Politicians need someone to talks to. But who represents Linux? Difficult. Invite Richard Stallman or Alan Cox? No the best idea but it happens all the time. Linux Foundation sounds to an uninitiated reader as the name of a benevolent organisation behind Linux development.
For anti-software patent advocacy that groups would be real poison. Linux Foundation in favour of useless patent shield red herrings, this will make advocacy easy for patent agents which fight for their vested interests very well.
MS propaganda efforts are always very entertaining. Not to forget comical Ballmer. We find it entertaining, so why not the kids.
The point is that the classical consumer software works the same as shareware. Shareware: you are the good guy when you register Classic Model: You are the bad guy when you got a copy from your friends.
One is driven by fear, the other by reward. But both need distribution by copying. Unautorised use is part of the business model in both cases! De facto the closed source software market has become a shareware market.
Organisations as the BSA just need to scare the public (but not to much) and combat commercial large scale counterfeiters. However, overambitious legislators could change that.
> And though it might not be palatable to numerous other high-profile OSS projects to appear as a "second fiddle", > the Linux name can provide some solidarity that could make OSS a topic at many dinner tables and, by extension, > many board rooms.
Just have a look at Firefox. I used Mozilla Software long before it was usable. I also installed every alpha version of Firefox, reported bugs. But the solodarity thing does not work. Mozilla Foundation is now very rich and can fund developers or attract money but do they use their support for instance for an emerging project as Sunbird? No, that project is as slow as ever. And Sunbird is a Mozilla project. Open Source Solidarity doesn't work.
Same with Linux Foundation. As long as they are US-only you cannot take them serious and then they even take the patent attorneys on board. Disgusting.
a) A standards group must be independend. The FSG loses its credibility.
b) Patents risks cannot be combated with baseless tinkering and playing nice. Give a credible lobby group 1 million to build up an equivalent movement in the US as in Europe and US software patents will be gone within 3-4 years. In Europe they continue to exist because of the weakness of US advocats and their waste of money in superficial reform proposals (red herrings). Software patents are of abolutely no use. It is time to prepare a soft landing in Alexandria "to promote the sciences and the arts".
c) If you want patents to cause no harm and pose no risks let them lapse.
d) The strong US bias is a problem which will be regarded as a risk in the rest of the world, also given the insecure US legal situation (patriot act, DMCA etc.).
It is a good idea for these reasons:
e) A Linux foundation now represents "Linux" (the trademark, the founder, the LSB, perfect).
f) The package of services looks complete and gives certain gravity to the project.
Both Slashdot and you get it wrong. The Broadcast Treaty which is a WIPO remake of the Rome Convention is beeing discussed for years and it is in its final stage. That is no agreement was reached so far to convene a diplomatic conference. It is dead, yet not killed. Yesterday the chair Jukka Lieders proposed a "non-paper", a quite unusual move. A last move death certificate, the next step will be the chair to start crying and beat the national delegations.
NGOs are pretty strong on the WIPO level and Youtube and the like do their best to kill it. Get accreditation and go to Geneve to visit WIPO. It's supposed to be great fun.
Broadcast Treaty. Treaties are not "imposed" by UN agencies, these agencies are discussion fora for member states delegations and they move very very very slow.
But budgetwise I observe no investment into Sunbird. Mozilla gained a lot of money from its products. Now they should invest into other products. I mean Firefox 1.5 or 2.0, I don't really care. But what is done to take Sunbird to 1.0? Mozilla was a poor project, now that they are rich they can liberate other parts of the market as well. As long as Sunbird or Lightening makes no progress Thunderbird has absolutely no chance to combat the Outlook lockin.
I am very dissatisfied with Sunbird. It is a pity the project does not take up although Mozilla has all the cash to broaden its product portfolio.
With KDE ported to Windows we will have Amarok for Windows soon. That project will kill iTunes. And if Amarok won't Songbird will.
What an anti-political message. Face it, Larry: You pretent to be a loser. And you think that attracts support. Nice try. Lessig is a loser priest because he thinks like a loser.
When you approach politicians with a big guy small guy scheme, you are lost. Because politicians side always have to side with the big guy. And all sympathy goes to the small guy, that is you.
Now Larry Lessig, what if you represent the "big guy"? The big guy is the one who always wins. So tell them that you are the "big guy", stupid.
All that is required is permanent lobby hammering for open source, open standards and Linux operating system. When Europe takes a geostrategic approach then its clear that Linux is the way to go, to avoid strategic dependencies.
When you lobby for Linux using grassroot efforts its very difficult to get killed by the salesman from the other side, because Linux is both a product and a political movement. Time is runnign out for Microsoft.
Show me the code writen in Ruby.
In understand why everyone likes Ruby. I guess Ruby will be the web language of choice for the international esperanto congress.
I don't think why I should care. Power systems break down all the time. Telephone systems less often.
A decentral net is the best of all worlds. So the solution is to identify national strategic dependencies and seek alternatives.
It is simply "Gates law": Win installation == 50% less performance every 18 month.
If you believe some unfair tricks are played by Microsoft, bad Eula etc. and you have some factual evidence just report it to your Competition authority. Europeans please take this form. Competition authorities have to be triggered and do not work without triggering. They are curious to know consumer complaints.
They make trouble for you. You make trouble for them.
How Al Capone got jailed? "Capone's downfall occurred in 1931 when he was indicted and convicted by the federal government for income tax evasion."
Is is an ivory tower troll. In fact almost no one uses ruby. It may be hot among Nerds and its growing. Java went into the enterprises in the 90th as Cobol did before. C++ was less usable for enterprises. Java looked good and fostered plattform independency, helped to increase interoperability.
"Java to go" is as off-topic as the prediction that FreeBSD would take over Linux. Ruby and Python are upcoming languages. Growing but you have to wait for another five years.
Open Source Java will mean all Linux systems will ship free Java. Java will get a working GNU compiler native compilation. Java will be the trusted alternative to -- arrrgh patents --- Mono for enterprise applications. SUN knew exactly why they did it. Linux will become a strong Java plattform and with Linux on so many servers that will give Java and Linux a boost.
The point is that secret services have a severe problem which is secrecy. Secret organisations tend to be inefficient and unaccountable. Not because they do evil things but because they waste ressources and nobody watches it. You don't really know whether their work is worth the money spent.
Today everyone of us can find out a lot more than a bureaucratic agency does for hard cash.
But don't you think support for the campaigners could reverse the situation. Just imagine they get 30 millions for software patent abolishment lobbying... and now compare that with the money involved in useless patent indemnification deals. what is your opinion on that?
You know, Suse was a nice company. There was a joke when Novell overtook Suse that no company survived Novell for long. Then we watched Suse management which left the comnpany. We saw a good Linux distribution changed with ideological techology decisions. No user of Suse requested them (Gnome-focus, red carpet mess, 10.1...),
I remember how passionate Suse management and Suse employees supported the fight against software patents in the EU. What has Novell ever done to put an end to software patent madness in the EU? I know what RedHat does to lobby for patent reform. RedHat owns patents but they strongly oppose the patent system for the sake of their developers who request market security.
The simple test of what Novell thinks about software patents is: look what they lobbied for. Or what they did not lobby for.
In Europe it is common knowledge that the US patent system is broken. In Europe things are not even much better, we have an insane management of the patent system but all options are still in place to change the situation, to reverse the trend. Our lobbying turned out to be very succesful and continues to contribute to change of the pratice. In the US it gets more difficult. They don't have a technical contribution requirement. "Usefulness" is a weak weak weak criteria.
But what do concerned parties in the US do? They follow the remaining two screws novelty/prior art and non-obviousness which are nothing but red herrings when it comes to patent reform discussions. You can solve the patent problem when you start to debate subject matter. Patents make absolutely no sense for software and fulfil no useful purpose. Novell should know that and support lobbying.
How misguided is Novell's management? Do they really believe a deal with Microsoft contributes to market security, pleases customers? We do not forget Caldera.
In the European Union we currently watch the next stage of madness. They prepared legislation which would turn all intentional infringements of an IP right into a criminal offense. No fair use exemptions yet.
Article 3 Offences Member States shall ensure that all intentional infringements of an intellectual property right on a commercial scale, and attempting, aiding or abetting and inciting such infringements, are treated as criminal offences.Let's see whether parliament will fix it. I hope that at least the following amendment will be accepted:
Article 3, paragraph 2 (new)
Amendment Member States shall ensure that the fair and reasonable use of a protected work including such use by reproduction in copies or audio or by any other means, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, archiving, format conversion or research will not be treated as a criminal offence.
Justification:
Paragraph 1 of Article 3 describes what shall be treated as a criminal offence. New paragraph 2 affirms desirable fair uses which shall never get punished by criminal sanctions, and are vital for a free and open society. Amendment derived from to 17 U. S.C. 107Please write to Member of the Legal Affairs Committee and ask them to support or table the amendment. Lobbying at the right time can prevent a lot of problems which occur when the law will be executed. Then you or your business will get into danger. Please ask MEPs to support the fair use provision!
It is further intresting to watch that the EU wants to make all infringements of an intellectual property right a criminal offense. That is not the case right now... for good reasons. So don't spit on the Americans, Europeans are equally crazy.
Slashdot Mirror
Politicians need someone to talks to. But who represents Linux? Difficult. Invite Richard Stallman or Alan Cox? No the best idea but it happens all the time. Linux Foundation sounds to an uninitiated reader as the name of a benevolent organisation behind Linux development.
For anti-software patent advocacy that groups would be real poison. Linux Foundation in favour of useless patent shield red herrings, this will make advocacy easy for patent agents which fight for their vested interests very well.
MS propaganda efforts are always very entertaining. Not to forget comical Ballmer. We find it entertaining, so why not the kids.
The point is that the classical consumer software works the same as shareware.
Shareware: you are the good guy when you register
Classic Model: You are the bad guy when you got a copy from your friends.
One is driven by fear, the other by reward. But both need distribution by copying. Unautorised use is part of the business model in both cases! De facto the closed source software market has become a shareware market.
Organisations as the BSA just need to scare the public (but not to much) and combat commercial large scale counterfeiters. However, overambitious legislators could change that.
http://www.openusability.org/ ??
Piracy is an essential part of the closed source business model. It works as asp shareware.
The difference: shareware means registrators are "good guys".
Piracy means unautorised users should feel as "bad guys"
The piracy the Companies go after is not the average joe unauthorised use, but commercial
counterfeiting of their software products.
> And though it might not be palatable to numerous other high-profile OSS projects to appear as a "second fiddle", > the Linux name can provide some solidarity that could make OSS a topic at many dinner tables and, by extension,
> many board rooms.
Just have a look at Firefox. I used Mozilla Software long before it was usable. I also installed every alpha version of Firefox, reported bugs. But the solodarity thing does not work. Mozilla Foundation is now very rich and can fund developers or attract money but do they use their support for instance for an emerging project as Sunbird? No, that project is as slow as ever. And Sunbird is a Mozilla project. Open Source Solidarity doesn't work.
Same with Linux Foundation. As long as they are US-only you cannot take them serious and then they even take the patent attorneys on board. Disgusting.
That is a bad idea for several reasons:
a) A standards group must be independend. The FSG loses its credibility.
b) Patents risks cannot be combated with baseless tinkering and playing nice. Give a credible lobby group 1 million to build up an equivalent movement in the US as in Europe and US software patents will be gone within 3-4 years. In Europe they continue to exist because of the weakness of US advocats and their waste of money in superficial reform proposals (red herrings). Software patents are of abolutely no use. It is time to prepare a soft landing in Alexandria "to promote the sciences and the arts".
c) If you want patents to cause no harm and pose no risks let them lapse.
d) The strong US bias is a problem which will be regarded as a risk in the rest of the world, also given the insecure US legal situation (patriot act, DMCA etc.).
It is a good idea for these reasons:
e) A Linux foundation now represents "Linux" (the trademark, the founder, the LSB, perfect).
f) The package of services looks complete and gives certain gravity to the project.
g) The name is very catchy
What do you think?
Both Slashdot and you get it wrong. The Broadcast Treaty which is a WIPO remake of the Rome Convention is beeing discussed for years and it is in its final stage. That is no agreement was reached so far to convene a diplomatic conference. It is dead, yet not killed. Yesterday the chair Jukka Lieders proposed a "non-paper", a quite unusual move. A last move death certificate, the next step will be the chair to start crying and beat the national delegations. NGOs are pretty strong on the WIPO level and Youtube and the like do their best to kill it. Get accreditation and go to Geneve to visit WIPO. It's supposed to be great fun. Broadcast Treaty. Treaties are not "imposed" by UN agencies, these agencies are discussion fora for member states delegations and they move very very very slow.
But budgetwise I observe no investment into Sunbird. Mozilla gained a lot of money from its products. Now they should invest into other products. I mean Firefox 1.5 or 2.0, I don't really care. But what is done to take Sunbird to 1.0? Mozilla was a poor project, now that they are rich they can liberate other parts of the market as well. As long as Sunbird or Lightening makes no progress Thunderbird has absolutely no chance to combat the Outlook lockin.
I am very dissatisfied with Sunbird. It is a pity the project does not take up although Mozilla has all the cash to broaden its product portfolio. With KDE ported to Windows we will have Amarok for Windows soon. That project will kill iTunes. And if Amarok won't Songbird will.
What an anti-political message. Face it, Larry: You pretent to be a loser. And you think that attracts support. Nice try. Lessig is a loser priest because he thinks like a loser.
When you approach politicians with a big guy small guy scheme, you are lost. Because politicians side always have to side with the big guy. And all sympathy goes to the small guy, that is you.
Now Larry Lessig, what if you represent the "big guy"? The big guy is the one who always wins. So tell them that you are the "big guy", stupid.
All that is required is permanent lobby hammering for open source, open standards and Linux operating system. When Europe takes a geostrategic approach then its clear that Linux is the way to go, to avoid strategic dependencies.
When you lobby for Linux using grassroot efforts its very difficult to get killed by the salesman from the other side, because Linux is both a product and a political movement. Time is runnign out for Microsoft.
Just have a look at that poor effort to prevent a strong open source movement in eGovernment.
Ordo policy is what is needed, not laissez-faire.
"Gates law" refers to a machine running one and the same MS operating system.
Show me the code writen in Ruby. In understand why everyone likes Ruby. I guess Ruby will be the web language of choice for the international esperanto congress.
I don't think why I should care. Power systems break down all the time. Telephone systems less often. A decentral net is the best of all worlds. So the solution is to identify national strategic dependencies and seek alternatives.
It is simply "Gates law": Win installation == 50% less performance every 18 month.
If you believe some unfair tricks are played by Microsoft, bad Eula etc. and you have some factual evidence just report it to your Competition authority. Europeans please take this form. Competition authorities have to be triggered and do not work without triggering. They are curious to know consumer complaints.
They make trouble for you. You make trouble for them.
How Al Capone got jailed? "Capone's downfall occurred in 1931 when he was indicted and convicted by the federal government for income tax evasion."
Is is an ivory tower troll. In fact almost no one uses ruby. It may be hot among Nerds and its growing. Java went into the enterprises in the 90th as Cobol did before. C++ was less usable for enterprises. Java looked good and fostered plattform independency, helped to increase interoperability. "Java to go" is as off-topic as the prediction that FreeBSD would take over Linux. Ruby and Python are upcoming languages. Growing but you have to wait for another five years. Open Source Java will mean all Linux systems will ship free Java. Java will get a working GNU compiler native compilation. Java will be the trusted alternative to -- arrrgh patents --- Mono for enterprise applications. SUN knew exactly why they did it. Linux will become a strong Java plattform and with Linux on so many servers that will give Java and Linux a boost.
Never blame the examiners. Blame US industry which handed the patent system over to patent attorneys. Time for a FFII US to clean up the mess.
The point is that secret services have a severe problem which is secrecy. Secret organisations tend to be inefficient and unaccountable. Not because they do evil things but because they waste ressources and nobody watches it. You don't really know whether their work is worth the money spent. Today everyone of us can find out a lot more than a bureaucratic agency does for hard cash.
But don't you think support for the campaigners could reverse the situation. Just imagine they get 30 millions for software patent abolishment lobbying... and now compare that with the money involved in useless patent indemnification deals. what is your opinion on that?
You know, Suse was a nice company. There was a joke when Novell overtook Suse that no company survived Novell for long. Then we watched Suse management which left the comnpany. We saw a good Linux distribution changed with ideological techology decisions. No user of Suse requested them (Gnome-focus, red carpet mess, 10.1 ...),
I remember how passionate Suse management and Suse employees supported the fight against software patents in the EU. What has Novell ever done to put an end to software patent madness in the EU?
I know what RedHat does to lobby for patent reform. RedHat owns patents but they strongly oppose the patent system for the sake of their developers who request market security.
The simple test of what Novell thinks about software patents is: look what they lobbied for. Or what they did not lobby for.
But Novell? They don't care about developers. Instead they play patent games with Microsoft. 150 millions? Get a trusted lobbying party 5 millions for lobbying and softpatents will be gone, on a worldwide scale within four years. You cannnot solve the patent mess with insurances or patent indemnification. It just does not work.
In Europe it is common knowledge that the US patent system is broken. In Europe things are not even much better, we have an insane management of the patent system but all options are still in place to change the situation, to reverse the trend. Our lobbying turned out to be very succesful and continues to contribute to change of the pratice. In the US it gets more difficult. They don't have a technical contribution requirement. "Usefulness" is a weak weak weak criteria.
But what do concerned parties in the US do? They follow the remaining two screws novelty/prior art and non-obviousness which are nothing but red herrings when it comes to patent reform discussions. You can solve the patent problem when you start to debate subject matter. Patents make absolutely no sense for software and fulfil no useful purpose. Novell should know that and support lobbying.
How misguided is Novell's management? Do they really believe a deal with Microsoft contributes to market security, pleases customers? We do not forget Caldera.
We feel afraid!
Member States shall ensure that all intentional infringements of an intellectual property right on a commercial scale, and attempting, aiding or abetting and inciting such infringements, are treated as criminal offences.Let's see whether parliament will fix it. I hope that at least the following amendment will be accepted: Article 3, paragraph 2 (new)
Amendment
Member States shall ensure that the fair and
reasonable use of a protected work including
such use by reproduction in copies or audio
or by any other means, for purposes such as
criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching
(including multiple copies for classroom use),
scholarship, archiving, format conversion or
research will not be treated as a criminal
offence.
Justification:
Paragraph 1 of Article 3 describes what shall be treated as a criminal offence. New paragraph 2
affirms desirable fair uses which shall never get punished by criminal sanctions, and are vital for
a free and open society. Amendment derived from to 17 U. S.C. 107Please write to Member of the Legal Affairs Committee and ask them to support or table the amendment. Lobbying at the right time can prevent a lot of problems which occur when the law will be executed. Then you or your business will get into danger. Please ask MEPs to support the fair use provision!
It is further intresting to watch that the EU wants to make all infringements of an intellectual property right a criminal offense. That is not the case right now... for good reasons. So don't spit on the Americans, Europeans are equally crazy.
See here
Caldera was a nice Linux company... they overtook SCO but then...