Perens Dismisses Torvald's Patent Pool

ficken writes "Open source activist Bruce Perens has dismissed as inadequate a new IP initiative backed by Linus Torvalds. The Open Source Development Labs' (OSDL) patent commons project is intended to provide patent protection to open source developers. Perens, speaking at LinuxWorld, compared the patent pool to "spitting in the wind" -because the patents it contained come from "the wrong people.""

Comments

Stop the infighting

[Yo Maing]

It's dissapointing to hear this event played up for the media's benefit. I read this article yesterday and while Perens' comments seem out of place, the open source community needs to work together instead of becoming splintered with bad press like this.

Re:Stop the infighting

[KiloByte]

Wrong. Having the community work together doesn't really help here -- IBM cannot use its patents to attack any possible foes due to agreements and mutual assured destruction.

Re:Stop the infighting

[Qzukk]

Perens is right though. The idea is a good one, but what's needed isn't patents from IBM and Sun, but patents from regular human beings who have never signed an agreement with Microsoft that would keep the patents from being usable in a lawsuit.

Re:Stop the infighting

[CountBrass]

Actually they're both wrong.

Let's face Linus may be a great project manager (although that's dubious: I'd expect a pm to be a bit more of a diplomat and have a lot less ego) but he's clueless when it comes to the basis of FS/OS: look at the Bitkeeper debacle: a tool he mandated blew up in exactly the way fs advocates would predict. And now he's promoting a patent pool on the same basis which is: if you can't beat them join them.

If I want to hear an informed opinion about OS/FS issues Linus is pretty much the last person I'd turn to.

Re:Stop the infighting

[lightknight]

"look at the Bitkeeper debacle: a tool he mandated blew up in exactly the way fs advocates would predict. "

Because of those FS advocates. It's no different if a friend (and I use the term loosely) tells you not to buy a new Ford Mustang, and then steals it when you do. That's what we call fucked up.

"And now he's promoting a patent pool on the same basis which is: if you can't beat them join them. "

Which works. Face it, with MAD agreements with half the software companies out there, patent litigation is somewhat negated. It's not full proof (lone inventors/companies without agreements will still pose a challenge), but it offers some comfort that a number of the big boys will not come knocking.

Do I think this strategy will be successful in the long run? To a limited extent. But I'd be lying if I said that Linux will not be facing a war soon. And unlike MS, it does not have deep enough pockets to fight off all its challengers.

Re:Stop the infighting

[Master of Transhuman]

I agree.

Perens is simply keeping his name in the press.

While some of his remarks may be partially correct - namely, that it's not terribly useful to have a patent portfolio built from people who already support OSS - his primary mission here is simply to denigrate some useful work.

Where are his solutions to the problem? I see lots of criticism and no ideas from him.

Eben Moglen, at LinuxWorld this past week, outlined a program involving not merely the Patent Commons Project, but attempts to change patent laws and to actually reverse patents that are of particular threat to OSS.

Perens concentrates only on the Patent Commons Project, and ignores the rest. This proves his only motive is to start a flame war.

Nothing like handing Microsoft some talking points, Bruce. Way to go.

Re:Stop the infighting

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, perens, raymond, etc. should be ignored and air time given to those that are actually contributing something to OSS besides hot air.

Re:Stop the infighting

[inode_buddha]

FWIW Groklaw had some commentary on this a few days ago.

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200508092 21240129

Re:Stop the infighting

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be silly. The Linux community now includes IBM, Novell, Intel, HP. If you think they will allow MS to destroy Linux, you need to think again.

Re:Stop the infighting

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Because of those FS advocates. It's no different if a friend (and I use the term loosely) tells you not to buy a new Ford Mustang, and then steals it when you do. That's what we call fucked up.

Your analogy and attribution of blame are both nonsensical. The FS advocates claimed that granting a single individual whole and absolute control over revision control system was foolish. The individual in question, Larry, did prove them right by going off and demanding that 3rd parties cease and desist doing what was not only perfectly within their rights but what is the cornerstone of the whole FS movement: providing compatibility based on reverse-engineering of protocols.

To come back to your "analogy", it would be as if a friend advised you not to use a Larry's Specially Converted Ford Mustang which runs only on Larry Gas (tm). Following which some unrelated party attempted to produce a compatible version of Larry Gas to which Larry reacted by coming over and smashing the Mustang to pieces.

Re:Stop the infighting

[bill_mcgonigle]

I'm not sure why people can't accept Linus Torvalds as a great systems coder, or even a man who was in the right place at the right time and did the right thing.

I guess some primitive drive for leaders and heros causes us to put Linus upon a pedestal and burn TechNet mailings in homage.

It probably drives him crazy.

Re:Stop the infighting

[Ruie]

"look at the Bitkeeper debacle: a tool he mandated blew up in exactly the way fs advocates would predict. "

Because of those FS advocates. It's no different if a friend (and I use the term loosely) tells you not to buy a new Ford Mustang, and then steals it when you do. That's what we call fucked up.

Hey - wait a moment !

If closed-source vendors want to play nice then this should be mutual and, in particular, I expect to see no clauses in EULA that prohibit me from writing any kind of software I choose and I expect the vendors to protect there competitiveness by implementing features that users want themselves instead of trying to lock me in to particular format and going all nutty when someone creates a conversion utility.

Andrew Tridgell was absolutely right in trying to make a utility to extract the metadata in human readable format.

Re:Stop the infighting

[BillyBlaze]

See, the thing is, Mutually Assured Destruction is a very non-optimial solution. It has worked in the nuclear arms race, (provided only sane governments get the bomb, a big if), but much better would be simply not having nuclear weapons. It's not possible to get all countries to stop building nukes, forget how, and destroy the ones they have. It is, however, possible to put an end to software patents. (Or in the short term, to keep them from proliferating.)

Re:Stop the infighting

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine you have a friend that has another friend that is a complete asshole. So what do you do, try to be a better friend and provide your friend with everything that the asshole provides for your friends or do you just antagonize him resulting in a scene that embarasses all three of you in public?

Sometimes you have to leave assholes alone for the sake of others. Larry's an asshole but apparently Linus did feel he was more productive with BitKeeper. I would have at least respected the fact that Linus prefers BitKeeper unless I could put together a system to replace it.

Re:Stop the infighting

[BillyBlaze]

Maybe it's time some large company does launch a patent missile. Frankly I'd prefer a patent winter to what we have now. All the fallout might convince Joe Public to oppose software patents.

Re:Stop the infighting

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Because of those FS advocates. It's no different if a friend (and I use the term loosely) tells you not to buy a new Ford Mustang, and then steals it when you do. That's what we call fucked up.

No. Bitkeeper was a ticking time bomb, waiting to explode. Sooner or later, it would have come right back to bite everyone in the ass.

The situation is analagous to Linus accepting a booby trapped Ford Mustang, gratis from McVoy, and then getting irritated when Tridgell safely detonates the device while he's in the store buying supplies for an offroad camping trip.

Re:Stop the infighting

[IgnoramusMaximus]

I would have at least respected the fact that Linus prefers BitKeeper unless I could put together a system to replace it.

But Linus was wrong in this also. It turned out that BitKeeper could be replaced within weeks of Larry's going crazy. The "git" revision control system was constructed by Linus with a lot of willing help by others, because, unlike BitKeeper, git is GPL software. So not only was Linus wrong as to his short-sighted reliance on closed source from assholes like Larry, but the whole "unique" quality of BitKeeper was proven to be utter hogwash within weeks. The end result is quite positive in my books, Larry was put in his place and Linux (and the whole FS community) now have a superior and truly free system. The only regret is that this should have happened without imtermissions and detours instigated by the likes of Larry and the "pragmatic" members of Linux community who do not subscribe to its phillosophy and instead are here just to get something working for themselves now, without any care as to consequences of their actions for others or even long-term repercussions for themselves.

Re:Stop the infighting

[jeroenb]

Nothing like handing Microsoft some talking points, Bruce. Way to go.

So you prefer security through obscurity? If nobody knows we can easily get screwed over it matters less?

Re:Stop the infighting

[NemesisNL]

Linux has plenty of deep pockets. That's why we have to make sure thise deep pockets stay involved. You think IBM, with it's future certainly partly linked to linux, wants to see it comming under attack? Keep developing Linux and keep companies like IBM and Novel at the front. They will fight the battles if their company has a big enough stake in Linux. The more big companies like them get involved the harder it will be to attack Linux without some serieous risks atached to it.

Re:Stop the infighting

[carnivore302]

And I agree even more. No wonder HP fired Perens. His mouth is bigger than his brains.

Re:Stop the infighting

[bXTr]

Where are his solutions to the problem? I see lots of criticism and no ideas from him.

If you had RTFA, you would know what his solutions were.

Re:Stop the infighting

[Bruce Perens]

I support Eben's efforts to change patent law. Daniel Ravicher has been successful at reversing a Microsoft patent, and we need to do a lot more of those. I don't support the pool at this time because I feel it can actually hurt the overall effort. Note that I am not alone in this, Florian of NoSoftwarePatents.org, an organization that has been incredibly effective in saving our butts in Europe, said the same thing.

When OSDL has an effective patent pool, they will show us how it can be effective. Until then, I believe that belief in the pool only diverts people from solving the problem.

Bruce

Re:Stop the infighting

[Kent Recal]

Gentlemen, can you please stop the Ford Mustang analogies.

Please do realize that the issue at hand can not be compared to anything involving a car.

Thanks.

Re:Stop the infighting

[Almost-Retired]

When OSDL has an effective patent pool, they will show us how it can be effective. Until then, I believe that belief in the pool only diverts people from solving the problem.

Bruce

Ok, I'll buy that Bruce, but can you or someone privy to the info tell us frogs, if for example, the 500 patents IBM donated have in fact been transferred to the full ownership of the EFF?

If that was the case, and I highly doubt it, the the EFF & Eban would be relatively free to take any detected violations to court, with a decent chance of prevailing I'd think.

But as I doubt the actual transfer of the patents has taken place, then Ebans hands are quite tightly bound and he can do nothing except posture for the press. He simply has no 'standing' in the legal sense. It remains I've Been Moved's game in its entirety since they are the only one with 'standing' in the matter. And that, as IBM very well knows, is a double edged sword, to be used very carefully.

So I see the next step after forming the patent pool, is to populate it, which will take a considerable sum of money for the application fees, money the EFF probably doesn't have access to right now.

But while doing that, keep looking over our collective shoulders too because until its big enough to represent a club we can swing a wide clear path with, there is gonna be some 2-bit shyster nibbling at our heels and any revenue streams the OS folks can use to pay the rent.

And yes, I'd put SCO in the 2 bit shyster pidgenhole. Hopefully, Novells asking for the jugular vein in cash will be granted since that will, in one swell foop, put an end to all the fud coming from Linden Utah.

--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
  soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)

Re:Stop the infighting

[Hosiah]

And unlike MS, it does not have deep enough pockets to fight off all its challengers.

Why would it need to? Linux is owned by each user of Linux. Yes, a Red Hat or two might go down. But trying to vanquish the Linux community with lawsuits will be like trying to exterminate dandelions.

Re:Stop the infighting

[Bruce Perens]

if for example, the 500 patents IBM donated have in fact been transferred to the full ownership of the EFF?

What we had from IBM was a covenant not to sue, not any sort of transfer. It was not useful for defensive purposes. And Stu's remarks in Business Week led me to believe that the 3000 patents were all that sort of covenant. I asked him to clear this up in email. He did not put anthing concrete in writing and offered to talk with me on the phone. That probably won't happen until late this week.

I surmise that there is no strength to the pool at this time.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:Stop the infighting

[martyn s]

Why is it not possible in the case of nukes, but possible in the case of software patents? You say it's possible to put an end to software patents, why don't you tell us how that is possible.

Re:Stop the infighting

[Almost-Retired]

I was afraid of that Bruce. So the EFF has in fact, no standing in regards to defending these patents. Unforch, if anything concrete is developed in the next month, I probably won't hear about it as I'll be netless during that time, working on location in upstate MI. Its kind of nice that they think an old (70) fart like me can walk on water when it comes to fixing tv related stuff, in this case a dual Harris 50kw transmitter that got zapped by lightning a couple of weeks back. I get a nice take home that screws me into the next tax bracket on 4/15 next year plus all expenses except food. Since most of my income these days is SS, it comes in handy for buying new toys etc. :-)

At any rate, I've noticed a lot of AC's denegrating your comments. Ignore them if they aren't willing to put their handle on the comment. In the longer view, the current skepticism you are exhibiting is good. Being "from Missouri" has kept me out of some stuff that later proved to have been bad judgement, even the promoter who was selling it sees it too.

There's that old saw about experience I can't quite repeat verbatum, but you get the picture I'm sure.

--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
  soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)

Re:Stop the infighting

[Zeinfeld]

Perens completely fails to understand the real problem. Unless you have $5 million to spend defending a patent it is worthless.

The real problem here is not technology companies, they all have a stake in the industry. The real problem is patent trolls whose only asset is their patent portfolio and their only goal is to squeeze as much out of it as possible.

Most of the assanine patents that cause real issues have been bought from bankrupt dotcoms by lawyers.

Re:Stop the infighting

[rtb61]

If it is open it is open. Infighting is impossible in an open system, we are all both outsiders and insiders (you get to choose depending upon how much effort you wish to put in). Linus, like Bruce, as well as the rest of us all have something to contribute to any idea we wish to contribute too.

The current press, sponsored by one of the most marketing challenged companies in coporate history M$=B$, will take any and every oppurtunity to create the impression that the open source community is somehow fragile and weak. Open discussion is an important part of open source, as it is for what should be an open society, with different points of view being it's strength not it's weakness.

The reality of course is the exact opposite, the strength of the community is in it's openness. Everybody on the face of this planet has the oppurtunity to contribute to the technological future of our society via open source (just dependent upon your own ability).

History has proven that open systems always defeat closed system in the end. A closed source, majority share, operating system, was a mistake, it is time to fix that mistake.

Re:Stop the infighting

[makomk]

The trouble with nukes is that the first country to get rid of theirs risks being reduced to radioactive rubble. With software patents, they can be removed from everyone simultaneously by passing a suitable law. Expecting companies to give up software patents on their own accord won't work, for obvious reasons.

Re:Stop the infighting

[zotz]

I think Bruce is right, but I think some big player like IBM could probably address the issue in a constructive way if they wished to do so.

Here is my idea:

When they next have a fundamental patent to apply for, apply for it in the name of the pool and not in their own name. This patent is now not subject to the cross patent agreements it may have with others.

Now it signs a cross patenting agreement with the pool so it can use all of the pool patents.

Where does this leave players who do not wish to play with the pool?

What if all of the big patenters who sincerely wanted to solve this issue applied for all of their new patents in the name of the pool and not on their own behalf?

Does anyone see any reason why such a plan could not work?

all the best,

drew

http://www.ourmedia.org/node/40737
Rocky Road on the eastern end of New Providence (Nassau) in the Bahamas.

Re:Stop the infighting

[dbIII]

demanding that 3rd parties cease and desist doing what was not only perfectly within their rights

Someone else has missed the whole point - it may have been within the law but it was against the conditions of the licence, so the licence was revoked. Very simple. To put it another way, against the terms of the licence someone gave a person who had not agreed to the licence access and they used this access to start to reverse engineer the software. We can't play games and say there is no licence that is valid other than the one we personally like - SCO is playing that game and will most likely face consequeces for it someday.

Re:Stop the infighting

[FlorianMueller]

I'm the founder of the European NoSoftwarePatents.com campaign and I've commented on this overall issue more comprehensively here, but let me reply specifically to this call on the OSS community "to work together instead of becoming splintered with bad press like this":

It's one of the strengths of open-source projects and initiatives that there are debates on mailing lists (and on slashdot). That's not the same as being divise, even if it happens via the media.

It was absolutely necessary to point out that those IBM-style "patent pledges" are fundamentally flawed. They are a solution to a problem that doesn't exist (the possibility of IBM suing Linux users), and they don't solve the real problem because they don't deter an enemy of open source from starting a patent litigation.

The OSDL issued a press release, so Bruce and I had no other choice but talking to the media as well (totally independently from each other). If the OSDL had asked any of us before, we would have given them the very same feedback, privately.

Re:Stop the infighting

[Bruce Perens]

The main problem I see is that companies don't have much economic inducement to apply for their patents in the name of the pool, which would give them all essentially the same advantage from the patents as if they had simply published the invention as prior art. In general the companies wish to continue to license their patents to proprietary software creators and to trade them with other companies not in the pool for cross licenses. The companies that have contributed to the OSDL pool in general only want to carve out a narrow permission for Open Source software without otherwise losing the value of their patents. For the plan to work, it has to be visibly in the company's best interest. The problem we have is that the patent system pits the company's best interest against Open Source. Of course it's worse than that, I think it pits the company's best interests against the entire economy.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:Stop the infighting

[Ravnen]

There were no licensing fees for using BitKeeper, so your suggestion of having to use gas/petrol from Larry isn't so good, since this is normally something that has to be bought.

A better analogy (sorry! ;-) ) would be:

Larry let Linux and his friends borrow early models of a new car he was designing, helping them by letting them drive the cars, and helping him because they told him how they liked them, etc. It was agreed that they would not try to copy the car design.

Someone lent one of the cars to another friend, who hadn't agreed not to try to copy its design, and he immediately began to do so. Larry reacted by taking his cars back, and so Linus and his friends had to design and build their own, which is something they hadn't wanted to spend their time doing.

If your perspective is the GNU/FSF ideology, then of course you will consider it better not to use Larry's cars at all. However, not everyone shares that ideology, so to some of the others, it was better to have nice cars for free, without having to bother designing and building them.

I'm sure there are problems with this analogy too, but the basic point is the agreement between Linus and Larry was mutually beneficial (in practical terms, not GNU/FSF ideological terms) until some people who disagreed with it for ideological reasons spoilt things.

Re:Stop the infighting

[file-exists-p]

I agree with this. All those "patents for the open-source movement" look like a way to reduce the strain so that there will never be a major crisis forcing the system to change drastically.

In Europe especially, instead of playing that insane game of the US-patent system, it is time to use our rights and implement algorithms for which the EPO granted illegal patents.

Freedom gets worn-out when you don't use it.

Cheers!

--
FF

Re:Stop the infighting

[Ravnen]

It's also true that if software patents don't spur innovation (and I don't think they do, at least not the current regimes), eliminating them in only some countries won't put those countries at a competitive disadvantage, in the way that destroying nuclear weapons would put them at a military disadvantage. In other words, there is no risk in being the first mover, and in fact there may be an advantage to being such.

On a company level, it would of course be unwise to give them up, but on a national level it could be done without requiring all countries to do it at once, and without any action from companies (since their software patents would simply become invalid).

Re:Stop the infighting

[zotz]

"which would give them all essentially the same advantage from the patents as if they had simply published the invention as prior art."

If the system was working properly, I would agree pretty much with this point. Since it isn't, publishing as prior art is no guarantee that someone else will not get a patent on it later even after publishing as prior art. Or am I mistaken in how I have read what is going on these days?

"For the plan to work, it has to be visibly in the company's best interest."

Well, I think it just may be in many companies' best interests to have a counter balance to the dominance of MS in the market. If this is so, it will be in their best interests to provide a defense for Free Software in respect to the games MS may play.

Perhaps putting all of their new patents in the pool would be too much. Perhaps just enough key ones that MS will need to cross license with the pool in order to keep playing.

A query: Does anyony know how the cross licensing agreements work? Does A generally agree to share and share alike all of B's patents, and B A's?

all the best,

drew

Yo Bahamas - silver medal in the Men's 4x400.

http://www.ourmedia.org/node/41879

Re:Stop the infighting

[Master of Transhuman]

Since when does nobody know? It should be obvious to anyone that a Patent Common Project isn't going to stop Microsoft from suing anybody they like - and probably winning, where prior art isn't obvious.

The point is it won't hurt - like chicken soup. Eben Moglen specifically said it was targeted at making sure another SCO didn't happen. While he may be disingenuous to suggest it will impact Microsoft, it may well assist in dealing with smaller lame outfits like SCO who might want to jump on the "sue OSS" bandwagon.

So what's the point of Perens criticism? Just to keep his name in the OSS press?

Re:Stop the infighting

[Master of Transhuman]

Right - argue for dumping patents altogether.

Which I happen to agree with, if you'd read MFP.

However, in this country at this time, that isn't going to happen. So why not use a patent commons to help defend OSS? It may not stop Microsoft but it can't hurt.

Perens has no answer to that.

Re:Stop the infighting

[Bruce Perens]

Groklaw has the text of a cross-license between Microsoft and Sun. Sometimes you can find these as part of the companies SEC filings.

Bruce

Re:Stop the infighting

[Master of Transhuman]

Sorry, Bruce, that's backsliding because of the criticism you're taking for your off-the-cuff and poorly thought out public comments.

On the one hand, you say you don't support the pool "at this time" because it's not "effective". Well, that's obvious, isn't it? There isn't anything of significance IN the pool yet. And it hasn't been tested in court.

On the other hand, you imply you'll support it when it IS effective. If everybody thinks it's not worth it, which is your opinion, how is it ever going to be get big enough to be effective?

Your bottom-line argument appears to be that people will be "diverted from solving the problem". But you have made no suggestions for "solving the problem" except to argue for removal of patents altogether.

Which I happen to agree with completely, because I don't believe in intellectual property of any kind.

But in this country at this time, it simply is NOT going to happen. Period. That simple. The OSS movement is FAR too tiny to make Congress dump patents in general (although it just MIGHT be able to limit the most excessive abuses of software specific patents - that remains to be seen, given Microsoft's and the software industry's influence in the government.) Therefore, your suggestions amount to no suggestions.

In any event, it's irrelevant, because your opinion that it will divert people from changing patent law is both an assumption on your part with no evidence whatsoever to support it and entirely wrong because the EFF and others have already said it won't divert them from other measures.

They ARE trying to change patent law and reverse destructive patents. So exactly WHO do you think will be "diverted"? People whose impact on the issue will be nil in any event? /. posters?

If you'd said publicly that you didn't think the Patent Commons Project would be effective against Microsoft, AND left it at that, you wouldn't have been criticized about this by me or anyone else, because it would have been obvious you were correct. Microsoft is going to do what they want regardless - they beat an antitrust suit, they're not going to be worried about a patent suit against OSS invalidating some patent they have. They can bleed OSS dry with lawsuits until the cows come home.

But suggesting that the commons has no value against lesser lame outfits like SCO is premature. Eben specifically stated the purpose of this project and the other elements is to make sure another SCO doesn't occur. He may be disingenuous to suggest it will be effective against Microsoft (whom he pointedly referred to in his talk), but he's right about it being useful.

Adding on the gratuitous comments about "spitting into the wind" is what got you in trouble. You came across as being antagonistic to serious OSS efforts to deal with the problem proposed by well-known OSS advocates like Eben.

I'm sympathetic, because I speak strongly on issues as well, as everyone at /. can testify.

But you're wrong on the value of the Commons Project. While it may not help against Microsoft, it can't hurt - like chicken soup.

Re:Stop the infighting

[Bruce Perens]

Richard,

Don't accuse me of backsliding when I haven't changed my position.

Regarding what solution I offer, no, I'm not out to abolish the patent. I am for an end to software and business method patents. Nobody voted for software patents or business-method patents. Even the U.S. patent office was against them. We have them because of court decisions.

We have won so far in Europe. We can turn back the tide on software patenting, but I am afraid that half-measures like the patent pool will lull people into believing the problem is solved.

Re:Stop the infighting

[Master of Transhuman]

Like I said, provide some evidence, ANY evidence, that lulling people - significant people who are directly involved in this issue - is in even the slightest way likely or significant.

You harp on patents - forget that. We agree on that. Software patents and business patents are bad. I go further and say ALL patents are bad, and trying to fight any patents by supporting some patents is not a good martial art technigue - but forget that.

The bottom line is if your argument against a patent commons project is that it will result in lulling people into thinking the problem is solved, that's a really weak argument against doing it anyway. There is obviously a potential practical benefit in having such a commons in dealing with frivolous lawsuits which isn't outweighed by the mere possibility that some people might overlook more serious efforts.

Especially when your argument is pure speculation as to the side effects.

I respect your bringing up the issue, but you should have been a bit more diplomatic and less dismissive of the concept. You'd get a lot less criticism from me and others if you'd publicly clarify your support for the rest of the program Eben outlined as you did in your earlier post to me. That's all I'm saying.

Re:Stop the infighting

[Bruce Perens]

Well, I am corresponding with Eben on this, and hope to talk with him, and with Stu and Diane of OSDL this week. Hopefully I will have something material to say by the end of the week.

Bruce

Re:Stop the infighting

[Master of Transhuman]

Works for me, Bruce. Thanks.

Since the original post is titled "Stop the infighting", it's good that we ended up there.

Re:Stop the infighting

[IgnoramusMaximus]

To put it another way, against the terms of the licence someone gave a person who had not agreed to the licence access and they used this access to start to reverse engineer the software.

Licences between two parties are not binding on 3rd, unrelated parties. I have no idea how Tridgell accessed the protocol but he at the time claimed to have been doing so without the need for him to run the client nor the server. I assume packet sniffing was involved.

We can't play games and say there is no licence that is valid other than the one we personally like - SCO is playing that game and will most likely face consequeces for it someday.

This is not a question of choosing to abide by one license and ignoring another, it is simply about unwillingness of unrelated people to abide by some arbitrary license rules created by others to which they did not agree. By your logic, Larry could have demanded that you transfer a payment to his bank account as soon as you hear the words "Bit Keeper", even though you never used his product and never agreed to anything.

Re:Stop the infighting

[IgnoramusMaximus]

I do not wish to get involved in a tit-for-tat, "my analogy is better then yours" type of thing, but please note that yours falls apart at this point:

Someone lent one of the cars to another friend

It is my understanding that Tridgell was not using BitKeeper in any way but was observing the on-line protocol by tapping traffic between end-points. Which negates your whole premise. Noone has "lent" him a car. In your analogy, Tridgell was standing on a street and took photos of the cars as they went by following which he proceeded to make his own compatible one.

I'm sure there are problems with this analogy too, but the basic point is the agreement between Linus and Larry was mutually beneficial (in practical terms, not GNU/FSF ideological terms) until some people who disagreed with it for ideological reasons spoilt things.

Actually no. It was anything but practical (although it was beneficial to Linus personally). Linus dropped the ball on this one, his personal friendship with Larry and subsequent infatuation with BitKeeper went against the grain of the whole Linux development process and was causing major disruptions and upheavals in the mailing lists and amongst the developers. Linus tried to enforce his personal preference upon everyone else, disregarding a significant portion of the kernel developer's opinions. Add to this the fact that BitKeeper license was one of most attrocious, outrageous and megalomaniac pieces of self-ego-stroking crap masquarading as a license to ever hit the FSF world. Including provisions like demands that noone who uses BitKeeper is allowed to work on any competing product even if they are not using BitKeeper for that purpose.

Linus made an error and he paid for it by losing a significant portion of his stature and respect people had for him. After the fiasco blew up in his face he managed to recover somewhat by quickly moving to disprove his own earlier claims of insurmountable difficulties of automating kernel source management by creating the "git" system which is by now superior to BitKeeper in most respects. But a lot of people will remember this massive screwup which exposed Linus for his lack of principles and will no longer trust him to make the right call as they did before.

Re:Stop the infighting

[dbIII]

Licences between two parties are not binding on 3rd, unrelated parties

It's very, very simple - the person who gave the third party access broke the terms of the licence by giving Tridgell access, a bit was written about it at the time among all the noise.An agreement was made and was broken.

I assume packet sniffing was involved.

I can very safely assume from this comment that the previous poster managed to avoid reading anything about the incident.

By your logic, Larry could have demanded that you transfer a payment to his bank account as soon as you hear the words "Bit Keeper", even though you never used his product and never agreed to anything.

How's that for a massive conclusion to jump to! I assumed someone who would reply to my comment would know what happened with Bitkeeper.

This "for us or against us" attitude is just silly, Larry is not automaticly evil becuase his licence is not the GPL.

Re:Stop the infighting

[IgnoramusMaximus]

It's very, very simple - the person who gave the third party access broke the terms of the licence by giving Tridgell access, a bit was written about it at the time among all the noise.An agreement was made and was broken.

Quoth Tridgell:

As I have stated previously, my code was written without using bk. Some people expressed some skepticism over that, perhaps because they haven't noticed that bk servers have online protocol help (just type 'help' into a telnet session). I don't think it is unreasonable to assume that this help was intended for people like myself who wished to implement new clients.

I can very safely assume from this comment that the previous poster managed to avoid reading anything about the incident.

In light of the previous I should really cease to take you seriously.

assumed someone who would reply to my comment would know what happened with Bitkeeper.

See above.

This "for us or against us" attitude is just silly, Larry is not automaticly evil becuase his licence is not the GPL.

It is not question of being "evil" just because the license was not GPL. Larry is well within his rights to make any license he wants and try to foist in on whomever is silly enough to go along. But in this case it was not only an issue of the licence being utterly attrocious and unreasonable but on top of that the use of BitKeeper caused all sorts of practical problems for people, the same people who went to Linux in order to escape proprietary lock-in by vendors and from a desire for their tools to customizable by themselves, both of which BitKeeper was not. Not to mention that some of them were outright prohibited from using BitKeeper due to their involvement in other projects which Larry disliked.

Re:Stop the infighting

[dbIII]

In light of the previous I should really cease to take you seriously.

As I was tempted after the "packet sniffing" assumption - even if you examine the above quoted text you will see a reference to "telnet" and a "help function". Furthur reading would have shown that someone who was supposed to abide by the licence was not supposed to let Tridgell log in. Very, very simple - agreement broken, right to use the software removed.

In this case it doesn't even matter what the licence is - it is breaking the terms of a contract.

it was not only an issue of the licence being utterly attrocious and unreasonable

Have you read this licence, or is it assumed because it is not the GPL, or did this came from the same place as the "packet sniffing" comment? Which clauses are utterly attrocious and unreasonable?

Lets get back to the comment I replied to:

Licences between two parties are not binding on 3rd, unrelated parties

One of the two parties gave access to a third, breaking one of the terms of the licence. Tridgell didn't break the licence, but the person who gave him access did, so the vendor decided this breach of trust warranted taking away the right to use the software. Heavy handed perhaps, but demonising a guy becuase others agreed to play by his rules and didn't is going a bit far. It was a storm in a teacup, opportunists tried to use it as an excuse to push their favourite licence and no proprietary lock-in occurred at all. Personally I prefer the GPL, but we can't just go around breaking the terms of every other licence just because we don't like them.

Re:Stop the infighting

[IgnoramusMaximus]

As I was tempted after the "packet sniffing" assumption - even if you examine the above quoted text you will see a reference to "telnet" and a "help function".

Consider the obvious: from the discussion long ago, full of flame wars, I recalled that Tridgell was not using BK when he did his bit of subtrefuge. I did not investigate at the time the particular method he was using (or I forgot by now, which has the same effect). A method which is irrelevant to the discussion, as it would not have mattered if he was using divination and chicken entrails. I assumed (incorrectly) that he was packet sniffing until you made me go out and find quotes for you. Which of course took nothing away from my original argument: Tridgell was not using the BK client and thus was not bound by its license terms.

As to the server, it appears that Larry screwed up by not displaying the licence agreement on login (available to all) into the server on the client protocol level which was explicitely provided for use by the community at large ... and run by Larry himself out of BitMover's office. Larry simply assumed that the client is the choke point for his licence which Tridgell skillfully circumnavigated. Such is the fate of self-centered megalomaniacs who place all sorts of demands on people and are so absorbed by defending those demands that they end up overlooking some obvious loophole.

Which clauses are utterly attrocious and unreasonable?

I dunno, maybe something like this:

(d) Notwithstanding any other terms in this License, this
License is not available to You if You and/or your
employer develop, produce, sell, and/or resell a
product which contains substantially similar capabil-
ities of the BitKeeper Software, or, in the reason-
able opinion of BitMover, competes with the BitKeeper
Software.

One of the two parties gave access to a third, breaking one of the terms of the licence. Tridgell didn't break the licence, but the person who gave him access did, so the vendor decided this breach of trust warranted taking away the right to use the software.

You mean Larry himself was breaching his own trust by allowing Tridgell to telnet into BitMover? You should write comedy.

Re:Stop the infighting

[dbIII]

I recalled that Tridgell was not using BK

That is incorrect - he logged into bitkeeper with a username and password supplied with telnet to the port and typed "help". I suggest you actually reread the bit you quoted a couple of posts above!

A method which is irrelevant to the discussion

The method was using the bitkeeper software without permission, which really makes it the core of the discussion.

That is why it is all very simple - using Bitkeeper without permission to reverse engineer it, even if it was just typing "help", pissed off the vendor because only the people that had agreed to the licence were supposed to be using it, and those people were not supposed to reverse engineer it as shown by the clause quoted above.

You mean Larry himself was breaching his own trust by allowing Tridgell to telnet into BitMover?

Larry did not tell Tridgell the username and password to use.

It is very simple - person gives out password they are not supposed to, employer of person loses right to use software when vendoir gets annoyed at this breach of trust. Can it really be stated any simpler than that?

Re:Stop the infighting

[IgnoramusMaximus]

That is incorrect - he logged into bitkeeper with a username and password supplied with telnet to the port and typed "help". I suggest you actually reread the bit you quoted a couple of posts above!

That user name and password was "anonymous", "anonymous". Also even if someone would have provided Tridgell with the uid/password, the license terms neglected to forbid such a situation due to Larry's oversight as the license was (extensively) concerned with various uses of the client software but failed to mention any uid/password restrictions.

The method was using the bitkeeper software without permission, which really makes it the core of the discussion.

The public client protocol login did not display the license and did not request for confirmation of acceptance since Larry assumed the client software was the only useful way to access the server and it was the client which had the license restrictions on it. And that is why Tridgell did not use the client. Larry simply did not think anyone could be clever enough to figure out the protocol by interacting directly with the public server to circumvent the license.

Larry did not tell Tridgell the username and password to use.

He did not have to. The anonymous BK server access was a part of the basic requirement for community access.

It is very simple - person gives out password they are not supposed to, employer of person loses right to use software when vendoir gets annoyed at this breach of trust. Can it really be stated any simpler than that?

No such person existed. And even if it did, which it did not, the transfer of uid/password was not restricted in the license. The transfer/use of the client software was.

Look, it is really simple. If any of what you fantasize about was true, knowing Larry's rather well documented personality, Tridgell and the password/username provider would be by now dragged through the courts on "breach of contract" charges. But even Larry could see he screwed up and his legal options were nil.

Re:Stop the infighting

[dbIII]

That user name and password was "anonymous", "anonymous"

Now that sounds more like it, probable and that you have now found out enough to back up second hand opinions - do you have a link to a source of this information? If you haven't, no problem, I didn't bother to bookmark stuff at the time so I can't back up what I say either without more work than I think this little bit of confusion deserves.

why Tridgell did not use the client

Wasn't Tridgell quoted as saying he did? I don't have the source article so I could be wrong.

If any of what you fantasize about was true

knowing Larry's rather well documented personality

What's with getting personal all the time? In the schools of my country it is called "playing the man and not the ball" and is greatly disparaged.

Re:Stop the infighting

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Wasn't Tridgell quoted as saying he did? I don't have the source article so I could be wrong.

I did provide you with a quote from him claiming that he did not use BK, just a few posts back.

What's with getting personal all the time? In the schools of my country it is called "playing the man and not the ball" and is greatly disparaged.

I did not intend that to be read as a personal attack on you (although Larry is a different matter -- he deserves it), the word "fantasize" was meant to humorously express my finding of your claims being rather hard to believe. It appears it was not as funny as I thought.

Re:Stop the infighting

[Castar]

Seriously. Car analogies are just not the most effective tool for explaining situations.

It's like trying to win an F1 race with a Pinto.

Re:Stop the infighting

[Anonymous Coward]

It appears it was not as funny as I thought.

Your comments rarely are, historically speaking.

Re:Stop the infighting

[Ravnen]

Someone lent one of the cars to another friend

It is my understanding that Tridgell was not using BitKeeper in any way but was observing the on-line protocol by tapping traffic between end-points. Which negates your whole premise. Noone has "lent" him a car. In your analogy, Tridgell was standing on a street and took photos of the cars as they went by following which he proceeded to make his own compatible one.

It only falls apart if Tridgell was observing the BitKeeper traffic without the permission of one of the licensees. If he had permission, then access to the software (in the sense of the technologies it implements, not the source code, of course) was given to him (ie it was lent, even if copies of the blueprints weren't given out). If he was eavesdropping without the concent of the licensed users (I don't think this was so), the more appropriate analogy would be that Tridgell stole one of the cars.

In any case, the usefulness of such analogies is limited. The only point is that Larry was not asking Linus or anyone else using his software to pay him, or to otherwise buy 'Larry gas' or anything else from him. He was allowing them to use his software for free, because it was beneficial both to him and to the Linux pragmatists (but not to the GNU ideologues, for ideological, not technical, reasons).

Actually no. It was anything but practical (although it was beneficial to Linus personally). Linus dropped the ball on this one, his personal friendship with Larry and subsequent infatuation with BitKeeper went against the grain of the whole Linux development process and was causing major disruptions and upheavals in the mailing lists and amongst the developers. Linus tried to enforce his personal preference upon everyone else, disregarding a significant portion of the kernel developer's opinions. Add to this the fact that BitKeeper license was one of most attrocious, outrageous and megalomaniac pieces of self-ego-stroking crap masquarading as a license to ever hit the FSF world. Including provisions like demands that noone who uses BitKeeper is allowed to work on any competing product even if they are not using BitKeeper for that purpose.

The software allowed for co-ordinated revision control of the Linux kernel. This is the practical use for which Linus wanted it. If its use led to ideological conflicts between GNU ideologues (like Tridgell) and Linux pragmatists (like Linus), this was an ideological problem, and not related at all to the suitability of BitKeeper for tracking revisions to the Linux kernel.

Linus made an error and he paid for it by losing a significant portion of his stature and respect people had for him. After the fiasco blew up in his face he managed to recover somewhat by quickly moving to disprove his own earlier claims of insurmountable difficulties of automating kernel source management by creating the "git" system which is by now superior to BitKeeper in most respects.

You agree with the GNU ideologues. A lot of other people disagree with them, so there's no point in claiming one opinion or the other is the right one. The facts are: (a) BitKeeper was technically suitable for revision control of the Linux kernel; (b) it is no longer used because of ideological, not technical or economic, reasons; (c) the development of git has imposed an opportunity cost, in that the time Linus and others have used to develop it could otherwise have been used to improve Linux itself.

But a lot of people will remember this massive screwup which exposed Linus for his lack of principles and will no longer trust him to make the right call as they did before.

Linus has never claimed to be a GNU ideologue, or to believe in Stallman's GNU philosophy. The principles you refer to are the principles of that philosophy, not general principles normal people believe in. Since Linus has never adhered or claimed to adhere to the GNU philosophy, it should not surprise you that his principles are not the same as you

Re:Stop the infighting

[Ravnen]

It only falls apart if Tridgell was observing the BitKeeper traffic without the permission of one of the licensees. If he had permission, then access to the software (in the sense of the technologies it implements, not the source code, of course) was given to him (ie it was lent, even if copies of the blueprints weren't given out). If he was eavesdropping without the concent of the licensed users (I don't think this was so), the more appropriate analogy would be that Tridgell stole one of the cars.

Actually, a better way of putting it is Tridgell was able to closely observe and record the workings of one of the cars as it was being used by one who had agreed not to copy it, either with or without permission (with, as far as I know), but with the express goal of copying it. As I said before, there is only so much value in an analogy, and I've explained what I meant anyway, so my analogy is redundant.

Re:Stop the infighting

[IgnoramusMaximus]

It only falls apart if Tridgell was observing the BitKeeper traffic without the permission of one of the licensees.

After some investigating, I found out that Tridgell was actually exploiting a licensing loophole. He connected to a public server using telnet on the client protocol port. The protocol apparently was decipherable that way and the anonymous, public server did not display any license. Thus he did not need anyone's permission, Larry simply screwed up by not anticipating that someone can bypass the client and access the server directly, a server which was publicly accessible (as it had to be for Linux kernel development) and run by Larry himself out of his office. Thus Larry had tied all his extensive efforts in licensing to the client software and neglected to make the server prompt for any sort of license confirmation. This oversight is what prevented Larry from pursuing Tridgell through courts, which as far as I can tell about Larry, he would have loved to do. Thus none of the analogies proposed so far is really fitting the situation.

The only point is that Larry was not asking Linus or anyone else using his software to pay him, or to otherwise buy 'Larry gas' or anything else from him.

No but he was putting onerous demands and restrictions on the use of the BK client while he benefited from the publicity and while he caused other practical grief for many developers.

This is the practical use for which Linus wanted it. If its use led to ideological conflicts between GNU ideologues (like Tridgell) and Linux pragmatists (like Linus), this was an ideological problem, and not related at all to the suitability of BitKeeper for tracking revisions to the Linux kernel.

It was far more serious then simply the already serious ideological problem. I will bypass for the moment the fact that many kernel developers develop because of the GPL nature of the kernel and just focus on these practical aspects: the BK license prevented many developers from using BK. Alan Cox who is a major figure in the kernel development crowd was for example prevented from using it because the overly onerous license demanded that anyone whose employer (RedHat in this case) as much as distributes another source control system (all the SC systems in RedHat distro) is forbidden from using BK. Same goes for all Debian developers etc etc. Add to this the fact that many developers are using GPL software so that they can modify their tools. Combine this with the fact that a large portion is also here so that they can escape vendor lock-in and yet look at how Larry was treating them, etc and so on.

Larry was simply greedy and paranoid in the extreme and it is that overzealous paranoia which brought the BK use for Linux kernel down in the end as it made a lot of people very crossed by the practical (in addition to ideological) problems it caused.

The facts are: (a) BitKeeper was technically suitable for revision control of the Linux kernel; (b) it is no longer used because of ideological, not technical or economic, reasons; (c) the development of git has imposed an opportunity cost, in that the time Linus and others have used to develop it could otherwise have been used to improve Linux itself.

(a1) While it was technically suitable for some it was legally not available for many top developers causing them additional conversion steps and impeding their efforts, it caused technical problems for those who had customized their revision control system previously and, most importantly, it alienated a significant portion (a vast majority in my opinion) of developers who consider the ideological aspect of Linux to be the primary reason they are developing for it in the first place.

Noone has run a poll but from reading the LKML for a long time, I am quite certain that the GPL folks outnumber the "pragmatists" 2:1 at least.

To make a long story short, Linus used BK because it was conveni

Re:Stop the infighting

[Ravnen]

I recall having heard that Linus chose the GPL as a tribute to gcc (not the GNU philosophy), without which he'd not have been able to create Linux. I know he's also expressed concerns about keeping software free (I mean free in the normal sense of no cost, not the GNU sense).

The biggest difference between Linus and Stallman is that Linus doesn't care so much what other people do. If they write good software, and he thinks agreeing to whichever licence they use is a good exchange for the utility that software provides, he'll use it. Stallman will refuse to use it, and will otherwise oppose it, unless they use the GPL, or allow him to relicense it under the GPL (as in the case of BSDL'd software).

A lot of pragmatic developers use the GPL/LGPL without necessarily agreeing with the GNU philosophy, or often even fully understanding it. Some might in any case feel (as Linus does) that the open source development model will lead to superior software in the long run. For those with such a view, the GPL v BSDL argument makes little difference, since they believe open source software will always be better in the long run. It's only those who believe proprietary software can add value open source can't who would insist on the BSDL. (Right now, I would lean more towards the view that both proprietary and open source development can add value, but I don't think using the GPL versus BSDL makes all that much difference.)

I've never read any convincing argument that Linux is more successful than BSD because of its licence. Linus has said he only wrote Linux because a free BSD was unavailable (owing to the USL lawsuit). A lot of early Linux users undoubtedly used Linux instead of BSD for the same reason (the USL lawsuit prevented them using BSD), and after that it was largely a matter of network economics.

Given the broad success of OpenSSH, the X Window System, Mach, BSD sockets, Apache, et al, it's abundantly clear that the BSDL (or similar) doesn't prevent open source software being successful, or prevent corporate use of it. I think licensing ideologues on both sides (GPL and BSDL) tend to overestimate rather severely the importance of the licence. Things like meeting the needs of users and network economics matter a lot more than BSDL v GPL.

Re:Stop the infighting

[IgnoramusMaximus]

I recall having heard that Linus chose the GPL as a tribute to gcc (not the GNU philosophy)

This is one of those muddled stances I was referring to. It is like claiming that you set up a democratic, free-market system in your country, complete with balance of power provisions in its constitution and all the related bells and whistles in a tribute to ... USA's space program only, but do not actually subscribe to any of that democratic/free-market ideology. The other possibility is of course that you did at one point in time think that ideology great but then for "pragmatic" reasons found it more convenient to deny it and were subsequently forced to produce strange excuses.

I've never read any convincing argument that Linux is more successful than BSD because of its licence.

One only has to look both at the number of developers and users of GPL vs that of BSD. If BSD was indeed superior, or even equal, the natural process would be to equalize the two. The number of GPLed projects on sourceforge/freshmeat is something like 90% even though one can use BSDL software on Linux. The percentage of GPL packages in all of Linux distros is similiarly high. There are some major non-GPL projects such as Apache or X but their licenses are the result of their academic origins. I know from personal experience that if it were not for GPL many of the developers would not touch linux or its applications with a ten-foot pole. BSD is in the minds of many simply an invitation to give and get nothing in return and maybe even watch your own code being sold back to you.

A lot of early Linux users undoubtedly used Linux instead of BSD for the same reason (the USL lawsuit prevented them using BSD), and after that it was largely a matter of network economics.

If it were true, there would be wide-spread efforts by vast hordes of "viral-GPL-hatin'" developers to "restore order" and go back to pure BSD environment. After all, the lawsuits are already safely settled. In case you did not notice, no such movement (of any meaningful size) exists except of a few trolls (who curiously write no code) on Slashdot harping about how GPL offends their Libertarian/Capitalist sensibilities.

Given the broad success of OpenSSH, the X Window System, Mach, BSD sockets, Apache, et al, it's abundantly clear that the BSDL (or similar) doesn't prevent open source software being successful, or prevent corporate use of it. I think licensing ideologues on both sides (GPL and BSDL) tend to overestimate rather severely the importance of the licence. Things like meeting the needs of users and network economics matter a lot more than BSDL v GPL.

While it is true that BSDL does not prevent wide community acceptance, in projects where the code is clearly dominant, you should note that GPL people will contribute to them, if they must, on an exception basis, because they see them as critical to their operation and at the same time they see these projects as being in no danger of being commercially sold or in some other way hijacked by some corporation. I personally belive that it is a rather gullible stance but so far any major disasters have yet to befall these projects. Perhaps their high profile is what makes their safety possible. At the same time however most developers are very upset at any GPL violations by embedded hardware makers who sneakily attempt to use Linux kernel in their products which leads me to believe that GPL/BSDL are not "all the same" and pragmatically interchangeable to most people.

Re:Stop the infighting

[Ravnen]

I recall having heard that Linus chose the GPL as a tribute to gcc (not the GNU philosophy)

This is one of those muddled stances I was referring to.

It's clear enough to me: licensing is not a religious issue for Linus. He wants to give away his software, which the GPL lets him do, but his choice of which software to use is based on the utility it provides, not its licence. Most people choose software for this reason.

To use an analogy, I'm happy to pay tax to fund public services like health, education, pensions, support for the unemployed/poor, et al, but I don't believe there's anything wrong with private industry. This is in contrast to Marxists (there are still a few left) who would say the whole economy should be nationalised (to prevent abuse by those who take but don't give back), and classical capitalists who would say all of the state services should be privatised (to allow the profit motive to drive improvements to them).

One only has to look both at the number of developers and users of GPL vs that of BSD. If BSD was indeed superior, or even equal, the natural process would be to equalize the two.

This simply shows that the GPL is fashionable, which is partly a result of the success of Linux. For anyone writing open source software, the obvious licence choice is the GPL, since it's what Linux (the most famous open source software) uses. The only reason to use a more obscure licence like the BSDL would be if it offered some specific advantage, which in most cases it doesn't.

A lot of early Linux users undoubtedly used Linux instead of BSD for the same reason (the USL lawsuit prevented them using BSD), and after that it was largely a matter of network economics.

If it were true, there would be wide-spread efforts by vast hordes of "viral-GPL-hatin'" developers to "restore order" and go back to pure BSD environment.

No, you don't understand. Most of the people who use Linux or BSD don't care about the licence. It's only the ideologues on either side who are overly concerned about it.

The people, like Linus, who used/developed Linux because the USL lawsuit made BSD unavailable didn't want to use BSD because they cared about its licence. They just wanted a Unix-like OS they could use for free, and some also wanted source code so they could learn about it, develop it, etc. Linux provided this, and became dominant in a network economy, which meant that by the time BSD was available, Linux provided higher utility to those looking for a free Unix-like system.

While it is true that BSDL does not prevent wide community acceptance, in projects where the code is clearly dominant, you should note that GPL people will contribute to them, if they must, on an exception basis, because they see them as critical to their operation and at the same time they see these projects as being in no danger of being commercially sold or in some other way hijacked by some corporation.

Such people are GNU ideologues, who care a great deal about licensing ideologies. On the opposite side are the BSD ideologues, who also care a great deal about the licensing ideologies.

What I'm saying is that there are also people who don't care much about the licence, but only want free or reasonably priced software that meets their needs. The overwhelming majority of people using Linux, Unix/BSD, MS Windows or whatever operating system don't care about the licence, except as far as it requires them to pay something. These people are rational in the economic sense, and therefore choose the software that provides the greatest net utility (ie the utility of the software minus the utility of any money and/or time they have to give up to use it).

Re:Stop the infighting

[Golthur]

I assume packet sniffing was involved.

IIRC, I believe the only tools he claimed to have used were telnet and the ability to type the word "help".

Apparently, the server provides a great deal of "helpful" protocol documentation if asked nicely.

Re:Stop the infighting

[IgnoramusMaximus]

IRC, I believe the only tools he claimed to have used were telnet and the ability to type the word "help".

Quite true. I had to get up on these details in a hurry as people upthread were trying to claim reverse-engineering without the use of BK client was impossible. Thanks for bringing it up anyhow.

Re:Stop the infighting

[IgnoramusMaximus]

He wants to give away his software, which the GPL lets him do, but his choice of which software to use is based on the utility it provides, not its licence

BSDL does that. What GPL does is to set up a framework of sharing. There is no conceivable reason to use GPL if one is not concerned about that aspect as BSDL would be more "unrestricted" and this have potentially more "utility" to more people. If that is all Linus wanted, GPL is a disastrous choice. But I suspect he simply changed his mind later when the corporate whining started.

To use an analogy, I'm happy to pay tax to fund public services like health, education, pensions, support for the unemployed/poor, et al, but I don't believe there's anything wrong with private industry.

This analogy is flawed in the sense that Linux was the project for Linus. In your analogy you would dedicate all your efforts into public service, say free medical care for people, collect accolades and admiration for that, ending up rallying a large crowd to your cause, and then when a buddy from abroad came to visit you, and he happened to be a for-profit chiropractor, you then decided to force all the users of the very public system you worked on, to "try" his "introductory free offer" as a pre-condition of participating. A word: "hypocrisy" comes close in its definition to that. Equally weak becomes the excuse that you never really were claiming to be "against" for-profit doctors.

This simply shows that the GPL is fashionable, which is partly a result of the success of Linux. For anyone writing open source software, the obvious licence choice is the GPL, since it's what Linux (the most famous open source software) uses.

These are licenses, not colour-coordinated socks we are talking about. Since there is nothing preventing the use of BSDL, should it be considered superior or even equal there would be much wider use of it. "Fashion" has nothing to do with it, both BSD and GPL are very well known and thus BSD is not at an "awarness" disadvantage.

What I'm saying is that there are also people who don't care much about the licence, but only want free or reasonably priced software that meets their needs.

The overwhelming majority of people using Linux, Unix/BSD, MS Windows or whatever operating system don't care about the licence, except as far as it requires them to pay something. These people are rational in the economic sense, and therefore choose the software that provides the greatest net utility (ie the utility of the software minus the utility of any money and/or time they have to give up to use it).

Now you are bringing the users into the discussion. Their motivations are on a completely diferent plane then those of the developers which I thought we were discussing. Users will use nearly anything free or otherwise, good or bad for millions of reasons which have nothing to do with licenses, of which most users are blissfully ignorant (as is their right).

Re:Stop the infighting

[Ravnen]

BSDL does that. What GPL does is to set up a framework of sharing. There is no conceivable reason to use GPL if one is not concerned about that aspect as BSDL would be more "unrestricted" and this have potentially more "utility" to more people. If that is all Linus wanted, GPL is a disastrous choice. But I suspect he simply changed his mind later when the corporate whining started.

You've misunderstood my point. Whatever licence Linus uses for his code, he has never refused to use software under different licences, nor claimed using GPL or non-GPL software is a matter of principle for him. This is different from the GNU ideology, which is in principle against not only contributing to non-GPL software, but even using it.

As a pragmatist myself, I don't find Linus's behaviour either surprising or inconsistent. You're obviously an ideologue, and have said you find it both surprising and inconsistent. I can only suggest this stems more from your own views than from Linus's.

In any case, you appear rather firmly convinced that Linus is lying about his motivations, and it can't be proved one way or the other, so I don't know if there's any value in discussing it further.

This analogy is flawed in the sense that Linux was the project for Linus. In your analogy you would dedicate all your efforts into public service, say free medical care for people, collect accolades and admiration for that, ending up rallying a large crowd to your cause, and then when a buddy from abroad came to visit you, and he happened to be a for-profit chiropractor, you then decided to force all the users of the very public system you worked on, to "try" his "introductory free offer" as a pre-condition of participating. A word: "hypocrisy" comes close in its definition to that. Equally weak becomes the excuse that you never really were claiming to be "against" for-profit doctors.

Linus doesn't spend all his time on Linux, and I don't pay all my money in tax. As for the rest of your comment, I was trying to explain the difference between pragmatism and ideology, not to rehash the BitKeeper issue in another setting (a complete waste of time in my view).

In simple terms, the fact that I support state ownership of some parts of the economy doesn't mean I believe state ownership is best for all parts of the economy (and the reverse for private ownership). This is similar to the way in which a pragmatic open source developer like Linus might believe the GPL is best for some software, but not for all software. The ideologues, like Marxists or Stallmanists, believe in principle that one model of ownership (communal ownership of the means of production in the case of Marxists, with state ownership during a transition phase, and in the case of Stallmanists, effective communal ownership of software) should be used in all cases.

These are licenses, not colour-coordinated socks we are talking about. Since there is nothing preventing the use of BSDL, should it be considered superior or even equal there would be much wider use of it. "Fashion" has nothing to do with it, both BSD and GPL are very well known and thus BSD is not at an "awarness" disadvantage.

To some people, the colour of their socks is more important than whether or not a particular open source project they use or contribute to is licensed under the GPL, BSDL or some other open source licence, as long as it's open source.

There's an extraordinarily large number of open source licences to choose from. The GPL is by far the most well known (again, in large part because of Linux), and is quite obviously the default choice for anyone writing open source software today. I don't think the suggestion that everyone writing such software reads and understands all the open source licences available (or even all the major ones) before choosing which to use is even remotely realistic. However, to the extent that this can't be proved one way or the other, and you're already repeating yourself without addressing my ar

Poor Linus.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are so many people mean to him and what he is trying to do!

I don't get patents

[skynare]

I'm not a prograwyer...

Re:I don't get patents

[ScrewMaster]

I think you mean "lawrammer"

Only the bravest of people...

[rob_squared]

...submit stories that read as flamebait on slashdot.

(since I've been modded in all sorts of directions today, this is an observation, not a troll, flamebait, or anything else negative)

Re:Only the bravest of people...

[LewsTherinKinslayer]

...submit stories that read as flamebait on slashdot.

Flamebait is also known as the catalyst to heated debate. And while there is a difference between something being said just to stir up the bee hive and constructive pondering and comments, I think its important that people don't automatically dismiss a subject with "strong" proponents and opponents as flamebait.

Re:Only the bravest of people...

[NitsujTPU]

</parody>
Arrrggghhhh!!!

You outrageous idiots, with your views of what flamebait is, and isn't.  I can't stand you.  I can't stand looking at you.  I hate everything you stand for.

It's people like you who killed my goldfish when I was 5!!

I hope you rot in prison for 640 years, just like that spammer, and all of those kids who figured out the administrative passwords to the laptops their school districts gave them.

You'll hear from my lawyer.
</parody>

Re:Only the bravest of people...

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree the article was clearly a troll, not a flamebait.

Re:Only the bravest of people...

[BarryNorton]

Might take bravery, but it doesn't take much intelligence to quote the first two paragraphs of a story from The Register word for word!

Some FUD spreading perhaps?

[cc-rider-Texas]

He noted open source infringes on "tens of thousands" of patents granted in the US and that companies taken to court over these would "lose some of the cases."

I sure wish he would have given some examples of these "tens of thousands" because IMHO that is just a thrown out figure aka FUD.

Re:Some FUD spreading perhaps?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure. How many of those patents are completely bogus and undefensible in court? Perens is casting FUD. Why? Whose side is he on, anyway?

Re:Some FUD spreading perhaps?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? Because he makes money off selling OSS bogo-insurance.

Re:Some FUD spreading perhaps?

[Russ Nelson]

Did Perens ever have principles?

Re:Some FUD spreading perhaps?

[Russ Nelson]

A patent only gives you the legal right to sue somebody. It doesn't give you the resources to succeed in your suit. Nor does bringing suit prevent the plaintiff from implementing a work-around for the patent. Look at what Keith Packard did with his font renderer. It avoids Apple's TrueType patent by rendering the font in a non-infringing manner.

Patent infringement isn't a serious problem for open source projects. It might be a problem for open source companies, but that's their problem.
-russ

Re:Some FUD spreading perhaps?

[Anonymous Coward]

A patent only gives you the legal right to sue somebody.

I already have the right to sue. A patent might give me a chance of winning.

Re:Some FUD spreading perhaps?

[Russ Nelson]

Without a patent you have no right to sue someone for patent infringement. Yes, you can sue anybody for anything (and if you disagree with me, I'll sue you!!!).
-russ

Re:Some FUD spreading perhaps?

[Anonymous Coward]

Without a patent you have no right to sue someone for patent infringement.

I'm not sure what you mean by a right in the above quote but I'm certain it can't be synonymous with the "legal right" you referred to in your earlier post. My legal right to sue you for patent infringement does not depend on me holding a patent.

Re:Some FUD spreading perhaps?

[Master of Transhuman]

I suggest you wander over to Groklaw and get a clue about "legal standing".

Yes, if you do not have a patent or any other basis for suing somebody, your case will be kicked out of court in a heartbeat.

Not only that, you may be sued by other parties or even held in contempt of court for bringing a "frivolous lawsuit".

The idiot suing the OSS people because it's devaluing his work is in this situation now - his case is being ignored because he has no legal standing.

Re:Some FUD spreading perhaps?

[Russ Nelson]

On the face of it, you're right. You can sue anybody for anything, however if you're going to waste your filing fee in that manner, why not do something useful with your money instead, like burn it? At least that way you'd be kept warm for a few moments.

Re:Some FUD spreading perhaps?

[Anonymous Coward]

Build a man a fire, keep him warm for a night.

Set a man on fire, keep him warm for the rest of his life.

Re:Some FUD spreading perhaps?

[Anonymous Coward]

I suggest you wander over to Groklaw and get a clue about "legal standing".

Why would you expect to get a clue about the law from Groklaw? The #1 submitter isn't even a lawyer. Groklaw is to the law like Slashdot is to technology; a bunch of posers who like to think they know what they're talking about, but really it's just noise and misinformation and dupe after dupe after duped story.

Re:Some FUD spreading perhaps?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure I follow.

You can sue anyone over anything, you have the legal right. What a patent does is put you in a situation where you may win, if the opposing party infringes your patent and doesn't have the resources (or the logic just isn't on their side) to get the USPTO to terminate the patent. Typically defending yourself in a patent infringement suit generally costs, from the estimates I've seen, something in the $2M area.

For a small developer, if the day comes a patent infringement notice arrives in the mail, the developer really has few choices:

1. Raise $2million and investigate methods to overturn the patent and have it ruled invalid. That assumes, of course, that it's somehow easy to prove the patent is "trivial" (few, if any, approved patents in recent years have been overturned on the basis of someone proving they're trivial), or that there's prior art (which there may well not be, if the patent concerns a recent technology.)

2. Cave in. Remove the offending technology from the code. In some cases, this may cripple the code completely to the point that the project is no longer supportable. Sometimes there are no workarounds.

Software patents cover a wide variety of applications, and they're not merely used to prevent people from, for example, rendering a font a particular way without a license, but also to access data whose format is covered by patents. This is why, for example, there is no legally 100% free MP3 encoding system in the US. Systems like LAME live in legal limbo. FOSS MP3 players exist by the grace of Thompson & Franhoffer, and there is no FOSS MP3Pro player because that grace hasn't been granted by the licensors.

So in the end, I'm puzzled by your assertion that "Patent infringement isn't a serious problem for open source projects. It might be a problem for open source companies, but that's their problem." Open Source Companies at least are likely to have the wherewithall to fund patent infringement lawsuits. For typical FOSS projects, on the other hand, there's no comeback. It's quite possible for a well placed patent to cause an entire project to be shut down, the code possibly getting maintenance in Free countries, but existing in legal limbo in the US.

That's not a good situation.

I will not comment on what Perens has said because frankly the Slashdot writeup is dumb, I haven't a clue what the details of the project Perens is supposed to have criticised is, nor whether Perens comment was an unsolicited diatribe, a passing comment, or a response to a specific question. El Reg isn't what it used to be.

Re:Some FUD spreading perhaps?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Patent infringement isn't a serious problem for open source projects. It might be a problem for open source companies, but that's their problem.
-russ"

That's right. Speak with the voice of stupidity.

No patents harmed PostgreSQL (ARC)

No patents harmed rproxy (http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;8391 60262;fp;512;fpid;968099126) for web page speed up.

No patents harmed fontconfig (pcode character hinting)

No patents harmed iSCSI (dual CRCs for PDU rather than the same algorithm used for ATM).

No patents harmed GNOME (spring loaded folders).

Please pull you head in and stop making a nuisence of yourself. You obviously have no clue what you are talking about.

Re:Some FUD spreading perhaps?

[chris_7d0h]

At a talk RMS held in Germany a year ago or so, he mentioned that a *friend* of his had gone through the Linux source in an attempt to find possible patent infringements. RMS mentioned his friend found thousands, so regardless of Perens being a d*ck or not, there might be some substance to the claim.

Re:Some FUD spreading perhaps?

[MarkJenkins]

Patent infringement isn't a serious problem for open source projects. It might be a problem for open source companies, but that's their problem.

Something that is a problem for such companies is a problem for all of us. The contributions from businesses to free software have been substantial.

Re:Some FUD spreading perhaps?

[ChrisMaple]

A patent only gives you the legal right to sue somebody.

A patent looks pretty nice when framed. It also looks good on your resume.

A patent enhances a company's price if the company is sold. I've heard a figure of about $1e6 per patent.

A patent gives trading/bargaining power with respect to other company's patents.

A patent can be a source of income without suing, if you're fortunate enough to deal with honorable companies and ask a reasonable price.

Re:Some FUD spreading perhaps?

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at what Keith Packard did with his font renderer

Give credit where it's due. Keith Packard had absolutely nothing to do with this. It's the FreeType guys which did all the good work.

Re:Some FUD spreading perhaps?

[Anonymous Coward]

Patent infringement isn't a serious problem for open source projects. It might be a problem for open source companies, but that's their problem.

Bzzzt, wrong! Software patents are bullshit, unfortunately the USPTO has seen fit to expand patentability to such un-novel, non-inventions based on some misguided case law.

Software patents are a problem for everyone, from the companies and open source projects who have to waste time checking for patents and working around them through to end users who can be held liable. In light of threats made to Governments by MSFT, that they may face litigation if they use linux; your downplaying of the situation is so wide of the mark with it makes you look like a complete fool.

Re:Some FUD spreading perhaps?

[dbIII]

A patent only gives you the legal right to sue somebody. It doesn't give you the resources to succeed in your suit

Say that for instance you are a poorly funded government research organisation outside of the USA and you have the patent on WiFi but Microsoft want to use it for free - you're screwed. The US patent system no longer functions in a useful manner in a lot of cases. I can't do anything about it, but those of you in the USA, even those who didn't bother to vote last time, can do something about it by contacting your representatives. Still can't do anything due to the huge lobbying power of various groups? Then try to do something about government corruption - even a lot of third world countries have been able to reduce the levels of bribery of elected officials.

I'm not really sure the patent pool will do anything when the system is becoming an infinite swamp like the silly example below.

Re:Some FUD spreading perhaps?

[Russ Nelson]

I'm just relating what Keith told me he was doing. Keith is proud of what he does, but is contemptuous of people who take credit for what others have done. It's possible that I misunderstood him, or it's possible that you don't know that keithp helped the freetype guys. I doubt that Keith is taking credit for something somebody else did.
-russ

Patent it all or none

[Anonymous Coward]

In the end, one has to choose:
either patent it all, including software or don't allow patents on anything. There is no valid reason for making a difference.

Also, either patents should be valid worldwide or they shouldn't be valid at all, for obvious trade competition equity.

Given the current way the world is working, I would tend to tink that everything should be patentable and that patents should be valid worldwide.

Re:Patent it all or none

[dakkon1024]

>In the end, one has to choose:
>either patent it all, including software or
>don't allow patents on anything. There is no
>valid reason for making a difference.

>Also, either patents should be valid worldwide
>or they shouldn't be valid at all, for obvious
>trade competition equity.

>Given the current way the world is working, I
>would tend to tink that everything should
be >patentable and that patents should be valid
>worldwide.


I believe that's referred to as purism. It's
more of an OCD disorder then a clearly
thought out concept. The world, due
to the fact that we operate on beliefs,
and not absolute truths, cannot
agree on "one way" to do things. This is why
there are 50 states, different countries,
and religions. All based on belief. I believe Hitler was trying to change
all this, but I think they current system is not so bad.


The world is not just black and white.

Re:Patent it all or none

[dnixon112]

While we're at it, all criminals should be either executed or set free. Because everything is black and white, and there's never any middle ground. Yeah.. that makes a lot of sense. /sarcasm

What you're forgetting is that there are valid reasons to differentiate between things that should be patented and things that shouldn't. In fact the patent system already takes such things into account. You cannot for example patent a mathematical algorithm. This is a valid and logical thing to dissallow from the patent system, the big problem with software patents is that software is a mix of mathematical algorithms and creative innovation. It takes careful examination to tell which side of the fence a certain program or system falls on. Yet, the patent office doesn't seem to realize this, or doesn't have the skill to deal with it, and therefore tends to grant patents that are nothing more then simple mathematical algorithms with no innovation.

When customs officials are reviewing people for acceptance into America, they check to see if you're a criminal. If you are, you won't be allowed in. Just because some people are criminals, they don't ban everyone from coming into the country, they examine the person with skilled employees on a case by case basis and make a decision. This is what the patent office *should* be doing, but they are failing and in the meantime letting all kinds of criminals into the system.

Re:Patent it all or none

[Anonymous Coward]

Globalizing the economy where some state obey patents and others don't is just unfair. We have to think on alternative ways to protect initial investments or do not protect it at all.

This is not belief, as they are probably already studies (pointers anyone ?) showing the economic inefficiencies resulting from this state of matter.

How is this even remotely connected to Hitler? It is quite the opposite.

I'll take so what ? for 500....

[Darkinspiration]

His comment is irrelevent. There is no commun initiative to protect the makers of OSS agains patent lawsuit. This is a step in the right direction. Maybe the database will be unhelpful maybe not. That's not really the point. The point is that someone is reacting in a way that could help us all. You should not dismiss theyre efforts so easely. Instead you should work toward a solution to the bigger problems. How to completely safeguard open source software maker against patent lawsuit.

Re:I'll take so what ? for 500....

[Master of Transhuman]

Exactly.

And Perens has no ideas of his own to bring to the table, so he should fuck off.

I personally doubt that just having a patent commons is going to be all that helpful once Microsoft starts suing OSS people (as they undoubtedly will once they see they have no choice left if they want to survive as a company), but it can't hurt to have one to back up the other efforts Eben Moglen outlined at LinuxWorld.

At the least, it could be used to help keep out the riff-raff - the lame smaller companies who jump on the "sue OSS" bandwagon. Eben specifically stated this project was intended to prevent SCO from happening again. And SCO certainly qualifies as a "lame smaller company."

Re:I'll take so what ? for 500....

[squiggleslash]

I personally doubt that just having a patent commons is going to be all that helpful once Microsoft starts suing OSS people

If you don't have any ideas of your own to bring to the table, why don't you just... (ahem)

Seriously, there's no problem with someone saying "Look, this isn't going to work, well intentioned though it might be." Perens, like Stallman, Raymond, et al, may be a bit of blowhard, but he still can say something and people will write about it in the press, so actually, if we're going in the wrong direction, I'd like people like him to speak up.

It'd be interesting to see someone actually link to this project though. Slashdot seems to have absolutely nothing on this supposedly great idea. Numerous people have suggested that Perens is only commenting on one small part of it, but where's the rest?

Re:I'll take so what ? for 500....

[Master of Transhuman]

Talk to Eben Moglen - he laid it out at LinuxWorld.

No great details are available. Why should there be? The program is simple: collect patents, lobby Congress, and try to reverse patents at the USPTO via the courts as the EFF has done.

I brought my ideas to the table - dump intellectual property altogether, but since that isn't going to happen, the patent commons is just fine.

And the point is not that Perens is criticizing the program, it's that the criticism is lame and irrelevant and limited to the Commons Project and doesn't say anything we don't already know and doesn't indicate any alternatives and doesn't offer any evidence that it can't be helpful to do it. While I doubt it will help against Microsoft, as does Perens, it can't hurt - like chicken soup.

His motivation seems to be, as you put it, to be a blowhard. That's what's irritating people.

Re:I'll take so what ? for 500....

[squiggleslash]

Talk to Eben Moglen - he laid it out at LinuxWorld.

Alas, I wasn't at LinuxWorld, and I've never met Eben Moglen and am highly unlikely to encounter him at any point soon. Nor, FWIW, would most Slashdot readers be in a better position than I on this matter. And I suspect if you were to post Eben's phone number so I can talk to him, he'd be a little pissed if he had to explain the same thing over and over again to all 800,000 registered readers of this fine website.

I'm kind of of the opinion a website or something similar would be a good idea. Your general outline is interesting but not exactly informative. It's fairly short on details. Who? What? How?

Re:I'll take so what ? for 500....

[Master of Transhuman]

Google is your friend. Try the EFF.

Re:I'll take so what ? for 500....

[squiggleslash]

As responses goes, that has to be the most useless I've seen. Do you seriously think I'd be asking if I hadn't tried them?

Google finds nothing authorative. The EFF site says nothing. Nor does the FSF's, or the OSI's. Nobody's responded to my JE asking for information either.

I assume you know this, otherwise you'd have actually put a link in rather than "try the EFF". It's just plain not out there. I'm beginning to wonder if this is actually all some elaborate hoax, and Moglen said nothing whatsoever.

In any case, responding to a lament that information isn't available by suggesting I personally talk to Eben Moglen, then asking me to look at a website that has nothing about the subject on it, is bizarre. Quite bizarre. What would you like me to check next? Oh! Oh! I know, Wikipedia, right? I mean, that's right up there after Google, huh?

Re:I'll take so what ? for 500....

[Master of Transhuman]

moglen@columbia.edu

That help?

Christ, he gave a talk about an initiative. Who knows how far along it is? So there's no Web site. So what?

Try this: the announcement. Note the following there:

WHILE STILL IN THE PLANNING STAGES [My emphasis], the OSDL patent commons project will initially involve the following:

* A library and database that aggregates patent pledges made by companies. The library will also aggregate other legal solutions, such as indemnification programs offered by vendors of open source software.

* A collection of software patent licenses and software patents (issued and pending) held for the benefit of the open source community.

Do I have to do all your work? I found Moglen's email in one Google search with his name and Columbia and I just entered OSDL and went to the link for their home page, where the announcement is.

Hard, huh? How the hell do you make it to /. with those Internet skills?

Get a Life Open Source

[Anonymous Coward]

Perens, speaking at LinuxWorld, compared the patent pool to "spitting in the wind" -because the patents it contained come from "the wrong people."

Yes, I fear this is where the open source movement may be headed--into a nutty world where they are the chosen few, everyone else is an infidel, and Microsoft is the Great Satan. All the obsession with ideological purity we saw in French Revolution (Great Terror) or Soviet Communism (Trotsky) will be applied to software.

These people need to "get a life." Open source is a good idea, but it isn't the Answer To Everything, nor are those who disagree necessarily evil.

G. K. Chesterton got it right when he remarked that "When people cease to believe in God, they don't believe in nothing, they believe in anything." Open software is not even that important an "anything." It's just software. It won't give you good health. It won't give you a wonderful marriage and delightful kids. It won't cause you to wake up in the morning with a song in your heart. It's just bits and bytes on a hard drive.

Relax, take the time to smell the roses or whatever else you find pleasant. Don't build your life around hating the "wrong people" so much you reject their donations to a patent pool.

--Mike Perry, Untangling Tolkien

Re:Get a Life Open Source

[Russ Nelson]

These people need to "get a life." Open source is a good idea, but it isn't the Answer To Everything, nor are those who disagree necessarily evil.

I think you're confusing the Open Source movement with the Free Software movement. Free Software is about morality. Open Source is about better software. We both want more freedom, but for different reasons.

Re:Get a Life Open Source

[rk]

Don't build your life around hating the "wrong people" so much you reject their donations to a patent pool.

A careful reading of what Perens said will reveal what he meant by "wrong people". The people who would put such patents in a pool are already friendly to open source, and are thus least likely to start trouble for open source products.

I see his point. Putting patents in a pool like this is a noble gesture, and it's certainly useful that these patented techniques will be allowed in open source software, but it doesn't buy open source much in the way of legal protection.

Re:Get a Life Open Source

[Master of Transhuman]

I'm not interested in distinguishing whether Bill Gates or George Bush is "the Great Satan".

An asshole is an asshole, it's that simple.

There are fanatics in everything - including Windows and Linux and OSS and interior design and poodles.

So what?

There are also idiots who like to post pompous bullshit on /. Especially when they miss the point of the discussion, as your last line does.

Perens was stating that the "wrong people" are people contributing patents to OSS who already support OSS. He would prefer Microsoft to do this. He knows Microsoft won't. His conclusion that the Patent Commons Project is worthless does not follow from his premise, but his premise is correct - and completely irrelevant to your post.

Don't build your life around trying to convince everybody to love everybody else. Ain't gonna happen.

This is like getting nukes...

[A beautiful mind]

...advocated by enviromentalists and peace activists to defend their position. Perens is right, that the means are wrong although i do not agree with his numbers.

Open source advocates should lobby for no software patents, because by using the "enemy's" weapon it validates it. Do not give credibility to patents, lobby against them.

Re:This is like getting nukes...

[TheRaven64]

If I may, I will abuse your analogy a little.

If you are a country, and a potentially hostile country gets nukes, then it makes sense for you to have them too - it means that attacking you with nukes is a bad idea. Of course, another good choice is to enter an organisation such as Nato or the Warsaw Pact, where nuclear-capable nations agree to launch nuclear retaliation against anyone who starts a nuke-fight with any of them. Now, imagine that there is another player in this game, one who lives in an orbital habitat. They can easily drop nukes on anyone, but you'd have to hit them with a perfect shot to make them even notice - fall-out isn't much of an issue in space. Oh, and their habitat is movable, so the chances of hitting them are approximately nil.

To explain this analogy:

Nukes are obviously patents. Linus has tried to collect some nukes of his own. This is not really necessary, since if Microsoft (a potentially hostile nation) decided to enforce patents against Linux then people like Sun and IBM would complain - and IBM is to patents what the USA is to nukes, someone you really don't want to mess with.

The final part of this analogy is small IP-only firms. Companies that buy up a patent purely for the purpose of litigation. They don't make anything, so a defensive patent chest is useless against them. There is no real defence against them other than reform of current IP laws.

Re:This is like getting nukes...

[beakerMeep]

You have a nice sounding analogy there but i think you made the wrong correlation. This would be more akin to stealing the enemy's weapon stock pile or designs and destroying them. rendering them powerless. also, there is no reason to assume that by taking patents you are condoning them. Condoning them would require holding them over someone to prevent them from doing their work, or, gettng paid for it. However, I believe the idea here is just to protect those who WANT to give their work away for free.

Re:This is like getting nukes...

[dmaxwell]

I've wondered if business method patents couldn't be used against some of these IP-only firms. Since there are thousands of trite business method patents to go along with all of the trite software patents, surely some of these could be stretched to apply to any business. Even a so-called business like a IP troll firm should be vulnerable to some of these.

Re:This is like getting nukes...

[Master of Transhuman]

OSDL and the other OSS organizations intend to lobby to change patent law. And they intend to actively reverse patents that threaten OSS.

So what's your point?

Eben Moglen laid out a program at LinuxWorld this past week. Perens has laid into ONE aspect of the program - the Patent Commons Project - and ignored the rest - presumably just to start a flame war.

I agree that ALL so-called "intellectual property" should have absolutely NO legal protection. But in the real world, this isn't going to happen. So OSS needs to try to defend itself any way it can.

If I produced a "killer" app - one that could put Microsoft out of business - I'd patent the algorithm and copyright the expressions of that algorithm. I'd make it all closed source until Microsoft was out of business. THEN I'd open source it. Why OSS it early and let Microsoft grab it and use their "legal" and monopoly-built financial clout to defeat it?

In martial arts, you do what is necessary to win - no matter how "dirty" the technigue. The only art I can think of that suggests doing less than that for a spiritual purpose is aikido. And even they don't suggest you give up a technigue to hamper yourself from winning.

I've often said that Lawrence Lessig is fighting with both hands tied behind his back because he supports the notion of intellectual property. And I still believe that. And I believe that supporting patents and copyright while advocating OSS is the same error.

But I don't believe that OSS should IGNORE patents while they're being actively used against it.

Who's writing these headlines?

[tsm_sf]

Obviously should have read "Perens poo-poos penguin patent pool".

"Lloyd's taking on open source IP risk"

[Quirk]

The Reg has a pertinent piece on the venerable insurance company Lloyd's being close offering..."independent insurance protection worldwide against potential IP litigation involving Linux and open source software".

Re:"Lloyd's taking on open source IP risk"

[Anonymous Coward]

You can use a broker to get a lloyd's 'name' to write an insurance contract on any risk you want - already. The 'names' do take on 'custom' risks, the drawback is that the risk is rather uncertain and the cost could be potentially high for both sides...making it a more standard offering should make the premiums reflect actual risk rather than risk which includes huge uncertainty of the risk:)

He's right about one thing

[Anonymous Coward]

The patent system is seriously in need of fixing.

Having a lot of patents works because anybody who sues you over one patent can be sued by you over another patent. Microsoft sues IBM, IBM sues Microsoft. Mutually assured destruction (slight hyperbole).

Having lots of patents doesn't work if the company suing you has patents as its only business. In that case, you have nothing to blackmail them with. Having lots of your own patents is no protection at all.

Lots of people are angry about the patent system, so there is a mood to fix it. The trouble is that if it gets fixed the way Microsoft wants, we won't like it very much. Bruce may be right, we should get way more politically active.

Proof by contradiction

[RedLaggedTeut]

Using the "enemy's weapon" does not always invalidate a defense. After all no-one is hurt by the use of the enemies weapons in the GPL, maybe with the exceptions of those whose power of abuse is limited by the existance of the GPL.

If Patent War does break loose ...

[alucinor]

If there is a patent war, this will assure the dominance of China, India, Brazil, and Eastern Europe in both open source and software innovation in general.

A cynical part of me almost wants to see the West shoot itself in the foot with patents, but then I remind myself, "Oh wait, I live in the West."

Re:If Patent War does break loose ...

[imsabbel]

Maybe you are a bit late, but didnt you notice that "eastern europe" has become "the NEW europe" and is whoring itself to the usa like no tomorrow?

Re:If Patent War does break loose ...

[alucinor]

I guess I didn't notice ... what kind of things are happening?

Re:If Patent War does break loose ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Free trade, open borders, democratic representation, capitalistic economics, that sort of thing.

Re:If Patent War does break loose ...

[cdn-programmer]

whoring my ass. If you didn't notice - Putin has decided to keep the oil reserves Russia has secret.

There is an energy war happening right now. While hopefully energy issues will not be linked to patent and OSS issues - the idea that Eastern Europe wants to hitch its wagon the the faltering USA economy and legal mess is very unlikely. Quite the opposite.

The US can do whatever it wants to and the rest of the world will put its feet up - grab a beer and vie for the popcorn stand.

Re:If Patent War does break loose ...

[DarkAvZ]

Even counting Eastern Europe out, China+India+Brazil represents almost half of the world!

Re:If Patent War does break loose ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Free trade? Since when is that in the West? All I see is monopoly-dominated markets where free-trade is dying with all kinds of barriers, not to mention patent-litigation being the new tool for raising such barriers even higher. As they say, its free trade for the free. For the rest (the vast majority of powerless entities), its "free" time as long as they live on scraps and crumbs. So much for "freedom"....

Ahhhh...

[Anonymous Coward]

...so many important people.

What the article is about

[Roland Walter Dutton]

Oh Ghod, here we go again. Since the submitter hasn't given a remotely useful summary of what Bruce Perens' actual problem with the patent pool is, I will explain it here for those of you who won't RTFA.

THE ARGUMENT ---

There are two main types of possible patent agression: 1) from patent trolls and 2) from big companies with lots of software as well as lots of software patents. Let's see how our new patent pool does against each of them.

Case 1:

PATENT TROLL: Your software violates my patent on the letter 'g'. Pay me $40,000,000 to go away.

LINUS: Your software violates several thousand patents in *our* patent arsenal.

PATENT TROLL: I don't own any software; all I have is this portfolio of groundbreaking, original patents. Pony up.

Now *nobody's* patent pool is useful in case 1 (unless it just happens to contain prior art on the troll's patent). Patent pools are generally for use in case 2.

Case 2:

MICROSOFT: Your software violates 42,000 of our finest patents. Go to jail.

LINUS: Your software violates several thousand patents in *our* patent arsenal.

MICROSOFT: Oh, that's too bad. Would those be the patents loaned to you by other major software companies? The same major software companies who have given us an unlimited, perpetual license to use all their software patents in exchange for a similar license from us? Yes? Gosh, now I'm scared.

So if the Linux patent pool is no use in case 1, and no use in case 2, it's no use at all, correct?

THE POINT ---

Now I don't really know how correct Bruce Perens' position is, although on the face of it it does seem highly reasonable. What I do know is that whether you think Bruce Perens suX0r, or whether he founds too many nonprofits, or whether or not he could defeat the fscking Green Lantern, is *completely* *irrelevant* to the actual question, which is really pretty damned important. So: can we talk about the *actual* *issue* now, and not whether we like Bruce Perens?

Re:What the article is about

[alucinor]

I guess the only real viable solution (which is what is happening anyways) is for open source to get so entrenched at the governmental level, that governments don't want to see it harmed, and also see it as enabling them to have power above US corporations (and though it can be bribed, even the US government at the highest levels wants to have more power over its IT than its own corporations, which open source allows).

Re:What the article is about

[back_pages]

I'm not familiar with Linus' proposal (or existing tool?) but thank you for the explanation of Perens' position. I am extremely familiar with both programming and the patent system.

Your summary seems extremely plausible. Having an arsenal of patent leverage could easily be useless leverage in the scenarios you describe.

I think that first and foremost is fulfilling the need in the software world for a patent liability analysis/consulting industry. The patent system is widely misunderstood by the average Joe working in software.

Slashdot, the Fox News of the Patent System, is proof positive of this observation.

While reform, via legislation or case law, is an ideal solution (using both definitions of "ideal") a more immediate and likely solution, in my opinion, is including patent liability in your software project. Market analysis, marketing, tax experts, and human resources are existing overhead in software development companies. I'm just making the observation that assessing your patent liability in a professional manner, by experts, with some form of insurance, seems to be the next logical step.

Of course, when the patent system is "adequately" reformed, that will be unnecessary. But which seems like the best solution for tomorrow or 2006? Continue blindly, hope you don't get sued, and wait for reform; or pay an expert to determine whether you're on thin ice regarding patent infringement?

A first step toward making this an industry-wide practice could be a service like Groklaw that helps to inform and educate those average Joes. I'm not sure that devoting resources to develop a Mutually Assured Destruction patent arsenal will possess any real expectation of success.

Re:What the article is about

[bperkins]

He's right that it would be far better to somehow magically remove software patents. Nobody is arguing with that. Unfortunatly, Perens is advocating a course of action that has been underway for ten years or more and has gotten exactly nowhere.

The reality is that the U.S. will not get rid of software patents. Even if we are able to prevent more software patents from being issued, there are still the existing patents which need to be dealt with(*).

As usual, Linus has created contovesy by suggesting we trade ideological purity for practical matters. While it's not exactly consistant to rail against patents and hold them yourself, it's a plan that at least hasn't been tried yet. Peren's plan will not work. Linus' probably won't. Which one sounds better?

(*)Imagine:

Dear Senator Smith:

I am a shareholder of Foobar Software. You voted for legislation that eliminated all software patents, reducing the assets of my company by $999 billion. Can you explain why I should vote for you in November?

Re:What the article is about

[lma]

Case 1 is always a problem, and no one expects a patent pool to solve it. The argument here reads a bit like this to me: "Your solution to problem A doesn't solve problem B, therefore your solution is bad." Huh?

Case 2 is solvable by a patent pool. The argument made here that a patent pool is ineffective depends on the fallacy that patents in that pool have already been licensed to a potential aggressor through some other means. Again, I think that everyone recognizes that to be effective, the pool must contain original IP not already licesned to a potential aggressor. The discussion we should have is how to encourage and enable the growth of that part of the pool.

Larry

Re:What the article is about

[surprise_audit]

I think that first and foremost is fulfilling the need in the software world for a patent liability analysis/consulting industry.

No, that's just pandering to the lawyers. What's really needed is to convince the government that it should reform the patent system. It shouldn't be possible for anyone to be granted patents for some of the crap that the USPTO recently granted, and it should be easier for patents to be challenged and revoked.

Unfortunately, that would require a degree of maturity that big business simply doesn't have. As with everything else, the revamped system would be abused by those with deep pockets, to the detriment of those without. A company with a large cash reserve can simply ignore patents because they can afford to drag things out in court until the patent owner runs out of money. Look at the recent EU vs Microsoft case - OK, that wasn't about patents, but the same principle applies - Microsoft was told to pay big fines that amounted to little more than pocket change compared to their $40bn cash reserve.

Perhaps the easiest patent reform would be to disallow corporate ownership of patents. Let the actual inventor own the patents and provide a method to expedite settlement of patent infringement cases.

Re:What the article is about

[Roland Walter Dutton]

I think that part of the solution is also for free software to get entrenched in powerful companies and non-profits too. For example, I don't think the big stockbroking firms would take it lying down if they were told that they couldn't run Linux on their traders' terminals anymore. I'm pretty sure that considerations like this are a large part of why Microsoft hasn't launched a new patent offensive already.

The big shortcoming of the "get entrenched" approach is that while it's likely to buy good protection for big, successful free software projects that big institutions use a lot - Apache, GCC, the Linux kernel, and the like - it may not do much for the thousands of smaller projects that don't have any sugar daddy. It's great to hear big companies promising to protect Linux - will they protect you if you decide to write a new OS kernel that might be the new Linux someday, or a little tool that will be valuable to seventy grateful users? We are in danger of reaching a situation where development continues on the big projects but individuals and small groups are too scared to work on small ones.

Re:What the article is about

[Anonymous Coward]

case 1 is really the only one to worry about. Open source software 'benefits' major corporations in numerous tangible and semi-intangible ways. While the GPL protects your 'source' it doesn't at all protect your 'design' if you design some open source software particularly well any closed source company is going to be able to look at it, and implement anything you've done in a heart beat. reverse engineering has been going on in closed source software forever, and if the same programmer who writes the program reverse engineers it it's illegal, but take QDOS, which was basically YAM cp/m clone, written based on a publication made by a guy who reverse engineered cp/m... unethical you bet... but if it was 'illegal' then bill gates would be in jail, and he's not.

So as you can see, open source software 'benefits' magor software developers. Especially since 'open source' software never has the maturity and feature set of a closed source program. Because open source software writers are writing for there own needs, not to keep the paychecks rolling in. so they lack the kind of manpower and dedication it takes to really compete.

Consider open office, where would open office be without sun? it would be dead. Where would Free BSD be without yahoo! it would be dead... Linux has numerous corporations with vested interested in various distubutions or the kernel in general etc.. Mozilla is the burning remnants of the netscape corporation, after being slash and burned by aol. And yeah they've got a foundation, and right now there aren't any comanies with a vested interest in it's continued survival, other than microsoft, since many many people would have thrown out windows pcs and got apples or installed linux out of shere frustration at IEs glaring security holes and the inability to keep windows 'safe' if you don't know what you're doing (ie: most normal people) with fewer than $200 worth of software, most of which is subscription based... and incurs monthly fees.. unless you 'rely' on free software like mozilla/firefox etc...

and yeah if you're using IE to surf the web you do need close to $200 worth of commercial software: a commercial AV program ($80 w/subscription), a commercial spyware program($30-80 w/subscription),(30-80, w/subscription) a commercial 'firewall' solution, a 'free' popup blocker, etc etc...

yes firewalls come with a subscription option now, where have you been. oh yeah, behind a hardware firewall, that probablly runs linux. and defintely is more secure than even the $120-150 'security suite' that includes firewall/spyware /av at least one of which is subpar.

the problem with that hardware firwall, is grandma probablly wants to pay $9 a month for internet so most hardware firewalls are useless, and that means relying on the isp for inbound protection (which is generally good on dialup, because the low bandwith means anything that wastes bandwith is probably disabled), and having zilch for outbound protection.

Re:What the article is about

[BillyBlaze]

See, the big problem with that is that we really don't want to turn the IT industry into the medical industry, where some huge fraction of your wages has to go to malpractice or patent infringement insurance, and where innovation is difficult because of the legal risks involved.

Re:What the article is about

[Roland Walter Dutton]

Case 1 is always a problem, and no one expects a patent pool to solve it. The argument here reads a bit like this to me: "Your solution to problem A doesn't solve problem B, therefore your solution is bad." Huh?

No, no. I was just laying out what the patent threats are and what a strong patent pool does and doesn't do. As you say, no-one expects a patent pool to be much use against threat 1. I wasn't attempting to score a point here; the humour wasn't directed at anyone (except perhaps the /. ad hominem flamers).

(And I did clearly state that my outer connective was 'the patent pool is no use at all if it is no use in either case'.)

Case 2 is solvable by a patent pool.

No-one is disputing that Case 2 is solvable by an effective patent pool.

The argument made here that a patent pool is ineffective depends on the fallacy that patents in that pool have already been licensed to a potential aggressor through some other means.

Why is this false? As far as I know, this is true of the patents that are currently in the pool. It may be the case that future patents will enter the pool of which this is not true, but until then the pool is not effective in case 2.

Again, I think that everyone recognizes that to be effective, the pool must contain original IP not already licesned to a potential aggressor.

I don't think the prior cross-licensing problem is immediately obvious to everyone - it certainly wasn't immediately obvious to me - and it wasn't mentioned in, for example, the initial press release, so I think it's perfectly reasonable for Bruce Perens to raise it.

The discussion we should have is how to encourage and enable the growth of that part of the pool.

Amen.

I think that Perens' specific point about the patents currently in the pool is likely correct; certainly it deserves to be discussed on its own merits. The misleading summary given by the poster, and Taco's largely irrelevant snark in the subheading, led me to fear that we'd get another round in the pointless /. anti-Perens/ESR/RMS/whoever flamewars instead, which is why I wrote the original post.

I also think that Perens is right that lobbying against patents is important and should continue. Again, I don't think many of us would disagree about that either.

If Perens is also making a broader claim that the patent pool effort is useless, and that only political action matters, then I think he's clearly wrong in that. The current state of the patent pool doesn't justify a dismissive "it'll never work" attitude, but it does justify a skeptical "show me the money" attitude.

Re:What the article is about

[lma]

I think that Perens' specific point about the patents currently in the pool is likely correct; certainly it deserves to be discussed on its own merits.

Yes, although I believe that the intent is to encourage the contribution of original unencumbered patents, and that this is just a starting point.

If Perens is also making a broader claim that the patent pool effort is useless, and that only political action matters, then I think he's clearly wrong in that. The current state of the patent pool doesn't justify a dismissive "it'll never work" attitude, but it does justify a skeptical "show me the money" attitude.

My major concern was smaking sure that people understood that the effort is not useless. It is important. Political action is also important. Both are worth pursuing. The patent pool should not be dismissed on day one because it's not yet effective. It will take a long time to make it effective. We must be willing to persist at it for the duration.

Larry

Re:What the article is about

[back_pages]

Perhaps the easiest patent reform would be to disallow corporate ownership of patents.

Yeah, maybe. That suggestion is just a shade less radical than dismantling the entire system. You go ahead and promote that idea, I'll continue to suggest identifying your patent liability before you're sued, and we'll see who comes out ahead.

Slashdot IS the Fox News of the patent system. All the ranting and raving about how stupid the system is will get nothing done. Nobody who gets sued out of business will be in a position to lobby for reform. Why not solve tomorrow's problem? The popular alternative amounts to holding your breath until you turn blue and get what you want.

Best of luck with that.

Re:What the article is about

[back_pages]

See, the big problem with that is that we really don't want to turn the IT industry into the medical industry, where some huge fraction of your wages has to go to malpractice or patent infringement insurance, and where innovation is difficult because of the legal risks involved.

And if this were 1995 before Diamond v. Diehr, I'd say you are very insightful.

But since this is 2005, my response is that you're roughly 10 years behind the hard facts of the industry. If you refuse to compete in the reality of 2005 then you're just going to be extremely bitter after being sued into bankruptcy.

But... at least you'll still have your ideals?

Re:What the article is about

[Bruce Perens]

Larry,

A pool operated by OSDL may simply be ineffective because OSDL's controlling members, the big ones who have board positions, for the most part already have cross-licenses with Microsoft.

There is also the fact that OSDL's controlling members are some of the world's largest software patent holders, and a real solution to the problem simply isn't in their interest. When we fight against the embedding of software patents in standards, we are generally fighting IBM. This has been true at W3C, OASIS, and elsewhere.

Thus, I doubt the effectiveness, and indeed I am afraid that I even doubt the sincerity of the patent pool.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:What the article is about

[Roland Walter Dutton]

As usual, Linus has created contovesy by suggesting we trade ideological purity for practical matters. While it's not exactly consistant to rail against patents and hold them yourself, it's a plan that at least hasn't been tried yet.

Not so fast. Eben Moglen (basically the FSF's head legal guy) is one of the people extolling the patent pool in the original press release. And the whole idea of using software patents against software patents is classic FSF tactics, like the GPL "judo throw" of using "copyleft" against copyright.

(Speaking of which, the FSF have been quietly mentioning that the new version of the GPL will contain anti-software-patent language. Will it be something straighforward, like "any patents you take out based on derivative works must be freely licenced for free software use"? Or something impressively vicious, like "ever attempt to enforce a patent against any free software and this license instantly expires"? Very probably the former, but the latter would be so much fun... :) )

The FSF certainly hasn't given up on campaigning and lobbying against software patents either. This makes perfect sense, after all: the two approaches reinforce each other. The less software patents are worth to the big companies, the less inclined they will be to lobby hard for them.

Re:What the article is about

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is everyone assuming that this plan is valuable only to the extent that it can go head-to-head with Microsoft? Except in one or two isolated cases, Microsoft has almost no history of aggressive patent exploitation.

That may change if/when they find they're not making enough money selling software, but for the time being, it doesn't appear to be a major threat.

Other companies like Unisys, Texas Instruments, Kodak, Sun, and Amazon.com are much bigger concerns. There are plenty of companies like these who have a history of patenting obvious and/or trivial things and waving them around like blunt instruments. Unlike Acacia and similar abusers, these companies do produce goods and services, and many of them not have cross-licensing agreements with anyone.

So yes, I do see some value in a consortium whose purpose is to prepare for attacks by companies other than Microsoft. People tend to be blinded by hatred of Microsoft to the extent that they assume there are no other significant bad guys out there. That is a foolhardy way to think.

Re:What the article is about

[Bruce Perens]

I'd be happy with a trade of ideological purity for practical matters if the trade showed some prospect of working. So far, this doesn't. OSDL's controlling members (the big ones with board seats) for the most part are cross-licensed with MS. They are also some of the world's biggest software patent holders, and a solution to the problem isn't in their interest.

Thanks

Bruce

Re:What the article is about

[Bruce Perens]

While I was an employee of HP, Microsoft disclosed to HP their plan to take down various Open Source software using a software patent attack. This became public knowledge some years after I left HP, the memo is on Newsforge and it was reported on CNET and elsewhere. Microsoft was diverted by the anti-trust and a desire to wait for their patent legislation to be passed in Europe. Had Microsoft brought suit, it could have worked against the legislation. But now that legislation has fallen anyway. They are free to move if they want to.

But you are right that they are not the only possible agressor. It's also possible they could use a proxy. Many people believe that SCO is their proxy today.

Bruce

Re:What the article is about

[Bruce Perens]

I'd add to your analysis that OSDL's controlling members - the folks who pay the most and get board seats - have agreements with MS.

Regarding Rob's snotty remark about the non-profits I've created, most are successful, so I don't see his point:

• No-Code International - helped eliminate Morse code tests for ham radio licensing in 25 nations so far, got the ITU treaty fixed.
• Software in the Public Interest - managing Debian's assets and those of a number of other projects. Recently awarded $6000/year grant and makes $20K to $40K in contributions per year.
• Linux Standard Base - created a lot of useful work. Could be better accepted by application vendors, maybe the DCCA (blame Ian Murdock for that one and the previous LCC) will help.
• Sincere Choice and Global Technology Policy Institute - after I started these, real universities offered to back me, so they became less relevant. But donations were put to good use in the patents and standards fight.
• UserLinux - not yet. I've not given up.

I can't believe anyone would consider this a bad record. Even having 1/4 of ones ideas pan out is better than most folks could ever ask for.

Bruce

Re:What the article is about

[Bruce Perens]

the FSF have been quietly mentioning that the new version of the GPL will contain anti-software-patent language.

The present GPL has it. The only increase in anti-software-patent language I can think of would be the addition of a mutual-defense clause.

Bruce

Re:What the article is about

[Jerry]

Don't pay any attention to the critics, Bruce. Most are just Micosurfs astroturfing and trying to create desention among the Penquins, and a few hot beaks can't resist replying in kind.

Re:What the article is about

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't seen the disclosure(s) in question, but do they really represent MS corporate policy? If they don't, they're just FUD.

There has never been a shortage of outlandish schemes contrived by rogue developers and program managers at Microsoft. Most of the resulting memos never rise to the level of company policy. (You should see some of the stuff that came out of the team that created what eventually became DirectX. The project was called the "Manhattan Project" because at the time, it was aimed directly at Japanese console makers. I can literally still see the T-shirt every time I open my closet door -- it has a Microsoft logo on the front and a huge glow-in-the-dark mushroom cloud on the back.)

At this time, I believe it's appropriate to take defensive measures against the submarine-patent pirates who have already run their colors up the mast. It is possible that Microsoft may become a problem in the future, but really, trying to fight the next war is no smarter than trying to fight the last one.

Re:What the article is about

[WNight]

The problem with your strategy is that "we", the non-rich, corporations or otherwise, developers are always going to be on the losing side in this battle. The patent system as it is doesn't offer any real benefit to the little guy. If Microsoft contested a patent of mine I'd be hooped, even if in the right - the patent might get bought by someone who could afford to defend it, but it wouldn't matter for me.

It may be hard to fight to dismantle the patent system, or overhaul it extensively, but that's the only way it'll ever actually be a benefit to society. Luckily, I think it'll collapse soon enough. We're firmly entering the information age and we're letting companies patent trivial algorithms that are used in all programs. Eventually nothing will be possible without infringing on some bogus patent. All companies with enough money to sue will be sued by the RAMBUSes and SCOs (same abuse, different system) of the day - to defeat these abusers, the former beneficiaries of the system (IBM, GE, 3M, etc) will, imho, have to destroy the system.

The idea of getting rid of up-front monopolies and going to royalties or something else isn't a new one. Like first-past-the-post voting - we don't do it because it's best, just because it sounded good at the time. If the patent system changed to a forced-licensing, industry-determined royalties system, you couldn't abuse it by squatting. If you did have a good idea it would be adopted and you'd get a check every year for an ammount based on the benefit to the users of your idea. If nobody used it, or did but didn't achieve any benefit from your work, you would get nothing. Pretty simple. It's not like the only option to the current patent system is anarchy with armed lawyers wandering the streets.

Re:What the article is about

[extrasolar]

"...or whether or not he could defeat the fscking Green Lantern..."

That depends, does he have any superpowers?

Re:What the article is about

[makomk]

There's an easy workaround to that - have employees hold the patents but find some suitably ingenious legal method to transfer all the actual rights granted to the company. I think things used to work this way in the UK, though IANAL.

Re:What the article is about

[back_pages]

First, while I sympathize with your frustration, your reply has really very little to do with what was previously being discussed. There's nothing wrong with that in principle, but it's indicative of why very few people in the IP industry take Slashdot seriously. No matter how reasonable the suggestion, the only solution that satisfies Slashdot is Revolution. That's an easy opinion to dismiss.

The problem with your strategy is that "we", the non-rich, corporations or otherwise, developers are always going to be on the losing side in this battle. The patent system as it is doesn't offer any real benefit to the little guy. If Microsoft contested a patent of mine I'd be hooped, even if in the right - the patent might get bought by someone who could afford to defend it, but it wouldn't matter for me.

I'm puzzled. The alternative is what? The little guy publishes his idea and Microsoft steals it, and he has no legal recourse whatsoever? Maybe he pursues the eternally fruitless line of copyright infringement?

In the situation you describe, the little guy is holding the golden ticket. He could license it, sell it, or use it to protect his own products. You describe a situation where the reality of the market urges him to sell the patent. Maybe the little guy isn't happy about it, but that's how the market works. At least he got to cash out the golden ticket.

What's more is that I find the situation you describe slightly unrealistic. A case of patent infringement is typically pretty cut and dry (to the people who work in that industry). If Microsoft is honestly infringing, then the little guy will have no trouble finding legal representation that will collect their paycheck out of Microsoft's settlement, and the little guy gets to keep his patent.

It may be hard to fight to dismantle the patent system, or overhaul it extensively, but that's the only way it'll ever actually be a benefit to society. Luckily, I think it'll collapse soon enough.

Pardon me for asking but what exactly is your expertise in the patent system? I'm not trying to be rude, but I work 50 hour weeks in the IP industry and it gets really irksome to enter conversations like this with people who read about patents on Slashdot. I hope you understand my position and don't take offense.

If the patent system changed to a forced-licensing, industry-determined royalties system, you couldn't abuse it by squatting.

I'm not speaking in hyperbole when I say that this idea very quickly reduces to a corrupt economy where only the oligopoly survives. Imagine the Big Three automakers A, B, and C are the only competitors in automobiles. The patent system forces all of A's inventions to be licensed to B and C at industry-determined prices. Well well, B and C can eliminate A's competitive advantage gained by that invention by 1) getting it at the same price as mandated by the government's patent system, or 2) set the price so low that nobody cares. Now A, B, and C have essentially equal access to what was previously A's competitive advantage. How can any company continue to please Wall Street? Price fixing. A, B, and C form on oligopoly to preclude outside competition and agree to not impede each other's profits. Failure to participate is foolish - you'd quickly be squeezed out of the market because the government has decreed that you shall have no unique competitive advantage. How are you going to compete in that market? You form a price fixing oligopoly or you'll hemmorage cash until bankruptcy.

For the "forced-licensing, industry-determined royalties system" to work, you must first remove the market economy. To do that, I believe history shows you must first remove greed from human nature.

It's not like the only option to the current patent system is anarchy with armed lawyers wandering the streets.

Yeah, it's spending a little dough up front to assess your patent liability. You don't develop a product that has no market - you do ma

Re:What the article is about

[alucinor]

Very good point; I think then it becomes the responsibility of the large successful projects to help protect smaller projects -- OSDL seems to be doing this very thing, since it's the home of the Linux kernel. The whole patent pool may be more of a political, anti-FUD measure then, rather than an actual strategic play against Microsoft launching a patent attack.

Re:What the article is about

[Anonymous Coward]

The Open Source and Free Software movements, if they are to play the patent game and not just campaign to eliminate some types of patents, need to own some patents of their own, that they can assert against companies like Microsoft.

This probably means that some open source programmers need to write patent disclosures, and that they then need to pay or get some patent lawyer to donate the time to file the patent and get it awarded. And then this needs to be repeated several thousand times.

Folks like me would gladly donate some inventions if we could - but we can't, since we work for big companies as our day job, and our employment contracts pretty much say that anything we invent belongs to our employers - no matter whether it was done inside or outside work.

So, the task of creating a patent portfolio to protect open and free software probably falls to

(a) that small community who are paid to work full-time on free software

(b) students... except that many universities, at least in the US, own rights in their students' inventions

(c) consultants and other folks who can invent things on their own time.

I sure do wish that I had ownership of some of my 100+ patents, or the innumerable other inventions that my employer decided not to patent. But I don't. And I won't until I retire or otherwise stop working for the man.

News for Nerds...

[Whafro]

That doesn't mean that it's okay to forget how to assign possession to words. Please, editors and posters, realize that his name is Torvalds, and when he owns a pen, it's "Linus Torvalds' pen."

Word choice, grammar, and punctuation matter. If you're one of those people saying "I'm a nerd, I don't have to know how to write" then please, spare the rest of us, and don't submit stories to major "news" sites.

Editors who don't catch these things are simply pathetic, and it's inexcusable.

That is, unless we're talking about someone else named Torvald, in which case I move to strike my previous comments.

Re:News for Nerds...

[The Axe]

Actually, I believe it would be "Linus Torvalds's pen."

You put an apostrophe followed by an s to indicate ownership for singular nouns, even if the noun already ends with an s. With plural nouns, you omit the s after the apostrophe.

Singular example: The class's discussion lasted an hour.

Re:News for Nerds...

[Whafro]

There's contention as to this rule, and while you're not completely wrong, many would say that you're not completely right, either.

Most people go with what sounds right vs. what sounds awkward:

"The Jones's House" (said "The Joneses House")
"In Jesus' Name" (said "In Jesus Name")

In this case, I'd posit that Torvalds falls into the latter case, and therefore would be Torvalds'

Re:News for Nerds...

[soma_0806]

I consider this pretty pointless and anal in general, but if you're going to be critical, you must also be correct.

While it is true that the possessive in the title is incorrect, according to MLA formatting as well as Strunk's Elements of Style, which is pretty much the authority on such matters, your suggestion is acceptable, but more correct is to add an apostrophe s. ex. Torvalds's. It's actually rule number one in Strunk's Elementary Rules of Usage.

Aside from all that clap-trap, I notice gramatical errors in numerous "professional" publications that don't have the additional challenges of slashdot all the time. (For example, speed is kind of important here, so maybe things don't get checked over by three or seven different editors). I know it matters. Of course it matters, but you sound pretty snarky in your reply, so it may bode well to ask yourself just how much it should matter.

Also, I am an engineer, not an English major, so my reply may indeed be replete with errors. I love it just the way it is, just like slashdot.

Re:News for Nerds...

[typical]

You must be joking. Slashdot stories are regularly loaded with grammatical errors.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

When fighting a war

[Anonymous Coward]

When fighting a war it is best not to exclude any weapon. The patent pool is a start and may well prove usefull. If the Linux communitty was to hire several patent lawyers and start documenting and patenting every possible idea in Linux and GNU software generally so that they have patent records and rights to fight with that would help too. Getting a team of lawyers together to start combing through every patent that Microsoft, Sun, Intel, Apple, and whoever has submitted in the area of software for patents that are to vague, or are not unobvious to someone skilled in the art or which otherwise fail the test of patentability and challenging all these would help. Begining a lobbying and educational effort to eleminate software patents would help. Getting active in politics at a local level and getting congresspeople elected who will support a no vote on Softwar Patents wil help. None of these alone will do the trick and I think it is a distinctly bad idea to poopoo any particular approch because it's not the one you want.
I suspect this is going to be a multifront war and we're going to need every one of these approches before we win it. When the courts allowed, and then the Congress and treaty interpretation ratified, the idea of software and business methods patents we unleashed a monster. It's a multi-headed hydra that's going to take a multi-faceted approch to beat.

Re:When fighting a war

[Jane_Dozey]

IIRC the FSF already has a bunch of lawyers. The main problem with patenting things is money. You have to cough up the cash everytime you wish to patent something and people generally don't have this pool of money to work with. Unfortunatly, while a patent pool would be a start it's an expensive start.

Who has the better overall track record?

[Herschel Cohen]

In my opinion Linus.

Remember Perens was co-founder of the Open Source (Foundation/whatever), whose goal was to entice commercial interests to open source. Perhaps a bit too successful, but the point is afterwards he belatedly recognized "Open Source" effort was at least partially misdirected.

While I know too little about UserLinux, there is a critique of Perens' role: http://lwn.net/Articles/146959/#Comments

read the comment under the name of syntaxis, which has a quote from back in March but "... Sarge has been out for ages now and UserLinux still hasn't released ...". In a link in the comment Perens says he is awaiting only release of Sarge.

[Regarding this portion of lwn.net - guests even posted here, you need not be a subscriber to read the comments.]

A solid plan?

[GenKreton]

Perens seems to fail at laying out a solid plan or alternative to the open source patent portfolio Torvalds and others are trying to accrue. While criticism is good, without proposed solutions it is only negative.

With that said nobody claimed this open-source patent portfolio they are developing would be the be-all end-all solution to patent problems but it is a step in the right direction. Sometimes you need many lines of defense. Lobbying our political leaders costs more money than most FLOSS supporters have save a select few companies (like IBM who still love to horde patents).

This patent portfolio is needed in the meantime and not meant to be a comprehensive defensive line anyways. So why such negativity without a solid alternative?

Perens isn't a lawyer, so he is simply wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer is simply this: if patents are assigned to OSDL, they are not bound by any licensing agreements donators may have made to others.

Further, if programmers and vendors all donate to one common place, the pool gets bigger and bigger, and your leverage in any such type 2 scenario gets bigger as a result.

The patent commons doesn't have only defensive purposes however in the scenario you posit. There will also be a database of prior art associated with the project.

It's a good project. Those that think the only solution is to outlaw software patents, like Perens, will oppose it. Longterm, they may be right to hope for that, but Microsoft is really on the move, and it does look like patents are the weapon of choice, and something needs to be done right now, and if you think the US is going to outlaw patents any time soon, you are wrong. Given that reality, now how does the patent commons idea look?

Re:Perens isn't a lawyer, so he is simply wrong

[RickHunter]

if patents are assigned to OSDL, they are not bound by any licensing agreements donators may have made to others.

I seriously doubt that's true. That would place a large number of these companies - which have "non-agression treaty" contracts with others - in violation of contracts they've already signed. Thus, these companies would not donate any patents to the pool.

More likely, all that most of the patent licenses say is "you won't sue us if we violate these patents".

Re:Perens isn't a lawyer, so he is simply wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Bruce incorrectly assumes that the only patents in the pool will be from IBM, etc. He is mistaken. He assumes the lawyers who set this up are stupid. They decidedly are not.

People who are not in the legal field need to realize that they are not qualified to give "opinions that matter" on legal issues, and for sure not off the top of their head like Bruce did. He should issue a clarification statement, in my opinion, or go down in history as clueless or a headline-seeker. It's unseemly what he did. Besides, anyone who understands patent law and has the facts on this project will know he's wrong; but the damage he has done is done. Shame.

Re:Perens isn't a lawyer, so he is simply wrong

[Roland Walter Dutton]

I'm all in favour of an effective open source/free software patent pool, precisely because I abhor software patents. Not only does it promise to protect free/open source software from threat 2, but because it would indirectly help to end threat 1. * The problem is whether the current Linux patent pool is actually going to be effective. IANAL either, but I'd be very surprised if the big software companies' cross-licensing agreements could be circumvented just by handing patents to a third party, because that would be seem to be much too easy to game. For example, Microsoft would be able to hand a bushel of patents to Concerned Citizens Against Hewlett-Packard.

* I assume that software patents have three attractions for big companies: attacking/bullying other big companies, attacking/bullying free/open source efforts, and attacking/bullying small proprietary software firms. Attacking other large firms is too dangerous because of the fact that other large companies can retaliate in kind. If attacking open source is also too dangerous because of an effective FOSS "patent nuke", then that only leaves the small proprietary shops. And presumably if they ride them too hard they'll just drive more of the small commercial development from proprietary to open-source as well. Against that, they will still face the expensive nuisance of patent trolls and the risk of one of the big patent-holders doing something crazy. In that situation, they may feel a lot less keen to defend software patentability. If the big lobbying money behind software patents goes, the patents will probably go, and the pure-play trolls will be out of business too.

Re:Perens isn't a lawyer, so he is simply wrong

[Bruce Perens]

I understand that Eben Moglen and others were involved, and Eben is no dunce. I also understand that at this time, the pool is a gesture, not something effective, and indeed may hurt efforts to actually solve the problem.

If you think this pool can work against Microsoft and their proxies, show us how. Show us how it will avoid the obligations of the controlling board members of OSDL. Show us how it avoids the agreements of the contributors. And show us how solving the problem is even in the interest of OSDL's board members, who are some of the largest software patent holders in the world.

Bruce

A few points

[HiThere]

1) The patent system is unjust, broken, and appearently intentionally so.
2) Software patents are a bad idea
3) Patents are expensive to get and expensive to assert...but not as expensive as having to defend against
4) Even if a patent you hold in your pool can't be used to counterattack, it still can't be used against you.
5) Things start small. The current roster of patents donated may have all of the faults that Perens cites, but that doesn't mean that the ones that follow will.
6) You got a better idea? Go to it. I'm not stopping you.

Perens is right that this isn't a cure all. It's not the defense we want. This doesn't mean it's totally worthless.

Re:A few points

[prof_tc]

I agree that it's not what we want, but it is a stopgap. While the patent system is screwed up, its all we have to work with until we get people to see the truth.

Until they do, we have to defend ourselves with the weapons we have.

Perens being a downer again

[NekoXP]

He can make anything sound like the end of the world, can't he?

The patent pool is a START. Having "big names" contribute to it strengthens the
pool's credibility. In a couple years the pool may be very very useful and
contain patents from the RIGHT people.

Even Microsoft relies on Open Source sometimes. There is no reason why they
wouldn't or couldn't contribute; for instance they may have a bunch of patents
they might want to let people use in order to increase interoperability with
Windows (as this is, ironically, the first step in migrating to Windows from
Old Unix) or perhaps to increase licensing revenue for other things (i.e. maybe
they would let people use the iPod Interface Patent from a couple stories back,
and reap more money from the associated WMA licensing on commercial devices with
"open source" firmware?)

Neko

Re:Because Linux sucks?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Fact: People who run Mac OS X do not spend their days arguing IP/Patent/Copyright/License issues. We just get our computing done.

Fact: If Linux on the desktop was going to go anywhere, it would have done it by now. In more than ten years of existence, Linux has failed to break one percent."

Please please PLEASE go and look up the definition of a fact (Hint: something that can be quantified by non-subjective evidence)! These are YOUR opinions, writing "FACT:" at the start of them does not change this.
You're one of the people giving the majority of Mac Users (the ones who actually ARN'T up their own asses) a bad name.

"We just get our computing done." Sounds like all you get done is a quick ego boost when you post on /.

Don't need a moral victory

[Mr. Underbridge]

Open source advocates should lobby for no software patents, because by using the "enemy's" weapon it validates it. Do not give credibility to patents, lobby against them.

Idealists don't win wars. MS is taking a war to linux, and as a linux user, I'd like Linux to stick around as a strong, viable OS. I don't really give a shit about the software patent movement - I think it has little chance in the US - and I don't really see a reason to weaken Linux's position and legal strength to satisfy idealists of a separate movement. No thanks.

In other words, a moral victory is neither.

Right for the wrong reasons

[karlandtanya]

Patents as used today are tools of intimidation.

All a patent (or a library of them) buys you is pretext to go to court. I think the term is "standing".

After you get onto the battlefield, you still need to actually defeat your opponent. In civil court in the US, this is accomplished with money and popular appeal.

While it's possible for the free software movement to appeal to the public as David to [whoever]'s Goliath, technical people don't do a good job of selling ourselves. Maybe it's our natural distaste for sophistry and our intellectual arrogance. My point in this paragraph is to dismiss the court of public opinion. Even if David wins here, Goliath has to give a crap about their image in that particular instance. And Goliath will be back.

Which leads to the real issue. Money. David's got a couple dozen patents and a few grand (hell, give him a couple hundred grand). Goliath has hundreds of times the resources in both arenas. So David wins a battle or two. Goliath wins by sheer attrition.

The solution here is for David to bind his interests to the interests of a powerful party. Convince business and government that:

--The continued existance free (as in beer) software,

--drastic changes (back to reasonable limits) to the patent process,

--and the development and business models promoted by the GPL, LGPL, BSD-license, (pick your favorite)

benefit them in a direct, immediate, and measurable manner, and you have a battle you can win.

Co-opt the resources of your opponent. Better still, convince your opponent that you are his friend and he needs you in order to achieve his goals.

Folks, we (the OSS community, developers, testers, users) need to realize we're doing a terrible job of selling ourselves. Take a lesson from our favorite whipping-boy. Get governments, schools, businesses dependent on open source software. Dependent on the fact that it is free and open-source software, not just on a particular app. Hell, convince Microsoft that linux is not competition, but a resource they can benefit from only as long as it's free. Why not?

Re:SLASHDOT - BORG

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes because your post was sooooo intelligent! Seriously, even the worse debating team would kick you out if you think that was a good comment to post. You basically attacked a bunch of people you don't know for no good reason and didn't contribute ANYTHING worthwhile to the discussion. Even if I agreed with your points I think I'd of had to mod that one down!

Is Bruce still relevant?

[Phrogger]

Does anyone else think that Bruce Perens is becoming an irrelevant also-ran? It seems to me that he's better known for starting projects in a flurry of publicity that wind up as vaporware (User Linux anyone?)

    So now he has the role of pundit, sniping at others from the sideline.

Re:Is Bruce still relevant?

[HanzoSpam]

Does anyone else think that Bruce Perens is becoming an irrelevant also-ran? It seems to me that he's better known for starting projects in a flurry of publicity that wind up as vaporware (User Linux anyone?)

Bruce Perens is what you'd call the Jesse Jackson of OS/FS. He spends most of his time and energy jumping in front the cameras, and trying to get in front of parades that have already left.

Re:Is Bruce still relevant?

[Anonymous Coward]

Userlinux isn't exactly vaporware. In fact you can download it from it's official site (www.userlinux.com).
It's not exactly what it supposed to be but it DOES exist and it's still in active development.

Bruce seems more like an ideas and opinion man. He's not irrelevant yet (IMHO RMS is more irrelevant than Bruce) but seems to be struggleing to find something really useful to contribute :-/

Re:Is Bruce still relevant?

[typical]

I think that his writings are pretty on-the-spot.

His technocrat.net site is pretty on-the-spot, and I'd say better than Slashdot.

He avoids ESR-style broad proclamations and claiming that he's speaking for the entire open source community.

I'm not saying that Perens is perfect, but relative to the other highly-visible members of the OSS community, I find him a lot more acceptable than I find, say, ESR. And unlike RMS, he isn't a fanatic (not that we don't all need an RMS somewhere, but...) and is reasonably personable.

You may not like UserLinux, but Perens is out doing work to try to produce social change. RMS did the same thing, and had plenty of bumps along the way before, after decades of work, getting some recognition. He's one of the people that's actually out trying to *do* something about what most Slashdotters just gripe about.

No, I think Perens is pretty decent.

Re:Is Bruce still relevant?

[HanzoSpam]

You may not like UserLinux, but Perens is out doing work to try to produce social change.

Is that an endorsement or an indictment?

Seriously, if your going to write code, then fucking write code. If you want to change the world, then run for fucking office.

Actually, I'd love to see Bruce Perens run for office. Watching yet another two-bit socialist going down in flames at the polls is about as much fun as you can have with your pants on.

Obfuscation

[foonf]

It sounds like Perens is attacking this proposal for not doing something which it never claimed to do. If Microsoft or some other anti-OSS software company wants to use their patent portfolio against open source projects, there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it except perhaps get the patent invalidated, if there is a case for doing so. What it sounds like this was intended to do, and seemingly does do, is present patented technologies that open source projects unambiguously CAN use without fear of retribution.

So what does Perens want? The only way to securely eliminate the threat of Microsoft, etc. using patents agressively against open source would be to eliminate patents altogether, at least on software and anything related to software. That might be a reasonable position that deserves consideration, but if that is what he is advocating he should say so openly so that it can be reasonably debated, rather than making insinuations like this.

Re:Because Linux sucks?

[Master of Transhuman]

You're a moron.

Linux has only been capable of functioning on the desktop for the last two years or so.

It DOES take time to get to a usable state. Did you expect Linux to be full-blown from the brow of Zeus?

No, you're just a paid Windows troll masquerading as a Macnut.

Fuck off, moron. Go back to Bill and tell him you lose.

Proper attribution, please

[Dachannien]

Unless "ficken" is "Gavin Clarke in San Francisco", a writer for The Register, "ficken" didn't write it at all. He just copied and pasted it verbatim from the article without providing attribution.

Article submitters need to give proper attribution when they quote another article, and /.'s editors really need to make sure that the articles they approve provide that attribution when the submission does nothing more than quote another article verbatim. You editors do read the linked pages before you approve the articles, right?

Re:Proper attribution, please

[Anonymous Coward]

You editors do read the linked pages before you approve the articles, right?

Lakcaj said "You must be new here."

Re:Because Linux sucks?

[Anonymous Coward]

FACT: YHBT.

FACT: I RULE.

Re:Because Linux sucks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hardly. Keep trying though, it's kind of fun shooting down comments like that.

Oh, btw, at least try and make the come back a little better. That was kind of like saying "Yeah, yeah...well you smell!" and running away.

PERENS IS ZERO!

[Anonymous Coward]

FUCK PERENS! He's a fucking ZERO! Who the fuck does he think he is? What has he done? All he is capable of doing is CONSTANT WHINING! Kiss my ass Perens!

Re:PERENS IS ZERO!

[WilliamSChips]

Somehow I think a global s/Perens/this AC/ would be appropriate...

Re:SLASHDOT - BORG

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, my post had less content than copying verbatim from The Register?

I have debated and have pointed out that people are just reading out word for word from third-party texts and/or making themselves look stupid through basic grammatical errors... and not been thrown off the team. In fact, in my day I was rather successful.

I have a good reason for attacking these people - they're seen as OSS proponents. We might as well give up now!

MOD PARENT UP!

[Anonymous Coward]

MOD UP! Insightful!

Re:Mod Parent Up!

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you a godless heathen?

OT: possession

[matthewp]

Whafro wrote: "The Jones's House" (said "The Joneses House" ...which is not right, unless the house belongs to a person known as 'The Jones'.

The home of the Jones family is "the Joneses' house".

Re:SLASHDOT - BORG

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you got my attention buddy. I feel you got it right, but unfortunately you can't speak out loud here.

Just ASK

[UnrefinedLayman]

The guy posts here on slashdot all the time; instead of infighting so much, why doesn't someone just ask him to clarify the details of an article written in a newspaper that's barely above being a tabloid?

Anyone that reads too deeply into "news" snippets like these which happen to always be adversarial and use creative verbs like "slams" and "rails against" needs to have his head examined. The Register is the UK tech equivalent of E! television.

Re:Just ASK

[Anonymous Coward]

The Reg is below a tabloid, even.

Re:Just ASK

[Jonti]

The Register is barely above being a tabloid

Oh, really? Perhaps it is you that is barely above being a trollish shill. But let Slashdot readers decide for themselves. "How the music biz can live forever, get even richer, and be loved" is a very worthwhile article about IP and the music business. Have a read. It's hardly tabloid material.

Or if exposing the stupidity of the music industry attitudes towards copyright and the internet is not enough, how about the Register's expose of Microsoft's misleading security claims. Try this for sizeSecurity Report: Windows vs Linux

Anyone with half a brain can see this coverage is far superior to the usual shashdot fare.

Re:Just ASK

[UnrefinedLayman]

You are right in saying that The Reg does have some articles that are good work. But a man that works one day out of the week helping sick kittens at the animal hopsital and mugs a different person every other day isn't a hard worker, he's an asshole.

The Reg is, like I said, barely above being a tabloid which means that it is not a tabloid but rather a trashy online magazine that fills the majority of its pages with dreck. The Reg is all about filler; they'll write on any useless snippet of information they hear so they can keep a readership until they can come across a real story worth printing (two of which you pointed out).

The problem for me is that the vast majority of what's peddled as "news" is just infotainment trying to get some kind of emotional reaction out of the readership. That's all The Reg does: cast out lines and hope to reel in some fish with big and splashy and adversarial bait.

Agree with me or don't: that kind of participation in society is a drain on society when it's passed off as "news." It's not journalism, it's hackery.

Anyone with half a brain can see this coverage is far superior to the usual shashdot fare.

I agree that those articles are better than the usual crap you see on slashdot, but we're not seeing those things on slashdot. We're seeing THE CRAP from The Register being sold as news-- in case you missed that pertinent part of the slashdot article.

FACT: You smell.

[Anonymous Coward]

kthxbye.

Re:FACT: You smell.

[Anonymous Coward]

hehehe, okey okey, that one should actually be modded funny :)

Mod Parent Up!

[oncehour]

Good post, despite the judeo-christian references.

DOS protest for software patent

[calcutta001]

Here is an idea to protest against software patents.

Create an open source patent organization and start applying for software patents on behalf of open source coders for every little piece of innovation. The idea is to keep the threshold of what qualifies as innovation low to generate a huge list of patent applications.

Anything useless from "emphasizing email addresses containing a numbers in a word processing document" to "a real fancy way of optimizing inner loops in interpreted languages" to "a memory management code for NUMA architecture"

The important goal is not to get a software patent but to demonstrate the weakness of the system.

This will overwhelm the patent office. at best cause a change in thinking of policy makers. at least it will cause a headache for the patent mongers.

Patenting patenting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't someone just patent: "patenting something to sue others that use the thing patented in their product(s)"?

Re:Patenting patenting...

[tao]

Too much prior art...

Not a good idea, Linus

[Anonymous Coward]

This just isn't wise.

First, for this to mean anything at all, they need to get participation from the companies with the biggest patent portfolios. This includes companies such as Microsoft. It's not going to happen. Without their participation it's meaningless.

Second, even if they do get every single Fortune 500 company to join in the fun it won't help because there will always be small companies that make a play for some cash with a patent attack. We all know about a small I'm-not-dead-yet company coming from nowhere with a lame copyright suit. There are also some tiny companies with no products that come out with pure-play patent shakedown business models. Are these guys going to join in the pool? That's where the real threat is.

No, the real answer is this:

• Sourcecode can't infringe on patents. Only distributed products can possibly infringe on a patent. Therefore those who are involved only in sourcecode (ODSL) don't need to worry about patents. That's a question for distributors like RedHat, etc, who do have the resources to fight patent fights or license the patents.
• Software patents don't exist in Europe. Why worry about a problem that doesn't exist?
• We would be better served by a League of Patent Justice to defend the Earth than by some kind of pool. This League of Justice would do things like fight against frivolous patent shakedown claims, and also put out bounties on finding prior art. There almost always is prior art for all these claims.

So I think Linus is wrong on this. There's no way the pool is ever going to include all the participants it needs, both big companies like MS that don't want to be in the pool, and small companies like Acacia and SCO that are really just litigation shakedown companies whose whole business model depends on the threat of frivolous (but expensive) legal actions.

----------------
mobile search - try it on your phone

OT: Re: possession

[MerlinYoda]

Rules for showing possession aren't that complicated people. :-)

You only have to ask 2 questions:
1) Is this a this word singular or plural?
2) Does this word already end in 's'?

1) Singular
2) No
Result: add " 's " to the end of the word
Example: My dog's squeek toy is gross. (pronounced like "dogs")

1) Singular
2) Yes
Result: add " 's " to the end of the word
Example: Mr. Jones's pen is leaking. (pronounced like "Joneses", sort of a redundant 's' sound)

1) Plural
2) No
Result: add " 's " to the end of the word
Example: The alumni's party bus was missing. (pronounced like "alumneyes")
Note: This is naturally somewhat rare since we don't tend to have many words in English that are not pluralized by adding 's'.

1) Plural
2) Yes
Result: add " ' " to the end of the word
Example: The Jones' House is a mile down the road. (pronounced like "Jones", no redundant 's' sound)

As you can see, you're safe most (roughly 75%) of the time with adding " 's ", just don't forget the exception because it is important. It shows that the word is possessive *and* plural as adding " 's " would signify it as being singular (i.e. The Jones's pen is owned by "The Jones" ... as was pointed out in the previous post).

This post is dedicated to grammar instructors and grammar police everywhere :-).

Re:OT: Re: possession

[zsau]

Your rule for Singular/ending-in-s is wrong. Or rather, it's right in many circumstances, but it's an overgeneralisation that doesn't hold for all contexts in all Englishes.

In particular: Biblical names ending in -s often simply take an apostrophe (e.g. Jesus' suffering). Also, for many people/in many dialects, if the -s at the end sounds like it's a plural marker (typically in names like Jones, Torvalds, but not in class), you simply add the apostrophe. To such people, Jonezuz or Torvaldzuz sound weird (to say the least). You don't have to be an old, conservative prescriptivist to speak like that; I'm merely twenty-one, but it's by far the most common pronunciation in my speech and my experience.

Also, in the case of pronouns, you almost never use an apostrophe (instead going straight to the -s), with the exception of one's and a handful of neologisms like that's which probably aren't likely to find themselves into any writing which a grammar Nazi is likely to criticise (when you should write whose).

Re:OT: Re: possession

[typical]

I'm hoping that widespread use of English by many people who do not have English as their native language will force certain rules (such as those regarding possession) to change. The current ones are awful. The "it's" exception is particularly galling.

Another pet peeve of mine is the American English (not British English) method for quoting an entire sentence. In American English, you'd write:

He said, "She died."

In American English, the period always goes inside the quotes.

In every other English-speaking country, the period goes *outside* the quotes.

He said, "She died".

The American method is stupid and horrible for dealing with technical speech, where periods in quotes may matter.

Oh, and MLA mechanisms for citing URLs don't surround the URL with angle brackets, which was most certainly the standard in use at the time the MLA was doing up their URL-citing guidelines and works nicely as a metacharacter that cannot appear in an URL.

Re:OT: Re: possession

[zsau]

Well, by the intended rules, "its" isn't an exception, it's just that most people don't know the intended rule and also that homophones involving grammatical words like "their", "where" etc. seem to be difficult for English speakers to sort out (more complicated words seem to be easier—probably something to do with rarer words being more likely to be encoded in our brain along with the spelling/being more likely to see the spelling of rarer words than hear the word).

Of course, I doubt that EFL speakers will have a great influence on our orthography. More likely is that some generation of English speakers somewhere, having grown up reading and writing SMSes and on the Internet and in other environments where proper spelling isn't so important, will not bother being too picky as they grow up. Perhaps also computers (in a more general sense) will help this along as digital dictionaries pick up on misspellings but are still able to provide the intended word, and other things like that. (Microsoft may also help—their spellchecker is worse than useless in Australia so many people just completely ignore it's suggestions.) It just needs to be one city to begin with, but it'll spread. That's my prediction for the day, grounded in absolutely nothing.

That being said, I understand that written and spoken French are so different grammatically that they might as well be different languages, so maybe there isn't any hope anyway...

As for punctuating quotes—for the sort of sentence you quoted, you're likely to see the same sort of punctuation everywhere (regardless of what the rules said). It's in non-narrative sentences like 'Click the green button that says "frog".' that you're going to see the punctuation in the semantically-intended place. Well, that's my experience as an Australian at least, maybe they do it differently in Britain.

Re:OT: Re: possession

[matthewp]

MerlinYoda wrote: Example: The Jones' House is a mile down the road. (pronounced like "Jones", no redundant 's' sound)

...which is the home of the Jone family. But the plural of 'Jones' is 'Joneses', not 'Jones'.

Re:OT: Re: possession

[MerlinYoda]

I have to unfortuenately agree with you on the bit about the degradation in spelling and usage, especially with the homophones. I'll admit that I do the same as far as text messaging goes, especially the homophones, but I think it has something to do with typing the sound of my internal monologue as opposed to typing out "word glyphs" and looking at what I type on the screen (my habit of looking down at the keyboard occasionally, while typing probably doesn't help either). Also, texting is fast-paced and less formal to the point that most errors in grammar that are overlooked unless the error is extreme enough to cause confusion as to the meaning.

However, I personally draw the line at more "permanent" forms of comminication like postings, e-mails, etc. I can't hazard a guess as to how a generation of "texting teens" will affect the future of the language though. I don't think it will be a huge or lasting one. Though, if "LOL" makes it into any standard dictionary, we might be in trouble :-P

Re:OT: Re: possession

[MerlinYoda]

Thanks for mentioning the posessive pronouns. I forgot about them. Though, in a sense, they're almost a category of their own ... almost. As for possesive forms of names, I usually just take the shortcut of using adjetival(sp? .. if it's even a word) prepositional phrases (i.e. the suffering of Jesus). It keeps me safe from the grammar police :-)

Re:OT: Re: possession

[zsau]

I wasn't saying anything about degradation, I was just saying that we seem to find it difficult. Personally I'd be more than happy if we actually spelt in some way that vaguely represented the way we spoke, instead of the random collection of letters that we call words. (There's a lot of rules, and I know most of them, but they're only useful for reading, and it requires a lot of unnecessary knowledge about the history of English over the last five hundred or more years. Which is patently stupid.)

What I was saying was that I think for common words like 'they're', we have that encoded in our brain as just the sound, which we need then to convert to the spelling. This obviously is conflicted by other options. On the other hand, with rarer words that we're more likely to come across in written form, we're more likely to encode them with their spelling equal to their pronunciation, so there's less to go wrong. Of course, that's just based on the spelling mistakes you're likely to see, not on any proper research.

It's just a pity that it's the commoner words that have the stupider spellings, ’cos they're the ones most likely to irregul'y reduce in pronunciation. Fortunately, they're also the ones 'texting teens' are more like to write, and, consequently, correct the spelling of in the long term :) Maybe you're right, though; maybe we're stuck with this muck of a spelling system. Some languages get away without a word for 'spell'. Some languages don't even spell their homonyms different. But that's too hard for a poor Englishspeaker's brain to decode, or something, at read-time.

Pardon me :P

Re:OT: Re: possession

[MerlinYoda]

Sorry about that little misunderstanding of you main point. Though, going over it again, I just made a connection (almost a minor epihany) as to why it's all the more common words that are more irregular as far as spelling goes.

According to my basic understanding of the roots of Modern English, English draws from Old English, French, and Latin primarily. As you mentioned before, written and spoken French are so dramatically different pronunciation-wise. So it stands to reason that some of that lengual(sp?) tradition carried over. As far as percentages go I'd wager that the and French rooted words make up a good percentage of the words in most people's everyday vocabulary with Old English being very close.

Thankfully there's that base of Old English there as well that has more logical pronunciation with words like "good", "bad", and so on. Plus the more "complicated" words like "decapitation" have Latin roots and are easy to sound out. Otherwise, I think there would be a *lot* more problems with words not seeming to match up to a logical spelling. :-)

Re:OT: Re: possession

[zsau]

Most words used in English are from Old English and Old Norse, actually, not Old French. For instance, in your first paragraph, you have 33 words from Old English plus 'spell', which in this sense comes from Old French but is ultimately from a Germanic language. Of the rest: point < OFr, just < OFr, connection < La, minor < La, epiphany < OFr/La, common < OFr, irregular < La.

When you re-align your sources of analysis and data to more pseudoscientific discourse, of course, your proportion of lexemes deriving from alternative languages increases. But that's not how we speak in everyday conversation, fortunately :)

However, our orthographical tradition does derive from the Old French one, but in 11th century French, their speech was a lot closer to their writing than it is now. Likewise, in 11th century English, their speech was a lot closer to their writing than it is now. But in some cases, words were deliberately spelt unphonetically. For instance, in the handwriting used to write both Old French and Middle English, a sequence of i, u, n, and m were indistinguishable (all just vertical lines—they hadn't invented the dot on top of i's yet), so to help the word 'ton' look obvious, they used an O instead of a U. We kept some of them, but we dropped others. Anyway, you're French theory doesn't work because if you read the French-derived English words like French, they don't sound a thing like recognisable! If you get my, ahem, 'pwahng' :)

And in the meantime, some English writers did things the French didn't do. The silent B in 'debt' is there because it was considered important that the link to the Latin word debitum was clear, and the S in 'island' was added because people mistakenly thought it was derived from the Latin word insula (it wasn't, it came from Old English/Scandinavian sources).

No, the real cause in both English and French is that we try and write our language like it was pronounced a few hundred years ago. (Tibetan's worse than English, Icelandic's about as bad as French and not quite as bad as English, both of these languages have orthographies little changed over hundreds of years.)

The reason commoner words are spelt less phonetically is because you're more likely to say them, and they're more like to be in unstressed syllables, so they're more likely to have their pronunciation changed. (Also, oddities in odder words are more likely to be replaced by a spelling pronuncation; 'waistcoat' used to be prononuced 'wesket', or the way 'forehead' is sometimes prononuced as 'four-hed' instead of 'forrud'.)

(About lengual—probably you're trying to spell 'lingual', and trying to mean either 'linguistic' or 'orthographic'.)

Re: infighting? no. publicity stunt? yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, before I read any of the comments my first thought was: this is a publicity stunt designed to spark debate in order to raise awareness. i.e. Bruce's intent is to make people aware of the effort by pretending to be against it. Debates/arguments bring out emotion and cause you to form a strong(er) opinion on something, even if you had never heard of it before.

Anyway, it looks like his little trick worked. They've got everybody on slashdot arguing about it. Now you're more likely to talk about it around your non-tech friends and they'll help spread the meme to the right people. :-)

Nothing (is) illegal

[millette]

"unethical you bet... but if it was 'illegal' then bill gates would be in jail, and he's not."

Gates never did anything illegal, right.... Nor did Microsoft for that matter. Thank you for putting my mind at ease.

Perens.. well, you know how it is.

[Anonymous Coward]

Where is a camera, there is Perens.

Getting a pool of FOSS patents is great!

[oneandoneis2]

Who will Linus use them to sue first?

One way to consider ending the threat.

[jbn-o]

A corporate-funded legislator might back voting up on a bill which would discontinue issuing any new software patents and preclude any term extensions on extant software patents. In other words, the aim of the bill would be to let the current software patents expire. The mega-corporations investments in these patents would not be adversely affected and then we could get on with the job of competing without this particular problem. This approach would not pay off for 20 years, but that's considerably better than the current situation where computer users in many countries have to live with this threat for the forseeable future.

I'm sure the patent holders looking to preclude competition (as opposed to those looking to defend themselves and remain competitive) would cry foul based on their "inability to justify innovation" (or somesuch language), but this theoretical bill might help expose such claims.

I think you have inaccurately described a position in this article as "ideological purity". Lobbying legislators is a reasonable course of action to achieve political ends. FFII didn't get as far as they did without lobbying. Although the Register article doesn't get into all of the details of what Perens said, the OSDL patent pool is quite compatible with lobbying.

Monopolism - who does really want that?

[rtssmkn]

The idea that is attributed to Linus is not essentially his idea. Many more people had this idea, even I. And the I thinks that there is no library of patents as patents themselves are opposite to free market. They monopolize. The database of patents should rather be a database of vital thread to public and private development in opposite to a database of virtually benefitial patents held by some individuals based in either the open source or of liberated patents. A database of thread to public and open development would be more specific and in this by itself would be more true than building up a database of open-sourced patents or patents that are held by any of the open-source developers just in order to show that also the OSS development and activists that both grow and grew out of OSS development are capable of also issuing patent registrations etc. And, yes, I personally recognize patents as a thread and a tendency to monopolize where there actually can not be any monopoly, ie free economy and free market, free decision, free as in beer not as in ..., just because there is no speech anymore, not free of course. While we speak about monopolism we also speak about public economies, ie states, that fight against monopolism, yet the duality is fulfilled and they grant monopolism by introducing patents, and also, as we have here in Germany, and perhaps in other states in the world, so-called petty patents, we also grant people who have developed something petty to also be granted full future-extension-and-copy-control and by thus monopolism to its full extend. Haven't we learnt anything from the past industrial phase of (de-)humanization? Have we only listened to the economic mind? If so, we have listened and interpreted the call on a wrong basis. The call is, actually, to make everything free, as it not only provides for all of us living, but also for the structural beings that are yet to come, and believe me, mankind is only the beginning, and the end of itself - as it strives not only for intellectual property but also for mind control. Just my two or more worth of cents... Carsten

Re:SLASHDOT - BORG

[Anonymous Coward]

"Oh, my post had less content than copying verbatim from The Register?"

I said nothing about the plagerism. It has nothing to do with my critisisms of your original comment.

"I have debated and have pointed out that people are just reading out word for word from third-party texts and/or making themselves look stupid through basic grammatical errors... and not been thrown off the team. In fact, in my day I was rather successful."

I suggest you start exercising those skills again then. You didn't even HAVE a real argument, nevermind posing it in a structured manner.

"I have a good reason for attacking these people - they're seen as OSS proponents. We might as well give up now!"

No, there's never really a good reason for simply attacking a person without evidence to back up your claims. A personal attack usually means a lack of any real point and will always give your opponants a way in to undermine your arguments.
As for giving up, that's not a good option. Just because vocal "members" of the OSS community can make fools of themselves does not mean that OSS is doomed. Managers rarely read tech articles (unless they're on a major tech news site such as CNet or TechNewsWorld) and so will rarely hear the rantings and the tech staff *should* know better if they're worth their pay.

However, if you sould be so kind as to voice your opinion as to why exactly we should give up now I'd be more than happy to hear it! I'm always open to other peoples views on the matter (provided they're not flamebait!) :-)

"

Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.

It's been 23 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment"

No

[Roland Walter Dutton]

If Microsoft or some other anti-OSS software company wants to use their patent portfolio against open source projects, there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it except perhaps get the patent invalidated, if there is a case for doing so. What it sounds like this was intended to do, and seemingly does do, is present patented technologies that open source projects unambiguously CAN use without fear of retribution.

No. What you do to protect yourself against software patent lawsuits from a software company is threaten them with a bunch of patent lawsuits of your own. This is how the large software companies protect themselves from each other right now, and it's clear that at least one of the purposes of the new patent pool is to give free/open source software a patent arsenal of its own. A list of patents you are allowed to use is vastly less useful, basically because if you're being sued for infringing a patent it doesn't matter how many other patents you're using with permission.

Even the initial press release, written as it is in consensual happy-speak, adds that

The library will also aggregate other legal solutions, such as indemnification programs offered by vendors of open source software.

Then, if you look at this CNET article, you see Eben Moglen, one of the people quoted in the press release, say

We will see how successful this is when we begin to negotiate cross-licenses that would otherwise inhibit innovation

In other words, the purpose of the exercise is to get free software immunity from software companies' patents in exchange for giving the software companies immunity from our patents.

Really poor logic even if I agree with conclusion

[Hal9000_sn3]

Eben Moglen laid out a program at LinuxWorld this past week.
Yes, he did.

Perens has laid into ONE aspect of the program...
We agree up to this point.

..and ignored the rest - presumably just to start a flame war.
That is where you went to the edge and lost me.

Can you see no possiblity that Mr. Perens had nothing to say, pro or con, about the rest of the proposal?
Are you certain that the Bruce does not limit himself to either where his experience, training, or priorities guide him?
Is there some reason that you can cite for us to believe the only motivation is 'just to start a flame war'.

Going with your martial arts analogy, would you always go for completely annihilation of an opponent, at all times, even in practice, even if it is a friend?
Are you seriously claiming that the only reason one would not kill all opponents using all available techniques, is to score points?

Re: infighting? no. publicity stunt? yes.

[Bruce Perens]

No, your idea of reverse publicity to promote the pool wasn't what I planned. I am a pretty straightforward guy and say what I mean. Sorry.

But if it did result in a discussion that made the pool into something effective, that would be cool.

Bruce?

goatse patent portfolio

[bad-badtz-maru]

I think it should be "pooh-poohs"...

If you think I'm wrong

[Bruce Perens]

Folks,

My office phone number is 510-526-1165 and it rings in my home too. I leave it off the hook when my family is asleep, so you don't run the risk of bothering us. If you feel I'm doing the wrong thing, call me and discuss it. I may convince you otherwise.

Bruce

Re:If you think I'm wrong

[strider44]

I get your argument Bruce however I don't think I agree with you that the purpose of the patent protection is to use it in defense of the "evil" companies. The main advantage in my opinion is for the programmers who see a patent that they infringed on. If it's owned by IBM, widely seen as a friend of open source, then even so you wouldn't really be sure you're not pissing them off by using it. IBM might want some patents be free to use by open source developers but they might also want to keep some for their own purposes. However if it's in the Patent Commons then you know you're off the hook.

Re:If you think I'm wrong

[An'Desha Danin]

Be sure to post to tell everyone how quickly your office line gets slashdotted.

Re:If you think I'm wrong

[Sartak]

You're an incredibly brave man for posting your PHONE NUMBER on Slashdot. I bet it was really McBride's.

Re:If you think I'm wrong

[Bruce Perens]

Nobody called all evening.

Bruce

Re:If you think I'm wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Bruce, you're one helluva guy and doing a very valuable job for the open source world! Thank you very much for your work! Sometimes people disagree and it's only natural. You do have a good point there.

And don't care about the Slashdot kids who are acting stupid. They are just kids and don't know any better.

Keep up the good work man!

Re:If you think I'm wrong

[Bruce Perens]

Well, since the phone did not ring all evening, there appears to be a skew between what we are seeing here on slashdot and what people really think.

Bruce

Re:If you think I'm wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

No - it's just that using a phone actually requires some form of social interation and geeks just don't do that

Re:If you think I'm wrong

[QMO]

It also requires a small amount of personal accountability that posting anonymously on the internet doesn't.

(Note that posting while logged in, under your actual username, is still very anonymous. Unless I have told you face-to-face that I am QMO on /. you probably don't know who I am.)

2 1/2 other reasons why the pool matters already

[Roland Walter Dutton]

Small reason: even if the patent pool doesn't give legal protection against MS, the sight of other major software companies licensing their patents to FOSS may have political/PR value. (Or it could actually be counterproductive, eg. in the context of the European Parliament. :( )

First bigger reason: it's far from impossible that some big companies with many software patents will hit serious financial trouble in the next few years. (I won't name any names because I'm nice. :) ) For that or other reasons, it's quite possible that one or more of the companies that have donated patents will decide to go out and collect as much as they can in licensing/lawsuits, either from FOSS or generally. In which case we might be very grateful that they granted us immunity to their patents back when they still liked us - *provided*, of course, that the licenses they are giving can't be revoked later. (Question: is that the case?)

Second bigger reason: It's all very well hearing large companies promise to use their patents to protect the Linux kernel and other big, mainstream FOSS projects. But that might not give much protection to smaller and/or younger projects without powerful sugar daddies. Presumably if the OSDL has control of the patents, it will be willing to use them to protect all FOSS development. (Question: will it? I should certainly hope so...)

Perens is a fuckwit

[Anonymous Coward]

Perens is a fuckwit. Linus pwns hs ass.

Don't be silly.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Because of those FS advocates. It's no different if a friend (and I use the term loosely) tells you not to buy a new Ford Mustang, and then steals it when you do. That's what we call fucked up.

Only the licensor was able to take it away, and it was he who did so. Yes, the BitKeeper guy. None of the FOSS advocates *could* have. Assign blame where you will, but there's only one person who could "steal" it back.

>> "And now he's promoting a patent pool on the same basis which is: if you can't beat them join them."

> Which works. Face it, with MAD agreements with half the software companies out there, patent litigation is somewhat negated. It's not full proof (lone inventors/companies without agreements will still pose a challenge), but it offers some comfort that a number of the big boys will not come knocking.

WRONG! Dead wrong, and they're already asking for change. Yes, even those with massive patent portfolios (think IBM).

Why? Patent "vampires" (or trolls, whatever) -- companies with NO product who produce only litigation. SCO isn't even the only one (and they actually have... well, had... a product which made them vulnerable). They gather pools of pointless patents, then go around suing people, collecting whatever money they can. Because they make *NO* product whatsoever (they're "IP trusts" or similar nonsense), they are NOT vulnerable to a counter-claim of infringement.

It is NOT good enough and I can only wonder just how long it will be before we see some kind of reform in that regard. Of course, I use the word "reform" loosely, because I have no idea what hair-brained way congress might deal with them, and I don't doubt their ability to make things worse.

problem here is that some think...

[3seas]

software is honestly patentable,

Its NOT, I've commented on this enough recently, just look at my previous posts...

In short, those who support software patents inherently support fraud and public deception.

And I don't give a shit who does. They are wrong.

Linux's pockets are shallow, but inexhaustible

[Anonymous Coward]

And unlike MS, it does not have deep enough pockets to fight off all its challengers.

Who needs to fight? It seems that MS is the party backed into the corner with something vulnerable at stake.

One strength which comes from having no "war chest" is that you can never lose a conventional war if you never fight one. It is the very decentralized, non-financial nature of Linux which makes it impossible to defeat.

'saright

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of my best friends are Judeos

How to approach the pool

[Roland Walter Dutton]

I think it's much too much to say that a real solution is not in the interests of the big companies involved. Take IBM. A devastating attack on free/open source software of the kind that you expect from Microsoft would be disastrous for IBM, yes? No Apache in Websphere, no Linux to create a market for its server hardware, no longer much between "we are an open systems company" and "we do Windows, too!". But naturally IBM doesn't want to give up on its software-patent goodies either. So I guess that IBM is not deceiving so much as it is dithering, casting around for a way to have its cake and eat it too. It may be deceiving itself the most.

If this is the case, then a policy of engagement - a combination of willingness to cooperate, polite skepticism, and continued pressure - may well succeed in pushing the big beasts of OSDL to recognise their own interests and make the hard decisions to do what it takes to protect open source before it's too late. (It /may/ even succeed in getting them to act in such a way that FOSS as a whole is protected, not just the specific projects which enjoy the favour of large companies.) To that end, I suggest that the way forward is not to be seen as dismissing the patent pool, but to press specific hard questions about it, such as:

1) Granted that the initial gift of patents from the OSDL members was valuable and worthwhile, what will the OSDL now do to secure a large body of patents for the pool that can actually deter Microsoft? Will it actually spend the large amounts of money that it will take to do this?

2) Is the OSDL absolutely sure that its members' cross-licensing agreements with MS won't indirectly "poison" all patents that the OSDL holds rights on, not just ones that were given to it by MS cross-licensees?

3) To overcome its' members conflicts of interest over the patent pool, will it also sub-license the pool patents to some other free software/open source institutions (maybe the FSF, OSI, or Debian) in such a way that they too can go to court using the patents without requiring any futher permission from OSDL?

At the worst, the answers will be "no", in which case asking the questions will have exposed the unseriousness of the OSDL's project. Otherwise, the prodding will have helped to ensure that OSDL does the right thing, or something closer to it. What's to lose?

that is why you're great

[selfdiscipline]

There seems to be a fair amount of character assassination attempts on slashdot, and you seem to be one of the victims.
    I hope that slashdotters will read your post here and realize your commitment to rational debate and perhaps take you more seriously.

Patents are now stifling...

[Anonymous Coward]

When first conceived, paptents were intended to allow an originator of an idea to be protected, for a limited time, from others who would simply choose to copy his/her idea. Towards this end, patents were limited to specific implementations!

Now, patents are blatently used to prevent anyone from using any similar idea in any similar way. Ptaents are granted with such broad, far-reaching definitions that virtually anything similar is prohibited. In addition, success is no longer decided by any rational means. Instaed, success is measured by those who have the most bucks and the longest endurance, regardless of any technical/legal merit.

In short, patents no longer protect the inventor of any unique process from copying. Instead, they protect large companies from any competition whatsoever! Ahhh, our forefathers must be revolving in their graves at about 5000 RPM!

Re:Patents are now stifling...

[TeXMaster]

In short, patents no longer protect the inventor of any unique process from copying. Instead, they protect large companies from any competition whatsoever! Ahhh, our forefathers must be revolving in their graves at about 5000 RPM!

Is there a way to cap this to produce energy?

Re:Patents are now stifling...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a way to cap this to produce energy?

Sorry, the process has already been patented and suppressed by the oil industry!

Microsoft's cold war

[Roland Walter Dutton]

My feeling is that enough powerful institutions now use free software extensively that if Microsoft were to launch a direct patent attack on any of its blockbuster successes (say Apache, the Linux kernel, or MySQL) it would rapidly spell the end of software patents and get MS in a lot of trouble. Microsoft is not as big or powerful as half the rest of the Fortune 500 put together. So I suspect they won't launch the big offensive, at least until they get desperate someday. They will, however, get as much mileage as possible out of the fear of the big offensive. They will also stir things up a bit through proxies like SCO. They may also decide to attack, directly or indirectly, small and relatively obscure projects that don't have the support of powerful users or vendors. (Every time an individual decides not to start an OSS project for fear of legal hassle is an invisible victory for MS.) They'll do all they can to poison, divide and spread fear without getting in over their heads.

Two conclusions: first, if MS does succeed in its aims it will be the realm of small-to-individual projects that will suffer most. Second, even when MS isn't attacking, the presence of an effective defence will pay off by reducing the fear of an attack.

GOATSE GOATSE GOATSE

[Anonymous Coward]

I just faxed him a goatse pic.

grammar?

[Anonymous Coward]

"We have to understand this is still an extremely fragile phenomena,"

this is an extremely questionable singular....

Possible solution?

[zotz]

Check my post here:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=158939&cid=133 15572

and let me know what you think.

all the best,

drew

http://www.ourmedia.org/node/40046
Nassau Bahamas seascape

Re:Possible solution?

[Master of Transhuman]

Interesting idea.

I'm not versed enough in patent law and cross-licensing to comment on whether it would work or not.

Bruce would seem to be correct that such companies would need to see it in their interest - over and above publishing as prior art - to do this.

And you would seem to be correct in that many companies might see it as a defense against Microsoft, who is the 800-lb gorilla in all this.

I would suggest emailing Eben Moglen and see what he thinks. He'd be the one most likely to be able to give you a decent legal and practical analysis of your idea. If he thinks it's good, they might try to incorporate it into their project for persuading companies to do it.

Like the Patent Commons Project, while your idea might not help that much, it wouldn't hurt as far as I can see.

At least Bruce didn't say you were "spitting into the wind!"

Suggestion for possible fix...

[zotz]

Bruce,

I suggest a possible fix here:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=158939&cid=133 15572

Could you give your comments? Could it work if pursued? What are the chances of some big patent players playing along? Is the idea worth trying to refine?

all the best,

drew

http://www.ourmedia.org/node/41879
View of Atholl Island from the top of the Sans Souci Hill

Re:Suggestion for possible fix...

[Bruce Perens]

OK, I have replied to the message you cited.

For those who don't know wtf we're talking about..

[mixonic]

"Making it easier for companies and communities that have patents to make those patents available in a common pool for people to use is one way to try to help developers deal with the threat," Torvalds continued.

http://linuxbusinessnews.sys-con.com/read/117730.h tm

"The software patent game is like the Cold War: The only thing that protects you is the concept of mutually assured destruction."

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1846948,00.as p

OSDL Announcement:

"OSDL is the ideal steward for such an important legal initiative as the patent commons project," said Eben Moglen, chair of the Software Freedom Law Center. "No matter what your stand on software patents, and I oppose them, I call on developers to contribute to the OSDL patent commons project because there is strength in numbers and when individual contributions are collected together it creates a protective haven where developers can innovate without fear."

http://www.osdl.org/newsroom/press_releases/2005/2 005_08_09_beaverton.html

Long Announcement with more detailed information:

http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2005-08-10-a.html

There we go...now maybe we can have an intelligent conversation :-D

Half Measures

[Mateo_LeFou]

The danger of half measures is that they often convince people that the problem has been addressed, and it becomes almost impossible to get them to talk about a complete measure.

e.g.
-The Patent Reform Act of 2005, a half-measure if I ever saw one, will be accounted "good enough" and no one will have to stomach to look into this issue again for years.
-This patent pool could make developers complacent, as though they had bought some time, at a time when Very Intense Activity is what's needed.

Agreed, sorta

[Mateo_LeFou]

But this is a half-measure. For which, see "Half Measures", above.

Patent pledges won't help, a patent arsenal might

[FlorianMueller]

Last year I founded the NoSoftwarePatents.com campaign, which I transferred to the FFII earlier this year. On 6 July, the European Parliament threw out a proposal that would have given software patents a stronger legal basis in Europe. There are tens of thousands of software patents in Europe, but there is very little litigation activity because national courts in major European countries have already invalidated many software patents on the grounds of a multi-national treaty (the European Patent Convention) that goes back to the year 1973 and excludes computer programs from the scope of patentable subject matter. I'm currently writing a book on our fight against that EU software patent directive.

I reacted with similar comments to the OSDL announcement as Bruce, who BTW held a great speech on open source and software patents at a conference in the European Parliament last November. My comments were published on various IT websites, such as News.com.

I just established a criterion: It will only be helpful if and when they gather patents with which they could, for instance, countersue an organization like Microsoft.

The so-called patent pledges that IBM, Sun and Nokia made were attempts to fool those who don't know exactly how the patent game is played (and who don't read the fine print of those terms). Not a single one of those patents could be turned against a company like Microsoft because the holders of those patents already have, as Bruce noted in his comments, cross-licensing agreements in place that are non-aggression pacts with respect to those patents. Apart from that, those patent pledges have lots of strings attached. In some cases, the respective patents are not even valuable (for instance, IBM pledged some medical technology patents). Even if they are, the pledges are tied to certain open-source programs (Nokia's pledge only relates to the Linux kernel, only a small part of Linux itself, and even Linux is just a small part of open source) and/or licenses (that's the problem with Sun's pledge). Then there are clauses in there that talk about exceptions, such as if a company needs to defend itself, and those vague wordings are loopholes that can render an entire pledge useless when push comes to shove.

If any of those large companies are serious about building a protective shield for open source against its competitors, then they have to provide a trustworthy and truly independent open-source body with patents that can be used for retaliatory strikes (i.e., are not part of any existing cross-licensing deals) and consequently are a basis for forcing potential aggressors into cross-licensing agreements to protect all of open source. Simply put, if you have a few dozen patents that could be used to stop the distribution of Windows, then you have a bargaining position. Everything else is useless.

Note that a patent arsenal like this wouldn't work against patent trolls with no products of their own, and an aggressor could hide behind a remote-controlled troll like some suspected in the SCO case.

If people like Bruce Perens and I criticize those patent pledges, we don't do it to hurt our common cause nor to be in the media, but because the patent game is a tricky one and there's a lot of eyewash and brainwash going on. It's important to educate journalists and the community how to take a more knowledgeable perspective on those initiatives. It would be a major mistake to accept totally pointless PR tricks instead of insisting on real solutions. Our criticism is ammunition for the positive forces inside those organizations to ask for truly meaningful measures.

The only definitive solution of the patnet problem is at the legislative level, and until that happens, the only form of defense that makes any sense is the threat of mutually assured destruction.

Linus' statement does not express any enthusiasm

[FlorianMueller]

I don't think it's reasonable to generally claim that Linus Torvalds has more credibility than Bruce Perens. Obviously, Linus is in a strong position and not dependent upon the OSDL even if he works for them, but everyone (no matter how independent) is always more likely to do his colleagues a favor.

If you read Linus' comment on the OSDL patent pool precisely, it doesn't actually say much: "Making it easier for companies and communities that have patents to make those patents available in a common pool for people to use is one way to try to help developers deal with the threat."

Saying that it's "one way to try to help..." is actually a very weak endorsement. If someone is absolutely convinced of something being hugely helpful, he'd sound a bit more enthusiastic. Instead of "is one way to try to help", he could have said "is the way to address the problem", but he's smart enough to know how little value there is in the types of patent pledges that IBM, Sun and Nokia made in the past.

Re:Linus' statement does not express any enthusias

[Herschel Cohen]

You might be surprised to say I agree with your logic. However, when the future is so murky on the course of actual events might be, can the option of doing nothing be the best? The problem is many people expect to be told the "answer", when one simple answer more probably does not exist. [If you have a subscription look at the first item on the front page of linux weekly news for the past week, http://lwn.net/Articles/146412/ "Interview: Eben Moglen", which I have not yet read fully, however, seems so far to be a cogent argument for pursuing the path of patents.]

In my view, doing nothing is not an option. Whether this will suffice or even be effective counter force is still an open question.

I didn't say that doing nothing is an option

[FlorianMueller]

Patents are a harsh reality, and I agree with you that it would be pointless to oppose the use of patents for the protection of open source because of any anti-patent fundamentalism.

However, the patent game is a tricky one, and it has to be played right. There are approaches that are truly beneficial, and some that are not. Those that appear to help while they don't (such as the IBM, Sun and Nokia patent pledges) are counterproductive because they fool people into thinking that there's a solution in place when they should actually take initiatives toward real solutions. We must not settle for cheap PR stunts of large corporations. Instead, we should insist on them making truly valuable contributions, and we must not forget that the political level is the only one at which the software patent problem can truly be solved.

I've explained my thinking more specifically in this posting.

Re:I didn't say that doing nothing is an option

[Herschel Cohen]

I have found the the /. reply to message system fails for me on the second level. confirmed it in a test, hence, I wrote a response to you directly. Please check your email - I hope it was not an imposition doing so.

Also hoping this message appears properly so that you will see it even though I am not using the built-in message system. Could not locate my original message thread despite scanning what should have been all the message 0 and above!

Re:I didn't say that doing nothing is an option

[FlorianMueller]

I didn't get any direct E-mail from you.

Re:I didn't say that doing nothing is an option

[Herschel Cohen]

florian.mueller@nosoftwarepatents.com is that a real email address that you check? If not is there a way we could exchange messages with out showing them publicly.

Are you on LXer? If so I could paste a copy there without email addresses being needed.

Have any suggestions? So far I have not yet had my message returned as undeliverable.

Re:Really poor logic even if I agree with conclusi

[Master of Transhuman]

Your logic is the really poor one.

At what point did I suggest any of that stuff in your last paragraphs?

I said Perens was out of line for criticizing a proposal with an obvious line of criticism, for not having any better ideas, for ignoring the potential value of the program against lesser opponents than Microsoft, and for not being willing to admit that while it might not be a panacea, it can't hurt to do it.

Perens made excessive comments about "spitting into the wind" and other nonsense. He ignored the positive elements of the program, and the other aspects of the overall program. Why, then, should I give him the benefit of the doubt about his motivations? If he had pro things to say about any elements of the proposals, he should have said so.

Now, if you can prove the media misrepresented his comments, I'll reconsider the position.

MOD PARENT INSIGHTFUL!

[MacDork]

Having lots of patents doesn't work if the company suing you has patents as its only business. In that case, you have nothing to blackmail them with. Having lots of your own patents is no protection at all.

This is the most insightful comment on the board. Too bad you posted AC and mods won't give you the time of day.

Lots of people are angry about the patent system, so there is a mood to fix it. The trouble is that if it gets fixed the way Microsoft wants, we won't like it very much. Bruce may be right, we should get way more politically active.

Unfortunately, there's a problem with this approach. The American political system is broken too. Otherwise, we wouldn't have had this foolishness in the first place.

Re:Really poor logic even if I agree with conclusi

[Hal9000_sn3]

The third paragraph of your comment:

Perens has laid into ONE aspect of the program - the Patent Commons Project - and ignored the rest - presumably just to start a flame war.

is where you assert, that there is only one possible reason for what Perens did. Further, there is a lot of difference between not giving the benefit of the doubt about someone's motivation, and claiming, without any supporting facts, that there is

..presumably just..

some purpose other than what was stated. What you did is to impute motivation. If you only meant to report media representation of his motivation, or if you meant to speculate, you certainly could have used verbiage along the lines of 'it has been reported that..' or 'I agree with commentators opinions that..' or 'In my opinion this appears like..'.

But, you did not use those phrases, and so I stand by my criticism of what you wrote in the comment that my comment was a replying to.

And thanks for giving your reasons in your response.

I believe we are on the same side on the real issue of intellectual property, we may have to just agree to disagree about what would be possible to do at this time, and how to try to achieve that without losing sight of the long term goal.

P.S. I had to look up your id and find your other comments to get a better idea of what your position is.

Re:Really poor logic even if I agree with conclusi

[Master of Transhuman]

I've just had two responses from Bruce on the issue, and I've responded to him.

He clarified his position that he supports opposing patent laws and reversing patents that Eben outlined, but maintains that the commons project may "lull people into believing the problem is solved."

I told him I respect his bringing up the issue, but that his comments about "spitting into the wind" were excessive and his argument is really weak because it is entirely speculative and does not outweighh the probable benefits of having a commons project in at least some cases.

If his comments were intended honestly but undiplomatically, I would drop my suggestion that he acted to start a flame war or for his own PR purposes. However, I have no way of actually knowing what his motivation was, as you correctly state. That's why I said "presumably". "Presumably" means "I don't know, but it seems that..."

I told Bruce just now that if he were to publicly clarify his support for the other aspects of the program he'd get a lot less criticism from me and others.

Because he basically is right in one respect: none of this is going to stop Microsoft from doing what they want to do. But if it even helps stop another SCO - which was Eben's point - then it's useful.

The bottom line is: his argument is too weak to support the tone of the comments he made and he ignored the other aspects of the program (AFAIK until his comments to me). Now it's all water under the dam and he'll have to deal with any backlash. I don't think his comments are going to have any effect on anybody directly involved anyway.

The E-mail address is real

[FlorianMueller]

The E-mail address works, and I can be contacted there. However, if I receive an E-mail from an unknown sender and the subject line doesn't clearly se it apart from spam, then there's a certain risk that I accidentally delete it.

Re:The E-mail address is real

[Herschel Cohen]

Resent as two messages: the first simply giving the subject line to look for and the second with the original message and a few minimal comments.

Regarding SPAM, I understand too well! The messages informing about my eBay and PayPal accounts do not even go into my junk folder. Those are immediately forwarded to my ISP and eBay.

If you ever change your email address and want to keep it public, why not use text for symbols and intersperse junk text to at very least increase the email harvesters costs.

Re:Patent pledges won't help, a patent arsenal mig

[ficken]

Yes, but we know how the media likes to obscure things if they think it will make the news. Unfortunately, this will probably be construed as fighting amongst ourselves.

Demanding unity is not a solution

[FlorianMueller]

It was absolutely necessary to point out the fundamental shortcomings of those patent pledges. Bruce was asked at LinuxWorld, and he told people what he thought, and I informed some of my media contacts (most of them in Europe) when the first reports came up and told them what's wrong with the OSDL strategy.

I can't see how it hurts open source or the anti-swpat cause if there's an impression of "fighting amongst ourselves" as you call it.

However, I can easily see how it would hurt to not talk about what really needs to be done against the swpat threat to open source. Compared to the top two priorities (political efforts and building up retaliatory strength), everything else is not even 1% as useful.

Unfortunately, the OSDL won't truly help at the political level because it's backed by some large corporations that lobbied aggressively for software patents in Europe (IBM, Intel, Nokia, Ericsson) as strategic allies of Microsoft on that issue. Maybe the OSDL could nonetheless help with building an arsenal that would deter others from attacking open source with patents (or to force them into cross-licensing in such a scenario), but so far there's no indication that they're pursuing that strategy.

Swpats are a much more serious issue than any bad press on internal fights within the open-source community. It's easy to unite an entire community behind a compelling and well-thought-out strategy. If the OSDL announces something that makes sense, I'm sure everyone will support them and there won't be any internal fighting.