Please note that the discussion is not only about article 52 (which prohibits patenting of programs) but also article 33. The basic proposal (page 30) of the conference intends to change it in a way, that the EPO may itself change article 52!
Bernhard Lang writes:
is proposed by EPO, so that it can change the EPC (european patent
convention, i.e. the very text under discussion) to put it in
agreement with other international treaties. Agreement is of course
what the EPO considers as agreement. For example, if EPC 52.2
modification does not pass, but EPC 33 does, EPO could decide that its
interpretation of the TRIPS agreement requires to remove EPC 52.2 and
allows patenting software, or what else.
Given the past record of the EPO, their propensity to bend rules
that have been fixed, you can guess what will happen if you give them
the right to change the rules according to their own assessment of the
situation.
By the way, it is not clear that all countries are aware of what is
hidden in the proposed modification of 33. More national lobbying and
information has beenshould be done on that issue.
Please note that the discussion is not only about article 52 (which prohibits patenting of programs) but also article 33. The basic proposal of the conference intends to change it in a way, that the EPO may itself change article 52!
Bernhard Lang writes:
is proposed by EPO, so that it can change the EPC (european patent
convention, i.e. the very text under discussion) to put it in
agreement with other international treaties. Agreement is of course
what the EPO considers as agreement. For example, if EPC 52.2
modification does not pass, but EPC 33 does, EPO could decide that its
interpretation of the TRIPS agreement requires to remove EPC 52.2 and
allows patenting software, or what else.
Given the past record of the EPO, their propensity to bend rules
that have been fixed, you can guess what will happen if you give them
the right to change the rules according to their own assessment of the
situation.
By the way, it is not clear that all countries are aware of what is
hidden in the proposed modification of 33. More national lobbying and
information has beenshould be done on that issue.
no, if You're really concerned, don't be the 58.000th to sign the petition. if You're living in europe, pls take part in the consultation of the "Directorate General for the Internal Market" about the "patentability of computer-implemented inventions". This commission is outside the patent offices and they are asking specifically for opinions from european companies and organisations about software patents.
- the petition has already 52.000 signatures (pls sign if You haven't done it yet. it hasn't been mentioned on slashdot ever, even i submitted it several times)
- eurolinux is not just against a software patent system similar to the US, but against any patents on software and algorithms.
if You haven't signed yet, please help to fill up the 50.000:
This petition is directed to the European Parliament. Its goal is to warn European Authorities against the dangers of software patents. This petition is supported by the EuroLinux Alliance together with European companies and non-profit associations. Please make this petition well known to everybody concerned.
probably the biggest concern of sun in open sourcing solaris is the fact, that the evil guys can search the source at once for all the vulnerabilities. this would neither be good for the reputation of sun and neither open source.
this is unlike linux and *BSD, which got audited over the years, so holes are showing up one by one, not a whole bunch, which might result in combination to an ever bigger vulnerability.
i know kevin downloaded the solaris source, but i don't have a clue if he published it to the cracker scene. if this would be the case kevin might have helped in open sourcing solaris, as sun could be pretty sure every hacker would have already looked at it.
ok, it was 4 years ago, but still a nice thought:)
the number of vulnaribilities which show up in securityfocus.com show that this is really necessary for MS to get back ANY reputation in security. the securityfocus-list shows 29 holes for microsofts IIS in the years 1998-1999. for apache there are two, both from 1996.
it's hard to use this list to compare linux vs. NT, because lots of the bugs listed for the operating systems are in add-ons and third-party products.
the nearest statistical comparison of openrating-system-security is on attritions web-defacement-counter. in the overall OS-count from august 1999 to present Win-NT is leading clearly with 55%, followed by linux with 19% and solaris with 13%. source: http://www.attrition.org/mirror/att rition/os.html
these total number of defacements should also take into account, that there are more webservers running on linux than on NT, as can be seen here.
open source brings a security-problem which is not as big in closed source: it's far easier to write trojans. but this risk is small compared to backdoors intentionally implemented by clodes-source software manufactures. a good example is the international version of lotus notes where the NSA knows 24bit of the 64bit-key.
there's one strategy of intel which is touching crusoe, that's those silly p3-optimized internet-plug-ins, f.e. weboutfitter. the crusoe is targeted on the internet and will not be able to display those websites.
transmeta stated themselves in their crusoe-introduction how important it is to be 100% compatible and to be able to display the "cool website of the day" (page 17) every plugin which needs some SIMD-extension (single instruction, multiple data) like 3d-now or MMX will reduce those 100% from crusoe.
1. what do they mean by "internet plug-ins" ? the can't mean that a CPU runs netscape or IE plug-ins.
2. where are the q3-benchmarks ? they're mentioned in the introduction of crusoebenchmarkreport_1-18-00.pdf but i can't find them anywhere. looks like crusoe is lousy in floating point.
Frank Hecker and JWZ for making mozilla happen
on
Category: Unsung Hero
·
· Score: 1
for convincing netscape-management to open up the source of navigator.
heckers paper which convinced the management is in here. the whole story is here.
the event was important in the history of open source, as it was the first major company opening it's source and many followed by now ( opencascade.org, zope.org )
ever since i used vim the 1st time i've been thinking zillion times in any other text-editor "damn, this X minutes work would have been:%s/"%$"%%$/&$&$/goi; in vim now"
for being 100% usable without any meta-keys! doesn't matter what strange old-unix-box-keyboard You find in front of You, to what machine You telnet and what TERM You've set, it just works.
the BSD-license keeps software only free in copyright-terms, it doesn't mention software-patents at all. it would still be possible to charge a license-fee for every single copy of f.e. freeBSD in case somebody finds it violates a patent.
this is not possible with linux, as paragraph #7 of the GPL prohibits distribution of the software in this case.
another license which is more free in the patents issue is the MPL/NPL. here the original author grants the user a license for all his patents necessary to use the software.
somthing which really should be changed, is that the open source definition doesn't mention patents at all. software is not free unless it's free of patent alfortihms or comes with a license to use them.
software is protected under the copyright- and the patent-law. ( unlike physical machines, which are just protected by patents ). the copyright-law is necessary for free software to be able to enforce the copyleft to keep it free. the patent-law doesn't bring any benefit to free software. and we should as soon as possible start to learn how to deal with it.
patent-law gets promoted to foster innovations. i think this is plain silly. look it the innovations which where used to build the internet. the internet's basement is free software (apache, bind, sendmail, linux, *bsd, perl, php, majordomo,... ) and all these didn't get developed BECAUSE of patent-law, but DESPITE it.
we need to deal with patents in all open source licenses and in the open source definition! write to Your congress-guy today!
don't forget that there's also the universal drive interface on the way. this is an effort from sun, intel, compaq, HP, IBM, NCR and SCO to make drivers portable between plattforms and operating systems. a proof of concept port has been done by intel.
ok, RMS doesn't like it for pushing binary-only drivers. so this is not a good thing for "free software", but just for the linux-community. microsoft is not going to like UDI, because one of the main advantages of windows is, that it has drivers for everything. well, anyway i guess microsoft isn't affraid as much of linux than of the unification of the unix-market in progress, around open source and linux. unix can only win against windows when 10 different unix-vendoers stop reinventing the wheel 10 times. and this is happening with apache, samba, xfree86 and somehow also linux. solaris x86, freebsd, SCOs openserver and unixware (and soon AIX ) are all able to run linux binaries. so users can stick with their unix-of-choice and still run the bulk of linux-software. but guess for which plattform developers are going to publish their software first... and this is going to have long-term impact.
ups, well, as i'm OT anyway, doesn anybody know why IBM did port linux to S/390 and not AIX ?
the real reason why win-NT uptimes is just 49 days
on
Server Uptimes Ranked
·
· Score: 2
the client gets the uptime from the gettickcount-API-call which doesn't return more than 49days. so this doesn't mean NT and W2K crash after 49 days like win9x does.(information from the maintainer of the project)
if You sort the complete list by OS, several entries of NT with 49 days uptime show up, indicating that it's so unusual to reach those 49 days and more.
remember also that NT has to be rebootet more often because of silly things, like changing the default gateway. on the other hand those intentional reboots might lower the probability of a crash.
john carmack is without doubt the most important person in linux- and open source-gaming. he has released doom and quake1-3 on linux and lots of other plattforms, he gas GPLed doom and quake1. he's defending openGL against directx. imagine everybody using directx, no more easy loki-porting to linux someday.
they ported something from AIX to OS/390, so what ?
this is the complete list of openrating systems running on S/390: http://s390.ibm.com/software/
reasons for this might be, that linux-kernel, gcc and glibc have been written with portability in mind and AIXs not. or the S/390 department had some problems getting the AIX-source:)
redhat just opened an office in germany, but they don't get anywhere until they get one thing done:ISDN.
i just looked in the redhat-sollution-db for ISDN: 2 hits, the best was from 9/14/99, lots of URLs where to find help on the net.
ISDN-setup is in SUSEs YAST for years. nearly every german company has ISDN, most linux-users are "power-users" => have ISDN at home. (it's just lots more common here than in the US )
Slashdot Mirror
There's also a list of 10.000 granted software patents + some statistics generated from them.
Bernhard Lang writes:
is proposed by EPO, so that it can change the EPC (european patent convention, i.e. the very text under discussion) to put it in agreement with other international treaties. Agreement is of course what the EPO considers as agreement. For example, if EPC 52.2 modification does not pass, but EPC 33 does, EPO could decide that its interpretation of the TRIPS agreement requires to remove EPC 52.2 and allows patenting software, or what else. Given the past record of the EPO, their propensity to bend rules that have been fixed, you can guess what will happen if you give them the right to change the rules according to their own assessment of the situation.
By the way, it is not clear that all countries are aware of what is hidden in the proposed modification of 33. More national lobbying and information has beenshould be done on that issue.
Bernhard Lang writes:
is proposed by EPO, so that it can change the EPC (european patent convention, i.e. the very text under discussion) to put it in agreement with other international treaties. Agreement is of course what the EPO considers as agreement. For example, if EPC 52.2 modification does not pass, but EPC 33 does, EPO could decide that its interpretation of the TRIPS agreement requires to remove EPC 52.2 and allows patenting software, or what else. Given the past record of the EPO, their propensity to bend rules that have been fixed, you can guess what will happen if you give them the right to change the rules according to their own assessment of the situation.
By the way, it is not clear that all countries are aware of what is hidden in the proposed modification of 33. More national lobbying and information has beenshould be done on that issue.
Also available in french and german.
This is really something, where You can change something, don't just sign the petition and think it'll all get fine.
- the reason for collecting the opinions is the conference on 20.-29. november this year, where the european patent offices will make their proposal for changing the european patent treaty. at the moment they want to change article 52 in a way to allow software patents.
- the petition has already 52.000 signatures (pls sign if You haven't done it yet. it hasn't been mentioned on slashdot ever, even i submitted it several times)
- eurolinux is not just against a software patent system similar to the US, but against any patents on software and algorithms.
if You haven't signed yet, please help to fill up the 50.000:
This petition is directed to the European Parliament. Its goal is to warn European Authorities against the dangers of software patents. This petition is supported by the EuroLinux Alliance together with European companies and non-profit associations. Please make this petition well known to everybody concerned.
http://petition.eurolinux.org/index_html.
this is unlike linux and *BSD, which got audited over the years, so holes are showing up one by one, not a whole bunch, which might result in combination to an ever bigger vulnerability.
i know kevin downloaded the solaris source, but i don't have a clue if he published it to the cracker scene. if this would be the case kevin might have helped in open sourcing solaris, as sun could be pretty sure every hacker would have already looked at it.
ok, it was 4 years ago, but still a nice thought :)
it's hard to use this list to compare linux vs. NT, because lots of the bugs listed for the operating systems are in add-ons and third-party products.
the nearest statistical comparison of openrating-system-security is on attritions web-defacement-counter. in the overall OS-count from august 1999 to present Win-NT is leading clearly with 55%, followed by linux with 19% and solaris with 13%. source: http://www.attrition.org/mirror/att rition/os.html
these total number of defacements should also take into account, that there are more webservers running on linux than on NT, as can be seen here.
open source brings a security-problem which is not as big in closed source: it's far easier to write trojans. but this risk is small compared to backdoors intentionally implemented by clodes-source software manufactures. a good example is the international version of lotus notes where the NSA knows 24bit of the 64bit-key.
transmeta stated themselves in their crusoe-introduction how important it is to be 100% compatible and to be able to display the "cool website of the day" (page 17) every plugin which needs some SIMD-extension (single instruction, multiple data) like 3d-now or MMX will reduce those 100% from crusoe.
2. where are the q3-benchmarks ? they're mentioned in the introduction of crusoebenchmarkreport_1-18-00.pdf but i can't find them anywhere. looks like crusoe is lousy in floating point.
Behind every good man is a good woman!
heckers paper which convinced the management is in here. the whole story is here.
the event was important in the history of open source, as it was the first major company opening it's source and many followed by now ( opencascade.org, zope.org )
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"submission.html" 12 lines, 723 characters
hjkl me !
for GPLing doom and quake, bringing quake3 for linux shrink-wrapped in the shops, promoting openGL vs. MS-directX
no need to explain, You have it in Your shelf anyway ( i think >500.000 sold )
this is not possible with linux, as paragraph #7 of the GPL prohibits distribution of the software in this case.
another license which is more free in the patents issue is the MPL/NPL. here the original author grants the user a license for all his patents necessary to use the software.
somthing which really should be changed, is that the open source definition doesn't mention patents at all. software is not free unless it's free of patent alfortihms or comes with a license to use them.
software is protected under the copyright- and the patent-law. ( unlike physical machines, which are just protected by patents ). the copyright-law is necessary for free software to be able to enforce the copyleft to keep it free. the patent-law doesn't bring any benefit to free software. and we should as soon as possible start to learn how to deal with it.
patent-law gets promoted to foster innovations. i think this is plain silly. look it the innovations which where used to build the internet. the internet's basement is free software (apache, bind, sendmail, linux, *bsd, perl, php, majordomo, ... ) and all these didn't get developed BECAUSE of patent-law, but DESPITE it.
we need to deal with patents in all open source licenses and in the open source definition! write to Your congress-guy today!
ok, RMS doesn't like it for pushing binary-only drivers. so this is not a good thing for "free software", but just for the linux-community. microsoft is not going to like UDI, because one of the main advantages of windows is, that it has drivers for everything. well, anyway i guess microsoft isn't affraid as much of linux than of the unification of the unix-market in progress, around open source and linux. unix can only win against windows when 10 different unix-vendoers stop reinventing the wheel 10 times. and this is happening with apache, samba, xfree86 and somehow also linux.
solaris x86, freebsd, SCOs openserver and unixware (and soon AIX ) are all able to run linux binaries. so users can stick with their unix-of-choice and still run the bulk of linux-software. but guess for which plattform developers are going to publish their software first... and this is going to have long-term impact.
ups, well, as i'm OT anyway, doesn anybody know why IBM did port linux to S/390 and not AIX ?
if You sort the complete list by OS, several entries of NT with 49 days uptime show up, indicating that it's so unusual to reach those 49 days and more.
remember also that NT has to be rebootet more often because of silly things, like changing the default gateway. on the other hand those intentional reboots might lower the probability of a crash.
linux-mags linux howto can be found here
this is the complete list of openrating systems running on S/390: http://s390.ibm.com/software/
reasons for this might be, that linux-kernel, gcc and glibc have been written with portability in mind and AIXs not. or the S/390 department had some problems getting the AIX-source :)
i just looked in the redhat-sollution-db for ISDN: 2 hits, the best was from 9/14/99, lots of URLs where to find help on the net.
ISDN-setup is in SUSEs YAST for years. nearly every german company has ISDN, most linux-users are "power-users" => have ISDN at home. (it's just lots more common here than in the US )
vs.
SuSE will use the investments to set up new sales and support offices worldwide.
and "worldwide" in this case probably doesn't mean europe :)