I've gotten behind in blogging the past two weeks, due to travel and other writing chores. One of the news items I should have commented on earlier was the Linux Foundation's announcement last week that it has established a travel fund for open source developers.
/>The idea behind the fund is that while open source software is created globally and virtually, there's just no substitute sometimes for face-to-face collaboration. Of course, many of the events where this occurs are global as well, and therefore liberally spread about the world's landscape. While travel to key gatherings may be feasible for those with corporate support, some of the real forces behind important open source projects don't have the wherewithal to contribute to, or simply enjoy, the process in this fashion. That's where the travel fund comes in.
The Linux Foundation is a natural place to provide this type of support, given its mission, which is to promote, protect and standardize Linux by "providing unified resources and services needed for open source to successfully compete with closed platforms." One good use for the substantial dues that for-profit members contribute is to subsidize the participation of those who contribute in non-monetary ways. That's what the "unified resources" bit is all about. Another bit is providing some of the key events that developers can attend to advance the common cause.
The first such conference will be an invitation-only meeting to be held on June 13-15 at Google's Mountainview Campus in the Bay Area. That event is intended to:
Over the last several months I have spoken at conferences and symposia in places as widely dispersed as Washington and Cambridge, Beijing and New Haven. In each case, the topic was the intersection of standards and the public interest, comprehending new concepts such as the "knowledge commons" and increasing importance of "cyberinfrastructure," and issues such as government's responsibility to utilize appropriate standards to safeguard the future of public documents, and the best way to ensure that the promise of information and communications technologies (ITC) is fulfilled in developing nations. These gatherings have been held under the auspices of institutions as diverse as the National Academies and the United Nations Development Programme, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce and the United States – European Commission Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue, and the Law Schools of Harvard and Yale Universities.
The fact that so many people are meeting in so many venues to discuss standards in non-technical contexts demonstrates the fact that something new and important is at work here. And the fact that many of these conferences are taking place in academic and government venues suggests that people are still trying to figure out what it's all about.
Microsoft-Samsung pact includes Linux patent 'protection'
Provision raises specter of controversial claim by Steve Ballmer
April 18, 2007 (Computerworld) --Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday signed a broad cross-licensing agreement with close partner Samsung Electronics Co. that includes a controversial provision granting the Korean electronics conglomerate rights to patents that Microsoft claims have been illegally borrowed by the Linux operating system. Samsung is the third company to ink a similar cross-licensing pact, which critics said de facto advances Microsoft’s unproven claims to Linux-related intellectual property…[full story]
Well, there they go again. With the prolifieration of all these Linux "protection" cross licenses, one can't help asking a few questions. Such as whether Microsoft will ever reveal its mysterious patents, so that Linux users and distro vendors can decide whether or not they agree with Microsoft's contentions? And whether, if all of the terms of each deal were known, would it really appear that Microsoft's partners really thought there was much substance to those patent claims at all? And finally, where will it all end?
I don't know the answers to the first two questions, but I thought I'd take a crack at the last one. Here you go:
Microsoft-Kellogg's pact includes Froot Loops trademark 'protection'
Provision will protect breakfast cereal vendor and its customers form IPR liability
April 20, 2007 (BreakfastBowlToday) – Microsoft today announced that it had entered into a trademark cross license agreement with leading cereal vendor Kellogg's, granting the grocery giant the right to continue to use the name "Froot Loops" to describe its popular children's cereal. "Everybody knows computer software uses loops, and any one who has ever had their Windows-based computer freeze up knows it has infinite loops," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Ballmer stated that the Redmond giant had no choice but to threaten litigation in order to "get the appropriate economic return for our shareholders from our innovation."
Trademark experts were taken by surprise that Kellogg's felt realistically threatened. Boston-based attorney Susan Mulholland, a partner at technology boutique Gesmer Updegrove, observed, "It's absurd for a software vendor to claim that there could be any confusion between a software bug and a colorful breakfast cereal." Not so, according to a Microsoft legal spokesman: "Microsoft has always cared about the total user experience. Developers enjoy breakfast cereal at their computers all the time, and many programmers I know are very easily confused."
Human beings have an astonishing capacity to take the most incredible innovations for granted almost as soon as they begin to enjoy them. A less attractive feature of human nature is our ability to forget (and even not care) that others may not be able to enjoy those same advantages. Sometimes, those that are disadvantaged in this way may even lose ground as we gain new conveniences and privileges, because those that are less fortunate may lose access to traditional services as they migrate to the Web.
As a result, I have tried to do my part to focus attention on a regular basis on Web and IT accessibility issues, in all their many forms (a recent example is here). Happily, the media in general are paying closer attention to equal IT access, if only because advocates of the rights of (for example) those with physical abilities have sought to make accessibility issues more visible. A recent example of such public attention was the focus in Massachusetts on accessibility in connection with the adoption of ODF. More broadly, the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), a multi-year initiative under the auspices of the United Nations, has sought to promote Internet and Web accessibility on a global basis.
To the general public, hardware and software economic roadblocks to Third World equality of access are easy to understand, and thus the worthwhile work of the One Laptop Per Child initiative justifiably receive wide attention. But there are many other initiatives that have been, and continue to be, pursued largely outside public notice. These projects address much more basic infrastructural challenges, and therefore appear less "interesting" to the general public. Yet without this important work, true global equality of Internet and Web access would not only be economically challenging to achieve, but technically impossible as well.
Now that news of the merger of the Free Standards Group and OSDL has settled in, folks are entitled to be curious to see what the Linux Foundation – the name adopted by the new organization – will do. As I was elected last month as an At Large board member, I'll take it as part of my job to let people know what happens as it happens – beginning with this blog entry.
Last week, LF announced three new members of interest, as they illustrate the broadening relevance of Linux to diverse constituencies, as well as to the increasing importance of Linux on mobile devices. Those new members are Marvell, a vendor of storage, communications and consumer silicon solutions; Nokia, the mobile communications giant; and VirtualLogix, a developer of real-time virtualization technology for connected devices.
And tomorrow, LF will issue another press release [Updated: here it is], this time announcing the latest update of FSG's flagship specification, the Linux Standards Base (LSB), as well as a new testing toolkit. The testkit is the first product of a multi-million dollar development partnership between lf and the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Taken together, these two press releases illustrate the many dimensions of the "Linux ecosystem," as well as the role that the LF plays in supporting, protecting and empowering it. More familiarly, that ecosystem includes direct participants (individual, for-profit and non-profit); developers (both ISVs as well as Linux developers); and end-users of all types. But it also includes not only platform and application software, but also the standards, test kits, and certification programs that are needed to permit the two to together to create an interoperable environment that is rich with choices, and free from lock-in.
One canard that is occasionally thrown out by a vendor in a corner is that "standards stifle innovation." In fact, of course, nothing could be farther from the truth, because when vendors agree upon a standard at an appropriate level of detail, they help create a larger market. This increases the profit opportunity, and provides a growing incentive for more vendors to enter that market. Since all products must be identical at the level of the standard, vendors can only compete by adding additional desirable features, improving quality, and competing on price. The result is what is often referred to as a "virtuous circle" of incentives and results.
If that sounds like standards spin, consider your car, which implements thousands of standards, covering virtually every one of its parts, from the tires to the radio. And yet competition is relentless to upgrade the basic product ("car") by adding new features, and improving old ones, despite the fact that profit margins on most cars are quite slim.
The reality is that the great majority of standards help create meaningful choices, rather than limit them. True, some standards can restrict choice, and sometimes even in an arbitrary fashion, due to practical or economic reasons. But then again, you've probably never been heartbroken over your inability to buy a 42 watt light bulb (the standard wattages, of course, are 40, 60, 75, and so on).
In what is beginning to seem like a legislative drumbeat, Oregon has become the fourth US state this year to see an open document format bill introduced in its legislature (the others, in order of bill introduction, are Minnesota, Texas and California). Taken together with pioneer Massachusetts, which led the way with an administrative rule adopted in 2005, this means that individual legislators in10% of all US States have thus far taken steps to require that governments must be responsible stewards of public records. The text of the bill is here. As usual, I am also including the complete text of the bill, in its current form, at the end of this entry for long term-archival reference and ease of word-search based research using this site.
While the Oregon bill falls into a current trend, it is in some ways less similar to the bills introduced earlier this year than they are to each other. Most notably, it would establish a clear preference for open formats that are deployed in the greatest variety of programs and services that are available as "free ware," which it defines as " computer software made available or distributed to the public for use free of charge for an unlimited time." Through this and other provisions, it is clear that only ODF, and not OOXML, would pass muster for the foreseeable future in Oregon. The bill was introduced by State Representative Peter Buckley as House Bill 2920.
Looking first to the central definition of an "open format," we see that the Oregon definition is more detailed than that which is found in most of the other bills. For example, while the California formulation is very high level and would provide more flexibility in interpretation, the Oregon text is more precise, and often provides examples of what would be required in order to comply with the bill. Here is a direct comparison of the definitions found in these two bills:
A Federal Court sitting in San Diego, California has upheld a jury's unanimous verdict that QUALCOMM Incorporated abused the standards process by failing to make timely patent disclosures during a standard setting process. The litigation arose when Qualcomm filed suit against Broadcom Corporation, an implementer of the standard. The decision follows on the heels of a unanimous verdict by the Federal Trade Commission against memory technology company Rambus, inc. under similar factual circumstances.
Cases involving standards abuse are infrequent, but Qualcomm and Broadcom are currently involved in as many separate pieces of standards-related litigation as the entire industry usually indulges in over a period of years. In one suit (in which I helped draft and file a friend of the court brief on behalf of several standards organizations), Broadcom alleges that Qualcomm refused to honor its pledge to license its "essential claims" under a standard on "reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms." Other suits are continuing in multiple courts in several countries, including an antitrust suit that Broadcom lost –but perhaps not permanently – before the FTC issued it's verdict in Rambus. Ironically, the flurry of legal action is helping develop judicial guidelines for standards development and licensing on a more rapid basis than usual.
The current case was brought by Qualcomm in October 2005, and involved two patents that it later alleged would be infringed by implementing H.264, a video compression standard developed by the Joint Video Team (JVT), an effort supported by two global standard setting bodies, ITU-T, acting through its Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG)and the ISO/IEC, acting through its Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). The jury concluded that implementing the H/264standard would not result in infringement, but also indicated that it believed that Qualcomm had acted improperly before the United States Patent Office in obtaining the patents in question.
