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IBM, Schools Pursue Open-Source Research

IBM Corp., which has been a big backer of open-source software, is working with seven universities on new computing research projects whose fruits would be widely shared rather than held as intellectual property.

The program calls for researchers at IBM and the universities to work together on software projects in such fields as privacy and security, then release the results as open-source programming code that anyone can use or alter.

The technology company and the schools announced their new projects this month as part of ongoing work in an open-source research program launched last year. Its backers say the open format stimulates research by keeping projects from being bogged down by concerns over who would own any resulting patents.

The schools involved are Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Purdue, Rutgers and the University of California campuses in Berkeley and Davis. Other universities are also part of the program, as are Intel Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Cisco Systems Inc.

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