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Microsoft Patents sudo
Jimmy O Regan writes "Justin Mason (of SpamAssassin fame) has this blog entry: US Patent 6,775,781, filed by Microsoft, is a patent on the concept of 'a process configured to run under an administrative privilege level' which, based on authorization information 'in a data store', may perform actions at administrative privilege on behalf of a 'user process'."
So, I guess the prior art will be easy to show... right?
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I don't think I've seen a true unprivileged user under an M$ system yet. Everyone is talking about previous art, which is definitly around, but I'd say make M$ prove they actually understand sudo before you start complaining about "I saw it first."
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
The American patent system is so out of control, it's unbelievable. The companies that abuse the overworked, underqualified patent office to stack up dubious patents for future ammunition against competitors ought to be sanctioned!
;)
I don't have words to express how angry this IP grab makes me - and I'm not even an American! Did the Patent Office do any looking into prior art in this case at ALL?
Whose brilliant idea was it to give corporations the same legal rights as an individual? I wonder if this kind of crap would happen if only individual inventors could apply for patents, whether or not they were funded by a company that paid for their research. Hell, make it illegal for companies to defend patents or fund the defense of their employees' patents - make it up to the inventor to go to court and defend themselves! Jail time if prior art is found!
Research would still get funded, but only for the purpose of improving products, not for expansion of intellectual property portfolios.
IANAL (obviously), I know these are probably stupid suggestions, but damn it, we need some extreme methods to match the extreme opportunism shown by these companies. Anyone else have other pie-in-the-sky, impractical ideas for changing the US patent system?
Companies are getting rich by stealing the future inventions of people with these generic fucking patents. What are the odds that those who invented the patenting process actually envisioned it being twisted around and allowing people to patent ideas, and concepts, the like of which they themselves have no idea how to achieve.
The idea of a patent is, or at least should be, to patent an invention. Not some task or distant goal which you can imagine some day being achieved, but are unable to currently achieve yourself.
Imagine if Ford had been able to patent the automile in generic enough terms so that any motorized land vehicle was covered... Where would we be today Wine makers had patented the fermentation process before beer had existed?
IMHO, patents should be for very specific inventions, and processes, which you have invented, and can accurately demonstrate at the time of patent request, and which of course didn't exist in it's current form prior to your invention
The computer industry, and it's money sucking lawyers have been allowed to chisel away at the wording and verbiage of the patent laws to such an extent that you are now able to patent just about any idea/concept someone may have down the road. Just think about the stifling of innovation if those science fiction writers of the 50's had patented all that they foresaw.
What makes me mad is that no one has yet come forward and shown prior artwork for a patent on lawyer wielding companies who make their money by exploiting the ideas and innovations of others through a series of generic and vaguely worded patents and threats. Perhaps then this whole mess would disapear.
Personally I hope the Patent office continues granting MS patents that have such prior art ---- two things will happen -- 1) it makes the patent office look to be a joke and can be used in court against patents in general and 2) makes MS look to be even more a fool seeings how they really should know better then to file such patent applications for such prior art stuff in software...
Although it's easy to view this patent as a frivolous innovation that will probably be overturned (eventually) if MS chooses to pursue action against competitors, the danger is in the precedent that is continually being set by the USPTO. By failing to adequately examine the concepts behing these obvious patents (eg, running a process authorized by root, single/double/triple clicking a mouse, etc.), our patent system is perverted into one where the burden falls on new inventors to prove that their innovations do not infringe on patents, rather then a system where the burden falls on patent-holders to prove that their IP has been infringed upon.
This strategy may work in the US, where we can simply put the inventor^h^h^h^h^h criminals in jail (note that the US already has among the highest incarcerated population %-ages), but it probably won't hold up well against the rest of the world, especially the parts that don't think the USPTO is the last word. Unless we can start to incarcerate a larger percentage of the world's population for infringing on US IP, this strategy may not prove to be sustainable.
Perhaps corporate sponsorship of prisons facilities would help make this strategy a winner...
My theory is that Microsoft is patenting all these things so they can use it as part of a marketing campaign to PHBs when Longhorn comes out. Something to the effect of, "Why take the risk of running Linux when we own the patents on everything they use?" I know a few people it would convince pretty easily... Tis all FUD.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
It's an old news, but I wonder have slashdot crowd found out this patent:
P TO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch- bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=200301895 97&OS=20030189597&RS=20030189597
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=
The most interesting part is the images. There you can actually see the Gnome logo. (There is an extra karma bunus for the first who find the KDE logo;)
So Microsoft have already begun patenting Linux.
It is true that M$ cannot buy GPL code, but it can buy the coders.
Now, guess what will happen after the fiaSCO is over.
Bruce Perens brought this up in a previous patent article and I can't find the post atm. IIRC, it's a criminal offense to knowingly file a false patent. I would assume it falls under perjury. Of course, you don't see anybody actually being prosecuted for this.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
I can certainly see how this could apply to sudo.
executing an administrative security process under the administrative privilege level;
bash forks/execs the sudo process, which gains root privileges through the setuid bit.
the administrative security process accepting a request from a user process executing under the non-administrative privilege level to initiate a particular administrative method
The request is passed on the command line and accepted by sudo.
the user process calling the administrative security process with parameters comprising (a) an identification of the particular administrative method and (b) arguments to be provided to said particular administrative method; and
Now, this depends on your definition of a method. If an executable program counts as one - and it should, as most administrative tasks under UNIX use separate commands - then this fits perfectly.
the administrative security process calling the identified particular administrative method on behalf of the user process and providing the arguments to said identified particular administrative method.
Sudo execs the requested program. QED.
The thing is, the patent doesn't specifically say the privileged process has to handle multiple requests. Sudo DOES run in its own process before it transfers control.
Karma: Segmentation fault (tried to dereference a null post)
Wondering.
This "prior Art" of which everyone is speaking.
Would it apply to a full-form patent application posted publicly?
Meaning, if I present here the idea of a type of list-browsing method where the user is presented with newest added or scanned items inserted into the next selected cursor position in an updateable or actively updating list as they browse arbitrarily sorted or ordered items or values, that this declaration itself constitutes prior art (if, theoretically, the language was legally sound)?
Even if it's not prior art it's still a good idea huh?
I digress.
Is the concept of an "open patent" even applicable legally? I hope so, because I have some ideas that I would like to open up (and I have the feeling i'm not the only one).
It would be great, having this huge database of ideas that any designer or engineer could feel free to impliment or incorporate or merely look into for inspiration.
Competition is good in practice, but cooperation is better in play.
So, it's somewhat questionable if sudo would really block the claims. I'm sure if one were to send the patent office the sudo info, MS would argue that they have an "already running admin. process" that then actively accepts requests from other user processes.
you may be correct... I wonder, in security terms, if its a good idea to have such a thing constantly on, like you describe.
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Ugly and insecure I know but my choices were to get off my ass every time the server bogged (not bloody likely), give every bozo with enough rank to work overtime for free admin and show them how (even less likely, I'd quit first) or implement an ugly kludge that could screw things up royal if used by morons.
I also realize upgrading to a OS that did'nt leak memory in it's network service was a long term option.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
ssh allows (via authorized_keys) to execute selective remote/local actions by certain authenticated entities. And it is all highly configurable:
- who can execute remote (or local) commands
- what operations (commands) can be executed
- using what privileges (via setuid/setgid bits and command owner/group)
And since the agent (sshd) is a permanently running process, there's really nothing new in this patent as decribed.Am I missing something?