If you haven't heard about this elsewhere, here is one link to the story. But here is a pdf file from IBM's website listing the patents.

Some people could learn a lot from this!

Cheers
ZB

Big corporations generally do not donate intellectural property for altrustic reasons, they do it for tax relief, often in ways that are questionable, from a tax and accounting perspective.

See:

http://www.ideas21.co.uk/183

and

http://www.forbes.com/2004/01/07/cz_...way_print.html

For example.

It would be interesting to see what is the tax deduction IBM takes for these patent 'donations'......

Who are we supposed to then feel sorry for? The IRS- for lost "revenues," or for the Big Company's?
Personally, I feel if the Big Company's do this for tax relief, thats great news for them. They spent the money developing the patents, the IRS did none except stick out their palms demanding people cough up money.

IBM has some 40k patents, them kicking out a mere 500, whether or not it will advance open source may be a good thing. IBM has been a strong supporter of LINUX development for sometime. It has definitely helped attract more eyeballs.

Big Blue, not the company it once was, still has set a strong historic mark on computing. They could be much more of a M$ than M$, if they had not released the PC architecture. Without IBM doing what they had, M$ would not be where they are today, since M$ only develops software.

Had Apple followed IBM, they may have gained a much stronger footing then they have today.

I wonder if the releasing of patents is a rub to SCO.

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Sorry?! What is that for?