Open source developers have rewritten a piece of code to avoid violating an IBM patent, raising questions over the effectiveness of IBM's policy to allow open source developers the free use of some of its patents.
Developers on the open source database PostgreSQL announced on a mailing list last week that the latest release of the database contains a fix that has been added to avoid violating a patent filed by IBM.
Earlier this year IBM said it will allow open source developers the royalty-free use of 500 of its 10,000 US patents, with more patents to be made available under the scheme in the future. Any software covered by the Open Source Initiative's Open Source Definition was granted royalty-free use of the named patents.
But some PostgreSQL developers are concerned that using any IBM patent will prevent companies from reselling the open source database as closed source — something that is permitted under its OSI-approved BSD licence.
"Our BSD license says people can take PostgreSQL code and do *anything* with it," said an article summarising PostgreSQL discussions about the issue. "Including any [IBM] patents would preclude any third party from packaging and re-selling PostgreSQL. It would require that they pay license fees or remove the patented code. This changes the essence of the BSD license and so is not desirable."
The US patent office has not yet made a decision on the patent IBM has filed, but if it was approved it would have an "enormous effect" on commercial PostgreSQL distributors, according to the article posted on the Web site of Varlena, a company that offers services around PostgreSQL..
A posting on Linux news site LWN.net said that IBM's open source patent scheme forces projects to use a more restrictive licence, such as the GPL, rather than a more liberal licence such as BSD.
The GPL licence has been criticised by some, including Sun Microsystems president Jonathan Schwartz, who claim it discourages businesses from using open source software as a foundation for proprietary projects.
"If you are an open source developer — you can just forget about patents and hack freely: you have written license to do so," said the posting on LWN. "Once you'll try to make a program proprietary... bam: you'll get letter with royalty demands pretty soon. Kinda defeats the reason to license something under BSD license."
But an IBM spokesman said on Wednesday that PostgreSQL developers have never contacted IBM about this particular patent, making it difficult for the company to speculate what action it may have taken in the future.
"No dialogue has taken place, which is frustrating from our point of view," said the spokesman. "IBM is keen to support the open source community and hence why it has pledged these patents."
The IBM spokesman was unable to comment on whether the royalty-free licence would apply to proprietary implementations of BSD-licensed software.
The IBM patent that PostgreSQL developers are concerned about is patent number 295507, which was filed by IBM in November 2002. The patent concerns the
Talkback
I responce from a progresql developer.
http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&sid=2005041120232361&title=How+IBM%27s+patent+application+disrupted+PostgreSQL&type=article&order=&hideanonymous=0&pid=299028#c299082
Ingrid,
Actually, I don't think this event raises any question about the effectiveness of IBM open-sourcing patents. In fact, it points out how critical IBM's push for patent reform is. It just shows that reform isn't quite enough.
The software patent system is fundamentally broken and no amount of reform is going to be more than just barely adequate. Even when the groups involved (like IBM and PostgreSQL) have the best intentions in the world, software patents will continue to inhibit development.
(The opinions above are purely my own; I do not speak for the PostgreSQL project as a whole.)
This is highly irresponsible reporting. The linux newsgroups and open source coders have no idea how patents might or might not affect GPL or BSD-type licenses. These guys are not doing this upon the advice of counsel. The bottom line is that neither the GPL or BSD-type licenses affect patent rights or award patent licenses upstream or downstream in any way - they just don't matter. It is irresponsible of Ms. Marson to report upon random comments from an ill-informed newsgroup readership that have no relationship to the legal duties or consequences involved.
Just because the developers in question may not have an accurate understanding of the legal position doesn't mean this story shouldn't be reported.
I would suggest that the reporting highlights a much more interesting issue which is that open source developers can't afford expensive lawyers to work out this stuff and are (by de-facto) having to play safe.
If IBM was really genuine about opening up intellectual property, they could do so in a much more pro-active and supportive manner.
Whether deliberate or not, it's current approach to patents (and open source more generally) seems to be driven by public relations needs, rather than a genuine belief that the business model works ...
It’s going to get harder, not easier as “open source” moves into newer technology areas – e.g., rfid. The fundamental work on technologies such as compilers, relational data bases and operating systems like Unix predate “software” or “business methods” patentability. However, more recent technologies are littered with such patents. Also, it is hard to write around patents that hold technology “high ground,” because the resulting open source or freeware product may be significantly compromised. In the end, it may be that the open source solution providers like Red Hat and Novell, etc. will have to collect royalties as well as collecting support fees.