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| ADTI Has Another Study; Marbux Finds a Patent-Open Standards Primer |
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Friday, March 25 2005 @ 01:36 PM EST
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Alexis de Tocqueville Institution President Ken Brown is singing for his supper again. According to TechWorld, ADTI has a new study coming out shortly with the insulting title, "Intellectual Property -- Left?" Apparently he is a glutton for punishment, considering the drubbing his last study sustained from everyone who is anyone. Even Microsoft said the study wasn't helpful. The Microsoft-funded "think tank" that mistakenly reported that Linux came from Minix (Minix's author publicly corrected ADTI on that) now reports that Open Source software "may be a legal time-bomb waiting to explode into a torrent of lawsuits." Ooooh. Scary. What is the message here? Maybe that we shouldn't use Linux in the enterprise and should use Windows instead? You think? With his usual intellectual creativity, Mr. Brown says that the lack of any litigation so far against Free and Open Source software, (the SCO case is a contract issue, remember, according to SCO) is suspicious. After all, the proprietary software world has been in an orgy of lawsuits against one another for some time for various infringements. How could it be, this inquiring mind wants to know, that you never see those kinds of infringement lawsuits against or within the FOSS community? Or in his words: "Certainly it is improbable (and mathematically impossible) to assume that no infringement is occurring," he writes. "Thus, we are left to conclude that infringement to date has largely been getting a 'pass'." Those involved must ask themselves when the litigation will arrive and what will trigger it, he argues. What a novel approach. I certainly never would have thought of that. Of course, I never studied probability theory. I thought there were no infringement lawsuits because the FOSS community doesn't infringe other people's code, as a matter of principle. Also, they don't infringe code because their code is written in public, so any infringement would be immediately visible and that is, shall we say, a disinducement even to those with no ethics. Also, FOSS developers take pride in their work, and that is also a deterrent, because the writing of the code -- solving the issues that present themselves -- is the fun part. Copying someone else's code on purpose would completely take away all the fun. Anyway, just in case his message comes from above, so to speak, and it's a foreshadowing, and there will be some manufactured litigation filed as an anticompetitive weapon, here is great resource for us all to study about patents and standards, a link Marbux found for us. That knowledge just might come in handy for a rainy day, if it ever starts raining patents. If not, as Groklaw demonstrates, you just never know when knowledge might come in handy in ways you never predicted. I'll be studying with you, so let's start cracking the books so we will be ready. I'll put the link in the Legal Links resource page too, so we can all find it again readily. I'll call it Patents and Open Standards Primer. About that title, I gather Mr. Brown would like to paint Linux as a leftist conspiracy. I realize he is playing on words, using the Copyleft wording, but I also think it was a title deliberately chosen to leave a cloud in the air over Open Source software. I gather ADTI does not feel any compunction about throwing out insults, since they apparently have a section full of them now, where they call Open Source "open sores software" and "hybrid-source software". The page is http://www.adti.net/, but I surely don't recommend it. Anyway, the point I'm making is simply this: speaking strictly for myself, Linux and FOSS and the GPL are not, to me, political issues. Groklaw is not political. I'm not political either. I just like the software. Our comment policy exiles political discussions from this site. And I feel insulted when people say such things about Linux and the FOSS community. Intel and IBM and Novell and Red Hat and any number of upstanding American corporations now support FOSS. It's a business, not politics. And according to Wall Street Technology, Linux is here to stay. Seems a bunch of rabid capitalists on the Street like to use it: "Execs from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, J.P. Morgan Chase, and Merrill Lynch said they've experienced price-performance improvements by up to a factor of four by replacing Unix-based systems with those based on Linux." Linux is taking over because people can save money, and capitalists like to save money, so their businesses make a larger profit.
But there is more to it: "Linux has been crucial to the success of J.P. Morgan's derivatives-trading business, said Scott Marcar, head of technology for global emerging markets. Linux now powers about two-thirds of the CPUs that run J.P. Morgan's business of trading derivatives, such as futures and options contracts.
"At the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, average daily trading volume on its Globex electronic-trading platform has grown to 2.5 million contracts, representing more than half of the exchange's total daily volume of trades. To help support that workload increase, the Chicago Merc began switching to Linux from Sun Solaris in late 2003, said Joseph Panfil, director of enterprise-technology services. By switching to Linux, he said, the exchange has achieved orders-of-magnitude reductions in order-execution times. 'We're going for speed as well as cost savings,' Panfil said." So it isn't just the money saved. It's also speed. Speaking of speed comparisons, here is an article that includes some speed tests (scroll down) you might find of interest, between Solaris 10 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0. I think you'll be surprised. The Wall Street guys won't be.
Here's why Brown thinks there will be a flood of litigation: "After a brief glance at much open source software development, it becomes readily apparent that a number of open source practices directly conflict with best practices associated with protecting intellectual property," he writes. "Both intentionally and unintentionally, users, developers, and distributors are in conflict with traditional, staid intellectual property law." Among the potential conflicts are "licensing, attribution, anonymity, derivative works, and indemnification", according to Brown." Now we are entering an area I actually know something about. And my opinion is that the GPL is based on copyright law, the exact same law the RIAA uses to sue little girls who download their music. I don't see any conflict of law. It's how you use copyright law that makes the difference. The GPL is a license to let people know what they can legally do with covered software without having to write to the authors and get permission every time. But if you infringe it, the enforcement of the authors' rights is handled by a copyright infringement action, just like the RIAA. In short, ADTI misses again.
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 25 2005 @ 03:22 PM EST |
I can't understand how people can be willing to make their living being publicly
mistaken. It's almost like their goal in life was to be a carnival geek, with
chickens and all.
I mean, there are books and studies thay can go to for material to help them get
a clue. The clues are low-cost, so that anyone can afford several at a time.
People will actually help you find a clue, if they think you have any chance of
understanding one when you come across it.
And there's a ton of money in it for the folks with clues to share with others
who still don't get it, like a consultant does.
But some folks just can't seem to get a clue, or make use of the clues others
have provided, even, so....
what are they to do but try to distract other people who are seeking a clue?
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 25 2005 @ 03:22 PM EST |
| corrections go here [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: rm6990 on Friday, March 25 2005 @ 03:30 PM EST |
| OT Here [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: SeismoGuy on Friday, March 25 2005 @ 03:33 PM EST |
More Pacer activity here: http://www.utd.uscour
ts.gov/documents/ibm_hist.html
0-0 Filed: 03/22/05
Docket Text:
**Terminated document(s): terminating [142-1] motion to dismiss counterclaim;
ruled on in Memorandum Decision of 2/9/05
425-1 Filed: 03/23/05
Docket
Text: SEALED DOCUMENT entitled: Memorandum in Opposition to IBM's Motion for
Entry of Order Limiting Scope of IBM's Ninth Counterclaim
0-0 Filed:
03/24/05
Docket Text: **Terminated document(s): terminating [142-2] motion
or, in the alternative to separate per order 2/10/05
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 25 2005 @ 03:35 PM EST |
| Mr. Brown says that the lack of any litigation so far against Free and Open
Source software is suspicious...
"Certainly it is improbable (and
mathematically impossible) to assume that no infringement is occurring," he
writes. "Thus, we are left to conclude that infringement to date has largely
been getting a 'pass'." Those involved must ask themselves when the litigation
will arrive and what will trigger it, he argues.
Wow, what a great
argument! Lets try it other ways!
The lack of any litigation so far against Mr.
Brown is suspicious. Certainly it is improbable (and mathematically impossible)
to assume that no subtle form of copyright infringement is occuring in his
reports. Thus, we are left to conclude that his copyright infringement has
largely been getting a pass.
Cool. It works. I guess we're all criminals. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Rob M on Friday, March 25 2005 @ 03:36 PM EST |
There is likely a lot of patent infringement in open source (LAME and XMMS jump
to my mind as a first example(Fraunhoeffer) GPG for a while(the RSA patent has
expired, hasn't it?), Almost any image program (Unisys GIF, expired)...)
However, I don't see much of it being found on either side. For the corps, it's
a lot of code to sift through for minimal return. And any suits could bring out
IBM's claws as well.
For an OSS developer, there's lots of patents, both valid and invalid to sift
through. Can any OSS shop short of IBM actually do an effective patent search?
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: TAZ6416 on Friday, March 25 2005 @ 03:51 PM EST |
Wasn't Mr Brown writing a book about the Minux/Linux "Smoking Gun"? Was it ever
published?
Jonathan
Pal Mickey Does
DLP[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 25 2005 @ 03:58 PM EST |
| So his principle thesis is based on "...licensing, attribution, anonymity,
derivative works, and indemnification"??
I have never known a legally
copyrighted work to have an anonymous author. Most free software is under the
GPL, and one presumes has a stated author, authors, copyright holders, etc.
Certainly there can be more than one. But anonymous?
In regard to
"derivitive" works, if anything, the GPL may take a stronger position on the
question of what constitutes derivitive work than copyright law does! Also
since the code is published, it's hard to see how another's work could be
"slipped into" a free software work, though clearly a free software work can be
slipped into a proprietary work, such as happened with Cherry OS vs PearPC.
Indeed, I agree there are oppertunities for litigation involving free
software, but they all involve oppertunities where free software has been
misappropriated by proprietary vendors. Indeed, the potential for
indemnification is important, for if you purchase a proprietary software
product, how can you be assured that the proprietary software vendor did not
misappropriate another person's work into his product? Is Mr. Brown's paper
advising people should avoid proprietary software for these reasons? It sounds
like it should.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 25 2005 @ 03:59 PM EST |
Or is his another chapter, and 'still writing' is the reason why we still havn't
seen the last promised effort.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 25 2005 @ 03:59 PM EST |
| when and if microsoft stops payment is when they will get a clue [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 25 2005 @ 04:03 PM EST |
According to the article, he refers to OSS as "public domain"
software.
If he can't tell the difference between a copyright license and the public
domain, what business does he have analyzing intellectual property issues?
You know, I should write a dissertation on all the dialects of Chinese. Of
course, if someone spoke to me in Mandarin or Cantonese I couldn't tell you
which it was, but I have a college degree, so obviously my analysis shows a
powerful understanding![ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 25 2005 @ 04:13 PM EST |
| This guy has a severe thinking problem. He said Linus Torvalds must have copied
Minix code into Linux, because one person couldn't write that much code in such
a short period of time. The inventor of Minix and many others told him he was
wrong, yet here he goes again:
"Certainly it is improbable (and
mathematically impossible) to assume that no infringement is occurring,"
he writes. "Thus, we are left to conclude that infringement to date has largely
been getting a 'pass'." Those involved must ask themselves when the litigation
will arrive and what will trigger it, he argues.
This argument is logically
along the lines of the rooster who keeps crowing because he thinks it makes the
sun rise. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 25 2005 @ 04:21 PM EST |
Regarding the quote about FOSS's infringement getting a free pass and the
subsequent analysis, I think there is a point that is missed. Since there is
only limited context of Brown's quote in the originial article, I am assuming
that he is talking about any infringement of any intellectual property. PJ's
analysis rebuts this with regard to copyrights. I would temper her analysis
slightly, however, in that I would find it extremely suprising that of every bit
of code ever released under an Open Source license, none was improperly
released. (Note that this is equally true for closed source projects.) I
suppose that I get a bit cautious when discussing the actions of the "FOSS
Community." While her analysis is spot on for the overwhelming majority of
projects and people, since membership is not strictly defined and can include
people with malicious intent (say, plants who would deliberately infringe to
make the community look bad), a bit of temperance might be better. This aspect
is a minor aside, though, to what I think was missing from the analysis:
patents.
My impression is that a majority of the "orgy of lawsuits" were patent
infringement based, not copyright infringement based. On this point, I am sure
that there is infringement on granted patents, for a couple of reasons. First
is that not every granted patent is a vaild, enforcable patent. (Here I am
assuming vailidity and enforcablility in a theoretical sense which would mean
without regard to cost of defense, with all possible prior art available, and
with all concepts of non-obviousness and such properly applied. This is not
necessarily the same as what would happen if someone was acutally sued for
patent infringment. The difference, of course, represents bugs in the system.
:) ) The second reason has to do with the standard practice (in both closed and
open source) of programmers avoiding reading patents to avoid the tripple
damages for willful infringement. Perversely, this has the opposite effect of
what the patent system is supposed to do (exchange of public disclosure for
temporary monopoloy), but that is a different discussion. Between these, and
possibly other reasons, it has been said that is likley impossible to write any
non-trivial program which does not infringe on some patent. This statement is
equally true for closed source as it is for open source.
Given this, I think that there is an interesting question regarding the
frequency of patent lawsuits regarding Open Source software compared to closed
source software. I tend to believe Brown in that I think that the number of
such suits will increase, if for no other reason than the sort of organizations
likely to bring them are the same sort as those that pay for these reports to be
written. The Open Source software development model has ways for dealing with
the copyright issues. How patents end up being dealt with will be interesting.
--Trollsfire[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 25 2005 @ 04:46 PM EST |
| Sounds like these guys have been "Tocque"-ing up again. [ Reply to This | # ]
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- Gosh - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 25 2005 @ 09:51 PM EST
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| Authored by: Simon G Best on Friday, March 25 2005 @ 04:47 PM EST |
Having just had a quick look at the ADTI website, it immediately looks to me
like their stuff about "open sores software" is blatant flamebait - and probably
FUD for the PHBs, too. Perhaps they're trying to stir us up so that we can then
be 'shown' to be militant, unreasonable, zealotted, sort of latter-day
communist, and so on.
But anyway, their 'suggestion' that we're a bunch
of lefties reminds me of something I've been thinking recently. Those who
pretend that we're communists are as much pretending that they themselves are
capitalists - they're just two sides of exactly the same coin of pretence. But
such pretences say more about their perceptions of themselves and their
attitudes towards the bulk of the population.
To see us as 'sort of
latter-day communists' (to put it the way Bill Gates did) in the way they do,
they must be seeing themselves as part of what true Communists call the
'borgeoisie', and the majority of the population (including us) as the
'proletariat'. Furthermore, they are placing themselves in the role of
exploiters of the 'proletariat' and 'proletarians' - something which seems
very fitting in some cases! At least, that's a thought that occurred
to me in recent weeks.
But this stuff about it being a matter of 'left'
and 'right' is wrong - it's the wrong political axis! If Open Source
has a place on the political spectrum (and, dissenting with PJ's opinion here, I
believe it does), it's not particularly on the old, out-of-date, one-dimensional
spectrum of traditional left and right. Instead, it's on the two-dimensional
spectrum of economic left/right and authoritarianism/liberty - where Open Source
leans towards liberty (of course)! It's the authoritarian/liberty axis that's
the important one when it comes to the issue of Open Source.
This is
'liberty' in the sense of 'Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness'. This
is 'liberty' in the sense of 'the Land of the Free'. This is 'liberty' in the
sense of 'Freedom of Speech', 'Freedom of Expression'. If we're 'communist',
then so are the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United
States, and the United States of America itself.
True
Capitalists believe in freedom - freedom of the market, free competition. This
is not what Open Source is opposed to; if anything, Open Source happens to be in
favour of such freedom. If there's a direction on the political compass which
Open Source is opposed to, it's authoritarianism.
The conclusion I keep
reaching about these denouncers of Open Source, who favour software
patentability and disapprove of people exercising basic freedoms when it comes
to software, is that they're not true capitalists. Rather than have healthy
competition in the free market, they want the authorities to shore-up and
protect the interests of the established, often powerful software proprietors
(and they want patents for that). Perhaps that's why they see us as
'communists' - a kind of reflection of how they see themselves as 'borgeoise'
proprietors threatened by 'revolting' 'proletarians'.
---
FOSS IS
political. It's just that the political establishment is out of touch and
hasn't caught up. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: xtifr on Friday, March 25 2005 @ 04:53 PM EST |
If it is "mathematically impossible" for Free/Libre/Open Source Software to
be non-infringing, then it is mathematically impossible for non-Free Software to
be non-infringing as well (since there is just as much, if not more, of it
around). And in fact, since FLOSS is open for public inspection, it is far more
likely that non-Free software is infringing on Free software's authors'
copyrights than the other way around (target of opportunity). So the only
rational conclusion from this line of argument is that you should avoid
proprietary, non-free software at all costs! For your own safety, of course.
:)
It's truly amazing to me how many of these so-called "analysts"
raise arguments that so clearly cut both ways, without considering the
implications of turning the argument around.
---
Do not meddle in the
affairs of Wizards, for it makes them soggy and hard to light. [ Reply to This | # ]
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- cuts both ways - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 25 2005 @ 05:08 PM EST
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 25 2005 @ 05:06 PM EST |
From my upcoming report on think tanks:
"Certainly it is improbable (and presumably impossible) to assume that no
research is occurring," one notes. "Thus, we are left to conclude that
research to date has largely been getting an 'ignore'. Those funding such
studies must ask themselves where the value is, and just what they are paying
for."[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: jelenko on Friday, March 25 2005 @ 05:08 PM EST |
I wonder what it's like for Mr. Brown to go home at night and talk with his
family about what he does for a living.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 25 2005 @ 05:14 PM EST |
There is the question of obviousness. If I come up with something useful and
nobody else comes up with it, I am in reasonable shape as far as my patent goes.
If one other person invents it independently, we have a horse race. If ten
other people come up with it then the race is over before it starts. Nobody
gets the patent because it is obvious. I wonder if the mere existance of
something in FOSS demonstrates obviousness.
I think that patent holders are somewhat reluctant to sue people because they
are worried that if the case actually goes to court their patent will be
overturned. The best case is to use the patent and the threat of a costly suit
to intimidate someone into giving them money.
It may well be that the lack of patent cases against FOSS is because of the
danger for the plaintiffs. If they lose, their patent is gone.
On the other hand, I am not entirely unworried about submarine patents.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: kawabago on Friday, March 25 2005 @ 05:17 PM EST |
The upside to this story is that AdTI seems to be the best Microsoft can do. If
so, we haven't got much to fear!
---
Life is funnier from the far end.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: archonix on Friday, March 25 2005 @ 05:39 PM EST |
Take a coin. Toss it in the air. On average, if you keep tossing it in the air
it will come out with roughly 50% heads and 50% tails. It's a general rule that
the probability of heads coming up when you toss a coin is therefore 50%, or 1
in 2.
So far so good.
This is where people begin to make a mistake. They assume that this general
observation is a strict rule, and that a run of tails increases the liklihood of
heads coming up the next time. It doesn't. The coin doesn't have any memory of
the tosses that came previously; each toss has a 50% chance of coming up heads,
and a 50% chance of coming up tails. If you've tossed tails the last 100 times,
don't assume that it's more likely to come up heads this time... theoretically
you could sit and toss tails for all eternity.
And this, of course, is where Mr Brown seems to be making his mistake. He
appeals to a misunderstanding of probabilities (What are the probabilities of
open source software infringing anyway?) and says that, because it hasn't
happened yet, then it must be happening soon. It sounds logical until you
realise that the probablities aren't an aggregate of everything that came
before. At least that's the simplistic way of lookign at it. Each new open
source project potentially reduces the probablity of open source software
infringing on this nebulous IP, as they are wiser in the ways of the so-called
IP world, as well as being more visible than the proporietary developers, and
therefore more likely to try and avoid potential infringement.
---
Things to do before I die:
Get married; Check (june 18th 2005)
Get OO.org working on amd64; check
Find working amd64 version of SIM; Crud...[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: findlay on Friday, March 25 2005 @ 05:40 PM EST |
"Also, FOSS developers take pride in their work, and that is also a
deterrent, because the writing of the code -- solving the issues that present
themselves -- is the fun part. Copying someone else's code on purpose would
completely take away all the fun."
No, not necessarily. I find that working someone else's code into something I
wrote can be just as fulfilling. After all you're not reinventing the wheel.
Finding clever ways to reuse code or use libraries in new and interesting ways
is part of the fun, is it not? Besides remember laziness, impatience, and
hubris, a representative example of programming wisdom, for there are other
virtues as well.[ Reply to This | # ]
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- More fun - Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, March 26 2005 @ 08:03 PM EST
- All part of the fun - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 28 2005 @ 04:59 AM EST
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| Authored by: gvc on Friday, March 25 2005 @ 05:49 PM EST |
PJ says: "ADTI has a new study coming out shortly."
Isn't the previous hatchet-job still "coming out shortly?"[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: grw on Friday, March 25 2005 @ 05:59 PM EST |
Kenneth Brown of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, may be a legal time-bomb
waiting to explode into a torrent of lawsuits, according to a new study from the
Stop Beating Your Wife Institute (SBYWI). According to the study, called
"Have you stopped beating your wife, yet?", Mr. Brown has never
publicly acknowledged that he has stopped beating his wife.
Most worrying is the absence of litigation around alleged wife beating, says the
SBYWI. "Certainly it is improbable (and mathematically impossible) to
assume that no wife beating is occurring," they write. "Thus, we are
left to conclude that wife beating to date has largely been getting a
'pass'." Those involved must ask themselves when the litigation will arrive
and what will trigger it, they argue.
So far, the potential litigant has kept quiet because the ADTI has been making a
good living shilling for Microsoft.
. . . etc, etc
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: philc on Friday, March 25 2005 @ 06:04 PM EST |
"Certainly it is improbable (and mathematically impossible) to assume that
no infringement is occurring," he writes. "Thus, we are left to
conclude that infringement to date has largely been getting a 'pass'."
Those involved must ask themselves when the litigation will arrive and what will
trigger it, he argues.
I don't think that there all that much of a "pass". First off, with
open software you are an easy target. The source is published. SCO has yet to
find any infringing IP in Linux and any other software they investigated. I, for
one, am not surprised.
People that take FOSS seriously understand that their ONLY real protection is
through copyright law. There is considerable attention paid to knowing the
source of any code that you don't personally write.
Second, its more fun to create a program completely from scratch. Why steal code
when you can have fun writting the program yourself?
Third, where is the motivation to use stolen code? There is little monatary
value or time pressure in creating FOSS. Every once in a while you hear about an
IP problem in some project. The response is to remove the suspect code and write
replacement code.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: cricketjeff on Friday, March 25 2005 @ 06:12 PM EST |
Why hasn't there been an avalanche of lawsuits against OSS? There are a number
of reasons.
First the easiest software to "borrow" is OSS. If you are releasing
software under the GPL then you can't be sued for borrowing GPL software, that's
the whole point! Proprietary software houses are frequently spoken to about
their misuse of OSS and there aren't many cases getting to court because its a
better bet to change your terms of business than to go to court lose and be
barred from selling your product.
Secondly as PJ mentions OSS is open, therefore its a really lousy place to hide
things, if I stole the crown jewels I probably wouldn't put photos of them in my
living room all over the Internet together with my contact details. Its far more
likely that someone who steals jewels and hides them away will be the guilty
party.
Third patent infringements, most patent lawsuits have not been launched to stop
someone using an idea. Most have been launched by companies who bought up old
patents for next to nothing and decided to use them to try to get huge sums of
money from rich people. This wouldn't work against most OSS developers, we
aren't rich! There is a general rule in launching a lawsuit, never sue anyone
for money if they don't have any. Therefore the only people who are likely to
sue for patent infringement are those who want to stop OSS software competing,
however if the most obvious group in this category were to take this action,
they would be buried under a different avalanche, of government enquiries and
anti monopoly enfocement actions. Worse still they may end up winning in the USA
and losing everywhere else, can you see American big business wanting to live in
a world where they get to use old, slow, buggy, expensive and easily hackable
software while their rivals in other countries aren't so encumbered?
This "report" is just meaningless FUD. It is very very simple for
anyone to prove that OSS is full of IP infringements if it is. Just find them
all the OSS software is there to read, all patents are public documents AdTI
could have taken a dozen leading software projects and analysed them to show all
the problems. This would actually be a useful and saleable report so not really
up their street.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: tizan on Friday, March 25 2005 @ 06:29 PM EST |
With his usual intellectual creativity, Mr. Brown says that
the lack of any litigation so far against Free and Open Source software, (the
SCO case is a contract issue, remember, according to SCO) is suspicious. After
all, the proprietary software world has been in an orgy of lawsuits against one
another for some time for various infringements
Dear Mr
Brown...
That's because it is open...you can see if things are
being
infringed. Can you guess why there is less litigation ?
Because you can
check if things is being stolen...we live
in glass houses
!
---
tizan: What's the point of knowledge if you don't pass it on.
Its like storing all your data on a 1-bit write only memory ! [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: dkpatrick on Friday, March 25 2005 @ 06:36 PM EST |
As I was thinking how unfortunate it is that there's no mechanism to punish
people who knowingly publish lies and twist facts on the internet (unless you
have big bucks and lots of time), how do you deal with people like Mr. Brown and
Mr. McBride and Ms. O'Gara, et. al.?
Like the tar baby of childhood tales, the more you punch at it the more
entangled you get. It doesn't fight back, it merely absorbs the blows. So it is
with the trolls. They don't fight back, they pull the rope-a-dope and let the
opponent punch itself out.
As long as they get a reaction (even negative, since they have no sense of
ethics) they have won because they continue to get attention which leads others
to think they are news worthy which means people like Mr. Brown, et al, continue
to get paid.
So accept that he is lying and twisting facts to suit his own agenda. All that
needs to be said is "prove it" and since he can't, let it go.
---
"Keep your friends close but your enemies closer!" -- Sun Tzu[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 25 2005 @ 06:55 PM EST |
Lemma see, McBride gives an interview (rare these days), MOG tries to start a
rumor that sunw will buy scoxe, scoxe has a PR piece about openserver 6 being
released eventually, scoxe releases another PR piece about their 5-star rating
from VARBusiness (totally bogus btw, you buy those ratings), then we have AdTI
back at it, and what am I forgetting?
All that hot air in about a week? Also during the same week scoxe shares takes a
price hit, and volume dries up?
Hmmmmm. . .
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: urzumph on Friday, March 25 2005 @ 07:00 PM EST |
"Certainly it is improbable (and mathematically
impossible) to assume that no infringement is occurring," he writes. "Thus, we
are left to conclude that infringement to date has largely been getting a
'pass'." Those involved must ask themselves when the litigation will arrive and
what will trigger it, he argues.
What a novel approach. I
certainly never would have thought of that. Of course, I never studied
probability theory. I thought there were no infringement lawsuits because the
FOSS community doesn't infringe other people's code, as a matter of principle.
Also, they don't infringe code because their code is written in public, so any
infringement would be immediately visible and that is, shall we way, a
disinducement even to those with no ethics. Also, FOSS developers take pride in
their work, and that is also a deterrent, because the writing of the code --
solving the issues that present themselves -- is the fun part. Copying someone
else's code on purpose would completely take away all the fun.
PJ, while these are all good reasons, I think you missed the
most important one of them all. Ken Brown's reasoning works on the
mis-understanding (intentional, if his last work is anything to go by) that
people in the FOSS community want to keep their copyrights close to them, and
only let people use them in very restricted situations (which of course, is how
closed software, big music and big film work)
While I disagree with his
statement that it is impossible (I did study a bit of probability), it is still
quite unlikely.
The reason there are no lawsuits, are because they can be
settled without them.
The reason that people put code under the GPL in the
first place is to share it. If it's within the FOSS community (rather than
against someone like Sitecom)
then the other person is also sharing, they just aren't doing it right. It is
very likely that this is simply a misunderstanding that can be rectified with a
few emails, whereas, the legal department of a company would simply see the
$$$ in the other person's simple mistake, and go for the throat in a
lawsuit.
Completely asside from that, any potential infringement is
greatly reduced by the fact that most FOSS is GPL, which allows (indeed,
encourages) code sharing.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Sunny Penguin on Friday, March 25 2005 @ 08:10 PM EST |
This is strange; I agree completely
"Both intentionally and unintentionally, users, developers, and
distributors are in conflict with traditional, staid intellectual property
law." Among the potential conflicts are "licensing, attribution,
anonymity, derivative works, and indemnification", according to
Brown."
Yes, I agree, Microsoft developers and distributors are using open source code
in violation of copyrights.
There is no way Microsoft developed all the code in Windows without infringing
open-source code. We need some rocket scientists to do a deep dive into the
Windows code base.
<g>
Remember "Traditional" code development was pioneered at Berkley and
MIT during the late 60s and early 70s; it was all open to freedom based
development, and was stolen and plagiarized in large quantities by AT+T. (As the
BSD case was pointing to when dropped)
---
Just Say No to Caldera/SCO/USL/?
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Observer on Friday, March 25 2005 @ 08:31 PM EST |
| Certainly it is improbable (and mathematically impossible) to assume that there
are absolutely no aliens out there in the universe. Thus, we are left to
conclude that aliens to date have largely been getting a 'pass'. Those involved
must ask themselves when the aliens will arrive and what will trigger them,
along with their "Alien Mind Probes" and crop circles and all that...
---
The Observer [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: producer on Friday, March 25 2005 @ 09:49 PM EST |
Do you think Mr.Brown marks his socks L & R?
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 25 2005 @ 10:07 PM EST |
Typical conspiracy theorist "logic" (some people just call it lunacy)
goes something like this:
Theorist: UFOs are planting mind control chemicals in our food, in order to
take over the world!
Normal Person: I've no seen evidence of that. No press reports. No lab reports
from all the government labs that monitor our food supply.... do you have any
proof?
Theorist: Of course... the very fact that you've seen no evidence, proves
they've already taken control of the media and the government!
Mr Brown's logic is somewhat similar and equally circular
Brown: Open Source Software infringes lots of patents, copyrights, laws, etc.,
and is a litigation nightmare
Normal Person: I've rarely, if ever, heard of any open source infringement
lawsuits... let alone your "litigation nightmare". Do you have any
proof?
Brown: Of course... the very fact that you've seen no infringement lawsuits,
proves that it's such a litigation nightmare, that it's a time bomb that hasn't
gone off yet.
Now, if you meet a conspiracy theorist of the type described above, even if they
are sincere, you'll never convince them by showing them contrary evidence...
because every bit of contrary evidence just convinces them more of the enormous
scope, size, and effectiveness of the conspiracy.
Likewise, Mr Brown (assuming for a moment that he is sincere), equally uses
contrary facts (and has done so in the past controversies that he's been
involved with too)... not as evidence against his case, but as evidence that
his case is even stronger.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 25 2005 @ 11:13 PM EST |
Well I rather like the comment
"Certainly it is improbable (and mathematically impossible) to assume that
no infringement is occurring,"
it could be applied to software from those who bankroll his junk studies, after
all it would be easier for them to hide it!
You would think someone with his supposed intelligence would be able to see
that.
Roger[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 25 2005 @ 11:44 PM EST |
How do we fight this FUD? Much of the logic works. Yet the logic does not match
the innuendo. And the analysis is downright blind to experience and common
sense.
Can we identify ADTI's sponsors? Can this be used to discredit ADTI? Is there
an example to be made of their sponsors? A thoughtful response is called for.
I'm thinking that the ADTI is better prepared this time for a FOSS response even
with the apparent ineptitude of serving up heathly portions of ammuniton, on the
proverbial silver platter, to their critics. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: billposer on Saturday, March 26 2005 @ 12:56 AM EST |
As far as I know, no valid example of improper copying into FOSS is known.
There appear, however, to be REAL examples of improper copying on the part of
proprietary software developers. The New York Times (Friday March 25)
reports
(p. C3) that Quest Software has agreed to pay $16 million to
Computer Associates International to settle a lawsuit in which CA claimed that
Quest hired former employees of Platinum Technology International, a company
that CA had acquired, and that they copied Platinum software into Quest's Quest
Central for DB2 database manager. Quest did not admit wrongdoing, but in July
2004 a federal judge granted an injunction prohibiting Quest from selling its
software, suggesting that CA's case had some merit.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, March 26 2005 @ 06:44 AM EST |
For some people, solving the issues and writing the code is the fun part.
Others get off on counting profits, or beating the other guy. Others drool over
the getting away with stealing someone else's stuff. There are even people who
get palpitations thinking up ways to help over people hide their malfeasance.
For most of these others, not only is writing code tedious, they cannot even
imagine it might be fun. They fervidly believe the happy coders must be
bingeing on stolen property.
There are people, too, for whom the fun part is writing well-crafted slanders
against the enemies of all that is good and holy.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, March 26 2005 @ 07:36 AM EST |
Why no lawsuits against FOSS on copyright infringement:
1. FOSS is open, this means, anyone who publish such software is aware that
their 'mischief' would be obvious on the first day.
2. FOSS authors are usually not a single company (and not too rich), so hard to
catch, or worthy to go after.
Why no lawsuits from FOSS:
1. ken brown never heard of Harald Welte (one author of iptables).
2. GPL-->GPL theft is impossible due to the nature of the licenses. (And a
lot of other FOSS licence combos are also making theft impossible).
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Bas Burger on Saturday, March 26 2005 @ 08:38 AM EST |
I think the main reason that OSS is not much challenged is that when a company
with closed source has to open up their code when they need to prove that the
open code of OSS infringe on their code.
I personally like to see that only opened up sources have a right to get
protection under the copyright laws.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Toon Moene on Saturday, March 26 2005 @ 09:02 AM EST |
Perhaps we should start to make fun of Think Tanks the way Aristophanes mocks
Socrates club:
Phrontisterion, i.e., Thinkery.
---
Toon Moene (A GNU Fortran maintainer and physicist at large)[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: eggplant37 on Saturday, March 26 2005 @ 10:09 AM EST |
I remember listening to Mr. Brown on "The Linux Show" just over a year
ago. I had to laugh out loud at the guy -- he clearly has a sense of humor, but
it was all too apparent at that time that this guy's sense of ethics was
dictated by only one thing: Who's paid him the best sum.
When looking at the history of most Microsoft-sponsored studies, you'll find the
studies always seems to come out in favor of Microsoft's position. Believe me,
money talks -- in this instance, the bought mouthpiece is Mr. Brown. I could
train a parrot to do the same thing Mr. Brown does.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: muir on Saturday, March 26 2005 @ 01:47 PM EST |
PJ says: "speaking strictly for myself, Linux and FOSS and the GPL
are not, to me, political issues."
PJ, I think you're missing
something big. All software is political. It's politcal in the same way that
law is political. Software defines structures that other people must fit
within. Law defines structures that other poeple must live within.
The
choice of license is very political. Within the FOSS community, it's almost
purely political because there is very little (if any) economic component.
A
choice of API, interface, or license that favors one sort of interaction over
another is how the politics of software is expressed.
For example, the
qmail mail system is glued together with little programs that are easily
replaced encourages tinkering with the basic flow of how mail is delviered. The
postfix mail system is glued together by configuration files that allow
tinkering with individual steps but leaves most of the basic flow pre-defined.
This is subtle but each system encourages a different sort of thought and
behavior. If you don't like my example, please provide a better
one.
Choosing between a BSD-style license and a GPL license is a matter of
choosing between conflicting values:
- ability for everyone to use it
(favors BSD)
- preventing commercial exploitation (favors GPL)
- encouraging outside contributions (favors GPL)
- belief that people will
contribute out of their own desires (favors BSD)
- belief that corporations
need to be pushed to contribute (favors GPL)
- ability for people to take and
use small portions in their own work (favors BSD)
Which of these is
important to the author is, I think, a political choice.
Groklaw is
political. Among other things, it has given the FOSS communitity a strong voice
in the legal world. Now nobody would consider the FOSS community to be a soft
target for litigation. You, PJ, have made a strong statement to Microsoft and
others that is political in nature. You've shown that the FOSS community will
stand up for its own; poke holes in FUD; co-ordinate its efforts; and leverage
its vast human resources to fight legal supression. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: bbaston on Sunday, March 27 2005 @ 03:02 AM EST |
| ADTI, I've figured it out!
Here's your line of logic, exposed:
Fear,
uncertainty and doubt cannot stand the light of day, but plenty of
confusion serves the same purpose. In fact, with groups like Groklaw
setting the misinformation straight faster than it can be pumped out, blatant
confusion is a necessity. After all, one must put brain in gear to read the
truth, so a good dose of confusion is equivalent to draining oil from the
gearbox of those daring to think for themselves.
ADTI, misinformation
for the uncommon man. ADTI is, if nothing else, still trying. ---
Ben
-------------
IMBW, IANAL2, IMHO, IAVO,
imaybewrong, iamnotalawyertoo, inmyhumbleopinion, iamveryold.
-+++->> Have you donated to Groklaw this month? [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: AllParadox on Monday, March 28 2005 @ 12:56 AM EST |
What the heck.
There is a fundamental problem with comparing two programs, in general.
In general, it is theoretically not possible to perform such a comparison. The
process cannot be automated because there is no general way to do it.
"Small" programs are not general. We can do such comparisons for very
tiny programs, and only for comparisons that can be reduced to very tiny
problems.
If you had an algorithm, or a program, that could do such a general comparision,
then it would be much easier to perform another task: determine, generally, if
one of the programs will ever end. That's it. Just develop a system where you
feed in your source code, and the system analyzes it to determine if the
described program ever stops running.
You can't do it. I can't do it. Nobody can do it.
This is one of the fundamental theorems of Computer Science. It is called
"Turing's Halting Problem". The darn thing is simply un-decidable.
Any trial lawyer that understands the Halting Problem, when well advised by his
own experts, can turn a deposition of his opponents "expert" into a
never ending nightmare. Remember, to win a patent infringement case, you have
to have some "expert" positively identify some section of someone
else's code, and say for sure that that section of code performs the patented
operation. If the patent is on a small and relatively simple thing, like that
patented for the .GIF files (Lempel-Ziv compression, IIRC), then it is possible.
For complicated programs, it is not possible, in general.
When the expert claims that he has accomplished the impossible, tie him in knots
in deposition.
If you, the opposing trial lawyer, are well prepared, you can have him
specifically denying his own statements by the end of the third day of
depositions.
Juries are really upset to hear this kind of thing in the courtroom. It is very
hard on your opponent's case.
---
PJ edits insults, not ideas.
AllParadox; retired lawyer and chief Groklaw iconoclast. No legal opinions,
just my opinion.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 28 2005 @ 04:11 PM EST |
I think I'd like to see a study, comparing the number of times that OSS has been
sued for copyright infringment, vs. how many times, shall we say, a certain
"supporter of academic research" has been?
I'm thinking of Stacker and DoubleSpace, but I'd bet there are a lot of other
examples.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Wesley_Parish on Tuesday, March 29 2005 @ 05:48 AM EST |
I thought it would be good to support these guys. Busybox Hall of
Shame!!!.
As usual, ADTI's Ken Brown gets it wrong. It's the
open stuff gets ripped
off by others - to paraphrase a DOS
utility writer in the late 1980s, public
domain stuff gets
ripped off and paraded by people claiming to have written
it
themselves. ---
finagement: The Vampire's veins and Pacific torturers
stretching back through his own season. Well, cutting like a child on one of
these states of view, I duck [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 31 2005 @ 08:39 AM EST |
| He's not a very convincing defender of his own work.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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