Patent Infringement Lawsuits That Involve FOSS (Groklaw) [LWN.net]

Groklaw looks into a patent infringement lawsuit filed by J2 and Catch Curve, Inc. against Mijanda. The dispute concerns FAX software. "Mijanda offers a fax to email gateway hosting service on Asterisk, a GPL licensed general purpose IP-PBX available under GNU/Linux. I believe one of the other companies involved is using Hylafax, which is another much older free software solution specific to faxing. The short list of free software packages that are potentially effected includes mgetty+sendfax, some of the fax stuff found in GNOME (and maybe KDE), hylafax, Bayonne, and Asterisk."

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Patent Infringement Lawsuits That Involve FOSS (Groklaw)

Posted Aug 11, 2005 19:12 UTC (Thu) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link] (4 responses)

" In terms of prior art, whether one considers fax machines, classical fax modems, or even the very old mgetty+sendfax package used for doing fax to email and email to fax on GNU/Linux machines for maybe 20 years now, I am rather certain there is a great deal of relevant and readily demonstrable prior art in this area, besides the ridiculous nature of these patents. "

There has been an old long patent busting dffort from EFF...

This lawactions only serve to stop the evolving progress of Open Source in general, a tactic followed by Ma$ter with SCO e now this.

To counter this is, i belive the action should be to *NEVER* stop evolving Asterisk and Hylifax or what ever be implyed in the futur, and counterclaim for loses to the maximum possible penny that those patent trolls might have. That is, the benevolent approach followed with GPL cases, transported here in the style, okay there was prior art, but we are nice guys and forgive you J2, so everybody can go about their business... *could* never apply here to the danger of having a flush of claims like this one that effectivelly can stop commercial and non-commercial Linux.

If only there was a very strong(enough) Desktop presence i'm sure those claims as strategic manouvers would be severely limited in effectiveness, because common users dont wait years for "commercial" courts to shake down trolls and their injust claims, to continue to use the products and even help in their development whenever possible.

Linux approach with "hardware bend over" or "else", with everything tight integrated and no API bounderies what so ever, is a *sitting duck* for claims immensely worst than this one because patents infesting device drivers *ARE NOT* to be considered software patents, since it has long been determined by law, in US, EU and Asia, that every piece of software restrictly needed to make a device function is considered part of that device and the inventions associated with it.

So every defendor of "nothing out of tree" because tight integration helps rapid development is a *guardion*, knowingly or fullishingly, of the startegy that aims to convert the Open Source paradima into a proprietary one, because even if there is an immense pool of patents to use, its obvious that it will tend to be appliable to those devices from intitutions *working* with open source, and in the end the only legal integration of devices drivers in an official tree, will be of those institutions and only for their hardware.

That is a proprietary paradigma from whatever angle you look at it, because it will be controlled tight by proprietary interests.

Patent Infringement Lawsuits That Involve FOSS (Groklaw)

Posted Aug 12, 2005 23:37 UTC (Fri) by njhurst (guest, #6022) [Link] (3 responses)

Sorry mmarq, but every time I start reading one of your posts[1] my eyes glaze over and I give up. Do you think you could keep your posts shorter, and work on the spelling and sentence structure? When I do fight my way through there is often a nugget of goodness, but you hurt your own case with your rambling, incoherent style.

Perhaps it would help to outline your comment first with bullet points?

Maybe I'm the only person with this problem, in which case I apologise in advance.

[1] I trained myself to not read the author until after I've read the message to try to reduce bias.

Patent Infringement Lawsuits That Involve FOSS (Groklaw)

Posted Aug 13, 2005 22:58 UTC (Sat) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link] (2 responses)

When subjects to comment depend on a so elaborated maze of interests, as patents, commercial interests, individual interests and idyosicrancies, and more or less 'ad hoc' methods of development, how can you expose it clearly and shortly ?

Unless, you suggest to post only banalities, and only in perfect english, and absolutely nothing politicly incorrect whatsoever !

Then anyone posts could appear, maybe on CNN or BBC, as frivilous and empty as possible, but correct and polite, because that would help Linux and open source cause... Gossh!!

Grammar, syntax, and meaningful posts.

Posted Aug 18, 2005 21:27 UTC (Thu) by AJWM (guest, #15888) [Link]

Sorry, mmarq, but he has a point. Perhaps English is not your first language, in which case I applaud your efforts in posting here. Either way, though, you could use some tips in grammar and punctuation.

Take your first sentence above, for example. The first phrase, "When subjects to comment depend on a so elaborated maze of interests, ..." borders on the incomprehensible -- the meaning can be extracted, with some effort, but it is masked behind grammatical errors and inconsistencies. The phrase "to comment", for example. A verb, followed immediately by another verb ("depend"). Where's the subject? Where's the object?

From context, one can eventually deduce that you probably meant "to comment" to be part of an adjectival phrase modifying "subjects", as in "When subjects on which to comment depend on ...". Better, but a little long-winded. It could be improved by dropping the phrase, or at least setting it apart with punctuation. You'll find some disagreement amongst punctuation fanatics as to which punctuation -- commas, dashes, or parentheses -- but any of the above will improve readability. For example "When subjects, on which to comment, depend on ...".

I could go on. "[A] so elaborated maze", for example. Perhaps you meant "an elaborate maze"? Or "a maze [of twisty little passages?] so elaborate that ..."?

Certainly, some things cannot be explained briefly (as the length of this post attests), but punctuation, word choice, and word order can help to make explanations clear.

Posts (or documentation!) with poor grammar or punctuation don't help anyone any more than does code with poor grammar or syntax. I'd recommend Strunk & White's Elements of Style to anyone interested in improving themselves in this area.

Cheers.

Patent Infringement Lawsuits That Involve FOSS (Groklaw)

Posted Aug 19, 2005 0:09 UTC (Fri) by njhurst (guest, #6022) [Link]

It is possible to be insightful in a single sentence - and more people will read it and learn.