The license is free and includes a patent license. Just go read the FAQ linked from the story. Yes, there may still be an "evil sinister plan" hidden somewhere, but it's not the patents (unless their FAQ contradicts the actual license).
"Oh, BTW, you're violating several of our patents. Yes, we said you could use the open parts of our XML, but we didn't say you could use the patented parts."
According to the FAQ linked from the story, Microsoft gives you a perpetual patent license. I can't read the license itself, since I don't have Windows and it seems you can only view the license when installing.
This is why Photoshop CS is slower on the same hardware than Photohop 7 - and it's why we Mac users with our 8GB of RAM still can't use more than 2GB for Photoshop, even in Tiger, which will let apps access more than 2GB of RAM if they're 64-bit aware.
No, gui apps will not be able to do this under Tiger, for the simple reason that GUI libraries are not yet 64 bit aware. See this page for the full rundown.
No matter what happens with SCO's malicious patent crusade
SCO is saying nothing about patents, their lawsuit is about copyright. IBM did countersue based on (software) patent infringement, but that was just to pester them back, and has in se nothing to do with the SCO allegations.
IBM opened the 500 patents it opened without restriction.
No, they didn't. The restriction is that their license is only valid for open source. I may be a less strict restriction than Sun's, but it still is an important one.
Yeah - notice the date from the article - 2000. It's now five years later, Vorbis is certainly a viable competitor
I don't think it is in their eyes (nor is it in the eyes of many others). Not for technical reasons probably, but for commercial reasons.
nd no patent suit has been filed, despite Thompson's recent practice of enforcing its patents. Which implies that Vorbis does not infringe, though even Thompson had trouble believing it at first (which they've apparently overcome).
Not sure, maybe it's simply not worth it to them at this time. Anyway, my main point was that the mp3 patents definitely cover a lot more than just mp3. It's of course possible that ogg nevertheless managed to stay outside that minefield.
Actually, the dutch parliament told the dutch minister of economic affairs to vote against software patents. Brinkhorst, the dutch minister of economic affairs, then voted for software patents, because he doesn't give a shit about the democratic process. Dutch parliament then told him to change his vote in "against," he didn' t want to because that would mean losing face so instead he abstained.
No. Before the Council meeting in May, Brinkhorst told the Dutch Parliament that there was no problem with supporting the Council text, because it was a compromise between the Council and European Parliament and everyone was happy about it.
Afterwards, it became clear that this was wrong, and Brinkhorst claimed this was due to "an error in the word processing". Next, two motions were proposed: one to change the yes-vote into a no-vote, and another one to change it into an abstention. Only managed to get a majority in the Parliament.
They patented a ton of high level algorithms in fact, including compressing (using any compression algorithm) a sample in a loop until it can be represented in the desired number of bits, as long as you use spectral analysis up front and huffman coding (or another entropic encoder) inside the loop.
That's not specific to mp3 at all, that's more like a patent on constant bit rate encoding (if you use an entropic encoder inside the loop). The mp3 patent holders initially couldn't even believe themselves that ogg did not infringe on any of their (broad) patents.
The biggest story here is the way the European Parliament and associated croonies keep on trying to get this directive through the backdoor without no reference to the rules, law or democratic society.
It's the European Commission and Council of Ministers that keep trying to push it through. The European Parliament is the one that tried to stop it in September 2003.
Fisheries and Agriculture? The people behind this must be offering big backhanders to all involved to push this through at all costs, that's all I can say.
In principle, the fact that it's handled by agriculture and fisheries is not special.
It's because in May, the responsible ministers reached a political agreement on this text (sort of, anyway). Such a political agreement has no legal value however, and must still be turned into a "common position".
Normally, turning a political agreement in a common position is just a formality. That's the reason why it can be done by any kind of Council formation.
Of course, in this case we have the fact that Poland really abstained in May (although they were recorded as voting in favour) and that since November change of voting weights there no longer is a qualified majority because of this, the fact that the Dutch parliament asked its government to change the pro-vote into an abstention, a similar motion by the German Bundestag etc.
Diplomatic inertia is a powerful force to fight, however: political agreements are "always" turned into a common position, so they want to do it this time as well, even though it's completely against democratic principles.
Free Software wants a world without copyrights, where anyone can share the software. Copyright stands between Free Software and its goals. So it uses copyright the best way it can to achieve something close to these goals. The GPL is an artificial construct to get as close as possible to a state of no-copyright. If there were no copyright laws, the Free Software Foundation and GPL would no longer need to exist, as all software would in fact be free.
In a world without copyright, all software would be public domain and not Free in the sense of the GPL/FSF. It would be more like a BSD license without any requirement for attribution.
The Brussels-based Polish official said the same thing in December, which caused the responsible Polish minister to personally come to Brussels to block the decision back then. There's no guarantee he'll be able to do the same thing again, though.
Copyright and patents were intended to encourage people to make stuff that otherwise wouldn't be done. When people and organizations are willing to create an entire operating system and a collection of thousands of programs (GNU/Linux and the thousands of associated programs), the basic premise of copyright and patents is nullified.
First of all, patents have relatively little to do with open source or not. E.g. IRIS is company which has nothing to do with open source, which is very innovative and which doesn't want software patents. Patents are mainly big vs small, and not really open vs closed.
Next, Open Source and Free software do need copyright. They're built on it just as much as closed source software is.
Labour is lying/weaseling out. With "software as such", they mean "the source code of programs". Nobody in his right mind would ever pay to get such a patent. There is already US-style patenting, and they're legalising exactly that. There's nothing in the texts they support that would prevent negative effects for open source (or any other kind of software producers, for that matter). The last point about litigation is another pious wish.
Look here for a point-by-point analysis of a letter written by Patricia Hewitt, Labour MP.
Actually, they're primarily motivated by competition in the software sector. If you don't innovate, your competitor will. See e.g. the FTC study.
Additionally, one person's protection is another person's limitation. Patents allow one person to make money, but inhibit a lot of others (since they're per definition monopolies). As such, they discourage follow-up innovation (after all, to be able to use your work, you will have to pay to the owner of every other patented technique you use).
In the world of software, where almost all inovation is sequential as opposed to revolutionary, this has large negative consequences.
Newsflash: ALL patents are algorithms. Stop acting like this unique to computers. Chemical process patents, for example, are structurally and functionally indistinguishable and very obviously map into the same space as "software algorithms" and yet those are not considered controversial.
They're quite distinguishable. Suppose you have a patent on adding element A to B, wait a while and element C. Now suppose you have a patent on the software-implemented algorithm to add "A" and "B", wait a while and add "C". In the former case, the patent only applies if you are using those particular chemical elements. In the latter, it applies regardless of what A, B and C are, because a computer can't tell chemical reagent A from a bullet in Doom 3.
his is not an argument against anything. Everything machine is reducible to software, and every software is reducible to machine.
Please reduce a machine to make chocolate to software (+ a computer). You can't make chocolate with software. You need a special machine for that (of course the machine can be steered using software). It is however true that everything described in software can be turned into hardware (e.g. an fpga or an asic).
And that may exactly be the FTC report concluded that patents in the computer hardware industry and semi-conductors are generally considered to be not very efficient either.
Further, even though the intellectual achievement is quite similar (the routine and layout of the chips may require some extra time), in practice you often need either a chip fabrication line, or have to buy stock of those chips with someone else. In case of software development, almost the only investment that really counts is human capital. You don't have to setup a new assembly line for each program.
Quibbling over meaningless distinctions between identical classes of things is completely missing the point
There are indeed general problems with the patent system (e.g. triviality). However, software patents turn out to be especially sensitive to those issues, and they are in fact different. Otherwise, why would all those studies make a special case out of software?
But that's not really the point: AmigaOS is older than Linux, and it's still pretty useless.
It's not useless according to the posts I've read here from people who use it. And it's not up-to-date because it hasn't been seriously worked on the last 10 years (maybe more, I don't know, I've never been an Amiga user).
But other than the geek factor, what's the big deal over a new AmigaOS?
Couldn't you have said the same thing about Linux 10 years ago? Who says it will never be useful in the future? (at least if stays owned more than 1 day by the same company)
Does it read/render MS-Word and MS-Excel files (>95% of all features)? Does it save NeoOffice docs in MS-Office data formats, so Windows readers won't even notice the NeoOffice origins (for >95% of the features)?
It does all of that just as well (or just as badly) as OpenOffice, since it's plain OpenOffice with a Java GUI on top (instead of an X11 GUI).
No, not everything in Tiger will be 64 bit. Oversimplified: command line programs will be compilable for 64 bit, GUI programs won't be.
The kernel in Panther is already 64 bit in the most important sense, in that it can handle more than 4GB of memory. The second-most important aspect (support for user space programs with 64 bit address spaces) is being added in Tiger. I'm not sure what other 64 bitness you'd want in a kernel (apart from filesystem support, but that has nothing to do with G5 or 64 bit processors specifically and is already largely supported).
Slashdot Mirror
The license is free and includes a patent license. Just go read the FAQ linked from the story. Yes, there may still be an "evil sinister plan" hidden somewhere, but it's not the patents (unless their FAQ contradicts the actual license).
Thanks for the heads-up.
Afterwards, it became clear that this was wrong, and Brinkhorst claimed this was due to "an error in the word processing". Next, two motions were proposed: one to change the yes-vote into a no-vote, and another one to change it into an abstention. Only managed to get a majority in the Parliament.
That's not specific to mp3 at all, that's more like a patent on constant bit rate encoding (if you use an entropic encoder inside the loop). The mp3 patent holders initially couldn't even believe themselves that ogg did not infringe on any of their (broad) patents.
Normally, turning a political agreement in a common position is just a formality. That's the reason why it can be done by any kind of Council formation.
Of course, in this case we have the fact that Poland really abstained in May (although they were recorded as voting in favour) and that since November change of voting weights there no longer is a qualified majority because of this, the fact that the Dutch parliament asked its government to change the pro-vote into an abstention, a similar motion by the German Bundestag etc.
Diplomatic inertia is a powerful force to fight, however: political agreements are "always" turned into a common position, so they want to do it this time as well, even though it's completely against democratic principles.
The Brussels-based Polish official said the same thing in December, which caused the responsible Polish minister to personally come to Brussels to block the decision back then. There's no guarantee he'll be able to do the same thing again, though.
Next, Open Source and Free software do need copyright. They're built on it just as much as closed source software is.
Look here for a point-by-point analysis of a letter written by Patricia Hewitt, Labour MP.
Additionally, one person's protection is another person's limitation. Patents allow one person to make money, but inhibit a lot of others (since they're per definition monopolies). As such, they discourage follow-up innovation (after all, to be able to use your work, you will have to pay to the owner of every other patented technique you use).
In the world of software, where almost all inovation is sequential as opposed to revolutionary, this has large negative consequences.
And that may exactly be the FTC report concluded that patents in the computer hardware industry and semi-conductors are generally considered to be not very efficient either.
Further, even though the intellectual achievement is quite similar (the routine and layout of the chips may require some extra time), in practice you often need either a chip fabrication line, or have to buy stock of those chips with someone else. In case of software development, almost the only investment that really counts is human capital. You don't have to setup a new assembly line for each program.
There are indeed general problems with the patent system (e.g. triviality). However, software patents turn out to be especially sensitive to those issues, and they are in fact different. Otherwise, why would all those studies make a special case out of software?Yeah, like the Mac
The kernel in Panther is already 64 bit in the most important sense, in that it can handle more than 4GB of memory. The second-most important aspect (support for user space programs with 64 bit address spaces) is being added in Tiger. I'm not sure what other 64 bitness you'd want in a kernel (apart from filesystem support, but that has nothing to do with G5 or 64 bit processors specifically and is already largely supported).