And yet, all those good things aside, I bet it still gets passed.
That kind of defeatist cynicism is not only counter-productive, since it risks becoming self-fulfilling. It's also quite unwarranted at this point in time, when looking at the political scene in Europe.
I september 2003, the FFII and other software patent opponents won a major victory in the European Parliament, when a majority of the politicians there adopted a version of the directive that said no to software patents.
Last week, it was announced that Poland will not support the introduction of software patents in the Council of Ministers, which means that there is no longer a qualified majority in the Council. This too is a great step towards a Europe free from software patents.
Right now, the issue hangs very much in the balance in Europe. The best estimate I've heard anybody give, is that it could really go either way. So this is no time to give up and resort to armchair cynicism. We managed to get a majority in parliament, now let's try to reach the politicians in the Council as well.
Right now, this one winnable in Europe.
And even if things had looked gloomier than they actually do today, I think there is a lot of wisdom to the German saying "Wer kämpft kann verlieren, wer nicht kämpft hat schon verloren." (If you fight you may lose, if you don't fight you've already lost.)
The beauty of being a politician is the public listens to what you say, not what you do.
So yeah, they'll make tons of noise about being against sw patents, and then silently pass it into law.
Yes, your'e quite right that even the politicians that support the bad version of the directive claim to be against the introduction of software patents.
In a way, this is of course a victory --- there is nobody on the political level that claims that patents on software are a good idea --- but it really makes it difficult to establish a constructive dialogue with the pro-patent side.
You should have a look at Richard Stallman's talk about patents, it is far more informative than this article, and also the presented books.
RMS is doing a tour through the Baltic states and Helsinki July 21-23, to talk about his views on software patents. The program (still somewhat preliminary) can be found here. Take the chance and come and listen if you happen to live nearby!
These are average costs including filing fees to the PTO, and fees to the patent attorney drafting the patent. The costs for actually making the invention are of course not included, however. The reason why European patentets are so much more expensive is mostly because they have to be translated into so many languages.
The parent's estimates for what it costs to do patent litigation are also in line with what other sources quote. So when someone comes and claims that patents are to protect the little guy against big corporations, it's good to have these numbers in mind.
Patenting songs and artwork. If you need to draw an analogy for the layman, there's one they can identify with:
I'm sorry, but if your art class wants to paint that bowl of fruit, you'll have to pay us 699 Euro for each painter's fruit bowl painting patent license.
The European Patent Convention explicitly prohibits patents on aesthetic creations in Article 52, which just happens to be the same Article where it says that computer programs are not patentable either.
But the European Patent Office allows software patents anyway, using an argument centered on the phrase "as such", which appears in Article 52. So if they wanted to allow patents on artwork, music or films, they have already opened the door for doing so.
I've written a slightly humorous article on the subject called "Why Can't I Patent My Movie?" that you may find interesting.
Can you cite any instances where MS unleashed the BSA hellhounds on someone for anything OTHER than unlicensed software use?
Microsoft is also using BSA as a tool for trying to influence the European Union to follow America's lead and introducing software patents, with a view to making it illegal, or at least impossible in practice, for any small or medium-sized company to even try to compete with Microsoft. You can find more info about it here at the FFII site.
So this particular hellhound isn't restricted to biting, if there's a politician around it can lick as well.
I agree with ESR's analysis, but not with the conclusion: What he found out was the usability problems in Fedora.
I've set up network printers in SuSE many times for years and it has never been a problem.
So instead of needing intimate knowledge about the differences between IPP and LPD before she can even use it, she just needs to have intimate knowledge about the differences between Fedora and SuSE before she can even use it?
[H]ow can an organisation trademark a word that's a common noun?
Under normal circumstances, it wouldn't be possible to register a common noun like "Windows" as a trademark for a windowed operating system, since it is not only an ordinary word in the English language, but also a word that describes the product. After all, the reason why it was called Windows was that it could handle windows on the screen, which MS-DOS couldn't. Such marks are called "descriptive", and can normally not be registered at the Patent Office.
The only way to get around this obstacle is if you can show that the trademark is already "well-established" or "known through extensive use", which roughly means that if people in the relevant market segment would associate the name with your product anyway, then you can have it registered as well.
On these grounds, presumably, Microsoft now has the mark Windows registered in most, if not all, countries. Whatever one may think about Microsoft in private one has to admit that both they and Windows are pretty well known, so it's hard to argue against the fact that they got these registrations. Note that it is not because of some evil conspiracy that Microsoft could get the registrations through because they were rich enough to make the name well known, but that this is explicitly part of the trademark legislation, and should be like that.
When it comes to determining if Lindows infringes on the Windows trademark it starts to become real interesting (if you're interested in trademark similarity, that is).
First of all, if it had been two "invented words", like Lindows vs. Pindows, I don't think there's much doubt at all that they would be found to be in conflict with each other (if it had been for the same type of goods, like in the Windows/Lindows case).
However, since "windows" is a common everyday English word, and Lindows is clearly an invented word, the likelihood of confusion is much less than it would be between two different invented words, and you could well argue that the two marks should be able to coexist on those grounds. In practice this means that the level of protection you get when you manage to get a descriptive word registered because it is well-established tends to be lower than it would be for an invented word.
However, on the first side again, there is also the fact that Windows is not only a "well-established" mark, but actually a "famous" trademark, which should be awarded an extra level of protection, beyond what ordinary marks get. (This is also explicitly part of the trademark legislation, so again, no conspiracy.;-) )
But on the other hand, is there really any risk at all that a consumer wouldn't notice the difference between the trademarks when he was standing with a cellophane wrapped box in his hand?
But then again, and so forth...
Not too easy to call this one right, I think, and I wouldn't be surprised if there is almost as much disagreement on the issue among trademark lawyers as there evidently is here on Slashdot.
But he who reads Slashdot will no doubt see what the outcome will be.
IANATML, yadda yadda, but I have worked for 25 years with building phonetic trademark search systems, so I am at least somewhat familiar with the area.
As I understand it, another key element apart from the number of syllables etc. is that the first two lines should paint up a scene, which then gets radically transformed in the last line. In the article where I read it, the example used was somthing along the lines of
Seven black ducklings
Walking towards the water
Over the white ice
The point here being that after the first two lines the reader would have assumed that is was summer, and made a mental image in green and blue summer colors, but after the last line, he has to revise that picture radically.
(My own sucky translation of my faulty recollection of the Swedish translation of the originally Japanese haiku, so please don't take the example as such too seriously, but it illustrates the point, anyway.)
In a way it works a bit like a joke: first you set something up, and then, at the end, you deliver the punch line.
And this of course makes it more interesting to try to write haikus, because no matter how you count your syllables, you really don't have an awful lot of them to achieve all of that.!
You seem to be arguing the world should rest at typewriters or rotary channel selectors because we're accustomed to it.
Nope, if I gave that impression it's only because I express myself badly.
What I am arguing is that we should learn from the people who created the first computers, and decided to stick with the familiar qwerty keyboard.
The qwerty keyboard was originally designed to make it difficult to type too fast, because that could cause the mechanical parts inside the typewriter to jam (at least according to the urban myth:) ). Since there is obviously no risk that this would happen in a computer, why didn't they change the keyboard layout to something better when they introduced the personal computer? Because they wanted to gain acceptance among people who had years of experience using typewriters professionally, and didn't want to alienate and annoy them by introducing more differences than necessary.
For all I know, it is quite possible that alternative keyboard layouts like Dvorak are considerably better that qwerty --- for typing. But for marketing a new superior technology that had other more important benefits to offer, they would have sucked severely.
Now, let us consider Emacs' key bindings from the perspective of an experienced Word user...:-)
Why are we all so focused on cloning something we all agree is awful?
I actually belive that that is an excellent question, and I'll be happy to provide the answer:
Because 90% of all computer users are used to Windows
(The rest of the following rant is essentially a repost, so I apologize if you have already read it.)
You can feel that it shouldn't be like that, and you can make hundreds of snide and clever remarks to the effect that Windows users are too stupid to recognize their own best interests, but you can't change the facts: at least 90% of the people who are using a computer today are using Windows.
It is not every day that a court of law makes an official market survey and releases it freely on the net, in line with the finest traditions of the Open Source movement. Yet it seems that the very people who really believe the most in the benefits of free and open information, are remarkably reluctant to use it when it's available. Think what you will in private, but please please listen to judge Jackson: if Linux is going to have any impact at all in the desktop market, it is Windows users that will have to be converted.
There are a number of good reasons to make the switch to Open Source --- open file formats, control over future license costs, etc., etc. --- but if it means that you have to spend six months cursing all the little things that are different, so that you can't focus on what you're supposed to be doing because you have to relearn all your automatic reflexes, how many people will decide that it's worth the effort?
A lawyer might perhaps consider switching from MS Word to StarOffice simply to make sure that all the files that he creates today can be opened and read on another computer ten years from now, when the case has finally reached the Supreme Court or whatever. But how may chargeable hours is he prepared to let it cost him in the first six months?
It somehow seems that a lot of the people who develop Open Source applications take a special pride in inventing amusing little pitfalls for the Windows user who might be prepared to switch camps. In StarOffice, the keyboard combination to insert a non-breaking space is "Ctrl-Space", rather than Word's "Ctrl-Shift-Space". Please, somebody, why? Of course this is something that one can relearn if one has to, but what's the point of it? The first time a would-be convert, who has been using non-breaking spaces in Word, tries to insert one in a text in StarOffice, it won't work. Whether he decides that non-breaking spaces are not available and that the product does not fulfill his needs, or interrupts what he was originally trying to achieve and starts exploring the help system to find out what it is that he has to do, he will not feel more favorably disposed towards Open Source programs for having tried one. And so unnecessarily.
I could recite any number of examples: if you type "Ctrl-A Ctrl-Return" to mark all posts in a newsgroup as read, Mozilla will instead choose to open a couple of hundred windows (one for each post in the newsgroup), which will cause the system to freeze, so that it has to be rebooted. Excellent marketing ploy.
To change some settings in Mozilla you should of course look under "Edit" in the menu system, and not under "Tools" like in all other programs in the Windows world. Brilliant. How could you possibly fail when you make it so convenient for the user?
And please, don't come and say "RTFM" now. Why the **** should someone who has been using a computer for years have to consult the FM (provided there actually is one, of course, but that's a separate issue in its own right) to perform a so completely trivial standard task as the ones mentioned here?
And please don't come and say "but you can change that if you spend a couple of days learning how to reconfigure the program from the bottom up" either. Pe
Sometimes group members will send files to other sites themselves, using a technique called File Transfer Protocol instead of e-mail.
Aha! Since this FTP thing is obviously a tool for criminal acts, all we have to do is to use the DMCA or the Patriot Act to declare it illegal. Once this is take care of by the responsible authorities, the Internet will once again be free of criminals, and a safe place where innovation can flourish.
[...] the demonization of one man has such a large effect on fashial hair fashions. Did this kind of thing happen during other large conflicts?
The moustache was in fact intended as a deliberate political statement: by cutting of the long, vaxed ends of the moustache that had been the hallmark of the previous generation of German leaders associated with the Kaiser, they were signalling rejection of the leadership that they blamed for Germany loosing The Great War on such humiliating terms.
So the facial fashion game was already on in that arena at the time. Weird times, to say the least.
It's also the British model, and I suspect a lot of other countries use it.
Sweden uses exactly this system with paper ballots that are counted in plain sight of representatives of the various parties (and whomever else that is interested). Never caused any problems at all, to my knowledge.
We still have a government that sucks, of course, but at least I feel confident it's the one that the majority of idio^h^h^h^h citizens voted for.
Re:Stick with Windows and if you do...
on
PC Annoyances
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I'd feel comfortable putting newbies in front of a Linux install.
What you say may very well be true, that for a newbie it isn't all that more complicated to start with Linux instead of Windows.
However, if we are talking about reasonably experienced computer users, then I think the situation is different. I believe that the single most important factor that is holding back the spread of Open Source programs is the fact that Open Source developers are too proud to adopt a user interface that makes it easy for experienced Windows users to switch.
I know that this is swearing in the Linux church, but I'll say it anyway: If Linux is ever going to have a chance on the desktop, it will have to become as similar to the Windows user interface as is humanly possible. Why? The answer is extremely simple:
90% of all computer users are used to Windows
You can feel that it shouldn't be like that, and you can make hundreds of snide and clever remarks to the effect that Windows users are too stupid to recognize their own best interests, but you can't change the facts: at least 90% of the people who are using a computer today are using Windows.
It is not every day that a court of law makes an official market survey and releases it freely on the net, in line with the finest traditions of the Open Source movement. Yet it seems that the very people who really believe the most in the benefits of free and open information, are remarkably reluctant to use it when it's available. Think what you will in private, but please please listen to judge Jackson: if Linux is going to have any impact at all in the desktop market, it is Windows users that will have to be converted.
There are a number of good reasons to make the switch to Open Source --- open file formats, control over future license costs, etc., etc. --- but if it means that you have to spend six months cursing all the little things that are different, so that you can't focus on what you're supposed to be doing because you have to relearn all your automatic reflexes, how many people will decide that it's worth the effort?
A lawyer might perhaps consider switching from MS Word to StarOffice simply to make sure that all the files that he creates today can be opened and read on another computer ten years from now, when the case has finally reached the Supreme Court or whatever. But how may chargeable hours is he prepared to let it cost him in the first six months?
It somehow seems that a lot of the people who develop Open Source applications take a special pride in inventing amusing little pitfalls for the Windows user who might be prepared to switch camps. In StarOffice, the keyboard combination to insert a non-breaking space is "Ctrl-Space", rather than Word's "Ctrl-Shift-Space". Please, somebody, why? Of course this is something that one can relearn if one has to, but what's the point of it? The first time a would-be convert, who has been using non-breaking spaces in Word, tries to insert one in a text in StarOffice, it won't work. Whether he decides that non-breaking spaces are not available and that the product does not fulfill his needs, or interrupts what he was originally trying to achieve and starts exploring the help system to find out what it is that he has to do, he will not feel more favorably disposed towards Open Source programs for having tried one. And so unnecessarily.
I could recite any number of examples: if you type "Ctrl-A Ctrl-Return" to mark all posts in a newsgroup as read, Mozilla will instead choose to open a couple of hundred windows (one for each post in the newsgroup), which will cause the system to freeze, so that it has to be rebooted. Excellent marketing ploy.
To change some settings in Mozilla you should of course look under "Edit" in the menu system, and not under "Tools" like in all other programs in the Windows world. Brill
You are not licensed to distribute a Licensed Implementation under license terms and conditions that prohibit the terms and conditions of this license.
Which just accidentally happens to exclude any software that is licensed under GPL, since the GPL is not compatible with any licence that has a mandatory advertising clause.
Letting patent lawyers decide what should be patented - is like letting generals decide when to go to war.
Exactly!
The only difference is that while the generals in all civilized countries would also agree that it would be a seriously bad idea to let the "experts" decide instead of the democratically elected institutions, there are plenty of patent lawyers that openly argue that the field of patent law should be above the reach of the democratic process, and should be dictated by the patent lawyers themselves.
I wrote a reply to one patent lawyer who was expressing that idea, and repost it here:
Democracy may not be so bad after all
In the ZDNet article Software patent limits 'go to far', legal expert Alex Batteson argues that although "it may seem undemocratic", the outcome of the recent European Parliament vote on software patents proves that the issue is too complex to be handled by the parliament, and should have been left to the experts.
While I agree with Mr. Batteson that the issue of software patents is far too complex to be handed over to the European Parliament in the manner that it was, I still have to disagree with him when he suggests that the matter should be handled by the patent lawyers instead.
I have just spent an entire day going through the amendments that the European Parliament made to the resolution before adopting it, just to form my own opinion as to whether FFII, the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure, really has a leg to stand on when it describes the resolution as a victory for the opponents of software patents. As I am neither a lawyer nor a politician, but merely a programmer and citizen, I wouldn't really have gained much insight by just reading through the resolution as is. Instead, I went through the amendments one by one and checked what the FFII had said on each issue before the vote, and what they said afterwards.
After having gone through this process, I am now prepared to agree with the FFII that the adopted resolution is indeed a victory, and that it is a good thing that it passed, but like I said, it took me a day of reading just to reach this conclusion.
It is quite obvious that it was completely unreasonable to expect the parliament members, who would normally neither be programmers nor patent lawyers, to vote together a consistent legislative proposal in a plenary session lasting less than an hour, squeezed in between a
resolution about the situation in Iraq, a proposal on European energy taxation, and a statement on the fisheries agreement with Mauritius.
I think that the fact that they nevertheless managed to put together a good resolution does them great credit, and shows that many of them must have realised that this is an issue that deserves to be taken seriously.
But how did it come to this?
Well, this is where I have to disagree with Mr. Batteson's position, and state that I prefer the democratic road, despite all its shortcomings. While it is doubtlessly true that a group of patent lawyers working behind closed doors would have come up with a legislative resolution that was technically much more consistent, it would have been a resolution with radically differen
Considering that mechanical realisations of software can be constructed, I see little point in "battling" them, as they're fully tangible, patentable ideas.
What you say is simply incorrect, since, in Europe, software patents are not allowed according to the European Patent Convention EPC. Article 52 of the EPC quite explicitly states that computer programs are not patentable, since they are not inventions in the sense that the word is used in the field of patent law.
The problem is that the European Patent Office EPO (which is funded by the fees that patent applicants pay, and therefore stands to benefit directly if more and more things can and do get patented) has adopted a praxis of accepting software patents anyway (and collecting the registration and renewal fees for them). At present, however, the value of these illegally granted patents is dubious, since there is no guarantee that the relevant courts would decide to uphold them if they were challenged, and the patent owners have mostly been (understandably) reluctant to let push come to shove for that reason.
If a European Directive that sanctions the current EPO practice would come into force, however, this would quite likely change, and European small and medium sized businesses would find themselves in the same legal minefield that their American counterparts already are.
It is for this reason that the pro-software-patent lobby is trying to push for a directive that would be good for patent lawyers and bad for people who actually make software, and it is for this reason that there is all the point in the world to be battling for a good directive that reinstates Article 52 into practice and leaves Europe free of software patents.
And since the legislative process is under way at this very moment, there is all the point in the world to do that battling right now.
I think the independent record companies should get together and register the phrase "No-Nonsense Indie" (or something like that) as a certification trademark that would certify that:
- The record company is not a member of the RIAA, and that it is not affiliated with any company that is
- The CD record itself does not employ any DRM technology that aims to restrict the rights of the purchaser
The word mark could be accompanied by some eye-catching logo and put on the CDs, to make it easy for customers who are fed up with the RIAA members' attitude towards them, but would still like to spend some money on music, simply because they enjoy listening to it.
What is a "certification trademark"? It's basically like a normal trademark, except that anybody who fulfills the criteria that are specified for that particular mark can use it. One example of a certification mark is the OSI mark for Open Source software.
Imagine if you couldn't release any software that hasn't been vetted by some government agency [...]
Yes, I agree that that would be a death blow to open source (and to many smaller independent software manufacturers as well), but "government regulation" can take many other forms than "obligatory vetting".
If the government regulation took the form of a law stating that if a security problem arises in some software that you have distributed, you must either
take full responsibility for it and make sure that the problem is fixed, immediately and for ever, or
release the full source code for the software in question, so that any other party that may be more interested in (or capable at) solving the problem can do so.
This would provide no additional burden to the Open Source movement, including the commercial distributors of Open Source software, since the source is already out there in the open, for anybody to examine and improve, if necessary. It would, however, most certainly "encourage" (to quote the article) the makers of proprietary closed source software to make sure they gave adequate attention to security issues, since they would be deprived of their business model if they didn't.
The government would in effect be saying "if you make stuff that is dangerous and you can't fix it yourself, we're going to turn it over to somebody else and not let you continue exposing us all to risk".
I thought haiku was 5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables.
Yes, but also the perhaps most important rule which often gets overlooked: The two first lines should paint a picture, which is then radically changed by the final line.
Perhaps:
Sharp executives
Expert hard-hitting lawyers
Taking a crack break
The documentation for the VAX/VMS operating system (this was in the eighties, before they started renaiming it every other year) claimed that one of the system parameters in SYSGEN should be specified in "microfortnights", but then proceeded to say that for added convenience, microfortnights were approximated by "seconds". (If you can't be bothered to bring out your calculator, a proper microfortnight would be 1.2096 seconds.)
At least I thought this was rather funny, but perhaps I am just very childish.
The bill is being introduced into the European Parliament by a representative from the UK Labour party, which means that members of the PSE group (Social Democrats, roughly) from other countries might feel inclined to support it on the grounds that "it comes from our side".
The PSE members from other countries ought to reflect upon the fact that the primary motivation for a representative from the party that is in government in the UK is quite likely to be that the UK government is interested in nurturing its "special relationship" with the US, rather the (dis-)merits of the proposal in an of itself. While this may be a perfectly rational stance for the UK Labour party to adopt, it does not automatically follow that it makes sense for the representatives from other European countries to support it, despite the fact that they may be members of the same political group inside the European Parliament.
For this reason I would urge in particular those Slashdot readers whose political affiliations are with the other PSE parties in other European countries to contact their respective Members of European Parliament, and make the case against software patents to them. It could very well be that some of those MEPs were just intending to support the bill out of loyalty to their political friends, rather than on deeply held convictions, and that they might be quite prepared to listen to reasonable arguments (if they are presented in a polite and coherent manner).
"A program that works only when a GPLed library is present is derivative of that library."
is if not wrong, then at least completely irrelevant, in my opinion.
In paragraph 0 of the GPL it says:
"Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not
covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of
running the Program is not restricted, [...]"
This means that the act of linking to a GPLed component and running the
resulting program, is "not restricted" by the license, and "outside
its scope". If you have been using a GPLed component to
develop some program of your own, you have been doing exactly that:
using it, which places you under no obligations at all, according to
the above quote. This means that you are perfectly free to do
whatever you want with your own code, like for instance licence it as
closed source, or under an Open Source license that is not GPL
compatible.
A user that downloads the GPLed component himself and uses it by
linking it together with your component is likewise under no GPL
obligations, since he too is only using the GPLed component.
It is only when you, or this hypothetical user, chooses to distribute
the GPLed component together with your own contribution, that you (or
he) will be bound the GPL. It is in this light that the question of
static or dynamic linking should be viewed.
In the case of static linking, the answer is very simple: if you
distribute a pre-built binary, it obviously contains the GPLed
component, so the GPL applies. If you do not want to place your own
code under a GPL compatible license, you will have to distribute your
own contribution separately, which presumably means either as source code, or as
a pre-compiled library that the user will have to link to himself.
For dynamically linked programs, one aspect is exactly the same,
namely that if you do not actually distribute the GPLed component,
you are not bound by the GPL. Hence, a dynamically linked program
that expects some GPLed standard component to be already installed in
the user's computer, but does not itself contain that component in its
distribution, need not be GPL compatible in order to be distributed.
Isn't the opposite true as well, that if you do distribute the GPLed
component together with your own program, you are bound by the GPL?
Well, basically yes, but possibly no, would, unfortunately, be
my answer.
"Basically yes" because the GPL is a license that is
explicitly intended to cover derivative works, so if that is what your
work is and you want to distribute it as a whole, you should obey the
terms of the GPL.
The "possibly no" stems from the the provision in paragraph 2 of the GPL, where
it says that
"[The] mere aggregation [...] on a volume of a storage or
distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of
this License."
This means that if it is reasonable to see the distribution as merely
an aggregation, your own program need not necessarily fall under GPL.
When is it reasonable to claim that the combined
distribution is merely an aggregation, and when is it not? This is no
doubt something that lawyers will be more than happy to argue
endlessly over at the rate of 500$ per hour (of your money), but to me
the answer is very simple, and will certainly prove beyond doubt that
I Am Not A Lawyer: why bother?
If you feel uncomfortable about the
GPL, all you have to do is to arrange your own work in a way that can
be meaningfully released without any GPLed components, and then
distribute it in that form.
If you do not actually distribute any GPLed components, you are not
bound by the GPL, even if you have written and released something that
requires them to be present in order for your own work to be
meaningful.
If you cannot live with the GPL, don't distribute GPLed
components; if you can, by all means do.
Slashdot Mirror
I september 2003, the FFII and other software patent opponents won a major victory in the European Parliament, when a majority of the politicians there adopted a version of the directive that said no to software patents.
Last week, it was announced that Poland will not support the introduction of software patents in the Council of Ministers, which means that there is no longer a qualified majority in the Council. This too is a great step towards a Europe free from software patents.
Right now, the issue hangs very much in the balance in Europe. The best estimate I've heard anybody give, is that it could really go either way. So this is no time to give up and resort to armchair cynicism. We managed to get a majority in parliament, now let's try to reach the politicians in the Council as well.
Right now, this one winnable in Europe.
And even if things had looked gloomier than they actually do today, I think there is a lot of wisdom to the German saying "Wer kämpft kann verlieren, wer nicht kämpft hat schon verloren." (If you fight you may lose, if you don't fight you've already lost.)
Yes, your'e quite right that even the politicians that support the bad version of the directive claim to be against the introduction of software patents. In a way, this is of course a victory --- there is nobody on the political level that claims that patents on software are a good idea --- but it really makes it difficult to establish a constructive dialogue with the pro-patent side.If not, you can read the speech he gave in Cambridge 2002
- Europe: 49.900 euro
- Japan: 16.450 euro
- USA: 10.330 euro
(Page 39 in this pdf. A euro is 1.23 USD.)These are average costs including filing fees to the PTO, and fees to the patent attorney drafting the patent. The costs for actually making the invention are of course not included, however. The reason why European patentets are so much more expensive is mostly because they have to be translated into so many languages.
The parent's estimates for what it costs to do patent litigation are also in line with what other sources quote. So when someone comes and claims that patents are to protect the little guy against big corporations, it's good to have these numbers in mind.
But the European Patent Office allows software patents anyway, using an argument centered on the phrase "as such", which appears in Article 52. So if they wanted to allow patents on artwork, music or films, they have already opened the door for doing so.
I've written a slightly humorous article on the subject called "Why Can't I Patent My Movie?" that you may find interesting.
So this particular hellhound isn't restricted to biting, if there's a politician around it can lick as well.
I'm sure she'll be relieved to hear that.
The only way to get around this obstacle is if you can show that the trademark is already "well-established" or "known through extensive use", which roughly means that if people in the relevant market segment would associate the name with your product anyway, then you can have it registered as well.
On these grounds, presumably, Microsoft now has the mark Windows registered in most, if not all, countries. Whatever one may think about Microsoft in private one has to admit that both they and Windows are pretty well known, so it's hard to argue against the fact that they got these registrations. Note that it is not because of some evil conspiracy that Microsoft could get the registrations through because they were rich enough to make the name well known, but that this is explicitly part of the trademark legislation, and should be like that.
When it comes to determining if Lindows infringes on the Windows trademark it starts to become real interesting (if you're interested in trademark similarity, that is).
First of all, if it had been two "invented words", like Lindows vs. Pindows, I don't think there's much doubt at all that they would be found to be in conflict with each other (if it had been for the same type of goods, like in the Windows/Lindows case).
However, since "windows" is a common everyday English word, and Lindows is clearly an invented word, the likelihood of confusion is much less than it would be between two different invented words, and you could well argue that the two marks should be able to coexist on those grounds. In practice this means that the level of protection you get when you manage to get a descriptive word registered because it is well-established tends to be lower than it would be for an invented word.
However, on the first side again, there is also the fact that Windows is not only a "well-established" mark, but actually a "famous" trademark, which should be awarded an extra level of protection, beyond what ordinary marks get. (This is also explicitly part of the trademark legislation, so again, no conspiracy. ;-) )
But on the other hand, is there really any risk at all that a consumer wouldn't notice the difference between the trademarks when he was standing with a cellophane wrapped box in his hand?
But then again, and so forth...
Not too easy to call this one right, I think, and I wouldn't be surprised if there is almost as much disagreement on the issue among trademark lawyers as there evidently is here on Slashdot.
But he who reads Slashdot will no doubt see what the outcome will be.
IANATML, yadda yadda, but I have worked for 25 years with building phonetic trademark search systems, so I am at least somewhat familiar with the area.
Yes, it would, but it would have no claim on the Montague family fortune, so it would in fact be a horse of a different color.
There's no rule against mixing metaphores here on Slashdot, is there?
The point here being that after the first two lines the reader would have assumed that is was summer, and made a mental image in green and blue summer colors, but after the last line, he has to revise that picture radically. (My own sucky translation of my faulty recollection of the Swedish translation of the originally Japanese haiku, so please don't take the example as such too seriously, but it illustrates the point, anyway.)
In a way it works a bit like a joke: first you set something up, and then, at the end, you deliver the punch line.
And this of course makes it more interesting to try to write haikus, because no matter how you count your syllables, you really don't have an awful lot of them to achieve all of that.!
Nope, if I gave that impression it's only because I express myself badly.
What I am arguing is that we should learn from the people who created the first computers, and decided to stick with the familiar qwerty keyboard.
The qwerty keyboard was originally designed to make it difficult to type too fast, because that could cause the mechanical parts inside the typewriter to jam (at least according to the urban myth :) ). Since there is obviously no risk that this would happen in a computer, why didn't they change the keyboard layout to something better when they introduced the personal computer? Because they wanted to gain acceptance among people who had years of experience using typewriters professionally, and didn't want to alienate and annoy them by introducing more differences than necessary.
For all I know, it is quite possible that alternative keyboard layouts like Dvorak are considerably better that qwerty --- for typing. But for marketing a new superior technology that had other more important benefits to offer, they would have sucked severely.
Now, let us consider Emacs' key bindings from the perspective of an experienced Word user... :-)
I actually belive that that is an excellent question, and I'll be happy to provide the answer:
Because 90% of all computer users are used to Windows
(The rest of the following rant is essentially a repost, so I apologize if you have already read it.)
You can feel that it shouldn't be like that, and you can make hundreds of snide and clever remarks to the effect that Windows users are too stupid to recognize their own best interests, but you can't change the facts: at least 90% of the people who are using a computer today are using Windows.
It is not every day that a court of law makes an official market survey and releases it freely on the net, in line with the finest traditions of the Open Source movement. Yet it seems that the very people who really believe the most in the benefits of free and open information, are remarkably reluctant to use it when it's available. Think what you will in private, but please please listen to judge Jackson: if Linux is going to have any impact at all in the desktop market, it is Windows users that will have to be converted.
There are a number of good reasons to make the switch to Open Source --- open file formats, control over future license costs, etc., etc. --- but if it means that you have to spend six months cursing all the little things that are different, so that you can't focus on what you're supposed to be doing because you have to relearn all your automatic reflexes, how many people will decide that it's worth the effort?
A lawyer might perhaps consider switching from MS Word to StarOffice simply to make sure that all the files that he creates today can be opened and read on another computer ten years from now, when the case has finally reached the Supreme Court or whatever. But how may chargeable hours is he prepared to let it cost him in the first six months?
It somehow seems that a lot of the people who develop Open Source applications take a special pride in inventing amusing little pitfalls for the Windows user who might be prepared to switch camps. In StarOffice, the keyboard combination to insert a non-breaking space is "Ctrl-Space", rather than Word's "Ctrl-Shift-Space". Please, somebody, why? Of course this is something that one can relearn if one has to, but what's the point of it? The first time a would-be convert, who has been using non-breaking spaces in Word, tries to insert one in a text in StarOffice, it won't work. Whether he decides that non-breaking spaces are not available and that the product does not fulfill his needs, or interrupts what he was originally trying to achieve and starts exploring the help system to find out what it is that he has to do, he will not feel more favorably disposed towards Open Source programs for having tried one. And so unnecessarily.
I could recite any number of examples: if you type "Ctrl-A Ctrl-Return" to mark all posts in a newsgroup as read, Mozilla will instead choose to open a couple of hundred windows (one for each post in the newsgroup), which will cause the system to freeze, so that it has to be rebooted. Excellent marketing ploy.
To change some settings in Mozilla you should of course look under "Edit" in the menu system, and not under "Tools" like in all other programs in the Windows world. Brilliant. How could you possibly fail when you make it so convenient for the user?
And please, don't come and say "RTFM" now. Why the **** should someone who has been using a computer for years have to consult the FM (provided there actually is one, of course, but that's a separate issue in its own right) to perform a so completely trivial standard task as the ones mentioned here?
And please don't come and say "but you can change that if you spend a couple of days learning how to reconfigure the program from the bottom up" either. Pe
Bring out the stromtroopers!
So the facial fashion game was already on in that arena at the time. Weird times, to say the least.
We still have a government that sucks, of course, but at least I feel confident it's the one that the majority of idio^h^h^h^h citizens voted for.
What you say may very well be true, that for a newbie it isn't all that more complicated to start with Linux instead of Windows. However, if we are talking about reasonably experienced computer users, then I think the situation is different. I believe that the single most important factor that is holding back the spread of Open Source programs is the fact that Open Source developers are too proud to adopt a user interface that makes it easy for experienced Windows users to switch.
I know that this is swearing in the Linux church, but I'll say it anyway: If Linux is ever going to have a chance on the desktop, it will have to become as similar to the Windows user interface as is humanly possible. Why? The answer is extremely simple:
90% of all computer users are used to Windows
You can feel that it shouldn't be like that, and you can make hundreds of snide and clever remarks to the effect that Windows users are too stupid to recognize their own best interests, but you can't change the facts: at least 90% of the people who are using a computer today are using Windows.
It is not every day that a court of law makes an official market survey and releases it freely on the net, in line with the finest traditions of the Open Source movement. Yet it seems that the very people who really believe the most in the benefits of free and open information, are remarkably reluctant to use it when it's available. Think what you will in private, but please please listen to judge Jackson: if Linux is going to have any impact at all in the desktop market, it is Windows users that will have to be converted.
There are a number of good reasons to make the switch to Open Source --- open file formats, control over future license costs, etc., etc. --- but if it means that you have to spend six months cursing all the little things that are different, so that you can't focus on what you're supposed to be doing because you have to relearn all your automatic reflexes, how many people will decide that it's worth the effort?
A lawyer might perhaps consider switching from MS Word to StarOffice simply to make sure that all the files that he creates today can be opened and read on another computer ten years from now, when the case has finally reached the Supreme Court or whatever. But how may chargeable hours is he prepared to let it cost him in the first six months?
It somehow seems that a lot of the people who develop Open Source applications take a special pride in inventing amusing little pitfalls for the Windows user who might be prepared to switch camps. In StarOffice, the keyboard combination to insert a non-breaking space is "Ctrl-Space", rather than Word's "Ctrl-Shift-Space". Please, somebody, why? Of course this is something that one can relearn if one has to, but what's the point of it? The first time a would-be convert, who has been using non-breaking spaces in Word, tries to insert one in a text in StarOffice, it won't work. Whether he decides that non-breaking spaces are not available and that the product does not fulfill his needs, or interrupts what he was originally trying to achieve and starts exploring the help system to find out what it is that he has to do, he will not feel more favorably disposed towards Open Source programs for having tried one. And so unnecessarily.
I could recite any number of examples: if you type "Ctrl-A Ctrl-Return" to mark all posts in a newsgroup as read, Mozilla will instead choose to open a couple of hundred windows (one for each post in the newsgroup), which will cause the system to freeze, so that it has to be rebooted. Excellent marketing ploy.
To change some settings in Mozilla you should of course look under "Edit" in the menu system, and not under "Tools" like in all other programs in the Windows world. Brill
We are clever, aren't we!
I have always assumed it was just "C double cross".
Exactly!
The only difference is that while the generals in all civilized countries would also agree that it would be a seriously bad idea to let the "experts" decide instead of the democratically elected institutions, there are plenty of patent lawyers that openly argue that the field of patent law should be above the reach of the democratic process, and should be dictated by the patent lawyers themselves.
I wrote a reply to one patent lawyer who was expressing that idea, and repost it here:
Democracy may not be so bad after all
In the ZDNet article Software patent limits 'go to far' , legal expert Alex Batteson argues that although "it may seem undemocratic", the outcome of the recent European Parliament vote on software patents proves that the issue is too complex to be handled by the parliament, and should have been left to the experts.
While I agree with Mr. Batteson that the issue of software patents is far too complex to be handed over to the European Parliament in the manner that it was, I still have to disagree with him when he suggests that the matter should be handled by the patent lawyers instead.
I have just spent an entire day going through the amendments that the European Parliament made to the resolution before adopting it, just to form my own opinion as to whether FFII, the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure, really has a leg to stand on when it describes the resolution as a victory for the opponents of software patents. As I am neither a lawyer nor a politician, but merely a programmer and citizen, I wouldn't really have gained much insight by just reading through the resolution as is. Instead, I went through the amendments one by one and checked what the FFII had said on each issue before the vote, and what they said afterwards.
After having gone through this process, I am now prepared to agree with the FFII that the adopted resolution is indeed a victory, and that it is a good thing that it passed, but like I said, it took me a day of reading just to reach this conclusion.
It is quite obvious that it was completely unreasonable to expect the parliament members, who would normally neither be programmers nor patent lawyers, to vote together a consistent legislative proposal in a plenary session lasting less than an hour, squeezed in between a resolution about the situation in Iraq, a proposal on European energy taxation, and a statement on the fisheries agreement with Mauritius. I think that the fact that they nevertheless managed to put together a good resolution does them great credit, and shows that many of them must have realised that this is an issue that deserves to be taken seriously.
But how did it come to this?
Well, this is where I have to disagree with Mr. Batteson's position, and state that I prefer the democratic road, despite all its shortcomings. While it is doubtlessly true that a group of patent lawyers working behind closed doors would have come up with a legislative resolution that was technically much more consistent, it would have been a resolution with radically differen
The problem is that the European Patent Office EPO (which is funded by the fees that patent applicants pay, and therefore stands to benefit directly if more and more things can and do get patented) has adopted a praxis of accepting software patents anyway (and collecting the registration and renewal fees for them). At present, however, the value of these illegally granted patents is dubious, since there is no guarantee that the relevant courts would decide to uphold them if they were challenged, and the patent owners have mostly been (understandably) reluctant to let push come to shove for that reason.
If a European Directive that sanctions the current EPO practice would come into force, however, this would quite likely change, and European small and medium sized businesses would find themselves in the same legal minefield that their American counterparts already are.
It is for this reason that the pro-software-patent lobby is trying to push for a directive that would be good for patent lawyers and bad for people who actually make software, and it is for this reason that there is all the point in the world to be battling for a good directive that reinstates Article 52 into practice and leaves Europe free of software patents.
And since the legislative process is under way at this very moment, there is all the point in the world to do that battling right now.
- The record company is not a member of the RIAA, and that it is not affiliated with any company that is
- The CD record itself does not employ any DRM technology that aims to restrict the rights of the purchaser
The word mark could be accompanied by some eye-catching logo and put on the CDs, to make it easy for customers who are fed up with the RIAA members' attitude towards them, but would still like to spend some money on music, simply because they enjoy listening to it.
What is a "certification trademark"? It's basically like a normal trademark, except that anybody who fulfills the criteria that are specified for that particular mark can use it. One example of a certification mark is the OSI mark for Open Source software.
If the government regulation took the form of a law stating that if a security problem arises in some software that you have distributed, you must either
take full responsibility for it and make sure that the problem is fixed, immediately and for ever, or
release the full source code for the software in question, so that any other party that may be more interested in (or capable at) solving the problem can do so.
This would provide no additional burden to the Open Source movement, including the commercial distributors of Open Source software, since the source is already out there in the open, for anybody to examine and improve, if necessary. It would, however, most certainly "encourage" (to quote the article) the makers of proprietary closed source software to make sure they gave adequate attention to security issues, since they would be deprived of their business model if they didn't.
The government would in effect be saying "if you make stuff that is dangerous and you can't fix it yourself, we're going to turn it over to somebody else and not let you continue exposing us all to risk".
Which hardly would seem unreasonable to me.
Perhaps:
Sharp executives
Expert hard-hitting lawyers
Taking a crack break
At least I thought this was rather funny, but perhaps I am just very childish.
The PSE members from other countries ought to reflect upon the fact that the primary motivation for a representative from the party that is in government in the UK is quite likely to be that the UK government is interested in nurturing its "special relationship" with the US, rather the (dis-)merits of the proposal in an of itself. While this may be a perfectly rational stance for the UK Labour party to adopt, it does not automatically follow that it makes sense for the representatives from other European countries to support it, despite the fact that they may be members of the same political group inside the European Parliament.
For this reason I would urge in particular those Slashdot readers whose political affiliations are with the other PSE parties in other European countries to contact their respective Members of European Parliament, and make the case against software patents to them. It could very well be that some of those MEPs were just intending to support the bill out of loyalty to their political friends, rather than on deeply held convictions, and that they might be quite prepared to listen to reasonable arguments (if they are presented in a polite and coherent manner).
In paragraph 0 of the GPL it says:
This means that the act of linking to a GPLed component and running the resulting program, is "not restricted" by the license, and "outside its scope". If you have been using a GPLed component to develop some program of your own, you have been doing exactly that: using it, which places you under no obligations at all, according to the above quote. This means that you are perfectly free to do whatever you want with your own code, like for instance licence it as closed source, or under an Open Source license that is not GPL compatible.A user that downloads the GPLed component himself and uses it by linking it together with your component is likewise under no GPL obligations, since he too is only using the GPLed component.
It is only when you, or this hypothetical user, chooses to distribute the GPLed component together with your own contribution, that you (or he) will be bound the GPL. It is in this light that the question of static or dynamic linking should be viewed.
In the case of static linking, the answer is very simple: if you distribute a pre-built binary, it obviously contains the GPLed component, so the GPL applies. If you do not want to place your own code under a GPL compatible license, you will have to distribute your own contribution separately, which presumably means either as source code, or as a pre-compiled library that the user will have to link to himself.
For dynamically linked programs, one aspect is exactly the same, namely that if you do not actually distribute the GPLed component, you are not bound by the GPL. Hence, a dynamically linked program that expects some GPLed standard component to be already installed in the user's computer, but does not itself contain that component in its distribution, need not be GPL compatible in order to be distributed.
Isn't the opposite true as well, that if you do distribute the GPLed component together with your own program, you are bound by the GPL? Well, basically yes, but possibly no, would, unfortunately, be my answer.
"Basically yes" because the GPL is a license that is explicitly intended to cover derivative works, so if that is what your work is and you want to distribute it as a whole, you should obey the terms of the GPL.
The "possibly no" stems from the the provision in paragraph 2 of the GPL, where it says that
This means that if it is reasonable to see the distribution as merely an aggregation, your own program need not necessarily fall under GPL.When is it reasonable to claim that the combined distribution is merely an aggregation, and when is it not? This is no doubt something that lawyers will be more than happy to argue endlessly over at the rate of 500$ per hour (of your money), but to me the answer is very simple, and will certainly prove beyond doubt that I Am Not A Lawyer: why bother?
If you feel uncomfortable about the GPL, all you have to do is to arrange your own work in a way that can be meaningfully released without any GPLed components, and then distribute it in that form. If you do not actually distribute any GPLed components, you are not bound by the GPL, even if you have written and released something that requires them to be present in order for your own work to be meaningful.
If you cannot live with the GPL, don't distribute GPLed components; if you can, by all means do.