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IBM's Patent Sea Change, and "No RAND in OASIS"?
Monday, April 11 2005 @ 10:23 PM EDT

It's nice to have some good news about patents, other than the fact that Smuckers lost their ridiculous patent on peanut butter and jelly crustless sandwiches. Not innovative enough, perchance. Or maybe too much prior art. In my house alone.

You can read all about it on Dennis Crouch's Patently O: Patent Law Blog. "Rather than issuing an opinion," he writes, "the court issued a per curium Rule 36 decision without opinion.  Generally Rule 36 decisions are reserved for cases that are so clearly on one side of standing precedent that a written opinion is deemed unnecessary."  If only they were all so easy.

Anyway, Lawrence Rosen believes there's hopeful patent news regarding IBM's recent announcement that from now on, all their patents donated to OASIS will be free. You may have seen the story in the NY Times (also available in the International Herald Tribune, without a sub). Larry said I can share the email with you. He says that it looks like RAND is no more as far as OASIS is concerned, and if so, we have IBM to thank.

Here's Larry's email:

Dear colleagues,

This morning I was delighted to read in the New York Times that IBM has committed "all of its future patent contributions to the largest standards group for electronic commerce on the Web, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, would be free."

I don't think it is too soon to congratulate ourselves that a huge battle has been won. IBM is the big gorilla in the patent zoo, and when it agrees to open standards in OASIS we're a good long way to victory. I'm confident other companies will join as they recognize that it is in their own best interest to do so. The newspaper story doesn't have all the details, of course, and companies (through their lawyers and standards professionals) will be rewriting the rules over time to implement freedom in OASIS. There may still be skirmishes among the professionals. But in broad brush, I think we just won "No RAND in OASIS."

The free software and open source communities and customers worldwide can apparently be reassured that a large chunk of patents have been made available for free when we implement OASIS industry standards. That's good news.

Of course, as Richard Stallman and many others remind us, software patents continue to confound even when we're not implementing industry standard software. Most of us believe the entire patent system is ripe for dramatic reform to better meet its stated goals. Many of us share a dream of a rich commons of software and content that is free from so-called "intellectual property" ownership. That's the broader war many of us continue to fight. But the battle in OASIS, I predict, will soon be history.

Thanks to each of the signatories, and to the many folks around the world who wrote in support.

Best regards,

/Lawrence Rosen

You can read more about IBM's sea change on the patent issue in ZDNET, but note their idea on one way to improve the patent-granting process:

IBM's antidote to the problem is to increase the scope of the investigation into 'prior art' associated with software patents. Stallings believes that sort of undertaking is something the academic community, volunteers and others are willing to help in.

"Because of the Internet, you can have thousands if not millions of individuals around the world share information about whether that invention actually took place years and years ago. You'll find volunteers and others interested in a public inspection of patents. The technology [currently] exists for that."

"We are saying that the granting of it, inspection of it, challenge, and post grant should be enhanced to take full advantage of new technologies and also the brain power of people around the world to make sure it is truly new things that are coming out."

Yo. We are here.

I'll also let you read a memo that was sent around IBM today, which got sent to me also, but not by them. They'll have to sue me to find out who leaked it, and even then, I'll go to prison first rather than reveal my sources, like the Apple bloggers, and IBM can put lit matches between my toes and I still won't squeal. I hope you enjoy it, so it's worth me being boiled in oil and drawn and quartered and dragged by horses in four directions at once, as I yell, "I'll never reveal my anonymous source." Oops. There I've done it. Rats. I never could keep a secret. Just joshing. It wasn't anonymous. It's just anonymous to you. By the way, you can read an Amicus Curiae brief Groklaw is a part of in the Apple v. Does case here. It was filed today in the Sixth Appellate District Court. Here's the IBM memo:

Four things you need to know about IP

Once considered the exclusive domain of developers, researchers and lawyers, intellectual property (IP) has emerged as one of the hottest topics in business today. The ways companies, governments, standards bodies, and universities address the rapid evolution of intellectual property as a business tool could have a profound effect on this era of collaborative innovation.

IBM is fueling what some might call one of the most significant transformations in IT history -- the reinvention of intellectual property. The tech industry must change the way it approaches IP if it wants to harvest future growth. To keep you up to date, below is a list of the four things you need to know about innovation and IP.

1. Collaboration is key to innovation:

In recent years, disputes over intellectual property have threatened to disrupt innovation in everything from on-line sales to text messaging in cellular phones. To improve economic growth and competitiveness, governments and the private sector must create an environment favorable to cross-border, cross-organizational and cross-disciplinary collaboration.

2. Open standards are essential to collaborative innovation:

No single entity has all the answers. To successfully tackle some of the toughest problems, collaboration is essential. Open standards enable the IT infrastructure and the solutions it supports to work much better together, facilitating collaboration and creating a platform for innovation.

3. In today's competitive marketplace, proprietary solutions and open standards must coexist and complement one another:

Open-standards-based innovation will not supplant proprietary innovation; both are effective and important models. Open-source communities quickly deliver innovations, which can be adopted by developers as a platform upon which to build proprietary offerings and generate income growth.

4. Quality matters. Patents should be granted only for what is new:

A strong, global, intellectual property system encourages innovation, but the real power of that system depends on the quality of the patents it produces. IBM believes quality depends on granting patents for ideas that embody genuine scientific progress and technological innovation. In addition, incremental development -- that which merely uses the existing stockpile of basic technology for its intended purposes -- often does not rise to the level of patent-worthiness. Therefore, IP laws and policies require careful management to encourage incremental innovation, while preventing over-protection that would work against the public interest.

Interesting, no? Of course, my preference would be that software and patents get a divorce and make a clean break of it, whereas IBM supports the software patent directive the EU keeps trying to shove down everyone's throats over there. I'm hoping they see that the wording on what constitutes a "technical contribution" needs to be rewritten. How about J? Keep thinking deep thoughts, IBM, please.

If I had all of IBM's patents, I might feel very differently about it. It's like Microsoft. How do you go open source, which they more or less have to someday, this puff piece notwithstanding, without angering your shareholders? (The article has a guest-starring appearance by none other than that "independent" analyst, Laura Didio, singing Microsoft's praises -- alert the media! Didio praising Microsoft! When does that happen? -- and the article pushes her "independent" report, so I'm sure you won't want to miss it for that alone. Just don't call her, OK?) But the article is fascinating on another score: it lays out their anti-Linux strategy, devised by Martin Taylor, which they present as winning the anti-Linux war, thanks to studies like Ms. Didio's, or something like that. They are at least pretending that they really believe Didio's studies. Message to Martin Taylor: Listen to your mother:

Microsoft initially sneered at Linux. . . .Taylor said Microsoft initially saw nothing revolutionary in Linux technology and thought "it might not be that interesting to people."

Then when Linux became more popular, Microsoft had what Taylor called "an emotional response." Executives publicly derided Linux and even called it a cancer, further polarizing the industry into Windows and Linux camps.

"You had a very visceral, vibrant, emotional community being very negative aggressively toward Microsoft in a very emotional way, which sometimes causes an emotional response, of course," he said.

Taylor now advises employees not to blast a product that many of its customers appreciate.

Looking back, Taylor said the viciousness of the criticism almost kept him from taking the job and made his mother, a journalism major, worry about his career choice.

"She reads every paper in the country, I think," he said. "I used to get e-mails once a month — 'Are you still employed? Good gracious, every time I read the paper there's something else about Linux taking over the world.' "

Psst. Martin. It *is*.

I suppose Linux "extremists" are to blame for calling Ms. Didio Ms. Didiot, but calling Linux a cancer (and unAmerican) is right down the middle, mainstream, super-polite fine. No extremism there. Puh-lease. Anyway, I could tell you some stories of what the dark side has done to me, if I was the whining-in-public type that would top anything Didio has complained about. Seriously. I think they'd best change the subject.

Of course, being Microsoft puffery, they describe Linux's beginning like this:

Finnish programmer Linus Torvalds created the program in 1991 so he could run a variation of the industrial-strength Unix operating system on his PC. Torvalds shared the system on the Internet, where he asked others to help improve the system, and a phenomenon was born.

Sigh. Anyway, here's what Microsoft does to try to figure out how to beat Linux:

Taylor recruited former IBM Linux advocate Bill Hilf to run the lab. Hilf keeps Microsoft abreast of the competition by running a stack of machines with about 30 different versions of Linux. He runs tests on the systems himself, uses them to explain the software to Microsoft colleagues.

Hilf is among 18 members of Taylor's team who work just across the street from Ballmer's building, in a row of unassuming offices decorated with the occasional Linux penguin logo. Taylor also hires a rotating mix of Linux experts for different projects, using an employment agency to recruit people. . . .

Microsoft used its research and customer surveys to develop a marketing campaign it calls "Get the Facts." The campaign uses a collection of studies, some funded by the company, that raise questions about "total cost of ownership," or the actual cost of running Linux when support and other expenses are taken into consideration.

Linux supporters dismiss the campaign as propaganda, but it may have contributed to a shift in the Windows-Linux debate toward business questions and away from philosophical arguments about whether software should be freely shared.

Forewarned is forearmed. By the way, software *should* be freely shared.

: )


  


IBM's Patent Sea Change, and "No RAND in OASIS"? | 175 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Corrections Here Please
Authored by: entre on Monday, April 11 2005 @ 10:30 PM EDT
Corrections here for pj

[ Reply to This | # ]

Off Topic Threads Here Please!!!
Authored by: Rann on Monday, April 11 2005 @ 10:36 PM EDT
... so we can keep things nice and neat!

Remember to use html for any links!

[ Reply to This | # ]

Challenging patents
Authored by: jseigh on Monday, April 11 2005 @ 10:51 PM EDT
I keep a list of interesting patents that I happen to know about. One of the
reasons they can be in that list is they're patents on prior art as near as I
can tell. The problem is there's just way too many in that category if my small
sample is any indication. We need a more efficient way of challenging patents.
The present scheme wouldn't even put a dent in the mess. For every patent you
could invalidate, ten more could take its place. The ip extortionists have no
shortage of patents they can use.

[ Reply to This | # ]

IBM's Patent Sea Change, and "No RAND in OASIS"?
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, April 11 2005 @ 11:10 PM EDT
I see a few ways to fix the patent problem.

1. Hire people in the field of a patent applicaiton (after retirement?) to judge
if it is prior art, or an obvious innovation from exsisting applications.

2. First four patents are at the current rate. 5th thorough 9th patents are 3
times the current rate. 10th to 99th patent are at 10 times the current rate.
100th and up, 100 times the current rate. If more than 10% of your patent
portfolio is proven worthless, you lose ALL your patents. (If you give up a
patent yourself without a challange, then it doesn't count against you.) If you
buy a patent from someone else, you must pay the difference between what they
paid and what you are supposed to pay. If one of your patents is challanged and
you lose, there is also a huge fine. Make it 3-10% of the corporation's assetes
or income, whichever is greater.

3. Hire more examiners. Make it easier to refuse a patent than to approve it.

4. No software patents. No software copyrights longer than 5 years. Plenty of
time to recoop the expenses of development, not enough time to bully everyone
else.

The biggest problem is that for multi-nationals, the patent process is pretty
much a cost free no lose lottery. Sure, they pay the same as we do for a patent
(in fees, their attorneys are another matter) but to them, 10,000 to 50,000 USD
is nothing. If a silly patent stands, they could make out like like crazy.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Too Soon?
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, April 11 2005 @ 11:15 PM EDT
How does this affect the patent infringement counterclaims that IBM is asserting
against SCO? Would this give SCO any way out?

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • Too Soon? - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, April 12 2005 @ 12:13 AM EDT
  • Too Soon? - Authored by: darthaggie on Tuesday, April 12 2005 @ 09:50 AM EDT
How IBM's patent application disrupted PostgreSQL
Authored by: AJWM on Monday, April 11 2005 @ 11:16 PM EDT
See this link for a discussion of how PostgreSQL rewrote a major subsystem because of concerns about an IBM patent application on the ARC cacheing algorithm. One telling point is that IBM applied for the patent some months after discussions of the algorithm had taken place in a an open (Usenix) conference.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Thanks for forwarding good news.
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, April 11 2005 @ 11:32 PM EDT
Its nice to here good news.

Now I'll try for an understatement.

It is nice to hear that some people are thinking rationally about things.

I'd feel a lot better if this hit the major press, and I saw it mention on Fox
News and other outlets.

But I guess I can dream.

A florida resident.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Okay, I'm confused.
Authored by: Trepalium on Monday, April 11 2005 @ 11:33 PM EDT
First, analysts were telling everyone that Linux wasn't harming Microsoft because it was only stealing customers from proprietary UNIX vendors. Now they're saying that Microsoft has stopped losing customers to Linux? How were they losing customers to Linux if they were never losing them to Linux in the first place?

This is why I hate reading quotes from analysts. They're never self-consistent, and never admit they were wrong.

---
No Software Patents! http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/

[ Reply to This | # ]

IBM's Patent Sea Change, and "No RAND in OASIS"?
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, April 11 2005 @ 11:34 PM EDT
"Because of the Internet, you can have thousands if not millions of individuals around the world share information about whether that invention actually took place years and years ago. You'll find volunteers and others interested in a public inspection of patents. The technology [currently] exists for that."
That technology is known as Groklaw.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Sharing Software.
Authored by: rsteinmetz70112 on Tuesday, April 12 2005 @ 12:01 AM EDT
PJ said;

"By the way, software *should* be freely shared. : )"

PJ,

I agree that the benefits of software should be shared but so should the effort
necessary to create it. In my view computers don't "save time" but
literally "store time" by recording and repeating, on demand, the work
of programmers, designers and previous users, thereby eliminating repetitious
and valueless work.

In many niche markets there is no one able to expend, by themselves on behalf of
the community, the effort, nor is there a community with the ability to share
the effort necessary to create an industry specific application. In those cases
I believe it is appropriate for some members of the affected community to
provide their expertise to commercial programmers and for those contributors to
restrict the use of their efforts to those members of the community who support
the development effort.

This situation is common to many mid-sized, capital limited markets. Large
organizations (IBM, DCC, AutoZone) always have the options to do custom
development and they can incorporate Open Source, even GPL software to internal
applications. If they don't 'distribute' their application they are free to
appropriate the commons. Think of a custom designed trading system developed
in-house for a Wall Street investment firm or AutoZone's store systems.

If on the other hand a small company (10-50) employees wants to develop an
application. They don't have the resources to do that, unless they can somehow
share the cost with others many of whom do not have resources to help. How,
under the GPL, do they do that? If they give it to anyone, they have, in effect,
given it everyone, or at least allowed 'anyone' to give it to everyone.

I am not anti-GPL. I am, asking what is to me, a legitimate question. I am the
Owner of one of those mid-sized (some would say small) companies in a niche
market. How do I compete with the big guys? How do I limit liability if I decide
to release my application?

---
Rsteinmetz

"I could be wrong now, but I don't think so."
Randy Newman - The Title Theme from Monk

[ Reply to This | # ]

That Microsoft puff piece is a classic
Authored by: aussiedave on Tuesday, April 12 2005 @ 12:03 AM EDT
If the journalist had been just a little more alert to what was going on around
him, he could have built a truly eye-catching headline from IDC's Al Gillen's
final quote:

"My belief is that open-source software is going to help drive the
acquisition cost of software down toward zero," he said, a shift that will
require software companies to move "over to a maintenance and support
model."

In a previous paragraph we had read:

"...so you're not comparing this free thing from the cloud to this pay
thing from Microsoft," Taylor said. "You're comparing a pay thing from
Microsoft to something I pay either Red Hat or Novell or IBM for, so now let me
go look at TCO (total cost of ownership), security, reliability."

How about "Microsoft misses key battleground shift and leads with
chin"

[ Reply to This | # ]

Egregious FUD
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, April 12 2005 @ 12:22 AM EDT

Taylor recruited former IBM Linux advocate Bill Hilf to run the lab. Hilf keeps Microsoft abreast of the competition by running a stack of machines with about 30 different versions of Linux. He runs tests on the systems himself, uses them to explain the software to Microsoft colleagues.

Mr. Hilf should be more accurately described as 'a former IBM employee who worked with Linux'.

Hilf is among 18 members of Taylor's team who work just across the street from Ballmer's building, in a row of unassuming offices decorated with the occasional Linux penguin logo. Taylor also hires a rotating mix of Linux experts for different projects, using an employment agency to recruit people. . . .

An employment agency? For Linux experts? I thought one of the problems with Linux, cited in Microsoft's 'get the facts' campaign, was that Linux experts were so hard to find. In fact, according to Microsoft, it turns out that you can simply make a call to your local employment agency and hire them! And, better yet, you can 'rotate' them, so you don't have these 'FOSS' people tainting your pure, salaried employees.

Linux supporters dismiss the campaign as propaganda, but it may have contributed to a shift in the Windows-Linux debate toward business questions and away from philosophical arguments about whether software should be freely shared.

So Martin Taylor's dream is to work to make people move away from software freedom and sharing and, instead, move toward the darkness of software secrecy, upgrade tyranny and 'profit at any cost'?

This is disturbing, egregious FUD.

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • FUD.. - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, April 12 2005 @ 01:19 AM EDT
    • FUD.. - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, April 12 2005 @ 01:28 AM EDT
  • Egregious Sophistry - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, April 13 2005 @ 05:19 AM EDT
Flat World
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, April 12 2005 @ 12:52 AM EDT
I think people are missing something very important in the language of the
IBM internal e-mail. CEO's never come right out in plain language and say
something, you need to look at the wording very carefully. It is usually what
they don't say that is most important. Bare with me, I want to give some proper
background.

I am posting anonymous because others where I work read Groklaw as well.
Where I work it has become very apparent that developers, software engineers,
QA, etc. are expendable commodities. We had some of the smartest people in the
industry employed to produce one of the most far reaching and profound new
software packages for communicating with a computer. Every day the new release
gets more and more rave reviews in both trade press and the media at large.
After performing this super human effort and even being given awards, almost
everyone was laid off.

Why? because we now own the industry. We have purchased or resell most of
our compeditors products, and have a product which is 'good enough'. There were
plenty of innovations left, but they would effect the bottom line. It is cheaper
to out source the maintainance of the product line and sit back and realize
'positive cash flow'. The product suffers, the developers suffer, and the
customers suffer. (NOTE: not because the foreign developers are bad, quite the
contrary. The developers are great, but they are not tasked with innovating,
only maintaining). A few managers and the CEO get new cars. Ok, I am
exadgerating a little, but only a little. The product is dead and all but a
handfull of people who have been working on the product for over 10 years are
out of work. And unfortunatly for all involved (CEO, shareholders, remaining
employees), it just makes good buisness sence.

I have been reading a great book called 'The World is Flat'. It is a self
claimed history of the 21st century and focuses in part on globalization. The
Idea that 10 or even just 5 years ago you were better off being a mediocre 8
year old in Harlem than a genius in Hong Kong. With gloabalization, the ability
to be connected anywhere, i.e. the flatening of the World; that is just no
longer the case. I see articles about the decline of innovation in America. I
see that decline as innovation is stiffeled not just by offshoring, but by a
pattent system which make it near impossable for these fantastic minds who are
out of work to band together and form a new corporation. The risk of lawsuit is
too great, and licensing fees for known bogus patents are too high. This is
stopping two companies and fantastic products from hitting the market that I
personally know of.

Now to pull it all together. Here is IBM saying something VERY VERY
important, and I think it is being missed by most people. Over and over the
message in this e-mail is about american innovation in the global market place.
IBM sees the decline of American innovation and the stranglehold the US patent
office has unwittingly put on what was its largest growth sector sence the
industrial revolution. All things come to an end, but remember, CEO's are
Americans as well, and if all the grunt work goes to another country, soon so
will their jobs as well.

IBM is not only trying give the US tech sector a kick in the butt. Something
to get all those small buisnessed out there innovating away without fear; be
they open or proprietary. If those same small buisnesses turn to IBM to solve
their staffing, payrole, compute or other infrastructure needs, all the better.
The world is flat, and only those who innovate keep from falling off the edge.
IBM is trying to keep the playing field level with the rest of the world. In a
sence MS is trying to do the same thing, only they want to be one of only a few
games present globally.

Now that you have suffered through all this, go re-read the IBM e-mail. It
is positivly dripping with 'We must do everything in our power to save American
innovation from being obsoleted by the global market'.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Microsoft's funding of SCO finally explained
Authored by: jbb on Tuesday, April 12 2005 @ 01:40 AM EDT
Taylor recruited former IBM Linux advocate Bill Hilf to run the lab. Hilf keeps Microsoft abreast of the competition by running a stack of machines with about 30 different versions of Linux.

One million dollars per license adds up fast.

---
SCO cannot violate the covenants that led to and underlie Linux without forfeiting the benefits those covenants confer.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Linux is unAmerican?
Authored by: stevem on Tuesday, April 12 2005 @ 02:28 AM EDT
Sounds about right to me!

Linus is Finish.
Andrew Morton is Australian.
Marcelo Tosatti is Brazilian.
Alan Cox is Welsh.


;-)


- SteveM

[ Reply to This | # ]

I've changed from whitebox servers to IBM servers
Authored by: Frank Daley on Tuesday, April 12 2005 @ 02:41 AM EDT
Because of its ongoing actions to support Open Source and Open Standards, I
support IBM with actions.

Whereas previously I installed many whitebox servers, I now install IBM servers
- all running Linux.

[ Reply to This | # ]

software *should* be freely shared
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, April 12 2005 @ 05:14 AM EDT
Yes it should, but why stop with software? It would be dreadful if people insisted on releasing their work under a restrictive license because they don't like the potential uses that some people might make of it. That's old world thinking.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Another veil of PJ is lifted...
Authored by: BelgianWaffle on Tuesday, April 12 2005 @ 06:35 AM EDT
We now have an additional piece of the puzzle that is PJ's identity. Surely, she
can no longer hide...

The entire world now knows that she likes Peanut Butter AND Crustless
Sandwiches. This must be the definitive hint she is trying to give us.

So please, everybody, take a close look next time you see a young, intelligent
women stacking up with Peanut Butter or Crustless Sandwiches at Walmart, because
it might be HER !

Better still, start investigating your neighbour's dustbin, because if it
contains many Crusts, it is a strong indication you are living to somebody
famous (in an anonymously way, ofcourse).

The hunt is on !

[ Reply to This | # ]

About the Amici Curiae
Authored by: ile on Tuesday, April 12 2005 @ 08:25 AM EDT
The Amicus brief in the Apple case has hit the mainstream: there is a reference to it in the bbc online

BTW, just a curiosity from an ignorant: why is it that the court itself is the respondent? That thing about "real party in interest" surprised me...

[ Reply to This | # ]

puffery?
Authored by: MeaninglessNick on Tuesday, April 12 2005 @ 12:06 PM EDT
Of course, being Microsoft puffery, they describe Linux's beginning like this:
Finnish programmer Linus Torvalds created the program in 1991 so he could run a variation of the industrial-strength Unix operating system on his PC. Torvalds shared the system on the Internet, where he asked others to help improve the system, and a phenomenon was born.
I'm donning my asbestos suit here, but is the quote really that bad? I guess I would have written
So he could run a Unix-like operating system on his PC
to avoid intentional misunderstandings. But is that it, or is there something else here that I'm missing?

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • puffery? - Authored by: Christian on Tuesday, April 12 2005 @ 01:58 PM EDT
  • fuddery? - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, April 12 2005 @ 03:32 PM EDT
controling patents
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, April 12 2005 @ 12:23 PM EDT
The only way to control patents is to control the flow of money they provide to
the patent office.
If the patent office is remunerated by the number of patents they issue, they
should also be penalised (say the cost of 20 patents or something decided by the
judge depending on the obviousness of the case) if a patent they issued is found
invalid. This refund would go to a fund against patent whose mission would be to
scrutinise and fight patents.
This way you have 2 offices auto-regulating each other.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Software should be free...
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, April 12 2005 @ 07:00 PM EDT
Sometimes.

Some software should not be free(libre). I work in a secure environment as a
programmer. At the moment I am working on some migration tools. These tools
are full of hard coded variables that only make sense in my secure environment.
The program gives a good idea of what the environment looks like. I would not
want this program out in the real world.

However, in my spare time, I am cleaning up my source and making it more
ecumenical in nature, and finding out much more about coding in the process. I
hope to release a version of the software without the constraints of our rigid
software architecture under a free licence soon. I haven't picked a licence
yet. That I need to research. I wish to allow the maximum freedoms I am able
without being more than a hobby for me. (I am lazy, what can I say?)

[ Reply to This | # ]

Linuxers contracting at MS
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, April 12 2005 @ 08:11 PM EDT
I'm pretty sure that some postings that hit jobs.perl.org in mid-February are related to this group. You can still see the postings here: http://jobs.perl.org/search?q=redmo nd -- the Siemens ones have a microsoft.com contact address.

[ Reply to This | # ]

About patents, legal casuistry and prior art
Authored by: Wesley_Parish on Wednesday, April 13 2005 @ 07:19 AM EDT

About patents, legal casuistry and prior art

Well, I've just been through a good part of what was available to the DOS developer in the late eighties and early nineties, in the form of Simtel's 1995 CDROM issue.

The results? Well, trubba not. The following is true - the proportion of text editors in the public domain or under permissive source-available licenses, is about half. the rest are standard shrink-wrapped shareware licenses.

What this means, as far as the software patent issue goes, is that a full ninety per cent of all current text-editing algorithms are already known, in the public domain, and in common use. That also applies to hypertext.

Ditto for statistical and mathematical algorithms. You can't get very far in scientific or engineering mathematics without using them.

I should also point out that many of the concepts touted in the early nineties as innovations of Microsoft Windows or IBM's unhappy OS/2, were already well-known as Unix developments even among the DOS crowd.

The companies wishing to permanently cripple the American economy and turn the United States of America into a Third World Superpower, might well wish to reconsider their actions.

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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

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