LWN: Comments on "Red Hat Responds to U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Request for Guidance on Bilski"

Meaningful vs. meaningless support from businesses

promotion-account — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 19:30:01 +0000

And also remember that RedHat has engineers on most of the relevant FOSS layers. From the kernel, to the plumbing layer (NetworkManager, *kit packages, etc), to GCC, to X, to glibc, to GTK, to the foundational GNOME libraries (libxml2, etc), to the user-facing GNOME applications, to the RPM packagers themselves.

So they are not really 'taking away' anything. Our stack wouldn't be the way it is without RedHat.

And speaking of jobs, there are lots and lots of FOSS developers who are having projects that they love thanks to these developers original contributions. Where are they? They are allover the place in the usual silicon valley companies.

Red Hat invested venture capital for MySQL

FlorianMueller — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 03:56:25 +0000

During those days there's been a lot of interest in the Android situation (firstly Microsoft's announcement of infringement action against Motorola, then also Oracle's reply to Google's suit) and I had to answer press questions and I wanted to analyze the overall situation on my blog, which was a lot of work (looking at all patents-in-suit from all three Android cases).

I'll try to answer questions to the extent they bring up new points that should be discussed. But I can't always do it as quickly as I'd like to.

Red Hat invested venture capital for MySQL

nix — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 22:38:10 +0000

It's been four days and Florian doesn't seem to have followed up to this post. Strange that.

IBM/TurboHercules can be resolved with license; no need for abolition

nix — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 22:31:27 +0000

Also, RH pour a lot into PostgreSQL, and have for a long time. But apparently that doesn't save them from being 'parasites', because they contributed to a free software project that Florian doesn't approve of. Or something. (If there is logic here, I'm not seeing it.)

Red Hat failed to achieve the Supreme Court decision it wanted

nix — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 22:13:34 +0000

What an excellent comment.

Five years on

pboddie — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 11:37:46 +0000

Rewinding to bring in the context...

They are not the same because a case of illegal tying is characterized by customers being forced to take something they don't want in order to buy something they need from a dominant vendor. No single PC vendor is dominant
Yes, but the operating system vendor is dominant.
It was found dominant. But being dominant isn't illegal. It's the combination of dominance and abuse that's illegal.

Which is what you already said before you trimmed away the context. Yes, you can get alternatives to Windows on hardware purchased through mainstream retail channels, if you managed to navigate to the disused lavatory where those alternatives are "on display", and you might even be able to ask for no operating system at all, but most "consumers" get told that Windows is "part of the product" and that they have to take their complaints to the vendor (the classic lazy retailer excuse, contrary to consumer regulation in various countries), who in turn often tell the customer the same thing or that their deal with Microsoft precludes any kind of refund. At which point, most people determined enough to pursue the matter that far (and few people are) are likely to give up and write off their loss, which is the gain of the "dominant vendor", of course.

Now maybe this isn't a "big R" regulatory matter that involves finger-wagging from the European Commission - although it is baffling that they entertain the dog and pony show that is the Web browser parade with all its back-and-forth between the EU and Microsoft, but not something effective like this - but it certainly is a matter that requires some kind of "small R" regulatory intervention, at least from the perspective of anyone whose idea of buying stuff isn't having extra stuff thrown into one's shopping basket and being made to pay for it. But I accept that our perspectives may differ on such matters.

IBM/TurboHercules can be resolved with license; no need for abolition

Wol — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 09:37:16 +0000

It's more I think Florian has abandoned Groklaw. He gets called out too much by people who know what they're talking about.

I don't think PJ has banned him. But I don't think he's got quite the thick hide trolls need to withstand an army of troll-hunters. The regulars there have rather driven him off.

Cheers,
Wol

Meaningful vs. meaningless support from businesses

motk — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 01:50:05 +0000

Sigh. Please stop paying attention to Florian - he's definitely using the collegiate nature of LWN to produce what almost looks like bizarro-world agitprop.

Meaningful vs. meaningless support from businesses

Wol — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 23:15:26 +0000

Sounds like you haven't heard of the word "symbiosis", actually.

Cheers,
Wol

Meaningful vs. meaningless support from businesses

Wol — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 23:12:17 +0000

aol!

Florian needs to take a look at reality. Most NEW treatments (as opposed to reruns of old drugs) ARE state-funded. They have a habit of coming out of University research.

The other big problem is that most big-pharma research is aimed at the self-inflicted illnesses of affluence. It's widely known that most of the killer diseases of the poor are simply ignored. Unless, of course, they have a habit of causing the poor old western tourist some discomfort ... malaria for example.

Cheers,
Wol

Five years on

FlorianMueller — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 04:54:05 +0000

today the entire mainframe market is happily ignored by almost all businesses using computers.

This statement is true only if you base it on the number of companies but disregard size. In terms of economic weight, we talk about legacy program code worth $5 trillion ($5,000 billion) still in use, and about 80% of the world's business data still being processed by mainframes. IBM itself said a couple of months ago that Western civilization runs on the mainframe. You can read more about it here.

At this point, saying that IBM has a monopoly on the mainframe market and should be forced to separate their hardware from their software is very similar to saying that Apple has a monopoly on their market

From a competition point of view, those cases are different. In order to counter the claim that they dominate what competition law calls a relevant product market, both companies would have to argue for a broader market definition including all sorts of competitors. Apple would have a much better basis to do so than IBM. Apple's products are generally more expensive than those of their competitors, but the difference is limited enough that one can argue they are exposed to competitive pressure from others operating in the same relevant market. By contrast, if you look at IBM's price discrimination in the mainframe market, you can easily see that mainframes and other servers aren't the same market. Otherwise IBM wouldn't charge you about ten times as much -- for identical hardware -- for the execution of mainframe legacy workloads as for new applications operating in a more competitive market. Also, mainframe memory costs about 60 times as much as memory for other servers. Sure, mean time between failures is very high, but still that's the kind of price difference that shows it's not the same market.

It would be nice to have both open, but the law doesn't require it,

In IBM's case it can certainly be imposed, like it was in the past, and I'm confident that this will be the outcome of the ongoing investigations in the EU.

Five years on

FlorianMueller — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 04:45:40 +0000

Which brings us to the interesting case of the Web browser, does it not? After all, can't people who want Firefox or Opera install it themselves?

At first sight one may believe there's an important parallel, but there isn't under competition law.

If bundling is abused by a dominant vendor in one market to gain an unfair unadvantage in another market (which was the argument in the Media Player context, used by complainants as a precedent for the Internet Explorer discussion), then there's a competition problem. But note the "dominant vendor" requirement. There's no dominant PC company, and instead major players like Dell and HP do offer Windowsless Linux configurations.

Yes, but the operating system vendor is dominant.

It was found dominant. But being dominant isn't illegal. It's the combination of dominance and abuse that's illegal.

And doesn't competition regulation have anything to say about a bunch of companies getting together and stifling competition?

Sure, that would be called a cartel: a form of cooperation with the object of illegally restricting competition. There's no indication that Dell, HP and others have conspired against Linux. On the contrary, some vendors are known for a very pro-Linux attitude, but they all have to respond to what the market (in the context you care about: the consumer market) wants at this stage.

even though history suggests that in the EU, at least, they would rather mess around with things like media players and Web browsers than get to grips with the underlying causes.

It's interesting that you say this because five years ago I criticized the European Commission in a similar way. I said that on the one hand they were pursuing Microsoft with antitrust law but on the other hand supporting the very software patents Microsoft wants. I would have preferred a focus on software patents, especially since I was mostly concerned about patents on codecs in terms of the ability of others to compete with the Media Player.

But as far as interoperability is concerned, the European Commission is indeed looking at what might ultimately become a legislative solution that would affect all "significant market players" in order to establish general rules rather than only pursue individual cases,

Five years on

dlang — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 00:32:00 +0000

back when IBM was investigated for their mainframe monopoly, the mainframe basically _was_ the computer market (there was a smaller market in mini computers, but microcomputers/PCs were not a noticable factor)

today the entire mainframe market is happily ignored by almost all businesses using computers.

At this point, saying that IBM has a monopoly on the mainframe market and should be forced to separate their hardware from their software is very similar to saying that Apple has a monopoly on their market (they are the only ones who make the hardware, and they forbid anyone from using their software with anyone else's hardware)

It would be nice to have both open, but the law doesn't require it, and in the Apple vs Pystar lawsuit recently, Apple got the court to rule in their favor in a big way (namely that copyright forbade pystar from installing OSX on their computers, even though they had purchased the appropriate number of legal copies)

In many ways, apple's control of their market is much more significant to consumers than IBMs control of the mainframe market.

Five years on

pboddie — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 23:40:45 +0000

You can buy Linux computers from major vendors like Dell and HP.

If you can find them without playing "beware of the leopard". Likewise with machines without any operating system whatsoever.

Someone who wants Linux can get machines without Windows.

Yes, that's true: I'm using exactly such a machine. However, ignoring most of the machines built from components, virtually all of the machines sold on the Web site where I bought mine are bundled with Windows, including the "build your own" machines where you don't even get to do that without a copy of Windows magically appearing together with that mainboard, CPU, RAM, and so on. Now observe the same phenomenon throughout the breadth of the retail channel directed at "the consumer".

The reason they're less aggressively promoted is that there's less demand on the desktop for Linux than for Windows, but antitrust law is meant to ensure that demand and supply can drive a market as opposed to abuse distorting it.

Which brings us to the interesting case of the Web browser, does it not? After all, can't people who want Firefox or Opera install it themselves?

In the PC market, there's no need to force anyone because you can buy Windows separately, and you can buy every hardware component separately.

It's not just about being able to buy Windows separately; it's about being able to buy the hardware separately as well. (Besides, the only people needing to buy Windows separately are those who want to upgrade the version thrust upon them when they bought their existing hardware.)

You say that the two situations (mainframe and PCs shipped with Windows) are the same. They are not the same because a case of illegal tying is characterized by customers being forced to take something they don't want in order to buy something they need from a dominant vendor. No single PC vendor is dominant

Yes, but the operating system vendor is dominant. And doesn't competition regulation have anything to say about a bunch of companies getting together and stifling competition? If it were all about a single company doing something, all the cases involving collusion between, say, oil companies would fall apart when someone points out that it's not one single gigantic oil vendor involved.

Anyway, my point was that there's a genuinely open market for personal computers and operating systems that gets undermined by the vast majority of computers somehow needing to have a particular vendor's product installed on them. (Talk about supply and demand all you like, and I don't entirely disagree that such things are an influence, but why it appears almost impossible to drop a supposedly separate product from a purchase remains a mystery.) You assert that there's a genuinely open market for solutions that can run a particular proprietary mainframe operating system.

Since I'm a believer in interoperability, I support the idea that you should be able to run whatever you want on anything you can - that you shouldn't have to take the hardware if you just want the software - but not only do I not think that it has to be a completely extreme situation before the regulators need to get involved, I also think that such an extreme situation risks being perceived as something other than a market needing regulation. And then, if that judgement doesn't go your way, by your own criteria you've just put the regulators out of work.

So I hope the regulators feel that they have a role to play, even though history suggests that in the EU, at least, they would rather mess around with things like media players and Web browsers than get to grips with the underlying causes.

Economic efficiency

sustrik — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 08:10:25 +0000

> But what the proprietary model encourages is economic inefficiency...

My point was that politicians don't care about efficiency. What they care about it employment and tax revenue. You are not going to change that.

IBM/TurboHercules can be resolved with license; no need for abolition

bojan — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 06:06:06 +0000

> What I said is that MySQL AB (the company, including the predecessor whose assets it acquired) developed MySQL, so someone wanting to use MySQL needed something developed by MySQL AB, while someone using Linux back at the time we used SuSE didn't need anything from Red Hat.

Yeah, you argument is without meaning. I can equally well argue this:

Someone wanting to run an open source SQL server didn't need anything from MySQL AB. Someone wanting to run Red Hat Linux had to get stuff from Red Hat.

These statements, just like yours, mean almost nothing. It's like saying that you need to go to Ford dealership if you want to buy a new Ford. Well, yeah, thanks Captain Obvious!

So, I can only conclude that you must think that somehow MySQL had some great innovation or invention that nobody else did. Well, it was just another implementation of an open source SQL server. And because web boomed and people needed some particular features of their SQL server, more of them chose MySQL than PostgreSQL. I already acknowledged that. It is a sign of success, of course, but not a sign of some revolutionary innovation that needs its own special monopoly to be successful.

Equally, Red Hat Linux was just another implementation of a Linux distribution (or should I say open source stack). Not Linux - distribution. It did particularly well because of particular features it had, as compared to other distros.

So, pretty similar stories at the beginning, really. After that, and because Red Hat decided to take the whole thing really seriously and to a whole new level, they started offering excellent support and expertise, provided world class certification program, which further strengthened their brand. And they succeeded beyond anything MySQL AB managed to do. Along the way, they innovated far more than MySQL AB ever did.

Without putting MySQL AB down for a second (as I said, hat off to hard working folks there), Red Hat are an innovative open source company. And completely dedicated to releasing everything they make as open source.

Your diatribe about some parasitic business model or some such sounds like a whole lot of sour grapes to me.

And this is even without addressing the nebulous claims that people should pay more for the same stuff, because some programmer somewhere may lose their job.

Red Hat failed to achieve the Supreme Court decision it wanted

linuxrocks123 — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 01:33:21 +0000

You are incorrect. I read the entirety of your defeatist arguments before posting.

---linuxrocks123

IBM/TurboHercules can be resolved with license; no need for abolition

bojan — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 23:08:45 +0000

Wow, you have outdone even yourself now. The big innovators at MySQL AB invented something that already existed!

PS. You know, I am actually being unfair to all those hard working folks that made MySQL an open source success. My hat off to them. Your arguments regarding this, however, are complete and utter nonsense. I am more then willing to agree with you when you present reasonable points of view. This doesn't qualify.

Red Hat failed to achieve the Supreme Court decision it wanted

sepreece — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 22:43:20 +0000

It is very rare for the Court to rule on an issue that isn't explicitly in front of it. The case didn't require them to rule on software patents, so they didn't. I don't think you can read into their failure to address software patents anything about how they might rule if/when it eventually comes to them.

Of course, there might be analytical elements in the decision itself that would suggest how they would analyze a case explicitly on software patentability

IBM/TurboHercules can be resolved with license; no need for abolition

FlorianMueller — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 17:58:32 +0000

So, any claims that MySQL was the only show in town is just nonsense. And that seems to be the main plank of his argument.

How much more absurd can those claims of things I said or implied get?

I never said MySQL was the only show in town. I never implied. On the contrary, I'm well aware of PostgreSQL. My own online gaming startup used it in the late 1990s. I also mentioned it in my position paper on MySQL's acquisition by Oracle and discussed it throughout the merger control process.

How can someone arrive at such an unbelievable conclusion? It's unfathomable. It calls into question someone's good-faith intention to discuss the issues on a reasonable basis.

What I said is that MySQL AB (the company, including the predecessor whose assets it acquired) developed MySQL, so someone wanting to use MySQL needed something developed by MySQL AB, while someone using Linux back at the time we used SuSE didn't need anything from Red Hat.

I repeat, for the few here who are reading-impaired and simply type before they read and think: MySQL AB was needed for MySQL. Not for SQL as a whole. That one predates MySQL AB, obviously.

Five years on

FlorianMueller — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 17:49:48 +0000

There isn't a competition issue with what you describe.

You can buy Linux computers from major vendors like Dell and HP. Someone who wants Linux can get machines without Windows. The reason they're less aggressively promoted is that there's less demand on the desktop for Linux than for Windows, but antitrust law is meant to ensure that demand and supply can drive a market as opposed to abuse distorting it.

The mainframe operating system was actually also available independently from the machine for about three decades -- the time when plug compatible mainframes were available from other manufacturers. Due to the so-called Consent Decree by the US DoJ, IBM was forced to make components available separately.

In the PC market, there's no need to force anyone because you can buy Windows separately, and you can buy every hardware component separately.

You say that the two situations (mainframe and PCs shipped with Windows) are the same. They are not the same because a case of illegal tying is characterized by customers being forced to take something they don't want in order to buy something they need from a dominant vendor. No single PC vendor is dominant, and I mentioned above that Dell, HP and others sell you what you want, without Windows if you want. By contrast, mainframe customers need z/OS to run those legacy applications worth $5 trillion (yes, trillion) and are forced to buy IBM hardware.

You complain that maybe some customers buy desktops with Windows simply because they aren't aware of the possibility of buying Linux desktops, especially since in many retail stores those have less presence. Again, that's a supply-and-demand thing. By contrast, mainframe customers know very well what they want and can't get it, due to an abuse of a dominant position in the form of illegal tying.

Regulators can't and won't intervene if it's just an awareness problem that can be solved with marketing. If the likes of Red Hat (which is the actual context of this discussion) or Ubuntu believe that end users should be made aware of the possibility of buying Linux-powered rather than Windows-powered PCs, it's their job to generate awareness. They could also do so in partnership with retail chains. If there's an unexploited or, more realistically, perhaps a bit underexploited market potential, market dynamics will result in some retailers cooperating with some vendors and seizing that opportunity. There's nothing preventing anyone from doing that in connection with Linux. Hence, there's no antitrust problem.

You ask for regulation but you have no antitrust issue. You'd like the market to be different, and I can assure you that I, too, think it's essential that customers are fully aware of Linux as an alternative and that they have easy access to it -- but the market can take care of itself in that regard, while the mainframe market shows clear symptoms of total market failure due to abuse.

Economic efficiency

pboddie — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 13:27:54 +0000

Think about it. Today every company has a person that codes around MS bugs. In the future you would need just one person to fix the bug.

This fits into the whole "90% less taxes" remark quite well. But what the proprietary model encourages is economic inefficiency: you have to hire more people to do stuff, that means generating more revenue to cover those personnel costs, that means customers paying more, themselves charging more to cover your prices, and so on.

Although some people think this is just great ("Look at all this money sloshing around - what a vibrant economy!") it provides limited benefit. You can now just about manage to code around Microsoft's bugs whereas you could be providing more value in other functionality instead. And even if you decided to lay off the person writing the workarounds, it doesn't mean that they'll go straight to the welfare queue: they could quite easily be competing with you in another company instead.

What I find distasteful is the way that people supposedly holding "the market" in high regard advocate various business models by saying that they create jobs and encourage "capitalism" and "functioning markets", but if other business models which actually make the economy more efficient are promoted (or heaven forbid, the government decides to create jobs itself), creating wealth in other ways, these alternatives are condemned by the same people as somehow being "socialist" and "wrong".

I guess it's just not acceptable to refer to things like economics unless someone is given the opportunity to siphon off large amounts of money at some point or other. Robin Hood would have been a "communist" had he not had that secret offshore bank account. That kind of thing.

Five years on

pboddie — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 13:01:06 +0000

If a PC vendor sells his machine only with Windows and doesn't offer it with Linux (or simply without any operating system), then that means you are required to buy Windows if you want to buy that particular machine. That's the opposite of the IBM mainframe situation.

How is it "the opposite"? I want one thing but if every separate product I inspect involves me having to take another thing with it, then effectively I have to take both of those things.

IBM requires you to buy its extremely expensive hardware if you want to run its operating system. The hypothetical equivalent for Windows would be if Microsoft stopped supplying hardware companies with OEM licenses and instead became a hardware vendor itself, forcing you to buy their hardware if you want to run Windows at all. You can be sure there would be an outcry, and antitrust intervention, if that happened.

Well, I grant you that at this point you've reproduced the IBM situation, but then there would be no illusion about who is forcing customers to take whose products, although there's always that argument that mainframes and operating systems written for them are all part of a single product. Meanwhile, PC vendors and Microsoft can point the finger at each other, while in practice almost everybody has to acquire Microsoft products when they buy a computer.

The PC hardware market is competitive enough and there are vendors who offer you devices with Linux pre-installed. If there's choice, then bundling isn't the kind of problem that it is if there's a dominant vendor, let alone a monopolist.

Yes, but we're talking about effective choice here, not whether alternatives exist. It's a bit like large retail chains getting into trouble when they secretly agree on prices whereas a bunch of "man plus dog" vendors probably won't see anything like those levels of scrutiny. Why is that? Because the large chains' collusion will affect the vast majority of consumers.

No single PC manufacturer is in such a position that you couldn't just go to another vendor if you prefer Windows-less PCs.

True, but the matter of effective choice arises again. If 99% of retailers force purchasers to acquire Windows and those purchasers don't know about the other 1%, they effectively have to acquire Windows with every purchase.

But with IBM, customers currently have no choice if they want to run those legacy applications.

I guess that from a bundling or tying perspective we have all been told often enough by now that the IBM mainframe case is extreme, if you regard the market for hardware solutions running IBM's proprietary software as a genuinely open market, but my point was that there are indisputably genuinely open markets that need not exhibit such extremes (and by not doing so actually demonstrate obvious open market credentials) that could more usefully do with some proper regulation that would benefit many more people.

IBM/TurboHercules can be resolved with license; no need for abolition

bojan — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 12:59:30 +0000

Seriously for a second, many people chose MySQL in the olden days because it was fast and ACID was not an issue for the web. Fair enough, but claiming that an open source implementation of an SQL server was a revolution done by MySQL AB is a complete fantasy.

I learnt my open source SQL on Postgres, all before 2000. Never ran MySQL until I found myself in a job in 2004 where GBs had to be written into the DB fast and the product (not open source) supported MySQL.

So, any claims that MySQL was the only show in town is just nonsense. And that seems to be the main plank of his argument.

Red Hat invested venture capital for MySQL

mjw — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 12:39:43 +0000

> Contrary to what you claim, I'm not missing the bigger discussion.

Lets disagree, I think this whole discussion shows you are missing why you are wrong in the bigger discussion.

> I believe you (unless I confuse you for another nickname) identified yourself as one in some other thread. It would have been nice to do so in this context in case you are.

Dude, you are repeating yourself. Try to relax and not relive every discussion again and again. Yes, we discussed this already. You fail to identify who funds you and I was open about who funds what work I do:
http://lwn.net/Articles/402409/

Red Hat invested venture capital for MySQL

FlorianMueller — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 12:23:35 +0000

The fact that you meant something different by "seed capital" is irrelevant. You can mean what you want and that doesn't automatically mean that there are different definitions by even remotely reasonable standards. Better look up Wikipedia (deep link leads to relevant paragraph) or any other source.

I said before that seed makes all the difference here. When we talk about creating innovation, the critical stage is early, not shortly before trade sale or IPO.

Contrary to what you claim, I'm not missing the bigger discussion. We're having one big discussion here, and in some subthreads, individual aspects such as Red Hat's investment in MySQL get discussed.

Are you a Red Hat employee by any chance? I believe you (unless I confuse you for another nickname) identified yourself as one in some other thread. It would have been nice to do so in this context in case you are.

Red Hat invested venture capital for MySQL

mjw — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 12:17:39 +0000

> There is no "different interpretation of the word 'seed capital'".

Well, clearly there was, since you meant something different by it than I did.

> You said a wrong thing -- why can't you admit it? Seed capital is clearly defined and not by any stretch of the imagination would a company founded in 2001, sold in 2008, be at the "seed" stage in 2006.

Relax. You "won" your point. Feel free to just read that sentence without the word seed in there. So "Red Hat was one of the venture capital investors providing funding for MySQL AB". There fixed. The point was just a little addition to what others had said. Red Hat invested through various means to help make MySQL a success.

But this is precisely why we are making a little fun of you. You seem to want to win these grammatical/spelling error points over a wrongly used word in a sentence. While missing the bigger discussion completely.

Red Hat invested venture capital for MySQL

FlorianMueller — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 11:38:50 +0000

There is no "different interpretation of the word 'seed capital'".

You said a wrong thing -- why can't you admit it? Seed capital is clearly defined and not by any stretch of the imagination would a company founded in 2001, sold in 2008, be at the "seed" stage in 2006.

IBM/TurboHercules can be resolved with license; no need for abolition

dlang — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 11:30:36 +0000

this is also the first time I've heard that MySQL complies with the SQL standard :-)

hint: in many ways it doesn't

Red Hat failed to achieve the Supreme Court decision it wanted

sustrik — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 10:47:33 +0000

Would it compensate?

Think about it. Today every company has a person that codes around MS bugs. In the future you would need just one person to fix the bug.

How are we going to employ the rest of them?

You really have to think about compensation outside of IT R&D sphere. What would it be? IT services? Heavy industry? Pharma? Agriculture?

Red Hat invested venture capital for MySQL

mjw — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 09:24:01 +0000

Dude lighten up. We are just making fun of your impulsive desire to discredit Red Hat at every possibility you see. Don't focus on such small details like a different interpretation of the word "seed capital" to score some point. The point was just that they do invest in things like MySQL through various ways.

There are just many different ways Free Software companies like Red Hat invest and innovate in communities, projects, projects and their customers. They just like doing that by providing high value at lower costs to their customers by being a catalyst and amplifier of the free software ecosystem. They even invested in you by paying you to play lobbyist at a time when that did make sense. So yes, sometimes Red Hat makes mistakes, sometimes they invest time, money and resources in things that turn out not to benefit them and the community as much as we hope. But that is just what you do when you take risks and try to innovate and change an industry.

IBM/TurboHercules can be resolved with license; no need for abolition

bojan — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 09:14:32 +0000

> but SQL is a language, not a code base...

Wow! Thanks for the education - really didn't know that - wink, wink. Oh, wait - there is this thing called SQL92. What is that? A spec? Not written by MySQL AB? What? NO INNOVATION?

Seriously, you crack me up man!

IBM/TurboHercules can be resolved with license; no need for abolition

FlorianMueller — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 09:08:56 +0000

You don't seem to recognize that MySQL built its code out of scratch. They sort of complied with the SQL standard, but SQL is a language, not a code base...

Red Hat invested venture capital for MySQL

FlorianMueller — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 09:06:19 +0000

@mjw It's disappointing to see that you react so unreasonably to my clarification. It was *you* who said that Red Hat was a seed investor. You could have phrased it more broadly, then I wouldn't have had to correct it. It certainly does make a major difference whether a company places a seed investment in something when the risk is highest or comes in when the company is already in great shape and ends up being sold not much later.

Obviously it's not "parasitic" to invest money at any stage. It's just that coming in at that stage isn't when you can claim to be a co-creator of the product.

IBM/TurboHercules can be resolved with license; no need for abolition

bojan — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 09:04:41 +0000

> We never needed anything from Red Hat but were able to use Linux, while you can't use MySQL without using something from MySQL AB.

You are truly hilarious mate! Can't use MySQL without MySQL AB. ROFL! Who cares about them - it's SQL one wants.

You know, I was running my web business long time ago without any MySQL and I had SQL. It's called PostgreSQL. Or maybe I just dreamt it... Hilarious.

The saviours of the world: MySQL AB. Still laughing. Thanks!

Red Hat invested venture capital for MySQL

mjw — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 09:01:53 +0000

> But mentioning that wouldn't help anyways, Florian will invent (and maybe patent) some crazy explanation why Red Hat's money is parasitic and why MySQL AB would be better off without it. That happens when you feed the tr.. I mean lobbyist.

Ha ha. But yes, you are right as you can see above. The venture capital Red Hat injected into the MySQL AB company wasn't "seed capital", so obviously it is just more proof of the parasitic nature of Red Hat :) How dare they try to take a chance and invest in innovative companies and business methods! Well, it was worth a try to inject some facts into the discussion.

Red Hat invested venture capital for MySQL

FlorianMueller — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 08:53:44 +0000

Prior to your thanking him for this, I had already posted a correction. Red Hat came in very late (and owned a tiny share of the company), five years after the seed round. I doubt MySQL ever even spent one cent of Red Hat's money because it didn't have any significant burn rate at the time and was sold shortly thereafter.

IBM/TurboHercules can be resolved with license; no need for abolition

FlorianMueller — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 08:49:55 +0000

I was looking really hard for some substance in your comment but couldn't find it. You replied to a comment of mine with which I provided lots of facts. Now you argue about my blog not having comments enabled and why that is the case in your opinion. As far as I link to my blog here, it's to facilitate further research by people who really want to find out. You also talk about another site (GroklXX) having supposedly "banned" me. I'm available for discussions, online and in real life when I attend industry events. Also, I've answered many questions on Twitter (@FOSSpatents). So if you wanted to discuss the issue, you'd have plenty of opportunities, especially here.

Red Hat invested venture capital for MySQL

gnufreex — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 08:49:41 +0000

Thank you. I knew that but forgot to mention.

But mentioning that wouldn't help anyways, Florian will invent (and maybe patent) some crazy explanation why Red Hat's money is parasitic and why MySQL AB would be better off without it. That happens when you feed the tr.. I mean lobbyist.

No, Red Hat did not provide "seed funding for MySQL AB"

FlorianMueller — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 08:44:08 +0000

And Red Hat was one of the venture capital investors providing seed funding for MySQL AB

As a former MySQL AB shareholder, I know that this is wrong. If you look at the press release you linked to, it's from 2006. MySQL AB was founded and received its seed investments in 2001 (the year I became involved as well). It received some more funding that year as well as in 2002 from European investors. Then in 2003, Benchmark Capital (knowing for funding eBay, Red Hat, Twitter), Index Ventures (known for funding Skype), SAP's corporate venture capital group and others came in. Red Hat came in three years after those, five years after the seed round.