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DURHAM
Greg DeKoenigsberg is the Vice President of Community for Ansible, where he leads the company's relationship with the broader open source community. Greg brings to Ansible over a decade of open source product and community leadership, with the majority of this time spent building and leading communities for open source leader Red Hat. While at Red Hat, Greg served in various community leadership roles, including senior community architect, leader of the Fedora project, chair of the first Fedora Project Board, and Red Hat community liaison with the One Laptop Per Child project. More recently, Greg led community and product efforts for open source cloud pioneer Eucalyptus Systems.
Authored Comments
So I guess being basically <a href="http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Bilski_v._Kappos_amicus_briefs#AGAINST_software_patents">the only software vendor on the Planet Earth to file an amicus brief against patents in the Bilski case</a> doesn't count as "supporting efforts to eliminate software patenting" in your eyes.
I guess <a href="http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20091001154227155">when PJ at Groklaw says</a> "I love Red Hat. They stand alone so far among vendors, willing to stand up and express what the FOSS community would really say if it could speak with one voice to the Supreme Court. This is certainly what *I* would say if I had that chance," she's just some knucklehead who's talking out of her hat. Is that your position?
We won't even go into the ludicrous nature of the statement that we are "taking advantage of the many community contributors who are effectively unpaid employees," since every single Red Hat engineer produces open source software, every single day. To imply that we're not doing our fair share is a slap in the face. It's an insult to the *thousands* of employees at Red Hat who care *deeply* about these issues.
You seem to think that if we're not in 100% agreement with you, then we're against you. 95% agreement isn't sufficient. But I suppose that extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, eh?
I'm shocked, Bruce. Really and honestly shocked. I thought you were more civil than this. And I certainly thought you were smarter.
"If RH is only getting patents defensively, why don't they license them freely and in perpetuity for use under any Free Software license?"
IANAL, of course, but I would guess it's because the patent promise, as currently worded, provides the same benefit to the community, right now, without committing Red Hat to future behavior. Would a perpetual license be more binding in the future? Sure. But Red Hat's promise seems to be equally binding *now*, and anyone who writes code *now* relying on that promise is protected by it. If and when the policy changes, I'm sure that you and others will point it out, and you would be right to do it. Until then, why throw stones?
And of course Microsoft only offers the patent promise on an *extremely* small minority of its patents; our promise extends to *all* of our patents. I'm sure that you can recognize and appreciate this fundamental difference, right? Of course you can.
"Red Hat, AFAIK, was a profitable company before it had patents. So, it stands the reason that the only thing acquiring patents can do is make them *more* profitable. How much money is enough?"
Point out a single instance in which Red Hat has made a dime from patent licensing. Go ahead. I'll wait. And hey, maybe we reserve that right in the future -- but again, you can judge us on what you think we *might* do, or what we *have* done, over and over. Which has been to fight on the side of the angels.
"Why doesn't Red Hat take every dollar it spends on getting new patents, and use it as lobbying dollars toward ending software patenting in the USA?"
Maybe because we could spend every dime we have in the bank, and it would still be the equivalent of bringing a switchblade to a gunfight. Better to protect ourselves as best we can, and slug it out in courtrooms and win, and better to file amicus briefs in cases like Bilski -- where it's not a matter of throwing money away, but being on the right side of the fight as a matter of public record.
Come on, dude. You don't have to like our patent position, but how about a little credit where credit is due?