On this "anniversary" of Open Source, we should be thinking about what has been accomplished and what needs to be done next. For instance, while the OS community has proven the value of providing open implementations, it is now time to start protecting and defending the community's right and ability to create those implmenations in the future. The best way to do this is to start pursuing "Open Ideas" or "Open Patents."
In recent years there has been an explosion of patents and patent applications by companies that seek to monopolize the exploitation of ideas and methods in software. With every patent granted, the scope of future OS projects is limited just a little bit more. Without going into flame wars about the patent system, I can say that there is something useful that we can do today to protect OS in the future.
A patent can be prevented if one can prove "prior art" exists that describes the method that the filer wishes to patent and, the USPTO accepts "Internet Publications" as prior art, using the "posted date" on messages as the date of priority. Thus, if people with good ideas document those ideas on the Web, from the instant that the description of a method is posted, then all future patents on that method are blocked forever unless the inventor can prove that they came up with the idea before the posting on the web. Thus, by adopting a discipline of identifying and posting ideas that others might try to patent, we can establish a collection of "Open Ideas" or "Open Patents" that block others from monopolizing the methods in the future.
It would also be useful for those in the OS community to become active in reviewing new patent applications as they are published by the USPTO every Thursday, and use the established procedures for "third party filing of prior art" to ensure that patent examiners don't issue patents on ideas that should remain Open.
Open Source isn't enough. We need Open Ideas to enable the Open Source of the future.
The site claims to be: "The number one Amateur Science page!" This is a bit depressing if true. I sure hope that amateur scientists are working more useful problems than blowing things up... I can't help thinking about Vannevar Bush's article in the July 1945 Atlantic Monthly in which he surveyed the possible uses for organized technological development and concluded that "Memex" - the source of the hypertext idea, was the most important thing to work on. What would a similar analysis uncover as the most important problem for technology and "Amateur Scientists" today? I don't think it would have anything to do with blowing things up...
I'm surprised that people have been so shallow in their search for prior art on this patent. There was a great deal of... * Medio Magazine, the first "broad market" CDROM based magazine which published between 1993 and 1995 had, from day one a "frame" based interface that anticipated that which was later implemented in HTML. * There were many "bookreader" or "document" reader products that worked on old VT100's that would display a "frame" of contents, or menu, at the top of the screen and then only repaint a portion of the screen when pages changed. I can't remember the names after all these years, but I think one was called "folio" and another was "flipbook", there was one built at Digital in the Methods and Tools group. Does anyone remember what it was called? * Microsoft had a multimedia authoring package from about 1992 on that I think was called "Blackhawk"... It allowed you to set up "frames" on the page just like HTML later did. At Medio, we used an "extended" version of HTML which got converted into the codes that the MS tool needed... So, that's even prior use with an HTML variant. * The numerous forms packages, FMS, TDMS, DECforms, etc. were all used to build "frame-based" interfaces on VT100 initially and later Bitmapped terminals. * There used to be an emacs package called "info" that had some modes that would allow you to show a pane of links at the bottom of a page. etc. etc.
I could go on, but this is really ridiculous.
The prior art cited above can be used to blow out the independent claims of the patent and should be used to force a formal reexamination by the patent office.
If you want to bust this patent, find some old farts who can remember things that happened before 1996 when 90% of the folk in this industry today were still doing something else. Frames aren't new.
Clearly the author of the SBC patent didn't know much history since the patent claims that SGML was "one of the first" markup languages and was developed by ISO... It wasn't. Even newbies to this industry should remember that the first application of UNIX was to do markup based text processing in the Bell Labs Patent office. runnoff, troff, nroff, etc. all came before SGML and Goldfarb, of IBM, had been touting predecessors to SGML for years before it got anywhere near ISO (which doesn't "develop" standards...).
This patent is garbage, as are so many others that have been issued lately. It is really too bad that this junk ends up giving the entire system of patenting a bad name. The base idea of patents is a very good one, but it has been abused to the point where it seems like we'll never be able to get from the system the value that it was intended to provide.
> if your company's existence depends on selling > software that a bunch of volunteers can cobble > together themselves, just what the FUCK is your > justification for existence? You're a leech on > the ass of society.
I get so tired of this line of argument. I've been writing software since the 70's and worked on the first versions of much of the software you use every day. My existence is easily justified by the vast improvements in people's lives that have resulted from my efforts. While you may be able to copy what I and many others have created, and while you may be able to implement dozens of marginal improvements to what we've created, the fact that we did create these things cannot be diminished simply because we were paid to do so.
I have been terribly disppointed with the the Open Source effort in that it has simply not met the promise that many of us originally hoped it would. Most of the Open Source work I've seen has been derivative. i.e. copies of or extensions to ideas that originated in commerical efforts. There have been precious few really new and groundbreaking bits of software that came from Open Source. The result is that Open Source has become, at least for me, a bit distasteful. The movement smells of theft and of an effort to diminish the people and companies who make the real contributions in our industry.
Frankly, I'm puzzled by this. It seems to me that the Open Source effort should be able to free people up to think out of the box and try risky ventures that commercial groups wouldn't take on. The result should be an outpouring of original contributions, not just in implementation, but also in conception. But, this is not what has happened. Can it be that people are really only motivated to excel when presented with the prospect of financial gain? Is this a fundamental flaw in the philosophy behind Open Source?
>You're a leech on the ass of society.
I am no leech. If anything, society leeches off people like me. We create, for money, the things society needs and we provide those things at costs far below the benefits that are received from their use.
When reading a patent, the interesting part is the claims, not the summary or the sometimes dozens of pages and figures that precede the claims. Thus, ShortSpecialBus's conclusions, being based only on the summary, have little basis. To read the claims, look lower on the cited page and click on the link to show claims. That is where you will find the meat of this patent.
bob wyman
(Note: I hold four patents as sole inventor and have some experience in this matter.)
Given that msnbc is the primary source of information for most of the commentators here, much of this converstation isn't surprising...
www.FindLaw.com provides complete and timely PDF's of all original filings, briefs, etc. as well as mp3's etc of testimony. Take a look at:
http://news.findlaw.com/legalnews/us/election/elec tion2000.html
They have every filing from every legal action related to the issue.
Today's SCOTUS ruling can be found at: http://news.findlaw.com/cnn/docs/election2000/usc0 0836final.pdf
symlinks are ancient technology, first implemented in Multix I believe. Mapping drives to directories was also common and supported in a variety of old DEC operating systems as well as OS's other than Unix. Many of the NT developers (i.e. Cutler and Co.) came from DEC and had implemented both features there or had experience with them.
bob wyman
Slashdot Mirror
On this "anniversary" of Open Source, we should be thinking about what has been accomplished and what needs to be done next. For instance, while the OS community has proven the value of providing open implementations, it is now time to start protecting and defending the community's right and ability to create those implmenations in the future. The best way to do this is to start pursuing "Open Ideas" or "Open Patents."
In recent years there has been an explosion of patents and patent applications by companies that seek to monopolize the exploitation of ideas and methods in software. With every patent granted, the scope of future OS projects is limited just a little bit more. Without going into flame wars about the patent system, I can say that there is something useful that we can do today to protect OS in the future.
A patent can be prevented if one can prove "prior art" exists that describes the method that the filer wishes to patent and, the USPTO accepts "Internet Publications" as prior art, using the "posted date" on messages as the date of priority. Thus, if people with good ideas document those ideas on the Web, from the instant that the description of a method is posted, then all future patents on that method are blocked forever unless the inventor can prove that they came up with the idea before the posting on the web. Thus, by adopting a discipline of identifying and posting ideas that others might try to patent, we can establish a collection of "Open Ideas" or "Open Patents" that block others from monopolizing the methods in the future.
It would also be useful for those in the OS community to become active in reviewing new patent applications as they are published by the USPTO every Thursday, and use the established procedures for "third party filing of prior art" to ensure that patent examiners don't issue patents on ideas that should remain Open.
Open Source isn't enough. We need Open Ideas to enable the Open Source of the future.
bob wyman
See: http://www.pubsub.org for more info.
The site claims to be: "The number one Amateur Science page!" This is a bit depressing if true. I sure hope that amateur scientists are working more useful problems than blowing things up...
I can't help thinking about Vannevar Bush's article in the July 1945 Atlantic Monthly in which he surveyed the possible uses for organized technological development and concluded that "Memex" - the source of the hypertext idea, was the most important thing to work on. What would a similar analysis uncover as the most important problem for technology and "Amateur Scientists" today? I don't think it would have anything to do with blowing things up...
bob wyman
I'm surprised that people have been so shallow in their search for prior art on this patent. There was a great deal of...
* Medio Magazine, the first "broad market" CDROM based magazine which published between 1993 and 1995 had, from day one a "frame" based interface that anticipated that which was later implemented in HTML.
* There were many "bookreader" or "document" reader products that worked on old VT100's that would display a "frame" of contents, or menu, at the top of the screen and then only repaint a portion of the screen when pages changed. I can't remember the names after all these years, but I think one was called "folio" and another was "flipbook", there was one built at Digital in the Methods and Tools group. Does anyone remember what it was called?
* Microsoft had a multimedia authoring package from about 1992 on that I think was called "Blackhawk"... It allowed you to set up "frames" on the page just like HTML later did. At Medio, we used an "extended" version of HTML which got converted into the codes that the MS tool needed... So, that's even prior use with an HTML variant.
* The numerous forms packages, FMS, TDMS, DECforms, etc. were all used to build "frame-based" interfaces on VT100 initially and later Bitmapped terminals.
* There used to be an emacs package called "info" that had some modes that would allow you to show a pane of links at the bottom of a page.
etc. etc.
I could go on, but this is really ridiculous.
The prior art cited above can be used to blow out the independent claims of the patent and should be used to force a formal reexamination by the patent office.
If you want to bust this patent, find some old farts who can remember things that happened before 1996 when 90% of the folk in this industry today were still doing something else. Frames aren't new.
Clearly the author of the SBC patent didn't know much history since the patent claims that SGML was "one of the first" markup languages and was developed by ISO... It wasn't. Even newbies to this industry should remember that the first application of UNIX was to do markup based text processing in the Bell Labs Patent office. runnoff, troff, nroff, etc. all came before SGML and Goldfarb, of IBM, had been touting predecessors to SGML for years before it got anywhere near ISO (which doesn't "develop" standards...).
This patent is garbage, as are so many others that have been issued lately. It is really too bad that this junk ends up giving the entire system of patenting a bad name. The base idea of patents is a very good one, but it has been abused to the point where it seems like we'll never be able to get from the system the value that it was intended to provide.
bob wyman
> if your company's existence depends on selling
> software that a bunch of volunteers can cobble
> together themselves, just what the FUCK is your
> justification for existence? You're a leech on
> the ass of society.
I get so tired of this line of argument. I've been writing software since the 70's and worked on the first versions of much of the software you use every day. My existence is easily justified by the vast improvements in people's lives that have resulted from my efforts. While you may be able to copy what I and many others have created, and while you may be able to implement dozens of marginal improvements to what we've created, the fact that we did create these things cannot be diminished simply because we were paid to do so.
I have been terribly disppointed with the the Open Source effort in that it has simply not met the promise that many of us originally hoped it would. Most of the Open Source work I've seen has been derivative. i.e. copies of or extensions to ideas that originated in commerical efforts. There have been precious few really new and groundbreaking bits of software that came from Open Source. The result is that Open Source has become, at least for me, a bit distasteful. The movement smells of theft and of an effort to diminish the people and companies who make the real contributions in our industry.
Frankly, I'm puzzled by this. It seems to me that the Open Source effort should be able to free people up to think out of the box and try risky ventures that commercial groups wouldn't take on. The result should be an outpouring of original contributions, not just in implementation, but also in conception. But, this is not what has happened. Can it be that people are really only motivated to excel when presented with the prospect of financial gain? Is this a fundamental flaw in the philosophy behind Open Source?
>You're a leech on the ass of society.
I am no leech. If anything, society leeches off people like me. We create, for money, the things society needs and we provide those things at costs far below the benefits that are received from their use.
bob wyman
When reading a patent, the interesting part is the claims, not the summary or the sometimes dozens of pages and figures that precede the claims. Thus, ShortSpecialBus's conclusions, being based only on the summary, have little basis. To read the claims, look lower on the cited page and click on the link to show claims. That is where you will find the meat of this patent. bob wyman (Note: I hold four patents as sole inventor and have some experience in this matter.)
Given that msnbc is the primary source of information for most of the commentators here, much of this converstation isn't surprising... www.FindLaw.com provides complete and timely PDF's of all original filings, briefs, etc. as well as mp3's etc of testimony. Take a look at:c tion2000.html 0 0836final.pdf
http://news.findlaw.com/legalnews/us/election/ele
They have every filing from every legal action related to the issue. Today's SCOTUS ruling can be found at:
http://news.findlaw.com/cnn/docs/election2000/usc
bob wyman
symlinks are ancient technology, first implemented in Multix I believe. Mapping drives to directories was also common and supported in a variety of old DEC operating systems as well as OS's other than Unix. Many of the NT developers (i.e. Cutler and Co.) came from DEC and had implemented both features there or had experience with them. bob wyman