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| Stallman on Nokia Patent Statement |
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Monday, May 30 2005 @ 10:42 AM EDT
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Richard Stallman has written an article on NewsForge on Nokia's patent announcement. He contrasts Nokia's action unfavorably with the "significant step forward" IBM took "by offering blanket licenses for 500 of its patents to all free software developers. These are but a fraction of IBM's software patents, but still it was a substantial step. These 500 patents, at least, are no longer a danger to free software developers." He characterizes some other companies, such as Sun, as
"exploring how little they can give to the free software community and still pose as our supporters." Stallman writes:
In January it was Sun's turn. Sun's announcement, if read quickly, appeared to say Sun had authorized free software developers to practice thousands of software patents. In fact, the announcement didn't really give anyone anything. Sun merely reminded us that Solaris is free software and that Sun would not sue us for using that. However, all other free software projects still face the threat of patent lawsuits from Sun.
Nokia's offer, he says, "isn't nothing" unlike "Sun's empty gesture", but he hopes Nokia will broaden their umbrella to cover the some 4,000 free software packages in the Free Software Directory, not just Linux.
He discusses the situation in Europe with regards to software patents and notes that Nokia's announcement highlights that FOSS is obviously truly endangered by software patents, since otherwise there would be no need for such a promise, limited though it is. Proprietary software vendors and users "can also be sued for patent infringment," he writes, which is why, he says, one German government study found 85% opposition to software patents.
But here is the part of his article I particularly wished to emphasize to Groklaw's readers, because he is asking for help: If you can present me with a copy of a real threat letter that was sent by a patent holder to a free software developer, that would be useful.
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| Authored by: MadScientist on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 11:26 AM EDT |
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| Authored by: MadScientist on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 11:26 AM EDT |
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 12:05 PM EDT |
I think its important that we consider Nokia's gesture in the context of the
current situation in the EU where software patents are going to be voted on
soon. It is hard not to consider it a cynical attempt by Nokia to confuse MEPs
in the run up to the European Parliament vote.
Nokia are lobbying hard for swpatents in Europe. Thank them by all means for
their gesture but they are still the bad guys.
Emil[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: ENOTTY on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 12:18 PM EDT |
What I came away with from the Nokia announcement thread was the understanding
that Nokia had to make this offer, otherwise they couldn't abide by the GPL (and
they need to do this, since they have a product using the kernel and distribute
the source).
Ok, maybe the didn't have to make it explicitly, but they couldn't sue for
infringement anyway while basing a product on the same kernel, right?[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 12:26 PM EDT |
| I live in the EU. What exactly would I not be able to do, or need someone's
permission to do, in a world with software patents ?
It's pretty awful that I
might write software that causes gamepads to runble in time with the game, that
Sony then picks up, ships with their Playstations, and then Sony gets asked to
hand over $90M for the privilege. What with broadband, BitTorrent, and my
propensity for scattering software the world over with a generous licence like
GPL or BSD, who is to say that it will not ?
Can anything worse happen ? Any
chance that my employer might be asked to pick up a tab for something I do at
home on my own time? Any chance that my house could get sold to help Sony pay
the $90M ? My pension grabbed ?
It's sort-of the difference between
hardware patents and software patents. Presumably Bessemer patented the Bessemer
Converter process for making steel back in the 1800's; then for the next 20
years, everyone wanting to use that process to make steel had to strike a deal.
If you set up a Bessemer Converter in your garden, it would not make
commercially-significant quantities of steel; Bessemer would have no cause for
complaining of a loss even if you did.
Software, you can. And we do. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 12:28 PM EDT |
| Here is one threat letter that I know of:
[Virtua
l Hypnotist] Threat Letter (free registration required).
This has to
do with a program called "Virtual Hypnotist. VH's author, who goes by his first
name of Ryan or the nickname "followthewatch" (the author choses to remain
anonymous, but what's wrong with that?) has been making software that uses
script templates and text to speech libraries to facilitate Hypnosis.
Someone, long after Ryan had published his first versions of his
hypnosis software had filed a patent for developing a hypnosis script through
choices on the computer and then reciting them to the user.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: tiger99 on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 12:41 PM EDT |
| I don't always agree with the extreme positions sometimes
taken by RMS,
(although I do think the (L)GPL is the only
sensible licence for FOSS) but
when I first saw the Nokia
news, it was
quite obvious what they were up
to. Posing as the good
guys, to confuse the situation in Europe, while
basically
giving away nothing, or very little, to the Linux
kernel. Let us ignore this distraction by Nokia, and keep
attempting to
persuade our MEPs to do the right thing, and
vote for democracy. This is
not party politics, it is the
duty of
the democratically elected
parliament to assert that
democracy and refuse to be beaten by an
undemocratically
appointed Council of Ministers, or a Commisssion to which
have been appointed people unacceptable to the electorate
due to their
proven record of corruption. And it has
nothing to do with whatever part of
the political spectrum
someone occupies either. It is really about freedom
more
than anything else. Left, right, centre, green, or
whatever, has
nothing really to do with this. The French
have done very well in
saying NON! to a very undemocratic constitution. I
hope that it
marked a turning point, where the voice of the
electorate will be heard.
However, with the UK assuming the
presidency shortly, I wonder, because B.
Liar listens to
no-one, especially when they tell him the truth. And that
is not because of the political party he belongs to, which
like the
opposition contains both honest and dishonest
people, as well as competent
and incompetent, hard-working
and lazy, etc..... But issues like honesty and
freedom are
more or
less orthogonal to party politics, or should be.
However,
the B. Liar connection to Sir Bill is quite alarming. It
used to
be that politicians who got too close to dishonest
buisnessmen found their
carreers suddenly curtailed, but
seemingly that is acceptable now. But
hopefully the EU will
come down really hard on M$ for their tactics over
Media
Player etc, which might force B. Liar to review who his
friends are.
And maybe then he will listen. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 12:44 PM EDT |
Here's the beginning of the saga.Tux2 - evil
patents sighted I didn't follow it but Danial Phillips eventually gave up
on TUX2 because of patents.
Perhaps somebody with some more free time
could chase this down and find some letters or something?
Regards,
Karl O. Pinc <kop@meme.com> [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: swmcd on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 01:03 PM EDT |
A few years back, someone started writing a media player to play the Microsoft
media format. Microsoft waved some patents at him, and he gave up.
I don't recall the details.[ Reply to This | # ]
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- here's a couple - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 01:31 PM EDT
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| Authored by: C N Hoff on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 02:20 PM EDT |
by Microsoft some years back over the ASF/WMV format. I don't believe the letter
was ever published publicly, but all versions after the letter refuse to support
the format.
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- Link - Authored by: m_si_M on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 04:27 PM EDT
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| Authored by: J.F. on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 03:28 PM EDT |
It's not quite software, but it is a free project threatened by a patent.
MIPS holds a bogus patent covering loading or saving data to a misaligned
address. People who try to recreate the MIPS instructions that handle those
load/saves get threatened.
Here is someone who made an open and free
implementation of the MIPS CPU, but had to leave out the patented instructions
due to threats by MIPS.
Yellow
Star
A copy of the threat is on the site here:
letter
This could easily
affect someone writing software on a computer using a MIPS CPU, or writing
something like QEMU for the PC to handle MIPS linux binaries.
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| Authored by: blacklight on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 10:11 PM EDT |
In retrospect, Sun HAD to exempt Solaris contributors from patent enforcement: a
situation where the Sun would sue a contributor to Solaris because the
contribution contains code that infringes upon a Sun patent - such a situation
would have an element of burlesque or slapstick.
I would be awfully interested in how the Sun goes about validating that the
contributed code does not violate someone else's patents and copyrights - I have
a suspicion that the Sun would follow the Linux model, which Darl the Snarl
derides as inadequate: having the contributor certify that the code is his to
contribute. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: rsteinmetz70112 on Monday, May 30 2005 @ 10:39 PM EDT |
In evaluating any statement by RMS we need to be aware of his vocabulary.
free software = GPL software as listed at www.gnu.org.
Much of the rest of the article can be fairly characterized as "damning
with faint praise" IBM.
---
Rsteinmetz
"I could be wrong now, but I don't think so."
Randy Newman - The Title Theme from Monk[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: jbn on Wednesday, June 01 2005 @ 04:14 AM EDT |
"He discusses the situation in Europe with regards to software patents and
notes that Nokia's announcement highlights that FOSS is obviously truly
endangered by software patents..."
RMS recognizes the term "FOSS" to be a way to describe free and open
source software for people who do not want to take a side in which movement they
wish to stand with.
RMS most certainly does take a side, and he has made this perfectly clear in
countless talks, articles, and interviews.
RMS stands with the free software movement, the movement he founded over 20
years ago. He does not speak for "open source" anything. He
explicitly tells people who ask him questions by framing the issue in terms of
"open source" this or that that he is the wrong person to ask about
"open source" stuff.
FOSS is an incorrect term to use in the context of what RMS discusses here.[ Reply to This | # ]
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