[Commons-Law] Glyn Moody on Open Source Licensing and Patent Agnosticism

[Venkatesh Hariharan]

Pranesh Prakash wrote:
> http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/should-open-source-licence-ever-be-patent-agnostic
>
> Should an Open Source Licence Ever Be Patent-Agnostic?
> April 9th, 2009 by Glyn Moody

Pranesh, thanks for posting this. My comments on Glyn's post is below.

Venky
=====

Dear Glyn,

I agree with you that the open source community should stand up to the
"sheer brinkmanship on the part of the media industries" as you call
it. More and more countries are hardening their stance against
software patents and the US remains one of the few countries that
continues to grant software patents. Even in the US, the voices for
reform are growing. Bessen and Meurer's research
(http://www.researchoninnovation.org/) shows that software patents
lead to litigation and actually prevent innovation. Even in the US,
the recent Bilski case goes against business method patents, which are
closely related to software patents.

The larger issue is that standards should belong to humanity and
should not be controlled by individuals or companies. We do not pay
for standards like weights and measures in the physical world and we
should not pay for standards in the digital world either. Governments
across the world are mandating open standards because public data
should be in public formats and not private formats like MPEG. This
will eventually tilt the balance of power in favor of open standards.

The dot com bust proved that the digital world cannot violate the laws
of economics. The open standards movement will prove that the digital
world cannot violate the norms of civil society.