MetaFilter posts tagged with GNU

The software patent cold war is getting less cold

finite — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 05:26:56 -0800

[Patent Lawsuit Filter] On Wednesday Sun Microsystems announced a counter suit against Network Appliance, wherein they will draw on their "defensive portfolio" which is "one of the largest patent arsenals on the internet". They are going to be requesting a permanent injunction to remove all of NetApp's filer products from the marketplace, and also seeking monetary damages (half of which they've pledged to donate to the Software Freedom Law Center and Peer to Patent Project). Last month, NetApp sued Sun for patent infringements in ZFS. Earlier this month in Texas, the first ever patent infringement lawsuit against Linux distributors was filed. The plaintiff in the case against Red Hat and Novell is IP Innovation and Technology Licensing, a company that successfully got some money from Apple with a similar claim earlier this year. They're owned by Acacia Technologies, a company with close ties to Microsoft, which has caused some to suggest that this suit might be more about spreading FUD than about securing licensees for patents. The Sun/NetApp case is less clear-cut. In September, the founder of Network Appliance (Dave Hitz) announced on his blog that they were suing Sun for patent infringement, explaining that "Sun has been using its patent portfolio as a profit center. About 18 months ago, Sun’s lawyers contacted NetApp with a list of patents they say we infringe, and requested that we pay them lots of money." Sun's CEO (Jonathan Schwartz) replied on his blog, thanking NetApp for suing them and saying that "Sun did not approach NetApps about licensing any of Sun's patents and never filed complaints against NetApps or demanded anything." Dave replies that he is stunned by Jonathan's response, in a post titled "Sun Patent Team Demanded $36 Million From NetApp". After this, their blogs went silent on the subject for a few weeks. Then, Jonathan announced the counter suit (the first link in the fpp), and Dave responded with two more blog entries. Groklaw has reason to believe Microsoft is also involved in this case.

The Hippest Sounds on Earth

digaman — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 08:33:29 -0800

John Coltrane. Thelonious Monk. Hank Mobley. Lennie Tristano. Blue Note. Impulse. Riverside... In other words: jazz. Now three fans in Japan -- a country that has always appreciated America's gift to music even more than the US itself -- have created The Jazz Discography Project, a bare-bones, open-source, astonishingly exhaustive database of the hippest sounds on the planet. For aficionados, just reading an ASCII entry for long out-of-print stuff like A Message from Garcia, featuring a young and then-unknown musician named Bill Evans who would later reinvent his instrument, is thrilling.

The Rise And Fall of Maui X-Stream

Ogre Lawless — Tue, 24 May 2005 12:09:41 -0800

Bogart not the OSS Open Source is cool. Not only is it free-for-you, but you're also entitled to commercialize it as long as you follow some fairly simple rules. Software company Maui X-Stream seems to have run afoul of not just one OSS project but m a n y, cobbling together entire product lines out of free software and branding them as their own -- and then heartily denying it. (More Inside)

baylink — Wed, 03 Jul 2002 12:16:14 -0800

Anyone who ever spent any time on the Domain-Policy mailing list before NetSol shut it down without warning a year or more back (it was starting to look evidentiary, you see, and they didn't want to get sued...) will be familiar with much of what's in this Salon piece about John "Gnu" Gilmore, CORE, ICANN('t), and the Great Domain Registration Fiasco.

BGM — Thu, 02 May 2002 11:43:30 -0800

Peru goes GNU. And I quote: "You may have heard about this if you watch the free software news, but I just want to repeat it for anyone who hasn't. The Peruvian government has introduced legislation requiring government offices to use free software; Microsoft is unhappy; and a member of the Peruvian Congress has written a response which I highly recommend reading, in which he explains in strong terms why it's out of the question for the government of a democratic nation to use proprietary software."

HeikoH — Sat, 20 Oct 2001 11:38:43 -0800

Let's stop wasting US$ 78 billion a year. Is software development really this inefficient? Aside from the main theme, there is also an interesting statement from a CIO towards the end of the article. "Those folks [involved in the open-source movement] are very knowledgeable, very good at what they do, and they're producing really great code," [...]

greyscale — Tue, 28 Mar 2000 20:12:54 -0800

Cyber Patrol hacker sells out for one dollar < I made my political point and just don't want further annoyance... ...Mattel initiated legal action in e-mail subpoenas in mid-March and Skala and Jansson removed cphack from their sites, but not before urging computer activists to copy and distribute it.... ...Nevertheless, some mirror site operators think open source software protections make the issue moot. The court cannot impose an Internet ban because cphack was released under the GNU General Public License... > perhaps you've seen this--the final decision will be interesting with repect to free speech and the GNU GPL. something to watch anyhow.