Interesting news. While M$ runs amok threatening to sue the world over rumoured patent violations in GNU/Linux, Nokia and Intel are promising to protect customers from such suits. That could throw M$’s trolley off the rails if their targets point to Nokia/Intel and demand they be sued first. Otherwise the targets could use as a defence that M$ does not sue Nokia/Intel. I wonder what a jury would think of that.
In Canada, as I am sure in many other jurisdictions, abuse of a patent can lead to severe penalties including revocation of the patent:
“
(e) if any trade or industry in Canada, or any person or class of persons engaged therein, is unfairly prejudiced by the conditions attached by the patentee, whether before or after the passing of this Act, to the purchase, hire, licence or use of the patented article or to the using or working of the patented process; or
”
I am sure failing to prosecute competitors would be considered “unfair”. HEHEHE. Take that, M$.
What about Intel, one-half of Wintel? What’s their angle? Are they hedging their bets as the dinosaur sinks into the tar-pond? Have they realized they can compete without monopoly? Are they trying to carve out a new monopoly in phones that does not involve M$? We shall see.
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Good grief, Robert, are you so insensitive to the Linux cult’s party line that you would blog in support of the claims by Intel and Nokia? Have you so soon forgotten the shame that you folks heaved on Novell for the very same sort of activity?
“Use our Linux said Novell (and later others and now Nokia and Intel) and we guarantee you will not be sued!” And then the scorn cam from Stallman and the FSF, vowing to change the very structure of the GPL to prevent such fellow travelers of Microsoft from attempting to offer such a deal. Fortunately for the millions of customers of the commercial Linux distributions, Linus himself has chosen to igore the revised GPL and disassociate himself from their shrill shrieks.
And now you yourself, once true to the cause with your constant “GNU/Linux” paying homage to the FLOSS ideal, are suggesting that this protection is a wonderful thing? Shame on you, Robert, whatever were you thinking?
As always, attacking the messenger and not the message. M$’s patent FUD is weakened by folks standing up to them. Nokia and Intel are big enough to do that and smaller businesses can lean on that in replying to M$’s extortion attempts. I am not in favour of software patents at all but if you got ‘em, use ‘em to fight FUD.
SCOTUS is overdue on ruling in Bilski. Some are saying software patents are not on the table there but my reading of the filings and transcripts says they are. Why else would SCOTUS take time during oral arguments to raise the issue? SCOTUS know what is going on and how important the issue is. It could be there is a split decision coming but it will be soon, IMHO. I think it unlikely they will knock off without a ruling.
“As always, attacking the messenger and not the message”
Certainly my portrayal of your position in such an ironical light was hardly an attack on you. Heavens, have you no sense?
You apparently miss the message, too. Richard Stallman went to the trouble to actually change the GPL itself in order to try to preclude any individual distro from indemnifying users and here you are praising that very same action by Intel and Nokia. Wake up and try to be consistent with your cause!
Here you are raising straw-men. Stallman is irrelevant to the issue at hand. So it copyright. The issue is patents, software patents. The GPL is not about patents but about licences for copyrighted software. Distros distribute software with no warranty, to the best of my knowledge. Why would any distro wish to indemnify users? Most distros are tiny organizations that could not fund a single patent-suit. The purpose of the GPL is to license free software keeping it free.
“Why would any distro wish to indemnify users?”
Are you really so charmingly naive or are you just being coy? The issue of indemnification is the only reason that there can be any threat of patent infringement. If the user were to suffer no potential loss of use, they would not fear purchase of an infringing product. Novell and several other major Linux distributions have made deals with Microsoft and can so offer their customers protection from any such problems. Now Intel and Nokia have joined the crowd by declaring that their patents are a reasonable protection against any patent action by Microsoft and so they can offer such protection.
Do you not see how all these things fit together?
The list of distros not indemnifying is very large. It is not necessary as software patents are invalid. Read the transcript of the oral arguments of Bilski. Ths Supremes are well aware that software patents are phoney. If they re-affirm machine-or-transformation test, software patents are dead. Software is an abstract thing like language. It cannot reasonably be patented. If M$ made machines to do certain things in novel ways, they perhaps could get valid patents but not for software outside of a machine. They certainly cannot get a patent on someone else’s machine which is what the bullies are saying they have now.
That sounds like SCOTUS understands the issue of software patents and they are intimately tied to “business methods patents”. If they do away with business methods patents, they must do away with software patents.