taint.org: Justin Mason’s Weblog

Patents: An anonymous contributor writes:

‘I just received this letter and these pre-addressed postcards in the post this morning. I was surprised when I saw the envelope, because I’d never received anything from the BSA before. It turned out that they had extracted my name and address from the European Patents database, because I registered a software patent once. So a lot of these letters have been probably been sent out.

According to the letter, from Francisco Mingorance, the draft directive is being turned around to ‘rob small businesses of their intellectual property assets’.

I find it hard to see how that could be true. However the BSA’s letter has an important message you should heed - it is critical to contact your European representatives (your MEP and your country’s Commissioner) within the next two weeks. Let them know that the European Union should curtail software patents for once and for all.

Get out your best stationery and write to your MEP at the address given on this page.

Make sure your message is short and clear. SME’s don’t benefit from patents. Few patents are held by SME’s and the cost of applying for, maintaining and defending them is crippling.’

jm: I would suggest noting that you support the position of rapporteur
Michel Rocard MEP, and/or the FFII — details here. Please do write!

• scanned JPEG of cover letter
• scanned JPEG of some of the postcards

BTW, the contributor also offers: ‘if anyone is interested in doctoring up the BSA postcards, I can provide the hi-res scans.’ ;)

Tags: bsa, contributor, european, jpeg, letter, mep, message, patents, post, sme, software

Web: Google Suggest, a drop-down list of suggestions — with hitrates! The one letter hits are interesting, too.

“spam” hitrates, the top 3 (aside from “spam” itself):

• “spam filter”: 6,400,000 results
• “spamcop”: 1,570,000
• “spamassassin”: 1,350,000

in the top 3. getting there!

unfortunately, you have to get as far as “justin ma” before my name shows up, so not doing too great in that competition. ;)

Tags: competition, filter, google, letter, list, name, spam, spamassassin, spamcop, suggest, web

Patents: Disastrous for European software developers, that is.

It looks like Ireland’s EU Council Presidency is pushing through some nasty stuff on behalf of the European Patent Office. FFII says:

On all points where substantial controversy exists, the Council Working Party has taken the most hardline pro-patent view of all parties. They make patentability hinge on the word ‘technical’ and yet refuse to explain what that word means. They have refused the interoperability exemption which even the Legal Affairs Committee had accepted. They have rejected the freedom of publication. They are insisting on making programs directly claimable, something which even Arlene McCarthy and the Commission did not advocate.

Nokia’s Patent Department is leading the PR push:

The (Nokia call-for-support) letter calls on ministers to drop their objections, and to support a draft text issued by the Irish Presidency on March 17th: ‘All of Europe’s innovators, including individual inventors, small and medium size enterprises (SMEs), as well as large multinational companies, require patents to protect their inventions, provide incentives to undertake research and development in Europe, and to promote licensing and technology transfer’, claims the letter.

‘Nokia doesn’t seem to be counting Opera among the European innovators’, comments Håkon Wium Lie, CTO of Opera Software Inc, an innovation leader in the web browser market and producer of much of the software used in Nokia’s mobile phones.

Note that it’s the Patent Department of Nokia, not necessarily Nokia’s top brass, pushing this — here’s a relevant anecdote from FFII:

The patent officials never see the CEOs themselves, and when they appear in public, their thinking on patent matters may surprise the audience. Last week Airbus CEO Peter Kleinschmidt was invited as a pro-patent speaker to a panel in Paris but then, during his speech, congratulated his co-panelist Michel Rocard for his important contributions to containing the expansion of the patent system, which, as he described in detail, was slowing down innovation at Airbus.

(The economic studies and the US’ Federal Trade Commission both concur, incidentally. But it’s pretty unlikely a patent lawyer will say the same thing in public ;)

On the other side, 15 MEPs have signed their own Call For Action which points out that ‘patent professionals in various governments and organisations are now trying to use the EU Council of Ministers in order to sidestep parliamentary democracy in the European Union’ and urges the Council to ‘refrain from any counter-proposals to the European Parliament’s version of the draft, unless such counter-proposals have been explicitely endorsed by a majority decision of the member’s national parliament’.

Let’s see if Ireland’s presidency will do it the democratic way, or in a back-room deal, over all our heads…

Tags: council, department, ffii, letter, nokia, opera, patent, patents, presidency, software, word

SCOvLinux: GrokLaw: Groklaw’s Open Letter Linked to SCO’s Backing Off Invoicing.

‘SCO Group Inc is backing-down from threats to invoice organizations running Linux while extending SGI’s compliance deadline.

‘A company spokesperson said yesterday SCO’s plan to invoice organizations, on the basis that Linux illegally contains SCO code, had changed following what he claimed was success of its UnixWare licensing program. . . .

‘Members of the open source community warned SCO last month in an open letter they would initiate civil action under anti-fraud and consumer protection statutes.’

My take: ‘What? You mean extortion through fraudulent invoicing is illegal? Oops, call the mail room!’

BTW, anyone who hasn’t read the GrokLaw Open Letter to SCO yet, really should. It’s a great summary of all the many points where SCO is wrong.

Tags: backing, groklaw, group, invoice, invoicing, letter, linked, linux, open, sco, scovlinux

In case you’re trying to reconcile Arlene McCarthy’s public words, about how the proposed EU legislation helps block software and bizmeth patents, and the FFII’s public words saying the opposite, here’s a helpful email thread cross-posted between the Patents list at AFUL.org and the free-sklyarov-uk list.

• The letter asking for clarification on some key points;

• The rather vague reply from AMcC;

• a follow-up from Rui Miguel Seabra;

• one from Bernhard Kaindl;

• and from Hartmut Pilch.

Also, Hartmut Pilch notes a prior letter which as yet remains unanswered; ‘All she has until now ever done is to send out standard answers to unspecific letters from concerned (and possibly naive-sounding) software developpers. Whenever someone tries to ask her more specific questions, there is no response at all. However documenting the fact that there is no response may also help. So please remember the public letter and point demand a response at every opportunity.’

The Financial Times has an article (paying subscribers only, but that link excerpts a part) which makes clear the difficulties. ‘oftware protection regulations across EU member states should be harmonized while also allowing software developers to carry on without the threat of patent searches and litigation hanging over their heads. He argues that the EU directive’s wording is opaque: The proposal lists computer implemented inventions as patentable, but this definition fails to establish whether it refers to software algorithms or inventions whose usability is dependent on software. Cane also notes that it is harder to see parallels in software invention and physical invention, and argues that there are few truly novel software inventions because most software is based upon prior work carried out by other people.’ (thanks to Gary Robinson for the link)

Tags: bizmeth, case, ffii, invention, legislation, letter, link, list, response, software

Arlene McCarthy’s letter hits /. and garners some interesting comments.

• An eyewitness report from the parliamentary hearing in Brussels in early May, pointing out that none of the bill’s supporters bothered responding to the wide range of SMEs opposing the directive. In fact, most of them didn’t even turn up.

• Alan Cox on AMcC’s call for ‘harmonisation’, the traditional excuse for new Euro-laws ;)

Tags: bill, directive, eyewitness, hearing, letter, may, none, range, report, smes

In case you missed it — SCO’s letter to Linux customers. Executive summary:

• open-source code development methodology bashing, to start with
• SCO will ’suspend their own Linux-related activities’, whatever they were
• all users of Linux are vaguely threatened in a ‘cartooney’ fashion
• ‘Similar to analogous efforts underway in the music industry, we are prepared to take all actions necessary to stop the ongoing violation of our intellectual property or other rights.’

Classy! And a bonus good point from a comment on this LJ article: ‘According to this article, SCO Linux 4.0 contains version 2.4.19 of the Linux kernel. … By the act of distributing the Linux 2.4.19 kernel, SCO has irrevocably released any and all of their intellectual property present in the 2.4.19 kernel under the (terms of the) GPL.’

Tags: article, case, code, executive, kernel, letter, linux, property, sco, summary

Karlin notes this about ‘the extraordinary letter the Department of Justice sent out this week to various parties’.

According to the letter, the Department will hold a preliminary forum to ‘initiate’ a consultation process on its proposed three-year data retention bill … The forum begins at 3pm — clearly making sure no long and unruly discussions will develop! — and starts with a 20-minute address by the Minister, followed by a 20-minute address by the Dept of Communications on the 1997 EU Data Privacy Directive (which, BTW, Ireland STILL has not implemented despite being under legal threat by the EU — and note that there’s no mention of the far more crucial 2002 amended Directive, voted in last May by a spineless and ill-informed EU Parliament, which allows for up to SEVEN YEARS data retention.

Then — and this is the amazing bit — attendees get a 20 minute pep talk by An Garda Siochana (the Irish police force) ‘on the contribution of data retention in the fight against crime.’

When you pick yourself up off the floor, remind yourself that this is the Irish government’s formal initiation of a purported public discussion on data retention — brought to you by the Irish police. Amazing. You’d have thought they’d at least *pretend* to be balanced and disinterested, and perhaps ask Joe Meade, the Irish Data Protection Commissioner, to contribute as well. …

The Department of Justice itself should have nothing whatsoever to do with ANY consultation process on this proposed bill. Instead, as in the UK, an independent Dail group should hold hearings and get public input into this.

Tags: address, data, department, directive, forum, justice, letter, minute, police, retention

A funny letter from New Scientist regarding the use of monkeys to collect specimens in the field, which was pioneered by John Corner in Singapore.

The botanist noticed that local fruit-pickers trained monkeys to collect fruit, and reasoned that a monkey could similarly be trained to collect flowers, leaves and nuts for his own work. The result was the collection of hundreds of otherwise inaccessible specimens — and this gem:

Travelling with mule and monkey on a narrow path in the uplands, he spied a new and unrecognised flower on a liana hanging from the path, down a near-vertical cliff face too steep for him to climb down. So he instructed the monkey to descend and collect the flower. But the monkey just looked at him questioningly with its head on one side.

‘Go down!’ repeated the eminent botanist. At which the monkey gave an eloquent shrug, took hold of the liana and pulled it up hand over hand to collect the flower. No human being, said Corner, had ever, before or since, made him feel so much of a fool.

Tags: botanist, flower, hand, letter, liana, monkey, new, path, scientist, use

BoingBoing forwards 2 links to hilarious Nigerian Scam parodies, one from Dick Cheney and one from Laura Bush. Cory quotes it already, but it’s too good to miss, so I will too:

I am the widow of the late President George W. Bush of the United States of America. I am writing you this letter in confidence regarding my current circumstances.

I escaped the United States ahead of death squads with my husband and two children Jenna and Frank, moving first to England and then, when my husband’s political enemies took power there, to Austria. All of our wealth, obtained legitimately through baseball, oil drilling and insider trading, was seized by the new government of the USA under the despotic regime of (Dr.) Noam Chomsky, except for the contents of a few Swiss bank accounts. These bank accounts, which contain social security lock-box funds and the bulk of the 2001 budget surplus, could not be accessed by me or my children, due to agreements made between the socialist government of the USA and Swiss bank regulators. They seized our ranch in Crawford, Texas and now use it to teach homosexualist propaganda to schoolchildren.

Tags: bank, boingboing, confidence, cory, government, husband, letter, nigerian, scam, widow

BillG recently claimed to have invented Open Source. As part of a discussion of this, his original open letter to computer hobbyists was uncovered. Makes interesting reading, in retrospect.

An Open Letter to Hobbyists

February 3, 1976

By William Henry Gates III

To me, the most critical thing in the hobby market right now is the lack of good software courses, books and software itself. With- out good software and an owner who understands programming, a hobby computer is wasted. Will quality software be written for the hobby market?

Almost a year ago, Paul Allen and myself, expecting the hobby mar- ket to expand, hired Monte Davidoff and developed Altair BASIC. Though the initial work took only two months, the three of us have spent most of the last year documenting, improving and adding features to BASIC. Now we have 4K, 8K, EXTENDED, ROM and DISK BASIC. The value of the computer time we have used exceeds $40,000.

The feedback we have gotten from the hundreds of people who say they are using BASIC has all been positive. Two surprising things are apparent, however, 1) Most of these “users” never bought BASIC (less than 10% of all Altair owners have bought BASIC), and 2) The amount of royalties we have received from sales to hobbyists makes the time spent on Altair BASIC worth less than $2 an hour. Why is this? As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share. Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid?

Is this fair? One thing you don’t do by stealing software is get back at MITS for some problem you may have had. MITS doesn’t make money selling software. The royalty paid to us, the manual, the tape and the overhead make it a break-even operation. One thing you do do is prevent good software from being written. Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free? The fact is, no one besides us has invested a lot of money in hobby software. We have written 6800 BASIC, and are writing 8080 APL and 6800 APL, but there is very little incentive to make this software available to hobbyists. Most directly, the thing you do is theft.

What about the guys who re-sell Altair BASIC, aren’t they making money on hobby software? Yes, but those who have been reported to us may lose in the end. They are the ones who give hobbyists a bad name, and should be kicked out of any club meeting they show up at.

I would appreciate letters from any one who wants to pay up, or has a suggestion or comment. Just write to me at 1180 Alvarado SE, #114, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87108. Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten programmers and deluge the hobby market with good software.

Bill Gates

General Partner, Micro-Soft

(Gates, 1976)

Tags: computer, hobby, letter, market, open, programming, software, thing, time, year

Gerry reckons the Irish Times are taking the piss.

Date: Tue, 01 May 2001 14:42:46 +0100
From: “Gerry Carr” (spam-protected)
To: (spam-protected)
Subject: IT are taking the piss out of me

Mere days after I send them this letter

Dear Sir,

Having read Mr Cruishank’s invaluable insight into the Health Shambles, can I offer the majority of your contributors a handy Irish Times letter generator;

Dear Sir/A Chara

How can one convince this Government that we need; a decent health system; help for the homeless; housing for travellers; free care for drug addicts; help for the 3rd World; free computers for every school; more social welfare money; more money for teachers/nurses/doctors/public servants/dustbinmen/soldiers wives

much more urgently than:

2 stadiums; a spike in O Connell Street; politicians’ beanos on St Patrick’s Day; a Eurovision song contest; sponsoring a race car; bailing out RTE; fireworks on the Liffey; a government jet/building/pay rise/reception/refurbishment/chauffer/travel expenses/secretary/ etc.

Is the government lacking morals/priorities/reason/sense of proportion/focus/ethics/

yours etc/Is mise [ADD NAME HERE]

Just delete as appropriate and you’ve got yourself 6 months worth of material.

Yours etc.

They print these 4 in a row;

POLICY ON SPORTS STADIUMS

Sir, - Let’s see if I understand the £60 million offer of our money to the GAA. It appears to have been offered the money to ensure that foreign games would not be played at Croke Park (thereby strengthening case for Stadium Ireland), and on the understanding that some key GAA matches would be played at the folly. In effect, does this mean that the payment is designed to ensure that Croke Park will be under-utilised? Just how far are our politicians willing to go to support an ego trip which could cost a billion or so by the time it is build? How will its annual financial costs of, say, £60 million be met? That amount equates to a Croke Park “donation” for every year to infinity! Surely, this money could be better used - to reduce the national debt, improve the infrastructure, assist the underprivileged and so on. Yours, etc.,

BRIAN FLANAGAN, Blackrock, Co Dublin. Sir, - The money being proposed for financing a national stadium in Abbotstown would be equally well spent on a submerged clock counting down the 998-plus years, second by second, to the next millennium. - Yours, etc.,

JERRY TWOMEY, Woodlawn Court, Santry, Dublin 9. Sir, - I would like our Taoiseach to complete the following sentence. I believe that £1 billion should be spent on a national stadium and not on our ailing health service because . . . - Is mise,

CIARAN MacAONGHUSA Baile an tSratha, Tír Chonaill. Sir, - Haemophiliacs are offered £4 million, the GAA is to receive £60 million. What a great little country we live in. - Yours, etc.,

EAMONN TIERNEY, Beverly Avenue, Knocklyon, Dublin 16.

Tags: date, gaa, government, health, irish, letter, money, sir, times, tue