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Evidence or urban legend - "problems" companies haveEvidence or urban legend - "problems" companies havePosted May 18, 2011 22:08 UTC (Wed) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458)In reply to: Evidence or urban legend - "problems" companies have by dneary Parent article: Mark Shuttleworth on companies and free software
Sorry, but Sun did not fix their problem with Java (witness the heat Oracle is now raining on Android over that same code) or their other open source projects (placing OpenSolaris under their expressly not GPL compatible license). So it isn't that they invested years of hard work in regaining confidence, they lost whatever they had fair and square and did precious little to gain it back.
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Evidence or urban legend - "problems" companies have Posted May 19, 2011 7:23 UTC (Thu) by dneary (subscriber, #55185) [Link]
> Sorry, but Sun did not fix their problem with Java
The main problem people had with Java is "it's not released under the GPL". Then it was. But that was too late, the confidence had been lost, and so people were looking for the catch, and they found it - "the conformance suit isn't available under a free licence".
If Sun's first announcement was "Java released under GPL, but Sun to maintain control of Java trademark" then I think everyone's reaction would have been "fair enough, woohoo". Because this was a 2nd or 3rd step, after an initial "freeing Java" announcement (and in combination with the history around Solaris), people were saying "boo, hiss - holding something back".
Which I think was mostly unfair.
> placing OpenSolaris under their expressly not GPL compatible license
Since when does every free software licence have to be GPL compatible? It would have been nice, but releasing it as free software is better than not releasing it as free software. This is a case in point of what Mark is saying - "not enough" is an all too frequent chant.
Cheers,
Evidence or urban legend - "problems" companies have Posted May 19, 2011 15:09 UTC (Thu) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
>The main problem people had with Java is "it's not released under the GPL". Then it was. But that was too late, the confidence had been lost, and so people were looking for the catch, and they found it - "the conformance suit isn't available under a free licence".
You forgot 'passing the non-free conformance test is a condition for being able to use the numerous wide-reaching patents over which we will eventually sue you'. As catches go, a massive lawsuit probably counts as quite a big one.
Evidence or urban legend - "problems" companies have Posted May 19, 2011 15:13 UTC (Thu) by dneary (subscriber, #55185) [Link]
> You forgot 'passing the non-free conformance test is a condition for being
> able to use the numerous wide-reaching patents over which we will > eventually sue you'. As catches go, a massive lawsuit probably counts as > quite a big one.
Ah, I don't care about patents, and I encourage every other free software developer not to care about patents. It is an issue orthogonal to software freedom and the licence of the software.
Dave.
Evidence or urban legend - "problems" companies have Posted May 19, 2011 15:34 UTC (Thu) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
>Ah, I don't care about patents... It is an issue orthogonal to software freedom
Do you have any justification for this rather extraordinary assertion?
> and the licence of the software.
Yes, obviously.
Evidence or urban legend - "problems" companies have Posted May 19, 2011 15:39 UTC (Thu) by dneary (subscriber, #55185) [Link]
>> Ah, I don't care about patents... It is an issue orthogonal to software
>> freedom > Do you have any justification for this rather extraordinary assertion?
The Linux kernel is patent encumbered. The GIMP saved GIFs when LZW was still patented.
This does not prevent either from being free software.
Mind me asking what was extraordinary about my assertion?
Dave.
Evidence or urban legend - "problems" companies have Posted May 20, 2011 21:49 UTC (Fri) by DOT (subscriber, #58786) [Link]
If you aren't allowed to use the software without explicit permission of a dictator (patent owner), how can you call that software free? It fails the first rule of software freedom.
Evidence or urban legend - "problems" companies have Posted May 20, 2011 23:36 UTC (Fri) by dneary (subscriber, #55185) [Link]
> If you aren't allowed to use the software without explicit permission of a
> dictator (patent owner), how can you call that software free? It fails the > first rule of software freedom.
Then no software is free.
Dave.
Evidence or urban legend - "problems" companies have Posted May 21, 2011 5:40 UTC (Sat) by faramir (subscriber, #2327) [Link]
>Then no software is free.
Are you saying that ALL software is covered by
Evidence or urban legend - "problems" companies have Posted May 21, 2011 6:29 UTC (Sat) by dark (subscriber, #8483) [Link] It seems plausible to me. There are so many of them, so vague and so broad. And software contains so many parts that might infringe. It seems unlikely that there would be no overlap, for any program that does anything useful.Either way, how can you prove for any piece of software that it's not covered by any patents?
Evidence or urban legend - "problems" companies have Posted Jun 5, 2011 5:47 UTC (Sun) by JanC_ (guest, #34940) [Link]
I'm pretty sure that any non-trivial piece of software is covered or might seem covered by at least one patent. And it doesn't really matter if the patent is stupid & obvious, or that the patent only seems to cover the software at first glance if you look at it from a weird angle but really doesn't, if a company with deep pockets sues you over it, you're screwed.
Evidence or urban legend - "problems" companies have Posted May 21, 2011 9:54 UTC (Sat) by DOT (subscriber, #58786) [Link]
There is a reason why patents are such a huge pain in the ass of free software; it's not orthogonal at all. But let's not overstate the problem. All software with a free software license can be considered free until it is actually found to infringe a patent.
Evidence or urban legend - "problems" companies have Posted May 21, 2011 10:30 UTC (Sat) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
and the patent holder decides to not license it for free software
for example, the RCU patent has been licensed to all software under the GPL IIRC
Evidence or urban legend - "problems" companies have Posted May 22, 2011 8:22 UTC (Sun) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
If a patent license is available, it is not a infringement anymore.
Evidence or urban legend - "problems" companies have Posted May 22, 2011 21:13 UTC (Sun) by dneary (subscriber, #55185) [Link]
> All software with a free software license can be considered free until it
> is actually found to infringe a patent.
I would say *proven* to infringe a patent. And that needs a court case. And a bucketload of money. And not $1 bills.
So, all software is free, and the patent system is broken, and keeps approving patents which, if challenged, would be invalidated. So, as I said, I don't worry about patents, and I don't think a patent should ever be a reason not to write a piece of free software.
Cheers,
Evidence or urban legend - "problems" companies have Posted May 22, 2011 23:11 UTC (Sun) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
patent infringement doesn't need to be proven to put a company out of business, a lawsuit is enough (it takes a lot of money to defend against a patent lawsuit)
Evidence or urban legend - "problems" companies have Posted May 27, 2011 7:04 UTC (Fri) by AdamW (guest, #48457) [Link]
dave: your position is all very well in the abstract, but it looks fairly absurd in the real world. As was pointed out, Sun was rather up front about the fact that it had a big patent stash, that you had to pass the conformance tests to be immune from the big patent stash, and that the conformance suite was not F/OSS and was not going to be. it's a bit oblique of you to pretend that all this is irrelevant to the practical issue of people actually believing that Sun wanted them to be able to exercise their F/OSS rights in relation to Java. You and I might think software patents are fundamentally broken and everyone should ignore them, but the District of East Texas doesn't, and people who want to hang on to their assets are going to listen to that...
Evidence or urban legend - "problems" companies have Posted May 29, 2011 18:50 UTC (Sun) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]
However, the district of East Texas doesn't (much as it might like to) have jurisdiction over the world.
For example, where I live, software patents are EXplicitly NOT permitted. Unfortunately, that doesn't stop the EPO granting them in contravention of their constitution :-(
Cheers,
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