Durham, NC (February 25, 2020) – Open Invention Network (OIN), the largest patent non-aggression community in history, announced today that it is sponsoring and supporting Software Heritage Foundation (Software Heritage), a project of Inria, the French National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology. Software Heritage’s mission is to collect, preserve and share all software that is publicly available in source code form. It has made significant progress in preserving source code from open source projects. In addition to becoming a gold sponsor, OIN will provide insight and strategic guidance with regard to software preservation from an intellectual property standpoint.
“Open source software has been one of the instrumental, driving forces of innovation this century. Software Heritage is an important organization for software, having already archived more than 6 billion unique source files. Archiving of code in a curated form maintains the technical and scientific knowledge that goes along with the code, preserving the innovation while also providing a means for determining prior art,” said Keith Bergelt, CEO of Open Invention Network. “We are proud to sponsor Software Heritage and to work with the organization to ensure that this valuable resource is available to the open source community.”
“We see incredible value in the free and open source software (FOSS) communities. Our work in collecting, preserving and making source code available to developers, academics and government entities, will enable developers to continue to innovate,” said Roberto Di Cosmo, Founder and CEO of Software Heritage. “We are very pleased for OIN’s sponsorship and its support in maintaining the technical and scientific knowledge that may be lost without preservation, and may be further useful to developers from an intellectual property perspective.”
About Software Heritage
Founded in 2016, Software Heritage is a non-profit project of Inria, the French National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology. Software Heritage’s mission is to collect, preserve and share all software that is publicly available in source code form. For more information, please visit www.softwareheritage.org.
About Open Invention Network
Open Invention Network (OIN) is the largest patent non-aggression community in history and supports freedom of action in Linux as a key element of open source software (OSS). Patent non-aggression in core technologies is a cultural norm within OSS, so that the litmus test for authentic behavior in the OSS community includes OIN membership. Funded by Google, IBM, NEC, Philips, Sony, SUSE and Toyota, OIN has more than 3,100 community members and owns more than 1,300 global patents and applications. The OIN patent license and member cross-licenses are available royalty-free to any party that joins the OIN community. For more information, visit www.openinventionnetwork.com.
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