IBM’s promise five years ago to release 500 of its patents to the open source world was a milestone in Big Blue’s support for community-developed software.
So the news that it now plans to assert its legal rights in the case of at least two of those patents could mark an unfortunate watershed. And, to borrow an accusation often directed at arch-rival Microsoft, it is certain to sow FUD in open source circles.
The apparent inconsistency has been unearthed by European open source advocate Florian Mueller, who recently led the quixotic and ultimately unsuccessful effort to persuade Brussels to prevent Oracle from assuming control of MySQL when it bought Sun.
Mr Mueller’s blog has the details of a threatening IBM letter to TurboHercules, a company whose business is based on the open source Hercules project. Hercules is a mainframe emulator, a layer of software that sits on top of IBM’s mainframe hardware and makes it possible for users to run non-IBM software. So it’s no surprise IBM is not a fan.
In the letter, the computing giant lists no fewer than 173 patents that IBM either already owns or has applied for, and which it says TurboHercules may have infringed.
Two of those are among the 500 it released to the open source world.
This makes it look very much as though, when it comes to open source products that threaten to tread on IBM’s own toes, the company’s high-minded 2005 pledge isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.
In a statement on Tuesday, IBM says it has “serious doubts” about whether TurboHercules qualifies under the terms of the pledge, adding:
TurboHercules is a member of organisations founded and funded by IBM competitors such as Microsoft to attack the mainframe. We have doubts about TurboHercules’ motivations.
The pledge, though, was irrevocable, with only one exception:
IBM reserves the right to terminate this patent pledge and commitment only with regard to any party who files a lawsuit asserting patents or other intellectual property rights against Open Source Software.
Even under a very generous reading of the case, IBM is stretching the definition considerably to defend its turf. There’s a clear message there for any other open source company rash enough to try to take on Big Blue with its own weapons.
