Slashdot Mirror
LANCOR v. OLPC Case Continues In Nigerian Court
drewmoney writes "According to an article on Groklaw: It's begun in a Nigerian court. LANCOR has actually done it. Guess what the Nigerian keyboard makers want from the One Laptop Per Child charitable organization trying to make the world a better place? $20 million dollars in 'damages,' and an injunction blocking OLPC from distribution in Nigeria."
get their money from all those secret accounts that I keep getting emailed about.
Q: How do you pronounce "$20"
A: "Twenty dollars"
Q: How do you pronounce "$20 million"
A: "Twenty million dollars"
Q: How do you pronounce "$20 million dollars"
A: "Twenty million dollars dollars"
You're welcome.
Nigeria, the land of scammers and con artists. no wonder thier country is in the state it's in.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Just send them weapons.
Most of the stuff on
When I collect my $25 million from the Honorable Juju Majinki, who is holding these funds in trust, I plan to donate part of those funds to the OLPC defense fund.
There is probably nothing of consequence here (legally), but the need to defend themselves will probably put a dent on how much more good the OLPC program can bring to children elsewhere.
The sad thing is that Nigerian children probably need this device as much as kids in Uruguay or Mexico or Armenia, but thanks to some hardass nigerian scammer they might be negatively affected, because this will certainly put a chill on the OLPC distribution plans for their country.
This whole thing is just a shame.
The twitter monologues. Click on my homepage and be amazed.
I guess OLPC didn't pay the kickback moneys in pricing the deal now the corrupt are howling foul. Goes to show us in the free world how well we are off when institutionalized corruption is so rampant.
Or is it the government wanting to keep people dumb and stupid so they don't revolt for a democracy?
Would be interesting to see who bribed who to deprive the children from knowledge. There could be one hell of a story in that.
Ok, but when OLPC asked "Assuming you aren't saying you own the entire idea of a multi-language keyboard, which parts of your particular keyboard design are you even saying we stole from you?"
They didn't answer but they still want $20 million dollars.
It's easy to forget that most of Africa's problems stem from the fact that the culture places very little value on human life.
You know all those "relief funds" that go to poor/starving/fucked African countries? Yeah, most of those funds end up in the hands of the corrupt government leaders and/or military, who are MORE than happy to let everybody starve if it means more cash for them.
The problems with Africa can't be solved with donations. They can only be solved with armed revolutions. Of course, the U.S. and most of the rest of the world is making too much money off of the exploitation of Africa to actually want to fix things.
Putting a bunch of Nigerian-language characters onto a keyboard doesn't qualify as an "invention"; it's exactly what's been done for hundreds of other languages around the world since before Nigerian-language characters were in the Unicode standard even (which, I might point out, that same generous West put in after working hard to create those standards in the first place and then giving them to poor countries like Nigeria for free). Perhaps the West should demand royalties from this company for using its technologies like Unicode and keyboards in the first place, haha, right.
I'm afraid this is just how things go here in Africa, and as someone else pointed out, why it'll probably remain 3rd-world indefinitely. Try give a hand to Africa, and it will demand an arm, and then try kill you for not giving the entire arm. Mod me whatever, but I've lived here all my life and seen this kind of thing over and over, facts are just facts, I wouldn't expect someone who hasn't lived here to get it.
If you do read the article, it's a complicated case (as legal cases always are), that essentially boils down to this: Nigeria's officials, including their judges and politicians, are still perceived as being hopelessly corrupt, and by all appearances this is nothing more than attempted legal extortion. The legal claims by which the lawsuit is proceeding is on shaky ground at best. Even if the claims are legitimate, it still is a sad day, when an organization like this is sued by the very people it's most likely to benefit.
Maybe they aren't ready for a mass introduction of technology - they certainly have shown a compunction for abuse so far. Nigeria is already synonymous with Internet-based moneymaking scams. Does the third world have other, more important priorities instead of laptops, such as basic infrastructure, and a stable and responsive democratic government (most of the world's poorest countries are still ruled by dictators). Complain if you will about the governments of first-world countries such as the US, but if so, you likely haven't seen the corruption of others up close. Visit Mexico for a fine example of what happens when a country with significant potential is rife with corruption from top to bottom. Corruption tends to poison and overshadow even the benefits of democracy and capitalism, as it tends to keep power concentrated in very few hands.
On the other hand, perhaps an opening of information can help to educate the next generation - to give them more options, and more information, more hope. Just as wireless technology is leapfrogging the old, expensive landline-based infrastucture in many countries, perhaps an infusion of technology can help jump-start an economic surge in places that need it most. I just hope they choose to use it wisely.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
It appears that the disputed keyboard layout was only used in the development devices and not in the production devices. By this there should be no injunction on the distribution and likely no/minimal payment for infringement.
From Groklaw: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071203061340580#c652659
----
If you examine the OLPC Wiki's edit history for the West African (Nigerian) keyboard you can see what Adé Oyegbola is on about. To save you trawling back and forth here it is in a nutshell. Note that where I write "create" I am referring to the Wiki entires - these dates may not correspond to the physical devices.
1. 2006-08-07 OLPC buy KONYIN keyboards
2. 2006-11-13 OLPC create Nigerian layout based on KONYIN layout
3. 2006-11-13 OLPC Nigerian image updated; layout unchanged
4. 2007-03-02 OLPC image updated to show Beta-3 model; layout unchanged (Original Image March 2nd)
5. 2007-08-?? LANCORP sends OLPC Cease & Desist Notice
6. 2007-08-20 OLPC B3 layout revised completely, no longer looks like KONYIN (Revised Image August 20th)
7. 2007-08-21 OLPC replaces B3 with B4 Ng-MP-Alt layout (more dialect symbols) and new image.
So this boils down to prototype XOs that used the KONYIN layout. I'm not sure how many prototypes were made with the Nigerian keyboard (I'd guess not many more than the 300 used at Galadima primary school, Abuja) but the total quantities were B1: 875, B2: 2,500, B3: 100, B4: 2,000, C1: 300 (see Development Schedule.
Since August 2007 with the C1 (pre-production) the West African (Nigerian) layout has been as you see it on the current Wiki page.
So the crux is that LANCORP are upset over those beta prototypes but the production XOs (and all XOs made since August 2007) have not used the KONYIN layout.
--
I was born in Nigeria, and spent the first 7 months of my life there, so sadly I don't have any memories of the place. My mum and dad have regaled me with tales of corruption (everyone from the gardener to the police it seems) and it sounds like a horrible place in which to live and work. I have no desire to go back.
My web domain.
Here's a a problem for Negroponte: IP infringement.
Describe, in your own words, what IP has been infringed.
I see a trend here?
- "Linux stole unix code!"
- "Oh really? Which lines, exactly?"
- "I'm not telling."
- "Linux infringes 235 of our patents"
- "That's likely, you patented the obvious. We'll see when IBM starts complaining about their patents you likely infringe upon. BTW, Which ones?"
- "I'm not telling."
- "OLPC steals our patented keyboard input method"
- "Oh really? Which ones exactly?"
- "I'm not telling."
I'm reconsidering the real cruelty of the good ol' times where justice was administered by the king, and if you looked like you were making him lose time on useless technicalities you were going to be hanged.
I haven't lived in Africa, but I have lived in under-developed nations a large portion of my life. To be honest, you hit the nail on the head, and it's not just limited to Africa. The problem with aid agencies is that they are just as corrupt, if not more, than the governments they are trying to protect the citizens from.
Aid agencies need to be a lot stricter on their staff members and have stiffer penalties for any transgressions - you know, like a bit of gaol time in a dingy cell rather than painting them as a Martyr like the "Chad Children Thieves".
From a RIAA lawyers perspective, this is just fine. Add a little immorality (deprived children), do some simple math (300 * $66,666 = $20,000,000) and voila!
Full Tilt
Jean-Francois Im's blog
Here's a problem for you: patent a keyboard that can render all the strange facets of written English: upper case letters, lower case letters, diacritical markings, punctuation, etc. Come back to me when coding language rules is considered to be innovation.
Palm trees and 8
Tutorial:
Q: Should the word "Nazi" be capitalized?
A: Yes.
Q: Do you hold article comments to the same grammatical standards as the articles themselves?
A: No.
Q: What do you call someone who does the above for no reason other than to attract attention and cause disruption?
A: A troll.
"Don't deal with black people" is racist. "Don't deal with African Countries, unless they're white" is racist. "Don't deal with country X that has a history of corruption, and happens to be black" is no more racist than "don't go down Johnson street, there were fifty murders there last year."
I don't know why you say this is a "3rd-world" problem. We in the US have crap like One-Click-Buy patents that are laughable (although it looks like it is finally getting overturned). Or, letting MS be the annoying monopoly it is and make every PC pay the Windows Tax even if you want another OS. Organizational stupidity is not limited to the 3rd world. Rationality is the exception.
Further, countries still have their pride, and for us to come in acting like they "need help" is a kick in the ego. By roughing up the westerners a bit it restores a sense of control over their world (even if it may harm them in the longer run). Even starving people want a sense of control (and those doing the activity may not be the starving ones).
Table-ized A.I.
Are you denying that it is true though? The very existence of a "Nigerian keyboard" is only thanks to *incredible* amounts of work put in to create things like keyboards and the Unicode standard and software for easily creating IMEs and so on - countries like Nigeria have basically gotten a major free ride being able to simply directly import and use all these technologies, to massive benefit. Do you have ANY clue how much work and money went into creating Unicode alone, just one tiny component/aspect of such a system? It's mammoth, and all free to use, and yet when last did you hear one "thank you"? On the contrary, it's always just complaints about how it's not enough.
Anyway, I'm not going to convince you, let me say this instead: Dedicate your spare time for the next few years to trying to help Africa, then we'll talk again.
Tutorial
Q: Should tutorial be the new fad?
A: Yes.
Q: Does it seem weak and unimaginative?
A: Yes.
Q: Then why persist?
A: In the mere hopes that it offends at least one person.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
Tutorial
Q: Is "it offends at least one person" a single hope?
A: Yes.
Q: Should "hopes" therefore be "hope"?
A: Yes.
Q: ??
A: Profit!!
i forget
This is taking place in a Nigerian court.
A hanging (ie: corporate death penalty) may not be totally out of the question. If I recall correctly, LANCOR has to pay court fees if it turns out to be a waste of court time.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
LANCOR.
Yes, I realize there are over 500 languages being used in Nigeria and their official language is English. I just hope the courts in Nigeria can grind a little faster than the courts in America.
IMO this ploy by LANCOR against OLPC is a carbon copy of the SCO scheme against Linux. I wonder if the company funding LANCOR is the same company that funded the SCO fiasco.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
It's just a QWERTY keyboard with a second shift key and Nigerian letters painted in purple.
Not kidding.
Basically, the idea of OLPC is that we'll just flood Africa with a bunch of practically free notebooks using massive economies of scale.
When you do that, you basically destroy any chance of a tech industry emerging in Africa, because, there's not going to be any indigenous computer manufacturing. It's always fun to look at free trade and say, geez, look at what the third world is doing to the USA, but, sometimes, you have to look the other way around.
This is my sig.
Tutorial, continued further...
Q: Should you place a comma in the sentence "Tutorial, continued..."?
A: Yes.
Q: When using the dash as a separator for an unordered list, should you place a space character between the dash and the first character of the list item?
A: Yes.
Q: Should the sentence following a sentence ending in ellipsis be capitalized?
A: Yes.
Q: Can someone "trend towards perfectionist"?
A: No. One can either trend towards perfectionists or trend towards perfectionism, the latter presumably being your intended meaning.
Q: Should you place the period inside or outside quotation marks?
A: Inside.
Q: Are there any exceptions to the above rule?
A: No. Exceptions exist for exclamation or question marks (depending on whether the mark applies to the quote alone or to the whole sentence), but never for commas or periods.
Q: Are any of the above rules relevant to Slashdot comments?
A: No, as I stated previously. The objective of communication rules is to facilitate maximally convenient communication between parties, and the rules vary depending on the medium and circumstances. In the case of Slashdot comments, the time required to analyze and correct spelling, grammar, punctuation and stylistic errors is unjustifiably high compared to the meager benefit it provides to the readers. Slashdot articles themselves, which are more formal than comments, have a greater time period to be written and checked, and are read by more people, have a justifiably higher standard applied to them. Still, they will have a lower standard than a formal academic paper. Similarly, in cases where communication speed is much more important than rigorousness, such as instant messaging or online game chat, it is perfectly acceptable that the sentence "lol kthxbye" has a better cost-benefit ratio than the sentence "That was amusing; all right, thank-you, and good-bye." The very definition of a "Grammar Nazi" is not simply one who uses formal grammar, but one who expects its use in situations where the expectation is not justified.
You are technically correct, but your point has nothing to do with this LANCOR situation, since their claim is specifically about illegal use of "their" keyboard layout - nowhere does their complaint say anything about being harmed by cheap laptop dumping, nor do they represent any group of people who might have such claim.
Anyway, there is a crucially important difference between this and other forms of dumping which are actually more wrong: This is basically PRIVATE charity, it's not e.g. the US government dumping cheap computers on the 3rd world to subsidise their own industry; rather, it's private individuals using private money.
A: Inside.
Q: Are there any exceptions to the above rule?
A: No. Exceptions exist for exclamation or question marks (depending on whether the mark applies to the quote alone or to the whole sentence), but never for commas or periods. I thought when I saw "Only in America" follow-ups, this would be addressed. It wasn't.
Whether or not it's proper for periods (or commas, etc.) to go inside or outside the quotation marks very much depends on where your editor (or puler) was trained. If you're writing for some Brits (or Anglophiles), periods (or commas, etc.) must be outside the quotation marks.
Holy moly. I just realized I chimed in with a grammatical comment on a post about OLPC and Nigerian "courts.".
Then it'd probably be unsafe for children.
I've done some careful research on this, and I believe the Africans got to Africa before the Europeans.
**TODO** Steal someone elses sig.
It's just a QWERTY keyboard with a second shift key
Sounds shifty to me.
Seriously, though, don't most keyboards have two shift keys (and a caplocks key)?