Hi all,
In the light of the recent BIG event of IBM patents being made available to free software developpers, I'm wondering :
- couldn't this be used by the pro-patent lobby to make software patents become a reality in Europe ?
any comment ?
thanks in advance
Jerome Alet
On Tue, 2005-01-11 at 09:43 +0100, Jerome Alet wrote:
Hi all,
In the light of the recent BIG event of IBM patents being made available to free software developpers, I'm wondering :
- couldn't this be used by the pro-patent lobby to make software patents become a reality in Europe ?any comment ?
I see it the opposite way, anti-patent lobby can easily say: see IBM the most important patent owner and early patent adopter in the information science world has recognized that patents are effectively a threat to one of the most important way of producing software today, and because of that they released them to FS producers.
But ultimately I think that anybody can twist the meaning unless IBM explicitly tell the political reason that made them do the move.
Simo.
At Tue, 11 Jan 2005 10:15:32 +0100, Simo Sorce wrote:
On Tue, 2005-01-11 at 09:43 +0100, Jerome Alet wrote:
Hi all,
In the light of the recent BIG event of IBM patents being made available to free software developpers, I'm wondering :
- couldn't this be used by the pro-patent lobby to make software patents become a reality in Europe ?any comment ?
I see it the opposite way, anti-patent lobby can easily say: see IBM the most important patent owner and early patent adopter in the information science world has recognized that patents are effectively a threat to one of the most important way of producing software today, and because of that they released them to FS producers.
But ultimately I think that anybody can twist the meaning unless IBM explicitly tell the political reason that made them do the move.
I think those are pretty clear. See also the following NoSoftwarePatents.com press release (http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=288):
NOSOFTWAREPATENTS.COM CRITICIZES IBM FOR "DIVERSIONARY TACTICS", "AGGRESSIVE PATENT LOBBYING" AND "SQUEEZING" IN CONNECTION WITH IBM's REPORTED RELEASE OF 500 PATENTS FOR OPEN-SOURCE USE
Munich (11 January 2005). Media reports appeared last night acording to which IBM now allows open-source software developers to use 500 of its approximately 40,000 patents. Florian Mueller, campaign manager of NoSoftwarePatents.com, commented on IBM's move:
[start quote]
Recently IBM made an unsubstantial non-aggression promise with respect to Linux, and now they show off again. It's just diversionary tactics. Let's put this into perspective: We're talking about roughly 1% of IBM's worldwide patent portfolio. They file that number of patents in about a month's time.
In Europe, IBM is a driving force behind the extension of the scope of patentability with respect to software. If IBM wants to assume the role of a post-Christmas benefactor, they'd better stop their aggressive patent lobbying in the EU and their shameless squeezing of small and medium-sized companies with that IBM "patent tax". Let's take it from there. We can still talk about some kind of patent pittance after that.
[end quote]
Jeroen Dekkers
On Tue, Jan 11, 2005 at 09:43:26AM +0100, Jerome Alet wrote:
In the light of the recent BIG event of IBM patents being made available to free software developpers,
In consider it a small event which might be dangerous.
There is an article in LWN's last edition from 20050113. (subscriber only content until the 20th.) http://lwn.net/Articles/119039/
I wrote the following comment:
IBM licensed their patent to all software or only a fraction of Free Software (Posted Jan 14, 2005 18:36 UTC (Fri) by subscriber ber)
One reason why an patent exception for all Free Software does not work is that if you can fully use patents under a non-protecting Free Software license like MIT/X it can also be used in proprietary applications. To use the patent in proprietary software: Only put the implementation of the algorithm under MIT/X and keep the rest proprietary following the license terms.
So what does mean for IBM? Either they just gave up their 500 patents completely because of the MIT/X trick; or they actually mean pure Free Software solutions, effectively limiting the use to strong licenses like the GNU GPL.
Because it does not make sense to write down terms when you want to completely give up the patents, IBM certainly means only a fraction of Free Software licenses can be used as before when using their patents, any Lesser GNU GPL code cannot be linked into proprietary applications anymore without getting a target for ligitation.
There is even another posion hidden in IBM's patents for Free Software and this is the freedom to learn and use the knowledge in other applications. Okay, that is true for all patents, but usually you do not have the freedom to work with the code and know some might think it is okay.
Conclusion: This might be more than just a smoke screen from the known friend of software patents IBM.