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Apple Patent Claim Threatens To Block Or Delay W3C
Kelson writes "The W3C Widget specification is running into a problem: Apple claims a patent on automatic updates and is unwilling to license it royalty-free in the event that it impacts the spec. The W3C is investigating to determine whether the spec includes anything covered by the patent, and decide what to do."
I hope this is a legitimate claim, or I'll have to start hating you, too.
FTFP:
A software program running on a computer automatically replaces itself with a newer version in a completely automated fashion, without interruption of its primary function, and in a manner that is completely transparent to the user of the computer.
As long as the user is notified or must explicitly grant permission, the update process is not transparent to the user.
Apple claims a patent on a stealth method.
From the article "It probably helped that in those days we avoided patents and other restrictions; without any financial incentive to control the protocols, it was much easier to reach agreement." Exactly why patents don't work in their current form.
Now it seems more appropriate for this story.
*sigh* Patent 5155847, referenced in Apple's patent, covers everything Apple's does. The only differences are obvious minor adaptions based on the different communications channels in use, things any network programmer does automatically every day.
If you read this claim, it seems that any webpage loaded through a caching web-browser *could* fall under it.
1. A method for automatically updating software programs on a computer, comprising the steps, of:
storing an updated version of a program at a designated location in a remote memory that is accessible to the computer;
Being that most browsers will check a cache to see if it already has your content, the act of overwriting the cache before loading the asset for your page seems to run afoul of this auto-update process.
Apple is a member of the W3C, and even advertises on it's own web page (Click Here) that it supports an immutable commitment to royalty free licensing on W3C standards, per the W3C patent policy. Sounds like Apple is only interested in other companies licensing Royalty Free terms to them, but not the other way around....
Meh. Apple is basically just Microsoft with an inferiority complex.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
"We are think for ourselves," eh?
My point, since you missed it, was that we often don't, based on the story posted. Nobody will remember this when the next iPhone comes out.
The broadest claim the patent makes (bullet points mine):
1. A method for automatically updating software programs on a computer, comprising the steps, of:
Could one not simply have the client software send a request to the server software saying "send me the stored version, if it is modified since version 12.34"
Hence it would not be the current version carrying out the action of determining whether a the newest version of the program is more recent than the current version of the program; rather it would be being performed at the server.
Indeed, HTTP already includes an "If-Modified-Since" header the client can send to the server, though the HTTP header uses a date rather than a version number.
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
It will be great if the W3C sort-a ban apple from using the HTTP and other W3C tech in OS X...when your the owner you can give and take permission whenever you like so...give em' a taste of they're own medicine. I'll die laughing if that happens!
... and in a manner that is completely transparent to the user of the computer.
In my book that means: no need for a restart. Completely different from what i.E. FireFox / Thunderbird and the like do - needing to ask the user to stop with his / her work in order to perform the update.
Not trivial.
According to the Patent Advisory Group they've formed to deal with this hurdle, the PAG membership includes "Advisory Committee Representatives of each Member participating in the Web Applications Working Group".
Of course, the Web Applications Working Group includes: "Apple, Inc. (4 representatives)".
Isn't it kind of a conflict of interest for Apple to be sitting on the committee that has the purview to:
?
coding is life
If it were all about money, Apple products would suck. Exhibit A: Microsoft Windows--makes a lot of money AND they don't care about users. Exhibit B: Mac OSX--makes a lot of money but has to care about users, otherwise they render themselves obsolete.
You don't have to outrun the wolf, just the slowest member of your party.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Apple "cares" about its users the same way a gold-digging wife "cares" about her husband, or a manufactured pop music group "cares" about its fans.
Apple cares about keeping its users blinded with shiny distractions, sure. It does not care about providing quality products or services, or about the long-term well-being of its customers.
Apple has been a bunch of lawsuit trolls since the infamous "look and feel" lawsuits of the late 1980s. There are every bit as evil as Microsoft, just smaller and wrapper in a prettier box.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
But a stylish, tasteful inferiority complex. You don't see Steve Jobs with sweaty underarms, do you?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
There's nothing wrong with stockpiling patents. The alleged problem is that Apple refuses to grant them royalty free to the W3C, undermining the open standards that Apple professes to protect.
This space left intentionally blank.
this patent is total BS!
the patent description makes it sound like we're talking about a system for automatically updating any program while its running without any interruption (which would be quite a feat if accomplished, but still not worthy of a process patent because its an obvious goal).
However the operation the patent actually describes is as follows:
1) I click on an icon to launch an application,
2) a process starts that checks to see if I have the latest version of the application
2a) if I have the latest, it launches the application
2b) if I don't have the latest, it replaces my copy with the latest and the launches the application
this stuff about "transparently running" and "no need for restart" is a red herring. of course there's no need for restart, the program isn't running yet!
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
I know. I have not seen a valid software patent. This one is almost impossible to implement. Apart from Web-2 applications. And this is probably why it popped up.
Updating a running program without interruption is everything but trivial.
It can be pretty easy. I helped write a database app where every time the menu form was invoked, it would check the back-end database to see what the "current" version of the front-end should be. If it wasn't the same, it would launch the new version and quietly kill itself.
The user only experiences a slight delay that can not be differentiated from network congestion or heavy database load.
The key here is that the app does the work of checking for updates at an easy time to do it (user is transitioning from one form to another) and not based on an external stimulus (an interrupt).
Doing this for something like a word processor or spreadsheet that doesn't have such stark transitions would be trickier since it would have to somehow save the state, reload itself, and restore the state.
I think in the case of the patent, they're talking about updating the app during a page-load, so the user won't notice the delay because they're going through a state-change already. I may be mistaken, but I do not think the app gets updated in the middle of reading a page without doing a refresh of some kind.
Shiny and Quality are not mutually exclusive.
# cat
apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
completely transparent. No verifications or reboot requests. new version is put in place. I keep working with old version until I'm done and the new version takes over whenever I naturally quit and restart.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Or for applications that are slow and unresponsive all the time.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
You don't see Steve Jobs with sweaty underarms, do you?
That's why he always wears black: there's not enough contrast to see it;-) Apple certainly has a far better marketing department, and they've gone to great lengths to not only play up their image, but to tie their products to that image; but once you're beyond that they are every bit as deceptive and secretive as Microsoft. They've essentially convinced an entire class of consumers to think that they are "different" from everyone else when they really just aren't. The inferiority comes from reacting vehemently over any thing that is said along those lines, which is why, like my initial post, this will be modded down to -1 TROLL in no time.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
That is not one of the claims of the patent. That is part of the abstract, which has no direct bearing on what the patent actually applies to.
If you read the claims, it amounts to "checking for an update at runtime, and updating without asking the users, then restarting the program".
Programs often get borked when they're upgraded on the fly. Firefox certainly does this if you upgrade it while it's running, as do various pieces of server software which HAVE to undergo a restart to update the data and config files.
You have to restart everything that was affected to be sure (including the OS if you upgrade the kernel).
Someone from Apple scene does use that concept. Intego Netupdate. It has a preference to automatically install and reboot after updates, without even asking to user. Thank God, it is disabled by default.
In fact, it performs exactly the way patent says. You may even be greeted by "Enter serial number you purchased while you upgrade your software" message.
Apple being victim of their stupid lawyers as usual, not even surprised. They should separate RIAA/MPAA iTunes types from the Technical types.
What if MS steals their concept as usual and implements like its own? Well, it has been solved by Real Networks for their million dollar patents. Free to GPL, patented for closed source. As people here busy with "buffering" jokes and spyware allegations regarding their free/open source software, I better remind it.
I followed the link (not the one to the pathetic opinionated article, but the one to the short email message), and this is what seems to have happened: Apple told the W3C people that they have a patent that they believe might cover something that W3C is trying to standardize. So they have done exactly what Rambus _failed_ to do when they participated in memory standardisation, which since then has caused dozens of lawsuits over hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. This will not happen here because Apple disclosed their patent.
That email doesn't say in any way that Apple is doing anything inappropriate or is threatening anyone or refusing to give anyone a license. What is happening is a very simple process that W3C is prepared for: Apple was kind enough to inform them that there is a patent, so they will now look at the patent, which will or will not turn out to be relevant, and if it is relevant, something will be sorted out.
Now that fine article (or whatever the f in RTFA stands for) calls Apple "patent-lawsuit happy". So who exactly is Apple suing right now? Maybe the manufacturer of a new phone that is vastly outselling the iPhone, except that it doesn't do that quite yet, because it is not for sale right now, so not a single Palm Pre has been sold, and Apple hasn't sued them, because as long as Palm doesn't sell its phone there is nothing to sue them for?
After bricking unlocked iPhones, kicking applications off the iPhone store that might even slightly compete with iTunes in the far future, and filing a wave of patents on basic well-known computer science, Apple Inc. today filed a 10-Q with the Securities Exchange Commission declaring that it was openly adopting Evil(tm) as a corporate policy.
"Fuck it," said Steve Jobs to an audience of soul-mortgaged thralls, "we're evil. But our stuff is sooo good. You'll keep taking our abuse. You love it, you worm. Because our stuff is great. It's shiny and it works. It's not like you'll go back to a Windows Mobile phone. Ha! Ha!Ã
Steve Ballmer of Microsoft was incensed at the news. "Our evil is better than anyone's evil! No-one sweats the details of evil like Microsoft! Where's your antitrust trial, you polo-necked bozo? We've worked hard on our evil! Our Zune's as evil as an iPod any day! I won't let my kids use a lesser evil! We're going to do an ad about that! I'll be in it! With Jerry Seinfeld! Beat that! Asshole."
Sergey Brin of Google said, "Of course, we're still not evil. You can trust us on this. Every bit of data about you, your life and the house you live in is strictly a secret between you and our marketing department. But, hypothetically, if we were evil, it's not like you're going to use Windows Live Search. Ha! Ha! I'm sorry, that's my 'spreading good cheer' laugh. Really."
http://rocknerd.co.uk
... and then wonder why you can't save any of the Openoffice.org documents you have open due to mismatching libraries.
(note: I use apt and yum myself daily on Debian and Fedora boxen, but never recommend doing them non-interactively)
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
This is the nature of the problem.
You don't have inventions in software. You have ideas, and implementations. There is no in-between.
The idea of patenting a software algorithm is equivalent to patenting a mathematical expression.