YouTube a haven from media/industry brainwash; let’s keep it that way
WHEN Novell employees fill YouTube with adverts (Microsoft does this too), they always have some good reason/excuse. Novell, just like any company, is made out of people, so it’s responsible for the things they do.
There are lots of ‘new’ (some are practically old) videos which were tossed onto YouTube. Here is the first one.
That’s a lot of Novell marketing material finding its way into YouTube in just one week. Who is responsible for this? Are arbitrary people voluntarily pushing Novell case studies for the public to watch? Who would ‘pollute’ a social network with advertisements, some of which used to be viral? █
Q4 results from Novell is something that we covered last week, but there are a few things which keep showing up. Novell and Microsoft are mentioned in harmony under this press release.
Scott Morris of SUSE rants/blog wrote about reasons to choose GNU/Linux whilst corruption takes the economy down. But anyway, on to some happier news.
OpenSUSE 11.1
Some applications or features are already being tested under near-final OpenSUSE 11.1 builds, which shall be finalised almost on the very same day as my birthday. Here is a review of Opera 10.0 (alpha) under OpenSUSE 11.1 and one about SELinux.
Previously, in our writings about “Linux Defenders” [1, 2, 3, 4], we presented both the good and the bad. It’s not all good, even though journalists who are focused on GNU/Linux prefer to view it that way. Sean Michael Kerner poses this as a question.
Will Linux Defenders Save Linux from Microsoft?
Questions over patent validity in software are never easy to answer, but it’s one that a new effort called Linux Defenders from the Open Invention Network (OIN) is trying help solve.
Linux Defender includes facilities for peer-to-peer patent review, post patent review as well as defensive publications for patents.
[...]
“It’s not really focused on Microsoft,” Keith Bergelt, chief executive officer of Open Invention Network told InternetNews.com. “Under post-issue Peer to Patent there will probably be some Microsoft patents up there, there will probably be some from small companies and trolls,” he said, using a pejorative term for patent-holders who often manipulate the patent system for excessive profits.
The thing is, Microsoft and patent trolls are not exactly separable. We were told that “they [OIN] are nervous once you mention the words “patent troll”.” The people at eWeek presented the view of the Linux Foundation:
Stated Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation. “The open source community is getting an IP rights tool that will limit distractions created from organizations that like to play the FUD game.”
Patent pools tend to come about when you have a lot of patents in and around a particular product, creating “patent thickets” where a bunch of different patent holders all hold onto important pieces of the puzzle. T
he worst case scenario, then, is that nothing can get done, as it’s impossible for anyone to innovate without being hit by a ridiculous number of lawsuits. To us, this is a sign of the patent system clearly not working. If so many different elements all need to be patented separately, then mistakes were made in the patenting process. You get, as Michael Heller has called it, a gridlock situation. Our solution? Throw out such patents, because they’re clearly hindering, rather than enabling, innovation.
Back in 2006, Richard Stallman explained why identifying prior art is not the way to go. He criticised OSDL (back then the equivalent of the Linux Foundation) when he wrote:
The Open Source Development Lab (OSDL) has a project to educate the US Patent Office about ideas already known (“prior art”) so as to prevent issuance of “poor quality” software patents which would cover those known ideas. It works by annotating free software packages in free software repositories so that ideas in them can be found more easily. It sounds like a good thing because the problems are hidden. The GNU Project does not participate in the project, and you should think twice about it too.
Apple harms Free(dom) software and GNU/Linux [1, 2], but Apple/Mac enthusiasts prefer to deny this. It’s just too embarrassing. In the latest step that may lead to castration of GNU/Linux features due to Apple patents [1, 2], Apple claims to have ‘invented’ the third dimension on the desktop, despite all that we find in Compiz/Beryl/ Compiz-Fusion/Metisse/ Looking Glass/whatever.
The US Patent and Trademark Office today published a collection of Apple filings, including a 3D interface that may herald the most radical – or, dare we say, the most bizarre – usability development since Doug Englebart first demoed a window-based GUI 40 years ago yesterday.
We’re not sure how we overlooked this one, but late last week, Opti apparently “won” a patent hearing over Apple in the Eastern District of Texas. You remember them, right? This is over that whole “Predictive Snooping of Cache Memory for Master-Initiated Accesses” issue. Oh, right, that predictive snooping issue. Uh-huh.
It’s worth remembering that Apple’s reasoning about “defensive” patents does not apply where patent trolls are involved. The trolls have no products, so swords can’t be crossed.
Abuse
Abuse. Yes, that’s what the patent system is about. Its holy grail is callously being called “intellectual monopolies” for a reason.
Today ( Friday 5 December) the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) organised a side event on ‘the business contribution to a new climate agreement’.
With 65 lobbyists, the WBCSD is one of the bigger business lobbying bodies in Poznan. It represents over 200 transnational corporations, most of them headquartered in Europe, Japan and North America, employing ‘over 3 million employees and a combined turnover of 7 trillion dollars’.
[...]
On access to intellectual property and the much needed technology transfer that will permit to the Global South to deal with urgent mitigation and adaptation challenges, WBCSD representatives called it “completely unacceptable for industry” that a UN climate agreement would include compulsory licensing of patents. They want technology transfer only to take place through projects that require the participation of multinationals.
In many cases, trade agreements and embargoes can be used against nations that encourage freedom of thought and resist intellectual monopolies. Even emoticons are becoming intellectual monopolies of individual people now.
A Russian businessman has trademarked the combination of semicolon, dash and bracket that make up a winking face ‘emoticon’ in texts and emails.
Google’s official stance about the US patent system is that it is broken. The company has pushed for patent reform in order to stop “frivolous patent claims from parties gaming the system to forestall competition or reap windfall profits.”
We have accumulated a couple of videos where Google speaks about intellectual monopolies [1, 2] and the overall picture is not encouraging at all. They probably whine only because of nuisance such as those Chrome lawsuits and Yahoo patents.
Legal/Political Means
It’s probably all down to law. Digital Majority pulled this new reference from earlier in the week. It’s about the effect of In Re Bilski on computer programs patentability, which remains a subject of disagreement and little ground for testing in court (as yet).
Can I patent software running on a general purpose computer?
The Bilski court focused on data-processing methods, and did not address the patentability of hardware or software per se. A key question for the future is how the phrase “tied to a particular machine” will be applied to software patents. If interpreted narrowly — i.e., requiring the use of special-purpose computing hardware to receive a patent — many, if not most, business method and software patents may not survive. If it is read less restrictively, the status quo may prevail. In either case, patents for inventions implemented as software should include some structural and functional components in the patent application and the claims. Claims covering human activity are now seemingly a thing of the past.
The IPKat is always saddened when all that effort that goes in standards-setting leads to litigation. In theory it should be friction-free and competition-friendly, but technical misunderstandings and misjudgments, drafting imperfections, impatience and opportunism all play their part in ensuring that the gulf between the ideal and the real remains as wide as ever. Merpel says, you’d think that Open Source licensing would provide more litigation and patent standards less — but it’s very much the other way round. This looks like a good topic for a PHD thesis or two.
In the United States of America, the new democratic government has promised a lot of change, but it becomes increasingly easy to have doubts [1, 2]. Here is another new reason for doubt:
…[W]idespread reports that Obama has chosen Xavier Becerra to be the new US Trade Representative. In the past, the US Trade Rep has basically acted as a representative of Hollywood at times, and Becerra may be no different… as he’s literally the Congressional rep for California’s 31st district… which (you guessed it) covers Hollywood. Uh oh. That would be like making a Congressional rep from Detroit in charge of automotive policy in the US. They’re less likely to have the nation’s overall best interests in mind.
The appointment of IBM’s Irving Wladawsky-Berger, who has yet to become part of an advisory body, is not good news, either. █
“Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.”
–Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO
Reporters whose aim is to elevate the Microsoft ecosystem seem to out there in large numbers. We mentioned this a few days back. The “Microsoft open source” pitch just floods the news like Waggener Edstrom is greasing up wheels again.
What’s wrong with this? Microsoft prefers ‘open source’ like Google Chrome, which is not just Windows-only but is also very hard to port to other platforms because of the way it was built.
In 2009, Microsoft will continue its gradual acceptance of open source software while at the same time it works to dispel old prejudices against non-proprietary software from within the company.
Here’s that term again, “non-proprietary”. It’s an offensive use of words, which can change perception. And further down it says:
Microsoft and Novell forged a deal in November 2006 to offer joint support for the Windows and SUSE Linux operating system with cross maintenance and support from both vendors.
Once again Novell pops up as Microsoft's inviter. As we explained yesterday, Microsoft uses this to elevate Windows and to attach patents (royalties) to anything that’s free.
The Mono project pushes a lot of buttons in the free software community. Patents, Microsoft, language choice, and platform choice all generate lots of heat individually, and Mono has them all. In spite of all the debate, there are still some issues that remain unresolved. There are undoubtedly some people who have been avoiding Mono just because Red Hat was; now that Fedora has it (while RHEL is still apparently up in the air) it’s tough to know if Mono is safe to use or not.
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