On Mon, 2005-01-17 at 08:44 -0500, linux-os wrote: > Tue Jan 11 07:07:40 EST 2005 > > IBM has announced that it will provide free access to about
No, they only promise now to not sue anyone given the following criteria. No one knows what happens in 5 years. > 500 of its existing software patents to users and groups They have ca. 40000 AFAIK. So 500 is 1,25 %. And IBM is actually lobbying for patents so this is only a marketing thing. > working on open source software. > > http://www.ibm.com/news/us/ > > Many of these patents relate to interoperability, communications, > file-export protocols, and dynamic linking. And almost all of them are pure software-patents and probably prior art. Thus they are - at least in Europe - not relevant and actually illegal if you believe in the current European patent law as defined by the European Patent Convention (see §52(2) for details). Bernd -- Firmix Software GmbH http://www.firmix.at/ mobil: +43 664 4416156 fax: +43 1 7890849-55 Embedded Linux Development and Services - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/