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Perens Looks For Payback for Open Source 89

Posted by Hemos from the gimme-the-rights! dept.
A reader writes "Bruce Perens is rounding up luminaries including Brian Behlendorf and Laurence Lessig to meet IBM, HP (where he now works) and other companies that have made money from Open Software. Perens says he wants them to give up patent rights for some of their software. I'd say fat chance, but HP is bankrolling the meeting, which will follow LinuxWorld. See the story here."
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Perens Looks For Payback for Open Source More

Perens Looks For Payback for Open Source

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  • Value of open source/free software. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Wind River starts bankrolling FreeBSD programmers. In 2 years the keepers of FreeBSD coders got 21 million.

    VA linux and RedHat have stock evaluations that are heading for $0.

    Looks like RMS's desire of the GPL to keep code worthless is happening. And RMS doesn't want the GPL to be called open source.

    GPL has no economic value. BSD code DOES have value.

  • Re:Don't knee-jerk (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This Open Source as Marxism argument makes me laugh. It really does.

    Marx wrote about the workers taking the control of the means of production out of the hands of the bourgeoisie.

    Computer programmers are the bourgeoisie.

    Ironically, MS and Apple spend a lot of money making computers accessible to the working class. The FSF and OSS movements are taking that work and throwing it away because of ideological differences which are irrelevant to the common man. By doing this they are promulgating the idea of a technological bourgeoisie, rather than helping to destroy it.

    So in a sense, MS and Apple are better Marxists than Stallman ever will be.

    Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

  • Re:Good God NO!!!! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    In fact, IBM for instance, has contributed real code in many cases. I wonder if IBM will consider giving up IP.

    Each year IBMers submit thousands of invention disclosures. They go through an internal review process and only the best get chosen. Even then, some disclosures which are really original don't get filed as patents - if for instance, they are in an area not considered crucial to IBM, or perhaps only make sense in an IBM implementation and not in a competitor's implementation. All of these disclosures get published to protect IBM from patent infringement litigation at some future point in time.

    My point is, IBM may have many patents, but they are crucial to IBM's business. So long as the company contributes (and it certainly does ! Jikes, jfs, kernel-stuff etc) why should it be forced to contribute in some other fashion ? Even if it doesn't contribute there is no reason to force it to do so.

    oh by the way, IBM doesn't speak for me and I don't speak for IBM although I am employed by 'em.

  • I have a transcript (Score:5)

    by Tony Shepps ( 333 ) on Friday April 06, 2001 @11:15AM (#310077)
    Perens: Thank you for coming. Friends, we know that you've used a ton of free software and sold additional hardware because of that. In return, we'd like you to give something back to the community.

    IBM Rep: Thank you, Bruce, for giving us the opportunity to reiterate our commitment to Open Source. Last year we gave hundreds of millions of dollars to Linux development, and this year we plan to invest one billion dollars towards it. We've agreed to port Linux to all of our platforms and we've ported DB2 as well as a ton of other software to Linux. Our commitment to Linux is unequalled in the industry.

    Perens: Well, that's nice, but that doesn't count. You see, what I'm talking about is --

    IBM Rep: Wait a minute, that doesn't count?

    Perens: Yes, you see, that's Open Source you're supporting, not Free Software.

    IBM Rep: Are we at the right meeting?

    H/P Rep: Yeah, Jim, but Bruce wants to talk about patents --

    IBM Rep: Bruce, are you talking about Linux?

    Perens: Well, GNU/Linux is a part of it, but --

    IBM Rep: Guhnew Linux? We work with Red Hat, are they a competitor to Red Hat?

    Perens: No, Red Hat sells that software.

    IBM Rep: So they're a partner?

    HP Rep: Jim, let me explain. You're actually providing free software to sell your hardware.

    IBM Rep: How could it be free if we've given them over twice their market cap to develop it?

    HP Rep: Well it was the basis of developing Linux.

    IBM Rep: So somebody developed this before Linux and now they want paid for it?

    Perens: No, they don't want to be paid. They just want you to give up some of your ability to get paid.

    IBM Rep: Are they insane?

    (pause)

    Perens: Well I represent the Free Software community, and I thnk I can speak for them.

    IBM Rep: Really. Before IBM committed to doing anything with Linux, I was told that the community would love us for using it. Now we use it more than anyone else.

    Perens: Well Free Software was there before you developed it, it just wasn't adapted by business.

    IBM Rep: And we helped it get adapted and we're it's strongest advocates.

    Perens: I think so.

    IBM Rep: So? Does the community love us?

    Perens: Well not really. It isn't enough to use the software, to port it to different platforms, to encourage its use and to give an incredible amount of money to develop it further. You also have to give up some of your ability to make money in the future.

    (long pause)

    IBM Rep: Folks, I've just gotten paged and there's an emergency we have to take care of.

    Perens: But I haven't gotten to the patent part yet.

    IBM Rep: Sorry, gotta run.

  • http://www.ibm.com/ibm/licensing/

    IBM
    Director of Licensing
    North Castle Drive
    Armonk, New York 10504-1785

    General patent or technology licensing questions can be sent via E-mail to licensng@us.ibm.com.
  • To all who think IBM isn't making money on Linux....

    IBM S/390 sales have increased because of Linux S/390. Also, in order to take advantage of Linux on S/390 properly, you must purchase VM.. a proprietary closed source operating system with large license fees.

  • Good grief, if Linux isn't collectivist, then I'll eat my shorts.

    Never work? Who knows. I try to avoid predicting the ultimate future of human cultural development.

  • They don't care what you do with their code, unless you take that right away from others. Ending IP would end the need for the GPL. As long as IP laws are around, someone else can take code I worked on, and use it in a freedom-limitting fashion, unless I've protected it with the GPL. Then I know that the user's freedom is always protected. Freedom doesn't mean you can do whatever you want. It means that you can do whatever you want except limit someone else's freedom, which is exactly what the GPL does (it has some additional restrictions, but those are to keep the freedom enforceable under current IP laws)
  • IBM's _are_ from open source, at least a lot of them. They said so themselves. The ability to run Linux on the S/390 has rejuvinated sales of that product. Especially in Japan, now a whole server farm can be run in one small section of floor space, rather than taking up multiple buildings. In addition, the power savings are enormous. It is estimated that replacing a room full of suns with an S/390 running lots of copies of Linux will save you $250,000/year in electricity alone. Not to mention the management costs. Large companies _are_ buying S/390s to run linux on them.

    RHAT is doing just fine. VA isn't doing too shabby, they just spread themselves too thin (never trust stock prices. The stock prices for tech companies are always stupid because investors know crap about tech).

    Also, you said If you could lose all your patents in unrelated fields becuase you dabbled in Open Source, who's going to risk it?. Where did you come up with a statement like that? How are companies using open source losing patents in unrelated fields?

  • My God... (Score:3)

    by GypC ( 7592 ) on Friday April 06, 2001 @04:18PM (#310083) Homepage Journal

    there is such an outpouring of extreme negative reaction here!

    Nobody is forcing anyone to or demanding that anyone relinquish their software patents. Bruce is merely assembling some highly respected scientists in the field to explain why they think software patents are wrong and bad for the industry and ask that they release them.

    Jesus, you'd think they were demanding their first-born children at gunpoint by the way some of you are reacting.

  • The Free Software movement seeks to end the quaint fallacy of "intellectual property".

    My, this is revolutionary! Be sure to let us know when the constitutional convention is held to repeal the US Constitution, Article I Section 8 .

    You know, I can admire someone with the noble goal of making a no-strings attached OS available to whoever wants it, and I love to help out where I can. But when you go over the top with crap like this you just end up making all of us look like fscking idiots.

    Collectivism will never work outside of military dictatorships and oppressed peasants - it's a nice fantasy but fails to consider one small detail: the reality of human nature.
  • Theory a) Marx said communism would evolve into communism naturally
    Fact a) Russia was forced, rather unnaturally, into communism.
    Fact b) Russia is now turning back to capitalism.

    Facts a and b are not a disproof of theory a. Marx said 'Capitalism will naturally evolve into communism', not 'forced communism won't evolve into capitalism'. In fact, if someone says that 'If X, then Y will turn into Z.', and Z turns into Y without X, you can sometimes take that as partial vindiction of the theory. Example: 'If I answer the phone, when it's ringing, I won't get a dial tone.' if it's not rigning, you probably will get a dial tone, but you know this, and so stated it in your theory.

    Marx knew communism wouldn't work if forced. He said it many times. Guess what? He was right. Guess what else? All sort of companies and whatnot have started pooling their resources in orser to work better. OSS is the farthest effort of this, but it happens all over the place. Companies have found out they can work together, even if they compete, and produce things cheaper. That's exactly what Marx was talking about.

    Unions are also an example of this. In a union, you'll have many different groups of people, who are directly competing with each other, but work together for a common good.

    -David T. C.

  • If I was HP, I'd be overjoyed to fund this meeting. It's a win/win situation.

    • If the Open Source community has no claim on the IP in question (as is likely for most of it), then it's good from HP's point of view to have this established as quickly as possible.

    • If the Open Source community _does_ have claim or partial claim to the IP, then HP earns kudos for being good sports about it, and is thus more likely to finagle dual-licensing or cross-licensing for the IP that they're interested in.



    The amount of money involved is negligeable to a large organization, and the PR and potential precedent-setting benefits are substantial. Expect other companies to make backing contributions Really Soon Now.

  • I don't want to live in the cruel, twiseted world you describe. That's why I work to make things better. Maybe you really believe that the world can't be made a better place but I am not going to sit around while everything goes to hell in a handcart around me.

    Grr

  • REALLY?!? I wonder why... is there anything on the web about it? JT

  • Marx himself said it would never be necessary to force Communism in place of Capitalism, Capitalism would evolve into Communism naturally.

    Go to your nearest Communist Manifesto [anu.edu.au] and grep for revolution.

    [rangek@pinot-noir rangek]$ grep --count revolution manifesto.txt
    51

    Now lets look for "evolve" and "evolution" (be careful, evolution is just revolution without the 'r'...)

    [rangek@pinot-noir rangek]$ grep --count evolve manifesto.txt
    0
    [rangek@pinot-noir rangek]$ grep --count " evolution" manifesto.txt
    4

    It looks like Communists want revolution ~12 times more than evolution. As a matter of fact, violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat is a basic tenent of Communism. From The Communist Manifesto (emphasis is mine):

    In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into
    open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.
  • I'm all for companies protecting their *products* (ie: Microsoft is free to protect Windows), but strong against companies blocking others simply because they were there first. Okay... give 'em some monopoly time to enjoy (as a reward for innovating) but I think that, in the software economy, you need to let others in sooner.

    Take a website like /.. When it first started, /. was unique and original. Now go out and look at all the clones. But wait... they all do the same thing, but they each do it in slightly different ways. These 'differences' allow end-users to find the one program that suits their entire needs. Imagine if /. were a company that had patented its' software. Then, as a prudent company would, defended against all the clones (assuming they were awarded the patent). Suddenly any site that wants to do a forum has to license from /. and they all end up looking the same.

    By removing software patents (or expiring them faster) the market-place opens and allows more choice and better products for consumers. Competition creates this because companies try to one-up each other with different features. Each serves its' own unique consumer base and each has its' niche. Without this open market, software becomes stale, bland, and digs itself into obsolecance.

    The biggest problem with Windows is not that it's a crappy program - far from it. Windows 95, for instance, was a good thing when early 586's dominated the consumer scene. Now with faster and more powerful computers, Windows 95 is not optimized for this power - and does not exploit newer features. Microsoft tries to keep pace with the industry by patching it and pushing it into new areas, but the old Windows becomes stale. Oh shit.. I was supposed to make a point.. umm.. err... ok... here goes...

    Microsoft not too long ago said something like "Linux is bad for competition" (or something like that). Actually, I think the growth of "other os's" comes from people wanting choice. What if Microsoft had obtained a patent on "computer operating systems" (not too far off if yout think about it... 1988ish... get a patent for DOS... although there WOULD be a lot of prior art). Could you imagine if your only choice was Windows? Ugh. Oh well.

    (* break out the Metallica good/bad voice *)

    Choice = GOOD.
    Patents = BAD.

    Patents are like unions... they used to be good... but we need to think if we *really* need them anymore - or can the market handle itself.

    Microsoft should be against patents or they are hipocrits (sp?). I'd like to know their stance on s/w patents - given their "freedom to innovate" propaganda.

    Sigh... Life sucks...
    ---
    Computer Science: solving today's problems tomorrow.

  • Two sides (Score:3)

    by verbatim ( 18390 ) on Friday April 06, 2001 @10:52AM (#310091) Homepage
    There are two sides to this story:

    (1) Free software developer believes that s/w patents are silly and companies should relinquish them. Pulling a Microsoft-ish move, the community leaders pressure companies by asking for compensation for their work.

    (2) Companies that have built business models on open-source / free (pick one) software should be able to conduct their business so long as they don't violate the software licences (GPL et. al.) they have agreed to.

    Of course s/w patents are silly, but attacking the companies is (IMHO) the wrong way to go. You need to lobby the government and show them how silly they are. Or even suggest a reasonable alternative - such as shortening the period of patents to meet the increasing momentum of the industry. Tell them WHY 8 years (or whatever) is too long.

    Things like the .GIF compression patent and the Amazon 1-click patnet really hurt the end-user in that they restrict otehr sites from implementing useful features. Yes, in a perfect world companies would not take software patents.

    We need a perminant solution - not a temporary hack. The patent office needs to catch up to modern methods - and that 'aint gonna happen if you do an end-run around them.

    Links to anyone actually doing this? Lobbying the government? I know of the searches for prior-art, but I'm looking for stuff that tries to nail the gov't to the wall. ;-)

    ---
    Computer Science: solving today's problems tomorrow.
  • They don't really care what you do with their code, AS LONG AS you don't resell it AND prevent others from distributing it for less (e.g. nothing).

    How hard is this concept to comprehend?
  • In marketspeak, its called "barriers to entry". Let's face it, if you want to get compensated for what you know (the basis of the knowledge economy) then it is in your best (OK selfish) interest to control/limit/milk the difference as much as possible. Doctors and Lawyers are perfect examples of this school of thought ... guess how hard it is getting into a specialist medical college? Now with software, given that any concept (with proviso a Turing machine of adequate complexity and Turing strong language equivalent) then there is no barrier to entry ... any idea can be reimplemented in a different language with a different twist partitioned across space/time. Even algorithms, given that you can transform certain problem classes into another (with some performacne penalty) then sooner or later, someone will find a non-patented algorithmic solution.

    Patents had their roots in manufacturing processes for an industrial age economy (what the US was entering into after Independence). There it made sense to grant a long period of limited monopoly to reward the risks of experimenting with machinery. Nowadays we've got CAD/flexible manufacturing/24 hr design cycles, the rewards are disproportionate to the risks.

    My gut feeling is that with something as mutable as software, that any period of monopoly should be no more than twice the period spent developing it instead of a fixed length. This will allow inventors to have some period of benefit, yet encourage them to keep the development period short (otherwise someone else would claim that problem space) and the end source could enter public domain sooner. Copyright (the distribution of implementation) is another problem. Marketing ideas / business plans are rather dubious products to protect as codification/automation of human practices is hardly an innovation (cough*Priceline*cough). Trade secret is more likely to be relevant as it affects execution rather than a saleable product in its own right. Given the failure of business models (cough*dotcon*cough), it seems that a MBA is the equivalent of a mental labotomy.

    LL

  • occam (Score:1)

    by occam ( 20826 )
    I think opening up the s/w patents to ease innovation (and open source s/w) is a good idea and very worthwhile. I hope IBM and HP, etc., are willing to participate.

    Nevertheless, it strikes me as beating around the bush. The real issue is really that s/w patents are nonsense. Bruce Lehman (US lawyer, and former USPTO head) instituted s/w patents at society's expense and despite vocal opposition. The real issue is to get rid of s/w patents altogether.

    Since that's hard to do, thanks to Bruce Lehman, I'd say this Perens approach is as good a step as any. Just don't lose sight of the real disease (s/w patents) while treating the symptoms (legal red tape and blockaded innovation).

    = Joe =

    P.s., isn't it amazing what one stupid person can inflict on countless others? Monopolies just feed on power, and so do government appointees apparently.

  • Re:Don't knee-jerk (Score:3)

    by Rombuu ( 22914 ) on Friday April 06, 2001 @10:28AM (#310095)
    The Free Software movement seeks to end the quaint fallacy of "intellectual property".

    Right... that's why they really don't care what you do with their code.

    Oh, no, really they bitch and moan unless you release stuff under the GPL.

    They don't really care about getting rid of IP, or they wouldn't harp on their rediculous, freedom-limiting license.
  • How about an agreement like this:

    Company X states that patents A, B, ... will be licensed at no-cost to anyone whose code using those patents is covered by any of the free/open-source licenses FooL, BarL, ...

    That's basically part of what I'm trying to do (with Option and Pool "F") in the Open Patent License under development at www.openpatents.org/ [openpatents.org].
  • I would say it's upto the software publishers to ask this not him. He does not speak for all people who develop open source software. And many companies do give back, they return code back to the community.

    This is why stuff like the GPL will never work in the corporate world imho. GPL is about politics not software.
  • First, Bruce Perens no longer claims to be affiliated with "Open Source" software.

    But when it's convenient to him, he reminds people that "He wrote the Open Source Definition", or that he "co-founded the Open Source Initiative."
    -russ

  • I'm just pointing out that it's not truthful to say "First, Bruce Perens no longer claims to be affiliated with "Open Source" software.", because he does exactly that, from time to time.
    -russ
  • I think IBM has done fine with Linux, making plenty of money from it, though surely nowhere near their mainframe division. RH and VA are not doing well, because like every dot-bomb out there, they used their inflated stock prices to grow FAR too fast for their own good, and they cant afford all the employees, offices, etc that they bought with the money. If they had stuck with a plan and grew at a more reasonable rate, they'd be fine. There is a market out there for open source products and support.

    siri

  • I never thought I'd hear Atlas Shrugged being associated with communism.


  • Good grief, if Linux isn't collectivist, then I'll eat my shorts.

    Only metaphorically and poorly at that. "Collectivism" is usually applied to a political system, which Linux is surely not. Even if you think of the people who use/contribute to Linux as a "collective", it is a collective in which individuals are free to come and go. This flys against the idea of a collective where individuals are subsumed into the whole. Perhaps you mean that the code is collective, in which case I'd agree, but faced with the mass subjegation of thousands of lines of code under the facist rule of the hard-line Torvalds, I'm hard pressed to feel any empathy for their predictament and possible mass extinction in yet another versioning pogrom.
  • It's not like a leather-clad BP is gonna stroll into the HP boardroom with James Brown blaring ("i can dig codin! i can dig debuggin'! But i can't dig, back- back-stabbin!"), and shoot up the joint for "Payback".
    I for one would love to see that!
  • Making money is not evil, nor will it ever be.
  • How about an agreement like this:

    Company X states that patents A, B, ... will be licensed at no-cost to anyone whose code using those patents is covered by any of the free/open-source licenses FooL, BarL, ...

    Something like this would pull a major thorn out of the community's paw - the threat of legal action for independent rediscovery of patented algorithms.

    A company that did this could still use its patents to beat up on other closed-source companies - they would just be saying they don't want to use the same tactics against open-source projects.

  • What money is being lost by licensing some of your IP openly? Especially for a big companies like HP and IBM, they have portfolios that cover thousands and thousands of things they will never exploit commercially.
  • From the ZDNet article; "The open source community is planning to meet IBM, HP and others that are making fat profits from open source software, and ask them to relinquish intellectual property in return."
    I don't mean for this to sound like a troll, but AFAIK nobody is making "fat profits" from open source (with the possible exception of spindoctor firms sucking away investment dollars). Companies [quicken.com] who focus [quicken.com] on open source technologies don't seem to be doing well at all.

    Too bad they can't sell their patents for operating capital ;)

  • Mmm... sacrilicious bananas.

  • WTF??!!!

    That can't be right? How the hell does them using Open Source software mean that they should now be giving something? Does this mean I have to give something too? WTF?! Hey, I hate software patents as much as the next guy, but this just isn't right.
  • bah they did'nt have a marketable product :)
  • Thats kinda like asking microsoft to compensate Apple for all the ingenuity they stole from them :)

    hahaa

  • phil left. thats what.
  • Let's just say I don't take the tagline seriously:
  • When did we stop doing this "for the love of proramming"? Could it be when our shares of VALinux and RedHat plunged? It's open source, no fucking strings attached, and that's the way it should stay.

    When are the countless developers who contribute going to profit from this, even if it comes to pass? How are the people beyond those scare few at the top of the pyramid going to get compensation out of this... or are Perens et al planning on paying their devoted followers in Bananas?
  • Oh, you can do it without "gratitude", alright. That's just the press release.

    What's really happening is as follows:
    1. [big company] releases patent
    2. confidence in the "open source movement" increases
    3. shares in Red Hat, VALinux, and other companies that Perens et al have NO VESTED INTEREST IN WHATSOEVER go up(which is of course, totally meaningless, since they have NO VESTED INTEREST WHATSOEVER)
    4. Thousands of programmers around the world who actually don't have a vested interest beyond a love for programming slave away for countless nights, further expanding the influence of Perens et al.
    5. organizations whose primary source of revenue is in the sale of non-free software lose a little more grip on the market.
    6. Hardware vendors... say, aren't all the companies in the article hardware vendors? Anyway, they don't have to worry about software companies dictating their business anymore, so they reassume control of the market.
    7. Wash, rinse, repeat, emphasis on rising stock prices for everyone but the software vendors.

  • Fat chance is right... (Score:3)

    by jacobcaz ( 91509 ) on Friday April 06, 2001 @10:02AM (#310116) Homepage
    Companies are not in business to "do the right thing" (sorry guys) they are in business to make money.

    Period.

    That is their number one goal. Anything they contribute for the good of the community is, sadly, to ease the conscious of the execs from making all that money.

    The reason that they (probably) won't release the patens is because these are considered an asset of the company. The shareholders usually don't like it when the company gives away its assets.

    I have been to many bankruptcy sales where trademarks, patents and other IP were up for sale with all the desks and computers.

    Nice thought, but the submitter had it right with "fat chance."


    -----

  • But when it's convenient to him, he reminds people that "He wrote the Open Source Definition", or that he "co-founded the Open Source Initiative."

    And I suppose you erase from your resume any accomplishments you're no longer actively pursuing.

  • If that's the case, ok, but that's much different from saying "I wrote X," or "I helped found Y," even after one's no longer involved.

  • What Bruce (in his zeal) fails to understand, or hopes that companies won't recognize, is that the fact that the GPL has become so widespread makes it impossible, or at least extremely unwise, for inventors large and small to give up their patents. In fact, it gives them a greater incentive than ever before to sue for, and obtain, patents.

    Here's why. Anyone who wants to make money from technology that involves software -- be it a large corporation or an individual developer -- is constantly threatened by the possibility that someone will come out with a GPLed equivalent of his product. It's not anywhere near as hard to come up with the GPLed copy as it is to come up with the original, which may have required millions or even billions of dollars in R&D! Once you can see how a company implemented a solution, it's trivial to copy its painstakingly developed techniques and carefully researched design decisions in a GPLed product, destroying the market and preventing the developer from even breaking even on development costs.

    Patents provide a defense against the GPL by providing the developer with a temporary monopoly on his or her invention, and thus a guarantee that he or she will be able to recoup his or her investment.

    Would any rational company -- including IBM or HP -- give up its one defense against having its business undermined and the value of its hard work destroyed? Not a chance. What's more, Bruce Perens' expositions of the topic (see his presentation at the February 2000 LinuxWorld Expo) contain thinly veiled threats and intimations of blackmail. This won't go over well with anyone -- especially companies such as IBM and HP. I expect them to say, "Sorry, Bruce, but we won't be bullied. And now that we see that your true goal is to undermine and hurt us, we'll make an extra effort to beef up our patent portfolios."

    In short, I think that Bruce's efforts will not only fail but backfire.

    --Brett Glass

  • I totally agree. One codes free/open software for many reasons, none of which is a direct compensation. You just can't go around giving something away and later ask for something in return. Not even ask them to do it just for generosity.. if you do that, you're a hypocrite.

    chlt.

  • The Free Software movement seeks to end the quaint fallacy of "intellectual property".

    So, if there is no intellectual property, then I can do anything I want with any software, right? I can take emacs, modify it into a proprietary version, and sell my version without giving away the source code?

    After all, it is the intellectual property laws that the GPL is making use of. If they are ever truly destroyed, then effectively all software is public domain. If you are right, RMS can save a lot of time by just releasing all FSF code as public domain instead of GPL.

    I know the knee-jerk capitalists who don't understand Marxism will shriek

    I guess I don't understand Marxism. Please provide me with some examples I can study. Exactly where in the world has Marxism ever been successfully tried? Where have the predictions of Marx ever come to pass?

    For example, the U.S.S.R. had a system where a privileged elite ran the country with dictatorial powers; this system was called Communism, but I don't think Marx would say it was what he had in mind. Am I wrong, and that was a good example of Communism? Or is real Communism still in our future?

    It's time for these companies to pay the piper.

    Maybe you think so, but they will decide whether they want to pay or not. Free software is free. The companies that modified GPL code have released their modifications to the community; they have no obligation to do anything more than that.

    steveha

  • "We plan to put them on the spot," said Perens. "I don't know how much we will get out of them but we will say: 'It is time now that you are making money out of our software for you to help us with this.' I don't know if they will be nice to us or just tell us to go and get screwed."

    Ok, so let's say you're cheating on your wife with your sister-in-law and her husband. Your wife doesn't know it, and your sister-in-law doesn't realize that you're screwing her husband on the side, too. All of a sudden, your wife says your family is going to be featured on the Jerry Springer Show. Ironically, your sister-in-law and her husband have plans to be out of town on the same day. What do you do?

    The point is, if you know you're about to get screwed in a big way, why show up? This meeting is being announced as a "we're going to try to get you to fork over patents and thus some of your potential leverage for profit in the future, and make you feel horrible about it in front of thousands of people in the process" kind of meeting.

    Who the Hell would show up for that?

    Of course, Springer has a show every day--so there are plenty of stupid people...

    --SC

  • The two above replies totally misunderstood the parent. He was quoting one of the "bad guys" in Atlas Shrugged. Atlas Shrugged is full of bits where the government passes laws so restrictive as to be parodies (but frighteningly realistic parodies) of laws passed in socialist countries. So what Mr. Monkey was saying was the guy learned his advocacy from the type of people Atlas Shrugged was arguing against.

    The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
  • Thats kinda like asking microsoft to compensate Apple for all the ingenuity they stole from them :)

    You mean like Xerox PARC asking Microsoft AND Apple for compensation.

  • If it's companies that make money by providing Open Source software, it should be a sparsely attended meeting, unless they include all the companies that tried. I think Bruce is probably trying to present a value proposition that there are lots and lots of indirect economic benefits of using Open Source software, and that it's worth it for companies to spend money on Open Source because they'll make it back somehow. Or maybe he's trying to keep his name in the public eye, or both.

  • And I'm sure that his shifting position between two groundswell movements that have minor philosophical differences is going to greatly enhance his credibility while making a marginal economic proposition to some of the largest corporations in the world.

    Finally we grind those money-grubbing capitalist lackeys beneath our boots, eh comrades? Eh?

  • Then they don't need to be patented anyway. 'Publishing them' establishes prior art.

    I believe they patent them so they can then use patent bargaining in case they accidentally step on someone else's patents - so publishing them wouldn't achieve the same thing at all.

  • Legally I don't see any reason why they would have to give up their patents. Just because something contains a 'piece' of something else shouldn't make the whole patent null. As long as they didn't copyright that little 'piece' in question individually then they should have no problems.

  • The last thing we need is for IBM, HP, and other corporate "sponsors" of Linux to decide that they're tired of giving and giving - drivers for their hardware, research labs, etc. - and being unappreciated. We can't forget that we're dealing with large corporations with established business plans. Linux fits into those business plans -- they're not doing it out of the goodness of their collective hearts, as much as the grassroots Linux movement would like to believe. Is forcing the software patent issue now really the brightest thing to do? Do we want to publicly spit on the contributions these hardware and software corporations have made thus far, and negate the chances of any future goodwill gestures?
  • Yeah, and as we all know, where there's a big corporation's money backing a movement, we're all more likely to see results.

    ***JUMP PAD ACTIVATION INITIATION START***
    ***TRANSPORT WHEN READY***

  • rediculous, freedom-limiting license


    Actually, I believe you should say " ridiculous, freedom-guaranteeing license "
    Yes, I think that is much more accurate. :)

  • Re:Good God NO!!!! (Score:3)

    by BitwizeGHC ( 145393 ) on Friday April 06, 2001 @10:19AM (#310132) Homepage
    I don't think it's payback in the strictly economical sense; not like "since we gave you X, you owe us Y." More like, "Since we gave you X in an open manner, it behoves you to voluntarily release Y under open terms as well, as a friendly exchange." If it really was what you feared, then there would be attack lawyers all over the place.
  • I remember reading a while back (at this very site) Bruce saying that he was working on releasing specs to HP printers to allow Free Software people a way to write decent drivers. He said, IIRC, that the problem wasn't so much HP's willingness to release the spec as patent issues and 3rd party licenses. Perhaps HP is using this forum as a start on releasing some of those printer specs...
  • IBM is a company. It exists to make money. It uses Linux and Open Source software because it helps make them money.

    Even -if- they made no additional contribution to Open Source software, do they owe -any- of us -anything? Does the fact that they do contribute to the development and widespread acceptance of Linux and Open Source software have no value at all?

    Comply with the GPL, and you don't have to worry about anyone parking themselves on your doorstep demanding money (or something that will cost you.) Something about not biting the hand... you get the idea.

  • > Java language instead of the previous TCL language

    Holy shit! Phil used to go off on java.
    TCL this, TCL that. I wonder what the hell
    happened?

  • VM.. a proprietary closed source operating system with large license fees.

    Costly, sure, but not by S/390 standards. Closed source, hardly. The IBM VM development group has provided source code for most of their system continuously since 1967. In the early 1980s, IBM entered the dark days of their Object Code Only policy, under which much source code was withdrawn. But since the early 1990s, all that code and almost everything else that hadn't been delivered has been released to the customers. These days, the so-called open source parts of VM are the largest parts IBM doesn't provide source for, and that's because they're forbidden to do so by the original authors (e.g. DCE, Java).

    Next time, keep your opinions to yourself if you don't know the facts.

  • If you read the ZDNet article before it vanished (I guess it got slashdotted), Perens was quoted as saying that he planned "to put them on the spot". Nobody said anything about asking, Perens is being reported as making demands.

    That sucks.

  • Well, the article doesn't mention anything about "Payback", except for the title, folks.

    It's not like a leather-clad BP is gonna stroll into the HP boardroom with James Brown blaring ("i can dig codin! i can dig debuggin'! But i can't dig, back- back-stabbin!"), and shoot up the joint for "Payback".

    BP isn't an idiot. Personally, i think this is a good thing (TM), and the media has decided it's "Payback" time. No one is getting "Paid" any "Back". It'd be nice, sure, and definitely lead the big boys down the 12-fold path to true software divinity, but we're just asking.

  • I thought open source was all about "free speech" rather than "free beer". This just proves that the leaders have only been with movement for monitary gain. I mean COME ON! If a company sells a piece of open source software, it shouldn't matter. It's "free speech" REMEMBER? It seems, once again, that the the rules keep getting changed, for the OSS movement gain. After awhile, it makes the whole movement look like a farce. this whole fiasco reminds me of the hippies in the 70's.(I imagine stallman was one of them). The "Free" people were the ones living in the communes, they didn't want "the man" getting them down. I wish people would realize, that without things like capitalism, the internet would be nothing.
  • It seems to me that Open Source means that anyone can use it for free providing they abide by the rules of the appropriate license. If IBM, HP, etc., can make money off Linux (and provide credibility for it as well) they are under no obligation, moral or otherwise, to "pay" for it.

    This is not to say that it would be a bad idea for IBM, etc., to be good corporate citizens and make some of their proprietary software open source, but to demand them to do so is arrogant.

  • Don't knee-jerk (Score:4)

    by DunkPonch ( 215121 ) on Friday April 06, 2001 @10:04AM (#310142) Homepage
    First, Bruce Perens no longer claims to be affiliated with "Open Source" software. He removed himself from that splinter group some time ago because he disagreed with the compromises it was making in the name of profitability and corporate acceptance. Bruce is part of the Free Software movement.

    Second, the Free Software movement has an agenda. This is not news. The Free Software movement seeks to end the quaint fallacy of "intellectual property".

    In a delicious ironic twist, they use the laws of intellectual property to destroy the concept of intellectual property. I know the knee-jerk capitalists who don't understand Marxism will shriek, but this is exactly how more modern collectivist systems will be put in place. They will use the tools of the current pseudo-democracies to gain control. Marx himself said it would never be necessary to force Communism in place of Capitalism, Capitalism would evolve into Communism naturally.

    If HP et al thought they could simply take the goodies and ignore the ideology behind it, they were unbelievably naive. In the real world, ALL "charity" comes with strings attached. If you accept government welfare, you have to abide by the laws and values of the government. If you accept clothes from the Salvation Army, expect to receive a pamphlet summary of the New Testament in the same shopping bag.

    It's time for these companies to pay the piper. In the end, they'll benefit from releasing their patents just as much as the community at large.
  • The main BSD companies are older and well established - Most of the Linux companies are relatively young, and didn't even plan on turning a profit in the first couple of years. Obviously, some of them may not make it, but saying that all Linux companies are doomed is painting with a pretty broad brush.
  • I'm probably going to get burned for saying this, but open source is like reading your source code, line by line, over a set of loudspeakers in front of millions of people. And the GPL is more like an honor system than a license. Any company can just hire staffers to hunt around SourceForge and download relevant source files. They then change a few variable names, find another way to perform one of the functions, and then use it in their project. And that's the best-case scenario; worst-case scenario is cut-and-paste right into the compiler.

    I haven't seen any evidence of this, but it sure sounds like what is happening out there. After all, what's the Free Software Foundation going to do to companies like Microsoft and HP? Send them a cease-and-desist letter?

  • Sounds like you've learned your free software advocacy lessons from the pages of Atlas Shrugged. "Directive 24-7-420 equalizes opportunity for free software developers by forever abolishing the quaint notions of owning the products of one's own mind. What is mind, anyway, other than a collection of chemicals that produces software?" Dr. Richard Stallman Director The People's Foundation of Free Software.
  • Unfortunately, big businesses (ANY business, for that matter) exist to make a profit. They don't generally 'give back' to ANY community for no reason. When you see companies 'giving back' to communities, it's usually because there's some good PR involved, or there's something else in it for them. Wouldn't you be pretty pissed off if a company you owned a piece of started to give away your money just to be nice? I know I would.

  • That is pretty naive on the part of Perens and Stallman. They're acting like IBM and HP are a couple of college kids. They're MASSIVE corporations, not individuals. They have no sense of 'obligation' or anything even close to that. The goal of these companies is to make money, and you certainly don't make money by giving away patents. Open Source, Free Software, whatever, is all about writing code for free, with no strings attached. Last time I checked, no strings attached, means no strings attached. If somebody (or a massive corporation) wants to use the stuff without contributing, that's their right according to RMS and his ilk. It sounds like these guys have been living in la-la land too long, and are upset that their idealistic, utopian expectation of the whole world freely writing and giving away software doesn't quite hold true. Bummer.

  • ...are they SURE it's really Bruce Perens doing this? They better check.
    ---
  • As am I not a "rabid FSFer", but I do have the misfortune of working in a patent landmine, I agree wholeheartedly.

    But since HP is the one putting this on, perhaps he's not trying to beat them with the stick, but prod them along. Hopefully, he'll have a carrot in his back pocket just in case...

    Personally, I'd like to see some patents open up... maybe not on the bleeding edge stuff, but at least on some well-established technologies. Opening them up could lead to further developments without the legal hassle of patenthood. Oh, well, enough rambling for now...

  • I may not be following what you're saying, but if you are actually comparing 'Atlas Shrugged' (or anything Ayn Rand ever wrote) to anything remotely resembling Communism, then you haven't read anything Ayn Rand ever wrote. She was, to put it lightly, one of the most anti-Communist writers ever, to the point that it colored everything she did, Objectivist-wise or other-wise.
  • Open Source

    While the companies involved may be making big profits (HP, IBM), who's to say that these big profits are derived from Open Source?

    I'd say most of IBM's profits are from selling and servicing their AS/400's and 390's, they're probably making very little from selling Linux on a mainframe.

    If Open Source was making such big profits for IBM and HP, don't you think VA Linux and RedHAt would be doing better?

    Anyhow, if this goes much further, don't you think companies considerate of there bottom line are going to flee from Open Source? If you could lose all your patents in unrelated fields becuase you dabbled in Open Source, who's going to risk it?
  • I might be seeing things, but it appears that IBM [ibm.com] IS giving back [ibm.com] to the OSS community.

    $man microsoft

  • And I'm sure that his shifting position between two groundswell movements that have minor philosophical differences is going to greatly enhance his credibility while making a marginal economic proposition to some of the largest corporations in the world.

    The philosophical differences may be small. The personality differences are not. The problem with FSF is that there is a fundamental conflict between the outward liberating aims and the controlling methods used to achieve them. It is always do things the RMS way or be treated as the enemy.

    I simply don't have time these days to deal with RMS's ego. He made a contribution to the movement but the changes in society that computers and networks and the change in power that they make possible are about much more than Free or Open software or any individual.

    If the objective of the meeting is to get IBM to cough up some IP and back the idea of multilateral disarmament on software then take folk like Brian along. If on the other hand the idea is to launch some my-way-is-the-only-way jihad then please don't bother.

  • Depends on what has already been agreed (Score:5)

    by Zeinfeld ( 263942 ) on Friday April 06, 2001 @09:54AM (#310155) Homepage
    Asking IBM etc. to give up patent rights is not unheard of. Just read the IETF lists to see racks of IP to which a free open licens has been granted.

    Asking for a complete patent license tends to get refused. However I have neogitated what amounts to the same thing - a free license for use in an open standard protocol - which is all that anyone really cares about in any case.

    Most patents are filled for defensive purposes. Only a very few companies actually make money from patents as such - TI being the biggest example in the tech sector. IBM does make significant patent royalties but those tend to be manufacturing and processing.

    Software patents are not actually terrifically profitable. If an idea is patented then people tend to design arround the patent. The number of ideas so devastatingly original that they can't be evaded is very small.

    If the meeting has been set up right then Brian and co have already got some deal with IBM and this is simply an excuse to allow the IBM management to give away property rather than sit on it and watch it be unused.

    The biggest lever the open source community has against patents is that in general a patented product is nowhere near as useful as a standards based one. There are exceptions but very few.

  • CNET [cnet.com] has a story about similar to this here [cnet.com]. Basically it talkes about how ArsDigita, an e-commerce company in the midst of layoffs and a major product overhaul, is bucking the trend of comrades selling open-source software. While other open-source companies such as Red Hat, Caldera Systems and VA Linux Systems work to shift revenue from products to services, ArsDigita is going the opposite direction. Instead of just offering services around the open-source ArsDigita Community System (ACS) software for setting up e-commerce Web sites, the company will begin selling proprietary software modules, said Dave Menninger, senior vice president of marketing. In addition, the company's latest version of ACS has been rewritten using Sun Microsystems' Java language instead of the previous TCL language. Very interesting read
  • Insightful AND funny!
    --

  • Good God NO!!!! (Score:5)

    by BillyGoatThree ( 324006 ) on Friday April 06, 2001 @09:38AM (#310159)
    I'm a rabid FSFer. I cringe at the term "open source", preferring "free software". But even *I* can see this is a terrible, terrible idea.

    Yes, by all means, try to persuade Big Business to play nice. But don't, for the love of God, say that's it's "payback" for benefits they've received from the community. The entire idea of "open source" (which is what the company's bought into, not free software) is that the company doing the releasing gets a benefit. So you can't try to make them "pay twice" by asking for a favor later.

    Bruce, you cannot drive a man with a stick, you must lead him with a carrot. Point out the *benefits* of releasing patents, don't try to appeal to some nebulous "gratitude".
    --
  • IBM to linux community

    "All your bases are belong to me" (sic)

    While open sourcers have been busy innovating and coding. IBMs lawyers and employees (don't forget they are "goaled" on how many patents they have submitted) have been busying patenting the stuff.

    IBM have historically quietly made millions from "licensing" their patent portfolio. Maybe Bruce found out how much HP has paid IBM for desktop patents in the past?

    er ibm can the F1 key for help patent be public domain, thnks

  • If a piece of software is liscenced to you, but the technology is then sold to someone who patents it, do you lose your right to freely distribute it?

    What makes the rights they bought more legal than the rights you were GIVEn?

  • It would seem to me that Bruce will be learning the hard lesson on how to negotiate from strength.

    From the article:
    " . . we will say: 'It is time now that you are making money out of our software for you to help us with this.'

    He's giving something for nothing and then asking for compensation?

    As Bruce argues passionatly (read:flaming them), the IBM execs will be practicing throwing pencils into the ceiling tiles.
    --

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