The Debian Project posts a primer on software patents for developers

THE DEBIAN LINUX PROJECT has done the whole free, open source software (FOSS) community a favour and released a patent policy.

The Debian Project, which is best known for the Debian Linux distribution, has served up the Community Distribution Patent Policy FAQ, a document that tries to explain patents and patent liabilities in plain English for developers working on FOSS projects. The information was prepared by lawyers at the Software Freedom Law Center and it applies to US patent law.

The document runs through the basics of what a patent is, the term of patent validity and the different classes of patent infringement. Interestingly, one of the questions posted was, "Can you provide examples of patent infringement suits against FOSS communities?"

The answer to this seemingly innocuous question was a blunt "No". To provide some explanation the document states, "Fortunately, few such cases exist, and none has yet developed to final judgment. To date, no court has ever addressed most of the issues unique to free software distribution. We believe that this is because FOSS communities do not have 'deep pockets' from which to pay royalties, and suing individual developers who do not have large revenues makes bad press for patent holders without achieving any useful outcome."

The document also claimed that unless you are a company that makes more than "a few hundred thousand dollars a year in sales [...] you are not worth the expenses of litigation to a patent troll or other rational plaintiff".

Although the Debian Project clearly says that the document is only meant to be a basic guide and that any final decisions should be taken after consulting with a lawyer, it does provide coverage for a good breadth of software patent topics. It provides an excellent layman's guide to the murky world of software patents and one that should be consulted by all FOSS developers to make sure that their hard work does not end up being a nice little earner for some patent troll. µ