OIN has received $40M. Red Hat, in an SEC filing, said it was kicking in an initial cash contribution of $20M, and suggested that others may join OIN. (The funding requirement originally envisioned by its founders was $280M.)It said, "If new members are admitted to the LLC, such members will make, at the time of their admission, capital contributions in amounts determined by the board of the LLC."

According to that Red Hat filing, the company told the SEC that "the LLC may take actions it deems appropriate to protect Linux and other open source software. The LLC may also take appropriate, good faith counter-measures within the scope of its mandate, such as declaratory judgment actions, reexamination actions, interferences or similar legal or administrative actions initiated anywhere in the world."

OIN is headed by a retired IBM patent attorney Jerry Rosenthal – who ran IBM's own highly profitable billion-dollar IP licensing operation – out of offices Pound Ridge, New York.

The company is described as a "first of its kind" and a "new model" that is aimed at advancing Linux components and applications and helping grow the Linux ecosystem. It's unclear whether it has a shopping list.

(This is a substantially edited and abridged version of a story that appeared originally at www.clientservernews.com.)