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Netstat -vat by Sean Michael Kerner (bio)

A command line view of IT



Red Hat opens up on patent settlement - or does it?

By Sean Michael Kerner on July 15, 2008 10:04 AM
redhat.png
From the 'read the fine print files' :

Red Hat VP and Assistant General Counsel Rob Tiller has publicly posted the terms of the patent agreement he helped to negotiate last month with Firestar Software, Inc. and DataTern Inc. The general idea behind Tiller's post is to be transparent about the deal - the only problem in my simplistic view is that it's missing some very key information about money.

According to Tiller:
Section 3 of the agreement is entitled 'Payment,' but the material on this issue has been redacted here. This is because the parties agreed that this term must remain confidential.
How can you be transparent about a settlement without discussing money? How much is a patent worth today? I certainly would want to know and I'd bet millions of others would too.

The money issue aside the other key item from my point of view that is actually clarified reasonably well by Tiller relates to who is actually protected by this deal.  The patent in question has to do with technology that is used by Red Hat's JBoss division, but Red Hat has done the RIGHT THING and gone a step further to protect the whole community - and not just its own customers.

The agreement specifically notes that it protects products distributed under a 'Red Hat Brand' as well as its derivatives.
Because this includes downstream derivatives and combinations based on projects developed upstream from Red Hat, JBoss, and Fedora, it covers not only software distributed by us, but also software from such projects that is distributed by our competitors such as Novell and Sun Microsystems under their own brands.
This is a fantastic thing. Now if Novell had been as community minded when it struck its patent covenant deal with Microsoft the biggest patent threat hovering over the Linux community as a whole IMHO would just go away.

Hopefully others will learn from Red Hat's community approach to patent deals and we'll see more of this sort in the future that protects the interests of ALL users.

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5 Comments

Jason R. said:

I'm with you on everything but your last statement regarding Novell and its MS patent deal. It seems like a cheap shot at Novell.

I think it necessary to point out that the RH deal succeeded because ALL parties were interested in achieving an amicable solution. Novell on its own could not force MS to agree to a solution like that and, if I remember correctly, Red Hat couldn't make a deal with MS either.

Thanks.

July 15, 2008 1:29 PM
Rahul Sundaram said:

"if I remember correctly, Red Hat couldn't make a deal with MS either."

Ugh, No. Red Hat was first approached by Microsoft and they refused to sign up a patent deal which Novell later agreed to.

July 15, 2008 1:51 PM
Timothy J. Bogart said:

"Ugh, No. Red Hat was first approached by Microsoft and they refused to sign up a patent deal which Novell later agreed to."

Novell and MS have a reciprocal patent deal. How could you infer that the _same_ deal could ever be offered to another company with a different patent portfolio?

Or a different record for winning court cases against MS?

Or who don't have outstanding court cases against MS?

Or, back to the original article, and what Jason R. said, why would anyone think MS would want to do a reasonable settlement? MS has poured money on a couple of parties who have been successful at litigating them in the past. Red Hat doesn't fall into that category.

July 15, 2008 5:26 PM
Rahul Sundaram said:

"Novell and MS have a reciprocal patent deal. How could you infer that the _same_ deal could ever be offered to another company with a different patent portfolio?"

Microsoft Steve Ballmer said so in public that similar patent deals is on the table and has signed so with many other companies including Linspire, Xandros etc. Red Hat refused.

http://www.redhat.com/promo/believe/

If you think this is merely a matter of "reciprocal" patent deal, even Novell disagrees with that. Whether it is the exact same deal or not is almost completely irrelevant here since any kind of patent deal was not going to be signed up as long as it discriminates upstream developers

http://www.redhatmagazine.com/2007/05/14/summit-2007-eben-moglen-on-microsofts-summer-of-fear/

July 15, 2008 5:43 PM
Orlando Native said:

Seems to me this really isn't all that different from the Novell-MS deal. Only difference is the upstream and downstream coverage, rather than just downstream coverage.

But even so, it does not really cover 'sidestream'; which is really what everyone disliked about the Novell agreement as well. If you use a RedHat derivative, you're covered. But, if you use a NON-REDHAT version, I don't see ANY coverage. So the providence of where you got it from (ie, if you got the same covered software from SUSE, who got it from a different source than RedHat, would it still be covered? That certainly does not appear to be clear at all.

July 16, 2008 1:48 PM

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