Fsf-friends December 2006

fsf-friends@gnu.org.in

20 participants
29 discussions

Protest against Novell-Microsoft agreement
by പ്രവീണ്‍‌|Praveen 03 Dec '06

03 Dec '06

An Open Leter to Novell CEO Hovserpian from Bruce Perens (you can also add your comments there) "To Mr. Hovsepian, The Open Source community would find little to criticize in your agreement with Microsoft, had it remained a strictly financial and technical agreement. As the agreement stands today, it betrays the authors of the software you re-market and their users worldwide for Novell's sole commercial benefit. The covenant of the GPL is that in the face of a software patent aggressor we must all hang together, lest we each hang separately. Novell accepted that covenant when you chose to include the Linux kernel, the GNU C library, and hundreds of additional works created at no charge to Novell by individuals in the Free Software community and licensed under the GPL. It is abundantly clear that Novell and Microsoft took the time to engineer a circuitous legal path of issuing covenants to each other's customers, rather than licenses to each other, in order to circumvent Novell's earlier agreement with the community of GPL software developers. In your defense, you offer that Novell has not acknowledged that Linux infringes upon Microsoft's patents. Let's be truthful about software patents: there can be no non-trivial computer program, either proprietary or Free, that does not use methods that are claimed in software patents currently in force and unlicensed for use in that program. There are simply enough patents, on enough fundamental principles, to make this so. If all software patents were enforced fully, the software industry would grind to a halt. Of course software patents are less than fully enforced, and what we have is a sort of shake-down racket in which tremendous attorney fees and damages are routinely extorted. Open Source communities and medium-sized enterprises can be legally prevented from participating in the industry simply because they can not afford the price of justice, between three and five Million dollars to defend a case. Several years ago, attorney Daniel Ravicher, now of the Software Freedom Law Center, reported finding 283 patents with claims that could read on the Linux kernel. That kernel represents only a few percent of the overall collection of software in Novell/SuSE Linux. It is likely that there are many thousands of unlitigated potential infringements within the entire Novell system. Only a minority of those patents are owned by Microsoft, your recent agreement does nothing to defend you from the others. Most troubling are the patents owned by "patent trolls", companies that produce no products other than patents and thus can not be deterred by patent counter-threats from organizations like OIN. Microsoft has invested in at least one explicit "troll" company, which can use its patents offensively as a proxy of Microsoft without exposing Microsoft to counter-suits, anti-trust issues, or Microsoft's agreement with Novell. In the face of this threat, not only to Free Software but to the small and medium-sized proprietary software companies that make up 80% of the software economy worldwide, Novell chose to act selfishly and take the money. One-third Billion dollars is a strong inducement. Your open letter to the community mis-represents Novell's software patenting policy. At a Brussels meeting that I attended including EU Member-of-Parliament Arlene McCarthy, Novell's stance was that the company was for enforcible software patenting in the EU but against the particular bill being considered at that time. This stance does not consider that increased enforcement of software patents remains a potential complete show-stopper for Free Software, from Novell or anyone else. You, Mr. Hovsepian, reiterated Novell's support for strong software patent protection on a panel that I chaired at the AlwaysOn conference this summer. The text of your agreement with Microsoft has not been released, and perhaps not all of it is even on paper. But we know that Microsoft has bought your cooperation. No doubt we will now see Novell at Microsoft's side in political venues, representing *Linux*, asking legislators for stronger software patent protection that has the potential to harm or even end Open Source. This is unacceptable. If Novell is to benefit from the Free Software community, Novell should be working to make it safe for everyone to write and use software. There are serious questions regarding how Novell intends to go on with its business. Developers are jumping ship. The very software that you sell is owned by parties who are now hostile to your company. The C library, essential to run every program on your system, is the property of the Free Software Foundation, which will surely relicense that library to LGPL 3. The leading developer of that library is a Red Hat employee. It's already been announced that GPL and LGPL 3 will contain terms that make it untenable to use while your patent agreement with Microsoft stands. The Samba software and hundreds of other programs will probably go a similar path. The Novell-Microsoft agreement has even had the power to make the Linux kernel developers and the large companies that support them take a fresh look at GPL 3. In the face of these changes, Novell will probably be stuck with old versions of the software, under old licenses, with Novell sustaining the entire cost and burden of maintaining that software. Novell will have to maintain its customers on old versions while the community takes GPL 3 versions of the same software into the future. In short, now that Novell has chosen not to hang together with the Free Software community, we've chosen not to do so with you. There is really only one path out of this corner for Novell. Go on with your technical collaboration, and keep the money. But Novell must now direct Microsoft to refrain from granting covenants to Novell's users unless they will apply to everyone equally. Hang together with the Free Software community by changing your software patent stance from one of monopoly rights for Novell to one of support for legislation that will make it safe for all of us to create, distribute, and use software." * Bruce Perens, *creator of *Electric Fence* and *Busybox*, two programs that are important to Novell Linux and are covered by the GPL. http://techp.org/petition/show/1 Regards Praveen -- "Value your freedom, or you will lose it, teaches history. `Don't bother us with politics', respond those who don't want to learn." -- Richard Stallman Me scribbles at http://www.pravi.co.nr

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SFLC challenges Blackboard's ridiculous patent
by Sasi Kumar 02 Dec '06

02 Dec '06

"The Software Freedom Law Center said Thursday that it has asked the U.S. Patent Office to re-examine a patent awarded to education software company Blackboard. It claims that the patent is bogus and could undermine three open-source education software projects it represents--Sakai, Moodle and ATutor." see: http://news.com.com/2100-7344-6139834.html?tag=yt -- V. Sasi Kumar Free Software Foundation of India Please see: http://swatantryam.blogspot.com/

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Yahoo! Groups: You're invited! Join MarathiOpenSource today.
by MarathiOpenSource moderator 01 Dec '06

01 Dec '06

pritisd(a)yahoo.com has invited you to join MarathiOpenSource [http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MarathiOpenSource/] on Yahoo! Groups, the best way to discover and share information and advice with others. All for free. A personal invitation from pritisd(a)yahoo.com: Join this group to keep yourself updated about Marathi computing on Computer See for yourself why millions of people are members of Yahoo! Groups. But hurry. This invitation expires in 30 days. Join this group: http://groups.yahoo.com/i?i=NDNFSPc-V07yDWpZ4MA2_bliGqQ&e=fsf-friends%40mm%… ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups is a free service that allows you to stay in touch with friends and family or meet new people who share your interests. Yahoo! Groups values your privacy. It is a violation of our service rules for Groups members to abuse this invitation feature. If you feel this has happened, please notify us: http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/groups/abuse/index.html You may also change your email preferences to stop receiving group invitations in the future. To do so, please go here: http://groups.yahoo.com/s?tag=jq1U0Sdf9Foh3NGKJd8h9muLooq5W9RYjoYl32bmS4f2C… Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

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Stockholm Challenge awards
by doxa＠sancharnet.in 01 Dec '06

01 Dec '06

The Stockholm Challenge award system appears to discriminate Free and Open Source Software. Earl Mardle maintains that a comparative study between proprietary systems and FLOSS systems is uncalled for, even if the evaluation is for the e-governance based public systems. That exposes the constitution of the Stockholm Challenge system to the core. No wonder then that the award screening committee shortlisted Information Kerala Mission, perhaps, the most dubious ever non-free e-governance engineering system in the country for the award, even when the Comptroller and Auditor General report levelled serious charges of abusing public resources and countered the claims of the organisation. Unless for the tireless objections (from our fsf-friends) that finally forced them to deny the organisation any space in the final list, the committee might have even considered the organisation a global-working space (which is still working on Kerala Govt's public funds, meant for the poor and marginalised). Fred should be alerting all our global FSF networks on this, and possibly even the democratic governments. Do we have any other experiences, Fred ? CK Raju Thrissur

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Fsf-friends December 2006