Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, ZDNet; Microsoft open-sources its patent portfolio
"Several years ago, I said the one thing Microsoft has to do -- to convince everyone in open source that it's truly an open-source supporter -- is stop using its patents against Android vendors. Now, it's joined the Open Invention Network (OIN), an open-source patent consortium. Microsoft has essentially agreed to grant a royalty-free and unrestricted license to its entire patent portfolio to all other OIN members.
Before Microsoft joined, OIN had more than 2,650 community members and
owns more than 1,300 global patents and applications. OIN is the
largest patent non-aggression community in history and represents a core
set of open-source intellectual-property values. Its members include
Google, IBM, Red Hat, and SUSE. The OIN patent license and member
cross-licenses are available royalty-free to anyone who joins the OIN
community."
Matt Asay, TechRepublic;
"While patent collectors will often claim that their portfolio is a
good indicator of the deep research and development they do, rarely do
we see patent heft translate directly into product success. Why? Because
rarely do products succeed simply because of technical merit.
Instead,
the most successful companies are those that can execute (sales,
marketing, etc.) around a product, whatever its technical merits. In
this area, IBM has largely failed over the last decade...
IBM has long been one of the pioneers in open source software, which is
where most usable innovation seems to be happening today. From
TensorFlow to Apache Kafka to Kubernetes, if IBM wants to compete with
modern technology giants like Google and Microsoft, it needs to innovate
in the same way they do, too. Yes, they still gather patents, but their
more interesting work emerges as open source software."
