Confusion

[GreyGeek]

Re: Confusion

....
On Scott's post regarding Mono -- that seems very reasonable, to me. A patent give the owner the right to sue someone for infringement -- nothing more. If the Mono patent holder isn't squawking about the Ubuntu use of Mono, and they are aware of it, after a short while their right to announce a suit evaporates. So I don't any reason for concern about it.

Actually a LOT more! That Microsoft isn't "squawking" about MONO IP violations right now is no guarantee that they won't squawk later, when it suits them.

This article discusses the problems facing those who create and use software today:http://cpsr.org/act/contest/4ip2/

Let us imagine you are developing a game. In this game, a character runs behind a tree to hide, but the tree partially obscures him. In drawing both character and tree, how do you ensure the area around the tree is transparent so that you can see the character hiding behind it? The answer may be obvious. Employing a technique using "exclusive or" operations to copy the tree onto the screen does the trick. This technique works in any situation where parts of an onscreen image must be transparent. There is just one problem with this scenario.

It is illegal. A company (Cadtrak, now NuGraphics) received a patent on the exclusive or technique. Legally using the technique requires a license from the patent holder - an expensive proposition. This implies that only the most affluent software developers would be able to satisfy this demand. Something about this stinks.

It sure does. The stinkiest part is that those who own the Gold make the rules, or bend them with near impunity. Typically, patent applications cost $10K or more to obtain. It's a rich man's game. This is especially grievous because the USTPO does a POOR job of searching for prior art, and an EXCELLENT job of ignoring prior art when it is found. Microsoft and other corporations, and even countries like China, are patenting everything in sight related to computers and software. Things like the PgUP and PgDn keys, Smiley , the BASIC "else if", and God only knows what else. We'll find out when the patent is published.


Then read this: http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2007/05/ippa07

Essentially, the bill would turn copyright law into something more akin to existing drug laws: The government could seize personal property, wiretaps would become legal for the first time, violators could face life in prison and, in an ambiguous and far-reaching provision, the mere attempt to violate a copyright would become a crime.

and then read this about the new PROP-IP law: http://www.nationaljewelernetwork.co...cf01f03e2efa5c
which states "... the PRO-IP Act goes too far and has the potential for punishing people who have not infringed. "

Life in prison because some IP patent holder twists court evidence into "showing" some hapless coder "attempted" to infringe their IP? Has Congress gone insane? Just consider the substitute teacher who attempted to close web pages but they were popping up faster than she could close them. The idiot investigator on the case used forensic software which showed repeated openings of porn pages, but he never looked for the malware which caused it, or knew that it could. She was found guilty in January of 2007! Two years later, to dodged felony charges she agreed to plead guilty to a single misdemeanor charge and surrendering her state teaching credentials...
http://www.alternet.org/rights/46925/
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/200...roof-porn-pop/
Notice especially how the prosecutor used a person trained for only two week on computer forensics but the defense presented a professional CS with decades of experience ... and the judge refused to let him testify completely! Luckily, she didn't get sentenced to life in prison but it cost her about everything else. You can see that scenario repeating itself many times over in the future.


There is no penalty for those who can afford to claim and pursue copyright infringement where none actually exists. Corporations are using that loophole in the law to force people who cannot afford to hire lawyers into giving up their rights to their own creations. The new law even gives them the power to bring down SERIOUS, life long punishment those who have not infringed!

Unethical corporations are also using the courts as a club to beat down those from whom they have stolen IP, merely because their victims cannot afford to respond, initiate or continue legal action and usually quit due to lack of funds, if not bankruptcy.

If a corporation wins a software IP infringement law suit the defendant can be forced to turn over the ownership of all source codes that "infringes", plus fines, penalties and court costs to the plaintiff. IF the corporation KNOWS OR BELIEVES that a product infringes their patents and blusters about it for several years but does nothing, their actions only eliminate the monetary penalties for infringement once a lawsuit is begun. In other words, they cannot "run up" the penalties by setting on their knowledge of an IP infringement, as Microsoft is currently doing. However, it does not eliminate the other fines, court costs, or the "return" of source code. The infringer does not get a "get out of jail free" card.

Therefore, besides the fact that Microsoft's "promise", even the most recent one, covers ONLY those MONO components covered by the EMCA-334 and 335 standards, the MS IP that MONO is using that is NOT in the EMCA "standard" puts into IP infringement any distro that uses a MONO dependent GNOME, contains MONO even it it isn't used, or any application that depends upon MONO, and OpenSUSE and its users.

NOVELL and SELS users are immune from an MS IP lawsuit over MONO because of that infamous "agreement" on Nov 2, 2006. The MS/Novell agreement divides GPL software into two camps: those that are free of MS lawsuit threat for the code they contribute to or because they purchased SLES, and those who use OpenSUSE or another distro or whose contributed GPL code does NOT make it into SELS, even if it is accepted into OpenSUSE.

Novell pays Microsoft a ROYALTY for each copy of SELS that it sells!. This is an interesting turn of affairs because according to Sec 7 of the GPL it is NOT LEGAL for Novell to distribute GPL applications and extend certain rights to some recipients and not to others, i.e., immunity from an MS lawsuit. These Novell ROYALTY payments to Microsoft, and its implication that Linux contains MS IP, divides the FOSS community into a different set of two basic camps: those who work for Novell or use SELS, and every one else. Since 2006 a LOT of Windows folks of all kinds (developers, PR folks, TEs) without history of or sympathy with Linux and its community have, for want of a better word, infiltrated GNOME and MONO development crews, or post, blog or campaign for MONO. They have convinced Debian and Canonical folks to accept MONO into their distros. The "MONO Position Statement" by the Canonical Technical Board says:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ub...ne/000584.html

Given the [reasons] above, the Ubuntu Technical Board sees no reason to exclude Mono or applications based upon it from the archive, or from the default installation set.

Since the Mono stack is already a dependency of the default installation set for many remixes of Ubuntu, including the Desktop Edition, there is no reason to consider a dependency on Mono as an issue when suggesting applications for the default set.


When the fact was revealed a couple weeks ago that the MS "promises" not to sue did NOT cover the parts in MONO that are NOT in the EMCA, De Icaza announced plans to divide MONO into two packages, those components in the EMCA standard and those that are NOT. Considering his excellent knowledge of MS software and software IP, the help Microsoft gave him personally, and his previous comments about the lack of MS IP in MONO, it is amazing that only now is he splitting MONO apart. All those previous "assurances" were hot air, if not an attempt to disguise an IP trap.

One pro MONO campaigner is going so far as to claim there is a "faux" and a "real" "FLOSS" Community and he'll tell you who is and who isn't "real". Hint: pro-MONO folks are real members of the Linux community and those against MONO are "faux" members.
http://discuss.itwire.com/viewtopic....t=14668#p52022
But the problem in the FLOSS community (the real community, not the faux "anti-Mono advocacy" crowd ... I'm a member of the real FLOSS community ... Sam: you're part of this "faux FLOSS community" ...


I asked "Why?" a month ago. It is still a good question.
http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story...-OP-CY-MS-0002

[Nakrull]

Re: Confusion

no im not confused anymore m$ is afraid so they are using any means they can to stop and/or hole open source software
im so happy that i live in a third world country and not in the US, Europe or Asia
woaaa 40 jears in jail becouse of a malware... nice now that how we like it
china patenting the smiley ill use it while i still can
woops i will afterwards too
its kinda the same issue as patenting life, like when some petrol company... i cant remember witch... patented a backteria that eats up oil or some gene lab patented single gene strains
the world kinda behaves lika a win after some time it need a fresh install the bad thing is in real life it would mean a huge catastrofe or a world war and that allways sucks

sorry for the typos i dont have speel check in ff3.5 (cant figure out why tough)

[DanteAshton]

Re: Confusion

Ok, my personal opinion is; there are plenty of good Mono apps out there. Take Banshee, for instance. It's quite feature packed and I like it.

However, history aside, Mono apps do tend to be VERY resource heavy, having run a GNOME desktop with the full on-call of Mono apps (Banshee, Gnome-Do..and a few others I cant remember) the end result was HEAVIER on my system then running KDE 4.2 with compositing and all the bells and whistles on.

Now, going back to the history here; Let's not kid ourselves boys and girls, Microsoft has never been one to play nice, after all; it IS a company, and in my experience a company only cares about what makes it money. Either you can fix a large gaping hole in your software, or you can get money from someone selling software to put a patch over it (Internet security software on Windows, in this case). Which is a company going to do?

I will say this, there are quite a few people in the anti-Mono camp of what I like to call the 'tin foil hat group' IE, a good number of people who have popped up on mailing lists and forums jabbering on at length, powered by paranoia instead of facts. In the pro-Mono camp, we have people who seem to selectively paraphrase and have PARTICUALLY selective amnesia.

On another note, I do love the irony; KDE and GNOME have switched places, GNOME's the one in the awkward legal position, argueablly more awkward then KDE was, at least the KDE devs KNEW it wasnt open source years ago., now all we have is a "Maybe we wont sue you." for the GNOME devs, I do feel sorry for them :/

I can pretty much be sure of MS keeping to it's word about not attacking people...until we're too dependant on it. This could literally rip the guts out of Ubuntu, and if not kill it, KILL any trust commercial users have for it. Yes, dear ol' Mark Shuttleworth could come down on a bit of string and play the role of God and breathe life back into the project, but I personally doubt it'll ever work.

Yes, Mono can be very useful, it can allow developers to code for Linux without needing to do much to already existing code. I just personally think it's a bad idea to have such a technology in a legal grey area when we are becoming increasingly dependant on it, even to the point of having our default (and, don't forget, native) apps run on it. Until I see Mono completely under a licesne which MS can't attack without the EU biting down harder, I have no faith in it.

Should it find it's way into Kubuntu, then yes, I will leave Kubuntu. Or probably go off and find others who wish to fork it (which I can almost guarantee there will be)

[dibl]

Re: Confusion

....
On Scott's post regarding Mono -- that seems very reasonable, to me. A patent give the owner the right to sue someone for infringement -- nothing more. If the Mono patent holder isn't squawking about the Ubuntu use of Mono, and they are aware of it, after a short while their right to announce a suit evaporates. So I don't any reason for concern about it.

Actually a LOT more!

My understanding of the law is ... nothing more.

The holder of a patent has an exclusive right to practice the disclosed method, and also the right to prevent others from practicing it, or alternatively, to require reasonable royalties from others in exchange for a license to practice it.

Moreover, upon being put on notice that a potential infringement situation exists, the holder of a patent has a reasonable time period in which to give notice to the infringer, and demand that the infringing activity cease. After some lapse of the "reasonable time" (the jury decides how long that is), the patent holder's ability to enforce the patent against the infringer will lapse. These are general principles of patent law -- details of specific cases may drive to a different conclusion. But it is not generally the case that a patent holder can sit back and observe flagrant infringement for a long period of time, and then "spring" an injunction or restraining order on the infringing party.

I don't argue that Microsoft's agenda should be soft-peddled -- they certainly deserve to be watched closely, and with a jaundiced eye. And yes, it is a rich guy's game, in general -- you have to pay to play. But there's no need for ghost stories.

[Troberg]

Re: Confusion

Remember that software patents is more or less a US only phenomenon at the moment. Europe rejected them, as did most other industrialized nations, and most of the rest of the world don't really care about patents anyway.

This means that patents regarding .Net are meaningless in most of the world.

[Fintan]

Re: Confusion

I was just about to write something to that extent.

It continues to amuse me that the US media and by extent a lot of "learned" people in the US think the US is all alone in the world and the rest of the world plays by its rules. We don't

[GreyGeek]

Re: Confusion

Remember that software patents is more or less a US only phenomenon at the moment. Europe rejected them, as did most other industrialized nations, and most of the rest of the world don't really care about patents anyway.

This means that patents regarding .Net are meaningless in most of the world.

Microsoft is doing its best to change Europe's view on software patents. The MS sock-pupper, ACT, even opened an office in Switzerland to help MS lobby the EU. Johnathan Zucker weasled his way onto the European Open Source Documentation Project, which was writing a "game plan" for FOSS in Europe during the next decade and he effectively turned it into an MS PR memo praising "Mixed Source", with Microsoft's proprietary part of the mix leading the FOSS GPL part.

Money buys a lot. IIRC, it was the European head of the ISO committee, after he jammed the OOXML through ISO, quite ISO and began working for Microsoft.

[Fintan]

Re: Confusion

The MS sock-pupper, ACT, even opened an office in Switzerland to help MS lobby the EU. Johnathan Zucker

I know, actually their office was right across the street from my girlfriends house.

But, and there is a big BUT, with the exception of the UK, most people here don't really care. They just want something that works.

As dible said, a computer is a tool.

As a trained cook, I have a sFr. 300 handmade dalmatiner knife. It cuts fresh tomatoes like butter, actually it doesn't even cut. It just glides, and will last a lifetime, mine at least.

The average joe - blow European is much more open to alternatives, as can be witnessed from the city of Munich to various Dutch and French gov. police, military agencies.

Even the swiss judicuary fought off MS's stranglehold on submitting proposals to the government, educational, and financial systems.

where is the problem? We love linux and FOSS, more and more.

Let the us patent lawyers, congress MS, etc dig a large hole.
Plain old sense will prevail in the end.

The price foe not so naive thinking?

As steep as we want it to be.

[Troberg]

Re: Confusion

Microsoft is doing its best to change Europe's view on software patents.

They tried and failed. Sure, they can try again, but for every failed attempt, it gets more difficult. The opponents of software patents gets better organized and better representation in the parliament, the EU gets more entrenched in it's position and less likely to listen to MS.