The previous post discussed and dissected a case of false accusations. Microsoft throws dirt at IBM for ‘daring’ to point out Microsoft’s corruptions, which is akin to a criminal blaming the cop when asked in court about the reason for an arrest.
Surely, another case of false accusations is Microsoft's mythical patents. Mafia-like intimidation tactics were used to lure companies in to signing patent deals which were not necessary. One of the victims (or accomplices) in this plot was Samsung. Because the company’s UMPCs are now running a flavour of Linux, caution is advised.
Quick: you’ve got to sell UMPC (Ultra Mobile PC’s) to a mass market! How to do it? Well, Intel decided to show off pro audio and music production on the Linux-based Transmission, from Trinity Audio, as we saw earlier this week. I’m not entirely sure what got Intel thinking our geeky way, but I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts. And in all seriousness, Linux really an ideal OS choice here, because of its ability to be customized to the application.
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Trinity has sent us some photos of the Intel booth at CES. Yes, Linux audio is getting some wider exposure. And even if you’re attached to Mac or Windows as your desktop/laptop platform, a mobile Linux device could be an ideal companion in the near future. We’ll have a chance to look at Trinity’s own device next week at NAMM and see how it stacks up.
Do remember that Samsung signed a software patent deal, so if this CES exhibit reaches the wide market, Microsoft will probably benefit financially. It is important that Linux gets more exposure, but under these terms, dangerous precedence can be set.
Linux is used very extensively in devices and any ‘taxation’ would harm future adoption and expansion. Linux devices have defensive patents too, so none of this was necessary. For Samsung and Microsoft this was a shotgun wedding, at best. It wasn’t even a marriage of convenience because ‘weapons’ were involved (May 2007).
LG Electronics will be another global mobile phone maker who will roll out a Linux based mobile phone within this year.
This may be another product to cross out from the list. There are so many Linux-based phones anyway, just as there are many GNU/Linux distributions which can replace SUSE.
Remember what Torvalds said in his interview (published just a few days ago) about patents?
Paula notes that Linus said during his podcast that the U.S. patent system is broken, and that patents have no real value, except as tools to inflict fear.
Fear is indeed what patents are about, but fear can keep formidable monopolies in tact. It entirely misses the point of patents which were intended to encourage open minds. Fear makes no comfort to the mind and it harms productivity too.
Here is a new comment about Microsoft’s patent FUD. It comes from Paul at LinuxToday.
Sooner or later, the IT industry will have enough of MS and their FUD tactics and finally put them to bed for good. Or at least that is what one would hope would happen.
However, I have always said, “Ignorance is manifest in all of her children,” and in a MS centric shop, “looks like she has played the Harlot!!”
“Ignorance” may be the key word here. No company needed to sign a deal with Microsoft. It was the hurried cowardly response to false accusations.
The Linux kernel is clearly a piece of software that is not built to integrally operate with a particular device. To be more precise, it is not implemented to achieve a particular physical process. Several months ago in court proceedings, a Microsoft lawyer explicitly said that a device needs to be involved in order for a patent to be valid. That was Microsoft arguing that software patents as we know them should be considered invalid. This happened in a US court of law. Shane and I recorded this dialogged and had this mentioned before.
The following new article from The Register talks about arguments involving the British patent system. Let it be repeated that software patents are not valid in the UK and here is a more precise explanation.
“The UK IPO’s position is that only when the patented item and its software are combined, when you are dealing with the whole package, are they offered protection,” he told us.
This leads back to discussions about the most recent patent deal which involves embedded Linux. One discussion went on to asking whether the LG, Samsung, Fuji Xerox, and Kyocera Mit deals actually mean anything to Linux. Matt Asay, who started his OSS/Linux-oriented career when he worked at Lineo (embedded Linux), rebuts and clarifies.
I doubt Microsoft has been any more forthcoming in private about its patent claims than it has in public. I used to work for a large Japanese company (Mitsui & Co.). I also used to work for an embedded Linux vendor. Between the two roles I discovered that Japanese electronics companies use a lot of Linux and they’re also very conservative.
Mix the two together, with a finger-pointing, brash American FUD-meister like Microsoft, and you get a patent deal. I don’t think there’s much more to it than that.
Regardless, Linux had a strong toehold in embedded Linux before Microsoft even thought of being relevant there. If nothing else, I’m guessing any claims around embedded Linux would be swatted down on prior art (whether that’s from Linux or VxWorks, pSOS, etc.).
As further evidence and information about this consider:
That last item is very interesting in retrospect, due to FSF/Microsoft disagreement that soon followed.
In the following new video, Eben Moglen says more about the GPLv3, but he also talks about software, hardware, and patents.
I just got a note from Joe Latone of IBM Research that brought the happy news that the video of Eben Moglen’s talk Copyleft Capitalism, GPLv3 and the Future of Software Innovation, given at at IBM Research on October 29, 2007, is now available online
Embedded stream below, if you have Adobe Flash (link for gnash users is provided above).
Yesterday we saw another attempt to instill and spread fear throughout the embedded Linux industry. This happens to be an industry where Linux is expected to become very dominant and even reign (as seen in HPC), if it does not already approach that status. Let us remember that, among other factors, Microsoft signed a deal with companies such as Samsung and LG in order to scare developers (and mind you, there was no explicit disclosure of patent numbers, let alone a number of patents).
Fortunately, the world which revolves around embedded Linux yawns and continues to ignore the FUD. It’s safe to say this based on a recent survey. The polling process took place around the time other such deals were made.
As a result, patent worries are down among Linux users over the last three years. LinuxDevices.com’s latest reader survey, published earlier this month, suggested that only about 22 percent of embedded Linux developers take patent concerns seriously, down from 33 percent two years ago.
No only is this fear unfounded, but it also appears to be on a sharp decline. Linux continues to thrive in the mobile-, embedded-, and devices-oriented area. Only yesterday, for instance, the following three announcements were made:
“Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded edition is expected to deliver fast boot and resume times, and reside in a small memory and disk footprint,” Canonical said in a statement.
These are just 3 among several new Linux devices/ports that are being introduced in a single day. LinuxDevices.com boasts about half a dozen a day.
The LG deal was probably irrelevant in the sense that it does not appear to scare anybody. Developers move on while media chooses a sensationalist tone to create the illusion that a difference was made.
Will we be seeing more Linux devices than ever before? You bet. Here’s a new video of one (Palm Foleo).
After the deal with Fuji-Xerox and Samsung, Microsoft seems to have found another victim, with which it claims to have swapped patents, including Linux-related ones.
There is not much to see here because the previous deals with Fuji-Xerox and Samsung are similar (wording varies however). There is little to be worried about, but small companies that use embedded Linux ought to put an end to coverages such as this, which remain non-specific. Why would Linux require coverage? What Microsoft patents does Linux infringe on? Not a word from Microsoft. Recall deals where companies got betrayed or overcharged because patents simply remained hidden. In any event, here is the obnoxious part of news:
Under the agreement, LG will be able to use Microsoft-patented technology in its products, including Linux-based embedded devices.
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