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let's assume sincere intentions for a while...let's assume sincere intentions for a while...Posted Jan 13, 2005 7:45 UTC (Thu) by nettings (subscriber, #429)Parent article: IBM's patent pledge
while i agree with the author that the outcome of ibm's move remains to be seen, i think we should consider it a well-meant gesture for now.
my guess is that inside ibm, there are open-source-minded folk and followers of the traditional ideas of intellectual property, and we should not view ibm as a monolithic entity with just one opinion.
the opening of just 500 patents sure is an ambiguous move given how big blue continues to be the most active purveyor of software patents in the industry.
however, it might be a great achievement for those inside ibm who have grasped the concepts of freedom in programming and are trying to steer company politics towards open-source-friendliness.
i'm all for healthy scepticism, but let's not put our allies at ibm off by being too vitriolic about their first steps...
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let's assume sincere intentions for a while... Posted Jan 13, 2005 10:30 UTC (Thu) by pointwood (guest, #2814) [Link] Well, software patents are probably the biggest threat to open source software and the open source community should therefore fight it at all cost.
IBM still supports software patents. I'm not that conserned about IBM suing any open source developers, but IBM is not the only company with software patents. There's a certain company located in Redmond that isn't quite as big an open source fan as IBM is.
It might be well-meant gesture from IBM, but it is of little use in reality.
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