Technocrat

Microsoft: We were naïve about standards. No, really!

Bruce Perens
Mon Jun 23 10:58:00 -0700 2008
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Anthony Donoghue of ZDNet UK reports:

Speaking at a panel debate, at a Red Hat conference in Boston, entitled 'The OOXML battle: Who really won?', Microsoft national technology officer Stuart McKee admitted that the company had no specific department or individuals focused solely on standards prior to beginning the process of fast-tracking Office Open XML.

I have to contradict that. When I served on the W3C Patent Policy Board, about 8 years ago, there was a Microsoft representative on the board. W3C policy was that members of that board were to dedicate 1/4 of full time just to the board - and that was far from Microsoft's only involvement in W3C at the time. The representative seemed fully cognizant of the standards process. You may remember that back then, various companies were working to get W3C's approval for royalty-bearing patents in web standards. Which would have been fatal for Open Source.

Microsoft was also present at IETF meetings around that time, and was enthusiasticaly gaming the system. I remember one Microsoft attorney with three assistants who were each feeding "audience" questions at the attorney's direction.

Organizations like Sun, which ran a large standards department, were tremendously concerned with Microsoft's attempts to game the system at the time.

Microsoft is no newcomer to the standards business. Protests otherwise on their behalf are insincere.

Microsoft: We were naivé about standards. No, really!

oGMo
Mon Jun 23 11:58:14 -0700 2008
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You may remember that back then, various companies were working to get W3C's approval for royalty-bearing patents in web standards. Which would have been fatal for Open Source.

This seems unlikely. "Open Source," both software and standards, seem to win out time and time again because they're royalty-free (and Free(tm)). If W3C had adopted royalty-bearing "standards," it's probable the network would route around the W3C.

Microsoft: We were naivé about standards. No, really!
Bruce Perens
Mon Jun 23 12:03:26 -0700 2008
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One of the reasons we win is that we fight. Back then, we weren't as well entrenched in the industry as we are today. We almost lost. It was quite a lot of work for yours truly. Had we lost then, you might not have been able to be so optimistic today. Open Source is still in deep trouble regarding patents. Literally every Open Source program infringes one patent or another, and the developer can be legitimately and legally sued for Millions. This is because it's impossible to write a non-trivial program that doesn't infringe some granted patent.

Microsoft: We were naivé about standards. No, really!
Thomas Lord
Mon Jun 23 14:11:47 -0700 2008
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It occurs to me that a more effective defense against patents would be to argue that the exercise of the GPL freedoms should not, by definition, count as infringement. There is no need to be rid of software patents, as Rosen's OSL shows. Rather, there is merely a need to protect software freedom from software patents.

I happen to have the opinion that the conclusion patents do not exclude the exercise of the "four freedoms" can be reached through constitutional and common law principles. Regardless, it can certainly be reached legislatively.

Such an adjustment to either the understanding or legislation of patent law would not fully protect all possible uses of some, more permissive "open source" licenses - but then, open source was never obviously about software freedom in the first place.

-t

Microsoft: We were naivé about standards. No, really!
Bruce Perens
Mon Jun 23 15:43:56 -0700 2008
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What makes you think that Rosen's OSL shows there's no need to get rid of software patents? The OSL is a copyright license, and can at most protect against entities that have actually accepted the license. There are a number of other licenses that attempt to do this, with varying degrees of success.

Regardless of its effect on free software, I don't think software patents make economic sense even in the proprietary software market. The system is too skewed toward the largest companies, which are not where the innovation happens.

Microsoft: We were naivé about standards. No, really!
Thomas Lord
Mon Jun 23 16:51:18 -0700 2008
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What makes you think that Rosen's OSL shows there's no need to get rid of software patents?

Excellent question and it has a simple answer.

FSF, RMS, Rosen, and for whatever it's worth even I agree that OSL is a free software license. At the same time, OSL protects a substantial portion of the market value of so-called software patents -- demonstrated in at least one case.

Thus, OSL shows that you can have software freedom and software patents and furthermore shows that software patents can create an incentive to create free software!

I don't think software patents make economic sense even in the proprietary software market. The system is too skewed toward the largest companies, which are not where the innovation happens.

Rosen's showcase OSL adopter was not a large company -- he was "a guy." It appears to be the triad of a free software realization, plus OSL, plus patent protection that allowed "the guy" to approach large companies fearlessly and collect licensing fees -- all while nowhere violating anybodies software freedom.

My position is simply that it isn't obvious to me that OSL is necessary in the sense that I don't think patents can exclude the exercise of GPL freedoms and, in any event, I'd be perfectly content with legislation that affirmed that (or, in the alternative, made it so).

-t

Microsoft: We were naivé about standards. No, really!
Thomas Lord
Mon Jun 23 16:54:20 -0700 2008
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I should add that it's tough nuggets, in my view, for the OSD in the sense that it extends to licensing which certainly can constitute infringement of various kinds of so-called software patents.

You sometimes say, of late, that OSD was meant to say the same thing the FSF says but in business friendly language. You gloss over some important details when you say that. OSD is not about software freedom. It (roughly speaking) takes the set of licenses of which the FSF says "it is safe for us to use these" and elevates them to the level of "this is what software freedom is about." In doing so, it creates a horrible conflation that has messed up a lot of people's thinking.

-t

Microsoft: We were naivé about standards. No, really!
Petr Mareš
Wed Jun 25 11:12:59 -0700 2008
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Not here in Europe! If the patent trolling in US gets easy, then Europe will sue the pants off of every IT business in US. US companies cannot sue European one for software patent infringement. We are not infected with the stinking plague here.

IT is one of the most relocatable type of businesses. I guess it would take less than 5 workdays and $2500 to buy a company registered as an IT business in UK. So the st1nk1ng patent lawyers and judges must be very very careful not to stretch the trolling too much.

Microsoft: We were naivé about standards. No, really!
Bruce Perens
Wed Jun 25 12:12:05 -0700 2008
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Petr,

You are far from safe. For example, read this. If people like you are complacent, you may have U.S. style software patenting as soon as December.

A ban

lars
Mon Jun 23 12:02:43 -0700 2008
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Thanks for the review, posts like that are important to counter the revisionist history tactic trotted out from time to time. Better bookmark it for future, re-use, though. Once an alternate history is cooked up by MS, it's marketeers try the same story every few months.

None of the court's (any of the courts) remedies to-date have had any bite. It's probably time to talk about a blanket ban on the products in certain trade zones.

Further, it's important to go after the problem at their source: those who advocate, select, or allow the deployment of MS products and technologies within their organizations or institutions.

In this day and age it's not believable that these managers and staffers have failed to notice the poor performance, egregious interoperability (even among MS products), borderline illegal licensing, inflated prices and functionally non-exist security. The MS path means ignoring established technologies, standards, products and skipping reviews required by due diligence. It also means choosing licensing which is usually in direct violation of company security policy and even privacy laws. It looks like an either or situation: they know they are putting MS interests first to the greater harm of their own employer XOR they are so woefully out of touch that those responsible for their hiring have erred criminally.

A ban
Michael Smith
Mon Jun 23 16:14:32 -0700 2008
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In this day and age it's not believable that these managers and staffers have failed to notice the poor performance, egregious interoperability (even among MS products), borderline illegal licensing, inflated prices and functionally non-exist security. The MS path means ignoring established technologies, standards, products and skipping reviews required by due diligence. It also means choosing licensing which is usually in direct violation of company security policy and even privacy laws. It looks like an either or situation: they know they are putting MS interests first to the greater harm of their own employer XOR they are so woefully out of touch that those responsible for their hiring have erred criminally.

Windows is percieved as being easier to lock down because it is only available in binary form.

Where I work Windows is favoured by information technology and *nix is favoured by software engineering. Because IT control the perimeter they control the security model, which gets pushed inwards over time.

Kudzu

lars
Mon Jun 23 21:23:23 -0700 2008
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"Because IT control the perimeter they control the security model, which gets pushed inwards over time."

Yes. That's how the problem spreads. It's like having a "little bit" of kudzu just across your property line. Whatever the Windows proponents claim to perceive about Windows is not relevant, only what it does. For that reason, and the resulting spread, questions of criminal negligence or mischief can be raised.

Naïve rather than naivé ?

Mathinker
Thu Jun 26 04:45:22 -0700 2008
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I have a feeling that you meant "Naïve", I've never heard about "nayvay" which is what naivé would probably sound like if you pronounced it.

Naïve rather than naivé ?
Bruce Perens
Thu Jun 26 08:53:57 -0700 2008
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Oops.

 

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