IT Jungle: Will IT Vendors Set Up a Patent Trust?

"IBM is not letting loose 500 software patents in the world for just anyone to use. Under the agreement it has in effect for those 500 software patents, IBM is specifically saying that it will not enforce its patents when these 500 are used in open source programs, such as Linux, Apache, MySQL, and other popular programs. IBM is firmly retaining control of those patents, and is in no way relinquishing control of them to the open source community. It is, however, allowing them to be used in the creation of open source programs without the normal intellectual property licensing fees. To use the patents freely, an individual, company, or community project has to be working on or using open source software that meets the definition of open source created by the Open Source Initiative (OSI), a nonprofit corporation that promotes open source..."

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