14 DAY TRIAL // Yesterday, Red Hat took a stand on challenging the standards for patenting software. In the Bilski case that's at this moment before the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, the issue is ripe for consideration. Red Hat shows the problems that software patents bring to open source and seeks modifications to the standards for patentable subject matter that take open source into account.
Because of the U.S patent system, open source software cannot develop as it should, although it is one of the most dynamic and innovative sectors in USA. Thus, they don't get along mostly because the collaborative activity that's the core of the open source world. By using patents, developers exclude others from using and modifying the code; the open source devs let everyone have access to the code, modify it and improve it. The community is always the top priority in the open source world.
At this moment there are more than 200,000 software patents. A developer could write some code with good intentions and discover after some time that he/she infringed some that he/she didn't even know they existed. Besides, software patents are hard to interpret and can not be efficiently searched. A risk of litigation exists for almost all open source projects. In case you infringe a patent, you should know that the cost of such a litigation runs into millions of dollars.
Because of the litigation risk, companies from the open source world, like Red Hat, get patents for defending themselves in case of a future lawsuit. Through the Open Source Assurance Program, Red Hat protects its customers and provides open source intellectual property.
Although there are so many problems because of the patent system, open source continues to evolve. If the patents would be removed, we could see this evolution go at a much higher rate.