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Patent Concerns Unlikely To Nix Munich Linux Plan
MonkeyDev writes "Yahoo is reporting that Munich is ready to move forward with plans to 'abandon Microsoft Windows
in favor of upstart rival Linux. The council is expected to take a calculated risk and vote through the move, despite concerns about possible software patent infringements in the face of coming European Union legislation that caused months of delay.' Not everyone is excited about it. A software developer at MySQL claims 'Linux violates 283 U.S. software patents.' How does the Linux community respond to these claims?" (Florian Mueller, the MySQL developer mentioned, isn't opposed to Munich using Linux, though -- just the opposite.) Update: 09/29 02:22 GMT by T : Marten Mickos of MySQL AB writes with a correction: "Florian Müller is an independent software developer and entrepreneur. He is ALSO an advisor to MySQL AB but he does not work for the company. He is presently engaged in coordinating opposition against software
patents in EU, and thereby doing all of us within free software and open
source a great favour."
Hmmm, easy answer : back up your claims, show us the list.
If you ship software that has code in it that is covered by a patent what does that mean? Can the owner of the patent hit the author up for money? Can they hit the users of the code up for money? Can the author say "you, the user, are responsible for getting licenses for any patents that cover this code" and pass the buck?
How we know is more important than what we know.
Why would these guys in Munich be concerned with violating US software patents? Just as long as they don't become European software patents (although that doesn't look like happening).
Fascinating Entendre
I wish that developers would, instead of noting that such violations exist, correct them. Now... this is not always possible... for instance, I'm sure that a patent or copyright exists for "displaying multiple pages through the use of a clickable scroll bar" and undoubtedly, more than one OS has this functionality. Perhaps the issue will boil down to not whether or not parts of Linux violate copyrights but rather, whether or not said copyrights are even enforceable in the first place?
Mak'tal shree lok'tak mek'ta sa'tak Oz! - Daniel Jackson
> Linux violates 283 U.S. software patents.' How does the Linux community respond
> to these claims?
I just don't care.
when does Linux stop being an "upstart" in the popular press? It's getting on to 15 years old, and it's quite prevalent already.
Please read the source text carefully!
Florian Müller is NOT a MySQL developer. He is an independent software developer who ALSO is an advisor to MySQL.
And when Florian mentiones the patents, he is only quoting another source.
Florian Müller is engaged (successfully, I might add) in opposing the legalisation of software patents in EU. By doing this, he is doing all of us within the free software and open source world an enormous favour.
I am afraid that many of the postings on this topic are based on erroneous input data. Hope this helps to set things straight.
Marten Mickos, CEO, MySQL AB
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
And how many of those 283 patents are based upon other patents which have already expired or are really not unique? (Many of the patents being issued today are only extensions of pre-existing patents which is why there are these long lists of other patents being referenced.) This is not to dump on those truly unique patents - it is to dump on those (like the usage of a laser light as a cat toy) patents which, to programmers, are so obvious as to make you sick that the Patent Office could actually issue a patent on the invention. As per this other /. article - there are a lot of people saying the Patent System is broken and needs to be fixed.
Someone put a black hole in my pocket and now I'm broke.
How about Math.
Please explain to me why a computer program is not simply a gigantic math problem?
Can it's processing not be broken down into nothing more than binary operations of a function. A formula that some determined individual may write out longhand?
Sure, that blackboard may stretch to the moon (and be made of carbon nanotubes), but it is an equation nonetheless.
is it not?
I mean, it takes input values, and returns output values.
It's just a really useful math problem.
When did we suddenly become able to patent Mathematics?
John, this is a misquote from the start. MySQL has not claimed ANYTHING, nor has any MySQL developer. See my posting elsewhere under this topic.
A person who is only an advisor to MySQL has simply repeated something that someone else has previously said about Linux and patents.
I am sorry for the confusion, but we did not create it.
Marten Mickos, MySQL
How many patents does microsoft windows violate? How about osx? solaris? aix? hp/ux? Probably tens of thousands.
We only know about the linux 'violations' because the code is open. I'm sure if someone were to evaluate "those other operating systems" we'd find far more -- because there is no open public oversight of their code. They operate in secret, who's the wiser if they were deliberately violating patents?
Also, do any of "those other companies" provide indemnification to end users? No, in fact microsoft's license is almost exclusively to provide microsoft with indemnification from end users.
Using microsoft or any other OS isn't likely any safer than using linux, when it comes to patent violations.
'Linux violates 283 U.S. software patents.' How does the Linux community respond to these claims?'
You pulled 283 out of your ass. Those are just the ones you know about. You know why you pulled that number out of your ass? It's impossible to review the whole patent database and screen it against the whole of Linux. Humanly impossible. 283 is a made up number. May as well say 2,830 or 283,000.
An exact count of how many software patents are violated by Microsoft Windows, for instance, would be equally impossible - nay, more, because they keep their source code a secret; however, it is incontravertibly a similar if not higher number.
If you try to follow the U.S. software patent system you won't even be able to power a pocket calculator without a half-million dollars for attorneys and payoffs. Yes, you think I'm exaggerating, don't you.
That's why 100% of Americans ignore their own system. Everybody knows its ridiculous. Even SP's major proponents are afraid to use them because they fear the whole system will unravel if they test it, so all they do is occasionally shake people down, hit and run once and a while. They want to sue Linux over patents; they've been desperate to do it for years, and they're too scared of how badly it will backfire. They're probably right. So they're reduced to backdoors like SCO. And we see how well that cleverness works for them.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
Slashdotters, this is a very important discussion (the one on software patents), but let's start with accurate facts.
The 283 thing is old news and was just repeated by Mr Florian Müller (who is NOT a MySQL developer). See here:
http://news.com.com/Group:+Linux+potentially+infr
I quote from that article:
- - -
Linux potentially infringes 283 patents, including 27 held by Microsoft but none that have been validated by court judgments, according to a group that sells insurance to protect those using or selling Linux against intellectual-property litigation.
Dan Ravicher, founder and executive director of the Public Patent Foundation, conducted the analysis for Open Source Risk Management. OSRM is like an insurance company, selling legal protection against Linux copyright-infringement claims. It plans to expand the program to patent protections.
- - -
So it seems that an important discussion has got onto the wrong track due to incorrect input information.
But let us discuss software patents! MySQL's official position can be found here:
http://www.mysql.com/company/legal/patents.html
Marten Mickos, CEO, MySQL AB
'Linux violates 283 U.S. software patents.' How does the Linux community respond to these claims?"
Maybe it's not Linux which is what's wrong/broken. Fill in the rest.
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
If some one said this to me, I would take the "Groklaw Approach". I would ask them first, what are the specific patents and second, how can he be sure that Linux violates all these patents. It would seem to me that to do a fair assessment of 283 patents would take a fair amount of time. So let's see the details.
My guess is that his answers would consist of words like "I", "don't", and "know".
HPC for Primates. Read Cluster Monkey
Linux using patented ideas may or may be a great problem. Some of these patents are probably in code contributed by companies. When you open up code under the GPL, you are also saying you won't use those patents against derivatives of that code (that's part of the GPL). So 'violating' may be the wrong word in this case, becuase is (hopefully all) of the cases, they've been given to the Linux movement.
Besides, I'm sure Microsoft has looked into patents that Linux might violate, becuase they're looking to destroy Linux, and a legimate patent claim would certaintly help. If they had found something, I'm sure they would have used it by now.
I can think of two ways, of the top of my head. Note that the 'equation' is, as with mathematical desrciptions of relationships, just a method of formal statment, and need not 'look like' a typical mathematical equation.
The first, and probably the simplest, is to use a formal description of a state machine. Thus, the system is normally in the 'wait for input state', and then it branches to a state determined by the type of user input. This encapsulates the interactive element in a single part, and closely resembles the typical structure of most GUI systems (with callbacks etc).
The other method is to treat the system as a function of infinite arguments and use combinator logic. Curry all the arguments into the function, up to the latest existsing, then as each piece of new input occurs, add another argument, and curry it out. Something like an RDBMS is probably better suited to this sort of desription.
This is, I think, an impure calculus - currying is normally invoked to allow description of multiargument functions withing lambda calculus which requires single argument functions. Nevertheless, I can see no major hurdles to describing a program in such a manner.
Granted, I've not had the chance to express any non-trivial programs in either form as yet (lack of time), but I think that some programs are better suited to one representation that the other.
Worth noting that there is no change in the description if the input is known all a priori, and processed from a file, or if it's all garnered piecemeal. Consider a shell script for an example where this is obvious.
A mouse action is probably best represented by a tuple of tuples, giving button down and button up coordinates - thus ((10,10),(20,10)) represnts a mouse drag action, and clicks fall out as degenerate coordinates.
Alternativly, for another option, look at how a pure functional language does a GUI. For example, the wxHaskell bindings for, (unsurprisingly) Haskell. Haskell (a pure functional language with lazy evaluation) programs are just an implementation of a mathematical model of computation. Here, the description is effectivly as a set of functions, where the 'user input' determines which function to run [0]. Techincally, this is no longer a set of equations, however I can prove that this is equivelent to the state machine description above.
Any errors, feel free to correct - this is all a bit rough and ready. I just felt that it was worth pointing out that just because it might be absurb, doesn't make it impossible. For example, the halting problem seems absurb to everyone whose not studied it (because it's obvious if a program will finish).
[0] Or something close to that. I'm not intimatly familer with either the language or the bindings, so I might be a little of with the description.
That's how the (software) patent game works. It's virtually impossible to avoid violating patents due to the very nature of software. When challenged, the big guns go through their patent portfolio and can usually find something that the challenger violates in some way. Then, a cross licensing agreement is hammered out. Thus, the big fish are protected, but any small fry can't compete.
So, yes, everyone is guilty, but the IBM's of this world can weather the war just fine, while everyone else gets wiped out. In fact, the war is already in full swing and has simply become part of doing business.
I think RMS covers this in his speech The dangers of software patents.
Signatures are a waste of bandwi (buffering...)
It's interesting to note that patents apply to all sorts of unlikely things like software and business processes, but not to legal strategies, practices or processes. It seems as if the lawyers realized how badly that would muck them up and haven't applied the patent pricipals to their own field. I guess that there's lots of money to be made from messing up everyone else's business, but not their own.
It would be very bizarre to hear an objection to a legal argument because someone else owned the right to make arguments of they style that the motion used. Perhaps only Johny Cochraine could "play the race card" or something like that. Every other law firm might have to pay him a royalty to use the argument.
If someone could come up with a clear demonstration showing that software patents are as sensible as legal strategy patents, then I'll bet that the supreme court would overturn the current incarnation of the patent laws in a heart beat.
Signatures are a waste of bandwi (buffering...)
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
I considered adding a paragraph about algorithms being the appropriate parallel in software, but pulled it out just because of what you said here...
I guess at that point, you'd have to also confirm it's a non-obvious method that is being patented. If someone invents a truly novel algorithm of encrypting communication that doesn't involve really big factorizations or something, that might warrant a patent. If someone develops an encryption algorithm though that just does different factorizations or longer keys than normal methods, while different, that algorithm isn't really novel.
So essentially, I guess algorithms could potentially be patented ethically, but it would more or less be a math patent, not a software patent. And i would take a good mathemetician to identify if it was obvious or not, because I know I certainly couldn't decide...
And even with all that, this is a gray area, which is largely why patent reform is necessary in the first place. Innovation is being hindered by these questions since some of the most innovation right now is coming out of software development.
-N
I've nothing to say here...
They are waiting until Europe has approved software patents. It is no use to them to only destroy Linux in the USA, they need to destroy it wherever they can. If they were to do so now, the opponents of software patents in Europe would gain a powerful weapon. If they wait a while, until software patents have become a reality, they can strike and destroy Linux in two major markets.
Expect them to strike as soon as the future of software patents in Europe is known.