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IBM's Supreme Court Brief Says That Patents Drive Free Software

Posted by timothy on from the corellation-is-not-causation dept.

H4x0r Jim Duggan writes "For the Supreme Court's upcoming review of the Bilski decision, IBM has submitted an amicus brief claiming that software patents 'fueled the explosive growth of open source software development' (!) (p38 of linked PDF). EndSoftwarePatents, for its own amicus brief, is looking for help building a list of free software harmed by software patents, and a list of companies that distribute free software and are taxed by patent royalties."

2 of 284 comments (clear)

  1. WTF IBM by Microlith · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Good to see that IBM has no clue what they're talking about. Patents most certainly have not fueled the explosive growth of open source software, the open nature of the licenses and community have. But go ahead and misrepresent the open source community IBM, for your own sake.

    Patents sit as an ever present threat that threatens to push development outside of software patent permitting countries, and makes software that is known to violate them into seriously gray territory. I also don't see how a patent, something with the sole purpose of denying use of the described mechanism to others, could possibly aid open source.

  2. Here's how it works: by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    1. Stupid patents piss off techies
    2. Techies grow to despise corporate-produced software
    3. Techies motivated to make open-source variants to take sales away from evil corporations
    4. Profit! (Well, okay, I added this one out of habit.)

    --
    Table-ized A.I.