05.21.10

Who to Blame for Germany’s Dangerous Decision Regarding Software Patents

Posted in Europe, IBM, Law, Microsoft, Patents, Red Hat at 9:39 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Microsoft, Nokia, IBM, GE, Siemens, SAP, Philips and several other massive companies are largely responsible for Europe’s trouble with monopolies on algorithms

THE FFII’s president recalls a situation from 2004 when the Bundestag (Germany) debated software patents and stated: “The German Bundestag shares the conviction that technical inventions, even if they contain software components, must be amenable to protection by patent law. Nevertheless, the German Bundestag has arrived at the conclusion that the present state of opinions concerning the draft directive at the European level does, thus far, not provide sufficient solutions to central questions. The definition of the “technical contribution” of a computer-implemented invention as a requirement for its patentability represents a central item of the proposed directive. For reasons of legal certainty, the definition of the technical contribution therefore has to be shaped as precisely as possible in order to achieve sufficient quality control in the patent granting practice and to prevent the patenting of so-called trivial patents.”

Jan Wildeboer, a Red Hat representative who lives in Europe and used to advocate strongly for blocking software patents in Europe before joining Red Hat, blames Microsoft for what culminated in Siemens’ offensive action [1, 2] shortly after Microsoft had done something similar. “So Microsoft lobbying seems to have been successful in Germany,” wrote Wildeboer. “Congrats on giving us software patents after Vista and other quality products,” he added. Microsoft did lobby for this.

“Let’s be honest,” wrote one of our regulars, “Software patents are nothing more than a way for Microsoft to avoid competing fairly…which is why they’ve spent like drunken sailors getting software patents implemented worldwide – now EU. Myhrvold cheering at Insidious Ventures?”

“So Microsoft lobbying seems to have been successful in Germany”
      –Jan WildeboerThe overwhelming majority of Microsoft's patents are software patents and there are a lot of debates in German right now over this disastrous development in Europe’s largest economy.

Florian Müller, a prominent German who deals with this problem, has already published his analysis and there is more about it in LWN (only in the form of a discussion as Müller blocks comments in his blog). He has also published ‘”Fair Trolls” To Fight Patents With Patents’ over at Slashdot where the "The Defensive Patent License" for Free/open source software is discussed (last mentioned a few days ago). What they are trying to do is create a legal mechanism like copyleft (using copyright law to fight copyrights) to turn software patents against themselves. The OIN more or less fails to achieve this goal although it can be effective sometimes [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6].

Right now we know that In Re Bilski in the main tool for eliminating software patents in the United States. It is a shame that IBM (whose former employee runs the USPTO) is in favour of software patents in Europe and assuming that the problem cannot be compartmentalised in the US and Japan, it is important to work to revoke Germany’s poor judgment on software patents before this decision spreads itself like a disease in European nations (the ‘second plague’). Tell IBM to oppose this decision in Germany, assuming that IBM cares about software freedom. Otherwise, this would not be the first time that IBM puts its profits before ethics in Germany. Another troublesome company in that regard is Nokia, which was spreading software patents in Europe through the United Kingdom with a key decision on Symbian a couple of years ago. █

“[The EPO] can’t distinguish between hardware and software so the patents get issued anyway”, —Marshall Phelps, IAM: Microsoft to have 50,000 patents within two years, Phelps reveals

Permalink Leave Your Comment      Send this to a friend

Advocates of Free/Open Source Software and Standards Do Not Welcome EU ICT Plan (Digital Agenda)

Posted in Europe, Free/Libre Software, Interoperability, Law, Standard at 9:01 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: The Open Source Observatory and Repository (OSOR) mischaracterises the response of Free/Open Source groups to Neelie Kroes and the Digital Agenda; we attempt to set the record straight

OSOR has come up with a misleading article that mistakes politeness for cautious acceptance. Glyn Moody calls it a “misleading headline” too. Readers can just for themselves:

Advocates of open source and standards cautiously welcome ICT plan

Advocacy groups on open standards and open source software cautiously welcome the European Commission’s five year ICT plan.

This page leaves out or forgets the FFII, which is a leading advocate in the said area. As we showed yesterday, the FFII is not too happy about the Digital Agenda. By contrast, Openforum seems fairly pleased.

Openforum Europe (OFE) welcomes the European Commission’s Digital Agenda, and commends Vice President Neelie Kroes for her determined effort to build an open, competitive and innovative ICT market for the benefit of citizens and businesses in Europe.

OSOR mentioned the statement from the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) which was summarised with: “Lack of Open Standards “gaping hole” in EC’s Digital Agenda” (clearly negative)

The European Commission has officially published its long-awaited Digital Agenda, outlining its policy plans for the next five years. “While it includes some important building blocks for Free Software, the omission of Open Standards rips a gaping hole in this agenda,” says Karsten Gerloff, President of the Free Software Foundation Europe.

Here are some other ones [1, 2] and there is the ECIS statement, which we haven’t mentioned yet. It goes like this:

ECIS commends European Commission for its Digital Agenda

BRUSSELS, 19 May, 2010 – ECIS is gratified that the European Commission’s “Digital Agenda” released today sets a timetable for making sure that government-purchased software adheres to open standards, so it will work smoothly and easily together, thus ensuring citizens have open access to their governments.

The European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS) is also pleased that the Commission frowns on software that is hemmed in by closed, proprietary standards.

“As our name suggests, interoperability is a central tenet of our group,” said Thomas Vinje, counsel and spokesman for ECIS. “We’re pleased the European Commission has given broad support to interoperability, and gratified it believes government acquisition of software should adhere to open standards.”

“That approach assures that governments will avoid granting a monopoly to a proprietary software company, which can then charge citizens for the software they need to access and interact with their governments.”
      –Thomas Vinje, ECISThe broad-ranging Digital Agenda focuses in part on the importance of making software work together. Among its conclusions are that because all technology is inherently standards-based, “Interoperability between these standards is the only way to make our lives and doing business easier – smoothing the way to a truly digital society.”

The Digital Agenda says member states should by 2013 carry out goals enunciated in April by EU Telecommunication Ministers during their meeting in Spain, whose Granada Declaration calls for the “systematic promotion of open standards and interoperable systems” for governments across the European Union.

“That approach assures that governments will avoid granting a monopoly to a proprietary software company, which can then charge citizens for the software they need to access and interact with their governments,” said Vinje.

Open standards permit inter-operation without the necessity of paying special fees. For example, the common electric plug is designed to an open standard. Anyone may build an electric plug without paying a royalty to design prongs to the right size and shape for a power point. In software, two of the best-known open standards are those that created the Internet and those that created the World Wide Web. Anyone may write software that works on the Internet or the Web, without paying special fees.

“These open standards have transformed the way we do business,” said Vinje of the Web and the Internet. They are clear examples of the way that open standards promote creativity and competition.

“Open standards will help create such things as health records that will be readable anywhere in the European Union, using a variety of software from a number of providers,” said Vinje. “They set the stage for economic growth. We’re gratified that the Commission is backing this approach.”

Open standards are distinct from “open source.” Using the latter, a group or company makes public the underlying source code of its program. Open standards are aimed at allowing pieces of software to work seamlessly together. Proprietary software business models based on open standards and open source business models both allow a high degree of interoperability and consumer choice. ECIS strongly believes that in adopting measures to implement the Digital Agenda, the EU should take care in ensuring that one particular model is not favoured over another, as long as the aims of openness and interoperability are met.

In summary, Free software groups are unhappy with the loophole that facilitates software patents (Germany’s situation with software patents [1, 2] will be discussed shortly), so it would be unfair to say that they “cautiously welcome [the] ICT plan”; they actually criticise it.

The European Commission needs to expose the lobbyists who derailed the “Digital Agenda” and those companies they represented. Some of them pretend to represent small European businesses while actually serving Microsoft. It is a known AstroTurf tactic when one takes over the opposition to misrepresent that opposition. Perhaps the European Commission got bamboozled. It ought to be mended. █

Permalink Leave Your Comment      Send this to a friend

Links 21/5/2010: Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring RC, Google Activates 100,000 Android/Linux Devices Per Day

Posted in News Roundup at 8:24 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Clip of the Day

NASA Connect – World Space Congress (1/2/2003)

Permalink Leave Your Comment      Send this to a friend

05.20.10

IRC Proceedings: May 20th, 2010

Posted in IRC Logs at 6:05 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Read the log

Enter the IRC channel now

Permalink Leave Your Comment      Send this to a friend

Patents Roundup: Novell’s and Apple’s Latest Software Patents, Ruling in Germany, and Harms to Software Freedom

Posted in Apple, Free/Libre Software, Intellectual Monopoly, Law, Novell, Patents at 11:03 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: News about software patents and other unjust monopolies

• Patent applications by Utahns [Novell still loves software patents]

System and method for creating and presenting modal dialog boxes in server-side component Web applications, patent No. 7,721,225, invented by Daniel Montroy of Sandy, Micah Gorrell of Spanish Fork, and Matthew Sorensen of Lehi, assigned to Novell, Inc. of Provo.

• New iPhone Patents Extend Apple’s Control Over Apps, Potentially Squeezing Out Many Developers [Apple uses patents against GNU/Linux]

• Apple Looking Into Location-Temporary Apps

• German court ruling, upholding Siemens patent, as text [see yesterday's analysis about Siemens]

• German Supreme Court on Patents on Computer-Implemented Inventions

Today the German Supreme Court (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH) has published the full reasons of the decision in re Xa ZB 20/08 dated April 22, 2010. The decision is related to German patent application DE10232674 filed by Siemens AG on July 18, 2002.

• Hugin and patents [some Free software projects have already been hurt by software patents and then vanished, e.g. [1, 2]]

Source code as such (certainly in the case of compiled languages) does not implement an invention — it merely describes an algorithm. As such, I believe that the source code of a Free Software implementation of some patented algorithm (as if it makes sense to patent an idea, but hey, some patent offices hand these things out) cannot infringe the patent even if you accept the validity of algorithmic patents because it’s just describing something that has already been published — the patent text itself! On the other hand, compiled forms of the same do implement the algorithm in a machine and might be covered. I’m not sure if anyone has really dug into the implications of the division between source and object code in this area.

In cases like this, the Open Invention Network might be of use. It’s a patent pool organization for Linux. Since Hugin isn’t part of Linux (as in, the kernel bits) it’s unlikely to be helped out directly. The OIN folks are some of the most pragmatic and sensible people I’ve talked to about the effect (negative) software patents have on us all.

[...]

While looking for the SIFT patent, I did find US patent numbers 7,639,897 and 7,711,262 which both cover guiding a user of a digital camera in making a panorama photo. They seem awfully similar to me, although obviously there’s a giant difference (sarcasm doesn’t work in writing unless Penny Arcade does it) between sweeping a scene and then re-photographing it and indicating already-photographed areas as the scene is swept. I guess there’s no patent yet on not helping at all.

• Fighting patent aggression the open source way [see Acacia for details]

For the open source community, it’s worth noting with pride that a substantial portion of the prior art used in the case was identified by community members. Groklaw helped rally support, and drew many prior art contributions. The Open Invention Network’s Linux Defenders program posted the patents on its Post-Issue Peer to Patent page, and drew numerous useful contributions as well. In fact, all of the prior art used as prime examples at trial (Apple Switcher, Commodore Amiga 1000, and Chan Room Model), were identified on both Groklaw and Linux Defenders. Many thanks to all who contributed and showed how open source can help invalidate patents that should never have been granted.

Explaining prior art to a jury is itself an art, and our invalidity expert, Dave Wilson, did a great job. He was smart and engaging, and managed to make some challenging material really interesting. For those interested in the technical details on invalidity, I’m posting his entire testimony, but here are a couples of excerpts that will give some idea of what he did.

• Chien: Recent History Suggests that Supreme Court will Rule Bilski’s Claim Unpatentable [see background/index to Bilski]

Professor Colleen Chien (Santa Clara) has written an interesting new article on the importance of amicus briefs in patent cases. Her article is titled Patent Amicus Briefs: What the Courts’ Friends Can Teach Us About the Patent System and is available online at SSRN.

[...]

The abstract:

Over the last two decades, more than 1500 amici, representing thousands of organizations, companies, and individuals, have signed onto amicus briefs in over a hundred patent cases, many of them representing landmark decisions. This paper turns the spotlight on these “behind-the-scenes” actors in the patent system. It combines theoretical insights with an empirical study of amicus briefs filed in patent cases over the last 20 years in an examination of who is interested in the patent system, the positions they have advocated, and the effectiveness of their advocacy. Amicus filers have been instrumental in shaping the courts’ agenda; the Supreme Court was seven times more likely to grant cert, and the Federal Circuit eight times likely grant a petition for en banc rehearing, if urged to by an amicus. However, while certain briefs have been important, overall the balance of briefs on the merits have not had a measurable impact on the courts’ rulings. One exception has been the briefs of the US Government, which have been exceptionally prescient. Over the 20 years studied, every single amicus brief authored by the US Government in a Supreme Court patent case except one predicted the case outcome. That is to say, in almost all cases, the Court affirmed or rejected the lower court holding when the Government told it to, and in one case, dismissed cert as improvidently granted when the Government recommended doing so. In terms of who files briefs and their agenda, the results are somewhat surprising. Although debates about the patent system are usually cast as a fight between the pharmaceutical and hi-tech industries, patent lawyers comprise a powerful interest group, filing the most briefs of any single group. In addition, among companies, what seems largely to determine how they advocate is their business model – non-practicing entities, for example, nearly always weighed in for the patentee and public companies, often against the patentee. These and other results have implications for those seeking to understand the patent system and those seeking to influence it.

• The Suicide Belt [Monsanto strikes again]

He is one of nearly 200,000 Indian farmers, many of them cotton growers, to commit suicide since 1997. In fact, suicide among farmers in India has become so prevalent that officials in New Delhi keep a tally. Hanging and consumption of poison are the common methods of death, and most farmer suicides have occurred in India’s cotton belt, which extends from Hyderabad north to Nagpur, at the geographical center of India, and east to the state of Gujarat.

[...]

Cotton seed has historically been among farmers’ lowest expenses. During the harvest, cotton growers would cultivate crop seeds and save them for the following season. As a general practice, they also would swap seeds with neighboring farmers, ensuring through natural selection that subsequent generations of cotton seed would be best suited for the region. Although local cotton did not provide the same potential yields as cotton seed from the Americas, it had adapted to India’s unique climate — an intense monsoon season followed by months of drought.

Monsanto helped to abolish this practice. At the turn of the century, the company introduced a genetically modified cotton plant that produces bacteria known as Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt, a commonly used pesticide against bollworm. When Bt cotton seed first came to market nationwide in 2002 under the trademark Bollgard, a box recommended for one acre of farmland was 1,400 rupees, about $35, a substantial amount for a farmer who in a good year will earn a few hundred dollars to support his family. Although government-regulated prices have been halved to 750 rupees per box — a predatory pricing lawsuit filed by the state of Andhra Pradesh forced Monsanto and the federal government to lower the prices — the input costs of Bt cotton are still more than the average farmer can afford to spend out of pocket.

• Developing Countries Blast WHO Report On IP, Demand “Credible” Approach [intellectual monopolies always suppress the poor, by design]

A critical report on financing research and development of medicines for the world’s poorest was created without transparency, failed to live up to its mandate, and did not address the potential threat that intellectual property rights can pose to access to drugs, developing countries said today at the World Health Assembly. But a proposal by a group of Latin American countries for a new intergovernmental working group was not accepted by developed countries and others and quick informal consultations began to work out differences before the end of the assembly this week.

[...]

Even the United States – generally supportive of the group’s work – said it was “regrettable” that information on process and manner of work was not included in the report itself when published, and that member states did not hear about it until last week’s informal meeting (IPW, WHO, 14 May 2010).

Permalink Leave Your Comment      Send this to a friend

Techrights Welcomes Google’s WebM/VP8 Push

Posted in Apple, Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Patents at 10:40 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Google does the right thing when it comes to codecs; it already converts vast amounts of video and it is going to defend free codecs from software patents, which in turn would possibly eradicate Flash and Silver Lie (if all goes according to plan)

YESTERDAY we alluded to the exciting news from Google [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] and presented the FFII's response, which was mostly enthusiastic.

Google’s VP8 is not perfect (no codec can be perfect), but it works decently and it shall be Free software to be supported by the major Web browsers, apparently even Microsoft’s (“Don’t forget that Microsoft basically does not have an option,” Oiaohm remarks about the news). Here is the “first in-depth technical analysis of VP8″ (it is the author’s claim that it’s the first). In conclusion it says:

VP8, as a spec, should be a bit better than H.264 Baseline Profile and VC-1. It’s not even close to competitive with H.264 Main or High Profile. If Google is willing to revise the spec, this can probably be improved.

VP8, as an encoder, is somewhere between Xvid and Microsoft’s VC-1 in terms of visual quality. This can definitely be improved a lot, but not via conventional means.

VP8, as a decoder, decodes even slower than ffmpeg’s H.264. This probably can’t be improved that much.

Patents are the issue many Web sites are discussing right now. These are of course software patents, mostly mathematical (compression, matrices, etc.) and Google might be addressing the issue by buying Global IP Solutions and eying the VoIP market (watch out, Skype).

According to this Web site, “Zencoder Excited About Open Source VP8″ and Theora’s founder thinks that it’s “wonderful”.

“This is great news,” said Christopher “Monty” Montgomery, founder of the Xiph.org Foundation, when I reached him by phone right after the announcement. Montgomery is spearheading the development of Ogg Theora and is a Theora developer himself, but he called VP8 going open source “absolutely wonderful” and sounded honestly stoked about the initiative. Montgomery did mention that Google didn’t make too much of an effort to reach out to open source developers ahead of the official announcement. He was notified of the development, but many others weren’t. “We have to see how it’s going to play out in the open source community,” he told me, adding that it will be a while until VP8 will really have an impact.

Guess who is still standing in the way? Flash’s co-creator.

However, Gay is skeptical that Google’s plans to open-source its VP8 video codec will be able to fundamentally change this situation, cautioning that it may be impossible to build open-source codecs that don’t infringe on someone’s patents.

Here we go. The “P” word again. Microsoft, Nokia, and Apple love bringing that one up, as we mentioned in:

• Patents Roundup: Red Hat on Patent Trolls; Apple Antitrust; Microsoft Attacks Theora, Which is Needed to Save Our Video Culture
• Behind the Microsoft Puppetmaster: SCO-Type Libel, Acacia-Type Patent Trolls, and Novell-Type Patent Deals to Make GNU/Linux Not Free (Gratis)
• Apple’s and Microsoft’s New Motto: Do More Evil, Together
• Steve Jobs: “A Patent Pool is Being Assembled to Go After Theora and Other “Open Source” Codecs Now.”
• Apple and Microsoft a Threat to Culture (Data), Not Just Software (Tools)
• “The fight has been around a long time, now the target of Microsoft is Theora”
• Symptoms of the Sickness of the Patent System and Apple’s Infinite Greed
• Microsoft Brings MPEG-LA-LA Land to the Web and Threatens GNU/Linux With Software Patent Lawsuits

Flash’s co-creator (or Adobe) is worried about VP8 because it complements HTML5 and may ultimately send Flash back to the dark ages. Silver Lie too is already suffering. TechCrunch‘s new headline states that “Netflix Is The Latest To Talk The HTML5 Talk”

As we all know, the battle between Flash and HTML5 for the future of online video is raging. But what about that other plugin some sites use for video? You know, the one made by Microsoft — Silverlight? A new posting tonight may call that platform’s future in video into question as well. Because arguably their most important client is looking to jump on the HTML5 video bandwagon: Netflix.

That’s excellent news. Will they use Ogg Theora? VP8? Hopefully not H.264, which would potentially put a form of tax on GNU/Linux [1, 2].

Google’s Tim Bray wrote about video publishing just days before Google’s anticipated announcement (people already knew that it was coming) and the press characterises Google’s move as a “gift” [1, 2] (even if it’s a self-serving one).

It is probably safe to say that the winners here are Google and the public, whereas the losers are companies like Nokia, Apple, and Microsoft. It’s a sad day for software patents maximalists and a wonderful day for the rest.

Google’s new codec could become the lingua franca of video on the web. From there it could influence all manner of gadgets connected to the web and render the polyglot of codecs antiquated. I would not be surprised if it became popular on CDs as well. What conserves bandwidth on the web can also save space on hard drives and CDs.

Electronista says that “WebM’s royalty-free HTML5 video raises patent issues” and Florian Müller argues that “The risk concerning WebM isn’t a matter of Google’s own patents. What about third-party patents?”

Red Hat’s Wildeboer responds to this pessimism by saying: “we should adopt webM and adopt it everywhere. Don’t be afraid of patent threats.”

“Google backs open codec against patent trolls,” heralds The Register.

Google is “very confident” that the newly open-sourced VP8 video codec will stand up to the sort of patent attack Steve Jobs warned of when he defended Apple’s decision to shun VP8′s predecessor, the open-source Ogg Theora.

[...]

In a private email, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs even went so far as to say that unnamed forces were putting together a patent pool to “go after” Ogg Theora. Today, when The Reg asked if VP8 was vulnerable to patent attack, Google product manager Mike Jazayeri indicated this isn’t a big concern for the company.

“We have done a pretty through analysis of VP8 and On2 Technologies prior to the acquisition and since then, and we are very confident with the technology and that’s why we’re open sourcing,” he said.

But wait. It gets better. A week or two ago, ARM complained that Flash was standing in the way of delivering sub-notebooks with GNU/Linux to the market. Watch this new report from the EE Times:

Chip makers back Google’s open source codec

A handful of mobile chip makers–including ARM, MIPS, Nvidia and Texas Instruments–said they will support Google’s move to establish V8, a video codec it acquired with On2 Technologies in August.

Google announced at its annual Google I/O event in San Francisco it will make the V8 codec available as open source code with a royalty free license as part of a new WebM project. Google said it will pair V8 with the Vorbis open source audio codec and support the two in its Chrome browser and YouTube service. Browser makers Mozilla and Opera also said they will support the codecs.

This would obviously help Google sell tablets, sub-notebooks, and other form factors with ARM/MIPS chips and Android/Chrome OS on them. So again, Google is acting to advance its own interests, but GNU and Linux may benefit as well.

As we pointed out in the latest news summary, Mozilla has reasons to be happy and to be sad about Google. On the one hand, Google threatens Firefox in more ways than it helps Firefox (competition), but on the other hand, Google is a vital source of income to Mozilla and it now removes a patents barrier that recently led to this Firefox fork which we wrote about in [1, 2]. If many parties commit to VP8, then Mozilla will no longer need to worry about codecs. Neither will GNU/Linux distributors. █

“If you want to accomplish something in the world, idealism is not enough–you need to choose a method that works to achieve the goal. In other words, you need to be “pragmatic.”"

–Richard Stallman

Permalink Leave Your Comment      Send this to a friend

Microsoft Propaganda in Africa Curses the Whole Population

Posted in Africa, Deception, Free/Libre Software, FUD, GNU/Linux, Microsoft at 9:46 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“Once GNU is written, everyone will be able to obtain good system software free, just like air.”

–Richard Stallman

Summary: This old obsession with daemonising the most enslaved and exploited continent in the world is once again seen thanks to Microsoft’s latest charade with the BSA

IN our Wiki we have a fairly new page about Microsoft and counterfeiting. The gist of it is that Microsoft admits benefiting from counterfeiting. Microsoft calls it “piracy” in order to label/portray the victims as a bunch of thuggish criminals and the addicter as a miserable victim.

Two years ago we explained and showed that Microsoft was characterising GNU/Linux use in Kenya as “piracy” and it is a theme we keep seeing and pointing out (it’s accusation by subtle insinuation). Last week we explained how Microsoft used its front group, the BSA, to spread some more of that same propaganda [1, 2, 3] and we presented several refutations, which are pretty much the same every year (the propaganda from the BSA and IDC is an annually-recurring event as they are never deterred by facts contradicting their work).

“Two years ago we explained and showed that Microsoft was characterising “GNU/Linux” use in Kenya as “piracy”…”Google News points to over 100 articles this week which mostly focus on Africa in their propaganda against “piracy” (here is just one example). And no, they do not refer to piracy in Somalia; not even once. The word “piracy” is being hijacked by them to pretend that software is a scarcity and Africa is robbing the West of its precious resources (never mind if the physical resources flow in the very oppose direction while the African population is left to die from West-induced pollution). This post is not intended to be a rant about imperialism, so we digress.

Rather than link to the many (seemingly infinite) propaganda pieces that we see in this week’s news we wish to draw attention to several weak responses such as:

i. Rampant piracy affects open source in Africa

When people can access cheap pirated software, they do not invest in customization of open-source software, and this “affects the growth of open-source-based businesses and services,” said Evans Ikua, chairman of the Linux Professional Association in Kenya.

ii. Reactions to the problem of software pirates

For example, you would pay anywhere in the region of Dh300 to Dh500 for Microsoft Office while there are perfectly good open source systems available for free on the internet.

To state the obvious using an analogy, one might think of a world where fresh water is abundant but where a large company sells intoxicated sweetened water, makes the population highly dependent on this new liquid, and then criminalises the population and pollutes the local water supply. This parable would not be so effective if it were not a real one, too. People in Africa and south America (among other regions) can probably relate and equate Microsoft to those very same companies. The oil wars in Nigeria famously reverse the role of the victim and the exploiter, but again, this goes well beyond our stated scope.

Earlier this year we wrote about the daemonisation campaign that IIPA led against Free software in developing nations [1, 2]. Now is a good time to review this new article where a proprietary software company is belittling the challenge of software freedom but at the same time recognises that it can be harmonious and beneficial to everyone.

The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) recently released the 2010 Special 301 Report on Copyright Protection & Enforcement which claims that open source is responsible for a “tidal wave of losses in U.S. jobs and competitiveness.” Indonesia was recently added to the “Special 301 watchlist” because its government encouraged its agencies to use open source software. Many in the open source and technology community have found this indictment ridiculous, yet it illustrates a very real fear that some groups still feel about the open source movement. Years ago, internal emails from Microsoft were accidentally released that exemplified this fear, stating, “OSS poses a direct, short-term revenue and platform threat to Microsoft, particularly in server space. Additionally, the intrinsic parallelism and free idea exchange in OSS has benefits that are not replicable with our current licensing model and therefore present a long-term developer mindshare threat.”

[...]

Journyx has benefited from the OSS movement. Though we are not an open source company, our software was built on open source tools like Linux, Python, Apache, and PostgreSQL. These tools allow us to ship a free product, called Timesheet.

Ironically, it is proprietary software which poses a great threat to society and culture at large; and yet, proprietary software companies turn heads into tails (and vice versa) and characterise exploiters as victims.

What Microsoft’s BSA ‘study’ shows us is that Africa is the place most vulnerable to submission in the face of “drug addict” tactics. It makes Africa the biggest victim of Microsoft, as opposed to Microsoft being the biggest victim in Africa. █

“They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.”

–Bill Gates

“Copying all or parts of a program is as natural to a programmer as breathing, and as productive. It ought to be as free.”

–Richard Stallman

Permalink Leave Your Comment      Send this to a friend

La Quadrature du Net and the FFII (EU) Respond to the European Commission’s Digital Agenda

Posted in Europe, Microsoft, Standard at 8:50 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Credit: World Economic Forum
(Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic licence)

Summary: European freedom and rights groups are concerned about the deal Neelie Kroes is getting after lobbyists got involved

EARLIER this month we pointed out that the Commission's agenda got derailed by lobbyists of proprietary software companies, notably Microsoft and SAP. We had named some of the culprits in posts such as:

1. European Open Source Software Workgroup a Total Scam: Hijacked and Subverted by Microsoft et al
2. Microsoft’s AstroTurfing, Twitter, Waggener Edstrom, and Jonathan Zuck
3. Does the European Commission Harbour a Destruction of Free/Open Source Software Workgroup?
4. The Illusion of Transparency at the European Parliament/Commission (on Microsoft)
5. 2 Months and No Disclosure from the European Parliament
6. After 3 Months, Europe Lets Microsoft-Influenced EU Panel be Seen
7. Formal Complaint Against European Commission for Harbouring Microsoft Lobbyists
8. ‘European’ Software Strategy Published, Written by Lobbyists and Multinationals
9. Microsoft Uses Inside Influence to Grab Control, Redefine “Open Source”
10. With Friends Like These, Who Needs Microsoft?

Clearly there is pressure on the Commission to abandon the notion that open standards are a desirable thing (Free software aside, but that’s important too) and La Quadrature du Net suspects that our freedoms are at stake. Their latest statement is summarised as follows:

On Tuesday May 18th, the Commission’s Digital Agenda will be released. This important document will define the European Union’s future policies on the Internet and other communications technologies. A leaked draft showed that major policy orientations remained to be arbitrated in advance of the release. Although much of the document puts forward very sensible and positive proposals, potential mentions of dogmatic copyright enforcement and Internet filtering could be sneaked in the final document at the last minute. Will the rights and freedoms of EU citizens be protected?

Groklaw too has responded to the Digital Agenda (Groklaw‘s editorship is US-oriented) and Microsoft is named:

That last part means that Microsoft could implement an open international standard like ODF if it wanted to, despite being a proprietary software business. So far, it doesn’t do so in a way that really works, and the only obstacle I know of, as reflected in their remarks about Google Docs, is a lack of a desire to actually do so.

The FFII‘s press release can be found below. That statement too makes it clear that Europeans are dissatisfied and wish to know which lobbyists are responsible for subverting a document which was intended to defend their freedoms, not the freedom of action for multinational corporations whose lobbyists (whom we named) took over the process.

Europe requires open standards and software freedom. Unless these are prescribed, neither requirement will be obeyed and there will be chaos like this new example:

A year ago, i wrote about how New York City’s Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP) requires the use of Internet Explorer to apply online (and it even appears to require IE just to download the PDF of the application!)

In this particular case we witness how a governmental programme becomes inaccessible to those who adhere to standards and are using Free software (as opposed to non-Free software from one particular company which was found guilty of crimes several times). The European Commission will hopefully not permit repetition of mistakes that are seen across the pond. Recommendation of Free software and open standards which everyone can master is a basic right; to do anything else is to use the sovereign nations to empower private entities of choice at the expense of everybody else. █

Neelie Kroes’ Digital Agenda is ‘carrot without stick’

Brussels, 20 May 2010 — Yesterday EU-Commissioner Neelie Kroes disclosed her long-expected Digital Agenda for Europe. The Digital Agenda spans a 10-year period of upcoming European Commission policies in the digital sphere including ambitious regulatory initiatives. The FFII points out that her strategy document falls short on good governance and open standards.

“I would like Kroes to name the corporations that were lobbying behind closed doors for a removal of open standards.”
      –Benjamin HenrionA “Digital Agenda Assembly”, an annual lobby-parliament to govern the agenda implementation, would be composed of delegates from the European Parliament and industry. The Assembly would bring them together to ‘assess progress and emerging challenges’ and receive input from a ‘High Level Group’ and ‘stakeholders’.

“Neelie Kroes feeds her ambitious Digital Agenda as raw meat to lobby groups. It is a carrot without stick”, warns René Mages from the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII). Mages continues, “The Commissioner undermines the dignity of the European elected representatives by setting them on equal footing with private interest representatives.” The FFII fears her governance principles would aggravate the trend to keep the backbone of the European ICT sector, small and medium-sized companies, from having significant influence in Brussels.

“Take open standards for example”, comments FFII president Benjamin Henrion. “Earlier drafts of the Commission’s Digital Agenda featured ‘open standards’ but interest groups managed to eliminate the phrase during inter-service consultations. I would like Kroes to name the corporations that were lobbying behind closed doors for a removal of open standards. Brussels should be transparent and be willing to reveal the elephant in the room.”

Links

EU Commission Digital Agenda website: The Commission intends to “work closely with national governments, concerned organisations and companies.”
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/digital…

EU Digital Agenda:
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/digital…

Permanent link to this press release:
http://press.ffii.org/Press%20releases/Neelie…

Contact

Benjamin Henrion
FFII Brussels
+32-484-56 61 09 (mobile)
bhenrion at ffii.org
(French/English)

FFII Berlin
+49-30-41722597
office at ffii.org
(German/English)

About FFII

The FFII is a not-for-profit association active in many European countries, dedicated to the development of information goods for the public benefit, based on copyright, free competition, open standards. More than 1000 members, 3,500 companies and 100,000 supporters have entrusted the FFII to act as their voice in public policy questions concerning exclusion rights (intellectual property) in data processing.

Permalink Leave Your Comment      Send this to a friend