Now, assuming that it does not satisfy you as an explanation, you could indicate that you are going to pursue legal action (the I in IBM stands for International) but you are willing to settle and sign away your rights for some relatively nominal fee.
Ok, you said you are not a lawyer, but you could at least try to know what you're talking about before writing such a post.
IANAL either, but even I know that being granted a patent doesn't magically make you own all prior art in the domain. The patent examiner even noticed HeapCheck as related work! The author has no claims whatsoever against IBM, and the idea to push for a settlement is ridiculous. What can there possibly be to settle?
Since the examiner approved the patent, while knowing about HeapCheck, they must have thought that the patent claims (only the claims count, the description is worthless in that regard) are not fully covered by prior art. I doubt they could be wrong on this, so the prior art defense is pretty much out. They must also have thought that there is significant non-obvious innovation in relation to the prior art. That part is more subjective and thus may be debatable.
In any case, the only possible outcome would be that IBM loses the patent, which changes exactly nothing for anybody unless IBM starts to sue people based on that patent. In any case the author has absolutely nothing to gain, and no basis whatsoever to negotiate with IBM.
There are no rights to sign away, the author can do nothing to help IBM maintain the patent if it is invalid, and has no benefit from invalidating it. And if the patent is valid, as it probably is, he's just going to lose a lot of money and look like a fool (as opposed to losing a lot of money but without looking like a fool if he wins).
No, I did not look at the patent, and am not going to. It would change nothing about the above.