Good Morning Silicon Valley
Published: Thursday August 5, 2004
IBM exec's LinuxWorld keynote concludes with group hug
By John Paczkowski
In 2001, IBM spent untold millions plastering city
sidewalks with its "Peace. Love. Linux" graffiti. So it
came as little surprise to learn that the company has no
plans to use its formidable patent portfolio to mount a
legal offensive against the open-source operating system.
In his keynote address on Wednesday at LinuxWorld, IBM
Senior Vice President of Technology and Marketing Nick
Donofrio assured the Linux community that the company has
no intention of bringing its patents to bear against the
Linux kernel. "As an ally that believes in the positive
power that the Linux community is having on collaborative
innovation, I can assure you we have no intention of
asserting our patents against the Linux kernel -- unless,
of course, we are forced to defend ourselves," Donofrio
said, noting that legal action against a movement that
has done so much to encourage and support innovation
would be foolhardy. "When more people have access to the
building blocks of innovation, it can inject a richer
perspective to the creative process. When you combine all
the diversity of the world in the open environments, it's
a rather humbling thought. ... The open movement forces
people to rethink their intellectual property models, to
rethink where they can offer the most value to their
customers and what really creates competitive advantages.
Over the next decade, you will see the open movement
spread. The creation and value of intellectual property
will be dramatically transformed." Donofrio's remarks
follow the release of a study that identified 283 patents
that threaten the Linux OS, among them more than 60 held
by IBM and 27 held by Microsoft. Hopefully word of IBM's
stance will make it over to Munich, where city officials
have delayed what would have been the largest-ever
Windows-to-Linux migration because of concerns over
software patents.
[ ... ]
Encyclopedia McBride and the case of the smoking e-mail
When SCO CEO Darl McBride pledged to continue the
company's ill-starred legal battle against IBM, he seemed
quite sure of himself -- a little too sure, perhaps (see
"SCO chief winning his battle with reality" [ yesterday ]).
Now we know why. SCO claims to have found "smoking gun" e-mail
messages in which IBM employees acknowledge that IBM used SCO
code in its Unix-based AIX operating system without a proper
license. Given SCO's penchant for stock-pumping PR ploys
[ ... ], its tough to take the company at its word on this
point. But if these e-mails do exist, and SCO isn't
misrepresenting them, it may be onto something.
[ ... ]
Good Morning Silicon Valley is written and edited with
the able assistance of John Murrell.
--
«How many surrealists does it take to | Brian Foster Montpellier,
change a lightbulb? Three. One calms | blf at utvinternet.ie FRANCE
the warthog, and two fill the bathtub | Stop E$$o (ExxonMobile)!
with brightly-colored machine tools.» | http://www.stopesso.com
Maintained by the ILUG website team. The aim of Linux.ie is to
support and help commercial and private users of Linux in Ireland. You can
display ILUG news in your own webpages, read backend
information to find out how. Networking services kindly provided by HEAnet, server kindly donated by
Dell. Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds,
used with permission. No penguins were harmed in the production or maintenance
of this highly praised website. Looking for the
Indian Linux Users' Group? Try here. If you've read all this and aren't a lawyer: you should be!
