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Speaking at LinuxWorld, noted open source figure Bruce Perens finds fault with the OSDL Patent Commons Project.

Well, the project must have seemed like a good idea at the time.

But Mr. Perens has pointed out in his Open Source State of the Union address that the initiative will be like "spitting in the wind," The Register reported.

Why the problem? The patent contributions the initiative needs to truly protect developers are not the ones firms friendly to the open source movement would provide.

That means while all those IBM patents will be nice to have, it's Microsoft's work the community really needs to have contributed.

Mr. Perens claims that open source projects infringe on "tens of thousands" of patents in the US. Like others in the open source community, he blames the legal environment for the problems developers face. He's proposed lobbying politicians to fix laws governing software patents.

The flames of concern regarding a possible patent assault began to fan in February. At that time, several sources reported Microsoft was seeking PhD holders in computer science or electrical engineering to do prior art searches and research whether a given application could be patented.

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.