Google Stands Down from Patents and Stands Up for Open Source
April 10, 2013
Google has been the leader for the rest of the Web’s biggest names for years. Whether or not they admit it, Google leads and Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter, etc. all follow. Because of their early lead, Google holds many patents related to search infrastructure. But in a recent shift, Google has decided to back off from their enforcement. Read more in the Wired article, “Google Erects Patent Shield for the Open Source Internet.”
The article sums it up:
“The rub is that Google owns several patents related to MapReduce and other data center technologies that have spawned widely used open source projects, and though Google is typically viewed as a friend of open source software, those patents have always posed at least a small threat to the web at large . . . But on Thursday, Google formally agreed not to assert 10 patents related to MapReduce — unless it’s attacked first. The move is meant not only to ease fears over Google’s relationship to Hadoop and related technologies, but to encourage other companies to make similar pledges and build a kind of patent shield around open source software inside the data center.”
Aggressive patent tactics are becoming common even in open source. Google is taking a strong stand against such practices, no doubt hoping others will follow suit. Open source forms an important structural foundation for many emerging technologies. For instance, LucidWorks builds their enterprise search solutions on Apache Lucene/Solr. LucidWorks has developed a strong industry record for reliability and customer support, all made possible by its open source roots.
Emily Rae Aldridge, April 10, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
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