Lit Review 4: Patent Promises

This time we are looking at the various patent promises that have been made by Red Hat, IBM, and Apple

Who:

Apple, Red Hat, Google, and IBM

What:

The Patent Promises by the various companies and what they mean

Where:

Google's Patent Promise
IBM's Patent Promise
Red Hat's Patent Promise

When:

Red Hat posted their's in 2014, but the others have no listed time

The Gist:

Multiple companies have basically said that they will not go after anyone who is using their patents in specific ways

The Good:

• This helps promote open source
• This helps developers know to an extant what is okay to do with their resources

The Bad:

• Open Source has a very loose definition
• The language is fairly thick overall

Any Questions?

• Any legal battles from after these promises were made?
• Just how many patents do Google an IBM actually own?

In Conclusion:

Fairly tough read as the material was rather thick. While this is on the whole a good step forward for Open Source development, it is rather telling that this much has to be put into protecting oneself and their software. 8/10