[openamq-dev] Patents around AMQP

[Pieter Hintjens]

Hi all,

You may have read the Slashdot article about Red Hat's submarine
patent on an XML content-based exchange for AMQP:

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/15/153226

or Kirk Wylie's blog today:

http://kirkwylie.blogspot.com/2009/03/red-hats-amsp-patent-application-stupid.html

I'd like to reassure everyone.  Red Hat's patent claim is very weak.
iMatix first proposed content-based exchanges in the AMQP draft specs
two years before Red Hat filed this.  Further, the actual design is
poor: dynamic routing XML is obvious but slow.  There are faster ways
to do this - extract the essential routing data from the XML and turn
into a topic key or headers.

But the quality of the patent is actually irrelevant.  What we have
seen is that there is a risk that participants in the AMQP process
will silently file patents on it. which would be detrimental to all of
us, users and open source vendors alike.  Even if this particular
patent is contested and rejected, there will be others.

At the start of April there is a face to face meeting in San Diego.
iMatix will be present and together with Rabbit Technologies and
hopefully a majority of the working group we will push for changes to
the rules under which AMQP is developed to permanently ban this kind
of behaviour.  We consider this to be the highest priority on the
agenda.

As we've done since day 1, iMatix will do everything it can, together
with other members of the AMQP working group, to keep AMQP free and
open.  And not just AMQP but every layered technology, such as the
many related specifications we've developed and promoted.

As regards my own credentials in this, I was for two years president
of the FFII, the main European volunteer network working for the
abolition of software patents.  We organized many conferences, press
campaigns, and we changed several key decisions at the European level.
 Together with others I founded the Digital Standards Organization
(www.digistan.org) which is aimed at keeping digital standards free
and open, and free from the threat that patents and other unethical
practices present.  For three years at FOSDEM (the largest Free and
Open Source developers' meeting in Europe) I've given talks on
software patents.

So this is familiar, though unhappy, subject matter.  Software patents
are never good news.

Finally I wish to reassure our users and competitors and partners that
iMatix will never, ever, file for a patent on anything.  We will
document all our specifications, from day 1, on sites like
http://wikli.amqp.org with a clear policy that excludes patent
ambushes.  We will never compete by hiring lawyers.  We will spend our
time and money on writing better software, period.

Thanks to all our users for helping make OpenAMQ and Zyre better products.

I encourage all those with an opinion on the matter to try to attend
the San Diego event, or to send me their views by email so that I can
print them out and make them available to the Working Group.  As users
of AMQP, your voices must be heard.

-
Pieter Hintjens
CEO, iMatix Corporation