Idea: Non-profit that will buy patents and offer them open-source

Have you thought about how it would acquire money to acquire the patents? Would you run the fundraising circuit and solicit donations?

Also, I know what your question means, be careful of your wording "open source", patents are, by nature, open source, ie you can view what makes them work. (this is part of the point of patents) It's the licensing them that's the tough part, as they don't exactly operate under anything like the Apache/BSD/GNU license.

Add a twist to it. Make a specific licensing agreement that requires a payment to the Non-profit in the amount of .001% of profits in trade for use. You could even stipulate a floor and ceiling (minimum payment 10000 max 100000). Being a non-profit all the money returned should go directly into purchases of further patents. This could even be explicitly stated as part of the license agreement making it more of a paying it forward agreement.

The idea here is that you are getting a risk-less technology, but if you do hit it large you have to pay it forward in a very minimal amount. And of course you are afforded the 'patent umbrella' by utilizing tech you know is in a portfolio and properly documented/owned.

Too many crap patents out there.

Variation: a consortium where all participates share their patents in a common pool. If you are in the consortium, you promise not to sue any of the participants.

This is good because startups can join the consortium. It needs at least some good patents inside it to bootstrap. As the patent portfolio of this consortium gets better, larger players have an incentive to join.

If you're going to ask companies to abandon their competitive advantages in exchange for cash, you better have a ton of it. And you best be able to tell which ones are really advantages, or you'll wind up losing a ton of it without meaningful impact.

I can see the ibankers frothing at the thought of it all.