.B.M. plans to announce today that it is making 500 of its software patents freely available to anyone working on open-source projects, like the popular Linux operating system, on which programmers collaborate and share code.Posted on 01/11/2005 10:09:09 AM PST by antiRepublicrat
.B.M. plans to announce today that it is making 500 of its software patents freely available to anyone working on open-source projects, like the popular Linux operating system, on which programmers collaborate and share code.
The new model for I.B.M., analysts say, represents a shift away from the traditional corporate approach to protecting ownership of ideas through patents, copyrights, trademark and trade-secret laws. The conventional practice is to amass as many patents as possible and then charge anyone who wants access to them. I.B.M. has long been the champion of that formula. The company, analysts estimate, collected $1 billion or more last year from licensing its inventions.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Goldang pinko kommymist ferriners and their penguin thingy! It's the end of programmerin' in the US of A I tells ya!
So much for the ol' "Just watch--IBM will start using their patents offensively before MS will!" attack.
Where is the list of the 500?
Another angle here:
http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3457381
In this corner (and they are cornered, albeit in a large, money-lined corner) we have Microsoft and all of their partners. You'll note that no one in that corner dares cross the great and powerful OZ.
In the other corner, you have Novell, IBM, an army of geeks who love to code for free, and a small group of geeks willing to code for hopes of money someday.
In the middle you've got multi-Billion dollar lawsuits. There is one where Novell is directly suing Microsoft, claiming $1.2 Billion in actual damages. Then there is the one where Microsoft just paid $500 million to Novell for damages done to WordPerfect. Don't forget about the SCO lawuits, funded by a friend of Microsoft, which is suing AutoZone, Novell, IBM and DCX (Chrysler).
Gosh, I wish I was a lawyer....
There's a link to a .pdf file at the bottom of the article I just linked.
Here it is... in all its mindnumbing verbose titles:
hmmm... 15 minutes since the post... and none of the MicroSoft defenders have posted yet?
Downloading their talking points perhaps?
Of what? IBM suing them? Example: Suppose that IBM invented (and patents) "A" and MS invents (and patents) "B." MS combines A and B to generate product C and sell product C (assuming they have a cross license agreement with IBM allowing them to do so). To distribute an open source version of C using both patented methods still requires a patent use license from MS. Thus, the opening statement should be quantified as "so they can develop without fear of IBM suing them.
Thanks...
This is not a one-time event," John E. Kelly, IBM's senior vice president for technology and intellectual property, said in a statement. "(T)hrough measures such as today's pledge, we will increasingly use patents to encourage and protect global innovation and interoperability through open standards, and we urge others to do so as well."
Open source software has made big strides in the past few years, with government agencies promoting it in nations including China, France, Germany, Japan and South Korea.
Develop without fear of MS, dude. Not so good at inference, eh? ;-)
The availability of the portfolio does nothing to shield or otherwise offer protection from anybody other than IBM.
IBM has - many thousands - of software patents. This is more to continue the farce that they are hip, cool, and not-microsoft while they are 100 times as evil as Bill's software shop. They may still use these patented areas but I'll bet they haven't been making any money on them. What's that you say, making money? Well that's why you get patents. Not to protect your software ideas but to sue the $$$ out of others as often as you can.
Blueflag - IBM is the company on record for using their patents offensively, not Microsoft. Check it yourself.
Bottom line IBM is essentially stabbing the US in the back, in the hopes they get a leg up in some emerging markets overseas. It's not really working though, their once proud IBM PC division is being dumped by lots of US customers since it's been sold to the Chicoms, no more "chinkpads" for us for sure.
Soon their intellectual property business will be in shambles as well, with the freeware mob screaming "GIVE IT ALL TO US, NOW!" They got a short leg up on the market by marketing Linux first. Once it matures though, not many people will be willing to pay premiums for IBM, and IBM can't live without premiums.
End result will be a weakened IBM, and US, and stronger overseas competitors. You don't have to look any further than recent articles like this to see it coming.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/linuxunix/0,39020390,39183084,00.htm
http://www.technetra.com/writings/open_government/china_rising_html
US5614925
Method and apparatus for creating and displaying faithful color images on a computer display
(Bout all I needed to see... LOL)
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