The problem with software patents is that it protects an idea regardless of implementation. On top of that many software patents cover ideas that are a very small part of a large puzzle, again without implementation.
When developingan application it is quite possible, perhaps even inevitable to eventually be faced with a problem that has somewhere received a patent. Without knowing that a patent exists the developer comes up with a solution to the problem and completes the application. Keep in mind that at this point the developer is unaware that a patent exists and has not made any use of any of the information conveyed in the patent application or published elsewhere. His coding is entirely his innovation, noone elses!
Then at some point in the future someone steps forward and claime infringement on some patent because the idea of how to solve a problem encountered in the application has been patented by this person. The unfairness of patents is that without ever implementing anything, one can dream up ideas, wait until someone creates a product that infringes on these ideas, and finally reap the benefits by sueing and collecting royalties once the product is successful.
At the very least, patents should be 100% unenforcable unless they are accompanied by a marketable product, period. Further patents need to be on a particular implementation or solution to a problem, not on a broad concept.
> Now, Sveasoft's service agreement says that if a subscriber exercises their right to distribute the source, > as given by the GPL, their subscription will be terminated. Hence, the "further restrictions" > which "ask you to surrender the rights" given by the GPL. >
> No, they don't. The restrictions in that case are not on the "rights granted therein". They
> are on other rights, granted by Sveasoft, so obtain support and updates.
The support agreement is terminated IF you excercise the right to redistribute the software. In essence you are punished for exercising the rights granted under the GPL. I'd say this is a "further restriction" of the "rights granted therein".
that it is not permissable to apply any restrictions in addition to the restrictions imposed by the GPL to GPL licensed code. The fact that they will terminate a support agreement ($20 subscription) if GPL'ed pre-release code is distributed is a violation of the GPL. After all they a placing a restriction on the GPL code that further restricts distribution.
This does present an interesting thought, though. Let's say I take some GPL licensed code and make changes to it. I give this code to a couple of friends to try it out. I say "Here is the code with my mods, here are the sources, build it, use it, let me know how it works". In my mind this is a trial version, lacking documentation and not meant (from my perspective) for broad public consumption.
Now one of my friends posts this everywhere on the internet. He can do this without my permission since this is GPL'ed code. However, I am pissed since wide distribution wasn't what I intended. As a result I am getting bombarded with emails about the flaws of the software.
In my opinion this friend breached my trust in distributing the software, something I didn't intend. I have no obligation to provide him any updates of the code, the final release or anything else. In fact I don't even have to talk to him if I choose not to. Except I would say I am breaching the GPL since my friend does have the right granted to him under the GPL to redistribute...
If they gave away the binaries and charged for the source, that would be a violation. Or if they charged for the binary and charged again for the source. But AFAIK, they do not. As the source always accompanies the binaries, it's not a problem.
The GPL doesn't require that the source code be made available for free. Is $50 a reasonable fee for burning a CD and shipping it?
Here is the paragraph from the GPL that permits charging a fee for source code:
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three
years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your
cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete
machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be
distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium
customarily used for software interchange; or,
I wish the Commission would consider laying aside a MHz or so for hobbyist broadcasters. But they should require type-accepted transmitters and dictate minimum technical standards of operation. None of this would be expensive or an undue burden upon those who would like to air out the First Amendment.
Open up a small chunk of spectrum for broadcast use by licensed amateur radio operators...
I believe state borders should be fortified and all persons and vehicles crossing state borders should be searched. All out of state visitors should be photographed and fingerprinted while were at it. Case closed....
Sorry, but the use tax is tremendously stupid. While I refer to states (parent article) but similar tax problems exist in Canada. Different provinces apply different sales taxes. While this thing is calles sales tax (name implies tax applies on SALES, no consumption) it is not applied that way. If I purchase products in one province and take them to another for consumption I need to claim for a refund in the province I purchase the products and submit tax in the province I use the products. This is incredibly stupid, IMHO.
I purchase a lot of products online and over the phone. My choice of supplier rarely takes the location and possible taxes into consideration. I purchase from whomever gives me the best service.
I agree, but what constitutes a lock? If my mp3 collection is accessible via http on an odd port and via a subdirectoy not advertised anywhere it is at the very least concealed. Unless I am knowingly sharing files to a third party I don't think I am infringing copyrights!
From now on I will send 20,000,000,000 emails to any creep that sends me crap I don't want. And I know who you are, it states 'From:....' clearly on any email I receive.
by powering your P4 using a bicycle generator. Imagine a notebook strapped to an exercise bike and powered by motion of the pedals. That would be a great way to get into shape. Heck, even I could become an athlete then!
All this non interference stuff is big bunch of horse shit. If my radio gear interferes with my neighbours internet how popular am I going to be? As far as I know amateur radio is the hobby of a minority.... And remember that this is a mobile problem, too. Some HAM comes driving down your lane keying his transmitter quite possibly there goes your internet....
Arm yourself with a tape measure and visit someone with a "real" rack. That'll give you all the dimensions you'll need. Next get a pair of rackrails and some plywood. That's about all that's needed.
No but. The levy is royalty for storing a copy of copyrighted material on blank media. That gives me the right to fill the CD or HDD with music. So whether I own, borrow or download the content should be irrelevant. I don't think the levy on blank media gives anyone the right to make music available online, but it does make it legal to posess music.
I'd say the up and coming internet tax/royalties should make it legal to distribute music via the internet..... At least it will from a moral point of view.
Yes! Department of Transportation should ne sued as well, they provide the roads criminals travel on. For crimes commited during the winter, snow clearing crews are liable, too, they make the getaway possible. Let's not forget the gas station that provided fuel for the Chevy and the store that clothed the robbers and sold them shoes.....
BPL is insane! Everywhere they a pilot project has been done it was shown that there is significant RF noise to interfere in huge chunks of radio spectrum. Whomever thought up the brilliant idea to transmit RF via unbalanced unshielded wire over the power grid should be... (I will leave medieval torture methods to your imagination)...
So what does SCO have to prove to make their point?
Even if there are pieces of code in Linux that resemble Unix source code, isn't it possible that programmer faced with similar problems arrive at similar code to solve the problem. After all there is a common train of thought here. I bet if a hundred programmers are given a programming challenge, there'll be many very similar, if not identical, results.
I think this will result in a unique challenge to OpenSource projects as a whole. Who came up with what. In the world of closed source prorietary software, one can steal from the other and noone will likely find out for a very long time. After all, the sources are a well guarded secret.
In the OpenSource world, who's to say what code came from where? There's the whole aspect of prior art, just like in patents. How can a closed source project prove that its code existed prior to the OpenSource projects? If the date of the conception was close, whose to say the closed source people didn't glimpse ideas of the OpenSource project?
Even if there this is code similar to what SCO conceived in Linux, there needs to be some wrong doing before there can be any liability or damage. There's got to be positively theft, a well established trail of evidence how the code made it from SCO to IBM to Linux. The only party I can see being liable would be the person(s) lifting the code from SCO.
I wonder if there's a legal precedence to this type of situation. After all, who can verify that the sources of an OpenSource product are genuine and haven't been lifted from someone other then the party that has been infringed on. For the 'user' (be it personal or commercial) there is no way to determine any of this since there is no access to the closed sources.
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The problem with software patents is that it protects an idea regardless of implementation. On top of that many software patents cover ideas that are a very small part of a large puzzle, again without implementation.
When developingan application it is quite possible, perhaps even inevitable to eventually be faced with a problem that has somewhere received a patent. Without knowing that a patent exists the developer comes up with a solution to the problem and completes the application. Keep in mind that at this point the developer is unaware that a patent exists and has not made any use of any of the information conveyed in the patent application or published elsewhere. His coding is entirely his innovation, noone elses!
Then at some point in the future someone steps forward and claime infringement on some patent because the idea of how to solve a problem encountered in the application has been patented by this person. The unfairness of patents is that without ever implementing anything, one can dream up ideas, wait until someone creates a product that infringes on these ideas, and finally reap the benefits by sueing and collecting royalties once the product is successful.
At the very least, patents should be 100% unenforcable unless they are accompanied by a marketable product, period. Further patents need to be on a particular implementation or solution to a problem, not on a broad concept.
> as given by the GPL, their subscription will be terminated. Hence, the "further restrictions"
> which "ask you to surrender the rights" given by the GPL.
>
> No, they don't. The restrictions in that case are not on the "rights granted therein". They
> are on other rights, granted by Sveasoft, so obtain support and updates.
The support agreement is terminated IF you excercise the right to redistribute the software. In essence you are punished for exercising the rights granted under the GPL. I'd say this is a "further restriction" of the "rights granted therein".
This does present an interesting thought, though. Let's say I take some GPL licensed code and make changes to it. I give this code to a couple of friends to try it out. I say "Here is the code with my mods, here are the sources, build it, use it, let me know how it works". In my mind this is a trial version, lacking documentation and not meant (from my perspective) for broad public consumption.
Now one of my friends posts this everywhere on the internet. He can do this without my permission since this is GPL'ed code. However, I am pissed since wide distribution wasn't what I intended. As a result I am getting bombarded with emails about the flaws of the software.
In my opinion this friend breached my trust in distributing the software, something I didn't intend. I have no obligation to provide him any updates of the code, the final release or anything else. In fact I don't even have to talk to him if I choose not to. Except I would say I am breaching the GPL since my friend does have the right granted to him under the GPL to redistribute...
The GPL doesn't require that the source code be made available for free. Is $50 a reasonable fee for burning a CD and shipping it?
Here is the paragraph from the GPL that permits charging a fee for source code:
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
Open up a small chunk of spectrum for broadcast use by licensed amateur radio operators...
I believe state borders should be fortified and all persons and vehicles crossing state borders should be searched. All out of state visitors should be photographed and fingerprinted while were at it. Case closed....
Sorry, but the use tax is tremendously stupid. While I refer to states (parent article) but similar tax problems exist in Canada. Different provinces apply different sales taxes. While this thing is calles sales tax (name implies tax applies on SALES, no consumption) it is not applied that way. If I purchase products in one province and take them to another for consumption I need to claim for a refund in the province I purchase the products and submit tax in the province I use the products. This is incredibly stupid, IMHO.
I purchase a lot of products online and over the phone. My choice of supplier rarely takes the location and possible taxes into consideration. I purchase from whomever gives me the best service.
I agree, but what constitutes a lock? If my mp3 collection is accessible via http on an odd port and via a subdirectoy not advertised anywhere it is at the very least concealed. Unless I am knowingly sharing files to a third party I don't think I am infringing copyrights!
From now on I will send 20,000,000,000 emails to any creep that sends me crap I don't want. And I know who you are, it states 'From:....' clearly on any email I receive.
by powering your P4 using a bicycle generator. Imagine a notebook strapped to an exercise bike and powered by motion of the pedals. That would be a great way to get into shape. Heck, even I could become an athlete then!
All this non interference stuff is big bunch of horse shit. If my radio gear interferes with my neighbours internet how popular am I going to be? As far as I know amateur radio is the hobby of a minority.... And remember that this is a mobile problem, too. Some HAM comes driving down your lane keying his transmitter quite possibly there goes your internet....
Arm yourself with a tape measure and visit someone with a "real" rack. That'll give you all the dimensions you'll need. Next get a pair of rackrails and some plywood. That's about all that's needed.
No but. The levy is royalty for storing a copy of copyrighted material on blank media. That gives me the right to fill the CD or HDD with music. So whether I own, borrow or download the content should be irrelevant. I don't think the levy on blank media gives anyone the right to make music available online, but it does make it legal to posess music. I'd say the up and coming internet tax/royalties should make it legal to distribute music via the internet..... At least it will from a moral point of view.
Yes! Department of Transportation should ne sued as well, they provide the roads criminals travel on. For crimes commited during the winter, snow clearing crews are liable, too, they make the getaway possible. Let's not forget the gas station that provided fuel for the Chevy and the store that clothed the robbers and sold them shoes.....
BPL is insane! Everywhere they a pilot project has been done it was shown that there is significant RF noise to interfere in huge chunks of radio spectrum. Whomever thought up the brilliant idea to transmit RF via unbalanced unshielded wire over the power grid should be... (I will leave medieval torture methods to your imagination)...
So what does SCO have to prove to make their point?
Even if there are pieces of code in Linux that resemble Unix source code, isn't it possible that programmer faced with similar problems arrive at similar code to solve the problem. After all there is a common train of thought here. I bet if a hundred programmers are given a programming challenge, there'll be many very similar, if not identical, results.
I think this will result in a unique challenge to OpenSource projects as a whole. Who came up with what. In the world of closed source prorietary software, one can steal from the other and noone will likely find out for a very long time. After all, the sources are a well guarded secret.
In the OpenSource world, who's to say what code came from where? There's the whole aspect of prior art, just like in patents. How can a closed source project prove that its code existed prior to the OpenSource projects? If the date of the conception was close, whose to say the closed source people didn't glimpse ideas of the OpenSource project?
Even if there this is code similar to what SCO conceived in Linux, there needs to be some wrong doing before there can be any liability or damage. There's got to be positively theft, a well established trail of evidence how the code made it from SCO to IBM to Linux. The only party I can see being liable would be the person(s) lifting the code from SCO.
I wonder if there's a legal precedence to this type of situation. After all, who can verify that the sources of an OpenSource product are genuine and haven't been lifted from someone other then the party that has been infringed on. For the 'user' (be it personal or commercial) there is no way to determine any of this since there is no access to the closed sources.
... or become a patent lawyer ... I see a tremendous business opportunity in that particular field ...