Patents: don't hate companies for playing using broken rules

For-profit companies exist for one reason. Whether we like it or not, they exist to maximize shareholder wealth. I don't have a big problem with this. I don't have a big problem with this looking at it from an open source perspective either. Here's why.

Profits and wealth pay the bills. They put food on the table. They raise the standard of living. They create opportunities. This is good.

Unethical practices such as misrepresenting information, polluting, lying, stealing, and more clearly isn't. I'll enthusiastically talk about this if given the chance over a pint.

The two should not be confused. Profits and wealth do not necessarily equate with unethical practices. In fact, if anything there's some evidence to indicate the opposite in the notion of the triple bottom line. This is that ethical practices help maintain and increase the value of a brand, attract the best talent, build customer loyalty, and more. So there is indication that when done ethically, profits and wealth are a very good thing indeed.

In the open source world there's been a bit of outrage lately calling IBM on its apparent hypocrisy for using Patents to defend it's Mainframe business against The Hercules Emulator. On the surface, this may appear to violate the IBM Statement of Non-Assertion of Named Patents Against OSS,

The following quote from IBM makes this a little less black and white:
"TurboHercules is an "emulation" company that seeks a free ride on IBM's massive investments in the mainframe by marketing systems that attempt to mimic the functionality of IBM mainframes. This is not really any different from those who seek to market cheap knock-offs of brand-name clothing or apparel. TurboHercules is a member of organizations founded and funded by IBM competitors such as Microsoft to attack the mainframe."

Hmm, this is interesting. So Microsoft is getting crafty and using an open source project to target one of it's competitor's lucrative core businesses. Let's be honest here... IBM did the same with Linux, Eclipse, and others against Microsoft and Sun. Turnabout is fair play in the open source world it seems.

So we have a situation where large companies are vigorously defending their interests in order to preserve profits. I would expect nothing less... it's why the companies exist. The tools they use such as copyrights, patents, and so forth are simply the tools we (meaning our government representatives) have given them. I believe it is unrealistic to expect a firm such as IBM (or Microsoft) to lay down and surrender a market generating rich profits. That would be foolish and dangerous to how capitalism works. Imagine a future where you cannot count on firms to be aimed at maximizing shareholder wealth.... who would invest?

Thus the answer isn't to complain about IBM's open source marketing gone wrong, but instead to target the source of the main concern. We need to tune or otherwise fix the patent system.