The article contains a common error - 'a computer program which removes DVD copy-protection'. As I understand it, DeCSS has nothing to do with copying. It removes the playback 'protection'.
DVD players are crippled to stop you playing discs in countries where the movie studios don't want you to. However, in most countries copyright law does not allow them to impose such restrictions (IANAL), so use of DeCSS is not illegal. In fact, it is just letting you exercise rights granted by law.
The computer has to stink in order for the game to be enjoyable. If the computer were any good, it would crush you. No matter how frantically you can click the mouse, the computer will always be faster in dispatching its units, working out what to repair, building things as quickly as possible, and so on.
The idea is that although the computer is superior in reaction times (and often, in number of units at the start of the level), you can beat it through better strategy and greater aggressiveness. Part of the fun of Dune 2 was working out the bugs or stupidities in the AI, and finding ways to exploit them.
The geeks (or whatever you call them) are not lobbying for special treatment. If you oppose something like the DMCA, you oppose it because of what it does to everybody, geek or otherwise.
People with technical knowledge will always be able to download things like DeCSS, work out how to make MP3s of their CD collection, and so on. But what about the ordinary citizens, who don't even know what the DMCA is? They are affected by it just as much, more even if they just take what they are offered by the record / movie industry.
Or take software patents; okay, they're a bad thing for individual programmers, but *everyone* loses out from monopolies and lack of choice. A large proportion of households own a PC, and they will suffer more if small software vendors get bullied by large patentholders. For an ordinary small business that is trying to launch an e-commerce site, software patents are also a major obstacle. It just happens that only 'geeks' are the ones worrying about this, because arcane intellectual property matters don't usually get coverage on TV news.
Sounds like Wine is getting to the point where it could be ready for end-users. At least, ready for end-users who need to run a particular application and don't mind if it breaks occasionally.
Dosemu was at this stage for a long while before 1.0 came out, and distributions like RedHat included it. Are there any mainstream distributions that include Wine ready-to-run? Ideally, a Windows application would just appear on the programs menu like any other. You could run it using the binfmt_misc kernel module to start wine automatically.
Or even cooler, the installation program could scan your Windows partition, see what apps you have on your Start Menu, and set them up to run from Wine.
It's well known that the USPTO is granting patents which never should have been granted, patents on something which is already well-known. For example, Unisys managed to patent a simple linked list, and the LZW algorithm is patented _twice_ - the USPTO couldn't even manage to check the later application against previous patents.
Now the patent office uses software, right? Here's what you need to do, if you have the money:
- Apply for a broad patent which will cover some software used by the USPTO. This software could even be Windows, sendmail or whatever.
- Hope it gets granted. If not, try again with a slightly different application.
- Sue the USPTO for patent infringement and refuse to license the patent to them under any conditions.
- With luck, the patent office will be forced to go to court arguing that the patent should never have been granted.
- Hope that newspapers pick up the story.
Re:SuSE making inroads in the North American marke
on
SuSE 6.4 Announced
·
· Score: 1
I'm not saying that SuSE is the *only* European distribution, but rather that it's much MORE common in Europe than in the United States. I've had people laugh at me, here, for using it; I imagine that's not the case in Europe.
Ah, that's because those Europeans have no sense of humour; they can't see the funny side of using a distribution that tells you to 'Have a lot of fun':-)
Re:SuSE making inroads in the North American marke
on
SuSE 6.4 Announced
·
· Score: 3
SuSE is not, in general, less expensive than RedHat, because you can get RedHat from Cheap Bytes, but SuSE don't allow you to resell copies of their distribution. When you pay $50 or so for RedHat, you are supporting ten other users who got it for next to nothing.
The SourceForge CompileFarm enables Open Source developers to automatically create packages that can be installed on SuSE Linux using SuSE's YaST installation tool
I always thought packages were installed on SuSE using Red Hat's RPM. Funny that.
- if people might try to shut down your web site or block your program, make sure the source code is 'out there'. Making binary-only releases is taking a risk that the whole effort will be wasted, if the lawyers get to you in time.
- ideally, make the code public domain (ie not copyrighted) so that there will not be legal problems with someone else picking up the code, you being forced to try 'revoking' a licence, etc.
No, free software is used commercially, so it is not safe from software patents.
In any case, it is worth opposing software patents simply for their impact on *proprietary* software developers who are trying to develop new software and make money from it. The effect on free software is another item in a long list of Bad Things.
Jon Katz is wrong, they are not applying 'outdated' old ideas of copyright to a new medium. Instead, the copyright industry is taking advantage of electronic media by pushing for new and stronger powers.
I for one would be happy to return to the 'good old days', where copyright controlled only copying and not usage, and lasted a reasonable time rather than up to 150 years. Instead, laws like the DMCA and the proposed UCITA give copyright holders unprecedented new powers.
(I live in Europe so I'm not directly affected by these laws, but there's no cause to feel smug; there is already strong lobbying to introduce software patents in Europe, UCITA-type laws will probably come next.)
It would be nice if there was some kind of `standard' letter that could be copy/paste/emailed to the patent office.
Here is a letter that I wrote to the UK patent office about software patents. You should not cut and paste it - for a start, it is far too long - but you might like to mention the more important ideas.
The letter talks about software patents in general, it doesn't say anything about WIPO, so you might have to add that. Here it is, (but again, don't just cut and paste, write in your own words):
To: xxxx Subject: Software patents From: Ed Avis Dear Sir,
I am concerned at moves to allow patents on computer programs and algorithms in Europe. I think that this would be misguided, hamper innovation, and disadvantage British consumers and businesses. The patent system is not appropriate for software.
First, I don't think that the question of whether a computer program is an 'invention' is relevant. Just because patents are useful for some kinds of invention doesn't mean that we should blindly apply the same policy to software. Speaking as a software developer myself, I would say that a program is more like a literary work, but either way, we should consider a patent system on its merits, and not by just carrying over a system from some other area.
We should consider whether software patents would promote innovation, whether they would encourage disclosure of new techniques, and whether they would benefit the writers or users of software. In doing this we have an excellent example to consider, the software patent system in the US.
Software patents in America have been a disaster. Software developers constantly face the threat of lawsuits from companies which hold hundreds, thousands of patents on ideas which any software engineer - or in some cases, even any layman - would consider trivial or obvious. The only way to defend against this is to get your own collection of patents, preferably worded as vaguely as possible so that it will be impossible to write a program without infringing. Then you can countersue if anyone claims you are infringing on their patent, and probably reach a cross-licensing arrangement.
The people who lose out are the small to medium size software developers, who cannot afford a large enough legal department and a big enough patent portfolio for defence. Some companies (such as Oracle, the leading database company) have openly admitted that the only reason they apply for patents is to defend themselves against spurious lawsuits from other patent holders. Small developers are the ones who lose out, and it is small developers who make most of the breakthrough innovations in software. In any case, the hard work is covered by copyright (see below) and patents are obtained only as a legal weapon. So patents do not help innovation.
Do patents encourage disclosure? This is not true either. Disclosing the human-readable source code to a program opens up a developer to patent infringement lawsuits, which are less likely if the program's workings are kept secret. The fact that patents once granted are made public is not very significant here, since any important and non-trivial algorithm would need to be made public in any case, in order to become an accepted standard.
Do patents on software benefit the consumer? No. There is a grave threat to competitiveness in many markets from patented business models, which are quite easy to achieve if you are allowed to get patents on particular software ideas. For example, a patent was recently granted in Norway which, according to its owner, covers all e-commerce in Europe. In America, the bookseller Barnes & Noble was sued by rival Amazon.com over placing a link to 'buy now' on its web pages. If Europe starts granting patents on computer programs, it will be possible to get a monopoly on a particular business model simply by patenting the idea of a software program that implements that model. In the software market, consumers also lose out. Patents make it easy to stamp out competing or compatible products, by adding some trivial 'wrinkle' to data formats used and then patenting it. The software market is naturally very prone to creating monopolies; it doesn't need any extra help from the patent system.
Developers are expected to check every line of their code against thousands of existing patents. Consider that the USPTO has allowed the same algorithm (LZW compression) to be patented twice, by Unisys and by IBM. If even the patent office cannot check an application against previous patents, what hope is there for the developer checking a 500,000 line program?
I don't think that software patents in America have benefited anybody except a handful of very large corporations and patent lawyers.
Some people have advocated introducing software patents in Europe, claiming that it will help small European software firms compete against large American ones. I think I have explained why quite the opposite is true; the best help we can give to software firms is an open and competitive marketplace. Others claim that software patents will help in the fight against piracy, which is a complete non sequitur. Software piracy is a copyright violation and has nothing to do with patents. Neither should we harmonize our laws with America just for the sake of it; it's unfortunate that the US system is so harmful, but at least we are free of it here. (In any case, patents on software happened by accident; Congress didn't pass any law, but rather judges ruled that software was an invention and hence should be patentable. They did not, however, rule that since it was an invention it should not be copyrightable.)
On a different level, software is unlike physical inventions. Innovation in software development is not a big event but an everyday occurrence; every program a developer writes will contain some new technique or a new way of combining existing techniques. Software development is fundamentally about combining a large number of existing ideas in new ways, and this work is covered by copyright. Copyright works well for software; it covers the hard part of development, which is actually writing the code, testing, and documentating. Patents serve only to hamper other programs which have been developed independently.
Don't take my word for it that patents are a danger, hear what Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web has to say:
I appreciate the reasons why the patent system was set up, but there is a really big problem here... The bar for innovation seems too low. You are able to take an existing social practice and write software to do it and get a patent.
If you wish, I can refer you to dozens of other sources who agree with what I am saying. It is difficult to find anybody in favour of software patents, except for statements from large companies such as IBM.
Sorry that this is a long letter, but this is a subject of great importance, not just for the software industry, but for the whole world in the information age. In summary:
Consider what will promote innovation, rather than trying to define what is an 'invention'.
In practice, software patents are used as a legal weapon against competitors, rather than to protect genuine innovations.
Patents discourage rather than help innovation and disclosure.
Patents are a serious obstacle to competition both in the software market and online.
and most importantly, software is already covered by copyright.
I hope that the Patent Office will argue against granting patents on software in Europe, whether by changing article 52.2 or by any other method.
Having a high patent fee, or a fee which increases year after year, would just reinforce the idea that patents are a special privilege you can purchase, rather than a way to promote new research and disclosure of inventions.
Firstly, I believe the GATT treaty requires patents to last for 20 years. So it would not be possible to make software patents have a shorter lifespan without breaking the treaty - the only options are 20-year patents, or no software patents at all.
Secondly, I cannot believe that getting a patent on a particular business model would let you go out and start a business, whereas without such a monopoly you wouldn't. You may have one or two patents, but the big companies such as Microsoft have thousands of software patents. Any program you write will violate lots of them. So they can quite easily twist your arm to force a cross-licensing deal - and you're back where you started, except that now a lot of money has been siphoned off by lawyers.
And we don't get people in the physical world trying to make this argument - that without absolute control over a particular business model they would not have a chance of going into business. If there is market demand for something then it will be profitable to start a business supplying it. Yes, there will be other businesses which get into the act after a while, offering competition and choice to the consumer - that's how capitalism is supposed to work.
There is already plenty of 'protection' provided by copyright, for the code you have written, and simply by being first. For example, there is nothing particularly remarkable about Amazon compared to other online booksellers, it's just that they have the advantage of Being First and thus getting an established market position. Unfortunately, software patents now allow them to abuse that position to threaten competing companies.
Finally, even one year software patents would create a legal minefield for any developer. There are thousands of new patents issued every year - do you really want to check every line of code against every one of them? Large patent-holding companies would still be able to demand protection money for use of their 'innovations'.
Well, Red Hat merged with / bought Cygnus earlier this year, and so far there's no sign that Cygnus's proprietary stuff such as Code Fusion will be released under GPL. Not that they are under any obligation to, of course.
I believe Mozilla has its own portability layer, the Netscape Portable Runtime or NSPR. Maybe you could use that for other programs if the licensing is acceptable.
Slashdot Mirror
The article contains a common error - 'a computer program which removes DVD copy-protection'. As I understand it, DeCSS has nothing to do with copying. It removes the playback 'protection'.
DVD players are crippled to stop you playing discs in countries where the movie studios don't want you to. However, in most countries copyright law does not allow them to impose such restrictions (IANAL), so use of DeCSS is not illegal. In fact, it is just letting you exercise rights granted by law.
The computer has to stink in order for the game to be enjoyable. If the computer were any good, it would crush you. No matter how frantically you can click the mouse, the computer will always be faster in dispatching its units, working out what to repair, building things as quickly as possible, and so on.
The idea is that although the computer is superior in reaction times (and often, in number of units at the start of the level), you can beat it through better strategy and greater aggressiveness. Part of the fun of Dune 2 was working out the bugs or stupidities in the AI, and finding ways to exploit them.
Wow... 1.4.2... so refreshing to see such a low version number in today's climate of Slackware 7.0, RedHat 6.1, and so on :-)
The geeks (or whatever you call them) are not lobbying for special treatment. If you oppose something like the DMCA, you oppose it because of what it does to everybody, geek or otherwise.
People with technical knowledge will always be able to download things like DeCSS, work out how to make MP3s of their CD collection, and so on. But what about the ordinary citizens, who don't even know what the DMCA is? They are affected by it just as much, more even if they just take what they are offered by the record / movie industry.
Or take software patents; okay, they're a bad thing for individual programmers, but *everyone* loses out from monopolies and lack of choice. A large proportion of households own a PC, and they will suffer more if small software vendors get bullied by large patentholders. For an ordinary small business that is trying to launch an e-commerce site, software patents are also a major obstacle. It just happens that only 'geeks' are the ones worrying about this, because arcane intellectual property matters don't usually get coverage on TV news.
Will we see a Samba port to Windows, as a more flexible / less licence-encumbered alternative to the built-in file and print sharing?
What is your opinion on man pages? Are they an obsolete distraction, or are they still essential for any well-documented program?
Do you think it's reasonable to use man pages for learning, or should they be written only as a reference manual?
Sounds like Wine is getting to the point where it could be ready for end-users. At least, ready for end-users who need to run a particular application and don't mind if it breaks occasionally.
Dosemu was at this stage for a long while before 1.0 came out, and distributions like RedHat included it. Are there any mainstream distributions that include Wine ready-to-run? Ideally, a Windows application would just appear on the programs menu like any other. You could run it using the binfmt_misc kernel module to start wine automatically.
Or even cooler, the installation program could scan your Windows partition, see what apps you have on your Start Menu, and set them up to run from Wine.
It's well known that the USPTO is granting patents which never should have been granted, patents on something which is already well-known. For example, Unisys managed to patent a simple linked list, and the LZW algorithm is patented _twice_ - the USPTO couldn't even manage to check the later application against previous patents.
Now the patent office uses software, right? Here's what you need to do, if you have the money:
- Apply for a broad patent which will cover some software used by the USPTO. This software could even be Windows, sendmail or whatever.
- Hope it gets granted. If not, try again with a slightly different application.
- Sue the USPTO for patent infringement and refuse to license the patent to them under any conditions.
- With luck, the patent office will be forced to go to court arguing that the patent should never have been granted.
- Hope that newspapers pick up the story.
Ah, that's because those Europeans have no sense of humour; they can't see the funny side of using a distribution that tells you to 'Have a lot of fun' :-)
SuSE is not, in general, less expensive than RedHat, because you can get RedHat from Cheap Bytes, but SuSE don't allow you to resell copies of their distribution. When you pay $50 or so for RedHat, you are supporting ten other users who got it for next to nothing.
I always thought packages were installed on SuSE using Red Hat's RPM. Funny that.
Yes. The moral of the story is:
- if people might try to shut down your web site or block your program, make sure the source code is 'out there'. Making binary-only releases is taking a risk that the whole effort will be wasted, if the lawyers get to you in time.
- ideally, make the code public domain (ie not copyrighted) so that there will not be legal problems with someone else picking up the code, you being forced to try 'revoking' a licence, etc.
No, free software is used commercially, so it is not safe from software patents.
In any case, it is worth opposing software patents simply for their impact on *proprietary* software developers who are trying to develop new software and make money from it. The effect on free software is another item in a long list of Bad Things.
Jon Katz is wrong, they are not applying 'outdated' old ideas of copyright to a new medium. Instead, the copyright industry is taking advantage of electronic media by pushing for new and stronger powers.
I for one would be happy to return to the 'good old days', where copyright controlled only copying and not usage, and lasted a reasonable time rather than up to 150 years. Instead, laws like the DMCA and the proposed UCITA give copyright holders unprecedented new powers.
(I live in Europe so I'm not directly affected by these laws, but there's no cause to feel smug; there is already strong lobbying to introduce software patents in Europe, UCITA-type laws will probably come next.)
Here is a letter that I wrote to the UK patent office about software patents. You should not cut and paste it - for a start, it is far too long - but you might like to mention the more important ideas.
The letter talks about software patents in general, it doesn't say anything about WIPO, so you might have to add that. Here it is, (but again, don't just cut and paste, write in your own words):
To: xxxxSubject: Software patents
From: Ed Avis
Dear Sir,
I am concerned at moves to allow patents on computer programs and algorithms in Europe. I think that this would be misguided, hamper innovation, and disadvantage British consumers and businesses. The patent system is not appropriate for software.
First, I don't think that the question of whether a computer program is an 'invention' is relevant. Just because patents are useful for some kinds of invention doesn't mean that we should blindly apply the same policy to software. Speaking as a software developer myself, I would say that a program is more like a literary work, but either way, we should consider a patent system on its merits, and not by just carrying over a system from some other area.
We should consider whether software patents would promote innovation, whether they would encourage disclosure of new techniques, and whether they would benefit the writers or users of software. In doing this we have an excellent example to consider, the software patent system in the US.
Software patents in America have been a disaster. Software developers constantly face the threat of lawsuits from companies which hold hundreds, thousands of patents on ideas which any software engineer - or in some cases, even any layman - would consider trivial or obvious. The only way to defend against this is to get your own collection of patents, preferably worded as vaguely as possible so that it will be impossible to write a program without infringing. Then you can countersue if anyone claims you are infringing on their patent, and probably reach a cross-licensing arrangement.
The people who lose out are the small to medium size software developers, who cannot afford a large enough legal department and a big enough patent portfolio for defence. Some companies (such as Oracle, the leading database company) have openly admitted that the only reason they apply for patents is to defend themselves against spurious lawsuits from other patent holders. Small developers are the ones who lose out, and it is small developers who make most of the breakthrough innovations in software. In any case, the hard work is covered by copyright (see below) and patents are obtained only as a legal weapon. So patents do not help innovation.
Do patents encourage disclosure? This is not true either. Disclosing the human-readable source code to a program opens up a developer to patent infringement lawsuits, which are less likely if the program's workings are kept secret. The fact that patents once granted are made public is not very significant here, since any important and non-trivial algorithm would need to be made public in any case, in order to become an accepted standard.
Do patents on software benefit the consumer? No. There is a grave threat to competitiveness in many markets from patented business models, which are quite easy to achieve if you are allowed to get patents on particular software ideas. For example, a patent was recently granted in Norway which, according to its owner, covers all e-commerce in Europe. In America, the bookseller Barnes & Noble was sued by rival Amazon.com over placing a link to 'buy now' on its web pages. If Europe starts granting patents on computer programs, it will be possible to get a monopoly on a particular business model simply by patenting the idea of a software program that implements that model. In the software market, consumers also lose out. Patents make it easy to stamp out competing or compatible products, by adding some trivial 'wrinkle' to data formats used and then patenting it. The software market is naturally very prone to creating monopolies; it doesn't need any extra help from the patent system.
Developers are expected to check every line of their code against thousands of existing patents. Consider that the USPTO has allowed the same algorithm (LZW compression) to be patented twice, by Unisys and by IBM. If even the patent office cannot check an application against previous patents, what hope is there for the developer checking a 500,000 line program?
I don't think that software patents in America have benefited anybody except a handful of very large corporations and patent lawyers.
Some people have advocated introducing software patents in Europe, claiming that it will help small European software firms compete against large American ones. I think I have explained why quite the opposite is true; the best help we can give to software firms is an open and competitive marketplace. Others claim that software patents will help in the fight against piracy, which is a complete non sequitur. Software piracy is a copyright violation and has nothing to do with patents. Neither should we harmonize our laws with America just for the sake of it; it's unfortunate that the US system is so harmful, but at least we are free of it here. (In any case, patents on software happened by accident; Congress didn't pass any law, but rather judges ruled that software was an invention and hence should be patentable. They did not, however, rule that since it was an invention it should not be copyrightable.)
On a different level, software is unlike physical inventions. Innovation in software development is not a big event but an everyday occurrence; every program a developer writes will contain some new technique or a new way of combining existing techniques. Software development is fundamentally about combining a large number of existing ideas in new ways, and this work is covered by copyright. Copyright works well for software; it covers the hard part of development, which is actually writing the code, testing, and documentating. Patents serve only to hamper other programs which have been developed independently.
Don't take my word for it that patents are a danger, hear what Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web has to say:
If you wish, I can refer you to dozens of other sources who agree with what I am saying. It is difficult to find anybody in favour of software patents, except for statements from large companies such as IBM.
Sorry that this is a long letter, but this is a subject of great importance, not just for the software industry, but for the whole world in the information age. In summary:I hope that the Patent Office will argue against granting patents on software in Europe, whether by changing article 52.2 or by any other method.
Yikes, that was long. But you get the idea. Read more at freepatents.org or the archive of this message on the mailing list.
Having a high patent fee, or a fee which increases year after year, would just reinforce the idea that patents are a special privilege you can purchase, rather than a way to promote new research and disclosure of inventions.
When you say the movie was 'horrific' do you mean that it was a bad movie, or just that it mutilated the book?
BTW the game Dune II is (I think) even less faithful to the book, but it's a damn good game.
If you've read the book, you probably won't like the film. This is true for most book-based films, not just Dune.
I saw the film without having read the book, and I thought it was okay. A bit bizarre, but okay.
So maybe you're just expecting too much if you want the film to be faithful to, or as good as, the book it's based on.
What about ELKS? It's probably the oldest of the 'embeddable' Linux projects, but you don't see any press releases mentioning it.
Firstly, I believe the GATT treaty requires patents to last for 20 years. So it would not be possible to make software patents have a shorter lifespan without breaking the treaty - the only options are 20-year patents, or no software patents at all.
Secondly, I cannot believe that getting a patent on a particular business model would let you go out and start a business, whereas without such a monopoly you wouldn't. You may have one or two patents, but the big companies such as Microsoft have thousands of software patents. Any program you write will violate lots of them. So they can quite easily twist your arm to force a cross-licensing deal - and you're back where you started, except that now a lot of money has been siphoned off by lawyers.
And we don't get people in the physical world trying to make this argument - that without absolute control over a particular business model they would not have a chance of going into business. If there is market demand for something then it will be profitable to start a business supplying it. Yes, there will be other businesses which get into the act after a while, offering competition and choice to the consumer - that's how capitalism is supposed to work.
There is already plenty of 'protection' provided by copyright, for the code you have written, and simply by being first. For example, there is nothing particularly remarkable about Amazon compared to other online booksellers, it's just that they have the advantage of Being First and thus getting an established market position. Unfortunately, software patents now allow them to abuse that position to threaten competing companies.
Finally, even one year software patents would create a legal minefield for any developer. There are thousands of new patents issued every year - do you really want to check every line of code against every one of them? Large patent-holding companies would still be able to demand protection money for use of their 'innovations'.
I read Slashdot with several stories in different windows. When I switched to this one, I got it confused with the previous story's comments.
That must be the answer. The puzzle is an example sendmail.cf.
Well, Red Hat merged with / bought Cygnus earlier this year, and so far there's no sign that Cygnus's proprietary stuff such as Code Fusion will be released under GPL. Not that they are under any obligation to, of course.
I thought Eric Allman was the creator of Sendmail, ie *the* person behind it.
I believe Mozilla has its own portability layer, the Netscape Portable Runtime or NSPR. Maybe you could use that for other programs if the licensing is acceptable.
For a _real_ challenge you could try writing an OS, TCP/IP stack, HTTP client and HTML renderer all in 5Kbyte...