A few years back, along with some folks at MySQL and in the open source community, we helped kick off a campaign against software patents in Europe. This was a hot topic and surprisingly, it seemed no large companies were willing to step up the fight. As a relatively young company, MySQL had a lot to lose if someone went on the attack against us using patents. While we had a very small number of patents in our portfolio (mostly through acquisitions), we help them only for defensive purposes.
It's been interesting to see some stories come out from NPR's Planet Money and This American Life shows that shed more light on software patents. The …
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