Hi there! Fellow IBMer :) sorry to hear about your experience so far, just wanted to chime in and say that you're definitely not alone with this perspective. Patents at IBM are so highly valued that they often act as a blinder towards open source.
However, there are definitely groups inside of IBM that choose to open source their work instead of filing for patents. For example, the team that I'm currently on works on the Carbon Design System [0], which is entirely open source. All the work our team does is out in the open too [1][2], which is great!
I would say that for teams like this, the tendency is to open source software and patent processes that are unique to IBM or a particular domain. That way we can try and contribute back as much useful technology as we can!
Obviously there are others at the company who might have a different perspective, but thankfully we're also trying to spread our own take on alternatives to the traditional processes at IBM.
Hope this info can help make your time at IBM a little bit better!
However, there are definitely groups inside of IBM that choose to open source their work instead of filing for patents. For example, the team that I'm currently on works on the Carbon Design System [0], which is entirely open source. All the work our team does is out in the open too [1][2], which is great!
I would say that for teams like this, the tendency is to open source software and patent processes that are unique to IBM or a particular domain. That way we can try and contribute back as much useful technology as we can!
Obviously there are others at the company who might have a different perspective, but thankfully we're also trying to spread our own take on alternatives to the traditional processes at IBM.
Hope this info can help make your time at IBM a little bit better!
[0]: https://www.carbondesignsystem.com/ [1]: https://github.com/carbon-design-system [2]: https://github.com/IBM?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=carbon&type=&languag...