A 2005 retrospective [LWN.net]

The last issue of December is traditionally a time for many publications to look back at the past year. As we live through a year, it can be a hard time to get a perspective on all that is happening; a review can help develop a better understanding of what we have all experienced.

Besides, there's usually not much more to write about at the end of December.

In past years, your editor has reviewed the predictions made at the beginning of the year. That exercise seems a little self-indulgent this time around. So suffice to say that some of last January's predictions have been borne out, and others not. We'll not go through all of them here.

Starting with one which didn't work out: your editor's prediction that 2005 would see the end of SCO was optimistic. We have seen the end of SCO in every way that matters; what remains, at this point, is the ghoulish exercise of watching it all fall apart and seeing where the pieces land. Following SCO is a waste of time at this point, a morbid and pointless exercise in the consequences of stupid decisions. We're looking forward to every minute of it.

Your editor's prediction that software patents would not be enacted in Europe looked optimistic, especially in the first half of the year, but turned out to be correct in the end. More to the point, though: the free software community enjoyed legal victories in almost every battle which was decided this year. No software patents, no broadcast flag, the GPL upheld in German court, FAT patents thrown out, etc. Next year may be tougher, but, for this year, we can all raise a glass and toast our victories. It is not all hopeless.

Let us not forget our defeats, however. The Grokster decision holds software developers responsible for the actions of their users - in some situations, at least. The bnetd decision placed limits on our right to create interoperable software. The situation is not all rosy either.

One battle which came to head this year was open formats: as of this writing, the state of Massachusetts is still fighting over a mandate to use open formats in government. Open access to government documents is a clear requirement for a free society; it seems amazing that there is even a fight on this issue. Open formats are also a key to the desktop for free software. This is an important issue, and the debate has barely begun.

The free software community has acquired a pool of patents of its own. Donations - of greater or lesser freedom - came from IBM, Sun, Nokia, Computer Associates, and others. These patents can help to prevent attacks from competitors in the software industry - though they will do little to deter lawyer-only patent troll firms. But a partial solution is better than none; one might well conclude that the risk of a patent attack against free software is, while still significant, lower than it was a year ago.

For years, we have talked about the evils of digital restrictions management schemes and the dangers inherent in not having control over our own systems. But we can thank SonyBMG for making these points clear to a much larger audience. "Consumers" everywhere have seen what happens when others claim control over their systems. People who bought CDs because it was the right thing to do saw that they were punished for it. Their desire to do the right thing will be much reduced - and the entertainment industry must know it. The DRM battle is far from over, and we have a great deal of ugliness to endure yet. But SonyBMG may have shortened the process for us considerably.

2005 was, perhaps, the year of the foundation. A number of projects, including Zope, Ubuntu, and OpenPKG created independent foundations to look after their code. Red Hat also announced the creation of a Fedora foundation, but, the better part of a year later, that foundation has yet to materialize. The fundamental motivation behind all this founding of foundations is easily found: software (even free software) controlled by a single company tends to make other users nervous. The creation of an independent foundation gives others confidence in a free software project's future.

The free software business world continues to develop. MandrakeSoft and Conectiva merged into Mandriva, Novell went through some difficulties but looks like it may be pulling things together, and the flow of venture capital toward free software businesses increased. HP claimed to have shipped over 1 million Linux servers. It seems there really is business to be done around free software.

Meanwhile, the code continues to get better. The list of significant releases is far too large to review here - check the latest version of your favorite distribution to see much of it. Our development community is active and healthy; it is producing results that few would have thought possible even a few years ago. Ups and downs notwithstanding, 2005 has been a good year for the community. We can all raise a glass to that.

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2005 predictions

Posted Dec 22, 2005 6:19 UTC (Thu) by BrucePerens (subscriber, #2510) [Link]

Jon, few or none of the pooled patents so far are usable for defensive purposes. First, the pledges in general only allow use of the patents by Open Source and do not provide ownership of the patent or a right to prosecute infringement of the patent. Second, the entities that are donating patents to purportedly defensive pools are widely cross-licensed, including with most of the bad guys who would go against us. Third, an attack on Free Software would be a proxy attack, just like last time, with a small troubled company standing in for the real aggressor. That company would be operating as a patent troll.

Bruce

2005 predictions

Posted Dec 22, 2005 9:58 UTC (Thu) by cventers (subscriber, #31465) [Link]

Bruce,

I don't know that I'm sufficiently educated or briefed on this issue
to really comment on how helpful the pools may actually be. I just wanted
to say that as someone who cares very much about free software and Linux,
the patent pooling projects - even if they may marred by half measures
and partial commitments - indicate to me that there is a big community
out there that really does care.

When news of patents and DRM began to boil over, the future of our
practice seemed to be at grave risk. We still have many battles to fight,
but I for one will sleep a bit easier at night knowing that we have some
of the world's best on our side.

- Chase

2005 predictions

Posted Jan 1, 2006 15:40 UTC (Sun) by mepr (guest, #4819) [Link]

> I will also raise a glass to our grumpy editor's pretty much
spots-on predictions at the start of this year.

And to the readers, for the most excellent combination of editorial review and continuing reader/editor feedback

The one subscription website worth the money, for this poor hax0r

A 2005 retrospective

Posted Dec 22, 2005 15:24 UTC (Thu) by southey (subscriber, #9466) [Link]

Well, in terms of your 'farce', it seems really part of the USA way to let everyone have their day(s) in court. Also, realise how slow the system actually is even ignoring SCO tactics. From the previous rulings really nothing major was going to happen until the discovery has ended. Obviously it is only fair that all the evidence is obtained otherwise there would be a series of appeals and new cases. Based on the last rulings it seems that the discovery period is about to end and SCO is running out of options to delay it further.

What has been accomplished is that SCO no longer has it's way and is rather silent. The court is starting to get annoyed at SCO tactics which is not a good sign. We have seen some of SCO claims go into flames (like the PowerPC chip license). But the really most important accomplishment is that IBM finally has the infringing code but we probably will not get to see it for some time.

A 2005 retrospective

Posted Dec 22, 2005 9:27 UTC (Thu) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]

I pointed out in responses to last year's predictions that the xfree/xorg
split was the one thing that nobody predicted, but where all the signs
were there. This year's equivalent would have to be the kernel's
Bitkeeper/Git switch. The signs were there, but nobody predicted that
2005 would be the year.

Both seemed to come out well -- the community seems better for each.

Anybody dare trying to predict 2006's version?

Looking back at my replies there (wow, I was a posting hog! <g>), I called
Jon's no 2.7 kernel prediction "bold", because while I considered the
likelihood small, and didn't expect it until Q4, I thought it might happen
then, and the reasons might look obvious in hindsight. Obviously, that
25% max I gave it didn't happen.

My "bold" prediction was that malware would get dramatically worse, to the
point it would begin to be obvious that MSWormOS had issues that Linux
didn't, and folks would begin switching in measurable numbers for that
alone. I'll call that half-right. I didn't expect it to be /quite/ as
big as Sony, so that part was fulfilled /far/ beyond my expectations.
It's seeming to have repercussions in other than software, tho. I
expected Linux would get a more direct bump, because I expected the
problem to remain in the software realm. I missed the move to the media
realm, so the implications for society are bigger than I predicted, but
the implications for Linux aren't as direct as I predicted.

One could predict big things either way along that line, for year 2006.
I'll predict that the repercussions from Sony, and another similar big
event, will bring DRM/malware to the forefront this year. It is said
there are serious discussions going on at Sony right now, about a major
change in policy. I'll predict the Sony thing, coupled with that other
event, will either cause one big media company to reverse course and
actually start MARKETING the point that they are DRM free, or the question
will come up, the choice rejected, and a new determination to do "whatever
it takes", upto and including overtly risking customer's computers and
data, will be accepted. If the latter, it will naturally take some
pushing of various mandatory DRM and DRM-liability-exclusion laws thru
Congress to accomplish. Hopefully, however, it'll be the former. That
would of course be a big reversal in stated policy, but at least for CDs,
not such a reversal in facts on the ground, tho it would be for DVDs. For
CDs, in any case, all the company would be doing would be reverting to the
previous status quo, except that they'd be marketing up a storm over it,
now.

There was some comment discussion on SCO's Legend product as well as the
litigation. I predicted that Legend wouldn't make a very big splash,
because people would by that point be deliberately avoiding SCO licenses,
so they'd only be selling to an ever-shrinking captive audience. It
certainly hasn't been big, but perhaps because they began soft-pedaling
the litigation, the aversion factor hasn't been what I expected.

My big prediction for year 2006 is that the little government
OOo/Firefox/Linux adoptions we keep seeing will get big enough this year
to begin to make a noticeable dent in MS' market share, in at least one of
those areas. Unfortunately, my comments proved too optimistic about
Firefox's share last year, but I'm predicting one of those three is going
to get big enough to begin to get painful for MS, led by Government
adoption, this year.

If either of the two big predictions there come true, and the DRM/malware
one doesn't go the wrong way, I could be a very happy camper come this
time next year. However, I believe the time is right for at least /one/
of those two, so I'll make both and hope I get lucky on one. If BOTH hit,
WOW!

Duncan

Could someone explain to me why

Posted Dec 24, 2005 21:43 UTC (Sat) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Sorry, but this argument will not fly very far today. Three years ago - may be, today - no. Most personal photos are printed novadays via digital devices - the end resolt is the same problem for scanning as with magazines. Thus most scanned photos must be processed by said filters - magazines or not. Few years ago sitiation was different...

P.S. In fact it's pretty good sample which shows that program creators must not be held liable for user's doings: few years ago when feature was introduced it was almost exclusively used for illegal reason. Today... the same feature is vital for legal usage!

Could someone explain to me why

Posted Dec 26, 2005 16:10 UTC (Mon) by Baylink (subscriber, #755) [Link]

I would characterize "vital for legal usage" as a bit of an overstatement: all photos still have copyrights, even if they weren't taken for money by professional photogrpahers. And if you're *legally* using someone's photograph and they're someone you know personally, why wouldn't you just ask them for the digital original.

And, for that matter, I don't think that scanner descreening algorithms will deal with the Floyd-Steinberg and similar dither patterns used by inkjet printers (which are much more common than color lasers, which *do* use the traditional grid-screening pattern like lithography does).

Could someone explain to me why

Posted Dec 30, 2005 10:28 UTC (Fri) by dvdeug (subscriber, #10998) [Link]

Not all legal image use is with the permission of the copyright holder; many interesting things fall under the rubric of fair use.

A 2005 retrospective

Posted Dec 22, 2005 20:00 UTC (Thu) by ortalo (subscriber, #4654) [Link]

Yet another prediction that I would not have dared to make personnally (this is also an interesting information btw):
The French parliament has just (yesterday), pretty surprisingly and against the governement advice, adopted two amendments (153 and 154) to its "DRM-and-the-like" law proposal.
(NB: The French parliament was to discuss and vote yesterday a law transposing a european directive with respect to copyright and authorship, especially in the music and media area.)
And these amendments, available here for amendment 153 and here for amendment 154 do allow some exceptions to the copyright protection.
These exceptions include specifically the right to make private personal copies of a legally purchased media and the right to transport these copies via the Internet.

Certainly, even for a french guy, this really is a surprise given our current parliament political orientation. Furthermore, I am not a lawyer and anyone reading these lines should double check everything.
Otherwise, this really sounds to me like: Joyeux Noel.

Interoperability.

Posted Jan 6, 2006 15:14 UTC (Fri) by rrw (guest, #9757) [Link]

The bnetd decision placed limits on our right to create interoperable software.

There is a life outside of US.

Polish copyright law (Ustawa o Prawach Autorskich) contains two interesting points regarding computer software:

Art. 75 pkt 2 ppkt 3: Allows all forms of research incl. reverse engineering of copyrighted software in order to create interoperable software.
Art. 76: (quoted verbatim) Contract's clauses conflicting with art 75 pkt 2 and 3 are invalid[1].

I believe there are similar provisions in copyright laws of other European countries

Robert

[1] Polish: niewazne -- non-binding? void?