Submission + - Red Hat patenting around open standards 2
I Believe in Unicorns writes: Red Hat's patent policy says "In an attempt to protect and promote the open source community, Red Hat has elected to... develop a corresponding portfolio of software patents for defensive purposes. We do so reluctantly..." Meanwhile, USPTO Application #: 20090063418 "Method and an apparatus to deliver messages between applications", claims a patent on routing messages using an XQuery match, which is an extension of the "unencumbered" AMQP protocol that Red Hat is helping to make. Is this a defensive patent, or are Red Hat cynically staking out a software patent claim to an obvious extension of AMQP? Is Red Hat's promise to "refrain from enforcing the infringed patent" against open source a reliable contract, or a trap for the unwary? Given the Microsoft-Red Hat deal in February are we seeing Red Hat's "Novell Moment?"
Patenting open standards = evil (Score:2)
This makes me really, really furious. Patents on open standards are evil, just a way of taxing those who make products on those open standards. I happen to know the background to AMQP really well. Most of what Red Hat has contributed is utter crap (read the 0-10 spec to get an idea of how poor!) The real work is done by others. Yet Red Hat want to claim patents on extensions of AMQP that should be standardised. Why? So they can collar clients and say, "we own the patents, buy our licenses or we'll s