My fiscal responcibility to my company ver. Open Source - advice please

[Lloyd Budd]

On 21-May-04, at 23:21, Madison Kelly wrote:
>
>   Well, on the IBM/Novell being open-source question, I do. IBM is 
> standing up against the first legal challenge to OSS
Did / does IBM have any choice ?

>   I am learning fast that supporting OSS on a professional level 
> requires a delicate balance of covering your bottom line and providing 
> your share to the community whom you are benefiting from. Novell and 
> IBM (and Redhat, etc.) are doing that balancing act nicely.
Considering IBM is by far the most active patenting company [1] ,
I find it interesting that you consider IBM's approach balanced .
Do you not consider patents a danger to OSS ?  Do you not
desire significant patent reform ?

Further , I do not consider IBM an open source company , because
only an insignificant amount of their software is open source .  IBM
does not feel morally driven to OSS , it is strictly a profitability
equation .

IBM is a fantastic contributer to OSS and our society , but I do *not*
call IBM an OSS Company .

-
[1] Eleven years as the world's top patenter , and by a huge divide .

--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml