FEEDBACK ON THE IBM DONATIONS: People have been chiming in on the IBM patent "freebie" and - as you would suspect - cynicism abounds. I have not personally looked through these patents (has anyone really done this?), but my experience taught me that such acts are rarely rooted in altruism, but merely serve as some sort of PR booster (remember the DuPont patent donations of unused patents that also happened to result in a $64 million tax write-off?). One theory is that the move was done to curry favor with the open source community. Others say it's no big deal anyways, since IBM has given previous assurances that the portfolio wouldn't be enforced against the Open-Source people.

Any way you slice it, no one can really know for sure what is going on, or the motivation behind this gift. Someone needs to sit down and sift through the documents (and I'm sure someone at IBM has done this) before a clearer picture can be formed.