It has been pointed out that my earlier post was remiss in not including IBM's material on the decision to release the patents for use by open source programs, so here is the press release and the formal commitment letter.

The letter contains an interesting provision. IBM says that its commitment is irrevocable "except that IBM reserves the right to terminate this patent pledge and commitment only with regard to any party who files a lawsuit asserting patent or other intellectual property rights against Open Source Software."

So any company running open source software that uses code under IBM patent is barred from enforcing any of its own patent, copyright, or trade secret rights that it may believe are infringed by any open source program, even if that program is unrelated to the program that contains the IBM code. Or, to be more precise, if it filed an IP claim against an open source program, then it would have to stop using the IBM-related program if IBM chose to exercise its revocation option, which is not automatic.

This is heavy duty stuff.

Also - I have seen it written that IBM is putting patents into the public domain. Whatever its practice in the past, that is not true of this initiative. IBM retains full patent rights; it only pledges not to enforce them against open source software programs. In contrast, software that is in the public domain can be used by anyone for any purpose, including incorporation into a proprietary program. The difference between the two approaches is monumental.

posted by James DeLong @ 5:50 PM | Software

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