If only this was being handled by an organisation with a record of winning vitally important court cases, instead of establishing destructive precedents by losing them. By now losing doesn't seem to matter to the EFF as long as they can still crow about what they did and put out the hat for money to do it again. It looks like a classic case of an institution promoting its own survival by destroying the thing it's supposed to be working for.
Green beer, eh? Only in America.
on
Green Geek Beer
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· Score: 1
St. Patrick's day is really as American as Thanksgiving or the Superbowl; it's just a little better known internationally. Heck, we even have it in Ireland. But not the green Budweiser. (OTOH, regular yellow Budweiser is ubiquitous in Ireland, 365 days a year:(.)
No. The things that happen in "Fall Out" - including what the Village does after Degree Absolute, the choice it gives to (the former) Number 6, the choice he makes, who Number 1 turns out to be, and what happens in the end - make sense. They just don't make sense on a "real world" spy-fiction level.
The Prisoner is an allegory. Not a silly elaborate allegory: "the Butler symbolises Unease, while the shape of the telephone handsets represents Half-Truth"; nothing like that. It's simply that the Village symbolises the human world we live in. After the undertakers call, it seems at first that Number 6 is still in his room. That's because he hasn't travelled at all. The place he wakes up is the same place he fell asleep in - "The whole world as the Village.". The Prisoner immediately starts trying to escape the Village and get back to London. But if the Village is the whole world, how can he escape it? That's why it's so crushing when Number 2 taunts him at the end of "Dance Of the Dead": she's right. Number 6 can't escape, because there is nowhere for him to go.
"Fall Out" gets wild and wooly because it pulls back the curtain and shows the allegory behind the spy-story. It has to do that because a spy-story ending - "He wins in the end, it was Dr. Sinistro, bye" - makes no sense in terms of the allegory. Number 1 has to be who he or she (haha, no spoilers here!:) ) is revealed to be in "Fall Out". Who or what else could be Behind It All, responsible for the whole human condition? Communism? Dr. Sinistro? Not flossing? The Prisoner can't just "win in the end", unless you're happy with the concept that he creates a perfect world for everyone and we all live happily ever after. It's not that Patrick McGoohan couldn't think of a good resolution to his allegory that also "makes sense" as a spy plot. There couldn't be such an ending.
That's not to deny that "Fall Out" is consciously zany, though it's more pomo than psychedelic. In fact, part of the problem seems to be that the script doesn't lay on the pomo heavily and obviously enough for everyone to pick up on what is happening. Not that they'd necessarily like the episode any better if they did. It doesn't deliver on the spy-story level. But it's certainly not meaningless.
I've said it before, but it bears repeating. The serious problem that Free Software/Open Source faces isn't that MS or anyone else will destroy Linux or Apache or whatever with patent litigation. The strength of the vested interests behind the big, successful projects means that's unlikely to happen. The serious problem is that people will be forced or scared away from starting or participating in projects that aren't household names and don't have powerful sugar daddies. No new small projects largely means no future big ones; and a large part of the value of FOSS is in the thousands of niche tools that will never appear on the front page of Fortune but do help their users greatly.
In the realistic nightmare scenario, by 2015 development continues on Linux and some other big projects almost as an extension of the international standards bureaucracy, controlled by (mostly) big institutions and their paid programmers. But the freedom to just write some code, put it online and start a mailing list without needing approval, support or funding from anyone is gone.
The first thing we can do to try to prevent this is to ask loud and clear whenever announcements like this are made: why only "certain Linux-related software"? Why won't you protect FOSS in general?
But the general convention is that x, the independent variable, gets the horizontal axis, while f(x), the dependent variable, gets the vertical axis, no? And since the most obvious way to think of learning-curve functions is as functions from "how much you put in" to "how much you learn", that would put "effort" (or "time") on the horizontal.
OTOH, the loose talk of "gentle" and "steep" learning curves suggests that when you show people a learning curve graph they tend to reflexively think of the graph as (the vertical cross-section of) a physical slope that the learner must climb. (This is unsurprising since we often think of tasks like learning something as being similar to climing a hill.) That metaphor is a lot more appropriate if we put "knowledge" on the vertical, xor graph the inverse function ("time/effort for given knowledge").
My feeling is that enough powerful institutions now use free software extensively that if Microsoft were to launch a direct patent attack on any of its blockbuster successes (say Apache, the Linux kernel, or MySQL) it would rapidly spell the end of software patents and get MS in a lot of trouble. Microsoft is not as big or powerful as half the rest of the Fortune 500 put together. So I suspect they won't launch the big offensive, at least until they get desperate someday. They will, however, get as much mileage as possible out of the fear of the big offensive. They will also stir things up a bit through proxies like SCO. They may also decide to attack, directly or indirectly, small and relatively obscure projects that don't have the support of powerful users or vendors. (Every time an individual decides not to start an OSS project for fear of legal hassle is an invisible victory for MS.) They'll do all they can to poison, divide and spread fear without getting in over their heads.
Two conclusions: first, if MS does succeed in its aims it will be the realm of small-to-individual projects that will suffer most. Second, even when MS isn't attacking, the presence of an effective defence will pay off by reducing the fear of an attack.
I think it's much too much to say that a real solution is not in the interests of the big companies involved. Take IBM. A devastating attack on free/open source software of the kind that you expect from Microsoft would be disastrous for IBM, yes? No Apache in Websphere, no Linux to create a market for its server hardware, no longer much between "we are an open systems company" and "we do Windows, too!". But naturally IBM doesn't want to give up on its software-patent goodies either. So I guess that IBM is not deceiving so much as it is dithering, casting around for a way to have its cake and eat it too. It may be deceiving itself the most.
If this is the case, then a policy of engagement - a combination of willingness to cooperate, polite skepticism, and continued pressure - may well succeed in pushing the big beasts of OSDL to recognise their own interests and make the hard decisions to do what it takes to protect open source before it's too late. (It/may/ even succeed in getting them to act in such a way that FOSS as a whole is protected, not just the specific projects which enjoy the favour of large companies.) To that end, I suggest that the way forward is not to be seen as dismissing the patent pool, but to press specific hard questions about it, such as:
1) Granted that the initial gift of patents from the OSDL members was valuable and worthwhile, what will the OSDL now do to secure a large body of patents for the pool that can actually deter Microsoft? Will it actually spend the large amounts of money that it will take to do this?
2) Is the OSDL absolutely sure that its members' cross-licensing agreements with MS won't indirectly "poison" all patents that the OSDL holds rights on, not just ones that were given to it by MS cross-licensees?
3) To overcome its' members conflicts of interest over the patent pool, will it also sub-license the pool patents to some other free software/open source institutions (maybe the FSF, OSI, or Debian) in such a way that they too can go to court using the patents without requiring any futher permission from OSDL?
At the worst, the answers will be "no", in which case asking the questions will have exposed the unseriousness of the OSDL's project. Otherwise, the prodding will have helped to ensure that OSDL does the right thing, or something closer to it. What's to lose?
Small reason: even if the patent pool doesn't give legal protection against MS, the sight of other major software companies licensing their patents to FOSS may have political/PR value. (Or it could actually be counterproductive, eg. in the context of the European Parliament.:( )
First bigger reason: it's far from impossible that some big companies with many software patents will hit serious financial trouble in the next few years. (I won't name any names because I'm nice.:) ) For that or other reasons, it's quite possible that one or more of the companies that have donated patents will decide to go out and collect as much as they can in licensing/lawsuits, either from FOSS or generally. In which case we might be very grateful that they granted us immunity to their patents back when they still liked us - *provided*, of course, that the licenses they are giving can't be revoked later. (Question: is that the case?)
Second bigger reason: It's all very well hearing large companies promise to use their patents to protect the Linux kernel and other big, mainstream FOSS projects. But that might not give much protection to smaller and/or younger projects without powerful sugar daddies. Presumably if the OSDL has control of the patents, it will be willing to use them to protect all FOSS development. (Question: will it? I should certainly hope so...)
As usual, Linus has created contovesy by suggesting we trade ideological purity for practical matters. While it's not exactly consistant to rail against patents and hold them yourself, it's a plan that at least hasn't been tried yet.
Not so fast. Eben Moglen (basically the FSF's head legal guy) is one of the people extolling the patent pool in the original press release. And the whole idea of using software patents against software patents is classic FSF tactics, like the GPL "judo throw" of using "copyleft" against copyright.
(Speaking of which, the FSF have been quietly mentioning that the new version of the GPL will contain anti-software-patent language. Will it be something straighforward, like "any patents you take out based on derivative works must be freely licenced for free software use"? Or something impressively vicious, like "ever attempt to enforce a patent against any free software and this license instantly expires"? Very probably the former, but the latter would be so much fun...:) )
The FSF certainly hasn't given up on campaigning and lobbying against software patents either. This makes perfect sense, after all: the two approaches reinforce each other. The less software patents are worth to the big companies, the less inclined they will be to lobby hard for them.
If Microsoft or some other anti-OSS software company wants to use their patent portfolio against open source projects, there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it except perhaps get the patent invalidated, if there is a case for doing so. What it sounds like this was intended to do, and seemingly does do, is present patented technologies that open source projects unambiguously CAN use without fear of retribution.
No. What you do to protect yourself against software patent lawsuits from a software company is threaten them with a bunch of patent lawsuits of your own. This is how the large software companies protect themselves from each other right now, and it's clear that at least one of the purposes of the new patent pool is to give free/open source software a patent arsenal of its own. A list of patents you are allowed to use is vastly less useful, basically because if you're being sued for infringing a patent it doesn't matter how many other patents you're using with permission.
Even the initial press release, written as it is in consensual happy-speak, adds that
The library will also aggregate other legal solutions, such
as indemnification programs offered by vendors of open source software.
Then, if you look at this CNET article, you see Eben Moglen, one of the people quoted in the press release, say
We will see how successful this is when we begin to negotiate cross-licenses that would otherwise inhibit innovation
In other words, the purpose of the exercise is to get free software immunity from software companies' patents in exchange for giving the software companies immunity from our patents.
Case 1 is always a problem, and no one expects a patent pool to solve it. The argument here reads a bit like this to me: "Your solution to problem A doesn't solve problem B, therefore your solution is bad." Huh?
No, no. I was just laying out what the patent threats are and what a strong patent pool does and doesn't do. As you say, no-one expects a patent pool to be much use against threat 1. I wasn't attempting to score a point here; the humour wasn't directed at anyone (except perhaps the/. ad hominem flamers).
(And I did clearly state that my outer connective was 'the patent pool is no use at all if it is no use in either case'.)
Case 2 is solvable by a patent pool.
No-one is disputing that Case 2 is solvable by an effective patent pool.
The argument made here that a patent pool is ineffective depends on the fallacy that patents in that pool have already been licensed to a potential aggressor through some other means.
Why is this false? As far as I know, this is true of the patents that are currently in the pool. It may be the case that future patents will enter the pool of which this is not true, but until then the pool is not effective in case 2.
Again, I think that everyone recognizes that to be effective, the pool must contain original IP not already licesned to a potential aggressor.
I don't think the prior cross-licensing problem is immediately obvious to everyone - it certainly wasn't immediately obvious to me - and it wasn't mentioned in, for example, the initial press release, so I think it's perfectly reasonable for Bruce Perens to raise it.
The discussion we should have is how to encourage and enable the growth of that part of the pool.
Amen.
I think that Perens' specific point about the patents currently in the pool is likely correct; certainly it deserves to be discussed on its own merits. The misleading summary given by the poster, and Taco's largely irrelevant snark in the subheading, led me to fear that we'd get another round in the pointless/. anti-Perens/ESR/RMS/whoever flamewars instead, which is why I wrote the original post.
I also think that Perens is right that lobbying against patents is important and should continue. Again, I don't think many of us would disagree about that either.
If Perens is also making a broader claim that the patent pool effort is useless, and that only political action matters, then I think he's clearly wrong in that. The current state of the patent pool doesn't justify a dismissive "it'll never work" attitude, but it does justify a skeptical "show me the money" attitude.
I think that part of the solution is also for free software to get entrenched in powerful companies and non-profits too. For example, I don't think the big stockbroking firms would take it lying down if they were told that they couldn't run Linux on their traders' terminals anymore. I'm pretty sure that considerations like this are a large part of why Microsoft hasn't launched a new patent offensive already.
The big shortcoming of the "get entrenched" approach is that while it's likely to buy good protection for big, successful free software projects that big institutions use a lot - Apache, GCC, the Linux kernel, and the like - it may not do much for the thousands of smaller projects that don't have any sugar daddy. It's great to hear big companies promising to protect Linux - will they protect you if you decide to write a new OS kernel that might be the new Linux someday, or a little tool that will be valuable to seventy grateful users? We are in danger of reaching a situation where development continues on the big projects but individuals and small groups are too scared to work on small ones.
I'm all in favour of an effective open source/free software patent pool, precisely because I abhor software patents. Not only does it promise to protect free/open source software from threat 2, but because it would indirectly help to end threat 1. * The problem is whether the current Linux patent pool is actually going to be effective. IANAL either, but I'd be very surprised if the big software companies' cross-licensing agreements could be circumvented just by handing patents to a third party, because that would be seem to be much too easy to game. For example, Microsoft would be able to hand a bushel of patents to Concerned Citizens Against Hewlett-Packard.
* I assume that software patents have three attractions for big companies: attacking/bullying other big companies, attacking/bullying free/open source efforts, and attacking/bullying small proprietary software firms. Attacking other large firms is too dangerous because of the fact that other large companies can retaliate in kind. If attacking open source is also too dangerous because of an effective FOSS "patent nuke", then that only leaves the small proprietary shops. And presumably if they ride them too hard they'll just drive more of the small commercial development from proprietary to open-source as well. Against that, they will still face the expensive nuisance of patent trolls and the risk of one of the big patent-holders doing something crazy. In that situation, they may feel a lot less keen to defend software patentability. If the big lobbying money behind software patents goes, the patents will probably go, and the pure-play trolls will be out of business too.
Oh Ghod, here we go again. Since the submitter hasn't given a remotely useful summary of what Bruce Perens' actual problem with the patent pool is, I will explain it here for those of you who won't RTFA.
THE ARGUMENT ---
There are two main types of possible patent agression: 1) from patent trolls and 2) from big companies with lots of software as well as lots of software patents. Let's see how our new patent pool does against each of them.
Case 1:
PATENT TROLL: Your software violates my patent on the letter 'g'. Pay me $40,000,000 to go away.
LINUS: Your software violates several thousand patents in *our* patent arsenal.
PATENT TROLL: I don't own any software; all I have is this portfolio of groundbreaking, original patents. Pony up.
Now *nobody's* patent pool is useful in case 1 (unless it just happens to contain prior art on the troll's patent). Patent pools are generally for use in case 2.
Case 2:
MICROSOFT: Your software violates 42,000 of our finest patents. Go to jail.
LINUS: Your software violates several thousand patents in *our* patent arsenal.
MICROSOFT: Oh, that's too bad. Would those be the patents loaned to you by other major software companies? The same major software companies who have given us an unlimited, perpetual license to use all their software patents in exchange for a similar license from us? Yes? Gosh, now I'm scared.
So if the Linux patent pool is no use in case 1, and no use in case 2, it's no use at all, correct?
THE POINT ---
Now I don't really know how correct Bruce Perens' position is, although on the face of it it does seem highly reasonable. What I do know is that whether you think Bruce Perens suX0r, or whether he founds too many nonprofits, or whether or not he could defeat the fscking Green Lantern, is *completely* *irrelevant* to the actual question, which is really pretty damned important. So: can we talk about the *actual* *issue* now, and not whether we like Bruce Perens?
Is there any possiblity IE7 will support XHTML 1.0 properly, or XHTML 1.1 at all?
Not that we'd want to rush things - given MS's struggles with XML, actual support for XHTML may be an unfair demand. After all, the XHTML 1.1 standard isn't quite four years old yet. Still, maybe the new IE should at least be able to communicate its ineptitude with XML to the world's webservers. Maybe MS could resource a project team to edit the string that will give the next-generation IE a sane Accept header. (Maybe Steve Jobs would strike back by forming an Apple project team to find out what an Accept header is.)
This says most of what you need to know about the Media Lab, I suspect.
Last week I was off the coast of Greece on my yacht ``Nippo-bux'' (I put the ``raft'' in ``graft,'' as I always say) with my close personal friend Al (``Al'') Gore. He asked me ``Nick--er, Hunter, how do you do it? You maintain a research staff of, in the words of Albert Meyer [an underfunded Course VI professor], `Science Fiction Charlatans,' yet you never fail to rake in monster sponsor bucks? I could fund Hillary's socialized medicine boondoggle in an instant if I had that kind of fiscal pull.''
I told him that it's merely a matter of understanding our sponsor's needs. Our sponsors are represented by middle-aged middle-managers who need three things: Booze, good hotels, and hookers. Keep 'em busy with free trips and the slick dog and pony shows, provide them with pre-written notes for their upper-managment, and the money will keep rolling in.
Do I worry that one day some sponsor will wake up and say ``Wait a minute--what the hell did I do last night? Did I shell out a million bucks to fund a LEGO Chair in the Media Lab? Tequila!'' Over the years I've learned not to care. I could pull the cigar out of W.C. Field's mouth and sell it back to him at a profit. And he'd thank me for the deal. I'm that goddamn good.
Originally, a large proportion of the Irish government's funding for university science research was going to be diverted into MLE. (Although to be fair the total funding was going to be enlarged as well.) Good riddance. Blame Irish prime minister Bertie Ahern. Evidently he got high on the media lab's promotional vapours. (Another gullible suit.) This isn't the first time he's pushed a grandiose, expensive, misconcieved pet project which eventually dies in an embarrassing fashion.
The Sharp Zaurus SL-C700 will be released in Japan on 14 December. It has a 640*480 display and a real keyboard (which can fold back, allowing the SL-C700 to mimic a conventional 480*640 pen-operated PDA). LinuxDevices has a brief news article on it. Apparently they're going to sell for around 60,000 yen (around $500). That's dear for a mere PDA, but probably very cheap for something you can use as a laptop replacement. (I'm quite sure it could take a 1GB IBM Microdrive, costing perhaps $250 or less, in its CF Type 2 slot.)
It has a 400Mhz XScale processor, 64/32MB RAM, one SD slot, and one CF Type 2 slot. The battery is claimed to be able to support 4hrs 50 mins of active use. It's reasonably sized and weighs 225g, but the capacity to record sound is lacking.
Unfortunately, Sharp currently have no plans to release this beauty outside Japan. An alternative might be the HP Jornada 720, which has a 640*240 display and a keyboard. Its expansion options are arguably better. It has a 209MHz ARM processor, which may be good enough. However, it weighs half a kilo, it costs $1000(!) (at least officially), and Linux is still being ported. Yet another alternative might be the 640*480 HNT Exilien 00101/00201, but where or when that thing will be available beats me.
It's all very frustrating, because an SL-C700-like PDA with 128MB of RAM (instead of 64MB), somewhat better expandability (say one CF Type 2 slot and one Type 2 PC Card slot) and built-in sound-recording capability would solve all my life's problems.;)
Shirow's primarily a comics artist, not an animator. As far as I can tell, Black Magic M-66 is the only anime in which his involvement went much beyond allowing one of his manga to be adapted or providing character or concept designs. (See also this biography.) (Ghost in the Shell is Oshii Mamoru's adaptation of (part of) Shirow's manga of the same name.)
A good while ago ID said that that Doom III multiplayer would require more than 56kbits of bandwidth. Does anyone know if this is still their intention? If D3 multiplayer does require broadband, the consequences could be interesting. ID games broke OpenGL and hardware 3D acceleration into the mass market, after all.
The Prisoner's influence on Eva goes beyond the deliberate references (such as Magi error code 601, "cannot be computed"). ITV's telephone lines were jammed solid after "Fall Out" (The Prisoner's final episode) was shown, and Patrick McGoohan was being assaulted in the street in the following days. I could continue expanding on the similarities between the ending of Eva TV and the Prisoner's confusing, chaotic, magnificent final episodes, but suffice it to say that there were plenty of people who had expected "a more finite and clear ending to the story".
Evagelion's bombastic, sarcastic use of theme music in some scenes (Worthy is the Lamb, the Ode to Joy) is another place where The Prisoner's influence (especially that of "Fall Out") is apparent. (The Prisoner came well before Kubrik's Clockwork Orange, let alone Reservoir Dogs.) More generally, both shows took a popular genre of TV action serial and subverted it into a statement about the human condition, full of weirdness, symbolism, and angst. HIDEAKI Anno probably owes Patrick McGoohan a beer for that one.
For those out of the know: The Prisoner is notPrisoner: Cell Block H. The Prisoner is a British TV show from the 1960s. ITV is a UK commercial TV channel. The Prisoner is a one-hour show with 17 episodes. The Prisoner is the Greatest TV Show of All Time, Ever. (So far, at least.:) )
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If only this was being handled by an organisation with a record of winning vitally important court cases, instead of establishing destructive precedents by losing them. By now losing doesn't seem to matter to the EFF as long as they can still crow about what they did and put out the hat for money to do it again. It looks like a classic case of an institution promoting its own survival by destroying the thing it's supposed to be working for.
There's a nice account of this in Ian Stewart's The Magical Maze.
St. Patrick's day is really as American as Thanksgiving or the Superbowl; it's just a little better known internationally. Heck, we even have it in Ireland. But not the green Budweiser. (OTOH, regular yellow Budweiser is ubiquitous in Ireland, 365 days a year :( .)
No. The things that happen in "Fall Out" - including what the Village does after Degree Absolute, the choice it gives to (the former) Number 6, the choice he makes, who Number 1 turns out to be, and what happens in the end - make sense. They just don't make sense on a "real world" spy-fiction level.
The Prisoner is an allegory. Not a silly elaborate allegory: "the Butler symbolises Unease, while the shape of the telephone handsets represents Half-Truth"; nothing like that. It's simply that the Village symbolises the human world we live in. After the undertakers call, it seems at first that Number 6 is still in his room. That's because he hasn't travelled at all. The place he wakes up is the same place he fell asleep in - "The whole world as the Village.". The Prisoner immediately starts trying to escape the Village and get back to London. But if the Village is the whole world, how can he escape it? That's why it's so crushing when Number 2 taunts him at the end of "Dance Of the Dead": she's right. Number 6 can't escape, because there is nowhere for him to go.
"Fall Out" gets wild and wooly because it pulls back the curtain and shows the allegory behind the spy-story. It has to do that because a spy-story ending - "He wins in the end, it was Dr. Sinistro, bye" - makes no sense in terms of the allegory. Number 1 has to be who he or she (haha, no spoilers here! :) ) is revealed to be in "Fall Out". Who or what else could be Behind It All, responsible for the whole human condition? Communism? Dr. Sinistro? Not flossing? The Prisoner can't just "win in the end", unless you're happy with the concept that he creates a perfect world for everyone and we all live happily ever after. It's not that Patrick McGoohan couldn't think of a good resolution to his allegory that also "makes sense" as a spy plot. There couldn't be such an ending.
That's not to deny that "Fall Out" is consciously zany, though it's more pomo than psychedelic. In fact, part of the problem seems to be that the script doesn't lay on the pomo heavily and obviously enough for everyone to pick up on what is happening. Not that they'd necessarily like the episode any better if they did. It doesn't deliver on the spy-story level. But it's certainly not meaningless.
I've said it before, but it bears repeating. The serious problem that Free Software/Open Source faces isn't that MS or anyone else will destroy Linux or Apache or whatever with patent litigation. The strength of the vested interests behind the big, successful projects means that's unlikely to happen. The serious problem is that people will be forced or scared away from starting or participating in projects that aren't household names and don't have powerful sugar daddies. No new small projects largely means no future big ones; and a large part of the value of FOSS is in the thousands of niche tools that will never appear on the front page of Fortune but do help their users greatly.
In the realistic nightmare scenario, by 2015 development continues on Linux and some other big projects almost as an extension of the international standards bureaucracy, controlled by (mostly) big institutions and their paid programmers. But the freedom to just write some code, put it online and start a mailing list without needing approval, support or funding from anyone is gone.
The first thing we can do to try to prevent this is to ask loud and clear whenever announcements like this are made: why only "certain Linux-related software"? Why won't you protect FOSS in general?
OTOH, the loose talk of "gentle" and "steep" learning curves suggests that when you show people a learning curve graph they tend to reflexively think of the graph as (the vertical cross-section of) a physical slope that the learner must climb. (This is unsurprising since we often think of tasks like learning something as being similar to climing a hill.) That metaphor is a lot more appropriate if we put "knowledge" on the vertical, xor graph the inverse function ("time/effort for given knowledge").
My feeling is that enough powerful institutions now use free software extensively that if Microsoft were to launch a direct patent attack on any of its blockbuster successes (say Apache, the Linux kernel, or MySQL) it would rapidly spell the end of software patents and get MS in a lot of trouble. Microsoft is not as big or powerful as half the rest of the Fortune 500 put together. So I suspect they won't launch the big offensive, at least until they get desperate someday. They will, however, get as much mileage as possible out of the fear of the big offensive. They will also stir things up a bit through proxies like SCO. They may also decide to attack, directly or indirectly, small and relatively obscure projects that don't have the support of powerful users or vendors. (Every time an individual decides not to start an OSS project for fear of legal hassle is an invisible victory for MS.) They'll do all they can to poison, divide and spread fear without getting in over their heads.
Two conclusions: first, if MS does succeed in its aims it will be the realm of small-to-individual projects that will suffer most. Second, even when MS isn't attacking, the presence of an effective defence will pay off by reducing the fear of an attack.
I think it's much too much to say that a real solution is not in the interests of the big companies involved. Take IBM. A devastating attack on free/open source software of the kind that you expect from Microsoft would be disastrous for IBM, yes? No Apache in Websphere, no Linux to create a market for its server hardware, no longer much between "we are an open systems company" and "we do Windows, too!". But naturally IBM doesn't want to give up on its software-patent goodies either. So I guess that IBM is not deceiving so much as it is dithering, casting around for a way to have its cake and eat it too. It may be deceiving itself the most.
/may/ even succeed in getting them to act in such a way that FOSS as a whole is protected, not just the specific projects which enjoy the favour of large companies.) To that end, I suggest that the way forward is not to be seen as dismissing the patent pool, but to press specific hard questions about it, such as:
If this is the case, then a policy of engagement - a combination of willingness to cooperate, polite skepticism, and continued pressure - may well succeed in pushing the big beasts of OSDL to recognise their own interests and make the hard decisions to do what it takes to protect open source before it's too late. (It
1) Granted that the initial gift of patents from the OSDL members was valuable and worthwhile, what will the OSDL now do to secure a large body of patents for the pool that can actually deter Microsoft? Will it actually spend the large amounts of money that it will take to do this?
2) Is the OSDL absolutely sure that its members' cross-licensing agreements with MS won't indirectly "poison" all patents that the OSDL holds rights on, not just ones that were given to it by MS cross-licensees?
3) To overcome its' members conflicts of interest over the patent pool, will it also sub-license the pool patents to some other free software/open source institutions (maybe the FSF, OSI, or Debian) in such a way that they too can go to court using the patents without requiring any futher permission from OSDL?
At the worst, the answers will be "no", in which case asking the questions will have exposed the unseriousness of the OSDL's project. Otherwise, the prodding will have helped to ensure that OSDL does the right thing, or something closer to it. What's to lose?
Small reason: even if the patent pool doesn't give legal protection against MS, the sight of other major software companies licensing their patents to FOSS may have political/PR value. (Or it could actually be counterproductive, eg. in the context of the European Parliament. :( )
:) ) For that or other reasons, it's quite possible that one or more of the companies that have donated patents will decide to go out and collect as much as they can in licensing/lawsuits, either from FOSS or generally. In which case we might be very grateful that they granted us immunity to their patents back when they still liked us - *provided*, of course, that the licenses they are giving can't be revoked later. (Question: is that the case?)
First bigger reason: it's far from impossible that some big companies with many software patents will hit serious financial trouble in the next few years. (I won't name any names because I'm nice.
Second bigger reason: It's all very well hearing large companies promise to use their patents to protect the Linux kernel and other big, mainstream FOSS projects. But that might not give much protection to smaller and/or younger projects without powerful sugar daddies. Presumably if the OSDL has control of the patents, it will be willing to use them to protect all FOSS development. (Question: will it? I should certainly hope so...)
Not so fast. Eben Moglen (basically the FSF's head legal guy) is one of the people extolling the patent pool in the original press release. And the whole idea of using software patents against software patents is classic FSF tactics, like the GPL "judo throw" of using "copyleft" against copyright.
(Speaking of which, the FSF have been quietly mentioning that the new version of the GPL will contain anti-software-patent language. Will it be something straighforward, like "any patents you take out based on derivative works must be freely licenced for free software use"? Or something impressively vicious, like "ever attempt to enforce a patent against any free software and this license instantly expires"? Very probably the former, but the latter would be so much fun... :) )
The FSF certainly hasn't given up on campaigning and lobbying against software patents either. This makes perfect sense, after all: the two approaches reinforce each other. The less software patents are worth to the big companies, the less inclined they will be to lobby hard for them.
No. What you do to protect yourself against software patent lawsuits from a software company is threaten them with a bunch of patent lawsuits of your own. This is how the large software companies protect themselves from each other right now, and it's clear that at least one of the purposes of the new patent pool is to give free/open source software a patent arsenal of its own. A list of patents you are allowed to use is vastly less useful, basically because if you're being sued for infringing a patent it doesn't matter how many other patents you're using with permission.
Even the initial press release, written as it is in consensual happy-speak, adds that
Then, if you look at this CNET article, you see Eben Moglen, one of the people quoted in the press release, say In other words, the purpose of the exercise is to get free software immunity from software companies' patents in exchange for giving the software companies immunity from our patents.No, no. I was just laying out what the patent threats are and what a strong patent pool does and doesn't do. As you say, no-one expects a patent pool to be much use against threat 1. I wasn't attempting to score a point here; the humour wasn't directed at anyone (except perhaps the /. ad hominem flamers).
(And I did clearly state that my outer connective was 'the patent pool is no use at all if it is no use in either case'.)
No-one is disputing that Case 2 is solvable by an effective patent pool.
Why is this false? As far as I know, this is true of the patents that are currently in the pool. It may be the case that future patents will enter the pool of which this is not true, but until then the pool is not effective in case 2.
I don't think the prior cross-licensing problem is immediately obvious to everyone - it certainly wasn't immediately obvious to me - and it wasn't mentioned in, for example, the initial press release, so I think it's perfectly reasonable for Bruce Perens to raise it.
Amen.
I think that Perens' specific point about the patents currently in the pool is likely correct; certainly it deserves to be discussed on its own merits. The misleading summary given by the poster, and Taco's largely irrelevant snark in the subheading, led me to fear that we'd get another round in the pointless /. anti-Perens/ESR/RMS/whoever flamewars instead, which is why I wrote the original post.
I also think that Perens is right that lobbying against patents is important and should continue. Again, I don't think many of us would disagree about that either.
If Perens is also making a broader claim that the patent pool effort is useless, and that only political action matters, then I think he's clearly wrong in that. The current state of the patent pool doesn't justify a dismissive "it'll never work" attitude, but it does justify a skeptical "show me the money" attitude.
I think that part of the solution is also for free software to get entrenched in powerful companies and non-profits too. For example, I don't think the big stockbroking firms would take it lying down if they were told that they couldn't run Linux on their traders' terminals anymore. I'm pretty sure that considerations like this are a large part of why Microsoft hasn't launched a new patent offensive already.
The big shortcoming of the "get entrenched" approach is that while it's likely to buy good protection for big, successful free software projects that big institutions use a lot - Apache, GCC, the Linux kernel, and the like - it may not do much for the thousands of smaller projects that don't have any sugar daddy. It's great to hear big companies promising to protect Linux - will they protect you if you decide to write a new OS kernel that might be the new Linux someday, or a little tool that will be valuable to seventy grateful users? We are in danger of reaching a situation where development continues on the big projects but individuals and small groups are too scared to work on small ones.
I'm all in favour of an effective open source/free software patent pool, precisely because I abhor software patents. Not only does it promise to protect free/open source software from threat 2, but because it would indirectly help to end threat 1. * The problem is whether the current Linux patent pool is actually going to be effective. IANAL either, but I'd be very surprised if the big software companies' cross-licensing agreements could be circumvented just by handing patents to a third party, because that would be seem to be much too easy to game. For example, Microsoft would be able to hand a bushel of patents to Concerned Citizens Against Hewlett-Packard.
* I assume that software patents have three attractions for big companies: attacking/bullying other big companies, attacking/bullying free/open source efforts, and attacking/bullying small proprietary software firms. Attacking other large firms is too dangerous because of the fact that other large companies can retaliate in kind. If attacking open source is also too dangerous because of an effective FOSS "patent nuke", then that only leaves the small proprietary shops. And presumably if they ride them too hard they'll just drive more of the small commercial development from proprietary to open-source as well. Against that, they will still face the expensive nuisance of patent trolls and the risk of one of the big patent-holders doing something crazy. In that situation, they may feel a lot less keen to defend software patentability. If the big lobbying money behind software patents goes, the patents will probably go, and the pure-play trolls will be out of business too.
Oh Ghod, here we go again. Since the submitter hasn't given a remotely useful summary of what Bruce Perens' actual problem with the patent pool is, I will explain it here for those of you who won't RTFA.
THE ARGUMENT ---
There are two main types of possible patent agression: 1) from patent trolls and 2) from big companies with lots of software as well as lots of software patents. Let's see how our new patent pool does against each of them.
Case 1:
PATENT TROLL: Your software violates my patent on the letter 'g'. Pay me $40,000,000 to go away.
LINUS: Your software violates several thousand patents in *our* patent arsenal.
PATENT TROLL: I don't own any software; all I have is this portfolio of groundbreaking, original patents. Pony up.
Now *nobody's* patent pool is useful in case 1 (unless it just happens to contain prior art on the troll's patent). Patent pools are generally for use in case 2.
Case 2:
MICROSOFT: Your software violates 42,000 of our finest patents. Go to jail.
LINUS: Your software violates several thousand patents in *our* patent arsenal.
MICROSOFT: Oh, that's too bad. Would those be the patents loaned to you by other major software companies? The same major software companies who have given us an unlimited, perpetual license to use all their software patents in exchange for a similar license from us? Yes? Gosh, now I'm scared.
So if the Linux patent pool is no use in case 1, and no use in case 2, it's no use at all, correct?
THE POINT ---
Now I don't really know how correct Bruce Perens' position is, although on the face of it it does seem highly reasonable. What I do know is that whether you think Bruce Perens suX0r, or whether he founds too many nonprofits, or whether or not he could defeat the fscking Green Lantern, is *completely* *irrelevant* to the actual question, which is really pretty damned important. So: can we talk about the *actual* *issue* now, and not whether we like Bruce Perens?
(No body but this.)
Is there any possiblity IE7 will support XHTML 1.0 properly, or XHTML 1.1 at all?
Not that we'd want to rush things - given MS's struggles with XML, actual support for XHTML may be an unfair demand. After all, the XHTML 1.1 standard isn't quite four years old yet. Still, maybe the new IE should at least be able to communicate its ineptitude with XML to the world's webservers. Maybe MS could resource a project team to edit the string that will give the next-generation IE a sane Accept header. (Maybe Steve Jobs would strike back by forming an Apple project team to find out what an Accept header is.)
You can find a link to it - here.
This says most of what you need to know about the Media Lab, I suspect.
Originally, a large proportion of the Irish government's funding for university science research was going to be diverted into MLE. (Although to be fair the total funding was going to be enlarged as well.) Good riddance. Blame Irish prime minister Bertie Ahern. Evidently he got high on the media lab's promotional vapours. (Another gullible suit.) This isn't the first time he's pushed a grandiose, expensive, misconcieved pet project which eventually dies in an embarrassing fashion.
Oh Ghod that's funny. The image of a third-floor cubicle farm packed with 100 Space Ghost desks and matching massage chairs at $40,000 apiece...
It has a 400Mhz XScale processor, 64/32MB RAM, one SD slot, and one CF Type 2 slot. The battery is claimed to be able to support 4hrs 50 mins of active use. It's reasonably sized and weighs 225g, but the capacity to record sound is lacking.
Unfortunately, Sharp currently have no plans to release this beauty outside Japan. An alternative might be the HP Jornada 720, which has a 640*240 display and a keyboard. Its expansion options are arguably better. It has a 209MHz ARM processor, which may be good enough. However, it weighs half a kilo, it costs $1000(!) (at least officially), and Linux is still being ported. Yet another alternative might be the 640*480 HNT Exilien 00101/00201, but where or when that thing will be available beats me.
It's all very frustrating, because an SL-C700-like PDA with 128MB of RAM (instead of 64MB), somewhat better expandability (say one CF Type 2 slot and one Type 2 PC Card slot) and built-in sound-recording capability would solve all my life's problems. ;)
Shirow's primarily a comics artist, not an animator. As far as I can tell, Black Magic M-66 is the only anime in which his involvement went much beyond allowing one of his manga to be adapted or providing character or concept designs. (See also this biography.) (Ghost in the Shell is Oshii Mamoru's adaptation of (part of) Shirow's manga of the same name.)
A good while ago ID said that that Doom III multiplayer would require more than 56kbits of bandwidth. Does anyone know if this is still their intention? If D3 multiplayer does require broadband, the consequences could be interesting. ID games broke OpenGL and hardware 3D acceleration into the mass market, after all.
Yes, having checked it, you're right. I still stand by my other assertions, though.
Evagelion's bombastic, sarcastic use of theme music in some scenes (Worthy is the Lamb, the Ode to Joy) is another place where The Prisoner's influence (especially that of "Fall Out") is apparent. (The Prisoner came well before Kubrik's Clockwork Orange, let alone Reservoir Dogs.) More generally, both shows took a popular genre of TV action serial and subverted it into a statement about the human condition, full of weirdness, symbolism, and angst. HIDEAKI Anno probably owes Patrick McGoohan a beer for that one.
For those out of the know: The Prisoner is not Prisoner: Cell Block H . The Prisoner is a British TV show from the 1960s. ITV is a UK commercial TV channel. The Prisoner is a one-hour show with 17 episodes. The Prisoner is the Greatest TV Show of All Time, Ever. (So far, at least. :) )