Tiemann of Red Hat: "Patents are filed secretly."

A candidate for non sequitur of the week comes from Michael Tiemann, Red Hat's vice-president for open source affairs. Commenting on Sun's claim to document and identify the author of every line code in Sun's operating system, Tiemann said: "Patents are filed secretly, it is literally impossible for Red Hat to find out about every patent and fix it."

The whole point of "patents" is that they are publicly available. Even patent applications are published at 18 months. With little understanding of patent terminology or concepts, Red Hat's commentary on patent reform has little credibility.

from Benamin Koe of cmpnet:

Battling a common enemy, however, is not enough to stop Sun and Red Hat from clawing at each other's throats.

Phipps had boasted during a conference at the recent CommunicAsia 2005 in Singapore that Sun's OpenSolaris protects its users better, as Sun is able to document and identify the author of every line of code in its operating system.

"If you ask Red Hat, they wouldn't be able to tell you," remarked Phipps.

Tiemann pooh-poohed this, saying that no one can possibly know if each line of code is infringing on a patent.

"Patents are filed secretly, it is literally impossible for Red Hat to find out about every patent and fix it," he declared.

"We have an open source assurance programme that says if somebody makes us aware of some patent that we infringe -- and to my knowledge no one has made us aware of it -- we will modify the software so that it no longer infringes."