In the real world, "innovation" means "build on the work of others" and patents are what you use to stop people doing that.
Not really. Patents are something you can use to delay people profiting from using your work. They do not stop people building on your work at all; you can build as many patented things in your R&D labs as you like. If you want to stop people building on your work, publishing it and agreeing to have it enter the public domain in 20 or so years would be a pretty stupid way to go about it.
If you want to stop people building on your work, keep it a trade secret. But then of course you get no legal protection, so you can't really license your invention because there is nothing to stop someone just using it and not paying you. If there were no patents, there would be a hell of a lot more trade secrets and as a result a whole lot less sharing of technology. After the patent expires it's easier for people to build on your work because it's published in a form which a someone skilled in the art can use to understand and reproduce the invention. It's also explicitly in the public domain. So while patents can be used to delay people profiting from building on your work, they encourage you to invent in the first place and allow others to build on your work in ways which would be impossible without patents.
Patents, when correctly implemented, encourage innovation and encourage the sharing of technology by providing a framework where the inventor can freely disseminate information about their invention while being assured of a chance of recouping their costs. Without patents there would be fewer inventions and less sharing of information about those inventions.
The point of patents can be found in the patent library in all the expired patents. Every significant invention of the technological age is presented in precise detail and all that information is free for you to use. That's not stopping people building on others' work in my book, that's facilitating it.
First of all, it's a design patent. It's not a utility patent. Design patents are used for stuff like the flowers on the handles of your silverware. (why that isn't done with copyright I don't know) Design patent rules are different from utility patent rules.
It's about using two extra shift keys for the non-ASCII characters. On his keyboard, he calls them "Shift2" and "Ng". This is a nice way to do languages that use the latin alphabet with a few abnormal extra characters.
If it's a design patent, surely it's not about using two extra shift keys, but the specific ornamental design and layout of the characters on the keys. I'd guess things like the layout, font(s) used [which he apparently had custom designed] , positioning of characters on keys, colours used, the naming of additional shift keys and so on would be at issue. If the OLPC people just lifted the design from one of his keyboards thinking keyboard layouts were all pretty much standard stuff and in the pubic domain, they may well be infringing his design patent.
The particular scenario they describe is irrelevant; MD5 checksums aren't intended to protect against that. If the attacker can manipulate the original file, he can usually simply alter it to become malicious itself.
The problem as I see is that the harmless version can be released and gain trust. That version can be tested and inspected, even checking the binary wouldn't reveal malicious code because there wouldn't be any malicious code to find - no dodgy looking system calls, for example. Just a chunk of seemingly random data, which could be disguised as a lookup table, compressed image or whatever. At some later point, after the harmless version has gained trust, its use has become more widespread and the rate of downloads has increased correspondingly, it can be replaced by the malicious version. So while you could initially release a malicious version, being able to first release a harmless version can widen the impact of an attack.
An 8 GiB SD card may cost $200, but an 8 GiB USB drive costs about a quarter of that. 8 GiB SD cards are at the cutting edge of flash density and are priced to match, you just don't need that density in a device the size of an iPhone, you can use lower density, cheaper flash.
Parent AC makes an informative point. I've idea if it's correct as IANAL (but I do hope it's correct, as it addresses the fears in my GP), but perhaps those with mod points would like to make it more visible.
How exactly do you propose that something licensed under GPL v2 (or v3) could be forked to non-free, even under a future version of a license developed by an evil future-FSF? The politics of the FSF do not factor into the license chosen by a particular author.
If you include the "or any future version" clause, the politics of the FSF categorically do affect the licensing of your software, because it is the who FSF define the future versions of the license. Say I release SuperWidgetApp under GPL v2 with the "any future version" clause. Also say that down the line, bad people take over the FSF and make GPL v27, which has no requirement to release the source code. BadCorporation could then take the source to SuperWidgetApp, invoke the "any future version" clause and apply GPL v27; they can then make trivial changes, release it as HyperWidgetApp and not release the source (because under GPL v27, they don't have to). The GPL v2 - v26 versions would still be Free, but the modified version would not be.
The whole notion of "or any future version" of the license, as is commonly used in GPL and GFDL licenses, has always worried me. IANAL, but from a legal standpoint, it seems odd that you can agree in a binding way to something which is yet to be defined.
Plus there's the (seemingly vanishingly small, at present) risk of the FSF being co-opted by some faction which changes the licenses in ways which make them entirely different in spirit to the current versions. That wouldn't mean the content wouldn't still be available under the current versions of the licenses (you can't un-license it once it's out there), but it could mean that forks could be made which were non-free. How do we know that, in say 40 years, the leadership of the FSF will be as principled and uncorruptible as the current leadership?
So, how quickly would you run afoul of Intellectual Property laws doing this?
You're highly unlikely to run afoul of trademark laws and absolutely guaranteed to run afoul of patent law in the US, or virtually guaranteed not run afoul of patent law elsewhere. So you must have meant copyright. Why didn't you just say copyright? Lumping copyrights, patents and trademarks together is futile for most purposes and calling them "property" is dangerously misleading.
Most publications of any merit grant independence to the senior editorial staff, often in the form of tenure.
Most publications of any merit aren't in the business of providing opinions on their advertisers' wares. It's much easier for, say, The Guardian or New York Post to grant editorial independence because the subjects of the journalism aren't usually the subjects of the adverts. Car magazines are the only mature segment I can think of where editorial and advertising are so closely related. I've not read any car magazines recently. How do they score on the editorial bias front?
This is not a left / right issue, it's a libertairian (with a small l) / authoritarian issue. Politics is not one dimensional. It's not two dimensional ether, but the two dimensional approach is overwhelmingly more informative than attempting to express preferences regarding economic and personal freedoms together on a single axis.
Having poor credit doesn't mean you're more likely to be susceptible to blackmail, but it does make you more likely to be susceptible to bribery. The logical way to make your employees less open to bribery is to ensure they have plenty of money, by paying them a lot.
They aren't exactly secrets, are they? According to the article, the secret of accomplishment is to de-emphasise innate ability (the bit about rewarding hard work is important too, but that's hardly a secret either).
I would disagree based on my reading of the article. The kids that were praised for their hard work did better on future exams (even when presented with difficult problems), then kids who were praised for their intelligence. Once they hit problems that were not trivially solvable, they determined that they simply couldn't do it and just stopped trying (what this article calls learned helplessness).
That doesn't contradict what the GP said. Academic exams do not, and are not designed to, measure intelligence. IQ tests are designed to measure intelligence. Performance in IQ tests is far less malleable than performance in academic exams or life in general. It's also far less important. No matter how hard you try you'll never raise your IQ by thirty points, but by working hard you can get better at actually doing things.Seeing as life consists of actually doing things, that's what really matters.
Your error is in assuming the cost of playing on the other systems is zero. It's not, it's just extremely small (say, the additional energy cost of sending the data) - one might say the cost is infinitesimal. See? The maths does work. Seriously though, it was just hyperbole. Applying strict mathematical definitions outside of that context is just going to stress you out for no reason. I gave up caring that people say "weight" when they really mean "mass" a long time ago. Life's too short.
It has nothing to do with the Eee PC and the GPL, and only a little to do with the Eee PC, but it does have something to do with the comment I responded to. Threads drift.
I know it would cost me $400 (I also worked put the duty and VAT I'd have to pay on top - and pondered the inevitable argument with customs over whether the taxes should be paid on $200 or $400 worth of kit), I was only referring to the $200 which would nominally be the net donation. And it wasn't a moan, it was more complete bemusement. I just don't understand why they would restrict the takeup of the offer like that. It makes no sense to me at all. I'm not alone, they must be turning down hundreds of thousands of dollars, perhaps millions. I know it's not a commercial product and I wouldn't expect any support whatsoever and no more than a DOA warranty.
As for the actions of my ancestors being my fault...
The fairly recent appearance of motion sensors in everything from mobile phones to games consoles is due to MEMS technology. If you're a geek, it's quite likely you've got a MEMS device already and it's likely made by Analog Devices.
Neither are they trying to comply with it, unless someone points out their mistake.
Exactly. Asus wouldn't dream of shipping a PC with Windows pre-installed without having licensing agreements in place with Microsoft. I not entirely sure if it's fear or respect that makes the difference but I suspect it's fear. If we are to stop this kind of thing happening in future we need to make companies as scared of violating the copyright of FOSS as they are of violating the copyright of proprietary software. To induce fear of violation there need to be penalties beyond simply coming into compliance at some later date.
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Not really. Patents are something you can use to delay people profiting from using your work. They do not stop people building on your work at all; you can build as many patented things in your R&D labs as you like. If you want to stop people building on your work, publishing it and agreeing to have it enter the public domain in 20 or so years would be a pretty stupid way to go about it.
If you want to stop people building on your work, keep it a trade secret. But then of course you get no legal protection, so you can't really license your invention because there is nothing to stop someone just using it and not paying you. If there were no patents, there would be a hell of a lot more trade secrets and as a result a whole lot less sharing of technology. After the patent expires it's easier for people to build on your work because it's published in a form which a someone skilled in the art can use to understand and reproduce the invention. It's also explicitly in the public domain. So while patents can be used to delay people profiting from building on your work, they encourage you to invent in the first place and allow others to build on your work in ways which would be impossible without patents.
Patents, when correctly implemented, encourage innovation and encourage the sharing of technology by providing a framework where the inventor can freely disseminate information about their invention while being assured of a chance of recouping their costs. Without patents there would be fewer inventions and less sharing of information about those inventions.
The point of patents can be found in the patent library in all the expired patents. Every significant invention of the technological age is presented in precise detail and all that information is free for you to use. That's not stopping people building on others' work in my book, that's facilitating it.
If it's a design patent, surely it's not about using two extra shift keys, but the specific ornamental design and layout of the characters on the keys. I'd guess things like the layout, font(s) used [which he apparently had custom designed] , positioning of characters on keys, colours used, the naming of additional shift keys and so on would be at issue. If the OLPC people just lifted the design from one of his keyboards thinking keyboard layouts were all pretty much standard stuff and in the pubic domain, they may well be infringing his design patent.
Then why's he suing for copyright infringement?
The problem as I see is that the harmless version can be released and gain trust. That version can be tested and inspected, even checking the binary wouldn't reveal malicious code because there wouldn't be any malicious code to find - no dodgy looking system calls, for example. Just a chunk of seemingly random data, which could be disguised as a lookup table, compressed image or whatever. At some later point, after the harmless version has gained trust, its use has become more widespread and the rate of downloads has increased correspondingly, it can be replaced by the malicious version. So while you could initially release a malicious version, being able to first release a harmless version can widen the impact of an attack.
An 8 GiB SD card may cost $200, but an 8 GiB USB drive costs about a quarter of that. 8 GiB SD cards are at the cutting edge of flash density and are priced to match, you just don't need that density in a device the size of an iPhone, you can use lower density, cheaper flash.
If someone didn't find the idea of their code being used in non-Free ways onerous surely they'd have chosen a BSD-style license, not the GPL.
Parent AC makes an informative point. I've idea if it's correct as IANAL (but I do hope it's correct, as it addresses the fears in my GP), but perhaps those with mod points would like to make it more visible.
If you include the "or any future version" clause, the politics of the FSF categorically do affect the licensing of your software, because it is the who FSF define the future versions of the license. Say I release SuperWidgetApp under GPL v2 with the "any future version" clause. Also say that down the line, bad people take over the FSF and make GPL v27, which has no requirement to release the source code. BadCorporation could then take the source to SuperWidgetApp, invoke the "any future version" clause and apply GPL v27; they can then make trivial changes, release it as HyperWidgetApp and not release the source (because under GPL v27, they don't have to). The GPL v2 - v26 versions would still be Free, but the modified version would not be.
The whole notion of "or any future version" of the license, as is commonly used in GPL and GFDL licenses, has always worried me. IANAL, but from a legal standpoint, it seems odd that you can agree in a binding way to something which is yet to be defined.
Plus there's the (seemingly vanishingly small, at present) risk of the FSF being co-opted by some faction which changes the licenses in ways which make them entirely different in spirit to the current versions. That wouldn't mean the content wouldn't still be available under the current versions of the licenses (you can't un-license it once it's out there), but it could mean that forks could be made which were non-free. How do we know that, in say 40 years, the leadership of the FSF will be as principled and uncorruptible as the current leadership?
Judging by the attitude many have, becoming a support tech and achieving divine status are coincident.
You're highly unlikely to run afoul of trademark laws and absolutely guaranteed to run afoul of patent law in the US, or virtually guaranteed not run afoul of patent law elsewhere. So you must have meant copyright. Why didn't you just say copyright? Lumping copyrights, patents and trademarks together is futile for most purposes and calling them "property" is dangerously misleading.
Erm, I was going to change that to the New York Times. I've no idea if the NY Post has any merit.
Most publications of any merit aren't in the business of providing opinions on their advertisers' wares. It's much easier for, say, The Guardian or New York Post to grant editorial independence because the subjects of the journalism aren't usually the subjects of the adverts. Car magazines are the only mature segment I can think of where editorial and advertising are so closely related. I've not read any car magazines recently. How do they score on the editorial bias front?
This is not a left / right issue, it's a libertairian (with a small l) / authoritarian issue. Politics is not one dimensional. It's not two dimensional ether, but the two dimensional approach is overwhelmingly more informative than attempting to express preferences regarding economic and personal freedoms together on a single axis.
Having poor credit doesn't mean you're more likely to be susceptible to blackmail, but it does make you more likely to be susceptible to bribery. The logical way to make your employees less open to bribery is to ensure they have plenty of money, by paying them a lot.
They aren't exactly secrets, are they? According to the article, the secret of accomplishment is to de-emphasise innate ability (the bit about rewarding hard work is important too, but that's hardly a secret either).
Wrong kind of effort. The required effort in that case would be making yourself practice even when you don't especially want to, not physical effort.
That doesn't contradict what the GP said. Academic exams do not, and are not designed to, measure intelligence. IQ tests are designed to measure intelligence. Performance in IQ tests is far less malleable than performance in academic exams or life in general. It's also far less important. No matter how hard you try you'll never raise your IQ by thirty points, but by working hard you can get better at actually doing things.Seeing as life consists of actually doing things, that's what really matters.
Why do Marxists drink herbal tea? Because all proper tea is theft.
Your error is in assuming the cost of playing on the other systems is zero. It's not, it's just extremely small (say, the additional energy cost of sending the data) - one might say the cost is infinitesimal. See? The maths does work. Seriously though, it was just hyperbole. Applying strict mathematical definitions outside of that context is just going to stress you out for no reason. I gave up caring that people say "weight" when they really mean "mass" a long time ago. Life's too short.
Surely that's down to the quartz, not the silicon. This research is specific to silicon on small scales.
It has nothing to do with the Eee PC and the GPL, and only a little to do with the Eee PC, but it does have something to do with the comment I responded to. Threads drift.
I know it would cost me $400 (I also worked put the duty and VAT I'd have to pay on top - and pondered the inevitable argument with customs over whether the taxes should be paid on $200 or $400 worth of kit), I was only referring to the $200 which would nominally be the net donation. And it wasn't a moan, it was more complete bemusement. I just don't understand why they would restrict the takeup of the offer like that. It makes no sense to me at all. I'm not alone, they must be turning down hundreds of thousands of dollars, perhaps millions. I know it's not a commercial product and I wouldn't expect any support whatsoever and no more than a DOA warranty.
As for the actions of my ancestors being my fault...
That'll teach me to hit refresh before posting, nullspace got there first with basically the same information.
The fairly recent appearance of motion sensors in everything from mobile phones to games consoles is due to MEMS technology. If you're a geek, it's quite likely you've got a MEMS device already and it's likely made by Analog Devices.
Exactly. Asus wouldn't dream of shipping a PC with Windows pre-installed without having licensing agreements in place with Microsoft. I not entirely sure if it's fear or respect that makes the difference but I suspect it's fear. If we are to stop this kind of thing happening in future we need to make companies as scared of violating the copyright of FOSS as they are of violating the copyright of proprietary software. To induce fear of violation there need to be penalties beyond simply coming into compliance at some later date.