I mean, I don't know this guy personally, so it's not an attack on him, but MS has hired various "open source" people in the past, and what do we get?
MS pays Nokia to drop KDE and MeeGo. MS pays Novell to develop a C# and.Net stuff (which prevents the antitrust commission calling them a monopoly), and when Novell goes bust, MS buys their patents.
I don't see any indication that this hire is any good news for us.
To give negative feedback about a reader, email info AT librivox DOT org. The admins will read it and decide if there's anything that could be usefully passed on to the reader, without discouraging them.
> can you package it up and send it to the developing world so the kids can read along, for cheap?
Obviously, yes. It's data, audio data with no copyright restrictions. If you can get a computer (such as an Amazon Swindle) to a village, you can get data there too.
Sending data is either just as easy (put the data on the computer), or much easier (via the nearest Internet-enabled building/village rather than having to travel from another country).
> you'd think it'd be embarrassing by now to have that kind of sloppiness on the Slashdot front page.
Ha! Gotcha!
Ok, it was an in-joke that you couldn't have spotted. Slashdot pay someone to add minor sloppiness just to wind you up. Your comments give them a much needed laugh on a slow Saturday.
There have been previous threats about Theora, but nothing happened. This could be FUD bluff too.
MPEG LA has over 1,000 patents which it says are needed for an implementation of MPEG H.264.
Most current efforts around software patents talk about quality and bad patents, but none of those efforts will make a dent on a thicket of 1,000 patents. It's unlikely they're all obvious or that prior art exists for them.
There was a time when the problem was killer patents - RSA, public key encryption, gif - but today the problem is always thickets. Raising quality won't solve the problem, we need to clearly exclude software from patentability.
I guess the lesson is to diversify - get a.com or.org, but also get a national domain or two, and mention each domain somewhere on your webpages. Not a big mention, but just something so that if one gets seized, enough readers will know to just change s/\.org/\.ie/ in each domain.
[Ciaran checks this strategy....]
Actually, that might not work so good either. RojaDirecta also had a.me,.in, and.es. The last two aren't working:-/ The.me still is.
I wonder if the US govt has control over all domains by some way, or if the USA had to send take down requests to the local authorities in India and Spain.
When their.org and.com disappeared, they focussed on their.in. They must have thought that was the surest one. I'll check again in a few weeks to see if.me is good or if it also disappears in the near future.
Disputes of "I invented it first" are only a tiny subset. Really tiny. Changing to first-to-file will only affect that tiny subset of disputes. I can't even think of an example.
Most disputes are either about: * whether this software uses that idea - is that patent broad enough to cover this software; or * how important is that idea to this software - how much should the programmer have to pay the patent holder
Every entity that produces quantities of pharmaceuticals or cars can afford the lawyers needed for defending against patents. Also, because of the raw materials cost per-unit, they all have direct revenue as part of their development plan.
For software, it's SMEs, individuals, and people who are paid to do something else but develop software as part of getting their work done.
Ask a software developer to hire a lawyer and to pay per-user fees to a patent holder is not the same as asking this of a developer of pharma or cars.
I'm not saying patents are good in other fields. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. For software, they are definitely a problem.
Filing costs are the problem, it's the costs of defence.
If you write something in your spare time and you get threatened with a patent suit, would you pay a lawyer US$10k for an initial opinion? If the lawyer said you had a 60% chance of winning, would you have the time and money to start the lawsuit?
If the patent holder asked you for US$5 for every unit which you distribute, for a product you were giving away for free, would you start charging your users so you could pay the patent holder?
Applying these questions to producers of pharma and cars is different. Only large companies produce those things (on a commercially significant scale), so all concerned parties have the time and cash resources for these issues to be considered. For software, most producers can't deal with these costs. The list of costs is quite long:
Your first paragraph is overly optimistic. The Mpeg h.264 video format is covered by over 1,000 patents. Raising quality might get rid of 5 or 10% percent, or in a dream world 50%, but that would change nothing, you'd still need the MPEG LA cartel's permission to use that format.
Your 2nd paragraph is correct*, software and books are copyrighted. Algorithms and plots are not. Plots are not patentable, and neither should algorithms be.
( * To be more correct, you've over-simplified in saying that algorithms are patentable - only specific implementations to a technical problems are patentable, not the algorithm itself.)
Large companies, who can afford to defend themselves in court, will benefit from this. Same is true for Microsoft's case against i4i where they want to make it easier to invalidate patents in court.
For small and medium-sized companies, and for individuals, this won't help.
In software, people need the freedom to use the commonly used video formats, and the freedom to make a website to sell stuff. For a small company, the court case would cost more than the profits they'd be trying to protect.
Patents simply don't work for software. They *might* work for things where all mass production is done by large companies (e.g. pharma, cars), but for things which ordinary people do, such as writing books and writing software, patents don't work and must be abolished. Reform is not enough.
Note to anyone looking for approval voting in the linked chart: it's not there, that chart only compares "ranking" voting systems, and approval voting isn't one. Here's the Wikipedia article:
Sounds like a good move. Getting Schulze voting would be better, and I hope it takes off in the future (I heard Australia uses a form of Schulze voting). I'd definitely be in favour of moving from first-past-the-post to approval voting.
It's also a good way to entice people to put names on the faces in their photos.
Other security suggestions include verification via mobile phone.... which just so happens to be a good way to entice people to put their mobile phone number into their profile.
Why does every feature sold as a security enhancement involve increasing the amount of personal info you hand over?
There's very little "wiki" to Wikileaks. As for leaking stuff, they pride themselves on having the stuff vetted and confirmed by a team of professional journalists.
So it's a website with a bunch of journalists. And some pointy haired boss in NYT is saying "Ooooh, we should set up one of those!"
The only question is: why to whistle blowers go to Wikileaks instead of NYT?
Slashdot Mirror
I mean, I don't know this guy personally, so it's not an attack on him, but MS has hired various "open source" people in the past, and what do we get?
MS pays Nokia to drop KDE and MeeGo. MS pays Novell to develop a C# and .Net stuff (which prevents the antitrust commission calling them a monopoly), and when Novell goes bust, MS buys their patents.
I don't see any indication that this hire is any good news for us.
It's not the hardest job in MS. It's a PR stunt. Just being hired is already a win for MS.
A rating system was debated and rejected.
To give negative feedback about a reader, email info AT librivox DOT org. The admins will read it and decide if there's anything that could be usefully passed on to the reader, without discouraging them.
More info (including how to give positive feedback) here:
http://forum.librivox.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=883&sid=6a21d91282df956ca053c6c15335dac5
> can you package it up and send it to the developing world so the kids can read along, for cheap?
Obviously, yes. It's data, audio data with no copyright restrictions. If you can get a computer (such as an Amazon Swindle) to a village, you can get data there too.
Sending data is either just as easy (put the data on the computer), or much easier (via the nearest Internet-enabled building/village rather than having to travel from another country).
Better than text-to-speech: http://librivox.org/
It's a project where volunteers make audio books of public domain works. So you get a real reading rather than a robotic best effort.
I hope free software projects combine this with the public domain texts to make cool materials for people (kids and adults) learning languages.
> you'd think it'd be embarrassing by now to have that kind of sloppiness on the Slashdot front page.
Ha! Gotcha!
Ok, it was an in-joke that you couldn't have spotted. Slashdot pay someone to add minor sloppiness just to wind you up. Your comments give them a much needed laugh on a slow Saturday.
> MPEG-LA is risking a "slander of title" claim
Has that been used in the past against a patent holder??
The decision will be made by the distros.
Patent encumberedness is what makes your legal department tell you a package can't be in the distro.
Liking openness is a lovely discussion for Sunday afternoons.
There have been previous threats about Theora, but nothing happened. This could be FUD bluff too.
MPEG LA has over 1,000 patents which it says are needed for an implementation of MPEG H.264.
Most current efforts around software patents talk about quality and bad patents, but none of those efforts will make a dent on a thicket of 1,000 patents. It's unlikely they're all obvious or that prior art exists for them.
* http://en.swpat.org/wiki/MPEG_LA
* http://en.swpat.org/wiki/WebM_and_VP8
* http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Audio-video_patents
There was a time when the problem was killer patents - RSA, public key encryption, gif - but today the problem is always thickets. Raising quality won't solve the problem, we need to clearly exclude software from patentability.
Thanks.
I guess the lesson is to diversify - get a .com or .org, but also get a national domain or two, and mention each domain somewhere on your webpages. Not a big mention, but just something so that if one gets seized, enough readers will know to just change s/\.org/\.ie/ in each domain.
[Ciaran checks this strategy....]
Actually, that might not work so good either. RojaDirecta also had a .me, .in, and .es. The last two aren't working :-/ The .me still is.
I wonder if the US govt has control over all domains by some way, or if the USA had to send take down requests to the local authorities in India and Spain.
When their .org and .com disappeared, they focussed on their .in. They must have thought that was the surest one. I'll check again in a few weeks to see if .me is good or if it also disappears in the near future.
Disputes of "I invented it first" are only a tiny subset. Really tiny. Changing to first-to-file will only affect that tiny subset of disputes. I can't even think of an example.
Most disputes are either about:
* whether this software uses that idea - is that patent broad enough to cover this software; or
* how important is that idea to this software - how much should the programmer have to pay the patent holder
The US DoD even gave FSF an endorsement of free software for fsf.org:
http://www.fsf.org/working-together/profiles/department-of-defense
Others:
http://www.fsf.org/working-together/whos-using-free-software
Every entity that produces quantities of pharmaceuticals or cars can afford the lawyers needed for defending against patents. Also, because of the raw materials cost per-unit, they all have direct revenue as part of their development plan.
For software, it's SMEs, individuals, and people who are paid to do something else but develop software as part of getting their work done.
Ask a software developer to hire a lawyer and to pay per-user fees to a patent holder is not the same as asking this of a developer of pharma or cars.
I'm not saying patents are good in other fields. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. For software, they are definitely a problem.
Bleh, missing word:
Filing costs are NOT the problem
Filing costs are the problem, it's the costs of defence.
If you write something in your spare time and you get threatened with a patent suit, would you pay a lawyer US$10k for an initial opinion? If the lawyer said you had a 60% chance of winning, would you have the time and money to start the lawsuit?
If the patent holder asked you for US$5 for every unit which you distribute, for a product you were giving away for free, would you start charging your users so you could pay the patent holder?
Applying these questions to producers of pharma and cars is different. Only large companies produce those things (on a commercially significant scale), so all concerned parties have the time and cash resources for these issues to be considered. For software, most producers can't deal with these costs. The list of costs is quite long:
* http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Costs
Not that I know of, but if they were patentable, there would be film owners and trolls patenting plots and enforcing them.
If that's not happening, it's not for lack of interest from trolls. It must be that plot patents aren't being granted (or granted but not upheld).
If anyone has more info, it would be great to gather it here:
* http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Storyline_and_fashion_patents
Your first paragraph is overly optimistic. The Mpeg h.264 video format is covered by over 1,000 patents. Raising quality might get rid of 5 or 10% percent, or in a dream world 50%, but that would change nothing, you'd still need the MPEG LA cartel's permission to use that format.
Your 2nd paragraph is correct*, software and books are copyrighted. Algorithms and plots are not. Plots are not patentable, and neither should algorithms be.
( * To be more correct, you've over-simplified in saying that algorithms are patentable - only specific implementations to a technical problems are patentable, not the algorithm itself.)
Large companies, who can afford to defend themselves in court, will benefit from this. Same is true for Microsoft's case against i4i where they want to make it easier to invalidate patents in court.
For small and medium-sized companies, and for individuals, this won't help.
In software, people need the freedom to use the commonly used video formats, and the freedom to make a website to sell stuff. For a small company, the court case would cost more than the profits they'd be trying to protect.
Patents simply don't work for software. They *might* work for things where all mass production is done by large companies (e.g. pharma, cars), but for things which ordinary people do, such as writing books and writing software, patents don't work and must be abolished. Reform is not enough.
* http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Why_software_is_different
* http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Why_abolish_software_patents
> Why do so many stupid people post on /.?
Because it inspires responses of high technical prowess, such as yours.
You're my hero.
Can the US shut down .org domains, but not .com domains? That's what the article summary seems to say.
If this is the case, is the entity that "controls" .com domains better?
I was about to buy a .org domain but now I have to research this first.
Note to anyone looking for approval voting in the linked chart: it's not there, that chart only compares "ranking" voting systems, and approval voting isn't one. Here's the Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting
Sounds like a good move. Getting Schulze voting would be better, and I hope it takes off in the future (I heard Australia uses a form of Schulze voting). I'd definitely be in favour of moving from first-past-the-post to approval voting.
Thanks for sticking to the important stuff!
Those aren't the only two options.
For example, passwords are neither public nor private info.
> asked to name the person in those photos
It's also a good way to entice people to put names on the faces in their photos.
Other security suggestions include verification via mobile phone.... which just so happens to be a good way to entice people to put their mobile phone number into their profile.
Why does every feature sold as a security enhancement involve increasing the amount of personal info you hand over?
There's very little "wiki" to Wikileaks. As for leaking stuff, they pride themselves on having the stuff vetted and confirmed by a team of professional journalists.
So it's a website with a bunch of journalists. And some pointy haired boss in NYT is saying "Ooooh, we should set up one of those!"
The only question is: why to whistle blowers go to Wikileaks instead of NYT?