On 14 February 2014 14:37, Valer Mischenko
wrote:
> Hi the OpenBSD team,
>
> Ken Westerback advised me to appeal to you as a collective.
Well, my exact word were
"You can try appealing to tech@openbsd.org, but I'd rate the chances of
a previously secret organization controlling OpenBSD patents surfacing
in response to such a plea as low."
Which I thought would be discouraging. :-)
>
> My name is Valer and I am writing to you on behalf of the Open Invention
> Network (OIN). Our mission is to support projects developing or using Open
> Source and Linux-related technology by deterring patent aggression. We do
> this through a community that pledges not to assert patents against each
> other over this technology. This pledge covers over 2,100 Open Source
> packages. It is structured to reduce risk on core operating system and
> middleware technologies. Almost 750 projects and companies from all areas
> of technology creation, deployment and use have joined our community so far
> (see not very up to date list:
> http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/licensees.php)
>
> We wanted to invite OpenBSD Foundation to our community.
And you did so invite us. But I explained we could not meet the bar
you set for membership, to wit,
"Our community is free to join. The only thing we want is a pledge
that OpenBSD would never use patents aggressively against the broader
Linux System."
since the Foundation has no powers to make such promises.
Ken
>
> We understand that there is no organization that owns or controls OpenBSD,
> but that is valid for lots of projects / distress who joined the
> non-aggression pact. Most of them are also autonomous collectives of
> individual contributors, each of various degrees of current influence over
> the source code. Mostly the team decides by consensus who may sign the
> pledge (can be done digitally).
>
> You may be interested in our community credentials and to get some more
> context about our work. Here is an endorsement from Eben Moglen, Chairman
> of the Software Freedom Law Center:
> http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/now/organizations/OIN
>
> Here is an endorsement from Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux
> Foundation:
> http://www.linux-foundation.org/weblogs/jzemlin/2009/09/09/protecting-linux-from-microsoft-yesmicrosoft-got-caught/
>
> Our community is free to join. The only thing we want is a pledge that
> OpenBSD would never use patents aggressively against the broader Linux
> System. Of course it never will, and that's a symbolic gesture, but it
> remains very important for our work. When we bind bigger companies with
> this pledge we are sure they will not attack the users of OpenBSD for
> example. But their participation in OIN is also very important in various
> other aspects.
>
> And these companies are numerous. For example Valve Software and Dropbox
> are on of the latest bigger companies joined in. UnitedStack from China
> joined just a weeks hours before. Pretty much everyone else is in there
> too, from Red Hat to GNOME, Fujitsu to CentOS, Google to KDE to OpenStack
> Foundation. This is the largest community to address software patent
> challenges in the world. The idea is: when everybody pledges freedom, there
> will be no wars.
>
> We are passionate supporters of open innovation and the Linux System in a
> very broad sense. I hope we can work together by welcoming OpenBSD as a
> project to our non-aggression community. (And may be also OpenSSH,
> OpenBGPD, OpenNTPD, and OpenCVS as separate projects.) Yes, we need mass to
> shift the current state of affairs to the better. Every single voice helps
> us face current market challenges while investing in a more collaborative
> future.
>
> Attached is a very short overview of OIN + FAQs, but I am happy to answer
> any questions and to explain in more detail why the pledge of patent
> non-aggression is so important for open innovation.
>
> May you decide positively there is a possibility to sign online:
> http://licenses.openinventionnetwork.com
>
> Please let me know what you think guys.
>
>
> Faithfully,
> Valer Mischenko,
> Open Invention Network
>
> www.openinventionnetwork.com
