From newsletters at the-financial-news.com  Thu Apr  4 10:54:03 2002
From: newsletters at the-financial-news.com (The Financial News)
Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2002 12:54:03 +0200
Subject: Production Mini-plants in mobile containers. Co-investment Program
Message-ID: <MDAEMON-F200204041254.AA540623md50005594501@wtnserver>


The Financial News, April 2002

Production Mini-plants in mobile containers. Co-investment Program

"...Science Network will supply to countries and developing regions the technology and the necessary support for the production in series of Mini-plants in mobile containers (40-foot). The Mini-plant system is designed in such a way that all the production machinery is fixed on the platform of the container, with all wiring, piping, and installation parts; that is to say, they are fully equipped... and the mini-plant is ready for production."

More than 700 portable production systems: Bakeries, Steel Nails, Welding Electrodes, Tire Retreading, Reinforcement Bar Bending for Construction Framework, Sheeting for Roofing, Ceilings and Façades, Plated Drums, Aluminum Buckets, Injected Polypropylene Housewares, Pressed Melamine Items (Glasses, Cups, Plates, Mugs, etc.), Mufflers, Construction Electrically Welded Mesh, Plastic Bags and Packaging, Mobile units of medical assistance, Sanitary Material, Hypodermic Syringes, Hemostatic Clamps, etc. 
Science Network has started a process of Co-investment for the installation of small Assembly plants to manufacture in series the Mini-plants of portable production on the site, region or country where they may be required. One of the most relevant features is the fact that these plants will be connected to the World Trade System (WTS) with access to more than 50 million raw materials, products and services and automatic transactions for world trade.

Because of financial reasons, involving cost and social impact, the right thing to do is to set up assembly plants in the same countries and regions, using local resources (labor, some equipment, etc.)

For more information: <A HREF="mailto:reports at the-financial-news.com">Mini-plants in mobile containers</A>

By Steven P. Leibacher, The Financial News, Editor


Mini-plantas de produccion en contenedores moviles. Programa de Co-inversion

"...Science Network suministrara a paises y regiones en vias de desarrollo la tecnologia y el apoyo necesario para la fabricacion en serie de Mini-plantas de produccion en contenedores moviles (40-foot). El sistema de mini-plantas esta diseñado de forma que todas las maquinas de produccion van instaladas fijas sobre la propia plataforma del contenedor, con el cableado, tuberias e instalaciones; es decir, completamente equipadas... y a partir de ese momento están listas para producir." 
Mas de 700 sistemas de produccion portatil: Panaderias, Producción de clavos de acero, Electrodos para soldadura, Recauchutado de neumaticos, Curvado de hierro para armaduras de construccion, Lamina perfilada para cubiertas, techos y cerramientos de fachada, Bidones de chapa, Cubos de aluminio, Menaje de polipropileno inyectado, Piezas de melamina prensada (vasos, platos, tazas, cafeteras, etc.) Silenciadores para vehiculos, Malla electrosoldada para la construccion, Bolsas y envases de plastico, Unidades moviles de asistencia medica, Material sanitario (jeringas hipodermicas, Pinzas hemostaticas, etc.)

Science Network ha puesto en marcha un proceso de Co-inversion para la instalacion de pequeñas Plantas ensambladoras para fabricar en serie las Mini-plantas de produccion portatil, en el lugar, region o pais que lo necesite. Una de las características relevantes es el hecho de que dichas plantas quedaran conectadas al Sistema del Comercio Mundial (WTS) con acceso a mas de 50 millones de mercancias, materia primas, productos, servicios y las operaciones automaticas de comercio internacional. 
Resulta obvio que por razones economicas, de costes y de impacto social, lo apropiado es instalar plantas ensambladoras en los mismos paises y regiones asi como utilizar los recursos locales (mano de obra, ciertos equipamientos, etc.)

Para recibir mas infromacion: <A HREF="mailto:reports at the-financial-news.com">Mini-plantas de produccion en contenedores moviles</A>

Steven P. Leibacher, The Financial News, Editor

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From adulau-conos at conostix.com  Fri Apr  5 15:35:59 2002
From: adulau-conos at conostix.com (Alexandre Dulaunoy)
Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2002 17:35:59 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards 
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0204051735230.27264-100000@perycles.unix.be.EU.org>

http://www.advogato.org/article/453.html

Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
Posted 4 Apr 2002 by atai (Journeyer)

In its continuous battle against the GPL, Microsoft is trying a new 
tactic, a combination of patent claims and licensing of technical 
standards. In the "Royalty-Free CIFS Technical Reference License 
Agreement", Microsoft defines the GNU GPL as an "IPR Impairing License" 
and requires companies not to distribute their implementations of the CIFS 
specification "in any manner that would subject such Company 
Implementation to the terms of an IPR Impairing License." This attack is 
clearly aimed at the successful GPLed CIFS implementation, Samba.

The license defines

1.4 "IPR Impairing License" shall mean the GNU General Public License, the 
GNU Lesser/Library General Public License, and any license that requires 
in any instance that other software distributed with software subject to 
such license (a) be disclosed and distributed in source code form; (b) be 
licensed for purposes of making derivative works; or (c) be 
redistributable at no charge.

and

1.6 "Necessary Claims" shall mean those claims of a patent or patent 
application, including without limitation, United States Patents Nos. 
5,265,261 and 5,437,013, which (a) are owned, controlled or sublicenseable 
by Microsoft without payment of a fee to an unaffiliated third party; and 
(b) are necessarily infringed by implementing the CIFS communication 
protocol as set forth in the Technical Reference, wherein a claim is 
necessarily infringed only when there are no technically reasonable 
alternatives to such infringement.

And it requires

3.3 IPR Impairing License Restrictions. For reasons, including without 
limitation, because (i) Company does not have the right to sublicense its 
rights to the Necessary Claims and (ii) Company's license rights hereunder 
to Microsoft's intellectual property are limited in scope, Company shall 
not distribute any Company Implementation in any manner that would subject 
such Company Implementation to the terms of an IPR Impairing License. 


-- 
Alexandre Dulaunoy		 http://www.foo.be/ AD993-RIPE			http://www.ael.be/
"People who fight may lose.  People who do not fight have already lost."
  - Bertolt Brecht


_______________________________________________
asbl-libre mailing list
asbl-libre at ael.be
http://www.be.linux.org/mailman/listinfo/asbl-libre

ASBL Association Electronique Libre http://www.ael.be/ 



From Weimer at CERT.Uni-Stuttgart.DE  Fri Apr  5 16:38:57 2002
From: Weimer at CERT.Uni-Stuttgart.DE (Florian Weimer)
Date: Fri, 05 Apr 2002 18:38:57 +0200
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0204051735230.27264-100000@perycles.unix.be.EU.org> (Alexandre
 Dulaunoy's message of "Fri, 5 Apr 2002 17:35:59 +0200 (CEST)")
References: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0204051735230.27264-100000@perycles.unix.be.EU.org>
Message-ID: <87wuvmje1q.fsf@CERT.Uni-Stuttgart.DE>

Alexandre Dulaunoy <adulau-conos at conostix.com> writes:

> 1.6 "Necessary Claims" shall mean those claims of a patent or patent 
> application, including without limitation, United States Patents Nos. 
> 5,265,261 and 5,437,013, which (a) are owned, controlled or sublicenseable 

5,265,261 is easy to work around (just move the functionality
described in this patent to the kernel; the claims cover only
applications).

I'm not sure how to work around the second patent.  You could move the
redirector to a different machine (although this would hamper
performance), or you could avoid a separate "redirector" entity (I
don't know if it is feasible).

Or you could search prior art. ;-)

-- 
Florian Weimer 	                  Weimer at CERT.Uni-Stuttgart.DE
University of Stuttgart           http://CERT.Uni-Stuttgart.DE/people/fw/
RUS-CERT                          +49-711-685-5973/fax +49-711-685-5898


From xdrudis at tinet.org  Fri Apr  5 16:52:12 2002
From: xdrudis at tinet.org (xdrudis at tinet.org)
Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2002 18:52:12 +0200
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS
 standards
Message-ID: <20b281d36c.1d36c20b28@tinet.org>

> Or you could search prior art. ;-)
>

I guess you meam for USA citizens. 

For UE citizens there's a better option. And it does not need 
to be repeated for each patent that comes across:

Dedicate some time 
to convince your politicians to turn down directive proposal
0047/2002, written mostly by the BSA. At least, if you don't want to
talk 
to politicians, or businesses, institutions or associations, 
contribute some time to help those who do (translate, gather
information, design, maintain sites, contribute money.

see  http://swpat.ffii.org/vreji/papri/eubsa-swpat0202/index.en.html
http://www.eurolinux.org/news/warn01C/index.en.html

for accounts of this dirty directive proposal by BSA and EU Comission. 

And get in contact with eurolinux, the FSFE or other organisations 
to coordinate your efforts (Caliu in Catalonia). 

Because I guess everybody has already signed 

http://petition.eurolinux.org

P.S. In fact for USA citizens their better option is to change 
their patent law, but I can tell less about how to do that.



From markj at cloaked.freeserve.co.uk  Fri Apr  5 23:19:02 2002
From: markj at cloaked.freeserve.co.uk (MJ Ray)
Date: Fri, 05 Apr 2002 23:19:02 GMT
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards 
References: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0204051735230.27264-100000@perycles.unix.be.EU.org>
Message-ID: <slrnaasc75.gc1.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>

Alexandre Dulaunoy <adulau-conos at conostix.com> wrote:
> Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards

Can someone tell me whether we should expect this tactic against any Free
Software .net implementations?  Thanks, MJR.




From home at alexhudson.com  Sat Apr  6 07:17:38 2002
From: home at alexhudson.com (Alex Hudson)
Date: 06 Apr 2002 08:17:38 +0100
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <slrnaasc75.gc1.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>
References: 	<Pine.LNX.4.44.0204051735230.27264-100000@perycles.unix.be.EU.org> 
	<slrnaasc75.gc1.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <1018077458.11610.33.camel@rendevous.alexhudson.com>

On Sat, 2002-04-06 at 00:19, MJ Ray wrote:
> Alexandre Dulaunoy <adulau-conos at conostix.com> wrote:
> > Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
> 
> Can someone tell me whether we should expect this tactic against any Free
> Software .net implementations?  Thanks, MJR.

This has been discussed before. By participating in the ECMA
standardisation process (for part of the CLR) Microsoft are forced to
disclose any patents that are key for the operation of the system that
they are not willing to licence. So, if they do have patents, they will
either be RAND or not critical for the operation of the CLR (i.e.,
run-time compiler optimizations is a likely subject). 

Passport is probably the subject of patents, although I've never seen
any mention of patents which might be applicable. We already know of the
first two CIFS patents, and there are probably other patents which apply
to CIFS/SMB - security facilities are often another easy target.

I would expect that Mono will be pretty safe from patent disputes. Their
problem is possible copyright infringement from people who've interacted
with Rotor and the Microsoft implementation of mscorlib.dll. Everything
else they are doing is pretty run-of-the-mill.

dotGnu probably has worse problems, given the larger scope of the
project. Rotor, etc., also poses them a problem, but I would expect that
some of the stuff they intend to do will infringe some patent or other
(especially the crypto/identity stuff). 

I would love to see Microsoft attempt to enforce its CIFS patents. From
the look of them, they don't look especially strong, and there are
strong interests that want to see SMB/CIFS stay unencumbered (Sun spring
to mind..). Sadly it looks like they will be used more as barriers for
independent developers - lines in the sand they dare not cross.

Cheers,

Alex.

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From markj at cloaked.freeserve.co.uk  Sat Apr  6 09:58:53 2002
From: markj at cloaked.freeserve.co.uk (MJ Ray)
Date: Sat, 06 Apr 2002 09:58:53 GMT
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
References: <slrnaasc75.gc1.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <Pine.LNX.4.44.0204051735230.27264-100000@perycles.unix.be.EU.org> <slrnaasc75.gc1.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <1018077458.11610.33.camel@rendevous.alexhudson.com>
Message-ID: <slrnaathmt.6tl.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>

Alex Hudson <home at alexhudson.com> wrote:
> [...] So, if they do have patents, they will either be RAND or not
> critical for the operation of the CLR (i.e., run-time compiler
> optimizations is a likely subject).=20

RAND is not good enough, is it?



From leypold at informatik.uni-tuebingen.de  Sat Apr  6 09:59:15 2002
From: leypold at informatik.uni-tuebingen.de (M E Leypold @ labnet)
Date: Sat, 6 Apr 2002 11:59:15 +0200
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards 
In-Reply-To: <slrnaasc75.gc1.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0204051735230.27264-100000@perycles.unix.be.EU.org>
	<slrnaasc75.gc1.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <15534.50931.110888.64790@hod.void.org>


MJ Ray writes:
 > Alexandre Dulaunoy <adulau-conos at conostix.com> wrote:
 > > Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
 > 
 > Can someone tell me whether we should expect this tactic against any Free
 > Software .net implementations?  Thanks, MJR.

Expect the worst. I'm no Mikrosoftie, but the direction of that
licensing clauses is clear to me. If it works, there will be more of
that kind.

Regards -- Markus



From joao at silvaneves.org  Sat Apr  6 15:56:05 2002
From: joao at silvaneves.org (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jo=E3o?= Miguel Neves)
Date: 06 Apr 2002 16:56:05 +0100
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <slrnaathmt.6tl.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>
References: <slrnaasc75.gc1.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>
	<Pine.LNX.4.44.0204051735230.27264-100000@perycles.unix.be.EU.org>
	<slrnaasc75.gc1.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>
	<1018077458.11610.33.camel@rendevous.alexhudson.com> 
	<slrnaathmt.6tl.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <1018108579.866.1.camel@central>

On Sáb, 2002-04-06 at 10:58, MJ Ray wrote:
> Alex Hudson <home at alexhudson.com> wrote:
> > [...] So, if they do have patents, they will either be RAND or not
> > critical for the operation of the CLR (i.e., run-time compiler
> > optimizations is a likely subject).=20
> 
> RAND is not good enough, is it?
> 
No, because RAND licenses are per copy, so you can't have the freedom to
redistribute the program. This means it can't be used on Free Software.
-- 
						João Miguel Neves
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From xdrudis at tinet.org  Sat Apr  6 11:10:20 2002
From: xdrudis at tinet.org (Xavi Drudis Ferran)
Date: Sat, 6 Apr 2002 13:10:20 +0200
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <1018077458.11610.33.camel@rendevous.alexhudson.com>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0204051735230.27264-100000@perycles.unix.be.EU.org> <slrnaasc75.gc1.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <1018077458.11610.33.camel@rendevous.alexhudson.com>
Message-ID: <20020406111020.GA789@golem>

El Sat, Apr 06, 2002 at 08:17:38AM +0100, Alex Hudson deia:
> > 
> > Can someone tell me whether we should expect this tactic against any Free
> > Software .net implementations?  Thanks, MJR.
> 

I don't remember reading it myself, but apparently this may talk about
it (Ballmer at CeBIT).  Of course you possibly have to read through the FUD.


 http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/jk-12.03.02-000/

And, to Alex, RAND is incompatible with free software, and if it wasn't we should check 
the exact terms of the ECMA policy (is M$ forced to diclose/license all patents, 
or can they claim later they didn't realise they had a patent that blocks 
the standard?). 



-- 
Xavi Drudis Ferran
xdrudis at tinet.org


From mk270 at cam.ac.uk  Sat Apr  6 17:40:40 2002
From: mk270 at cam.ac.uk (Martin Keegan)
Date: Sat, 6 Apr 2002 18:40:40 +0100 (BST)
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406184029.10771I-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk>

If there's a solid case, I'm well up for doing the paperwork to submit a
formal complaint about this issue to the UK Office of Fair Trading, with
whom I was in contact by phone yesterday. What needs to be demonstrated is
evidence of abuse of a dominant position. 

This document linked from Advogato purports to be a combination of a
copyright licence (as far as I can see -- and on closer inspection, 3.1
says so) governing copying the Technical Reference document and a patent
licence governing implementation of any system which comes under the
claims of the patents mentioned. 

In practical terms, what this is is the US government forcing Microsoft to
disclose technical information relating to one of the essential facilities
it controls, and Microsoft doing so in such a way as to discriminate
against one of its principal competitors.

Mk




From jeroen at dekkers.cx  Sat Apr  6 19:21:02 2002
From: jeroen at dekkers.cx (Jeroen Dekkers)
Date: Sat, 6 Apr 2002 21:21:02 +0200
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <1018108579.866.1.camel@central>
References: <slrnaasc75.gc1.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <Pine.LNX.4.44.0204051735230.27264-100000@perycles.unix.be.EU.org> <slrnaasc75.gc1.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <1018077458.11610.33.camel@rendevous.alexhudson.com> <slrnaathmt.6tl.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <1018108579.866.1.camel@central>
Message-ID: <20020406192102.GB426@celeron.dekkers>

On Sat, Apr 06, 2002 at 04:56:05PM +0100, Jo?o Miguel Neves wrote:
> On S?b, 2002-04-06 at 10:58, MJ Ray wrote:
> > RAND is not good enough, is it?
> > 
> No, because RAND licenses are per copy, so you can't have the freedom to
> redistribute the program. This means it can't be used on Free Software.

Why do we care about those patents at all? I agree that the USA is an
important part of the world, but it isn't *the* world. We don't have
patents in Europe and hopefully never get them. This means patents
aren't a problem for all developers in non-USA world. You have the
freedom to redistributie the program, only in some countries where the
people don't have freedom you can't. (Countries like the USA, Irak,
etc.)

Jeroen Dekkers
-- 
Jabber supporter - http://www.jabber.org Jabber ID: jdekkers at jabber.org
Debian GNU supporter - http://www.debian.org http://www.gnu.org
IRC: jeroen at openprojects
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From xdrudis at tinet.org  Sat Apr  6 19:20:28 2002
From: xdrudis at tinet.org (xdrudis at tinet.org)
Date: Sat, 6 Apr 2002 21:20:28 +0200
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406180350.10771F-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk>
References: <20020406111020.GA789@golem> <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406180350.10771F-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <20020406192028.GA3241@golem>

El Sat, Apr 06, 2002 at 06:40:00PM +0100, Martin Keegan deia:
> 
> If there's a solid case, I'm well up for doing the paperwork to submit a
> formal complaint about this issue to the UK Office of Fair Trading, with
> whom I was in contact by phone yesterday. What needs to be demonstrated is
> evidence of abuse of a dominant position. 
> 

I don't know if there is a solid case (IANAL, and IANAUKC) 
What I know is that the license only cites (not limiting itself to) two 
USA patents. First of all we shsould know whether there is an European 
or UK (in your case) patent. If they aren't the license is void of any force. 
(USA patents only apply to the USA). The problem is how do you know 
if there is any patent or not. You can never be 100% sure, I'd say, and 
then you can't go and tell your comrades: keep calm, no real threat here. 
That's the problem with patents, legal insecurity and therefore very 
effective FUD. If you find the patent, then you can file the complaint
to the UK Office for Fair Trading (or invalidate the patent on subject matter 
grounds, maybe). But this would only stop this strike. There'll be more 
and more. Microsoft can hire many lawyers and patent attorneys.   

There are some hints and todos here:

http://swpat.ffii.org/patents/effects/cifs/index.en.html

> This document linked from Advogato purports to be a combination of a
> copyright licence (as far as I can see -- and on closer inspection, 3.1
> says so) governing copying the Technical Reference document and a patent
> licence governing implementation of any system which comes under the
> claims of the patents mentioned. 
>

I get the same impression. The force of the copyright license is ridiculous. 
It does no harm. We don't republish the specification and that's it. 
The probem is the patent license. 

So what I tried to say is that the most effective 
way to fight this is getting rid of software patents, which are just yet illegal 
in Europe, but are about to be legalised if we don't do something to stop 
our politicians legalising them. We must also stop the EPO (and I'm told the 
UKPTO) from issuing patents that don't conform to the law.

Without software patents, those types of licenses are impossible, and nobody 
could forbid nobody to write, publish or trade in tehir own software. 
 
I heard that UK is the country pushing for software patents in Europe. So 
your help  trying to change that would be more useful (IMHO) than fighting 
this single license. If you want to help your country fellows in keeping 
our law system sane, you may want to read 

http://swpat.ffii.org/players/uk/index.en.html

Writing to your MEPs and Ministers would be most useful. And there is 
some care to be taken not too be carreid away by playing with words 
("we won't patent software, just methods to calculate things with 
a general computer", "we won't patent programs as such, just programs 
run on computers", and things like that) 

> In practical terms, what this is is the US government forcing Microsoft to
> disclose technical information relating to one of the essential facilities
> it controls, and Microsoft doing so in such a way as to discriminate
> against one of its principal competitors.
>

Microsoft can't fight this competitor in the current market. Their business 
model is broken, and they live on inertia. Their only 
recourse is to change the law so that the market is handled to them by 
our own lawmakers. That's exactly what they're doing in Europe through the BSA.
See

http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/eubsa-swpat0202/index.en.html

-- 
Xavi Drudis Ferran
xdrudis at tinet.org


From xdrudis at tinet.org  Sat Apr  6 19:32:52 2002
From: xdrudis at tinet.org (Xavi Drudis Ferran)
Date: Sat, 6 Apr 2002 21:32:52 +0200
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <20020406192102.GB426@celeron.dekkers>
References: <slrnaasc75.gc1.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <Pine.LNX.4.44.0204051735230.27264-100000@perycles.unix.be.EU.org> <slrnaasc75.gc1.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <1018077458.11610.33.camel@rendevous.alexhudson.com> <slrnaathmt.6tl.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <1018108579.866.1.camel@central> <20020406192102.GB426@celeron.dekkers>
Message-ID: <20020406193252.GB3241@golem>

El Sat, Apr 06, 2002 at 09:21:02PM +0200, Jeroen Dekkers deia:
> 
> important part of the world, but it isn't *the* world. We don't have
> patents in Europe and hopefully never get them. This means patents

I think our time is not for hoping but for helping hope with some 
action. The directive proposal 2002/0047 to introduce software patents 
in Europe has been written (mostly) by the BSA, has been blessed by the 
Comission, and is in the European Parliament and the Council. We better 
make sure our elected politicians know what to vote. 

And Europe _has_ software patents. It's just that they aren't legal, 
so nobody knows how threatening they are until you come back from court.
But something like 30000 software patents have been granted by the EPO.
I'm told they're enough to frighten people and stop them from writing or 
publishing software sometimes. 



-- 
Xavi Drudis Ferran
xdrudis at tinet.org


From martin at no.ucant.org  Sat Apr  6 20:20:39 2002
From: martin at no.ucant.org (Martin Keegan)
Date: Sat, 6 Apr 2002 21:20:39 +0100 (BST)
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <20020406192102.GB426@celeron.dekkers>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406211248.10771V-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk>

On Sat, 6 Apr 2002, Jeroen Dekkers wrote:

> Why do we care about those patents at all? I agree that the USA is an

It's not the patents (the Ethernet patents have been great for free
software), it's the licensing. Intellectual Property law (copyrights,
patents, etc) says Microsoft can license the patents and its copyrighted
work as it wants to. Competition law says otherwise.

I'll tell you why we should care about this (namely the action by
Microsoft which occasioned this thread):

This action is an attempt to hurt Samba. Samba is critical to the
wider acceptance of free software. If they can't get Samba as part of the
package, many users won't choose a free system, they'll chose a
proprietary system. The fewer users there are, the smaller the resistance
will be to attempts to lock down the hardware so free software won't run
on it.

If you want free software only to run on old hardware, so be it. That's
not a world I want to live in.

> important part of the world, but it isn't *the* world. We don't have
> patents in Europe and hopefully never get them. This means patents

This is simply false.

> aren't a problem for all developers in non-USA world. You have the
> freedom to redistributie the program, only in some countries where the
> people don't have freedom you can't. (Countries like the USA, Irak,

Are you from a country which has the European Copyright Directive, or is
within the territory of the European Patent Office?

Mk



From jeroen at dekkers.cx  Sat Apr  6 20:27:20 2002
From: jeroen at dekkers.cx (Jeroen Dekkers)
Date: Sat, 6 Apr 2002 22:27:20 +0200
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <20020406193252.GB3241@golem>
References: <slrnaasc75.gc1.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <Pine.LNX.4.44.0204051735230.27264-100000@perycles.unix.be.EU.org> <slrnaasc75.gc1.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <1018077458.11610.33.camel@rendevous.alexhudson.com> <slrnaathmt.6tl.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <1018108579.866.1.camel@central> <20020406192102.GB426@celeron.dekkers> <20020406193252.GB3241@golem>
Message-ID: <20020406202720.GA853@celeron.dekkers>

On Sat, Apr 06, 2002 at 09:32:52PM +0200, Xavi Drudis Ferran wrote:
> El Sat, Apr 06, 2002 at 09:21:02PM +0200, Jeroen Dekkers deia:
> > 
> > important part of the world, but it isn't *the* world. We don't have
> > patents in Europe and hopefully never get them. This means patents
> 
> I think our time is not for hoping but for helping hope with some 
> action. The directive proposal 2002/0047 to introduce software patents 
> in Europe has been written (mostly) by the BSA, has been blessed by the 
> Comission, and is in the European Parliament and the Council. We better 
> make sure our elected politicians know what to vote. 

That was actually what I intended to say with my mail. If we stop
patents now microsoft can't play the same tactics in Europe and we can
probably develop the patented things in Europe. For the USA patents, I
personally don't care about them, as I don't live in the USA and don't
have any plans to go there. Yes, it's a bad situation, but IMHO we
need to be sure that the EU isn't going that bad way first.

> And Europe _has_ software patents. It's just that they aren't legal, 

Let's keep it illegal. :)

> so nobody knows how threatening they are until you come back from court.
> But something like 30000 software patents have been granted by the EPO.
> I'm told they're enough to frighten people and stop them from writing or 
> publishing software sometimes. 

I didn't know this, I hope they aren't threatening at all. :(

Jeroen Dekkers
-- 
Jabber supporter - http://www.jabber.org Jabber ID: jdekkers at jabber.org
Debian GNU supporter - http://www.debian.org http://www.gnu.org
IRC: jeroen at openprojects
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From jeroen at dekkers.cx  Sat Apr  6 20:42:51 2002
From: jeroen at dekkers.cx (Jeroen Dekkers)
Date: Sat, 6 Apr 2002 22:42:51 +0200
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406211248.10771V-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk>
References: <20020406192102.GB426@celeron.dekkers> <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406211248.10771V-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <20020406204251.GB853@celeron.dekkers>

On Sat, Apr 06, 2002 at 09:20:39PM +0100, Martin Keegan wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 6 Apr 2002, Jeroen Dekkers wrote:
> 
> > Why do we care about those patents at all? I agree that the USA is an
> 
> It's not the patents (the Ethernet patents have been great for free
> software), it's the licensing. Intellectual Property law (copyrights,
> patents, etc) says Microsoft can license the patents and its copyrighted
> work as it wants to. Competition law says otherwise.
>
> I'll tell you why we should care about this (namely the action by
> Microsoft which occasioned this thread):

The action of Microsoft shows that we are going to good way, we are
really a big threat to them and that's nice. We only have to be sure
we can continue and win the war.
 
> This action is an attempt to hurt Samba. Samba is critical to the
> wider acceptance of free software. If they can't get Samba as part of the
> package, many users won't choose a free system, they'll chose a
> proprietary system. The fewer users there are, the smaller the resistance
> will be to attempts to lock down the hardware so free software won't run
> on it.

But the actual patent license doesn't matter much AFAICS. Yes, this is
something wrong, but I think we can work around it at least.
 
> > important part of the world, but it isn't *the* world. We don't have
> > patents in Europe and hopefully never get them. This means patents
> 
> This is simply false.

I mean software patents and they aren't legal in Europe AFAIK.
 
> > aren't a problem for all developers in non-USA world. You have the
> > freedom to redistributie the program, only in some countries where the
> > people don't have freedom you can't. (Countries like the USA, Irak,
> 
> Are you from a country which has the European Copyright Directive, or is
> within the territory of the European Patent Office?

Yes, I know of the bad things happening at the moment. However, I
don't see how the patents of microsoft harm me.

Jeroen Dekkers
-- 
Jabber supporter - http://www.jabber.org Jabber ID: jdekkers at jabber.org
Debian GNU supporter - http://www.debian.org http://www.gnu.org
IRC: jeroen at openprojects
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From xdrudis at tinet.org  Sat Apr  6 20:48:54 2002
From: xdrudis at tinet.org (Xavi Drudis Ferran)
Date: Sat, 6 Apr 2002 22:48:54 +0200
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406211248.10771V-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk>
References: <20020406192102.GB426@celeron.dekkers> <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406211248.10771V-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <20020406204853.GA3815@golem>

El Sat, Apr 06, 2002 at 09:20:39PM +0100, Martin Keegan deia:
> 
> On Sat, 6 Apr 2002, Jeroen Dekkers wrote:
> 
> > Why do we care about those patents at all? I agree that the USA is an
> 
> It's not the patents (the Ethernet patents have been great for free
> software), it's the licensing. Intellectual Property law (copyrights,

I disagree. The problem is the patents grant he owner the right to 
impose any license (yes, yes, there is other law too, so you can't 
ask the licensee for his first son). 

Any patent is a deal between society and the patentee. Society is supposed 
to gain an invention that it wouldn't know otherwise, and the patenty 
gets the privilege to take away the freedom of members of the society to 
commercialise the invention (for 20 years maximum). 

I don' know about mechanics, chemicals, etc. And I don't know about 
electronics, which is, I guess, what the Ethernet patent is about. 
Possibly in those fields patents are a good deal as you say. I don't
work in that, so I don't know.

But for software, patents 
are a bad deal for society. It gains a discovery it would have got anyway 
sooner or later (probably as soon as it needs it, because you don't have 
to build an expensive laboratory to innovate in software), and pays with freedom 
to commercialise software. Since software is information it pays with 
freedom to distribute information, (free expression, anyone?) 
and that is more than what you pay 
when letting your patent office grant a patent for a car engine. After 
all, many more people benefit from new car engines than are able to 
set up a car engine factory but can't because of the patent. 
For software, there are just as many people benefiting from new 
software than there are with a computer to write it and distribute it, 
so you pay with many more people's freedoms for something you would 
have anyway. I call that a bad deal.

So the problem is software patents. Not a particular way of licensing.

> patents, etc) says Microsoft can license the patents and its copyrighted
> work as it wants to. Competition law says otherwise.
>

Current European law (European Patent Convention article 52) says 
you can't patent programs for computers as such. If you can't patent 
them, you can't license them. The problem is the EPO does not obey 
that law. 
 
> I'll tell you why we should care about this (namely the action by
> Microsoft which occasioned this thread):
> 
> This action is an attempt to hurt Samba. Samba is critical to the

I agree, samba is critical. But I think we should cure the disease, 
not the symptoms. 

Sorry, I'm preaching to the choir, ain't I?. Your "It's not the patents"
is what got me started. 

-- 
Xavi Drudis Ferran
xdrudis at tinet.org


From xdrudis at tinet.org  Sat Apr  6 20:55:26 2002
From: xdrudis at tinet.org (Xavi Drudis Ferran)
Date: Sat, 6 Apr 2002 22:55:26 +0200
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <20020406202720.GA853@celeron.dekkers>
References: <slrnaasc75.gc1.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <Pine.LNX.4.44.0204051735230.27264-100000@perycles.unix.be.EU.org> <slrnaasc75.gc1.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <1018077458.11610.33.camel@rendevous.alexhudson.com> <slrnaathmt.6tl.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <1018108579.866.1.camel@central> <20020406192102.GB426@celeron.dekkers> <20020406193252.GB3241@golem> <20020406202720.GA853@celeron.dekkers>
Message-ID: <20020406205526.GB3815@golem>

El Sat, Apr 06, 2002 at 10:27:20PM +0200, Jeroen Dekkers deia:
> 
> That was actually what I intended to say with my mail. If we stop
> patents now microsoft can't play the same tactics in Europe and we can
> probably develop the patented things in Europe. For the USA patents, I
> personally don't care about them, as I don't live in the USA and don't
> have any plans to go there. Yes, it's a bad situation, but IMHO we
> need to be sure that the EU isn't going that bad way first.
>
Ok. I quite agree (I think we would do well to care for the USA  _after_
we solve our own problems). 
 
> > so nobody knows how threatening they are until you come back from court.
> > But something like 30000 software patents have been granted by the EPO.
> > I'm told they're enough to frighten people and stop them from writing or 
> > publishing software sometimes. 
> 
> I didn't know this, I hope they aren't threatening at all. :(
>

The fact you can't be sure it's a threat in itself. Of course it will get 
worse if they're legalised. 

Since you didn't know, you may want to see the European Software
Patent Horror Gallery

http://swpat.ffii.org/patents/index.en.html


-- 
Xavi Drudis Ferran
xdrudis at tinet.org


From markj at cloaked.freeserve.co.uk  Sat Apr  6 22:51:09 2002
From: markj at cloaked.freeserve.co.uk (MJ Ray)
Date: Sat, 06 Apr 2002 22:51:09 GMT
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
References: <20020406192102.GB426@celeron.dekkers> <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406211248.10771V-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <slrnaauuut.ihn.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>

Martin Keegan <martin at no.ucant.org> wrote:
> This action is an attempt to hurt Samba. Samba is critical to the
> wider acceptance of free software.

It need not be, although it currently is.  Samba is just an implementation
of someone else's interfaces, which is not normally a good way to succeed. 
You're always going to be behind and they have the upper hand.  Why help
them to continue their misrule?

What we need is a reliable read-write user-driven mount over an encrypted
connection.  For Linux, AVFS looks like the best potential solution at
present, so if you want to help there, find how to fix their ssh module (or
document it better so that I can figure it out) so as to talk to my
ssh-agent (probably echoing the details into a ssh_ctl or similar), if it's
possible.  For now, I have AVFS doing ftp mounts and the like.

I expect this sort of thing is simple for hurd ;-)

> If they can't get Samba as part of the package, many users won't choose a
> free system, they'll chose a proprietary system. [...]

Will they still, if we have a better alternative?  Surely Samba is normally
used during migration.  You never know, availability of a more secure remote
mount may make them have to implement it in their OS at last.  Then we have
the upper hand.



From markj at cloaked.freeserve.co.uk  Sat Apr  6 23:00:01 2002
From: markj at cloaked.freeserve.co.uk (MJ Ray)
Date: Sat, 06 Apr 2002 23:00:01 GMT
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
References: <20020406111020.GA789@golem> <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406180350.10771F-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk> <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406180350.10771F-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk> <20020406192028.GA3241@golem>
Message-ID: <slrnaauvfh.ihn.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>

xdrudis at tinet.org <xdrudis at tinet.org> wrote:
> I heard that UK is the country pushing for software patents in Europe. 

Please, do not start that again.  The UK Government, advised by the UKPTO,
merely appears trying to export our ambiguous wording.  I'm willing to
believe that they don't know how much harm this will do.  It still needs to
be stopped.

I don't think it's fair to say that the UK is pushing for it.  I don't think
most UK subjects are even aware of the issue right now, not even the ones
who ought to know about it.

> So your help trying to change that would be more useful (IMHO) than
> fighting this single license. If you want to help your country fellows in
> keeping our law system sane, you may want to read
> 
> http://swpat.ffii.org/players/uk/index.en.html

And then you may want to help AFFS organise its campaign against this
ill-considered move.  http://www.affs.org.uk/   We're looking for new faces
to help us on this troublesome issue.  Other campaigns are setting up, too.



From strange at nsk.yi.org  Sat Apr  6 23:18:23 2002
From: strange at nsk.yi.org (Luciano Miguel Ferreira Rocha)
Date: Sun, 7 Apr 2002 00:18:23 +0100
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <slrnaauuut.ihn.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>; from markj@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk on Sat, Apr 06, 2002 at 10:51:09PM +0000
References: <20020406192102.GB426@celeron.dekkers> <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406211248.10771V-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk> <slrnaauuut.ihn.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <20020407001823.A8901@nsk.yi.org>

On Sat, Apr 06, 2002 at 10:51:09PM +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
> > If they can't get Samba as part of the package, many users won't choose a
> > free system, they'll chose a proprietary system. [...]
> 
> Will they still, if we have a better alternative?
Most use samba because it's the best alternative for CIFS servicing, not
because CIFS is the best remote filesystem.

> Surely Samba is normally used during migration.
I don't think so. Some substitute win32 servers for free unix servers, but
remain with win32 clients because of the "habituation" caused by Word and
a dumb GUI. Some even use free unix servers without the knowledge of the
lesser technical managers.

> You never know, availability of a more secure remote
> mount may make them have to implement it in their OS at last.  Then we have
> the upper hand.
Availability of more secure remote mounts hasn't yet made then implement
them. Microsoft is in a position were it can dictate the standars (most of
them) used by clients, and those trying to fight Microsoft then have to
provide both server and clients with support for the same services.

Regards,
Luciano Rocha

-- 
Luciano Rocha, strange at nsk.yi.org

The trouble with computers is that they do what you tell them, not what
you want.
                -- D. Cohen


From markj at cloaked.freeserve.co.uk  Sat Apr  6 23:30:35 2002
From: markj at cloaked.freeserve.co.uk (MJ Ray)
Date: Sun, 07 Apr 2002 00:30:35 +0100
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards 
In-Reply-To: Message from Luciano Miguel Ferreira Rocha <strange@nsk.yi.org> 
   of "Sun, 07 Apr 2002 00:18:23 BST." <20020407001823.A8901@nsk.yi.org> 
References: <20020406192102.GB426@celeron.dekkers> <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406211248.10771V-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk> <slrnaauuut.ihn.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>  <20020407001823.A8901@nsk.yi.org> 
Message-ID: <E16tzdk-0005Pj-00@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>

Luciano Miguel Ferreira Rocha:
> > Will they still, if we have a better alternative?
> Most use samba because it's the best alternative for CIFS servicing, not
> because CIFS is the best remote filesystem.

Indeed.  Samba has one feature that I can't replicate in another system
except right now: passworded mounting of a remote file store as the current
user.

> > Surely Samba is normally used during migration.
> I don't think so. Some substitute win32 servers for free unix servers, but
> remain with win32 clients [...]

This is just a step along the migration pathway.

> Availability of more secure remote mounts [...]

Where?

> [...] trying to fight Microsoft then have to provide both server and
> clients with support for the same services.

I think that is the situation anyway.
-- 
MJR


From jeroen at dekkers.cx  Sat Apr  6 23:46:50 2002
From: jeroen at dekkers.cx (Jeroen Dekkers)
Date: Sun, 7 Apr 2002 01:46:50 +0200
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <slrnaauuut.ihn.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>
References: <20020406192102.GB426@celeron.dekkers> <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406211248.10771V-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk> <slrnaauuut.ihn.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <20020406234650.GB1806@celeron.dekkers>

On Sat, Apr 06, 2002 at 10:51:09PM +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
> Martin Keegan <martin at no.ucant.org> wrote:
> > This action is an attempt to hurt Samba. Samba is critical to the
> > wider acceptance of free software.
> 
> It need not be, although it currently is.  Samba is just an implementation
> of someone else's interfaces, which is not normally a good way to succeed. 
> You're always going to be behind and they have the upper hand.  Why help
> them to continue their misrule?
> 
> What we need is a reliable read-write user-driven mount over an encrypted
> connection.  For Linux, AVFS looks like the best potential solution at
> present, so if you want to help there, find how to fix their ssh module (or
> document it better so that I can figure it out) so as to talk to my
> ssh-agent (probably echoing the details into a ssh_ctl or similar), if it's
> possible.  For now, I have AVFS doing ftp mounts and the like.
> 
> I expect this sort of thing is simple for hurd ;-)

From what I know of AVFS, it's just one big joke. You can do that
already with the Hurd and in way which is much better IMHO. I expect
to see such things you are describing being implemented up when the
Hurd matures a bit. Our primary focus is stability at the moment.

Jeroen Dekkers
-- 
Jabber supporter - http://www.jabber.org Jabber ID: jdekkers at jabber.org
Debian GNU supporter - http://www.debian.org http://www.gnu.org
IRC: jeroen at openprojects
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From home at alexhudson.com  Sun Apr  7 07:38:21 2002
From: home at alexhudson.com (Alex Hudson)
Date: 07 Apr 2002 08:38:21 +0100
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <20020406111020.GA789@golem>
References: 	<Pine.LNX.4.44.0204051735230.27264-100000@perycles.unix.be.EU.org>
	<slrnaasc75.gc1.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>
	<1018077458.11610.33.camel@rendevous.alexhudson.com> 
	<20020406111020.GA789@golem>
Message-ID: <1018165101.630.2.camel@rendevous.alexhudson.com>

On Sat, 2002-04-06 at 12:10, Xavi Drudis Ferran wrote:
> > > Can someone tell me whether we should expect this tactic against any Free
> > > Software .net implementations?  Thanks, MJR.
>
> And, to Alex, RAND is incompatible with free software, and if it wasn't we should check 
> the exact terms of the ECMA policy (is M$ forced to diclose/license all patents, 
> or can they claim later they didn't realise they had a patent that blocks 
> the standard?). 

I wasn't suggesting it was acceptable. The question was, can a
patent/licence combination stop Free Software developers from developing
a .net implementation. The answer is no - Microsoft currently do not
have the aggressive patents needed to make it work. What patents they
might have are more like annoyances, than actual road-blocks.

Cheers,

Alex.
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From xdrudis at tinet.org  Sun Apr  7 00:48:38 2002
From: xdrudis at tinet.org (Xavi Drudis Ferran)
Date: Sun, 7 Apr 2002 02:48:38 +0200
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <slrnaauvfh.ihn.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>
References: <20020406111020.GA789@golem> <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406180350.10771F-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk> <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406180350.10771F-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk> <20020406192028.GA3241@golem> <slrnaauvfh.ihn.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <20020407004837.GA4982@golem>

El Sat, Apr 06, 2002 at 11:00:01PM +0000, MJ Ray deia:
> xdrudis at tinet.org <xdrudis at tinet.org> wrote:
> > I heard that UK is the country pushing for software patents in Europe. 
> 
> Please, do not start that again.  The UK Government, advised by the UKPTO,

OK, let's leave it here, then.

> I don't think it's fair to say that the UK is pushing for it.  I don't think
> most UK subjects are even aware of the issue right now, not even the ones
> who ought to know about it.
>

If I understand you say the country is not pushing it, only its government?
If that's so, I have no problem to take back "the UK is the country pushing..."
and replace it with "the UK government is pushing..." or "some civil servants 
and/or politicians in the UK government and/or administration are pushing 
it..." But it is not so uncommon to assume a democratic goverment represents 
the country even if many people in the country disagree with the government
or don't have an opinion. It's sort of the best generalization you can make, 
but yes, you don't have to make generalisations at all if you're a bit 
paranoid on language. All generalizations are bad :). Sorry to have let 
one about UK through.

 
> > So your help trying to change that would be more useful (IMHO) than
> > fighting this single license. If you want to help your country fellows in
> > keeping our law system sane, you may want to read
> > 
> > http://swpat.ffii.org/players/uk/index.en.html
> 
> And then you may want to help AFFS organise its campaign against this

Is your "you" the same as my "you" (i.e. Martin) or am I this "you" ?
I guess you're tañking to Martin, but if I can help somehow, just tell me.

> ill-considered move.  http://www.affs.org.uk/   We're looking for new faces
> to help us on this troublesome issue.  Other campaigns are setting up, too.
>


-- 
Xavi Drudis Ferran
xdrudis at tinet.org


From adulau-conos at conostix.com  Sun Apr  7 08:08:06 2002
From: adulau-conos at conostix.com (Alexandre Dulaunoy)
Date: Sun, 7 Apr 2002 10:08:06 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406184029.10771I-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0204071002260.30000-100000@perycles.unix.be.EU.org>

On Sat, 6 Apr 2002, Martin Keegan wrote:

> 
> If there's a solid case, I'm well up for doing the paperwork to submit a
> formal complaint about this issue to the UK Office of Fair Trading, with
> whom I was in contact by phone yesterday. What needs to be demonstrated is
> evidence of abuse of a dominant position. 
> 
> This document linked from Advogato purports to be a combination of a
> copyright licence (as far as I can see -- and on closer inspection, 3.1
> says so) governing copying the Technical Reference document and a patent
> licence governing implementation of any system which comes under the
> claims of the patents mentioned. 
> 
> In practical terms, what this is is the US government forcing Microsoft to
> disclose technical information relating to one of the essential facilities
> it controls, and Microsoft doing so in such a way as to discriminate
> against one of its principal competitors.

The European Union is continuing the investigation of Microsoft for 
the anti-trust case. 

http://www.ccianet.org/ms_eu.php3
http://europa.eu.int/comm/competition/index_en.html

I think we can make a paperwork (maybe the same for the UK OFT) about the 
specific example of the CIFS standard. That can help the EU to add more 
information in the specific case. 

hope this helps

adulau

-- 
Alexandre Dulaunoy		
http://www.foo.be/
http://www.ael.be/					



From rms at 1407.org  Sun Apr  7 08:46:12 2002
From: rms at 1407.org (Rui Miguel Silva Seabra)
Date: 07 Apr 2002 09:46:12 +0100
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <slrnaauvfh.ihn.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>
References: <20020406111020.GA789@golem>
	<Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406180350.10771F-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk>
	<Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406180350.10771F-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk>
	<20020406192028.GA3241@golem> 
	<slrnaauvfh.ihn.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <1018169173.351.29.camel@roque>

On Sun, 2002-04-07 at 00:00, MJ Ray wrote:
> xdrudis at tinet.org <xdrudis at tinet.org> wrote:
> > I heard that UK is the country pushing for software patents in Europe. 
> 
> Please, do not start that again.  The UK Government, advised by the UKPTO,
> merely appears trying to export our ambiguous wording.  I'm willing to
> believe that they don't know how much harm this will do.  It still needs to
> be stopped.
> I don't think it's fair to say that the UK is pushing for it.  I don't think
> most UK subjects are even aware of the issue right now, not even the ones
> who ought to know about it.

A government is chosen by the people who elected it, so theoretically,
all those who voted in favour are supporting software patents as advised
by the UKPTO ;)

It isn't fair but that's what's happening. The majority of UK people
voted for this government.

I bet 5 eur that most of them don't have the foggiest idea about most of
what happens though, but that's a problem of transparency in politics
and of caring from the people.

MJ, are you from the UK? Who in the UK is raising the issue against
software patents (very publicly)?

Hugs, rui

-- 
+ No matter how much you do, you never do enough -- unknown
+ Whatever you do will be insignificant,
| but it is very important that you do it -- Ghandi
+ So let's do it...?
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From martin at no.ucant.org  Sun Apr  7 10:18:46 2002
From: martin at no.ucant.org (Martin Keegan)
Date: Sun, 7 Apr 2002 11:18:46 +0100 (BST)
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <20020407001823.A8901@nsk.yi.org>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020407111349.10771X-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk>

On Sun, 7 Apr 2002, Luciano Miguel Ferreira Rocha wrote:

> > Surely Samba is normally used during migration.
> I don't think so. Some substitute win32 servers for free unix servers, but
> remain with win32 clients because of the "habituation" caused by Word and
> a dumb GUI. Some even use free unix servers without the knowledge of the

I must stress that it's not just habituation, it's network lock-in. Not
only is there an installed base of people who grok Windows (and therefore
a large, distributed cost in switching over to GNU/Linux or any other
system), there is the problem that people use Windows because it
interoperates with what they think is going to be the most widely-used
system (namely Windows). It's entirely rational for people to behave this
way.

Either you have to interoperate perfectly with Windows (nigh-on impossible
as Microsoft keeps changing the specifications), or you have to change the
perception that it's going to be the dominant system in the future.

Mk



From leypold at informatik.uni-tuebingen.de  Sun Apr  7 10:27:17 2002
From: leypold at informatik.uni-tuebingen.de (M E Leypold @ labnet)
Date: Sun, 7 Apr 2002 12:27:17 +0200
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <slrnaauuut.ihn.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>
References: <20020406192102.GB426@celeron.dekkers>
	<Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406211248.10771V-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk>
	<slrnaauuut.ihn.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <15536.7941.527316.7128@hod.void.org>


Hi,

MJ Ray writes:

 > > If they can't get Samba as part of the package, many users won't
 > > choose a free system, they'll chose a proprietary system. [...]

 > 
 > Will they still, if we have a better alternative?  Surely Samba is
 > normally used during migration.  You never know, availability of a
 > more secure remote mount may make them have to implement it in
 > their OS at last.  Then we have the upper hand.
 > 


I think migration is (in "real life") a slow and often very painful
process. If you look to big corporations you'll find they still use
old UNISYS systems from the 70ties and IBM Mainframes -- not for fun,
but out of necessity. So more often than not, it's not migration, but
integration: Run+build the new system(s) parallel to the old
ones. Applikations that bridge both worlds are essential then. Since
CIFS is the majority solution for LAN file+resource sharing in the
DOS/Windows world, and it is that kind of installation
Linux/Hurd/whatever-free-software has to penetrate ([1] in example: in
the Greman Bundestag the decision is now to use Linux usw. for the
servers and Windows for the desktop -- which leaves the option to
migrate to Linux later and perhaps incrementally, but I bet that'll
only happen if Linux can interoperate smoothly with the remaining
Windows machines).

What I want to say: From that point of view interoperability matters (a
lot) and we have 2 option (as far as ressource sharing is concerned): 

   (1) Samba and it's successor version -- now threatened by the license
       in question, and
 
   (2) build an own ressource sharing service. 

Option (2) is what you suggest, but to ensure interoperability (which
is the only ticket to getting into existing pure Windows environments)
would require client software for windows. Don't expect MS to write
that, and writing (and promoting) it as a GNU project will also be
difficult, since none of the us AFAIK can access techical
documentation as freely and as early as MS can. I fear that could end
like the Browser war.

So after all I think, the best way is not to require from Windows users
to install any additional software at their machines, but instead
emulate MS server functionality: Back to Samba.

Regards -- Markus









From idra at samba.org  Sun Apr  7 10:37:34 2002
From: idra at samba.org (Simo Sorce)
Date: 07 Apr 2002 12:37:34 +0200
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <20020407001823.A8901@nsk.yi.org>
References: <20020406192102.GB426@celeron.dekkers>
	<Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406211248.10771V-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk>
	<slrnaauuut.ihn.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> 
	<20020407001823.A8901@nsk.yi.org>
Message-ID: <1018175854.1390.17.camel@berserker>

On Sun, 2002-04-07 at 01:18, Luciano Miguel Ferreira Rocha wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 06, 2002 at 10:51:09PM +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
> > > If they can't get Samba as part of the package, many users won't choose a
> > > free system, they'll chose a proprietary system. [...]
> > 
> > Will they still, if we have a better alternative?
> Most use samba because it's the best alternative for CIFS servicing, not
> because CIFS is the best remote filesystem.

Exactly!

> > Surely Samba is normally used during migration.
> I don't think so. Some substitute win32 servers for free unix servers, but
> remain with win32 clients because of the "habituation" caused by Word and
> a dumb GUI. Some even use free unix servers without the knowledge of the
> lesser technical managers.

Sometimes that is true, but generally people stay with win32 clients
because they miss crtical apps to perform they work or need time to make
a full migration.
I'm not saying that everyone is near to swith to a free desktop
operating system, but I know many would make the switch if all
applications they need were there or if porting their custom environment
and home made application can be ported easily.

So Samba is used for migration and also as is, many NAS vendors lately
offer CIFS appliances that have samba under the cover.

> > You never know, availability of a more secure remote
> > mount may make them have to implement it in their OS at last.  Then we have
> > the upper hand.
> Availability of more secure remote mounts hasn't yet made then implement
> them. Microsoft is in a position were it can dictate the standars (most of
> them) used by clients, and those trying to fight Microsoft then have to
> provide both server and clients with support for the same services.

True, you can see the Pc-NFS has never made it into the MS world.


I want also reassure some people on the destiny if Samba.
Samba has been made without that specification and we are not going to
read it so we are not bound to those terms as far as I know.

And note that the conditions posed are not a license, they form a
contract. Copyright laws do not permit a license to dictate the license
of other (non derivative) works, and as far as I know also the patents
law do not permit that (but of course a licensor may impose the
acceptance of a contract as a condition to concede the use of techniques
subject to the patent).
Hopefully we have some chances to avoid patents on software in Europe.

Simo.

-- 
Simo Sorce
----------
Una scelta di liberta': Software Libero.
A choice of freedom: Free Software.
http://www.softwarelibero.it


From mk270 at cam.ac.uk  Sun Apr  7 10:41:54 2002
From: mk270 at cam.ac.uk (Martin Keegan)
Date: Sun, 7 Apr 2002 11:41:54 +0100 (BST)
Subject: information economics (was Re: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards)
In-Reply-To: <1018175854.1390.17.camel@berserker>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020407114031.10771Z-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk>

The best piece of background material I've found on the topic of
interoperability and why it's critical is Varian & Shapiro's "Information
Rules". It even has its own website: http://www.inforules.com/, though you
need to buy the paper copy, and it's well worth it.

Mk



From markj at cloaked.freeserve.co.uk  Sun Apr  7 10:46:38 2002
From: markj at cloaked.freeserve.co.uk (MJ Ray)
Date: Sun, 07 Apr 2002 11:46:38 +0100
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards 
In-Reply-To: Message from Xavi Drudis Ferran <xdrudis@tinet.org> 
   of "Sun, 07 Apr 2002 02:48:38 +0200." <20020407004837.GA4982@golem> 
References: <20020406111020.GA789@golem> <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406180350.10771F-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk> <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406180350.10771F-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk> <20020406192028.GA3241@golem> <slrnaauvfh.ihn.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>  <20020407004837.GA4982@golem> 
Message-ID: <E16uABy-0000uw-00@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>

Xavi Drudis Ferran:
> > And then you may want to help AFFS organise its campaign against this
> Is your "you" the same as my "you" (i.e. Martin) or am I this "you" ?
> I guess you're ta�king to Martin, but if I can help somehow, just tell me.

I was talking to Martin and any other lurkers like him, but as I think I've
said to you in the past, I would appreciate you just keeping an eye on us
once in a while and informing us of any new issues or mistakes that we
should be aware of.
-- 
MJR


From markj at cloaked.freeserve.co.uk  Sun Apr  7 10:47:00 2002
From: markj at cloaked.freeserve.co.uk (MJ Ray)
Date: Sun, 07 Apr 2002 11:47:00 +0100
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards 
In-Reply-To: Message from "M E Leypold @ labnet" <leypold@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de> 
   of "Sun, 07 Apr 2002 12:27:17 +0200." <15536.7941.527316.7128@hod.void.org> 
References: <20020406192102.GB426@celeron.dekkers> <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406211248.10771V-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk> <slrnaauuut.ihn.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>  <15536.7941.527316.7128@hod.void.org> 
Message-ID: <E16uACP-0000vW-00@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>

M E Leypold:
>    (2) build an own ressource sharing service. 
> Option (2) is what you suggest, but to ensure interoperability (which
> is the only ticket to getting into existing pure Windows environments)
> would require client software for windows. Don't expect MS to write
> that, and writing (and promoting) it as a GNU project will also be
> difficult, since none of the us AFAIK can access techical
> documentation as freely and as early as MS can. I fear that could end
> like the Browser war.

But I fear that the current situation is going to end like the proprietary
OS "war" of the early 90s.  If you gift MS the clients, they will get more
servers than they ever should have.  If Samba provides the initial "way in"
(hey, we have the way in) for Free Software, then I am happy, but we should
not rest there.  We must provide better services and software for our own
clients, so that we cannot be locked out from providing the servers by dirty
tricks in the client OS.
-- 
MJR


From markj at cloaked.freeserve.co.uk  Sun Apr  7 10:49:36 2002
From: markj at cloaked.freeserve.co.uk (MJ Ray)
Date: Sun, 07 Apr 2002 11:49:36 +0100
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards 
In-Reply-To: Message from Jeroen Dekkers <jeroen@dekkers.cx> 
   of "Sun, 07 Apr 2002 01:46:50 +0200." <20020406234650.GB1806@celeron.dekkers> 
References: <20020406192102.GB426@celeron.dekkers> <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406211248.10771V-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk> <slrnaauuut.ihn.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>  <20020406234650.GB1806@celeron.dekkers> 
Message-ID: <E16uAEq-0000xp-00@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>

Jeroen Dekkers:
> From what I know of AVFS, it's just one big joke. You can do that
> already with the Hurd and in way which is much better IMHO. [...]

ITYM "hack" not "joke".  I know hurd will do better...
-- 
MJR


From xdrudis at tinet.org  Sun Apr  7 11:06:58 2002
From: xdrudis at tinet.org (Xavi Drudis Ferran)
Date: Sun, 7 Apr 2002 13:06:58 +0200
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <1018175854.1390.17.camel@berserker>
References: <20020406192102.GB426@celeron.dekkers> <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406211248.10771V-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk> <slrnaauuut.ihn.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <20020407001823.A8901@nsk.yi.org> <1018175854.1390.17.camel@berserker>
Message-ID: <20020407110658.GA2249@golem>

El Sun, Apr 07, 2002 at 12:37:34PM +0200, Simo Sorce deia:
> 
> I want also reassure some people on the destiny if Samba.
> Samba has been made without that specification and we are not going to
> read it so we are not bound to those terms as far as I know.
>
I don't think readingit makes any difference about patents. 
Your strategy should work with copyright.
 
> And note that the conditions posed are not a license, they form a
> contract. Copyright laws do not permit a license to dictate the license
> of other (non derivative) works, and as far as I know also the patents
> law do not permit that (but of course a licensor may impose the

The patent laws forbid commercialisation of indepently developed 
(non derivative)
solutions falling under the patent claims unless you get a license
from the patent holder. You don't even need to know the patent 
or the invention exist, or how to license it. They can sue you all the same. 

> Hopefully we have some chances to avoid patents on software in Europe.
> 
Yes, as long as we do,  you'll be right.  

IANAL

-- 
Xavi Drudis Ferran
xdrudis at tinet.org


From matthias at astrum.ch  Sun Apr  7 11:42:38 2002
From: matthias at astrum.ch (Matthias Leisi)
Date: Sun, 7 Apr 2002 13:42:38 +0200
Subject: information economics (was Re: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020407114031.10771Z-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk>; from mk270@cam.ac.uk on Sun, Apr 07, 2002 at 11:41:54AM +0100
References: <1018175854.1390.17.camel@berserker> <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020407114031.10771Z-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <20020407134238.E12306@hub.net.astrum.ch>

> The best piece of background material I've found on the topic of
> interoperability and why it's critical is Varian & Shapiro's "Information
> Rules". It even has its own website: http://www.inforules.com/, though you
> need to buy the paper copy, and it's well worth it.

For german readers: The translation is available under the utterly
misleading title "Online zum Erfolg", 1999, Wirtschaftsverlag Langen
Müller/Herbig, ISBN 3-7844-7395-4.

Hal R. Varian has further online materials on his Economics website at
http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/resources/infoecon/

Matthias


From mk270 at cam.ac.uk  Sun Apr  7 11:46:42 2002
From: mk270 at cam.ac.uk (Martin Keegan)
Date: Sun, 7 Apr 2002 12:46:42 +0100 (BST)
Subject: information economics (was Re: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards)
In-Reply-To: <20020407134238.E12306@hub.net.astrum.ch>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020407124548.10771b-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk>

On Sun, 7 Apr 2002, Matthias Leisi wrote:

> For german readers: The translation is available under the utterly
> misleading title "Online zum Erfolg", 1999, Wirtschaftsverlag Langen
> M�ller/Herbig, ISBN 3-7844-7395-4.
> 
> Hal R. Varian has further online materials on his Economics website at
> http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/resources/infoecon/

A useful educational project would be to take the ideas in V&S and put
them up on the web in our own words. (I find it unlikely that the authors
would license the text, but it's worth asking).

Mk



From markj at cloaked.freeserve.co.uk  Sun Apr  7 12:01:19 2002
From: markj at cloaked.freeserve.co.uk (MJ Ray)
Date: Sun, 07 Apr 2002 12:01:19 GMT
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
References: <slrnaauvfh.ihn.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <20020406111020.GA789@golem> <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406180350.10771F-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk> <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406180350.10771F-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk> <20020406192028.GA3241@golem> <slrnaauvfh.ihn.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <1018169173.351.29.camel@roque>
Message-ID: <slrnab0d8f.4pt.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>

Rui Miguel Silva Seabra <rms at 1407.org> wrote:
> It isn't fair but that's what's happening. The majority of UK people
> voted for this government.

No, only 40.7% of UK voters (and some subjects are not permitted to vote,
even if they are adults) voted for this government.  It's a long way short
of a majority of UK people.  They are our elected representatives, though,
and we must work with them to make them represent us.

> MJ, are you from the UK? Who in the UK is raising the issue against
> software patents (very publicly)?

At the moment, the only people concerned with it that I am aware of are AFFS
http://www.affs.org.uk/ and CDR http://uk.eurorights.org/ -- CDR don't like
patents on their issues list yet, and AFFS is still young (expect a call for
members Real Soon Now).  I don't think this counts as "very publicly" yet. 
The more people who get involved with these two groups, the sooner it will.



From rms at 1407.org  Sun Apr  7 12:28:30 2002
From: rms at 1407.org (Rui Miguel Silva Seabra)
Date: 07 Apr 2002 13:28:30 +0100
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <slrnab0d8f.4pt.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>
References: <slrnaauvfh.ihn.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>
	<20020406111020.GA789@golem>
	<Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406180350.10771F-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk>
	<Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406180350.10771F-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk>
	<20020406192028.GA3241@golem>
	<slrnaauvfh.ihn.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>
	<1018169173.351.29.camel@roque> 
	<slrnab0d8f.4pt.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <1018182510.351.34.camel@roque>

On Sun, 2002-04-07 at 13:01, MJ Ray wrote:
> Rui Miguel Silva Seabra <rms at 1407.org> wrote:
> > It isn't fair but that's what's happening. The majority of UK people
> > voted for this government.
> No, only 40.7% of UK voters (and some subjects are not permitted to vote,
> even if they are adults) voted for this government.  It's a long way short
> of a majority of UK people.  They are our elected representatives, though,
> and we must work with them to make them represent us.

No one voted for the current Portuguese governement :0
However, a post election agreement has managed to put in the government
a coalition of a center-right+right wing parties, thus achieving more
than 50% of the deputies.

Still, it's our current governement, duely elected (for better or for
worse) and the number don't really count that much! :(

I agree with you, and in here 

> > MJ, are you from the UK? Who in the UK is raising the issue against
> > software patents (very publicly)?
> At the moment, the only people concerned with it that I am aware of are AFFS
> http://www.affs.org.uk/ and CDR http://uk.eurorights.org/ -- CDR don't like
> patents on their issues list yet, and AFFS is still young (expect a call for
> members Real Soon Now).  I don't think this counts as "very publicly" yet. 
> The more people who get involved with these two groups, the sooner it will.

This is very important, but it's going to be harder to win in the UK
where there are software patents already than over here.

Hugs, rui

-- 
+ No matter how much you do, you never do enough -- unknown
+ Whatever you do will be insignificant,
| but it is very important that you do it -- Ghandi
+ So let's do it...?
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From markj at cloaked.freeserve.co.uk  Sun Apr  7 14:51:13 2002
From: markj at cloaked.freeserve.co.uk (MJ Ray)
Date: Sun, 07 Apr 2002 14:51:13 GMT
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
References: <slrnab0d8f.4pt.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <slrnaauvfh.ihn.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <20020406111020.GA789@golem> <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406180350.10771F-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk> <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406180350.10771F-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk> <20020406192028.GA3241@golem> <slrnaauvfh.ihn.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <1018169173.351.29.camel@roque> <slrnab0d8f.4pt.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <1018182510.351.34.camel@roque>
Message-ID: <slrnab0n70.7to.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>

Rui Miguel Silva Seabra <rms at 1407.org> wrote:
> No one voted for the current Portuguese governement :0

Ah, but did the deputies in the government parties account for more than 50%
of the vote?  I'd rather see people voting for the representatives they
agree with and *then* a government is formed than the current thing here of
people voting for the group they think is most likely to form an acceptable
goverment.  This is wildly OT, of course.

>> At the moment, the only people concerned with it that I am aware of are
>> AFFS http://www.affs.org.uk/ and CDR http://uk.eurorights.org/ -- CDR
>> don't like patents on their issues list yet, and AFFS is still young
>> (expect a call for members Real Soon Now).  I don't think this counts as
>> "very publicly" yet. The more people who get involved with these two
>> groups, the sooner it will.
> 
> This is very important, but it's going to be harder to win in the UK
> where there are software patents already than over here.

Yes, we have some patents which may apply to software, but they are not
enforceable for software here, thanks to various rulings which clarified the
situation.  This is not guaranteed for the future and I think that exporting
that original lack of clarity is a very bad idea.



From leypold at informatik.uni-tuebingen.de  Mon Apr  8 09:55:44 2002
From: leypold at informatik.uni-tuebingen.de (M E Leypold @ labnet)
Date: Mon, 8 Apr 2002 11:55:44 +0200
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards 
In-Reply-To: <E16uACP-0000vW-00@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>
References: <20020406192102.GB426@celeron.dekkers>
	<Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406211248.10771V-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk>
	<slrnaauuut.ihn.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>
	<15536.7941.527316.7128@hod.void.org>
	<E16uACP-0000vW-00@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <15537.26912.870862.376237@hod.void.org>

MJ Ray writes:
 > M E Leypold:
 > >    (2) build an own ressource sharing service. 
 > > Option (2) is what you suggest, but to ensure interoperability (which
 > > is the only ticket to getting into existing pure Windows environments)
 > > would require client software for windows. Don't expect MS to write
 > > that, and writing (and promoting) it as a GNU project will also be
 > > difficult, since none of the us AFAIK can access techical
 > > documentation as freely and as early as MS can. I fear that could end
 > > like the Browser war.
 > 
 > But I fear that the current situation is going to end like the proprietary
 > OS "war" of the early 90s.  If you gift MS the clients, they will get more
 > servers than they ever should have.  If Samba provides the initial "way in"
 > (hey, we have the way in) for Free Software, then I am happy, but we should
 > not rest there.  We must provide better services and software for our own
 > clients, so that we cannot be locked out from providing the servers by dirty
 > tricks in the client OS.

Yes -- I agree. We need a better (and more uniform) framework for
sharing, abstracting and visualizing (possibly remote) resources. OK,
I'm now talking about Linux mostly, but I'd like to have is s.th. like
the Plan-9 Filesystem: Everything in a uniform processlocal
namespace. Internet Sockets are just files (no need for netcat),
loopback devices from user space (encrypted block-devices: no problem
then) and so on. It' would be just a matter of the server used to
export a resource encrypted to one side (Internet) and unencrypted to
the other (my home LAN). 

To get a client for that into windows would be the ultimate marketing
hack :-). I admit I'm only dreaming: I do not have the temporal
resources to do that in my free time and haven't found an employer
yet, who would pay for such a project.

Regards -- Markus


From mk270 at cam.ac.uk  Mon Apr  8 10:00:59 2002
From: mk270 at cam.ac.uk (Martin Keegan)
Date: Mon, 8 Apr 2002 11:00:59 +0100 (BST)
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <slrnab0d8f.4pt.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020408105556.10771e-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk>

On Sun, 7 Apr 2002, MJ Ray wrote:

> At the moment, the only people concerned with it that I am aware of are AFFS
> http://www.affs.org.uk/ and CDR http://uk.eurorights.org/ -- CDR don't like
> patents on their issues list yet, and AFFS is still young (expect a call for

Background: 

MJ Ray (the poster to whom I'm replying) is involved with the
setup of AFFS as an organisation. CDR, which I myself am involved with, is
a less formal organisation, which grew out of the "Free Dmitri Sklyarov"
protests.

AFFS has patents on its list of major issues.

I don't know what "CDR don't like patents on their issues list yet" means.
I suspect it's a typo where "like" should be "link". CDR certainly hasn't
really dealt with patents, and concentrates on copyright and technological
protection measures (DMCA, EUCD, etc).

> members Real Soon Now).  I don't think this counts as "very publicly" yet. 
> The more people who get involved with these two groups, the sooner it will.

I'll say it again: we need a European campaigning organisation for the
digital environment, covering the issues of freedom of speech, privacy,
crypto policy, intellectual property and open architecture. 

Mk



From lord_inh at yahoo.co.uk  Mon Apr  8 10:47:07 2002
From: lord_inh at yahoo.co.uk (Alistair Davidson)
Date: Mon, 08 Apr 2002 11:47:07 +0100
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS
  standards
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020408105556.10771e-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac
 .uk>
References: <slrnab0d8f.4pt.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20020408114022.00a31220@pop.mail.yahoo.co.uk>

At 11:00 AM 4/8/02 +0100, Martin Keegan wrote:

>I'll say it again: we need a European campaigning organisation for the
>digital environment, covering the issues of freedom of speech, privacy,
>crypto policy, intellectual property and open architecture.

I agree, but as we both know every attempt so far has failed utterly. I 
think the reason is an obsession with accommodating everyone, making sure 
we piss noone off and so on. I'm beginning to think that it might be best 
for the CDR to just form such an organisation itself, with the CDR as the 
first member and hopefully recruiting other European organisations quickly. 
I think the CDR experience has shown that it's perfectly possible to 
campaign while keeping to the "broad tent" idea, simply by focusing on the 
issues that we all agree on. also, most of the work has been done by a few 
dedicated individuals doing things without spending ages debating on 
mailing lists. I think we all no that no of any importance decision is ever 
taken on a mailing list ;)

For non-CDR folks: there's a range of opinion within the CDR, from 
copyright abolitionists to people who simply want to stop the EUCD and 
similar measures. Despite this (and the, er, 'heated' discussions it's 
generated) we've been able to all rally behind the specific campaigns. So 
far that's been fairly easy because they're all negative, but there's been 
discussion of positive campaigns that we all agree on, like a positive 
right to fair use.


_________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com



From jeroen at dekkers.cx  Mon Apr  8 14:45:56 2002
From: jeroen at dekkers.cx (Jeroen Dekkers)
Date: Mon, 8 Apr 2002 16:45:56 +0200
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <15537.26912.870862.376237@hod.void.org>
References: <20020406192102.GB426@celeron.dekkers> <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406211248.10771V-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk> <slrnaauuut.ihn.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <15536.7941.527316.7128@hod.void.org> <E16uACP-0000vW-00@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <15537.26912.870862.376237@hod.void.org>
Message-ID: <20020408144556.GB559@celeron.dekkers>

On Mon, Apr 08, 2002 at 11:55:44AM +0200, M E Leypold @ labnet wrote:
> Yes -- I agree. We need a better (and more uniform) framework for
> sharing, abstracting and visualizing (possibly remote) resources. OK,
> I'm now talking about Linux mostly, but I'd like to have is s.th. like
> the Plan-9 Filesystem: Everything in a uniform processlocal
> namespace. Internet Sockets are just files (no need for netcat),
> loopback devices from user space (encrypted block-devices: no problem
> then) and so on. It' would be just a matter of the server used to
> export a resource encrypted to one side (Internet) and unencrypted to
> the other (my home LAN). 

Every plan9 feature I've heard of can be implemented in the Hurd
without too much difficulties. The real difference is that the Hurd is
still POSIX compatible while plan9 isn't AFAIK.

Jeroen Dekkers
-- 
Jabber supporter - http://www.jabber.org Jabber ID: jdekkers at jabber.org
Debian GNU supporter - http://www.debian.org http://www.gnu.org
IRC: jeroen at openprojects
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From taw at users.sourceforge.net  Mon Apr  8 14:50:00 2002
From: taw at users.sourceforge.net (Tomasz Wegrzanowski)
Date: Mon, 8 Apr 2002 16:50:00 +0200
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <20020408144556.GB559@celeron.dekkers>
References: <20020406192102.GB426@celeron.dekkers> <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406211248.10771V-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk> <slrnaauuut.ihn.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <15536.7941.527316.7128@hod.void.org> <E16uACP-0000vW-00@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <15537.26912.870862.376237@hod.void.org> <20020408144556.GB559@celeron.dekkers>
Message-ID: <20020408145000.GA1032@tavaiah>

On Mon, Apr 08, 2002 at 04:45:56PM +0200, Jeroen Dekkers wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 08, 2002 at 11:55:44AM +0200, M E Leypold @ labnet wrote:
> > Yes -- I agree. We need a better (and more uniform) framework for
> > sharing, abstracting and visualizing (possibly remote) resources. OK,
> > I'm now talking about Linux mostly, but I'd like to have is s.th. like
> > the Plan-9 Filesystem: Everything in a uniform processlocal
> > namespace. Internet Sockets are just files (no need for netcat),
> > loopback devices from user space (encrypted block-devices: no problem
> > then) and so on. It' would be just a matter of the server used to
> > export a resource encrypted to one side (Internet) and unencrypted to
> > the other (my home LAN). 
> 
> Every plan9 feature I've heard of can be implemented in the Hurd
> without too much difficulties. The real difference is that the Hurd is
> still POSIX compatible while plan9 isn't AFAIK.
> 
> Jeroen Dekkers

If everything can be implemented so easily in Hurd then why nobody
implements these things ?

BTW. have you looked at Reiserfs's plans ? It seems that it will
include something like translators soon. They plan to use it mostly
for compression-on-fly and encryption-on-fly but it is going to be
more general than that.


From jack at unix.sbg.ac.at  Mon Apr  8 15:20:49 2002
From: jack at unix.sbg.ac.at (Georg Jakob)
Date: Mon, 8 Apr 2002 17:20:49 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: Software Patents in Europe (Was:Re: Microsoft prohibits GPLed wor
 via licensing of CIFS standards)
In-Reply-To: <1018077458.11610.33.camel@rendevous.alexhudson.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0204081708590.23787-100000@monster.edvz.sbg.ac.at>


Hi all,

For the german-speaking readers among you: I'd like to point you to some 
very good article by kyrah on software patents in Europe. 

http://www.fsf.or.at/artikel/softwarepatente.html

It has already been pointed out that theoretically, sw patents are illegal in 
Europe, but that they're granted nevertheless. Now kyrah did some absolutely 
great research which shows how absurd sw patents really are. This might not be 
new to most of you, but the article is a very important tool nevertheless - it 
provides exactly the kind of information clueless politicians etc. need to 
maybe reevaluate their efforts of legalizing SW Patents. So please spread 
it, and maybe help provide translations!


-- 
kindest regards,         jack at unix.sbg.ac.at
Georg Jakob              http://www.users.sbg.ac.at/~jack
"After explaining the situation to the machine clearly with appropriate
 use of a screwdriver and cleaning up I got the update to behave." (A. Cox)




From jeroen at dekkers.cx  Mon Apr  8 15:25:39 2002
From: jeroen at dekkers.cx (Jeroen Dekkers)
Date: Mon, 8 Apr 2002 17:25:39 +0200
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <20020408145000.GA1032@tavaiah>
References: <20020406192102.GB426@celeron.dekkers> <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406211248.10771V-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk> <slrnaauuut.ihn.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <15536.7941.527316.7128@hod.void.org> <E16uACP-0000vW-00@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <15537.26912.870862.376237@hod.void.org> <20020408144556.GB559@celeron.dekkers> <20020408145000.GA1032@tavaiah>
Message-ID: <20020408152539.GA1656@celeron.dekkers>

On Mon, Apr 08, 2002 at 04:50:00PM +0200, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 08, 2002 at 04:45:56PM +0200, Jeroen Dekkers wrote:
> > On Mon, Apr 08, 2002 at 11:55:44AM +0200, M E Leypold @ labnet wrote:
> > > Yes -- I agree. We need a better (and more uniform) framework for
> > > sharing, abstracting and visualizing (possibly remote) resources. OK,
> > > I'm now talking about Linux mostly, but I'd like to have is s.th. like
> > > the Plan-9 Filesystem: Everything in a uniform processlocal
> > > namespace. Internet Sockets are just files (no need for netcat),
> > > loopback devices from user space (encrypted block-devices: no problem
> > > then) and so on. It' would be just a matter of the server used to
> > > export a resource encrypted to one side (Internet) and unencrypted to
> > > the other (my home LAN). 
> > 
> > Every plan9 feature I've heard of can be implemented in the Hurd
> > without too much difficulties. The real difference is that the Hurd is
> > still POSIX compatible while plan9 isn't AFAIK.
> > 
> > Jeroen Dekkers
> 
> If everything can be implemented so easily in Hurd then why nobody
> implements these things ?

No idea. There are coming more and more people who want to develop the
Hurd, the system is getting more stable and more usable. RMS wants a
release of the whole GNU system before the end of this year, I think
it will already be usable for normal desktop work then.

> BTW. have you looked at Reiserfs's plans ? 

No, I don't have the time for that. But I'm certainly interested.

> It seems that it will
> include something like translators soon. They plan to use it mostly
> for compression-on-fly and encryption-on-fly but it is going to be
> more general than that.

You can never implement translators like we do it in a kernel.

Jeroen Dekkers
-- 
Jabber supporter - http://www.jabber.org Jabber ID: jdekkers at jabber.org
Debian GNU supporter - http://www.debian.org http://www.gnu.org
IRC: jeroen at openprojects
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From damien.genet at free.fr  Mon Apr  8 15:24:21 2002
From: damien.genet at free.fr (Damien Genet)
Date: 08 Apr 2002 17:24:21 +0200
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <20020408145000.GA1032@tavaiah>
References: <20020406192102.GB426@celeron.dekkers>
	<Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406211248.10771V-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk>
	<slrnaauuut.ihn.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>
	<15536.7941.527316.7128@hod.void.org>
	<E16uACP-0000vW-00@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>
	<15537.26912.870862.376237@hod.void.org>
	<20020408144556.GB559@celeron.dekkers>  <20020408145000.GA1032@tavaiah>
Message-ID: <1018279462.17715.5.camel@pouirt>

salut,

Le lun 08/04/2002 à 16:50, Tomasz Wegrzanowski a écrit :
> If everything can be implemented so easily in Hurd then why nobody
> implements these things ?

because there are only 5 core developpers for the Hurd, against hundreds
for Linux.


a+,

-- 
Dam



From wolfgang at pro-linux.de  Mon Apr  8 15:56:21 2002
From: wolfgang at pro-linux.de (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Wolfgang_J=E4hrling?=)
Date: Mon, 8 Apr 2002 17:56:21 +0200
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <20020408145000.GA1032@tavaiah>; from taw@users.sourceforge.net on Mon, Apr 08, 2002 at 04:50:00PM +0200
References: <20020406192102.GB426@celeron.dekkers> <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406211248.10771V-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk> <slrnaauuut.ihn.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <15536.7941.527316.7128@hod.void.org> <E16uACP-0000vW-00@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <15537.26912.870862.376237@hod.void.org> <20020408144556.GB559@celeron.dekkers> <20020408145000.GA1032@tavaiah>
Message-ID: <20020408175621.B365@dose.pro-linux.de>

Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 08, 2002 at 04:45:56PM +0200, Jeroen Dekkers wrote:
> > Every plan9 feature I've heard of can be implemented in the Hurd
> > without too much difficulties. The real difference is that the Hurd is
> > still POSIX compatible while plan9 isn't AFAIK.
> 
> If everything can be implemented so easily in Hurd then why nobody
> implements these things ?

I think the single most important reason is that people are not aware of
the Hurd, which means that our "marketing" was not good in the past. We
are working on that too, though. :)

> BTW. have you looked at Reiserfs's plans ? It seems that it will
> include something like translators soon. They plan to use it mostly
> for compression-on-fly and encryption-on-fly but it is going to be
> more general than that.

Yes, we are aware of that.

Cheers,
GNU/Wolfgang

-- 
Wolfgang Jährling  <wolfgang at pro-linux.de>  \\  http://stdio.cjb.net/
Debian GNU/Hurd user && Debian GNU/Linux user \\  http://www.gnu.org/
The Hurd Hacking Guide: http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hacking-guide/
["We're way ahead of you here. The Hurd has always been on the    ]
[ cutting edge of not being good for anything." -- Roland McGrath ]



From taw at users.sourceforge.net  Mon Apr  8 15:44:32 2002
From: taw at users.sourceforge.net (Tomasz Wegrzanowski)
Date: Mon, 8 Apr 2002 17:44:32 +0200
Subject: Filesystems [was: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards]
In-Reply-To: <20020408152539.GA1656@celeron.dekkers>
References: <20020406192102.GB426@celeron.dekkers> <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406211248.10771V-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk> <slrnaauuut.ihn.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <15536.7941.527316.7128@hod.void.org> <E16uACP-0000vW-00@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <15537.26912.870862.376237@hod.void.org> <20020408144556.GB559@celeron.dekkers> <20020408145000.GA1032@tavaiah> <20020408152539.GA1656@celeron.dekkers>
Message-ID: <20020408154432.GA1177@tavaiah>

On Mon, Apr 08, 2002 at 05:25:39PM +0200, Jeroen Dekkers wrote:
> > BTW. have you looked at Reiserfs's plans ? 
> 
> No, I don't have the time for that. But I'm certainly interested.
> 
> > It seems that it will
> > include something like translators soon. They plan to use it mostly
> > for compression-on-fly and encryption-on-fly but it is going to be
> > more general than that.
> 
> You can never implement translators like we do it in a kernel.

Alike or not, functionality will be similar.

Here is the document: http://www.namesys.com/v4/v4.html


From jeroen at dekkers.cx  Mon Apr  8 16:49:56 2002
From: jeroen at dekkers.cx (Jeroen Dekkers)
Date: Mon, 8 Apr 2002 18:49:56 +0200
Subject: Filesystems [was: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards]
In-Reply-To: <20020408154432.GA1177@tavaiah>
References: <20020406192102.GB426@celeron.dekkers> <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406211248.10771V-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk> <slrnaauuut.ihn.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <15536.7941.527316.7128@hod.void.org> <E16uACP-0000vW-00@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <15537.26912.870862.376237@hod.void.org> <20020408144556.GB559@celeron.dekkers> <20020408145000.GA1032@tavaiah> <20020408152539.GA1656@celeron.dekkers> <20020408154432.GA1177@tavaiah>
Message-ID: <20020408164956.GA2306@celeron.dekkers>

On Mon, Apr 08, 2002 at 05:44:32PM +0200, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 08, 2002 at 05:25:39PM +0200, Jeroen Dekkers wrote:
> > > BTW. have you looked at Reiserfs's plans ? 
> > 
> > No, I don't have the time for that. But I'm certainly interested.
> > 
> > > It seems that it will
> > > include something like translators soon. They plan to use it mostly
> > > for compression-on-fly and encryption-on-fly but it is going to be
> > > more general than that.
> > 
> > You can never implement translators like we do it in a kernel.
> 
> Alike or not, functionality will be similar.

No, read some Hurd documentation to what translators exactly are. For
example, a normal user can't add his own written compressing algoritms
without permission from a privileged user.
 
> Here is the document: http://www.namesys.com/v4/v4.html

Thank you, I've bookmarked the site. I will certainly look at it when
I've more time.

Jeroen Dekkers
-- 
Jabber supporter - http://www.jabber.org Jabber ID: jdekkers at jabber.org
Debian GNU supporter - http://www.debian.org http://www.gnu.org
IRC: jeroen at openprojects
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From jeroen at dekkers.cx  Mon Apr  8 17:09:56 2002
From: jeroen at dekkers.cx (Jeroen Dekkers)
Date: Mon, 8 Apr 2002 19:09:56 +0200
Subject: Filesystems [was: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards]
In-Reply-To: <20020408164956.GA2306@celeron.dekkers>
References: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406211248.10771V-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk> <slrnaauuut.ihn.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <15536.7941.527316.7128@hod.void.org> <E16uACP-0000vW-00@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <15537.26912.870862.376237@hod.void.org> <20020408144556.GB559@celeron.dekkers> <20020408145000.GA1032@tavaiah> <20020408152539.GA1656@celeron.dekkers> <20020408154432.GA1177@tavaiah> <20020408164956.GA2306@celeron.dekkers>
Message-ID: <20020408170956.GB2306@celeron.dekkers>

On Mon, Apr 08, 2002 at 06:49:56PM +0200, Jeroen Dekkers wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 08, 2002 at 05:44:32PM +0200, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> > On Mon, Apr 08, 2002 at 05:25:39PM +0200, Jeroen Dekkers wrote:
> > > > BTW. have you looked at Reiserfs's plans ? 
> > > 
> > > No, I don't have the time for that. But I'm certainly interested.
> > > 
> > > > It seems that it will
> > > > include something like translators soon. They plan to use it mostly
> > > > for compression-on-fly and encryption-on-fly but it is going to be
> > > > more general than that.
> > > 
> > > You can never implement translators like we do it in a kernel.
> > 
> > Alike or not, functionality will be similar.
> 
> No, read some Hurd documentation to what translators exactly are. For
> example, a normal user can't add his own written compressing algoritms
> without permission from a privileged user.

Reading this again I see that this sentence is very vague. This is my
second try.

In the Hurd, all filesystems run in user-space. Our filesystem is also
our IPC namespace, this is very flexible. It's possible for every
normal user to attach a program to a node in the filesystem, that
program extends the filesystem, it can just provide a file or a
whole directory hierarchy. The use of this is endless.

I don't see how you can ever do this in a kernel. For example, you
can't allow an user to use his own written compression algoritm
because that would place untrusted code in kernel-space.

Jeroen Dekkers
-- 
Jabber supporter - http://www.jabber.org Jabber ID: jdekkers at jabber.org
Debian GNU supporter - http://www.debian.org http://www.gnu.org
IRC: jeroen at openprojects
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From marcus at gnu.org  Mon Apr  8 22:25:10 2002
From: marcus at gnu.org (Marcus Brinkmann)
Date: Mon, 8 Apr 2002 18:25:10 -0400
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <20020408145000.GA1032@tavaiah>
References: <20020406192102.GB426@celeron.dekkers> <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020406211248.10771V-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk> <slrnaauuut.ihn.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <15536.7941.527316.7128@hod.void.org> <E16uACP-0000vW-00@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <15537.26912.870862.376237@hod.void.org> <20020408144556.GB559@celeron.dekkers> <20020408145000.GA1032@tavaiah>
Message-ID: <20020408222510.GA24344@gnu.org>

On Mon, Apr 08, 2002 at 04:50:00PM +0200, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> If everything can be implemented so easily in Hurd then why nobody
> implements these things ?

yeah, uhm, but we do.  I mean, we have a POSIX compatible system that
implements all of its funcationality with translators, and new features
are added constantly.  Just as an example, nbd clients (network block devices)
were added simply by adding a new store type, and now all filesystems
like ext2fs, ufs, isofs etc can use nbd servers to run from.

There are plenty of such examples in the Hurd, were adding a new feature
was straightforward and implemented without much changes to the existing
framework.

If you ask why the particular feature you desire is not already added or
why there is not a queue of people waiting to add it for you, well, then
the standard answer is that we accept good quality patches.The truth is
that easiness is not the only factor.  A lot of people write features
for the Linux kernel although they face serious obstackles  in doing so,
and the end result will not be quite as elegant as the equivalent
solution in the Hurd.  The reason is usually because the benefit
outweighs the disadvantage for them (benefits like larger market share
of Linux, or the existance of other important features in the system
we lack).

Thanks,
Marcus



From alexander at alexanderbraun.de  Tue Apr  9 05:00:34 2002
From: alexander at alexanderbraun.de (alexander at alexanderbraun.de)
Date: Tue, 9 Apr 2002 07:00:34 +0200
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0204051735230.27264-100000@perycles.unix.be.EU.org>; from adulau-conos@conostix.com on Fri, Apr 05, 2002 at 05:35:59PM +0200
References: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0204051735230.27264-100000@perycles.unix.be.EU.org>
Message-ID: <20020409070034.A23175@alexanderbraun.de>

hi,
my name is alexander braun and I did not contribute much to the
discussions yet.
I'm not sure if I understood the topic correctly, but I looked up the
two patents.

though IANAL:
is it possible to attack patent no.  5,265,261 due to terms of prior
art? I only read the abstract but it seems to me it is a clear
description of tcp/ip but with an initial date from 1993. and i don't
see any difference to 5,437,013. 
both patents talk of :

"""
   A method and system for sending data from a first computer through a
   communications line to a second computer. The second computer includes
   a redirector, a transport, a data buffer, and an application
   program. The method and system provides the transport with a read
   request to send data from the first computer to the second computer,
   and with a receive network control block which directs the transport
   to store the next data it receives directly in the data buffer. The
   transport sends the read request to the first computer. The first
   computer stores the data identified by the read request in a data
   block without a header. The first computer transmits the data block
   over the communications line to the transport. Using information
   contained in the network control block, the transport stores the
   requested data without the header directly in the data buffer.
"""

in the abstract. Propabely I missed soemthing, but for my
NO-Lawyer-ears this sounds like a common description of two computers
in _any_ network.

Attacking these patents will not help to protect SAMBA as a whole,
because M$ will insist on the IPR-stuff, but perhaps it might
help delaying the battle.
(because it's an american patent this might be an action of the
FSF-hq)

Alexander Braun

On Fri, Apr 05, 2002 at 05:35:59PM +0200, Alexandre Dulaunoy wrote:
> 
> http://www.advogato.org/article/453.html
> 
> Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
> Posted 4 Apr 2002 by atai (Journeyer)
> 
> In its continuous battle against the GPL, Microsoft is trying a new 
> tactic, a combination of patent claims and licensing of technical 
> standards. In the "Royalty-Free CIFS Technical Reference License 
> Agreement", Microsoft defines the GNU GPL as an "IPR Impairing License" 
> and requires companies not to distribute their implementations of the CIFS 
> specification "in any manner that would subject such Company 
> Implementation to the terms of an IPR Impairing License." This attack is 
> clearly aimed at the successful GPLed CIFS implementation, Samba.
> 
> The license defines
> 
> 1.4 "IPR Impairing License" shall mean the GNU General Public License, the 
> GNU Lesser/Library General Public License, and any license that requires 
> in any instance that other software distributed with software subject to 
> such license (a) be disclosed and distributed in source code form; (b) be 
> licensed for purposes of making derivative works; or (c) be 
> redistributable at no charge.
> 
> and
> 
> 1.6 "Necessary Claims" shall mean those claims of a patent or patent 
> application, including without limitation, United States Patents Nos. 
> 5,265,261 and 5,437,013, which (a) are owned, controlled or sublicenseable 
> by Microsoft without payment of a fee to an unaffiliated third party; and 
> (b) are necessarily infringed by implementing the CIFS communication 
> protocol as set forth in the Technical Reference, wherein a claim is 
> necessarily infringed only when there are no technically reasonable 
> alternatives to such infringement.
> 
> And it requires
> 
> 3.3 IPR Impairing License Restrictions. For reasons, including without 
> limitation, because (i) Company does not have the right to sublicense its 
> rights to the Necessary Claims and (ii) Company's license rights hereunder 
> to Microsoft's intellectual property are limited in scope, Company shall 
> not distribute any Company Implementation in any manner that would subject 
> such Company Implementation to the terms of an IPR Impairing License. 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Alexandre Dulaunoy		 http://www.foo.be/ AD993-RIPE			http://www.ael.be/
> "People who fight may lose.  People who do not fight have already lost."
>   - Bertolt Brecht
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> asbl-libre mailing list
> asbl-libre at ael.be
> http://www.be.linux.org/mailman/listinfo/asbl-libre
> 
> ASBL Association Electronique Libre http://www.ael.be/ 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Discussion mailing list
> Discussion at fsfeurope.org
> http://mailman.fsfeurope.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discussion
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From home at alexhudson.com  Tue Apr  9 05:38:57 2002
From: home at alexhudson.com (Alex Hudson)
Date: 09 Apr 2002 06:38:57 +0100
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <20020409070034.A23175@alexanderbraun.de>
References: 	<Pine.LNX.4.44.0204051735230.27264-100000@perycles.unix.be.EU.org> 
	<20020409070034.A23175@alexanderbraun.de>
Message-ID: <1018330737.4464.12.camel@rendevous.alexhudson.com>

On Tue, 2002-04-09 at 06:00, alexander at alexanderbraun.de wrote:
> though IANAL:
> is it possible to attack patent no.  5,265,261 due to terms of prior
> art? I only read the abstract but it seems to me it is a clear
> description of tcp/ip but with an initial date from 1993. and i don't
> see any difference to 5,437,013. 

I think, but don't quote me ;), that we're actually only talking about
one patent here - 5,437,013. 5,265,261 appears to be an earlier version,
and at first sight Microsoft appear to have narrowed their claim from
the previous version. There is also supposed to be an even earlier
original claim, which has now been completely disclaimed - if anyone can
find it, it would be interesting (I don't think the UKPTO passed it?).

What the patent appears to be is a claim on raw-mode network access,
along the lines of libpcap or something - an efficient way of
marshalling streams of data from applications and the network stack to
the wire so that it actually makes sense. I would be astonished if there
was no good prior art on this; the claim is from ~1993. Even if there is
no prior art, I can't believe that it's even vaguely original.

So, it looks like that Samba doesn't infringe on this patent (unless it
requires raw access for broadcasts or something?) as-is. But it also
looks like this patent could be dangerous for applications beyond those
that implement/use SMB - it looks like even tcpdump would infringe :(

Cheers,

Alex.


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From schaefer at alphanet.ch  Tue Apr  9 07:50:37 2002
From: schaefer at alphanet.ch (Marc SCHAEFER)
Date: Tue, 9 Apr 2002 09:50:37 +0200 (MEST)
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <20020408145000.GA1032@tavaiah>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020409094437.15563G-100000@defian.alphanet.ch>

On Mon, 8 Apr 2002, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

> BTW. have you looked at Reiserfs's plans ? It seems that it will
> include something like translators soon. They plan to use it mostly
> for compression-on-fly and encryption-on-fly but it is going to be
> more general than that.

FIST allowed me to implement a test migration filesystem (poor-man's HSM)
on top of ext2 with 2.2.x. mfs is half kernel and half user-space
(http://www-internal.alphanet.ch/~schaefer/mfs.html). Unfortunately the
project is on hold (because lack of interest: disk drives are too cheap
nowadays).

FIST is based on the concept of stacking filesystems.

FIST is apparently available on Solaris, *BSD and Linux, but I only did it
on Linux. 

FIST was written by Erez Zadok
   http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~ezk/research/fist/



From schilling at fokus.gmd.de  Tue Apr  9 09:30:42 2002
From: schilling at fokus.gmd.de (Joerg Schilling)
Date: Tue, 9 Apr 2002 11:30:42 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
Message-ID: <200204090930.g399UgeT007792@burner.fokus.gmd.de>

>From: Alex Hudson <home at alexhudson.com>

>I think, but don't quote me ;), that we're actually only talking about
>one patent here - 5,437,013. 5,265,261 appears to be an earlier version,
>and at first sight Microsoft appear to have narrowed their claim from
>the previous version. There is also supposed to be an even earlier
>original claim, which has now been completely disclaimed - if anyone can
>find it, it would be interesting (I don't think the UKPTO passed it?).

>What the patent appears to be is a claim on raw-mode network access,
>along the lines of libpcap or something - an efficient way of
>marshalling streams of data from applications and the network stack to
>the wire so that it actually makes sense. I would be astonished if there
>was no good prior art on this; the claim is from ~1993. Even if there is
>no prior art, I can't believe that it's even vaguely original.

RAW network access has been implemented by Sun in 1986 with:

-	Reverse ARP Boot Protocol daemon

-	Etherfind (a precursor of Snoop) ... the programs where the ideas
	have been copied as "tcpdump"

J�rg

 EMail:joerg at schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) J�rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       js at cs.tu-berlin.de		(uni)  If you don't have iso-8859-1
       schilling at fokus.gmd.de		(work) chars I am J"org Schilling
 URL:  http://www.fokus.gmd.de/usr/schilling   ftp://ftp.fokus.gmd.de/pub/unix


From kyrah at gnu.org  Tue Apr  9 10:04:52 2002
From: kyrah at gnu.org (Karin Kosina)
Date: Tue, 9 Apr 2002 12:04:52 +0200
Subject: Software Patents in Europe (Was:Re: Microsoft prohibits GPLed wor via licensing of CIFS standards)
Message-ID: <20020409120452.A6472@samhain.ifs.tuwien.ac.at>

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

### Georg Jakob [Mon, Apr 08, 2002 at 05:20:49PM +0200]
> http://www.fsf.or.at/artikel/softwarepatente.html

... which unfortunately is outdated in as much as it mirrors the status
quo of May 2001 :-/ but I promise I will add the recent alarming
developments some time really, really soon.  And all and any feedback is
welcome, there might be mistakes or things that are not clear enough...
I wrote this just as summary of a talk I held at the Linuxdays in St.
Poelten....

cheers,
#!/kyrah

- -- 
Karin Kosina (vka kyrah)
http://kyrah.net

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From schaefer at alphanet.ch  Tue Apr  9 09:06:22 2002
From: schaefer at alphanet.ch (Marc SCHAEFER)
Date: Tue, 9 Apr 2002 11:06:22 +0200 (MEST)
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020409094437.15563G-100000@defian.alphanet.ch>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020409110440.16001C-100000@defian.alphanet.ch>

On Tue, 9 Apr 2002, Marc SCHAEFER wrote:

> FIST is apparently available on Solaris, *BSD and Linux, but I only did it
> on Linux. 

I was talking of the Linux kernel itself, which is a component of a
GNU/Linux system, such as Debian GNU/Linux.

Sorry to all the GNUs out there.



From leypold at informatik.uni-tuebingen.de  Tue Apr  9 10:45:59 2002
From: leypold at informatik.uni-tuebingen.de (M E Leypold @ labnet)
Date: Tue, 9 Apr 2002 12:45:59 +0200
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <20020409070034.A23175@alexanderbraun.de>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0204051735230.27264-100000@perycles.unix.be.EU.org>
	<20020409070034.A23175@alexanderbraun.de>
Message-ID: <15538.50791.955180.395847@hod.void.org>

alexander at alexanderbraun.de writes:
 > hi,
 > my name is alexander braun and I did not contribute much to the
 > discussions yet.
 > I'm not sure if I understood the topic correctly, but I looked up the
 > two patents.
 > 
 > though IANAL:
 > is it possible to attack patent no.  5,265,261 due to terms of prior
 > art? I only read the abstract but it seems to me it is a clear
 > description of tcp/ip but with an initial date from 1993. and i don't
 > see any difference to 5,437,013. 
 > both patents talk of :
 > 
 > """
 >    A method and system for sending data from a first computer through a
 >    communications line to a second computer. The second computer includes
 >    a redirector, a transport, a data buffer, and an application
 >    program. The method and system provides the transport with a read
 >    request to send data from the first computer to the second computer,
 >    and with a receive network control block which directs the transport
 >    to store the next data it receives directly in the data buffer. The
 >    transport sends the read request to the first computer. The first
 >    computer stores the data identified by the read request in a data
 >    block without a header. The first computer transmits the data block
 >    over the communications line to the transport. Using information
 >    contained in the network control block, the transport stores the
 >    requested data without the header directly in the data buffer.
 > """
 > 


If you ask me, if patents on software should ever be allowed, it
should be required that the description is accompanied by a formal
specification in a common modelling language, like Z, Larch, VDM or
whatever. This would clarify what the people really mean, avoid spongy
description like the above, and be actually a real win for other
people going to implement the stuff. And patents would be much less
:-], and equivalence could be decidable.


Regards -- Markus




From rubini at gnu.org  Tue Apr  9 11:11:00 2002
From: rubini at gnu.org (Alessandro Rubini)
Date: Tue, 9 Apr 2002 13:11:00 +0200
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <20020409070034.A23175@alexanderbraun.de>
References: <20020409070034.A23175@alexanderbraun.de>
Message-ID: <20020409131100.A3285@morgana.systemy.it>

> is it possible to attack patent no.  5,265,261 due to terms of prior
> art?

I don't think we are concerned about that. At least I am not. It's
wasted time as it leads to nothing.

The problem of patents on abstract concepts (so-called "sw patents") isn't
addressed by fighting each patent in turn. And the problem of misuse of
license contracts and libel ("IPR impairing"), or FUD more in general
isn't addressed by addressing this specific patent.

Moreover, if we deal with the details we appear to accept the overall
ideas and thus publicly agree to have them explored further.


I express my own points, not those of any organization I belong to.

-- 
Quello che scrivo rappresenta solo il mio personale punto di vista,
non rispecchia l'opinione di organizzazioni di cui faccio o ho fatto parte.


From home at alexhudson.com  Tue Apr  9 16:17:54 2002
From: home at alexhudson.com (Alex Hudson)
Date: 09 Apr 2002 17:17:54 +0100
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <200204090930.g399UgeT007792@burner.fokus.gmd.de>
References: <200204090930.g399UgeT007792@burner.fokus.gmd.de>
Message-ID: <1018369075.7490.1.camel@rendevous.alexhudson.com>

On Tue, 2002-04-09 at 10:30, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> RAW network access has been implemented by Sun in 1986 with:
> 
> -	Reverse ARP Boot Protocol daemon
> 
> -	Etherfind (a precursor of Snoop) ... the programs where the ideas
> 	have been copied as "tcpdump"

Sadly, that doesn't count as prior art, sorry. If it was Free Software,
you might have a case, or if they exported the raw interface via an API
- was that done?

Cheers,

Alex.
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From eneko.lacunza at hispalinux.es  Tue Apr  9 17:49:28 2002
From: eneko.lacunza at hispalinux.es (Eneko Lacunza)
Date: 09 Apr 2002 19:49:28 +0200
Subject: My mail problems over (not important stuff)
Message-ID: <1018374580.1795.85.camel@antares>

Hi,

	This is just to say that I've had mail problems during the last 6 days,
and I was unable to read any mail. They're over now, and I read you from
an other mailbox.

Regards.

-- 
Eneko Lacunza
JID:enlar at jabber.sk

  # Por un mundo con conocimiento libre #
       No a las patentes de software

http://www.hispalinux.es - http://www.es.gnome.org
http://www.fsfeurope.org - http://sincanon.hispalinux.es




From stefan.meretz at hbv.org  Tue Apr  9 21:40:23 2002
From: stefan.meretz at hbv.org (Stefan Meretz)
Date: Tue, 09 Apr 2002 23:40:23 +0200
Subject: [Fwd: [ox-en] [Freesw] Free Sw Manifesto in English, (fwd)]
Message-ID: <3CB35FC7.3040103@hbv.org>

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2002 10:28:47 -0500 (EST)
From: Graham Seaman <graham at seul.org>
Reply-To: list-en at oekonux.org
To: list-en at oekonux.org

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 04 Apr 2002 12:18:14 -0300
From: Cl=E1udio Menezes <cmenezes at unesco.org.uy>
Reply-To: freesw at conecta.it
To: Freesw List <freesw at conecta.it>
Subject: [Freesw] Free Sw Manifesto in English,

http://www.softwarelivre.rs.gov.br/artigos/manifesto-ing.txt

Manifest to the Free Software Community

This meeting, in its second edition, is a milestone in the construction
of the international free software  movement. Our objective on these
three days is to strengthen the original mission of the movement which
was inspired by the concept of freedom from the Free Software
Foundation. We aim to go deeper into the construction of a concrete
alternative would insert the technological question into the context of
a world with social inclusion, equality and access to technological
advances.

One year after launching "Projeto Software Livre RS", we have proven
this is possible. Beyond limited terms in the national scenery, the free
software bases, we have developed many alternatives using free programs.
More than this, we inserted ourselves onto the international scene as an
important locale of development. We proved, with this, that it is
possible for us to be a reference in the technological area,  presenting
solutions, outside of the economic capitalistic center.

This proves that a model based in solidarity, in knowledge socialization
produced results-distribution instead of competition. Concentration and
accumulation are better suitable for the development of our planet. We
have shown that "the other world is possible". Here it's the free
software land.

The coordination of "Projeto Software Livre RS" requires dialog with
other movements and initiatives that aim for alternatives from the
international domination and exclusion. For this reason, we presented
the "Fórum Social Mundial 2001" here in Porto Alegre. We defined this
meeting as one more step, among the many that are occurring in the
world, toward the construction of  the "Fórum Social Mundial 2001".

This way, we'll be strengthening and amplify the free software community
and, at the same time, incorporating our specifications into the
construction of a global alternative program.

We invite the whole free software community: independent developers,
governmental entities, non governmental organizations, distribution
companies, public and private companies, user groups, universities and
research institutions to add up to the construction and convocation of
the "Fórum Social Mundial 2002". Please join us next January in Porto
Alegre and in the preparation of the "Fórum Internacional de Software
Livre 2002" predicted to May 2nd. , 3rd. and 4th.

We greet all participating to the "Fórum Internacional de Software Livre
2001"

Free Software RS Project Coordination


_______________________
http://www.oekonux.org/


-- 
      Vereinte Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft ver.di
      Internetredaktion
      Potsdamer Platz 10, 10785 Berlin
-- 
      mailto:stefan.meretz at verdi.de
      maintaining: http://www.verdi.de
      private stuff: http://www.meretz.de
-- 






From schilling at fokus.gmd.de  Wed Apr 10 12:03:25 2002
From: schilling at fokus.gmd.de (Joerg Schilling)
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2002 14:03:25 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
Message-ID: <200204101203.g3AC3PE7016549@burner.fokus.gmd.de>

>From: Alex Hudson <home at alexhudson.com>

>On Tue, 2002-04-09 at 10:30, Joerg Schilling wrote:
>> RAW network access has been implemented by Sun in 1986 with:
>>=20
>> -	Reverse ARP Boot Protocol daemon
>>=20
>> -	Etherfind (a precursor of Snoop) ... the programs where the ideas
>> 	have been copied as "tcpdump"

>Sadly, that doesn't count as prior art, sorry. If it was Free Software,
>you might have a case, or if they exported the raw interface via an API
>- was that done?

While I don't understand why close source cannot be prior art, of course
it was documented:

NIT(4P)                     PROTOCOLS                     NIT(4P)

NAME
     nit - Network Interface Tap

CONFIG
     pseudo-device  clone
     pseudo-device  snit
     pseudo-device  pf
     pseudo-device  nbuf

SYNOPSIS
     #include <sys/file.h>
     #include <sys/ioctl.h>
     #include <net/nit_pf.h>
     #include <net/nit_buf.h>
          fd = open("/dev/nit", mode);
          ioctl(fd, I_PUSH, "pf");
          ioctl(fd, I_PUSH, "nbuf");

DESCRIPTION
     NIT (the Network Interface Tap) is a  facility  composed  of
     several  STREAMS modules and drivers.  These components col-
     lectively provide facilities for  constructing  applications
     that  require  link-level  network access.  Examples of such
     applications include rarpd(8C), which is a user-level imple-
     mentation  of  the  Reverse ARP protocol, and etherfind(8C),
     which is a network monitoring and trouble-shooting program.

...


J�rg

 EMail:joerg at schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) J�rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       js at cs.tu-berlin.de		(uni)  If you don't have iso-8859-1
       schilling at fokus.gmd.de		(work) chars I am J"org Schilling
 URL:  http://www.fokus.gmd.de/usr/schilling   ftp://ftp.fokus.gmd.de/pub/unix


From home at alexhudson.com  Wed Apr 10 12:21:04 2002
From: home at alexhudson.com (Alex Hudson)
Date: 10 Apr 2002 13:21:04 +0100
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <200204101203.g3AC3PE7016549@burner.fokus.gmd.de>
References: <200204101203.g3AC3PE7016549@burner.fokus.gmd.de>
Message-ID: <1018441264.7490.42.camel@rendevous.alexhudson.com>

On Wed, 2002-04-10 at 13:03, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> >Sadly, that doesn't count as prior art, sorry. If it was Free Software,
> >you might have a case, or if they exported the raw interface via an API
> >- was that done?
> 
> While I don't understand why close source cannot be prior art

Because it's not in the art. The art is Computer Science, not writing
Sun's OS. The gain of knowledge to Computer Science from Sun having done
it is zero.

> of course
> it was documented:

Yep. Sadly, the documentation only shows you how to access it, not how
it was done. So, it's not even arguably prior art. With Free Software,
you are sharing the knowledge of the implementation, which is the
important thing.

Cheers,

Alex.

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From schilling at fokus.gmd.de  Wed Apr 10 12:42:53 2002
From: schilling at fokus.gmd.de (Joerg Schilling)
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2002 14:42:53 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
Message-ID: <200204101242.g3ACgr71016630@burner.fokus.gmd.de>

>From: Alex Hudson <home at alexhudson.com>

>> While I don't understand why close source cannot be prior art

>Because it's not in the art. The art is Computer Science, not writing
>Sun's OS. The gain of knowledge to Computer Science from Sun having done
>it is zero.

Sorry, this is nonsense! The gain of knowledge to Computer Science from
Linux is zero - most of the "ideas" have been copied from Sun.

If you were right, then Linux hackers would not be able copy Sun's ideas.

In addition, you seem to regret the fact that there are many publically
available white papers from Sun describing SunOS internals - as well
as many RFC's posted by Sun.


>> of course
>> it was documented:

>Yep. Sadly, the documentation only shows you how to access it, not how
>it was done. So, it's not even arguably prior art. With Free Software,
>you are sharing the knowledge of the implementation, which is the
>important thing.

As for the NIT, it could make sense to search the AT&T Streams documents
and white papers for a description of the NIT as a transition help from
BSD to STREAMS based networking.

J�rg

 EMail:joerg at schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) J�rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       js at cs.tu-berlin.de		(uni)  If you don't have iso-8859-1
       schilling at fokus.gmd.de		(work) chars I am J"org Schilling
 URL:  http://www.fokus.gmd.de/usr/schilling   ftp://ftp.fokus.gmd.de/pub/unix


From home at alexhudson.com  Wed Apr 10 13:01:11 2002
From: home at alexhudson.com (Alex Hudson)
Date: 10 Apr 2002 14:01:11 +0100
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <200204101242.g3ACgr71016630@burner.fokus.gmd.de>
References: <200204101242.g3ACgr71016630@burner.fokus.gmd.de>
Message-ID: <1018443672.7490.55.camel@rendevous.alexhudson.com>

On Wed, 2002-04-10 at 13:42, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> >Because it's not in the art. The art is Computer Science, not writing
> >Sun's OS. The gain of knowledge to Computer Science from Sun having done
> >it is zero.
> 
> Sorry, this is nonsense!

No, it's not. Prior art doesn't mean "an example of something having
been done before". The question to ask is, "Given the claim in this
patent, would it be obvious to a skilled software engineer how to
implement it?". "Obvious" is generally taken to mean that the idea, or
some close parallel, has been published. 

> The gain of knowledge to Computer Science from
> Linux is zero - most of the "ideas" have been copied from Sun.

No, you're not comparing like with like. Linux is Free Software. If you
accept that source code is speech (which is what makes this arguable),
having the code around is essentially equivilent to publishing. It's a
reference work, if you like. SunOS is proprietary software; it is most
definitely not a published work (not counting the current SCSL or
whatever release, since we're talking 1993). How it works internally is
a trade secret almost, you can't argue that it has contributed to the
art. Sun's implementation of raw network access will help no-one except
Sun engineers. 

> If you were right, then Linux hackers would not be able copy Sun's ideas.

Rubbish. We're not talking about copying ideas, we're talking about what
is obvious. Obvious means "yes, I know how to do that", not "give me 18
months of research and I should be able to do it". I would suggest that
many features "copied" from Sun, patented or not, would have taken
considerable time to research and implement, and would not have been
obvious.

> In addition, you seem to regret the fact that there are many publically
> available white papers from Sun describing SunOS internals - as well
> as many RFC's posted by Sun.

I wasn't even aware of them, so it's unlikely that I regret the fact
that they are available. If you can find an RFC on raw network access
describing the internals of SunOS dated before 1993, then you probably
have prior art.

Don't turn this into a Sun vs. Linux argument again please, we've had
enough of that...

Cheers,

Alex.

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From jeroen at dekkers.cx  Wed Apr 10 13:21:17 2002
From: jeroen at dekkers.cx (Jeroen Dekkers)
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2002 15:21:17 +0200
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <200204101242.g3ACgr71016630@burner.fokus.gmd.de>
References: <200204101242.g3ACgr71016630@burner.fokus.gmd.de>
Message-ID: <20020410132117.GA2400@celeron.dekkers>

On Wed, Apr 10, 2002 at 02:42:53PM +0200, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> >From: Alex Hudson <home at alexhudson.com>
> 
> >> While I don't understand why close source cannot be prior art
> 
> >Because it's not in the art. The art is Computer Science, not writing
> >Sun's OS. The gain of knowledge to Computer Science from Sun having done
> >it is zero.
> 
> Sorry, this is nonsense! The gain of knowledge to Computer Science from
> Linux is zero - most of the "ideas" have been copied from Sun.

I think both Linux and SunOS are an copy of the idea of unix.

> If you were right, then Linux hackers would not be able copy Sun's ideas.

AFAIK most Linux hackers have never run SunOS (at least not when they
wrote Linux in the beginning), keep to the facts please. GNU/Linux and
SunOS are both implementation of an 30 year old idea. 

Oh, yes, GNU/Linux and SunOS share some features, maybe there might be
even some features in Linux which Sun invented, but the overall design
is just Unix and the ideas of SunOS are just copied from Unix.

> In addition, you seem to regret the fact that there are many publically
> available white papers from Sun describing SunOS internals - as well
> as many RFC's posted by Sun.

Oh, cool! But if we just had the freedom to look at, change and
redistribute the SunOS code, it would have been much better.
 
> >> of course
> >> it was documented:
> 
> >Yep. Sadly, the documentation only shows you how to access it, not how
> >it was done. So, it's not even arguably prior art. With Free Software,
> >you are sharing the knowledge of the implementation, which is the
> >important thing.
> 
> As for the NIT, it could make sense to search the AT&T Streams
> documents

Did AT&T also copy those things from Sun? Or did Sun copy it from
them? 

You might like SunOS, you can run it and hack it as much as you want,
but please don't advocate it on this list which is about *Free
Software*.

Jeroen Dekkers
-- 
Jabber supporter - http://www.jabber.org Jabber ID: jdekkers at jabber.org
Debian GNU supporter - http://www.debian.org http://www.gnu.org
IRC: jeroen at openprojects
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From jeroen at dekkers.cx  Wed Apr 10 13:24:47 2002
From: jeroen at dekkers.cx (Jeroen Dekkers)
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2002 15:24:47 +0200
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <1018443672.7490.55.camel@rendevous.alexhudson.com>
References: <200204101242.g3ACgr71016630@burner.fokus.gmd.de> <1018443672.7490.55.camel@rendevous.alexhudson.com>
Message-ID: <20020410132447.GB2400@celeron.dekkers>

On Wed, Apr 10, 2002 at 02:01:11PM +0100, Alex Hudson wrote:
> Don't turn this into a Sun vs. Linux argument again please, we've had
> enough of that...

Just don't waste your time on this. In Joerg's opinion all free
software is bad and SunOS is the best OS in the world. We've already
seen that. Most other people on this list actually like free software.

Jeroen Dekkers
-- 
Jabber supporter - http://www.jabber.org Jabber ID: jdekkers at jabber.org
Debian GNU supporter - http://www.debian.org http://www.gnu.org
IRC: jeroen at openprojects
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From rubini at gnu.org  Wed Apr 10 13:29:12 2002
From: rubini at gnu.org (Alessandro Rubini)
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2002 15:29:12 +0200
Subject: how patents work (was: licensing of CIFS standards)
In-Reply-To: <1018443672.7490.55.camel@rendevous.alexhudson.com>
References: <1018443672.7490.55.camel@rendevous.alexhudson.com>
Message-ID: <20020410152912.A21044@morgana.systemy.it>

Hello Axel.
Shortly: I think Joerg is right.

In more detail, let me quote you:
> No, it's not. Prior art doesn't mean "an example of something having
> been done before". The question to ask is, "Given the claim in this
> patent, would it be obvious to a skilled software engineer how to
> implement it?".

On the other hand, most software patents and scientific papers do not
include the implementation. They just describe the idea and some
information on how it is implemented (papers have much information,
usually, while patents has almost none of it).

Your quote is right, but not to the point that the skilled person must
"implement" it, just "invent the same idea", as far as I know. But I
agree that "skilled in the art" is used by patent offices as a synonym
of "a person with good knowledge but no inventive ability at all",
which means "it must have been published".

But the point is that it's not about the implementation, only about
the idea. Otherwise you can patent something (without disclosing the
implementation) and I might be allowed to patent the exact same thing.
That's nonsense, as the patent application itself is prior art since
it "disclaims" the idea. Nobody is concerned with implementation here,
as it's all about vaporware.

I'm not sure of what I say here, as I'm not a patent lawyer or
anything, but I've been interested in the issue for some time. If you
still think we (we == "me and Joerg" here) are wrong, could you please
support your claims with some credentials (either "I'm sure because I
work in the field" or, better, a pointer to published information
about use of prior art in patent busting).

Still, I think in this specific case invalidating the patent is not
the way to go.

> Don't turn this into a Sun vs. Linux argument again please, we've had
> enough of that...

Obviously, here I wholeheartedly agree with you. 

thanks for your patience
/alessandro


From jeroen at dekkers.cx  Wed Apr 10 13:52:48 2002
From: jeroen at dekkers.cx (Jeroen Dekkers)
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2002 15:52:48 +0200
Subject: how patents work (was: licensing of CIFS standards)
In-Reply-To: <20020410152912.A21044@morgana.systemy.it>
References: <1018443672.7490.55.camel@rendevous.alexhudson.com> <20020410152912.A21044@morgana.systemy.it>
Message-ID: <20020410135248.GA2596@celeron.dekkers>

On Wed, Apr 10, 2002 at 03:29:12PM +0200, Alessandro Rubini wrote:
> 
> Hello Axel.
> Shortly: I think Joerg is right.
> 
> In more detail, let me quote you:
> > No, it's not. Prior art doesn't mean "an example of something having
> > been done before". The question to ask is, "Given the claim in this
> > patent, would it be obvious to a skilled software engineer how to
> > implement it?".
> 
> On the other hand, most software patents and scientific papers do not
> include the implementation. They just describe the idea and some
> information on how it is implemented (papers have much information,
> usually, while patents has almost none of it).

Software patents are just ridiculous to start with, IMHO we can better
put our energy in making sure we can stop those crazy ideas in Europe
and then stop it in the rest of the world instead of talking how they
work. Software patents don't work at all.

Scientific papers don't have to include implementations, they can just
point to the source code. They should discuss the actual idea, how to
implement it can be seen in the source.

Jeroen Dekkers
-- 
Jabber supporter - http://www.jabber.org Jabber ID: jdekkers at jabber.org
Debian GNU supporter - http://www.debian.org http://www.gnu.org
IRC: jeroen at openprojects
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From schilling at fokus.gmd.de  Wed Apr 10 14:02:30 2002
From: schilling at fokus.gmd.de (Joerg Schilling)
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2002 16:02:30 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
Message-ID: <200204101402.g3AE2UNq016689@burner.fokus.gmd.de>

>From: Alex Hudson <home at alexhudson.com>
>> >Because it's not in the art. The art is Computer Science, not writing
>> >Sun's OS. The gain of knowledge to Computer Science from Sun having done
>> >it is zero.
>>=20
>> Sorry, this is nonsense!

>No, it's not. Prior art doesn't mean "an example of something having
>been done before". The question to ask is, "Given the claim in this
>patent, would it be obvious to a skilled software engineer how to
>implement it?". "Obvious" is generally taken to mean that the idea, or
>some close parallel, has been published.=20


From home at alexhudson.com  Wed Apr 10 14:06:50 2002
From: home at alexhudson.com (Alex Hudson)
Date: 10 Apr 2002 15:06:50 +0100
Subject: how patents work (was: licensing of CIFS standards)
In-Reply-To: <20020410152912.A21044@morgana.systemy.it>
References: <1018443672.7490.55.camel@rendevous.alexhudson.com> 
	<20020410152912.A21044@morgana.systemy.it>
Message-ID: <1018447610.7493.86.camel@rendevous.alexhudson.com>

On Wed, 2002-04-10 at 14:29, Alessandro Rubini wrote:
> Hello Axel.

Hi Sallyandro :D

> On the other hand, most software patents and scientific papers do not
> include the implementation. They just describe the idea and some
> information on how it is implemented (papers have much information,
> usually, while patents has almost none of it).

In terms of the mechanics, yes. But in terms of the idea, no. The patent
brief is supposed to outline exactly how the process works - you don't
get a patent on the idea itself, but on the way you have achieved your
solution. For example, you can't patent a loudspeaker. But, if your
loudspeaker was designed in such a fashion that you made it 10% louder
than all the others due to some previously unknown acoustic property,
then you could get a patent on the device/contruction that allowed you
to do that. That wouldn't stop other people finding other ways of
harnessing the new acoustic property, they just wouldn't be able to copy
you exactly.

> Your quote is right, but not to the point that the skilled person must
> "implement" it, just "invent the same idea", as far as I know.

I think that depends on your definition of "idea". Certainly, if you
invent something that has been invented before, then that infringes the
patent. However, you can't pantent "ideas" - you can only patent
inventions, which are technological solutions to problems. If someone
else can solve the same problem a different way, that doesn't infringe. 

> But I agree that "skilled in the art" is used by patent offices as a 
> synonym of "a person with good knowledge but no inventive ability at
> all", which means "it must have been published".

Indeed. People often over-rate the amount of searching the patent office
will do as well - generally, it's up to the person applying for the
patent to do the search for prior art.

> But the point is that it's not about the implementation, only about
> the idea. Otherwise you can patent something (without disclosing the
> implementation) 

You can't do that. The point of the patent is that you disclose how you
solve the problem ;) From the UKPTO site:

"What must be included in the description

4. The description must be sufficient on its own to allow the invention
to be carried out by someone skilled in the field of technology to which
the invention relates. It should not normally refer to other documents
to explain important features of the invention and should never refer to
documents which have not been published at the time of filing the
application."

A patent is concerned with how something works, it's not a land-claim on
a solution space. You have to outline your specific solution to the
problem. 

BountyQuest talk briefly about prior art:

http://www.bountyquest.com/arttutorial/arttutorial.htm

Cheers,

Alex.
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From home at alexhudson.com  Wed Apr 10 14:18:12 2002
From: home at alexhudson.com (Alex Hudson)
Date: 10 Apr 2002 15:18:12 +0100
Subject: how patents work (was Re: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via
	licensing of CIFS standards)
In-Reply-To: <200204101402.g3AE2UNq016689@burner.fokus.gmd.de>
References: <200204101402.g3AE2UNq016689@burner.fokus.gmd.de>
Message-ID: <1018448292.7490.99.camel@rendevous.alexhudson.com>

On Wed, 2002-04-10 at 15:02, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> From my understanding of patentable claims (may be this is different in USA), 
> you cannot get a patent for anything that has been around before.

No, sadly, not true, certainly not here in the UK anyway. (UK rules are
basically the same as the European Convention too). The only requirement
is that is hasn't been _published_ before - hence my comparison between
your example of the Sun network system, and some other Free Software
system. It would be a lot easier to argue that the Free Software was in
fact a published work than any implementation Sun had done.

In fact, even if a work _has_ been published before, that doesn't stop
you from patenting something. The fact that prior art exists doesn't
matter a huge deal - the patent office will not search hard. It means
that your patent is terribly weak if there is obvious prior art, and it
would be unlikely that you could enforce it. However, as always, the
balance is weighted in favour of those who can afford to go to court :(

> >No, you're not comparing like with like. Linux is Free Software. If you
> >accept that source code is speech (which is what makes this arguable),
> >having the code around is essentially equivilent to publishing. It's a
> 
> But patents and Copyright are not related. So why do you make this
> comparison?

Where am I comparing copyright with patents? I'm not saying that having
copyrighted code available invalidates any patented system... is that
what you're pointing at?

> My understanding of prior art is that the idea has been around before and
> used in products. The important thing in publishing ideas is to tell other
> people that the idea did exist.

As I said before to Alessandro, the patent isn't strictly on the idea,
it's on the solution. To invalidate a patent with prior art, you have to
show that the solution has been used before. Essentially, prior art
consists only of previous patents issued, and published works
(scientific/technical journals, etc.).

The fact that someone has solved the problem previously isn't itself
enough to invalidate a patent.

> >Don't turn this into a Sun vs. Linux argument again please, we've had
> >enough of that...
> 
> Well this was not my intention, but you started with Sun bashing.......

If that was how it sounded, I apologise. But I would stand by my
assertion that it is unlikely that proprietary software (Sun or
otherwise ;) could be used as prior art to weaken a patent.

Cheers,

Alex.

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From rubini at gnu.org  Wed Apr 10 20:27:06 2002
From: rubini at gnu.org (Alessandro Rubini)
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2002 22:27:06 +0200
Subject: how patents work (was Re: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via
In-Reply-To: <1018448292.7490.99.camel@rendevous.alexhudson.com>
References: <1018448292.7490.99.camel@rendevous.alexhudson.com>
Message-ID: <20020410222706.A25214@morgana.systemy.it>

> As I said before to Alessandro, the patent isn't strictly on the idea,
> it's on the solution.

That's theory. So-called software patents are on abstract ideas (not
all of them, only most of them).  That's why they are not legal in
civilized countries. At least until some lobby ignores civil rules to
enlarge their own pockets, already deep enough to shape reality.

Never heard of the horror gallery?
http://swpat.ffii.org/vreji/pikta/mupli/index.en.html

/alessandro


From markj at cloaked.freeserve.co.uk  Wed Apr 10 21:07:03 2002
From: markj at cloaked.freeserve.co.uk (MJ Ray)
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2002 21:07:03 GMT
Subject: how patents work (was: licensing of CIFS standards)
References: <1018443672.7490.55.camel@rendevous.alexhudson.com> <1018443672.7490.55.camel@rendevous.alexhudson.com> <20020410152912.A21044@morgana.systemy.it>
Message-ID: <slrnab9abn.htj.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>

Alessandro Rubini <rubini at gnu.org> wrote:
> But the point is that it's not about the implementation, only about
> the idea.  [...]

I thought a software patent was a patent on an algorithm, a process, ie an
implementation?

This is all moot for this list, because you can't enforce the here (yet).



From list-fsf-eu-discussion at faerber.muc.de  Wed Apr 10 23:10:00 2002
From: list-fsf-eu-discussion at faerber.muc.de (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Claus_F=E4rber?=)
Date: 11 Apr 2002 01:10:00 +0200
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <1018443672.7490.55.camel@rendevous.alexhudson.com>
Message-ID: <8Mg6G92ZcDB@3247.org>

Alex Hudson <home at alexhudson.com> schrieb/wrote:
> No, it's not. Prior art doesn't mean "an example of something having
> been done before". The question to ask is, "Given the claim in this
> patent, would it be obvious to a skilled software engineer how to
> implement it?".

No. If it is not obvious how to implement it, the invention is not
disclosed and the patent is invalid.

The question is rather: Given the problem the invention solves, is
it obvious to find the solutiopresented in the patent.

Claus
-- 
------------------------ http://www.faerber.muc.de/ ------------------------
OpenPGP: DSS 1024/639680F0 E7A8 AADB 6C8A 2450 67EA AF68 48A5 0E63 6396 80F0


From home at alexhudson.com  Thu Apr 11 04:49:01 2002
From: home at alexhudson.com (Alex Hudson)
Date: 11 Apr 2002 05:49:01 +0100
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <8Mg6G92ZcDB@3247.org>
References: <8Mg6G92ZcDB@3247.org>
Message-ID: <1018500541.13055.1.camel@rendevous.alexhudson.com>

On Thu, 2002-04-11 at 00:10, Claus Färber wrote:
> > No, it's not. Prior art doesn't mean "an example of something having
> > been done before". The question to ask is, "Given the claim in this
> > patent, would it be obvious to a skilled software engineer how to
> > implement it?".
> 
> No. If it is not obvious how to implement it, the invention is not
> disclosed and the patent is invalid.
> 
> The question is rather: Given the problem the invention solves, is
> it obvious to find the solutiopresented in the patent.

Sorry, you're right, my wording is bad - s/claim/solution/, as you
rightly point out.

Of course, people skilled in the arts are rarely consulted anyway - the
patent offices tend to rely on published works to avoid the "20:20
hindsight" problem (where the solution is 'obvious' once it is provided
;)

Cheers,

Alex.

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From dalcolmox at vh-s.de  Thu Apr 11 08:52:29 2002
From: dalcolmox at vh-s.de (Josef Dalcolmo)
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2002 10:52:29 +0200
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
References: <200204101402.g3AE2UNq016689@burner.fokus.gmd.de>
Message-ID: <3CB54ECD.9000801@vh-s.de>

Joerg Schilling wrote:

>
>>From my understanding of patentable claims (may be this is different in USA), 
>you cannot get a patent for anything that has been around before.
>So if a skilled engineer sees that the claims of a patent are things that
>are already available in any other product, the claim is void.
>
This is certanly different in the USA. At least there, patenting is 
related to publishing. The purpose of filing for a patent is to make the 
idea publicly known (versus to keep it a proprietary secret), with 
simultaneous protection of the inventor (who otherwise might prefer to 
keep his solution secret).

Patents allow the inventor to publish his idea without fear of getting 
ripped off, and allows others to build upon and improve on the idea. 
Others can then file patents that refine or expand on the original idea.

So, patents are seen (at least in the USA) as a way to prevent solutions 
from being kept secret, which serves the public as a whole. If however, 
someone chooses to keep a solution secret (as is the case with many 
proprietary solutions), he or she risks the loss of the patent to 
someone else, who might come up with the same solution.

Obviously, publishing a solution is another way to make it available to 
the public. That is also why it is possible in the USA to publish 
something and then file for a patent (within a year). One can also file 
for a temporary "public pending" status, which is very simple to do, and 
costs just a small fee in the order of $100, but gives only any 
protection if one files for a proper patent within a year.

In all these cases, the public gain and therefore the publishing is the 
goal and the protection of the inventor is the means to it. If you keep 
your solution secret, you risk loosing the rights to it to someone else.

The goal of public gain through publishing is actually quite similar to 
the idea of Free Software. Only Free Software goes a lot further giving 
the public not only the solution, but also the rights to it (except the 
authorship of course). Free Software just favors a different business 
model than patents, which is why it appears threatening to some.

- Josef Dalcolmo



From rubini at gnu.org  Thu Apr 11 09:34:06 2002
From: rubini at gnu.org (Alessandro Rubini)
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2002 11:34:06 +0200
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <3CB54ECD.9000801@vh-s.de>
References: <3CB54ECD.9000801@vh-s.de>
Message-ID: <20020411113406.A1310@morgana.systemy.it>

> This is certanly different in the USA. At least there, patenting is 
> related to publishing. The purpose of filing for a patent is to make the 
> idea publicly known (versus to keep it a proprietary secret), with 
> simultaneous protection of the inventor (who otherwise might prefer to 
> keep his solution secret).

That's true. I think it's the same here, although I can't find
explanations of "why" laws exists in Italian jurisdisction (can't tell
of other countries). Unfortunately, patents don't appear in the Italian
constitution where I looked for such explanation. 

	BTW: I'm *very* interested in pointers to other constitutions where
	the idea behind patents is explained, I'll add them to my
	article (currently only in Italian, though we are translating it)
 
> Patents allow the inventor to publish his idea without fear of getting 
> ripped off, and allows others to build upon and improve on the idea. 
> Others can then file patents that refine or expand on the original idea.

This, though, only under license of the original inventor (italian law
1127/39, art. 5, as modified by law 198/96; can't tell about other
nations.

> So, patents are seen (at least in the USA) as a way to prevent solutions 
> from being kept secret, which serves the public as a whole.

True, but let me quote, again, Jonathan Shapiro:

  > 3. In software, the lifecycle duration is at most two years. The reverse
  > engineering cycle is also about two years. Patents are unnecessary.

His take on this issue is very illuminating. I include here the whole
quote, from a message to fsb at crynwr.com on Dec 13th 2000.


   I was interviewed extensively for an article in Johns Hopkins Magazine that
   will shortly be appearing. When it does I'll let people know where to find
   it. The particular context of the article is, of course, the impact of
   patents on academic research.
   
   How much of my comments will survive into the article is unclear, but here
   are some points I made to the interviewer:
   
   1. The concept of patent exists to advance the interests of the public, not
   the corporation or inventor.
   
   2. Whether you believe in patents or not, the patent lifecycle should be in
   line with the product lifecycle. A patent exists to allow the inventor a
   reasonable chance to follow through on their invention, not an unbounded
   opportunity to hold back the tide or hold the public for ransom. If the
   inventor cannot make good within one product lifecycle (as measured by the
   appropriate industry), they never will. There are always outliers, but
   patent duration must be decided on the "greatest good for the greatest
   number" theory.
   
   3. In software, the lifecycle duration is at most two years. The reverse
   engineering cycle is also about two years. Patents are unnecessary.
   
   6. In software, the public's interests are advanced by allowing ideas to be
   integrated. The entire purpose of patents is to balkanize ideas. Patents do
   not advance the interests of the public at all. Rather, they allow large,
   conservative companies to hold back progress in the industry by preventing
   others from introducing disruptive change.
   
   7. We've seen a number of examples where holders of software patents have
   used them specifically to hold up the interests of the public. There is a
   long list of software applications that started integrating cryptography in
   October, because that's when the RSA patent ran out.Unisys made an
   incredible mess out of GIF files when they started abusing their patent on
   Lempel-Ziv compression, and *that* patent isn't even valid! Mark Wegman
   (IBM) filed a prior patent on the same techniques.
   
   8. The patent office is unable to assess the quality of the applications, so
   they basically tend to trust the filer that the patent is innovative. The
   results are predictable. IBM, for example, holds a patent on table lookup.
   Demonstrating in court that one of these patents is bad costs the defendant
   a minimum of $250,000. This is enough that people settle rather than go to
   court. If you're a small company, this may be more than you have. The end
   result is that software patents have become a form of legally-supported
   extortion. The financial burden is on the wrong people. Combine that with
   inadequate patent evaluation and you have a real problem. Which we do.
   
   
   A couple of questions the reporter asked are potentially of interest. I've
   reconstructed the discussion, so the comments may not exactly capture the
   interview wording, but I think I've preserved the sense of the exchange.
   
   Q: What about drug patents? The drug companies have argued that these are
   absolutely essential to their profitability.
   A:
   
   [Me:] Let's test that. The drug companies are claiming that without patents
   they wouldn't make any money, right?
   [Reporter:] yes.
   [Me:] When were drug patents introduced?
   [Reporter:] around 1980 -- I'll check the year.
   [Me:] Were there profitable drug companies before 1980?
   [Reporter:] Yes.
   [Me:] And they made money without patents, right? There were a number of
   large, successful drug companies in the 1960's and 1970's.
   [Reporter:] Yes
   [Me:] So if those companies want patents, it's not about being profitable.
   That's an excuse. It's about being able to restrict advances in medications.
   Patents exist to protect the public. Are drug patents protecting the public?
   [Reporter:] But before patents, they used trade secrets...
   [Me:] Trade secrets aren't bad. What one person can discover and use,
   another can too, so long as repressive laws do not stop them.
   
   
   Q. So how long should software patents run?
   A. If we have to have them, I'ld personally argue for 18 months, but I'ld
   settle for two years.
   [Reporter:] But the lawyers are saying that it takes three years to fully
   file a patent, so they argue that anything less than three years doesn't
   make sense.
   [Me:]You really have to be careful when somebody with a vested interest --
   like a lawyer, or a drug company, or a Hopkins professor -- is talking. You
   need to ask "What is in it for them?" A patent lawyer isn't interested in a
   fair patent system. They are interested in higher legal fees and getting the
   best for their client. So here they are arguing "the beaureaucracy can't
   handle reality, so lets change reality." Does that make sense?
   
   
   Regards,
   
   
   Jonathan S. Shapiro
   Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science
   Johns Hopkins University



From alet at unice.fr  Thu Apr 11 13:14:07 2002
From: alet at unice.fr (Jerome Alet)
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2002 15:14:07 +0200 (MET DST)
Subject: [LONG] (sub)licensing issue
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020411145149.12304B-100000@cortex.unice.fr>

Hi,

I've written a GPLed (not LGPLed) library which I know is currently used
in a software licensed under the BSD license, so this is clearly a
GPL violation since the other software license should be GPLed too.

I'm currently trying to make the other software authors change their
license to GPL to comply with my module's license.

However AFAIK it may be impossible for them to comply since they may be
disallowed to do so by the company they are a part of, which may want to
keep the right to close their sources (we are currently discussing the
issue, no need for a flamewar on them) 

In other words, in the worst case scenario, the two only options
available to them are :
	
	1 - don't use my library at all.

	2 - ask me for a sublicense in exchange of money 
            (I'm the only author), which I'd be glad to accept ;-)
 
This is if I understand the GPL correctly.

Now if they finally choose point 2, and ask for my software
under a different license (BSD for example) and I agree, what
are my options to :

	1 - give them my software under the BSD license in exchange
            of money.

	2 - allow them to give/resell and/or close their sources which
            include my own BSDized (or other) sources. 

	3 - don't allow any of their "client" to extract my library's
            sources from their  whole package and redistribute it
            under the BSD license, since I want to keep my library
            under the GPL for the rest of the world.

So is there a license somewhere to solve this problem, or what would
you do in the same situation ?

Since IANAL any help on the text of a possible license would be 
greatly appreciated, especially because I'm french and they aren't...

I've read this mailing list archive (April and March) and I've found
a somewhat related thread but with no clear answer.

I've asked to the FSF but I've got no answer yet.

Thanks in advance for any help.

PS : Sorry if I'm not clear, just ask for more details if needed. 

Jerome Alet - alet at unice.fr - http://cortex.unice.fr/~jerome
Fac de Medecine de Nice        http://wwwmed.unice.fr 
Tel: (+33) 4 93 37 76 30     Fax: (+33) 4 93 53 15 15
28 Avenue de Valombrose - 06107 NICE Cedex 2 - FRANCE



From taw at users.sourceforge.net  Thu Apr 11 13:35:58 2002
From: taw at users.sourceforge.net (Tomasz Wegrzanowski)
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2002 15:35:58 +0200
Subject: [LONG] (sub)licensing issue
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020411145149.12304B-100000@cortex.unice.fr>
References: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020411145149.12304B-100000@cortex.unice.fr>
Message-ID: <20020411133558.GA2657@tavaiah>

On Thu, Apr 11, 2002 at 03:14:07PM +0200, Jerome Alet wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I've written a GPLed (not LGPLed) library which I know is currently used
> in a software licensed under the BSD license, so this is clearly a
> GPL violation since the other software license should be GPLed too.

You are wrong, it doesn't have to.
As long as they keep their version open, there is no violation of
licence. If somebody will ever take their code and close it,
or if they will close it, they will be unable to legally use your
library.


From alet at unice.fr  Thu Apr 11 14:13:07 2002
From: alet at unice.fr (Jerome Alet)
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2002 16:13:07 +0200 (MET DST)
Subject: [LONG] (sub)licensing issue (fwd)
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020411161248.12304D-100000@cortex.unice.fr>

sorry for the forgotten CC...

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2002 16:12:25 +0200 (MET DST)
From: Jerome Alet <jerome at cortex.unice.fr>
To: Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sourceforge.net>
Subject: Re: [LONG] (sub)licensing issue

On Thu, 11 Apr 2002, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

> On Thu, Apr 11, 2002 at 03:14:07PM +0200, Jerome Alet wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I've written a GPLed (not LGPLed) library which I know is currently used
> > in a software licensed under the BSD license, so this is clearly a
> > GPL violation since the other software license should be GPLed too.
> 
> You are wrong, it doesn't have to.
> As long as they keep their version open, there is no violation of
> licence. 

huh ?

reading :

http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#TOCWhatDoesCompatMean

if they redistribute both their source and mine as a whole then
the whole package MUST be GPLed whatever license they use 
for their own software.

if they don't redistribute my package as part of a bigger one which
contains their software and mine, then they can distribute their package
under BSD or closed. However in the closed case every recipient of their
package is not allowed to use my software, so their software won't work at
all (legally wise).

is that what you mean ?

> If somebody will ever take their code and close it,
> or if they will close it, they will be unable to legally use your
> library.

how will I know if they don't comply if this is the case ?

thanks in advance.

Jerome Alet - alet at unice.fr - http://cortex.unice.fr/~jerome
Fac de Medecine de Nice        http://wwwmed.unice.fr 
Tel: (+33) 4 93 37 76 30     Fax: (+33) 4 93 53 15 15
28 Avenue de Valombrose - 06107 NICE Cedex 2 - FRANCE





From bernhard at intevation.de  Thu Apr 11 14:13:54 2002
From: bernhard at intevation.de (Bernhard Reiter)
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2002 16:13:54 +0200
Subject: [LONG] (sub)licensing issue
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020411145149.12304B-100000@cortex.unice.fr>
References: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020411145149.12304B-100000@cortex.unice.fr>
Message-ID: <20020411141354.GZ23162@intevation.de>

On Thu, Apr 11, 2002 at 03:14:07PM +0200, Jerome Alet wrote:
> I've written a GPLed (not LGPLed) library which I know is currently used
> in a software licensed under the BSD license, so this is clearly a
> GPL violation since the other software license should be GPLed too.

Note that the authors of the other software code parts will
still be the authors and hold the rights.
So they can release their code parts under the conditions they want.

You are correct in that the combined larger program
will have to be under the GNU GPL.
	http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhatDoesCompatMean

Thus the question is: Are the other code parts compatible with the GNU GPL?
Modified BSD licenses usually are.

Then I do not see a problem.

> 	1 - don't use my library at all.
> 
> 	2 - ask me for a sublicense in exchange of money 
>             (I'm the only author), which I'd be glad to accept ;-)
>  
> This is if I understand the GPL correctly.

If you are the one holding the rights 
you can give out several licenses of "your" software:
	http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#ReleaseUnderGPLAndNF
	
| To release a non-free program is always ethically tainted, but
| legally there is no obstacle to your doing this. If you are the
| copyright holder for the code, you can release it under various
| different non-exclusive licenses at various times.

> So is there a license somewhere to solve this problem, or what would
> you do in the same situation ?

Find out if there really is a problem.
Study the GNU GPL FAQs.

> I've asked to the FSF but I've got no answer yet.

Probably because they are quite busy and wrote that nice FAQ. 
(Which it very long I admitt.)


-- 
Professional Service for Free Software                 (intevation.net)  
The FreeGIS Project                                       (freegis.org)
Association for a Free Informational Infrastructure          (ffii.org)
FSF Europe                                              (fsfeurope.org)
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From rubini at gnu.org  Thu Apr 11 14:16:23 2002
From: rubini at gnu.org (Alessandro Rubini)
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2002 16:16:23 +0200
Subject: [LONG] (sub)licensing issue
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020411145149.12304B-100000@cortex.unice.fr>
References: <20020407161103.A2200@port50-2.unice.fr>
Message-ID: <20020411161623.A20973@morgana.systemy.it>

Hello.

> I've written a GPLed (not LGPLed) library which I know is currently used
> in a software licensed under the BSD license, so this is clearly a
> GPL violation since the other software license should be GPLed too.

That's not completely right, as already remarked by Tomasz Wegrzanowski.

The program as a whole must be licensed according to GPL terms, but each
part (file or whatever) can still be licensed in a different way as
long as it's a gpl-compatible license.

Thus, your used can't distribute the binary unless on GPL terms, but
some parts can be reused according to different terms.

However, please be careful when talking about "BSD" license, as
there's not one of such licenses.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html explains why it is unclear to
talk about BSD-style licenses.

> I'm currently trying to make the other software authors change their
> license to GPL to comply with my module's license.

It's not needed. But the program _as_a_whole_ must be GPL'd if they
include your code.

> However AFAIK it may be impossible for them to comply since they may be
> disallowed to do so by the company they are a part of, which may want to
> keep the right to close their sources (we are currently discussing the
> issue, no need for a flamewar on them) 

They can close their source, but not link them with your library in
that case. So they don't need to change license to use your library
in the free release; they just won't be able to use the library in a
non-free release.
 
> In other words, in the worst case scenario, the two only options
> available to them are :
> 	
> 	1 - don't use my library at all.
> 
> 	2 - ask me for a sublicense in exchange of money 
>             (I'm the only author), which I'd be glad to accept ;-)

I've had the same problem. We (several authors) would accept to
release LGPL if paid to do do.  The "client" turned to a different
(proprietay) product instead.

> Now if they finally choose point 2, and ask for my software
> under a different license (BSD for example) and I agree, what
> are my options to :
> 
> 	1 - give them my software under the BSD license in exchange
>             of money.

Yes. Why still releasing to the public the GPL version. Sure people
can distribute the BSD version, but if yours is the "official" one you
most likely won't loose control of it.  But yes, having to
"competitors" in this way might be very bad to handle.
 
> 	2 - allow them to give/resell and/or close their sources which
>             include my own BSDized (or other) sources. 

You might give them a copy with a different license, still not BSD,
that they could use in the non-free version. They should have no problem
in linking the GPL library from the free distribution.

> 	3 - don't allow any of their "client" to extract my library's
>             sources from their  whole package and redistribute it
>             under the BSD license, since I want to keep my library
>             under the GPL for the rest of the world.

That's whay I say above, but your terms are wrong. IF there's such
clause than it's not BSD at all.

Hope this helps

> I've asked to the FSF but I've got no answer yet.

Sorry, we are very backlogged.

/alessandro


From alet at unice.fr  Thu Apr 11 14:48:49 2002
From: alet at unice.fr (Jerome Alet)
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2002 16:48:49 +0200 (MET DST)
Subject: [LONG] (sub)licensing issue
In-Reply-To: <20020411161623.A20973@morgana.systemy.it>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020411163509.12304F-100000@cortex.unice.fr>

On Thu, 11 Apr 2002, Alessandro Rubini wrote:

> The program as a whole must be licensed according to GPL terms, but each
> part (file or whatever) can still be licensed in a different way as
> long as it's a gpl-compatible license.

what does "Program as a whole"  mean ? (sorry)

does this mean : 

	- their own package without my library
	- a big-package : all their code + mine
	

> Thus, your used can't distribute the binary unless on GPL terms, but
> some parts can be reused according to different terms.

ok

> 
> However, please be careful when talking about "BSD" license, as
> there's not one of such licenses.
> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html explains why it is unclear to
> talk about BSD-style licenses.

I'll check again, thanks for the tip.


> > I'm currently trying to make the other software authors change their
> > license to GPL to comply with my module's license.
> 
> It's not needed. But the program _as_a_whole_ must be GPL'd if they
> include your code.

still not clear for me, see above.

> They can close their source, but not link them with your library in
> that case. So they don't need to change license to use your library
> in the free release; they just won't be able to use the library in a
> non-free release.

ok, I understand

> > 	1 - give them my software under the BSD license in exchange
> >             of money.
> 
> Yes. Why still releasing to the public the GPL version. Sure people
> can distribute the BSD version, but if yours is the "official" one you
> most likely won't loose control of it.  But yes, having to
> "competitors" in this way might be very bad to handle.

Yes it may be a problem

> > 	2 - allow them to give/resell and/or close their sources which
> >             include my own BSDized (or other) sources. 
> 
> You might give them a copy with a different license, still not BSD,
> that they could use in the non-free version. They should have no problem
> in linking the GPL library from the free distribution.


ok
 
> > 	3 - don't allow any of their "client" to extract my library's
> >             sources from their  whole package and redistribute it
> >             under the BSD license, since I want to keep my library
> >             under the GPL for the rest of the world.
> 
> That's whay I say above, but your terms are wrong. IF there's such
> clause than it's not BSD at all.


ok so I delete 3 and then I must "innovate" to crunch my 
BSD/proprietary  competitors ;-)
 
Not that bad, after all !

> Hope this helps

> > I've asked to the FSF but I've got no answer yet.
> 
> Sorry, we are very backlogged.

No problem.

Thanks to all for the invaluable help !

Jerome Alet - alet at unice.fr - http://cortex.unice.fr/~jerome
Fac de Medecine de Nice        http://wwwmed.unice.fr 
Tel: (+33) 4 93 37 76 30     Fax: (+33) 4 93 53 15 15
28 Avenue de Valombrose - 06107 NICE Cedex 2 - FRANCE




From alex at conostix.com  Mon Apr 15 09:17:48 2002
From: alex at conostix.com (Alexandre Dulaunoy)
Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2002 11:17:48 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: Software patents and Free Software implementation
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0204151105040.16339-100000@perycles.unix.be.EU.org>

Dear all,

We (AEL) are trying to have an updated list of patent owners that permit 
Free Software implementation under a RF licence of their patents.
On the other side, we have also a list of people that don't permit Free 
Software implementation . 

We want to show that software patents hurt the Free Software. 

We have for the moment two company in the waiting queue (we are waiting 
for respond).

 * Cisco Inc. for #5,473,599 in the US for a Hot Standby Redundacy Protocol

 * RSA Securities Inc. for #5,724,428 in the US for a Block encryption algorithm with data-dependent rotations

If they don't respond in the two weeks, they will be in the bad list ;-)
(there is one patent for the moment in the "bad" list and the respond of 
the owner in the bad list for Free Software)

If you have any specific case of software patents hurting Free Software, 
don't hesitate to send it to us. activists at ael.be

For more information (the beta page) : http://www.ael.be/node.php?id=52

Don't hesite to give feedback. 

Thanks.

Alexandre Dulaunoy








From rubini at gnu.org  Tue Apr 16 06:11:42 2002
From: rubini at gnu.org (Alessandro Rubini)
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 08:11:42 +0200
Subject: Software patents and Free Software implementation
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0204151105040.16339-100000@perycles.unix.be.EU.org>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0204151105040.16339-100000@perycles.unix.be.EU.org>
Message-ID: <20020416081142.A5404@morgana.systemy.it>

Hello.

> We (AEL) are trying to have an updated list of patent owners that permit 
> Free Software implementation under a RF licence of their patents.
> On the other side, we have also a list of people that don't permit Free 
> Software implementation . 

Would you please explain why are you doing that? Since software
patents are still illegal in Europe, moving like they were leagal is a
bad tactic, in my opinion.

thanks
/alessandro, expressing only his own ideas


From adulau-conos at conostix.com  Tue Apr 16 06:27:40 2002
From: adulau-conos at conostix.com (Alexandre Dulaunoy)
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 08:27:40 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: Software patents and Free Software implementation
In-Reply-To: <20020416081142.A5404@morgana.systemy.it>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0204160818410.12770-100000@perycles.unix.be.EU.org>

On Tue, 16 Apr 2002, Alessandro Rubini wrote:

> 
> Hello.
> 
> > We (AEL) are trying to have an updated list of patent owners that permit 
> > Free Software implementation under a RF licence of their patents.
> > On the other side, we have also a list of people that don't permit Free 
> > Software implementation . 
> 
> Would you please explain why are you doing that? Since software
> patents are still illegal in Europe, moving like they were leagal is a
> bad tactic, in my opinion.

Yes, you are right. We are currently battle to stop patent in Europe (in 
Belgium and Luxembourg governement) and they (gvt) have a (bad) general 
argument that saying "Software patent exists in the US and Free Software exists 
also in the US, so there is not issue with innovation in Free Software".
Of course, they are wrong but we need arguments... 

This general argument is in use for pushing the directive on software 
patents. We want to show that existing software patents hurt the Free 
Software developer in the US and other countries. 

That's why we have created a list of software patents that can be 
implemented in Free Software (with a RF license) or NOT. 

Of course, the majority of patent owners don't want an RF license for 
their patents. So I hope you understand the stategy of this. 

Don't hesitate to give any feedback. 

Thanks.

Alex


> 
> thanks
> /alessandro, expressing only his own ideas
> 



-- 
Alexandre Dulaunoy			adulau at conostix.com
					http://www.conostix.com/



From loic at gnu.org  Tue Apr 16 08:41:43 2002
From: loic at gnu.org (Loic Dachary)
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 10:41:43 +0200
Subject: Software patents and Free Software implementation
In-Reply-To: Alexandre Dulaunoy's message of 16 April 2002 08:27:40 +0200
References: <20020416081142.A5404@morgana.systemy.it>
	<Pine.LNX.4.44.0204160818410.12770-100000@perycles.unix.be.EU.org>
Message-ID: <15547.58311.732775.484535@inspiron.dachary.org>

Alexandre Dulaunoy writes:
 > 
 > Yes, you are right. We are currently battle to stop patent in Europe (in 
 > Belgium and Luxembourg governement) and they (gvt) have a (bad) general 
 > argument that saying "Software patent exists in the US and Free Software exists 
 > also in the US, so there is not issue with innovation in Free Software".
 > Of course, they are wrong but we need arguments... 

	As Alessandro pointed out, it is not a matter of stopping
software patents in Europe (they are illegal). I know you're very well
aware of this fact :-) But your choice of words can lead the reader to
think otherwise. It's better to say "We are currently battling to keep
software patents out of Europe" or something like that. 

	IMHO the best argument you have (in addition to the numerous
documents provided on www.freepatents.org and www.eurolinux.org) is
that all politicians in France declared themselves against software
patents, including the french government. See

	http://www.liberation.fr/quotidien/semaine/020312-040031012ECON.html

	Whatever the result of the presidential election will be, our future
president will be someone who declared against software patents. Also, but
it's a bit older, the french government declared itself against the European
directive:

	http://www.industrie.gouv.fr/cgi-bin/industrie/sommaire/comm/comm.cgi?COM_ID=1562&_Action=200

	Such a consensus catches the attention of politicians. It's
relatively fresh news (one month old) and, if nothing else, will allow
you to meet the conselors of politicians in Belgium and Luxembourg so
that you have an opportunity to present them the documents advocating
against software patents. That's exactly what we did in France : find
a mean to catch their attention, discuss with them, give them
documents. Get back to them on a regular basis with an update of the
situation. 

	Regarding the list of software patents, I'm unsure if
distinguishing between software patents that are friendly Free
Software and those that doesn't will do any good. Software patents that
are friendly to Free Software are *not* good software patents. There
is no such thing as a good software patent. Classifying them in the
way you suggest will probably lead to more confusion.

	A specific example is the RT/Linux patent. It is friendly to
GPL software but it is a software patent anyway. People tend to obey
this patent because the patent holder does a marketing campaign to
scare them. And this is a successfull tactic: people pay royalties to
the patent holder. They do not even question the patent, they only
fear that the patent holder will sue them. The patent holder convinced
them that he will go to court. On the other hand, the very same people
run web sites and completly ignore the patent on "System for managing
dynamic web page generation requests by intercepting request at web
server and routing to page server thereby releasing web server to
process other requests"
(http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%275,894,554%27.WKU.&OS=PN/5,894,554&RS=PN/5,894,554)
although the patent holder could claim it covers Apache and
cgi-bins. Everyone would say it's ridiculous. But, hey, everyone also
says that the RT/Linux patent is ridiculous. In this specific case,
the Free Software friendly software patent is harmfull (because the
patent holder scares people) and the Free Software unfriendly software
patent is harmless (because the patent holder did no make himself
known).

	Cheers,

-- 
Loic   Dachary         http://www.dachary.org/  loic at dachary.org
12 bd  Magenta         http://www.senga.org/      loic at senga.org
75010    Paris         T: 33 1 42 45 07 97          loic at gnu.org
        GPG Public Key: http://www.dachary.org/loic/gpg.txt


From rudy at zeus.rug.ac.be  Tue Apr 16 11:10:28 2002
From: rudy at zeus.rug.ac.be (Rudy Gevaert)
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 13:10:28 +0200
Subject: introduction
Message-ID: <20020416131028.A29932@zeus.rug.ac.be>

Hello,

I just joined this mailinglist, so I you don't mind I would like to
introduce myself (not to personal :)).

I live in Belgium (near Brugge and Ghent), 19 years old, almost 2 years
GNU/Linux users.  At the moment I'm a Computer Science student at the
RUG (University of Ghent).

There I am also the Chairman of ZeusWPI. This is the "Workgroup Computer
Science".  We primairly fuction as a GNU/Linux user group for the
university.  We spread the word :).  Next to that, we give a every year
a couple of lectures/lessons with self written course notes.  We gave
courses about: Installation of GNU/Linux, Apps under GNU/Linux, Anti
spam, LaTeX, PHP, etc. 

In other words, we try to spread the GNU word :)  Next school year I am
also giving an introduction to all the Computer Science freshmen about
GNU/Linux.

Next year I would like to gave a lecture about GNU it selves... but give
by a "certified agent" :).  So are there people here who are up to
that.... or if you give me some pointers.

Thanks in advance,
-- 
Rudy Gevaert - rudy at zeus.rug.ac.be  - http://www.zeus.rug.ac.be  
keyserverID=24DC49C6 -  http://www.webworm.org <-- UPDATED
Private mail with incorrect quoting behavior will remain unanswered

I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known.   
                                   - Walt Disney (1901-1966)


From greve at gnu.org  Tue Apr 16 14:05:23 2002
From: greve at gnu.org (Georg C. F. Greve)
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 16:05:23 +0200
Subject: introduction
In-Reply-To: <20020416131028.A29932@zeus.rug.ac.be> (Rudy Gevaert's message
 of "Tue, 16 Apr 2002 13:10:28 +0200")
References: <20020416131028.A29932@zeus.rug.ac.be>
Message-ID: <m3zo03oi1o.fsf@reason.gnu-hamburg>

Hi Rudy,

 || On Tue, 16 Apr 2002 13:10:28 +0200
 || Rudy Gevaert <rudy at zeus.rug.ac.be> wrote: 

 rg> Next year I would like to gave a lecture about GNU it
 rg> selves... but give by a "certified agent" :).  So are there
 rg> people here who are up to that.... or if you give me some
 rg> pointers.

Do you would like to have an "official" speaker talk about the GNU
Project, GNU/Linux and Free Software? This should not be a problem.

People at the FSF Europe, FSF NA and the associates of the FSF Europe
routinely speak at events and can be invited. It is mostly up to you
to decide who you would like to have as a speaker and which language
the speech should be in.

For more information, please see
 
 http://www.fsf.org/people/speakers.html
 http://fsfeurope.org/speakers/speakers.html

Regards,
Georg

-- 
Georg C. F. Greve                                 <greve at fsfeurope.org>
Free Software Foundation Europe	                 (http://fsfeurope.org)
GNU Business Network                        (http://mailman.gnubiz.org)
Brave GNU World	                           (http://brave-gnu-world.org)
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From alexandre.dulaunoy at ael.be  Wed Apr 17 09:35:19 2002
From: alexandre.dulaunoy at ael.be (Alexandre Dulaunoy)
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 11:35:19 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: Software patents and Free Software implementation
In-Reply-To: <15547.58311.732775.484535@inspiron.dachary.org>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0204171122330.17270-100000@perycles.unix.be.EU.org>


On Tue, 16 Apr 2002, Loic Dachary wrote:

> Alexandre Dulaunoy writes:
>  > 
>  > Yes, you are right. We are currently battle to stop patent in Europe (in 
>  > Belgium and Luxembourg governement) and they (gvt) have a (bad) general 
>  > argument that saying "Software patent exists in the US and Free Software exists 
>  > also in the US, so there is not issue with innovation in Free Software".
>  > Of course, they are wrong but we need arguments... 
> 
> 	As Alessandro pointed out, it is not a matter of stopping
> software patents in Europe (they are illegal). I know you're very well
> aware of this fact :-) But your choice of words can lead the reader to
> think otherwise. It's better to say "We are currently battling to keep
> software patents out of Europe" or something like that. 

We have made a new version of the document : 

http://www.ael.be/node.php?id=52

After the excellent comments of Loic, Alessandro and others. 

I hope the position is more clear on the page. 

Don't hesitate to give feedback. 

Alex


PS : Regarding the FSMlabs patent, there are two discussions around that :

	* The patent itself. (It seems they are some prior arts from 
	  Digital Research but seems to be an old trade secret) 

	* Of using the "bad" current patent system to force use of Free 
	  Software. 

     I will not discuss around that because it could start a long thread.


-- 
Alexandre Dulaunoy		http://www.foo.be/
AD993-RIPE			http://www.ael.be/
"People who fight may lose.  People who do not fight have already lost."
  - Bertolt Brecht




From mimir at spin.ict.pwr.wroc.pl  Wed Apr 17 10:05:47 2002
From: mimir at spin.ict.pwr.wroc.pl (Rafal Szczesniak)
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 12:05:47 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: free software organizations in eurpoe
Message-ID: <Pine.BSO.4.40.0204171202280.26763-100000@spin.ict.pwr.wroc.pl>

Hello all,

I'd like to know how many free software organizations are already
formally registered across european countries. Does anybody know exact
number and names ?


cheers,
+--------------------------------------------------------+
|Rafal 'Mimir' Szczesniak <mimir at spin.ict.pwr.wroc.pl>   |
|*BSD, GNU/Linux and Samba                              /
|______________________________________________________/



From giovanni.biscuolo at milug.org  Wed Apr 17 16:12:17 2002
From: giovanni.biscuolo at milug.org (Giovanni Biscuolo)
Date: 17 Apr 2002 18:12:17 +0200
Subject: Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards
In-Reply-To: <3CB54ECD.9000801@vh-s.de>
References: <200204101402.g3AE2UNq016689@burner.fokus.gmd.de> 
	<3CB54ECD.9000801@vh-s.de>
Message-ID: <1019059937.5739.10.camel@veritas>

Il gio, 2002-04-11 alle 10:52, Josef Dalcolmo ha scritto:
[...]
> 
> Patents allow the inventor to publish his idea without fear of getting 
> ripped off, and allows others to build upon and improve on the idea. 
> Others can then file patents that refine or expand on the original idea.

Not ideas.
Ideas comes from mind, they are immaterial.
Immaterials, and thus ideas, should *not* be patentable.

At least, creative works based on ideas, not ideas, are "protected" by
copyright laws. Software is such a creative work.

[...]

Ciao.

P.S.: ...and yes, think the world should better go on without patents,
this kind of "social experiment" is over.

-- 
Art and science are free and free is their teaching [IT Const., art.33]
Associazione Culturale MiLUG       | Xelera - servizi GNU/Linux 
http://www.milug.org               | http://xelera.it
mailto:giovanni.biscuolo at milug.org | mailto:g at xelera.it           
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From rubini at gnu.org  Thu Apr 18 18:42:22 2002
From: rubini at gnu.org (Alessandro Rubini)
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2002 20:42:22 +0200
Subject: free software organizations in eurpoe
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSO.4.40.0204171202280.26763-100000@spin.ict.pwr.wroc.pl>
References: <Pine.BSO.4.40.0204171202280.26763-100000@spin.ict.pwr.wroc.pl>
Message-ID: <20020418204222.A20157@morgana.systemy.it>

> I'd like to know how many free software organizations are already
> formally registered across european countries. Does anybody know exact
> number and names ?

I don't think we have a list. If you are interested to compile one, that would
be an interesting effort. I'm sure the FSFE web masters will be happy to
publish it.

/alessandro, speaking only for himself


From Weimer at CERT.Uni-Stuttgart.DE  Fri Apr 19 18:22:15 2002
From: Weimer at CERT.Uni-Stuttgart.DE (Florian Weimer)
Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2002 20:22:15 +0200
Subject: Software patents and Free Software implementation
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0204151105040.16339-100000@perycles.unix.be.EU.org> (Alexandre
 Dulaunoy's message of "Mon, 15 Apr 2002 11:17:48 +0200 (CEST)")
References: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0204151105040.16339-100000@perycles.unix.be.EU.org>
Message-ID: <874ri7sg4o.fsf@CERT.Uni-Stuttgart.DE>

Alexandre Dulaunoy <alex at conostix.com> writes:

> We (AEL) are trying to have an updated list of patent owners that permit 
> Free Software implementation under a RF licence of their patents.

Raph Levien is licensing several patents for GPLed software:

http://www.levien.com/patents.html

-- 
Florian Weimer 	                  Weimer at CERT.Uni-Stuttgart.DE
University of Stuttgart           http://CERT.Uni-Stuttgart.DE/people/fw/
RUS-CERT                          +49-711-685-5973/fax +49-711-685-5898


From jaromil at dyne.org  Sat Apr 20 15:29:04 2002
From: jaromil at dyne.org (jaromil)
Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2002 17:29:04 +0200
Subject: free software organizations in eurpoe
In-Reply-To: <20020418204222.A20157@morgana.systemy.it>
References: <Pine.BSO.4.40.0204171202280.26763-100000@spin.ict.pwr.wroc.pl> <20020418204222.A20157@morgana.systemy.it>
Message-ID: <20020420152904.GC26090@dyne.org>

On Thu, Apr 18, 2002 at 08:42:22PM +0200, Alessandro Rubini wrote:
> 
> > I'd like to know how many free software organizations are already
> > formally registered across european countries. Does anybody know exact
> > number and names ?
> 
> I don't think we have a list. If you are interested to compile one, that would
> be an interesting effort. I'm sure the FSFE web masters will be happy to
> publish it.

FYI, there is the UNESCO Free Software Portal online at

 http://www.unesco.org/webworld/portal_freesoft/index.shtml

which looks like such an effort.

-- 
jaromil  ][   http://dyne.org   ][  GnuPG _key__id_
EDEE F1B9 DC92 76C0 6D46  D77A 58B0 82D6 (5B6E 6D97)


From bernhard at intevation.de  Wed Apr 24 00:15:12 2002
From: bernhard at intevation.de (Bernhard Reiter)
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 02:15:12 +0200
Subject: LWN letters
Message-ID: <20020424001512.GA14292@intevation.de>

Just for you that do not read LWN on a regular basis,
there are a couple of letter to the current LWN
which contain interesting argumentations
and defend freedom for software:

http://lwn.net/2002/0418/letters.php3

Some quotes:

From:	 Richard Stallman <rms at gnu.org>
Subject: iSCSI and patents

	so he argues that a mere
	possibility (rather than a likelihood) of a patent problem is not
	cause for real alarm.  Believe this at your peril!  A chance that
	patents cover a protocol is like a chance that food has salmonella:
	don't find out by eating it!


From:	 bryanh at giraffe-data.com (Bryan Henderson)
Subject: The right to the fruits of one's ideas
	
[ Citing the US constitution. ]

	It doesn't mean Congress has to
	create patents or that anyone has a right to one.  In fact, in "for a
	limited time," it goes exactly the other way -- preserving the right
	of people to sponge off other peoples' work.


From:	 Kay Hayen <kayhayen at gmx.de>
Subject: http://www.lwn.net/daily/perens-robertson.php3

	I agree with that Debian will win in the end. I do not agree
	with the reason you seem to give, calling Debian "non-profit".

	I do not necessarily think an open system needs to be non-profit.


From:	 Emile Snyder <esnyder at whitesalmon.net>
Subject: RMS, property, and freedom

	the FSF and Mr. Stallman have never argued otherwise.  They have
	only pointed out the social harm in then punishing the buyer from
	giving away copies to his/her friends and neighbors.  This is why the
	physical/informational distinction is at the crux of the issue.  One
	may disagree with RMS's analysis of the failings of copyright law,
	but it is irresponsible to impugn his position based on specious
	analogy to physical property law.

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From loic at gnu.org  Wed Apr 24 07:06:01 2002
From: loic at gnu.org (Loic Dachary)
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 09:06:01 +0200
Subject: Why we speak about Free Software
Message-ID: <15558.22873.125948.210858@inspiron.dachary.org>

	Hi,

	I see that the situation described in

	http://mailman.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/discussion/2002-February/002267.html

	did not change. Who should we contact to encourage them to actually
speak about Free Software ?

	Cheers,

-- 
Loic   Dachary         http://www.dachary.org/  loic at dachary.org
12 bd  Magenta         http://www.senga.org/      loic at senga.org
75010    Paris         T: 33 1 42 45 07 97          loic at gnu.org
        GPG Public Key: http://www.dachary.org/loic/gpg.txt


From jan at intevation.de  Wed Apr 24 07:31:37 2002
From: jan at intevation.de (Jan-Oliver Wagner)
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 09:31:37 +0200
Subject: Why we speak about Free Software
In-Reply-To: <15558.22873.125948.210858@inspiron.dachary.org>
References: <15558.22873.125948.210858@inspiron.dachary.org>
Message-ID: <20020424073137.GA822@intevation.de>

On Wed, Apr 24, 2002 at 09:06:01AM +0200, Loic Dachary wrote:
> 	I see that the situation described in
> 
> 	http://mailman.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/discussion/2002-February/002267.html
> 
> 	did not change. Who should we contact to encourage them to actually
> speak about Free Software ?

I guess someone of icube did subscribe to the campaign.
A subscription to the campaign means that the management
of icube made the decision. So, if the actual subcriber
can not be reached anymore I propose to contact
the management of icube and ask why their commitment
did not work out in the web pages.

My personal opinion is that if the web pages did not
change, also the corporate culture did not adopt the term
Free Software nor understand the problem of the other term.

	Jan

-- 
Jan-Oliver Wagner               http://intevation.de/~jan/

Intevation GmbH	              	     http://intevation.de/
FreeGIS	                               http://freegis.org/


From schilling at fokus.gmd.de  Wed Apr 24 12:42:08 2002
From: schilling at fokus.gmd.de (Joerg Schilling)
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 14:42:08 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: LWN letters
Message-ID: <200204241242.g3OCg8Pf002617@burner.fokus.gmd.de>

>From: Bernhard Reiter <bernhard at intevation.de>


>From:	 Richard Stallman <rms at gnu.org>
>Subject: iSCSI and patents

>	so he argues that a mere
>	possibility (rather than a likelihood) of a patent problem is not
>	cause for real alarm.  Believe this at your peril!  A chance that
>	patents cover a protocol is like a chance that food has salmonella:
>	don't find out by eating it!

RSCSI can do a lot......

and RSCSI is free.

J�rg

 EMail:joerg at schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) J�rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       js at cs.tu-berlin.de		(uni)  If you don't have iso-8859-1
       schilling at fokus.gmd.de		(work) chars I am J"org Schilling
 URL:  http://www.fokus.gmd.de/usr/schilling   ftp://ftp.fokus.gmd.de/pub/unix


From markj at cloaked.freeserve.co.uk  Wed Apr 24 15:46:29 2002
From: markj at cloaked.freeserve.co.uk (MJ Ray)
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 15:46:29 GMT
Subject: Why we speak about Free Software
References: <15558.22873.125948.210858@inspiron.dachary.org> <15558.22873.125948.210858@inspiron.dachary.org> <20020424073137.GA822@intevation.de>
Message-ID: <slrnacdkql.50q.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>

Jan-Oliver Wagner <jan at intevation.de> wrote:
> My personal opinion is that if the web pages did not
> change, also the corporate culture did not adopt the term
> Free Software nor understand the problem of the other term.

On a saddening point, an open source promoter with EC involvement was at a
meeting I was at recently, yet he promoted StarOffice as an "open source"
alternative.  I'm rather confused by this.  I am right in thinking that it
is restrictively licensed, am I not?  It looks it to me, but am I going mad?

(If that person is reading this list now, "hi".)



From jan at intevation.de  Wed Apr 24 16:27:17 2002
From: jan at intevation.de (Jan-Oliver Wagner)
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 18:27:17 +0200
Subject: Why we speak about Free Software
In-Reply-To: <slrnacdkql.50q.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>
References: <15558.22873.125948.210858@inspiron.dachary.org> <15558.22873.125948.210858@inspiron.dachary.org> <20020424073137.GA822@intevation.de> <slrnacdkql.50q.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <20020424162717.GA3932@intevation.de>

On Wed, Apr 24, 2002 at 03:46:29PM +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
> Jan-Oliver Wagner <jan at intevation.de> wrote:
> > My personal opinion is that if the web pages did not
> > change, also the corporate culture did not adopt the term
> > Free Software nor understand the problem of the other term.
> 
> On a saddening point, an open source promoter with EC involvement was at a
> meeting I was at recently, yet he promoted StarOffice as an "open source"
> alternative.  I'm rather confused by this.  I am right in thinking that it
> is restrictively licensed, am I not?  It looks it to me, but am I going mad?

no, you are not going mad :-)
StarOffice is _no_ Free Software.

Yesterday I had a talk on Free Software and GIS at University of
Münster and exactly the same statement came up from the audience.
It is really interesting how it evolved that so many people
think of StarOffice as Free Software.

	Jan

-- 
Jan-Oliver Wagner               http://intevation.de/~jan/

Intevation GmbH	              	     http://intevation.de/
FreeGIS	                               http://freegis.org/


From simo.sorce at xsec.it  Wed Apr 24 16:55:15 2002
From: simo.sorce at xsec.it (Simo Sorce)
Date: 24 Apr 2002 18:55:15 +0200
Subject: Why we speak about Free Software
In-Reply-To: <20020424162717.GA3932@intevation.de>
References: <15558.22873.125948.210858@inspiron.dachary.org>
	<15558.22873.125948.210858@inspiron.dachary.org>
	<20020424073137.GA822@intevation.de>
	<slrnacdkql.50q.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> 
	<20020424162717.GA3932@intevation.de>
Message-ID: <1019667315.22192.39.camel@berserker>

The real problem is:

Too many People yet think Free Software == gratis/freeware!

Form this error it comes: StarOffice == gratis/freeware == FS

If you change the formula to be Free Software != gratis/freeware!
then also StarOffice == gratis/freeware != FS works

Unfortunately we tend to assume others understood that concept simply
because THEY now use the these terms and WE know what they means, but
the fact that others use the term Free Software  (or Open Source) does
not mean at all they understand what it means fully!

There's lot to do yet!
Simo.

On Wed, 2002-04-24 at 18:27, Jan-Oliver Wagner wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 24, 2002 at 03:46:29PM +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
> > Jan-Oliver Wagner <jan at intevation.de> wrote:
> > > My personal opinion is that if the web pages did not
> > > change, also the corporate culture did not adopt the term
> > > Free Software nor understand the problem of the other term.
> > 
> > On a saddening point, an open source promoter with EC involvement was at a
> > meeting I was at recently, yet he promoted StarOffice as an "open source"
> > alternative.  I'm rather confused by this.  I am right in thinking that it
> > is restrictively licensed, am I not?  It looks it to me, but am I going mad?
> 
> no, you are not going mad :-)
> StarOffice is _no_ Free Software.
> 
> Yesterday I had a talk on Free Software and GIS at University of
> Münster and exactly the same statement came up from the audience.
> It is really interesting how it evolved that so many people
> think of StarOffice as Free Software.
> 
> 	Jan
> 
> -- 
> Jan-Oliver Wagner               http://intevation.de/~jan/
> 
> Intevation GmbH	              	     http://intevation.de/
> FreeGIS	                               http://freegis.org/
> _______________________________________________
> Discussion mailing list
> Discussion at fsfeurope.org
> http://mailman.fsfeurope.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discussion
-- 
Simo Sorce - simo.sorce at xsec.it
Xsec s.r.l.
via Durando 10 Ed. G - 20158 - Milano
tel. +39 02 2399 7130 - fax: +39 02 700 442 399
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From jan at intevation.de  Wed Apr 24 17:07:57 2002
From: jan at intevation.de (Jan-Oliver Wagner)
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 19:07:57 +0200
Subject: Why we speak about Free Software
In-Reply-To: <1019667315.22192.39.camel@berserker>
References: <15558.22873.125948.210858@inspiron.dachary.org> <15558.22873.125948.210858@inspiron.dachary.org> <20020424073137.GA822@intevation.de> <slrnacdkql.50q.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <20020424162717.GA3932@intevation.de> <1019667315.22192.39.camel@berserker>
Message-ID: <20020424170757.GB6084@intevation.de>

On Wed, Apr 24, 2002 at 06:55:15PM +0200, Simo Sorce wrote:
> The real problem is:
> 
> Too many People yet think Free Software == gratis/freeware!
> 
> Form this error it comes: StarOffice == gratis/freeware == FS
> 
> If you change the formula to be Free Software != gratis/freeware!
> then also StarOffice == gratis/freeware != FS works

that is not the real problem in many cases: I might have created
some confusion because I don't use the other word for Free Software :-)
Will do now as an exception:

Many people said to me, "StarOffice is Open Source".
My answer is: StarOffice is no Free Software, you don't even get the
source".

	Jan

-- 
Jan-Oliver Wagner               http://intevation.de/~jan/

Intevation GmbH	              	     http://intevation.de/
FreeGIS	                               http://freegis.org/


From loic at gnu.org  Wed Apr 24 17:14:30 2002
From: loic at gnu.org (Loic Dachary)
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 19:14:30 +0200
Subject: Why we speak about Free Software
In-Reply-To: Jan-Oliver Wagner's message of 24 April 2002 18:27:17 +0200
References: <15558.22873.125948.210858@inspiron.dachary.org>
	<20020424073137.GA822@intevation.de>
	<slrnacdkql.50q.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>
	<20020424162717.GA3932@intevation.de>
Message-ID: <15558.59382.194012.188712@inspiron.dachary.org>

Jan-Oliver Wagner writes:
 > no, you are not going mad :-)
 > StarOffice is _no_ Free Software.
 > 
 > Yesterday I had a talk on Free Software and GIS at University of
 > Munster and exactly the same statement came up from the audience.
 > It is really interesting how it evolved that so many people
 > think of StarOffice as Free Software.

	I experience the same problems :-( Sun deliberatly marketed it
to achieve this result. Since OpenOffice is Free Software people say
StarOffice and OpenOffice interchangeably and they even *use*
StarOffice because OpenOffice is Free Software. To me it's like using
Oracle because MySQL is Free Software. There is hardly any rationale
in this behaviour but it's there anyway. I guess the only thing we can
do is to constantly remind people that OpenOffice is Free Software,
not StarOffice. That reminds me of people not willing to see the
difference between the Open Source movement and the Free Software
movement.

	Cheers,

-- 
Loic   Dachary         http://www.dachary.org/  loic at dachary.org
12 bd  Magenta         http://www.senga.org/      loic at senga.org
75010    Paris         T: 33 1 42 45 07 97          loic at gnu.org
        GPG Public Key: http://www.dachary.org/loic/gpg.txt


From wolfgang at pro-linux.de  Wed Apr 24 17:39:25 2002
From: wolfgang at pro-linux.de (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Wolfgang_J=E4hrling?=)
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 19:39:25 +0200
Subject: Why we speak about Free Software
In-Reply-To: <20020424162717.GA3932@intevation.de>; from jan@intevation.de on Wed, Apr 24, 2002 at 06:27:17PM +0200
References: <15558.22873.125948.210858@inspiron.dachary.org> <15558.22873.125948.210858@inspiron.dachary.org> <20020424073137.GA822@intevation.de> <slrnacdkql.50q.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <20020424162717.GA3932@intevation.de>
Message-ID: <20020424193925.A200@dose.pro-linux.de>

Hi!

Jan-Oliver Wagner <jan at intevation.de> wrote:
> Yesterday I had a talk on Free Software and GIS at University of
> Münster and exactly the same statement came up from the audience.
> It is really interesting how it evolved that so many people
> think of StarOffice as Free Software.

I think that in this case, people say it's Free Software because it
shares most of its code with OpenOffice.org, which indeed is Free
Software. And at least it should be easy to switch from StarOffice to
OpenOffice.org.

But it's certainly not because people think Free Software == Freeware.

Cheers,
GNU/Wolfgang

-- 
Wolfgang Jährling  <wolfgang at pro-linux.de>  \\  http://stdio.cjb.net/
Debian GNU/Hurd user && Debian GNU/Linux user \\  http://www.gnu.org/
The Hurd Hacking Guide: http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hacking-guide/
["We're way ahead of you here. The Hurd has always been on the    ]
[ cutting edge of not being good for anything." -- Roland McGrath ]



From home at alexhudson.com  Wed Apr 24 17:47:59 2002
From: home at alexhudson.com (Alex Hudson)
Date: 24 Apr 2002 18:47:59 +0100
Subject: Why we speak about Free Software
In-Reply-To: <15558.59382.194012.188712@inspiron.dachary.org>
References: <15558.22873.125948.210858@inspiron.dachary.org>
	<20020424073137.GA822@intevation.de>
	<slrnacdkql.50q.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>
	<20020424162717.GA3932@intevation.de> 
	<15558.59382.194012.188712@inspiron.dachary.org>
Message-ID: <1019670479.2232.19.camel@rendevous.alexhudson.com>

On Wed, 2002-04-24 at 18:14, Loic Dachary wrote:
> 	I experience the same problems :-( Sun deliberatly marketed it
> to achieve this result. Since OpenOffice is Free Software people say
> StarOffice and OpenOffice interchangeably and they even *use*
> StarOffice because OpenOffice is Free Software.

What shows that StarOffice is marketed more is that we don't even have
the right name for the Free alternative - the name of the software is
now "OpenOffice.org" (I believe the correct short name is "OOo" :). 

On the brighter side, I got pulled up for this (saying OpenOffice
instead of OpenOffice.org) in something I wrote recently by a "volunteer
marketer" for OpenOffice.org - so, this is obviously a problem that they
recognise, and there are people reading things and making sure that
people make the correct distinction between StarOffice and
OpenOffice.org. Perhaps we can prod them a little so that they also make
the distinction between the types of licence as well as the name  -
although, they may well do that already, I don't know.

Cheers,

Alex.
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From jeroen at dekkers.cx  Wed Apr 24 17:54:33 2002
From: jeroen at dekkers.cx (Jeroen Dekkers)
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 19:54:33 +0200
Subject: Why we speak about Free Software
In-Reply-To: <1019670479.2232.19.camel@rendevous.alexhudson.com>
References: <15558.22873.125948.210858@inspiron.dachary.org> <20020424073137.GA822@intevation.de> <slrnacdkql.50q.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> <20020424162717.GA3932@intevation.de> <15558.59382.194012.188712@inspiron.dachary.org> <1019670479.2232.19.camel@rendevous.alexhudson.com>
Message-ID: <20020424175433.GC516@celeron.dekkers>

On Wed, Apr 24, 2002 at 06:47:59PM +0100, Alex Hudson wrote:
> On the brighter side, I got pulled up for this (saying OpenOffice
> instead of OpenOffice.org) in something I wrote recently by a "volunteer
> marketer" for OpenOffice.org - so, this is obviously a problem that they
> recognise, and there are people reading things and making sure that
> people make the correct distinction between StarOffice and
> OpenOffice.org. Perhaps we can prod them a little so that they also make
> the distinction between the types of licence as well as the name  -
> although, they may well do that already, I don't know.

They should just make StarOffice free and you wouldn't have those
problems.

Jeroen Dekkers
-- 
Jabber supporter - http://www.jabber.org Jabber ID: jdekkers at jabber.org
Debian GNU supporter - http://www.debian.org http://www.gnu.org
IRC: jeroen at openprojects
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From joack at gmx.net  Thu Apr 25 11:11:42 2002
From: joack at gmx.net (joack at gmx.net)
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 13:11:42 +0200
Subject: OpenOffice.org [was:Re: Why we speak about Free Software]
In-Reply-To: <20020424175433.GC516@celeron.dekkers>
References: <1019670479.2232.19.camel@rendevous.alexhudson.com>
Message-ID: <3CC8008E.27378.438964@localhost>

On 24 Apr 2002, at 19:54, Jeroen Dekkers wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 24, 2002 at 06:47:59PM +0100, Alex Hudson wrote:
> > On the brighter side, I got pulled up for this (saying OpenOffice
> > instead of OpenOffice.org) in something I wrote recently by a
> > "volunteer marketer" for OpenOffice.org - so, this is obviously a
> > problem that they recognise, and there are people reading things and
> > making sure that people make the correct distinction between
> > StarOffice and OpenOffice.org. Perhaps we can prod them a little so
> > that they also make the distinction between the types of licence as
> > well as the name  - although, they may well do that already, I don't
> > know.
> 
> They should just make StarOffice free and you wouldn't have those
> problems.
SUN has just kindly agreed to go in the other direction. StarOffice 
has now to be paid for (as Version 6). Maybe that gets people 
noticing - maybe.

Cheers
J.



From rms at 1407.org  Thu Apr 25 11:34:23 2002
From: rms at 1407.org (Rui Miguel Silva Seabra)
Date: 25 Apr 2002 12:34:23 +0100
Subject: OpenOffice.org [was:Re: Why we speak about Free Software]
In-Reply-To: <3CC8008E.27378.438964@localhost>
References: <1019670479.2232.19.camel@rendevous.alexhudson.com> 
	<3CC8008E.27378.438964@localhost>
Message-ID: <1019734463.3547.1.camel@roque>

On Thu, 2002-04-25 at 12:11, joack at gmx.net wrote:
> > They should just make StarOffice free and you wouldn't have those
> > problems.
> SUN has just kindly agreed to go in the other direction. StarOffice 
> has now to be paid for (as Version 6). Maybe that gets people 
> noticing - maybe.

On other happy news, GUADEC 3 helped spun new life into the GNOME Office
project, partly because of the dire news of OO and SO.

Hugs, rms

-- 
+ No matter how much you do, you never do enough -- unknown
+ Whatever you do will be insignificant,
| but it is very important that you do it -- Ghandi
+ So let's do it...?
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From simo.sorce at xsec.it  Thu Apr 25 13:59:05 2002
From: simo.sorce at xsec.it (Simo Sorce)
Date: 25 Apr 2002 15:59:05 +0200
Subject: Why we speak about Free Software
In-Reply-To: <20020424193925.A200@dose.pro-linux.de>
References: <15558.22873.125948.210858@inspiron.dachary.org>
	<15558.22873.125948.210858@inspiron.dachary.org>
	<20020424073137.GA822@intevation.de>
	<slrnacdkql.50q.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>
	<20020424162717.GA3932@intevation.de> 
	<20020424193925.A200@dose.pro-linux.de>
Message-ID: <1019743145.1870.39.camel@berserker>

On Wed, 2002-04-24 at 19:39, Wolfgang Jährling wrote:
> 
> But it's certainly not because people think Free Software == Freeware.

It really depends on what do you mean with "people", I'm advocating
within non coumputer related people and they do NOT understand
difference beetween freeware/shareware/free software/open source/shared
source/whatever ...

... when they know at all that software is something that exist without
the machine and that Windows is not the only and first OS (when they
know what an OS is) on the earth. Some simply do not realize that a game
consolle or their microwave have a comupetr inside.

I just want to say: do not think people generally know what software is,
pretending they know what Free Software is, is just too much :)

-- 
Simo Sorce - simo.sorce at xsec.it
Xsec s.r.l.
via Durando 10 Ed. G - 20158 - Milano
tel. +39 02 2399 7130 - fax: +39 02 700 442 399
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From schilling at fokus.gmd.de  Thu Apr 25 15:36:36 2002
From: schilling at fokus.gmd.de (Joerg Schilling)
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 17:36:36 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: Why we speak about Free Software
Message-ID: <200204251536.g3PFaap8009205@burner.fokus.gmd.de>

>From: Jeroen Dekkers <jeroen at dekkers.cx>

>They should just make StarOffice free and you wouldn't have those
>problems.

It seems simple to resquest this but it is obvious that they can't
eve if they liked to do it...

J�rg

 EMail:joerg at schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) J�rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       js at cs.tu-berlin.de		(uni)  If you don't have iso-8859-1
       schilling at fokus.gmd.de		(work) chars I am J"org Schilling
 URL:  http://www.fokus.gmd.de/usr/schilling   ftp://ftp.fokus.gmd.de/pub/unix


From jeroen at dekkers.cx  Thu Apr 25 15:45:42 2002
From: jeroen at dekkers.cx (Jeroen Dekkers)
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 17:45:42 +0200
Subject: Why we speak about Free Software
In-Reply-To: <200204251536.g3PFaap8009205@burner.fokus.gmd.de>
References: <200204251536.g3PFaap8009205@burner.fokus.gmd.de>
Message-ID: <20020425154541.GB2241@celeron.dekkers>

On Thu, Apr 25, 2002 at 05:36:36PM +0200, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> 
> >From: Jeroen Dekkers <jeroen at dekkers.cx>
> 
> >They should just make StarOffice free and you wouldn't have those
> >problems.
> 
> It seems simple to resquest this but it is obvious that they can't
> eve if they liked to do it...

And why not?

Jeroen Dekkers
-- 
Jabber supporter - http://www.jabber.org Jabber ID: jdekkers at jabber.org
Debian GNU supporter - http://www.debian.org http://www.gnu.org
IRC: jeroen at openprojects
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From schilling at fokus.gmd.de  Thu Apr 25 15:47:19 2002
From: schilling at fokus.gmd.de (Joerg Schilling)
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 17:47:19 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: Why we speak about Free Software
Message-ID: <200204251547.g3PFlJQM009312@burner.fokus.gmd.de>

>From jeroen at dekkers.cx Thu Apr 25 17:46:10 2002

>> >They should just make StarOffice free and you wouldn't have those
>> >problems.
>>=20
>> It seems simple to resquest this but it is obvious that they can't
>> eve if they liked to do it...

>And why not?

Well this is widely known.....


Star Division, the creatot of the beast (before Sun bought them) bought
closed source software that is owned by others and linked into staroffice.

J�rg

 EMail:joerg at schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) J�rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
       js at cs.tu-berlin.de		(uni)  If you don't have iso-8859-1
       schilling at fokus.gmd.de		(work) chars I am J"org Schilling
 URL:  http://www.fokus.gmd.de/usr/schilling   ftp://ftp.fokus.gmd.de/pub/unix


From joao at silvaneves.org  Thu Apr 25 15:55:24 2002
From: joao at silvaneves.org (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jo=E3o?= Miguel Neves)
Date: 25 Apr 2002 16:55:24 +0100
Subject: Why we speak about Free Software
In-Reply-To: <20020425154541.GB2241@celeron.dekkers>
References: <200204251536.g3PFaap8009205@burner.fokus.gmd.de> 
	<20020425154541.GB2241@celeron.dekkers>
Message-ID: <1019750208.11679.87.camel@central>

On Qui, 2002-04-25 at 16:45, Jeroen Dekkers wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 25, 2002 at 05:36:36PM +0200, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> > 
> > >From: Jeroen Dekkers <jeroen at dekkers.cx>
> > 
> > >They should just make StarOffice free and you wouldn't have those
> > >problems.
> > 
> > It seems simple to resquest this but it is obvious that they can't
> > eve if they liked to do it...
> 
> And why not?
> 
There are certain parts of StarOffice that are third parties proprietary
products. I think the grammar checker is one of those, but I know there
are others.

-- 
						João Miguel Neves
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From jeroen at dekkers.cx  Thu Apr 25 16:12:04 2002
From: jeroen at dekkers.cx (Jeroen Dekkers)
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 18:12:04 +0200
Subject: Why we speak about Free Software
In-Reply-To: <200204251547.g3PFlJQM009312@burner.fokus.gmd.de>
References: <200204251547.g3PFlJQM009312@burner.fokus.gmd.de>
Message-ID: <20020425161204.GA2478@celeron.dekkers>

On Thu, Apr 25, 2002 at 05:47:19PM +0200, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> 
> >From jeroen at dekkers.cx Thu Apr 25 17:46:10 2002
> 
> >> >They should just make StarOffice free and you wouldn't have those
> >> >problems.
> >>=20
> >> It seems simple to resquest this but it is obvious that they can't
> >> eve if they liked to do it...
> 
> >And why not?
> 
> Well this is widely known.....
 
Sorry, I don't have all uptodate news about non-free software.
 
> Star Division, the creatot of the beast (before Sun bought them) bought
> closed source software that is owned by others and linked into staroffice.

Then why doesn't Sun use only the OpenOffice code or buy the now
proprietary code?

Jeroen Dekkers
-- 
Jabber supporter - http://www.jabber.org Jabber ID: jdekkers at jabber.org
Debian GNU supporter - http://www.debian.org http://www.gnu.org
IRC: jeroen at openprojects
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From loic at gnu.org  Sun Apr 28 13:26:48 2002
From: loic at gnu.org (Loic Dachary)
Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2002 15:26:48 +0200
Subject: European Copyright Directive Alert 
Message-ID: <15563.63640.52411.726679@inspiron.dachary.org>

	Hi,

	Will someone attend the European Copyright Directive Alert
(http://uk.eurorights.org/) ? If yes, I be very gratefull if a report
could be posted. It freaks me out to know that we only have until
December 2002 to get political persons to refuse this infamous
directive (it's already too late for Italy I'm afraid : it became
law).

	Cheers,

-- 
Loic   Dachary         http://www.dachary.org/  loic at dachary.org
12 bd  Magenta         http://www.senga.org/      loic at senga.org
75010    Paris         T: 33 1 42 45 07 97          loic at gnu.org
        GPG Public Key: http://www.dachary.org/loic/gpg.txt


From mk270 at cam.ac.uk  Sun Apr 28 14:32:55 2002
From: mk270 at cam.ac.uk (Martin Keegan)
Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2002 15:32:55 +0100 (BST)
Subject: European Copyright Directive Alert 
In-Reply-To: <15563.63640.52411.726679@inspiron.dachary.org>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020428153116.28172A-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk>

On Sun, 28 Apr 2002, Loic Dachary wrote:

> 	Will someone attend the European Copyright Directive Alert
> (http://uk.eurorights.org/) ? If yes, I be very gratefull if a report
> could be posted. It freaks me out to know that we only have until
> December 2002 to get political persons to refuse this infamous
> directive (it's already too late for Italy I'm afraid : it became
> law).

I'd be very interested in reports on how far other EU (and EEA) nations
have proceeded in implementing the EUCD in their national laws.

As to the talks on Monday, it's expected that they'll be available over
the web in things like MP3 and RealAudio (ironically :) ) formats after a 
few days.

Mk



From rubini at gnu.org  Sun Apr 28 17:10:26 2002
From: rubini at gnu.org (Alessandro Rubini)
Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2002 19:10:26 +0200
Subject: European Copyright Directive Alert
In-Reply-To: <15563.63640.52411.726679@inspiron.dachary.org>
References: <15563.63640.52411.726679@inspiron.dachary.org>
Message-ID: <20020428191026.A1027@morgana.systemy.it>

Loic:
> (it's already too late for Italy I'm afraid : it became law).

Could you please expand? None of us ever heard of this. And neither
our friendly lawyers, even looking specifically for the information.

/alessandro


From joao at silvaneves.org  Sun Apr 28 20:07:14 2002
From: joao at silvaneves.org (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jo=E3o?= Miguel Neves)
Date: 28 Apr 2002 21:07:14 +0100
Subject: European Copyright Directive Alert
In-Reply-To: <20020428191026.A1027@morgana.systemy.it>
References: <15563.63640.52411.726679@inspiron.dachary.org> 
	<20020428191026.A1027@morgana.systemy.it>
Message-ID: <1020024436.1854.118.camel@central>

On Dom, 2002-04-28 at 18:10, Alessandro Rubini wrote:
> 
> Loic:
> > (it's already too late for Italy I'm afraid : it became law).
> 
> Could you please expand? None of us ever heard of this. And neither
> our friendly lawyers, even looking specifically for the information.
> 
I found this with google:

http://www.dirittodautore.it/showtestolegge.asp?IDlegge=79

Legge 1 marzo 2002, n. 39 

Disposizioni per l'adempimento di obblighi derivanti dall'appartenenza
dell'Italia alle Comunita' europee. Legge comunitaria 2001.
(G.U. n. 72 del 26 marzo 2002 - Suppl. Ordinario n.54)

I don't know italian, but from what I've read this seems like the
implementation of the EUCD.

I really hope I'm wrong... 

-- 
						João Miguel Neves
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From alex at conostix.com  Sun Apr 28 20:21:46 2002
From: alex at conostix.com (Alexandre Dulaunoy)
Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2002 22:21:46 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: European Copyright Directive Alert
In-Reply-To: <1020024436.1854.118.camel@central>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0204282219020.6227-100000@perycles.unix.be.EU.org>


On 28 Apr 2002, João Miguel Neves wrote:

> On Dom, 2002-04-28 at 18:10, Alessandro Rubini wrote:
> > 
> > Loic:
> > > (it's already too late for Italy I'm afraid : it became law).
> > 
> > Could you please expand? None of us ever heard of this. And neither
> > our friendly lawyers, even looking specifically for the information.
> > 
> I found this with google:
> 
> http://www.dirittodautore.it/showtestolegge.asp?IDlegge=79
> 
> Legge 1 marzo 2002, n. 39 
> 
> Disposizioni per l'adempimento di obblighi derivanti dall'appartenenza
> dell'Italia alle Comunita' europee. Legge comunitaria 2001.
> (G.U. n. 72 del 26 marzo 2002 - Suppl. Ordinario n.54)
> 
> I don't know italian, but from what I've read this seems like the
> implementation of the EUCD.
> 
> I really hope I'm wrong... 
> 
> 

I found this (seems to be the updated text for being compliant to the 
Directive) :

http://www.andreamonti.net/it/lex/s1496.htm 

It seems also to be an official text law (I hope a project law). 

Alessandro could you confirm ? 

Thanks

adulau


-- 
Alexandre Dulaunoy			adulau at conostix.com
					http://www.conostix.com/



From loic at gnu.org  Sun Apr 28 20:38:25 2002
From: loic at gnu.org (Loic Dachary)
Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2002 22:38:25 +0200
Subject: European Copyright Directive Alert
In-Reply-To: Alessandro Rubini's message of 28 April 2002 19:10:26 +0200
References: <15563.63640.52411.726679@inspiron.dachary.org>
	<20020428191026.A1027@morgana.systemy.it>
Message-ID: <15564.24001.765749.102968@inspiron.dachary.org>

Alessandro Rubini writes:
 > 
 > Loic:
 > > (it's already too late for Italy I'm afraid : it became law).
 > 
 > Could you please expand? None of us ever heard of this. And neither
 > our friendly lawyers, even looking specifically for the information.

	I've been told that 

http://www.andreamonti.net/it/lex/s1496.htm 

	shows this. Not being able to read Italien and the fact that
you're not aware of it make me doubt of my sources. Could you
confirm ?

	Cheers,

-- 
Loic   Dachary         http://www.dachary.org/  loic at dachary.org
12 bd  Magenta         http://www.senga.org/      loic at senga.org
75010    Paris         T: 33 1 42 45 07 97          loic at gnu.org
        GPG Public Key: http://www.dachary.org/loic/gpg.txt


From rubini at gnu.org  Sun Apr 28 20:42:31 2002
From: rubini at gnu.org (Alessandro Rubini)
Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2002 22:42:31 +0200
Subject: European Copyright Directive Alert
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0204282219020.6227-100000@perycles.unix.be.EU.org>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0204282219020.6227-100000@perycles.unix.be.EU.org>
Message-ID: <20020428224230.A2502@morgana.systemy.it>

>> Legge 1 marzo 2002, n. 39 

This is just a catch-all document that delegates the government to
write the laws that apply a lot of EU directives. Not good per se, but
not an application of EUCD either.

> http://www.andreamonti.net/it/lex/s1496.htm 
> It seems also to be an official text law (I hope a project law). 

This is old, as far as I can tell (Andrea Monti isn't lynx-friendly,
unfortunately). Looks like the old stuff about the SIAE stamp and
photocopies and similar crap. Nothing related to EUCD.

/alessandro


From markj at cloaked.freeserve.co.uk  Mon Apr 29 08:08:45 2002
From: markj at cloaked.freeserve.co.uk (MJ Ray)
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2002 08:08:45 GMT
Subject: European Copyright Directive Alert 
References: <15563.63640.52411.726679@inspiron.dachary.org> <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020428153116.28172A-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <slrnacpvsd.3bc.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>

Martin Keegan <mk270 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> As to the talks on Monday, it's expected that they'll be available over
> the web in things like MP3 and RealAudio (ironically :) ) formats after a 
> few days.

Is it possible to have Ogg Vorbis?



From mk270 at cam.ac.uk  Mon Apr 29 08:14:05 2002
From: mk270 at cam.ac.uk (Martin Keegan)
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2002 09:14:05 +0100 (BST)
Subject: European Copyright Directive Alert 
In-Reply-To: <slrnacpvsd.3bc.markj+0111@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020429091349.28172J-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk>

On Mon, 29 Apr 2002, MJ Ray wrote:

> Martin Keegan <mk270 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> > As to the talks on Monday, it's expected that they'll be available over
> > the web in things like MP3 and RealAudio (ironically :) ) formats after a 
> > few days.
> 
> Is it possible to have Ogg Vorbis?

Yes, obviously.

Mk



From stef at zoomata.com  Mon Apr 29 08:58:32 2002
From: stef at zoomata.com (Stefano Maffulli)
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2002 10:58:32 +0200
Subject: Oh dear, "It's Copyright Awareness Week"
Message-ID: <200204290858.g3T8wUG04459@mail.mclink.it>

Shall we have a copyleft awareness week too? 


------------------------------------------
http://www.copyright.gov/awareness.html

COPYRIGHT AWARENESS WEEK
April 22 - 28, 2002

The Copyright Office is pleased to participate with the Copyright Society of
the U.S.A. in the first annual Copyright Awareness Week from April 22
through April 28, 2002.

The purpose of Copyright Awareness Week is to foster a greater awareness and
understanding of copyright by educating the public, specifically young
people, about the significance and purpose of protecting creative works.

During Copyright Awareness Week, staff from the Copyright Office and the
Copyright Society of the U.S.A. will speak to students at schools, colleges,
universities, and other organizations about the importance of copyright.

For information on copyright, peruse this website.

Also, for more information about Copyright Awareness Week, visit the
Copyright Society of the U.S.A. website at www.csusa.org



From alex at conostix.com  Mon Apr 29 19:28:45 2002
From: alex at conostix.com (Alexandre Dulaunoy)
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2002 21:28:45 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: EUCD and Italy
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0204292125500.4691-100000@perycles.unix.be.EU.org>

The EUCD seems to be in national italian law.

I got this mail from Andrea Monti :

(part French and Italian)

Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2002 20:42:30 +0200
From: lawfirm at andreamonti.net
To: Alexandre.Dulaunoy at ael.be
Subject: Re: EUCD en Italie

Bonjour Alexandre,
comme j'avais dit la directive europeene 29/01 a ete  recue dans la loi 
italienne avec la loi 
1mars 2002 n.39
(on en peut voir le texte chez http://www.interlex.it/testi/01comunit.htm)
En particulier, le texte parle de la directive 29/01 a l'article 30 (c'est 
dommage, mais j'ai 
selement le texte en italien)

Art. 30 (Attuazione della direttiva 2001/29/CE, sull'armonizzazione di 
taluni aspetti del 
diritto d'autore e dei diritti connessi nella società dell'informazione)

1. Il Governo è delegato ad emanare, entro il termine e con le modalità di 
cui all'articolo 1, 
commi 1 e 2, un decreto legislativo al fine di dare organica attuazione 
alla direttiva 
2001/29/CE del Parlamento europeo e del Consiglio, del 22 maggio 2001, e 
di adeguare e 
coordinare le disposizioni v
a) ridefinire l'oggetto del diritto esclusivo di riproduzione degli autori 
e dei titolari dei 
diritti connessi, specificando che lo stesso concerne ogni forma di 
riproduzione, anche 
indiretta, temporanea o parziale;
b) ridefinire il diritto esclusivo di comunicazione al pubblico spettante 
all'autore, tenendo 
conto dei modi di comunicazione con filo o senza filo, anche con 
riferimento alla messa a 
disposizione del pubblico delle opere in modo che ciascuno possa avervi 
accesso nel luogo e nel 
momento individua
c) riconoscere, nell'ambito del diritto di comunicazione al pubblico, il 
diritto esclusivo di 
autorizzare la messa a disposizione del pubblico, in modo che ciascuno 
possa avervi accesso nel 
luogo e nel momento individualmente prescelti, rispettivamente agli 
artisti interpreti ed 
esecutori, nonché
d) ridefinire il diritto di distribuzione spettante agli autori, rivedendo 
l'esaurimento dello 
stesso in caso di prima vendita o primo atto di trasferimento di proprietà 
nell'Unione europea, 
effettuato dal titolare del diritto o con il suo consenso;
e) ridisciplinare le eccezioni ai diritti esclusivi di riproduzione, 
distribuzione e 
comunicazione al pubblico, esercitando le opzioni previste dall'articolo 5 
della direttiva 
senza peraltro trascurare l'esigenza generale di una rigorosa tutela del 
diritto d'autore;
f) rideterminare il regime della protezione giuridica contro l'elusione 
dei meccanismi 
tecnologici per la protezione del diritto d'autore e dei diritti connessi, 
prevedendo adeguati 
obblighi e divieti;
g) prevedere un'adeguata protezione giuridica a tutela delle informazioni 
sul regime dei 
diritti, stabilendo idonei obblighi e divieti.


Ce qu'on a fait, ici, c'est d'affirmer certains principles (sans entrer 
dans le detail de la 
directive) en laissant a un successif decret legislatif le "devoir" 
d'etablir des regles plus 
precises.
Le veritable probleme, selon moi, c'est que la loi italienne a bati un 
systeme de 
responsabilite' pour le fournisseur d'access au reseaux, aussi bien que 
pour l'utilisateur, qui 
laisse beaucoup peux d'espace pour ne pas etre considere' coupable de 
n'importe quoi il s'est 
passe a travers l'internet.
En particulier, on a "legalise'" le spyware. Cette loi contien un article 
(le 31) qui tres 
clairement dis que le fournisseur d'acess - pour ne pas etre considere 
coupable de ce qui passe 
sur ses serveurs - ne doit pas empecher l'utilisation des technologies 
pour le control a 
distance du respect du copyright.
J'ai parle' plus en detail de tout cela dans deux articles que j'ai 
publie'. J'essayerai de les 
traduire en francais le plus vite qu'il m'est possible.

Si tu as besoin d'avoir plus d'informations sois-tu libre de demander:)
a





From rubini at gnu.org  Mon Apr 29 20:48:08 2002
From: rubini at gnu.org (Alessandro Rubini)
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2002 22:48:08 +0200
Subject: EUCD and Italy
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0204292125500.4691-100000@perycles.unix.be.EU.org>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0204292125500.4691-100000@perycles.unix.be.EU.org>
Message-ID: <20020429224808.A18084@morgana.systemy.it>

> I got this mail from Andrea Monti :

> [...]
> comme j'avais dit la directive europeene 29/01 a ete  recue dans la loi 
> italienne avec la loi 
> 1mars 2002 n.39

That's not true. After previous notes sent to the list I checked that
specific law, and already reported about it in this list.  Law 39/2002
is a generic delegation to the government to accept a lot of EU
directives.  It's not good news, but it neither is the application of
EUCD in Italy.

Sure article 30 lists the points of 2001/29/CE. No need to quote it
all. All the other articles quote the points of other directives.

The law is at http://www.parlamento.it/parlam/leggi/02039l.htm , and
it talks about these directives: 2000/13/CE 2000/14/CE 2000/20/CE
2000/26/CE 2000/31/CE 2000/34/CE 2000/35/CE 2000/36/CE 2000/37/CE
2000/38/CE 2000/43/CE 2000/53/CE 2000/59/CE 2000/62/CE 2000/65/CE
2000/70/CE 2000/75/CE 2000/77/CE 2000/78/CE 2000/79/CE 2000/9/CE
2001/12/CE 2001/13/CE 2001/14/CE 2001/15/CE 2001/16/CE 2001/17/CE
2001/18/CE 2001/19/CE 2001/20/CE 2001/23/CE 2001/24/CE 2001/29/CE
2001/37/CE 2001/40/CE 2001/42/CE 2001/44/CE 2001/45/CE 2001/46/CE
2001/51/CE 2001/55/CE 2001/64/CE 2001/65/CE 2001/77/CE 2001/78/CE
2001/84/CE 2001/86/CE .

So is this the EUCD law? It doesn't look such to me, despite what
Andrea Monti says.

When the government will deliver the proposals, they will be discussed
in parliament. Or not. We are working to have ours discussed.

Hope this is over. At least it is for me, I've other things to do than
dealing with domestic FUD.

/alessandro, not a lawyer but in touch with lawyers


From greve at fsfeurope.org  Mon Apr 29 23:53:22 2002
From: greve at fsfeurope.org (Georg C. F. Greve)
Date: Tue, 30 Apr 2002 01:53:22 +0200
Subject: Recommendation by the FSF Europe and supporting parties for the 6th
 EU framework programme
Message-ID: <m34rhucb9p.fsf@reason.gnu-hamburg>

                               [ http://fsfeurope.org/documents/fp6/ ]


                        Recommendation by the

                              FSF Europe

                      and more than 40 European

       companies, organizations, research centers and projects

                  for the 6th EU framework programme


Free Software is a concept that has fundamentally changed the way some
parts of the IT sector are working towards a more stable, lasting and
sustainable approach with higher dynamics and increased efficiency. It
is obvious that the first region to adopt and support this principle
on a larger scale can profit enormously and get a head-start in the
information age.

This document explains some of the reasons why Free Software should be
included in the considerations on the 6th European Community framework
programme 2002-2006 and gives input on how this could be done.

Free Software -- sometimes also referred to as ``Libre software'' or
``Open Source Software'' -- is best defined by the following four
freedoms:

    * 1. freedom: The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.

    * 2. freedom: The freedom to study how the program works, and
         adapt it to your needs. Access to the source code is a
         precondition for this.

    * 3. freedom: The freedom to redistribute copies.

    * 4. freedom: The freedom to improve the program, and release your
         improvements to the public, so that the whole community
         benefits. Access to the source code is a precondition for
         this.

For reasons that can be found online [1], this document will use Free
Software as the preferred term.  

- Summary

The ability of any region, country or person to participate in the
information age will be largely determined by access to and control
over key technologies and networks.

As a result of the proprietary software model, we are currently in a
situation where almost the whole European information technologies
industry is dependent on an oligopoly of U.S. software
companies. Viewed from the European perspective, such a situation is
highly unstable and unfavorable.

Not coincidentally, the only true exception to this, the internet, is
largely run on Free Software.

Recognizing the usefulness and importance of Free Software for the
future of Europe, the Information Society Technologies (IST) research
programme of the European Commission has shown increasting interest in
Free Software over the past years. An example of this was the ``2001
action line Free Software development: towards critical mass'' within
the 5th European European Community framework programme. Consequently,
Free Software is also found in the ``Work Programme 2002'' of the IST.

Free Software provides an alternative model for information technology
with significant advantages for numerous objectives and areas
specified in the Proposal for the 6th European Commission framework
programme.

Even if these are sometimes hard to quantify, it is clear that Europe
could greatly benefit from increased employment of Free Software in
terms of

    * Greater independence
    * Increased sustainability
    * Freedom from foreign mono- and oligopolies
    * Alternative hard- and software possibilities
    * Strengthened domestic market and local industries
    * Better cooperation between research and economy
    * Encouraged transdisciplinary research
    * Better protection of civil rights

Free Software is clearly a model of the future and Europe already has
an increasingly vibrant Free Software scene unrivaled anywhere in the
world. This gives Europe a very unique chance to capitalize on the
benefits of Free Software and get a head-start into the knowledge
economy.

For a more detailed and explanatory reasoning, please see section
Reasoning.  Recommendation

We [2] recommend that for all activities within the 6th European
Commission framework programme, Free Software becomes the preferred
and recommended choice.

We suggest that the programme and projects should monitor and report
on the share of the funding used for results released under a Free
Software or Free Documentation license. In certain areas like the IST
programme or fundamental research, the objective must be set that this
share is at least 50% of the budget used to produce software or
disseminable documentation.

As other ways of increasing the European edge, we furthermore
recommend:

      Dedicated calls

      In some areas -- ``eEurope'' or fundamental scientific research
      being two examples -- it would be advisable to enforce the
      advantages offered by Free Software by explicitly and
      exclusively calling for projects that will release their results
      under a Free Software and/or Free Documentation license.
      Preference in evaluation

      As a general criterion it would be in the interest of Europe
      that projects making their results available under a Free
      Software (and -- possibly -- Free Documentation) license [3]
      should receive a positive score in the evaluation process,
      giving them an advantage over comparable projects not offering
      this increased European value.

      Additional positive scores in the evaluation process should be
      granted to projects employing ``Copylefted'' Free Software [4]
      and projects taking steps to ensure the enduring availability
      and legal maintainability of the Free Software created through
      copyright assignments [5] to appropriate institutions.
      Information

      The preference and recommendation for Free Software should be
      added in the guidelines for evaluators, the policy documents and
      the documents explaining the rules of participation for project
      applications.

      Although Free Software is per se available to any organization,
      person or company, the European Commission should seek to inform
      and encourage local companies about and to Free Software,
      building up the expertise fundamentally necessary for the
      information age.


[1] Please see http://fsfeurope.org/documents/whyfs.en.html

[2] The Free Software Foundation Europe and parties supporting this
recommendation. Information about the FSF Europe and the list of
supporting parties can be found at 
http://fsfeurope.org/documents/fp6/supporting-parties.en.html

[3] See http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html

[4] Copylefted Free Software not only offers the four freedoms quoted
above, it also protects them. The most successful and best-known
Copyleft license is the ``GNU General Public License'' of the Free
Software Foundation, under which more than 50% of all Free Software is
being released.

[5] Transferral of exclusive exploitation rights in countries
following the ``Droit d'Auteur'' tradition.



From rubini at gnu.org  Tue Apr 30 06:24:38 2002
From: rubini at gnu.org (Alessandro Rubini)
Date: Tue, 30 Apr 2002 08:24:38 +0200
Subject: EUCD and Italy
In-Reply-To: <20020429224808.A18084@morgana.systemy.it>
References: <20020429224808.A18084@morgana.systemy.it>
Message-ID: <20020430082438.A24407@morgana.systemy.it>

> Hope this is over. At least it is for me, I've other things to do than
> dealing with domestic FUD.

Afterwards, I find this more harsh than I meant.  I apologize.  It
wasn't directed to Loic nor to Alexandre, who both just relayed wrong
information but didn't originate it.

/alessandro


From alex at conostix.com  Tue Apr 30 09:40:25 2002
From: alex at conostix.com (Alexandre Dulaunoy)
Date: Tue, 30 Apr 2002 11:40:25 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: Coherent action against the EUCD
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0204301139440.3441-100000@perycles.unix.be.EU.org>

Dear All,

As you known, the EUCD (2001/29/CE) is a real threat for the four 
freedoms of Free Software and for Freedom in general.

So we (at ael)  think the best way is to have a coherent action regarding 
and a coherent source of information (with cross-references) around the 
application of the EUCD in the different european countries. 

So we have setup a small wiki page with status : 

http://wiki.ael.be/index.php/EUCD-Status

So EVERYBODY can edit it and add his specific information about his 
respective country. 

Thanks a lot. 

adulau





From mk270 at cam.ac.uk  Tue Apr 30 09:52:51 2002
From: mk270 at cam.ac.uk (Martin Keegan)
Date: Tue, 30 Apr 2002 10:52:51 +0100 (BST)
Subject: Coherent action against the EUCD
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0204301139440.3441-100000@perycles.unix.be.EU.org>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020430105129.505I-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk>

On Tue, 30 Apr 2002, Alexandre Dulaunoy wrote:

> http://wiki.ael.be/index.php/EUCD-Status
> 
> So EVERYBODY can edit it and add his specific information about his 
> respective country. 
> 

I've added a little bit about the UK. I'll check back later, and link it
in from the uk.eurorights.org site. Maybe eurorights.org itself should
link to your new page.

It would be good you could change the instructions on this page to 
remind people to give links to national organisations involved in opposing
the EUCD, in addition to a progress report for their country.

Mk



From alex at conostix.com  Tue Apr 30 10:29:05 2002
From: alex at conostix.com (Alexandre Dulaunoy)
Date: Tue, 30 Apr 2002 12:29:05 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: Coherent action against the EUCD
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1020430105129.505I-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0204301225550.3441-100000@perycles.unix.be.EU.org>

On Tue, 30 Apr 2002, Martin Keegan wrote:

> On Tue, 30 Apr 2002, Alexandre Dulaunoy wrote:
> 
> > http://wiki.ael.be/index.php/EUCD-Status
> > 
> > So EVERYBODY can edit it and add his specific information about his 
> > respective country. 
> > 
> 
> I've added a little bit about the UK. I'll check back later, and link it
> in from the uk.eurorights.org site. Maybe eurorights.org itself should
> link to your new page.
> 
> It would be good you could change the instructions on this page to 
> remind people to give links to national organisations involved in opposing
> the EUCD, in addition to a progress report for their country.

Thanks. 

I have added the local contact for each country. (Now, you have to 
complete it with your local representatives against EUCD).

For France, that could be APRIL but I don't know... 

For the other countries, please provide feedback. 

adulau

-- 
Alexandre Dulaunoy			adulau at conostix.com
					http://www.conostix.com/



From loic at gnu.org  Tue Apr 30 10:29:53 2002
From: loic at gnu.org (Loic Dachary)
Date: Tue, 30 Apr 2002 12:29:53 +0200
Subject: Coherent action against the EUCD
In-Reply-To: Martin Keegan's message of 30 April 2002 10:52:51 +0100
References: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0204301139440.3441-100000@perycles.unix.be.EU.org>
	<Pine.LNX.3.96.1020430105129.505I-100000@slade.mus.cam.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <15566.29217.169371.35802@inspiron.dachary.org>

Martin Keegan writes:
 > 
 > I've added a little bit about the UK. I'll check back later, and link it
 > in from the uk.eurorights.org site. Maybe eurorights.org itself should
 > link to your new page.
 > 
 > It would be good you could change the instructions on this page to 
 > remind people to give links to national organisations involved in opposing
 > the EUCD, in addition to a progress report for their country.
 > 

	There is a non-negligeable risk that this page is filled by
so many informations that it becomes hard to read. IMHO it will be most
useful if it is short and focused on references only.

	- pointers to the reference documents showing that EUCD is being
	  implemented
	- pointers to actual lobbying actions + date
	- discard obsolete references & pointers

	I think pointers to existing organisations / people belongs to
another page.

	Cheers,

-- 
Loic   Dachary         http://www.dachary.org/  loic at dachary.org
12 bd  Magenta         http://www.senga.org/      loic at senga.org
75010    Paris         T: 33 1 42 45 07 97          loic at gnu.org
        GPG Public Key: http://www.dachary.org/loic/gpg.txt