Is Sun Backtracking On Software Patents?

from the hopefully-not dept

Wed, Apr 2nd 2008 2:22pm — Mike Masnick

MySQL's execs have always been outspoken critics of software patents. Back in 2004, we wrote about the company CEO's well-reasoned article about how software patents had become the nuclear stockpiling of the modern era. Companies were forced to patent everything just to have enough ammo to make sure others didn't sue them for patent infringement, and the end result was huge legal bills and wasted money that wasn't going towards innovation at all. Since then, the company has remained vehemently against software patents. However, now that Sun has purchased MySQL, the company is apparently being pushed to cut back on its anti-software patent stance. Someone who prefers to remain anonymous sent in some blog posts highlighting how Sun has removed MySQL's anti-software patent page. To be fair, among larger companies, Sun has certainly shown a much better understanding of how patents can be anti-innovation as well as how the patent system is often abused. But, at the same time, it also has a bunch of patents and has demonstrated in quite explicit fashion just how those patent nuclear wars work. So, of companies out there, Sun seems less bad concerning software patents than other firms. But it's still rather disappointing to see it erase MySQL's excellent public stance against software patents from the web -- even if it did make a silly April Fool's joke about open source software this week.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: open source, software patents
Companies: mysql, sun

3 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Jake, 2 Apr 2008 @ 3:01pm

Whilst I hope the content of the page is merely being relocated to its own server rather than disappearing for good, I respect Sun's right to choose to concentrate on conducting their business in a way that respects the spirit of the patent system and leaving active lobbying to those with the resources to tackle it full-time; leading by example is more important than hosting one page of eloquent arguments.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
interval, 2 Apr 2008 @ 3:26pm

I think the joke is on the guy who's got the hand outreaching in the thumbnail on Jonathon's Blog. He's got the hairiest arms in the world...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 2 Apr 2008 @ 7:22pm

Others
Sun is just against others have software patents. They're perfectly fine for Sun.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]