Bonum Certa Men Certa

FOSSPatents Conference is Against FOSS, Promoting the FOSS-Hostile Construct Known as RAND or FRAND

FOSSPatents Conference. Did you really think it's about FOSS?



Summary: Do not be misled by the term Free/Open Source software (FOSS) in the name FOSSPatents and whatever relates to it (e.g. FOSSPatents Conference); it's not about FOSS but against FOSS, or pro-FRAND

THE previous post ended with a tweet. As Benjamin Henrion put it the other day: "UPC rules of procedure also mention proportionality. Like bifurcation, rules of procedure should be made by legislators under art6 ECHR"



Henrion posted this while attending an event organised by another software professional, a longtime opponent of software patents and the UPC (those two things are closely related). I've long criticised this event (even before it took place), seeing what front groups were attending and speaking alongside Bristows. The event promotes the false concepts of “FRAND” and “FOSS patents” (no such thing). It welcomes litigation fanatics. "No idea why he chose to do this," I said, "but I can guess…"

He has repeatedly replied to me; the organiser and I have agreed and disagreed on a lot of things over the years. Here's Henrion stating: "Yesterday's Fosspatents conference was pretty much "trolls trolls trolls" with many more companies being attacked. Software patent warming is happening..."

That's an old term.

"FLOSS still absent from the conference of today," he said, "who is "all" if the developer doing the hard work of writing code is not even mentioned..."

"Yes," I responded, as "the program itself showed that Fosspatents was all about patents and not at all about FOSS (let alone anything tech)..."

"FRAND" is 4 (or 5) lies in a row, compacted into an acronym that sounds like "FRIEND". As one person put it: "Of course. Commons law. ...but FRAND used to mean Free Rand = RAND-0. Then they said FRAND = Fair RAND. No one could explain the difference between FRAND and RAND. It is not fair and unreasonable discriminates open source implementations. What a waste..."

RAND or FRAND or fancy 'lego puzzle' with these lies as letters ("reasonable", "nondiscriminatory", "fair"...) won't change the fact that they're designed to put gloss on monopoly. They reinforce the concept of patent tax on everything. It is almost depressing and going back to the UPC, high-profile 'FRAND' cases already target British courts, looking to tax the whole public through satellite patent trolls. If they got the UPC, the outcome of such court cases would impact hundreds of millions of people, not just tens of millions. So we know who stands to gain from the UPC.

We've found some particular tweets (with photographs) from Henrion informative. He focused on the detrimental effect, e.g. in



Of particular interest to our longtime readers is this couple/pair of tweets [1, 2]: "Antitrust law has abolished competition by installing barriers such as patents, for example in the 2007 Microsoft case http://blog.ffii.org/microsoft-will-trump-eu-competition-ruling-with-patents/"

To this date, Microsoft continues to leverage FRAND to impose software patents everywhere and blackmail everyone. Some other tweets speak of the origins of this term, "RAND", which we've used here since 2007 if not 2006. It was always (all along) a deliberate attack on FOSS/FLOSS. Microsoft knew all along that it wasn't compatible; hence it used front groups such as BSA to lobby for it.

Jake Hamby, who worked for Danger (then Microsoft) and later Google (Android), told me regarding the shock of awful patent quality: "Well, I wouldn't, considering the sketchy Microsoft patents I tried to help Google's lawyers defend against with Android. They milked those mobile OS patents for an entire decade. I'd love to know which companies are still paying them and how much per device."

Microsoft is still suing over it, e.g. Foxconn earlier this years. The underlying patents may all be bogus, more so after Alice -- a subject that the EFF has just brought up again [1]. We hope that Mr. "FOSSPatents" isn't taking Microsoft money again (as he did before) to promote FRAND.

Related/contextual items from the news:


  1. Alice Doesn’t Block Good Patents, It Protects the Public By Requiring Real Invention

    Leaders of the Senate IP Subcommittee have been working, for nearly a year now, on producing some kind of legislation to weaken Section 101 of the Patent Act. Their proposal would throw out all the case law based on Section 101, including the Alice decision, which has been especially critical for keeping bogus software patents out of the system.

    They held three days of hearings on the Senate floor in June, but still haven’t presented a bill detailing the changes they want to make. € As we’ve explained before, weakening Section 101’s protections would be a disaster for innovation, and encourage patent trolls to squeeze money from small businesses.



Recent Techrights' Posts

BetaNews Sacked Brian Fagioli and Deleted His Comments, But He Still Tries to Use the "BetaNews" Brand for Self-Affirmation
Fagioli takes the work of other people
[Meme] Hard to Be a Better Person?
Sooner or later they'll realise that for each pound I spend they need to spend about 1,000 times more
New US Editor for The Register is a Microsoft Booster
"Avram Piltch has served as US editor for The Register since July 2025."
Reda Demanded That FSF Removes Its Founder, Now Reda Works Directly for Microsoft
A sellout and a traitor, first working for GAFAM, now Microsoft
PCLinuxOS is Raising Money to Support Development After Fire Incident at the Host
PCLinuxOS has not had announcements lately
Over 3 Months Later Brett Wilson LLP Still Unable to Recruit a Media Lawyer?
"Immediate start", but not found... still unfilled
Microsoft is Trying to "Pull a Nokia" on GNU/Linux as Desktop/Laptop Platform
We all remember that rather well, don't we?
 
'Tech' Gimmicks Are for Advertising, Not for Usability
In the case of Microsoft, they latched onto slop
The LLM Con Artists Are Highly Destructive
Who will ever be held accountable for this scam?
Too Bribed by Microsoft to Move to Free Software?
Microsoft lies and Microsoft bribery (in politics)
Microsoft Hiring European Politicians is Another Form of Bribery; There Should be a European Investigation
When Microsoft bribed people in Europe for OOXML (there's no denying this!) a European government delegate said that Microsoft operated like a cult
Speed of the Site Should be Better Now
The "bot attacks" impact the speed of the sister site too
Getting More From AnalogNowhere
Recently we used many images from AnalogNowhere
Microsoft, Microsofters and 'Secure' Boot Shills Already Storming the LWN Report About Expiring Certificate, Shooting the Messenger
LWN has clearly stuck a nerve
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, July 23, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, July 23, 2025
Disable "Secure" Boot Today (the Only Better Time to Do So Was Yesterday)
Don't trust anything Red Hat tells you about security
Links 23/07/2025: Windows Killed Company After 150+ Years, US Government Mimics Russia's Attacks on the Media
Links for the day
Freedom Generally Wins at the End, History Shows (But It's Constantly Attacked, Too)
At the moment people realise "Linux" (e.g. Android) isn't enough to guarantee any freedoms
“Inhumane” and “Disgusting” Mass Layoff Execution, According to Microsoft Staff
The workers are looking for other places to work
Misinformation is Not Intelligence
It's low-grade plagiarism and it fails to show any signs of intelligence
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has a New Slogan for Its 40th Anniversary
The freedoms are what's most important
LLM Slopfarms gbhackers.com, "Cyber Press" and CyberSecurityNews Are Drowning Google News (and Shame on Google for Feeding and Facilitating Them)
All are run by the same people
Links 23/07/2025: Droplets GUI Patent Monopoly Challenge, Nokia Leverages Illegal Patent Court Against Rivals
Links for the day
Gemini Links 23/07/2025: Community in Geminispace and Challenges With Old Computers
Links for the day
Links 23/07/2025: Slop Patents Tackled, Slop Copyright Misuses Tackled by Politicians
Links for the day
Our Three Lawsuits Against Microsofters Are About to Become a Lot More Relevant to GNU/Linux
The Master will easily understand why Garrett has been attacking me since 2012
Links 23/07/2025: Retreating From Transparency on Jeffrey Epstein, We No Longer Have Press Freedom
Links for the day
Gemini Links 23/07/2025: Piano and Food
Links for the day
New and Old
On Ageism in Tech
Slop Is Not Intelligence and It Does Not Enhance Productivity
Like voice dictation, which cannot tell the difference between "sheet" and "shit"
EPO Crimes Are Spreading to the British Court System
Society is now paying the price for failing to tackle crimes at the EPO
It's Time to Dump SharePoint and Here's What to Use Instead
Nextcloud, ownCloud, Bookstack, MediaWiki, and MediaGoblin
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 22, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, July 22, 2025
Brett Wilson LLP Has Gone Silent
Sometimes silence says more than nothing at all
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, Planet Ubuntu, and LinuxTechLab
some slopfarms show no remorse and they don't value their reputation at all
Links 23/07/2025: Book Bans, Storms, and Kangaroo Court for Patents Commits More Unlawful Acts of Overreach
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/07/2025: Thinkpad and Pinephone
Links for the day
Links 22/07/2025: "Blog Restart" and Microsoft Clobbered by “ToolShell"
Links for the day
Global Warming and Global GAFAM Energy-Wasting
Burn more money (borrowed, loans), then hope the waste will somehow translate into profit?
No Compliance With the European Patent Convention (EPC) at the European Patent Office (EPO)
It's about preventing competition against this autocracy
Blue-Collar Trolls vs White-Collar Trolls
Examples of white-collar trolls
Apple Vision Pro Failed So Badly That Its Sales Are About 2,000 Times Smaller Than iPhone Sales
What's left for Apple to offer other than hype?
To Millions of People "Year of the Linux Desktop" Was Some Time in the 1990s (Bootable GNU/Linux as a Complete Operating System is Over 33 in Age)
In some sense, "year of the Linux desktop" was 33 years ago
Make No Assumptions (or Demands) About the Screen Resolution Used by Other People
There are usability aspects, aside from accessibility aspects
Why Wayland (and XWayland) Won't Solve the Key Problem It Proclaims to be Tackling (the Same Is True for Rust)
The problem isn't Wayland per se but the false promises and efforts to force everybody to move to it whilst insulting or demonising everyone who won't play along
They Don't Tell Us that 'Digitalisation' (Now Sold as "Hey Hi") Just Means Customers Become Unpaid Staff and Are Made Accountable
People are being conditioned to associate technology with something undesirable, at times even unbearable
Diplomatic Immunity Should Not Exist for Anybody
The EPO in its current form gradually 'normalises' the end of European democracy
Brett Wilson LLP Stopped Sending Me Papers When I Showed It had Sent Me Over 5 Kilograms of Legal Papers
A week ago we lodged our third lawsuit
Microsoft Mass Layoffs and Shutdowns Became the New Normal at Microsoft
Microsoft mass layoffs became a topic of everyday media coverage since May
Amazon Web Services (AWS) Has Layoffs and Microsoft Gaming/Entertainment Division Has an Uncertain Future
it's good to see all those horrible things crashing and burning
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 21, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, July 21, 2025
FSF "Raised Almost $139,000 During This Summer Campaign"
"Thank you for making a stand against dystopia!"
Gemini Links 22/07/2025: VPS Exploited and Fear of View
Links for the day