14 DAY TRIAL // Google, for all its problems, remains the only big player even slightly committed to an open web and real innovation. While the Google of today is not the Google of five years ago, it's still doing some good.
The company has announced that it's voluntarily entering a pledge not to sue open source companies over some of its patents, unless it's sued first.
"[We are] announcing the Open Patent Non-Assertion (OPN) Pledge: we pledge not to sue any user, distributor or developer of open-source software on specified patents, unless first attacked," Google explained.
"We've begun by identifying 10 patents relating to MapReduce, a computing model for processing large data sets first developed at Google—open-source versions of which are now widely used. Over time, we intend to expand the set of Google’s patents covered by the pledge to other technologies," it added.
The patents in question apply to companies using Hadoop, the open-source implementation of the MapReduce algorithms and specs.
There are several Hadoop vendors operating today and the technology is used by several large websites, including Yahoo and Facebook.
While Hadoop was developed independently, mostly at Yahoo, it is based on Google technology which could mean that, in concept, Google could sue any company using Hadoop over the patents it holds for MapReduce.
With the pledge, Google is saying that it will never sue any company using the open-source Hadoop, in any form, over the patents specified. The pledge is for life and applies even if the patents are sold.
Google plans to add more patents to the pledge moving forward. Several companies already have similar pledges, but Google goes the furthest.
That said, Twitter is even more progressive when it comes to patents, in fact, it's the only company that promises not to use patents except for defensive purposes.
What's more, inventors get to own the patents for the technology they create at Twitter, though the site does get a free license to use it in any way it sees fit.