Compliance Toolkit

Story: IBM patent sparks open source code rewrite

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Just because the developers in question may not have an accurate understanding of the legal position doesn't mean this story shouldn't be reported.

I would suggest that the reporting highlights a much more interesting issue which is that open source developers can't afford expensive lawyers to work out this stuff and are (by de-facto) having to play safe.

If IBM was really genuine about opening up intellectual property, they could do so in a much more pro-active and supportive manner.

Whether deliberate or not, it's current approach to patents (and open source more generally) seems to be driven by public relations needs, rather than a genuine belief that the business model works ...

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