Larry Rosen makes some interesting statements about patents in a video interview from the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco:-
"Well Open Source is based on intellectual property and it just is an accident of history perhaps that it's been based on copyright. And copyright is a kind of a weak way of protecting intellectual property but it works and it is the basis for open source licenses. But in fact there's a stronger kind of intellectual property called patents which as you suggested to me earlier today will cause people, when I talk positively about patents, to cut my head off, and unfortunately I think that's an unfortunate attitude because patents are, if they are good patents, and if they are well crafted, and if they are truly inventive and non obvious, can lead the way to great technology."
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Here's a video (17th March 2008) of RedHat's Mark Webbink and Alan Cox discussing Red Hat's Patent Promise which they co-authored:-
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This is an amazing video.
That’s the license Rosen is referring to: OSL 3.0 - www.opensource.org/.../osl-3.0.php
Grant of Patent License.
Licensor grants You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, sublicensable license, under patent claims owned or controlled by the Licensor that are embodied in the Original Work as furnished by the Licensor, for the duration of the patents, to make, use, sell, offer for sale, have made, and import the Original Work and Derivative Works.
Great news, he is building bridges .....
~Andreas