The most popular and comprehensive Open Source ECM platform
Let us know more
Open Source: Patent Based Open Source
A small company called International Characters has enlisted the help of Open Source lawyers to create a new twist to the Open Source model.
Patents and Open Source are frequently thought of as opposites, but International Characters is trying to change that.
International Characters has created new technology around a high-speed XML processing engine, and they are now trying to apply the new Open Source model to their inventions.
Standard Open Source licenses to date are based on copyright law. Patents provide a stronger protection on intellectual property, but until now, has not been applied to Open Source licensing.
The goal of the new approach is to bring together three systems of knowledge transfer:
1. Research from universities and academia,
2. The Patent System which is intended to provide limited-time exclusive rights to technology inventions, and
3. Open Source and it’s concept of allowing people to use freely use technology but be required to contribute back to the community
The model of the new patent-based Open Source license is “free for open source, everyone else pays.” Commercial companies that want to embed the technology into their proprietary systems can do so, but commercial licensing is not free.
It’s an interesting approach, and one that might catch on. It parallels the dual Open Source/Commercial license model that software companies like Alfresco, MySQL, Funambol and Asterisk are using.
