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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.
The standards should stand on their own. Open source products can embrace them regardless if commercial software remains closed.
The biggest and most commonly used 'product' to develop SOA-compliant applications is the JBoss stack - JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite, JEMS for short. It is open source, and uses the Rosetta ESB for building SOA apps.
Despite it's open source nature, RedHat is making a pile of money on JBoss - from training, certifications, consulting, site implementations etc. In fact RedHat makes over a billion dollars a year, based purely on Open Source offerings. Commercial success and Open Source offerings aren't mutually exclusive - if IBM really believes in the Open Source philosophy, they ought to make their offerings Open Source, else they risk dwindling mindshare.... and unltimately marketshare as well.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
How can a monster company like IBM act like this? It's not mostly out of altruism, although I am sure they have some. IBM invented FUD, as any old-time mainframer can tell you.
:p). Linux has a 5-10% desktop market share, and Apple has risen to 10% also. Google has 1/4 of the office suite market, and is competing very effectively with Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services for spam filtering, email archiving, and IM & web security.
Why, then, do they do it? The number one reason IBM supports open standards, supports open source, has opened its patents, and has contributed so much code to Linux is that IBM believes it can compete more effectively on a more level playing field. Compete against whom? Microsoft, mostly. When there is an entrenched de facto monopoly that fully dominates one area of your business (the dekstop) and is trying to muscle in on your turf (higher end servers, databases, web services, hosted services) and has already muscled in very successfully on your groupware turf, how do you fight back?
You try to level the playing field by commoditizing the thing your opponent sells. Microsoft is a software company; IBM sells a lot of software, but their primary business is hardware and services. If they can commoditize the software that runs on their hardware and on which they provide value-added services, it gives them a competitive advantage against software companies (and against hardware companies that don't use open source, too). The revenue stream of the software company goes down, while the revenue they make on service and on hardware sales increases as a result of reduced software costs.
While Sun also has some altruism (maybe more than IBM, because Sun's roots are in BSD; IBM's roots are firmly in proprietary software), I think it's a pretty good bet that the main reason for open-sourcing Solaris and Java is that they weren't making a lot of money on those things anyway (Solaris used to cost hundreds of dollars a copy, then it became essentially free as in beer) and Microsoft has done a pretty good job of fighting off Java on a lot of fronts, so if they open-source Java and Solaris they get:
-Commoditization pressure on Microsoft
-The same benefits of that pressure that IBM reaps, because like IBM, Sun is a hardware and consulting company that also sells software
-Probably more Java mindshare and marketshare
-Some respect from the FOSS community; what accountants call good will
-Linux might stop eating Solaris' lunch a little bit on the lower end of Sun's market
Why do they hope HP will do this too? Because of HP is the same kind of company Sun and IBM are, although HP is more purely a hardware play than either Sun or IBM. If they follow suit and start opening their patent portolio and maybe even open source HP/UX, that puts even more commoditization pressure on Microsoft. Of course, Sun, IBM, and HP all compete against each other - they're selling into the same markets - but each of them views Microsoft as more of a threat. If they all act to substantially level the playing field by opening up lots of their IP, that will make a significant counterweight to Microsoft's dominant position.
Fast forward five to ten years into the future and envision one possible scenario: the successor to Vista has just been released, or maybe hasn't even made it yet. Some places are still running XP. Linux has continued it's slow push onto the desktop and has pushed even farther into the server market. IBM, Sun, and HP all sell servers with either Linux or Solaris, AIX, or HP/UX. Same price either way; the lot have been open-sourced.
On the desktop side, Dell is still selling Linux machines, and they've been joined by Gateway, Lenovo, maybe even Sony (OK, that last one is crazy talk
Microsoft is still a formidable company, with a huge warchest of cash and a lot of highly successful product lines, but the combined weight of its competitors has not only checked its market share gains, but reversed a number of them.
Linux and Mac c