FYI -- in case you didn't follow the news last week: It seems that
software patents are back on the agenda.
[ http://www.fsfe.org/fellows/greve/freedom_bits/software_patents_they_re_back ]
Software patents: They're back!
freedom bits
greve
Sunday 22 January 2006
"I'll be back" has generally made it into history either as a
promise or threat by a mediocre actor and/or even more mediocre
gouvernator. But while the Terminator needed 7 years for a first
reappearance, and another 12 for its second, the "Terminator of
European Economy" (Mr Charly McCreevy) only needed months to bring
software patents back on the agenda, as we learned last week.
While IBM senior vice president John Kelly compared software
patents to nuclear weapons in his April 2005 statement to the New
York Times
"This is like disarmament. You're not going to give away
all your missiles as a first step."
the European Commission is happily pushing for the economic
equivalent of Terminator's SkyNet. (In case you are new to the
subject, you can read in this series of open letters how software
patents affect various areas of economy and politics)
Yesterday, German publisher Heise featured another article about
the reappearance of software patents on the agenda, in which
Günther Schmalz, head of SAP's software department, is quoted
saying "It starts again."
And just as the first Terminator went down after a long and
desperate struggle involving all sorts of fireworks, Mr Schmalz is
being reported saying that software patents were buried
due to the better lobbying of the opposition, said the SAP
manager. They met the members of the EU parliament far more often
and hit the parliament's nerve with their demonstrations.
but just like the second Terminator was more fearful and dangerous
than the first
the patent proponent expressed hope that his camp will be better
prepared this time than during the last struggle.
So they're coming back, and they are prepared. But so are we, and
like Linda Hamilton did not stop coaching her son for the next
meeting with another Terminator, we did not let down our guar. We
were always aware they would be back.
Günther Schmalz is also quoted in the following way:
Schmalz justifies SAP's commitment for a EU-wide regulation with
SAP seeing patents as the only way to ensure returns on its
development investment. Copyright is no solution, he continues,
as the actual writing of code only makes up about 20% of the
development of software. "Those who drive innovation need
patents", Schmalz stresses. "Those who don't imitate."
This puzzled me for a second in the same way that the logic of
proponents of "intelligent" design sometimes surprises me with its
circular logic, or in the way a person on an airplane trying to
open the door in mid-flight would puzzle me. I have tried to
understand how it is possible that the head of SAP's software
development could make such a nonsensical statement about software
development. Here are my theories:
* Mr Schmalz believes that software developers are essentially
glorified typists, and that whenever no key is being pressed,
no programming is done. This would imply a disturbingly limited
understanding of what software developers actually do.
* Mr Schmalz does not consider testing, bug-fixing and other
tasks to be part of programming. If programmers have to work
according to that maxime, it could explain the quality of some
of SAP's software, I guess.
* Mr Schmalz thinks that it is the act of typing that constitutes
Copyright, which would be an amazingly naive view of Copyright
law. It would also mean that the Copyright of a book would be
with the typist if the literary author "merely" dictated it.
* And finally my favorite: SAP is such a great employer that
programmers only have to work 20% of their time and spend the
rest reading the papers, getting massages, doing sports and
watching TV.
In any case this statement makes it seem like Mr Schulz does not
know much about software development or law. A peculiar combination
for a head of software development. But then: SAP hasn't really
developed anything innovative in years. And no, I don't dare to
predict the causality in this case. Bill Gates however seemed to
know much more about software development when he said in an
internal Microsoft memo that was published by Fred Warshofsky, The
Patent Wars (1994):
"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most
of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the
industry would be at a complete stand-still today. [...] A
future start-up with no patents of its own will be forced to pay
whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be
high: Established companies have an interest in excluding future
competitors."
But maybe Mr Schmalz was misquoted and he actually said that:
"Those who drive away innovation need patents."
Misinformation has at all times been part of the pro-software
patent campaign. Remember the term "computer-implemented
invention"? People tried to say this directive was about allowing
patents on washing machines, braking systems, battery chargers. How
many washing machines did SAP sell last year? Or the year before?
Why would a pure software company take an interest in this
directive if it weren't about software?
Truth is that this debate is only about software patents, about
monopolies on logic blocks, ideas and applied mathematics. Those
who would like to see these fundamental building blocks monopolised
in their hands are back. We beat them once, and we can do it again.
Because even though the second Terminator was so much quicker,
stronger and more well-prepared, we all remember the end of the
second movie.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.
I think this is a bad week. driconf was rejected from Savannah
hosting because Savannah does not now even allow GPL'd manuals,
as GPL is not an FDL-compatible licence.
See http://savannah.gnu.org/task/?func=detailitem&item_id=5214
There seems a change of policy, despite the redacted blog post.
Savannah *allowed* non-free-software non-program licences, but
didn't *require* them before. The original blog post can be seen
at http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2006/02/msg00210.html
Of course, with no easy way to decide when documentation source is
not otherwise source, the new policy makes Savannah decisions random.
On the one hand, this list gets good news suggesting that at
least the ambiguities in the FDL will be fixed. On the other,
Savannah inflames the dispute over FDL 1.2. What happens next?
Bluely,
--
MJ Ray - personal email, see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html
Work: http://www.ttllp.co.uk/irc.oftc.net/slef Jabber/SIP ask
Hi Francesco,
let me give you my personal view on the issue:
On Sat, Dec 10, 2005 at 06:19:48PM +0100, Francesco Poli wrote:
> I share many of MJ Ray's concerns about the design of the GPLv3
> development process.
>
> I fear the process will not take into account all the issues that will
> be brought to the FSF's attention. The process leaders could neglect
> (even in good faith) the issues that they feel as unimportant or minor,
> while concentrating on some others only.
yes, it is true , the last call will be made by Richard.
However I do not consider this a disadvantage
as Richard is known to accept any substantial argument
based on the argument alone.
He is a lot better in this than any scientist I know.
So if somebody wants an issue in - give Richard a good argument.
> How can you assure every group's voice will be heard?
> How can you assure the Discussion Committees will represent the various
> categories of interested parties adequately?
> IIUC, Committees will be formed by invitation in top-down fashion: how
> can a group of interested people become one such committee?
The process document at http://gplv3.fsf.org/process-definition
describes two possibilities to become part of a committee:
You get an invitation from the FSF or
you get invited later by one of the committees.
Given that the committees are there to channel the comments
so that the FSF and Richards are able to work, the design is reasonable.
Basically I imagine those committees to be the ears and eyes of Richard.
This means they better should fit him and his working style.
With such wide open ears, documenting everything reasonable they hear,
it will be hard for a group to not be heard.
They would need to throw away their ticket number.
> IMHO, the FSF should make this process more democratic and open.
>
> P.S.: please Cc: me on replies, as I am not subscribed to the list;
> thanks.
I think this process is a huge improvement over how it was done in
the past any by other groups that draft licenses. Note that the GPL writing
was never a democratic process. If we were to follow the majority
it is likely that we would not have Free Software, GNU/Linux nor the GNU GPL.
Having the main part of the process written down in a rather short document,
the ability to give trackable comments, and the time frame of a year
make this process quite open.
Nevertheless, there is always room for improvement
and I expect the FSF to be open for your comments!
What we can do in Europe is to convince our governments
and companies to donate more money and time into thinking about
Free Software and enabling the European Free Software people to
carry the discussion to as many places in Europe we can.
Best Regards,
Bernhard
sftp would be fine, or ftp. I will be travelling until Thursday, so I
won't have the bandwidth to send them to you before then. I will drop you
an email then and we can sort out how to do the transfer.
Also, the video is split into 29 files (I did this to avoid hitting a
large-file bug in my camera or gphoto2). It would be good if these could be
joined into one file, but I don't know much about that.
Here's the output of 'file MVI_6046.AVI' (so that you might know what sort
of video it is):
RIFF (little-endian) data, AVI, 320 x 240, ~15 fps, video: Motion JPEG, audio: uncompressed PCM (mono, 11024 Hz)
Thanks.
--
Ciarán O'Riordan, _________| Belfast, Northern Ireland, Thursday March 16th
http://ciaran.compsoc.com/ | \\ FOSS Means Business //
http://www.fsfe.org________|http://foss-means-business.org
On Saturday morning (Day one of FOSDEM), RMS made a quick GPLv3
presentation. I recorded it with my digital camera, and, following the
hopes mentioned in my blog, I've now made it available as a transcript:
http://www.ifso.ie/documents/rms-gplv3-2006-02-25.html
I hate making transcripts but I think GPLv3 materials are worth making
because we need people to understand and be able to discuss these issues, so
it's very important that the information flows far and easy - quickly.
I also hope they are useful starting points for people who might make their
own presentations about GPLv3.
I can't make the video available right now because the filesize is huge
(despite the quality being low). I have not gone over the transcript a
second time to check for mistakes. I will do this Sunday or Monday. I
might soon transcribe some of the Q&A, but it's not done yet.
Hope that helps, and thanks to the people who sent emails saying that the
last transcript was useful.
--
Ciarán O'Riordan, _________| Belfast, Northern Ireland, Thursday March 16th
http://ciaran.compsoc.com/ | \\ FOSS Means Business //
http://www.fsfe.org________|http://foss-means-business.org
Can people here mobilise some action in each of the member states?
Benjamin Henrion writes:
> Please try to make a similar letter and send it to your governement:
>
> http://wiki.ffii.org/Ipred2GovLtrsEn
>
> We have one working day to put pressure on governements.
>
> If patents is removed from the list, it is a HUGE achievement, so we
> don't have to lobby against it in the near future.
I will contact fsfe-ie and fsfe-uk.
The main reason that people use for doing nothing is "I don't know who to
send it to". Unfortunately, this rarely has an easy answer - but sending it
to no one is the most certain way to fail. So please encourage people to do
something. Take some guesses and send it to a "minister for technology"
and/or a "minister for internal market" and/or a "minister for competition".
If I receive any better advice, I'll send it here, but please don't wait for
it because it might not come.
thanks.
--
Ciarán O'Riordan, _________| NI, March 16th: http://foss-means-business.orghttp://ciaran.compsoc.com/ | Support free software: join FSFE's Fellowship
___________________________| & encourage others to do so: http://fsfe.org
Dear Friends of Free Software,
We would like to invite you to our next meeting of the Fellows in Berlin
and the surrounding area. We will meet
- Friday, February 17, 2006
- at 7 pm
- in the newthinking store [1], Tucholskystr. 48, 10117 Berlin-Mitte
During our first meeting, we decided to meet regularly to discuss topics
that we are interested in. These include
- Free Software in Berlin, what can WE do?
- Report from "Open Source Meets Business" [2]
- generation of Free Software advocacy material
If you are interested in those topics, we would be happy to meet you
during an open-minded evening with other fellows and friends.
Please send me a note if you like to come, so we get enough seats for
everybody.
With best wishes,
Matze
1. http://store.newthinking.de
2. http://www.open-source-meets-business.de
--
Join the Fellowship and protect your freedom! (http://www.fsfe.org)
Hi all,
this is more a "fyi notice" than anything else:
Thanks to the efforts of Werner Koch, Harald Welte, Nils Färber and
myself, last week I finally managed to solve two major problems for my
personal use of smart cards / OpenPGP crypto cards, such as the
Fellowship crypto card [1], that might be bothering others as well.
* 100% Free Software PCMCIA smart card reader
Problem one was to find a PCMCIA smart card reader that could be used
under GNU/Linux with 100% Free Software.
Most PCMCIA readers under GNU/Linux seem to use proprietary libraries,
which is unacceptable. From a security viewpoint, I also consider it
self-defeating: Obviously the security of the system is only as strong
as the security of the non-freelayer and all its maintaining
infrastructure at the producing company, which the user has no control
over.
Thanks to Werner, Harald and Nils, it is now possible to use the
Omnikey CardMan 4040 exclusively with Free Software under
GNU/Linux. You will find more information here:
http://www.fsfe.org/fellows/greve/freedom_bits/fellowship_crypto_card_the_c…
* Remote SSH logins with crypto card authentication
Problem two was to do remote logins via SSH with authentication
through the smart card. There was a problem with the gpg-agent that
did not do PIN caching, and thus was somewhat annoying to use in real
life. Werner just addressed this problem, and now it works rather
flawlessly.
The gpg-agent replaces the ssh-agent for authentication, and it is
possible to do remote securely authenticated OpenSSH logins. You can
find information here:
http://www.fsfe.org/fellows/greve/freedom_bits/authenticating_ssh_logins_wi…
So I hope this will help others with similar problems to solve them.
If anyone feels like playing with it, adding to it, making it easier
to use, or GUIfying it, that would be great. It would be good to see
the technology improve and spread.
Also, if people were to join the Fellowship (and such contribute to
the work of FSFE) in order to have play with the cards and find more
applications of it that are both fun and useful, that would be great.
Regards,
Georg
[1] http://www.fsfe.org/card/
--
Georg C. F. Greve <greve(a)fsfeurope.org>
Free Software Foundation Europe (http://fsfeurope.org)
Join the Fellowship and protect your freedom! (http://www.fsfe.org)
FSF have released a video of the opening presentation of the GPLv3 launch:
http://gplv3.fsf.org/av/gplv3-draft1-release.ogg.torrent
And I've made a transcript:
http://www.ifso.ie/documents/gplv3-launch-2006-01-16.html
...which I'd like to widely publicise to ensure that no one else wastes
there time doing the same thing.
The recording contains about 20 minutes of Richard Stallman and 70 minutes
of Eben Moglen, both spend the time describing the changes in the license
and why they were made.
One reason for making the transcript is that it can be used as a starting
point for anyone else who will give presentations about GPLv3 this year.
Other reasons are grep-ability, web-search engines, and translatabilitiy
(human or machine).
I haven't transcribed the post-presentation Q&A, but IMO, it's not too
interesting anyway. I may transcribe some bits, or note the highlights
if/when I get time.
--
Ciarán O'Riordan, _________| Support free software: join FSFE's Fellowship
http://ciaran.compsoc.com/ | & encourage others to do so: http://fsfe.org
___________________________| http://ciaran.compsoc.com/fsfe-fellowship.html
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Hi,
ams(a)gnu.org schrieb am 10.02.06 12:28:55:
> There is no doubt that free software needs free documentation, even
> FSF says this. If so, why does FSF allow restrictions to
> modifications of documentation (using FDL) that does not allow for
> software?
>
> Because such restrictions make sense, you don't need the right to
> modify my thoughts about why I wrote the book, or to whom I dedicated
> the book.
You're talking about books but the argument was about, say, the the gcc
manual.
>
> There is people that thinks software is the conjuction of programs
> and their documentation (and other thing, like images, etc.). For
> example, Debian project seems to think this way.
>
> Debian consideres _everything_ software, which is simply bogus. Some
> images might make sense to have as verbatim only, same applies for
> many texts about philosophy, or even music recordings. This does not
> apply to functional works, like software, where modification is an
> essential right.
And documentation of software belongs to the software itself as much
as the source code.
>
> You don't need the right to modify my poem about dragons, or infact,
> this text.
Nobody said so.
>
> Why limit modification of documentation of a free program, if we do
> not want that limit for the program itself and if the documentation
> is necessary?
>
> You aren't limited anywhere when you modify free documentation of a
> free program. This is like saying that you are limited by the GPL to
> create non-free works, which is simply nonsense.
I could interpret your message as saying that GFDL was not free,
otherwise, its sense is unclear to me.
The main question I see about this was:
Why are manuals/docs of GNU GPLed programs not under GNU GPL license, a
license that is bullet-proof, easily understood (in comparison to GFDL,
at least) and also practically useful?
Best wishes
Michael
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