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IBM says it won't assert patents against Linux kernel
InfoWorld ^ | August 04, 2004 | Ed Scannell

Posted on 08/06/2004 2:56:30 PM PDT by rdb3


NEWS

 
 
IBM says it won't assert patents against Linux kernel
Big Blue exec challenges IT to establish procedures to avoid infringement claims
 

 
By  Ed Scannell August 04, 2004 

SAN FRANCISCO -- In his keynote address on Wednesday at LinuxWorld, IBM Senior Vice President of Technology and Marketing Nick Donofrio assured the Linux nation his company would not assert its formidable patent portfolio against the Linux kernel and strongly advocated others to promise the same.

Donofrio's remarks were in response to a statement earlier this week from the Open Source Risk Management organization based on its research and initial analysis of patents that might affect the Linux kernel. A number of those patents were identified as being owned by several larger companies with strategic Linux-based strategies including IBM.

"I can say that as an ally that believes in the positive power that the Linux community is having on collaborative innovation, I can assure you we have no intention of asserting our patents against the Linux kernel, unless, of course, we are forced to defend ourselves," Donofrio said.

Donofrio threw out a challenge to the IT community to join together to establish procedures that avoid infringement claims and to also try to resolve them as they come up.

"When more people have access to the building blocks of innovation, it can inject a richer perspective to the creative process. When you combine all the diversity of the world in the open environments, it's a rather humbling thought," Donofrio said.

Donofrio said collaborative innovation figures to play a significant role in the future of IT and that Linux, various grid technologies, and the Internet will continue to be an influence there. He contended that countries around the world will have to find the right balance between collaborative innovation along with the respect for intellectual property as it applies to IT.

"For IBM's part, we pledge to do everything in our power to help stroke that balance. I can promise you that," Donofrio said.

The open movement, which Donofrio sees happening in many industries outside of computer software, is forcing people to rethink their various intellectual property models and to rethink where it is they can offer the most value to their respective users.

He contends this overall open movement has encouraged and enabled competition to continue thriving. Donofrio then made an open plea to governments and private businesses to "collectively sharpen" their focus on policies and practices that would serve to encourage and to support innovation.

"Why does innovation matter? Well, consider one issue that has been at the center of discussion for some time: job growth," Donofrio said.

He cited a recent economic study that stated some 91 million new jobs would be created in the coming years, but that it is yet to be determined in which countries most of those jobs would be based.

"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that many of the best jobs will go to those countries that create the most fertile environments for innovation," Donofrio said.

Donofrio then started preaching to the Linux choice saying that Linux and the open source community in general holds the potential to spark remarkable innovation because the technology is at once owned by no one but yet by everyone. It is this concept that will give it a major advantage compared with those still espousing proprietary platforms.

"The forces that cling to closed ways of doing things are doing nothing to advance innovation. When you box people in and create these artificial barriers to solving problems, you can't have [innovative] solutions spring forward," Donofrio said.




 
Ed Scannell is an editor at large at InfoWorld.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Technical
KEYWORDS: ibm; linux
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To: TechJunkYard

Actually I do agree with Bruce Perens on some things. I'd recommend each of you buy the $150,000 dollar insurance policy that he and the lady from Jokelaw are selling to protect you from Linux patent infringement for sure. Like he has said, there's close to ~300 patents that are possibly being infringed in the kernel alone, and each patent violation can cost millions of dollars to defend in court.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1183461/posts


21 posted on 08/07/2004 5:28:40 AM PDT by Golden Eagle
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To: TechJunkYard
Wow, such mistrust of IBM here!

No mistrust, just common sense. I was offered a chance to work directly for IBM via my own company (corp to corp) or through a body shop. They had bought a company I used to work for. The contract they wanted me to sign to work directly for them as an independent was over 100 pages with the text in a small font. Once I saw that large stack of papers and read through the first 20 pages, I wisely chose to go through the body shop. I was still still corp to corp with the body shop, but their contract was only a modest 5 pages. I show IBM the same trust they show others and give their promise the trust I have in John F'n Kerry's campaign promises (except for the promise to raise taxes, that one he will follow through on).
22 posted on 08/07/2004 7:31:40 AM PDT by GeorgiaFreeper (Hitlery does not have fat ankles. That's where the hooves show through above the foot prosthetics.)
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To: TechJunkYard

If IBM was really searious about open source, why don't they sign over the patents to the Free Software foundation? That would really stir the pot and give the FSF some muscle to stand up to Microsoft. Plus it would be fun to see what that crowd would do with the patents. Would they enforce them or just let them go away and the software to be "free".


23 posted on 08/07/2004 7:57:24 AM PDT by GeorgiaFreeper (Hitlery does not have fat ankles. That's where the hooves show through above the foot prosthetics.)
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To: GeorgiaFreeper

searious = serious


24 posted on 08/07/2004 7:57:50 AM PDT by GeorgiaFreeper (Hitlery does not have fat ankles. That's where the hooves show through above the foot prosthetics.)
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To: ryanjb2
"...collaborative innovation..."

"When more people have access to..."

That's a lot of Commie talk coming from Mr. IBM. Reminds me of Linux and Open Source.

Thank goodness you caught that!!!

The LAST thing that anyone would want from computers would be to collaborate, or share access to information and data!

Mark

25 posted on 08/07/2004 8:11:26 AM PDT by MarkL (Dude!!! You're farting fire!!!!)
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To: snopercod
It's an interesting problem. I have been miffed for many years that engineers and designers mostly get nothing for inventing the greatest things that people use every day. Yet hundreds or thousands of pierced/tatooed/cornrowed/coked-up "musicians" each get a nickle everytime some radio station plays the dissonant jangle that passes for "their music" these days.

Actually, it depends on the person and their job. For example, if you're an engineer or designer, and you work for a company where you use the company's resources to design and develop new "things," then the company would probably get the patents, and derive profits from them. OTOH, if you're independant, you get the money.

Mark

26 posted on 08/07/2004 8:14:09 AM PDT by MarkL (Dude!!! You're farting fire!!!!)
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To: GeorgiaFreeper
If IBM was really searious about open source, why don't they sign over the patents to the Free Software foundation? That would really stir the pot and give the FSF some muscle to stand up to Microsoft.

IBM has lots of things that they're serious about, not just Linux/OSS. That huge portfolio has some serious business value, and IBM would incur some expense just trying to figure out what to donate and what to keep.

And I'm not so sure that FSF would accept patents or licenses anyway, as they'd likely come with strings attached. There was an argument with W3C a few years ago, over royalty-free patent licenses, which came with restrictions which were incompatible with Section 7 of the GPL. I don't know how/if that was ever resolved.

27 posted on 08/07/2004 11:40:31 AM PDT by TechJunkYard (http://scaryjohnkerry.com/)
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To: TechJunkYard
They could donate the patents to the Public Patent Foundation if the GNU folks don't want them.
28 posted on 08/07/2004 11:50:02 AM PDT by GeorgiaFreeper (Hitlery does not have fat ankles. That's where the hooves show through above the foot prosthetics.)
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To: TechJunkYard

Until IBM takes an irrevocable step like a contract with the FSF or donating the patents, then I will assume that all of their talk is just a marketing ploy to sell more hardware and services.


29 posted on 08/07/2004 11:52:30 AM PDT by GeorgiaFreeper (Hitlery does not have fat ankles. That's where the hooves show through above the foot prosthetics.)
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To: GeorgiaFreeper
ploy to sell more hardware and services. And there is nothing wrong with that at all.
30 posted on 08/07/2004 11:56:46 AM PDT by GeorgiaFreeper (Hitlery does not have fat ankles. That's where the hooves show through above the foot prosthetics.)
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To: Question_Assumptions
A friend tells me that you can already run an IBM mainframe emulator under Linux...

Yep and you can run Linux in iSeries and mainframe partitions too (LPAR).

31 posted on 08/07/2004 12:09:00 PM PDT by ColdSteelTalon
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To: GeorgiaFreeper
I will assume that all of their talk is just a marketing ploy to sell more hardware and services.

That is exactly their plans. Oh they will have the mainframe and midrange operating system like OS/400. In fact you need it for some applications like C2 security levels and such. But yes IBM wants you to use thier hardware. And I have to tell you that it is rock solid. We have 12 Large AS/400s (now called iSeries) here at work. The system simply just dont go down compared to the other platforms we have. And on the rare occasion that they do. DB2 preserves the data with no data loss at all.

I have seen ORACLE crash on a box requiring a reload of the whole database.

32 posted on 08/07/2004 12:15:39 PM PDT by ColdSteelTalon
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To: ColdSteelTalon
*chuckle*

I have to admire IBM on this one. They make a cheap announcement with nothing to back it up and instantly get thousands of cheerleaders for their products.
33 posted on 08/07/2004 12:25:28 PM PDT by GeorgiaFreeper (Hitlery does not have fat ankles. That's where the hooves show through above the foot prosthetics.)
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To: GeorgiaFreeper
>I have to admire IBM on this one. They make a cheap announcement with nothing to back it up and instantly get thousands of cheerleaders for their products.

Come in here, dear boy, have a cigar.
You're gonna go far, fly high,
You're never gonna die,
You're gonna make it if you try;
They're gonna love you.
Well I've always had a deep respect,
And I mean that most sincerely.
The band is just fantastic,
that is really what I think.
Oh by the way, which one's Pink?
And did we tell you the name of the game, boy,
We call it Riding the Gravy Train
.

We're just knocked out.
We heard about the sell out.
You gotta get an album out.
You owe it to the people.
We're so happy we can hardly count.
Everybody else is just green,
Have you seen the chart?
It's a helluva start,
It could be made into a monster
If we all pull together as a team.
And did we tell you the name of the game, boy,
We call it Riding the Gravy Train
.

[Have A Cigar, from Wish You Were Here, Pink Floyd]

34 posted on 08/07/2004 12:36:56 PM PDT by theFIRMbss
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To: GeorgiaFreeper
Until IBM takes an irrevocable step like a contract with the FSF or donating the patents...

That's cool; if you want to base your judgements on whether IBM does what you want them to do, that's your choice. Isn't it great to have a choice?

For now, I'm satisfied that IBM made the pledge, and is encouraging other companies to make the pledge. IBM didn't have to do this.

They didn't just remain neutral, like Novell.

They didn't take the opposite tack, like Microsoft, which just relatively recently patented FAT (after how many years of using it in their products?) and has been licensing CIFS/SMB under terms which restrict the developer's choice of license.

Sometimes ya gotta be thankful for what you can get.

35 posted on 08/07/2004 12:50:19 PM PDT by TechJunkYard (http://scaryjohnkerry.com/)
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To: theFIRMbss
Something To Believe In by the Offspring
I believe that reality's gone
Disillusion's real
I believe that morality's gone
And there's nothing to feel
If you take the sacred things
The things that we hold dear
Empty promise is all you'll find
So give me something
Something to believe in
I believe in a changing of the guard
Put our feet on the ground
See it happen in your own background
Everything breaks down
Do you accept what you are told
Without even thinking
Throw it all and make your own
And give me something
Something to believe in
Where they lead
You will follow

Well I guess that's just the way it goes
And if you look away
You'll be doing what they say
And if you look alive
You'll be singled out and tried
If you take home anything
Let it be your will to think
The more cynical you become
The better off you'll be


36 posted on 08/07/2004 12:51:21 PM PDT by GeorgiaFreeper (Hitlery does not have fat ankles. That's where the hooves show through above the foot prosthetics.)
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To: TechJunkYard
Sometimes ya gotta be thankful for what you can get.

What you have gotten is the equivalent of a campaign promise.
37 posted on 08/07/2004 12:53:01 PM PDT by GeorgiaFreeper (Hitlery does not have fat ankles. That's where the hooves show through above the foot prosthetics.)
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To: GeorgiaFreeper
What you have gotten is the equivalent of a campaign promise.

And there will be hell to pay if they break it.

38 posted on 08/07/2004 12:55:18 PM PDT by TechJunkYard (http://scaryjohnkerry.com/)
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To: TechJunkYard
It will be a while. Probably about the time that they start charging more than support for linux on their machines. Too late when they have you hooked on the crack.

As an aside, have you noticed that FR's spell checker does not recognize linux :D but has no problem with Microsoft?

39 posted on 08/07/2004 12:59:01 PM PDT by GeorgiaFreeper (Hitlery does not have fat ankles. That's where the hooves show through above the foot prosthetics.)
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To: GeorgiaFreeper
FR's spell checker does not recognize linux. Whoops, my mistake. The spell checker just want's me to give linux proper respect and capitalize the L.
40 posted on 08/07/2004 1:01:19 PM PDT by GeorgiaFreeper (Hitlery does not have fat ankles. That's where the hooves show through above the foot prosthetics.)
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