Re: Answers to your questions about W3C patent policy

From: bts <at> alum.mit.edu (Brian T. Sniffen)
> I don't see how that can possibly coexist with this sentence of the
> GPL, section 7:
> 
> : if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of
> : the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly
> : through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this
> : License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.

This sentence would not disallow a field-of-use limited grant.
The patent is licensed for everyone's free use. They forgot to
say "for any purpose", surely something that will be fixed in
the next version of the GPL. If the patent were used for a
non-standard-related purpose, the program would not be distributable.

> The recipient of the program (which combines a GPL'd framework
> with a patent-encumbered MIT library) will be able to use the program
> to implement the standard, but not for any other purpose.

Right.

> Certainly,
> if he modifies it to use the patented material for some other purpose,
> he won't be able to redistribute *that*...

Yes.

> and since he won't be able
> to do so, you can't distribute the GPL'd code for which you don't have
> copyright.

Re: Answers to your questions about W3C patent policy

> I don't see how that can possibly coexist with this sentence of the
> GPL, section 7:
> 
> : if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of
> : the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly
> : through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this
> : License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the
> Program.
> 
> The recipient of the program (which combines a GPL'd framework
> with a patent-encumbered MIT library) will be able to use the program
> to implement the standard, but not for any other purpose.  Certainly,
> if he modifies it to use the patented material for some other purpose,
> he won't be able to redistribute *that*... and since he won't be able
> to do so, you can't distribute the GPL'd code for which you don't have
> copyright.

This rather seems to be the major flaw in the policy.  It looks to me
like a "you can implement the [patented] standard provided you you use
the standard in any implementation" arrangement.  Which really makes a
mockery of the whole thing.

=head1 Accidental [un]-ispirational Speech

Unfortunately this seems to be the place where free software ideals
fall down; standards and patents.  A lot of standards out there are
patented; and the creates an environment the opensource community just
doesn't stand a chance in, in terms of interoperability with
proprietary products.  The best we can do is point at the open

Re: A birthday message and a RFS for Film Gimp 0.13-1

On Mon, Dec 30, 2002 at 11:49:17AM -0500, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> Yes, it *is* annoying to wait "in the dark" and not know why your
> application isn't getting processed. (I should know, I've been through
> that before.) But public displays of impatience only makes the wait
> longer. (And possibly gives the DAM yet more reason to not work on
> your application---there isn't very much incentive, from the
> perspective of a DAM, to give accounts to people who repeatedly shows
> signs of impatience in public, whether or not said public image is
> accurate.)

in that case, sack the DAM and get someone who's actually willing to do
the job that he volunteered to do.  nobody voted to give troup veto
power over who gets to join debian, nobody voted to allow him to ignore
applications for months or years or however long it takes for NM's to
give up in disgust.  if he won't do the job he volunteered to do then he
should get out of the way and let someone else do it.

there's plenty of DD's who have volunteered to either help out or take
over the role, and who have been around for enough years to be trusted
to do it.

this shit has gone on for far too long.  it needs to be fixed.  no more
worthless lies about how it'll get better soon when james has time to
deal with it.  we all know they're just bullshit.  this is not about
lack of time, it's about lack of inclination.  NM's don't get approved
because troup doesn't want any new members in debian.  that's the truth
and i'm damned sick of seeing people pretend that it's just overwork or
insufficient time.  this goes beyond mere dereliction of duty, it is
deliberate abuse of his position as DAM to enforce his wishes on debian.

Developing free standards (Was: Re: Answers to your questions about W3C patent policy)

On Wed, Jan 01, 2003 at 01:05:00PM +1100, Francis Whittle wrote:
[snip]
> Unfortunately this seems to be the place where free software ideals
> fall down; standards and patents.  A lot of standards out there are
> patented; and the creates an environment the opensource community just
> doesn't stand a chance in, in terms of interoperability with
> proprietary products.

This brings to mind the infamous Halloween Documents. Decommoditizing
protocols. *shudder*

> The best we can do is point at the open standards and say "these are
> more standard, better, standards that can be implemented more standardly
> than patented standards because everyone has access to them not just
> big corporations" and hope that the world's information technology user,
> and I hate to use the term, market (it's not a community yet by a long
> shot)  pays attention.

But pointing at open standards won't do very much if practically nobody is
*using* them. The most accepted standards tend to be de facto standards
(at least in some form). It's very difficult for an open standard to be
accepted if other competing proprietary standards are already out there,
together with implementations used by the majority of users. 

[snip]
> Hopefully, we can avoid some problems by making our standards more
> extensible and more standard... and integrating features of new [patent
> pending] "standards" being designed and developed into existing open
> standards, which saves the hassle of trying to develop an entire new
> standard that does a few things more than an existing standard. 

Re: Developing free standards (Was: Re: Answers to your questions about W3C patent policy)

On 2003.01.01 15:32 H. S. Teoh wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 01, 2003 at 01:05:00PM +1100, Francis Whittle wrote:
> [snip]
> > Unfortunately this seems to be the place where free software ideals
> > fall down; standards and patents.  A lot of standards out there are
> > patented; and the creates an environment the opensource community
> just
> > doesn't stand a chance in, in terms of interoperability with
> > proprietary products.
> 
> This brings to mind the infamous Halloween Documents. Decommoditizing
> protocols. *shudder*
> 
> :
> :
> 
> Of course, I hope all this will turn out to be *not* the case. But it
> is
> wiser to plan for the worst than to hope we can ignore it out of
> existence.
> 

Sorry, were you meaning to spit back out exactly what I meant but using 
slightly different language (mostly ordering), or did that happen by 
accident?

Oh well...  You did outline a few more issues, though.

Francis.

(unknown)

Re: Answers to your questions about W3C patent policy

On Tuesday 31 December 2002 21:04, Bruce Perens wrote:
> A number of people have suggested defensive patent pools. I think
> I remember doing so in a 1997 article in LinuxWorld.com . The three
> problems are:
>
> 	1. Getting inventions.
> 	2. Getting money to file for patents. This is both legal fees to
> 	   format the patent claim (which has to be right if you want to
> 	   be enforcible), and filing fees.

This is a complicated intersection with the efforts in many countries to avoid 
software patents at all (including European countries), where discussions 
have almost always shown that patent pools are more harmful for the 
community.
More than 130k people have signed the Eurolinux petition, which, if 
successful, will supersede the W3C uphill battle for many people, and should 
thus not be forgotten in this context.

Josef

--

-- 
Free operating systems. Free software. Free games.

Re: grub/floppy/ext2 question

On Wed, 1 Jan 2003 00:38, Brian May wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 29, 2002 at 07:41:36PM +0100, Michael Karcher wrote:
> > ext2 makes no use of the first sector of the floppy, to allow boot
> > loaders to be placed there. FAT has its 'magic numbers' in exactly this
> > sector. So mke2fs(8)ing a FAT medium creates a valid e2fs without
> > removing the magic numbers of the FAT file system. So do it yourself.
>
> So (if this is correct and it probably is), it would appear that grub
> uses the first sector to determine if it is a MS-DOS filesystem or not,
> but Linux must use some other mechanism (because mount worked even
> without the -t option).

If you check if a file system is Ext2 before checking if it is MS-DOS (as 
Linux does) then there will be no problems in such a situation.

I think that format.exe will wipe out the Ext2 superblock, so therefore the 
only correct thing to do is to check for Ext2 first before even considering 
checking for MS-DOS.

I suggest that a bug be filed against grub in this regard.

--

-- 
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Re: A birthday message and a RFS for Film Gimp 0.13-1

On Tue, Dec 31, 2002 at 11:20:46AM +0100, Russell Coker wrote:
> On Tue, 31 Dec 2002 02:27, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
> > >  Note: Although this is more colours than can be displayed at once on
> > >  a conventional 24-bit monitor (8-bit per component), 16-bit makes a
> > >  difference when working with the higher dynamic range of film.
> >
> > Ranting aside, I think you mean a 24-bit display or 24-bit video card. A
> > "24-bit monitor" doesn't make sense to me. Perhaps it does for LCDs etc
> > but for CRTs the colours are completely analogue I believe ie
> > continuous.
> 
> Perhaps it is a reference to the professional monitors that have separate coax 
> cables for R, G, and B signals.

That's still a continous analogue signal. 24-bit monitor doesn't mean
anything in a CRT context.

Hamish
--

-- 
Hamish Moffatt VK3SB <hamish <at> debian.org> <hamish <at> cloud.net.au>

smb-network package

Hello,

I created a package of smb-network
(http://www.dragonsdawn.net/~gordon/smb-network/), a WWW based SMB network
browser. Packages (source and binary) are available at
http://www.solnet.cz/private/marcel/smb-network/. For binary package you
can also add

deb http://www.solnet.cz/private/marcel/debian ./

to your sources.list file. Although the upstream maintainer forgot to
include a license file in the tarball of the latest version, smb-network
is GNU GPL software (I asked the upstream maintainer about it). I am not
a Debian maintainer, but I would be happy to become a Debian maintainer
and maintain smb-network. So I would like to ask if there is anyone who
wants to sponsor me. I have my GPG key already signed by present Debian
maintainer. Unfortunately different key (FFC7E5D4) from that one which
I signed the package with (28E18DE1). Is it enough to sign my 28E18DE1 key
with the FFC7E5D4 one?

Next I have a question about developing. I have defined no dependencies
because I do not know which way is the best to responsibly determine the
dependencies. For example I know smb-network.cgi is written in Perl, but
I do not know which one of the Perl packages should I write into the
Depends item of the package. I also know smb-network needs WWW server and
smbclient, but is there any other way to determine the dependencies than
guessing what everything is required for run of the package?

Regards,

Marcel Kolaja
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Linux hackers are funny people: They count the time in patchlevels."
       -- Martin Josefsson