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[yak@collab] Re: IBM releasing patents

To: yak@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From: Henry K van Eyken <vaneyken@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005 22:18:43 -0500
Message-id: <1105672723.3105.0.camel@localhost.localdomain>
See also The Economist: 
http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3554542    (01)

Henry    (02)

On Wed, 2005-01-12 at 16:26, Peter P. Jones wrote:
> [1] http://www.ibm.com/news/us/en/2005/01/patents.html
> List of patents: http://www.ibm.com/ibm/licensing/patents/pledgedpatents.pdf
> 
> [2] 
> 
>http://www-1.ibm.com/press/PressServletForm.wss?TemplateName=ShowPressReleaseTemplate&SelectString=t1.docunid=7473
> <quote>
> "True innovation leadership is about more than just the numbers of 
> patents granted. It's about innovating to benefit customers, partners 
> and society," said Dr. John E. Kelly, IBM senior vice president, 
> Technology and Intellectual Property. "Continuing IBM's legacy of 
> leadership in the strategic use of intellectual property, our pledge 
> today is the beginning of a new era in how IBM will manage intellectual 
> property to benefit our partners and clients. Unlike the preceding 
> Industrial Economy, the Innovation Economy requires that intellectual 
> property be deployed for more than just providing the owner with freedom 
> of action and income generation."
> </quote>
> 
> I accept that this is possibly a classic 'open-sourcing by business' 
> manoeuvre made in a new explicit style, but I'm not sure I accept the 
> premise that it is necessarily bad or inadequate yet.
> 
> -- 
> Peter
> 
> 
> Gerry Gleason wrote:
> > On 2005.01.12 09:53 Murray Altheim wrote:
> > 
> >> Gerry Gleason wrote:
> > 
> > [...]
> > 
> >>> I guess one open question is how we should respond as advocates of 
> >>> another way.  I'm quite confident that "commons based 
> >>> peer-production" can outcompete traditional profit driven 
> >>> corporations, but we still lack a sufficient proof of concept.  Of 
> >>> course, this also assumes a level playing field ...
> >>
> >>
> >> Actually, I think there is a very strong proof in the success of linux.
> >> Had anyone fifteen or twenty years ago thought that it would win out
> >> over proprietary software, they'd been locked up as a nut. But IBM,
> >> Sun and others are gradually moving towards using linux in their
> >> product line, and as linux continues to improve it will continue to
> >> erode Microsoft's bottom line. By the same token, Mac OS X has an
> >> BSD framework underneath it too. Maybe this is just a proof that a
> >> unix/linux OS is better, but I think it has a lot more to do with the
> >> public development community beating the proprietary one. Thousands
> >> of hands are always better than a hundred, and open sharing is always
> >> better than secrecy. For example, you don't have to worry too much
> >> about leaking secrets if your code is already public.
> > 
> > 
> > No question that Linux is a success story, and Apache is probably 
> > equally important.  On the other hand, I still don't see these examples 
> > being used and extended the way they could be.  Relatively few make a 
> > living off this sort of work, and it doesn't generate the sort of 
> > surplus that would allow the sort of public advocacy campaigns that 
> > could counter the corporate messages in the political field.
> > 
> >> [...]  but we have the power of the people in this one, big time. I
> >> would say that the open source community may not be organized, but we
> >> represent an enormous threat to the powers at be, otherwise they wouldn't
> >> be waging such a war against intellectual property right now. They know
> >> their time is up unless they can lock everything down soon.
> > 
> > 
> > Unfortunately, at the moment it looks like they may succeed ;-)  Only 
> > half-joking, I suspect they way out may involve them first succeeding, 
> > which just locks up the entire global economic system in a self-emposed 
> > grid-lock, and only then does the new era emerge from a crisis in the 
> > dominant system.
> > 
> > Best strategy is to be ready with alternatives when the old answers fail 
> > and get them implemented before the whole thing falls into chaos.
> > 
> >> Microsoft will go down in flames, it's only a matter of time. They
> >> probably won't disappear, but their world is ending, just as the
> >> world of oil production will end, probably within most of our
> >> lifetimes. And with that: cheap plastics and petroleum-based resins.
> > 
> > 
> > That's been my prediction for quite some time.  Thought it would have 
> > started by now, but it can't really get going during a period of 
> > retrenchment.  Things are still pretty locked down here in the States.
> > 
> > Gerry
> >     (03)

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