Institutions which value their customer’s privacy should only use free software for their day to day business and record keeping. The rapacious behavior of banks, insurance companies and marketing firms has received a great deal of attention, and sane countries are making data privacy laws but the issue of non free software is seldom raised. Medical records are a particularly sensitive area where morals and ethics should trump profit. Ethical medical practitioners know that the records they create belong to the patient and that those records must be guarded and only surrendered to the patient or other health care professionals serving the patient. Bankers, insurance companies and other companies should be forced by law to abide by similar rules but no one can actually comply if they use propitiatory software which hides operations from users.
The US is in the midst of an insurance industry push towards electronic medical records. Tax breaks and other incentives have been offered to doctors who make the move to electronic records keeping. This will be good if adequate protections are in place.
Every business and government office that uses non free software should realize this threat and end it by migrating to free software. Moving to free software won’t protect institutions from malicious clerks and other commonly mentioned problems but it is the only solution to unauthorized access to records by software owners. That access and power is at the heart of the bad deal propitiatory software has always offered but is exposed in an ugly way when all of our records are electronic and computers must be on a network to be considered useful.
Businesses that do not move out of customer and self interest should be forced by law. Customers and citizens concerned about their privacy should be protected. Because no such privacy can be guaranteed by propitiatory software, no propitiatory software should be allowed to operate on customer business records. Only software with the four software freedoms should be allowed.
Summary: Assorted Novell and OpenSUSE news with emphasis on videos
IT HAS BEEN about a month since we last took stock of Novell’s new videos. There is nothing fascinating among them, but this file was uploaded a month ago to celebrate a Novell “Success Story” and Novell has begun utilising some account that’s described as follows: “Novell’s Learning Channel (sponsored by Novell Training Services) is focused on enhancing your ability to use Novell products effectively.”
Well, to name just some of the earlier videos that were uploaded by it last month:
“IdentityServerDemo” has uploaded another 10 or so videos. Novell is really filling YouTube up with commercials and supportive material for proprietary software. Hamline University added its own share to it and here is an unusual SUSE video from last month. The agitated dog is eating the SUSE mascot:
Masim Sugianto writes some instructions for software on OpenSUSE [1, 2, 3, 4]. Other posts about software on OpenSUSE (mostly packaging) cover Skrooge, iFolder, AutoYaST, openFATE, and LATEX editors:
I have started maintaining three packages, namely Texmaker, TeXworks and Rubber, in the Publishing repository. These applications make working with and compiling latex documents user-friendly and painless.
I received an email from a user who switched from openSUSE to Ubuntu since his Wireless netcard did not work. It worked with openSUSE 11.2 initially but after an online update it failed. He hoped that openSUSE 11.3 worked, tested it, it failed – and he gave up and wrote a frustrated email.
I was frustrated reading this since we should have been able to help this user if he contacted us in time.
The Wiki-based Weekly News has this new release and OpenSUSE’s wiki having spam problems. Techrights has seen a sharp increase in wiki spam too over the past month.
Novell’s OpenSUSE “boosters” are trying to grow the team [1, 2] and the marketing folks are imitating Ubuntu with a site and merchandise whilst others further refine the looks of OpenSUSE [1, 2]. █
“True friends are like diamonds; precious but rare. Fake friends are like fall leaves; found everywhere.”
–Anonymous
Summary: Timely reminder of the value of people’s privacy
Tactless remarks from Novell’s former CEO Eric Schmidt have led us to writing a post about the dire, potentially-criminal consequences, but the same type of debate returns now that Facebook’s boss makes a similar type of remark. This was covered (and spun a little) in:
Mark Zuckerberg has revealed that he is a prophet, declaring that he had foreseen that people will soon have no qualms about displaying every minute detail of their private lives on the internet.
Facebook’s database of binary connections between profiles is problematic for all sorts of reasons and one of our readers has explained why in the following message:
Internet Scumbags Spin Privacy Concerns to Their Advantage
Got a privacy problem? Embarrassed by something you gave others to publish? Perhaps the nice people running the databases and PR astroturf firms can help you get what you really want. The bad guys want to help you, really. This unlikely turn, where the exploiters and extortionists proclaim themselves the good guys, is amazingly being presented as reasonable policy and legislative framework.
A new wave of Google bashing and Facebook glorification is hitting the news. Instead of having a good look at real problems, such as ChoicePoint, and the problematic uses of databases by both government and industry, the databases that people can see and derive some benefit from are lambasted.
The Register is running an amusing article about Facebook that hints at some of the more serious issues.
“Critics have slated the social networking site for burying privacy controls, highjacking its users’ data and allowing advertisers to farm Facebookers to help them flog tat. Oh, and eroding an generations’ respect for their own and other people’s privacy.”
“The fact is, Zuckerberg said, that people want to share everything, and they want to share it on the internet. That is the “new norm”, and he saw it coming.”
Good for the Register to point to commercial exploitation of centralized databases and the intentional erosion of privacy by the exploiters. The article is amusing and worth reading in full.
If only more serious publications had as much sense. “Mainstream” coverage is looks more like this:
Google and digital freedom, aka “piracy,” are presented as cause for concern while astroturfers and spammers are presented as the cure. Reasonable legislation in France, where people would have the right to demand of
commercial databases that pictures of themselves be deleted, is ridiculed as hopelessly naive because “piracy” means the pictures will always resurface. Google is smeared with the piracy label, rather than a company that promises private sharing but then allows commercial data mining and tells you not to worry about it. The authors finally recommend the vigilante justice of “search engine optimization” and “reputation defense” which are euphemisms for astroturf and spam. PR companies that follow Microsoft’s TE training manuals will “defend” their clients by relentlessly libeling competitors, often anonymously or through pseudo names. Without search engines, their work would go doing damage without victim awareness. Google seems to be a convenient, visible target for the crimes of others. Big publishers have always hated digital freedom, which makes them unnecessary, and Google which supplants them.
Serious publications should be focusing their attention on the more sinister practices that have the same but less visible results, data mining of people’s purchasing, email and web browsing. Losses of insurance, denial of
employment and other problems have already shown people the dangers of social exploitation networks. Laws that govern these things are seriously out of line, especially in the US where the PatRiot Act actually encourages violation.
Free software has answers to as many of these concerns as is practical. Modern GNU/Linux systems offer simple interfaces for encrypted email, instant message and file sharing so that only a minimum of user selected material ever needs to be shared to achieve what social exploitation networks promise. The more control people have over their computers and publishing, the more privacy and publishing power they will have. While it is never possible to “take back” what you have given others, no one should need a third party publisher to share with their friends. Data mining of purchasing data and private electronic correspondence can only be reduced by law.
On the issue of privacy, The Register has also just published the following more encouraging article.
Italians take the ‘p’ to fight back against Big Brother
Italians are fighting back against the surveillance society with a grass roots project designed to publicise the location of CCTV cameras – and to “out” those that have been set up contrary to Italian Law.
Amy sez, “In 1955 Orson Welles created a BBC programme called Sketchbook. In this episode he is shockingly contemporary when he talks about passports, privacy and personal rights ending in his assertion that all members of the human race deserve to maintain their dignity and privacy. He also talks about about the role of police – interesting in light of recent invasions of privacy in the supposed interest of protecting citizens.”
It is good to have people out there who fight for everyone’s rights. █
SARAH from the Free Software Foundation has called for people to express their dissatisfaction with far-reaching DRM in Amazon’s Kindle. “We have over 1400 signatures already,” she emphasises, “and signers include Lawrence Lessig, Clay Shirky, Cory Doctorow and other notable authors, librarians, and scholars.”
If you know other people who may wish to support the cause, please pass this around as it will be used to persuade Amazon to reverse, not just apologise, and it may also serve as a future lesson to other companies that attempt the same predatory action. █
“I don’t understand how IE is going to win. The current path is simply to copy everything that Netscape does packaging and product wise.”
–Jim Allchin, President of Platforms & Services Division at Microsoft
Summary: Synopsis of developments regarding the legal challenges Microsoft unleashes upon Linux
THE principal question about TomTom’s lawsuit has recently been transformed into one which revolves around GPL compliance and ethical traps. This latest angle is already being examined, explained, and summarised. Mary Jo Foley, who is in good terms with Jeremy Allison (she interviewed him before), wrote about this issue which was first raised by him. She summarised the TomTom issue — as it appears at this stage in particular– without provoking:
[I]t’s looking more and more like the open sourcers are right and TomTom is the canary in the Linux-patent coal mine.
One of our readers explained this whole situation in simple terms, as follows: “The lawsuit publicizes a patent trap of Microsoft’s own creation. Microsoft created a de facto industry standard in the FAT (File Allocation Table) format that it made widely available for adoption without letting it be known that it held and would assert the patents behind the standard. What makes the FAT patents valuable is not the technology behind them but the fact that they were promoted and accepted as a standard without word that Microsoft would someday come asking for money. Two of the patents are for converting between long and short file names – a FAT function that is commonly implemented in digital cameras, MP3 players, and other devices, not just in Windows and Linux.
“Some wishful thinkers within the open source community may accept Microsoft’s claim that this is about TomTom rather than Linux, along with the blather that accompanies most patent litigation about how Microsoft would rather license than litigate. But this is in fact a landmark assault into the most troubled and controversial terrain of the patent system. It will reverberate for a long time to come.”
When your tech product or website is accused of infringing a software patent, you can:
• Pay the patent holder a licence fee; they decide the amount
• Fight the patents in court – expensive and time consuming
• Take your product off the market
These are the options currently being considered by Tom Tom NV.
Microsoft is claiming that Tom Tom’s car navigation systems violate eight Microsoft patents.
Groklaw has begun taking a closer look at the TomTom case and one person points out (from the comments): “I *also* wonder this: Microsoft is a big company. Has Microsoft *ever* distributed a Linux based device with VFAT support? If so, would the fact that, under the GPL they cannot do so without conveying a patent license to the recipient that is transferable to anybody the recipient sees fit, and the fact that Microsoft as owner of the VFAT patents is able to provide such a license mean that it can be legally assumed they DID provide such a license?”
Asks one informant of ours: “What about Microsoft’s Linux lab and their offerings to Apache and SAMBA? What if Microsoft released something under the GPL (to anyone), doesn’t that mean they relinquish any necessary patent claims?” We already know for a fact that Microsoft uses GNU/Linux-based products, but using is not necessarily selling.
[UPDATE: 2009-03-05 9.30a ET] I’m told that Oracle is also a defendant, although this filing is from April 2008.
Oracle is a member of OIN, so it is likely to be part of the battle that was initiated against TomTom. Additionally, the last time this case was mentioned it was also shown that Google had grown tired of the patent system (Google too is a relatively recent addition to OIN’s members). The word is still spreading out there and since many people respect (sometimes love) Google, they come to disrespect the patent system. Academics too continue to dispute the viability and value of this system.
Markets outperform patents in promoting intellectual discovery, say economists
When it comes to intellectual curiosity and creativity, a market economy in which inventors can buy and sell shares of the key components of their discoveries actually beats out the winner-takes-all world of patent rights as a motivating force, according to a California Institute of Technology (Caltech)-led team of researchers.
[O]nce again, the study found that a free market solution greatly outperforms a patent monopoly solution where the “first” provider gets a monopoly. The research was led by economist Peter Bossaerts and a team of others — and it made a point that won’t surprise anyone who’s studied the economics of monopolies. Patents tend to function just like any other monopoly system: it shrinks the overall market, decreases net social benefit, provides monstrously excess rewards to a single provider and harms everyone else. In fact, the research found that the patent system created a massive disincentive for many people to participate in the very process, even if their contributions could have been quite helpful in speeding along the innovation.
Given that software patents may have already died (most of them anyway [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14]), Microsoft’s last resort in the fight against Linux may be dead on arrival. Linux vendors can carry on doing business with confidence that Linux is here to thrive, as is GNU.
Patent trolling ain’t going away until the government decides to actually make a move.
The suit names the following industry players: Symantec, Microsoft, AVG, CA, Check Point Software, Comodo, ESET, F-Secure, iolo technologies, Kaspersky Lab, McAfee, MicroWorld Technologies, NetVeda, Norman Data Defense Systems, Novell, PC Tools, PWI, Sophos, Sunbelt Software, Trend Micro, Velocity Micro, and Webroot Software.
The lack of change from the newly-elected government is already upsetting Richard Stallman, who last night pointed a finger at this new article. This isn’t the first example of an Obama appointment that puts pro-intellectual monopolies people in charge and there seem to be legitimate reasons for concern. █
“I would much rather spend my time and money and energy finding ways to make the Internet safer and better than bickering over patents.”
We will hopefully be able to include some blog posts about these protests pretty soon.
Microsoft’s B.A.D. is a global problem [1, 2]. The strugglingcompany from Redmond is trying to cause as much damage as possible to young people, with the assistance of corruptible supervisors who permit this to happen. They really should be named and shamed (or at least be educated about the harms they bring). Here is another new example, this time from UAE:
Microsoft GulfMicrosoft GulfLoading… today announced the launch of the Microsoft DreamSpark Student Program in the UAE. Under the program, all high school and university students in the UAE will gain access to the latest Microsoft developer designer and gaming tools at no charge to unlock their creative potential and set them on the path to academic and career success. In its first phase, Microsoft DreamSpark is being piloted in partnership with Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT). This broad range of professional level software will be available online on http://www.dreamspark.com/ and students will also have the option of going through HCTHCTLoading…’s website to access DreamSpark.
Going back to India, Microsoft is once again invading Free/open source events, as the evidence in its Fort 25 [sic] blog suggests. This embrace, extend and extinguish plan needs to be resisted [1, 2, 3]. From Microsoft:
A New Appreciation for Open Source in India – and Our Role in it.
As I stated in my last blog, I am attending the premier Indian Open Source conference, FOSS.IN, in Bangalore.
Someone should tell Microsoft that until its stops threatening to sue Free software, they deserve no role in FOSS.IN, which is described as “one of the world’s largest Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) events, held annually in India.” Microsoft is playing a game there, but it does not seem like an active participant, for a change. They add insult to injury using their ‘buddies’ (from a distance) in order to discourage adoption of Free software.
Microsoft is no friend of Free software [1, 2, 3, 4]. It ‘embraces’ it in order to change and ruin it, just like it ruined ISO (along with international software standards). This destruction is a self-serving routine. █
“Open source is an intellectual-property destroyer [...] I can’t imagine something that could be worse than this for the software business and the intellectual-property business. I’m an American; I believe in the American way, I worry if the government encourages open source, and I don’t think we’ve done enough education of policymakers to understand the threat.”
–Jim Allchin, President of Platforms & Services Division at Microsoft
I guess it was a good programme yesterday for free software …we have
to concentrate on the long term aspects…please do write on what we
could do better..please make this a community report on what you thought
is good and bad..
We had many people saying “NO TO M$-VTU” Lock In. the nice thing was we
were able to have some new people From colleges : both lecturers and
students ..a good representation from all sections of civil socitey
Yesterday we uncovered Nathan Myhrvold’s latest mischiefs as a patent troll in deep denial. Slashdot has some more details about it.
“Intellectual Ventures (IV) will be setting up shop at the top of a Four Seasons this week as Headline Sponsor of the Ready to Commercialize 2008 conference hosted by the University of Texas at Austin. It’s the patent firm’s 100th university deal, though some, such as Professor Michael Heller at Columbia University, warn against such deals. ‘… their individual profit comes at the cost of the public ability to innovate. The university’s larger mission is to serve the public interest, and some of these deals work against that public interest.’ It’s a follow-up to the conference IV sponsored last summer for technology transfer professionals entrusted with commercializing their universities’ intellectual property, and should help IV, a friend of Microsoft, snag even more exclusive deals (PDF).”
A couple of days ago we also mentioned the conference where Microsoft used Novell’s fork of OpenOffice.org (yes, it’s a fork [1, 2, 3, 4]) to market OOXML and align some of this with software patents, the chief focus of the conference. One of the attendants and bloggers from Oracle wrote about this.
I will soon publish my impression from a highly entertaining European Commission workshop on intellectual property rights and ICT standards on 19 November 2008 in Brussels, Belgium held at the Bedford Hotel, formerly a cotton mill. Since I attended yesterday at the Commission in Brussels, I am still patching up my notes. Here is a very first impression. These are soundbites from the workshop. Some caused laughter. Others were just strange. Others again did not necessarily have one clear interpretation. I will leave it to the readers to interpret them for now.
His quotes from Microsoft may not be precise, but these ones stands out:
“12. – Open Source is not a business model, Amy Morasco [of Microsoft].”
Speaking of OOXML, Groklaw links to this report from an ISO plenary where OOXML is discussed. Pamela Jones adds: “here is my question: what do you implement? Microsoft isn’t implementing currently either OOXML or Ecma2. So where is the standard? Also, I am thinking if you can’t afford to pay ISO for the OOXML standard [it's not free] or don’t like the restrictions on free availability, you could just wait and get Ecma2 when it’s available from them without restrictions.”
The Vice President and Assistant General Counsel of intellectual monopolies at Red Hat has published the following article regarding the Bilski case and its impact.
In its new opinion, the court declined to settle the issue of when, if ever, software based inventions should be patentable. Even so, the new test in Bilski will probably limit the patentability of software.
Future cases will shed further light on this issue. In the meantime, the holder of a poor quality software patent is likely to think more carefully about bringing a lawsuit, because the patent may be ruled invalid.
The FOSS community and its supporters need to explain to our friends, neighbors, and legislators the practical realities of software patents. We need to continue to challenge received wisdom about innovation in software, and to explain that patents do not always foster innovation.
Jeremy from IPKet has published this post to shed more light on the situation in EPO and UK-IPO.
Some people say that the referral of the questions is a feeble surrender to the demand of Lord Justice Jacob in Aerotel/Macrossan that the EPO resolve the contradictions in its earlier rulings — contradictions the existence of which the previous President of the EPO denied — or whether it is a resolute defence of the EPO’s resistance to such pressures that have led it to ask its own questions of the Enlarged Board rather than those articulated by Jacob LJ. The nature of the questions has itself given rise to plenty of speculation. Are they there simply to remove perceived inconsistencies in EPO practice, or are they posed in order to provide an excuse to send out answers that will seek to bind practice in national offices too?
Fortunately, this isn’t from David Pearce, whom we don’t appreciate for his disdain of software patents critics, but either way, it’s encouraging to see pro-patents Web sites admitting that the system is weakening. This isn’t the first [1, 2].
The OpenMoko analysis, which continues to receive coverage [1, 2], probably fails to identify the source of agitation and litigation. It’s not about the patent troll called Sisvel; trolls sometimes operate on behalf of larger companies that want competing products removed from the market. In this case, Sisvel is said to be a proxy of Philips, acting as a front much like the MAFIAA. And let’s never forget Acacia [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11], which sued the market’s GNU/Linux leaders just shortly after hiring top-level employees from Microsoft. █
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