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Beta blockers? (Nature)
The sub-title for this
article is Proprietary data formats may be legally defensible but
open standards can be a better spur for innovation. "Dan
Cohen, director of GMU's Center for History and New Media, and Sean Takats,
a GMU history professor, are also directors of Zotero: open-source software
developed by the history centre that lets researchers organize and share
their digital information iTunes style, whether it is in the form of
citations, documents or web pages. Zotero is free and popular, and has
attracted some 1 million downloads since its launch in October 2006.
Thomson makes the proprietary bibliography software EndNote, and claims
that Zotero is causing its commercial business "irreparable harm" and is
wilfully and intentionally destroying Thomson's customer base. "
(Thanks to jerbol)
(Log in to post comments)
Shameful Posted Oct 11, 2008 9:53 UTC (Sat) by kripkenstein (subscriber, #43281) [Link]
Suing a nonprofit open source project, for interoperating with a proprietary data format - I had hoped we were past that sort of thing in late 2008?
Even worse, they aren't suing the project, but the (public) university where some of the FOSS project's members are on staff. And suing for $10 million per year. All under the excuse of the university violating the license of the EndNote software it was using.
I don't know if the license was violated, but based on the amount of $10 million/year and the context, it's clear they are suing in order to crush what they see as a competitor (if it was just misuse of the license, they could revoke the license and request some minor fine).
This is particularly revolting coming from Thomson Reuters, which claims to serve the academic community with their ISI web of knowledge etc. products. But I guess it's more of the "what's published in our journals is our proprietary information, not public research" nonsense, that is contradictory to the scientific spirit, but is thus far tolerated (yet, open access journals are making progress, so hopefully this will be resolved).
We need to get the word out about this lawsuit, I am emailing people I know in academia about it. I hope this shameful act of Thomson Reuters backfires.
Shameful Posted Oct 12, 2008 21:20 UTC (Sun) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] It appears that they are suing for breach of contract, since the prof's employer is a licensee and there's presumably some language in the contract/EULA that is allegedly being violated. It doesn't appear that they're claiming that no one has the right to compete with them.The Gnash and swfdec projects have a similar problem, since anyone who downloaded Adobe's Flash plugin and clicked "yes" on the EULA can't help to develop a competing product (or so Adobe claims).
Shameful Posted Oct 13, 2008 5:30 UTC (Mon) by kripkenstein (subscriber, #43281) [Link]
> It doesn't appear that they're claiming that no one has the right to compete with them.
Yes, formally they aren't, I agree - because they have no legal standing to do so. However, the lawsuit seems to clearly imply, to me at least, that this is about stopping competition: They mention that the FOSS project is 'willfully destroying' their business, they ask for $10 million/year, etc. Microsoft doesn't ask for $10 million/year from every person that violates their license by installing the same copy of Windows on multiple machines. So this isn't really about licensing, it's about trying to shut down a competitor, as I read it.
Shameful Posted Oct 13, 2008 5:47 UTC (Mon) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] It's completely legal for you or me to "willfully destroy" their business by building a better, cheaper product (assuming no patent infringement or copyright violations). However, if someone signed a contract with them saying that they would not compete (and assuming that this is a valid contract) it is a different matter.
Shameful Posted Oct 13, 2008 5:55 UTC (Mon) by kripkenstein (subscriber, #43281) [Link]
That's a good point, however, the article seems to imply the licensing issue in debate here is reverse-engineering of their product and file format. Even if the licensing agreement prohibits that, I don't see how $10 million/year makes sense, especially since it is "until they stop distributing their program". Seems like a clear attempt to stop competition.
Re: Shameful Posted Oct 15, 2008 6:24 UTC (Wed) by ldo (subscriber, #40946) [Link] Techdirt calls this “felony interference with a business model”.
Shameful Posted Oct 16, 2008 6:01 UTC (Thu) by dberkholz (guest, #23346) [Link]
The problem is that vast numbers of the people interested in working on such a tool will already be at a university with an EndNote license. That smacks of monopoly to me.
Open Access Day Posted Oct 12, 2008 0:12 UTC (Sun) by jabby (subscriber, #2648) [Link]
This article is well-timed for Open Access Day, which is coming up on Tuesday, October 14th.
http://openaccessday.org/
Open Access and open standards are the future. Proprietary de facto "standards" need to be "wilfully and intentionally destroy[ed]" in order to clear the way for open standards. Congratulations to the Zotero developers for striking a blow for freedom!
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