Motif is not OSS, even with this new license, so why should they have the privelege of calling it that?
OpenGroup is not calling OpenMotif "open source", and their web site explicitly says that OpenMotif misses the Open Source Definition because of the OS restriction.
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Here's the fine print on my copy of McAfee VirusScan:
The customer shall not disclose the results of any benchmark test to any third party without Network Associates' prior written approval.
The customer will not publish reviews of this product without prior consent from Network Associates, Inc.
OK, lessee, they left out the (r) twice, they used a possessive, and they used their own trademarks in a negative context. Time for NAI(r) to sue themselves.
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I say: Ay caramba! I'm sorry, but it (1) all boils down to algorithms. Remember, an algorithm may be a heuristic algorithm, but it is an algorithm nonetheless. Perhaps you meant to distinguish algorithms from hacks.
Was it Knuth who said, "Programs equal algorithms plus data structures"? And I'd say the data structures are the more important. A good data structure can mean the difference between an algorithm that zips along at O(n) and one that crawls at O(n**2) or worse.
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(IANAL. IANAL ought to be assumed unless the poster says otherwise. But that's another thread.)
Are the sets of things that can be patented and things that can be copyrighted mutually exclusive? Or can you patent the 'process' and copyright a specific 'implementation' of it?
Patents and copyrights are orthogonal; neither diminishes or augments the right to the other. I could, for instance, patent a process, copyright a book describing the process, and trademark a name for the process. Trade secrets, OTOH, are in fact mutually exclusive to patents: a patent discloses the invention, and then it isn't a secret anymore.
A GIF implementation would be subject to the author's copyright, unless released to the public domain; it would also be subject to Unisys's patent. One would need a license under the author's copyright and under Unisys's patent.
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(IANAL of course, and this applies only to the USA at any rate)
47 USC Section 227 seems to apply to GPS-triggered wireless advertising. If it does, then what the CNN article describes may be illegal.
In particular, section (b)(1)(A)(iii) says: "It shall be unlawful...to make any call using...an artificial or prerecorded voice...to any telephone number assigned to a paging service, cellular telephone service, specialized mobile radio service, or other radio common carrier service, or any service for which the called party is charged for the call."
This paragraph also applies to an "automatic telephone dialing system", but it doesn't appear to me that a GPS-triggered dialer would fall within the definition of that term in section (a)(1). So the marketroids could escape this clause by using real people.
Section (b)(3) establishes a right of private action "if otherwise permitted by the laws or rules of court of a State", with statutory damages of $500 or actual damages, whichever is greater.
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Part of that "pathetic business and marketing plan" was the OS/2 operating system. One big reason it never caught on.
The similarity of the name to PS/2 might have been a factor: it created the impression that one needed a PS/2 to run OS/2. Also, OS/2 1.x was not marketed well. One couldn't just walk into Egghead Software and pick up a copy of OS/2. Finally, the "DOS Coffin" in 1.x was not compatible enough with real DOS.
Free-form file names, bundled Internet software, full-featured GUI: J. Random Luser probably thinks these are Windows innovations. Yet OS/2 had all of these before Windows did. Shame. OS/2 could have been a contender.
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Quote: "A CD has much higher fidelity, liner notes, graphics. It's not going to be threatened by a cruddy MP3 file."
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(IANAL and if you go to Slashdot for legal advice then you are insane.)
You might have signed some kind of legal agreement when you were hired. It may, or may not, lay claim to intellectual property you develop on your own time. I certainly hope you didn't throw those papers away.
If your employer makes no such claim, then I think there's a way out. Make the changes on your own time. Then bring them into work. You'd then hold copyright to your changes, and you could license them to your employer under the GPL.
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You might want to rethink that brick house. You will actually get more of a dose from a brick house than a wood house, since the bricks themselves release radiation.
True; the bricks have traces of uranium and thorium among other things...but the wood contains traces of carbon 14.
You just can't win this game.
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When Yahoo et al. were DDOSed, the Feds and the Mounties were on the case and they busted "mafiaboy" for doing it.
But Slashdot is just a geeks' nest. I get the feeling the Feds aren't going to care, especially if it turns out that M$ is behind this.
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(IANAL and if you go to Slashdot for legal advice then you are insane.)
I don't think a protocol can itself be protected in a GPLish way, unless some part of it is patented. The name, however, is another story. Register the name as a trademark, and then license the name only for use with compatible implementations.
The US Department of Defense did something like this with the Ada name. You can superset or subset Ada all you want, but you can't call the resulting language "Ada." (I shudder at the thought of supersetting Ada, but that's a topic for another thread.)
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Much as I condemn Microsoft for this latest outrage, I should point out in fairness that the inclusion of post #86 in this nastygram was an honest mistake.
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(IANAL and if you go to Slashdot for legal advice then you are insane.)
I'd really like to see that ruling. It defies logic.
It also seems to defy the law, which permits a copy to be made if "such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner."
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(IANAL and if you go to Slashdot for legal advice then you are insane.)
This ruling did not turn on a disclaimer of warranty, which the Maryland UCITA bars in some cases. It turned, rather, on a limitation of liability, which the Maryland UCITA permits. To quote the ruling: "the provision limiting [the plaintiff's] damages to recovery of the purchase price was not unconscionable."
Of course Maryland law != Washington law, and a Washington Supreme Court ruling is not a binding precedent in other states. Nonetheless, courts in common-law legal systems sometimes rely on each other's rulings for guidance. A similar ruling in Maryland may offer an out to free software developers trying to avoid a ruinous lawsuit.
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Maryland UCITA, Free Software, and the GPL
on
Fighting UCITA
·
· Score: 1
(IANAL, and if you go to Slashdot for legal advice you need to have your head examined.)
The UCITA as enacted in Maryland provides, in sections 21-401 et seq., for five warranties:
21-401: implied warranty of noninterference with the licensee's enjoyment of the licensed information and of noninfringement of third party copyrights, patent rights, or other rights;
21-402: express warranties created by advertising claims, samples, and the like; this is essentially a truth in advertising provision;
21-403: implied warranty of merchantability of a computer program;
21-404: implied warranty of accuracy of informational content;
21-405: implied warranty of fitness for a particular purpose and of system integration.
The implied warranty in 21-401 can be disclaimed, in accordance with subsection 21-401 (D), with conspicuous language such as "THERE IS NO WARRANTY AGAINST INTERFERENCE WITH YOUR ENJOYMENT OF THE INFORMATION OR AGAINST INFRINGEMENT."
Section 21-406 provides the conditions for disclaiming the warranties in sections 21-402 through 21-405. Here are the shoals that providers of free software need to steer around. Subsections (A) through (G) provide language that may be used to disclaim the warranties. Subsections (H) through (J), which are present only in the Maryland version, bar the disclaimer of the warranties of merchantability (21-403) and fitness (21-405) in "consumer contracts."
Sections (H) through (J) are the killers; but there's a safe harbor. Subsection (K) provides that "The provisions of [sections] 21-403 and 21-405 do not apply to...an information/computer program provided for no fee, unless [it] is provided with the sale/lease of goods, services, or another information/program." So the creator of free-as-in-beer software need not worry about 21-403 and 21-405.
Furthermore, 21-803(A)(1) provides that "an agreement may provide for remedies...in substitution for those provided in this title and may limit or alter the damages recoverable, such as by...limiting remedies to returning or delivering copies and repayment of the contract fee." This clause, which is present in the unmodified UCITA, may be the salvation of free software in UCITA states.
Here, then, are my proposals to modify free software licenses such as the GPL:
Include language such as "THERE IS NO WARRANTY AGAINST INTERFERENCE WITH YOUR ENJOYMENT OF THE INFORMATION OR AGAINST INFRINGEMENT," as provided in 21-401;
To cover the other implied warranties insofar as they apply to licenses that are not "consumer contracts", include the language given in 21-406(B)(2): "EXCEPT FOR EXPRESS WARRANTIES STATED IN THIS CONTRACT, IF ANY, THIS `INFORMATION'/`COMPUTER PROGRAM' IS PROVIDED WITH ALL FAULTS, AND THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO SATISFACTORY QUALITY, PERFORMANCE, ACCURACY, AND EFFORT IS WITH THE USER" (the GPL already has similar language);
Include a provision that any damages arising from breach of express or implied warranty be limited to refund of the purchase price, if any.
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ARC was LZW based, at least its better compression schemes were, and its header format was limited to 12 character filenames. Hence ARC was doomed anyway.
One can still find source code for a version of ARC, and it compiles under my Linux installation.
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PKWare holds a patent on a particular implementation of LZ77. PKZip uses this patent; other Zip programs do not.
The Deflate, Implode, and Reduce compression methods can (AFAIK & IANAL) be implemented without patent infringement. Shrinking is LZW based, and we all know what that means.
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Why is it, that practically everybody on slashdot (I've done it too) always puts 'IANAL' in their posts,... and then proceeds to give legal advice or analysis? As far as I know, the real spirit of 'IANAL' is that since the person isn't a professional, their words should be taken with a grain of salt, and might even be total crap.
I think those who post about what the law (statue or case law) is, as distinct from what a just law should be, should be able to provide a citation. www.law.cornell.edu is your friend.
That goes for lawyers as well as IANALers. Indeed it goes double for lawyers, who have no excuse for not backing up their assertions.
Finally, anyone who takes any Slashdot posting as professional advice, even if the poster is a lawyer, needs to see a shrink as well as a lawyer.
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It's a design patent. The bar is somewhat lower for design patents than for utility patents. The term is also shorter: 14 years from issue.
Might it be possible, though, to build a connector that fits with the match to this one, but doesn't infringe the patent? Say, by making the body square instead of round, or leaving out that indentation on one side?
The good news is that the FAQ is incorrect. Patent 4,586,027 does not cover RLE as such, but a variant in which the run length is placed before and after the compressed run. This allows the decompressor to read the stream backwards, as from a magnetic tape, and still correctly decompress the stream. All of the independent claims make some mention of "front and back" or "front and end."
Moreover, this patent expired in 1998 for nonpayment of maintenance fees.
There is a constitutional problem with shortening outstanding patents. Patents are regarded as "property" and the Fifth Amendment says, among other things, "...nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
In my experience, Borland's "optimizer" doesn't optimize. bcc -O and bcc -O2 don't produce faster or smaller code than just plain bcc.
The resulting code is better than unoptimized GCC, but not as good as GCC with -O2. GCC produces rather inefficient code and relies on its optimizer to clean it up.
Slashdot Mirror
OpenGroup is not calling OpenMotif "open source", and their web site explicitly says that OpenMotif misses the Open Source Definition because of the OS restriction.
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Here's the fine print on my copy of McAfee VirusScan:
OK, lessee, they left out the (r) twice, they used a possessive, and they used their own trademarks in a negative context. Time for NAI(r) to sue themselves.
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Was it Knuth who said, "Programs equal algorithms plus data structures"? And I'd say the data structures are the more important. A good data structure can mean the difference between an algorithm that zips along at O(n) and one that crawls at O(n**2) or worse.
--
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Are the sets of things that can be patented and things that can be copyrighted mutually exclusive? Or can you patent the 'process' and copyright a specific 'implementation' of it?
Patents and copyrights are orthogonal; neither diminishes or augments the right to the other. I could, for instance, patent a process, copyright a book describing the process, and trademark a name for the process. Trade secrets, OTOH, are in fact mutually exclusive to patents: a patent discloses the invention, and then it isn't a secret anymore.
A GIF implementation would be subject to the author's copyright, unless released to the public domain; it would also be subject to Unisys's patent. One would need a license under the author's copyright and under Unisys's patent.
--
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47 USC Section 227 seems to apply to GPS-triggered wireless advertising. If it does, then what the CNN article describes may be illegal.
In particular, section (b)(1)(A)(iii) says: "It shall be unlawful...to make any call using...an artificial or prerecorded voice...to any telephone number assigned to a paging service, cellular telephone service, specialized mobile radio service, or other radio common carrier service, or any service for which the called party is charged for the call."
This paragraph also applies to an "automatic telephone dialing system", but it doesn't appear to me that a GPS-triggered dialer would fall within the definition of that term in section (a)(1). So the marketroids could escape this clause by using real people.
Section (b)(3) establishes a right of private action "if otherwise permitted by the laws or rules of court of a State", with statutory damages of $500 or actual damages, whichever is greater.
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The similarity of the name to PS/2 might have been a factor: it created the impression that one needed a PS/2 to run OS/2. Also, OS/2 1.x was not marketed well. One couldn't just walk into Egghead Software and pick up a copy of OS/2. Finally, the "DOS Coffin" in 1.x was not compatible enough with real DOS.
Free-form file names, bundled Internet software, full-featured GUI: J. Random Luser probably thinks these are Windows innovations. Yet OS/2 had all of these before Windows did. Shame. OS/2 could have been a contender.
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Quote: "A CD has much higher fidelity, liner notes, graphics. It's not going to be threatened by a cruddy MP3 file."
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You might have signed some kind of legal agreement when you were hired. It may, or may not, lay claim to intellectual property you develop on your own time. I certainly hope you didn't throw those papers away.
If your employer makes no such claim, then I think there's a way out. Make the changes on your own time. Then bring them into work. You'd then hold copyright to your changes, and you could license them to your employer under the GPL.
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True; the bricks have traces of uranium and thorium among other things...but the wood contains traces of carbon 14.
You just can't win this game.
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But Slashdot is just a geeks' nest. I get the feeling the Feds aren't going to care, especially if it turns out that M$ is behind this.
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I don't think a protocol can itself be protected in a GPLish way, unless some part of it is patented. The name, however, is another story. Register the name as a trademark, and then license the name only for use with compatible implementations.
The US Department of Defense did something like this with the Ada name. You can superset or subset Ada all you want, but you can't call the resulting language "Ada." (I shudder at the thought of supersetting Ada, but that's a topic for another thread.)
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It should instead indicate post #87.
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I'd really like to see that ruling. It defies logic.
It also seems to defy the law, which permits a copy to be made if "such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner."
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This ruling did not turn on a disclaimer of warranty, which the Maryland UCITA bars in some cases. It turned, rather, on a limitation of liability, which the Maryland UCITA permits. To quote the ruling: "the provision limiting [the plaintiff's] damages to recovery of the purchase price was not unconscionable."
Of course Maryland law != Washington law, and a Washington Supreme Court ruling is not a binding precedent in other states. Nonetheless, courts in common-law legal systems sometimes rely on each other's rulings for guidance. A similar ruling in Maryland may offer an out to free software developers trying to avoid a ruinous lawsuit.
--
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The UCITA as enacted in Maryland provides, in sections 21-401 et seq., for five warranties:
21-401: implied warranty of noninterference with the licensee's enjoyment of the licensed information and of noninfringement of third party copyrights, patent rights, or other rights;
21-402: express warranties created by advertising claims, samples, and the like; this is essentially a truth in advertising provision;
21-403: implied warranty of merchantability of a computer program;
21-404: implied warranty of accuracy of informational content;
21-405: implied warranty of fitness for a particular purpose and of system integration.
The implied warranty in 21-401 can be disclaimed, in accordance with subsection 21-401 (D), with conspicuous language such as "THERE IS NO WARRANTY AGAINST INTERFERENCE WITH YOUR ENJOYMENT OF THE INFORMATION OR AGAINST INFRINGEMENT."
Section 21-406 provides the conditions for disclaiming the warranties in sections 21-402 through 21-405. Here are the shoals that providers of free software need to steer around. Subsections (A) through (G) provide language that may be used to disclaim the warranties. Subsections (H) through (J), which are present only in the Maryland version, bar the disclaimer of the warranties of merchantability (21-403) and fitness (21-405) in "consumer contracts."
Sections (H) through (J) are the killers; but there's a safe harbor. Subsection (K) provides that "The provisions of [sections] 21-403 and 21-405 do not apply to...an information/computer program provided for no fee, unless [it] is provided with the sale/lease of goods, services, or another information/program." So the creator of free-as-in-beer software need not worry about 21-403 and 21-405.
Furthermore, 21-803(A)(1) provides that "an agreement may provide for remedies...in substitution for those provided in this title and may limit or alter the damages recoverable, such as by...limiting remedies to returning or delivering copies and repayment of the contract fee." This clause, which is present in the unmodified UCITA, may be the salvation of free software in UCITA states.
Here, then, are my proposals to modify free software licenses such as the GPL:
Include language such as "THERE IS NO WARRANTY AGAINST INTERFERENCE WITH YOUR ENJOYMENT OF THE INFORMATION OR AGAINST INFRINGEMENT," as provided in 21-401;
To cover the other implied warranties insofar as they apply to licenses that are not "consumer contracts", include the language given in 21-406(B)(2): "EXCEPT FOR EXPRESS WARRANTIES STATED IN THIS CONTRACT, IF ANY, THIS `INFORMATION'/`COMPUTER PROGRAM' IS PROVIDED WITH ALL FAULTS, AND THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO SATISFACTORY QUALITY, PERFORMANCE, ACCURACY, AND EFFORT IS WITH THE USER" (the GPL already has similar language);
Include a provision that any damages arising from breach of express or implied warranty be limited to refund of the purchase price, if any.
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One can still find source code for a version of ARC, and it compiles under my Linux installation.
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The Deflate, Implode, and Reduce compression methods can (AFAIK & IANAL) be implemented without patent infringement. Shrinking is LZW based, and we all know what that means.
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Maybe QNX should have used 31337 5p3@|< for their crypt function?
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I think those who post about what the law (statue or case law) is, as distinct from what a just law should be, should be able to provide a citation. www.law.cornell.edu is your friend.
That goes for lawyers as well as IANALers. Indeed it goes double for lawyers, who have no excuse for not backing up their assertions.
Finally, anyone who takes any Slashdot posting as professional advice, even if the poster is a lawyer, needs to see a shrink as well as a lawyer.
--
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The UCITA isn't law yet. Virginia has passed it and the governor has signed it, but it doesn't take effect for two years.
It's a design patent. The bar is somewhat lower for design patents than for utility patents. The term is also shorter: 14 years from issue.
Might it be possible, though, to build a connector that fits with the match to this one, but doesn't infringe the patent? Say, by making the body square instead of round, or leaving out that indentation on one side?
The RLE compression patent to which Gailly refers is "4056828: Run length encoding and decoding methods and means", filed by - you guessed it - Xerox.
The comp.compression FAQ, which Gailly maintains, mentions patent 4,586,027 as "[covering] run-length encoding in its most primitive form."
The good news is that the FAQ is incorrect. Patent 4,586,027 does not cover RLE as such, but a variant in which the run length is placed before and after the compressed run. This allows the decompressor to read the stream backwards, as from a magnetic tape, and still correctly decompress the stream. All of the independent claims make some mention of "front and back" or "front and end."
Moreover, this patent expired in 1998 for nonpayment of maintenance fees.
There is a constitutional problem with shortening outstanding patents. Patents are regarded as "property" and the Fifth Amendment says, among other things, "...nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
In my experience, Borland's "optimizer" doesn't optimize. bcc -O and bcc -O2 don't produce faster or smaller code than just plain bcc.
The resulting code is better than unoptimized GCC, but not as good as GCC with -O2. GCC produces rather inefficient code and relies on its optimizer to clean it up.
Something called "X-Box" sounds like it ought to be running the X Window System.
I smell a lawsuit....