The devil is in the details

The devil is in the details

Posted Jan 13, 2005 15:18 UTC (Thu) by ncm (subscriber, #165)
In reply to: The devil is in the details by filipjoelsson
Parent article: IBM's patent pledge

This is something Lucent tried when they released Plan 9 under similar conditions. Arguably, they doomed Plan 9 by it. By the time Lucent released it under a really-free license, the hardware base had moved on, Plan 9 had already been dismissed from most potential adopters' minds, and Linux had matured.

IBM's game is different enough that it might turn out better for them, but this sort of trick tends to bite back in surprising ways.

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