And sets an example with Fedora Foundation

Jun 4, 2005 18:16 GMT  ·  By

Red Hat announcement related to Fedora Foundation, an organization whose purpose will be to develop the distribution that bears its name, is a proof of the company's vision on patents.

In Red Hat's opinion, in this moment, patenting certain software products is a good method to increase market share and from that point of view, the allusion to Microsoft is obvious.

Red Hat got also involved side by side with Nokia, IBM and EU in the promoting of the anti-monopole legislation and the elimination of unfair competition.

Red Hat considers that the United States has also to reform its system of patent granting and the legislation related to intellectual property which in the company's opinion would limit innovations.

The Fedora project, for which Red Hat will continue to ensure financial and technical support, is actually the first step of a more complex strategy, whose end purpose is the development of software patent commons, which would allow the easier sharing of information between software developers and a better collaboration.

By entrusting Fedora to an independent organization, Red Hat is subscribing to the trend started by companies like IBM, Novell and Nokia which will put at the open-source community' disposal a series of patented applications.