Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page All in one big page See also: last week's Back page page. |
Linux links of the weekThe LinSpin Pages are "an amateur effort at providing market analysis and spin doctoring for the Linux OS" Have a look and you will find a number of essays looking at how Linux works with the marketplace in several areas. The FUD Counter site is a work in progress which is intended to be a definitive resource for those wishing to debunk groundless attacks against Linux. There is already a well-developed FUD FAQ in place, and a lively mailing list to support the effort. Section Editor: Jon Corbet |
November 4, 1999 |
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Letters to the editorLetters to the editor should be sent to letters@lwn.net. Preference will be given to letters which are short, to the point, and well written. If you want your email address "anti-spammed" in some way please be sure to let us know. We do not have a policy against anonymous letters, but we will be reluctant to include them. | |
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 09:36:12 +0200 From: Marko Samastur <markos@elite.org> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: Proliferation of licenses Hello, There seems to be an ongoing argument, that increasing number of licenses is somehow bad. The arguments for this are basically that it makes harder to understand the interactions between different licenses when a product is build on top of existing ones. I disagree with you on this one. I don't think that proliferation of licenses in itself is a good thing, but it is important to keep in view what a license really is. It's an agreement between two parties, the producer of the product and the customer (or licensee). This agreement explains conditions on which the producer is willing to sell, give etc. its product to the customer and rights that are granted to the customer with it. It should also describe things like how (usually where) conflicts should be resolved and other similar things that to most are just legal babble. In terms, it defines the relationship between them. From this, at least to me, follow at least two conclusions. As with any other agreement (legal or not) and relationships, all involving parties should treat computer licenses seriously. That means you should read it and understand what you are about to agree to. If you don't, don't agree to it. There's enough software out there that you should be able to find something that meets your needs and is given on enough liberal terms for you. If it doesn't, then I guess you have to weigh what's more important to you, the benefits of particular software or particular license. The other point is the view of the producer. Just as a customer should have the right to choose, so should the producer and this reflects (among other things) also in license which it chooses. Why should it use a different license, which doesn't meet all its needs, just to support unforgivable laziness of the other party? We (well, most of us do) live in countries which are regulated by laws. This should be reason enough to pay more attention to legal things in our lives. A call "don't roll your own", which might have a positive effect of not complicating things more than they should be, also might have a side effect of giving further support to the general ignorance. After all, how many people have read at least one of the licenses you've mentioned? I'd be willing to bet most haven't. Reading license agreements might not be the most fun thing to do, but if you intend to seriously use or rely on something, being a software, hardware or mortgage for a house, you should do it. It's time well spent. Best regards, Marko P.S: I'm not a lawyer & I don't like reading legal texts. But I do it anyway. | ||
Date: 3 Nov 1999 06:14:21 -0000 From: kenengel <kenengel@linuxstart.com> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: The Experts say... I have read about Linux almost every day for over two years now - hundreds of news items articles, anecdotes and reports about its flexibility, reliability, and even usability. So nowadays, whenever I read some pundit spewing FUD, or simply advising caution - "Linux is not ready for the enterprise or the home user's desktop, but they're working on it; it might be ready in 2 or 3 or 50 years..." - I think of the movie "Airplane!" Long after Striker has brought the plane safely to a dead halt, and all passengers are on safe ground, the air traffic control officer McCroskey is still advising, supporting and guiding, steadily, steadily, through grave danger and stormy conditions to an empty cockpit. | ||
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1999 12:55:36 +0100 (MET) From: Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: Bogus patents IMHO the biggest problem of the US PTO isn't that they approve bogus patents (even the most careful examiner can oversee previous art), but that they don't have a period of public review of the patent. The only way to let such a patent die is in court, and we all know that's not cheap; and you can do so only defensive (when asked for money). The German patent law allows public caveats in the first 6 months after approval and publication of a patent. It costs nothing but the stamp on the letter you write to the German PTO (e-mail not yet). If you write to the US PTO or to your senator, don't request that they should prohibit bogus patents - bogus patents are already prohibited. Tell them that a public review is the only way to find out in a timely and efficient way whether a patent is bogus or not. And it is much cheaper than hiring competent examiners. BTW Linux time.c code: I suggest removing that code, in two months. We can keep it around as example for previous art, but we won't need it any more (same with the same sort of code that should be in date). -- Bernd Paysan "If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself" http://www.jwdt.com/~paysan/ | ||
Date: Wed, 03 Nov 1999 12:46:18 +0000 From: James Durie <jdurie@anvil.co.uk> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: "windowing" patent I just read your article about the windowing patent and thought you might like to knoe about this page here. http://www.UNIX-systems.org/version2/whatsnew/year2000.html It is part of the Open groups recommendations about unix and the Year 2000 problem. They recommend doing windowing with a year border of 69. I wonder how many companies have followed their recommendations, I know my company has and although we are not directly affected by this in Europe, we do have clients in North America. James -- James Durie Phone: +44 171 749 7908 Anvil Software Limited Fax: +44 171 749 7916 46-48 Rivington Street e-mail: jdurie@anvil.co.uk London EC2A 3QP | ||
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1999 05:16:32 -0500 (EST) From: Kristofer Coward <kris@melon.org> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: McDonnell Douglas patent nonsense You mention in your article that "McDonnell Douglas is actively trying to shake down companies using the windowing technique" Is there any mention of which companies anywhere, and has anyone tried to present the Linux prior art to these companies before MD goes after a linux company? If the free software community can tip the off to the prior art, and possibly co-ordinate some funding for legal aid, it would provide yet another chunk of good open source publicity. Kris Coward | ||
From: "Bermingham, Charles E." <berminghamc@ada.org> To: "'letters@lwn.net'" <letters@lwn.net> Subject: Software patents: Idiotic and greedy Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1999 10:04:32 -0600 The windowing-technique patent mantioned in this week's Linux Weekly News is a good example of how people have learned to use ignorance and greed to achieve their objective, maybe even to "earn" a living. I saw code like this in COBOL prgrams at Chicago's Cook County Hospital as early as 1980. I saw some when I was working on a COBOL project in 1984 or 1985 here at my current job. These were examples of windowing to fix century problems in the opposite direction: IF BIRTH YEAR > CURRENT-YEAR SUBTRACT 1 FROM CENTURY etc. This kind of thing goes on and on in code all over the place. I don't suppose any government official will ever ask me, but if they did, I would tell them that software patenting is ultimately doomed. If not because of the philosophical problems involved, then at least because such exclusivism is an insult to programmers everywhere. I must admit, I reluctantly applaud those companies which use patenting *against itself* by patenting simple ideas and then not charging any royalties. I'd be happier if those organizations would help nail the coffin. I don't even know if such comments would do any good; it's been long since I've lost any trust of politicians. Remeber the "AT" patent that Hayes got for their modems? When that company went out of business, I laughed and laughed. They deserved what they got. They made things unnessarily miserable for not only their competitors, but for thousands upon thousands of system administrators all over the world. On top of that, most of us programmers knew that the use of a timing algorithm to make control decisions was just another basic principle of software. And for those of you who support software patents, it comes down to this: when you take ideas that others are willing to share with you and use them as your "property", and then you try to shake people down for their hard-earned living, you are the lowest of the low. Alexander Bell's followers did this very thing with A T & T, to garner control of telephone service the world over; because of this, and since the U.S. government broke up their monopoly, I am now hard-pressed to choose AT&T for *anything*, no matter how hard they compete. I hope those of you who are in Europe watch this situation carefully, and do whatever you can to remove this scourge from your continent. No widows or orphans are going to go hungry if you do. If you don't, some very greedy people are going to be hated instead. | ||
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