Samba developer and open source legend Andrew Tridgell says the open source community is poor at fighting patent attacks, but says things could improve with some changes in strategy. He offered his tips for effectively fighting patent holders making claims against open source projects at the recent Linux.conf.au.

Yesterday I was warning about the threat that the super-troll Intellectual Ventures represents. To provide some balance, here's a surprisingly upbeat piece from Samba creator Andrew Tridgell on how to read software patents.

Andrew Tridgell has posted a new patch intended to enable the kernel to work around the VFAT patents. Unlike the previous version, this patch preserves the long filename functionality.

Andrew Tridgell has published a patch that could make the Linux implementation of the FAT filesystem impervious to Microsoft patent claims of the kind that forced a settlement from TomTom. The patch alters the VFAT code so that it does not generate both short and long filenames.

While he sees the GPLv3 as "extremely good", Andrew "Tridge" Tridgell believes that the free software licence still needs strengthening.

The community is at work, I see. Not only is there a prior art search going on regarding three Microsoft patents asserted against TomTom, but now Andrew Tridgell has posted some code on LKML. You'll never guess what it does?

"...The Tridgell effect is what happens in the development community as the result of developers who are motivated by primarily by freedom. It might be summarized by the phrase: ..."

The Free Software Foundation Award for the Advancement of Free Software is presented annually by FSF president Richard Stallman to an individual who has made a great contribution to the progress and development of free software, through activities that accord with the spirit of free software.

Software patent law is not for the faint hearted. Now the FSF has funded a new video where top hackers and legal experts explain where the idea came from and just why it is so bad for free software. With increasing evidence that patents harm, rather then help, innovation, is the tide beginning to turn against software patents?