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7 Jun 2004


      Information aus einer Newsletter...
How Redmond Might Make Money Off Linux After All
It's kind of ironic. In 1980 IBM licensed MS-DOS from Microsoft, for
about $50 a computer. The deal of the century. So now, MS needs help
with licensing their intellectual property (IP), and who do they turn
to? The executive largely responsible for IBM's licensing success. IBM
earned $1.1 billion in licensing fees in 2002, and over the past ten
years it has consistently generated the most U.S. patents.
June 2003, Redmond named 28-year IBM veteran Marshall Phelps to be their
corporate veep and deputy general counsel for intellectual property.
Then, six months later MS revealed that Phelps would be heading up MS's
new intellectual property licensing initiative. So you can probably see
the writing on the wall. MS is now offering its patents for licensing.
To anyone. Including open source, and that means they might enforce
these patents if people choose to not license them. Meaning MS might
start making money off Linux after all.
Phelps's ascension at MS is interesting in that light. When IT companies
become as dominant as Microsoft, they must learn how to license their
IP, i.e. licensing of their software and their patents. The new policy
may well be modeled on IBM's methods. The irony of it all...
Erwin