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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?
If you're afraid of registering at NYTimes.com, you can look at any of several other sites that have picked up the story.
Wow - this is the first story that has made me get a subscription to New York Times.
Good stuff, IBM!! *
* Google - please retract this post from the archives in 12 years when IBM turns into the new evil corporation again
You can't expect to wield supreme executive power, just because some watery tart threw a sword at you
My only question is, is the license revokable?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Oh wait! They don't need to because open source programmers are already using them, have been for decades, and don't really give a shit at this point.
Now... if only Microsoft could do that (yeah, right).
Of course... SCO will find some way to say its illegal or immoral or unconstitutional or something.
Isn't that usually how it goes?
A) These things may have been patented before they decided to do this
B) They don't have to worry about someone else patenting them
C) They're only opening them up for open-source projects, meaning IBM projects can use them and open-source projects can use them, but IBM's closed-source competitors can't.
Twenties Retirement
Best of luck and don't let anybody say they didn't try.
To protect the people who use the patented work from entities who might have registered the patents and enforced them?
IBM's tactic: Apply for U.S. patents on methods used in software and then license them royalty-free for use in free software.
IBM's possible strategies behind the tactic:
This is great. I think IBM should be commended for this (assuming it's for a legit purpose).
This could be a huge "cold-war" style arms/IP race. These days when people vote with their wallets, it's nice to see that viable candidates are emerging...
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
IBM has the offical release up and it has a PDF of the patents:
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http://www-1.ibm.com/press/PressServletForm.wss
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
Because if it is licensed only for OSS projects, then MS and the like cannot use them without opening up their source code.
AFAIK, IBM makes most of their money in hardware and support, and helping OSS is an advantage to them. They don't get much of an advantage by helping other companied become richer. So they don't help them.
My point is that (to those who know more than three things about the patent system) this is a valid question. My best guess is that IBM feels that the more stringent patent process provides a stronger contribution to the open source community, but it could also be a change of heart within the IBM corporate direction (regarding patents they've already paid for) or a more predatory action against their competitors (where opening the other guy's potential IP to open source is more offensive than defensive.) I can't answer any better than that, but to reiterate, this is a valid question to those who know more than three things about the patent system.
If Microsoft did this or open up their sources it could set FOSS back years. Thank you MS for being selfish.
"brxref
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.
You want a signature? You can't handle a signature!!
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
here
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Goodwill from a lot of developers can help the company in intangible ways, improving the bottom line and thus the stock.
Perahps the greater exposure of the patents will lead to more commercial adoption of some, also bringing in more money.
It's not "Giving away the IP library" as far as Wall Street is concerned because everyone knows you can't charge money for open source software! How could it compete against closed source stuff?
The reality we can keep between ourselves (though the final reality is that Wall Street will not even notice, I'm afraid).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Is this not like, you first hit is free???
Father-in-law: You can't just give away your work! That doesn't make any sense!
Me: Maybe not to you, but IBM likes the idea so much that they're even letting us use their patents for free.
FIL: IBM? Really? Huh - they're not exactly a pack of hippies, are they?
One of the most conservative companies in the USA has publically and loudly proclaimed that sharing IP with your friends, neighbors, and even competitors is a good thing for profits (as long as you do it on level terms). Every time I hear some proprietary advocate spouting about how you can't make money by giving things away, I'm going to respond with "IBM says you're wrong" until they shut up or go away.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Kudos to IBM. This is a great move.
The biggest benefit I see for this is that by opening their portfolio, the innovations they spearheaded are built upon by an army of thousands. Now that IBM are turning into a service company (which is evidenced by their sale of the PC division - they will concentrate on selling service with their big iron (good move IMHO)), the innovations they have already invested in will continue to reap them rewards because their "style" of computing is already compatible with whatever the FOSS community will bring to the table. Cool innovations for FOSS and rewards for IBM. Win-Win situation!
"And then I visited Wikipedia
By first reading it is better than irrevocable. It is revocable only in the case that you take action against a free software project. Free software developers would seem to be able to use these 500 patents as a form of patent defence by saying: "Sue us and leave yourself liable to being stomped by IBM." Unfortunately you will have to convince IBM to litigate in your defence.
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.
--
make install -not war
This is just one major salvo across the bow of Battleship Microsoft from Battleship IBM. This war that been has quietly raging for many years is far from being won. The sinking of the IE ship is well under way at this time, and the Admirals and Generals on both sides are in their respective war rooms. So what's next?
Heard any good sigs lately?
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?
This is a profound move in so many ways.
A company actually using their patents "To promote the progress of science and useful arts"
and not to mention at the same time hastening the demise of a corrupt mega corporation.
Its obvious IBM has their own survival in mind but doesnt this sound to good to be true?
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt. --E.C. Stanton
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.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
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.
Whatever the intent of the patent system, right now its main use is for threatening other companies into cross-licensing agreements. Which is where Open Source comes a cropper, because it's not a legal entity that can enter into such agreements, and has no patents to cross-license.
But IBM's pledge works around that, by providing some patents for OSS to work with, and showing how to 'cross-licence' even without an OSS legal entity.
In fact, it might be the start of a 'viral' subversion of the patent system, in just the way that the GPL is for copyright. Imagine a time in a few years, where a lot of companies have done the same thing that IBM does. Each of those companies is then committed to the OSS patent pool, and can't threaten any OSS with a lawsuit on any particular patent without losing access to all the rest. And of course, the more companies that join in, the more patents are in the pool, and the more attractive it becomes.
What's important now is how other companies react to this now. If a few more come on board, this could be the Start Of Something Big!
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
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!!!
1) Patents expire. Most of those patents that IBM filed long ago are dead.
2) Most of IBM's patents are not software patents. IBM usually patents things like new kinds of electron microscopes, new semiconductor technologies, and other "hard" patents.
I haven't looked at the list of patents they're turning over, but my best guess is that they're on technologies that still have potential, but IBM's basically given up trying to profit from. I'm kind of hoping / thinking it's their voice recognition stuff (ViaVoice). It's probably stuff that could really go places, but IBM doesn't feel like committing the resources to get there. Turning the IP over to Open Source developers allows third parties to apply this tech in interesting ways and then IBM can come along and roll it up into their own suite of product offerings.
Eventually, I would not be surprised if they turned Websphere over to Open Source.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
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.
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.
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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I really hope IBM opens up the following patent (quoted from Forbes.com 06/24/02):
The chief blue suit orchestrated the presentation of the seven patents IBM claimed were infringed, the most prominent of which was IBM's notorious "fat lines" patent: To turn a thin line on a computer screen into a broad line, you go up and down an equal distance from the ends of the thin line and then connect the four points.
For the past few years I've been fantasizing about writing a killer app video game where thin lines get fat. But I've always been afraid I'd be sued by IBM.
Maybe now my dreams can come true.
This a very good strategy for IBM. They have a lot of good researchers coming up with ideas that will cost money to develop. Many of those can benefit the computing industry in general and help them in further development of core technologies. This is the easiest way for IBM to, in a sense, get free development. By opening up the patents, they don't have to spend money on implementation which will allow them free use of the technologies to futher their products with no real development cost. The open source community can implement and futher the technology covered by the patents allowing IBM to integrate that back into their core business to further the commercial products without the development cost.
It makes perfect sense if you think about it. Open Source won't earn them money, but will in turn give them the implementations without the expense of their own development team doing it. A community of free development that can implement technology that their researchers create, who could ask for more?
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PS - The legal concept behind this is "Promisory Estoppel". In other words, if they have promised that it is irrevocable (which they have done), they cannot change their minds in the future and start suing people for it. For the same reason that if you put a sign on your door saying "All Welcome" you can't shoot/sue (sorry - dunno what the standard is in the USofA) someone for trespassing.
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.
Clickety Click
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
Of course it is possible that the move is a pure PR stunt, and the patents are worthless anyway. But I'm not that cynical.
A friend of mine hacks Linux for IBM and the impression I get is that it is very popular. He's always being sent somewhere or other to install or configure some absurdly large sounding box or other.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
The programming industry is the largest service industry pretending to be a manufacturing industry.
IBM makes it's money from hardware, consulting and services. What is better business idea than supporting and developing free software and then selling support and consulting. If your customers don't buy software they can spend that money to service and hw! Smart!
Dyslexics have more fnu.
Long term imo there is nothing so important in business as your good name,IBM is certainly doing their good name lots of good. Well done big blue.
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?
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
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.
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
It's about result. End result, old lady still helped. We're talking about global affect, not moral scaling.
If we suddenly discovered life on another planet and we all stopped warring on each other in order to look good for them... bad or good.
Intentions irrelevant, so long as one doesn't start warring again or doing something equally underhanded it's a net good result. Now if somebody stopped the war just to plot a secret coup when the enemy is unsuspecting... final result bad.
The point is... IBM is still being helpful, and the old lady still got across the street. If they in the future turn around and use this in a bad way, it's a different story, but the net result is good without harm done to anyone else.
I'd suggest that all you negetive people STFU whenever somebody does something good. It doesn't mean you have to accept group X as a bunch of saints, just accept that they've done a good thing.
They will donate now patents to open source software, so open source developpers will all accept software patents. (See EU now)
Then, a few years later, nobody won't donate them anymore to open source projects, and you can't programm something without violating some patents, because then software patents are fully accepted.
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.
Yes its all very nice, and a bit of a personal relief to hear of open source being specifically excluded from the software patent process like this (at least by one corporate), but lets pause for a moment to be a bit cynical. Many of the posts so far, have decided that IBM's game plan is to assist with the process of making software a commodity and making hardware and support vending a bigger share of the cake of IT industry. Sounds reasonable.
Thinking a bit further, it occurs to me that this is a very nice and effective way of taking the wind out of the sails of the anti-software patent movement, the open source community being the most vocal member of this movement. Could this be part of the plan? Throw a bone to FOSS to shut them up and help them push out some proprietary software, as discussed, but also hope the software patent process will quietly crush small software companies that want to develop and sell software of their own, while no body takes any notice any more...?
Who's with me?! I SAID... WHO'S WITH ME!!??
Red hat just takes linux, adds a little here, a tweak there, some tech support and ta-da Red Hat linux 699$ (or some $$$).
And Suse and Mandrake....
its the same thing. I've been in software a while. Writeing code is fairly cheap and fast. Debug/ test Maintenance and Support cost $$.
"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?
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
So if I create code using two IBM patents, one that is "in the 500" and another that isn't, will IBM defend me from being attacked by IBM?