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A Couple of Quick Things... Well, Three, Actually. Oops. Four.
Thursday, December 08 2005 @ 01:48 PM EST

I wanted to let you know that I wrote an article for LWN (here for those with a subscription, and available to the public in a week or so) on patent pools and the Open Invention Network, in which I try to explain the difference between them and answer two questions: are they meaningful endeavors and are they enough to protect GNU/Linux and FOSS? I've seen some criticism of them that I felt was based on not understanding the US legal perspective, and I wanted to explain how they each work and what I think they are for. I hope you enjoy reading it and that the article helps you to understand the legal aspect, so you can reach your own evaluation of their worth based on further information. I'll tell you upfront that I think they are very creative approaches to the patent threat, and I explain in the article why I believe that.

Also, I wanted to bring to your attention that Red Hat has announced that they will match any donations to Creative Commons between now and December 31 up to $5,000:

Red Hat supports Creative Commons in their mission. Creative Commons is in the midst of a year-end fund drive, and Red Hat has established a matching program to help them meet their goal. If you donate to Creative Commons, Red Hat will match your donation dollar for dollar, up to a maximum of $5000 total for all donations.

If you prefer to donate directly to Creative Commons, you can go to their website, where you'll find other options as well, such as CafePress and Paypal. Creative Commons is working on a project dear to my heart:

The Open Access Law Program will continue to work to make legal scholarship “open access”— freely available online to everyone without undue copyright and licensing restrictions. Currently, 30 law journals in Canada, the UK and the US have adopted the principles or have policies consistent with them, including all of the journals published by Duke Law School. Through our Science Commons project, we’re working to expand this initiative throughout a wider range of disciplines, including agriculture, anthropology, biology and entomology.

The last day to contribute is December 31, and so far they have 21% of what they need to meet their objective.

Finally, I wanted to let you know that Sony BMG Music Entertainment and EFF jointly announced on Tuesday a patch for the MediaMax security vulnerability, which tells you how wrong that silly article was in The Register, attacking EFF and bemoaning that they were suing Sony and would lose. Talk about bad timing for a flame. Or whatever it was.

I didn't think it was worth mentioning at the time, and I won't give a link, because I think that's why the media prints flames, to get attention. The vulnerability was discovered by iSEC, which was asked to evaluate the SunComm software by EFF. When they brought it to the attention of Sony BMG, the company responded quickly. Unfortunately the patch introduces a new problem.

Anyway, EFF is now letting everyone know that Ed Felten and Alex Halderman of Freedom to Tinker fame have found a bug in the patch, so the current advice is not to use the patch for now. Here's what EFF recommends:

On Tuesday December 6, Sony BMG and SunnComm made available a patch that was designed to resolve this security vulnerability. We're pleased that Sony BMG responded quickly and responsibly when we drew their attention to this serious security problem.

However, the day after the patch was released, Professor Ed Felten and Alex Halderman identified a new problem. We take any security problems identified by these security researched very seriously. They "recommend for now that if you have a Windows PC, you

1. do not use the MediaMax patch
2. do not use the previously released MediaMax uninstaller, and
3. do not insert a MediaMax-bearing CD into your PC."

The MediaMax issue affects more people than the Sony rootkit, so I thought I'd better let you know. Here's a BBC article on the matter. Here's the Sony list of all the CDs affected, and here's SunnComm's list (SunnComm and Sony provided the patch), and it runs the gamut from Britney Spears and Clay Aiken to Dave Mathews Band, Foo Fighters, Tears for Fears, Usher , Alicia Keyes, and T-Pain, with a little Elvis and Jaimie Foxx thrown in. I've never heard of some of the folks on the list, frankly, like T-Pain, but I worried that because Groklaw is quite an ecclectic group, maybe you might have and so might be affected by this serious issue. It's a "privilege escalation attack" vulnerability, which EFF explains on its MediaMax page.

Fourth, I note something interesting by Steven Vaughan-Nichols on eWeek, about why it's so hard to find a Linux desktop:

The most thoughtful letter I got on why PC makers have been so slow in picking up the Linux desktop came from the president of a desktop Linux company, Kevin Carmony of Linspire Inc.

"There isn't a single Tier 1 OEM that Linspire isn't in discussions with (and has been for the last few years). I think you'd be surprised just how closely [OEMs] do watch desktop Linux and are aware of things. We meet with them often, and [they] all have teams and initiatives in place to get on board if and when the time is right," Carmony said.

And when will that be, I ask?

"You have to realize that companies like Dell, HP, eMachines, etc., are about fulfilling demand, not trying to create it. If you're Dell, and you do 100 percent of your desktop business with Windows and are already in the No. 1 slot, there's not a lot of incentive to invest in creating, marketing, promoting and supporting a new operating system on their computers. They will only do this once the demand is there," Carmony said.

So, if you haven't let these companies know that you want a Linux desktop, why not send them a nice, pleasant and polite letter? Even if you know how to install it yourself, and I know most of you probably do, if all Dell and the like need is a little encouragement by letting them know there is a market for such a product, I think it can only help to take the time to inform them. Ditto for driver manufacturers. If they don't make a driver for Linux, let them know you'd like one. Always be polite, so your letter doesn't get thrown away. That is what I do to rude email, by the way, too. It's human nature. So express yourself as to a respected colleague, to get the best results. It's a small effort, but if enough of us do it, it can make a difference. Never imagine that one person can't make a difference. Sometimes it's not enough, no matter what you do, true. But sometimes, you can change one small corner (or large corner) of the world, if you try.

I researched which drivers are needed, and I gather Nvidia tops the list, as well as Broadcom and ATI. I'd write to management, upper management, myself. That's who makes such decisions, after all.


  


A Couple of Quick Things... Well, Three, Actually. Oops. Four. | 106 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Offfffffffff Topic Here Please
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, December 08 2005 @ 02:54 PM EST
3 times in 1 week ;)

make clickys linkable please

[ Reply to This | # ]

Look at the bright side...
Authored by: prayforwind on Thursday, December 08 2005 @ 02:56 PM EST
Sony's probably done more to wake people up and point out how bad DRM is than
Groklaw, Richard Stallman, ESR and everyone else on our side combined could
have. Better to have them as an enemy than a friend it seems...

---
jabber me: burySCO@jabber.org

[ Reply to This | # ]

Corrections
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, December 08 2005 @ 03:00 PM EST
No registered user has stepped up to the plate yet so....

ecclectic -> eclectic

[ Reply to This | # ]

Kerrexions Here
Authored by: red floyd on Thursday, December 08 2005 @ 03:07 PM EST
To make anonymous happy :)

---
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a *CITIZEN* of the United
States of America.

[ Reply to This | # ]

30 Day Reminders (post here) - court dates, comment periods, hearings, etc...
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, December 08 2005 @ 04:06 PM EST
30 Day Reminders (post here) - court dates, comment periods, hearings, etc...
Maybe one day we would have a database that you could post to and have a pop-up
with the reminders easy to see (a stock ticker banner, or something)?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Off Topic
Authored by: meat straw on Thursday, December 08 2005 @ 04:27 PM EST
For non-anonymous

[ Reply to This | # ]

Microcenter now offers PC's with Linspire
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, December 08 2005 @ 04:41 PM EST
I was at Microcenter not more than a few weeks ago, and they
are currently offering at least two different PC's that are
pre-loaded with Linspire.

------------
AMD® Sempron Processor 2200+ (1.5GHz); 128MB DDR-333 RAM;
40GB 7,200RPM Hard Drive; 52x CD-ROM Drive; Integrated S3 Pro Savage 8 Video
Chipset; 10/100 Network Adapter; Linspire OS v4.5; Monitor Not Included
$249.99

AMD® Sempron Processor 2200+ (1.5GHz); 256MB DDR-333 RAM;
40GB 7,200RPM Hard Drive; Combo DVD-ROM/CD-RW Drive; Integrated S3 Pro Savage 8
Video Chipset; 10/100 Network Adapter; Linspire OS v4.5; Monitor Not Included
$299.99
-----------------

Above info from visiting the microcenter.com web site
and doing a product search for "linspire".

I am sure there are many that can point out various
shortcomings of Linspire versus whatever their favorite
distro is. No matter. You get one of these babies and
you are NOT paying the microsoft tax. (At least I hope
you are not....) Go ahead and load up whichever distro
you please.

If I had the money I would go get the better one.
I am glad to see that Microcenter has some sense
even if many others lack it so far.

[ Reply to This | # ]

A Couple of Quick Things... Well, Three, Actually. Oops. Four.
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, December 08 2005 @ 04:46 PM EST
Actually Nvidia has been pretty good about releasing drivers for Linux. They
support OpenGL and have decent 3-D acceleration. They are not fully Open Source,
but I can forgive them in the respect that they have purchased third party
intellectual property, which they contracturally cannot release specs on.

However Broadcom doesn't seem to care. It's not the fact that drivers dont
exist (witness the ever-popular Linux based WRT54G wireless router which uses a
Broadcom chipset) but they have no interest in releasing them in open
distribution. They do not even release hardware specifications so one could
create from scratch an Open Source driver. Thankfully, groups such as the
Ndiswrapper guys have created workarounds, but native drivers are always much
better. All said, my purchasing of hardware is very much influenced by the
availability of Linux drivers.

-dh

[ Reply to This | # ]

Drivers nitpick
Authored by: rsmith on Thursday, December 08 2005 @ 05:36 PM EST
I researched which drivers are needed, and I gather Nvidia tops the list, as well as Broadcom and ATI

It's not so much about drivers, but about documentation that enables us to write drivers. Otherwise we end up with binary-only drivers, which are not well supported on most open source operating systems (and for a good reason).

If you don't have driver sources, you can't debug them, you can't adapt them to changing kernel internals and you can't port them to another architecture. Only the vendor can. This way you loose the most important aspect of open source; openness. It's almost as useless as no driver.

---
Intellectual Property is an oxymoron.

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • Drivers nitpick - Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, December 10 2005 @ 08:34 AM EST
Regarding The Register article...
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, December 08 2005 @ 06:37 PM EST
I feel I should point out that The Register is a British website with a very
British sense of humour, and the article talking about how it was all going to
go wrong with EFF vs Sony BMG was *extremely* tongue-in-cheek and satirical.
Surely the author's name (Bonhomie Snoutintrough) and his ridiculous biography
would give it away...?

Well, I thought it would. But then I have a British sense of humour and
appreciate satire =) If you didn't chuckle at this, keep away from their Rotting
Dog Blog!

TwinDX (not logged in)

[ Reply to This | # ]

A Couple of Quick Things... Well, Three, Actually. Oops. Four.
Authored by: rc on Thursday, December 08 2005 @ 07:02 PM EST
I'd write to management, upper management, myself. That's who makes such decisions, after all
Extremely true! Don't bother with the salesdroid.

For that matter, don't bother sending it to 'support', probably.

I know that I've asked if they have a linux laptop and such before, so if they think they have no demand its because nobody is passing the info up the chain.

IMHO, etc, etc. rc

[ Reply to This | # ]

Why HP&Dell really like Windows.
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, December 08 2005 @ 08:17 PM EST
"You have to realize that companies like Dell, HP, eMachines, etc., are about fulfilling demand, not trying to create it. If you're Dell, and you do 100 percent of your desktop business with Windows and are already in the No. 1 slot, there's not a lot of incentive to invest in creating, marketing, promoting and supporting a new operating system on their computers.

It's even more than that. Lots of third party companies (media players, and all the rest of the crippleware you get pre-installed, etc) effectively pay Dell to put their software on Windows machines effectively subsidizing the windows boxes.

At a software company I previously worked at, we happily took a loss to pre-install a feature-reduced version of our software on HP, Gateway, and many other OEMs, and indeed even shared a significant percentage of the profit of upgrades back to them.

No such market exists yet for Linux; but it would be nice if Adobe's or Musicmatch's or Intervideo's of the world would start such a subsidy. Although we had a Linux product, the hardware vendors did not see much hope for upgrade revenues so we never did get our stuff pre-installed there.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Dell supports linux on Precision Line.
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, December 08 2005 @ 08:28 PM EST
If you head over to www.dell.com and type "linux" in the search box
the first hit will be for "Dell Precision Workstations with Linux".
Clicking on that link one can get Desktops of the "n" series that come
without an OS installed.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Creating Demand
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, December 08 2005 @ 08:45 PM EST

I can see why Dell would keep contact, but decline to be the first one in. But the #2, #3, and #4 guys? Doing like Dell means Dell eats your lunch. Maybe it's time for some initiatives and making some of your own markets. Because, if Linux Desktop happens, you also-rans are not going to benefit unless you're established on the beach head before Dell notices it's there. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Linux pre-installed
Authored by: tangomike on Friday, December 09 2005 @ 10:55 AM EST
TigerDirect (USA and Canada) sells computers with Linspire installed. They also
sell with no o/s, so you can avoid the M$ tax and install Ubuntu, Simply Mepis
(two good desktops) or whatever Linux you want.

IIRC M$ agreed not to force hardware sellers to pay for Windoze for every pc
they sell, BUT pc sellers get Windoze at a discount if they do and put up the
"... recommends Windows XP" logo. So M$ effectively continues its
practice of coercing sellers into installing Windoze. There's no advantage to
selling pc's with Linux for the retailers, and a serious downside if they do.

---
If Bill Gates had a nickel for every time Windows crashed...
Oh wait! He does!


[ Reply to This | # ]

Free links to LWN articles
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, December 09 2005 @ 12:20 PM EST
LWN currently has a policy where subscribers can create links to subscriber-only
articles that non-subscribers can use. It might make sense to use such a link if
you want to link to something you wrote for them. There are two purposes for the
links: let subscribers use these articles in conversations with non-subscribers,
and advertize the quality of timely subscriber-only articles to
non-subscribers.

[ Reply to This | # ]

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