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10.14.15

Links 14/10/2015: ONOS Liaises With Linux Foundation, New CentOS

Posted in News Roundup at 5:23 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • 7 open-source password managers to try now that LogMeIn owns LastPass

    Some LastPass users were clearly not pleased to find out last week that the password management app had been acquired by LogMeIn. Fortunately, there are several alternatives to choose from.

    Sure, there are premium options like Dashlane, Keeper, Passpack, 1Password, and RoboForm, but there are also free password management systems that anyone can inspect and even contribute to. No matter what you use, the idea is to be more secure than you would be if you were to just use “password” as the password for every app you sign up for.

  • Framing Free and Open Source Software

    Having just passed its thirtieth birthday, the Free Software Foundation has plenty to celebrate. Having begun as a fringe movement, free and open source software has become the backbone of the Internet, transforming business as a side-effect. Yet for all is accomplishments, the one thing it has not done is capture the popular imagination. As a result, I find myself wondering how free and open source software might present itself in the next thirty years to overcome this problem.

  • Best Quality and Quantity of Contributions in the New Xen Project 4.6 Release

    I’m pleased to announce the release of Xen Project Hypervisor 4.6. This release focused on improving code quality, security hardening, enablement of security appliances, and release cycle predictability — this is the most punctual release we have ever had. We had a significant amount of contributions from cloud providers, software vendors, hardware vendors, academic researchers and individuals to help with this release. We continue to strive to make Xen Project Hypervisor the most secure open source hypervisor to match the security challenges in cloud computing, and for embedded and IoT use-cases. We are also continuing to improve upon the performance and scalability for our users, and aim to continuously bring many new features to our users in a timely manor.

  • How I learned the difference between a community and an audience

    It’s not every day that your CEO gives you a telephone ring, so I definitely remember the day mine phoned me. He’d called to tell me about a puzzling voicemail he’d just received.

    I was a consultant for a tech community website and the team was rolling out a major site renovation. Our goal was to modernize the look and functionality of the site and, equally importantly, better monetize it so it could survive and thrive in the long term.

    Apparently, however, not everyone welcomed the changes we’d made. In fact, that’s why the CEO was calling me: an active and passionate member of the website’s community, someone irked by our alterations, had found his home phone number and called him directly to protest. And he wanted me to intervene.

  • IBM Adds Node.js Debugging to Bluemix

    After building up its Node.js expertise with its StrongLoop acquisition, IBM has added Node.js debugging capabilities to its Bluemix PaaS.

  • Xen Project 4.6 released with enhanced security to match challenges in cloud computing, IoT
  • Xen Project Virtualization Updated With Improved VMI and Security
  • Xen 4.6 strengthens security and Intel support
  • Xen 4.6 Open Source Linux Hypervisor Brings NSA’s Virtual Trusted Platform Module

    Earlier today, October 13, the Xen Project, through Liu Wei, had the great pleasure of informing the world about the immediate availability for download of the Xen 4.6 open-source Linux hypervisor software.

  • Events

    • Midokura to Present on Open Source Networking at All Things Open 2015
    • Dedoimedo at LinuxCon & CloudOpen 2015!

      Once again, you may have noticed a certain dose of quietness on Dedoimedo in the last week. For a good reason, because I was away in Dublin, Ireland, attending LinuxCon and its co-located sister events. Presenting. On OpenStack. Yay.

      So let me tell you a few more details on how it all went. Should be interesting, I guess, especially some of the camera footage. Anyhow, if you care for one-man’s retelling of the Three Days of the Condor, I mean Mordor, I mean Dublin, oh so witty I am, then please, keep on reading this lovely article. Right on.

    • Citizen cloud thoughts, after fOSSa 2015

      I had (at least) three big reasons to be at the fOSSa 2015 conference, a couple of weeks ago. Two already covered elsewhere and one, “Citizen Cloud: Towards a more decentralized internet?”, that deserves its own separate post. Before getting to that, however, let me quickly remind the first two reasons: first, I and Wouter Tebbens had to present a great research project we of the Free Knowledge Institute are working on, that is Digital Do-It-Yourself (DiDIY). I described the social, cultural and economical characteristics of DiDIY, and Wouter its main legal issues, like Right To Repair. More about the “Digital DIY” side of fOSSa 2015 is here. We also wanted to check out what others are doing about Open Education, as you can read from Wouter here, and from me here. On to Citizen Clouds now.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Katharina Borchert to Join Mozilla Leadership Team as Chief Innovation Officer

        We are excited to announce that Katharina Borchert will be transitioning from our Board of Directors to join the Mozilla leadership team as our new Chief Innovation Officer starting in January.

      • Mozilla, GSMA Publish Study on Mobile Opportunity in Emerging Markets

        Mozilla has released a new report — mzl.la/localcontent — co-authored with the GSMA. Titled “Approaches to local content creation: realising the smartphone opportunity,” our report explores how the right tools, coupled with digital literacy education, can empower mobile-first Web users as content creators and develop a sustainable, inclusive mobile Web.

      • Rust programming language for speed, safety, and concurrency

        Rust is a systems programming language that got its start in 2010 with Mozilla Research. Today, one of Rust’s most ardent developers and guardians is Steve Klabnik, who can you find traveling the globe touting it’s features and teaching people how to use it.

        At All Things Open 2015, Steve will give attendees all they need to know about Rust, but we got an exclusive interview prior to his talk in case you can’t make it.

  • Databases

    • Couchbase CEO on rise of NoSQL

      NoSQL benefits from open source in a number of ways. Open source projects often innovate faster than proprietary projects due largely to the openness of the community. Open source communities share and spread knowledge about the use of key technologies across companies and industries. This allows NoSQL developers to leverage the contributions from many outside developers.

      Open source also allows for a more natural market adoption process. NoSQL technology can be adopted much more rapidly because it can be downloaded and tried for free for exploration or small usage.

  • OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice

  • Business

    • Concurrent Announces Open-Source Transparent Caching Solution

    • Semi-Open Source//Openwashing

      • Microsoft’s Prajna Open Source Project to Play in the Big Data Pool [Ed: openwashing a proprietary software hook. Sam Dean repeats the "loves Linux" lie]

        Now, Microsoft is working on a brand new open source platform, under an Apache license, that seeks to allow developers to easily build cloud computing services and mobile applications that can analyze big streams of data. It is called Prajna, and the code is now on GitHub.

      • An inside look at open source at Facebook

        Christine Abernathy, developer advocate for the Facebook open source team, will be speaking at All Things Open this month. In this interview, she tells us more about how Facebook open sources projects at scale and what challenges lie ahead for the open source team there.

        Christine also references the TODO group, which in the past year has seen its members ship 1,000 open source projects. The TODO group is “an open group of companies who want to collaborate on practices, tools, and other ways to run successful and effective open source projects and programs.” TODO stands for talk openly develop openly.

  • Funding

    • Startup DataVisor Nabs $14.5 Million to Fund Spark-based Security

      DataVisor, a startup company that is building big things around Apache Spark, has announced that it has secured $14.5 million in Series A funding, led by GSR and NEA, to purportedly help protect consumer-facing websites and mobile apps from cyber criminals. The young company’s founders spent years working on computer security at Microsoft Research, and are now focused on big data.

  • BSD

    • Why Samsung’s Open-Source Group Likes The LLVM Clang Compiler

      Samsung is just one of many companies that has grown increasingly fond of the LLVM compiler infrastructure and Clang C/C++ front-end. Clang is in fact the default compiler for native applications on their Tizen platform, but they have a whole list of reasons why they like this compiler.

    • LLVM Is Pursuing A Community Code of Conduct

      While the LLVM community tends to be very respectful to one another and I’m having a hard time thinking of when things have ever gotten out of hand in their mailing list discussions, they are now pursuing a Community Code of Conduct.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • SFLC Files Comment with FCC Arguing Against Overbroad Rules Prohibiting User Modification of Software on Wireless Devices

      On Friday, October 9th, 2015 the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) submitted a comment with the United States Federal Communications Commission, which has proposed a number of revisions to its rules and regulations concerning approval of wireless devices. Notice of Proposed Rule Making, ET Docket No. 15-170. SFLC takes the position that the Commission does not possess the legal authority to adopt a rule that regulates the software running in devices that does not affect the operation of RF transmitters or create interference. SFLC further argues that, even within the scope of the Commission’s regulatory jurisdiction, the Commission must tread carefully to avoid over-regulating radio frequency device software to the detriment of user innovation and after-market software modification. SFLC also urges the Commission to issue a policy statement (1) supporting the use of community developed or free software in networking devices; (2) recognizing the overwhelming social benefits generated from the high-quality software produced by non-profit communities; and (3) stating that preferring proprietary software over software whose source code is publicly available does not meaningfully enhance the security of software.

    • SFLC Confronts FCC, OSI Supports GPL Enforcement Principles

      Today in Linux and Open Source news the Software Freedom Law Center filed a comment with the FCC arguing against overly-broad regulations that eliminate Open Source alternative on wireless devices. Elsewhere, My Linux Rig interviewed FOSSforce’s Larry Cafiero and Rafael Laguna released Halloween wallpapers for Lubuntu.

    • IceCat 38.3.0 release

      This is a major release upgrade following the Extended Support Release upstream cycle, moving from v31.x-ESR to v38.x-ESR. All the features in previous releases have been preserved, along with extra polish and improvements in privacy.

    • Ada Lovelace Day: Marina Zhurakhinskaya and Outreachy

      Working as a senior software engineer at Red Hat on the GNOME Project, I was very impressed by the talent of the project contributors, by how rewarding it is to work on free software, and by the feeling of connectedness one gets when collaborating with people all over the world. Yet, at GUADEC 2009, of approximately 170 attendees, I believe I was one of only eight women. Of the software developers working on the entire GNOME project at the time, I was one of only three.

    • 30 Years of Free Software Foundation: Best Quotes of Richard Stallman
    • GNU Spotlight with Brandon Invergo: Sixteen new GNU releases!

      16 new GNU releases in the last month (as of September 24, 2015):

      autogen-5.18.6
      cpio-2.12
      ddrescue-1.20
      gdb-7.10
      gettext-0.19.6
      global-6.5.1
      gnupg-2.1.8
      gnutls-3.4.5
      help2man-1.47.2
      libgcrypt-1.6.4
      libmicrohttpd-0.9.43
      libtasn1-4.7
      linux-libre-4.2-gnu
      parallel-20150922
      sipwitch-1.9.10
      ucommon-6.6.0

    • [FSFE PR][EN] FSFE convinces 1125 public administrations to remove proprietary software advertisements

      The campaign began in 2009 with the intent of removing advertisements for proprietary PDF reader software from public institutions’ websites. To start it all off, volunteers submitted 2104 “bugs”, or instances of proprietary PDF software being directly promoted by public authorities, and the FSFE listed[2] them online. Since then, hundreds of Free Software activists took action by writing to the relevant public institutions and calling for changes to their websites. We received a lot of positive feedback from the institutions thanking us for our letters, and to date, 1125 out of the 2104 websites (53%) edited their websites by removing links to proprietary PDF readers, or adding links to Free Software PDF readers.

    • GLib now has a datagram interface

      For those who like their I/O packetised, GLib now has a companion for its GIOStream class — the GDatagramBased interface, which we’ve implemented as part of R&D work at Collabora. This is designed to be implemented by any class which does datagram-based I/O. GSocket implements it, essentially as an interface to recvmmsg() and sendmmsg(). The upcoming DTLS support in glib-networking will use it.

  • Public Services/Government

    • 21 October: session on public sector modernisation

      Five experts plan to challenge some of our traditional assumptions about the role of the public sector at the ‘Public Sector Modernisation: Open(ing) Governments, Open(ing) minds’ session on Wednesday 21 October. The experts will elaborate on questions like ‘How can governments meet the expectations of 21st century citizens?’ and ‘How is the information revolution going to further transform our governments?’.

  • Licensing

    • The importance of community-oriented GPL enforcement

      The Free Software Foundation and Software Freedom Conservancy have released a statement of principles on how GPL enforcement work can and should be done in a community-oriented fashion. The president of the Open Source Initiative, Allison Randal, participated as a co-author in the drafting of the principles, together with the leadership of FSF and Conservancy.

      The Open Source Initiative’s mission centers on advocating for and supporting efforts to improve community best practices, in order to promote and protect open source (founded on the principles of free software). While the OSI’s work doesn’t include legal enforcement actions for the GPL or any of the family of licenses that conform to the Open Source Definition, we applaud these principles set forth by the FSF and Conservancy, clearly defining community best practices around GPL enforcement.

  • Programming

    • Google Introduces New Developer Tools for Cloud Platform

      Google’s Cloud Datalab and Cloud Shell continue company’s efforts to help developers with apps running on Cloud Platform.
      The developer community has been a key focus area for Google in its strategy to drive broader enterprise adoption of the company’s Cloud Platform service.

    • 2013 and internship

      My college days were coming to an end with placements all around. I was sure to work in a startup. One fine day, I saw a job posting on hasjob on 12th December 2012 that boldly said “HackerEarth is buidling its initial team – Python/Django enthusiast needed”. The idea made me apply to HackerEarth and after a few rounds of email with Sachin and Vivek. I landed up in a remote intern position.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Open Document Format: Using Officeshots and ODFAutoTesting for Sustainable Documents

      One of the many benefits of open source software is that it offers some protection from having programs disappear or stop working. If part of a platform changes in a non-compatible way, users are free to modify the program so that it continues to work in the new environment. At a level above the software, open standards protect the information itself. Everybody expects to be able to open a JPEG image they took with their digital camera 5 years ago. And, it is not unreasonable to expect to be able to open that same image decades from now. For example, an ASCII text file written 40 years ago can be easily viewed today.

Leftovers

  • Twitter Slashing Costs With Workforce Layoffs

    The cuts come as reinstalled CEO Jack Dorsey looks to boost Twitter’s fortunes after nearly a decade of financial losses.

  • Twitter cuts more than 300 staff

    Twitter is laying off up to 336 staff, with Jack Dorsey swinging the axe at the social network just a week after being appointed permanent chief executive.

  • 11 times the Windows blue screen of death struck in public

  • Science

    • Ada Lovelace Day: Celebrating the Achievements of Women in Technology

      Ada Lovelace was born two centuries ago this year, and is widely recognized as a visionary who saw the potential of computational machines long before the development of the modern computer – a prescience often credited to her devotion to metaphor-heavy “poetical” science. Lovelace’s mother provided her daughter with a thorough mathematical education, both to dissuade her from following in the footsteps of her father – the famed poet Lord Byron – and to provide her with intellectual and emotional stability. At age seventeen, Lovelace witnessed a demonstration of Charles Babbage’s difference engine, and eventually worked with him as he devised the analytical engine, furnishing Babbage with her own original set of groundbreaking notes.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • ‘MH17 hit by BUK missile’

      Flight MH17 was confirmed shot down in eastern Ukraine by a Russian-made anti-aircraft missile on July 17, 2014, in a final report by the Dutch Safety Board, but the 15-month investigation did not say who fired it.

  • Finance

    • Labour’s Dead Center

      Jeremy Corbyn, a long-time leftist dissident, has won a stunning victory in the contest for leadership of Britain’s Labour Party. Political pundits say that this means doom for Labour’s electoral prospects; they could be right, although I’m not the only person wondering why commentators who completely failed to predict the Corbyn phenomenon have so much confidence in their analyses of what it means.

      But I won’t try to get into that game. What I want to do instead is talk about one crucial piece of background to the Corbyn surge — the implosion of Labour’s moderates. On economic policy, in particular, the striking thing about the leadership contest was that every candidate other than Mr. Corbyn essentially supported the Conservative government’s austerity policies.

      Worse, they all implicitly accepted the bogus justification for those policies, in effect pleading guilty to policy crimes that Labour did not, in fact, commit. If you want a U.S. analogy, it’s as if all the leading candidates for the Democratic nomination in 2004 had gone around declaring, “We were weak on national security, and 9/11 was our fault.” Would we have been surprised if Democratic primary voters had turned to a candidate who rejected that canard, whatever other views he or she held?

    • Finishing What Thatcher Started

      The UK Trade Union Bill is a brazen attempt to crush worker power and restrict democratic rights.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Privacy

    • One Year Later, Hundreds of Tor Challenge Relays Still Active

      As of this month, 567 relays from our 2014 Tor Challenge are still up and running—more than were established during the entire inaugural Tor Challenge back in 2011. To put that number in perspective, these nodes represent more than 8.5% of the roughly 6,500 public relays currently active on the entire Tor network, a system that supports more than 2-million directly connecting clients worldwide.

  • Civil Rights

    • British Government cancels Ministry of Justice contract with the Saudi prison system

      The Government has cancelled a contract that would have seen the Ministry of Justice provide prison services to Saudi Arabia, Downing Street has said.

      The £5.9m deal, which Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn recently called on David Cameron to scrap, was controversial because of the autocratic kingdom’s weak human rights record.

      The commercial venture would have seen the trading arm of the National Offender Management Service, JSi, provide development programmes for the country’s prison service.

    • CIA torture survivors sue psychologists who designed infamous program

      Survivors of CIA torture have sued the contractor psychologists who designed one of the most infamous programs of the post-9/11 era.

    • Former U.S. Detainees Sue Psychologists Responsible For CIA Torture Program

      The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit on Tuesday morning on behalf of three former U.S. detainees against the psychologists responsible for conceiving and supervising the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation program that used systematic torture.

    • Time’s up on Gitmo, Mr. President: To make good on his promise, Obama must veto the defense authorization bill

      Do you remember when the President first said he wanted to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay?

      “I would very much like to end Guantanamo,” he said in 2006. I’m talking, of course, about President George W. Bush.

      At the time, I was a senior Defense Department counterterrorism official. My colleagues and I had been trying to transfer or release Guantanamo detainees since 2002, when we had discovered that an overwhelming majority had neither intelligence value nor value for prosecution. Most were not taken off the battlefield, as we had been told. Many were just victims of circumstance.

      Of course, Bush’s successor, Barack Obama, campaigned on closing the prison — and on his second day in office signed an executive order pledging to shut it down within a year. More than seven years later, this prison is still open — 114 people still languish there, down substantially from its height of 775.

    • How Many More FBI Documents Contain the Phrase ‘Mohammed Raghead’?

      We asked the agencies for every document that mentioned or referred to Mohammed Raghead. More than a year later, the FBI responded by turning over 56 pages of heavily redacted documents; the NSA and CIA are still processing our request. The FBI said it found a grand total of 86 pages, but redacted and/or withheld information on national security and privacy grounds, because they are considered “deliberative,” and because disclosure of the withheld material could reveal law enforcement techniques and procedures. Some Mohammed Raghead–related records, according to the FBI, originated with other government agencies and were sent to them for review for a final decision on whether they could be released.

EPO Says Crushing Patent Neutrality is a Good Thing® Because Authenticity of Self-Incriminating EPO Document Cannot be Denied

Posted in Europe, Patents at 6:49 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

A two-tiered society for large corporations and for little people

Manchester

Summary: The EPO’s ‘damage control’ is so weak that it almost resembles satire and staff protests are having a strong effect, with people threatening to take their exceptional skills elsewhere

ENGLISH-SPEAKING media is starting to catch up with news about EPO leaks.

Recall the special role Microsoft plays in all this. Microsoft’s role is prominent for reasons explained in this new article. “According to the memos,” it says, “the idea for the scheme was prompted by alleged complaints by both Microsoft and Canon that a number of their applications had been excessively delayed.” Neither Microsoft nor Canon is European. Why are they driving European policy?

“Florian Müller,” continues the reporter, “author of the FOSS Patents blog, said the memos are “incontrovertible evidence of the EPO’s institutionalised unfairness”. Roy Schestowitz, author of the Techrights blog, said they show that the EPO is acting like a business.”

Well, guess what? EPO hides the evidence. They are now blocking both sites which speak about this, the Techrights blog and also the FOSS Patents blog, based on this morning's revelations.

The EPO tried to tell us on Twitter that our leak is “wrong”, as if just putting an EPO document up there on the Web makes us “wrong” (as in incorrect). This is just hilarious in a sense. They don’t know what to do as they cannot deny the authenticity of the document (shown to journalists by several independent sources, maybe because EPO tried claiming — to journalists — that the document had been forged). With the accuracy having been verified, they now go right into spin mode (not denial).

“The EPO tried to tell us on Twitter that our leak is “wrong”, as if just putting an EPO document up there on the Web makes us “wrong” (as in incorrect).”It is hard to read the new article with a straight face. Consider excuses like this one: “The EPO spokesperson said the net effect is that smaller applicants will benefit because RAEX will not be flooded with requests from the biggest filers.”

That’s like saying that having a ‘fast lane’ for First Class and Business Class (for rich people) is a Good Thing™ for the rest of the passengers because it helps shrink the queues of Economy Class. There’s no logic there. In fact, this is so illogical that it’s hard to think where to begin refutation. It’s almost self-refuting.

Well, they also try to frame this as a temporary thing even though, based on our sources, this may just be an afterthought/spin/revisionism because of the negative publicity.

There is a staff protest right at this moment and there is another new article about today’s protest. It starts as follows:

EPO labelled ‘totalitarian state’ as controversy and demo hit

The president of the European Patent Office (EPO), Benoît Battistelli, has reportedly urged the Administrative Council (AC) to dismiss a member of the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) despite that body not recommending such action.

It comes amid separate allegations of harassment and as workers demonstrate today, October 14.

Battistelli’s request was allegedly outlined in a message sent to the AC ahead of its meeting this week, according to the IPKat blog yesterday, October 13.

Under article 23 of the European Patent Convention, a member of the EBA cannot be dismissed without the body lodging an official request with the AC, a supervisory organisation of the EPO.

Article 23 is in place to guarantee the independence of the EBA from the AC and EPO president.

So far, the EBA has not made such a request and in fact last month rejected a request by the AC to dismiss the member.

One person who is apparently attending the protest told us s/he “just saw appeal board members demanding he is fired. Poor sign.” █

Clare Curran (New Zealand Parliament) Pressures Her Government to Reveal Whether TPP Acts as a Trojan Horse for Software Patents

Posted in Patents at 6:04 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Clare Curran

Summary: Actions for and against software patents, in New Zealand which is still resisting them and in the US where patent parasites hope to spread these to other countries

SEVERAL days ago we wrote about signs, based on new leaks, that TPP would enforce software patents, forcibly making a huge number of nations receptive to them. It’s a clever, secret way to marginalise resistors and antagonists of an insane patent policy which welcomes trolls and crushes software startups. We mentioned how this related to New Zealand, where such concerns had been raised during late summer (of 2015). We wrote about this extensively at the time.

“Patent lawyers know that the fight against software patents is nowadays gathering steam (UPC and TPP notwithstanding), so they fight back with shameless spin or personal attacks.”A Labour Party politician who is quite progressive (see her activity online) decided to get some answers and issued this press release that we can now see in many places in the New Zealand’s news sites. It’s titled “Govt must clarify if software patents are in TPP” and it says: “New Zealand’s tech sector faces an uncertain future if a hard-fought for exclusion for software patents is missing from the final text of the Trans Pacific Partnership, Labour’s ICT spokesperson Clare Curran said today.

“”Labour and the tech sector fought long and hard to convince the government to accept that software should not be subject to patents as it stifles innovation and creativity in a fast-moving sector which spans many industries.

“”But on the face of it, software has not been named as an exception to patentable inventions. The Government must urgently clarify whether it has stood up for the local industry or sold it down the river.”

Let it be clear that the source of much of this lobbying for software patents is the United States, where SCOTUS recently (by legal scale) ruled against software patents (overruling software patents-friendly courts like CAFC and bypassing corruptible patent lawyers who were at CAFC), causing a shift in examination guidelines at USPTO. It’s about the Alice case that has gotten patent lawyers hopping mad.

The debate about software patents was mentioned in a couple of articles early on Tuesday and again in the afternoon. According to this, the “Federal Circuit Judge S. Jay Plager was driven to abstraction during the latest arguments over the application of ‘Alice.’”

Patent lawyers know that the fight against software patents is nowadays gathering momentum/steam (UPC and TPP notwithstanding), so they fight back with shameless spin or personal attacks. Alluding to something that we mentioned earlier this week in the long post about patent trolls, one vocal proponent of software patents (and a patent lawyer) goes with the clickbait headline “Mark Cuban: “Get rid of all software patents”” (true statement, but a misfit title).

Well, it is nice to hear him saying that again (even if it’s old news), but patent lawyers are furious and they now try to refute Cuban not using facts but rather using personal attacks. They trying to discredit Cuban over it yet again, claiming hypocrisy by associating old action with his more recent stance.

Make no mistake about it. Behind the scenes there are still some powerful actors trying not only to uphold software patents in the US (in defiance of the Supreme Court’s ruling) but also to spread them to every country around the world. Action like that of Curran helps expose and thus impede the conspirators (companies like Microsoft and IBM). We commend Curran’s actions (she followed me online) and hope she will get to the bottom of this matter. █

EPO Completely Loses It and Starts Banning Even More Sites Ahead of Today’s Demonstration, UPC Proceeding Behind Closed Doors

Posted in Europe, Patents at 5:27 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

STOP WRITING ABOUT THE EPO. IT HURTS OUR PROFITS.

Summary: The wrath of Benoît Battistelli reportedly leads to an expansion of bans (outright censorship), once again blocking sites that write about patents, prior art, and other relevant matters (to EPO examiners)

A BLOG which sometimes covers EPO-related matters is the latest victim of EPO censorship. Florian Müller told me he “just got an email from someone that the EPO has blocked my latest post, allegedly per presidential order” (that would be Benoît Battistelli). These bans by the EPO are not hard to circumvent, e.g. by going to a CDN or some caching service such as Google Cache. Censorship is monkey business and the EPO clearly does not understand the Streisand Effect.

There is a protest in an hour and it’s already being suppressed if not crushed by Battistelli’s bulldog, Željko Topić.

The EPO has plenty to hide right now as there are articles coming and suppression of sources is a priority. As one commenter put it last night, “did the investigation unit investigate the microsoft’s and other big “clients” kickback scandal? For an outsider this should have precedence over the futile and counterproductive measure of destroying the epo workforce’s motivation.”

There are other bad things that the EPO is doing right now. It is doing politics and makes no pretence about it (pro-UPC statements). It’s against what’s acceptable, but then again, the EPO disregards rules and laws anyway. So do some solicitors in European member states by the way.

“It’s not about science and technology but about conspired-for protectionism.”Annsley Merelle Ward, a UK-based maximalist of patents as we noted just over week ago, shows that the UK is now ignoring/bypassing the law for UPC (in secret, no voting), as it had also done with TPP and other treasonous deals (negotiated by the rich for the rich). Watch the antidemocratic nature of it. When it comes to patents, ‘public debate’ apparently just means speaking to people who profit from patents, not the rest of them (profit first, for few people, at the expense of everyone else). What an echo chamber.

Here are some details: “The session was organized by AIPPI’s UPC and Unitary Patent Standing Committee who are tasked with exploring issues that are important to the operation of the UPC and recommending potential solutions to resolve or clarify matters. Over the past year the Committee of 28 members from 18 countries has prepared four papers. Two of these papers have addressed the uncertainty surrounding the jurisdiction and applicable law during the transitional regime under Article 83. The other two papers have asked a series of survey questions to AIPPI’s National and Regional Groups and Indpendent Members. The first survey relates to how various national courts interact with EPO oppositions (i.e. whether national revocation proceedings are stayed pending the outcome). The second survey relates to how national courts treat court fees in patent actions. The purpose of these surveys is to identify common themes on how these issues are addressed in order to inform and make recommendations to the Preparatory Committee and Member States on these issues.”

Where is the general public in all this? It is being occupied by patent lawyers and other patent profiteers, such as the EPO. This is a betrayal or a departure from the very premise (or promise) of today’s patent systems. It’s not about science and technology but about conspired-for protectionism. █

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