Since the discussion went nowhere on groklaw, I am going to repost my comment here.

A different (maybe not better) plan

I happen to be one of those people who is not convinced that the solution that OSRM is offering is helpful to F/OSS. Not agreeing with OSRM's business plan, and by extension yours, is not shameful. People sharing a different opinion than yours, and coming to different conclusions based on their grasp of certain facts, does not mean both sets of conclusions are wrong. It is however, presumptuous to assume that I don't have a grasp on any facts, or that all facts lead to the same conclusion. Believe it or not, disagreeing with you does not automatically make someone a troll. What makes someone a troll is when they do it solely to inflame or as a personal attack.

I am not sure what "rest of the story" you are alluding to. If you are attributing SCOsource's failure due to third parties offering indemnification to OSRM, I respectfully disagree.  The only party that I know of that have been offering indemnification is HP. I wouldn't call what Red Hat offers indemnification. I highly doubt that when the 1500 extortion letters went out to previous or current SCO customers that SCO backed off because OSRM had sold those corporations indemnification policies. I believe it has more to do with SCO's behavior and the  industry reaction to the lawsuits. To attribute SCO backing down on SCOSource to OSRM is ludicrous unless someone can fill me in with additional facts.

And yes, I do have ideas for a different plan. I don't know if the plan would work or not and I don't claim it is the perfect plan. The plan is based on what I believe has worked well for the F/OSS community - a combination of what you have done here with groklaw and the successful example of OSDL.

Linux is, and will continue to be, a target only when it threatens the bottom line of corporations like SCO, Sun, and Microsoft. The good thing is that other corporations have embraced disruptive change, and discovered that money can be made from the F/OSS model. Corporations like IBM, HP, Red Hat, and Novell. As long as linux has value to them, they have a vested interest in its success. Linux is doing what the justice department failed to do - market correction in the software industry. They also happen to have the financial, legal, and political resources to make a considerable difference.

What I propose is to take advantage of this bizarre alignment of the planets - big business and F/OSS. The OSDL model is a perfect example. My proposal addresses the short, mid, and long term goals of business and F/OSS.

First of all, it should be a non-profit entity like OSDL.  The board membership should be structured to include representatives from corporate and F/OSS interests. For examples IBM, Red Hat, Fujitsu, HP, Nortel, EFF, FSF, pubpat.org, ISC, Apache Foundation, etc...

The short term problem of the patent threat should be addressed by some sort of patent trust or patent bank. I have no idea how to implement this - some sort of license or outright donation.  If corporations are making money off of F/OSS, give them another way to contribute back.  This would give IBM the perfect opportunity to formalize their recent statements about not using patents against linux. The short term goal is to fight fire with fire, create a patent bank that can be used to dissuade players like microsoft from attacking. The current rules of the game won't change soon enough to stave off attacks, so if you can't beat them, join them. Beat them at their own game. Imagine if you will, projects like Apache, projects owned by the ISC (bind, dhcp), sendmail, kde, and gnome all having their code combed through for patents.  Certainly the F/OSS community has been creative enough over the last 20 years to have some patentable ideas? The  ultimate goal in the short term is to stave off immediate patent attacks.

In the mid term emulate the success of the groklaw phenomenon. Apply the model to the creation of a prior art database, to legal research, create a focal point to rally the troops and whack the fud. Here is another idea for the mid term. The ultimate goal in the mid term is to render software patents useless by basically a legal DOS attack. Imagine a scenario where this body can apply the same attack to microsoft. Claim microsoft is violating patents held by a industry coalition and take a SCO dive  at their source code. Expose the fact that proprietary code may be full of patent infringement as well.

The long term goal is to change the laws. Once there is no financial gain from software patents because they have been rendered useless by the patent bank WMD and prior art database, it is time to start lobbying for changes in the law.

Problems? Heck yeah there are problems, lots of them.  Would IBM extend loyalty to F/OSS projects other than the kernel? What kind of license for the patents, GPL -vs- BSD models? What if one member of the consortium decides to go after another? Is this idea even legal? Can we "all get along"? What happens when microsoft quits being a monopoly and all financial motivation to cooperate goes away? Will it work against the leeches that have only patents and no products? Are all software patents a bad idea?

I wouldn't have believed any of this possible before OSDL and the SCO lawsuits.