07.21.10
Posted in Free/Libre Software, News Roundup at 11:29 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Grouping of recent news on Free software, including the hotly-debated WordPress controversy
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Project London movie is the triumph of community spirit, togetherness or whatever you call it over money. A team of online volunteers using free software, created the movie, Project London, with as many as 650 VFX shots! Isn’t that awesome?
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While thinking of the next article for the Open Sound Series, I was listening to some music via Ampache. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Ampache, it is simply a piece of software that allows you to upload, download, and stream music (and now videos) from a collection of media residing on a server. It features the ability to have multiple catalogs, ratings of songs and videos, playlist creation (including “democratic playlists” that users vote for), tag editing, album art and streaming various formats of music. While most software designed to listen to music does many of the same things, Ampache is then able to take it a step further by adding the idea of concurrent users of a single instance of the software.
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Canonical has gathered open source enthusiasts to help Ubuntu make its mark on the business landscape in the UK.
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Mozilla
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For the last couple of years I’ve been responsible for our wonderful Evangelism group at Mozilla. We’ve been responsible for a combination of developer relations, standards work and outbound developer-focused communications. If you’ve followed our work on hacks and devmo, especially around the release of 3.5 and 3.6 then you’ve familiar with the pretty amazing work of this team.
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Licensing
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If there is any failing on the part of the GPL here, it is not in the eyes of the second party – that person doesn’t want to share his code anyway. If there is a failing it is that the GPL has failed to enforce the terms that the first party expected – which I think are in line with the expectations of Free Software.
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Openness/Sharing
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Open Data
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The new coalition government’s commitment to transparency heralds an exciting time for the possibilities of open data. The data release movement is relatively new and it’s difficult to predict its full economic impact in advance.
The US leads the way in encouraging and financially incentivising the software community to develop new apps based on publicly available data. The first round of the Apps for Democracy competition in Washington DC saw 50 new apps created in 30 days. The city gained $2.5m in development work outlaying just $50,000 in prize money for the winner. The Californian government introduced a transparency website costing $21k with $40k annual operational costs. As a result of citizens reporting on unnecessary spending the state saved a whopping $20m in a few short months. A similar website in Texas saw $5m savings, again within a few months of operation according to an EU e-gov survey.
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Technology has placed vast amounts of medical information literally a mouse click away. Yet what often may be central – a doctor’s notes about a patient visit – has traditionally not been part of the discussion. In effect, such records have long been out of bounds.
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Apparently, when it’s been released under a freedom of information (FOI) request!
This is not, I imagine, the answer you, gentle reader, expected:)
Pangloss was recently asked by an acquantance, X, if he ran any legal risk by publishing on a website some emails he had obtained from the local council, as part of a local campaign against certain alleged illicit acts by that council. According to X, the emails could destroy the reputation of certain local councillors involved, and that they had had great difficulty extracting the emails, but finally succeeded. Obviously the value to the public in terms of access to the facts – surely the whole point of FOI legislation – would be massively enhanced if the obtained emails could be put on the campaign website.
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Yesterday I was invited to a meeting at the Department for Communities and Local Government with the key players in the local spending/Spikes Cavell issue that I’ve written about previous (see The open data that isn’t and Update on the local spending data scandal… the empire strikes back).
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The following guest post is from Katleen Janssen, researcher at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Law and ICT at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, and member of the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Working Groups on EU Open Data and Open Government Data.
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Open Access/Content
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The MIX website has been up for a few months now, and it looks like there are 2-3 new hacks being put up each day. What’s more, all of the work on the site is licensed under a Creative Commons license, which is awesome (although they chose the “no derivatives” version, which is less awesome, and perhaps a bit misaligned with the vision of the project to me).
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Open Hardware
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There are 13 million-dollar open-source hardware companies, but there have been no standards governing what defines the still nascent field.
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Programming
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Today SourceForge is announcing an open beta period for a new set of tools for developers. Specifically, our engineers have begun work on new and better tools for project members who want to use our tracker, wiki, and source code management. We also have a new open source project management environment. And there’s more to come.
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Python developers have their choice of shells – command-line interpreters that let you write Python code and execute it immediately. Israeli developer Noam Yorav-Raphael used IDLE, the graphical shell shipped with Python, for many years, and even contributed to its code. But IDLE was originally created to run as a single process, so the client-server model was “quite hacky,” he says, and it was written using the outdated TkInter GUI toolkit. Yorav-Raphael decided that writing a new shell was the way to go.
“I started to gather ideas for a new shell in the summer of 2007, started writing it in the summer of 2008 (so I had a working but not really usable shell), worked on it again in the summer of 2009 (which made it actually usable), and added some cool features in the end of 2009. I released the first public version of DreamPie in February 2010.” Today he released the latest version.
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Open source software development in Mexico.
Guest: Guillermo Amaral
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HTML5
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If you want to watch Internet-delivered video on your PC, the vast majority of Web sites have settled on a single, consistent way to do that. That’s the good news. The bad news is that this single, consistent delivery system is Adobe Flash, with all its security and stability issues.
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Aloha Editor is an easy to use WYSIWYG HTML editor, featuring fast editing, floating menu, and support for HTML5 ContentEditable. It provides WYSIWYG editor to any website content instantaneously, enabling content editors to see the changes the moment they type.
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Posted in GNU/Linux, IBM, News Roundup, Servers, Ubuntu at 10:47 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Further catch-up with GNU/Linux news (mostly from last week)
GNU/Linux
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Currently, Linux systems take the very high end machines (any machine more powerful than a fully tricked out MacPro {read supercomputers and mainframes}) and the very low end machines (phones, routers, palm-tops, PVRs).
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There’s almost nothing that desktop Linux can’t do. A modern Linux desktop is probably a better choice for 95% of the heavy Internet service using population than the big commercial behemoth that dominates the desktop. I’m not saying Windows doesn’t have its place or that it doesn’t do the job for a lot of people, but Linux is better, faster, stronger, safer, and sexier than anything else out there. It’s cool. It rocks. It dramatically increases your sex appeal. And if you’ve got a 64 bit processor instead of 32, that goes double. What more do you want?
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Fun
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You’ve seen the wobbly windows, you’ve seen the cube, you’ve seen the raindrops. Compiz is just a bunch of useless eye candy right? Wrong. While the flashy effects get most of the attention, Compiz is a top-notch window manager in its own right. In fact, it’s got so many workspace and window management tools that many people use Compiz for years without ever knowing about some of the most useful features. This guide will cover each of the best window management plugins for Compiz and explain how each can be used to create a more productive desktop, with or without wobbly windows.
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Linux, which I’m using at the moment, comes with a pretty standard blue-themed Gnome desktop common to several distros- Debian, Mandriva and Fedora- distinguished only by a branded wallpaper.
It’s a simple and elegant theme, but over the last few days I’ve been customising my desktop, changing the theme and icons. The new theme is a dark one which I think suits my laptop with its grey-bordered screen.
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Desktop
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Even I have done it. I don’t think you can be a Linux blogger without having done at least one post about how this year is the year the Linux desktop will take over the world. However, no matter how many people seem to write about it. The year the Linux desktop takes over the world always seems to fall through the cracks. Sometimes I think that there must be some Pinky foiling the Linux Brains plans 
But! The pundits cry, Linux is gaining market share every year. Surely it will win the Linux desktop prize soon. Nay! Say the naysayers, at the rate Linux is gaining desktop market share even those not born yet will have one foot in the grave before Linux has any significant rating. Which one is right?
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GNU/Linux has the answer to these annoyances, and it is this: they are simply not there. Why? Because the software is written by developers that are not trying to sell you something.
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It’s an old joke by now that this year will be the year of the GNU/Linux desktop – just like last year, and the year before that. But now there’s a new twist: that this year will be the year of the GNU/Linux smartphone – with the difference that it’s really happening.
That’s mainly being driven by the huge success of the Linux-based Android system, but it’s not the only open source system here. There’s also webOS and MeeGo, both of which have their loyal fans. What that means is that whichever of these takes off, the open source world will benefit.
[...]
If Baidu does come out with its own Android rival, that could help to achieve two things. It would finally take open source into the Chinese mainstream, and help to ensure that Linux unequivocally becomes the world’s leading operating system for smartphones – if not on the desktop.
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Almost all school children in Portugal are becoming familiar with using open source, including the Linux operating system, says Paulo Trezentos, founder of Caixa Mágica Software.
By the end of this year, the company’s eponymous Linux-based operating system will have been installed on 890,000 school PCs and school laptops, he says. “In a country with a population of 10 million, this means that Linux is reaching the majority of the young people.”
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In the almost 20 years since Linux was first released into the world, free for anyone to use and modify however they like, the operating system has been put to a lot of uses. Today, a vast number of servers run Linux to serve up Web pages and applications, while user-friendly versions of Linux run PCs, netbooks, and even Android and WebOS phones.
One incredibly useful way that Linux has been adapted to the needs of modern computer users is as a “live CD,” a version of the operating system that can be booted from a CD (or a DVD or, in some cases, a USB drive) without actually being installed on the computer’s hard drive. Given the massive RAM and fast CPUs available on even the lowest-end computers today, along with Linux’s generally lower system requirements compared to Windows and Mac OS X, you can run Linux quite comfortably from a CD drive.
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Server
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Canonical is offering enterprises a chance to try cloud computing via a virtual appliance that bundles Ubuntu Linux with the IBM DB2 Express-C database running on the Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) public cloud platform.
The free appliance, which features Ubuntu Server Edition 10.04, also can be deployed in private cloud configurations.
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Posted in Asia, Europe, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Windows at 7:06 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: New anonymised paper is produced to make a case against GNU/Linux in schools and government corruption is said to influence decisions on operating systems
ON MANY occasions in the past we explained how Microsoft was preventing Russian schools from moving to GNU/Linux as planned. We last summarised this in March and one year ago we wrote about the "manuals" trick. Someone dropped some information and links for us last night. It concurs with what we learned before, but there is new evidence which is concrete. Below we have the raw logs. █
| mpak |
hi all |
Jul 21 03:22 |
| mpak |
a couple of news from Russia |
Jul 21 03:22 |
| mpak |
Russian project of free software for school is endangered by a “group of experts” claiming that Linux and free software are not suitable for schools |
Jul 21 03:23 |
| cubezzz3 |
why unsuitable? |
Jul 21 03:24 |
| mpak |
they published a report where they claim that: |
Jul 21 03:24 |
| mpak |
- it is too difficult to install and setup |
Jul 21 03:24 |
| mpak |
- qualified techs needed to support and maintain it |
Jul 21 03:25 |
| cubezzz3 |
ridiculous |
Jul 21 03:25 |
| mpak |
- MFD and printers are not well supported |
Jul 21 03:25 |
| mpak |
- some software doesn’t work well |
Jul 21 03:25 |
| cubezzz3 |
my installs from 2004 are still fine |
Jul 21 03:25 |
| cubezzz3 |
MFD from HP are fine, others I’m not sure |
Jul 21 03:26 |
| mpak |
- no educational guides were made by the ministry of education |
Jul 21 03:26 |
| cubezzz3 |
anyways, I avoid MFD |
Jul 21 03:26 |
| mpak |
- existing educational guidelines are not aligned with the free software |
Jul 21 03:26 |
| mpak |
- MS office documents cannot be opened correctly |
Jul 21 03:26 |
| cubezzz3 |
it is a huge problem mpak |
Jul 21 03:27 |
| cubezzz3 |
so don’t use MS file formats |
Jul 21 03:27 |
| cubezzz3 |
very simple |
Jul 21 03:27 |
| mpak |
- teachers need additional training to use new software |
Jul 21 03:27 |
| mpak |
- etc |
Jul 21 03:27 |
| cubezzz3 |
how about some reasons on the other side? |
Jul 21 03:27 |
| cubezzz3 |
Microsoft -> Giving money to a U.S. company |
Jul 21 03:27 |
| mpak |
whole report is available here: http://www.infox.ru/infox/expert_judgement.pdf |
Jul 21 03:27 |
| TechrightsBot |
Title: Not a web page! Aborting application/pdf type .::. Size~: 0 KB |
Jul 21 03:27 |
| cubezzz3 |
that can’t really be too popular right? |
Jul 21 03:27 |
| cubezzz3 |
OK |
Jul 21 03:28 |
| mpak |
can you see the link? Bot complains on me |
Jul 21 03:28 |
| cubezzz3 |
yes |
Jul 21 03:28 |
| mpak |
the report is in Russian, of course, it is 3mb pdf |
Jul 21 03:28 |
| mpak |
there is an article with a preliminary analysis of the report |
Jul 21 03:28 |
| mpak |
http://tiny.cc/v0a7f — Rus-to-Eng translation of the article |
Jul 21 03:29 |
| TechrightsBot |
Title: Google Translate .::. Size~: 1.01 KB |
Jul 21 03:29 |
| cubezzz3 |
ok, mpak first of all |
Jul 21 03:29 |
| cubezzz3 |
consider what the schools did _before_ MIcrosoft came along |
Jul 21 03:29 |
| cubezzz3 |
obviously they functioned OK right? |
Jul 21 03:29 |
| cubezzz3 |
so it’s definitely wrong to say you have to use MIcrosoft |
Jul 21 03:29 |
| mpak |
yep. |
Jul 21 03:30 |
| mpak |
so the article says that the report is largely “anonymous” |
Jul 21 03:30 |
| mpak |
people didn;t bother to put their names on it |
Jul 21 03:30 |
| cubezzz3 |
yeah |
Jul 21 03:30 |
| ender2070 |
meaning they didnt want to |
Jul 21 03:30 |
| cubezzz3 |
they don’t want backlash |
Jul 21 03:30 |
| cubezzz3 |
we didn’t even use MIcrosoft when I was at school |
Jul 21 03:31 |
| cubezzz3 |
we used Commodore PETs |
Jul 21 03:31 |
| cubezzz3 |
Russia has good programmers |
Jul 21 03:31 |
| DaemonFC |
hmmm, the latest Chrome dev build truncates downloads to the first 40 MB  |
Jul 21 03:32 |
| mpak |
but the organization that made it works closely with Microsoft on their Unlimited Potential program |
Jul 21 03:32 |
| mpak |
it* == report |
Jul 21 03:32 |
| DaemonFC |
Chromium it is then |
Jul 21 03:32 |
| cubezzz3 |
so there should be a healthy GNU/Linux or FOSS community in Russia I think |
Jul 21 03:32 |
| ender2070 |
chromium > chrome |
Jul 21 03:32 |
| cubezzz3 |
yeah so it’s basically bullshit |
Jul 21 03:32 |
| DaemonFC |
cubezzz3: their government doesn’t frown on unlicensed sharing of Windows |
Jul 21 03:32 |
| ender2070 |
think of it like this, chromium is debian, chrome is ubuntu |
Jul 21 03:32 |
| DaemonFC |
so they probably all have Pirate XP user groups |
Jul 21 03:32 |
| cubezzz3 |
well don’t break copy right law |
Jul 21 03:32 |
| DaemonFC |
it’s Russia |
Jul 21 03:33 |
| DaemonFC |
|
Jul 21 03:33 |
| cubezzz3 |
well maybe, I don’t know |
Jul 21 03:33 |
| cubezzz3 |
Lots of European Linux people |
Jul 21 03:33 |
| ender2070 |
you kidding? |
Jul 21 03:33 |
| ender2070 |
they almost threw a teacher into a gulag |
Jul 21 03:33 |
| cubezzz3 |
Russia is a big part of Europe |
Jul 21 03:33 |
| ender2070 |
for pirating microsoft products |
Jul 21 03:33 |
| mpak |
guys, please see it this way: government in Russia is very corrupted |
Jul 21 03:34 |
| cubezzz3 |
mpak, no text? Then I can use google translate |
Jul 21 03:34 |
| DaemonFC |
doesn’t Russia have that big MP3 site the government won’t shut down |
Jul 21 03:34 |
| DaemonFC |
that’s selling unlicensed music |
Jul 21 03:34 |
| mpak |
they will use any means to get more money |
Jul 21 03:34 |
| ender2070 |
thats gone |
Jul 21 03:34 |
| cubezzz3 |
ok, so why give money to Microsoft? Save your money |
Jul 21 03:34 |
| cubezzz3 |
easy |
Jul 21 03:34 |
| mpak |
hah, it is a usual scheme |
Jul 21 03:35 |
| cubezzz3 |
Canada isn’t any better |
Jul 21 03:35 |
| cubezzz3 |
we are like Microsoft North here |
Jul 21 03:35 |
| mpak |
you’re government official, you pay money from budget to some company to buy their products, this company pays you back 30% in cash |
Jul 21 03:35 |
| mpak |
that’s how it works in Russia |
Jul 21 03:36 |
| cubezzz3 |
ok, but that is still 70% to Microsoft |
Jul 21 03:36 |
| cubezzz3 |
yeah, I get it |
Jul 21 03:36 |
| mpak |
if Microsoft wins this school project, Microsoft will receive just 70% of money, and 30% will be stolen |
Jul 21 03:36 |
| cubezzz3 |
we didn’t have that problem before |
Jul 21 03:37 |
| mpak |
30% is just an example. in real life it could be 10% to company and 90% stolen |
Jul 21 03:37 |
| cubezzz3 |
yes, that is a problem |
Jul 21 03:37 |
| cubezzz3 |
many many systems better than Microsoft though |
Jul 21 03:37 |
| mpak |
if the organization that made the report will convince government to push MS-oriented program |
Jul 21 03:37 |
| cubezzz3 |
why pick the worst? |
Jul 21 03:38 |
| mpak |
they will receive more money and wil be able to steal a half |
Jul 21 03:38 |
| cubezzz3 |
see, that is not a philosophical problem like open source/ closed source |
Jul 21 03:39 |
| cubezzz3 |
it is a social problem |
Jul 21 03:39 |
| cubezzz3 |
a people problem |
Jul 21 03:39 |
| cubezzz3 |
well you can complain to the government I suppose |
Jul 21 03:39 |
| DaemonFC |
Microsoft even made it so that Windows 7 ultimate will accept any language pack |
Jul 21 03:39 |
| DaemonFC |
it’s practically gift wrapped for pirates |
Jul 21 03:40 |
| mpak |
i will complain to the government that the government steals money? |
Jul 21 03:40 |
| cubezzz3 |
I complained to CBC, government of Canada and my municipal government too |
Jul 21 03:40 |
| cubezzz3 |
heh |
Jul 21 03:40 |
| cubezzz3 |
sure complain to the newspapers |
Jul 21 03:41 |
| cubezzz3 |
complain to the radio stations |
Jul 21 03:41 |
| cubezzz3 |
I fixed my councilman’s computer one time so he had to listen to me |
Jul 21 03:41 |
| cubezzz3 |
at least they used pdf |
Jul 21 03:41 |
| mpak |
oh, i need to fix someone’s computer then ) |
Jul 21 03:42 |
| mpak |
it is not them, it is a newspaper that get the report |
Jul 21 03:42 |
| mpak |
the report was in paper form |
Jul 21 03:42 |
| DaemonFC |
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtHiut6hzTg |
Jul 21 03:42 |
| TechrightsBot |
Title: YouTube- KEEP YOUR STUPID KIDS OFF THE INTERNET .::. Size~: 105.16 KB |
Jul 21 03:42 |
| DaemonFC |
Windows 7 Ultimate with Canadian language pack |
Jul 21 03:42 |
| *DaemonFC hands one to cubezzz3 |
Jul 21 03:42 |
| DaemonFC |
eh? |
Jul 21 03:42 |
| *cubezzz3 sits on it |
Jul 21 03:43 |
| *mpak puts a cup of coffee on it |
Jul 21 03:43 |
| cubezzz3 |
dude, I’m the last person on the planet to use windows 7 |
Jul 21 03:43 |
| DaemonFC |
cubezzz3: You love Windows 7 |
Jul 21 03:43 |
| DaemonFC |
and you know it |
Jul 21 03:43 |
| cubezzz3 |
I’ll tell you what |
Jul 21 03:43 |
| mpak |
yeah, hypnotize him |
Jul 21 03:43 |
| cubezzz3 |
you make it work on my 486 and I’ll use it |
Jul 21 03:44 |
| cubezzz3 |
no cdrom drive |
Jul 21 03:44 |
| DaemonFC |
but it DOES work on a 486 |
Jul 21 03:44 |
| *DaemonFC waves his hand in front of cubezzz3 |
Jul 21 03:44 |
| ender2070 |
overclock it to 800mhz |
Jul 21 03:44 |
| ender2070 |
give it 512 mb ram |
Jul 21 03:44 |
| DaemonFC |
This is the operating system you’re looking for |
Jul 21 03:44 |
| ender2070 |
it’ll work then |
Jul 21 03:44 |
| cubezzz3 |
even windows 2 sucked |
Jul 21 03:44 |
| DaemonFC |
you WILL buy new hardware |
Jul 21 03:44 |
| cubezzz3 |
and every version after that |
Jul 21 03:44 |
| cubezzz3 |
jedi tricks don’t work on me, only money! |
Jul 21 03:44 |
| DaemonFC |
you HAVE money |
Jul 21 03:45 |
| ender2070 |
what if you received a free legit copy? |
Jul 21 03:45 |
| cubezzz3 |
yeah but I don’t spend it on Microsoft products |
Jul 21 03:45 |
| mpak |
http://tiny.cc/j8uwb |
Jul 21 03:45 |
| *DaemonFC dumps out his monopoly box set and hands the money to cubezzz3 |
Jul 21 03:45 |
| DaemonFC |
you guys use that stuff up there, right? |
Jul 21 03:45 |
| mpak |
sorry about the previous link |
Jul 21 03:46 |
| cubezzz3 |
lol |
Jul 21 03:46 |
| mpak |
it was http://tinyurl.com/2arjpgf |
Jul 21 03:46 |
| TechrightsBot |
Title: korobkin: Forefront Security for what it is worth .::. Size~: 31.52 KB |
Jul 21 03:47 |
| *DaemonFC wonders if the Canadian serial killers are polite |
Jul 21 03:47 |
| DaemonFC |
shame this isn’t 1990, I could get a Canadian hitman for half price |
Jul 21 03:47 |
| DaemonFC |
have him whack the neighbors |
Jul 21 03:47 |
| DaemonFC |
with a hockey stick |
Jul 21 03:47 |
| DaemonFC |
or maybe let his hockey hair devour them whole |
Jul 21 03:47 |
| DaemonFC |
bones and all |
Jul 21 03:47 |
| DaemonFC |
 |
Jul 21 03:47 |
| mpak |
ok, have a good day guys |
Jul 21 03:48 |
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Posted in Africa, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Windows at 5:26 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft captures a laptops flag in South Africa after lobbying and dumping
LAST MONTH we shared a Tectonic interview (ish) where the editor of the site explained how proprietary software vendors can take over, sometimes by getting rid of the Free software proponents. We saw that happening in several countries before. According to this latest report, the acquisition or removal of Free software advocates in South Africa is paying off for Microsoft:
Government Gazette 32077 (PDF), which details the approved specifications says that the laptops must run “Windows XP or higher”, include Microsoft Office as well as use Windows Live. Other approved software includes a range of Microsoft applications such as Microsoft Digital Literacy and Microsoft Partners In Learning.
The department does not specify any open source alternatives to the Microsoft software for the initiative.
How typical. Let’s go back exactly 2 years ago and remember how Microsoft derailed GNU/Linux/ODF in South African schools. Shame on Microsoft and on Bill Gates for pretending to be doing “charity” when this so-called ‘charity’ is actually an anti-competitive software dump. █
“By May of 1994, Gates’s patience was growing so thin that not even a public relations pro like Pam Edstrom could muzzle him.”
–Barbarians Led by Bill Gates, a book composed
by Pam’s daughter
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Posted in America, Patents at 5:11 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Potpourri of software patent news from the past week and a half (focused on the United States)
HAVING taken a break for a while, a lot of patent news piled up. Here are the important bits of information from the United States:
• Association of Press Release Distributors, LLC (“Association of Press Release Distributors, LLC fight against #swpat on publishing press releases on websites,” emphasises Rui Seabra)
There are hundreds of press release distribution companies. Most exist with little to no interaction with each other in their industry. That ends today.
• RPX Client Network Grows 150% in Six Months (see our Wiki page about RPX)
The new clients include global electronics companies NEC Corporation and Hitachi, Ltd.; infrastructure software provider Novell, Inc.; semiconductor manufacturer Nanya Technology Corporation; software developer Lawson Software, Inc.; wireless voice and data solutions provider Leap Wireless International Inc.; speech-recognition leader Nuance Communications, Inc.; and the world’s largest bookseller, Barnes & Noble, Inc.
• Netflix Tries to Fix One Part of the Patent System
There’s a very interesting case, Media Queue v. Netflix, where Netflix is asking the Federal Circuit to revisit the standard for awarding attorneys’ fees. Here’s their appeal brief [PDF]. It would like the court to create parity between plaintiffs and defendants. Right now, the system tilts to help plaintiffs recover their fees if willful infringement is demonstrated, which is fairly easy to demonstrate. But defendants wrongfully sued have little hope of success when asking that their legal fees be covered, unless they can prove the claims were objectively baseless or brought in bad faith, a mighty high bar to get over. Netflix would like to change that to allow district courts to have discretion to award attorneys fees when folks bring litigation unlikely to succeed.
[...]
Netflix, in short, is asking the court to think about defendants who are attacked with very weak patents, and who then are more or less pragmatically forced to settle rather than fight, just because it’s cheaper. If they can’t get their attorneys’ fees paid, what in the world makes them whole? Netflix says Media Queue is “a non-practicing entity,” which is the polite way to call such entities. Setting an “objectively reckless” standard is a lower bar than proving frivolity or bad faith, and Netflix seems to be of the opinion that patent holders with weak patents are over-incentivized to bring questionable and very costly litigation, knowing they are unlikely to have to pay their victim’s attorneys’ fees, which can typically be in the millions.
• NTP Keeps On Making The Case For Patent Reform As It Sues More Companies
• Company suing eBay for $3.8B: eBay “unfairly stole the idea” of e-Payment systems
Another day, another major lawsuit. This time, a company called XPRT Ventures LLC has sued eBay for allegedly stealing “the idea and method of payment used in eBay’s PayPal and similar electronic payment systems” according to the press release put out by the XPRT’s lawyers Kelley Drye & Warren LLP.
• Write Brothers, Inc. Celebrates a Decade at Comic-Con International 2010
Write Brothers currently holds three software patents. It holds two for the Dramatica® story assistant, and one for the timeline-based presentation of text used in the StoryView™ outlining software. Streamline is the fourth technology patent Write Brothers has filed.
• Microsoft will offer test versions of Dynamics CRM in September
Microsoft biggest competitor in this arena is Salesforce.com, which sells a Web-based software service for customer relationship management. The two companies are currently suing each other over software patents.
There is still a lot of new coverage about the Bilski case:
• The silver lining in the Bilski decision isn’t where most people believe (“Florian Müller” warning — he is sometimes misguided in his targeting of issues)
About two weeks ago the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) handed down its opinion in re Bilski, a business method patent case. The patent application was rejected, but in a way that didn’t draw any kind of line that would affect patents on software technology.
[...]
Let’s better face this fact: there isn’t a single killer argument against software patents that will convince a non-programmer if that same counterpart has also heard the pro-patent argument. If you can ever convince a majority of decision-makers, you’ll have to do it indirectly. The direct approach has been tried by many people for many years — to no avail (except, as I mentioned before, in a defensive situation).
• Patent Litigation Weekly: Eben Moglen on Bilski, Software Patents, and Big Pharma
Moglen’s position on the subject of software patents—that they should be banned—is, to say the least, outside the mainstream in legal circles. It has, however, garnered support among software developers and other techies, especially those who work in the world of open-source and free software.
Moglen’s critique of the patent system extends well beyond the software issues he writes about, however. He suggests, for instance, that the 20-year monopoly granted by a patent is the product of a bygone era. And though he rejects the notion that he is “anti-patent,” he says that the patent monopoly grant should be subject to a rigorous cost-benefit analysis, not simply handed out at the “monopoly window” that he believes the current Patent and Trademark Office represents.
• Sanity From the 1st Post-Bilski Decision from BPAI: In Re Proudler
Look at this, will you? The first decision from the Board of Patents Appeals and Interferences post-Bilski to reference that US Supreme Court decision, in In Re Proudler [PDF], a ruling rejecting HP’s application for a software patent, setting forth a rule stating, as I read it, as saying software is not patentable because it’s an abstraction:
Laws of nature, abstract ideas, and natural phenomena are excluded from patent protection. Diamond v. Diehr, 450 U.S. at 185. A claim that recites no more than software, logic or a data structure (i.e., an abstraction) does not fall within any statutory category. In re Warmerdam, 33 F.3d 1354, 1361 (Fed. Cir. 1994). Significantly, “Abstract software code is an idea without physical embodiment.” Microsoft Corp. v. AT&T Corp., 550 U.S. 437, 449 (2007). The unpatentability of abstract ideas was confirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in Bilski v. Kappos, No. 08-964, 2010 WL 2555192 (June 28, 2010).
This is not the last word, I’m sure, as HP can certainly try to reword. But don’t you find this encouraging? I do. And that’s why I wanted it in our permanent record of the Bilski case and its aftermath.
• First Post-Bilski Patent Appeals Ruling Rejects Software Patent (Bilski precedence is already killing patents)
Well, well, well. Following the rather ridiculously vague Bilski ruling, that doesn’t actually say what the right test should be for whether or not business methods or software should be patentable, many people have been wondering what it really means. While some of the justices have hinted at the idea that most software really isn’t patentable, that’s not at all clear from the ruling. Instead, the ruling suggests that the courts come up with a new test, and then the Supreme Court will tell them whether or not that new test is okay. Many software patent system supporters have interpreted this to mean that software patents are perfectly okay. But perhaps they shouldn’t go that far just yet.
• Post-Bilski Decision
One of the first decisions post-Bilski has shot down an appeal of a rejected patent application by HP. The patent-examiner had rejected the patent on the grounds of prior art (It’s mostly AND applied to rules for passing data…) but the appeal-board rejected the claims on the grounds of non-patentability
• From the Editors: The Supreme Court’s road not taken
• Bilski patent ruling will increase costs of doing business, says expert
• United States: The Supreme Court Rules That The Process in Bilski is Not Patentable, But Refuses to Foreclose The Patentability of Business Methods
• Bilski, Business Method Patents and the Uncertainty Principle
• Bilski: One Step Forward… Two Steps Back
• Inventors Given Hope on Patents for Business Methods
• Software, pharmaceutical, and business method patents survive
• A Close Call for Silicon Valley
• Death Knell For Software Patents
• United States: The Long-Awaited Bilski (In) Decision
• [Ben Klemens on] Bilski and software patents
• Should software be patentable?
It seems to me that the concept of certain generic sorts of software patents could well be made redundant thanks to the growth of open source, while remaining for specialist applications that have a technical purpose.
• Patent Office Says No to Supreme Court and Software Patents
• Startups and University Research: Too Much Emphasis on Patents?
When the Supreme Court ruled last month on the Bilksi case, denying Bilski’s patent claim that Bilksi’s patent but not making any real statements on the overall patentability of business methods or software, several opponents of software patents, including VCs Jason Mendelson and Brad Feld expressed their disappointment.
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The study surveyed over 11,000 professors, and of the 1948 who responded who had started businesses, only 682 – about a third – had established them to exploit the patents obtained via the university intellectual-property systems. The remaining 1266 respondents had started businesses based on non-patentable knowledge.
• Supreme Court On Patenting
Software patent advocates are praising the said decision of the Supreme Court like Tom Syndor saying that the Supreme Court was sensible in rejecting the said idea. A new layer and era of patent decade will help in requiring patent applicants to present plaintiffs to prove that their ideas are not abstract.
Paul Kedrosky’s article “Software Patents Need to Be Abolished” has spread further (also published in other places with Brad Feld, who is a critic of software patents [1, 2, 3]). █
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