Webbink says both Cox and he despise software patents. "Alan... came to see the value to Red Hat of having patents on truly innovative ideas that may be implemented by others who are not so
friendly to open source," he said.

According to Webbink, the ideas came from just the one individual. Asked whether the GNU foundation, the Free Software Foundation, its counsel Eben Moglen or Public Patent Foundation executive director Dan Ravicher had any input into the ideas, he replied in the negative.

The patents have been pending for a few years now. "...so it is likely to be a few more years before they would likely issue," Webbink said. "In the meantime the examination by the USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office) may result in significant modification of the claims or outright rejection of the claims depending on any prior art the examiner is able to find."

He did not offer any opinion on whether he thought the applications would be accepted. However, he did stress that both applications, and indeed all other patents which Red Hat owns, were obtained for solely defensive purposes. "No presumption is necessary; that (a defensive move) is the sole purpose of pursuing these and the other patent applications filed by Red Hat," Webbink said.

According to Red Hat's patent policy, any patents the company owns will be used to defend developers of free and open source software in the event that they come under legal attack. Additionally, Red Hat's patents can be used freely in FOSS projects under the General Public License.

But many companies have made moves which seem to be in the public good and then made an U-turn. Why should the free and open source software community trust Red Hat?

Webbink says Red Hat has been consistent throughout its corporate history in its stance on software patents. "Red Hat was the first company to issue a patent promise. Red Hat has invested heavily in developing its patent portfolio while making that portfolio available to the open source community. Red Hat has invested heavily in the Open Invention Network in order to provide a protective shield to Linux and the Linux environment.

"All of that said, the community should only trust Red Hat so long as we continue to fulfill on our promise to remain a committed open source company."{moscomment}

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Industry  Intellectual property rights  Linux  Open Source  Research  Sam Varghese