Wow. IBM has just pledged not to assert 500 of its U.S. patents, as well as any counterpart patents issued in other countries, against open source software products. The pledge reads in part:
IBM is committed to promoting innovation for the benefit of our customers and for the overall growth and advancement of the information technology field. … We believe that the open source community has been at the forefront of innovation and we are taking this action to encourgage additional innovation for open platforms.
(Confirmation is at IBM’s website; if this is a hack, it’s a good one.)
IBM has long had a love affair with open source software as a means of diluting the power of its more significant rivals (i.e., Microsoft). This latest development likely fits into this strategy, and will generate some good will among the open source community. Yet, it’s hard to tell whether IBM is riding the open source wave or being swamped by it. It’s very unlikely, after all, that IBM had any practical intention of trying to enforce these 500 or so patents against individual developers in the open source community.
Its been speculated that IBM could use its famous patent power to crush SCO in their insane intellectual property suit. Is it possible that this is sabre rattling by IBM? Could they be indirectly threatening SCO (and SCO has some Microsoft backing in this) by contrasting how nice they are being with the good guy OSS programmers with what they could do if they wanted?
I think the timing of it may be a response to Bill Gate’s stupid “opens source advocates == commies” remark.
Heh. Guess I’m a commie.
Seriously. Open source has got little or nothing to do with business. Business had better get used to dealing with open source as a shift in the market (possibly; these things are normally only visible after the fact) rather than as a competition. A business that expects its market to last forever is looking for a violent death in the marketplace.
Not that Microsoft is going anywhere, anytime soon, mind you.
IBM no longer employs Marshal Phelps – the guy that spearheaded IBM’s acquisition of countless patents. Marshall now works for Microsoft and is spearheading their efforts to obtain as many patents as possible leading some to speculate that perhaps Microsoft is going to fight the open source trend with patent infringement suits.
Plus IBM has created a business unit specifically to support the business community utilizing open source software.
I personally think it’s a pretty savvy move. I am not sure what have valuable the information is that IBM so graciously released but the move will endear IBM and potentially increase the need for services like theirs as companies migrate to open source systems.
There are rumblings within the Federal Gov CIO community that it may be in the tax payers best interest that the government move from traditional arrangements with the Microsoft’s, Sun’s and IBM’s to computer systems utilizing open source operating systems/software packages.
I thought the SCO thing was over. I seem to remember Darl surrendering a few months ago.
IBM has been rebuilding itself as a support/consultancy company over the last decade. While they do write some software, that is no longer their mission. The more and more complicated software that’s out there, the more businesses will need their expertise, and the better off they are. IBM really likes complicated open source systems.
Nah. SCO is over, but unfortunately not in the legal sense. Not yet, anyway. Still a bit more FUD to spread, and money to burn. Groklaw.net is a great resource if you really want to keep up on the latest misadventures.
I suspect that there’s probably more to it, although, given the state of the SCO suit, I’d be surprised if that’s a prime motivator. Toby might have the right idea — IBM is refocusing on other matters, where its patent portfolio is less valuable. Incidentally, from my brief reading of the IBM release, IBM is still claiming the right to exclude folks who make proprietary software within the scope of the “IBM 500” — although, as a practical matter, it will be very difficult for IBM to seek significant damages in infringement litigation (at least, as to future infringement).
Once upon a time, to do any significant traveling, you took the train. That’s what Microsoft is now.
Then came freeways and jets. Took a while, who does any serious traveling by train any more? That’s where Microsoft is heading.
Check out stories of Bill’s demos down in Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show. It’s been 23 years, and the OS still crashes.
I thought IBM had already charged SCO with violating 4 or 5 of their patents, no?