Open Invention Network??

Hmmh, this announcement has really caught my eye: Open Invention Network. I find it very interesting in that I'm currently pursuing my JD with the intent to move to Intellectual Property management. Of course that is about 4-6 years down the road since I’m working on it part time.

I think this really fits with my own personal vision of a future where the Operating System has become mostly irrelevant due to commoditization. This means we’ll be flooded with devices that are very task specific in form and feature as part of our daily lives. MP3 players and smartphones are consumer examples and the handheld bar code scanners enabled with 802.11x/RFID used in retail is a commercial example.

While Open Source has come a long way in the last 30+ years, donations of IP to Open Source have happened only when this donation benefitted the donor more than holding onto the IP. Hence the existence of patent holding firms. This is similar to a previous opinion I expressed on the Oracle acquisition of InnoDB and why I believe MySQL/InnoDB users have nothing to worry about.

My parting thought: while the wrapper appears to have altruism in the fiber, is this really a gift of any significance to the community at large? Only time will tell.