""I believe such positive, constructive actions regarding intellectual property are the preferred routes to accelerate the shift to better products and services for customers via open architectures," he said."

I agree. And it will also allow for a Colossal Beowulf Cluster to Invade and take Control of*, for ITs Beta Use, the Windows Kernel/ITs Operating System Methodology for the Virtualisation of Reality in the ARG Environment........ which will allow for Parallel Migrations of Operating Systems to Memory Agnostic Lead Support. An Operating System led by Processing of Imagination to Intelligence via ITs Intelligence to Imagination creating a Viable Pragmatic Artificial Intelligence as the de facto Global Human Intelligence for Media and IT to Push/Peddle/Share thus to eliminate Conflicts and Divisions/Partitions, leaving in their Place.... Acceptable Mutually Beneficial Alternate Realities ....... Parallels.

* if necessary.... for Controls may be provided by the Host so that they can build an AI Presence...... which would be a Danegeld situation admirably averted and satisfied, methinks.

When the term "Intellectual Property" is used here, does it mean patents, trade secrets, trademarks or copyrights?

I might be wrong but I think this "you can use our technology if you won't stupidly sue over stupid patents" thing is a first.

Got to hope a few others follow suit.

My bet is that they're doing this:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html

... Some sense !

Perhaps this is the beginning of the end for software patents, someone had to realise that spending all their profits on lawyers was not a good way to proceed and that it was merely stymying development of new (and exciting) products. OK, they are not exciting.

I am a bit surprised, though, to find IBM leading the way. They are to be congratulated for this and I do hope others follow suit.

Is this a good thing? Sure.

Is IBM doing this out of the kindness of their own heart?

Hardly.

IBM is trying to get some of their IP out of the lab and in to products.

This is the cheapest way to help make their IP mainstream so that they can sell their products based on their IP. If that means sacrificing ownership of IP that goes unused in an effort to make more money, then IBM is all for it.

Suppose IBM has this language, Fred. Now Fred may be a great language, but no one adopts Fred. Even those who drink the cool-aid, because its not an 'open language' that the IT Community as a whole has adopted. So for IBM to 'sell' Fred and applications built on Fred, they must first give away the IP rights to Fred so that others will pick up the language.

IBM wins because they can now sell the products that they have waiting in the wings. The community wins because Fred is a great idea and a good language.

The alternative? Fred becomes a financial disaster and one of those rotting corpses lying around Silicon Valley.

Does that help put things in perspective?

"Does that help put things in perspective?"

I don't think anyone would accuse IBM of being a charity, but at least it's doing the Right Thing.

Language, file and communications standards should be open - implementations thereof can be as proprietary as you like (that's how to make money to feed the kids) as long as the implementation is measured against the standard. "Playing fair" like this grows the market for everyone.

Isn't this a bit like 1982 when IBM created the PC and opened up the design to anyone who wanted it? OK, Apricot, Amstrad and lots of other long gone names made some good PC clones then but who made the big money? MS of course - in a way, I hope that IBM have learnt their lesson and can make some money from their huge investment in IP now by sharing and profiting from it (probably a first, calling IBM the underdog!)