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Google Erects Patent Shield for the Open Source Internet
Topic Started: 30 Mar 2013, 05:33 AM (553 Views)
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Google Erects Patent Shield for the Open Source Internet

Behind the scenes, just about all of the web’s biggest names are mimicking Google. That includes Facebook, Yahoo, eBay, Twitter and so many more.

All of these web giants rely on Hadoop, an open source software platform for crunching data across hundreds or even thousands of computer servers, and Hadoop is based on technology originally developed at Google. A little less than a decade ago, Google published two research papers describing some of the software that juggles data inside its data centers, including a platform called MapReduce, and in short order, a community of software developers — led by Facebook and Yahoo — recreated these tools with open source code.

The rub is that Google owns several patents related to MapReduce and other data center technologies that have spawned widely used open source projects, and though Google is typically viewed as a friend of open source software, those patents have always posed at least a small threat to the web at large. Companies can change. Patents get sold.

But on Thursday, Google formally agreed not to assert 10 patents related to MapReduce — unless it’s attacked first. The move is meant not only to ease fears over Google’s relationship to Hadoop and related technologies, but to encourage other companies to make similar pledges and build a kind of patent shield around open source software inside the data center.

Google calls this an Open Patent Non-Assertion Pledge, and according to a company spokesman, the company plans to make similar pledges around various other open source technologies as time goes on. Google says these patent pledges will hold even if it sells the patents involved.

The move is part of a growing effort to fight agressive patent tactics in the tech world. Last year, Twitter introduced what it calls the Innovator’s Patent Agreement, promising not to use patents from employee inventions in “offensive litigation” without approval from the employees involved, and it hopes others will make similar agreements. Google’s pledge also follows in the footsteps of the Open Invention Network, a coalition of companies — including Google, IBM and Red Hat — that seek to provide patent protection for the open source Linux operating systems.

Google aims to create a similar coalition around its latest pledge, and this is perhaps the most important part of this new effort. Threats to the open source data center are everywhere. Just last year, Yahoo — one of the creators of Hadoop — threatened legal action against another creator, Facebook, over a long list of other open source technologies.

http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/03/google-hadoop-patent/
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