IBM Grants Universal and Perpetual Access To IP

StonyandCher writes "IBM is making it easier to utilize its patented intellectual property to implement nearly 200 standards in the SOA, Web services, security and other spaces. Under a pledge issued by the company Wednesday, IBM is granting universal and perpetual access to intellectual property that might be necessary to implement standards designed to make software interoperable. IBM will not assert any patent rights to its technologies featured in these standards. The company believes its move in this space is the largest of its kind."

Putting the cart in front of the donkey?

[arivanov]

In most other industries and in fact in other parts of the IT industry you are mandated to do that as a part of the standards process. At the very least you have to guarantee that you will offer your IP on non-discriminatory terms.

It is entertaining to see SOA getting to its supposedly standard and uberinteroperable status without anyone paying attention to this minute IP detail. Entertaining, but not surprising. If you actually can read a SOA spec, comprehend it entirety and have some functioning brain cells left after that you are mad anyway. Every time I have to read Xpath or god forbid one of the WS security or addressing space specs I remember Dijkstra. He was absolutely right:

b> The problems of business administration in general and data base management in particular are much too difficult for people that think in IBMerese, compounded with sloppy English. Still right today. Just change data base management for interoperability and you got a description of WS/SOAP and the rest of that standard ilk.

Re:Good first step...

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact RedHat makes over a billion dollars a year

Nope, only $400M total revenue in their most recent year, and only $60M net income. Why make up exaggerated numbers when the real numbers still prove your point?

Re:Good first step...

[Mark Imbriaco]

I'm sorry, but you're mistaken about how much revenue Redhat generates. The following quote is taken directly from the reported earnings from their most recent quarter:

"Total revenue for the quarter was $118.9 million, an increase of 42% from the year ago quarter and 7% from the prior quarter. Subscription revenue was $103.0 million, up 44% year-over-year and 7% sequentially." Net income for the quarter was $16.2 million, or $0.08 per diluted share, compared with $13.8 million, or $0.07 per diluted share, in the year ago quarter. Non-GAAP adjusted net income for the quarter was $33.7 million, or $0.16 per diluted share, after adjusting for stock compensation and tax expense as detailed in the tables below. This compares to non-GAAP adjusted net income of $28.0 million, or $0.14 per diluted share, in the year ago period.

(From: http://www.redhat.com/about/news/prarchive/2007/fi rstquarter.html [redhat.com])

Re:Good first step...

[psykocrime]

So it is OK for IBM to keep their important apps proprietary and still be praised for being "friends" of FOSS?


Sure, unless you're Stallman or a Stallman disciple who think that all proprietary software is evil by nature and should be
eradicated from the face of the Earth. And even then, there's no good reason to not praise the contributions IBM have made to the F/L/OSS world, despite whatever objections you may have to their proprietary offerings.


When they open source DB2, Lotus Notes, AIX may be I will take them seriously otherwise they are no different from Microsoft and Oracle.


Except IBM have contributed thousands - if not millions - of lines of code, and hundreds of patents to the F/L/OSS world, unlike Microsoft or Oracle?