ZDNet Must Read:
Google makes Chrome OS open source
Google made the early code available to the open source community and claims external developers will have the same access to the code as internal Google developers.... Continued »
Category: Legal
November 19th, 2009
ChromeOS says tear down this network regulation wall
An Australian friend wrote yesterday with a question:
I really can’t see the point of a cloud-based OS for the general user. The added cost in using it doesn’t seem worthwhile.
It would take me over 6 months to upload my data at my connection speed not to mention that ISPs here in Australia have now included uploads as part of your total usage which for me would be exceeded for those 6 months.
So can I ask - why choose ChromeOS ?
These are good questions. They have been vexing me ever since IBM and Ubuntu launched their Africa-only Linux, based heavily on network use, a few months ago.
It got me to thinking about the 1980s, the dawn of the Windows era.
Each new release of software pushed hardware beyond its limits. To get the latest new features, to review new software, I had to buy a new top-of-the-line PC every few years. Software sold hardware.
This helped make more than Bill Gates rich. It delivered fortunes to the entire semiconductor ecosystem — from box makers like Michael Dell to chip makers like Andy Grove of Intel to chip equipment makers like Jim Morgan of Applied Materials — everyone sold everything they could make at a fat profit.
All of today’s current trends — you can add clouds and the iPhone to this — are pushing demand for networking much as chip demand was pushed then.
What will meet that demand is just what met it then — Moore’s Law. Not Moore’s Law as Moore wrote it, but as it has been applied in networking technologies like optical fiber and radios.
Thanks to Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing, a single optical fiber today can carry many times the data it carried a decade ago. Thanks to Digital Signal Processors we can do the same thing with wireless data.
What is holding back network capacity is politics. We still think of it in terms of telephony, a regulated industry managed for scarcity. It’s not that way, and hasn’t been that way for a long time.
Throw out the old rule book and write a new one, based not on scarcity but abundance. Let the competition to serve more-and-more bits drive entrepreneurs to new fortunes around the world. Open more spectrum to unlicensed use, like WiFi is regulated, demand wholesaling of the last mile, and the bits you unleash will make us all rich again.
That’s what today’s software is telling us. That’s the message of ChromeOS. Unleash Moore’s Law in networks, unshackle competition to provide faster-and-faster data services, and watch the economy of the world take off again.
With ChromeOS Google is making the same call on networks Microsoft made on chips two decades ago. It’s a call that demands a response, not just from the market but from governments.
Deregulate. Free the bits. Here and around the world.
Or, as Ronald Reagan might say, Mr. Genachowski, tear down this wall.
November 13th, 2009
Groklaw suggests Microsoft sue, do over authentication
Microsoft has won a patent that seems to cover an old Unix authentication scheme known as Sudo.
(Your honor, I would like to offer this t-shirt of XKCD’s classic comic as evidence prior art. Mark it as Exhibit A for the defense.)
Groklaw is using the case to argue against software patents, and in favor of the government in the Supreme Court case Bilsky vs. Kappos, in which oral arguments were heard last week.
Advocates of free software have used the case to urge the courts to eliminate software patents, although the appellate court In Re Bilski only limited them. Groklaw may hope the utter bogusity of the sudo patent will prod the Supremes to sing the song their way.
One might also argue, however, that the case argues for better funding at the patent office, and patent examiners with an understanding of prior art.
The Unix version of Sudo (pronounced sue-doo) is freeware. (Red Hat attorneys are probably thinking just that of Microsoft’s lawyers right about now. Oh sue, do.)
The patent describes how Microsoft does Sudo through a program called Runas, but then adds this:
Although the invention has been described in language specific to structural features and/or methodological steps, it is to be understood that the invention defined in the appended claims is not necessarily limited to the specific features or steps described. Rather, the specific features and steps are disclosed as preferred forms of implementing the claimed invention.
This is lawyer speak for Clint Eastwood telling the bad guy, “feeling lucky, punk?” To which Linux lawyers might respond, “Go ahead. Make my day.”
My apologies for the puns. The whole issue makes me feel dirty, Harry.
October 23rd, 2009
Bells give net neutrality the McCain two-step
For over a century the Bells have been masters of the bureaucratic game.
Their failure in the Bell break-up, which delivered huge profits to investors, only taught them to fight harder. So after putting themselves together like the broom in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” of course they’re going to fight net neutrality like their lives depend on it.
Despite a unanimous FCC vote to start writing net neutrality rules, then, don’t expect an easy victory.
Democrats passed an actual law to rein-in the Bells in 1996, but the Bells finally won that battle, and $200 billion spent to upgrade America’s broadband went instead into Bell pockets. A unanimous FCC looks small by comparison.
Here’s how the two-step works. If the regulators say no you go to Congress. If Congress says no you go to the courts. If the courts say no you go to the states. If the states say no you go to the regulators.(Gee, golly, Officer Krupke.)
Meanwhile you hire every lobbyist you can, create every Astroturf organization you can so it appears your self-interest is the public interest, and contribute heavily to any politician, on any level, who will toe the company line.
Take John McCain (above). He says it’s all “mavericky” to stop net neutrality in Congress. Nothing mavericky going on at all.
McCain was one of five Senators who voted against the 1996 Telecommunications Act, and chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee in 2003-04, when the Bells were consolidating into two companies owning local, long distance, core Internet, and wireless duopolies nationwide. What he called “deregulation” was, and is, monopoly.
As with maverick, deregulation is a brand. It’s just the name of the ranch. The cow’s still going to the slaughterhouse, not Wyoming.
This is actually a bipartisan rant. There are plenty of Democrats, at all levels, bought and paid for by the Bells. Do not listen to what politicians say. Watch what they do and follow the money.
Any form of net neutrality, wireless or wireline, remains an uphill battle.
October 19th, 2009
SCO story ends with a whimper
Remember SCO?
Back when I started writing about open source and Linux, in 2005, you couldn’t swing a cat without catching someone with an opinion about SCO.
SCO claimed Linux was infringing its patentscopyright. SCO claimed it owned Linux. SCO sued IBM.
CORRECTION: Microsoft claims patent rights on Linux code. The SCO case was about copyright.
Once SCO built a railroad of lawsuits, made it race against time. Now it’s done.
As quietly as possible last week, through a required SEC filing, SCO quietly canned CEO Darl McBride, the architect of its audacious “better luck through lawsuits” business plan.
They didn’t just ease the man out. They eliminated the positions of CEO and president, which McBride held. The top name on the org chart is now COO Jeff Hunsaker (above), whose background includes stints at WordPerfect, Novell and Corel (so he knows from failure).
Anyone have a few words they want to say over the body?
October 9th, 2009
The best protection for software assets
Roberto Galoppini has an interesting piece running today on Codeplex, and how to improve it.
I can’t say much more than “attaboy” about it, but he ends with an interesting comment:
Software patents are not legal here in Europe, and Europe uses a lot of open source software.
As a commenter here wrote earlier today, much of the controversy surrounding open source involves patents, which he calls the “Fight Club” of software. (That’s what Brad Pitt is doing here.)
Without the argument over patents, what would Microsoft be doing that was controversial regarding open source? Some of its licenses are one-sided, but so are its contributions to the code protected by those licenses. The MS-PL license is also OSI-approved.
One point I have made many times — as have people much wiser than I am — is that patent protection isn’t that great a deal. You have to reveal your invention. The rights don’t last that long.
Contrast this with copyright and trademark. This story, and the logo above it, will have legal protection long after Microsoft’s so-called Linux “patents” are forgotten.
When people “pay” for software, what are they really buying? Support. They want to know needed updates will come in, that someone is back there stamping out bugs, protecting us from bad guys, and enhancing the code.
We convey this information through a trademark, not patents.
The difference between open source and proprietary software is visibility, nothing more. Why am I signing a contract for software I can see? To acknowledge your copyright on it, not your patent rights.
All the controversy between Microsoft and open source would be over if the Supreme Court followed Red Hat’s recent brief in the Bilski case, and stripped out rights previous courts had given software companies, rights that have proven to be little but trouble, protecting only monopoly and not innovation.
Perhaps Microsoft might add an “amen” to that brief. Can I hear an amen?
October 6th, 2009
Red Hat offers Supremes an audacious brief
Red Hat has filed a “friend of the court” brief to the Supreme Court in hopes of having software patents invalidated once and for all.
The brief follows the logic of the U.S. Court of Appeals in re: Bilski but asks the Supremes to go further in deciding the case, now called Bilski vs. Kappos. David Kappos is the new Undersecretary of Commerce for Intellectual property and director of the patent and trademark office.
The brief argues that lower courts erred in the 1990s, disregarding guideposts previously set by the Supreme Court and opening the floodgates for patents based merely on abstract ideas.
This is the heart of the argument:
Because the boundaries of software patents are exceedingly vague and the numbers of issued software patents is now enormous, it is virtually impossible to rule out the possibility that a new software product may arguably infringe some patent.
The brief goes on to argue that given such legal risks only the largest companies can afford to do any kind of software development, especially if it might involve real innovation.
Much of the argument is based on the 1972 case of Gottschalk vs. Benson, a decision written by the legendary William O. Douglas that invalidated a patent for turning binary-coded decimal numbers into pure binary numbers for use in a computer program.
The Benson ruling was that software was “merely a series of mathematical calculations” and thus did not constitute a “process” within the meaning of the Patent Act.
The brief even quotes Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, speaking in 1991 against the idea of software patents, arguing that if people understood how courts were moving when software was first being developed “the industry would be at a standstill today.”
It is, in sum, an audacious brief, as audacious in its way as new Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s recent argument that courts erred when they first called corporations persons in the 19th century.
Given history both arguments make sense. Given politics neither is likely to be accepted any time soon.
October 1st, 2009
America backs away from the Internet with a whimper
It was fun to read government guy Richard Koman’s take on the U.S. government release of ICANN, the Internet governing authority.
That’s because it was completely different from that of the BBC.
Koman wrote that control of the network was being privatized. That sounds like spin meant for Americans.
The BBC wrote it was being de-Americanized.
The New York Times has it as a little of both. “Washington said Wednesday that it would give other governments and the private sector a greater oversight role.”
Which is more important? I’m going with the BBC on this one.
During the Bush years the U.S. government would often assert claims of Internet sovereignty, as when it ran all the network’s traffic through a closet and said it was going after spies. ICANN made no protest then. It might now.
Europeans hailed the move, which will let representatives of many governments — not just the U.S. — oversee ICANN’s work on security, accountability and competition.
When I covered ICANN in the mid-1990s the big issue was democracy, and whether individuals around the world might have a way to participate in network governance. This move means the model is being replaced by a balancing of interests among governments and private business.
It’s not democracy, and it’s not pure capitalism. It’s more like how the European Community itself runs.
I wonder how U.S. Republicans will react to that once they figure it out? Obama let the Internet get Eurocratized. Obama lost the Internet. You betcha. I can see Russia from my house.
September 22nd, 2009
Eurocrats killing open source softly, says Ellison
American billionaires, and even America’s government, seem powerless against the big bad bullies of the EC.
So Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is trying another tack. Approve my deal or open source gets it.
Ellison carefully noted that Sun, not Oracle, is losing $100 million each month the deal is not done, and that its cash bleed is accelerating. No, he won’t unload mySQL, he added, and mommas don’t let your babies grow up to be IT’ers.
It’s a subtle game. The EC is not good at subtle. It can take the Eurocrats a long time to decide what to do, and technology does not work that way.
Ellison’s words were a reminder.
So is the EC’s refusal to rubber-stamp the Oracle-Sun deal, pending more investigation, really going to hurt open source? Do the Eurocrats understand what open source is, and what it takes to make it go? Or, by pointing out the possible damage it’s doing to open source, has Oracle found the key to making the EC move?
September 21st, 2009
Will the open Internet become a partisan divide
The idea of an open and neutral Internet is about to become a political flash point.
The launch of a new site dedicated to the issue, OpenInternet.gov (above) was accompanied by FCC chair Julius Genachowski publishing his speech text at The Washington Post and a brief commentary based on it at The Huffington Post, a liberal site.
The regulatory regime he proposed is along the lines of a net neutrality bill offered by Democrats that got a hearing in the House last week. The agency and the House agree on their aims, the main differences being how and where the details will be fleshed out.
Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal, which hosted policy pronouncements from top regulators throughout the Bush Administration, ran a piece about Genachowski’s moves that was highly skeptical of both their rationale and their legality.
It said Republicans will oppose Genachowski on “free enterprise” grounds, and pointed to a suit by Comcast against previous attempts to impose a set of net neutrality rules.
At the same time the two Republican members of the FCC said they opposed any net neutrality for wireless, and support exclusive deals between equipment makers and networks like the AT&T-iPhone deal.
Add a little industry Astroturf and a plan depressingly like that in health care starts to become visible. Turn some insiders with industry money, work from the outside on ideological grounds, and the 2008 election need never have happened. Plus you can blame the Democrats if they fail to crush you — call them partisan and ideological.
My view remains that net neutrality would not be necessary in an environment where there is ample competition. If someone wants an ISP or cell operator that will block everything to the left of Fox News they should have it, so long as the market offers ample alternatives.
Unfortunately antitrust does not appear to be the ground the Obama Administration seems ready to stand on. Which could make the open Internet a partisan divide for years to come.
September 15th, 2009
OIN suggests patent reform on the fly
Open Innovation Network (OIN) CEO Keith Bergelt enjoyed my recent analogy of his work to that of a bomb disposal team. He also liked Paula’s story.
But his motive for talking was to push the story forward, and to say that the Obama Administration is going to give us patent reform on-the-fly. He said we can be a part of it.
Yes, we can, because the new Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property is David Kappos.
Besides having a nice hair line (so much like my own) Kappos “gets it.” He came to the government from IBM. IBM is a co-founder of OIN.
You can help through a group OIN calls Linux Defenders. Here is how:
- Peer to patent, examining newly published patent applications to identify prior art and lead to the applications being rejected.
- Post issue peer to patent, identifying poor quality patents held by trolls OIN can crowd-source prior art on, leading to re-hearings.
- Defensive publications, writing up inventions as prior art for posting on ip.com, a database patent examiners will look at.
“We want to develop more rigor about codifying what we know so others can’t invent around what we already know. Patent only those things that are truly unique and wrap them with defensive publications.”
Kappos fits in because his mantra is patent quality. “You can’t have overly broad patents issued. This will change what the industry does, the interpretation of the legislation, and what is happening in courts.”
There’s a warning here, however. “We have to meet that change halfway and if we don’t mobilize the community we’re contributing to the negative future we want to avoid.”
About the earlier stories. I was right. The company that bought the patents from Microsoft and passed them to OIN, called AST, is a “white hat” in the patent litigation game. But it’s a white hat of a particular type. It buys patents for its owners, licenses them for those owners, then releases them into the wild.
Paula was right, too. Microsoft packaged the 22 patents to make them tasty for trolls, offering hints on who to sue and how. It also pointedly did not offer the portfolio to OIN, the biggest player in the market.
This is the game Microsoft played, Bergelt thinks. “If you are looking for the most elegant way of putting time and distance from the sale and repercussions of a sale directly to a troll, sell to a good guy who releases to the market rather than selling directly to trolls.”
Fortunately, in this case, AST and OIN worked together. Problem solved.
Those days could end, but it will take work. The patent office can’t do this alone. With your help, however, it’s finally willing to move in the way Linux wants.
September 14th, 2009
Would you march for Internet privacy?
It’s marching season again, time for the political opposition to take it to the streets, and show its strength in numbers. (Picture from CBS News.)
But this article is no tea party. It’s about another march that happened over the weekend, in Germany. Over 10,000 people marched in Berlin marched for data protection.
They were protesting a new law meant to guarantee police the right to track back Internet traffic, with tamper-proof IDs and special police.
Germany has long been a world champion at seeking to monitor its citizens online, its avowed goal to make online law conform to what is allowed offline.
So if the German law says the government has a monopoly on gambling, so should it be online. If German law says thou shalt not speak of Nazis, so should it be online. If sharing files is truly a copyright violation, the law must halt it, regardless.
The American reaction to such government actions is generally to engineer around them, or to laugh them off. My spam folder says they have apoint. Yet even here there are magic words that cause most voters to surrender any zone of privacy once offered by someone in authority. Watch.
Child pornography. (Open your laptop.) Terrorism. (Take off your shoes.)
The Internet, being based on computing, is a binary sort of place. To be effective, laws must become absolute. Which means, at some point, we’re trusting the government with the medium’s future.
In Europe, it should be noted, data privacy marches are the property of leftists, Greens, even pirate parties. In American, right now, it’s the right that’s out of power, fearful of an intrusive government.
Anyone expecting a tea party for the Internet?
September 9th, 2009
OIN outmanuevers Microsoft, buys Linux patents
The Open Invention Network seems to have one upped Microsoft. Or has Microsoft one upped OIN?
Either way, it’s win-win for Linux.
Yesterday, OIN, whose mission is to defend Linux and open source from patent trolls, purchased 22 Linux related patents Microsoft recently sold to Allied Security Trust.
OIN chief executive Keith Bergelt would not say how much OIN spent on the patents but said it was a “meaningful amount.”
He said the open source community lucked out because the seller, AST, is not a patent troll. AST, not an investment vehicle, recently purchased the patents from Microsoft to “ensure that they did not fall into the hands of non-practicing entities that could seek to assert the patents against Linux products,” the press release stated.
Bergelt does not take issue with Microsoft’s rights to assert and sell its intellectual property but he did question why the software giant blocked OIN from the bidding.
Was it an overight? Or an attempt by Microsoft to circulate potentially dangerous IP bombs into the patent troll community?
The patents covered open source software related to operating systems and desktop and broader applications, Bergelt said. Some of them were purchased from former Unix vendor SGI.
“I don’t begrudge Microsoft’s opportunity to generate a fair return on their IP but I’m concerned about a strategy of selling Linux related and open source software patents to trolls,” Bergelt said to this blogger. No, they have not done this before and I’d hope it doesn’t happen again.”
He said it’s possible that leaving OIN out of the bidding was an oversight on Microsoft’s part — but not probable.
“I can’t imagine how they could justify it,” Bergelt said about Microsoft’s IP execs not being informed about OIN. “It [appears to be] an elegant way of insulating [the company] from criticism by [trying to]sell it to a troll.”
Again, AST is not a troll, Bergelt emphasized. But did Microsoft know that?
Sure, Microsoft made some money on the Linux related patents. That has to be annoying to OIN members who paid for them.
But this is a win-win for Linux. It demonstrates that Microsoft has not been able to cook up an uber mega legal case against Linux (maybe?) if it is selling Linux related patents to smaller entities.
And the more Linux related patents Microsoft sells, the fewer it owns.
It also demonstrates that OIN is functioning very well in the marketplace. For the money it paid, the Linux defense organization — which is backed by IBM, Novell and Red Hat, among others — has gained more patents to its own growing portolio and prevented the trolls from gaining control of 22 linux related ones. The OIN protfolio is now just south of 300 patents and more are coming.
OIN created 45 of its own and has another 45 patent applications in the works designed to protect the Linux roadmap over time.
September 8th, 2009
OIN disposal squad takes out 22 patent land mines
The Open Invention Network has taken out 22 more patent land mines, buying them from an outfit called Allied Security Trust which in turn had bought them from Microsoft.
CEO Keith Bergelt hinted to a reporter that Microsoft was not interested in selling to OIN, but the group’s press release on the matter gives no hint of that.
AST bought the patents from Microsoft in July. It is headed by Daniel McCurdy, who also runs Patent Freedom, whose mission is “to help operating companies and their advisors more effectively assess, respond to, and ultimately reduce the specific threats” posed by non-practicing entities, sometimes called patent trolls.
Even if Microsoft did not know the patents would land with OIN, it seems clear they would know the organization they were selling to had no interest in holding anyone else up with them.
ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley reported that most of the patents were part of the package of 3D technology patents Silicon Graphics sold to Microsoft in 2002.
Given that, it’s possible that the patents may allow companies or groups to create more realistic 3D games using open source.
On learning of the transaction a few hours ago, I scratched my head searching for the proper analogy. I finally came up the recent movie The Hurt Locker, coming soon to DVD, about a bomb disposal unit working in Iraq.
What OIN does is delicate work, and dreadfully important. But as it is with land mines so it is with patents. In the time it takes to neutralize a few, hundreds more may be planted.
It’s an arms race that can’t be won. The only answer is to lay no more mines, or in this case to reform the patent laws so math, or software concepts, is no longer subject to ambush.
September 8th, 2009
Europe can stick a fork where its mouth is
My Italian friend Roberto Galoppini has a post up describing the complaints of European Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes regarding the Oracle-Sun merger.
He offers this quote from her:
Databases are a key element of company IT systems. In the current economic context, all companies are looking for cost-effective IT solutions, and systems based on open-source software are increasingly emerging as viable alternatives to proprietary solutions. The Commission has to ensure that such alternatives would continue to be available.
Roberto suggests a public tender. My Eurocratic is as bad as my Italian (so I may be saying much the same thing) but if Europe really feels a need to protect competition through mySQL, why not just stick a fork in it? (England’s iCoste sells this lovely fork from Dobbies for 18 pounds, or roughly 21 Euros. Plus VAT.)
Either establish a foundation, or designate an existing one, based on something like Apache or Eclipse. Take a copy of the mySQL code — which lives under the GPL — and place it under the foundation.
You can probably make acceptance of foundation a condition for approving the merger. Oracle could sign easily because they are not really giving anything away.
The foundation might start work by creating documentation for the program in every European language. You can establish forges in every language as well, and use input from those groups to direct code enhancements.
You collect donations and other forms of support just like a U.S. foundation. You choose other important code bases to complete your stack.
The difference between proprietary and open source competition is that you have to use the force of the law to guarantee control in a proprietary market.
In an open source investment you just invest.
August 21st, 2009
Google Books sued by a pig, cat and dog
When it comes to digitizing books and offering readers and writers a business model, Google has planted the wheat, harvested it, threshed it, ground it, and baked it.
Now Microsoft, Amazon, and Yahoo think they each deserve a big slice of bread. They are taking the hen to court in order to get it.
The effort, led by attorney Gary Reback, to challenge Google’s deals with writers and publishers for digitizing “orphaned works” that are copyrighted but no longer published is less lawsuit than business by another name.
The aim here is not to help writers make money. Once a work is online it’s as available as it’s ever going to get. The idea is to get Google’s rivals a cut of the deal.
The three say they’re standing behind the Internet Archive, which also wants Google’s deal without paying for it. (The Archive in this case is played by a duck.) And in theory there is no reason an easy settlement can’t be reached. With five companies involved each firm’s piece of the costs is a lot less than it was with just Google fronting things.
Something tells me, however, that’s not going to happen. The Archive’s claim is based on the fact that Google has the money to pay for digitizing (about $1 per book), it does not, but it should have the same rights to the result. That’s silly.
So is the Open Content Alliance’s claim that Google is trying to create a “monopoly” and “rewrite the copyright law.” We are talking here about solving a problem created by long-lived corporate copyright, the fact that books now become economically worthless long before they become legally available.
Google’s solution is pretty elegant. It’s free money to authors, or those to whom they have assigned copyright, and the greatest freedom possible for readers given the stupid requirements of that law.
Are authors going to get a better deal from the lawyers for Duck, Pig, Cat and Dog? Is such a deal being offered? If there is I’m all ears. But if not why should I, as an author, care except for the fact this stalls the deal and perhaps means there’s no deal at all?
August 19th, 2009
Writers who call MPAA or RIAA awful need to look in the mirror
Powerful interest groups representing musicians, movie moguls, and even TV have been fighting the copyright wars for years and losing.
(Who is reading the paper? Find out at the bottom of this post. Picture from Expedient Means.)
They win in court, and governments are aligned with them. Individuals who stand against them on grounds of principle are slapped down hard.
But that hasn’t stopped the Internet or Moore’s Law. These powerful interests have had to realign their business models to deal with the new reality.
There is a micro-payment model called advertising and if your stuff is not online and available it does not exist.
This has not stopped some writers, some agents, and some academics from tilting at Google’s windmill.
After years of negotiating with the Authors Guild and publishers, Google last year offered the authors of “orphan works,” copyrighted but no longer published or sold, free money.
For $125 million it won the right to digitize books, and while it will offer excerpts free, the whole books must be paid for, with 63% of the money (including ad money on the free looks) going to publishers and authors.
Google takes the risks, Google pays the costs, Google does all the marketing and distribution, while you get more than half the money for sitting on your rear end. Pretty sweet, huh?
Too rich, say some University of California professors. Not rich enough, say some authors, and you’re giving Google a monopoly, complain librarians. You should have negotiated with us instead, claims the William Morris Agency.
Trouble with all this is you can opt out. If you don’t like the deal for the old crap you can’t give away along I-75, say so and it will be taken down. Publishers of orphaned works, which aren’t making money, can’t opt-out en masse, because they relinquished a lot of publishing rights when they stopping publishing.
Christopher Buckley says he opted out because he’s ornery. He’s also still selling books.
This isn’t about your stuff anyway, Chris, but keeping alive such classics as pup’s God and Man at Yale.
How are tomorrow’s young conservatives going to discover what is eventually out of print? And when Google sells a copy or sells an ad next to the good parts, you get a cut. Free money.
Far from settled? Of course. A judge has to approve it. But if you expect Google to negotiate with you individually for your out of print crap you’re just being silly.
Any other e-book publisher — Amazon, Microsoft, Sony, Apple, etc. — can easily negotiate with Google to pay a share of its costs and get the same deal. If Google balks sue. This deal is non-exclusive.
I should add that my own out-of-print magnum opus The Blankenhorn Effect is presently available at Google Books, and when my update is done (later this month) I very much hope to do an Internet publishing deal for it and save a tree or two.
The medium is the message, as Marshall McLuhan said, and the message of the Internet is pretty clear. Make it available and maybe, if you’re lucky, someone will learn something from it. Don’t make it available, and it will cease to exist. (McLuhan still exists. That’s him behind the paper.)
August 13th, 2009
When will Microsoft admit the truth about software patents?
The truth being they are more trouble than they are worth.
Ever since the State Street case set off a gold rush to patent software, and software concepts, Microsoft has been tieingtying itself in knots.
(Here is a fun game. Invite your favorite Microsoft employee to lunch and then show up in this snazzy t-shirt from Zazzle.com. Inspiration for Insanity indeed.)
In Burning The Ships Microsoft lawyer Marshall Phelps, who previously developed IBM’s successful IP regime, described many of the machinations.
He writes Microsoft felt forced to abandon the Non-Assertion of Patents (NAP) clauses in its standard contracts, then patented every strand of code it could, then tried to use those patents to push itself into new areas like Linux.
Not only has its reputation been shattered by all this — Microsoft is routinely satirized as a force of implacable evil — but 10 years later it remains subject to patent blackmail.
As the i4i case shows Microsoft remains Gulliver in Lilliput when it comes to the patent bar of the Eastern District of Texas. The i4i code was originally an add-on to Word and when Microsoft added native support for this XML functionality the plaintiff pounced. Its litigation team rolled Microsoft’s lawyers the way Mexico’s soccer team rolled over the USA yesterday.
Microsoft does not need major changes to patent law in order to make this nightmare end. Despite the adjustments made by in re Bilski, the problem remains what it has been for a decade.
Software patents are more trouble than they are worth.
In every other area of invention, companies can easily invent themselves around patent claims. You build a better mousetrap. No one can protect the idea of hating meeses to pieces.
Copyright is the best protection for software. It lasts longer, you don’t have to make a big filing on it, you don’t have to open the kimono to win in court.
Just file a case to overturn State Street, or limit your lobbying to a call for an end to software patents. Eben Moglen will give you a victory hug. The medical boys won’t object. You’ll get some of your reputation back, and you can go back to doing business instead of running a law firm.
August 10th, 2009
Microsoft still pushing a standards tax
While putting it in the way of the weasel, Microsoft is still pushing what amounts to a tax on users of Internet standards.
(Image from Amazon.com.)
It’s doing this through a definition of “open standards” that would mandate standards bodies to consider patented, protected, proprietary technology on a par with truly open source offerings, and encourage companies to pack standards bodies with paid employees.
The way Jason Matusow, Microsoft director of corporate standards, does this would do credit to any Senator seeking to filibuster a wildly-popular measure.
He calls it “balance.”
I fundamentally still believe that innovations are opportunities…and that is a good thing (for the inventor and for society). But the “no IP restrictions” concept of “open standards” does away with too much. Out of balance.
In this Matusow is pretending not to know what having a standard means. It means everyone must use whatever it is you offer. Standards are, almost by definition, not innovative. They are what everyone has, what everyone is required to have.
If a standard includes “IP restrictions” of any sort, especially royalties (no matter how reasonable or necessary you consider them) you’re imposing a tax on all users for your invention.
My idea of balance is a bit different. Innovations are a good thing. But by the time an innovation reaches a standards body it’s no longer an innovation.
Standards are a base line. They’re the minimum entry point for performing a basic function. Any royalty or limitation on using a basic function represents a private tax against all users by one vendor.
If we learned anything at all from the OOXML debate it should be that any Microsoft victory there was pyrrhic. ODF was able to deliver on its standard long before Microsoft could change its own proprietary scheme to match what the ISO approved.
If their idea was to bury ODF in the corporate user base, Microsoft failed, and at enormous cost, both to its own reputation and that of the ISO standards bodies.
I think other companies saw this and will push back hard against any future Microsoft attempts to place its own proprietary technology ahead of open source, or at least royalty-free, offerings in the future. I think the standards bodies themselves have learned to read Microsoft pronouncements carefully, and assume weasel language, something that will cost Microsoft dearly for a long time to come.
But I wonder whether Microsoft has learned anything. (Tip of the hat to Raiden’s Realm for pointing out the need for a wag of the finger.)
August 7th, 2009
Google open source strategy not just a patent dodge
Matt Asay, whose views have become increasingly corporate as the recession has ground on, wrote yesterday that Google may be investing in open source as a patent dodge.
Of course, it wasn’t his opinion he was stating. He was just quoting the speculation of a Gartner analyst, Brian Prentice.
A politician couldn’t do that better. “I’m not saying my esteemed opponent is a duck. I’m just quoting an analyst who claims to have heard a quack.”
Fact is Google has been a long-time advocate of patent reform. And on this issue it is also, like the rest of the computer industry, a long-time loser.
Nothing Machiavellian is going on here. Google has been very honest about its views, and in its advocacy.
Google has lost this battle before because the pharmaceutical and medical device makers refuse to go along. Software patents are routinely issued that cover a wide range of programs. Drug and device patents cover specific compounds or devices. Their reach is more limited, and their protection more important in those industries.
This is a simple argument that has worked before. In the last Congress the House even passed a bill. The health care complex bottled it up. The present bills, HR 1260 and S. 515, have been passed by committee but have not come up for a vote. They won’t unless an agreement is reached with the medical supply folks. There is also a Republican substitute, S. 610, in the hopper. So far Phrma isn’t budging.
Now if patent reform is passed, and if I get a pony, might an open source substitute be allowable as mitigation in calculating damages? Maybe.
But that has nothing to do with why Google bought ON Technologies. That deal is about codec technology, about bandwidth efficiency, and about the ongoing standards process. If it’s an end-run around the patent office, it’s done to assure that future Web standards remain open source. That’s in everyone’s interest.
What Matt is really displaying here, in my view, is an assumption that since Google is large it must be evil. I have commented on that before, most recently at SmartPlanet a few weeks ago.
I have no doubt Google acts in its self-interest, as all companies and indeed all institutions and individuals generally do. But self-interest and evil are different things. Until Google crosses the line I’m not crossing them off my “nice” list.
August 3rd, 2009
What the FCC can do for open spectrum
Larry Dignan is afraid the FCC may be doing too much, just looking at possibly anti-competitive deals, trying to stay on top of the news instead of sleeping in a corner, as it did for a decade before Julius Genachowski (right) came to town.
It’s a mark of just how knee-jerk the opposition to government action in markets has become, that a mere investigation can lead reporters to fingering their worry beads.
To most people it’s pretty obvious why Apple shut down Google Voice. VOIP is competition with cellular minutes, just as it was competition for wired phone minutes, which it destroyed.
I’m old enough to remember the monthly chore of auditing my phone bill each month, creating expense bills for various publishers, with the cost of each call written down and photocopied. I don’t do that any more. The cost is rolled into my cellular plan as minutes which neither I nor my publisher has to see.
But running phone calls — a low bandwidth service — over the Internet rather than the wireless network is still a cost savings, which some customers would like to capture. Only the cell phone companies don’t want them to.
This is just one of many ways in which companies have succeeded in frustrating Moore’s Law over this decade. There is no technical reason why the price to move bits should not be going down, going down constantly, and going down rapidly. The cost of equipment, the efficiency of technology, it’s all there to make it happen.
What isn’t there are competitive markets with incentives for investment and no tolerance for monopoly.
Politics has squandered the advances of Moore’s Law, and it will take more than the FCC’s meager politics to bring them back.
So let me offer a simple guideline. Call it Dana’s Law of Technology Regulation:
Regulation should conform to the trends of Moore’s Law and maintain maximum competition in the market.
It will take real changes, not just investigations, to make that happen. We need more unlicensed channels, we need wholesaling in the last mile.
Bits may not be free, but they should be as cheap as the technology creating them allows. The goal should be encouraging the market to expand opportunity, and not making anyone’s life easier.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
Subscribe to Linux and Open Source via Email alerts or RSS.
SponsoredWhite Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads
- The True Costs of Virtual Server Solutions VMware In an economic environment that is repeatedly heralding the message "do ... Download Now
- Reducing Server Total Cost of Ownership with VMware Virtualization Software VMware VMware virtualization enables customers to reduce their server TCO and ... Download Now
- Three Steps You Need to Know to Stop Data Loss Varonis Sensitive data exposed to misuse or loss... it is the stuff of nightmares ... Download Now
Essential Topics 
- Top-ranked Novell support for Red Hat at 50% less
- Get top-ranked Novell support for Red Hat when you switch
- Move to SUSE Linux Enterprise. Get 3 years of Red Hat support
- More interoperability, plus 3 years. Red Hat support, only from Novell
- Red Hat support, patches, updates with the interoperability of Novell
- Unrivaled Red Hat support now available from Novell
Recent Entries
- Chrome OS will rise or fall on the safety dance
- Larry Augustin’s practical revolution at SugarCRM
- Google goes all-in with an open source cloud
- Tim O’Reilly and the Cassandra act
- Oracle opponent cheers delay in mySQL decision
Blogs From Our Sponsors
Most Popular Posts
- Google makes Chrome OS open source today
- Google-Microsoft rivalry on with ChromeOS launch
- The importance of Sixth Sense going open source
- ChromeOS says tear down this network regulation wall
- Linux to your grandma this Christmas
- Five ways Android could get into trouble
Top Rated
- Google makes Chrome OS open source today+15 votes
- Why Android is beating Windows Mobile+13 votes
- Ubuntu celebrates Thursday drop of koala desktop and server+7 votes
- Should search engines pay tribute to content?+6 votes
- Enterprises saving $26 million per project with open source+6 votes
- Broadcom goes open source and hell freezes over+6 votes
- Microsoft partners to allow Eclipse interop on Win7, WinServer 2008 R2, Azure+5 votes
- Linux to your grandma this Christmas+5 votes
Premier Vendor Content Whitepapers, webcasts & resources from our Power Center Sponsors
- New Online Dashboard for IT Leaders
-
Read about top issues IT decision-makers face every day, plus get cost-effective solutions to real-life IT problems.
- Learn more >>
- Reduce risk. Reduce complexity. Increase reliability.
-
A simplified IT environment isn't just less complex. It's also more reliable. Standardize on a single Linux platform with SUSE Linux Enterprise from Novell, and get the world's most interoperable Linux
- Learn more >>
- Save time with automated shipping solutions
-
The Business Essentials Guide provides you useful tools and templates to help grow your business and save you time with automated shipping solutions.
- Visit the UPS Business Essentials Guide
- The best support in the Linux business
-
If Linux is going to power your mission-critical applications, you'd better have the best support known to business. Novell was rated the top provider of Linux technical support.
- Learn more >>
Archives
Favorite Links
Blogroll
- Andy Updegrove Standards Blog
- Bob Sutor’s IBM Open Blog
- Doug Levin, former CEO, BlackDuck
- Dries Buytaert
- Fabrizio Capobianco - Funambol
- Jeff Haynie
- Law and Life in Silicon Valley
- Marc Fleury
- Mark Shuttleworth
- Matt Asay
- Michael Tiemann OSI
- Mitchell Baker, Mozilla founder
- Open Source Assistive Technology Center
- Red Hat blog
- Russell Ossendryver
- Sam Ramji
- Savio Rodrigues
- Stormy Peters
- WorldLabel Blog
Favorite Links
ZDNet Blogs
- All About Microsoft
- The Apple Core
- Between the Lines
- BriefingsDirect
- Collaboration 2.0
- Dev Connection
- Digital Cameras & Camcorders
- Ed Bott's Microsoft Report
- Emerging Tech
- Enterprise Web 2.0
- Forrester Research
- Googling Google
- GreenTech Pastures
- Hardware 2.0
- Home Theater
- iGeneration
- Irregular Enterprise
- IT Project Failures
- Laptops & Desktops
- Lawgarithms
- Linux and Open Source
- Managing L'unix
- The Mobile Gadgeteer
- On Sustainability
- Rational Rants
- The Semantic Web
- Service Oriented
- Smartphones and Cell Phones
- Social Business
- Social CRM: The Conversation
- Software & Services Safari
- Software as Services
- Storage Bits
- Team Think
- Tech Broiler
- Technology and the Global Supply Chain
- Tom Foremski: IMHO
- The ToyBox
- Virtually Speaking
- The Web Life
- ZDNet Education
- ZDNet Government
- ZDNet Healthcare
- Zero Day
White Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads
- Building the Virtualized Enterprise with VMware Iinfrastructure VMware VMware virtualization software has been adopted by over 120,000 enterprise ... Download Now
- Three Steps You Need to Know to Stop Data Loss Varonis Sensitive data exposed to misuse or loss... it is the stuff of nightmares ... Download Now
- Email Security and Archiving - Clearer in the Cloud Google The time is NOW for businesses and organizations of all sizes to implement ... Download Now
SmartPlanet
- Thought-provoking progressive ideas on diverse topics that intersect with technology, business, and life, and matter to the world at large. Visit SmartPlanet
- More from IBM
-
- Can your business work smarter? Learn more about Lotus Symphony
- Learn how to work smarter and optimize cost using the IBM Smart SOA approach Download the eBook
- Smarter ways to make smarter products Read the brief from IBM
