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protect themselves? What do you think they are, google?

hint: apple sues over patents, not "defends themselves". There's a big difference there. Not only that jobs and ellison are longtime friends too.

MS embracing open standards and specs is a good thing.

Microsoft knows fine well that Microsoft always has three Es in embrace. They are not coming over to HTML 5 for the good of the standard of to help save the world. They are doing it in order to have developer tools which work on HTML 5 and so limit their loss of market share. Their long term aim will be to destabilize and misappropriate the standard. There is nothing good about Microsoft getting involved in any standard. Look at the history of OOXML. Look at how they attempted to take over Kerberos.

This is not a sign that Microsoft has become good. It is a sign that they are too weak to force Silverlight on the world and they realise that now, so they will work with the standard for the time being.

Note the updates from Groklaw. (link to article)

UPDATE

Just in case you missed it (or simply don't want to spend your time searching for it, there are at least three important takeaways conveyed in the Google brief and related documents:

        * Cockburn ignored prior negotiations between Sun and Google in which Google was offered the opportunity to license these and other patents for a fraction of Cockburn's present estimate;
        * Cockburn ignored other licensing transactions in which Sun licensed these patents for a fraction of Cockburn's present estimate (and these other licensing transactions will almost certainly become a limiting factor on any royalties Oracle may be awarded); and
        * Cockburn bases his estimate on worldwide sales of Android devices and Google revenue, despite the fact that the devices are made and used (and thus the infringement occurs) outside the U.S. and is not subject to a U.S. patent claim.

All of this serves to indicate that the Cockburn report, while sensational, has little or no bearing on a likely outcome of this case

From the Groklaw article: "Cockburn Offers No Meaningful Analysis Regarding Copyright Damages"

That just about sums it up. Oracle shouldn't be picking a fight with Google; they should be thanking Google for helping to spread general Java know-how and promoting it on their phones, even if they've found a way to evade the licensing fees by using a 3rd party JVM.

Nokia has just started a partnership with Microsoft, so Windows Mobile and Bing Search will probably be their standard platform, with Visual C# as the primary language. Blackberry still uses Java, but they're going down the tubes as fast as Nokia. Meanwhile, Apple continues to prefer Objective C. That leaves only Android as the major handheld platform for any flavor of Java.

If Oracle wishes to spread Java on the handheld, they could maybe start by not suing the maker of Android. They should instead be negotiating with Google, trying to integrate Oracle services into Android, maybe offer Google a good deal on a fully licensed JVM that performs better than Dalvik. Wasting millions of dollars on lawyers and risking a huge schism with Google hardly seems worth it.

Microsoft is Google's rival; Microsoft is Oracle's rival. Increasingly, Apple is Google's rival. Maybe the two should get together and unite against Microsoft (and Apple, which has little invested in Oracle's product line). Stupid lawsuits, wasting everyone's time and money. How many programmers could they have hired for the amounts they're spending and will spend on this ridiculous effort?

Based on the arguments in the Daughbert motion posted on Groklaw, I think Oracle will have no choice. Google is taking a pretty good shot at Oracle's expert witness, and based on what I'm reading there, I think Google is likely to prevail in their challenge to the witness.

Groklaw commentary

"I guess you heard that Florian Mueller is at it again. He made strong claims of a smoking gun regarding alleged copyright infringement of Oracle files by Google. Well, in the cold light of day, some of the media who printed it without fact checking are now awakening to the news that the news wasn't as reliable or unchallengeable as they assumed". link

"The actual damages Oracle is demanding are unclear, since many portions of the latest five-page document are blacked out of view in the publicly available version filed Monday in federal court".

"After years of pretending to be a friend of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), IBM now shows its true colors. IBM breaks the number one taboo of the FOSS community and shamelessly uses its patents against a well-respected FOSS project, the Hercules mainframe emulator", Florian Mueller

"IBM has no intention of asserting its patent portfolio against the Linux kernel, unless of course we are forced to defend ourselves", IBM

PJ has already chopped the legs out from under this latest troll job.

Link

Nobody seems to talk about it, but I am pretty certain Microsoft is shaking down *all* the manufacturers of Android phones and tablets, with the notable exception of Barnes and Noble. Thanks to B&N, you can read how they go about it here. And it's not just money they are getting, they are controlling new development.

You don't want to deal with patents, avoid infringing on them and innovate.

Except one of the scumbag tactics that MS used was refusing to even tell which patents they infringed without signing NDAs, specifically so other companies had no chance to drop the allegedly infringing code before MS came after them in turn.

Microsoft really doesn't have much of a history of litigation

Microsoft has a long history of FUD and litigation, and is clearly not afraid to use patents to protect itself from competition.

Preventing or taxing interoperability is easily one of the slimiest way you can employ software patents. It's not like anyone wants to use their crummy FAT file system, it's just the only one their retarded operating system supports. And now they've managed to pull the same scam with exFAT. As if file systems for volumes larger than 32 GiB were not a dime a dozen, let's standardise on one that requires licensing from Microsoft, because they sure as hell deserve some rent from all those Linux devices out there.

they tried for a year to negotiate with B&N

Sounds more like blackmail.

Running Linux in a VM on Windows is like strapping yourself to the outside of a car with a seatbelt.

If you wish to understand why Microsoft might offer to "support" CentOS on Hyper-V, I suggest you don your tinfoil Homburg, and review the Groklaw link: http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20080505113024239

Sandeep is the same fellow who wrote this nice letter from Microsoft.

Um, yeah. That is exactly what that post proves: hordes of astroturfers. They have been here, and everywhere else online for a very long time. In the case of the KIN they are easy to spot because despite the immense social campaign nobody bought the thing. It had 300,000 Facebook fans and 8,000 Facebook users against a rumored actual 500 people who had actually bought the thing with their own money. It had more supportive slashdot comments than actual buyers - and that's just slashdot, a trivial corner of the effort as slashdotters weren't the target audience. Some of the astoturfers weren't even real humans: there were some praising the thing and claiming to have just bought it even up to last month - long after sales were stopped on the app's page before it was taken down. That had to be automated. Some poor confused soul may even respond to this very post defending the KIN. I wish I had bought one as a curiosity. Maybe I still will - on eBay they can still be had. They've gone away from the Bangalore blog center - the poor grammar was just too much. I suspect they're using Texas and Arizona prison labor now, but though it's better it's still obvious - as this idiot who doesn't even know who Vint Cerf is shows. They're sprinkling this with folks professionally trained in messaging, but who don't know our culture or the history. The pathology of this is creepy but the results are often funny. Their efforts are pathethic here at slashdot, but in other places they're doing well.

This is the perfect article to talk about astroturfers, "Analysts," bloggers and tech reporters. You see, this mass of humanity is made of people and many people will do what you want if you pay them enough - and payments need not be made in cash and swag, as what these folk crave the most is free: access. James Plamondon, Microsoft Chief Evangelist and spiritual grandfather of the marketing effort documented in The Fine Article said it thus: "Analysts sell out - that's their business model. But they are very concerned that they never look like they are selling out, so that makes them very prickly to work with. " In this case the marketing person didn't take enough care to make sure he was dealing with somebody who could be bought before he tried to close the deal - or at least before he had sold the terms. That was sloppy. By exposing them the blogger has instantly bought global fame and considerable cred, emboldening the entire blogosphere to expose the plots and making this type of marketing more difficult.

Also the marketing guy forgot the rest of James' bold lessons:

# Simple rule to live by: Never Lie
* Tell the truth, and nothing but the truth
* Be selective in which truths you emphasize
* Let the competition fill in the gaps

James danced with the devil and won. He got in, got his, and got out at the Vista launch. He's drinking beer on the beach in Australia now. There's nobody left in Redmond who understands how to use what he taught, thank God. So we get these feeble social marketing campaigns that go nowhere, are obvious, and are revealed with disastrous blowback. These are the secondary derivatives of the motion of a truly brilliantly evil man. I don't like him. I don't appreciate his work. I don't aspire to be him. But I have no choice but to respect his personal effectiveness. He did his bit and did it well. He profited thereby. He knew when to quit. Once in a while when the Devil goes down to Georgia he loses that fiddle made of gold. But not often.

I have to bring this back around to Facebook to avoid the off-topic moderation, o woe is me. So why would Facebook be using the methods of a Microsoft evangelist, and poorly?

Of course I read the whole thing. For those of you who want to read it for yourselves: http://www.groklaw.net/pdf/PLEX_2151.pdf . It is perfectly obvious what Gates is doing - stepping in and killing an already advanced project because the competition would use it, whereas Microsoft had nothing in Word to counter them.

I called you on your opening tactic, no doubt straight out of the Microsoft Astroturfer's Manual, "Make unsubstantiated, plausible sounding claims in a confident, condescending tone". You then responded with the "create an excessively detailed diversion" tactic. I don't buy into that, you then respond with "if you had read the entire xxx, then bog the opponent down with interpretation".

What next? "Never let an opponent get in the last word"? Does it have a flowchart?

Seriously, why don't you people just go away and leave Slashdot alone?

Nice strawman you created. No, I was primarily referring to the Microsoft emails and document exhibits in the Comes vs Microsoft trial. Here's a quote from Mr Gates himself (exhibit 2151):

"I have decided that we should not publish these extensions. We should wait until we have a way to do a high level of integration that will be harder for the likes of Notes, Wordperfect to achieve, and which will give Office a real advantage. This means that Capone and Marvel can still live in the top level of the Explorer namespace, but will run separately. We can continue to use the iShellBrowser APIs for MS provided views such as control panel, and can use them for other MS-provided views that don't create a large compatibility or ISV issue."

While telling Novell (Gates' letter to Novell's Frankenburg in 1995 - http://www.groklaw.net/pdf2/NovvMS-104-21.pdf):

"In fact, Microsoft goes out of its way to make early copies of API and protocol specifications available, hold design reviews (that even our competitors attend), and run the largest beta test programs in the industry. Novell has been invited to participate in many of these "Open Process" events -- and all without requiring a tit-for-tat arrangement."

Unfortunately, Novell's claims and these exhibits have not been tested in court. And now with Attachmate in control, I can see a confidential settlement happening. But we can see Microsoft's unpalatable tactics in these exhibits for ourselves, and while Gates poo-poos Novell's anti-trust concerns in the above letter, they were vindicated by the federal monopoly abuse conviction, the adverse settlement with Caldera for Microsoft's anti-competitive behaviour with DR-DOS, and with the adverse browser ruling from the EU.

As we saw with the ISO OOXML "Standard" farce, the patent suit against TomTom and now another against Barnes and Noble, Microsoft certainly hasn't changed its ways. I just hope they shrink from the scene sooner than later.

Your point about Word Perfect is false and misleading. Word Perfect died because Microsoft targeted it. MS viewed Word Perfect as a big threat and abused their monopoly position to end that threat. They purposefully changed specifications and withdrew APIs in Windows 95 a month before it was due to be released. Word Perfect/Novell had to recode much of the program, hence it was late and bug ridden. All this came out in the Comes vs MS trial and is about to resurface if Novell continues their case against MS. Before you say prove it, read for yourself:

http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=2007021720190018

I note your plugging a Microsoft shop in your sig - aren't astroturfers normally less obvious?

It was announced that groklaw will stop on may 16, What site will be the best followup?

An interesting piece of alternative history, in the real world the record has this to say:

"We are pursuing a strategy to keep WordPerfect on the defensive. In effect, this means acting like we are still the "trailer" and explicitly calling them out with aggressive switcher tactics" link

"In an email dated October 3, 199, however, Bill Gates ordered his top executives to retract the documentation of the browsing extensions, but only until Microsoft’s own developers of the Office suite of applications had sufficient time to work with the hidden extensions to build an insurmountable advantage over competitors such as WordPerfect" link

"I have decided that we should not publish these extensions. We should wait until we have a way to do a high level of integration that will be harder for likee of Notes, Wordperfect to achieve, and which will give Office a real advantage" link

"When I read the section beginning at paragraph 92, for example, about Microsoft deliberately making Word incompatible with WordPerfect" link

Groklaw

Note that the splitting of the "mumbo jumbo" has never happened and was shrugged off by De Icaza last time he was confronted about it.

The FSFs stance, but since the FSF are just anti MS, Stallman following loonies (right?), here's Groklaw's stance. I'm sure you can find more with your friend.

But don't let the facts presented by people who understand the applicable law and the related issues stop your fanboyism.

What exactly is a "computer-implemented invention"?

Is a compression algorithm a "computer-implemented invention"? The patents on arithmetic coding held up progress in that area for more than a decade. Is a video codec a "computer-implemented invention"?

Hint: Computers are general-purpose. By design, they can compute anything that is computable. That is the whole point. It can run any and every piece of software written for it. The same machine can implement any calculation you want. The software part (the inputs to the machine) is entirely mathematics.

Are you claiming that "General purpose machine" plus "software, which is entirely mathematics" equals a patentable invention?

Maybe you should read this article at Groklaw.

You may as well see the data too. Estimate of WP7 sales through scraping Facebook App active user data.

Simply put, Windows Phone 7 failed to thrive. It didn't take off. All that estimated $1B in marketing money added up to a big bucket-o-fail. It peaked at less than two percent of share on launch and is trailing off now to less than one fourth of that. Wishing that will change is not going to make it change. For the past month it's not even making up for the people giving up on Windows 6.5.

I, for one, would prefer they didn't gain any market share whatsoever. I would prefer that Microsoft fail in mobile, and that they continue to fail spectacularly by burning huge bonfires of money to no avail. Mobile is the future, and if you look at their suit against Barnes and Noble you will see that their desire for market share is not about innovation, it's not even about money. It's about control. They want to prevent all progress they don't supply. It's not enough for them to win - everybody else must lose also, including the customers. They want to stop all this neat stuff we've been getting the last few years. We like this stuff.

No, we don't need Microsoft for a vibrant competitive environment. Quite the opposite. For a vibrant competitive environment we need them to shrivel away to nothing through wasting all their money on lost causes. From the look of things they're well on their way.

Android tablets will put up the good fight yet. The Nook may save Barnes and Noble, particularly if they get really angry. We just need some tablets to hit the right price points with credible features and decent tablet-base OS. After that choice will win out over The iPad.

Symbian was released under the EPL (which was later changed to a mostly-closed license) in 2010.

Full source code dump is available here and some other stuff are available here.

"Unless whoever in legal wrote/checked out B&N's statement is a complete moron, fuzzyfuzzyfungus

'Microsoft is misusing these patents as part of a scheme to try to eliminate or marginalize the competition to its own Windows Phone 7 mobile device operating system posed by the open source Android operating system and other open source operating systems .. Barnes & Noble denies the remaining allegations set forth in this paragraph. 15. Denied. 16. Denied. 17. Denied`. link

--

"I assume that that particular line is attached to the broader claim that Microsoft is using patents that are either invalid, overbroad, or irrelevant; but excessively expensive/time consuming to challenge, to do that", fuzzyfuzzyfungus

Do you assume that the Android OS is violating MS patents, if so, explain your reasoning ...

citation needed?

Here you go then. Although it is a major joke to actually think this has never happened, including in major cases. It links to this judicial transcript from a major judge.
Or here, let me answer the part specifically in the article, from the judge.

THE COURT: Markman hearings. I have handled a fair number of patent cases. They are not my favorite, mostly because I am always feeling very inadequate to the job. When I feel inadequate to the job, I can't do a great job for you. I am your pupil; you are the teachers. I don't know anything about how these patents work. I can barely do e-mail. Although I have gotten a reputation for being a tech judge, that doesn't physically know how to do it. I know how to order other people how to do it.
When you approach me, you need to treat me like your brighter-than-average middle schooler. In other words, I have the brain power to learn just about anything you want to teach me, but what I don't have is the experience to know how to put that in context. Don't ever assume, oh, gee, everybody knows that, we don't need a tutorial. You probably do. I will feel more confident about the decisions that I give you if you will work with me from the basics up. A couple of things about being a good teacher is that you have to basically start where your student is. Don't be teaching physics to Ph.D candidates when what you really need is seventh grade science. I will tell you when you get too basic. But for the most part, if we learn a common vocabulary and common principles, we will be on the same page.

The second thing I would tell you is, you are the teachers, I am the pupil. If you overwhelm me, in other words, if you drop the library on me rather than the best book available, I am likely to be discouraged. You need to pick out the best material that you want me to read in order to get ready.

If 12 of you decide you are going to teach me about a particular concept needed for the Markman, I am not going to be able to absorb twelve different points of view. By necessity, if you want me to understand, you have to come at it with a common teaching point.

I will work hard to understand what you try and tell me. I am not shy about speaking up when I don't understand. You shouldn't consider that a problem.

When I first started doing patents, there was a complicated patent that involved the evolution of the internet itself, and the lawyers gave me a book to read, a single 180-page book and I read it, and then we started on the tutorial. I think the tutorial lasted for a day and a half. I said at the end of it, well, have you taught me everything that an average middle schooler might know about the internet? No, Judge, we got you beyond that. I said, well, have I gotten to high school yet? Well, Judge, we think we got you to high school. I said, did I get to college? The response was junior college, Judge, junior college. That's where we are.

citation needed?

Here you go then. Although it is a major joke to actually think this has never happened, including in major cases. It links to this judicial transcript from a major judge.
Or here, let me answer the part specifically in the article, from the judge.

THE COURT: Markman hearings. I have handled a fair number of patent cases. They are not my favorite, mostly because I am always feeling very inadequate to the job. When I feel inadequate to the job, I can't do a great job for you. I am your pupil; you are the teachers. I don't know anything about how these patents work. I can barely do e-mail. Although I have gotten a reputation for being a tech judge, that doesn't physically know how to do it. I know how to order other people how to do it.
When you approach me, you need to treat me like your brighter-than-average middle schooler. In other words, I have the brain power to learn just about anything you want to teach me, but what I don't have is the experience to know how to put that in context. Don't ever assume, oh, gee, everybody knows that, we don't need a tutorial. You probably do. I will feel more confident about the decisions that I give you if you will work with me from the basics up. A couple of things about being a good teacher is that you have to basically start where your student is. Don't be teaching physics to Ph.D candidates when what you really need is seventh grade science. I will tell you when you get too basic. But for the most part, if we learn a common vocabulary and common principles, we will be on the same page.

The second thing I would tell you is, you are the teachers, I am the pupil. If you overwhelm me, in other words, if you drop the library on me rather than the best book available, I am likely to be discouraged. You need to pick out the best material that you want me to read in order to get ready.

If 12 of you decide you are going to teach me about a particular concept needed for the Markman, I am not going to be able to absorb twelve different points of view. By necessity, if you want me to understand, you have to come at it with a common teaching point.

I will work hard to understand what you try and tell me. I am not shy about speaking up when I don't understand. You shouldn't consider that a problem.

When I first started doing patents, there was a complicated patent that involved the evolution of the internet itself, and the lawyers gave me a book to read, a single 180-page book and I read it, and then we started on the tutorial. I think the tutorial lasted for a day and a half. I said at the end of it, well, have you taught me everything that an average middle schooler might know about the internet? No, Judge, we got you beyond that. I said, well, have I gotten to high school yet? Well, Judge, we think we got you to high school. I said, did I get to college? The response was junior college, Judge, junior college. That's where we are.

Incorrect.... That's only what Sony has been trying to push...

Read this:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20110310172538157

160. On its website, SCEA wrote: Why did you delete the “Other OS” feature?

        A. To protect the intellectual property of the content offered on the PS3 system as well as to provide a more secure system for those users who are enjoying games and other entertainment content on the PS3 system, we have decided to delete the feature to address security vulnerabilities of the system.

161. This statement is a fabrication. SCEA gave these reasons as a pretext so that it could attempt to argue that the Warranty, SSLA, and/or TOS allowed for the removal of the “Other OS” feature. In reality, SCEI and SCEA removed this feature because it was expensive to maintain (as they previously admitted when the feature was removed from the “slim” models – but which they conveniently removed from SCEA’s website); they were losing money on every PS3 unit sold (due to poor decisions in the planning and design of the Cell chip as noted above and given the PS3’s extra features); SCEA needed to promote and sell games to make their money back on the loss-leading PS3 consoles (and there was no profit in users utilizing the computer functions of the PS3); and IBM wanted to sell its expensive servers utilizing the Cell processor (users could cluster PS3s for the same purposes much less expensively).

162. SCEA has never revealed how its “intellectual property” would be unprotected through the use of Linux on the PS3. Moreover, the utilization of Linux did not make the PS3 less “secure.”

163. It is virtually impossible to use the “Other OS” for piracy because the PS3 is specifically designed to avoid allowing piracy through using the “Other OS” feature. When the “Other OS” feature is enabled, the software prevents the proper operation of the gaming feature to avoid allowing the features to interplay. In order for a hacker to pirate a game, it is necessary to perfectly emulate the operating system for which the game is designed, including the API, which is the interface for the game OS that supports all of the features of a game. However, when the Other OS is in use, the API and other hardware features are blocked, including the graphics chip in the PS3, which makes it impossible to run a pirated game on the Other OS. As of January 2011, Sony had yet to identify a single instance in which someone used the Other OS to pirate protected content.

Have you told Google and Redhat and co that? Seriously, they may literally just not know about it, like the way the a groklaw commenter's Commodore Amiga (which of course was doing a bunch of "multitasking desktop OS" stuff a decade before the PC) got a patent troll thrown out.

http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20100513121121635

Oh, jeebus. Now you've done it. I've enjoyed some of your bits but you may as well check in this alt now, hairyfeet. You're about to be modded to the point where you can't be seen.

You may as well be a Birther on this. PJ has done more to expose the malfeasance in IT than any other this past decade. Her blog's fans brought us the full text of the BSD settlement agreement. She has shone a light on the dire dealings of the analysts, the lawyers, the custom venues. Her efforts have thwarted many a program that would lead us to darkness. Her blog is now archived in the Library of Congress.

What PJ's done for us won't stop happening for 20 years or more. Just one meek example can be found here. You won't bother to assimilate that, nor will many who read this - but enough people have done so to know what you are.

There are hundreds of these. Against your contempt I would ask: what have YOU done? Don't answer. We don't really care. We know now who you're for and why, or you'd not be attacking PJ.

I'm not sure what you meant, but I was posting a link I didn't find when I read the article.

Did you read any of the subsequent articles?
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20110413220154117

Here: http://www.groklaw.net/pdf2/SoftchoiceOppMotforJonAdminRecord.pdf

PS: I am no shill, the closest I was to Microsoft was when I was in Seattle, interviewing for Amazon for a Linux based position. My posting history is like that because it's fun to point out the other side of things.

Actually, more like "wah! guys! please come back! we promise we won't spite the community!"

This doesn't mean shit unless they change the bylaws which give oracle complete control over openoffice with the ability to nullify the community basically.

Please, you do realize they settled before resolving the jurisdiction issue right? And that the facts show that the Sony which sued in California very likely has no standing (hasn't been ruled yet - per the class action's statements as well).

The case never moved forward into discovery, there was no actual proof of infringement or ANYTHING substantiated. Now he has a settlement saying "don't do it again".

#2 has never been proven in court as straight up illegal, although DMCA has no exceptions carved for it for now this would have been the case to challenge that.

I wonder if this settlement is in any way related to the ongoing Class Action ( http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20110402000830503 ) that Sony (actually SCEA) would really want closed as well. The judge in that case is starting to ask uncomfortable questions, and I suspect they would not want to fight two battles that would result damaging to Sony's reputation, if they have any left after the rootkit case from a few years back. I also suspect that SCEA's views are not Sony's, and perhaps the parent company is asking for them to lower the tones.

Look, it isn't called grok sco, it's called grok law. Why not re-purpose toward legal issues in general or at least some broad subcategory?

Well, if you read her mission statement, she clearly said it was for SCO related stuff.

While we all appreciate the work that PJ has done ... she's free to follow other pursuits. She's invested 7 years in it; maybe she feels it's time to move on.

They had a lot of useful factual information on the Oracle-Google (Android) case

Why not just avoid buying Sony products? Let the free market operate. Granted, this doesn't compensate for Sony's removal of the "other OS" feature, but there's an ongoing lawsuit over that, too. It's interesting how disingenuous Sony is being, claiming different things in the two lawsuits - that should (hopefully) get them in big trouble with the courts, which don't like weasels.

With proposed law such as these:

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2011032316585825

Which protects only M$ and the other big ones, and the legislation purposely leave FOSS alone if you read carefully.

China still has a favorable IP laws and nobody should get punish for it. Buy "Made in China"!

I smell Microsoft.

Go here to download the Android source code. Then read the license here:

The preferred license for the Android Open Source Project is the Apache Software License, 2.0 ("Apache 2.0"), and the majority of the Android software is licensed with Apache 2.0. While the project will strive to adhere to the preferred license, there may be exceptions which will be handled on a case-by-case basis. For example, the Linux kernel patches are under the GPLv2 license with system exceptions, which can be found on kernel.org.

As others have already suggested, the FSF friendly way to "gain control of and final say over customization" is through the trademark, not the software license. There is no evidence in this article that this is not the path Google is taking, yet we got a plethora of posts saying "On noes! Google has become evil!".

You know the funny thing? This is yet another example when Google does something very good (standing against software patents in this case) and then gets slamed with make-believe charges that they are doing something evil. It is clear, to me at least, that is is just another foray in Microsoft's attacks on Google because they know they can't complete technically. It's like this decade's version of what was reported in the Halloween documents

yup, and wait for it....wait for it...you don't need honeycomb to be able do exactly that, which shows that the whole article is shoddy journalism at best.

For the reality side, Microsoft has lost, as pointed out by groklaw.

No, microsoft only won once: DOS. After that, they just used that marketshare alongside some really shady business practices to push windows as the #1 OS.

How to Get Your Platform Accepted as a Standard - Microsoft Style

Groklaw has its own biases whenever IBM comes into the picture.

Is Groklaw somewhat scared about SCO/Microsoft and does that show in the articles? Sure.

Is Groklaw generally wrong or misleading? Not at all: it is possible to keep fact separated from opinion. Journalists understand that and are able to do that just fine - unless their salary depends on not understanding it.

Furthermore, PJ's paranoia about SCO/Microsoft seems to be rather well founded .

So as far as journalistic integrity goes, Groklaw is top notch.

skip ars technica and go straight to groklaw http://www.groklaw.net/

Barnes and Noble aren't suing, but predictably Microsoft is. They don't like Nook+Android for some reason. PJ over at Groklaw thinks it's "SCO II" Ref: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20110321172008657

Keep a history of all the bullshitty things a company has done to users. Apple and Microsoft would have reams of instance of screwing with the company.

Groklaw?

Granted it's not aimed directly at users, but in the end it's the users who are screwed.

According to Microsoft today, the Nook, which uses Android as its base operating system, violates five Microsoft-held patents on such innovative inventions like "Loading status in a hypermedia browser having a limited available display area" (Patent #6,339,780).

Why Is Microsoft Seeking New State Laws That Allow it to Sue Competitors For Piracy by Overseas Suppliers?

Apart from his recent Linux header copyright brouhaha (which, to be fair, has still not been properly addressed by the appropriate parties),

Linus himself has spoken on the issue, the FSF's stance is pretty clear from what they've said in the past (and haven't changed), it was discussed in detail on Groklaw, and a ZDNet contributor got a statement from a technology lawyer contradicting the claims of Naughton. What more do you wantt? -- a Ietter signed by all the 1000s of Linux contributors, living and dead?

his writings are pretty accurate,

Really? He's been wrong on almost all of his opinions ever since he tried to block the Sun sale to Oracle along with Monty Wiidenius based on a ridiculous interpretation of the GPL (hey that seems like a theme, doesn't it?). At the time he was smaked down by Eblen Moglen himself (see Groklaw's story).

and he does have a much greater knowledge of patent matters than the random slashdotter or AC.

That's a pretty low bar. It's clear he understands a lot, but he only reports strangely twisted facts so that it always comes out as something Microsoft would agree with. In the process he makes absurd statements that have been debunked repeatedly by folks with more knowledge or better track records such as the FSF or Groklaw. You can look on his own blog where he has trouble defending his position -- he has to pretend various other comments, threads, and stories don't exist to defend his position, while others are providing clear references and links.

In the end, he looks like a fool precisely because he can't say what is true, but what his apparent sponsor needs him to say, no matter what the evidence to the contrary.

I see no FUD if he keeps pointing out how patents affect free software, especially since he is talking about actual lawsuits in progress.

You don't seem to understand the definition of FUD. The best FUD is real facts, used irrelevantly or out of context. For example, it is FUD for a large car dealership to say:
    "Even though he's got a lower price, I'd be worried from Dealer X, as he has a small business. Did you know that many small businesses that size fail every year? They might fail too and not be able to live up to their support contract like we can. With such low prices, he's probably losing money right now and could fail at any time. But of course, make your own choice based on what you are comfortable with."

See, nothing there is actually untrue, it's just that such stats taken out of context give you no real data on how these *specific* businesses are doing. The idea is to put a kernel of doubt in the person hearing it, so they will go along with you while thinking they are making an informed choice.

As others have pointed out, Florian is clearly trying to imply an extrapolation using a scary red color, he starts his graph at *negative* six lawsuits, ignores that lawsuits take years on an OS only a few years old, and ignores the outcome or expected outcome of any lawsuit. The idea is simply to make you worry about using Android. Yet if you think about it, if you were to graph the total awards in *successful* patent lawsuits against Microsoft since 1978, that also will go up and to the right. Does that mean Windows is in danger, or just that there's a big successful pie and plenty of people with patents who want to try to grab a slice?

And when he brings up indemnity, how can you *not* remember SCO and their eerily similar (and ultimately unsuccessful) FUD campaign?

I hope it pays well, Florian.

Apart from his recent Linux header copyright brouhaha (which, to be fair, has still not been properly addressed by the appropriate parties),

Linus himself has spoken on the issue, the FSF's stance is pretty clear from what they've said in the past (and haven't changed), it was discussed in detail on Groklaw, and a ZDNet contributor got a statement from a technology lawyer contradicting the claims of Naughton. What more do you wantt? -- a Ietter signed by all the 1000s of Linux contributors, living and dead?

his writings are pretty accurate,

Really? He's been wrong on almost all of his opinions ever since he tried to block the Sun sale to Oracle along with Monty Wiidenius based on a ridiculous interpretation of the GPL (hey that seems like a theme, doesn't it?). At the time he was smaked down by Eblen Moglen himself (see Groklaw's story).

and he does have a much greater knowledge of patent matters than the random slashdotter or AC.

That's a pretty low bar. It's clear he understands a lot, but he only reports strangely twisted facts so that it always comes out as something Microsoft would agree with. In the process he makes absurd statements that have been debunked repeatedly by folks with more knowledge or better track records such as the FSF or Groklaw. You can look on his own blog where he has trouble defending his position -- he has to pretend various other comments, threads, and stories don't exist to defend his position, while others are providing clear references and links.

In the end, he looks like a fool precisely because he can't say what is true, but what his apparent sponsor needs him to say, no matter what the evidence to the contrary.

I see no FUD if he keeps pointing out how patents affect free software, especially since he is talking about actual lawsuits in progress.

You don't seem to understand the definition of FUD. The best FUD is real facts, used irrelevantly or out of context. For example, it is FUD for a large car dealership to say:
    "Even though he's got a lower price, I'd be worried from Dealer X, as he has a small business. Did you know that many small businesses that size fail every year? They might fail too and not be able to live up to their support contract like we can. With such low prices, he's probably losing money right now and could fail at any time. But of course, make your own choice based on what you are comfortable with."

See, nothing there is actually untrue, it's just that such stats taken out of context give you no real data on how these *specific* businesses are doing. The idea is to put a kernel of doubt in the person hearing it, so they will go along with you while thinking they are making an informed choice.

As others have pointed out, Florian is clearly trying to imply an extrapolation using a scary red color, he starts his graph at *negative* six lawsuits, ignores that lawsuits take years on an OS only a few years old, and ignores the outcome or expected outcome of any lawsuit. The idea is simply to make you worry about using Android. Yet if you think about it, if you were to graph the total awards in *successful* patent lawsuits against Microsoft since 1978, that also will go up and to the right. Does that mean Windows is in danger, or just that there's a big successful pie and plenty of people with patents who want to try to grab a slice?

And when he brings up indemnity, how can you *not* remember SCO and their eerily similar (and ultimately unsuccessful) FUD campaign?

I hope it pays well, Florian.

"Would Microsoft lie to make more money?"

No never and nothing in their history would demonstrate that...?? link

It established the abstraction-filtration-comparison test in whether copyright code is infringing. Abstraction is the first step and gets the relevant source code. In filtration, any part of the code that cannot be copyrighted must be eliminated for consideration. One thing that must be excluded are facts. For example, many programs that draw circles rely on using Pi. A company cannot copyright PI =3.14159 as this is a fact. Anything in the public domain are excluded. This is where SCO would have had lots of problems because even if the code was legally owned by them (it was owned by Novell), some of what they claimed to be theirs had been put into the public domain by AT&T, USL, BSD, and others over the years. Header files (especially the simple ones that are merely #include statements) can fall under scenes a faire. Standards also fall under this category. Scenes a faire are all the elements that are required for any program of the same type to run. Variable declarations for example. If a program works with files, the owner can't really claim "File file = null" is copyrightable as a variable declaration.

Only after filtering out non-protected elements, can any comparison begin. That was one of the arguments IBM had against SCO: IBM's expert claimed that SCO's expert, SCO VP Gupta, had failed to filter out unprotected elements of code. Two examples of the alleged violating code were the IPC and ELF header files. The IPC header had been put into public domain without copyright since 1989. The ELF header was published as part of the ELF specification whose membership included SCO's predecessor, Santa Cruz. By the way, IBM's expert was Brian Kernighan who worked with Ritchie and Thompson on Unix, wrote the first book on C with Ritchie, and wrote some Unix programs like cron.

It established the abstraction-filtration-comparison test in whether copyright code is infringing. Abstraction is the first step and gets the relevant source code. In filtration, any part of the code that cannot be copyrighted must be eliminated for consideration. One thing that must be excluded are facts. For example, many programs that draw circles rely on using Pi. A company cannot copyright PI =3.14159 as this is a fact. Anything in the public domain are excluded. This is where SCO would have had lots of problems because even if the code was legally owned by them (it was owned by Novell), some of what they claimed to be theirs had been put into the public domain by AT&T, USL, BSD, and others over the years. Header files (especially the simple ones that are merely #include statements) can fall under scenes a faire. Standards also fall under this category. Scenes a faire are all the elements that are required for any program of the same type to run. Variable declarations for example. If a program works with files, the owner can't really claim "File file = null" is copyrightable as a variable declaration.

Only after filtering out non-protected elements, can any comparison begin. That was one of the arguments IBM had against SCO: IBM's expert claimed that SCO's expert, SCO VP Gupta, had failed to filter out unprotected elements of code. Two examples of the alleged violating code were the IPC and ELF header files. The IPC header had been put into public domain without copyright since 1989. The ELF header was published as part of the ELF specification whose membership included SCO's predecessor, Santa Cruz. By the way, IBM's expert was Brian Kernighan who worked with Ritchie and Thompson on Unix, wrote the first book on C with Ritchie, and wrote some Unix programs like cron.