Major electronics company build Linux alliance

CNN reports:

Three of the world's biggest electronics companies -- IBM, Sony and Philips -- have joined forces with the two largest Linux software distributors to create a company for sharing Linux patents, royalty-free.

This is huge for software developers. Basically these companies (plus Red Hat and Novell) are going to buy up a bunch of software patents and then let people use them without having to pay royalties. This allows people to continue to develop open source software without the risk of patent or legal difficulties.