[callenish]

I think this is an impressive first step, and I love the flow-through that future owners will be equally bound by the terms. Essentially, it gives a permanent free license to use the patents in any open source projects, which can only be an incentive for businesses to make their code open if they can.

I've often wondered, though, why there isn't a consortium to which all the companies with "defensive" software patents can assign them, on condition that if the company get sued for ANY software patent, the consortium will terminate the license to the plaintiff for ALL the patents it holds. The consortium could make that explicit in the license for software patents they offer (for free) to everyone. Sue someone for a software patent and you lose all rights to these others.

That would kill software patents dead in their tracks, I think. There are many elements of that solution in this one announced by Google, but it would be far more effective if every company who hated software patents but held them anyway collaborated.