Infosys embraces open source, joins network community

Indian IT services giant, Infosys, has joined the Open Invention Network (OIN) as a community member. The new move will enable the Bengaluru-headquartered company to share its developments with over 2,000 member companies in the OIN community, which is funded by Google, IBM, NEC, Philips, Red Hat and SUSE.

“We appreciate Infosys’ leadership in joining OIN and believe that those who look to the company for inspiration, both in and outside of India, will see the wisdom it has demonstrated by supporting patent non-aggression in Linux and adjacent open source technologies,” said Keith Bergelt, CEO of Open Invention Network.

Infosys considers open source software as the ‘primary engine of innovation’ that will help boost areas such as cloud computing, Big Data, artificial intelligence, DevOps and modern Web frameworks. Joining OIN will be vital for the company to expand its IT presence by not just sharing its developments with other community members but also enabling it access to the intellectual property of member companies without paying a royalty fee.

“Infosys is actively taking open source and open source based products to all our enterprise customers, so we are extremely excited to become a part of OIN. We encourage others to join it as well and support this very important initiative,” said Navin Budhiraja, SVP and head, architecture and technology, Infosys.

North Carolina-based OIN is the leading patent non-aggression community to promote the deployments of Linux and other related open source technologies. Patents owned by the OIN community are licensed royalty-free to help companies expand and enhance their existing offerings and promote open source.

Prior to Infosys, German automaker Daimler had joined OIN. The parent company of Mercedes-Benz is aiming to leverage open patents to upgrade intelligent vehicle technologies.