nettime I.B.M. to Give Free Access to 500 Patents
[As the article points out at the end, 500 patents is a relatively small number for IBM (which holds more than 10.000 software patents). Nevertheless, it represents a significant policy change in how to manage patents by the world's leading holder of patents. Is is also very different from Microsoft's current approach of seeking cross-licensing deals among holders of large patent portfolios. IBM Press Release: http://www.ibm.com/news/us/en/2005/01/patents.html Linux World Story: http://www.linuxworld.com/story/47749_p.htm Felix] NYT January 11, 2005 I.B.M. to Give Free Access to 500 Patents By STEVE LOHR http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/11/technology/11soft.html I.B.M. plans to announce today that it is making 500 of its software patents freely available to anyone working on open-source projects, like the popular Linux operating system, on which programmers collaborate and share code. The new model for I.B.M., analysts say, represents a shift away from the traditional corporate approach to protecting ownership of ideas through patents, copyrights, trademark and trade-secret laws. The conventional practice is to amass as many patents as possible and then charge anyone who wants access to them. I.B.M. has long been the champion of that formula. The company, analysts estimate, collected $1 billion or more last year from licensing its inventions. The move comes after a lengthy internal review by I.B.M., the world's largest patent holder, of its strategy toward intellectual property. I.B.M. executives said the patent donation today would be the first of several such steps. John Kelly, the senior vice president for technology and intellectual property, called the patent contribution the beginning of a new era in how I.B.M. will manage intellectual property. I.B.M. may be redefining its intellectual property strategy, but it apparently has no intention of slowing the pace of its patent activity. I.B.M. was granted 3,248 patents in 2004, far more than any other company, according to the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The patent office is announcing today its yearly ranking of the top 10 private-sector patent recipients. I.B.M. collected 1,300 more patents last year than the second-ranked company, Matsushita Electric Industrial of Japan. The other American companies among the top 10 patent recipients were Hewlett-Packard, Micron Technology and Intel. I.B.M. executives say the company's new approach to intellectual property represents more than a rethinking of where the company's self-interest lies. In recent speeches, for example, Samuel J. Palmisano, I.B.M.'s chief executive, has emphasized the need for more open technology standards and collaboration as a way to stimulate economic growth and job creation. On this issue, I.B.M. appears to be siding with a growing number of academics and industry analysts who regard open-source software projects as early evidence of the wide collaboration and innovation made possible by the Internet, providing opportunities for economies, companies and individuals who can exploit the new model. This is exciting, said Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Stanford Law School and founder of the school's Center for Internet and Society. It is I.B.M. making good on its commitment to encourage a different kind of software development and recognizing the burden that patents can impose. I.B.M. has already made substantial contributions to open-source software projects in the last few years. The company has been the leading corporate supporter of Linux. It donated computer code worth more than $40 million to an open-source group, Eclipse, which offers software tools for building programs. Last year, I.B.M. gave to an open-source group a database program called Cloudscape, which cost the company $85 million to develop. Those past contributions, however, have gone mainly to projects that serve to make Linux - fast becoming a viable alternative to the operating systems Windows from Microsoft and Solaris from Sun Microsystems - more attractive to corporate customers. In that respect, supporting Linux helps to undermine I.B.M.'s rivals and can be seen as a smart tactic for I.B.M. The company's commercial software strategy is focused largely on its WebSphere software, which runs on top of operating systems. Today's move by I.B.M. is not aimed at a specific project, but opens access to 14 categories of technology, including those that manage electronic commerce, storage, image processing, data handling and Internet communications. This is much broader than the contributions we've made in the past, said Jim Stallings, vice president for standards and intellectual property at I.B.M. These patents are for technologies that are deeply embedded in many industry uses, and they will be available to anyone working on open-source projects including small companies and individual entrepreneurs. I.B.M. executives said they hoped the company's initial contribution of 500 patents
Re: nettime Working on article about the need for a
Mark, At 16:28 10.01.2005, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Opinions can no longer be manipulated; people simply believe whatever the believe in and they are likely to act on these beliefs. And then they get informations or what? I dont think the internet has allready changed a lot and medias are not the main problem. The relevant facts are all open, see the situation in Israel for example, well, the details etc of the expulsion of the palestinensians out of their old villages may not be well known, but this doesn change much. The biggest problem is not the media, whatever it is, or taboos, see Godards Ici et aileurs insofar, but that many if not most people dont want an own opinion. The germans in the Nazi state are nothing special, allthough this case is special anyway, there was no free press. People dont want to think themselves. They dont care about other people, other people in other countries are not relevant for them anyway. I saw some blogs on the situation in Iraq, btw, sort of naiv, the Tigris water project etc, maybe more historic knowledge is necessary. It is more important than psychology. And what is democracy? H. # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
nettime reminder: nettime-ann
[new and old nettimers may (not) know that, under the growing and contradictory pressures of more and more announcements from around the world, we set up an independently maintained list for events, exhibitions, publications: nettime-ann. sample below, with un/sub info. -- mod (tb)] - Forwarded From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: nettime-ann Digest, Vol 17, Issue 3 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 18:54:38 +0100 (CET) Send nettime-ann mailing list submissions to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-ann or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can reach the person managing the list at [EMAIL PROTECTED] When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than Re: Contents of nettime-ann digest... //* nettime-ann list *\\ Today's Topics: 1. [event] [Amsterdam] 'A Decade of Webdesign' (Institute of Network Cultures) 2. [list] the Sarai Urban Study Group List, India (Curt Gambetta) 3. [event] [Berlin] Superfactory(TM) @ hack.it.art - Berlin ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) 4. [art] nznl.com digest Dec 30, 2004 - Jan 5, 2005 (Geert Dekkers) 5. [event] [Amsterdam feb12] PRECAIR FORUM: flexible labour/migration/the city (geert) 6. [news] new radio product (Doug Henwood) 7. [call] [site] Meta-CC.net: Launch imminent, call for participants/contributors (alex killough) 8. [link] o:ecs ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) 9. [event] [Barcelona] CONVERSATION METANARRATIVE(S)? (Raquel Herrera) -- Message: 1 Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2005 13:43:11 -0600 From: Institute of Network Cultures [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: nettime-ann [event] [Amsterdam] 'A Decade of Webdesign' To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII - A Decade of Webdesign Two day international conference in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Friday 21 and Saturday 22 January, 2005. More information registration at www.decadeofwebdesign.org Entrance fee (including lunch): 30 euros per day / 50 euros for two days, Students: 17,50 / 30 euros Make web history at www.designtimeline.org! Organization: Piet Zwart Institute, MA Media Design Research, Rotterdam (http://pzwart.wdka.hro.nl/) Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam (www.networkcultures.org) Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (www.stedelijk.nl) - Conference Programme: FRIDAY JANUARY 21 10:20 Doors Open 10:45 Introduction to the conference by Geert Lovink 11:00 Histories of Web Design with: Adrian Mackenzie, Peter Lunenfeld, Franziska Nori chair: Matthew Fuller What do technical and cultural historians, or those active in the world of museums, propose as ways to make an account of the last decade? 13:00 Lunch break Timeline Hot Spots 14:00 Distributed Design with: John Chris Jones, Olia Lialina, Hayo Wagenaar chair: Femke Snelting The web amplified an explosion of non-professional design. This panel will ask what happens to design once it becomes a non-specialist network process. 16:00 Tea break Timeline Hot Spots 16:30 Meaning Structures with: Steven Pemberton, Angela Beesley, Schoenerwissen/OfCD Moderator: Richard Rogers As automated site-design becomes increasingly important, the history of the interweaving of technology and culture up to the point of semantic engineering is mapped out. 18:00 End 18:30 Conference dinner at the Westergasterras SATURDAY JANUARY 22 10.30 Doors open 11:00 Digital Work with: Danny O'Brien, Michael Indergaard, Rosalind Gill Moderator: Geert Lovink Can we redesign work? From economics, sociology and design, key observers and critics of the changing patterns of work in web design will comment on the decade and encourage you to have your say. 13:00 Lunchbreak Timeline Hot Spots 14:00 Modeling the User with: Helen Petrie, Geke van Dijk, Peter Luining Moderator: Caroline Nevejan Creativity and usability have often been set up as the two key poles of web design. This panel asks instead for a more sophisticated narrative about the change in understanding of user needs and desires over the last ten years. 16:00 Tea break Timeline Hot Spots 16:30 Plenary Session With all speakers. 18:00 - 19:30 Drinks at Club 11 Don't forget to register at www.decadeofwebdesign.org Also, please check the resource section for interviews with Max Bruinsma and Luna Maurer, and extended bios of the speakers, by INC researcher Goran Batic. http://www.decadeofwebdesign.org/resource.html - Sabine Niederer Institute of Network Cultures www.networkcultures.org sabine [at] networkcultures.org -- Message: 2 Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2005 13:44:33 -0600 From: Curt Gambetta [EMAIL
Re: nettime Working on article about the need for a progressive press in US
Mark, Your technological or rather mediun determinism, remains as suggestive as ever, and I wouldn't dare try to think I could change or even alter your opinion. I'd just leave it that there is something to your point. I've gradually come to understand and respect and some of the Mcluhanesque critique. What I find funny and rather charming about such analyses are the grimness of them and the jaundiced eyed view of the hype centered around the latest fad in technology. It's not worth saying to you that yours is a narrow analysis. It's narrowness is its charm. The situation is indeed quite grim. grin or g as you so often add. Isn't the grin one of the first mediums for the expression of aggression? But, I think that Ronda's set of questions are worth attempting to answer on their own merits, that analysis in and of itself is a worthy task. Effectualness or effectuality is another matter. No one imagines, or maybe someone does, that Marx's years in the Library and his analyses, were directly effective in transforming social relations or in god forbid overthrowing the reign of global capital, the long twentieth century, as Arrighi playfully names a set of dynamics that were set into play in the 16th century. It was left to the Russian nihilists to attempt to act on Marx's critique, to what effect in the end? the long twentieth century goes on. So what of the recent elections in the US and of course this little thing folks are calling the internet? I don't thinks it's enough to lay WMD on the conservative media, this dud rather should be layed on the doorstop of the liberal media, and the newspapers of record, who were shown to be so dependent on access to various organs, as to just parrot what they are told by their sources. They are no match for a concerted campaign to control information that comes out of the official instutions of intelligence and the executive branch. Even well meaning liberal types are controlled by the protocols of access journalism. It's not the noble lie we saw with WMD, but the bald faced lie, or the beardless lie. They don't need to hide behind their beards, and no contemporary U.S. big time politician or even CEO has any visible facial hair. We like our lies bald and beardless I suppose. Mere opinion is indeed ineffectual, except perhaps to call everything into question. For every issue or even for what might be called empirical fact, there is contest, and it all seems to hang in a kind of weightless gelatin where even pointing out a lie has no effect. To each their media tunnel. Even old Leo Strauss, had no qualms about what he called empirical fact, because he still believed a science of politics was possible, and he would not dare argue with a fact. He missed this wonderful era when facts bend to the will of our great leaders. For obfuscation and for taking the sting out of criticism, opinion is very useful. You can neutralize almost any historical fact now, by enlisting legions of editorializers to spread a contrary narrative. And the do it for free now, even better, go bloggers go. On Mon, Jan 10, 2005 at 10:28:46AM -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ronda: Perhaps you might consider an alternative view . . . the Internet makes even propaganda-about-propaganda obsolete. Opinions can no longer be manipulated; people simply believe whatever the believe in and they are likely to act on these beliefs. Unlike radio which actually *was* propaganda (as psychological ground) or television which worried about the dangers of propaganda (as psychological figure), the Internet makes all of this seem . . . silly. ... # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
