Barry Mahon wrote:
IBM will begin allowing the use of 500 technologies covered by patents it holds by developers working on open source projects. [...]
It's difficult to know how to respond to this. Accepting this offer essentially means accepting software idea patents. Although they may be offering these 500 "technologies", they're still getting almost 9 new patents a day on average: If you accept the validity of the 500 patents, presumably you must also implicitly accept the validity of their other patents.
I think the best approach may still be *not* to do a patent search before releasing your software and *not* to acknowledge these IBM patents, as doing so implies that you should be aware of any patents you are infringing, which apparently makes you more liable.
David