OSRM Tracing Linux Patents in EU
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In an effort to stem the spread of software patents in Europe, the Open Source Risk Management (OSRM) group has begun documenting the sources of innovation claimed by such patents.
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It is with regret that I urge all FOSS developers to treat anything Novell has contributed to the community as suspect, scrutinize any Novell contributions and purge them as deemed appropriate.  This threat is real, and it is not necessarily contingent upon whether or not Microsoft would actually sue customers for patent infringements.  This is a classic case of posturing.  Novell is leveraging its agreement with Microsoft in a way that harms all other Linux distributions and other FOSS projects. It is actively exploiting its unique position in ways that seem beneficial, but will pose risks to anyone but its own customers (and even their own customers are only protected for the next five years).
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There is a fascinating article on Groklaw called Searching for Openness in Microsoft's OOXML and Finding Contradictions. One of the most relevant comments in the article is "So, they plan to be the only one in the Linux world that can actually interoperate with Microsoft. How do you think they will achieve that? By sharing? On the contrary, they already market themselves as uniquely interoperable, which means they get to interoperate and you don't, unless you are their paying customer."  There is also the Novell comment, "Only Novell has Microsoftâs endorsement as its partner to drive Linux-Windows interoperability."
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A company finds a sneaky new way to silence security researchers: Claim that defeating its products infringes on patents. Commentary by Jennifer Granick.
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Linux continues to move forward even as the open-source OS faces challenges from Microsoft, which claimed recently that the OS violates several of its patents. On Monday, a draft of the Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) specifications was released, with the final version planned for the end of this year.
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WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear a case focusing on whether peer-to-peer (P-to-P) software vendors should be penalized for unauthorized file trading when their software is used.ADVERTISEMENTSolaris 10(TM) OS: Position your business ten moves ahead.Solaris 10 OS has arrived and provides even more reasons for the world's most demanding businesses to operate on this, the leading UNIX platform. Like the fact you can run Linux and Solaris applications side-by-side and run the same OS on SPARC(R), AMD Opteron(TM), and Intel processor-based systems. Discover more reasons and how Solaris 10 OS can move your business ahead today.
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More FUD  from our friends in Seattle:  "Asian governments using Linux will be sued for IP violations, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said today in Singapore. He did not specify that Microsoft would be the company doing the suing, but it's difficult to read the claim as anything other than a declaration of IP war."  "According to a Reuters report (which we fervently hope will produce one of Ballmer's fascinating 'I was misquoted' rebuttals*), Ballmer told Microsoft's Asian Government Leaders Forum that Linux violates more than 228 patents. Come on Steve, don't hold back - what you mean 'more than 228' - 229? 230? Don't pull your punches to soften the blow to the community. "Some day," he contin ...
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A effort by a Seattle company at Black Hat DC to demo a device that easily hacks data from a popular RFID-based ID card system has been met by a patent-infringement claim. Meanwhile, legislators attempt to wrap laws around the security issues.
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A group of open-source software pioneers, led by Linux developer Linus Torvalds, has issued an appeal to the EU Council to block the legalization of software patents.
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What is happening with carrier grade Linux and kernel contributions in this area?
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How significant is the US Patent and Trademark Office&#39;s initial rejection of Microsoft&#39;s FAT (file allocation table) file system patent claims?
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Company plans to help software companies certify products for SuSE Linux operating system.
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(InfoWorld) - IBM is making it easier to utilize its patented intellectual property to implement nearly 200 standards in SOA, Web services, security, and other spaces. Under a pledge issued by the company Wednesday, IBM is granting universal and perpetual access to intellectual property that might be necessary to implement standards designed to make software interoperable. IBM will not assert any patent rights to its technologies featured in these standards. The company believes its move in this space is the largest of its kind. "These are what I could call the core infrastructure standards that people now use around such things as SOA," said Bob Sutor, IBM vice president of open source and standards. Web 2.0 applications also could be developed, for example. The company seeks to spur development of software that leverages these standards. Among the technologies included on IBM's list, accessible here, are various standards pertaining to SOAP, SAML, XML Schema, and Service Component Architecture. WS-* specifications are featured as well. IBM was not the sole developer of many of these standards, which are often under the jurisdiction of organizations like the World Wide Web Consortium and OASIS. But the company did contribute to their development. IBM's technology previously could be applied on a royalty-free basis when used in conjunction with the standards. But developers and customers had to go through a royalty-free licensing process, which involved filling out forms. "What we decided to do was make it simpler for people to implement all of them," Sutor said. IBM has provided a non-assertion statement that says people are free to use any of its patents needed to implement the standards, provided they do not sue IBM or anyone else over use of their own patents involved in implementing the standards. With the new setup, an open-source developer, for example, does not have to spend time getting licenses from IBM. Sutor acknowledged, though, that some implementers have simply chosen not to get the licenses anyway. IBM has about 40,000 patents. Any of these that apply can be used when deploying the standards. With IBM's effort, users have one less thing to be concerned about, said analyst Michael Goulde, of Forrester Research. "Nobody's going to change what they're doing. I think they're just going to be able to do it with one less concern over their head," Goulde said. Hopefully, other vendors, such as Sun Microsystems and Microsoft, will be inspired to do what IBM has done, said Goulde.Â  But IBM drew criticism from Sun's Simon Phipps, chief open source officer at the company, in a response posted on Bob Sutor's own blog. "Nice move, Bob, congratulations," Phipps said. "One question, though. Why did you frame this in terms of 'necessary claims?' That leaves a developer wondering if they have done the right things in their code to avoid a patent claim against them." "It leaves them (potentially) to research IBM's patent portfolio in order to get security that the approach they have taken is unavoidably necessary. And it leaves them fearful (reasonably or not) of action against them if they decide to partner with a company or project of which IBM does not approve (the same way the police can always find a law you broke if they want to nail you)," Phipps said. Sun has had equivalent patent pledges but did not limit usage to "essential claims," Phipps said. Microsoft did not provide a response in time for publication of this article. In 2005, IBM opened up access to 500 patents to open-source developers. Patent access also was opened up to health care and education professionals that year.
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roundup Large-scale Linux users could find themselves in a costly patent pickle, warns Steve Ballmer.
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PARIS - A group of European research institutions and open-source software companies has launched an effort to build new tools that will make it easier to do complex IT projects based on Linux and other open-source software, they said this week.
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The idea is to track all the relevant licenses used in any given open-source project or tool.
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I'm looking for ideas, established practices, do's and don'ts for sponsoring an open source project.  An upfront caveat -- this is not an actual offer. It's totally hypothetical. If I make the offer it will be done in some other more formal way.  The project: I want the OPML Editor to run on Linux. I don't want to hire someone to do this project, rather I want to offer a reward when the project is completed.  The source code is already released under the GPL, in versions for Mac OS X and Windows. Of course Mac OS is a flavor of Unix, but the internal API is quite different, I imagine, from Linux. I'm not looking for elegance, I'm looking for functionality. I don't care how the port is done, just that it be maintainable, and then be released (of course) under the GPL.  Personally, I think the most likely way to get this done quickly is to compile the code under WINE, using the Windows version of the code, and then go back and connect up the Unix system calls, so that all the Unix related verbs work. (Note the OPML Editor is actually a rich programming environment, despite its diminutive name. It's an instance of UserLand Frontier, which goes back to 1988.) To me, it would be worth $10,000 to have the OPML Editor running reliably on Linux, because then all the projects I've built and am building would then automatically run on Linux. Now I'm not saying that the project can be done for that amount of money (it's possible that it can), but I also don't feel I should be the only person funding the project. And maybe it's enough of a prize to incentivize someone or a group to do it. Now, of course, I see problems. Since it's an open source project, how will I know who to give the reward to if the goal is met. It might be the result of the work of a group of people. If so, I think they would have to figure out among themselves how to split the reward. On the other hand, I don't see any movement right now to port the codebase to Linux, so maybe if someone is interested in the project, you should do it on your own, and just present the results. If it works, then it seems you would be entitled to the reward. I seem to remember people proposing groupware systems for creating these kinds of projects, a few years ago. Not sure if they came to fruition, for all I know there could be an eBay for open source programming projects. If you have any information to share on this, please post a comment here, and thanks in advance.