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IBM Opens Their Patent Portfolio to Open Source
kfiller writes "IBM announced that over 500 of their currently held software patents will be freely available to use for those who are working on open source projects (NY Times, free registration required), with the hope that more companies will do the same. More information is available at SourceLicense."
IBM Opens Their Patent Portfolio to Open Source That does it. I'm buying a crapload of IBM stock. One good decision after another... but somehow I feel strange in doing so. How many of you remember when IBM were the bad guys?
My only question is, is the license revokable?
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So next the Rational Tools or DB2? ... A company transforming from product oriented to service oriented. Woo Hoo!! and Yippee!!
Maybe, WebSphere MVS, CICS?
Where will it all end?
IBM building a future - well done.
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Personally I think they have the idea that software patents are going the way of the dodo and this is the easiest and best way of cashing in on what they have - and they have my vote in the race for smartest global corporation this mellenium.
Been there, done that, paid for the T-shirt
and didn't get it
Other Possible Strategy:
Make it more difficult for those who only make software to compete with open-source, moving the software realm further to being primarily valuable to solutions companies, of which they are the most successful.
This is perfectly reasonable for IBM. In fact, patents require disclosure of the protected invention, if only to prevent unintentional infringement. If software is patented, its searchable nature offers much cheaper avoidance of serendipity, and much easier shopping for potential licensees. Copyright is still the more appropriate protection, with all those same compelling open-source characteristics. But as long as they are playing the patent game, at least IBM is playing fair - with those few patents they're now opening.
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Is this something IBM has done of its own accord, or is there an organisation out there (eg. OSDL) driving this? Consequently, is IBM the only company to do this, or are they the first cab off the rank with other companies to follow quickly?
Anyone have some answers?
The way the licence is worded (as I understand it anyway) they help protect IBM and other Open Source software. If you use "Open Source software A" with one of IBMs patents in it and decide to leverage your own patents against "Open source software B" then IBM can make life difficult for you by revoking your right to use the patent in software A.
I guess it's a sort of "mutually assured destruction" which should stop discourage people from firing their lawyers off willy nilly.
The only thing I can think of is that strictly speaking such a revocable patent licence of any sort might make it unuseable under the current GPL.
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So IBM is now the hero of the open source community because of 500 patents? Read the press release. IBM was awarded 3248 patents in the last year. IBM earned more U.S. patents than any other company for the twelfth consecutive year.
If patents are such a bad things, and IBM is the leader in obtaining patents, I wouldn't be so quick to applaud them.
1984 just comes 20 years late! Wait! Apple is using PowerPC?!? We are DOOMED! Seriously, IBM has disguised itself nicely in the past couple years as friends of open source: adapting Linux, push Sun to open Java, and Eclipse. IBM has changed its image from the Evil Big Brother to the Benevolent Giant. However, deep down inside, IBM is still the evil big brother in disguise. I am interested to see the reaction from Open Source Communities, a lot of which are against software patent all together. I suspect most would likely to hail this decision rather then speak against it since IBM is such a friend of open source. However, in long term, the projects using IBM's patents are going to effectively become IBM's weapon against its commercial competitors as IBM would be the only one qualified to including these projects in its commercial offering. Software patent is bad, bad, bad!!!
If open source software X uses pledged patent IBM patent Y. And if company Z uses the X, and then company Z becomes something like SCO is today against OSS then IBM can sue them over patent Y since their lisence was revoked because of their lawsuit agais OSS entities. Yes. Thats the trick, they are making this partially for against future SCO:s.
IANAL, but this looks obvious.
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It's nice that IBM is doing this, but have you looked at the list of patent titles? I admit I only took a quick look but to me the list looks ... old and rather bound to IBM products. I'm guessing that IBM has found that, historically, some patents don't make them much money (maybe because nobody does same thing), so to squeeze value from them (in this case, good will) they are giving royalty free licenses to OSS. In that case, they are generating tremendous good will and giving away little or nothing to non-competitors. I hope I'm wrong, but I can't see why new and/or widely useful patents would be given away. This list doesn't reassure me, and I will wait and see the usefulness of these patents before singing the praises of IBM.
It sounds like the patents can ONLY be used by OSS projects, and not by closed-source. Most likely, this means that it will only end up in GPL projects, as a BSD-License can lead to some very shaky grey-area with this aspect of the source licensing.
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No other company has done anything like this...
Sun has spent millions of dollars to aquire the IP necessary to open-source OpenOffice.org (and give it away to the OSS community) and, soon, Solaris (again giving it away to the OSS community). Not to mention they indemnify all their customers against crap like SCO. So, no, you do not have perspective. IBM really is jizzing all over the ladies of Slashdot to make them feel important, but, in reality, it is just a PR stunt. And look how Slashdot is eating it up! Tomorrow, Slashdotters everywhere are going to be hung over from all of IBM's jizz in their bellies! What a bunch of sick-os.
What would be really cool is if IBM reworked its cross licensing agreements it has with big companies like Microsoft to say that they can only use IBM's patents if they extend their cross license to allow open source products to be used.
MS is still a relative newcomer to patents, but IBM is an old pro. As there are surely hundreds or thousands of patents IBM owns that are used by Windows, Office, etc. and probably only dozens that IBM software would make use of, IBM has the strong hand and could do this.
Think of how Linux's growth could be helped over the next few years if the overhang of MS lawsuits was removed, and their ability to embrace and extend using patents was curtailed? Maybe I'm dreaming, but its a good dream!
Nothing the matter with PowerPC (or Cell) processors. In fact they would probably run Linux a lot better than the X86 architecture if somebody with IBM's resources put a bit of work into improving LinuxPPC support. The PowerPC architecture is pretty "unixy" to begin with while X86 is a just a ancient architecture with about a million band-aids slapped on over the years.
Since Itanium is sinking rapidly, PowerPC and X86-64 are probably the only real contenders for 64-bit supremacy.
I have no idea what these upcoming Cell processors are going to be like, but IBM has been doing some unusual things since announcing them. I think they are getting ready to drop a Cell processor based Linux bomb on the unsuspecting PC world.
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Imagine this scenario:
- party A releases Free Software program implementing some technique.
- party B patents the technique.
- party B releases the patent for free use in Free Software.
- party C challenges the patent claim, indicating A as author of prior art.
- A would definitely better like B to hold the patent in current state than C to have it challenged (A's program gets protected under the patent rights that way)
Can C succeed in challenging the patent claim?
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A few months ago I was working on a project that required the use of a particular data compression method (arithmetic coding), because of its great efficiency on the type of data I was supposed to process (uncompressed output from various audio codecs, including experimental ones). IBM owns no less than 19 patents on that algorithm and its derivatives. Sure, the first 3 of them are expired by now, but none of the others were in the 500 list.
Data compression is one of the areas where pure software patents are commonplace and very annoying, which makes your choices very narrow when it comes to choosing a compression method for your projects. Check it out here.
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IBM has sold off its PC business and thereby made itself less vulnerable to M$ attack if it moves to more openly support Open Source software. It's strong in services and is already actively supporting Open Source software and Linux. Now it's opening up patents to Open Source developers, contrary to the Gates Corp approach.
Could it be? Could IBM and Apple be the marriage of heaven and hell? Consider the possibilites...Can Microsoft really prevail in a shoot-out against companies that are so obviously picking up and wearing the white hats?
I had the chance to move to IBM from my current employer. I chose not to for family reasons, and when I read stories like these I don't regret it http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/10/ibm_jobs_i ndia/ but they do seem to be more strategicly constructive than the opposition. And consider this. Apple don't have a low cost offering to compete with the budget end of the PC market. Geode systems notwithstanding, the less developed nations could do with low cost internet-enabled devices that could provide communications and educational support for their increasingly educated populations. They need robust non-ground -based communications networks too. Distributed tsunami and other disaster warning systems, anyone? I would love to see something like this happening in the world today.
Except it's not. If you RTFSummary, much less TFA, it's being opened up to "Open Source" as defined by the OSI, not "Free Software" as defined by the FSF.
Which leads to a bit of a sticking point in this plan, unless the announcement is clearer than the NYT article. The BSD License is OSI approved. If I were to use some patented algorithm *shudder* in a BSD Licensed program, could someone take that and wrap it up in a closed source program? Or could they just take the non-patented code? Or would it reduce the BSD license to effectively another GPL by forcing the code to stay open?
"IBM reserves the right to terminate this patent pledge and commitment only with regard to any party who files a lawsuit asserting patents or other intellectual property rights against Open Source Software"
I think the "or other intellectual property rights" needs more discussion. So now you can't sue someone for violating your trademarks or you lose the rights to the patents?
Granted, it may technically be a done deal, but I think it still needs discussion.
Is this intended? I can see patent suits triggering the issue? But all "IP" issues?
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