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IBM Grants Universal and Perpetual Access To IP
StonyandCher writes "IBM is making it easier to utilize its patented intellectual property to implement nearly 200 standards in the SOA, Web services, security and other spaces. Under a pledge issued by the company Wednesday, IBM is granting universal and perpetual access to intellectual property that might be necessary to implement standards designed to make software interoperable. IBM will not assert any patent rights to its technologies featured in these standards. The company believes its move in this space is the largest of its kind."
Yes, because Open Source is the answer to everything!
How is it "logical" that IBM needs to open up their commercial products to entrench service standards? The standards should stand on their own. Open source products can embrace them regardless if commercial software remains closed.
I agree. It is a big enough step for a large IT corporation such as IBM to freely open up so much of their intellectual property. These standards can be used by open source applications now. That is what really matters when it comes to open source and this issue.
For some reason, Big Blue seems to have decided to side with the public good rather than fear open-source as most corporations do.
They're doing it because I'm guessing they're able to think big picture. IBM have been in existence for nearly 120 years now. The only way you get to last that long, especially while staying as big as they still are, is by being able to ride the rapids of consumer demand and desire.
They're still going to want to make money, of course...but they're smart enough to realise that a company doesn't really control either half of the supply and demand equation. The consumer declares their demand, and a company that wants to make money and last a long time supplies that demand, rather than trying to change or control what the consumer's demand is.
It is deeply appropriate that the animal most often associated with IBM is an elephant, I think. As well as being large, an elephant is a long lived and very intelligent animal. Also, although its' huge size means that things that shouldn't might get inadvertently stepped on occasionally, being herbivorous, an elephant is usually a fundamentally benevolent animal, as well.
Please how explain how open source automatically translates to "mindshare". I don't really see the link, but I'm interested in hearing your thoughts behind that assertion.
IMO, there are certainly advantages (as well as disadvantages) to being open source (depending on the project), but either way I think mindshare has a whole hell of a lot more to do with marketing than the open/closed nature of your product.
gameDB
Making standards easier to apply is always a good thing, but IMHO for a standard to make sense it's even more important to force people to actually implement it properly and in a conforming way. Which brings me to the licensing terms of Adobe's PDF stuff, which can be freely implemented as long as the implementation strictly follows the standard. In the same vein, it might have been a good idea to add a constraint to the license that makes the free use of IBM's IP only available to people who strictly adhere to the standard. Everybody else who thinks they have a good reason for adding their own "extensions" would have to fill out forms like it used to be and maybe have to make any documentation and patent portfolio regarding their changes freely available.
As a result, people would either have to follow the standard or at least provide documentation and patent licenses to guarantee some degree of interoperability, in order to prevent things like Microsoft's bastardization of Kerberos.
But I'm neither a patent lawyer nor do I have any special insight into licensing deals, so if this idea is stupid then please feel free to point out any potential issues you might see.
:/- spoon(_).