[Freegis-list] IBM software patents to be freely available from now

[Bernhard Reiter]

On Fri, Jan 14, 2005 at 12:10:58PM +0000, Roger Longhorn wrote:
>    IBM software patents to be freely available from now

>    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>    In New York, International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) has
>    planned to announce that it is making 500 of its software patents
>    freely available to anyone working on open source projects such as
>    Linux operating system.

This is at least a smoke screen by IBM, 
but it might be even be a small attack on the Free Software community.
The discussion is just starting.

>    I wonder if any apply to GI/GIS?

Even if they did, this might be of limited use as many Free Software
components deliberately use licenses with releaxed freedom
protection like the GNU Lesser GPL or MIT/X and the patents
do not let you do the same stuff with such licensed code then.


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