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[FYI] IBM risks billion dollar Linux strategy with W3C RAND demands



http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/22052.html

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IBM risks billion dollar Linux strategy with W3C RAND demands  

By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco  

Posted: 04/10/2001 at 16:53 GMT  

Sources familiar with the W3C's patent policy have confirmed that 
demands for the standards body to adopt RAND licensing were initiated 
by IBM.  

[...]

Hewlett Packard has been the first major industry vendor to publicly 
state its position, with its W3C rep Jim Bell declaring that web 
standards should continue to be royalty-free.  

Senior IBM server executives were horrified to learn yesterday that 
W3C standards may not in the future be royalty-free. Internet 
standards and Linux have helped IBM widen its appeal in recent years, 
and the company has pledged $1 billion on developing and marketing 
Linux. But its continued investment depends on good will from the 
Linux developer community, and that may well be imperilled by its 
preference of RAND to royalty-free for the most fundamental WWW 
standards.  

[...]

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