Companies Collaborate to Protect Linux
The Open Innovation Network this year has received a fresh round of publicity after being joined by Facebook, HP and OpenStack. The OIN was formed in 2005 to ensure that individual programmers, independent software vendors, distributors and businesses have open access to intellectual property related to the Linux System. The organization accomplishes this by acquiring patents to be used for cross-licensing purposes to defend the Linux System – making them available on a royalty-free basis to any company, institution or individual that agrees not to assert its patents against the Linux System.. These new members join companies including IBM, Novell, Philips, Red Hat, Sony and NEC.
The CEO of OIN explains that Linux, with worldwide business forecasted at about $40 billion USD, is threatened by any organization that “supports proprietary platforms and has a large [patent] portfolio that it likes to continue to use to be able to discourage choice. There will always be those who will be looking at Linux potentially threatening their livelihood, their way of life.”
A UK technology professional and writer further explains the importance role Linux plays in Open Innovation in an article for Computer World UK. His premise is that open innovation, as described throughout Henry Chesbrough’s breakthrough 2005 book on the subject, was essentially invented by Linus Torvalds when he started the Linux project in 1991. Alas, Torvalds does not get enough credit for helping to define the ideas behind open innovation a decade before books started appearing about it. (Chesbrough’s book mentions Linux just once, in the context of IBM).
“Even as the Linux process has evolved to accommodate increased participation,” he writes, “the key elements have remained the same: participation completely open to all (coders and users); bottom-up rather than top-down (although Linus always has the final decision about which of those bottom-up suggestions should be adopted); and based on online rather than personal collaboration.”
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