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OK, I sense there's going to be a fight, because Network Appliance is a profit-making corporation and they would be remiss if they didn't try to defend their IP. Did I mention that software patents are evil? Did I mention that software patents make people behave in evil ways?
We here at the news-desk are fans of the near-omnipresent search giant that is Google, and we don't mind saying so. However, though we don't play much poker, we know a spade when we see one, and we're not afraid to call it when we do. One such spade comes in the form of events that played out over the past few weeks with regard to the company's Open Source darling, Android.
Microsoft does not believe there is an inherent contradiction between its recent statements that free and open-source software infringes on 235 of its patents, and the veiled legal threats that go along with that, and its attempts to reach out and build bridges with the open-source community.
Two law professors from UC Berkeley have come up with a novel idea to protect open source developers from patent bullies. They call it the Defensive Patent License. They hope the DPL can address the objections FOSS developers have with patents the way the GPL addressed them for copyright.
The Google App Engine doesn’t really advance the cause of evil all that much, but it’s not exactly good, either. Google makes a big deal about its corporate motto, “Don’t be evil”, but at the end of the day, Google really is just another corporation, no matter how well-intentioned its founders may have been.
Users of free and open source software (“FOSS”) have little to gain and much to fear from the patent system. The patent system poses two major threats to users: