patents

Torvalds: Linux not becoming obsolete would be 'sad'

I admire Linus Torvalds' candor (this is the guy who freely admits his own family doesn't use the Linux desktop, after all), as well as his foresight.

In an excellent interview posted on Simple-Talk, Torvalds covers a range of topics, including the Linux operating system's place in history:

I can certainly imagine the Linux kernel becoming obsolete--anything else would just be sad, really, in the big picture.

He is absolutely right. Much as we may pine for this or that project to achieve market dominance, it is one of the cardinal virtues of open source that there are no legal or business policies that would entrench it as a monopoly. People may choose to use it for a long period of time and to the exclusion of other products/projects, but there are no nefarious designs in the code to make it so.

Hence, Linux may fade away. At some point, we should certainly hope so, in order to make way for the next phase of operating system, one that is preferably open source.

Other interesting tidbits from the interview are Linus' comment on patents:… Read more

Red Hat's patent deal: Proof that the GPL works

A few weeks ago Red Hat reported that it had reached a groundbreaking patent deal with a selection of patent trolls that put the community, not Red Hat, first.

"Typically when a company settles a patent lawsuit, it focuses on getting safety for itself," said Rob Tiller, Vice President and Assistant General Counsel, IP [Red Hat]. "But that was not enough for us, we wanted broad provisions that covered our customers, who place trust in us, and the open source community, whose considerable efforts benefit our business."

Now we have the proof [PDF].

This is a … Read more

Rambus sues Nvidia for patent infringement

Rambus is suing Nvidia, accusing the company of violating 17 Rambus-held patents on memory controllers. The suit was filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

The Los Altos, Calif.-based company says that chipsets, graphics processers, and media communication processors across six different Nvidia product lines are illegally infringing. The patents held concern memory controllers for SDR, DDR, DDR2, DDR3, GDDR, and GDDR3 SDRAM.

Rambus is asking the court for an injunction (which would stop Nvidia from selling the products at issue), as well as monetary damages.

In a prepared statement, Rambus' head … Read more

Ballmer: We'll look at open source, but we won't touch

Steve Ballmer is at least willing to talk with the open-source crowd now, as his comments at Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2008 demonstrate. He's just not willing to actually engage in open source as an appreciable part of his company's business. Fair enough.

Ballmer lacks the imagination to conceive of a world where Microsoft could open-source code and still make a lot of money (He's apparently not heard of "Google."):

No. 1, are our products likely to be open-sourced? No. We do provide our source code in special situations, but open source also implies free, free is inconsistent with paying for lunches at the partner conference. (Applause.)

But at least he's willing to work with those who do grok that the future of software business (meaning: money) is open source:

Will we interoperate with products that come from like Linux, from the open-source world? Yes, we will. Will we encourage people who want to do open-source development to do it on top of Windows? Yes, we're proud that the best PHP system in the world is actually the one that runs on Windows today, not the one that runs on Linux.… Read more

Buzz Out Loud 756: Dicker caught dickering

You know how sometimes the punishment fits the crime? In this case the criminal fits the crime. GoDaddy's VP of domain auctions, appropriately named Dicker, was caught bidding (dickering?) on domains on his own auction site. D'oh! Also, Sony starts offering some creative incentives to get you to buy their TVs: their movies. Hmm. Listen now: Download today's podcast Episode 756

Save Windows XP http://weblog.infoworld.com/save-xp/archives/2008/06/editors_blog_sa.html http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/30/BUDG11GE33.DTL

Google taps ‘Family Guy’ guy for Web series … Read more

Google, Cisco, and others band together against patent trolls

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, Ericsson, Verizon, and others are joining together to buy up patents to prevent the patents being used against them by patent trolls. The group, called the Allied Security Trust, is a bit like the open-source friendly Open Invention Network, but appears to have more cash at its disposal.

The new Allied Security Trust aims to buy patents that others might use to bring infringement claims against its members. Companies will pay roughly $250,000 to join the group and will each put about $5 million into escrow with the organization, … Read more

Tech giants form group to buy patents

Google is part of a group of tech heavyweights going on the offensive against the threat of patent-infringement lawsuits, The Wall Street Journal reported on its Web site Sunday evening.

The group, which calls itself the Allied Security Trust, plans to buy up key intellectual property before it is obtained by parties that might use it against them, the newspaper reported. Joining Google in the group are Verizon Communications, Cisco Systems, Ericsson, and Hewlett-Packard, among others.

Each company will pay about $250,000 to join and then put about $5 million into escrow for future patent purchases, the newspaper reported, … Read more

Microsoft on open source: "We should have done it earlier"

No, it's not Steve Ballmer pounding the podium in favor of open source, but apparently Microsoft's field is being told to play nice.

At least, that's the sense I get from the comments made by a Microsoft representative at a recent open-source conference:

"We should have done it earlier," said Abet Dela Cruz, Microsoft Philippines platform strategy manager, narrating Monday's panel discussion at the Cebu summit....

"It took IBM about 10 years to be at this stage and it is only now that Microsoft is going in the same direction...Open Source is a broad worldwide phenomenon....[O]verall we see it (open source) as a long standing movement that will continue."

Yes, you should have (done it earlier), Microsoft. But there is still time to do it right. The first step will be to invite open-source application and infrastructure developers, commercial and otherwise, onto your platform without requiring them to sign up to patent pledges. Treat the open-source world with the same respect that you expect. We don't (knowingly) violate your patents, just as I'm sure you don't knowingly violate anyone else's.… Read more

Random Sampler: Appeasing trolls, Firefox boosts market share, and more

Some of the news today was surprising, but some not so surprising. Here goes:

Don Marti makes a smart but flawed (in my view) suggestion that appeasing patent trolls with a settlement may be the way to go, rather than fighting them off. I see his point, but the problem is that if everyone does this, patent trolls will proliferate. Do we really need to encourage them to have offspring? Firefox has apparently boosted its market share at the expense of Safari and Internet Explorer according to Net Applications. Net Applications also says, however, that it may have overcounted. Watch … Read more