We're used to patent trolls being shifty little bozo operations like Acacia Research that serve no useful purpose beyond proving that some life forms never evolve. Sometimes, however, patent trolls come in larger sizes and have otherwise legitimate businesses. Such is the case today with Trend Micro's apparently specious lawsuit against Barracuda Networks and, indeed, the entire open-source community.
As Justin Mason, vice president of the Apache Software Foundation, notes:
Trend Micro's actions are clearly an attack on free and open-source software and its users, as well as on Barracuda Networks. The '600 patent covers a trivial method, one which was obvious to anyone skilled in the art at the time (the patent was written), and should be rendered invalid as soon as possible.
Unfortunately, our patent system only makes sense on paper. Once it hits the courts, all bets are off. This is why repudiating silly claims like Trend Micro's is so important, and why a collective response is critical.
Here's what happened in a nutshell:
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(Credit:
Barracuda Networks)
There was a time--2004 to be precise--when spam "only" consumed 70 percent of all e-mail. Those were the good old days. Today, as Barracuda Networks' annual spam report shows, upwards of 95 percent of all e-mail is spam. In 2001, the number was 5 percent.
We've come a long way, baby.
Ironically (or not), the United States' Can-Spam Act has done absolutely nothing (zip!) to stop the spam onslaught. It has come to the point that, as a separate Barracuda survey of 261 business professionals shows, we increasingly prefer telemarketing to e-mail spam. (I find that I'm much more willing to give my home address and phone number than my e-mail address these days. You?)
Some salient numbers from the reports:
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(Credit:
Barracuda Networks)
The Web may be the last bastion of uncensored speech, but things get a bit more locked down once you browse it from within the walls of your employer, according to a Barracuda Networks analysis of data contributed by thousands of its Barracuda Web Filter customers. In fact, the data shows that 50 percent of businesses using Barracuda Web Filters are blocking MySpace.com or Facebook.
Social networking may be hot with employees, but employers tend to discriminate between sites, preferring the more grown-up Facebook to MySpace, with 44 percent of the companies using Barracuda Web Filters currently blocking MySpace, while only 26 percent block Facebook. Nineteen percent block both.
Are employers leery of employees getting a life and socializing? Not really. It's a security thing, and not just a social-networking thing, as a separate Barracuda survey of 228 IT security professionals shows:
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(Credit:
BusinessWeek)
I spent some time last week talking with Dean Drako, CEO of Barracuda Networks. I'd wanted to talk with Dean for some time, as I've been an admirer of the company for many years. Barracuda recognized the strength of open source, and capitalized on it, well before most people were willing to even give open source a chance.
The conversation was particularly interesting because of Barracuda's announced intention to join the Open Invention Network, as well as some research it had done on perceived customer value for open source.
I started by asking Dean, Why do you care about open source?
... Read moreAs part of my interview with Dean Drako of Barracuda Networks, he mentioned to me some survey work Barracuda has done. Barracuda talked to 228 enterprise customers and asked what advantages open source has over proprietary software, and vice versa.
The answers were a bit surprising:
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