04.28.09

Links 28/04/2009: Red Hat Deal, Firefox Reaches Final Beta

Posted in News Roundup at 8:12 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day

Natasha Humphries on globalization and job security with Free Open Source Software 12 (2004)

Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating.

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[Parody] BN Announces Community Novell Review: Patents Cited in Future Mono-Targeted Litigations to be Placed on BN Defenders Wiki

Posted in Boycott Novell, Microsoft, Mono, Novell at 4:06 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Better before than after the act

MANCHESTER, UK — 04/28/09 — Boycott Novell (BN), a collaborative site that enables advocacy of Free software and an increasingly vibrant ecosystem around GNU/Linux, today announced that U.S. patents submarine #1, submarine #2 and submarine #3 will be placed for prior art review on the Wiki associated with BN Defenders. These patents will be cited in future litigations that target everyone but Novell, which bought protection for Mono until January 2012.

“These patents will be cited in future litigations that target everyone but Novell, which bought protection for Mono until January 2012.”BN’s mission includes encouraging the GNU/Linux community to destroy packages that may be suspect of Microsoft patents or riddled by questions regarding their real purpose. Accordingly, the patents used in future Mono patent action will be posted by BN for review and elimination of suspect packages by the GNU/Linux community.

“The patent vetting activity offered by the BN Wiki offers a unique opportunity to bring to bear the collective knowledge, passion and ingenuity of the GNU/Linux community to better explore the validity of the patents that are the subject of the future action against GNU/Linux,” said Geeko and a Red ‘N’, virtual effigies of BN. “We encourage active participation from the entire GNU/Linux community so that companies seeking to advance GNU/Linux strategies can be better informed about the dangers of Mono.”

Based on a press release from OIN, modified for comedic purposes and for parallels to be made apparent.

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OIN Keeps Its Promise, Strikes Back at Microsoft’s FAT

Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, OIN, Patents, TomTom at 3:16 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: OIN seeks to invalidate Microsoft’s Linux-related claims against TomTom

THERE is not much to be said which the press release does not already cover (we append it below). The short story is about OIN hoping to defuse and invalidate Microsoft’s extortion tool; it looks for help from the community of volunteers who are aware of prior art (we are aware of some). For a summary of this case, see this last post. Paula Rooney has some coverage referring to OIN’s very latest response.

OIN announced today that three patents in the lawsuit — including those the deal with the creation of long and short file names — have been named for prior art review on the Post-Issue Peer-to-Patent website linked to the Linux Defenders portal.

It would be better to eliminate software patents altogether, but this is not the approach adopted by OIN to mollify an inherently ill system. █

Open Invention Network Announces Community Prior Art Review: Patents Cited in Recent TomTom-Targeted Litigation Placed on Linux Defenders Portal

DURHAM, NC — 04/28/09 — Open Invention Network(SM) (OIN), a collaborative enterprise that enables innovation in open source and an increasingly vibrant ecosystem around Linux, today announced that U.S. patents 5579517, 5758352 and 6256642 have been placed for prior art review on the Post-Issue Peer-to-Patent website associated with the Linux Defenders portal. These patents were recently cited in litigation that targeted TomTom NV.

OIN’s mission includes encouraging the Linux community to review patents-of-interest that may be of suspect quality or riddled by questions regarding prior art. Accordingly, the patents used in the recent TomTom patent action have been posted by OIN for review and submission of prior art by the Linux community. Submissions may be made by visiting http://www.post-issue.org, clicking on the appropriate patent and selecting “Submit Prior Art.”

“The patent vetting activity offered by the Linux Defenders portal offers a unique opportunity to bring to bear the collective knowledge, passion and ingenuity of the Linux community to better explore the validity of the patents that were the subject of the recent action against TomTom,” said Keith Bergelt, CEO of Open Invention Network. “I encourage active participation from the entire Linux community so that other companies seeking to advance Linux strategies can be better informed about the quality of these patents.”

About Open Invention Network

Open Invention Network(SM) is a collaborative enterprise that enables innovation in open source and an increasingly vibrant ecosystem around Linux by acquiring and licensing patents, influencing behaviors and policy, and protecting the integrity of the ecosystem. It enables the growth and continuation of open source software by fostering a healthy Linux ecosystem of investors, vendors, developers and users.

Open Invention Network has considerable industry backing. It was launched in 2005, and has received investments from IBM, NEC, Novell, Philips, Red Hat and Sony. For more information, go to www.openinventionnetwork.com.

Open Invention Network, the Open Invention Network logo, Linux Defenders, Linux Defenders 911 and the Linux Defenders 911 logo are the property of Open Invention Network, LLC. All other names and brand marks are the property of their respective holders.

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Meet Obama’s Pick for Technology Advisory Panel

Posted in Free/Libre Software, GPL, Microsoft, Quote at 11:15 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

HERE is what Craig Mundie, whom Obama has just appointed, thinks about Free/open source software:

• Never show source code, senior Microsoft man says

Craig Mundie, senior VP at Microsoft, told the conference in São Paulo yesterday, the secret to success in software is “never show the source”.

He said that the FSF [Free Software Foundation] wanted to destroy a business model in which industry standard software had benefited everyone for a long time.

• Microsoft’s code sharing offer draws blank

[Craig Mundie] also said Microsoft is going ahead with the source code sharing programme despite the recent virus attacks targeting Microsoft products.

“When we enter into a source code sharing programme we have strict confidentiality clauses. We do not expect it to be leading to security breaches”

• Commercial software, sustainable innovation

“The GPL turns our existing concepts of intellectual property rights on their heads. Some of the tension I see between the GPL and strong business models is by design, and some of it is caused simply because there remains a high level of legal uncertainty around the GPL– uncertainty that translates into business risk” [ --Craig Mundie]

• Microsoft pays court to Washington

“At the height of the US government’s antitrust pursuit of Microsoft, Bill Gates and his execs were vigorously denouncing rivals Sun Microsystems and Oracle for using the Feds to try to cripple the world’s largest software company [...]

Privately [...] Microsoft lobbyist Paula Boyd met with Jonathan Cody, FCC chairman Michael Powell’s special policy advisor [...] Microsoft strategist Pierre De Vries and Microsoft attorney Scott Blake Harris (the FCC’s former international bureau chief) met with FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein. Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s senior vice president, has met with Powell personally. And those are just a few examples.

Obama promotes the message about transparency, so why is this guy on his panel? Devil’s advocate? █

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Patents Roundup: Bad, Destructive System; Microsoft and Apple Revisited

Posted in America, Apple, Asia, Law, Microsoft, Patents at 10:37 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: News about patents and patentors that affect GNU/Linux

Broken System

UNREST CAUSED by this broken patent system is beginning to be better realised as bubbles are bursting and real assets get appreciated more than paper. In regard to ownership of areas in mathematics (notably with software patents), SD Time reports that “experts mull changes to [the] software patent process” and Professor Moglen is among those who are quoted on the subject:

“These so-called patents grant ownership rights over ideas that have no reflection in the physical world other than ‘I own the math,’ ” said Eben Moglen, founder of the Software Freedom Law Center and a professor of law at Columbia Law School. “If everyone goes looking for more in a game of phony real estate, hell will follow.”

Moving on and looking elsewhere, we find even broader complaints that public knowledge is gradually being scooped up and privatised.

The phrase ‘or protection through established means’ is the most troubling, because it ignores of the decades old success of FOSS, Free Open Source Software, in the computer industry, and of the history of science itself which regarded knowledge as a commons, until the recent incursion of Thatcherite economics. Both of these are more far more ‘established’ than the recent American fad for software patents.

Destructive System

Like all broken systems (such as the banking industry nowadays), there are victims and it is not pleasant. Here is the end of one pointless never-ending fight where almost a billion dollars will be paid as a result.

The vicious fight between Broadcom and Qualcomm over patents has resulted in peace breaking out, worldwide.

[...]

Qualcomm will shell out $891 million to Broadcom over a four year period and the terms of the agreement are as follows.

It’s becoming more than a national issue if and when, as The Economist suggests, a rising superpower like China mimics the behaviour seen abroad and starts suing companies across the border.

Chinese companies are enforcing patents against foreign firms

FOR over a decade Schneider Electric of France has bombarded a Chinese firm, Chint Group, with lawsuits accusing it of copying its technology. But the tables turned on April 15th when the two companies settled an infringement case—with the French firm forking over $23m to Chint. The rich settlement against a foreign firm is a landmark. It serves as a reminder that Chinese companies are just as eager to defend patents as Western firms, and that China’s intellectual-property regime has been tightened in recent years.

This is not the first time that The Economist warns about patent wars in China.

Microsoft

One of the pro-Microsoft bloggers — one which InformationWeek employs to be precise — is now arguing that Microsoft is falsely claiming “innovation” when in fact it's just a term that Microsoft executives are being tamed to recite.

Microsoft Product Improvement Is Not Innovation

[...]

Wow. To those who say that there are no Microsoft fans, the messages from my last blog entry prove you wrong. One of the complaints was my assertion that Microsoft does not innovate anymore; perhaps the problem is in the definition of that word. To me, slow but steady improvement in existing products and services isn’t innovation, it’s maintenance and support. Those are important things, no doubt, especially to existing customers, but they’re not the same as innovation.

LinuxToday brought back the essay called “InNOTvators.”

Episode one: Whatcha talkin’ about, Vincent?

Vincent David’s lonely quest to protect an innovative world from the clutches of free software.

News Item: Microsoft Platforms Group Vice President Jim Allchin says that Open Source software stifles innovation and threatens Intellectual Property.

The scene: A table for two at Dale’s Dry Donut Deli, No Dunking Allowed, somewhere in lower left middle Montana, early, early morning. Across the table sits Vincent David, former Manager of Wildly Implausible Conspiracy Theories at Microsoft’s Redmond HQ.

Microsoft’s Friends

Not only Microsoft is trying to use software patents against its competition’s right to exist. Blackboard, which was funded by Microsoft, is doing the same type of thing [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7], but it has just suffered a setback:

In Preliminary Ruling, Patent Office Rejects Blackboard’s Claims

[...]

Some observers say that even if Blackboard ultimately loses the patent battle, it will have succeeded in distracting and weakening its rival through the lengthy court proceedings.

Another ally of Microsoft is the British Library [1, 2]. A reader has just warned us that they too promote intellectual monopolies and he sent us the following photo to prove it (from 2007).

Apple

Apple may be portrayed as a “pirate” or even a victim at the moment, but Apple is to a large extent part of this problem. Right now it claims to have ‘innovated’ Web silencing because there is a patent filing.

Apple wants to give you the opportunity to selectively block web-based audio while allowing you to listen to any other audio source of your choosing.

The EFF is meanwhile assaulting Apple for antagonising customers’ rights.

The operator of a wiki website has filed a federal lawsuit that accuses Apple of trying to squelch protected speech after it demanded the removal of posts discussing ways hobbyists can make iPods and iPhones work with software other than iTunes.

Apple — like Microsoft — has already used patents offensively against Linux or Linux-powered devices. Intimidation too is a form of aggression. █

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Charles McCreevy is Still Advancing Software Patents in Europe

Posted in Europe, Patents at 9:43 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Charles McCreevy’s “harmonisation” agenda gets a new name and it is still on

S

OMEONE at Digital Majority has just found this page from the European Union Web site. The page is a month old, but it contains the following revealing statement from Commissioner Charlie McCreevy, who is a known nuisance to freedom because of his promotion of self-serving multinationals and software patents [1, 2, 3, 4].

Announcing this breakthrough, the Internal Market Commissioner, Charlie McCreevy said:

“European businesses find the current patent litigation system complex, slow and costly.”

He predicted that the new unified system, with a dedicated unified patent court, would make patent litigation more predictable, faster and less expensive.

The EPO is already on the verge of selling out (to software patents and Microsoft), so protesters like Richard Stallman label the EPO "malicious" and "corrupt". In addition, as Bosson points out in his response to the EPO (he seems to be affiliated with FFII Sweden):

EPO needs a very clear mandate to grant patents on computer program. The TRIPS “fields of technology” does not exclude limits on what is a patentable invention. It is very questionable if patents make a good incentive for software that contain many thousands of new ideas and easily combines into millions of new ideas on how to organize and calculate information over the Internet.

Here is my personal response. █

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Should Microsoft Sue Microsoft for Using (and Suing) Linux?

Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Patents, Windows at 9:11 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Microsoft is using Linux again, so what are the implications of such hypocrisy?

MinceR has just pointed out that Microsoft is building products with Linux. Yes, that’s GPL and it’s the program Microsoft accuses of being a patent “pirate” or something.

The prototype works with a Vista host but the hardware comprising the NIC is based on a Linux stack.

Paul Hovnanian P.E writes in USENET, “Of course the production model will have the Linux system and network stack replaced with Windows CE … no matter what the cost. So why not start with CE? Possible answer: They’ve actually got to get this thing to work and the best system to use certainly isn’t Windows.”

This is not the first time that Microsoft uses GNU and/or Linux internally [1, 2] simply because they work better. █

“The number of developers working on improving Linux vastly exceeds the number of Microsoft developers working on Windows NT.”

–Paul Maritz, Microsoft

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Is Microsoft Live Dead Yet?

Posted in Microsoft at 8:40 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Staff exodus and closures

Summary: The wind is no longer in Microsoft’s sails because key people are leaving

Microsoft’s online/Web division seems to be in a state of disarray following the killing of "product upload" some days ago. It was a very bad week for Microsoft because of many cancellations and bad results [1, 2]. The online/Web division has fallen by another 17% in the past quarter, so sheer investments simply don’t pay off. Now comes another blow with the departure of a man Microsoft raved about, as well as another:

Linden’s departure is noteworthy because he was a prominent hire at Live Labs.

[...]

Another prominent member of the Live Labs team, design director Don Lindsay, left last month for a new job at Research In Motion.

Employee retention at Microsoft has been rather poor in recent years. But the company is still hiring anti-Linux people. █

“The Internet? We are not interested in it.”

–Bill Gates, 1993

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