Bonum Certa Men Certa

Free Software and Patent Settlements: It's All Wrong

Thou shalt not know

Y

esterday it was shown that Red Hat had paid in vain for software patents that would not be valid anyway. At the time, Red Hat was seen as a courageous patent swatter, but not everyone is happy. Here is quite a legitimate new criticism. (strong language warning)

It's not that Sun has better lawyers than Red Hat. It's that Sun has better top management than Red Hat! The #1 Linux company gave the wrong message to the community, going for petty deals and thinking "wow, we're great because we did better than Novell!". Red Hat is a shame, period. They were simply feeding the trolls — it's the same as when you simply pay the protection tax to the Mafia instead of calling the police and trying to fight with the evildoers.


Here is another software patent that potentially goes on death row, which only comes to prove that such patents are pointless and spineless once properly challenged.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office agreed to re-examine online-gaming patent 6,264,560 after the Electronic Frontier Foundation challenged it on the grounds that the technology covered by the patent had been used extensively before it was issued.


Looking back, Stallman's claim that "fighting patents one by one will never eliminate the danger of software patents, any more than swatting mosquitoes will eliminate malaria" still makes perfect sense.

An important thing to keep in mind is not where patents exist, but also who holds them and is willing to litigate without success only to create fear (think along the lines of SCO). That's why we constantly warn about Mono (last done so yesterday).

We mentioned Mono bindings in KDE about a year ago and now comes this about Plasma (KDE4) applets in C# and Ruby (thanks to Al Roberts for the tip).

The Ruby and C# ScriptEngines application apis are pretty much identical to the C++ one, and both bindings have that wrapped too in case you need to use it. For instance, you can't write Plasma containments in ScriptEngine based applets, but for 95% of use cases it should be just fine. In the C++ based apis the main class is Plasma.Applet for C# or Plasma::Applet for Ruby, whereas the main classes in the ScriptEngine bindings are PlasmaScripting.Applet and PlasmaScripting::Applet respectively. So you just make your applet a subclass of one of those, add some slightly different entries in it .desktop file and use the standard directory structure for Plasmoids for where you put the source code, C# .dll and other resources. Everything else is the same.


It's hugely important to keep Microsoft's intellectual monopolies away from the Free Desktop. An 'intellectual' dependency is just what Novell and Microsoft want to achieve in order to increase their power and ownership of it.

Other New Items of Interest



Digital Majority has collected a bunch of new stories.

The first one is a complaint about the patent system as a whole. It comes from none other than the Wall Street Journal and it concludes with:

Our patent system for most innovations has become patently absurd. It's a disincentive at a time when we expect software and other technology companies to be the growth engine of the economy. Imagine how much more productive our information-driven economy would be if the patent system lived up to the intention of the Founders, by encouraging progress instead of suppressing it.


The issue of software patents is soon to be discussed because it is so controversial.

Over the last several years, the Supreme Court and the Federal Circuit have taken a number of steps suggesting that the law governing software patents is still very much in flux.


Somewhat of an odd sibling of software patents, BM patents, are still hinged on the question about patentability of non-physical (amorous or perceptual) things. Can thought alone be a violation? Can you force someone to 'unknow' a part of science or demand payment for it? Can patents be violated using pen and paper? It's an interesting debate that can help defeat software patents.

This claim is interesting because like Wasynczuk, it involves a system claim that is not patentable subject matter.


Only in a world with Gates and Windows can people be forbidden from peering outside, looking for simple ideas. It's a world where research and exploration -- let alone thought -- can be a crime.

At the end of the day, the only criminals are those pushing for such laws.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Michael “Monty” Widenius: It Started in 1983 With Richard Stallman (RMS)
The other co-founder of MySQL is a bit notorious for confronting RMS rather viciously
For the Second Time in a Few Weeks Microsoft Lunduke Makes False Accusations Against Senior Red Hat Staff to Incite a Despicable 'Troll Army'
Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims of says can be trusted
su lisa && rm -rf /home/ibm/power
Novell was ruined by another person from IBM, Ronald Hovsepian
A Record Demand at Microsoft: Demand to Cancel
What we're witnessing is a very ungraceful destruction of XBox
 
Links 03/10/2025: Conflicts, Death of TypePad, and TikTok/CheeTok Gives a Boost to Far Right Groups in Europe
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 02, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 02, 2025
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Google News, and LinuxSecurity
They carry on polluting the Web with fake articles
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: Kubernetes With FreeBSD and robots.txt
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: 'Open' 'AI' Resorting to Gimmicks and Fake Funding, Europe’s ‘Drone Wall’ Discussed
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: Brave Passes 100M Users Milestone, Kodak Selling Its Own Film Again
Links for the day
Microsoft is Losing Europe
Hence all the "support" and "discount" offers that are limited to Europe
The Free Software Foundation Starts Fund-raising for 40th Anniversary
New pop-up 2-3 days ahead of the 40th anniversary event
Systemd Breaks Networking in Debian and Microsoft Staff Rushes to Make Face-Saving Excuses in LWN
Microsoft's bluca is already there in the comments, his Microsoft money pays for LWN to let him leave comments early
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 01, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 01, 2025
What the End of XBox Will Look Like: a Fiery Crash
XBox is the next Skype. It won't last much longer. Expect many more layoffs.
Richard Stallman is Going to Finland to Give a Talk Next Thursday
A day later he speaks in Sweden
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: SMTP Pipelining and End of ROOPHLOCH 2025
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Plagiarism, Fake Articles, and FUD About Linux
not a day goes by without Google News feeding FUD from slopfarms
Gemini Links 01/10/2025: Chat Control and End of Life
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: Long Covid Risk Reiterated, "Bitcoin Queen" Caught
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: EA $55 Billion Deal is Debt and Slop "Raises Vishing Risks"
Links for the day
Bluewashing at Red Hat Means Redundancies
The man who sold Red Hat to IBM meanwhile became a Microsoft Mono booster
After Killing OpenSource.com, IBM ('Red Hat') and OSI Told Us OpenSource.net Would Replace It (But That Didn't Happen)
Now it's time to move on, perhaps tarnishing the "Open Source" label some more (for whatever sponsor wants this)
Linux is Not a Community Project, It's a Wall Street Product
The core goal should be freedom
Bad Actors Abusing the Free Software Community, Vandalising It Using Rogue Politics and Old Tactics
Oil giants have long attempted to do this; now, the digital equivalent of Big Oil does this in technology
Social Control Media Isn't the Future, The Federation or Fediverse Isn't Growing, People's Accounts Vanish for Good
users' accounts will get deleted, not just become inactive
IBM is Failing, This Helps Show Wall Street is Entirely Detached From Actual Commercial Performance
IBM is unable to grow, it's just constantly shrinking
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 30, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 30, 2025
Clerical Aspects of Publishing and Development
In Free software, the management aspects are considerably reduced
Slopwatch: Fake Articles and Google News Promoting "Linux" Spam or Bot-Generated Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD)
These slopfarms help misplace blame
Third Wave of Microsoft Layoffs in September, This Time Many in Liverpool Affected
Be ready for more waves of layoffs ahead of the so-called "results" in late October