January 12, 2005

IBM Donates 500 Patents

Today came another illustration of why I think IBM is a great company that I can respect: IBM donates 500 software patents to the open source community. Of course, there are financial motivations for doing this, as IBM generates a lot of revenue on services and sales for open-source systems, but it is true that many of the people with influence in IBM recognize the problems with the U.S. patent system. Unfortuantely, any continuation of this sort of policy relies on what I referred to before as the benevolent dictatorship. As soon as the people in charge are replaced with those who believe otherwise, or if their views change, then this sort of important decision will become a thing of the past.

Posted by josuah at January 12, 2005 8:31 PM UTC+00:00