Pure Software's patents covering memory-leak checking

Hi, I was looking for upload instructions for alpha.gnu.org and got
distracted by reading /gd/gnuorg/patent-examples/mail-archive.  Many
of the articles in there talk about the difficulties encountered by
the GCC team regarding techniques apparently patented by Pure
Software.

It occurred to me that Rational bought Pure, and IBM bought Rational.
IBM seems to have a more benign attitude to GNU/Linux, and so this may
extend to free software in general (after all if they see "Linux" as
strategic, then improving the GNU system can only help them).

If the memory-leak detection problem still persists it may well be
possible to persuage IBM to do something helpful (for example agree to
license the patent in a Free Software-friendly way).

While I'm on the subject of memory-leak checkers, if you're interested
in that area you should look at Valgrind
(http://developer.kde.org/~sewardj/) if you are not already aware of
it.


-- 
James Youngman
Manchester, UK.