IBM has decided to let open-source developers use 500 software patents without fear of an infringement lawsuit, a new step in its encouragement of the collaborative programming philosophy.
IBM offers 500 patents for open-source use
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I would like to point to NoSoftwarePatents’s reaction:
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=288
patents stifle competition and ultimately stifles innovation as you are not free to build upon other peoples ideas. It keeps the ideas in the hands of the few instead of the many and makes it illegal to implement the same idea. This is very uncompetitive.
Competition is the corner-stone of our free-market competitive economy and is the only reason it out-did communism and all the other economic models.
Its a pity that we are moving further away from free-market true competitive economy that has done us so well in the past and where anyone is free to innovate regardless of support.
If IBM is really the vocal champion of Linux, how come they recommend Windows XP Professional to their potential customers ? Maybe they should put another motto on their website.
patents are bad news. dump them now !
or at least ban them in the EU, (where I am)
If IBM is really the vocal champion of Linux, how come they recommend Windows XP Professional to their potential customers ? Maybe they should put another motto on their website.
IBM has sold it’s PC branch to a chinese firm called Lenovo.They are eager to explore the chinese server market.Guess what they would advise to run the servers on?
In 2004, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) granted IBM another 3,248
So they’ve released about 15% of a single year’s worth of patents.
A quick scan of the list shows some interesting things though. I guess it’s better to have them release some rather than none.
The six comments above are 1000% more mature and thoughtful than the hundreds at Slashdot, right now.
MS requires that IBM do this as part of their OEM agreements. disgreeing to this would effectively kill IBM chances to ship windows prebundled with any system. No hardware manufacturer shipping systems for desktops can afford to do that now
Patents are part of the game these days. Even if IBM didn’t like software patents, they are forced to respect them so they would be at a significant competitive disadvantage if they didn’t file for patents.
Given that we are stuck with software patents and IBM made this generous offer, it should be embraced. Perhaps embracing the offer and producing some meaningful software with it will encourage IBM to open up more patents, and it will encourage other companies to do the same.
Why is excitement?
IBM invested billions into OpenSource, now it protects its investment with its enormous patent portfolio. Same old story.
now it protects its investment with its enormous patent portfolio.
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the point you dont understand is that this portfolio is now available under every OSI license and thats not just protecting its own investment.
If IBM is a real good supporter of Free Software, i.e., GNU
, then why can’t it expire all its software patents, and support in a real way. so clearly, its enjoying the benefits of Free Software and damaging all other companies, while supporting software patents which is the main opposition for GNU(Richard Stallman, http://www.gnu.org, a.k.a. Slang-OpenSource). ha, ha
, funny that how people are fooled by IBM using money pretending as a Free Software supporter. what i thought was true or false guys ????
A while back a software analyst company found approx. 500 IP violations in Linux that belonged to IBM. IBM then claimed that they would never use their patents against Linux — only to protect it’s customers against ‘possible’ future IP lawsuits (*cough* SCO *cough*). Therefore, I beLIEve this is IBM’s way of saying to the Linux community:
“see, now we really can’t is our patents against linux.”
“patents stifle competition and ultimately stifles innovation as you are not free to build upon other peoples ideas. It keeps the ideas in the hands of the few instead of the many and makes it illegal to implement the same idea. This is very uncompetitive.”
My father has been patenting ideas in the pharmaceutical industry for all his live, and rightly so: The development of a new medicine takes up *billions* and often well longer than a decade. Only someone without any clue whatsoever could ask for having the results of such scientific work handed over for free. Where is the money for such development supposed to come from..?!
The opposite is true: If there were no patents, noone would be stupid enough to spend even a single cent on inventing anything, even less so billions.
I don’t think it’s fair to compare software development to pharmaceutical development. Software developement concepts and ideas are far more generic and much cheaper to implement than new compounds for drugs etc. It’s a question of striking the right balance, and I think most people agree that software patents go too far, whilst also acknowledging that pharmaceutical companies need these laws to protect them.
<<and I think most people agree that software patents go too far>>
I strongly disagree with the notion that software patents “go too far”.
The barriers against obtaining a U.S. Patent are primarily you idea has to be (1) original (2) non-obvious and (3) useful.
The test for software non-obviousness was kind of messed up at first simply because the U.S. Patent office collection of “Prior Art” was very incomplete and also they were very short-handed of people that knew much about software. To their credit they fixed those problems some years ago; and yes they did later disallow the patents that never should have been granted.
Now those are the facts but propaganda organizations like “nosoftwarepatents” are assumed to be telling the truth.
Well, I say think for yourself and reject these “band wagon” arguments. Go ahead and ask some pointed questions to “nosoftwarepatents” and decide for yourself if they are really the champions of fairness as they claim. In my experience they are ignorant bigots who’s only real skill is to inflame passions based on jealously, class envy, and a bevy of false assumptions.
Better yet pick up a copy of the book “Patent it Yourself” and take ownership into your own hands, including the actual facts about how cheap it really is to get a patent.
One more thing. A Patent, at most only lasts 20 years whereas Copyright lasts 50 years and can even be renewed . . . yet note we are supposed to believe Patents are the bogeyman. Actually you will find it is far easier to get a Copyright because the protections against bogus applications are far less rigorous.
Why shouldn’t a software inventor be able to get patents just like everybody else. When that day finally came it felt like freedom to me. Prior to that we used to be smaller than the dog food industry with fewer rights too.
“Power to the People” arguments tend to come from people who would benefit from the challenge to think for themselves and maybe come up with something new and useful and non-obvious.
Consider a patent on a new drug to be equal to copyright in the software world. In software world, you can patent an IDEA (and copyright an implementation). What if you could do that in the pharmaceutical world? Nobody but the patent holder would be able to produce _ANY KIND_ of anti flu drug (the IDEA of an antio flu drug), for example. Would that be good? I don’t think so.
Excuse the incoherent sentences, btw, I haven’t slept for 48 hours :/