Linus Torvalds against EU patent directive
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They are asking the European Union Council to reject this proposal. They claim that software patent directive would be harmful to the European economy.
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(InfoWorld) - A U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) official has joined the debate surrounding Apple Computer's proprietary digital music technology by criticizing European antitrust activities, butÂ groups attacking AppleÂ are defending their actions. Speaking in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, Thomas Barnett, assistant attorney general at the DOJ's antitrust division, warned that forcing companies to reveal their intellectual property stifles innovation. He used Apple as an example, in a nod toÂ growing discontent in EuropeÂ regarding the way that music purchased from iTunes is tied to the iPod. Architects of complaints against Apple in Europe say he's got it wrong. "We're not attacking intellectual property rights but saying they should be implemented in a way which doesn't dictate which player you use," said Torgeir Waterhouse, a senior advisor with the Norwegian Consumer Council. His organization filed a complaint to Norway's consumer representative, or ombudsman, arguing that it's illegal for Apple to limit iTunes customers to playing music from the store exclusively on iPods. Along with similar representatives in Denmark and Sweden, the Norwegian ombudsman asked Apple toÂ defend its policy. In a written reply, Apple said it won't budge on the issue but the company plans to meet representatives from the countries later this month to further discuss the issue. If Apple won't open up, the ombudsman will take the company to court. Waterhouse suggests that Apple could solve the problem by licensing its digital rights management technology to other device makers so that iTunes customers could choose among devices or opt for an open standard that would be compatible with more devices. Barnett's criticisms of European antitrust policy, including comments that the policy is aimed at helping competitors instead of consumers, are generally in line with comments from U.S. officials since the Bush administration came to power, said Scott Megregian, a partner and head of the European competition group in the law firm McDermott Will & Emery UK. He disagrees with the argument that requiring companies to open up some of their technology stifles innovation. "That's an argument without support," he said. "Microsoft hasn't stopped innovating that I can tell despite regulations and attack by the E.U." So far, the European Commission has likely communicated with the countries that are pursuing Apple and has probably expressed an opinion on the matter, he said. While no official complaints have been filed with the Commission, if one is, the result will have the makings of a historical battle. "This has the potential to be the next big high-profile dispute," Megregian said.
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Nokia, the world&#39;s largest mobile phone maker, took legal action earlier this week against two European manufacturers for allegedly infringing on technology patents and registered designs.
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Alternative technologies are once again blocked in Europe.
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Two hot issues are making the rounds.  First, Debian and Firefox are having a spat, and the end result may be that Debian will distribute Firefox under a different name.  Second, the war betwen Linus Torvalds and other Kernel developers and the Free Software Foundation over GPLv3 is continuing, with Torvalds saying he's fed up with the FSF.  Here is my take on both, and related issues.
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InfoWorld - Linux creator Linus Torvalds, in an interview being made public by the Linux Foundation Tuesday, stressed that version 2 of the GPL (GNU General Public License) still makes the most sense for the Linux kernel over the newer GPL version 3.
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Microsoft&#39;s patent on the File Allocation Table disk format has been rejected by the US Patent Office, on the grounds that it should never have been granted in the first place.
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If Linus and the other key kernel developers were to back a shift to GPLv3, and if there were reasonable legal air cover from respected Open Source authorities for doing so, it seems unlikely that we'd see a substantive challenge to such a move.
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Bickering over details to blame The EU Internal Markets Commissioner has warned that Europe is about to miss out on a chance to forge a pan-European patent disputes forum because of long-standing international bickering on what a system might look like.â¦
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Three prominent open-source software developers have urged the EU to reject a law that would codify the practice of granting software patents in Europe.
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(InfoWorld) - A day after Linux creator Linus Torvalds publicly questioned the authenticity of Sun's interest in serving the open-source community, Sun CEO and President Jonathan Schwartz invited Torvalds for a sit-down over dinner to discuss how Sun and the overseers of the Linux kernel can join forces. "I wanted you to hear this from me directly," Schwartz wrote in an entry on his blog. "We want to work together, we want to join hands and communities -- we have no intention of holding anything back or pulling patent nonsense. And to prove the sincerity of the offer, I invite you to my house for dinner." Schwartz was defending Sun against comments Torvalds made in a post Tuesday on the Linux Kernel Mailing List. Torvalds suggested that Sun is keeping some of the more interesting features of its OpenSolaris open-source project -- such as ZFS, a file system in Sun's OpenSolaris Unix OS that is generating a lot of buzz -- close to the vest because the company doesn't want to help Linux, which has hurt Sun's position in the market. Schwartz begged to differ that Sun is punishing the Linux community for how commodity servers running the OS trumped Sun's Solaris-based hardware after the dot-com bust, a phenomenon that eventually led Sun to release Solaris as an open-source project. "Did the Linux community hurt Sun? No, not a bit. It was the companies that leveraged their work," Schwartz wrote. "I draw a very sharp distinction -- even if our competition is conveniently reckless. They like to paint the battle as Sun vs. the community, and it's not. Companies compete, communities simply fracture." Torvalds also took issue with the fact that Sun has not released OpenSolaris under the GNU GPLv2 (General Public License Version 2), which currently governs Linux. The license for OpenSolaris is the Community Development and Distribution License, which Sun created based on the Mozilla Public License. However, Schwartz is leaning toward supporting GPLv3 (GPLÂ Version 3), which should be released in its final version in the next few weeks as an option for OpenSolaris and other Sun open-source projects before GPLv2, which Torvalds prefers. In fact, the differences between GPLv2 and v3 have caused a public rift between Torvalds and other key members of the open-source community. "We love where the FSF's GPL3 is headed," Schwartz wrote. He cited a "variety of mechanical reasons" why it would be difficult to license OpenSolaris under GPLv2 and insisted it has "nothing to do with being afraid of the community. "Why does open sourcing take so long? Because we're starting from products that exist, in which a diversity of contributors and licensors/licensees have rights we have to negotiate," Schwartz wrote. "Indulge me when I say it's different than starting from scratch. I would love to go faster, and we are all doing everything under our control to accelerate progress.... It's also a delicate dance to manage this transition while growing a corporation." Torvalds in his post seemed unlikely to buy such an argument. "To Sun, a GPLv3-only release would actually let them look good, and still keep Linux from taking their interesting parts, and would allow them to take at least parts of Linux without giving anything back (ahh, the joys of license fragmentation)," he wrote. As to whether Torvalds would accept Schwartz's offer, he joked in an e-mail Wednesday that while he does not get to the San Francisco Bay area very often, "free food is a big draw." Torvalds lives in Portland, Oregon. He also said that though his post was not strictly meant for Schwartz, he appreciates the executive's response, especially his assertion that Sun would not seek patent fees for ZFS, as some in the Linux community wanted to port the file system to Linux. Still, Torvalds' mistrust of Sun's motives in the open-source industry is deep-rooted, though he remains optimistic that Sun and the Linux community still can come together on common interests. "I'll just have to say that I still have the old Java licensing mess fresh in my memory, and I'll take a 'wait and see' attitude to what actually comes out of Sun," he wrote, saying he is the kind of person who "would rather be pleasantly surprised by people's (and companies') actions, than expect too much and be disappointed." Robert McMillan in San Francisco contributed to this report.
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Almost everything that can be said has been said about the latest moves by Microsoft to create Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) about Linux. Countless pundits and analysts have pointed out that Microsoft threats are toothless. Some have noted that Microsoft has singled out Linux and OpenOffice, the biggest threats to its monopoly on operating systems and office suites. Surely Microsoft could claim that the *BSDs infringe on similar patents if not the same ones. But the *BSDs do not pose as great a threat to the company. Others have pointed out that Microsoft would be insane to pull an SCO and sue its own customers. Still others have noted that IBM and/or OIN could respond to a patent war with a massive retaliation in patent infringement claims. I have no doubt that Microsoft has lifted a lot of GPL code (more likely algorithms) for Windows, which would prevent Microsoft from following through with its threats. To do so would require that Microsoft open its own code to scrutiny. The list goes on, and others have covered the angles very well. There is one perspective I haven't yet seen, at least not the way I propose to deal with it. This perspective follows below.
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The future of controversial European Union legislation that would allow for some software patents was in doubt Thursday after the Polish government switched sides, saying the directive could hurt small and medium-sized businesses.
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According to a recent report from a research group, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer at an Asian Government Leaders Forum in Singapore claimed that Linux violates more than 228 patents.
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Microsoft&#39;s aggressive defense of its intellectual property, which includes claims that Linux violates a number of its patents, is nothing more than &quot;a marketing thing,&quot; according to Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel.&quot;They have been sued for patents by other people, but I don&#39;t think they&#39;ve -- not that I&#39;ve gone through any huge amount of law cases -- but I don&#39;t think they&#39;ve generally used patents as a weapon,&quot; Torvalds said. &quot;But they&#39;re perfectly happy to use anything at all as fear, uncertainty, and doubt in the marketplace, and patents is just one thing where they say, &#39;Hey, isn&#39;t this convenient? We can use this as a PR force.&#39;&quot;Torvalds made the comments during the second half of an interview conducted by the Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin on Oct. 16. The foundation is expected to make the rest of the interview publicly available on its Web site Monday. The foundation released the initial portion of the interview in January.&quot;Another reason why I don&#39;t think Microsoft really seriously would go after patents is when you&#39;re a convicted monopolist in the marketplace you really should not be suing your competitors over patents,&quot; Torvalds continued. &quot;I think that most Microsoft lawyers would say, &#39;You know, let&#39;s not do that; that sounds insane&#39;.&quot;Microsoft&#39;s recent work around improving its platform&#39;s interoperability with Linux left Torvalds largely unmoved.&quot;I think there are people inside Microsoft who really want to improve interoperability and I also think there are people inside Microsoft who would much rather just try to stab their competition in the back,&quot; he said. &quot;I think the latter class of people have usually been the one[s] who won out in the end, but -- so I wouldn&#39;t exactly trust them.&quot;Microsoft spokespeople on Friday declined to comment on Torvalds&#39; remarks. The company has said it believes that Linux infringes on its intellectual property, although it has been criticized for not being more precise with its allegations.Torvalds is instead focused on improving Linux, he said. &quot;I work weekdays, I work weekends, I work 52 weeks a year. I don&#39;t want there to be any question of who&#39;s the best maintainer,&quot; he said. &quot;And at the same time, I actually also do want to encourage competition. ... So, I actually enjoy seeing all these other kernel trees happening. All the vendors have their own.&quot;However, the Linux kernel community overall could be more welcoming to new ideas, he suggested. &quot;One of the problems is we have people who have such high criteria for what is acceptable or not that it scares away people who want to do new code and do new experiments,&quot; he said. &quot;We mustn&#39;t set the bar that high. New code, new drivers, there will be problems and I&#39;d rather take them and then improve them.&quot;Even as Linux matures as a technology, it has yet to make a major impact in the mainstream desktop market. &quot;It&#39;s really hard to enter the desktop market because people are used to whatever they used before, mostly Windows ... There&#39;s just this huge inertia in that market,&quot; he said.In contrast, he said, it was much easier to sell Linux in the context of a server: &quot;There&#39;s just a few loads, they&#39;re fairly simple, they&#39;re fairly well-understood, people have much less inertia in upgrading a server than they have in upgrading their desktop.&quot;At one point, the discussion turned to Sun&#39;s work to create an open-source community around Open Solaris. Torvalds expressed deep skepticism toward the effort.&quot;It&#39;s generally hard to build a community around a commercial entity that also wants to be in control because everybody else around that commercial entity will always feel like they&#39;re at the mercy of Sun,&quot; he said.This dynamic is reflected in Open Office, &quot;where the fact that Sun wants to have copyright assignments and exclusive control over the license ends up being something that actually drives away some developers,&quot; he argued.Overall, Torvalds expressed ambivalence toward Sun, which recently has developed an image as a particularly open-source-friendly company. &quot;In many ways, Sun has done a lot of things right. At the same time, they seem to often have trouble going the full last step,&quot; he said.Ian Murdoch, vice president of Sun&#39;s Connected Developer group, defended Sun&#39;s commitment to the open-source model. &quot;An open-source project has to have coordination, it&#39;s not anarchy,&quot; said Murdoch, who earlier in his career founded the Debian version of Linux.&quot;If you look at the Linux kernel itself, Linus is firmly in control of that, and the only difference is he&#39;s an individual and Sun is a company. ... Some of the most successful open-source projects are being driven by companies, like MySQL for example,&quot; he said.Torvalds also pulled out his crystal ball, offering predictions on how technology will change in the next five years.While hardware will be &quot;hugely better,&quot; software&#39;s power and complexity will grow alongside it, he said. &quot;I suspect things will be about the same speed because the software will have grown and you&#39;ll have more &#39;bling&#39; to just slow the hardware down.&quot;Virtualization is &quot;not that big of a deal,&quot; according to Torvalds. &quot;It&#39;s been all around for decades and it&#39;s very interesting in niche markets -- I think the people who expected to change things radically are just fooling themselves.&quot;Real change will come from entirely new uses of computers, he predicted.(James Niccolai in San Francisco contributed to this report.)
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InfoWorld - Microsoft's aggressive defense of its intellectual property, which includes claims that Linux violates a number of its patents, is nothing more than "a marketing thing," according to Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel.
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Speaking yesterday, AMD EVP Tom McCoy said that he believes the US Government has been lax in its antitrust enforcement in recent months. As an example, McCoy re-ignited an old quarrel with Intel - part of its federal antitrust complaint that hasn't been addressed recently, especially in the midst of allegations against Intel's conduct in Germany.