From owner-freebsd-chat Thu Dec 13 17: 0:16 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from monorchid.lemis.com (monorchid.lemis.com [192.109.197.75]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 87A2D37B417 for ; Thu, 13 Dec 2001 16:59:52 -0800 (PST) Received: by monorchid.lemis.com (Postfix, from userid 1004) id 50D83786E4; Fri, 14 Dec 2001 11:29:50 +1030 (CST) Date: Fri, 14 Dec 2001 11:29:50 +1030 From: Greg Lehey To: Terry Lambert Cc: Hiten Pandya , Poul-Henning Kamp , FreeBSD Chat Subject: Re: IBM suing (was: RMS Suing was [SUGGESTION] - JFS for FreeBSD) Message-ID: <20011214112950.N3448@monorchid.lemis.com> References: <20011212105559.19177.qmail@web21103.mail.yahoo.com> <3C17482C.3792DAA9@mindspring.com> <20011213115519.F3448@monorchid.lemis.com> <3C18472F.DD3A90D5@mindspring.com> <20011213165513.D3448@monorchid.lemis.com> <3C186EA5.4EA87656@mindspring.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <3C186EA5.4EA87656@mindspring.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.23i Organization: The FreeBSD Project Phone: +61-8-8388-8286 Fax: +61-8-8388-8725 Mobile: +61-418-838-708 WWW-Home-Page: http://www.FreeBSD.org/ X-PGP-Fingerprint: 6B 7B C3 8C 61 CD 54 AF 13 24 52 F8 6D A4 95 EF Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Thursday, 13 December 2001 at 1:02:29 -0800, Terry Lambert wrote: > Greg Lehey wrote: >> I know that things have changed since you were IBM. I still find it >> difficult to think that they have changed as much as would be >> necessary to explain the discrepancy between your viewpoint and my >> experience. > > I left IBM a year ago last September. > > When IBM acquired Whistle, they DEMANDED that we remove SQUID, which > was planned to be in the next release of the software for the next > generation product, as it infringed 5 IBM patents, and they did not > want to grant license to use those patents, royalty free, by shipping > a product with SQUID on it. For some definition of IBM. > I think perhaps some of the discrepancy is that you live in a > country which does not recognize software patents the way the > U.S. does. No, I work for the IBM Linux Technology Center. Our rules are formulated in the USA. >>> See also the IBM guidelines for the use of Open Source in IBM >>> products, >> >> Been there, done that. Your point? > > > > My point is that IBM is backing Linux and the GPL purely for > marketing reasons, not legal or technical reasons. Of course. Does that worry you? IBM is a commercial company. Nearly all its decisions are based on marketing input. >> I don't know the exact wording of the GPL, but I can't see any >> deviation here. Yes, the original code is proprietary. But we are >> most definitely talking an open source license, even if it's one you >> don't like. > > Big deal. It's not commercially useful, even interally to IBM, > for anything other than marketing blather. > > For the same reasons, a GPL'ed JFS port to FreeBSD would not be > commercially useful, except as IBM/Linux marketing blather. Why not? > As an overall business philosophy aside: frankly, I don't buy your > unified view of IBMs motivations; from my personal experience, > business units competed more than they cooperated, and IBM was > rarely unified on anything: it's not a single-minded entity. No company of that size can be completely unified. My understanding, though, is that IBM is trying to reduce competition between the business units, not maintain it. Greg -- See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message