Patent Commons project announced

An interesting piece of news via Axel Horn's blog. Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) is starting a patent project for Open Source. It will house a database containing information about patents and patent pledges for the benefit of the OSS community. According to the release from OSDL, the project will contain the following:

• A library and database that aggregates patent pledges made by companies. The library will also aggregate other legal solutions, such as indemnification programs offered by vendors of open source software.
• A collection of software patent licenses and software patents (issued and pending) held for the benefit of the open source community.

This will be a useful resource for OSS developers, particularly considering that software patents are going nowhere.