[…] IBM has sent a nastygram to the company TurboHercules, with a “non-exhaustive” list of US patents that it believes “will be infringed” by TurboHercules' code.

Patents could lead to the mutually assured destruction of the software industry and the parading of pledged patents in the opening of a dispute between IBM and TurboHercules threatens to upset the only progress towards a safer world for open source

Earlier this week it was made public that IBM had levied patent infringement allegations against French company TurboHercules and its mainframe emulator. A letter signed by IBM VP and technology officer Mark S. Anzani and addressed to TurboHercules co-founder Roger Bowler detailed the more than 170 patents the company allegedly infringed upon.

In 2005, IBM pledged to not use five hundred patents against open source software. In 2010, two of those patents have shown up in a letter from IBM to the makers of TurboHercules, an open source mainframe emulator

IBM is threatening to pursue legal action against TurboHercules, a company that sells services relating to the open source Hercules project, an emulator that allows conventional computers with mainstream operating systems to run software that is designed for IBM System Z mainframe hardware.

"Software patents are evil." Ask almost any free or open source software advocate, and they'll tell you that software patents kill creativity and keep computer science from advancing as rapidly as it would if everyone shared their basic work with everyone else, unencumbered by patents or other restrictions.

There have been many claims over the purchase of 22 patents by the Open Invention Network. Some have lauded the cunning of OIN in snatching the patents away from patent trolls. Others suggest the OIN have acquired useful defensive patents. The trouble is that the process of acquiring the patents is relatively opaque.

Many open-source developers and business people are upset that Oracle is suing Google over Java patents in Android. These people have reason to worry. This case could change not just how they use Java but how open-source development is done at all. So why would Oracle, a Linux-supporter in its own right, introduce the evil of software patents into open-source programming?

"Apparently patents do matter when it comes to open source software adoption."