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Groklaw going downhill...Groklaw going downhill...Posted Nov 12, 2009 17:56 UTC (Thu) by dw (subscriber, #12017)Parent article: Microsoft Patents Sudo?!! (Groklaw) High melodrama is all I can say. I'm no lawyer, but even a cursory glance at the text makes it clear that this is not a "patent on sudo". At the least it describes, in very specific, patenty terms, a particular mechanism for a graphical sudo-alike system.
From my limited understanding of such things, that is not how patents work at all. If we can make a single byte tweak to fatfs to work around patent claims, then the mere fact 'our' sudo isn't graphical in the least is enough to indicate this claim covers an entirely different 'invention'. There is nothing surprising about this patent. You can find crap like it pumped out by big software companies every day of the week, including from supposedly 'open source friendly' big names, for why, I have no idea.
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Groklaw going downhill... Posted Nov 12, 2009 18:03 UTC (Thu) by mrshiny (subscriber, #4266) [Link]
The thing is, patents are supposed to be non-obvious to a reasonably skilled practitioner of the arts. People have been adding guis to things for years. Does that mean that adding a gui to sudo makes it patentable?
Note: I haven't read the patent. But if it's just adding a gui, IMO it should not be patentable; furthermore our sudo does have a gui, at least, in Linux I never use command-line sudo but rather the KDE graphical tool that elevates my privileges when I run a control panel applet or something similar.
Groklaw going downhill... Posted Nov 12, 2009 18:23 UTC (Thu) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] Yes, Groklaw should have made clear that to infringe the patent, it appears that you have to have a graphical interface to sudo. However, this doesn't change the fact that Gnome, KDE, and Mac's OSX all have, um, graphical interfaces for allowing unprivileged users to execute privileged commands, and have for years.
Groklaw going downhill... Posted Nov 13, 2009 8:21 UTC (Fri) by jmm82 (guest, #59425) [Link]
"There is nothing surprising about this patent. You can find crap like it pumped out by big software companies every day of the week, including from supposedly 'open source friendly' big names, for why, I have no idea."
As long as courts are taking on patent cases against computer software companies, companies are going to patent anything they can, even if they do not plan to use it or it may not even be truly patentable. Just because a "good" company owns a "bad/foolish" patent does not mean they plan to harm others, rather it may be the opposite. I believe big companies like to collect useless patents for bargaining chips.
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