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07.02.08

Microsoft Lobbyists Abound for Software Patents in Europe

Posted in Microsoft, Deception, Samba, Patents, Europe at 10:37 am by Roy Schestowitz

A

s we emphasised yesterday, Microsoft’s plan for ‘interoperability’ excludes the GNU GPL, by design. In essence, this is achieved using what Microsoft proudly calls “licensing”, which requires payments for the use of protocols that have become very prevalent. The issue at hand was also described in the following short blog post from yesterday.

After Microsoft went public with its patent licensing specs the other day, I took a closer look at the agreements you have to sign — and the cash you have to fork over. To license patents from any one Microsoft product, you need to pay $10,000 up front, no questions asked, on top of per-copy-sold duties for your product.

It’s about what I expected from Microsoft. Good on them that they allow you to peruse and make use of the protocols without charge if you just want to work with them privately and not develop something that’s going to be released to others. But everything outside of that requires payment — and that $10K entry dues per Microsoft product is a great way to keep all of the noncommercial open source players out of the game.

Most observers are likely believe that people in Europe are unaffected by this because software patents have no merit, but Microsoft plays this game in a US-centric way, as illustrated by the Samba story, especially last year [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11]. Moreover, Charlie McCreevy has plans for what they call “harmonisation” (a very deceiving and cheeky word). His involvement is further described in this new article from IAM Magazine.

And alongside a Community patent we need a single European patent jurisdiction through which we can end the current patchwork of often contradictory decisions in patent cases handed down by national courts. On top of this, just three years ago the Commission was telling us that we needed a Computer Implemented Inventions directive to harmonise the treatment of software patents, again to help SMEs and to provide certainty in the software market. In short, the Commission tells us that patents are good and patents are vital to Europe’s prosperity.

[…]

So, a go-getting and smart European SME may well have invested significant time and money in developing world-class software. It may have followed the advice of commissioners McCreevy and Verheugen to get patent protection, but when it comes to putting that software into a potentially lucrative pan-European project, it’s no can do.

But wait. That’s not all. Some Microsoft lobbyisys we have come to know years ago, Jonathan Zuck and his agents, are once again pretending that small businesses are at stake.

Jonathan Zuck, president of the Association for Competitive Technology, said the EU scored an own goal with the document. “It aims to facilitate digital cooperation among European administrations, but in effect it excludes many well-established technologies from being used for e-Government services due to a narrow definition of open standards.”

It was only yesterday that we wrote about CompTIA and other Microsoft pressure groups. Pamela Jones connects the observation above to the previous incidents. She wrote:

[PJ: Yup. The BSA and CompTIA are riding agin. Yippee-ki-yi-ay, it’s a range war, and here comes the pr machine, and along with them dutifully ride some of the media. “The software industry” is expressing concerns? IP is being “sacrificed”? Or is it some fronts for Microsoft expressing concern? Take your pick. I’m pretty sure Red Hat isn’t complaining, and they are part of the software industry, after all. And not even all the members of these organizations wish to be represented this way. Remember last summer in Australia when CompTIA claimed its members were for OOXML and IBM was stood up and said it was a member of CompTIA and it was opposed? So, CompTIA speaks for *some of its members* who I guess would rather have others speak for them. I seriously doubt IBM is worrying about the EIC or open standards. You can read the final draft of the EIC here and more about it here.]

We also wrote yesterday about WIPO yesterday, so you may wish to keep an eye on articles like this one. There’s a lot of mystery around WIPO’s plans.

The fact that the WIPO patent committee has decided to request the International Bureau studies on “exceptions from patentable subject matter and limitations to the rights, inter alia research exemption and compulsory licenses” and “patents and standards” is testament that the WIPO of 2008 is not the WIPO that invoked “Intellectual Property as a Power tool for Development”.

Here below is the Annex to the Summary by the Chair which lists the eighteen non-exhaustive list of issues for further elaboration and discussion in the future. This list includes such topics as “Economic impact of the patent system, Alternative models for innovation, Patents and health (including exhaustion, the Doha Declaration and other WTO instruments, patent landscaping) and Relation of patents with other public policy issues.”

In summary, as is hopefully demonstrated here, there’s a great push from several different fronts for software patents in Europe. Without software patents, Microsoft’s dream of taxing Free software are doomed to fail. It’s an important battle to fight and important developments to keep abreast of. █

06.10.08

Microsoft Still Insists Free Software Tax in Europe

Posted in Red Hat, Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Samba, Patents, Europe, Antitrust, RAND at 2:32 pm by Roy Schestowitz

Turn competitor into own cash cow, make it more expensive and thus less desirable

We haven’t sufficient time to write about this in great depth at the moment, but there are various developments in Europe which readers ought to know about. These affect handling of software patents, Free software, and open standards.

Over in the IRC channel, we were told a little while earlier: “ECIS confirmed this morning that Microsoft appeals to the ECJ on patents. this is big news because all the press says they appeal on the “fine”, but in fact they just want certainty to tax Samba and Redhat.” This information is based on private talks with ECIS.

Further to this, consider the fact that the Commission is testing a migration to GNU/Linux and has an embargo proposal on its desk. As it turns out, based on a press release, it spends far too much money on software from the very same company it endlessly reprimands.

Microsoft sucks 8,136,000 EUR each year out of the European Commission

Commission pays Microsoft each year 226EUR for its office infrastructure. Commission has approx 36,000 users. Make the math. Commission makes also “open” tenders which prefers Microsoft products.

In the news you are also likely to find some coverage of the talk from Neelie Kroes. The New York Times, which is biased, picks a rather strong headline: E.U. Snubs Microsoft on Office Systems

Ms. Kroes has fought bitterly with Microsoft over the past four years, accusing the U.S. software giant of defying her orders and fining the company nearly $2.68 billion for violating European competition rules. But the speech was her strongest recommendation yet to jettison Microsoft products, which are based on proprietary standards, and to use rival operating systems to run computers.

“I know a smart business decision when I see one — choosing open standards is a very smart business decision indeed,” Ms. Kroes told a conference in Brussels. “No citizen or company should be forced or encouraged to choose a closed technology over an open one.”

You can find the speech here and you can also find a less critical (or moderate) article here.

The EU’s top antitrust official on Tuesday called for governments to favor open-source software for their own use, taking aim at Microsoft Corp. for ‘locking in’ customers to their proprietary technology.

In other news from Europe, recall the Nokia-Ogg disaster and watch the following curious new appointment.

EICTA, the industry body representing the information and communications technology and consumer electronics industries in the European Union announces that Erkki Ormala has been elected as President and Chairman of the Executive Board. Dr. Ormala is Vice President, Technology and Trade Policy of Nokia Corporation where his responsibilities cover political, regulatory, economic, market access and other business environment related issues. The main Eicta policy issues are in his area of responsibility at Nokia. He takes over from Rudy Provoost, who led the organization for the past four years.

Another change in the European patent system was published or at least highlighted by Digital Majority yesterday.

The council of ministers in Belgium has decided last 23rd of May to proceed with the ratification of the London Agreement, in order to scrap the requirement for translations of patents granted in Belgium in Flemish.

In other patent news, you may find of interest the following end of a patent dispute between Acer and H-P.

A patent war erupted between the two companies last year after HP filed patent suits against Acer accusing the Taiwanese PC vendor of infringing on at least 10 HP patents and sought to block Acer PC imports to the U.S.

Also of interest is this case of patent royalty madness.

The justices unanimously said LG could not enforce its memory-technology patents against both Intel and the computer makers that install Intel’s chips in their machines. The judges said LG’s power to extract royalties was “exhausted” by its licensing agreement with Intel, of the United States.

It was covered here as well. [via Groklaw]

Justice Thomas delivered the Supreme Court’s 19–page unanimous decision that provides some new life to the doctrine of patent exhaustion. The opinion reverses the Federal Circuit and holds that under the exhaustion doctrine applies to the authorized sale of components that “substantially embody” a process patent. Here, Intel’s authorized sale of chip components to Quanta exhausted LGE’s patent rights.

Lastly, there’s the WiMAX patent pool, which made a lot of headlines. What would be the impact on Free software?

Six big technology companies are spearheading a plan to jointly license patents that cover the wireless technology called WiMAX hoping to limit royalty rates that could deter customers from using it.

The participants are Cisco Systems Inc., Intel Corp., Samsung Electronics Co., Sprint Nextel Corp., Alcatel-Lucent and Clearwire Corp., according to people familiar with the situation and a document outlining the group’s plans.

They have scheduled a conference call Monday to announce an organization, the Open Patent Alliance, to gather rights to WiMAX-related patents and license them to makers of computers, networking devices and other products, these people said.

Software patents may not be going away so fast. It is very important to ensure that they stay (or get eliminated) in the very few places where these are seen as valid at the moment. █

Software patent on rise

04.07.08

On Marriage Patents, Software Patents and Thought Patents

Posted in Novell, Samba, Patents, Europe, America, Australia at 3:52 am by Roy Schestowitz

The subject of Free software is closely related to the subject of software patents, which are a great threat to it. In order to illustrate just what sort of mess Novell has committed itself to, we continue to present some examples of the system’s failure and beneath lie some of the very latest.

Business Methods and… Marriage Methods Patents?!?!

This one is really spooky. It’s titled “Method and instrument for proposing marriage to an individual” [via Groklaw] and it had me check the Web browser’s address bar because it’s almost too bizarre to be true (none yet beats “Method of swinging on a swing” though). Alas, it turns out that this one is no forgery and it is actually filed in the USPTO. Here is the abstract:

The purpose of this invention is to provide an improved method of proposing marriage to an individual. The method of proposing to an individual generally comprising the steps of meeting the individual; exchanging names with the individual; dating the individual (not necessary); drafting a government document having a proposal to marry the individual incorporated therein; and showing the government document to the individual. The government document may be a patent application. The patent application may claim the method by which the proposor will make a marriage proposal to the individual. The proposor could then use the method claimed in the patent application to propose to the individual. The patent application could be the actual marriage proposal.

Be careful. And be very afraid of the ‘marriage police’ (see the recent CeBit incident). They could storm into the restaurant and confiscate your golden ring if you ‘dare’ to propose without paying for a licence. Sarcasm aside, business methods in Australia and Europe are not an impossibility either. Digital Majority has just found this paper. From the abstract:

This paper reviews the availability of business method patents in Australia in light of the 2006 decision of the Full Court of the Federal Court in Grant v Commissioner of Patents,5 which confirmed the need in Australia for a ‘useful product’ to issue from the working of a method (business or otherwise) in order for the method to be patentable.

It hardly gets as bad as business and tax patents (how about patents that kill?), but fortunately there might be some reversals in the United States.

Australia Receives Lesson in Software Patents

Tridgell, of Samba fame, has served some ministers justice down there in Australia where decision makers gathered to discuss Free software. Here is a quote-worthy bit from a much larger article.

“The key issue that needs to be solved is independent invention. IP doesn’t cope with the commonly occurring ‘idea whose time has come’ - the patent system considers that a crime,” Tridgell said.

There is a similar situation down in South Africa (down as in “southern hemisphere”, just to be clear). It will be presented in the next post.

Bilski Case Revisited

A reader sent us a headsup with the following press release, adding: “Bilski is a case that is being closely watched by the Patent Bar.”

> http://www.aclu.org/freespeech/gen/34784prs20080404.html
> http://www.aclu.org/pdfs/freespeech/in_re_bilski_aclu_amicus.pdf [PDF]

—

ACLU Introduces First Amendment Argument In Key Patent Law Case
(4/4/2008)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: (212)549-2666; media@aclu.org

Patenting Abstract Ideas Violates The Constitution, Group Says

WASHINGTON - Introducing a rare argument applying the First Amendment
to patent law, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a friend of
the court brief today urging a federal court to uphold the denial of a
patent that would, if awarded, violate freedom of speech. In the
brief, the ACLU argues that Bernard L. Bilski is seeking a patent for
an abstract idea, and that abstract ideas are not patentable under the
First Amendment.

“The court must ensure that any test it uses in determining whether to
award a patent is in line with the Constitution,” said Christopher
Hansen, senior staff attorney with the ACLU First Amendment Working
Group, who filed the brief. “If the government had the authority to
grant exclusive rights to an idea, the fundamental purpose of the
First Amendment - to protect an individual’s right to thought and
expression - would be rendered meaningless.”

In 2006, Bilski sought a patent for his idea that the weather risk
involved in buying and selling commodities could be minimized if
sellers had conversations with two buyers instead of one. The U.S.
Patent and Trademark Office denied his request and the Board of Patent
Appeals and Interferences affirmed the denial. Bilski appealed that
decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and the
court has agreed to hear the case in a single joint session in May.

“Patent law prohibits the patenting of abstract ideas, but recently
the courts and the patent office have been granting patents that
consist essentially of speech or thought,” said Hansen. “If the
government continues to allow patents of speech or thought it risks
violating the First Amendment. No one can have a monopoly on an idea
or prohibit speech on a particular subject.”

The ACLU’s brief is available online here:
www.aclu.org/freespeech/gen/34783lgl20080403.html

Pay-to-think schemes, eh? Where does one pay the toll? █

03.24.08

Summary of Mono’s Danger to GNU/Linux and the Free Desktop

Posted in Formats, Red Hat, Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Novell, FUD, Debian, Samba, Mono, GNOME, Patents, Ubuntu, RAND, Open XML, FOSS at 3:15 am by Roy Schestowitz

A look back at evidence may be more compelling a proof than yet another explanation

We have received some mail recently from developers who are concerned about issues that are covered here, including OOXML and Mono. One person, for example, was concerned about pressure on KDE to implement support for OOXML (a big no-no). Coming from Debian, a concerned developer spoke about the problems surrounding Mono. Together, we ought to at least try to inform. Maybe we can help in pushing Debian to reduce its dependency on Mono, which is already present there. (correction/clarification: Mono is not there by default)

Let us quickly accumulate pointers to posts which summarise the problem and use this page as somewhat an index that makes it easy to understand for those unfamiliar with it. The list below is chronological, so better understanding has been formed by the time later posts were published, which makes them more accurate.

The presence of Mono alone should not be the key issue to address. There are legal issues. Upon attempts to demonstrate just loss of identity we were told that it would not be an issue as serious as patent-encumbered (and truly proprietary) elements like OOXML, WMV, etc.

That is indeed an issue. It also makes them more widespread, for all to suffer from.

Further throughout this discussion, the OOXML issue came up. The reader told us:

…what’s your opinion on OOXML support being added to OOo 3? Do you think rubbing it with the GPLv3 [1, 2] might yield some interesting results?

The reply is quoted verbatim:

It works badly for Novell, which is already building ‘Microsoft OpenOffice’ in a sense [1, 2, 3, 4]. Novell hates it when people use the “F” word in this context (”fork”), but it’s becoming more of a reality.

Microsoft hates the GPLv3. In fact, it turns out that GPLv3 got thrown out of Microsoft’s CodePlex. All of Microsoft’s smear campaigns against GPLv3 (through proxies in disguise, such as paid academics) show that Microsoft’s lawyers understand the ramifications.

“They, along with biased journalists who deceive, are totally falling for it.”The company works quite secretly, but understanding the strategy is not hard. Getting the word out and warning developers is another issue (PyCon, Ubuntu, OSI). They, along with biased journalists who deceive, are totally falling for it. It’s like a Big Lie campaign.

Many people are conveniently naive and it was frustrating to find that Michael T agrees with Matt Asay as far as the stance on Bruce Perens goes. He has posted about this to the OSI’s Web site. In other words, they see nothing wrong with Microsoft in the OSI, despite the fact that Ballmer sort of stuttered in an interview last month where he was going to name ‘open source’ as his number one threat. He eventually said “Open.. Linux”. He hesitated and changed his mind as he spoke. He knows that they have to pretend to like Open Source, as long as they can replace and subvert the licences to make them work Microsoft’s way (see notes above about Mono licence). Folks like Walli might already be doing a lot of legwork for Microsoft, trying to convince developers to embrace the Microsoft way, restrict openness, ownership, maybe even apply for software patents, etc. █

Just say no to Mono

03.09.08

How Microsoft Used Novell to Stifle the Samba Case in the EU

Posted in Microsoft, GNU/Linux, Novell, Samba, Europe, SUN, Antitrust, Interoperability, Protocol at 12:18 pm by Roy Schestowitz

Novell: Microsoft’s best friend and Samba/EU’s foe?

A reader has just brought to our attention some interesting quotes from an interview that we mentioned earlier. Here are the bits worth highlighting, with special emphasis (in red) on the role of Novell and Jeremy Allison, whom we interviewed in the past:

Carlo piana from the interview at LinuxWorld:

Q) Who are the people from free software community in this process and what was their role?

A) I have already mentioned Tridgell, whom many of the readers should know already. He is the founder and the leading developer of Samba. But also from the Samba team, two more people deserve high praises. The first is Jeremy Allison. Jeremy had a very important role first in the administrative proceedings, convincing the Commission to pass the Decision. Then in the interim case he also appeared in court ad made a big show. Unfortunately, after the interim, he was recruited by Novell which, shortly thereafter, entered into a settlement with Microsoft and pulled off the case. The settlement also prohibited any employees of Novell to cooperate with the case (and especially with us), which shows how negative to justice this sort of agreement could be. Nonetheless, as an Italian saying goes, not all bad things come to harm. We had the opportunity to bring Tridgell into the case, and I can hardly say who is more effective.

Some other excerpts of the interview are very clarifying as well, as highlighted by Groklaw’s News Picks:

Q: Was there some problematic behavior from MS that you noticed during the processes? Some non-official information says that MS spent 3.6 billion dollars on several actions related to this case. Any comment?

Piana: That was another arm of Microsoft strategy. Divide et impera.

It all started with Sun, the initial complainant. It received quite a treat to jump off the case, something in the range of two billion dollars. That was even before the court case started. The same happened later with Novell and CCIA, shortly after the “interim measure” case, during fall 2004. Notably, it was before the President issued the final order in that part of the case. And it happened again shortly before the main hearing last year, with Real Networks. That was even sleazier, because it had as a consequence that all the written documents submitted by Real as pleadings and evidence were taken off the court file. At that point the written phase was over and the evidence we were relying upon disappeared. I don’t know what is the final figure of this, but surely is over 3 billion dollars, in cash or services….

Q: How do you comment on the latest 899-million-euro fine?

Piana: Microsoft’s claim that the fine is from old issues, now resolved, is not entirely accurate. See what they are doing with the OOXML process, where instead of merging two standards for the same realm of application, they insist quite peculiarly in pushing for approval of a second international standard. And with a fast track procedure, when there have been thousands of comments in the voting process pointing out tons of very substantial shortcomings.

You can hopefully see the degree of manipulation and Novell’s role in it. Carlos mentions the illusion that the case is over. Microsoft sure like to prematurely/falsely declare such cases as dismissed, but as we showed in a digest just moments ago, Opera indicates that its case is not over. Always beware the spin. IE8 is one heck of a spin!

We previously showed how Microsoft uses Novell as a tool in Europe. Examples include:

  1. What About the EC Ruling?
  2. Novell's Role in a Microsoft Crusade Against Genuine Open Source Software
  3. Novell's Role in Microsoft's New Battle with the EU
  4. The Samba Project Still Affected by the Novell/Microsoft Deal
  5. Novell is not the next SCO, Microsoft is.
  6. Interoperability Mockery in Europe - Microsoft Dumps 30,000 Pages of Text
  7. Novell's Role in Hurting Samba and Free Interoperability

Is Europe still buying from MicrosoftNovell? █

MS Novell

02.25.08

The GPLv3 Not Strict Enough (Should Be Stricter), According to Samba

Posted in Microsoft, DRM, Finance, GNU/Linux, Samba, GPL, FOSS, Kernel at 4:20 am by Roy Schestowitz

Steve Ballmer scared of GPLv3

While Microsoft and its various proxies, including secretly-hired academics and lobbying arms (CompTIA, ACT, etc.), are on an aggressive crusade against GPLv3, the very same arguments which they try to use as a weapon against GPLv3 are actually a desirable trait. But it does not quite stop there. The GPLv3 is being characterised by Microsoft too strict, but then again Microsoft has always hated (read: feared) the GNU GPL, so it’s bound to find any excuse that suits it.

According to the father of Samba, the GPLv3 hasn’t a weakness which is being too strict. Quite the contrary in fact. Andrew “Tridge” Tridgell wants the GPL to become more restrictive and go harder against DRM — a sentiment that surely Linus Torvalds can subscribe to. In fact, a couple of weeks ago in Australia, Torvalds expressed on numerous occasions his disdain of DRM.

From the new article:

“Some people complain a lot about the anti-DRM provisions, and I would have liked to see those actually be even stronger than they are. Because currently they’ve got some limitations in there that limits some of the anti-DRM provisions of GPLv3 to only being applicable to consumer products. Which means it leaves out, for example, some Samba appliances.

“I’d like to see a future version of the GPL perhaps going a little bit stronger than that and applying it to the non-consumer/enterprise appliances as well” said Tridgell.

We received some mail from Palamida, which is probably one of GPLv3’s best friends in the sense that it ushers its increasing adoption and hands over an invaluable advocacy tool. Someone from the company asked us to address a particular topic:

“Sometime it’d be great to hear your recipe for open source coupled with capitalism, or whether you feel there IS a place for open source in a profit making business (because we’re finding that open source code makes up 50% of code in ALL apps).”

It’s probably important to distinguish between Open Source (in the OSI sense) and Free software (in the GPL sense). To address this question, if in capitalism your capita is physical (i.e. not something intangible like knowledge), then things are simple. They used to be simple.

“Consider Tim Berners-Lee’s motives for creating an open pool of information and ask yourself whether money is ever made on the Web.”Then, as we advanced, the man-made ambition was to (re)define ownership of information, of folklore, rather than to commoditise it. Open Source is a more reciprocal process that revolves around the assumption that information can be exchanged easily and bring benefit to everybody.

Consider Tim Berners-Lee’s motives for creating an open pool of information and ask yourself whether money is ever made on the Web. The problem may emerge when people refuse to give back, to make returns (patches, money, advice). And that’s completely separate from the issues of censorship and net neutrality (tiering and classes).

The transition in transportation means that physical containments of information (such as shrink-wrapped software) are no longer needed. This makes it an unnecessary barrier. It is really a philosophical question that hardly fits this Web site, but it seems to related to the issues that we find with software patents. In the case of Microsoft, not only does it insist on maintaining copyrights of code (which is perfectly acceptable), but it wishes to also own methods (never mind the actual implementation) and protocols, i.e. communication at the end points. That’s what last Thursday’s racketeering announcement was all about.

So, the short answer to that question is that open source is not incompatible with capitalism. That is just a Microsoft smear repeated over and over and over again (repetition does not make validity). Seeking to make profits by hindering communication, however, is a sin. The founding fathers of the United States saw the need to share ideas and something so organic simply must not be owned by an individual. If lobbyists that are paid to further promote greed actually achieve something in Congress, it does not mean they are correct. After all, these are man-made laws.

There is no such thing as an “intellectual property”. Let’s call it what it is: “intellectual monopoly”. It’s a fence. Development (so-called innovation) and profit can be sustained and even thrive without intellectual monopolies. No monopoly has ever done any good to progress. Progress is not to be judged only by currencies. █

12.23.07

Interesting Quotes from SUSE Forums

Posted in Microsoft, Novell, Opensuse, Samba, Ubuntu, Interoperability, Quote at 6:14 pm by Roy Schestowitz

A reader has informed us of some quotes of interest. These come from suseforums.net, which very recently suffered technical issues.

It is worth seeing how they try to spin the Samba deal in Novell’s favour, despite the fact that Groklaw, for example, used that deal to explain Novell’s stupidity.

Here’s a side topic:

I hope this is also a little step closer to loosening all those tightly held asscheecks on the matter of Novell (and others) working together with Microsoft to get better interoperability between Linux and MS product.

Here is the reasonable response:

It’s interesting that Samba never saw the need to sign a deal similar to the MS/Novell covenant, in order to get full protocol interoperability information. Not only that, no revenue is changing hands. All in all a good deal worked out by the PFIF legal team. Here’s a podcast by Jeremy Allison that explains the deal.

In another separate thread you’ll find more of these sour grape excuses, targeting Ubuntu, as usual.

Normally, we wouldn’t feel the need to post a forums announcement from another forum, but the actions of the Ubuntu Forums members it addresses hurt everyone in the Linux community, and are antithetical to the spirit of the global Linux community.

This seems very reasonable, but one might say that assigning liability to Ubuntu Forums is a bit unfair. █

12.22.07

Samba to Become More Popular, Time to Think About Patents (Updated)

Posted in Microsoft, Apple, Novell, Samba, Servers, Standard, Europe, Protocol at 4:50 pm by Roy Schestowitz

IANAL, but those 50 pence are here

A few days ago — and just in time for Christmas — we received some exciting news from the Samba team. From a technical point-of-view, barriers have been pulled thanks to Europe’s involvement and final decision, whose effectiveness was undervalued in the past.

”From what we can gather, what you have here is similar to Microsoft’s ‘promise’ not to sue Novell customers (they still can)“Samba’s milestone will contribute significantly to the adoption of GNU/Linux, not only at the expense of Windows, but also at the expense of some open protocols. Those protocols replaced Microsoft ones and thereby they removed patent issues away from the table.

Let’s put technical issues aside for a moment. There is one one negative thing which comes to mind. From what we can gather, what you have here is similar to Microsoft’s ‘promise’ not to sue Novell customers (they still can). Most journalists, none of whom are lawyers, seem very optimistic nonetheless. It’s great news, but it doesn’t seem so perfect. Ideal scenarios would involve no patents at al. We think about binding contracts rather than promises. Anyway, that’s just a case of pondering a worst case scenarios.

In other breaking patent news (timely reminder of the devil in the details):

1. Nokia, InterDigital claim patent case victory

Nokia filed a complaint in July 2005 asking the High Court to declare that 31 of InterDigital’s European patents were not essential to the UMTS standard, saying the it was proactively defending itself from potential infringement suits in Europe by InterDigital.

2. Vonage and AT&T Finalize Settlement

Vonage and AT&T have entered into a definitive agreement to settle their patent dispute, the companies announced today. The companies had agreed in principle to a settlement on November 7.

3. Apple Applies For Automatic Shutdown and Piracy-Fighting Patents

The US Patent Office has revealed a number of recent patent filings by Apple.

[…]

Apple has thus-far resisted industry trends towards activation of software, and currently only uses such methods in some of its most costly professional software. While it is clear that Apple has been working on methods to combat piracy, it remains to be seen how far Apple will employ the methods in its software. Readers are reminded that only a portion of the applications filed end up making it to shipping products.

It would not be wise to simply ignore patents, including software patents. At this time when OOXML is a hotly-debated issue, consider this:

Free software developers cares about the software they write. They care about licenses and boring legal stuff. Unfortunately Microsoft makes it illegal to make OOXML integration for individual developers. When Sun makes an OOXML converter to ODF, they are a company and got the legal team to handle the licensing issues. I suggest you yourself, since you don’t care of legal risks, tries to implement Suns OOXML->ODF in KOffice based on the work from Sun Microsystems. But it seems that you don’t know about this things in depth to do it your self. If that true, I think you should put your money where your month is. Instead of letting others live with the legal risks implementing OOXML, you should pay any legal cost for the developers who supports MS OOXML as you suggests. Or don’t you care about that either?

Supporting Microsoft formats and protocols is never the ideal route to achieving anything. It promotes reliance and dependability. It often involves legal risks, but then again, pragmatism gets in the way. Balancing the desire for freedom and the embrace of proprietary, patent-encumbered ‘gifts’ remains key.

Microsoft has a bone to pick and a saber to rattle. █

Update: having shared some of this information here, it seems clear that “software patents remain largely unaddressed.” This confirms the suspicion raised above.

« Previous entries ·

An invade, divide, and conquer Grand Plan

Novell CEO Ron HovsepianHighlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. Learn more

Xandros founderHighlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. Learn more

Linspire CEO Kevin CarmonyHighlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. Learn more

Hand with moneyHighlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. Learn more

Eric RaymondHighlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. Learn more

XenSource CEOAnalysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy. Learn more

More analysis >>

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