Bonum Certa Men Certa

Wakeup Call to Google, Regarding Software Patents



Summary: Addressing the problem of Google's love affair with software patents; news about Yahoo! and Microsoft, as well as its effects on Hadoop

SOFTWARE patents proponents like IBM and Novell (IBM has a lot of influence on Novell) are almost as much trouble as Apple. But one company which we rarely criticise for supporting software patents would be Google, which pretends to be a friend of Free software (which is hard to dispute) while at the same time doing things that are obviously harmful to Free software. It's not much different from IBM in that regard. Google also plays along with Microsoft's ActiveSync, which makes it spread patents and stifle standards. GNU/Linux doesn't need any of this trouble, as it was put right here yesterday:



With most jurisdictions still lax about violations of software patents by Linux users, who remain a quantatively negligible group, the popularity of products like Fluendo’s may be limited. But as Ubuntu’s user base grows, especially in the workplace, legal solutions for multimedia playback will become more and more important.


Well, actually, in most jurisdictions software patents are simply illegal, not just immoral. Google must be paying for those patents no matter where the buyer of Google products like Android or Chrome OS actually lives. That's a dangerous slope to take.

Google's idea that it can "invent" software algorithms was mentioned here earlier today and now comes this revelation that Google's most important patent is just a reinvention of something which goes back to World War II (if not earlier, just like Hewlett-Packard). [via]

Google's PageRank algorithm was developed in 1998. But a project to trace the history of such algorithms reveals an example from the 1940s.


This is a typical story.

Google was sued by Red Bend for software patent violations that affect Chrome. It's very doubtful that Google will be able to respond with its patent arsenal to a company as small as Red Bend, so the whole excuse about the patents being "defensive" often seems like unadulterated garbage. It does not 'compute' in real-world scenarios.

A month ago we showed that Google had earned a patent (monopoly) that it did not deserve. It's a monopoly on MapReduce. A startup called Cloudera builds a GNU/Linux distribution that offers some very powerful functionality based on Free software (Hadoop). Based on this new interview, Cloudera is aware of the supposed violation in MapReduce, but its response is that "Google has no track record of using patents offensively." Well, Microsoft could also say this until a few years ago; it's only when companies are dying that they become patent aggressors, so no-one can rely on mere promises that are not a legal contract.

I also asked Olson about Google’s recent move to patent the MapReduce algorithm for working with large data sets that underlies Google searches. Hadoop is based on a variant of MapReduce, and there have been suggestions made that everyone using Hadoop or MapReduce is in danger following Google’s patents. As we noted here, Hadoop really isn’t threatened, though. “Google has no track record of using patents offensively,” Olson noted.


The software patent from Google is troubling enough... Microsoft's hijack of Yahoo! withstanding, as it may have an effect on the Hadoop project. It is now finalised that Zimbra is in the hands of former Microsoft executives (Yahoo! gave it to them) and given that the Microsoft-Yahoo search deal is now approved, it might make one wonder if Yahoo! will still require Hadoop for search. Will it be actively maintained and developed? What will be the impact on many Free software projects that depend on Hadoop? That is another example of the poisoning of Yahoo's Free Software endeavours, courtesy of Microsoft's bullying and unwanted intervention.

“What would be the impact on many Free software projects that depend on Hadoop?”One of our readers wrote to tell us that there is a connection between "News International -> Yahoo -> BBC -> Microsoft," as he puts it.

"The BBC Trust has been urged to block the corporation's plans to launch phone apps for its news and sport content. The Newspaper Publishers Association (NPA) said that the corporation would "damage the nascent market" for apps," says this article. "The Newspaper Publishers Association (NPA) is the trade association for British national newspapers and its role is to represent, protect and promote the national newspaper industry. It was founded in 1906 and its current members comprise Associated Newspapers, Express Newspapers, Financial Times, Guardian Newspapers, Independent Newspapers (UK), MGN (Trinity Mirror national titles), News International and Telegraph Group," says this reference page. Microsoft's strong ties with the BBC (and overlapping staff [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]) were last covered in [1, 2]. But that's another story altogether. It will be treated separately some day.

"The day that the software sector forms a clear front against software patents, as pharma does for a unitary patent system… will be the day our cause comes close to winning." —Pieter Hintjens, Fosdem07 Interview

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

[Meme] Python Knows Its Bosses
Microsoft strings attached
[Meme] Debt of About $20 Per Active User
Facebook isn't laying off tens of thousands for "efficiency" but for survival
 
The "Luddite" Complex
Sometimes simplest is best and sometimes "modern" is designed not with the buyers' interest in mind
SCO's Darl McBride Dead at Age 64
There's hardly any information about it, except we know he reached bankruptcy and 3 years later he died at a relatively young age
The 'Turning-Free-Code-Proprietary Foundation' (Linux/Microsoft Foundation)
LF will basically become just as sinister as its corporate sponsors
Python Software Foundation is 'Cancel Culture' Rehomed
Python isn't grassroots and it doesn't really tolerate grassroots
DeVault "Closes Down His Mailing Lists Every Time There's a Scandal" and Also Censors Messages
Censorious code hosting platform
What Social Control Media Really Is
Social Control Media, in a nutshell, isn't just bad if its controller is some foreign or hostile nation
Taking Ethics Lectures From Drew
Projection tactics
Links 02/11/2024: Facebook Stock Falls (Soaring Debt), Apple’s Quarterly Profit Down
Links for the day
Gemini Links 02/11/2024: Burnout, Emacs Bookmarks, and Smooth Migration
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, November 01, 2024
IRC logs for Friday, November 01, 2024
Facebook's Debt Has Soared to All-Time High of Nearly 50 Billion Dollars
But the corporate media pretends all is well (while mass layoffs continue and slop takes over the social control media)
Geminispace Makes It Past 4,200 Capsules on November 1st
At last!
Links 01/11/2024: Election Interferences by X/Twitter/Musk, Strava as Espionage Tool
Links for the day
The October 2024 Web Server Survey Shows a Further Collapse for Microsoft in the Servers Market
Microsoft experienced the next largest loss of 699,464 sites (-3.45%)
Gemini Links 01/11/2024: TLS Sucks, twytere.com Announced
Links for the day
Links 01/11/2024: Few Things Are Cheaper Than This Antenna and "Nothing Lasts Forever"
Links for the day
Technology: rights or responsibilities? - Part V
By Dr. Andy Farnell
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 31, 2024
IRC logs for Thursday, October 31, 2024
R.T.O. is Another Name (or Acronym) for Voluntary Layoffs
Amazon is trying to get many workers to leave on their own
Microsoft's Acquisition of Activision (to Fake Revenue Growth by Buying Revenue) Was a Failure
Of course the mass layoffs at Microsoft aren't just a Microsoft thing
Stagnant, Shrinking Businesses and "IBM's Corporate Culture Since the Late 1980s... Over 35 Years."
Recently, IBM was using share price as a talking point, insisting the company was doing OK while tens of thousands were being laid off
Links 01/11/2024: World News, Political Catchup
Links for the day
[Meme] Probably the Worst Possible Time to Get Information From Social Control Media
Musk does not want to prevent disinformation from spreading and the same is true for Facebook and TikTok; they have their own interests
Update on Litigation Against the European Patent Office (EPO) at the ILO Administrative Tribunal (ILOAT)
Rewards and compensation for staff have long fallen, resulting in many experienced colleagues leaving and causing further declines in quality and compliance
Gemini Links 31/10/2024: NNCP, Declutter the Web, Cost of Community
Links for the day
Links 31/10/2024: Supermicro Plummets 33%, Block and Dropbox Mass Layoffs
Links for the day
Links 31/10/2024: Environmental Anxiety, Profound Changes in Hardware Market
Links for the day
Links 30/10/2024: TSMC Concerns and North Koreans in Ukraine War
Links for the day
Facebook is for Zombies
Social control media is for fools
Microsoft Now Has $235,290,000,000 in Liabilities, They Grow Over Time in Spite of Mass Layoffs (So Expect More Layoffs)
expect more mass layoffs
Links 31/10/2024: DST Woes, War Updates, Amazon RTO Backlash
Links for the day
Gemini Links 31/10/2024: Attention Economy and Gemlogs
Links for the day
Happy Halloween
October is nearly over
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 30, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 30, 2024
For the Record: Linux is Controlled by the United States of America
"This is going to make many question the openness and inclusivity of the work done by Linux Foundation"
Microsoft: XBox Hardware Revenues Down About 30% (Ignore the Buzzwords and Activision Activity Dressed Up as "XBox")
For context, in a previous quarter XBox hardware sales were down by about 50%
Cooking the Books With "Cloud" And "AI" Was Not Enough to Fool Microsoft Investors
"Microsoft Shares Drop on Disappointing Azure Growth Forecast"