Thomson Reuters Sues Over Open-Source Endnote-Alike Zotero

Noksagt writes "Thomson Reuters, the owner of the Endnote reference management software, has filed a $10 million lawsuit and a request for injunction against the Commonwealth of Virginia. Virginia's George Mason University develops Zotero, a free and open source plugin to Mozilla Firefox that researchers may use to manage citations. Thomson alleges that GMU's Center for History and New Media reverse engineered Endnote and that the beta version of Zotero can convert (in violation of the Endnote EULA) the proprietary style files that are used by Endnote to format citations into the open CSL file format."

Comments

"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[Noksagt]

I hoped that I kept the article summary relatively free of my personal opinion, which I will indulge in this comment:

Thomson Reuters has too many asshats.

Let us set aside the fact that academic software and those who develop academic software should embrace interoperability and knowledge sharing.

I'll even set aside that, despite the (rewritten) title, Zotero has many fundamental differences from EndNote.

The complaint is, in the words of Bruce D'Arcus, "a nuisance lawsuit designed to intimidate." Zotero's style repository contains no EndNote .ens styles and seems to contain no styles derived from those styles. CSL styles are created manually and through an online style creator. There is no way to get a new CSL style from an .ens file--the Zotero beta had mapped fields internally to allow .ens files to be used independently of CSL (but even this feature has been disabled in the trunk). Zotero thought about copyright issues surrounding this feature and came to the right decision--not to distribute .ens files or .csl files derived from .ens files, but to retain the feature to work with user-provided .ens files (similar to the way OpenOffice.org can open and save MS Office files).

I have decided not to purchase EndNote and I am asking my employer to do the same, unless the suit is dropped. I intend to donate at least as much as an EndNote license costs to George Mason University, the Software Freedom Law Center, the Electronic Frontier Foundation or any other applicable entity that both defends Zotero in this case and solicits donations. (I don't know any organization who has stepped in on this case yet, but I imagine that one of these organizations can provide some sort of legal support in the future.)

I encourage you to stop purchasing Thomson products too. There are plenty of reference managers for all platforms (some proprietary, some free/open source) that you can choose instead, not the least of which is Zotero.

Disclaimer: I am a developer of refbase, a free and open source reference manager that might be seen to compete with Thomson Reuters's EndNoteWeb. I have and continue to use many reference managers. While I have many technical complaints about the EndNote products, they aren't the worst technical products. Thomson may be the worst socially, though--in addition to inane and baseless lawsuits, they are very slow to respond to general feedback.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[Unending]

Thank you for doing your commenting this way, I hope that more story submitters will try to do the same thing in the future.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[Elektroschock]

Is it possible in the US to use an EULA to prevent third parties to read your proprietary formats?

Do you think the legislator should better enforce interoperability provisions?

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[dnoyeb]

I was under the impression reverse engineering was not illegal. So why the reverse engineering claim as if this is a legal issue?

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[QuessFan]

"Thomson Reuters has too many asshats."

Lord Thomson

As a law librarian who had paid Thomson/Reuters West plenty of money, I can say that the Thomson family never felt 19 billions dollars are enough. It's always about "mo money" for Lord Thomson.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[lysergic.acid]

weren't there a bunch of alternative PDF readers long before Adobe made PDF an open format? and same with many disc image applications and proprietary file formats, non-Microsoft word processors and Word documents, Samba's interoperability with NetBIOS, etc.

this seems like a blatant attempt by a proprietary software vendor to lock Universities and other academic institutions into their software. even if Zotero does allow users to convert from EndNote's style format to other formats, there's nothing inherently illegal about that. if users wants to import their custom styles from EndNote to Zotero, then that's their right.

this is like suing filesystem developers because they include a copy feature in their software that allows users to potentially make illegal copies of files.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[InspectorxGadget]

Reverse engineering may be prohibited by a license agreement even though it is not protected by the protection generally afforded to trade secrets in the US, where reverse engineering is usually permissible. With that said, though, an interesting but minor issue that popped up in one of the DVD Copy Control Association, Inc. v. Bunner cases is the burden of proof that reverse engineering has actually been carried out by the defendant. In that case, the DVDCCA not only couldn't prove that Bunner (an online distributor of DVDJon's DVDDeCSS) had reverse engineered the software - required to prove the violation of the particular software's EULA - but also couldn't definitively establish that reverse engineering had even occurred. So even if someone reverse engineered Endnote - a fact that can probably be proven by analyzing the source code of Zotero's format convertor - Thomson-Reuters will still have to prove that a Zotero author or distributor subject to the EULA did so.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[Anonymous Coward]

Get a grip, you may hate this lawsuit but you can't be serious about requested donations for the Commonwealth of Virgina, an organization with abundant legal and financial resources.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[John Hasler]

> Is it possible in the US to use an EULA to prevent third parties to read your
> proprietary formats?

It's not clear what you are asking. Someone who is not a party to a contract is not bound by the terms of that contract. Reuters is claiming that GMU entered into a contract with them as one of the conditions under which Reuters sold GMU copies of Endnotes and then breached that contract. No third parties are involved.

> Do you think the legislator should better enforce interoperability provisions?

Again, it is not clear what you are asking. This is a civil lawsuit for breach of contract.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[John Hasler]

> even if Zotero does allow users to convert from EndNote's style format to other formats,
> there's nothing inherently illegal about that.

Reuters is not claiming (at least in the initial complaint) that there is. They are claiming that the defendants contracted not to reverse-engineer Endnotes and then did so, breaching the contract.

> this is like suing filesystem developers because they include a copy feature in their
> software that allows users to potentially make illegal copies of files.

No it isn't.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[DECS]

There are a lot of things that are "not inherently illegal" that become the basis of a civil suit after one enters an agreement not to do it. That's what this case is about, so you can stop shaking the strawman of your populist idealism.

Additionally, there are plenty of workalike compatibility tools and or independent implementations of a proprietary standard that exist, but could easily be assailed, probably successfully, by patent attacks.

Microsoft could probably easily shut down Samba if it decided it wanted to (and determined the cost was worth the bad press). Apple created its own lossless codec after determining that supporting FLAC would expose it to liability due the patent attacks. Just because something exists doesn't mean it can be defended successfully under patent assault.

The Japanese iPhone Failure Myth

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[Anonymous Coward]

(posting anon for job reasons) My company spends over $100,000 per year for Thomson's financial database products. I'm not sure if I want to do business with people like this.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[mikek2]

QFT! I was going to say it myself, but what a group of asshats.

Clearly, this is the result of lawyers, not techies.

---- irks him beyond belief

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

No. PDF has always been well, if not fully, documented.
Somewhere in a box I still have a copy of the first PDF reference manual (along with the postscript red, green and blue books) from back around 1993.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[the eric conspiracy]

"There are a lot of things that are "not inherently illegal" that become the basis of a civil suit after one enters an agreement not to do it."

This is one of the areas the people espousing the abolishment of patent and copyright laws miss. Patents and copyrights are not the only means that can be used to protect intelelctual property; trade secret and contract law also provide many opportunities to control the flow of information. In general these mechanisms are far worse for the society that relies on them than patent and copyrights; one needs to consider what current laws would be replaced with before advocating that they be discontinued.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[Anonymous Coward]

They are claiming that the defendants contracted not to reverse-engineer Endnotes and then did so, breaching the contract.

They haven't, they reverse engineered the file format for it's styles. Users can create and export these from within Endnote. You probably only need a corpus with known data to successfully reverse engineer the format. Looks to me like that was exactly how it was done.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it possible in the US to use an EULA to prevent third parties to read your proprietary formats?

Do you think the legislator should better enforce interoperability provisions?

First off EULA's are not enforceable.

Second even if they were their nature makes them useless in this case, even if the program had been reverse engineered to gain information from it the programmers doing said reverse engineering clearly are not the end user for the product, and since they can reverse engineer the program with out installing it its likely they never even saw the EULA, let alone actually agreed to it.

Thrid, and most importantly copyright law has specific exceptions for format shifting, and interoperability. Even if its massively abused to do so copyright was never intended to restrict a market.

So while I can think of laws that say this activity is allowed I can't think of any that would forbid it, I don't think their suit has a leg to stand on.

This case's only hope is the DMCA, its got some pretty ridiculous restrictions of what can be done to software, and while I don't think it applies here I am however not a lawyer.

Ok what the hell, is the captcha system context sensitive? my word was 'infringe'. Thats just spooky.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[RisingSon]

Thomson Reuters has too many asshats.

Agreed! I dealt with them for almost a decade. I was a Bridge customer, bought by Reuters maybe 7 or 8 years ago. I also used lots of Thompson data and have colleagues who have had their companies purchased and ruined by Thompson as they so often do. I must say that a high percentage of folk I've had the pleasure to work closely with in this uber conglomerate are, in fact, asshats. Its appalling what they want to charge for data and services and their contract agreements are only second worst to Bloomberg. I've barked at their mismanagement and have actually received personal apologies from the then only Reuters senior executives. It ain't pretty.

Its not surprising this buy-the-competition-worry-about-merging-later abomination is looking for $$ now that the economy and pending regulation changes are destroying a solid chunk of the Thompson Reuters customer base. Look for them in the news again shortly.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[moosesocks]

Of course, the developer of a reference manager would be the type to take the time to adequately explain his argument, and fully annotate his sources :-)

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[Geste]

"There are plenty of reference managers for all platforms"

True. But I see lots of folks at my university who are addicted to EndNote's buggy "Cite While You Write" functions that provide MS-Word integration. RefWorks has an analogous "Write while you cite" function, but still lots of people have accumulated libraries in EndNote and still have a love/hate addiction to CWYW.

To make it worse, he negatives of this situation are not limited to EndNote but extend to Thomson-ISI's intent to maintain vertical lock-in. Our library provides ISI Web of Science on-line, but when you look at the licensing terms real hard it's abominable -- yes you can access these citations but don't think about really *using* them in any meaningful way (like citing them on your Web page). It's draconian.

So it feels like getting past EndNote to a more open alternative will require freeing up all elements of the stack to include citation repositories. I ask in earnest: is there an alternative vision for these? A combination of repositories, APIs and tools that would delivery a "free" citation/bib system from top to bottom?

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[Anonymous Coward]

IANAL, so I could be (probably) wrong, but I believe that this may normally fall under fair use clauses, and even more because its an educational facility its probably even more likely for them to get a pass on that. I doubt whether RE happened will even be an issue. I believe this would probably qualify as a dmca exemption, or at least thats how things for the security industry were explained to me when my job required me to reverse some stuff

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[DigitAl56K]

It would be easier for more story submitters to do the same thing in future if comments carried over from submissions to stories, and if you had a reasonable chance to review what the Slashdot editors did to your summary before it went live, or if you even knew in how many hours it might actually go live once it's modded up into a story.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[pembo13]

This (above) is the reference example to be used for postings.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[Noksagt]

True. But I see lots of folks at my university who are addicted to EndNote's buggy "Cite While You Write" functions that provide MS-Word integration. RefWorks has an analogous "Write while you cite" function, but still lots of people have accumulated libraries in EndNote and still have a love/hate addiction to CWYW.A lot of products provide "cite while you write"-like functionality. Zotero has CWYW-like functionality that can round-trip between MS Word and OO.o Writer. Bibus, another free/open source reference manager, also supports both word processors. Word processor support in other reference managers is detailed on Wikipedia.

Our library provides ISI Web of Science on-line....more open alternative will require freeing up all elements of the stack to include citation repositories.

Zotero plans to have a citation database that runs on a web server & plans to collaborate with the internet archive to provide storage of "open" publications (unfortunately, this excludes quite a bit of traditional content). Preprint/reprint servers, such as arXiv are a step in the right direction. Google scholar, PubMed Central, and other large repositories may help break the monopoly. If you'd like to help make your papers and citation information available to others, I encourage you to try out refbase or some other institutional repository software.

There are a wealth of APIs and standards to support this. I'm happy to say that refbase+zotero have adopted many of them. In addition to the citation style language, linked to above & which can create formatted citations form rich metadata, there is MODS XML, developed by the LoC, is a rich bibliographic format for exchange, unAPI makes it easy for websites to point to machine-readable metadata. SRW, also by the LoC, provides a uniform query language.

There are many places to follow this development, including OSS4lib, One Big Library, GCS-PCS, and many others.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[lysergic.acid]

ah, i didn't realize that. i wonder why they took so long to submit PDF as an open standard (ISO 32000-1:2008).

but the question remains, can a EULA be used to lock users/organizations into a particular company's products? i mean, if George Mason University isn't allowed to export their custom-created styles from Endnote, then couldn't a word processor's EULA forbid users from converting/reading their proprietary file format with another editor? and same with image editors. so anything you create with a particular image editor must then be forever tied to that application, taking away the copyright holder's right to reproduce, edit, or even view their own work as they wish. and if your license for that particular application expires, or the company decides to discontinue the software, then your work is lost forever.

most software applications come with some sort of license agreement that forbids the user from reverse-engineering the application. but converting your own work from a proprietary format to an open format to extricate it from the proprietary application isn't reverse-engineering the application. otherwise Samba would be considered the reverse engineering of Windows, and i hardly think Microsoft would let that slide.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[mysidia]

First off EULA's are not enforceable.

Sorry; I wish this were true, but it's not. EULAs have been found firmly to be enforceable by the courts.

But enforceability of the EULA is a question that may arise in this case. And the question of enforceability of EULA may depend on which court the case is heard it. No court has made a ruling that says EULAs are generally enforceable are not.

Some courts have found that certain EULAs were enforceable in certain circumstances, others have found that certain EULAs were not enforceable, so there is still some hope that sanity may set in with the courts and the legislatures.

Additionally the laws vary from state to state; some states have passed UCITA, and EULAs are more likely to be found enforceable there.

EULAs are a matter of contract law which is a decision of the states; so it is very possible that such an agreement may be completely legal, valid and enforceable in some states, whereas other states specifically prohibit or do not give EULAs much weight in court (favoring protection of the general public's liberty instead of the corporation's privilege to restrict).

See Blizzard vs BNETD

At issue in this case was whether three software programmers who created the BnetD game server -- which interoperates with Blizzard video games online -- were in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and Blizzard Games' end user license agreement (EULA).

The court issued summary judgement in Blizzard's favor, on the matter of the EULA, they found it enforceable, and that the authors of BNETD had violated it.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[feijai]

First off EULA's are not enforceable.

They are in Virginia, one of two states to enact UCITA.

Guess which state George Mason University is a state school of.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[mysidia]

I wonder if the people in the organization who purchased Endnote were the same as those who developed the open source software. Surely the university and the Commonwealth of Virginia didn't sign anything to install a piece of software?

If one professor purchases software for their use, or say use by their students, does this bind the entire organization to arbitrary terms shown on the professor's screen when Accept gets clicked by someone? (Or when the person thinks they are choosing "Disagree" but the software thinks they are pressing "Agree")

Perhaps the professor has only authority to purchase certain items for classroom use; no authority to assent to such an agreement on behalf of the organization, beyond (say) agreements regarding their personal use of software.

If your friend clicks "Accept" to install a program, and one day you (a third party) download the software from their computer and reverse engineer it.

Can you be sued for supposedly violating this "EULA" that you never even got a chance to read??

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[pesho]

Even if it is possible, I don't see any EULA attached to the EndNote style files. There is no license, no copyright statement, nothing at all.

What exactly is the Zotero team violating?

Besides Zotero does not convert the '.ens' files to '.csl' or to anything else that is stored. It maps the fields on the fly when formatting the text.

Endnote is a pile of features added over time with no common design or any usability consideration. Its is not designed for operating systems with user level restrictions and it is barely aware of the existence of Internet. The only reason EndNote has been making money is the lack of competitors in its niche market.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[Eil]

Reverse engineering may be prohibited by a license agreement even though it is not protected by the protection generally afforded to trade secrets in the US, where reverse engineering is usually permissible. With that said, though, an interesting but minor issue that popped up in one of the DVD Copy Control Association, Inc. v. Bunner cases is the burden of proof that reverse engineering has actually been carried out by the defendant.

Bear in mind that in the U.S., there is one area where reverse-engineering is against the law, and that's when reverse engineering with the (supposed) intent of circumventing copy protection; the DMCA. The DMCA is applicable to the case you noted here, but probably not here as the plaintiffs are alleging breach of contract rather than copyright infringement.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[Anonymous Coward]

Repeat after me;

Contracts after point of sale are not valid.

The Blizzard case you reference is unique because WoW is a service, the World of Warcraft software is next to useless without their realm services, In this case where the actual point of sale is becomes fuzzy, since aside from buying the product (which comes with subscription time) you are also subscribing to a service.

Further just because a judge decided something doesn't make it correct, thats what appeals are for. (case in point 'making available') Clearly however blizzard has more resources available than the BnetD coders. Since the American legal system is skewed in favor of the rich the BnetD guys likely just decided to cut their losses since even a win could cost them hundreds of thousands more.

If the BnetD guys had money to blow their most obvious argument is that an EULA would not apply to them since they are in fact not the end user of the software.

Finally please remember that while the DMCA applies to you Americans the rest of us don't suffer under it, so if you happen to be in an area where your corrupt officials have sold you out to the corporations you need to express your displeasure to your representatives. The rest of us however who live in places that have consumer protection laws with some teeth to them, can get on with our lives without asking a corporations permission to use something we already own.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[Repossessed]

How exactly can an EULA be enforced against someone who doesn't own the software though? The makers of Zotero have no need to own Thompson Rueter's software. Nor is it necessary to have ever used the proprietary software in order to need to open the files. Even if you did once own TR's software, I don't know of any precedent that says you can be held to an EULA of a product you once used but no longer do (A non disclosure agreement type clause might be enforceable this way). And I somehow doubt TR can make a case that a significant portion of Zotero's users use both the TR software and Zotero, the reason to get Zotero is to stop using something else. (This differs from the BNETD case, where a user of BNETD must also have Blizzard software). In this specific case, the EULA seems unenforceable top to bottom.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[Cochonou]

ah, i didn't realize that. i wonder why they took so long to submit PDF as an open standard (ISO 32000-1:2008).

This is probably because they didn't want to relinquish the control of the PDF format until it was well developed. Or because they didn't see any benefit of submitting a format already well documented to a standardization organisation before governments expressed their preference to properly standardized formats.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[Brandano]

The DMCA provides specific exceptions that allow reverse engineering for the purpose of obtaining interoperability with a different software or system: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/DVD/1201.html (paragraph f). Even if an EULA is enforceable, it cannot restrict an user's rights more than what is expressly allowed by law. I could ask in an EULA that an user is not allowed to install a competing software on his machine while my software is installed, but any court would find such a provision moot, since it would clearly fall afoul of several antitrust laws, for example.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[Brandano]

A licence agreement can't override specific freedoms allowed by law, period. It's not the seller's right to define what the freedoms of the users are, the lawmakers are the only body that can restrict these freedoms in a law based state.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[SpringRevolt]

From Wikipedia:

> "He became engaged to actress Kelly Rowan in late June 2007. They broke off their engagement just before Rowan gave birth to their daughter."

Sounds like a nice guy :-/

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[Anonymous Coward]

but what a group of asshats.

Errm... isn't it "a bunch of asshats" ?

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[cp.tar]

but what a group of asshats.

Errm... isn't it "a bunch of asshats" ?

Well, it should be either a crapload or a hatful...

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[TechnicolourSquirrel]

If you think there is any significant difference between putting your opinions in the summary itself versus putting them in the first post right below the summary, then you must work in middle management.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[pjrc]

weren't there a bunch of alternative PDF readers long before Adobe made PDF an open format?

Adobe from the very beginning of PDF claimed it was an open and fully documented format.

I believe the very first open source PDF reader was "xpdf" created by Derek Noonburg. I used it for years before Adobe finally released their own, and I still use it today because it is much faster and simpler.

For years there was quite a bit of tension between Derek and Adobe. His xpdf viewer, at one time, would display messages asking people to contact Adobe and make good on their claim that the PDF format was truly open, mostly with respect to the rather lame encrypted PDF features. As I recall, at one point it even printed the name and phone number of someone at Adobe. Supposedly people at Adobe blamed xpdf's programs on Derek (supposedly calling him incompetent publicly) and utterly denied they had not documented their format. Derek published on his web page exactly what features were not documented.

Today there are many other PDF viewers, though for a very long time xpdf was pretty much the only alternative to Adobe's. I haven't looked at their code, but I suspect most of them are based largely on Derek's original code. For one small anecdote along those lines, here is an advisory were Derek found integer overflows in his original xpdf code, which also effects all these other open source PDF viewers.

My point in all this is that, while today it may seem there have always been lots of PDF viewers, in reality they are mostly (if not all) due to the long, hard work of one determined man. While he didn't have to reverse engineer Adobe's software, it was nonetheless a long, difficult struggle to get the missing bits of info. We all benefit today, even though Derek probably doesn't get nearly the credit he well deserves.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[Kazymyr]

Seems to me they have indeed too many asshats.

Reading through the Zotero docs, the procedure for importing data from Endnote involves exporting the database from within Endnote as text, then importing the text in Zotero. The last time I looked, Thomson Reuters did not hold the patent for text files.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[darkwhite]

It may be a little buggy, but Endnote's CWYW for Word 2007 (in combination with Word 2007's excellent UI and reduced quirkiness compared to 2003) is really the best way to write articles I know of. And yes, I use latex with bibtex with citeulike as well.

To answer your question, I don't know much about new citation formats (there are way too many already), but the best alternative I've seen is direct BibTeX import from CiteULike or another online database.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[Nullav]

So you're saying those 'frosty piss' posts are actually part of the summaries they lie below? I guess I'll have to mod those 'interesting' instead of 'offtopic'.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[B'Trey]

If you think there's no difference in putting editorial comment in an article and in a personal comment attached to the article, you must work for Fox News.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[RiotingPacifist]

Pretty much what is expected, almost nothing can restricted a persons actual rights (well NDAs and stuff but generally speaking EULAs cant) and there is a strong president that (black box) reverse engineering is completely legal. This is just a harassment case

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[mysidia]

How exactly can an EULA be enforced against someone who doesn't own the software though?

Because the University that developed and funded development of the open source software does own some copies of the proprietary software subject to EULA, presumably because they had some researchers/professors buy it at the University's expense.

If they were subject to the terms of the EULA it doesn't matter whether they still use the software or not; only whether or not they agreed to the contract and installed the software and then reverse-engineered the software in violation of the contract.

The university are not primarily being sued for "End users" violationg the EULA, or interference with the EULA. That was not the case with Blizzard VS BNETD either; the finding was the developers MUST HAVE violated the EULA since they had to install the software to reverse-engineer the network protocols. The charge was never that end-users violated any EULA by using the software.

The users of Zotero software and others who do not own EndNote, or did not install EndNote do not agree to the EULA and are not subject to it.

However, if the court determines the EULA was enforceable and the University developers violated it, they do have a possibility of awarding the copyright to Thompson as renumeration.

They can even cancel/void the open source licensing, and allow Thompson to take recourse against users/further distributors of the software for copyright infringement.

That's the worst-case scenario for the public, as I see it.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[Anonymous Coward]

... it feels like getting past EndNote to a more open alternative will require freeing up all elements of the stack to include citation repositories. I ask in earnest: is there an alternative vision for these? A combination of repositories, APIs and tools that would delivery a "free" citation/bib system from top to bottom?

Perhaps one big counter-balance to Thomson is Google, and the general interest of publishers to get information out so as to enhance their market. Zotero is taking advantage of, and in turn further promoting, a more open model for citation data access. I believe this is where the future will be.

On the client and citation processing end, you really need standardizing two things: 1) how word-processing applications and formats encode citation and bibliographic information, 2) how citation styling is configured. Both together open up room for competition, and give users more choice, as well as the capability to collaborate with colleagues who may use different solutions.

There IS work on both of these issues. Microsoft's new (XML) Word format supports citations, and OpenDocument (and OpenOffice) is getting enhanced metadata support that will make it possible to tackle 1. CSL is one solution to 2, and it's just a question of getting more support for it.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[Teancum]

This is where you have to have "virgin" developers working on the software that is being developed. In other words, the software can only be developed based on specifications and not on actually observing the software in operation... or worse yet reading the de-compiled/disassembled software (and even worse still, proprietary source code) that made the product.

I do think EULA's that insist upon a "no reverse engineering" clause ought to be found illegal... and on that point I don't know of any firm legal precedent on that topic to suggest that such a clause is enforceable.

On the other hand, I know of no open source projects (I may be mistaken... but they are few and far between at most) that works hard to separate those who are doing the development work and those who are obtaining the specification via observation and documentation. This may have also been a huge problem the the BNETD case as well. Once you have been "contaminated" with the original software or device, it becomes much harder to prove that you are merely providing interoperability.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[Hognoxious]

Or because PDF is such a monumental clusterfuck it took 15 years to understand it and describe it in an even marginally comprehensible form.

Actually, I'm being unfair - it didn't take quite that long. It was just that by the time they'd done it somebody had embedded a flash player, web server and email client in it so they had to start again.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[jabuzz]

Most Universities (at least here in the UK) have a site license that covers unlimited installations of the software.

However Thompson's the owner of EndNote and Reference Manager the main products in this market, are a bunch of assholes.

Try using EndNote on a multi user machine. I make my own reference style, where do I save it. Of course not under c:\Program Files\Endnote with all the default reference styles because that would be silly, and of course my friendly administrator has prohibited normal users writing their so they don't mess it all up.

So I change it to somewhere in my home directory or profile. But now I cannot see any of the default styles as shipped with the product.

I complained about this back when Endnote 8 was current. A well behaved application would look in both the default location for all the shipped styles, and some directory in either my profile or home directory and merge the two.

It is now EndNote 11, and they still have not fixed this brain dead bit of coding, and expect you to have write permissions to the install directory.

Bunch of incompetent morons.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[honkycat]

Even if an EULA is enforceable, it cannot restrict an user's rights more than what is expressly allowed by law.

This doesn't smell right to me. Contracts frequently restrict rights more than the law, since otherwise there'd be no need for the contract. If a EULA is enforceable at all, it'd be a contract. As with any contract, it'd be an exchange of compensation between the two sides. The user is granted a license to use the software as compensation for agreement not to do certain things that he'd otherwise have the right to do.

The DMCA simply says that it's not a violation of the law to reverse engineer for the purpose of interoperability. It doesn't (AFAIK) provide a shield against contractual provisions that restrict such activities.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[jabuzz]

Because the University as a whole will have almost certainly entered into a site license agreement with Research Thompson. It is the only realistic way to license the software at a University, because it is so much cheaper than buying lots of individual licenses. At the last two Universities I have worked (in life sciences), around 50% of academics and postdocs use the software, and higher percentages for postgraduates.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[John Hasler]

They haven't, they reverse engineered the file format for it's styles.

I didn't say that the defendants had done or not done anything. I said that the plaintiffs allege that the defendants had reverse-engineered the program, thereby breaching the contract.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that the same box you keep your buttplug in?

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[lysergic.acid]

that's quite interesting. while i use Foxit reader on Windows, i still have a lot of respect for anyone who's worked for free to give users the choice of using an alternate PDF viewer, not to mention holding Adobe true to their word.

now that PDF is finally an ISO standard, i wonder if Adobe is still in control of feature updates in future versions, or if the further development of the PDF format will involve community members. i'm not sure how this kind of stuff is handled.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Yes it is, I don't need my buttplug anymore now that you do such a good job with your tongue.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[Anonymous Coward]

I, anonymous coward, 2nd that notion.

Perhaps /. can have a story submission textarea followed by a 1st post text area allowing the story submitter to put forth additional info.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[TechnicolourSquirrel]

So ... if Tom Brokaw first reported the news, and then immediately added a so-called 'personal comment' afterward broadcast along the same exact wires to all the same pairs of eyes ... that would be a meaningful distinction to you? Like I said ... middle management. Tell it to them -- they'll know exactly what you're talking about.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[Sparr0]

Faulty analogy. I can (and do) filter comments differently than stories, in many different ways. This debunks the "all the same pairs of eyes" portion of your post. Also, there is a distinction in that by segregating the two, I (as a reader/commenter) am able to post a reply to one or the other in a clean way.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[mgblst]

Well, maybe the submitter should be given the first comment automatically, rather than having to wait for the story to be accepted and hit the front page.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[protektor]

BUZZ! You are wrong. Johnny tell our guest what he did not win today.

The BNETD case had *ZERO* to do with World of Warcraft and everything to do with all the other games that you play on Battle.net. It was a server daemon to let you run Diablo, Diablo 2, Starcraft, Warcraft, Warcraft 2 online with your own ladders and own user accounts. So you didn't need battle.net if you didn't want to use it.

Please before you make yourself look foolish please know what you are talking about.

BNETD does not equal World of Warcraft (WoW).

Battle.net has been just about dead, until Blizzard decided to announce the release of Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 which both will use Battle.net presumably.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[protektor]

Um sorry but BNETD authors had to install the software/client (Diablo, Warcraft, Starcraft) in order to debug the server (BNETD) to make sure the client communicated correctly with the server (BNETD). Thus part of the install of the software/client was the EULA had to be agreed to.

The problem I had was that the software was sold without the knowledge of the EULA at time of purchase and no additional consideration was given for agreeing to the EULA. Which I would have thought would have made the EULA invalid but the courts didn't see it that way. I suspect the judge didn't actually understand what he was ruling on very will since those courts rarely see that many hi-tech computer cases, and tend to rule in favor of the corporations if you look at their ruling records. After all who gives them donations for re-election, corporations. I saw the same problems at the Missouri state office level of Senators and Representatives. They all assumed the corporations were correct and not lying over the small business owner because they delt with the corporations on a regular basis and that's were they got all their campaign contributions.

Judges can be just like other parts of the government they can be swayed by lobbyists and companies that donate large amounts to their election coffers. Not to mention when some of the corporate lawyers happen to deal with a judge all the time and are friends with him/her. It's sad, but it's the way it works. It also doesn't help when a judge has a severe dislike/phobia of computers and complex science and electronic issues. The old, "I don't understand it so the companies must be right because they make lots of money", type of thinking.

The BNETD ruling was some of the worst rulings I have ever seen first hand in my life and I still don't understand how Vivendi/Blizzard was able to such a lousy ruling passed, with such serious far reaching consequences to the computer industry. I also don't understand why more companies who rely on interoperability didn't chime in as friends of the court on this case. I guess they either were asleep at the wheel and didn't care, or had no idea how bad it could have, and did end up going.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[protektor]

The main problem BNETD ran into was the encryption routine for the password that a user used to login. It was originally code given to the project by a user who said he figured out how it worked. What wasn't known at the time was that the person disassembled the client EXE to see how the password was being encrypted. The project coders knew what type of encryption it probably was based on the wire traffic but there was something hokey about the way Blizzard did it. It eventually came out that this is how it happened. It turned out Blizzard made a mistake in how they tried to do an encryption standard and that is why the developers saw something hokey with the routine.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[protektor]

Actually you are wrong here. The BNETD case specifically revolved around reverse engineering for compatability and at least the courts in that case ruled that the EULA was enforceable that forbade reverse engineering of their products. If you doubt this head over the the EFF site and look up the specific case and the rulings on it. It's the BNETD vs. Vivendi/Blizzard case.
http://www.eff.org/cases/blizzard-v-bnetd

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[protektor]

You are correct. But my problem is what additional compensation is being offered for the EULA? I mean I made a purchase at the store for the software. I wasn't able to review the license before the purchase to see if it was agreeable. I can't see the license until I open and install the computer software.

Also why is it a license? I purchased the software just like I did a stereo or TV. I wasn't asked to sign a contract like I am with a cell phone purchase with service. So why should computer software suddenly be treated differently? I don't have to agree to a stupid license to play my XBox, XBox 360, PS2, PS3, PSP or Nintendo DS. Why do I have to do this with software? What is so special about a PC game over a console game?

I try to install the software I just purchased, and *BAM* I am presented with a EULA/license that I never saw or agreed to at the time of purchase. If I don't agree to the license during the install process it won't install. Now I try to return it to the store since I didn't agree to the license and they won't take it back since it is opened. Now I am screwed. I bought software that I can't use and I can't return, so it is worthless to me.

How is this even close to fair? Yet it happens hundreds of times a day in retail. People try to return software that they can't run on their machine/computer or that doesn't work like it should or that they don't like the license and they are not able to return it. Don't believe me? Try and return opened software to Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, or any other place that sells software and see how far you get. It has been like this for 15+ years at least, probably longer.

I think it is time the state and federal government would step in and say software is a sale and isn't subject to any extra licenses, just copyright protection period. You want to license software fine, have them sign a contract before they pay, but software sold at retail stores like Wal-Mart, Best Buy, etc are sales not licenses.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[protektor]

Reverse Engineering *IS* specifically allowed in the DMCA if the purpose is inter-operability or research. This exception was one of the key points used in the BNETD vs. Blizzard/Vivindi case as point of defense. So you can violate the encryption or DRM/copy-protection on software or a file, but only under certain conditions in the US, because of the DMCA. If you want more info either read up on the case over at EFF or see some of the articles EFF has written about the DMCA.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[protektor]

Interoperability & Reverse Engineering are not freedoms recognized by the court. So companies are free to try and make legally binding contracts that limit your ability to do those things. It is going to take some states or the federal government to step up and pass some laws saying they are freedoms that can't be taken away before you see them disappear from contracts.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[B'Trey]

Lots of mainstream media sources provide "personal comments." They're called editorials. And yes, I damned sure do see a meaningful distinction between what's said in an article and what's said in an editorial. And yes, if an article is immediately followed by an editorial which is clearly labeled as an editorial, then I see a huge difference there too.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[TechnicolourSquirrel]

We see the world in different ways. You see form. I see function. This is an oversimplification but what I am getting at is that we can both be right.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using refbase for a couple of years now! Thanks for releasing it!

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[honkycat]

Oh, absolutely I agree that this is how it "should" be. Unfortunately, it would seem that EULAs are enforceable in some jurisdictions so the law is in conflict with what is right. It is ridiculous, it is sad, and it is something that should be fought.

Re:"But it's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

[Noksagt]

Thanks for the kudos. Matthias deserves all of the praise. He's done quite a bit & you can play with the beta version at:
http://beta.refbase.net/

Looks like a pretty weak case

[One Louder]

Having read the complaint, it doesn't look like Thomson has much in the way of a case - this probably won't get very far.

They're basically relying on license language that prohibits the reverse-engineering of the program itself - but there's nothing there that prohibits reverse engineering of the file format that it uses.

Re:Looks like a pretty weak case

[John Hasler]

It should also be noted that as Reuters is claiming only breach of contract this suit will not prevent anyone not affiliated with the defendants from distributing and/or using the software. The project can continue if anyone is interested in continuing it even if GMU loses or gives up. I hope lots of people have downloaded the source.

Re:Looks like a pretty weak case

[Anonymous Coward]

And even if the EULA did prohibit reverse-engineering of the file format, and there was no DMCA or fair use protection - would they even have a case? My understanding was that EULAs were contracts, and if one broke the contract one only forfeited what one received in consideration (in this case, access & use of the software under EULA). Which wouldn't make Zotero illegal or anything.

Re:Looks like a pretty weak case

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the plan goes like this...

1. Provide free advertising for a competing open source solution
2. Demonstrate to existing customers you have no clue about copyright law or how working with the open source community to expand your data would benifit said customers
3. ...
4. Profit?

Thomson redistribute these files freely, the correct action would be to either make these files redistributable or to add support for the open file format into their product.

Re:Looks like a pretty weak case

[dgatwood]

More to the point, any file created by a user is inherently the sole property of the user. The only way contract terms prohibiting reverse engineering of file formats would hold up would be if the terms explicitly prohibited giving the file to anyone who is not bound by the contract.

In the absence of such a clause, as soon as that file leaves your hands into the hands of someone who did not agree to the contract terms, any rights the company has to protect their file format cease to be relevant or enforceable (with the exception of patents).

In the presence of such a clause, you're going to have a hard time selling your application to anyone with half a brain, and such a clause would almost certainly be thrown out as unconscionable because of the unreasonable burden it would place on the user to verify the license of someone else before giving that person data that the user legitimately created and on which the user holds exclusive copyright.

Either way, file formats effectively cannot be protected from reverse engineering. As such, this company would have to somehow prove that it was impossible to reverse engineer the file format without reverse engineering the app itself. Speaking as somebody who has reverse engineered file formats before, I can say that any such statement could not possibly be made by an intelligent person without it being perjury....

So there you go. This suit is frivolous, and I hope the company has to pay a few million in restitution for pain and suffering to the victims of the suit. Such IP fraud deserves nothing less than a huge in-court bitch slap. This is precisely the sort of case that makes me opposed to every aspect of the Pro-IP act.... Yet another case of copyright abuse by a corporation to harm consumers and illegally stifle competition from smaller players.... *sigh*

Re:Looks like a pretty weak case

[KGIII]

Err... It's all well and good to rant about copyright but what the hell does copyright have to do with the story at hand?

Re:Looks like a pretty weak case

[LaskoVortex]

Err... It's all well and good to rant about copyright but what the hell does copyright have to do with the story at hand?

If you actually read the post you are referring to, you would understand. You are probably struggling with reading comprehension so I'll futilely try to help you. See, in the post you are referring to, the poster brought up an example and used the word "copyright". This does not mean his rant was about copyright. He also used the word "perjury", and again, before you mistakenly ask "what does this have to do with perjury", bear in mind that he only used the word once as part of an example. I wish I had enough time and motivation to help you more with this concept, but just trust me when I advise you to try to ask less questions in the future so you don't appear so intellectually challenged.

Re:Looks like a pretty weak case

[purpleraison]

It should also be noted that as Reuters is claiming only breach of contract this suit will not prevent anyone not affiliated with the defendants from distributing and/or using the software. The project can continue if anyone is interested in continuing it even if GMU loses or gives up. I hope lots of people have downloaded the source.

You do realize that GMU has a law school, and they're not afraid to use it. Reuters will get pwned.

Re:Looks like a pretty weak case

[Lost Engineer]

Don't assume they did this in a clean room fashion. If the engineers did in fact agree to a EULA that said no reverse engineering and then did some reverse engineering, the plaintiff has a case. However, the only possible ruling could be that, in violation of the EULA these users or maybe the whole institution lost right to run the software. If anyone there was still running the software I can see a case for monetary damages.

A long history of non-enforcement has let horrendously one-sided EULAs slip under the radar. It's a bit much to expect individual software users to read the agreements with a legal mindset, but if this kind of litigation continues perhaps larger institutions will demand more reasonable terms.

Re:Looks like a pretty weak case

[KGIII]

I realize you're just trolling but I'll humor you.

Yet another case of copyright abuse by a corporation to harm consumers and illegally stifle competition from smaller players.... *sigh*

This would not be yet another case of copyright anything. This is yet another case of idiocy included in EULAs that hopefully no judge will enforce.

Re:Looks like a pretty weak case

[LaskoVortex]

One sentence does not a rant make. The nexus of his post was

Either way, file formats effectively cannot be protected from reverse engineering.

But once again I will pay for my razor tongue with karma.

Re:Looks like a pretty weak case

[dgatwood]

I'm not trolling at all. A EULA is binding upon the consumer solely because of copyright. Without copyright, because A. it is not a signed contract, B. the two parties are not equal, C. there is no negotiation, and D. the EULA is not agreed upon by both parties prior to the time of purchase, it is highly likely (nay, certain) that all EULAs would be prima facie unenforceable under pure contract law.

Without copyright to prop it up, sale of a copy of an app would be just that: a sale of a copy of an app. Therefore, EULA abuse is, by definition, copyright abuse because the former cannot rightfully exist without the latter.

Re:Looks like a pretty weak case

[dgatwood]

Never mind about that first part. I just realized that the thing about trolling was referring to a reply to a reply to my comment. :-) Too late at night....

Re:Looks like a pretty weak case

[dgatwood]

Much as one would hope we would demand better legislators and better laws after all the draconian things that have been passed in the last few years. Doesn't make it likely. Until it bites them directly, most businesses can't be bothered to care about details like draconian EULA restrictions.... They have more important things to worry about... like lobbying to protect their offshore bank accounts from taxation. :-D

Re:Looks like a pretty weak case

[KGIII]

It's okay. But no. This is being fought for contractual violations and not copyright violations. The two are wholly disparate. I don't mind ranting vs. copyright but, well, this really doesn't have a whole lot to do with it no matter how you want to think about it. In other words, copyright (the law) is not in question here. What is in question is the EULA. I hope they lose but I hope they lose for the right reasons, that you can't enforce unacceptable restrictions on users/license owners with a EULA. To try to cite copyright only muddies the waters and takes away from the important issues here in my opinion.

Re:Looks like a pretty weak case

[feijai]

You do realize that GMU's law school is notoriously crazy-conservative, and likely would be on the side of Thompson.

Same old story

[benntop]

EndNote does one thing [citation management] well. The problem is that citation management isn't a difficult thing to accomplish in software. You get some information in one format, store it however you want, and then spit it out according to another format when you are done.

I am sure that EndNote is a cash cow for Thompson, but the gravy train can't last forever. Other free (Zotero) and non-free (Papers) alternatives are becoming increasingly available - and they are far better than EndNote. Suing the competition won't make that problem go away.

Re:Same old story

[Sancho]

EndNote does one thing [citation management] well.

[citation needed]

Re:Same old story

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually no, Endnote does not do citation management that well. That was one of the main reasons why Bruce D'Arcus started the project. The Citation Style Language (CSL) can handle more types of citations than Endnote can.

You are also wrong thinking that this is easy to implement, but I can tell you that there are many many cases where citations can require formats that are quite though to catch in xml properly. Most implementations I have seen are too crude to do a totally reliable job. Even with CSL we still find things that are rather tough to express.

I do strongly think that CSL is a great step in the right direction for citation management. I sure hope it will get picked up much more. Endnote is in my eyes a rather poor product. It has a lot of styles and a lot of momentum, but it lacks in some important areas. This lawsuit for me shows that with CSL the CiteProc project is on the right track, because apparently it scares the hell out of Thomson/Reuters. I like healthy competition, but lawsuits like this are just petty and show only how immature these people are.

[Disclaimer, I am the author of CiteProc-Py, which is the Python implementation of a CSL citation processor. -- Johan Kool]

Re:Same old story

[Anonymous Coward]

It is the same old story, but not in the way you say.

Endnote does one thing, and does it very badly indeed. It has little intrinsic merit as a piece of software. As a result, its natural recourse is the standard business route to unmerited dominance: large contributions to VC wine budgets etc, and legal action.

All very natural. All ultimately doomed.

Re:Same old story

[benntop]

I think that we might have different definitions of how good or bad EndNote is. As an individual neuroscience researcher who has his entire PDF library referenced in EndNote it does work well enough, not that I like it. You seem to be approaching it from a more technical standpoint of usability across many disciplines and citation types. There EndNote is indeed trash if you routinely require citations not found in EndNote's templates.

As for the technical rigor of the programming, 99% of the citations I use in my manuscripts are books and journal articles. There might be a few conference presentations, personal communications, and whatnot in there as well, but that is about it. This reduces the scope of the problem to something that IS relatively easy to implement software-wise. The goal of CSL seems to be the creation of a catch-all language that can represent any citation. This is a far different problem in terms of difficulty.

Re:Same old story

[hweimer]

EndNote does one thing [citation management] well. The problem is that citation management isn't a difficult thing to accomplish in software.

Absolutely true. Pybliographer has been available for years, so there is hardly a need for proprietary reference management software.

Re:Same old story

[Anonymous Coward]

The goal of CSL seems to be the creation of a catch-all language that can represent any citation. This is a far different problem in terms of difficulty.

Yes, correct. Most existing software (BibTeX, Endnote, etc.) is designed primarily for scientists, who as you note typically only cite articles and books; published secondary sources. CSL and Zotero were designed by people who don't fit this mold. In the humanities (e.g. history) people cite a far wider range of stuff, including a lot of funky primary sources, which makes this a much more difficult problem. Our goal (I am the author of CSL) has been to try the make the easy stuff as easy as possible, but the hard stuff still possible.

The result is that the solution to these problem is rather different (and better) than what you see in Endnote.

Damages?

[enHatt]

The only ones using Endnote are already connected to a university or the likes which are going to pay for bulk licenses anyway. I could have gotten one without paying where I studied, but I don't use Microsoft Word, nor IE, so it's kind of a moot point. Are they afraid that most academics are going to switch to OpenOffice, Firefox and Zotero? If they are, they should relax: That's not happening for at least 10 years.

Re:Damages?

[TheRaven64]

I've only occasionally come across Endnote - I think the ACM digital library has them as an optional download format for references - but in the computer science community BibTeX is pretty ubiquitous so I've never really looked at Endnote. How does it compare to BibTeX, which is around 20 years old and still seems capable of concisely expressing all of the references I've needed?

Re:Damages?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are they afraid that most academics are going to switch to OpenOffice, Firefox and Zotero?

Think bigger here: if you have every piece of this technical puzzle using open formats (like CSL) and implemented in open code, you have the infrastructure that will enable a variety of implementations. Zotero is just one example, but I expect their will be others.

Also, I'd be willing to bet in 10 years most academic word processing will be happening using web applications. Proprietary desktop applications with proprietary file formats are a dead end in the long term.

As the head instructional tech guy at my college

[edremy]

I guess I'll start strongly discouraging Endnote usage by all my faculty. The library already makes Refworks available and I've been using Zotero for my class this fall and love it. Endnote is expensive and since we have a pile of individual copies of varying vintage purchased through the years it's annoying to deal with anyway.

Time to talk to the reference librarians again about scheduling some more faculty training with them...

I'd never heard of Zotero before..

[thephydes]

probably the same as many other users. Nothing like some free advertising. I've downloaded it and will probably start using it. And yes I usually use endnote.

Re:I'd never heard of Zotero before..

[Fnord666]

probably the same as many other users. Nothing like some free advertising. I've downloaded it and will probably start using it

Ditto for me. I hadn't heard of this before but it looks like it would be worth a try. If it works out well I will be encouraging the other faculty to take it for a trial run.

Re:I'd never heard of Zotero before..

[TaoPhoenix]

(To the theme of Obmoz.com. the quadratic parody of Zombo.com)
We are suing people involved with *open source Zotero*.
Never use Zotero. Zotero is bad. Yopu might think of using Zotero, but then we might sue you. Be afraid of Zotero! What was that program you were supposed to avoid again? Oh Yes. Zotero. That's right, make sure you remember to avoid *Zotero*.

(Citations, managed without paying the lawsuit aggressors.)

1. Zombo.com. Presumably a parody of empty DotBomb pseudocompanies, and possibly FeelGood management in general. http://www.zombo.com/

2. Obmoz.com. Meta-Parody of the highest class, repurposed by me for this additional context as an example of the mistake a lot of companies seem to be making these days. The brain attaches itself to nouns, so trumpeting the noun-name of your competitor that you hate defeats your purpose. http://www.obmoz.com/

reuters just opened up a whole can of worms

[Anonymous Coward]

If I were an attorney for the defense I would just be drooling to file the antitrust counterclaim for "making a contract in restraint of trade."

Treble damages ftw!

If you haven't already . . .

[base3]

. . . remove the "[zotero.org]" /. inserts first:

svn co https://www.zotero.org/svn/extension/branches/1.0/ zotero

Never know what idiotic (or corrupt) judge might grant a preliminary injunction forcing them to remove the source.

Re:If you haven't already . . .

[John Hasler]

Mod parent up.

GMU Library provides both

[dtaciuch]

I teach at GMU (English); the library here has links to both Zotero and Endnote (with a site license for the latter. I wonder how much that cost?).

I plan to ask the library to drop the license for Endnote; why pay them to sue us?

I encourage my research writing classes to use Zotero anyway.

Re:GMU Library provides both

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting anonymously as I work within GMU (and don't have job protections that parent probably has).

If software is managed campus-wide, then there's no need to bother the library. As far as I've heard (e-mail on the 25th), the entire university is dropping the EndNote site license as of Nov. 16. (Obviously, the injunction could have an impact on that.)

We've been warned that EndNote is so tightly integrated with Microsoft Word and the rest of our base PC software load that there may be undesirable side effects when the license expires on November 16 -- it's too late to redo the image, so EndNote will have to stay installed but nonfunctional until the Spring image is pushed in January. I've only had a handful of students ask about using EndNote (to be fair to Zotero, I didn't even know about the software until we got notice that it would replace EndNote) and I've never come across a faculty member using it as part of a class.

I was surprised by the announcement of the switch, since Zotero is FOSS. Quite frankly, the university spends money where it doesn't need to, and cuts corners where it shouldn't, which usually results in backpedaling, costing students and taxpayers. But maybe someone at GMU has figured out that trading expensive site-licensed software for comparable free software is a better alternative than cutting student services and operating hours in light of the recent statewide budget crunch.

Re:GMU Library provides both

[Anonymous Coward]

...the entire university is dropping the EndNote site license as of Nov. 16....and I've never come across a faculty member using it as part of a class.

You hit every important point.
The school doesn't need it, no professor I've ever had used it (GMU=Undergrad + masteres), and there are free alternatives now.

    Bascially Endnote is pissed that GMU won't be giving them shit-tons of cash for a product license no one needs. And this is america...so they sue.

Re:GMU Library provides both

[a5an0]

I'm a student at GMU, and I had no idea that we made zotero. I always did find it strange that it was (on of the few extensions) installed on the school's computers....

Re:GMU Library provides both

[Anonymous Coward]

Our EndNote site license cost $20k this year.
UT Knoxville

fantastic news

[jacquesm]

Really, what better way to make end users aware of the risks involved when they're using proprietary file formats?

Sue your own customers because they try to break the lock in? Great plan!

I'm sure that 'Thomas Reuters' will see their business go through the roof after this :)

Re:fantastic news

[gronofer]

Really, what better way to make end users aware of the risks involved when they're using proprietary file formats?

Sue your own customers because they try to break the lock in? Great plan!

I'm sure that 'Thomas Reuters' will see their business go through the roof after this :)

What better way to make anybody, large organization or individual, aware of the risk of open source software development? Why allow resources to be used, perhaps when it's hard to even measure the financial return, when you are opening yourself up to the possibility of multi-million dollar lawsuits, with all of the wasted management time and legal costs that will be incurred even if you fight and win?

Just saying, I think the legal system as it relates to software is completely broken.

Re:fantastic news

[jacquesm]

unfortunately your point is very valid, it's just that in this particular case the message seems to be don't start developing an open source product without checking the license of the products you own that you plan on replacing

everybody else is free to do so anyway (maybe not as motivated though).

Thanks for bbrining this to light

[Anonymous Coward]

and thanks to Thompson for the lawsuit. My wife is back in school and last week she was asking about purchasing endnote and I was going to research alternatives.
Zotero works very ell with FF.

Re:Thanks for bbrining this to light

[buswolley]

Zotero is fantastic, and I've been using it for about a year now. BTW, they have Word and Open Office plugins too.

LaTeX + BibTeX?

[Anonymous Coward]

How is the title not a solution over this?

Re:LaTeX + BibTeX?

[BorgCopyeditor]

It is a solution. But so is writing all your cited works on individual index cards and alphabetizing them.

I'd say more but I've got to get back to sorting my wires by the color of their insulators so that I'll have time to make some penny and nickel rolls.

Re:LaTeX + BibTeX?

[Noksagt]

Both EndNote and Zotero can export BibTeX. Zotero can import BibTeX and you can transform BibTeX into a file format that EndNote can import.

Reference management software normally provides more than a single BibTeX file does--it can retrieve citation information in a way that is faster/easier than "wget http://some_publisher/some_journal/some_volume/some_paper/import.bib && cat import.bib >> bibtex_file.bib" (and can convert it if that site has no native BibTeX file. Zotero can index attached PDFs for full-text searching. It has much better support for UTF-8. You can easily give your bibliography to others who don't use BibTeX. You can store your notes and highlights on articles in your database. There are a ton of other features too.

BibTeX is a good (if somewhat dusty) file format that I use often. It is not the sole solution to reference management.

Re:LaTeX + BibTeX?

[betterunixthanunix]

"You can easily give your bibliography to others who don't use BibTeX"

Uhm...assuming they are using Zotero/EndNote/whatever? How is that better?

Re:LaTeX + BibTeX?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather be able to easily share references with those that use Zotero AND EndNote AND BibTeX AND .... than just those that use BibTeX....

On donations

[Noksagt]

That is fair. And my zealousness hasn't made me write a check to the Commonwealth of Virginia. To be honest, I don't know what VA will do with this case or how the trial will work. VA is being sued simply because GMU is a state university. Will they really have a "blank check" (e.g. as many tax-payer funds that are needed) to defend this with any external counsel and experts that they wish to employ?

Re:On donations

[Anonymous Coward]

Whats funny is that all of the external counsel will be using another Thomson Reuters (there is no "P") product to do their legal research.

Re:On donations

[Anonymous Coward]

And that product has the same love-hate relationship as EndNote has.

Reverse engineering

[Noksagt]

They are claiming that the defendants contracted not to reverse-engineer Endnotes and then did so, breaching the contract.

They haven't

They have:

21. On information and belief, GMU reverse engineered or decompiled the EndNote Software and proprietary .ens style files contained within the EndNote Software (emphasis mine)

While there are some style files included with EndNote, there are many user-created styles & Thomson makes MANY more styles available with no stated license and third parties (individual EndNote users) have created many more over the years. EndNote cannot claim a EULA on a file format (especially one that many people and institutions have created and distributed) & nobody has shown evidence that the EULA on the software has been violated through the decompilation of EndNote (because that never happened).

The code that you link to is in beta software and does not export a stand-alone CSL file. I know of no CSL file that has ever been publicly distributed that was derived from an .ens file.

Re:Reverse engineering

[John Hasler]

What are you responding to? It isn't my article.

Re:Reverse engineering

[Noksagt]

What are you responding to?

My response was to the anonymous coward who replied to you (who argued with your statement that Thomson claimed that the Zotero developers had reverse engineered EndNote).

Re:Reverse engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not a lawyer (I'm also a different AC), but I think "on information and belief" in a complaint means "We think so, or at least we want the court to think so, but we don't really have any evidence yet." Just because the complaint says they reverse engineered it doesn't mean they did.

Re:Reverse engineering

[John Hasler]

Sorry. That AC's article was not visible here until now for some unfathomable reason.

why a jury trial?

[belmolis]

I wonder why Thomson is demanding a jury trial in a technical case like this. Surely they don't expect a company like theirs to come off as a particularly sympathetic victim. Juries tend to find cases like this confusing. I would think that I would prefer trial before a judge. Or is the idea that their case is so bad their only hope is to confuse a jury?

Re:why a jury trial?

[betterunixthanunix]

The point is to confuse a jury. Think about their case: they are claiming that an EULA which prevents reverse engineering the software was violated, but the case centers around reverse engineering their file format. The only possible way to win such a case is to confuse the people deciding it, and confusing a judge isn't as easy as confusing a jury (a judge has a certain level of education, whereas a jury isn't required to have any education at all). I can imagine their case already: keep shouting present the EULA clause about reverse engineering the software, then keep shouting reverse engineering whenever the issue of the file format comes up; also, get the GMU people to say that they reverse engineered the file format (which is legal but a jury probably would have trouble making a distinction).

Re:why a jury trial?

[True Grit]

I wonder why Thomson is demanding a jury trial in a technical case like this.

For the same reason that SCO asked for the same thing in their lawsuit against IBM. If your case is *legally* strong you almost always want the judge to decide it directly.

(In the SCO case fortunately, the judge realized their case wasn't just weak, it was *non-existent*, so a jury trial was refused.)

their only hope is to confuse a jury?

Bingo.

Re:why a jury trial?

[John Hasler]

While they are probably better off with a jury for the reasons you give it's a pretty weak reed. Yes, they do stand a better chance of confusing a jury than a judge but the other side has lawyers too and the issues aren't all that complicated.

Re:why a jury trial?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder why Thomson is demanding a jury trial in a technical case like this. Surely they don't expect a company like theirs to come off as a particularly sympathetic victim. Juries tend to find cases like this confusing. I would think that I would prefer trial before a judge. Or is the idea that their case is so bad their only hope is to confuse a jury?

Well, just like SCO expected IBM to settle, Thomson don't expect this to ever get to trial. They want a settlement from GMU, and a jury trial is going to be more expensive than a trial with just a judge, so the cost/benefit calculation of whether to settle or not moves slightly more towards "settle". The more expensive Thomson can make the prospect of a trial appear to be, the more likely the university are to choose to pay up in advance of the trial.

...and justice for all, eh?

Endnote should die

[bigbigbison]

Some colleagues keep suggesting that I use Endnote to keep track of my citations and so every year or two I give it a try. Even though they seem to update it every year it is still one of the worst programs I've ever used. It is unintuitive, offers no real error messages so you can't tell if it is working or not, and its method of inputting citations by hand is frustrating and confusing.

I've only tried Zotero once shortly after it came out but hopefully it will survive this lawsuit and last long after Endnote is long forgotten...

Re:Endnote should die

[betterunixthanunix]

Virtually all citation management software is difficult to deal with. To be honest, I find it more intuitive to just enter the citations manually into the OpenOffice.org bibliography database than to use any of the tools currently out there. Some people swear by EndNote, but I can't deal with it.

Re:Endnote should die

[Anonymous Coward]

You can enter citations manually into EndNote or Zotero, but you can also take someone else's database and import it much faster than you could individually enter citations. This can happen with people you collaborate with, an online list of author/group references that you find, a commercial database, etc.

Re:Endnote should die

[betterunixthanunix]

True, although it is fair to point out that OOo can also connect to shared databases or database files for its bibliography sources. Someone else pointed out that EndNote can automatically import citations from other papers, including PDFs of those papers, which is a pretty useful feature, although I have to wonder about someone who wouldn't have already looked up the cited sources and gotten the bibliography entries from those. Ultimately, I guess it depends on how your write your papers...

Re:Endnote should die

[yes it is]

I used to think the same. Zotero is the only reference manager I've used that's not a pain in the arse - that is, it's much easier to use it than it is not to use it.

That reminds me...

[ianm.phil]

Thanks Thomson Reuters, you just reminded me to install Zotero on all my Firefox installations now that I am back in grad school. Phew, without this post on /., it probably would have slipped my mind completely...

Can you say...

[Kalten]

...f***ing hypocrites?

Thomson alleges that GMU's Center for History and New Media reverse engineered Endnote and that the beta version of Zotero can convert (in violation of the Endnote EULA) the proprietary style files that are used by Endnote to format citations into the open CSL file format.

Thomson Reuters has a major division that develops tax and accounting software. The important thing to know about the tax and accounting software market is that it's saturated. Every accountant who wants software has it. If you want customers, you've got two choices: either get new accountants just coming into the market (which is balanced out by accountants retiring or otherwise leaving the market), or take them from your competitors.

And how do you take customers from your competitors, you ask?

First, by making better software. Second, by making sure that your prospective new customers don't have to re-enter every bit of information. You develop conversion software. Yes, that's right. You develop software--most likely in violation of the competitor's software's EULA--that extracts the data and digests it into a format that your software can handle.

And Thomson Reuters does this on a regular basis.

I used to work for them. I did exactly that for seven years. I think they may have just opened a can of worms that they really don't want to have open.

Re:Can you say...

[mdmkolbe]

Is there any legal doctrine that you can't sue someone for things you also do?

Unclean Hands seems close but not quite.

Re:Can you say...

[mdielmann]

Well, good news for them, and probably GMU, is that I've never heard of a jury requiring you to do the thing you sued a competitor for if you lose the case. So I'm guessing even Thomson Reuters will want this case to disappear, once their divisions talk to each other.

Beware! Virginia is a UCITA state

[grandpa-geek]

Virginia was one of the two states that stupidly enacted the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA). Maryland was the other. Maryland made a few significant changes; Virginia changed very little.

UCITA allows nasty provisions to be inserted in EULA's and is tilted to favor the large, downstream licensor (such as Reuters). IIRC, the version of UCITA enacted in Virginia doesn't even guarantee the licensee access to a copy of the license after the licensee clicks "I Accept" and allows EULA provisions under which the licensor can post revisions to the license on a web page at any time with the licensee being bound to the revised license without any other notice.

With Virginia being a UCITA state, I wouldn't make any assumption about the strength of Reuters' case or what seems reasonable in a proper system of law. UCITA could let Reuters get away with things that would shock the conscience of anyone with a sense of fairness.

Zotero is a brilliant piece of work

[yes it is]

Zotero is the best piece of software I've come across in a long time, and the database schema is particularly nice. I always thought that Thomposon were fools. Now on one side they're having their lunch eaten by google scholar, and on the other side by a variety of free and/or open source bibliographic managers. For any Thomposon execs reading - if you don't stop regarding the users data as your property and start opening up instead, your decline will be much faster than similar proprietary software companies.

Does not bode well for Reuters

[l00sr]

So apparently, Reuters recently got bought out by Thomson. Let's hope they don't start suing Wikinews...

The refuge of the frightened and the incompetent

[Arrogant-Bastard]

Thomson has obviously come to the conclusion that they cannot compete against a superior piece of software -- so rather than admitting this, they are going to try to use their legal thugs to crush it. We have seen this strategy many times before, so it is nothing new. But it is still a pathetic, transparently desperate action deserving only of our contempt.

Subject

[Legion303]

Not that I'll ever be likely to use this extension, but: *Archived*!

The end of endnote

[Anonymous Coward]

This is so funny. I was just talking to my Mum who is a university librarian. Her students have so many issues with Endnote, and most of it seems to be because of a lack of standardisation between publishers. There are also issues of ensuring file associations and correct extensions for the portfolio of existing "standards".

I was saying that it won't take long before a group of rival publishers get the shits with Thompson and offer an alternative solution which works way better than endnote.

Thank you for sueing Zotero. Not only will you be unsuccessful, you will also raise the profile of zotero.

Explanation neccisary

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

This is one of the few times in history that a non gaming story has been posted on slashdot that involves a technology I don't understand the use of. Someone please attempt to try and explain why they use citation software. I've googled,wikipedia-ed and left a few messages on friends answering machines. So I'm turing to you o 'ye unwashed slashdot hordes. You're my last hope.

Re:Explanation neccisary

[belmolis]

If you're a scholar you need to cite your sources when you write, in a variety of formats, and you also need to learn about publications in the areas you work on. A citation manager helps you do this. The core of a citation manager is a bibliographic database. Each record corresponds to one journal article, book, technical report, or publication. Each record contains information about the author or authors, title, name of the journal, volume, number, pages, etc. A citation manager also contains import tools of two sorts. One kind allows you to import bibliographic information in bulk, so that you can incorporate bibliographies that other people have prepared. The other kind extracts information from other single citations. Suppose that you are reading a journal article on-line and that it references something that you should look up. The input tool will let you select the on-line citation and assist you in entering it into your database.

The other major function of a citation manager is formatting, which is what is at issue here. Different publications require bibliographic information to be formatted differently. For example, some put journal names in italics, while others use a normal slat. Some put the year of publication in parentheses, others set it off with periods. Some put the journal volume number in bold face. You might have something like:

Watson, James D. and Francis Crick (1953) "Molecular structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid," Nature 171:737-38

or

Watson, James D. and Francis Crick. 1953. "Molecular structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid. Nature 171.737-38

Instead of having to manually format each bibliographic entry, the citation manager keeps the information in a format-free abstract representation (that is, each piece of information in a separate field) and lets you choose the format in which to export references for use in your paper. In order to do this, it needs to have a specification of the style used by the publication for which you are writing, where each style contains information like "journal volume number appears in bold face" and "year of publication is surrounded by parentheses". EndNote has a collection of several thousand such style files, which are in its own proprietary format. Zotero currently has a much smaller collection of style files, which are in its open XML-based format. EndNote is claiming that Zotero has breached a contractual prohibition against reverse-engineering their software in order to create a tool for converting style files from EndNote's format to Zotero's.

Re:Explanation neccisary

[betterunixthanunix]

I must wonder, though, why bother with anything more than the citation database? OpenOffice.org will format your bibliography directly from the citation database, in the same manner that it can build other tables and indexes from database sources. Why bother with a "citation manager" for this seemingly simple task?

Re:Explanation neccisary

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a fair summary. Just one minor correction: the styling format that Zotero uses is not "Zotero's." It is an independent open format (CSL) that Zotero has helped develop, and which is its most prominent implementation. But there are other implementations in progress as well, in a variety of languages.

Also worth noting that some of the factual claims in the suit are just wrong. For example, Zotero does not convert Endnote styles files to CSL style files. It is a read-only feature.

Re:Explanation neccisary

[Anonymous Coward]

Zotero can round-trip citations between MS Word and OO.o Writer.

It can be use to mass import citations.

You can use it to store your PDFs and web page snapshots & can index these, allowing for full-text searching and markup (highlighting, notes, etc.)

You can leverage citation styles written by others much more easily and the database allows for more complex metadata to be represented.

One of the lead developers of the OO.o bibliographic project thinks that the current OO.o bibliography is garbage, that it will eventually have a major rewrite, and he happens to also be the lead developer of CSL & likes zotero (so the new version will likely offer even better integration with Zotero and similar third party reference managers).

Re:Explanation neccisary

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Thanks. I think I understand. Just one question remains: is there any kind of relating the citation with some sort an idea as to why it has been cited? That could be pretty cool, if done correctly. If you combined it with an eliza like program you could have your papers written automatically for you. Great way to easily pad your number of published articles for tenure. Might even produce some thought provoking papers, and would at least be a good test of the peer review process.

Re:Explanation neccisary

[belmolis]

No, I don't think there is anything quite like that. The closest they come is that you can tag an entry with keywords for search, and many citation managers allow you to include the abstract or even the the actual article.

Re:As the head instructional tech guy at my colleg

[wanax]

I totally agree in general. I've been very impressed with Zotero, and have found it adequate for basic academic needs. My main issue with it is that there's no method of syncing or consolidating and index or database between multiple comps. Since I do all my writing on my Mac laptop, I've moved over to http://mekentosj.com/papers/ which I've found to be exactly what I'm looking for.. It has the database feature, easy complex searches like Endnote, and costs ~$26 for students, ~$50 for others. But if you don't use a Mac, Zotero is definitely the best I've used. If you are up to keeping everything on a USB key, you can keep your papers consistent no matter the comp with Zotero.

Google Scholar 'Import to EndNote' link

[Bazman]

I've had Zotero isntalled for a while but I'd not got round to using it, so with all this kerfuffle on slashdot I thought I'd have a play.

  So I went to google scholar and googled myself, as you do.

  So I check out a few things, and use the button on the URL bar to add them to Zotero. Neat, no more fiddling with curly brackets and at-signs in my .bib files, EVAR!

  And then I notice the 'Import into EndNote' links on my papers in Google Scholar. I click, thinking I'll get to save an EndNote format reference so I can reverse-engineer it and get sued, and guess what... IT IMPORTS IT INTO ZOTERO!! There's an option in Zotero to use it for RIS/Refer files, so maybe that's what the .enw file is. Anyway, I'm not sure if I set that up or if it was the default.

  Now, I can well imagine the EndNote guys not being happy with that! Although I doubt there's anything they can do about it... Muahahaha.

Re:Google Scholar 'Import to EndNote' link

[Noksagt]

And then I notice the 'Import into EndNote' links on my papers in Google Scholar. I click, thinking I'll get to save an EndNote format reference so I can reverse-engineer it and get sued, and guess what... IT IMPORTS IT INTO ZOTERO!! There's an option in Zotero to use it for RIS/Refer files, so maybe that's what the .enw file is.

That option used to be called "Import EndNote/Refer files" or something similar, but Thomson had Zotero remove the "EndNote" trademark from that option. I wonder why they don't ask google to stop using their trademark? Doesn't their failure to enforce their registration mean that the trademark can be challenged & become unregistered?

Now, I can well imagine the EndNote guys not being happy with that!

If you have a legal copy of EndNote on your system, I'm sure they're happy enough.

Re:Google Scholar 'Import to EndNote' link

[John Hasler]

> I wonder why they don't ask google to stop using their trademark?

Because Google is not infringing it. A trademark is not a copyright.

Re:Google Scholar 'Import to EndNote' link

[Noksagt]

Yes--I'm talking about trademarks and I didn't say anything about copyrights. I agree that a trademark is not a copyright, but they can both be infringed.

As I said, Thomson requested their trademark not be used in the Refer/RIS option and in the most recent complaint, they want the court to enjoin against further "inappropriate use" of this trademark (such as using it to describe .ens style files).

I happen to think that Thomson is on weak ground in these two claims, due to fair use of the mark.

If Thomson's reading is accurate, though: I fail to see why Thomson would think that Zotero is infringing their "EndNote" trademark when it describes Refer files, while google is using the same trademark to refer to the same filetype. Trademark law says that marks must be licensed and protected zealously. (This is why we have "Iceweasel"--Mozilla must defend their "Firefox" mark, or risk losing it.) Either Thomson is not zealously protecting their mark against the likes of google (which can mean that it becomes unregistered), or they are misusing their trademark registration by asking Zotero to stop using it (and could also lose the mark).

Re:Google Scholar 'Import to EndNote' link

[Bazman]

They don't seem to have a problem with Google putting 'Click here to import into EndNote' on Google Scholar links. Either they've got an agreement with Google or they know how much it would cost to put EndNote Ads on every Google Scholar page. I'm thinking they've paid Google something. Anyone know?

Endnote backend is MySQL...

[EuIdZero]

I wonder if Thomson Reuters conforms to Mysql licensing terms...

Re:Endnote backend is MySQL...

[FlyingBishop]

They've probably covered their asses by paying Sun for the proprietary version. If they haven't, I think this is one instance in which the FSF should go for a little more than compliance. (I would really love to see GMU sue Reuters on behalf of the FSF for a cash settlement.)

But sadly, it won't happen.

Re:Endnote backend is MySQL...

[John Hasler]

> I think this is one instance in which the FSF should go for a little more than
> compliance. (I would really love to see GMU sue Reuters on behalf of the FSF
> for a cash settlement.)

Whatever gave you the idea that the FSF owns the copyright on MySQL?

Zotero is a great reference manager

[Anonymous Coward]

I would definitely encourage any researchers out there to give Zotero a go. Our research group have been using it for a while now and it makes our lives much easier. Dealing with references is now completely pain-free.

Everyone take a copy of Zotero

[jopet]

If they want to invest in lawyers instead of developers they should prepare to sue a lot of people and organizations all over the world. And that includes countries where there alleged basis for sueing does not even exist.
I have had my issues with End Note before and I have long ago decided to avoid it like the devil. This move is just a little detail that reinforces my decision.

Re:Everyone take a copy of Zotero

[John Hasler]

> If they want to invest in lawyers instead of developers they should prepare to sue a lot
> of people and organizations all over the world. And that includes countries where there
> alleged basis for sueing does not even exist.

I don't think a whole lot of software development goes on in countries where contracts do not exist. Hint: their basis for suing does not apply to anyone who has not purchased a copy of Endnotes and agreed to the purchase contract.

And the ones pro Patent miss it too

[Anonymous Coward]

And how do you keep a trade secret on a business patent? Or "look n feel" patent? Or most software patents that say "displaying a list ordered by name ON THE INTERNET!"?

You can't.

And these are the ones that make least sense in a patent too. Causing most of the cry against patents.

Therefore this NDA/EULA only works on patents that nobody has a huge problem with patenting anyway.

Re:And the ones pro Patent miss it too

[the eric conspiracy]

Well yes, I think business patents are BS. The basic idea behind patents is that they provide an incentive for the inventor to disclose his invention in exchange for a right to prevent others from practicing the invention. It is a contract between a society and the inventor. The problem in the case of business process patents is that they cannot be kept secret so there is no value to society in this contract. No one in their right mind would enter into a contract like that.

But your point that NDAs work only on business processes is wrong. A company can apply NDAs to many things that they don't want to patent. For example it is common in the chemical industry to sell catalysts tied up with contracts that prohibit the buyer from reverse engineering or even conducting a chemical analysis of the catalyst.

Reverse engineering

[tapanitarvainen]

Reverse engineering may be prohibited by a license agreement

That depends on the jurisdiction. Finnish copyright law explicitly states that a contract cannot prohibit it. (More precisely, it says that any such clause in a contract is void.)

Re:As the head instructional tech guy at my colleg

[vigour]

Personally I'm a big fan of JabRef which uses the BibTeX package in LaTeX.

There is a way to get JabRef working with Word 2003 but I've never tried it, I mostly stick to LaTeX.

JabRef is a nice little Java app, nice easy to use interface, smart search functions, runs happily under my xp and *nix accounts, and is open source.

Happy Days

Re:As the head instructional tech guy at my colleg

[kipton]

My main issue with it is that there's no method of syncing or consolidating and index or database between multiple comps.

There is a Zotero beta available which does provide synchronization support (its called 1.5 sync preview, available here http://www.zotero.org/documentation/sync_preview.)

For those not familiar, let me give a short advertisement for Zotero. I'm a Mac user, and I recently switched from Safari to Firefox just for Zotero. Zotero makes it possible to add a citation entry to my library with one click in Firefox. Another nice feature is Zotero's ability to determine citation information for loose PDF's. And did I mention that Zotero is free?

Re:The refuge of the frightened and the incompeten

[mdmkolbe]

New rule for my broker: company makes silly suits => SELL!!!

Remember the Goal

[YetAnotherBob]

The goal of this type of lawsuit isn't to win, it is to cause financial pain to the developer, in order to kill the competitor. The filer doesn't even care that its' lawsuit fails.

As long as the legal system provides no real dis-incentives (IE real damages beyond mere legal fees) to the filers, this is seen as just a way of increasing market share by reducing the market.

Unfortunately, it is a very common practice in the US against new or small companies. A lot of non-profits and Universities will drop all support as a way to avoid the cost of a trial. That's all the filer wants anyway. How do they lose?

Thank you Thomson Reuters!!!

[stm2]

In my lab there was a discussion about buying or not endnote (or similar program).
Now thanks to Thomson Reuters and Slashdot I know of a nice alternative I didn't know before.
I will also include this plugin as default in Dnalinux VDE.

You are wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Microsoft could probably easily shut down Samba if it decided it wanted to"

Except that there's no possible way they could shut down Samba, even if they wanted to and decided it was worth the negative press and costs. One of the parts of their Anti-trust settlements was to release documentation so that competitors could interoperate. Samba is a complete, from the ground up reimplementation of SMB/CIFS and related protocols, and contains none of Microsoft's code.

If they tried to shut down Samba, Samba would simply point to the EU's (or the US Justice Department, if they felt like they needed to) ruling that said they were free to, and in fact were supposed to be given documentation to cause them to exist in the first place.

Once you become an anticompetitive monopoly, you lose a great deal of the rights you once had to compete. It would cost Microsoft more money than they have left to buy off the US and EU's Justice Departments to not immediately end any case against Samba with prejudice.

Another example. Don't buy Thomson products!

[Wolfier]

I recently bought a Thomson SpeedTouch 516 ADSL modem.

The interface is crap, restrictive, and the option to turn it into bridge mode disappeared from the UI (I had to telnet into the modem using information from the forums to do it).

What's most infuriating - on the first page of their manual, there's a "SPEEDTOUCH SAFETY INSTRUCTIONS AND REGULATORY NOTICES". Under which there's a section called "Directive".

It looks like a bunch of EULA crap that cannot be enforced -

Unless express and prior approval by THOMSON in writing, you may not:

1. *Disassemble*, de-compile, reverse engineer, trace or otherwise analyse the equipment, its content, operation, or functionality

(you cannot even peek into the openings)

2. or otherwise attempt to derive source code (or the underlying ideas, algorithms, structure or organization) from the equipment

(getting more ridiculous)

3. or from any other information provided *by THOMSON*, except to the extent that this restriction is expressly prohibited by local law

(This is *REALLY* stupid)

4. Copy, rent, loan, re-sell, sub-license, or otherwise transfer or distribute the equipment to others

(Their lawyers really believe I cannot sell the thing on Craigslist. I suggest they retake Law 101.)

5. Modify, adapt or create a derivative work of the equipment

(it also looks like i cannot connect the modem to a router, too, i guess?)

6. Remove from any copies of the equipment any product identification, copyright or other notices

(sue me, i'm about to throw away the manual)

7. Disseminate performance information or analysis (including, without limitation, benchmarks) from any source relating to the equipment

(from this statement i conclude the SpeedTouch 516 must perform like crap. OOps, have I violated it already?)

My opinion derived from the above facts: Thomson are totally controlled by retarded lawyers, and this modem is the last thing I'm getting from them.

Thomson does not needs reverse engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been developing a reference extracting/managing/citing tool for the last four years. One main motivation was a lack at that time of useful software. As a scientist, in a not in fashion area of knowledge, I considered useful 1) extracting references from anywhere and any format as a simple copy/paste 2) link articles (eg pdfs) and keep them attached to the citation, to have them readily available in the reading/writing cycle 3) easily perform internet queries, not only to databases but to any website, and 4) searches to full text article files.

Software at that time were monolithic lists of papers, aimed to be database "mirror" clients/browsers (I already did have my preferred browser), had access to only a limited, to only "cute" areas of research and to subscription only databases, and had poor formatting/citing capabilities.

A year ago, an ACS journal published a whole page Endnote advertisement. Several of the above points were mentioned as new improvements and additions to their newly released version.

The application I develop did have such capabilities years in advance to Endnote. If they need to put their noses to the sources of open source projects to advance their software, then it comes to no surprise that they had taken the lawsuit downhill.

Thank you Thomson Reuters

[kimvette]

Thomson Reuters, thank you for filing this suit as it brought Zotero to my attention. I have been looking for cross-platform software with this functionality and Zotero supports more platforms than your crappy product. Thank you again for filing this suit as I would not have discovered this package without this negative PR.

Streisand effect wins again!

Re:Beware! Virginia is a UCITA state

[John Hasler]

Have you read the license? I see nothing in it that would not be enforceable under UCC provided that the university agreed to it and I doubt that they could convincingly claim they didn't even in a UCC state. GMU isn't some clueless consumer clicking "Agree" after being confused by the legalese.

Re:Beware! Virginia is a UCITA state

[grandpa-geek]

Have you read the license? I see nothing in it that would not be enforceable under UCC provided that the university agreed to it and I doubt that they could convincingly claim they didn't even in a UCC state. GMU isn't some clueless consumer clicking "Agree" after being confused by the legalese.

UCITA replaces UCC on matters involving "computer information" (software and computer services). I haven't read the license, but in reading it you need to read it in the light of UCITA and not UCC. Some provisions of UCITA are "default" provisions that are there even if they don't appear in the license, and one of the major criticisms of UCITA was that provisions are surprising compared to expectations of someone familiar with UCC.