Nobody hates Microsoft exept some fanatics. However in order to secure freesom of its citizens there has to OS competition as so much depends on OS. Just consider an official bachdoor would be used in business espionage. Closed Source is not usable in security related areas of Government. the risk is too high.
Quote from Ian's announcement: "We have ported Red Hat's Anaconda installer to Debian; essentially,
we replaced calls to RPM with calls to APT, and replaced
Red Hat-specific configuration hooks with calls into the configlets and
debconf. We have also written a tool called PickAx that
facilitates the creation of Anaconda-based Debian installation CD sets.
We are also working with various parties to add/merge RPM support
into the mainline APT, to allow Debian- and RPM-based
distributions to be managed using a single APT codebase, and
possibly even to allow Debian and RPM packages to coexist side by
side. This work also aims to merge our various APT extensions
(e.g., support for authenticated APT repos) into the mainline APT."
Guess it answers your questions.
The response of Microsoft is already very strong. They want to take the case to the US, where the justice system is probably more corrupt (home advantage). See Hindustan Times's Reuters article for more information on this issue. They present the same accusation in an more polite manner: "Microsoft Corp has been trying to drum up support among US lawmakers as part of its effort to fend off antitrust sanctions being considered by European regulators, congressional sources say.
With the European Commission weighing a fine and behavioral changes that could go beyond its US antitrust settlement, Microsoft lobbyists have taken their case to key members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, sources said.
While Microsft is under investigation because of its abuse of power, Microsoft propaganda requests stronger IPR law, criminal prosecution . They claim the proposed EURO DMCA++ (IP Enforcement directive) was not strong enough. Examine the horribleEU directive proposal paper by AEL Wiki (page of Association Electronic Libre, Belgium).
[ EPIP 2 ] Copyright and database protection, patents and research tools, and other challenges to the intellectual property system
Maastricht, November 24-25
On November 24 and 25 of this year a conference will be held at MERIT in Maastricht on the topic "Copyright and database protection, patents andresearch tools, and other challenges to the intellectual property system". This is the second meeting of the EPIP (European Policy for Intellectual Property) network, funded by the European Commission and lead by Dominique Foray and Jacques Mairesse. The partners of EPIP are IMRI from Universite Paris-Dauphine in France, MERIT from University Maastricht in the Netherlands, INNO-tec from the Munich School of Management in Germany, Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies in Italy, Roskilde University in Denmark, and the Santiago de Compostella University in Spain. For more information of the network, please visit the website at: http://www.dauphine.fr/imri/EPIP/welcome.html .
The first EPIP meeting took place in Munich on the magnificent premises of the European Patent Office with over hundred participants, lawyers and economists, academics as well as practitioners (from the business world and the patent offices) from Europe and the United States. The papers presented at this conference touched upon many themes and challenges of the intellectual property rights system. The program of the Munich conference is also available on the website.
The next conference, while open to other themes, will essentially focus on research tools and databases. Both research tools and databases are major inputs of science and technology. In the view of fostering their impact on the economy through commercialization, governments have allowed IP to be taken on certain inventions, in the form of patents (on research tools) and sui generic rights (data bases). Whereas the US pioneered the former, Europe is leading the latter. The central issue is to strike the balance right between the conditions needed for commercialization (which often requires some exclusivity) with the conditions associated with scientific progress (open access). Should Europe reform its database directive along the lines of the United States? What should be the legal environment for the commercialization and diffusion of public databases? Should research tools be exempted from patent protection or other intellectual property protection mechanisms for the sake of scientific and technological development?
These are some of the questions that we would like to see discussed at the conference.
We aim at assembling leading scholars and thinkers on the contentious issue of ways and merits of protecting research tools and databases.
Some of the confirmed speakers and participants:
Dominique Foray, Univ. Paris-Dauphine Jacques Mairesse, CREST/INSEE Dominique Guellec, OECD Jean-Michel Dalle, IMRI Bronwyn Hall, Univ. of California at Berkeley Paul Uhlir, National Academy of Sciences Stephen Mark Maurer, Univ. of California at Berkeley John Walsh, University of Tokyo Peter Schroeder, Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, Netherlands Dietmar Harhoff, Munich School of Management Stephan Wagner, Munich School of Management Paul David, Stanford University Anselm Kamperman Sanders, Univ. Maastricht Robin Cowan, MERIT Luc Soete, MERIT Pierre Mohnen, MERIT Elad Harison, MERIT Brian Kahin, Univerity of Michigan Pierre Jean Benghozi, Ecole Polytechnique, Paris Paul Wouters, The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Wilfred Dolfsma, Erasmus University Tettu Luukonen, ETLA, Finland Rene Vleugels, Univ. Maastricht
More information on the program of the conference and of ways to get to Maastricht will be made available shortly.
Local organisor: Pierre Mohnen 31-43-388 3869 E-mail: p.mohnen@merit.unimaas.nl
The problem of amazon 1click is not "prior art", the problem is "Where's the damn invention?", "Where's the inventive step, the technical effect"? It's trivial and trivial patents are harmful to an economy.
More analysis on the prior art issue ( FFII paper)
In fact, whether there is 'prior art' or not: Amazon 1 click revealed the failure of the patent system when it comes to eCommerce, Internet and Software. Patents may be good in other fields, in the software industry they are not common usage. Patents benefit only lawyers and patent privateers. And Large scale IT companies can deal with them...
Europe canceled plans to introduce an Us style software patent system because the SME software industry kicked the patent industry (patent lawyers, patent institutions) in the ass.
Now it is time for the US to join the bandwagon and get rid of the patent lawyer's regime that does so much harm to innovation.
Ask your US FTC commissioner Mozelle W. Thompsson to stop SCO's anti-competitive behaviour that infriges all customs of business. A dirty media campaign based on baseless claims, in Germany SCO had to shut up because of competition law and was forced to pay.
1) Improve US competition law 2) Ask the institutions to enforce existing competition law.
Well, it is a fact that Government is bad in promoting technological change. however, they may cause harm. Just think of software patents as an example. In the EU Microsoft affiliated groups created the "European Internet Foundation". The EIF is a club of MEPs with "breakfast dirtector jobs" financed by BSA and other industry groups.
"Board of Govenors 12 political members Board of Management 12 "Board of Governors" 6 "Business Steering Committee" 4 Observers(Associate Members)2 Note: all of these are MEP's jobs
An organisation which does nothing except organising lobby discussions behind closed doors with industry leaders and its 50 key politicians.
For the second year in a row some of the MEP governors of the European Internet Foundation went on a successful fact-finding mission to Washington DC, kindly organised by the Internet Caucus Advisory Committee. Highlights included meetings with Senator Patrick Leahy, and Congressmen Bob Goodlatte and Rick Boucher. The mission kicked off with a site visit by some of our MEPs to Microsoft and Boeing in Seattle. Monica Ridruejo MEP, Arlene McCarthy MEP, Elly-Plooij-van Gorsel MEP and Roy Perry MEp about to embark on a visit of Boeing's construction facilities.
Not to mention that Arlene McCarthy and Plooj Van Gorsel are responsible for the IP extremism in the EU. US companies are the EUROpayens...;-)
Policy can cause harm.
A government body that promotes the idea of open source may be not bad at all. It means we institutionalise our interest as a counter balance institution.
If it was teethless, why is there so much resistance?
Foundation For a Free Informational Infrastructure made a very good job in Europe. Unfortunately there is no such a strong movement in the United States, although many anti-Patent experts come from the USA. And the United States is said to be more friendly to liberal economics and policy, such as F.A. von Hayek, who wrote:
The problem of the prevention of monopoly and the prevention
of competition is raised much more acutely in certain other fields to which the concept of property has been extended only in recent times. I am thinking here of the extension of the concept of property to such rights and privileges as patents for inventions, copyright, trade-marks, and the like. It seems to me beyond doubt that in these fields a slavish application of the concept of property as it has been developed for material things has done a great deal to foster the growth of monopoly and that here drastic reforms may be required if competition is to be made to work. In the field of industrial patents in particular we shall have seriously to examine whether the award of a monopoly privilege is really the most appropriate and effective form of reward for the kind of risk-bearing which investment in scientific research involves.
You're right. This is a "think tank", a mercanary. They write superficial reports and present them to the media as analyst reports.
Today tobacco, next time in favour of tanks, or against open source.
A think tank has no opinion. It produces opinions. Unlike politicians you cannot discuss with them. That's like convincing a media spokesman. The client is covered.
I am not anti-American. I fully respect the Americans. Sometimes they don't know what they are talking about but same applies to everyone.
Europeans usually know very little about life in Africa. Africans know little about Europeans. Americans know very little about the Arab world. and so on.
We all have a bias, communication is the bridge. We are affected by your patents, you are affected by ours. So it is natural to support each others.
Se our comments on this amendment, these are the amendments of McCarthy-JURI we protest against because they are fake limits. McCarthy rejected all important amendments that could define the word "technical".
Our comments on the 120 amendments that will be voted on wednesday see here.
This is the JURI proposal as introduced by rapporteur Arlene McCarthy and voted in JURI we fight against, an amendment to the original Business Software Aliance/EU Commission proposal.
It is very common that patent protagonists lied to the general public and their collegues. Patent lawyers are like crackers. Cracker circumvent security, patent lawyers circumvent restrictions of patent law. A patent lawyer that cannot file a patent on software patents with the current "JURI amended"-directive proposal would not be worth his money.
Here you find the amendments that will be voted on and FFII's recommendation.
FFII and the Eurolinux Alliance are very strong in Brussels and they grow stronger every day.
Many parliamentarians listen to us and then the directive protagonists sell the directive as an fulfillment of our concerns, switching rhethorics, but not substance.
About 200 people now focus on this issue as activists on our mailing lists. You can subscribe to patent@aful.org or take part in theOnline demonstration or become a member/supporter of FFII or sign the Eurolinux Petition.
You can support FFII by donations or even better by contributions. The European Parliament underestimated us. The patent lawyer slaves in Europarl came under strong pressure. We will be a mayor stakeholder in any future debate.
The Green Party/EFA Groups impressed by our work even called for Open Source in the EU institutions
The Green/EFA group in the European Parliament has called on the EU, and in particular on the European Parliament, to support free/open-source software by introducing it into their IT systems.
In a letter to the Secretary General of the Parliament, Julian Priestley, dated 9 September, the two Green/EFA Co-Presidents Monica Frassoni and Daniel Cohn-Bendit, argue that - as well as supporting Europe's software industry - switching to free and open source software would benefit the Parliament in terms of data continuity, technological independence and budgetary considerations. It would additionally take note of the Parliament's Echelon resolution, which recommended using non-proprietary software to increase technological security.
I also would like to remind you that the US government lobbied against us, esp. against interoperability in the directive. The wrote a letter to EU parliamentarians. I think it is time to internationalize the debate and we need your help to get rid of EU, US, JP ecc. trivial software patents.
Unfortunately OSI does not support anti-swpat action and very few US activists joined forces with us. An OSI representative (Russell Nelson) from the board of directors says they are
"neutral" not really caring about Intellectual Property, and that's what is
written in their FAQ.
There are economic studies that show a reduction in R&D sepnding. Unfortunately Lawmakers listen to Lawyers, not to economists. Ever read F.A. von Hayek' remarks about the patent system?
Patents, in particular, are specially interesting from our point of view because they provide so clear an illustration of how it is necessary in all such instances not to apply a ready-made formula but to go back to the rationale of the market system and to decide for each class what the precise rights are to be which the government ought to protect. This is a task at least as much for economists as for lawyers. Perhaps it is not a waste of your time if I illustrate what I have in mind by quoting a rather well-known decision in which an American judge argued that 'as to the suggestion that competitors were excluded from the use of the patent we answer that such exclusion may be said to have been the very essence of the right conferred by the patent' and adds 'as it is the privilege of any owner of property to use it or not to use it without any question of motive'. It is this last statement which seems to me to be significant for the way in which a mechanical extension of the property concept by lawyers has done so much to create undesirable and harmful privilege.
Slashdot Mirror
Nobody hates Microsoft exept some fanatics. However in order to secure freesom of its citizens there has to OS competition as so much depends on OS. Just consider an official bachdoor would be used in business espionage. Closed Source is not usable in security related areas of Government. the risk is too high.
Quote from Ian's announcement: "We have ported Red Hat's Anaconda installer to Debian; essentially, we replaced calls to RPM with calls to APT, and replaced Red Hat-specific configuration hooks with calls into the configlets and debconf. We have also written a tool called PickAx that facilitates the creation of Anaconda-based Debian installation CD sets. We are also working with various parties to add/merge RPM support into the mainline APT, to allow Debian- and RPM-based distributions to be managed using a single APT codebase, and possibly even to allow Debian and RPM packages to coexist side by side. This work also aims to merge our various APT extensions (e.g., support for authenticated APT repos) into the mainline APT." Guess it answers your questions.
VMWARE? Perhaps Bochs should be considered by all of us as the free alternative.
There is still a case existing: EU commissioner (competition) Mario Monti against Microsoft. Perhaps it would be better to focus on this case.
There is an article on EU Business: Microsoft faces 'final chance' in EU anti-trust probe from August. And Newsfactor thinks Don ' t bet on it.
The response of Microsoft is already very strong. They want to take the case to the US, where the justice system is probably more corrupt (home advantage). See Hindustan Times's Reuters article for more information on this issue. They present the same accusation in an more polite manner: "Microsoft Corp has been trying to drum up support among US lawmakers as part of its effort to fend off antitrust sanctions being considered by European regulators, congressional sources say.
With the European Commission weighing a fine and behavioral changes that could go beyond its US antitrust settlement, Microsoft lobbyists have taken their case to key members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, sources said.
While Microsft is under investigation because of its abuse of power, Microsoft propaganda requests stronger IPR law, criminal prosecution . They claim the proposed EURO DMCA++ (IP Enforcement directive) was not strong enough. Examine the horribleEU directive proposal paper by AEL Wiki (page of Association Electronic Libre, Belgium).
MERIT now organizes a conference for the patent lobby (patent lawyer interest groups)!!
l .
[ EPIP 2 ] Copyright and database protection, patents and research tools, and other challenges to the intellectual property system
Maastricht, November 24-25
On November 24 and 25 of this year a conference will be held at MERIT in Maastricht on the topic "Copyright and database protection, patents andresearch tools, and other challenges to the intellectual property system". This is the second meeting of the EPIP (European Policy for Intellectual Property) network, funded by the European Commission and lead by Dominique Foray and Jacques Mairesse. The partners of EPIP are IMRI from Universite Paris-Dauphine in France, MERIT from University Maastricht in the Netherlands, INNO-tec from the Munich School of Management in Germany, Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies in Italy, Roskilde University in Denmark, and the Santiago de Compostella University in Spain. For more information of the network, please visit the website at:
http://www.dauphine.fr/imri/EPIP/welcome.htm
The first EPIP meeting took place in Munich on the magnificent premises of the European Patent Office with over hundred participants, lawyers and economists, academics as well as practitioners (from the business world and the patent offices) from Europe and the United States. The papers presented at this conference touched upon many themes and challenges of the intellectual property rights system. The program of the Munich conference is also available on the website.
The next conference, while open to other themes, will essentially focus on research tools and databases. Both research tools and databases are major inputs of science and technology. In the view of fostering their impact on the economy through commercialization, governments have allowed IP to be taken on certain inventions, in the form of patents (on research tools) and sui generic rights (data bases). Whereas the US pioneered the former, Europe is leading the latter. The central issue is to strike the balance right between the conditions needed for commercialization (which often requires some exclusivity) with the conditions associated with scientific progress (open access). Should Europe reform its database directive along the lines of the United States? What should be the legal environment for the commercialization and diffusion of public databases? Should research tools be exempted from patent protection or other intellectual property protection mechanisms for the sake of scientific and technological development?
These are some of the questions that we would like to see discussed at the conference.
We aim at assembling leading scholars and thinkers on the contentious issue of ways and merits of protecting research tools and databases.
Some of the confirmed speakers and participants:
Dominique Foray, Univ. Paris-Dauphine
Jacques Mairesse, CREST/INSEE
Dominique Guellec, OECD
Jean-Michel Dalle, IMRI
Bronwyn Hall, Univ. of California at Berkeley
Paul Uhlir, National Academy of Sciences
Stephen Mark Maurer, Univ. of California at Berkeley
John Walsh, University of Tokyo
Peter Schroeder, Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, Netherlands
Dietmar Harhoff, Munich School of Management
Stephan Wagner, Munich School of Management
Paul David, Stanford University
Anselm Kamperman Sanders, Univ. Maastricht
Robin Cowan, MERIT
Luc Soete, MERIT
Pierre Mohnen, MERIT
Elad Harison, MERIT
Brian Kahin, Univerity of Michigan
Pierre Jean Benghozi, Ecole Polytechnique, Paris
Paul Wouters, The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
Wilfred Dolfsma, Erasmus University
Tettu Luukonen, ETLA, Finland
Rene Vleugels, Univ. Maastricht
More information on the program of the conference and of ways to get to Maastricht will be made available shortly.
Local organisor: Pierre Mohnen
31-43-388 3869
E-mail: p.mohnen@merit.unimaas.nl
The problem of amazon 1click is not "prior art", the problem is "Where's the damn invention?", "Where's the inventive step, the technical effect"? It's trivial and trivial patents are harmful to an economy. More analysis on the prior art issue ( FFII paper)
Follow this Link to find out more about the prior art issue.
In fact, whether there is 'prior art' or not: Amazon 1 click revealed the failure of the patent system when it comes to eCommerce, Internet and Software. Patents may be good in other fields, in the software industry they are not common usage. Patents benefit only lawyers and patent privateers. And Large scale IT companies can deal with them...
Europe canceled plans to introduce an Us style software patent system because the SME software industry kicked the patent industry (patent lawyers, patent institutions) in the ass.
Now it is time for the US to join the bandwagon and get rid of the patent lawyer's regime that does so much harm to innovation.
See FFII
I personally don't like war games. This one is special. Stalin or Hitler? Whom do you prefer? ;->
- better and more kernel documentation! - grid technology - security reviews, leak detection systems - bridge to W32 systems - easier kernel administration, kernel admin tools
Ask your US FTC commissioner Mozelle W. Thompsson to stop SCO's anti-competitive behaviour that infriges all customs of business.
A dirty media campaign based on baseless claims, in Germany SCO had to shut up because of competition law and was forced to pay.
1) Improve US competition law
2) Ask the institutions to enforce existing competition law.
Bob Goodlatte ------------- Top Contributors 1 Intel Corp $10,000 1 National Auto Dealers Assn $10,000 3 BellSouth Corp $8,000 3 Microsoft Corp $8,000 5 Siebel Systems $7,500 6 National Assn of Realtors $7,000 6 SBC Communications $7,000 8 Walt Disney Co $6,000 9 Wal-Mart Stores $5,250 10 Echostar Communications $5,000 10 Limited Inc $5,000 10 Northrop Grumman $5,000 13 Pilgrim's Pride Corp $4,700 14 Verizon Communications $4,500 15 Smithfield Foods $4,000 16 Adams Construction $3,000 16 ASCAP $3,000 16 Bank of America $3,000 16 Cargill Inc $3,000 16 Credit Union National Assn $3,000 16 eBay Inc $3,000 16 Management Concepts $3,000 16 National Assn of Broadcasters $3,000 16 National Hardwood Lumber Assn $3,000 16 National Venture Capital Assn $3,000 16 Outback Steakhouse $3,000 16 Philip Morris $3,000 16 Taylor-Ramsey Corp $3,000 16 Telepath Industries $3,000 16 Viacom Inc $3,000 16 Vivendi Universal $3,000
"Board of Govenors 12 political members Board of Management 12 "Board of Governors" 6 "Business Steering Committee" 4 Observers(Associate Members)2 Note: all of these are MEP's jobs
An organisation which does nothing except organising lobby discussions behind closed doors with industry leaders and its 50 key politicians.
Nice text. Who is the author, may we quote it?
I found this document about MS Patents.
You're right. This is a "think tank", a mercanary. They write superficial reports and present them to the media as analyst reports.
.de
Today tobacco, next time in favour of tanks, or against open source.
A think tank has no opinion. It produces opinions. Unlike politicians you cannot discuss with them. That's like convincing a media spokesman. The client is covered.
Open Source fuels the internet, > 66% of all web sites are hosted by Apache webservers. In Germany (.de domain) 89%!! (see Webserver market share
We all depend on Open Source. When we browse the web, when we use CMS, when we sent emails...
Guess it is not necessary to convince this mercanary organisation as the market and our society is convinced. Too late for mourning.
No, this is false news. It's the JURI report with it's fake limits to patentability with which nobody except OpenForum can agree.
I am not anti-American. I fully respect the Americans. Sometimes they don't know what they are talking about but same applies to everyone. Europeans usually know very little about life in Africa. Africans know little about Europeans. Americans know very little about the Arab world. and so on. We all have a bias, communication is the bridge. We are affected by your patents, you are affected by ours. So it is natural to support each others.
Se our comments on this amendment, these are the amendments of McCarthy-JURI we protest against because they are fake limits. McCarthy rejected all important amendments that could define the word "technical". Our comments on the 120 amendments that will be voted on wednesday see here.
This is the McCarthy-Juri amendment proposal we fight against. This is what we protest against.
FFFI has a story about it with regard to this amendet proposal called Why Amazon One Click Shopping is Patentable under the Proposed EU Directive. I guess this will answer your questions.
It is very common that patent protagonists lied to the general public and their collegues. Patent lawyers are like crackers. Cracker circumvent security, patent lawyers circumvent restrictions of patent law. A patent lawyer that cannot file a patent on software patents with the current "JURI amended"-directive proposal would not be worth his money.
Here you find the amendments that will be voted on and FFII's recommendation. FFII and the Eurolinux Alliance are very strong in Brussels and they grow stronger every day. Many parliamentarians listen to us and then the directive protagonists sell the directive as an fulfillment of our concerns, switching rhethorics, but not substance. About 200 people now focus on this issue as activists on our mailing lists. You can subscribe to patent@aful.org or take part in theOnline demonstration or become a member/supporter of FFII or sign the Eurolinux Petition. You can support FFII by donations or even better by contributions. The European Parliament underestimated us. The patent lawyer slaves in Europarl came under strong pressure. We will be a mayor stakeholder in any future debate. The Green Party/EFA Groups impressed by our work even called for Open Source in the EU institutions
I also would like to remind you that the US government lobbied against us, esp. against interoperability in the directive. The wrote a letter to EU parliamentarians. I think it is time to internationalize the debate and we need your help to get rid of EU, US, JP ecc. trivial software patents. Unfortunately OSI does not support anti-swpat action and very few US activists joined forces with us. An OSI representative (Russell Nelson) from the board of directors says they are "neutral" not really caring about Intellectual Property, and that's what is written in their FAQ.Well, let's show our muscels. And we need more US support of the other kind.