It finally dawned on me what OpenSearch does. Basically you tell it about different search engines by showing it how to query something in each, and get back an RSS return. Then when you search for some term, say foo+bar, it performs the search in all the engines you have configured it for. So it's a way to group a bunch of search engines together and command them all to look for the same thing. It is clever. It is something that hasn't been done before, to my knowledge. That's the good news. The bad news is that Amazon is a leading patent abuser. So as good as this idea is, it's bad for all the rest of us, unless they tell us that they're granting us some kind of license to use the idea. [via Scripting News]
I am no fan of Amazon's moves in the patent arena. At the same time I am very confident that OpenSearch isn't headed down this part. Virtualization isn't new or unique (irrespective of context), and the prior art defense should be pretty trivial.
For now, I like what OpenSearch offers, and would continue do so as long as there is no patent abuse associated with this (I certainly understand Dave Winer's concern; their track record isn't great re. this matter).
I should have an OpenSearch variant of this dynamic
collection of Amazon and patents related blog posts in the coming days (you will see a new OpenSearch gem alongside RSS/Atom/RDF).
BTW -
Here is the dynamic collection of all my Amazon.com posts to date.