[Fwd: Intellectual property for newbie programmers (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [SLUG] Novell and Microsoft])]
Thanks Adam really! It did clarify a few issues for me Regards Phill O'Flynn - Original Message - Subject: Intellectual property for newbie programmers (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [SLUG] Novell and Microsoft]) From: Adam Kennedy [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date:Tue, November 7, 2006 6:20 pm To: Phill O'Flynn [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: slug@slug.org.au Phill O'Flynn wrote: As a budding software developer, I find this copyright and intellectual property topic increasingly tragic. Where does it end? Who doesn't copy ideas? Didn't Microsoft develop Windows 3.1 by borrowing the GUI idea from Apple ( and subsequently squashing them). Now they want to protect themselves from what they did to others. Or perhaps they want to continue to squash any other alternative to them ( or better put Resistance is futile Let me clarify things a little for those getting started in the programming side of things. There's three different things you need to care about, and they have completely different impacts. Since there seems to be a little confusion in your comments, let me clarify in simple points. These are extraordinarily hand-waving definitions, but hold true for the most part. 1. Copyright. - Don't cut and paste other people's code without asking them. - Don't use someone else's module/API unless you agree to their terms. Plagiarism fits mostly into here, but in the academic and media sense, it's altered somewhat to... - Cut and paste all you like but ALWAYS say where you got it from. Open Source (in the extreme broadest sense of the term) is a massive positive for you here, because it lets YOU make a legally enforcable deal where you let other people copy your work, as long as you can copy theirs back again if you want to. Free Software extends this idea further, but in the most general share-and-share-alike sense it's similar. 2. Trademark - Don't steal someone's logo in a similar industry. - Don't use someone else's name in a similar industry. - Don't sort of do either of the above in a similar industry. Basically, don't present yourself to the public in a way that the average layman might get confused and think you are them. And even more strictly, don't ever make money off the similarity. Trademarks are why the Microsoft Pillow Factory on the Princes Highway in Tempe (no really, this actually exists) is completely safe, while a notional Open Source Microsoftware company or something that used the four colours windows pattern could be in trouble. 3. Patents While copyright and trademarks are quite clear and work pretty well, patents are another story. A patent, fundamentally, goes like this. - You have an awesome idea that isn't obvious to anyone else. Imagine you are the first person to invent gold plating. - You can make a huge of money from it, as long as nobody else knows. Imagine nobody has seen gold cups and forks except for solid gold ones owned by kings and great figures, and now YOU can eat like a king for only $199.90 per fork! - So you go to huge lengths to keep it secret. You never write down the chemical solution formula, and you guard carefully the machines in sealed buildings and you make the machines so only you can operate them. - You die, and because of the extreme secrecy, your idea is lost to society. This, obviously, is very very bad. Forget gold plating, imagine losing the ability to make penicilin. So society does a deal with the devil. - Society lets you exploit your idea in the open, but do so AS IF you had kept it secret. So society enforces your secrecy (exclusivity/monopoly) and lets you make even MORE money quickly, because you don't have to go to the efforts to keep it secret. - In exchange, Society forces you to tell it in extreme detail EXACTLY what your great idea is. Now when you die (or rather, in 20 years), all of society benefits and your idea isn't lost. In fact, in any patent application the standard of documentation to this day remains something similar to, Enough detail so anyone else in your industry could copy your idea And over the course of history, this deal with the devil has worked pretty well. Much of the key technical and applied scientific knowledge of mankind is stored in the vast patent office collections, and mankind advances on a (relatively short) 20 year delay without losing the ideas. So patents themselves are not inherently bad, even in it. That's a somewhat unpopular idea in this community, but I note that Donald Knuth holds the same position. The problem for us is that the standard of judging what is obvious and what isn't in IT is dangerously bad, and when you look at the speed of the IT industry compared to, say, chemistry or engineering or biology, 20 years is just a ridiculously long period of time. In this sense
[SLUG] Novell and Microsoft
Hi all, Im a little worried, and a little excited about the Novell, microsoft deal. Worried because Microsoft tend to want to screw everyone they come in contact with that is not Microsoft, and excited that they will be working on some mutually benificial projects, like openoffice and Xen. Reading some of Bill Gates recent speeches, it seem M$ is moving from anti opensource to anti GPL. As in, they are happy with BSD style opensource, because they can see how Apple is able to take all the opensourse stuff and close it up and sell it as if they coded the lot themselves. They seem to be happy with open source only if they can turn it around and own it (no surprises there). So I dont know what they have in mind when jumping into bed with Novell? What do you people think? I would be very interested to hear some opinions. Tuxta -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Novell and Microsoft
2006/11/6, tuxta2 [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Hi all, Im a little worried, and a little excited about the Novell, microsoft deal. Microsoft has done this many times before, so often that Redmond has a name for the technique: embrace, extend and exterminate. And yet people keep doing these deals. Usually, it's weak, struggling, desperate companies with declining market share and little hope of turning things around. In other words, just like Novell. http://www.forbes.com/2006/11/03/linux-microsoft-novell-tech-cz_dl_1103linux.html?partner=alerts Cheers Praveen -- Value your freedom, or you will lose it, teaches history. `Don't bother us with politics', respond those who don't want to learn. -- Richard Stallman Me scribbles at http://www.pravi.co.nr -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Novell and Microsoft
On 11/6/06, tuxta2 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What do you people think? I would be very interested to hear some opinions. This comment seems to be realistic, except for the finishing off bit. I think Microsoft has much more to gain by keeping Linux around and selling IP licenses for it. http://news.linux.com/comments.pl?sid=37578cid=92628 Humour piece, apparently from 1995: http://www.usd.edu/~bwjames/humor/ms/novel.html FSF article from April this year: http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/ms-vs-eu/article-20060421.en.html My thought on Microsoft's strategy: embrace, extend, and emasculate or enslave. If software patents are widely recognised then Microsoft can force Linux to be nothing more than a backyard hobby, or charge for it, all while appearing not to be a monopoly, because after all, it's reasonable to charge for your IP, right? FSF won't push the GPL issue, because if they do, Microsoft will threaten litigation against other distros on patent grounds. The FSF will be able to go ahead and most likely lose, or back off and cement the validity of software patents. The only way Linux will last as an independant force in the long run is to fight software patents. We need to make sure there is at least one major market where the patents don't have force. If you have to license Linux in the USA, but not in the EU, Microsoft will be tortured by the USA corporations, so they won't push it until they've made the EU think licensing is OK, which is why Novell is such a good ally for them, as it's the strong in the EU. Ben -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Novell and Microsoft
On Mon, Nov 06, 2006 at 10:50:57PM +1100, Ben wrote: On 11/6/06, tuxta2 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What do you people think? I would be very interested to hear some opinions. This comment seems to be realistic, except for the finishing off bit. I think Microsoft has much more to gain by keeping Linux around and selling IP licenses for it. http://news.linux.com/comments.pl?sid=37578cid=92628 Humour piece, apparently from 1995: http://www.usd.edu/~bwjames/humor/ms/novel.html FSF article from April this year: http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/ms-vs-eu/article-20060421.en.html My thought on Microsoft's strategy: embrace, extend, and emasculate or enslave. If software patents are widely recognised then Microsoft can force Linux to be nothing more than a backyard hobby, or charge for it, all while appearing not to be a monopoly, because after all, it's reasonable to charge for your IP, right? Am I missing something can't we just take the code from Novell and apply any patches to bring it up to where it is now and carry on from there, doesn't that give every one Novell's protection ? or something along those lines. ps I am not a lawyer . FSF won't push the GPL issue, because if they do, Microsoft will threaten litigation against other distros on patent grounds. The FSF will be able to go ahead and most likely lose, or back off and cement the validity of software patents. The only way Linux will last as an independant force in the long run is to fight software patents. We need to make sure there is at least one major market where the patents don't have force. If you have to license Linux in the USA, but not in the EU, Microsoft will be tortured by the USA corporations, so they won't push it until they've made the EU think licensing is OK, which is why Novell is such a good ally for them, as it's the strong in the EU. Ben -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Novell and Microsoft
Sadly, having an algorithm coded in open source doesn't protect one from the patent lawyers. For instance LAME (despite it's acronym) is a GPL implementation of a MP3 encoder. Hence basically anyone can use this code, under the terms of the GPL. However any MP3 implementation contains algorithms patented by the Fraunhofer Institute. So no matter how you write the code, you still infringe upon the ideas articulated in their patents. So while Fraunhofer cannot stop you distributing the code as a published work, they can potentially want you to licence the use of their patented algorithm in a product. But that licence doesn't usually go with the code, but with the product that implements it. ALso section 7 of the GPL specifically says that must cease distribution of GPL software if you believe it to be infringing on someone else's intellectual property. So my understanding of the agreements is that Microsoft are basically saying to Novell - You full well know that some of the code in SuSE Linux infringes on our IP. (From elsewhere I read that this would possibly in things like Mono, OpenOffice, Samba, etc). But because we have this arrangement, we will not enforce you to meet your patent obligations (I would presume there might also be bits of Novell's IP that Microsoft uses but hasn't paid for to date). So Microsoft is providing protection for the product, rather than the code. Therefore it would not automatically pass protection on to other products with the same source code. Of course the big problem with software patents, is that often seem to cover the smallest algorithm, and also seem to often cover ideas that have been obvious for ages, been implemented before, yet no one prior to the patent holder bothered to register their idea. (I am not a lawyer either :-) ) Regards, Martin On 11/7/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, Nov 06, 2006 at 10:50:57PM +1100, Ben wrote: On 11/6/06, tuxta2 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What do you people think? I would be very interested to hear some opinions. This comment seems to be realistic, except for the finishing off bit. I think Microsoft has much more to gain by keeping Linux around and selling IP licenses for it. http://news.linux.com/comments.pl?sid=37578cid=92628 Humour piece, apparently from 1995: http://www.usd.edu/~bwjames/humor/ms/novel.html FSF article from April this year: http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/ms-vs-eu/article-20060421.en.html My thought on Microsoft's strategy: embrace, extend, and emasculate or enslave. If software patents are widely recognised then Microsoft can force Linux to be nothing more than a backyard hobby, or charge for it, all while appearing not to be a monopoly, because after all, it's reasonable to charge for your IP, right? Am I missing something can't we just take the code from Novell and apply any patches to bring it up to where it is now and carry on from there, doesn't that give every one Novell's protection ? or something along those lines. ps I am not a lawyer . FSF won't push the GPL issue, because if they do, Microsoft will threaten litigation against other distros on patent grounds. The FSF will be able to go ahead and most likely lose, or back off and cement the validity of software patents. The only way Linux will last as an independant force in the long run is to fight software patents. We need to make sure there is at least one major market where the patents don't have force. If you have to license Linux in the USA, but not in the EU, Microsoft will be tortured by the USA corporations, so they won't push it until they've made the EU think licensing is OK, which is why Novell is such a good ally for them, as it's the strong in the EU. Ben -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFFT6TGkZz88chpJ2MRAqVoAJ46G3xXY5KS3fs4GVjhEm8WXwrdFQCgzjRU VpvvAox+WoWljoId1Fwib2g= =RYv8 -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html -- Regards, Martin Martin Visser -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Novell and Microsoft
The Novell/MS should really mean nothing to developers who respect intellectual property of Microsoft - Microsoft and Novell under the deal (and any Novell customer) are able to share each others respective intellectual property and allow external developers to extend and contribute to those projects. People crying about the entire community not getting covered simply don't get it... You can be sued now and you could be sued before the deal if you infringe on someones intellectual property and in some cases, rightly so. Novell are not handing the keys out to anyones castles, as GPL'd and similarly licensed software will stay open and free - Novell can't give this away on their own terms. Also take in the fact that the deal is very much product differentiation for Novell - offering security in the knowledge that Microsoft will not come for their first born son any time soon. James On 11/7/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, Nov 06, 2006 at 10:50:57PM +1100, Ben wrote: On 11/6/06, tuxta2 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What do you people think? I would be very interested to hear some opinions. This comment seems to be realistic, except for the finishing off bit. I think Microsoft has much more to gain by keeping Linux around and selling IP licenses for it. http://news.linux.com/comments.pl?sid=37578cid=92628 Humour piece, apparently from 1995: http://www.usd.edu/~bwjames/humor/ms/novel.html FSF article from April this year: http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/ms-vs-eu/article-20060421.en.html My thought on Microsoft's strategy: embrace, extend, and emasculate or enslave. If software patents are widely recognised then Microsoft can force Linux to be nothing more than a backyard hobby, or charge for it, all while appearing not to be a monopoly, because after all, it's reasonable to charge for your IP, right? Am I missing something can't we just take the code from Novell and apply any patches to bring it up to where it is now and carry on from there, doesn't that give every one Novell's protection ? or something along those lines. ps I am not a lawyer . FSF won't push the GPL issue, because if they do, Microsoft will threaten litigation against other distros on patent grounds. The FSF will be able to go ahead and most likely lose, or back off and cement the validity of software patents. The only way Linux will last as an independant force in the long run is to fight software patents. We need to make sure there is at least one major market where the patents don't have force. If you have to license Linux in the USA, but not in the EU, Microsoft will be tortured by the USA corporations, so they won't push it until they've made the EU think licensing is OK, which is why Novell is such a good ally for them, as it's the strong in the EU. Ben -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFFT6TGkZz88chpJ2MRAqVoAJ46G3xXY5KS3fs4GVjhEm8WXwrdFQCgzjRU VpvvAox+WoWljoId1Fwib2g= =RYv8 -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Novell and Microsoft
On Tue, Nov 07, 2006 at 10:17:15AM +1100, Martin Visser wrote: snip... So my understanding of the agreements is that Microsoft are basically saying to Novell - You full well know that some of the code in SuSE Linux infringes on our IP. (From elsewhere I read that this would possibly in things like Mono, OpenOffice, Samba, etc). But because we have this arrangement, we will not enforce you to meet your patent obligations (I would presume there might also be bits of Novell's IP that Microsoft uses but hasn't paid for to date). So Microsoft is providing protection for the product, rather than the code. Therefore it would not automatically pass protection on to other products with the same source code. Which would then stop Novell from being able to distribute GPL code, as the GPL also states that you have no rights to distribute if you are paying royalties etc, on distribution. Basically, you can't use patents or other such legal matters to prevent distribution of GPL code if you are distributing it yourself. Of course the big problem with software patents, is that often seem to cover the smallest algorithm, and also seem to often cover ideas that have been obvious for ages, been implemented before, yet no one prior to the patent holder bothered to register their idea. (I am not a lawyer either :-) ) Regards, Martin Byron Hillis -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Novell and Microsoft
On 2006.11.07 10:17 Martin Visser wrote: Sadly, having an algorithm coded in open source doesn't protect one from the patent lawyers. For instance LAME (despite it's acronym) is a GPL implementation of a MP3 encoder. Hence basically anyone can use this code, under the terms of the GPL. However any MP3 implementation contains algorithms patented by the Fraunhofer Institute. So no matter how you write the code, you still infringe upon the ideas articulated in their patents. snip ALso section 7 of the GPL specifically says that must cease distribution of GPL software if you believe it to be infringing on someone else's intellectual property. snip I was always under the impression that mathematics cannot be patented. If the algorithm is mathematics then the patent is invalid (even if it has been granted and has patent numbers etc etc). Therefore, clause 7 of the GPL is not infringed. In other words, Distribute and be Damned! Robert Thorsby -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Novell and Microsoft
On Tue, 2006-11-07 at 10:39 +1100, Robert Thorsby wrote: I was always under the impression that mathematics cannot be patented. If the algorithm is mathematics then the patent is invalid (even if it has been granted and has patent numbers etc etc). Therefore, clause 7 of the GPL is not infringed. In other words, Distribute and be Damned! Robert Thorsby As I understand it, the patents are on methods rather than specific algorithms. As such you get such gems as One click shopping and so on. Whether you consider these patents as valid or not, it is going to present an interesting problem for Novell if someone decides to enforce clause 7. -- James Purser Producer/Presenter - Open Source On The Air A LocalFOSS Production http://www.localfoss.org irc: #localfoss on irc.freenode.net signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Novell and Microsoft
On Tue, 2006-11-07 at 10:29 +1100, James Dumay wrote: Novell are not handing the keys out to anyones castles, as GPL'd and similarly licensed software will stay open and free Yes, but as you point out, You can be sued now and you could be sued before the deal if you infringe on someones intellectual property Just because the copyright owner grants you licence to use something of theirs via GPL does not mean that you have right to use any patented technologies belonging to some third party that said software happens to use (willingly or not). As Brendan Scott pointed out in this week's OSWALD email, if the royalty payments indeed covered any (for instance) .Net technologies, then in effect Novell has acquiesced to the legitimacy of those patents. [ie, to be effective, a patent holder has to demonstrate that they are enforcing it. Gaining royalties from someone over it is such evidence]... ...which in turn makes explicit the fact that the rest of the world (ie, anyone not a Novell customer) has NOT been granted a right to use. Incidentally, this has ever been my concern with Mono in GNOME. Nothing against the language, or the project, or any apps written with it. But while _C#_ has been submitted for ECMA standardization, the _framework libraries_ (ie, .Net, which Mono clones) appears to be heavily patented*, which would seem to put it in the same category as the GIF patent in terms of its free/non-free status, GPL or not. ++ Naturally all concerned will continue to muddy the waters - for example, I and many others are inferring what the royalty payment is for (danegeld, perhaps?) and much discussion is based on such speculation. Certainly we can't expect any clarity from the two companies in the subject line... after all, they're out of the line of fire. I rather expect that the entire topic is already far beyond the possibility for dispassionate debate, although SLUG's discussion of it has been quite measured. You should see TLUG in Toronto. Jeesh. AfC Sydney * I'm not an IP lawyer, of course. But I did some cursory searches on CAMBIA's Patent Lens a while back and oh my goodness there are a lot of patents covering .Net. That's fine (ie FOSS fine) if we're all given a worldwide royalty-free grant to use them. That has not been the case. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Novell and Microsoft
On Tue, Nov 07, 2006 at 10:29:21AM +1100, James Dumay wrote: The Novell/MS should really mean nothing to developers who respect intellectual property of Microsoft - Microsoft and Novell under the deal (and any Novell customer) are able to share each others respective intellectual property and allow external developers to extend and contribute to those projects. Sure, the world is rosier for Novell customers and non-commercial developers, but for the rest of us it's significantly murkier. Microsoft have effectively asserted rights over the creation of software by positioning themselves (with Novell) as arbiters of our community. (Note I said software, not FOSS. It has much broader implications than that, though FOSS is the obvious target.) They only have to say that a project *may* be infringing on their patents and businesses will have to reconsider whether they can use it under threat of licencing - a SCO redux. Granted, this is little different from before, though now the battle lines are drawn a lot more clearly. Now that this precedent has been set, Microsoft's strategy is pretty straight forward: Pick a few high profile projects (Mono, Samba, OpenOffice), sue their biggest commercial users for using non-Microsoft licenced software that *may* infringe on their patents, watch as customers flock to Microsoft and Novell seeking indemnity. If Microsoft deems your software to be unlicenced, how are you going to fight it? You *know* you probably have a legal leg to stand on with GPL (if the software is licenced that way), but how would you as a company fund the fight against the Microsoft behemoth if they ever took you to court? Red Hat call it an innovation tax, and that's exactly what it is. People crying about the entire community not getting covered simply don't get it... You can be sued now and you could be sued before the deal if you infringe on someones intellectual property and in some cases, rightly so. If you are a non-commercial contributor, you are safe. If you are a commercial contributor, you are not. I don't know about the percentages, but i'd say the split in numbers between the two groups is weighted towards commercial contributors. For Microsoft it's never been about the non-commercial contributor. They don't see the backyard tinkerer as a threat. This deal strikes right at the heart of FOSS in commercial environments. Novell are not handing the keys out to anyones castles, as GPL'd and similarly licensed software will stay open and free - Novell can't give this away on their own terms. It's quite true they don't have the right to relicence the software they don't hold the copyright of. They *have* flagged companies who contribute to and use FOSS as potential patent violators through their actions. Also take in the fact that the deal is very much product differentiation for Novell - offering security in the knowledge that Microsoft will not come for their first born son any time soon. And what a big product differentiator that is. As a non-Novell customer, i'd like to keep my first born. Lindsay -- http://slug.org.au/ (Sydney Linux Users Group) http://lca2007.linux.org.au/ (linux.conf.au 2007) http://holmwood.id.au/~lindsay/ (me) -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Novell and Microsoft
On 11/7/06, James Purser [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, 2006-11-07 at 10:39 +1100, Robert Thorsby wrote: I was always under the impression that mathematics cannot be patented. If the algorithm is mathematics then the patent is invalid (even if it has been granted and has patent numbers etc etc). Therefore, clause 7 of the GPL is not infringed. In other words, Distribute and be Damned! Robert Thorsby As I understand it, the patents are on methods rather than specific algorithms. As such you get such gems as One click shopping and so on. I thought the RSA patent and the GIF patent were both for specific algorithms? cf http://www.cyberlaw.com/rsa.html which outlines the ways in which an algorithm can be patented... -- There is nothing more worthy of contempt than a man who quotes himself - Zhasper, 2004 -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[Fwd: Re: [SLUG] Novell and Microsoft]
As a budding software developer, I find this copyright and intellectual property topic increasingly tragic. Where does it end? Who doesn't copy ideas? Didn't Microsoft develop Windows 3.1 by borrowing the GUI idea from Apple ( and subsequently squashing them). Now they want to protect themselves from what they did to others. Or perhaps they want to continue to squash any other alternative to them ( or better put Resistance is futile It might seem okay to protect ones self from being plagarised but where is the line that stops it going into the rediculous (if it hasn't already). I bet in 20yrs time my high school teacher will be able to sue me for using an idea he/she taught me. It is just getting stupid With governments continually allowing these parasites to squash invention (and making Australia even more the slave of the US and its Corporate feudalism) we will fast become a nation of consumers that can do nothing but sell off resources to support our need to obey advertisers and consume. It is a bit like that line of that movie in space no one can hear you scream To me, that is how it seems to be becoming for those who want to make a career out of software developement I appologise if this seems like some esoteric eccentric rant. but I just had to contribute something Regards Phill O'Flynn PS I am NOT anti american but there are certain aspects of their culture (like encouraging of unrestrained greed) that the rest of the world is better off without - Original Message - Subject: Re: [SLUG] Novell and Microsoft From:Lindsay Holmwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tue, November 7, 2006 2:24 pm To: SLUG List slug@slug.org.au On Tue, Nov 07, 2006 at 10:29:21AM +1100, James Dumay wrote: The Novell/MS should really mean nothing to developers who respect intellectual property of Microsoft - Microsoft and Novell under the deal (and any Novell customer) are able to share each others respective intellectual property and allow external developers to extend and contribute to those projects. Sure, the world is rosier for Novell customers and non-commercial developers, but for the rest of us it's significantly murkier. Microsoft have effectively asserted rights over the creation of software by positioning themselves (with Novell) as arbiters of our community. (Note I said software, not FOSS. It has much broader implications than that, though FOSS is the obvious target.) They only have to say that a project *may* be infringing on their patents and businesses will have to reconsider whether they can use it under threat of licencing - a SCO redux. Granted, this is little different from before, though now the battle lines are drawn a lot more clearly. Now that this precedent has been set, Microsoft's strategy is pretty straight forward: Pick a few high profile projects (Mono, Samba, OpenOffice), sue their biggest commercial users for using non-Microsoft licenced software that *may* infringe on their patents, watch as customers flock to Microsoft and Novell seeking indemnity. If Microsoft deems your software to be unlicenced, how are you going to fight it? You *know* you probably have a legal leg to stand on with GPL (if the software is licenced that way), but how would you as a company fund the fight against the Microsoft behemoth if they ever took you to court? Red Hat call it an innovation tax, and that's exactly what it is. People crying about the entire community not getting covered simply don't get it... You can be sued now and you could be sued before the deal if you infringe on someones intellectual property and in some cases, rightly so. If you are a non-commercial contributor, you are safe. If you are a commercial contributor, you are not. I don't know about the percentages, but i'd say the split in numbers between the two groups is weighted towards commercial contributors. For Microsoft it's never been about the non-commercial contributor. They don't see the backyard tinkerer as a threat. This deal strikes right at the heart of FOSS in commercial environments. Novell are not handing the keys out to anyones castles, as GPL'd and similarly licensed software will stay open and free - Novell can't give this away on their own terms. It's quite true they don't have the right to relicence the software they don't hold the copyright of. They *have* flagged companies who contribute to and use FOSS as potential patent violators through their actions. Also take in the fact that the deal is very much product differentiation for Novell - offering security in the knowledge that Microsoft will not come for their first born son any time soon. And what a big product differentiator that is. As a non-Novell customer, i'd like to keep my first born. Lindsay -- http://slug.org.au/ (Sydney
Intellectual property for newbie programmers (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [SLUG] Novell and Microsoft])
Phill O'Flynn wrote: As a budding software developer, I find this copyright and intellectual property topic increasingly tragic. Where does it end? Who doesn't copy ideas? Didn't Microsoft develop Windows 3.1 by borrowing the GUI idea from Apple ( and subsequently squashing them). Now they want to protect themselves from what they did to others. Or perhaps they want to continue to squash any other alternative to them ( or better put Resistance is futile Let me clarify things a little for those getting started in the programming side of things. There's three different things you need to care about, and they have completely different impacts. Since there seems to be a little confusion in your comments, let me clarify in simple points. These are extraordinarily hand-waving definitions, but hold true for the most part. 1. Copyright. - Don't cut and paste other people's code without asking them. - Don't use someone else's module/API unless you agree to their terms. Plagiarism fits mostly into here, but in the academic and media sense, it's altered somewhat to... - Cut and paste all you like but ALWAYS say where you got it from. Open Source (in the extreme broadest sense of the term) is a massive positive for you here, because it lets YOU make a legally enforcable deal where you let other people copy your work, as long as you can copy theirs back again if you want to. Free Software extends this idea further, but in the most general share-and-share-alike sense it's similar. 2. Trademark - Don't steal someone's logo in a similar industry. - Don't use someone else's name in a similar industry. - Don't sort of do either of the above in a similar industry. Basically, don't present yourself to the public in a way that the average layman might get confused and think you are them. And even more strictly, don't ever make money off the similarity. Trademarks are why the Microsoft Pillow Factory on the Princes Highway in Tempe (no really, this actually exists) is completely safe, while a notional Open Source Microsoftware company or something that used the four colours windows pattern could be in trouble. 3. Patents While copyright and trademarks are quite clear and work pretty well, patents are another story. A patent, fundamentally, goes like this. - You have an awesome idea that isn't obvious to anyone else. Imagine you are the first person to invent gold plating. - You can make a huge of money from it, as long as nobody else knows. Imagine nobody has seen gold cups and forks except for solid gold ones owned by kings and great figures, and now YOU can eat like a king for only $199.90 per fork! - So you go to huge lengths to keep it secret. You never write down the chemical solution formula, and you guard carefully the machines in sealed buildings and you make the machines so only you can operate them. - You die, and because of the extreme secrecy, your idea is lost to society. This, obviously, is very very bad. Forget gold plating, imagine losing the ability to make penicilin. So society does a deal with the devil. - Society lets you exploit your idea in the open, but do so AS IF you had kept it secret. So society enforces your secrecy (exclusivity/monopoly) and lets you make even MORE money quickly, because you don't have to go to the efforts to keep it secret. - In exchange, Society forces you to tell it in extreme detail EXACTLY what your great idea is. Now when you die (or rather, in 20 years), all of society benefits and your idea isn't lost. In fact, in any patent application the standard of documentation to this day remains something similar to, Enough detail so anyone else in your industry could copy your idea And over the course of history, this deal with the devil has worked pretty well. Much of the key technical and applied scientific knowledge of mankind is stored in the vast patent office collections, and mankind advances on a (relatively short) 20 year delay without losing the ideas. So patents themselves are not inherently bad, even in it. That's a somewhat unpopular idea in this community, but I note that Donald Knuth holds the same position. The problem for us is that the standard of judging what is obvious and what isn't in IT is dangerously bad, and when you look at the speed of the IT industry compared to, say, chemistry or engineering or biology, 20 years is just a ridiculously long period of time. In this sense, software patents are completely broken. --- So what should you do then. If you are wanting to be a programmer, you should learn how copyright law works (to the extent you reasonably can without becoming a lawyer), and learn how trademarks work (to the extent you reasonably can without becoming a lawyer) and more or less ignore how patents are SUPPOSED to work, leave campaigning for change to people like Pia and SLUG and OSIA and
