The last 15 years of IBM has basically been open.<p>1) They&#x27;re in the top 5 re: Linux contributors. (Guess who else is in there? Microsoft.)<p>2) They dropped their JVM (J9) for OpenJDK - again upstreaming their patches to the community.<p>3) Eclipse was founded by them in 2001 (later released into the public domain).<p>4) They released (at least part of) their ML system &quot;SystemML&quot; into the public domain as well, during the same month MS opened theirs and Google opened TensorFlow.<p>They aren&#x27;t patent trolls in the sense of those Texas LLP&#x27;s who lease a few hundred square feet and fire off scare-letters. They hold a lot of patents because they are one of the few companies that actually funds pure research. They make a ton of money by bilking banks&#x2F;the feds&#x2F;states who still run their RMV on AIX @ 2mill a year in support contracts, etc, who are vendor-locked in. A not insignificant amount of money goes to:<p>5) Post-docs from really smart uni&#x27;s to publish theoretical comp sci work in more journals than you&#x27;d imagine, which guess what? is also public domain!<p>They&#x27;re really not hurting the consumer at all. In fact, I honestly don&#x27;t see how they could be MORE open.<p>------<p>[1] (And guess Who&#x27;s not upstream&#x27;ing much at all but making billions off community written software? I&#x27;ll give you a hint, its not Barnes &amp; Noble! Even VMware donated back to FreeBSD. Support HN users who actually pay-it-forward[2] and use Tarsnap[3] instead of S3.)<p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.freebsdnews.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;02&#x2F;25&#x2F;donate-freebsd-foundation&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.freebsdnews.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;02&#x2F;25&#x2F;donate-freebsd-founda...</a><p>[3] www.tarsnap.com . Not affiliated with Colin but he&#x27;s been a long-time HNer who isn&#x27;t a conglomerate, taking GPL&#x2F;BSD software, slapping a pretty coat of paint on it and selling it for huge margins. Pay a few cents extra and support startups. Karma, guys. &lt; &#x2F;preachy hippie shit&gt;