arstechnica.com: "Red Hat gives up on Fedora Foundation"

[John]

Daniel Robitaille wrote:
> "Red Hat gives up on Fedora Foundation"
> http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060406-6535.html
> 
> 
> Ubuntu is mentionned in the article  as one example of a project that
> uses the concept of a foundation:
> 
> "Although Red Hat feels that a nonprofit foundation isn't suitable for
> its needs, there are many other open source projects (including other
> Linux distributions) that do use foundations. Established by Mark
> Shuttleworth in July 2005 with an initial funding commitment of US$10
> million, the Ubuntu Foundation was designed to preserve the autonomy
> of the Ubuntu project, and distinguish community efforts from the
> commercial endeavors of Ubuntu sponsor Canonical. The Ubuntu
> Foundation has largely succeeded in its goals, and as a result, the
> Ubuntu project has drawn a number of contributors from other projects.
> "
> 
> --
> Daniel Robitaille
> 

To understand the comparison between this and other foundations, you 
need to understand what the Fedora Foundation was to accomplish.

While there was much debate about it, the original purpose was to hold 
OSS patents and to prosecute infringements. OSS developers were to be 
able to use those patents by right.

"
This was the obvious starting place, and what we actually announced. One 
of the lurking concerns of the open source community is the threat of 
software patents.  The Fedora Foundation could have been an ideal 
repository for defensive patents.  We envisioned soliciting patentable 
ideas from businesses and/or individuals, paying for the prosecution of 
these patents, and then guaranteeing open source developers the 
unrestricted right to code against these patents using a similar 
mechanism to the Red Hat patent promise. 
(http://www.redhat.com/legal/patent_policy.html).

"What we weren't counting on was the rapid progress of the Open 
Invention Network (http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/press.html), 
which serves a similar purpose for businesses in a much more compelling 
way.  Without going into too much detail, it became clear to us that OIN 
is going to be the 800-pound gorilla in the patent commons space, and we 
were eager to join forces."

There is an announcement about it on fedora-announce-list at redhat.com and 
it would be archived at https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list