IBM: Open Source’s Friend or Foe?
Florian Mueller – the EU campaigner involved in the software patents war – a couple of months ago talking about the Sun-MySQL merger called IBM a “false friend of open source”, but when I asked for more details he told me to wait.
Today he pointed me to his new foss patents blog entry reporting IBM has concerns about unauthorized use of proprietary IBM information by TurboHercules contributors.
Roger Bowler – CEO of TurboHercules, the company behind the mainframe emulator distributed under the Q Public license – asked IBM to consider adding such intellectual property to the IBM “non-assertion†pledge to the open source community.
Is there any chance that IBM would consider that?
Read more at The Register and at Dana Blankenhorn’s blog.
Roberto Galoppini and
Patents Roundup: Fordham Conference for Software Patents in Europe, NZOSS Responds to Pro-Software Patents Lobbyists, and TurboHercules’ Ties With Microsoft Explained | Techrights 10:40 am on April 10, 2010 Permalink
[…] “[N]otice that Turbohercules does really not say that they are not a pawn of Microsoft, they sort of dance around the issue.†–”Chips”Just to clarify again, we never defended TurboHercules’ side. Its case is not related to the point that, regardless of context, IBM is using software patents to achieve a goal. We have said that TurboHercules is a malign party for a very long time, so none of us ever claimed otherwise. One could argue that TurboHercules tripped up or pulled a trick on IBM (the Microsoft boosters — including Microsoft’s MVP Miguel de Icaza who has just blocked his tweets from the public — then took the opportunity to bash IBM). Here is the “story thus far,” based on Linux Magazine. We do not necessarily agree with this analysis, but it is new. Roberto Galoppini, who is influential among Free/open source voices in Europe, also has a position on the subject. […]
Roberto Galoppini 7:24 pm on April 11, 2010 Permalink
Actually I didn’t take any position yet, though I believe that posing questions is legitimate and it doesn’t imply a judgment, as eloquently explained Simon Phipps.