Our Priority is Still Tackling Software Patents and Corruption in Patent Offices
When we started in 2006 (as "Boycott Novell") we focused on Novell in light of a terrible, submissive patent deal it had signed with Microsoft, as advised by Miguel de Icaza, essentially a Microsoft mole inside Novell (imported via Ximian along with Nat Friedman, another longtime Microsoft mole, who had already worked for Microsoft). This was confirmed to us by high-level Novell insiders. In a sense, Miguel de Icaza et al killed Novell (on Microsoft's altar) and helped legitimise software patents.
Those are "traitors", according to Dr. Stallman (RMS), who started GNU/Linux in 1983. Some commenters in our site back then said that Miguel de Icaza was "Judas". Yes, they repeatedly said that Miguel de Icaza was "Judas" (we didn't say so ourselves) and were subsequently proven right again when Miguel de Icaza was getting closer and closer and closer to Microsoft (even going on the radio to confront me, uninvited, regarding OOXML) until he became just a Microsoft employee and nothing else, not even an advisor but full-time Microsoft shill.
"That RMS called out de Icaza for being a traitor," an associate argued, is noteworthy, but it took him too long to say this. What matters here though, "it's that he [RMS] was right about it," the associate added.
There's a new article this morning (now outside the paywall of LWN, since around midnight) about troubles that Fedora is having with software patents. To quote: "Software patents and workarounds for them are, once again, causing headaches for open-source projects and users. This time around, Fedora users have been vulnerable to a serious flaw in the OpenH264 library for months—not for want of a fix, but because of the Rube Goldberg machine methodology of distributing the library to Fedora users. The software is open source under a two-clause BSD license; the RPMs are built and signed by Fedora, but the final product is distributed by Cisco, so the company can pick up the tab for license fees. Unfortunately, a breakdown in the process of handing RPMs to Cisco for distribution has left Fedora users vulnerable, and inaction on Fedora's part has left users unaware that they are at risk."
Software patents need to be abolished, but IBM refuses to do this; instead it lobbies for them.
As we said in 3 articles yesterday, IBM isn't a reliable ally if an ally at all.
A lot of the above issues are demonstrably connected. So we'll keep aiming towards the same outcome we wanted in 2006.
Meanwhile we got compliments on our recent articles, which means that they are effective. In HTTP/S we served over 1.2 million requests yesterday (even if many came from unwanted scrapers).
"Yes," someone told us, "I have read many of your articles. They are great. They show the same methods of intimidating employees. The management of the Patent Office are scumbags."
Another reader told us that almost everybody at the EPO reads this site. That's good to know and it gives us morale.
More about the damage software patents cause to innovation ought to be said; the subject merits hundreds or thousands future articles. In recent years we filed many examples of this in Daily Links under "Patents" in order to focus on other matters (in-depth articles about software patents take a long of time to prepare). An associate says that software patents are bad because of the harm they cause and the barriers they raise.
We mentioned this in a couple of articles this morning, both in relation to the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) and the EPO, where UPRP officials enabled the corruption. █