Amazon has joined the Open Invention Network (OIN), an organization dedicated to protecting the ecosystem. Linux from patent claims. By joining OIN, the company demonstrated its commitment to the ideas of collaborative innovation and non-aggressive patent management. Amazon believes Linux and open source software is a key driver of innovation at the company. It is noted that the goal of Amazon joining OIN is to strengthen open source communities and help ensure that technologies such as Linux, continued to develop and remain accessible to everyone.
OIN members commit not to assert patent claims and to license patented technologies for use in ecosystem-related projects free of charge. LinuxOIN members include over 3500 companies, communities, and organizations that have signed a patent-sharing license agreement. Among the key OIN participants, which ensure the formation of a protective Linux patent pool, companies such as Google, IBM, NEC, Toyota, Renault, SUSE, Philips, Red Hat, Alibaba, HP, AT&T, Juniper, Facebook, Cisco, Casio, Huawei, Fujitsu, Sony and Microsoft.
Companies that sign the agreement receive access to OIN-held patents in exchange for a commitment not to sue for the use of technologies used in the ecosystem. LinuxIn particular, as part of its accession to the OIN, Microsoft transferred the right to use more than 60 of its patents to OIN participants, undertaking not to use them against Linux and open source software.
The OIN Agreement applies only to components of distributions that fall under the definition of a system Linux ("Linux System"). The list currently includes 3730 packages, including the kernel. Linux, platform Android, KVM, Git, nginx, Apache Hadoop, CMake, PHP, Python, Ruby, Go, Lua, LLVM, OpenJDK, WebKit, KDE, GNOME, QEMU, Firefox, LibreOffice, Qt, systemd, X.Org, Wayland, PostgreSQL, MySQL, etc. In addition to non-aggression obligations, a patent pool has been created for additional protection within the OIN, which includes patents that are purchased or donated by participants related to Linux.
The OIN patent pool includes over 1300 patents. Including in the hands of OIN is a group of patents, which featured some of the first mentions of technologies for creating dynamic web content, which anticipated the emergence of such systems as Microsoft's ASP, Sun/Oracle's JSP and PHP. Another significant contribution is the acquisition in 2009 of 22 Microsoft patents that had previously been sold to the AST consortium as patents covering "open source" products. All OIN members have the opportunity to use these patents free of charge. The effectiveness of the OIN agreement was confirmed by the decision of the US Department of Justice, which demanded that the interests of OIN be taken into account in the terms of the deal to sell the Novell patents.
Source: opennet.ru
