Patent Commons
So is this:
1. A genuine act of philanthropy by a concerned corporate citizen who's business is transitioning to the service sector.
2. A pathetic ruse by the software patenting department of a multinational now that the tide is turning against them.
I'm leaning towards 2.
I've not read the full legal documents but this looks like a poorly thought out PR stunt that just happened to coincide with calls by European MEP's to restart the entire legislative process on the swpat debacle. We should probably take this as an admission by the worlds largest software patent holder that patents are not suitable for protecting software, because if they were this wouldn't be necessary.
What happens if you dual license your software like MySQL or Trolltech?
Posted by ____ atnobody@example.org wrote
So is this:1. A genuine act of philanthropy by a concerned corporate citizen who's business is transitioning to the service sector.
2. A pathetic ruse by the software patenting department of a multinational now that the tide is turning against them.
This is easily 1. IBM has some Open Source projects which they support such as the Linux kernel and Apache. Given the size of their patent war chest I'd assume there are several IBM patents these projects violate. Since IBM never plans to sue these projects, they might as well get some positive publicity and goodwill out of their investments in the patents if nothing else.
I'd have done the same thing.
Posted by Dare Obasanjo atIBM: IBM today pledged open access to key innovations covered by 500 IBM software patents to individuals and groups working on open source software.... [more]
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Stepping Up
IBM has pledged open access to key innovations covered by 500 IBM software patents to individuals and groups working on open source software. (via Sam Ruby)
Wow.
Apparently IBM has 1,314 more patents than any other company and has received more ...
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