Summary: An old position paper from Sun Microsystems helps shows a certain resistance to patents such as those which Oracle uses against Android

GROKLAW has some superb coverage of the Oracle vs. Google case, so as the trial kicks into full gear we mostly refrain from covering it. A lot of bloggers use Groklaw as a source while providing summaries.

One interesting post from Groklaw shows Sun’s position on software patents.

“I can’t find it on Oracle’s website any more,” writes Pamela Jones, “but thanks to Internet Archive, we can find Sun Microsystems writing about software patents in 2006 and explaining its position. This was back when the European Union was for a while considering adopting software patents. You will not believe what Sun’s position was. It’s definitely relevant to the Oracle v. Google litigation.

“Sun’s position paper was titled, “Software Patents: A European Union (EU) Directive on the Patentability of Computer-Implemented Inventions must not Jeopardize Interoperability.” The title says it all, but I’m going to show the entire statement to you in all its glory, so Oracle can’t pretend, as it tried unsuccessfully to do with the Jonathan Schwartz corporate blog, that it wasn’t an official company statement. Sun strongly urged that Europe, if it adopted the Directive, “allow for the creation of products which can interoperate with the protected products to safeguard competition in the sector and to provide greater choice and lower costs for consumers.”

“Imagine that. Sun said publicly that interoperability was more important than IP rights, even patents, because it led to competition and hence greater choice and lower costs for consumers.”

Can this be used to weaken Oracle’s case? We shall see. █

(ODF | PDF | English/original)

Resumen: El impuesto de patentes no aceptable en los territorios pública se refiere, pero las autoridades necesitan revisar las normas existentes.

Las cuestiones de Adquisiciones han sido cubiertos por Simon Phipps desde hace unos años, incluso antes, cuando trabajó para Sun Microsystems. En su más reciente artículo[http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/procurement-indemnity/index.htm] que escribe sobre el uso de patentes para discriminar al Libre/Software de Código Abierto, comenzando con: [via[http://webmink.com/2011/01/21/procurement-and-indemnity/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=laconica]]

En todo el mundo, me encuentro con los gobiernos y los países que afirman tener una política que permite o incluso favorecen al software de código abierto. Sin embargo, cuando en realidad veo lo que están haciendo, te encuentras con que todavía adquieran una gran cantidad de software propietario.

Una política por sí sola no es suficiente. Para poner en práctica, normas que el legado de contratación tiene que ser cambiado, especialmente en el gobierno. Las normas de adquisición evolucionan con el tiempo a la luz de la experiencia, y poco a poco acrecienta en un corpus considerable que es inflexible por diseño. Si bien estas normas pueden proporcionar la protección y el valor de adquisición de productos y servicios de la empresa que se ha visto antes, por lo general discriminan a nuevos enfoques, que son víctimas del “fuego amigo” de las consecuencias involuntarias e imprevistas. Las viejas normas de contratación sofocan la innovación.

Uno de los problemas más comunes que el legado de reglas de contratación causa está en el area de exigir indemnización por software. Normas de adquisición suele pedir sanciones severas a asociarse con la promesa de que el software no contiene ningúna apropiación indebida de derechos de autor, de abusos premeditados, y a sabiendas no infrinjir ninguna patente.

[...]

Este es uno de los principales problemas que hay que fijarse si tiene intención de mover su empresa hacia el software de código abierto. No es suficiente decir que lo haces, necesitará arreglar sus normas de contratación para que el software de código abierto pueda pasar a través de sus defensas.

El punto que se hace aquí es que las patentes (y derechos de autor) desempeñan un papel en la discriminación contra el libre/software de código abierto, ya sea deliberadamente o no. Se relaciona muy bien con la atroz noticia de Australia [1[http://techrights.org/2011/01/21/australia-ms-lock-in/], 2[http://techrights.org/2011/01/21/novell-influence-in-libreoffice/], 3[http://techrights.org/2011/01/20/mandating-proprietary-sw/], 4[http://techrights.org/2011/01/22/john-sheridan-owned/]], donde Microsoft propietaria y las patentes-gravadas fueron elegidos en lugar del formato ODF por un traje con la historia empresarial de Microsoft. Verlos tratando de negar lo innegable su “sesgo de Microsoft” cuando se les acercó un periodista australiano que es de investigación y coherente en favor de la libertad del software:

La política de AGIMO requiere que las agencias del gobierno apoyen la Oficina de archivo “Open” XML format/ECMA-376 norma PROMOVIDA por Microsoft, y que las mayoria de alternativa suites de oficina no puede escribir documentos. La ODF Alliance, que está apoyando a un formato rival, afirmó el año pasado el Office Open XML formato esta atiborrada con “dependencias de plataforma de Windows” (PDF) y esencialmente vinculada a los usuarios de Microsoft Office, y algunas organizaciones, tales como los Archivos Nacionales de Australia, han escogido el estándar ODF en lugar de en el largo plazo.

Sin embargo, AGIMO estableció que no hay sesgo en la elección de software.

[...]

Una de las quejas comunes de los trabajadores en las grandes organizaciones es que son incapaces de obtener acceso para instalar aplicaciones en sus ordenadores de sobremesa, lo que lleva a una frustración en el trabajo, ya que pueden ser incapaces de utilizar las aplicaciones que se utilizan, o prefieren hacer su trabajo más eficientemente. Un ejemplo sería la forma en que muchas personas utilizan los navegadores web, con extensiones muy personalizada.

Los compinches de Microsoft en el gobierno de Australia estan avergonzando a todo el país, el que está siendo observado por todo el mundo acerca de este escándalo. █

Many thanks to Eduardo Landaveri of the Spanish portal of Techrights.

Summary: Patent tax not acceptable where public territories are concerned, but officials need to revise existing rules

Procurement issues have been covered by Simon Phipps for quite a few years, even back when he worked for Sun Microsystems. In his newest article he writes about the use of patents to discriminate against Free/open source software, starting with: [via]

All over the world, I encounter both governments and countries claiming they have a policy permitting or even favouring open source software. yet when you actually look at what they are doing, you find that there’s still a huge amount of proprietary software being procured.

A policy alone is not enough. To implement it, legacy procurement rules have to be changed, especially in government. Procurement rules evolve over time in the light of experience, and gradually accrete into a sizeable corpus that is inflexible by design. While these rules may provide both protection and value for procurement of products and services the enterprise has seen before, they typically discriminate against new approaches, which are the “friendly fire” casualties of unintended and unforeseen consequences. Legacy procurement rules stifle innovation.

One of the most common problems that legacy procurement rules cause is in the area of requiring indemnity for software. Procurement rules usually ask for substantial penalties to be associated with promises that the software doesn’t contain any misappropriated copyright, abuses no trademarks, and does not knowingly infringe any patents.

[...]

This is one of the key problems that needs to be fixed if you intend to move your enterprise to favour open source software. It’s not enough just to say you do; you’ll need to fix your procurement rules so open source software can get through your defences.

The point to be made here is also that patents (and copyrights) play a role in discriminating against Free/open source software, whether deliberately or not. It relates quite nicely to the atrocious news from Australia [1, 2, 3, 4], where Microsoft proprietary and patents-encumbered formats were chosen over ODF by a suit with Microsoft business history. Watch them trying to deny “Microsoft bias” when approached by an Australian journalist who is investigative and consistently in favour of software freedom:

AGIMO’s policy requires government agencies to support the Office Open XML file format/ECMA-376 standard promoted by Microsoft, which most alternative office suites cannot write documents in. The ODF Alliance, which is supporting a rival format, claimed last year the Office Open XML format was riddled with “Windows-platform dependencies” (PDF) and essentially tied users to Microsoft Office, and some organisations, such as the National Archives of Australia, have picked the ODF standard instead in the long-term.

However, AGIMO stated there was no software bias in the choice.

[...]

One of the common complaints of workers in large organisations is that they are unable to gain access to install applications on their desktop PCs, leading to a frustration at work as they may be unable to use the applications which they are used to, or prefer to do their work more efficiently. An example would be the way that many people use web browsers with heavily customised extensions.

Microsoft cronies in the Australian government are embarrassing the entire country, which is being watched by the entire world over this scandal. █

Summary: A roundup of stories about the fight against software patents in the United States and the fight to ease elimination of extremely bad ones (even Microsoft supports this latter fight)

STRONG OPPOSITION is being formed against software patents and yesterday we mentioned Red Hat's filing. Ars Technica covers this right about now, arguing very clearly that Red Hat is pushing for the end of software patents.

When the Supreme Court heard the Bilski case earlier this year, it ruled that the specific business method patent at issue in the case was invalid and contended that the patentability of intangible methods should be reduced but not eliminated. The court declined to provide clarity on the scope of software patentability, however, which leaves a lot of important questions unanswered.

[...]

Red Hat’s submission was authored by Rob Tiller, the company’s vice president and assistant general counsel. He argues that a growing number of vague patents on software methods have made it impossible to guess whether a new product will face the risk of litigation. His statement contends that the resulting landscape of uncertainty discourages innovation in the software industry.

LWN has covered this too and the thread is being trolled by Microsoft Florian, who spreads disinformation as usual (daemonising Red Hat and just about anything that resembles competition to Microsoft). For those who don’t know yet, Microsoft Florian works almost exclusively with Microsoft software. He only pretends to be a “FOSS” guy. He also lobbies in favour of software patents, not against them. It’s like with ACT, where the lobbyist pretends to represent the very opposite side which he or she lobbies for. It’s a common and highly unethical lobbying technique in the United States. It’s so common because it’s very effective (something along the lines of the “I like Linux, but…” troll). For those who do not know, Microsoft Florian’s mission seems to be ‘injecting’ the Microsoft line into GNU/Linux-oriented Web sites (he blocks feedback on his own ridiculous posts). Right now he is spinning it just like Microsoft Nick, simply because there is common ground on the issue of invalidating bad patents [1, 2, 3], not the stance against software patents. Microsoft spinners would love to mix the issues and fool those who are gullible or do not verify the facts. The Linux Foundation and Microsoft (and at times even the SFLC/FSF) agreed on some issues and worked together when it came to software liability for example. This does not mean that Microsoft is a friend of the Linux Foundation. To Microsoft it’s just a selfish deed, intended to save the Office cash cow from i4i (c/f i4i vs Microsoft).

One more thing to be said about Microsoft Florian (there are more details in our IRC logs) is that he attempts to be omnipresent by allegedly pasting the same comments in many different GNU/Linux-oriented sites and then modifying them slightly. That counts as spamming, just like mass-mailing journalists with slight personalisation is a form of spamming. Microsoft Florian does both. And all this coming from the same lobbyist who called FSF “spammers” for merely asking supporters to write their own letters in support of abolishing software patents? People are entitled to write to their own government or patent office? What a hypocrite. As gnufreex put it in IRC, “Mueller is attacking Red Hat for comoditising, and at same time, he defends TH’s [TurboHercules'] right to commoditise.” Microsoft Florian just repeats his lies over and over again in many places (with different audiences).

“Truth is, if Oracle’s acquisition failed, Sun would be sold to pieces. James Gosling implicitly admitted that the other day. Some pieces would go to trolls. So Moglen is right.”
      –gnufreexFor those who wonder where repeated messages are allegedly posted (and even double-posted in at least one case), the list includes Ars Technica, IT world (IDG), Computer World (IDG), LWN, Slashdot, and various blogs (he was banned from Groklaw). In Twitter, Microsoft Florian is promoting Mono, Microsoft repositories, and he is chatting with the Microsoft crowd, conspiring to smear all the groups and people who support software freedom. Microsoft MVP de Icaza even helps him smear some of those groups and sites. Perfect couple, eh?

“Florian’s points are all pretty weak,” explained to us a reader who brought some of these allegations (gnufreex). “But enough to fool the ignorant. So it is dangerous. Best bet is to elegantly refute his points. For example, his Moglen smears goes like this: “Moglen supported Oracle’s acquisition, so he is a sellout. Moglen also said that Oracle better home from Sun patents that Microsoft, and Microsoft never made bid for Sun. So Moglen is fear-mongering people against Microsoft/trying to make ‘em believe in bogeyman called Microsoft.

“Truth is, if Oracle’s acquisition failed, Sun would be sold to pieces. James Gosling implicitly admitted that the other day. Some pieces would go to trolls. So Moglen is right. Oracle is better than the alternative.”

Anyway, moving on a little, journalism on the subject of patents appears to be poor. TechDirt has just caught a good new example where a reporter could not tell the difference between copyright and software patents and thus misreported:

Michael Scott pointed us to a story from the Mass High Tech Business News claiming that Adobe had been hit with a copyright infringement lawsuit by EveryScape. That caught my eye because it’s pretty rare for there to be copyright infringement claims between software companies, since there needs to be actual copying of the code in question (in most cases), and that’s pretty rare. And, reading the article, it didn’t sound like anyone was actually alleging copying of code. The more I read, the more I suspected that the reporter just got the story totally wrong, and that this had to be a patent infringement case, rather than a copyright one.

And, indeed, that’s what it appears to be. The company EveryScape, appears to have two patents (7,327,374 and 7,593,022) on the technology being discussed here. I get that not everyone recognizes the differences between copyrights, patents and trademarks, but honestly, if you’re passing yourself off as a high tech publication, it seems like you should be able to get the basics down.

Here is one letter which has just been sent to the USPTO to protest against software patents:

I am a US citizen and software engineer. I am a named inventor on at least three patents (numbers 7,346,839, 7,409,383, and 7,783,639) and am named as an inventor for numerous pending patent applications. I am employed by Google, Inc.; this letter represents my personal opinion and not necessarily that of my employer.

Software patents are a significant threat to innovation in the software industry and, by extension, all of America’s technology-related businesses. While I understand the theoretical case that software patents can foster innovation – by encouraging investment and advancing the state of the art through disclosure – I have not seen this to be the case in any way in the software industry.

Software patents are not wanted even by American software engineers, but can they outnumber the patent lawyers and the lobbyists of software monopolists? It usually boils down to bureaucracy and greed, not science.

“The FT on the push for an EU patent,” says James Love regarding another new article whose first couple of paragraphs (needs subscriptions to read the rest) say nothing about the long-term impact on patentability of software. They make the Community patent (there are variations to this name) sound so attractive and sane.

A political push to create a single European Union-wide patent will get under way on Wednesday evening as EU industry ministers gather for an informal meeting in Brussels.

They will be urged to back a plan for a single patent that could apply across the 27-nation bloc and would be granted in one of three official languages – French, German or English.

Also on the subject of patents, gene patents [1, 2] suffer another well-deserved blow:

Several months ago we reported that a group of Australian plaintiffs had initiated litigation challenging the validity of Myriad’s Australian BRCA patents. Much like its U.S. counterpart, the Australian lawsuit represents a frontal attack on the patentability of genes.

Here in the U.S., the gene patent litigation shows no signs of reaching a swift resolution. Over the summer, Myriad appealed March’s widely-discussed district court ruling invalidating several of its key BRCA patents and claims, and the current appeal is unlikely to be the last, regardless of the outcome. In Australia, however, Myriad appears to be taking a different tack: offering to surrender its BRCA patent.

Recall the recent actions of Richard Stallman in Australia [1, 2]. Power to him.

Oddly enough, there is this new article with a sentence that bothered us slightly:

The number of U.S. software patents held by women has increased 45-fold since 1985; three times the national average.

Patents are not a measure of success and people need not measure innovation by the amount of papers accompanying some lines of code. Lawyers have an entirely different perspective and patent lawyers include the “innovation” meme alive as means of propaganda. Crosbie Fitch wrote to me and said: “People correlate patents as having caused innovation, not vice versa, inexorable progress attracting monopoly as a parasite. Indoctrination has it patents are modest reward for innovation, NOT that monopoly is excused by enumerating the obvious.” █

Summary: The FSF-endorsed, community-run office suite gains momentum and there are reasons to believe that it can make Oracle relinquish control at some stage

A COUPLE of days ago we helped introduce LibreOffice, which contrary to what some Mono/Novell trolls are saying, is not a rebranded Go-OO. The idea is similar in the sense that copyright assignment gets changed, but here there are a lot of vendors involved and the steering committee is diverse.

A lot has changed since Novell first tried to fork OpenOffice.org and take control away from its rightful owner. Besides, a lot has changed in the stewardship because Sun was a trustworthy steward whereas Oracle disregards freedom. Its CEO recently sent E-mail to a journalist calling him a scumbag. That’s not the type of person a community can look up to.

“Libre” appears to be a focus of the new office suite, whereas Go-OO added some Microsoft elements like Mono bindings and OOXML. Responding to the worries that there is too much overlap between what was once known as Go-OO and LibreOffice, Charles-H. Schultz clarifies as follows:

I had a chance to ask Charles-H. Schultz, on the steering committee of The Document Foundation some questions I had swirling in my mind after their announcement today of LibreOffice, and he was kind enough to take time on a really busy day to answer.

I wanted to know about Mono and OOXML and all the things you are wondering about too. I had become quite worried about OpenOffice.org and Go-OO, and naturally that was on my mind, given who is involved in LibreOffice. The answers are reassuring. The Document Foundation is serious about avoiding non-free elements, and they are on the same page about that. I guess that’s how they got Richard Stallman to bless the project, now that I think of it, along with so many others. And I wanted to ask him how we all can help out.

[...]

Question 2: What about Mono? What about OOXML?

Schultz: Well, that’s quite easy. Mono was never really inside OOo or Go-OO to start with. What was inside Go-OO was the possibility of Mono integration, and even that sort of exists inside the “vanilla OOo”. So we made sure that didn’t add to this.

As for OOXML, well, we didn’t take the Go-OO approach and did not include the patches developed with the “aid” of Microsoft. All in all, LibreOffice is clean, very clean, and we look forward stay that way. But enough talking on OOXML, a standard that does not exist. Let’s rather focus on ODF, an existing open standard we support and promote.

We discussed this in IRC last night. I said that I had gone to the IRC channel of LibreOffice only to find that at least half of the operators are Novell staff. “Meeks has been pushing for this for a long time,” wrote Saul, “and it seems like he found a way to get his way and fork it.” Well, Novell seems like it has just weeks/months left to exist (in its current form) and as for Meeks, “he might probably be ready to go elsewhere,” told us a source. There is a slight worry that if VMB_ware got hold of LibreOffice, then it would be like Microsoft executives controlling part of Microsoft’s opposition, like they do with Zimbra. But anyway, this is too speculative and even far fetched at this stage.

One of the forces behind LibreOffice, Leif Lodahl, is thrilled to see the good reception the project has gotten:

I saw discussions on freenode about how to compile localized version. I saw Twitter run more than 800 tweets per hour and I have heard about Catalan hackers talk with Spanish journalists. The last thing – I have heard – doasn’t happen every day.

Zonker wrote about it and so did Matt Asay who says that “LibreOffice [is] An Idea Whose Time Has Come (and Gone)”. Well, coming from the person who almost replaced that free/libre office suite with Fog Computing (Google) at Canonical, this is not too shocking, but regarding Apple and Oracle, Matt Asay has just posted the following decent article:

• Apple and Oracle Must Let Developers Have Their Say

  It’s getting harder to be a monopoly these days. Microsoft owned the desktop for decades, milking its Windows platforms every step of the way. Apple, on the other hand, hadn’t even managed four years of iOS dominance before Google’s Android staked a serious claim to the mobile market.

  This isn’t because Microsoft is somehow smarter than Apple, but rather because the underlying dynamics of the technology industry have fundamentally changed. In brief, the technology world is increasingly embracing “write” communities, as Jono Bacon calls them, not simply “read” communities. Open source may have kickstarted this trend, but open APIs and open data are taking it to new heights.

One must remember that Oracle and Apple think alike in many ways and their CEOs are good friends [1, 2, 3].

Here is some nice analysis from Matthew Aslett:

• If you fork it, will they come?

  Which is not to say that LibreOffice will not be a success, but when it comes to forking, creating the fork is clearly just the start. It takes time, and a lot of effort, to generate the momentum for a fork to be truly successful. There is bound to be an initial spike in developer and user interest. Turning that into a meaningful and productive community will be the hard part.

There is a fundamental difference between OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice. It’s mostly to do with copyrights.

In quite a timely fashion, Richard Stallman warned about copyright assignment the Oracle way. From the FSF’s Web site:

Companies that develop free software and release it under the GNU GPL sometimes distribute some copies of the code in other ways. If they distribute the exact same code under a different license to certain users that pay for this, typically permitting including the code in proprietary programs, we call it “selling exceptions”. If they distribute some version of the code solely in a proprietary manner, we call that releasing a purely proprietary version of the program.

LibreOffice has a lot to offer to GNU/Linux users and with over 20% market share in some countries, as well as with major deployments all around the world, LibreOffice might soon be used by hundreds of millions of people, especially if Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols (SJVN) is right and Oracle is about the drop the ball on OpenOffice.org (which seems possible, unless it decides to sue instead):

What I mean by a fork, by the by, is an actual split in the code. For example, Ubuntu can be seen as a fork of Debian. No one doubts that Ubuntu is based on Debian Linux, but it’s also clearly a Linux distribution in its own right. Simply changing out some trademarks and product names, which, for example, is what Oracle did with Red Hat Enterprise Linux when it created Oracle Linux, isn’t the same thing. At this early point, that’s all the Document Foundation has done with OpenOffice.

My expectation is that Oracle will quietly let OpenOffice gather dust, and LibreOffice will become the new open-source office suite of choice. What do you think?

Development on LibreOffice is already active and although it’s not so different from OpenOffice.org (SJVN says it’s not a fork yet, but we disagree), it is quite unique. So give LibreOffice a go and download the latest build. It’s better to rely on GNU/Linux users and vendors than it is to rely on Oracle. Besides, even the FSF endorses LibreOffice. █

Summary: Rumours and speculations that Oracle might prepare to buy ARM Holdings may arouse the suspicion that Android is Ellison’s target

OIN has added Mozilla as a licensee and pro-GNU/Linux bloggers keep talking about it. One person remarked:

I hope OIN is good for Mozilla, but what about Oracle? #swpats

The troubling thing is that despite Oracle and Google both being inside the OIN shield zone, Oracle decided to sue Google using software patents [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] and interestingly enough, as Groklaw points out, they are assigned the same judge as in the Apple vs. Psystar case.

Google has appeared in the Oracle v. Google litigation and they have extra time to file an answer to Oracle’s complaint. Meanwhile, they’ve added some more lawyers to the team and informed the court they decline to have the case handled by a magistrate judge, so it’s been assigned to the Hon. William Alsup. What are the odds? That’s the same judge who presided over the Apple v. Psystar case.

Previously we found rumours that Apple would buy ARM (reported less than a year ago in many news outlets) and also learned that Steve Jobs’ friendship with Larry Ellison might have something to do with the legal attack on Android [1, 2, 3] (Apple is also suing Android using software patents). Right now there is news suggesting that Oracle — not Apple — might buy ARM Holdings, which recently signed a deal with Microsoft.

ARM Holdings Plc, the U.K. designer of chips that power Apple Inc.’s iPhone, rose the most in two weeks in London trading after Oracle Corp. Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison said his company may buy a chipmaker.

ARM rose as much as 6.8 percent to 417.5 pence, and traded up 6 percent to 414.4 pence as of 12:19 p.m., valuing the company at about 5.47 billion pounds ($8.6 billion).

“We primarily think this is about Ellison,” said Lee Simpson, an analyst at Jefferies Intl Ltd. in London, adding that the “Oracle speculation is unwarranted” and that the company would more likely target an enterprise-focused chipmaker such as Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

Has Oracle not gotten enough from Sun’s SPARC? Back when it was rumoured that Apple would buy ARM people said that it can be seen as an attack on Android. Could the strong friendship between Ellison and Jobs play a role here? As pointed out some hours ago, collusion of this kind if a lot more common than people dare to imagine. █

Summary: Some new examples and a new discussion about Microsoft and Apple “innovations” that were not

MICROSOFT MAY HAVE a patent (or more) on “Start menus”/”task bars”, but Microsoft never came up with these ideas which are merely inspirations and aggregations of existing ideas (well, maybe Clippy was Microsoft’s idea, but it wasn't that good). Just about anything in Windows’ graphical user interface is in some way ‘borrowed’ from another operating system, but that’s not the picture people are getting if they grow up only seeing Windows around them and one day come across something different which looks “just like Windows” (rather than the other way around). It’s worth mentioning right now because this OpenSUSE site is currently contributing to the false perception that Microsoft was the first.

“Just about anything in Windows’ graphical user interface is in some way ‘borrowed’ from another operating system…”“Start me up” said an old motto/song, but Microsoft did not start up a so-called ‘start menu’. It merely repackaged what already existed. The same goes for Apple’s ‘dock’; many people love to call/label everything resembling it a copy/clone of Apple rather that acknowledge that Apple was merely copying some ideas which already existed and were implemented, e.g. by Sun for reflections. That’s just why the patent system has become so tactless and out of touch.

Over at Planet Fedora we found this new rant about what software patents do to computer scientists.

There is a whole mess in here with patents, and this is related to why patents may be unethical for science. In a machine patent, the science isn’t necessarily being patented; it’s the results of the science that is. Any science that leads up to the machine patent should be open and visible for reproducing and verifying.

But a software patent is a slippery thing. The patent may cover the science as well as the product of the science, in that both can be in the code. There is an ethical dilemma for any scientist when they patent the science. They are putting a price tag and control on reproducing and verifying the science. Without verification, the science is invalid.

In case you are wondering if this is just semantics and word choices, it is. Perhaps all of the people who call themselves computer scientists, shouldn’t? I presume the word has meaning for them, as it does for the rest of us, and I expect them to act accordingly.

Being a scientist has a specific meaning that spans a long part of written history. How long? Several hundred to several thousand years, depending on what you are measuring. It is clear that the scientific method has been followed since at least the Middle Ages. It predates copyright and patent law by at least several centuries, if not nearly a full millenium.

Disregard and disdain towards the patent system seems to be increasing. It gets worse even from within, based on Alex Stack who complains about lack of transparency:

USPTO Data: CIPO [Canadian Intellectual Property Office]?

Those of you who know me well know that in the past I have harped on patent office statistics like pendency and backlogs. I think they are important – central, critical even – to understanding how patent law functions in a country.

As Wayne says in the comments (there is only one): “Probably in the 22nd century. And it will probably be the 23rd century before it works properly.”

Here again is an example of embargoes/sanctions being used as a weapon thanks to the USPTO:

The latest skirmish in a giant patent fight over flash memory chips in MP3 players, cell phones, digital cameras and tablet computers got a green light to proceed from the International Trade Commission.

The ITC is one of the worst possible things that can happen to innovation [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. It helps demonstrate that the USPTO is imperialistic in the sense that it goes overseas to impose and enforce its controversial views. █

Summary: Words of value from someone who was relatively close to regulators and a word about SCO against Linux

Simon Phipps, formerly an executive of Sun Microsystems, has this to say about the seemingly Microsoft-funded legal attacks on Google [1, 2, 3, 4]:

The conspiracy theories Pamela espouses are well-based. At the start of last year as I was working on other technology policy issues with colleagues in Brussels, there were constant stories of indirectly-but-identifiably Microsoft-sponsored lobbyists and lawyers forming groups to initiate a variety of cases against Google over there, on the premise that “anti-trust has changed us and now Google are the new monopoly”. I heard the same from colleagues in DC too. So, as Pamela says: “Is this perhaps more abuse of the legal and administrative systems for anticompetitive purposes? If so, could somebody investigate *that*?”

Microsoft has already admitted being behind legal complaints against Google in Europe.

In other news from Groklaw, the Microsoft-funded lawsuit against Linux still refuses to die.

A new trial. Of course. There can never be too many trials for SCO, as it would like to actually win one and would prefer to keep trying until it does so. Apparently money is no object to a company that is in bankruptcy, has paid none of its creditors, and is now trying to sell off essentially all its assets but the litigation on which it long ago set all its hopes and dreams. And you can’t say it’s impossible to get an empathetic hearing from this court of appeals. It bent over backwards for SCO last time, granting it this 2nd trial that SCO then lost. So who knows? My grandchildren may someday be writing about the next SCO v. Novell retrial, as this crazed monomania seems to have no closing chapter.

Where/who does SCO continue to get money from? █

“…Microsoft wished to promote SCO and its pending lawsuit against IBM and the Linux operating system. But Microsoft did not want to be seen as attacking IBM or Linux.”

–Larry Goldfarb, BayStar, key investor in SCO approached by Microsoft

Summary: Gizmodo sells out to Microsoft’s patent troll; Oracle pays NetApp for alleged software patents relating to the Open Source (ish) ZFS

JUST OVER A WEEK ago, someone in our IRC channels mentioned Gizmodo selling out to Intellectual Ventures, the world’s largest patent troll which is groomed by Bill Gates, Microsoft, and Apple (all are founding and/or funding sources). We were going to post a rebuttal to Gizmodo, but decided it would be better to just never give attention to that puff piece. TechDirt has just caught up with this embarrassment at Gizmodo and responded by blaming “PR”.

A bunch of folks have been sending over this somewhat ridiculous love letter to Intellectual Ventures written up at Gizmodo (a site that usually is a lot more on the ball than what this post shows), which basically takes all of IV and Nathan Myhrvold’s favorite talking points (many of which make little sense) and simply parrots them back, acting as if the company is some sort of Willy Wonka chocolate factory of invention — but leaving out the hundreds of millions of dollars companies pay up as a sort of “don’t sue us tax,” and the incredibly sketchy nature of the over 1,000 shell companies set up by the firm and the entirely secret nature of many of its business dealings. Instead, the guy at Gizmodo is wowed by the fact that the company has computer hackers trying to cure cancer.

[...]

Why would that be mistaken? The article doesn’t say. Instead, the writer just seems wowed by the fact that IV has lots of old scientific equipment. What a shame. It would be nice if someone actually asked Myhrvold and his crew some actual tough questions, rather than fawning over the fact he once dug up dinosaur bones.

Nathan Myhrvold’s foolish patents are currently being promoted by Gates, for profit. It’s a mostly untold story, but one which we covered several times before. The above is yet another story of success in exploiting the media — convincing it to tell fairy tales, thanks to an army of PR agencies just like Gates’. Gizmodo should hang its head in shame for playing along with it. Just over a month ago Groklaw alleged that Gizmodo was getting close to Microsoft because it was riling people up against Apple and praised Microsoft projects at the same time.

Intellectual Ventures not only has a lot of PR with which to deceive the press; it also spends a lot of money lobbying governments, pushing for the obvious policies (allowing patent trolls, software patents, and so forth). Recently we showed how New Zealand’s patent law got subverted by foreign lobbyists, only for changes to eventually be reversed in some sense, as also explained in this new legal analysis.

Moving on to something a little different, Phandroid has this new article which characterises Palm as a gold mine of software patents, which is probably true.

After we figured HP was just about done with Android after their acquisition of Palm (which gave them full access to webOS and tons of neat software patents), rumors began swirling that those earlier suspicions were a tad bit preemptive and that HP still had plans to bring out an Android tablet.

It wasn’t long ago that Android came under a lawsuit from Oracle, not just from Apple (whose CEO is a close friend of Oracle’s CEO). Apple itself threatened Palm using patents and it is said to have withdrawn from ZFS because as we explained last year, patents killed ZFS to an extent. NetApp's aggression was a major factor and not much has changed because NetApp is now harassing Coraid for its use of ZFS. Watch how Oracle sells ZFS down the river, unlike Sun (paying ZFS so very submissively). That’s just another new example of software patents endorsement at Oracle:

• NetApp, Oracle Drop Suits
• NetApp, Oracle Drop Suits
• NetApp Rises: Settles Sun Suit With Oracle
• Oracle and NetApp dismiss ZFS lawsuits
• NetApp, Oracle dismiss patent suit
• NetApp, Oracle End ZFS Litigation
• NetApp and Oracle Agree to Dismiss Lawsuits
• Oracle and NetApp settle patent dispute
• NetApp, Oracle Agreed To Dismiss Patent Lawsuits Started In 2007 (ORCL,NTAP)
• Oracle and NetApp drop Sun Microsystems lawsuits
• NetApp and Oracle lift ZFS patent cloud
• NetApp, Oracle Agree To End Patent Litigation – Update
• Oracle, NetApp agree to settle patent litigation
• Updates, advisories and surprises
• NetApp, Oracle Agree To End Patent Litigation – Update

IDG says: “Storage vendor NetApp said Thursday it has reached an agreement with Oracle to dismiss patent litigation stemming from a 2007 suit NetApp filed against Sun Microsystems, which.Oracle acquired earlier this year. Terms were not disclosed.” NetApp’s founder speaks at Oracle OpenWorld 2010, so it seems like an amicable resolution.

“[N]ot much to celebrate in this settlement,” said to us FurnaceBoy, a Solaris/ZFS expert. Legitimising software patents is possibly what Oracle does here, so the FSF’s denouncement of Oracle for its unnecessary patent aggression [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] comes at a fairly good time. █

Summary: In order to prevent software patents which are owned by Red Hat from falling into the wrong hands (e.g. in an acquisition like Oracle’s), something should be done to diffuse them

Red Hat’s patents are a subject we previously wrote about in posts such as:

• Novell, Red Hat, and Software Patents: Strike II
• Red Hat Fights Fire with Fire
• Patents Roundup: Red Hat, Former USPTO Commissioner on Patent Demise, and WIPO Notes
• Patents Roundup: Red Hat Again; EPO and USPTO Debated
• The Other Side of Red Hat: Pieter Hintjens on AMQP and Patents
• How Red Hat Dodged a Novell-Like Microsoft Deal Despite Lobbying for Software Patents
• Red Hat, Microsoft, EU Lobbyists, and Software Patents
• A Glimpse Back at Red Hat’s and Novell’s Stance on Software Patents in 2005
• Red Hat and Software Patents (Video)
• Patents Roundup: Identifying Real Patent Foes and Conflicts of Interests

Over a week after those scary SAP rumours we checked to see if Red Hat has done something to ensure that its patents will self-explode if they reach the wrong hands (like Oracle getting Sun’s Java patents). “I discussed that with @webmaven a few weeks ago,” Richard Fontana (Red Hat) told me today. It does not seem like progress has been made since then. Red Hat really needs to ensure that its portfolio does not get used against the Free software community in the same sense that Sun’s portfolio is being misused right now [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13].

“Red Hat really needs to ensure that its portfolio does not get used against the Free software community in the same sense that Sun’s portfolio is being misused right now.”Does Red Hat really need patents? I had a discussion about it with Red Hat earlier today and I was left overwhelmingly unconvinced. Hugo Roy, a software freedom activist whom we mentioned in the previous post, writes that “In 1985, someone filed a patent for a brilliant invention: the “Tool””

“I haven’t looked at the patent itself,” he told me, “so I don’t know if we can really say that. But sure, the title is not credible”

Patents have become so controversial that major newspapers occasionally call for an overhaul and maybe even abolition. We saw some examples last week.

Here is a new CERN article from the New Scientist. It helps show patents versus science, not for science:

You might imagine that vast patent royalties flow into the organisation that invented the touchscreen and the World Wide Web. But the atom-smashing outfit CERN, cradle of both these technologies, doesn’t make a bean from either.

The particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, has been reluctant to patent the inventions it creates in pursuit of exotic subatomic entities. But it hopes that will soon change: last week, it struck a deal with the United Nations’ World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to ensure that it profits better from its engineers’ innovations in fields like imaging, computing, particle detection and superconducting magnets, says international relations adviser Maurizio Bona.

If Red Hat still sidles with science and not with patents (or the USPTO which legitimises software patents), then it will take care of those potentially-destructive weapons it has in its hands/arsenal. It’s too late to do this if/when a takeover is imminent. Red Hat has just announced the hiring of a lobbyist (“Mark Bohannon to Lead Red Hat Governmental Affairs and Public Policy” as pasted here) and together with the practice of software patents, Red Hat is at risk of being called a hypocrite; it doesn’t need to be.

Red Hat is not the only GNU/Linux proponent which claims to be collecting “defensive” software patents. Red Hat is unique though. IBM and Google, for example, are somewhat different in this case because they are not in a position where they can practically be sold along with their patents (not any time soon). █

Summary: Google’s greed for patents may harm its Java/Dalvik/Linux cause and questions ought to be asked about unwise hires that seemingly subverted Google’s policy

GOOGLE was once a fine company created by software developers/scientists, but about 3 years ago we showed a video where Google hires are seen who are lawyers that loves software patents and insist on having them. This is sad. We have already posted a little memo to Google regarding software patents, but unless masses of people do something similar, Google (the ‘God’ of the Internet) will continue to ignore such pleas.

Oracle’s patent attack on Google/Dalvik [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12] ought to have taught Google that the world would be a better place if it was without software patents. Why can Google not do more to end software patents? At the moment, Google reinforces patents using its USPTO search facility with improved features which are added over time. There are even patents on providing access to patents and there is a patent on patent trolling, too. Are tools like this one infringing on Google’s patents? Are patent trolls infringing on IBM’s patent? “Google Patents Indexing, Retrieval of Blogs,” says this item of news.

This week, Google Inc. was assigned a patent by the United States Patent and Trademark Office USPTO for the invention of a system and method for indexing and retrieval of blogs.

You can find details of this new patent 7765209 in IP.com’s Intellectual Property Library, which includes detailed information for this patent, first applied for in 2005 and granted in 2010 for what appears to be the core patent for Google’s system and method of indexing blogs, which are now included in the results of a Google search.

Has Google lost its head? There are other new patents from Google. Why are patent lawyers running this company now? And how can Google appeal for sympathy when it falls under patent attacks (the same goes for net neutrality)? To Google’s credit, so far it has used patents only defensively, but these policies don’t last forever. Microsoft and Apple are both patent predators and Sun’s patents, for example, became offensive when put in the hands of another company. “Clearly, Oracle is a strong believer in software patents. And if they can use patents as a lever for revenue generation, they will,” said RedMonk analyst Michael Cote to IDG. With Microsoft as a major barrier and Oracle as a true obstacle, Google’s smarter strategy ahead would be elimination of software patents. Here is a new article of interest:

If that weren’t about to become a sticky political wicket for the company, it also faces growing antitrust, privacy and patent scrutiny, fanned by a growing phalanx of Beltway opponents, the latest being Larry Ellison and Oracle. “There’s a set of people who are intrinsic oppositionists to everything Google does,” Mr. Schmidt acknowledges resignedly. “The first opponent will be Microsoft.”

Mr. Schmidt is familiar with the game—as chief technology officer of Sun Microsystems in the 1990s, he was a chief fomenter of the antitrust assault on Bill Gates & Co. Now that the tables are turned, he says, Google will persevere and prevail by doing what he says Microsoft failed to do—make sure its every move is “good for consumers” and “fair” to competitors.

We have a lot of the documents from this trial in Comes vs Microsoft. We also know that Microsoft threatened Sun with software patents. Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer did it personally like Joe Pesci and Al Pacino playing mafia. █

Summary: Gosling may have helped Sun gain bogus patents (violation of USPTO rules), the USPTO delegitimises itself with poor adherence to quality, and Acacia receives more money with which to further delegitimise the USPTO

THE GOOD thing about the Oracle lawsuit (which is generally very bad [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12]) is that it motivates more people to end software patents right now.

The debate about software patents is hot again. Rui Seabra passes the message that “Merely asking #Oracle: “play nice” isn’t enough. We should demand abolition of their #swpats [software patents]”

Red Hat’s Richard Fontana says: “incidentally, whatever one thinks of #swpats, #disturbing if #Gosling knowingly signed off on bogus patent; see http://ur1.ca/16ox4 [§ 1.56 Duty to disclose information material to patentability. - Appendix R Patent Rules]”

Fontana is referring to joke patents [1, 2, 3], which continue to cause great controversy and stir up important debate.

Mike Masnick shows that “Patent Office [is] Back To Approving Pretty Much Anything”:

Of course, the unfortunate reality is that this won’t actually solve the backlog problem at all. You would think, with all the engineering/operations brains at the Patent Office, that they would understand that this will only make the backlog worse. Approving junk patents only makes it more lucrative to file ever more ridiculous patent applications, which only increases the backlog. In rushing through more patents, it only encourages a bigger and bigger backlog. In treating the symptoms, rather than the actual disease, we’re making the disease much, much worse.

Separately, Masnick shows that the court system (not the USPTO) rejects a controversial patent. The courtroom — unlike the USPTO — does not have special incentive in approving more and more patents.

Last fall we wrote about how a company named Ultramercial had sued Hulu, YouTube and WildTangent over patent 7,346,545 for requiring people to watch an ad before being able to access content. It resulted in an interesting discussion in our comments, where some patent system defenders insisted that the patent was perfectly legit. Unfortunately, the court disagrees with those folks. It has ruled that the patent is not valid (the ruling covers Hulu and WildTangent — YouTube was dismissed from the case). Perhaps most interesting is the fact that the court chose to use the “machine or transformation test” for judging the patent. While some have read the Bilski ruling to “reject” the “machine or transformation” test, that’s not quite true.

Simon Phipps responds to the Oracle lawsuit also by raising questions about OIN:

Software patents are broken and the only possible justification for having them is self-defence (which is itself a risky accumulation of armaments). Perhaps OIN and the Linux Foundation need to make membership conditional on members taking no first action against each other with software patents?

We criticised the OIN’s vulnerabilities long before other people did, even back in 2008. Additionally, we seemed to be among the first to suggest that Apple could have a role in Oracle’s action (we brought up the possibility hours after the announcement). We now find more articles noting the Jobs-Ellison connection and Apple booster Daniel Eran Dilger is adding to the FUD. We link just to comments on his article, not from his Apple choir, so for anyone who still thinks that Apple and its followers are not harmful to Linux, pay careful attention to this. It’s part of a pattern from this close friend of Apple. People like Denial should do more to tell their emperors at Apple to stop the patent greed, including the investment in the world’s biggest patent troll. When Apple threatened Palm with patents, Daniel of course defended Apple.

Speaking of the world’s biggest patent troll, Acacia too has just received a quarter of a billion dollars of investment money (in patent trolling). [hat tip: FFII]

Acacia Research Corp. in Newport Beach has established a fund to buy, license and enforce patents and other intellectual property.

The Acacia Intellectual Property Fund LP has received an initial $27 million from an unnamed institutional investment group. An Acacia subsidiary will be the fund’s general partner.

[...]

Acacia recently announced two separate settlements with IBM for undisclosed terms to license Acacia-owned patents for monitoring computer applications. One lawsuit was pending in federal court in Texas and the other in Nebraska.

Microsoft recently paid Acacia, which sued Linux (through Red Hat and Novell). █

Summary: Good new find from SJVN and further explanation about comedy regarding software patents at Sun Microsystems

“IF an open source product gets good enough, we’ll simply take it,” said Oracle's CEO on one occasion. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols (SJVN) has found another memorable quote that he mentions in relation to this article:

So why would Oracle, a Linux-supporter in its own right, introduce the evil of software patents into open-source programming? My answer: Because Larry Ellison, Oracle’s CEO, thinks the company can profit from it.

You see there are two ways of looking at open source, as Eben Moglen, founder of the SFLC (Software Freedom Law Center), explained recently at LinuxCon. Moglen said, “The patent crisis is not going to go away. We’re now in a situation — after the Bilski decision — where clarity on the patent situation is not coming anytime soon.” And, “The patent system is built for secrecy and for trouble-making — it’s not a pro-innovation system.”

Because of this, Oracle decided to make hay while they could with its aging Sun Java patents. But, why did they choose this way? Well, Moglen answered that question as well even before anyone knew that Oracle was going to sue anyone.

Meanwhile we continue to gather more stories about the SUN/Java patents being part of a joke [1, 2]. Here is a new cartoon about those patent jokes and also a new article.

Sun engineers once ran an unofficial competition to see who could get the “goofiest” invention past the US patent office, according to former Sun man and Java founder James Gosling.

In suing Google over its use of Java on Android, Oracle is waving seven Sun patents, and one of them carries Gosling’s name. In a blog post sparked by the suit, Gosling says Sun didn’t pay patents much heed until the company was successfully sued by IBM for infringing on its so-called RISC patent. Then Sun went on a “patent binge”, and yes, this included some less-than-serious filings.

In later posts we are going to show that the Oracle case is technically weak [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13]. █

Summary: By spilling coffee Oracle scares Solaris users, upsets the GNU/Linux community, and helps show what a joke (literally) software patents are

THE ORACLE lawsuit is clearly bad news [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12], but let’s find some positive things that can happen as a result of this ludicrously suicidal action.

Oracle is in many ways shooting itself in the foot. First of all, Oracle is harming Java — not helping it — by intimidating existing Java users (while claiming to fight for Java’s integrity). Secondly, Oracle pisses off many of the world’s developers, namely Free software developers (article from Katherine Noyes is an accumulation and Dana Blankenhorn takes it too far). Thirdly, by pissing off Java users and developers, in addition to betraying OpenSolaris, Oracle may only be pushing Solaris users right into GNU/Linux. To give a potential new example:

My opinion on OpenSolaris, Oracle and all open source Sun software

[...]

I will admit that this is most likely where I will end my use of Solaris, unless Oracle surprises the world and continues to maintain the type of quality that Sun brought to the operating system.

Regarding the claim about Java, this is where experts agree. Oracle is shooting its own foot, having bought a company whose stock symbol is JAVA (for no less than billions of dollars).

Oracle is suing Google over the use of Java in Android and that may change everything about Java and open-source development.

That’s one heck of a claim. Unfortunately, the experts agree.

Earlier today we wrote about the revelation that patents were somewhat of a joke inside Sun and elsewhere. It’s a hot news item at the moment. TechDirt writes:

Why The Oracle Java Patents Were Literally A Joke Played By Sun Engineers

[...]

While that patent that Gosling names isn’t included in this particular lawsuit, but others have noticed that one of the patents (RE38104) is a Gosling patent.

Of course, it’s easy to point out that the folks named on the patents are claiming themselves that the patents were part of a joke to see how bad the patent office is. But, you can take it to another level altogether, and have folks who actually know quite a bit about the technology go through the patents one by one and explain why each of them is a total joke.

This is yet another in an exceptionally long line of examples of what a complete mess our patent system has become. I’m curious if the patent system supporters out there can come up with some sort of way to defend the patent system in this particular situation.

Jan Wildeboer has this to say:

Oracle’s next target? Power switches

[...]

Yes. Remote power switches. James Goslin filed for a patent on remote power switches. And he/SUN got it. What originally was a joke, as the “inventor” explains here:

There was even an unofficial competition to see who could get the goofiest patent through the system. My entry wasn’t nearly the goofiest.

is now potentially a fortune for Oracle! If the play their cards right, millions and millions of infringing power switches must be destroyed!

As Groklaw has already found out and Pogson points out, Oracle made the same mistake as SCO, lending support to Android whilst also attacking it.

It appears as though the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing at Oracle. This is not unique to Oracle. Any organization of size will have this happen. I cut my left hand with a saw held by my right hand once and I am one.

It appears that the left hand, say the bosses and their legal advisors, were figuring out what to do about Android vis a vis Java, software patents and all that. It appears that the right hand, say the geeks in charge of certifying stuff for Java, certified Berkeley DB, JE, to run on Android…. Berkeley DB is a good database for smartphones because it is small and efficient. It has less overhead than some SQL databases.

This ought to weaken Oracle’s case, at least in the eyes of outside observers. █

Summary: Leader of Sun’s open source programme is not at all positive about Oracle’s commitment to Free/libre software

THE ORACLE-GOOGLE case has gotten us increasingly distracted [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9], but it’s an important issue. Simon Phipps‘ initial reaction was:

Hmm. Aren’t these both Linux Foundation members and OIN licensees? Fighting over open source technology in a Linux distro? Presumably this also indicates Oracle’s decision on Apache’s request for a TCK for Harmony.

Phipps was Sun’s key “Open Source” guy, so his opinion matters a great deal. He is calling for everyone to abolish software patents (again). “If you still think software patents are a spur to innovation, you’re not paying attention,” he wrote. More importantly, he goes on to show that Oracle is not serious about Free software, except as a control freak or a ‘consumer’ (exploiting without contributing much, pretty much like Apple). Oracle has grabbed MySQL and other such projects which relate to databases. In a 2006 interview Ellison made a revealing statement:

FT [Financial Times]: Is open source going to be disruptive to Oracle?

LE [Larry Ellison]: No. If an open source product gets good enough, we’ll simply take it. Take [the web server software] Apache: once Apache got better than our own web server, we threw it away and took Apache. So the great thing about open source is nobody owns it – a company like Oracle is free to take it for nothing, include it in our products and charge for support, and that’s what we’ll do. So it is not disruptive at all – you have to find places to add value. Once open source gets good enough, competing with it would be insane. Keep in mind it’s not that good in most places yet. We’re a big supporter of Linux. At some point we may embed Linux in all of our products and provide support.

Phipps also links to Carlo Daffara’s second insightful post about the subject:

I believe that the first one is the most probable one; Larry Ellison should know that cornering Google would not be sufficient to make them capitulate – they have too much to lose. But this will not be sufficient to create an opportunity for Oracle; I believe that the lawsuit will actually bring nothing to Oracle, and lots of advantages to Google. But only time will tell; the only thing that I can predict for sure right now is that Solaris will quickly fade from sight (as it will be unable to grow at the same rate of Linux) exactly like AIX and HP-UX: a mature and backroom tech, but nothing that you can base a growth strategy upon.

The FSF-backed swpat.org is already stepping in and Google promises to fight Oracle to defend Android/Dalvik. █

Summary: An accumulation of news about Oracle’s software patents offence

SOFTWARE PATENTS are a good thing for those who are already dominant in one area of computing or those who make a living suing/defending companies.

Vivek Wadhwa, a co-author of software patents who recently protested against software patents [1, 2], claims that startups — not mega-corporations which love patents for obvious reasons — should be considered a priority. Oracle and Microsoft too get a mention. From the opening paragraph:

The big companies’ executives argued that abolishing patents would hurt their ability to innovate and thus hamper the nation’s economic growth. (They believe that companies like theirs create the majority of jobs and innovations, and they claim that without patents they cannot defend their innovations.) I am not convinced that software patents give Google any advantage over Microsoft and Yahoo, or make IBM’s databases any better than Oracle’s. But I do know one thing for sure: it isn’t the big companies that create the jobs or the revolutionary technology innovations: it is startups. So if we need to pick sides, I vote for the startups.

This leads us to the main story (still) in the technology press, namely the Oracle lawsuit [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]. Here is another cartoon about it; there’s nothing funny about the lawsuit. “In this case,” Asay told me, “it’s not what I’d like (I hate biz via lawyers), but I do think it’s Oracle’s purpose”

I have attempted to defend Asay’s position on this, but others disagree with me. Our participant FurnaceBoy was exceptionally dissatisfied with Matt Asay’s take on it, calling him rude names in the process. “This smells,” he wrote, “as expected from Asay. This article is FUD…”

“Well, cult of Mono has already overtaken Ubuntu Forums which is biggest meeting place, so prospects are bleak.”
      –gnufreexAnother reader wrestled with the question about Google’s relationship with Canonical (a relationship Asay did not know about until quite recently when I told him about it). “[A]pparently google isn’t as important to them (or to Asay) now,” said one of our readers. “He’s a lawyer,” I explained to him, to which the response was: “that explains so much… complete cluelessness on technical terms… the crApple cultism stemming from it… lack of morals and ethics… resulting hatred of free software”

“He even recommends .NET like de Icaza,” wrote gnufreex. “Well, Canonical is pushing .net/mono,” responded to him that previous person and gnufreex wrote that “Oracle should sue Novell over Mono. It is same as Dalvik. It is incompatible with Java and competes with it. Well, cult of Mono has already overtaken Ubuntu Forums which is biggest meeting place, so prospects are bleak. That’s why I hope Oracle destroys Mono.” The full IRC logs contain the rest of this discussion.

FurnaceBoy then asked, ‘is anybody going to let Asay state unchallenged that Oracle-v-Google “might actually give Microsoft a chance in mobile, not to mention make .Net an even better alternative for Java developers, as Novell developer Miguel de Icaza postulates.”‘

“[T]his is disgusting,” said FurnaceBoy in response to sentences like “No one would casually borrow SAP’s proprietary software and expect to get away with it. In similar manner, no one should cavalierly take open-source code without inquiring into its provenance, ownership, etc.”

Asay’s opinions are his own, but as Canonical’s COO these can be seen as somewhat troubling. Shuttleworth, who understands engineering a little better due to his background, is a lot harsher on Oracle:

“This will complicate the relationships Oracle has with a very important audience, which is the broader open source community,” Shuttleworth said. “It will significantly undermine their efforts to establish many of their major products like Java, Solaris and Oracle Unbreakable Linux, and in due course, I’ll imagine that they’ll quietly wish they hadn’t taken this approach.”

“I certainly respect their right to take whatever approach they want to take with what they consider to be their property, but I cannot see any way in which this ultimately ends in a constructive outcome for them,” he added.

Compare that to Asay’s original post:

Oracle’s Java Lawsuit: Free Markets, Not Free Software

In this particular case, Google almost certainly took care to protect itself against IP infringement, which makes the lawsuit no easy slam-dunk for Oracle. But even an open-source luminary like Bruce Perens is quick to point out that Google’s replacement of Java ME’s Swing widget toolkit and AWT graphical user interface class in favor of its own GUI may have violated its license. This wasn’t a big deal when Sun was the owner because, as Gosling noted, lawsuits weren’t in Sun’s genetic DNA.

But Oracle, not Sun, now owns Java, and it has a very different genetic makeup. Hence, this lawsuit, while not a sign of Armageddon for open source, serves as a clear warning to Google and everyone else to take the same level of care when using open source as when using proprietary software.

We first learned about this post via “agentsmith”, who wrote: “What does Matt Asay want to tell us with this post http://bit.ly/drE3JD ? I’m puzzled… what’s his point? At least Glyn Moody, in a recent article, suggests to FORK everything. Mr.Asay leaves in the air.”

Pogson calls Oracle “Software-Patent Troll”:

Now We Know. Oracle is a Software-Patent Troll

Here is one person who thinks that the threat is exaggerated although Red Hat’s Jan Wildeboer disagrees with him:

Why Oracle vs Google won’t harm Android

So what will be the outcome of the case? Baseless or not, Google hasn’t really (yet) clarified its stance and has only released a rather meek statement, expressing its disappointment at Oracle for attacking the open source Java community.

There’s also talk of this lawsuit killing Android. That’s just plain rubbish. If anything, Oracle wants Android to flourish. It would just heart it more if Android uses Java under Sun’s commercial license. And that’s what this lawsuit is about. License fees.

Leave the technical details for the engineers of the companies to fight over, in court. That is if this case ever escalates to that level.

One of the negative side effects of this whole action is that other Oracle projects lose some credence or legitimacy. OpenSolaris is already being made independent:

The Hand May Be Forced

Illumos has garnered the support of some of the top minds in the industry; already the list of names of Solaris contributors and potential contributors that have already publicly committed to supporting this project is extensive. Many of the names are famous, people like Bryan Cantrill. Oracle’s actions and inaction have actually made this possible.

Brian writes about the Java situation and suggests making OpenOffice.org more independent too:

Time for an OpenOffice.org Foundation

OpenOffice.org’s problem involves some history: when Sun ran the project, non-Sun developers often complained that Sun’s insistence copyright assignment discouraged external contributions, and that Sun’s (and now Oracle’s) tight control of the project inhibits developer initiative. So third-party developers already have a problem with Oracle, as more than one developer involved in OpenOffice.org has privately indicated to me in just the past few weeks.

Now, along comes Oracle with lawsuits and lock-downs that could adversely effect existing open source projects. Even if you can make an argument that right now, the OpenOffice.org community and project is doing just fine, just exactly how long would you expect this to be the case?

If I were an OpenOffice.org contributor, especially one not employed by Oracle, I would start to be very worried about the future of the project, at least until I heard Oracle publicly state what their plans were.

Novell’s Meeks has been trying to take control of OpenOffice.org and now he writes about copyrights in Java only to be heckled by Wildeboer who quotes Meeks as saying: “try not to fall in love [with a technology], if a single company owns, and controls it.”

Wildeboer evokes thoughts about the situation with Mono.

Gosling carries on commenting about the situation (“Quite the firestorm”) while prior art is being sought/collected to weaken Oracle’s case and help Java/Android.

Surprisingly enough, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols (SJVN) has been doing a lot of scare-mongering about Java/Oracle/other, especially in Twitter. Dana Blankenhorn makes it more personal:

After pretending to kindness for many months, Larry Ellison has stepped up to be that villain. (I’m certain this costume would fit him nicely, just $799.95 from Buycostumes.com.)

Wayne Rash also makes it somewhat personal:

While Oracle’s love of domination hasn’t made the news so much lately, there is certainly a long history of the company’s activities in this area. James Gosling, the creator of the Java programming language, pointed out in his blog that Ellison is frequently referred to as, “Larry, the Prince of Darkness” or “LPOD”. Gosling also notes in his blog that the Oracle’s CEO’s approach to industry competition is best described by a saying attributed to Genghis Kahn that is a favorite of Ellison’s: “It’s not enough that we win, all others must lose.”

Ellison has had a long history of suing other companies, hostile takeovers, and harsh treatment of employees. Over the years he’s had a long line of respected senior executives quit because they simply can’t take his aggressive style and hostile culture.

Matthew Aslett from the 451 Group cites many items including Matt Asay’s and Susan Linton summarises too:

Oracle Delivers Friday the 13th Bad Luck to FOSS

No one is really surprised. Oracle has always been a proprietary company. But Oracle’s actions of Friday the 13th come only days after offering up a keynote at LinuxCon. This hits after last year’s promises of no major changes in Sun’s open source community assets. Those hoping for a new soft and fuzzy Oracle are no doubt sorely disappointed. Experts have already stated Oracle could turn out to be more of threat to Linux and Open Source than either Microsoft or SCO ever was.

We’ll continue to watch this and especially to report FUD. █

Summary: Further analysis of possible motives in the “SCOracle” case; another look at Apple’s software patents lust

IN PREVIOUS POSTS about Oracle’s lawsuit against Google [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] we explained that it is more complex than it initially seems.

There are some more cartoons about it and plenty of opinions, including some from Carla Schroder (“Oracle on the Warpath”) and from IDG. What we found interesting is the reaction from the Microsoft camp though. We did not find a reaction from Microsoft Gavin, who is busy doing ‘damage control’ regarding Microsoft’s violation of privacy. We did, however, find that the ‘Microsoft press’ and Microsoft boosters like Mary Jo Foley (Gavin’s colleague) have begun advertising Microsoft’s database in the midst of disdain/fear of Oracle. How timely. Microsoft MVP de Icaza led Groklaw to writing (Groklaw has just published another new post: “In the “You Won’t Believe This” Department, Miguel’s suggestion to Google is: “…I can not help to think that Google could migrate Android from Java to the ECMA/ISO CIL and C#. Unlike the Java patent grant, the Microsoft Community Promise for both C#, the core class libraries and the VM only require that you have a full implementation. Supersetting is allowed….Google could settle current damages with Oracle, and switch to the better designed, more pleasant to use, and more open .NET platform.”

“I can’t help but think about what Jonathan Schwartz wrote about meeting with Bill Gates and Gates asking for royalties for patents he claimed were infringed by OpenOffice. Schwartz told him that .NET infringes JAVA patents, and so Gates went away. But why isn’t Oracle suing Microsoft, then?”
      –Pemela Jones“Like *that* will ever happen. I think he’s completely missed the real lesson to be learned about patents and skating close to the edge. And now, because Miguel wrote this, I must begin to wonder about the purpose of this litigation. I can’t help but think about what Jonathan Schwartz wrote about meeting with Bill Gates and Gates asking for royalties for patents he claimed were infringed by OpenOffice. Schwartz told him that .NET infringes JAVA patents, and so Gates went away. But why isn’t Oracle suing Microsoft, then? Instead, here’s Boies Schiller again, after SCO, with another anti-Linux lawsuit, if we define Linux in the broadest terms. Things that make you go hmm.”

To further expand on that point, Groklaw cites “The Java Trap” and agues: “Just a reminder that Richard Stallman warned developers years ago to watch out for nonfree versions of Java and stick to what became the GPL code. Had they all listened, there’d be no Oracle v. Google, methinks. Money makes people do strange things, but you as individual programmers don’t have to. This is in the live and learn from the mistakes of others category. And may I remind you that rms is now warning about Mono and C#, not to depend on them? When you see others pooh pooh his warning, look at his track record. How often is he right? Extrapolate.”

Huge damage has potentially been done to Java’s reputation. As one writer puts it:

Personally, it’s Ruby on Rails and Hadoop for now. My application has a browser-based front so Ruby on Rails is great and as far as the server is concerned, I use the old fashioned C++. Given how I use the data I use in my stealth app, I will never want to use mySQL. It’s Hadoop for the moment. Now with this Java lawsuit, I will not even consider building a Java-based application. Given a choice, one should never pick uncertainty or maybe even a lawsuit.

James Gosling was right. Goodbye Oracle Java.

Oracle has made one rare and important clarification (Oracle is mostly quiet, Google says the claims are “baseless”):

An Oracle spokeswoman said: “This suit is specifically about Google and that’s it.”

[...]

Oracle’s suit also underscores the sharp difference in philosophies between Oracle and Sun, which became one of the most visible proponents of open-source software. Google CEO Eric Schmidt is a former senior Sun executive.

Bruce Perens explains this as follows:

Apparently, Android is missing AWT and Swing, as Google created its own user-interface toolkit. So, Android would not conform with Java Standard Edition nor Java Micro Edition, which both require AWT. Google loses Sun’s patent grant through non-compliance with its requirements to follow the Java standard.

Perens watched the SCO case very closely and whether one recalls it or not, a few years ago Jonathan Schwartz wrote publicly in his blog that Sun had been invited to sue a competitor, pretty much like SCO on the face of it. This may lead to all sorts of suspicions and theories about past and present. Sun did pay SCO at the end.

At a later stage Groklaw was made aware of the Apple connection, which was mentioned here before. Groklaw, which spends some time defending Apple for reasons we do not understand, quotes: “This unexpected move by Oracle sends a strong and threatening message to Google and the entire Android community—specifically that Oracle will use its intellectual property rights to get compensated for innovations around the exploding mobile marketplace. Oracle’s CEO Larry Ellison is inserting himself in the middle of an ever-evolving battle between Google CEO (and former Apple Director) Eric Schmidt, Apple CEO Steve Jobs, a long-time friend of Ellison’s.”

Pamela Jones writes: “Ah! Apple. HTC. Now the picture is getting clearer as to the why. So it will come down to facts of the case, and the stupid patent system.” For background about Apple vs HTC see our Wiki.

To say more about Apple and patents, the company “Wants Patent On Video Game-Based iBooks,” according to Slashdot:

theodp writes “Patently Apple reports that a new Apple patent application has surfaced describing an application that would record your personal journey through a video game and turn it into a custom comic or iBook when you’re done playing. Imagine how thrilled little Billy’s Mommy would have been if she only had the chance to read the story of her son’s foray into Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas or see how he dealt with BioShock’s Little Sisters.”

Also in the news:

• Apple Patent Opens a New Frontier for Gaming–Documenting

• Here Comes the iBike? Apple Files Patent for a Bicycle Accessory [Updated]

• Apple Researching Methods to Turn iPhone Into Feature-Rich Bike Computer

• Here comes the iBike? Apple files patent for a bicycle

Yes, you read that headline right. Apple has applied for a patent for a bicycle concept.

Apple’s love of software patents has already angered one Apple ‘partner’ (FutureTap), but Apple still denies the allegations which were made repeatedly .

There is no “PatentGate.” That’s the word from FutureTap, the company which The Reg reported last Friday was concerned about Apple’s lifting of the look-and-feel from its flagship app and including an illustration of it in a recently published patent application.

We have covered the FutureTap story in [1, 2, 3].

Apple’s hypePhone also allows people to look up patents (Apple would love this app):

I wrote last May about Apptorney IP, an app that facilitated patent and trademark searching on an iPhone by providing direct links to the appropriate sections of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office website. Now comes an app that takes that to the next level, enabling more seamless searching of patents and trademarks.

Called Banner & Witcoff’s IP Lawyer, the free app from the IP firm Banner & Witcoff provides direct search access to patents and trademarks, as well as to corresponding assignments, without the necessity to connect through a web page.

The app lets you search for patents by keyword, patent number, assignee, inventor or classification, and by keywords or exact phrases. Once you find a patent, you can further search within its text or download a PDF (via Google Patents) of the actual patent images.

Apple is a major part of the problem with software patents. As we showed on Friday, it has a lot to gain from the lawsuit against Google. █

Summary: As the Oracle vs. Google case is being analysed, the FFII further distances itself from Florian Müller; James Gosling speaks out

Florian Müller may have started a Web site called NoSoftwarePatents (and FFII took over his site/project/initiative later on), but this does not mean that Müller’s opinions in any way overlap or intersect with the FFII’s. In fact, as we noted in this previous post about Oracle vs. Google (case filing accessible here), the lawsuit is being used by ‘Team [Microsoft] Apologista’ to promote C# (Novell employees communicate the issue with anonymous agitators). Yes, the Microsoft boosters are celebrating this lawsuit and it seems like Novell/Ximian does this too, along with Müller in the sense that he defends Microsoft.

We have already shown several examples where the FFII publicly disagrees with Müller and his attitude. Estranged or ostracised? Either way, here is the latest argument involving those two (where “fosspatents” is the Microsoft apologist who uses Vista 7, not FOSS)

[ffii] @FOSSpatents FFII does not endorse your anti-corporate moralism but supports legal steps to reduce risks http://stopsoftwarepatents.eu/

“FFII does not endorse your [Müller's] anti-corporate moralism but supports legal steps to reduce risks”
      –FFII[fosspatents [Müller]] @FFII We’re in sync that no software patents means no patent lawsuits, no patent royalties. Then why do you partner with patent aggressors?

[ffii] @fosspatents FFII defends your right to code without patent threats, promotes a less-risk ecosystem for small medium-sized innovators

[ffii] @fosspatents FFII promotes an inclusive Free Information Infrastructure. We oppose #FOSS discrimination, other orgs advocate #FOSS models.

[ffii] But #FFII provides a #foss discussions list http://lists.ffii.org/mailman/listinfo/floss/ #freesoftware

[ffii] …then why does he beat his wife? #ubertroll #oracle

[ffii] #Oracle’s #Android case quickly examined http://carlodaffara.conecta.it/?p=478 #scoracle

[fosspatents] I’m so with you on the question of patentable subject matter. But that’s not the issue. I meant your standards lobbying alongside OFE.

[schestowitz] @ffii he doesn’t seem to mind so much when Microsoft sues, just saying Microsoft does not exclude like “evil IBM”

[fosspatents] @schestowitz Please get real and recognize the fact that I distinguish between failed attempts to license that go to court, and others.

[ffii] #Gosling about #Scoracle http://nighthacks.com/roller/jag/entry/the_shit_finally_hits_the #google #java

[zoobab [FFII president]] Any idea where to download the source code of Dalvik VM? Time to ask national courts everywhere in Europe for non-infringement #fuckoracle

[zoobab] Florian Mueller promotes the usage of the undefined RAND term: http://ur1.ca/149dt

We are not defending Oracle by the way; in fact, it’s possible that Oracle will also attack Mono by suing Novell. Advogato.org is rightly concerned about Oracle’s attitude.

Seems Oracle bought Sun to become a java patent troll. Trying to destroy the alternative free java implementation that is part of android. Sun used to be agnostic towards Free Software in the past, then became a huge fan on java liberation day. Now that Oracle is in control and starts its quest to destroy the free java world, we are back to the dark ages. So, now what?

Watch what Java’s father has to say:

Oracle finally filed a patent lawsuit against Google. Not a big surprise. During the integration meetings between Sun and Oracle where we were being grilled about the patent situation between Sun and Google, we could see the Oracle lawyer’s eyes sparkle. Filing patent suits was never in Sun’s genetic code. Alas….

I hope to avoid getting dragged into the fray: they only picked one of my patents (RE38,104) to sue over.

In better news, the EFF is saying that it “Staffs Up in Patent, Copyright, and Trademark Law”

EFF is pleased to announce the hiring of our newest staff member: staff attorney Julie Samuels. Julie will be working on intellectual property issues, with a focus on stopping abuse of software patents.

Gene patents ought to be tackled too [1, 2] (although these are not electronic as in “Electronic Frontier Foundation”). “20% of the Genes in Your Body are Patented,” says this new blog post. [via Glyn Moody]

Here’s a disconcerting thought: for the past thirty years, genes have been patentable. And we’re not just talking genetically modified corn – your genes, pretty much as they exist in your body, can and have been patented. The US government reports over three million gene patent applications have been filed so far; over 40,000 patents are held on sections of the human genome, covering roughly 20% of our genes.

Upset? You’re not alone. Critics argue that the patents stifle potential research into disease, keep new treatments off the market, and bring in serious money to Big Pharma – all by exercising property claims that shouldn’t exist. After all, genes aren’t inventions, which are patentable – they’re discoveries, which aren’t. As Luigi Palombi noted recently at the Open Science Summit, “You can’t patent Mount Everest; why can you patent a gene?” Here, we review the history of genetic law, the current state of affairs, and interview David Koepsell, an attorney and author of a recent book on gene patenting, Who Owns You? The Corporate Gold Rush To Patent Your Genes.

Humanity is just hurting itself using patents, which are about greed (for power), not documenting one’s inventions. █

“I would much rather spend my time and money and energy finding ways to make the Internet safer and better than bickering over patents.”

–Dean Drako, Barracuda’s CEO

Summary: Next target for Oracle could be Novell; Sun’s outgoing CEO gets a part-time job alongside a former Noveller

MAKER of Mono Novell Inc. is now at risk of lawsuits from Oracle, not just Microsoft (which was also sued by Salesforce for patent violations in .NET). Bruce Byfield mentions Novell’s Go-OO in his latest article, which is about OpenOffice.org 3.3. Novell has been trying to fork OpenOffice.org, which upset some people at Sun. Now that Oracle owns Sun and is also getting litigious against similar works, what is the probability of Novell being sued by Oracle (which uses RHEL and Solaris, not SLES)? Novell has been poaching Solaris customers recently, which would anger Oracle.

According to this, Jonathan Schwartz (who very much dislikes extortion with software patents) enters the board of Taleo along with Jim Tolonen, who used to work for Novell:

Tolonen was CFO for Business Objects, a software maker, until it was acquired by SAP AG in January 2008. Taleo said he has also worked at Novell Inc., IGN Entertainment Inc., and CyberMedia.

The new Sales VP of InsideSales.com turns out to have some Novell history as well. █

–Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL (about Oracle)

Summary: ‘Team Microsoft’ or ‘Team Apologista’ — including Florian Müller — already touts Oracle’s lawsuit against Google as a reason for C# (implicit recommendation)

OH, how predictable. Mono boosters are already using Oracle’s action not to denounce Oracle but to promote C# at Java’s expense. To quote Carlo Daffara, “Miguel de Icaza claims that “The Java specification patent grant patent grant seems to be only valid as long as you have a fully conformant implementation”, but that applies only to the Standard Implementation of Java, not OpenJDK. Sorry Miguel – nice try. More luck next time.” Here are parts of Daffara’s analysis of this case:

On the first point: in the complaint, Oracle claims that “The Android operating system software “stack” consists of Java applications running on a Java-based object-oriented application framework, and core libraries running on a “Dalvik” virtual machine (VM) that features just-in-time (JIT) compilation”. On copyrights, Oracle claims that “Without consent, authorization, approval, or license, Google knowingly, willingly, and unlawfully copied, prepared, published, and distributed Oracle America’s copyrighted work, portions thereof, or derivative works and continues to do so. Google’s Android infringes Oracle America’s copyrights in Java and Google is not licensed to do so … users of Android, including device manufacturers, must obtain and use copyrightable portions of the Java platform or works derived therefrom to manufacture and use functioning Android devices. Such use is not licensed. Google has thus induced, caused, and materially contributed to the infringing acts of others by encouraging, inducing, allowing and assisting others to use, copy, and distribute Oracle America’s copyrightable works, and works derived therefrom.”

[...]

As for patents, a little reminder: patents cover ideas, not implementations (let’s skip for the moment the folly of giving monopoly protection on ideas. You already know how I think about it); so, if in any way Oracle had, now or in the past, given full access to those ideas through a licensing that is transferable, Google is somehow protected there as well. And – guess what? That really happened! Sun released the entire Java JDK under the GPLv2+classpath exception; granting with that release full rights of use and redistribution of the IPR assigned on what was released. This is different from the TCK specification, that Google wisely never licensed; because the TCK license requires for the patents to be transferred to limit the development to enhancements or modifications to the basic JDK as released by Sun.

This case is more complex than it may first seem. We’ll write about it later. Jan Wildeboer from Red Hat told me that “SUN tried to “sell” JDK to Google, didn’t like Dalvik, claims it hurts JAVA. Now Oracle sues.” [...] maybe @webmink [Simon Phipps] knows more. But I am not surprised. Will be painted as “defending” JAVA by Oracle.” Later he pointed out that “The patents in the ORCL v GOOG case are 6,125,447, 6,192,476, 5,966,702, 7,426,720, RE38,104, 6,910,205 and 6,061,520″

Wait for more and more Mono boosters to take advantage of this.

Microsoft apologist Florian Müller (see last week's post, titled “Florian Müller Unofficially Joins Microsoft’s ‘Team Apologista’”) is already promoting C# along with the trolls who harass this Web site “[a]nd the fud goes on” the FFII writes in relation to Müller’s latest bit of FUD (he asks, “is Java less open than C#?”). Well, Müller is bombarding Twitter with at least 3 links to his blog right now, using provocative statements like “Shame on Oracle”, “A lawyer affiliated with the FSF Europe supported #Oracle ‘s takeover of Sun”, and “FFII and FSFE should draw the appropriate conclusions from Oracle’s patent aggression against FOSS.”

He also uses this to attack OIN, saying: “One Open Invention Network licensee (Oracle) sues another (Google) over patents. Another #fail for the OIN.”

We’ll write about this later as more details continue to emerge. █