Multiple readers submitted this newsbit: Linux related websites all over the net are down “due to software patents. Spotted so far are: the Gnome website, the KDE website, and Knoppix homepage. All pages point a visitor to http://swpat.ffii.org. Update: This topic seems to need clarification. These sites are down in protest of a proposed patent law in the EU that many people believe is too broad and will hurt rather than protect the rights of software developers. Read the “swpat.ffii.org” site for more details.
Websites Down Due to Patents
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Adam Scheinberg
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Actually also all the sites of the Apache foundation
( http://www.apache.org ) are showing the protest.
Debian is protesting as well.
i dont like it, it’s making SCO feel like they are achieving something, i dont think SCO’s aim is to shutdown anything, but to make money and lots of it in any way possible.
I’m certaintly NOT going to close down my linux related blurb on my site becuase of SCO lol
by the way i click on gnome and it said (for those too lazy to check)
Page closed
Page fermée
Seite gesperrt
This page is temporarily closed in protest against software patents. Websites may soon be closed down regularly due to software patents. Software patents can get you prosecuted for publishing texts you wrote yourself!
You will be redirected to swpat.ffii.org in 20 seconds for more information. To enter this site, click here.
Now, the bit you and others may miss is this ^^^
‘To enter this site….’
so
http://www.gnome.org/index.html
lets you ‘into’ the normal Gnome site
cool !
also to note: the site http://swpat.ffii.org/ times out, nothing to see there…
cheers
anyweb
http://anyweb.kicks-ass.net/linux/tips/index.html <- tips for noobs
Patents are, in general, “a good thing”. Unfortunately, like so many other “good things” they’re open to abuse by freeloaders, oppourtunists, bottom feeders and SCO executives.
Redirection goes nowhere? More details?
All I can say is that there are too many zealots out there. What do they hope to accomplish with this? remove information from other open source advocates and users? I am sure there are all sorts of proprietary software users and developers, and lawyers, etc just cringing now. What a bunch of looney toons. Makes we want to quit using Linux and other open source software.
WTF, is this a new way of protesting ?
Apache.org was not protesting when I checked.
They could have state what patents were involved in the protest.
How does this help? Almost everyone who uses the sites noted are (or should be) already aware of the problems with software patents.
In the US at least, you need a court order to bring down a product that violates a patent from sale or distribution…. defacement?
Dang that medicine I took. I didn’t bother reading the sites at all… haha 🙂
Yeah, seems futile to me. If sites from like Sun or IBM (hah! like that would ever happen) do this, maybe it would be more effective. I’m against software patents in its current form because it is stupid and it goes against the very reason patents was first created: to reward invention. I just don’t think that it should be abolished, rather should be overhauled by people who truly understands the industry rather than some US Supreme Court judge.
http://www.go-mono.org/
i dont like it, it’s making SCO feel like they are achieving something, i dont think SCO’s aim is to shutdown anything, but to make money and lots of it in any way possible.
It’s NOT about SCO. It’s about the stablishment of software patents on Europe. Read the links for clarification.
This is highly effective because it gets the message out to the media. The media reports on the protest thereby drawing the mainstream audience to a greater understanding of the troubling issues surrounding software patents.
So I happen to disagree. This is indeed useful. Besides it is easy to be armchair critic and do nothing. At least, these folks are doing something…
Go to the protest if you live in Brussels
getting the word out. How many people actually knew about this proposed law before this protest was up? Not many I’m guessing. And now? Quite a few more most likely.
All they are trying to accomplish is to let the general public know what is happening with the law. And actually let them do something about before its to late.
What else would anyone suggest that they do? With stuff like this there, unfortunatly, aren’t a lot of options.
This isn’t because of cease and desist orders (which in all/most? of EU states will require a court order anyway).
This is a protest against software patents, and is aimed specifically at the to be decided EU directive on software patents.
NOTE AGAIN this is a protest measure not as a result of any lawsuits!
Dave
http://www.linux.org is up.
The protest is against upcoming European software patent legislation that could effectively stop not only much open source software but also a great deal of commercial independent software as well. In a nutshell it would require every software developer to pay recurring patent and licensing fees for seemingly trivial things like scrollbars, progress indicators and so on. If this legislation goes through it would be a major disaster, so radical action to draw attention to the stupidity of it is urgently needed.
This isn’t about SCO. Sheesh, doesn’t anyone actually read more than a paragraph at a time anymore?
How is anyone relating this to SCO anyway? IBM has the software patents, SCO has copyright issues.
i don’t know this is samething, visit,
http://www.freecraft.org
then you will see this message, like below
“If you’re wondering what happened to the old site, please read this:
FreeCraft Cease and Desisted by Blizzard
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/21/1323249&mode=thre…
If you have a hosting site located outside the U.S.A. with a speedy Internet upload connection,
or if you can remember the domain name of the ***craft.org site the guy on Slashdot opened,
then please send mail to:
hosting suggestions AT freecraft.org (one word)
You can write in English, German, French, Spanish, or Italian.
Please do not use this link to send email with suggestions or questions about the game —
just about web hosting. Thank you. Let’s get this up and running soon.”
WTF is this?
Is europe now in kohoots with the USA when it comes to protecting big business, illegal monopolies, and frivolous lawsuits?!
As if putting forth a proposal in the UK to install monitor chips in people’s cars to jot down every single moving & parking violation and then transmiting it to nearby receivers! what the hell is wring with the europeans?! (and the americans for supporting the RIAA bullies for that matter)
Jeezes, people, read the link. This is not some wide scale legal action from SCO or Microsoft. This is part of the protest against software patents. Tomorrow there will also be held a small demonstration against software patents in Brussels.
“As if putting forth a proposal in the UK to install monitor chips in people’s cars to jot down every single moving & parking violation and then transmiting it to nearby receivers!”
They should cars are dangerous and the way people drive them they are too careless.
http://www.gimp.org/
also down.
the sites aren’t actually down because of patents. If IP law keeps going the way it has over the past century it would not surprise me if this happened in the future due to some draconian patent law.
What do these websites have in common? They don’t say anything about what their websites are for.
You might want to know that when this directive passes, ANY UI WITH SCROLLBARS BECOMES IP VIOLATION IN GERMANY!
Some fool has patented scrollbars there, this patent was granted, so *everyone in Germany who wants to implement a scrollbar should get a costly license*.
The website that is down now lists a small code snippet which would become IP violation:
echo “———-”
echo -e ”
”
for x; 0; 10 do
echo -n ‘#’
sleep 1
done
Doesn’t anybody see how stuuppid this would be?
Additionally, the AGUL (or so) has patented the 35-hour work week in France. It’s not valid at the moment, but when the directive passes, ANY BUSINESS IN FRANCE who switches to the 35-hour work week SHOULD GET A LICENSE OR IT WILL VIOLATE IP!
And the site also mentions that almost the entire directive corresponds LITERALLY to a suggestion done by the BSA,
Slashdot and OSNews should protest as well!
There is a lot of ignorance in comments about this (SCO? defacement?). Some of it is clearly willful. Some of it may be due to ffii.org being down. There was a slashdot story about this yesterday, to which I would refer those who are curious about the issue but not informed:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/08/26/0147202&mode=thread…
I like the way http://savannah.gnu.org/ did the protest. The site isn’t “closed”, but the front page has been altered to raise awareness.
I havent even seen a story about this on /. yet
In response to:
How does this help? Almost everyone who uses the sites noted are (or should be) already aware of the problems with software patents.
I can say that I were aware of this but havent done anything at all, but when I was reminded visiting the gnome.org site I begun to email the diffrent media availible in Sweden, Tv Newspaper. Hope someone picks up on it and get it out to the public.
It is patented at the EPA in Munich, i.e. in the whole EU.
So it’s also patented in the Netherlands.
I just lost a lot of respect for gnome, kde and all others involved in this. Everyone has the right to protest and say their opinions, they want to close down their sites? fine! but they sure as hell don’t have to right to flood other people web sites.
In my view, doing this will only make the general public look at the open source movement as a bunch of thieves that want to steel other peoples code and not pay for it, when it isn’t the case.
Also IMHO i think Arlene McCarthy’s proposal seems very fair [http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,975126,00.html], it *DOES NOT ALLOW SOMEONE TO COPYRIGHT SCROLLBARS*, so STFU, this directive even allows reverse engineering. And finally Stallman (which started all this) as no right to come to europe acting like some sort of messiah and stir thing up, it’s europeans that decide on this not him, are there no europeans on the fsf?
Sagres wrote:
> I just lost a lot of respect for gnome, kde and all others
> involved in this. Everyone has the right to protest and say
> their opinions, they want to close down their sites? fine!
> but they sure as hell don’t have to right to flood other
> people web sites.
This is pure misinformation. How did they flood other people’s web sites? They didn’t.
Why is everyone saying these sites are down? I have yet to find one that doesn’t have a link to the actual site… So long as they aren’t stopping the flow of information due to this, I think its a good thing. Like has been said, its about getting the word out. Getting the word out is one thing, but people still will want to get at the information and continue as normal…
Patents should not be anything to do with governments, they should be for a company to protect. The company created the patents, not the government. I find it hard to beleive they have nothing better to talk about in the entire EU then software patents. It kinda sickens me, I would love to find out the reasoning for this law change proposal…
PS, for all those that have said “this does nothing”, did you know the EU was going to be discussing this law before reading this article? I doubt it, so I guess it is doing some good. It’s like I always say ‘a bad reaction is better then no reaction at all’.
“getting the word out. How many people actually knew about this proposed law before this protest was up? Not many I’m guessing. And now? Quite a few more most likely.”
Patent battle to culminate in Brussels
http://news.com.com/2100-1012_3-5068007.html
Slashdot discussion
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/08/26/0147202&mode=thread…
“getting the word out. How many people actually knew about this proposed law before this protest was up? Not many I’m guessing. And now? Quite a few more most likely.”
This has to be the dumbest most stupid thing I have ever seen come out of the open source community. I mean honestly. How asshead stupid can these people be?
“Hey. I know. Lets make a political protest, and in the process, lets make it so that our users can’t get any support, etc.”
Let this be a lesson to all the businesses considering moving to open source. DON’T. Because this is the kind of assheaded stupidity among the open source community. They are more interested in making a political statement than they are in supporting their users. This is not accomplishing anything other than punishing their users, and likely costing some corporate customers MONEY because of the fact that they can’t go to the Web page for support.
These people have no business sense at all. And there is going to be major backlash from users and customers about this.
winehq.com, and of course autopackage.org
“I have yet to find one that doesn’t have a link to the actual site… So long as they aren’t stopping the flow of information due to this”
Yeah. But it is very misleading with the giant “THIS PAGE CLOSED” header at the top. Many people are going to miss the tiny link that says “go to this page”.
Yet another reason to hate the EU. What a f*cking joke the EU has evolved into. Any country that willing enters the EU must either be stupid or blind, and possibly both.
>> These people have no business sense at all. And there is going to be major backlash from users and customers about this.
These people do have business sense, they’re trying to make sure their business (making Open Source Software) isn’t killed by the big companies.
For some OSS developers it’s their live, for you it’s obviously not.
Moron.
> Many people are going to miss the tiny link that says “go to this page”.
That’s because there’s a lot of dumb people around: today I visited one of my usual linux news sites in italian. It has the protest homepage and the link.
Clicked and read my news.
Oh, and in case you didn’t notice, this is a protest. Don’t strikes also cause disservice? They certainly do! Are they completely useless? I don’t like them, but I don’t think so: they work pretty well to build pressure…
Bye, Renato
“Everyone has the right to protest and say their opinions, they want to close down their sites? fine! but they sure as hell don’t have to right to flood other people web sites.”
That’s true as well. I wonder how upset the sites linked to are going to be when they get their hosting bill next month?
“And finally Stallman (which started all this)”
Does anyone actually take Stallman seriously? I mean the guy is the worst rabble rouser in the open source movement. He exagerates, makes claims that aren’t true, and spins more than a gyroscope.
No Stallman… Those of us who have been around awhile still have not forgotten your days of trolling to comp.lang.tcl and your “WHY YOU SHOULD NOT USE TCL” posts that you made to that forum.
Stallman is a rable rouser and a troll.
Dear Mr. Anonymous,
All that these sites have done is replace their front page with a page informing people of an EU directive on software patents that is under consideration. You do like to be informed don’t you? You can still get to the sites quite easily, because the protest pages all contain a link to proceed to the regular site.
Let this be a lesson to all the businesses considering moving to open source. DON’T. Because this is the kind of assheaded stupidity among the open source community. They are more interested in making a political statement than they are in supporting their users. This is not accomplishing anything other than punishing their users, and likely costing some corporate customers MONEY because of the fact that they can’t go to the Web page for support.
LISTEN YOU DUMBASSED FOOL – ALL THE SITES HAVE LINKS THROUGH TO THEIR NORMAL CONTENT</>
Sorry to have to shout but half the people here aren’t reading or listeneing.
“Hey. I know. Lets make a political protest, and in the process, lets make it so that our users can’t get any support, etc.”
Question, have you been to any of the sites protesting? If you have then you would see that each one offers a link to their site, they are not leaving users without support, they have simply altered their front page. There is a link that says “To enter this site click here” and guess what when you click it you can enter the site. I suggest you get your facts straight before you start ranting
Who Can File For A Patent?
¶24 The first step in getting a patent is to file a patent application. Even at this early stage European patent law differs from American law. In the U.S., the person who may claim a patent for an invention must be the inventor.59 This is known as the first-to-invent rule, a rule that, though seemingly fairer on its face, has proved troublesome at times.60 Europe is more pragmatic; whoever files a patent application first is presumed to be the inventor (first-to-file rule).61 The purpose of the first-to-file system is to discourage inventors from withholding an invention, while at the same time unburdening the patent office.62
As i live in europe i cliam to have invented the wheel,
therefore all who use anything with a wheel would be so kind to pay me -with acception for GNU users, they my cycle for free_.
(just to keep things light).
> IMHO i think Arlene McCarthy’s proposal seems very fair
> [http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,975126,00.html]
I’d agree with you, but the article you linked to (written by Ms. McCarthy herself) is actually misleading (I’d use the word ‘lie’, but I’ll leave that up to you)
If you happen to have some spare time, go read the proposal… then read the article and have a good laugh (not!)
“These people do have business sense, they’re trying to make sure their business (making Open Source Software) isn’t killed by the big companies.”
Which they aren’t going to do by alienating their users, which is what this stupid protest does.
“For some OSS developers it’s their live, for you it’s obviously not.”
Bullshit. Most OSS developers do it as a hobby. They have full time programming jobs somewhere else, often at, god forbid, one of those big commercial software companies… Which, by the way, put food on their table so that they can actually take time to write oss instead of having to work 3 jobs.
“Oh, and in case you didn’t notice, this is a protest. Don’t strikes also cause disservice? They certainly do!”
Except strikes are legal. This protest might be illegal. (non-profit using donation supported bandwidth to make a political statement.)
“All that these sites have done is replace their front page with a page informing people of an EU directive on software patents that is under consideration. You do like to be informed don’t you?”
Which a simple headline would have done just as well. That’s how I like to be informed. And those who CARE would have clicked on the headline link. Those who don’t care aren’t going to read it no matter what. All they are going to do is get pissed off at this abnoxious page.
http://www.gimp.org is down too.
“LISTEN YOU DUMBASSED FOOL – ALL THE SITES HAVE LINKS THROUGH TO THEIR NORMAL CONTENT</> ”
I realize that. Many users won’t since the headline is misleading, and the link is somewhat burried.
“Sorry to have to shout but half the people here aren’t reading or listeneing.”
Bah. Don’t apologize. All you do by shouting is prove my point, which is that open sourse zealots are more interested in shooting their mouth off than in providing any kind of meaningful service to their users.
This is pure misinformation. How did they flood other people’s web sites? They didn’t.
http://swpat.ffii.org/ was down when i wrote that, they could have just placed a link instead of the auto redirector.
Gimp web site:
“Due to Software Patents, this website is not running anymore!”
That is false information. The headline is downright lying. Because the Web site is running. You just need to click a burried link to get to it. So any user who assumes that gimp.org is going to tell them the truth, instead of LYING to them, is going to take this statement at face value and assume that the gimp website isn’t running right now.
“This is pure misinformation. How did they flood other people’s web sites? They didn’t.”
Sure they did. They flooded the Web sites of the people making the software patent protest.
If I were these people, I would send KDE, GNOME, GIMP, etc., my hosting bill for next month and demand that they pay it. I’d be willing to bet these software patent sites are going to have a several thousand dollar hosting bill next month due to the traffic generated by KDE, GNOME, GIMP, etc. They should have mirrored the site. Not redirected millions of hits to a site which I am sure does not have the finances to pay the bandwidth bill they will be getting.
See the Debian site http://www.debian.org for a way of doing it that actually makes sense.
It’s a header at the top of the page. It doesn’t mislead me into thinking the site is closed when it really isn’t. It’s relatively small and unobtrusive. And it gets my attention so that if I am interested, I will go read about it, but if I am not, I won’t get pissed off at the intrusion.
The other sites aren’t doing it this way, GIMP being the worst offender with their downright false header stating the site is not running.
BTW, the fact that they didn’t mirror has made this protest rather ineffective anyway.
The site they are pointing to is being so flooded I can’t even get to it. I just keep getting “request timed out”.
Yet another reason to hate the EU. What a f*cking joke the EU has evolved into. Any country that willing enters the EU must either be stupid or blind, and possibly both.
A joke is having people put on jail for reverse engineering DeCSS (wich this EU directive allows). A joke is having SCO sue linux on american courts! A joke is having the RIAA suing school kids. A joke is the american legislation on GM foods. A joke is the USA view on the kyoto protocol. Those are jokes, my friend, not this.
As i live in europe i cliam to have invented the wheel
And I will reverse engineer it: O
There, see how that works
“A joke is having the RIAA suing school kids.”
A little off topic, but what other choice did RIAA have? Let’s not forget that RIAA had pretty much exausted their other legal options before they resorted to suing the people providing the files.
Besides, don’t forget that you are required to show that you are taking steps to protect your copyright if you want to maintain it. If you let people violate your copyright and don’t do anything about it, then later on a court may say your copyright is invalid because you didn’t do anything to protect it.
I’m an author, and I know I wouldn’t be too happy if people were making illegal copies of my books instead of buying them. The only difference? Its much harder for someone to illegally copy an entire 400 page book than it is for someone to copy a CD. (And by the time they pay the copying costs for a 400 page book, it might have been cheaper for them to just buy the book).
>> Bullshit. Most OSS developers do it as a hobby. They have full time programming jobs somewhere else, often at, god forbid, one of those big commercial software companies… Which, by the way, put food on their table so that they can actually take time to write oss instead of having to work 3 jobs.
I was hoping you would be smart enough to get the point..
Software patents are not bad only for FOSS.
Nicolas Roard, who is often here, has made a good explanation on his website. http://www.roard.com/
(Sorry, it’s perhaps long, but it’s worth to read it.)
In protest against the directive validating Software Patents that will be voted this 1rst September at the European Parliament, I have decided to put this information page.
Should this proposal be enacted, it would merely sign the end of innovation and freedom in software.
In fact, previous enquiry from the European Commission shown that a large majority (around ninety percents) of european programmers and software business interrogated were against software patents. The commission then simply choose to discard this embarassing result (yes, it is unbelievable).
Software patents are a bad thing because :
* contrary to “classic” patents, software patents works on ideas, not on some material innovation. Simply because software are that, ideas, mathematics algorithms. Thus, applying a patent to a program, an algorithm, is simply equivalent to patent ideas — because a computer isn’t just a machine, but an all-purpose, universal, machine.
* softwares doesn’t use a single unique idea, but many ideas at once. Moreover, the process of programming is entirely incremental. Thus it is very difficult to apply correctly the idea of patents to computers, because of the software complexity, and because many of thoses ideas are straightforward if taken separately. What’s worth in a software isn’t generally a specific idea, but the combination of thoses ideas, and what’s more important, in a working program. Just having the idea without a workable implementation is not worth the paper it’s written on.
* This software complexity leads to many problems if we want to have software patents : we’ll need computer sciences specialist highly competent to evaluate the patents applications, and highly aware of the prior art. It’s irrealist : computer sciences researchers themselves don’t have the time to read everything which is publicated in the computer science world.
* Patents are a state monopoly accorded to the inventors, to reward them temporarly of their research costs. It could be interesting in a field where innovation is difficult or low. But in computer science, it doesn’t seems that innovation is low or that people needs a particular incentive to create new programs !
* Patents are temporar monopoly, but the current period of a that monopoly (20 years) is incredibly inadequate to the quick market of computers, where a product turnover is often measured in months.
* Furthermore, softwares doesn’t need the patents protection, because they are already instantanetly protected under the copyright laws. Patents are very costly and must be defended in court …
* The effect of software patents in Europe will simply be to shut a number of small business and independant programmers, as big multinational software companies will use patents to shut down annoying concurrents. Problem is, innovation in computer science and software comes very often from small companies and universities, neither of them will have the money to buy patents or correctly defend their few patents in court.
* Patent’s aim is to describe inventions, so that they won’t be lost and that everybody could use them after the initial monopoly period. But currently, nobody reads patents, because they are unreadable by anyone but lawyers (and I could assure you that they aren’t easily readable by an engineer — a shame). The reason patents are scrambled like that is simple : to try to maximize the application domain of the patent, using the fuzziest words possible. The result is that companies are sued for use of patents they didn’t even knew about, and that are anyway fuzzy enough to be unusable from a technical point of view.
To sum up, software patents will likely result in a loss of innovation in Europe (the exact opposite theorically result), as stated in all economic studies on this subject. It should be noted that the economical council of the EU concluded to a similar position, only to be simply not taken in account by the commission.
Software patents will only benefit to IP lawyers, Patents Office (as they have a financial interest to validate all the patents they could, which could be an explanation for the exceptionally poor quality of the patents currently awarded), and big companies. It will also give an unfair advantage to USA corporations, as patents in USA exists since around twenty years, bypassing the heavy opposition at that time. And we could see, two decades later, that the effect on the US software industry resulted in many silly examples of court cases, crush of small competitors by the big software companies, etc.
Why do we need to follow blindly the USA ? Why would we want to impose the software patents system while copyright works well enough to protect automatically softwares ? Why would we want to patent ideas ?
“The only difference? Its much harder for someone to illegally copy an entire 400 page book than it is for someone to copy a CD.”
Oh yeah… This is one reason e-books haven’t caught on very well with authors. They are simply too easy to steal and make illegal copies of. Unfortunately, until the technology is available to prevent this, we will probably be mostly stuck in a world where we continue to cut down trees to create paper books.
http://swpat.ffii.org/ was down when i wrote that, they could have just placed a link instead of the auto redirector.
Sure they did. They flooded the Web sites of the people making the software patent protest.
Most of the protest pages are based on recommend boilerplate from ffii.org: http://swpat.ffii.org/group/demo/index.en.html. (I think that is the correct link, but can’t confirm at the moment.)
Somehow I don’t buy your faux concern for the welfare of ffii.org.
“I was hoping you would be smart enough to get the point.. ”
The point is that OSS is not their livlihood. So no, this protest is NOT protecting their livlihood. Because of that, it is entirely different than a strike.
BTW, notice another habit of the open source animal. Insulting someone’s intelligence without providing an explination.
without providing an explination.
Please read my earlier post
Cheers
i realise now its nothing to do with sco, however when i read it at first all it said was
Multiple readers submitted this newsbit: Linux related websites all over the net are down “due to software patents. Spotted so far are: the Gnome website, the KDE website, and Knoppix homepage. All pages point a visitor to http://swpat.ffii.org.
with :we will update more as we know…. and the
http://swpat.ffii.org. site was down, and gnomes site reffered me there for info, so please dont consider me ‘ignorant’ as one poster mentioned,
no, i was just trying to come to a conclusion based on a quick observation of what i saw/read here and on gnomes site.
cheers
anyweb
This is perhaps the stupidest idea I’ve heard of in quite some time. All they’re doing by doing this is hurting theirselves and lowering their credibility. The software patents law will pass in the EU whether we and they like it or not.
I was considering switching my machines over to using pure open software for both the OS and applications, but with such pre-school nonsense tactics like this, it makes me seriously reconsider…
“Linux related websites all over the net are down “due to software patents. Spotted so far are: the Gnome website, the KDE website, and Knoppix homepage. All pages point a visitor to http://swpat.ffii.org.”
Which is also a very distorted and inaccurate headline. Whoever submitted this post either:
1. Didn’t research it themselves.
2. Is guilty of the typical oss zealot exageration
The demo.en.html from http://swpat.ffii.org/ is to scary! People should be redirected to the ‘normal’ website. And there should only be a link to http://swpat.ffii.org/ instead of a redirect. This will decrease the load on ffii.org webserver as well.
My homepage is an example of this.
Seeiing that you are so smart when we are so stupid suggest us a good idea!
It’s not a stupid thing to protest in any legal way you can to make other hear your position. We are not fighting agaist a law which impose us to paint black the case but against a law which put our liberty in a cage.
If you consider that stupid perhaps YOU are the stupid.
Don’t be so sure the law will pass and the next time, please, think before calling stupid other people who think different from you.
regards,
Jones
This way is the only way to really get through to visitors. It’s a “if patents come true, this is how the site will look in the future” (without the link to the original site offcourse).
It has allot more impact than just a little news article that everybody forgets within an hour.
“It’s not a stupid thing to protest in any legal way you can to make other hear your position. We are not fighting agaist a law which impose us to paint black the case but against a law which put our liberty in a cage.”
It IS stupid when you are trying to convince businesses and corporations that open source should be taken seriously. The way this protest is being conducted is childish, and doesn’t reflect well on the open source movement to business managers considering switching to open source.
“If you consider that stupid perhaps YOU are the stupid.”
No. Those who decided protesting his manner don’t have a clue though.
“think before calling stupid other people who think different from you.”
I did think. And I say again, these people running these web site have no business sense at all. How can they actually expect to attract corporate users and such when they are engaging in such childish protests? There are better ways to protect your interests than childish protests like this.
I’m about to go out and buy a copy of XP and ditch OSS forever! I’m sick and tired of all these politcal activists that have taken linux by the neck.
It’s a crazy mob mentality!!
Why doesn’t the the OSS community just GROW UP and stop acting like a bunch of babies!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It IS stupid when you are trying to convince businesses and corporations that open source should be taken seriously. The way this protest is being conducted is childish, and doesn’t reflect well on the open source movement to business managers considering switching to open source.
Businesses will only look at the bottom line, and if the protest is explained well, they will understand that what’s at stake here is the “healthy being” (survival is too strong?) of this “OpenSource cheap-and-useful thingy”.
For the rest of us, we just want to have this software around in a few years from now, that’s all…
“I’m about to go out and buy a copy of XP and ditch OSS forever! I’m sick and tired of all these politcal activists that have taken linux by the neck.”
I agree 100%. I remember back when I first started using Linux. This was before even Slackware existed. None of this political crap existed back then.
But I grew sick of Linux for the same reasons you are now. Linux has become nothing more than a hotbed for anti-establishmentarianism. It’s become a hotbed of rebels who have a “no one is going to tell me what to do” attitude, and “I’m going to throw a temper tantrum anytime someone tries to tell me what to do” attitude.
Linux is no longer the domain of programmers and hackers. It is the domain of anti-establishment fundamental extremism. And I didn’t want any part of it anymore.
That’s the main reason I switched to FreeBSD. (Which, BTW, is NOT engaging in this childish protest).
“Businesses will only look at the bottom line.”
Sure. But do you know how many things go into the bottom line? One of the things is TCO, total cost of ownership. If software doesn’t work well and decreases the efficency of the business, than they might be better off buying expensive software that suits their needs better. It is cheaper in the long run.
One of the things that businesses are going to look at it professional image. It’s why you don’t show up in bluejeans and a NIN teeshirt when trying to close a deal with a buisness client. Professional image says a lot about the quality of the product or service you are considering using. And the way this protest is being conducted does not present a professional image. It presents a childish image. It presents an image of anti-establishmentarianism. It presents an image of rebels. It presents an image that scares corporations and businesses away.
“I did think. And I say again, these people running these web site have no business sense at all. How can they actually expect to attract corporate users and such when they are engaging in such childish protests? There are better ways to protect your interests than childish protests like this. ”
What is the point of selling a product if the freedom to create the product is taken away from us?
Business sense is useless if you don’t have anything to sell and this law will hinder academic research, Free Software development and small business software development.
In the long term, software patents mean that all of our software will either be illegal or be highly priced products created by large corporations with vast collections of frivolous software patents.
That means no hobby OSes, no alternative OSes, no Free Software OSes and no Free Software to run on those OSes.
Surely, as a reader of a site focused on alternative OSes, that isn’t something you want?
And the law isn’t inevitable. MEPs have a tendency to be more accessible than, for example, normal MPs here in the UK. We managed to get the EUCD delayed and put under reconsideration. We also managed to get the UK government to reconsider their plans for identity cards.
We can prevent this law. It just requires people to stand up and say something.
That’s what these websites are doing. And it’s something that has to be done.
Well, http://www.vim.org has it as well.
“What is the point of selling a product if the freedom to create the product is taken away from us?
Business sense is useless if you don’t have anything to sell and this law will hinder academic research, Free Software development and small business software development.”
I’m not suggesting they shouldn’t protect what they think are their rights. I’m suggesting that this childish protest is not the way to do it. It projects a very unprofessional image. It projects an image of extremism and anti-establishmentarianism–both of which frighten corporate customers. These two things alone are often enough reason for a corporation to steer clear of a product.
What I’m suggesting, is that a small simple header explaining the situation would have portrayed a more professional image than replacing their entire home page with an abnoxious and misleading heading about the web site being closed in protest.
One of the things that businesses are going to look at it professional image.
Suits and PR notes, yes. but don’t worry, “Anonymous”, that business image will still be projected by the actual companies that distribute and are involved in Open Source (RedHat, SuSE, IBM, Novell/Ximian, etc..).
But please don’t dismiss the protest of core projects (Gnome, KDE, Apache, Gimp if you want) as childish, they see a real threat in their future and they are just pointing out.
What I’m suggesting, is that a small simple header explaining the situation would have portrayed a more professional image
Hints like that have been on the GNU website for years, and they never broke the news, I’m sure this will do the job.
It’s not a stupid thing to protest in any legal way you can to make other hear your position. We are not fighting agaist a law which impose us to paint black the case but against a law which put our liberty in a cage.
1) IMHO it’s stupid to mix gnome, kde, or whatever software project with politics.
2) It’s not a law, it’s a EU directive: http://www.euireland.ie/LegalRights/sources.htm
3) Freedom goes both ways, you can’t take someones freedom to make money from their own criations, wich required investment of time, money and brain use without at least having to spend some time yourself trying to reverse eng. it.
“but don’t worry, “Anonymous”, that business image will still be projected by the actual companies that distribute and are involved in Open Source (RedHat, SuSE, IBM, Novell/Ximian, etc..).”
Businesses research better than that. They are going to look at the GIMP site for example, and say “These are the guys that wrote this software? Thanks, but no thanks.”
“But please don’t dismiss the protest of core projects (Gnome, KDE, Apache, Gimp if you want) as childish, they see a real threat in their future and they are just pointing out.”
It is childish. And it portrays an image of extremism and rebels. Yes, I dismiss it as nothing more than that.
1) Lets see Linux is a bunch of zealots who just wanna shake the man
2) Your stupid. No YOUR stupid. Uh-uh I said it first
3) All oss users/developers/etc work for major companies and its just a hobby.
Well I dont think i’m an anti-establishment zealot, I just have severe problems with microsofts business practices I find them anti-capitalist, short sighted and greedy, if that makes me a zealot so be it. I’ve sold product for them for years and I know the terms and agreements we as a business had to submit to. It just my opinion I dont like the way they do things. So buying a copy of xp and swearing off OSS because of a noisy few seems extreme to me.
Calling anyone stupid is generally a waste a time for discussions, fun maybe but advancing your point at all no.
I used to work for an IT company setting up and maintaining freebsd, and some linux servers. I sure as hell wouldnt want a perfectly legitimate way of making money stolen from me by someone who claims to have invented scroll bars.
“Hints like that have been on the GNU website for years, and they never broke the news, I’m sure this will do the job.”
BTW, no one takes GNU seriously thanks to Stallman. Stallman is the most extreme of the extreme. If he had his way, all forms of commercial software would be illegal and it would be impossible to patent anything that was a software algorithm.
Not only that, but Stallman is a confirmed troll and a rable rouser. I think there are a great many people even in the open source community who shy away from Stallman.
“I sure as hell wouldnt want a perfectly legitimate way of making money stolen from me by someone who claims to have invented scroll bars.”
No one is going to be able to patent scrollbars. That is pure FUD being propegated by the oss extremists.
The OSS movement isn’t about making IBM and Apple comfortable. The movement doesn’t exclude businesses either, but it certainly isn’t bound to their wishes.
I agree with those who sincerely suggest that many sites did not handle the protest in the best way possible. I hope the community does better next time. I think both Savannah and Debian handled the protest well, for example.
I think the real agenda of some people is clear. Some people don’t agree that software patents are bad, which is fine. I encourage those people to makes posts here or on their own web pages defending that position, to write polite letters of protest, etc. However, frothing at the mouth about what gnome.org puts on gnome.org’s own web site is childish. Doubly so since it was a single page, with a single short paragraph, that was so easily bypassed.
Software patents are a hindrance to everyone who seeks to compete fairly, including businesses. Consider these words from R. Jordan Greenhall, CEO of Divx Networks in testimony at FTC/DOJ hearings:
“I have no idea whether my product infringes on upwards of 120 different patents, all of which are held by large companies who could sue me without thinking about it. The end result, much like Borland, I have now issued a directive that we reallocate roughly 20 to 35 percent of our developers’ resources and sign on two separate law firms to increase our patent portfolio to be able to engage in the patent spew conflict.”
The above is from:
http://www.ftc.gov/opp/intellect/020227trans.pdf
Please stop trolling. Calling people names will never help you get your point across. Another thing not all FreeBSD are this eletist and/or closed minded.
Scrollbars ARE already patented in the EU. It just cannot be enforced yet, because the patent was granted when the law didn’t allow it.
“Please stop trolling. Calling people names will never help you get your point across. Another thing not all FreeBSD are this eletist and/or closed minded.”
I’m NOT trolling. I’m venting frustration about what Linux and much of OSS has become. I’m frustrated about it has gone from a community project being developed by people with technical curiosity, to a hotbed of extremism.
“Another thing not all FreeBSD are this eletist and/or closed minded.”
FreeBSD is more business oriented. It always has been. It’s a difference of philosophy. FreeBSD is organized more like a business, having a board of directors, etc. Linux, on the other hand, is much more loosely organized, and less business oriented. (Which is interesting considering they are targetting businesses as clients).
“Scrollbars ARE already patented in the EU. It just cannot be enforced yet.”
And it never will be enforcable. It’s trivial and obvious and will be struck down the first time anyone attempts to enforce it.
“Software patents are a hindrance to everyone who seeks to compete fairly, including businesses.”
I disagree. But I think that it has been abused in the past and that the patent office needs technically oriented people who can better make decisions about what software deserves a patent and what doesn’t. Example, Amazon’s one click ordering system was a stupid patent.
But on the other hand, suppose I develop some wizbang new sorting algorithm that can sort a list 100 times faster than any other algorithm currently in existence. If I’m a software company who actually has to PAY my programmers, what is my motivation for developing such an algorithm? My motivation is that I can patent it and get rich on it. Take away my ability to patent it, and my incentive for developing it is gone. My incentive to PAY my programmers to develop such an algorithm is gone. Because if I can’t patent it, what will happen is I will spend tons of money on R&D to develop the algorithm, and then not be able to recover my expenses because the GNU leaches will just steal it and put it all over the place for free.
Yes, software patents need to be revamped. It didn’t take any R&D money to program a one click ordering system that uses cookies, so Amazon should never have gotten a patent on that. But completely abolishing software patents will mean far fewer R&D dollars available to fund software engineering research. Companies aren’t going to give a grant to a University PhD candidate if they can’t get some kind of kickback when he develops some useful software algorithm.
I have just one thing for you:
# ln -sf /dev/brain .
Software patents are a hindrance to everyone who seeks to compete fairly, including businesses. Consider these words from R. Jordan Greenhall, CEO of Divx Networks in testimony at FTC/DOJ hearings:
?I have no idea whether my product infringes on upwards of 120 different patents, all of which are held by large companies who could sue me without thinking about it. The end result, much like Borland, I have now issued a directive that we reallocate roughly 20 to 35 percent of our developers? resources and sign on two separate law firms to increase our patent portfolio to be able to engage in the patent spew conflict.?
How ironic, considering “Divx networks” basically ripped off opendivx (this led to the development of xvid) and they still have the nerve to come say and they want to make money out of mpeg4 without paying any licence. Oh yeah! that’s a “hindrance to everyone who seeks to compete fairly” allright.
After all, this shouting is not that bad. See how many old rich guys have made so much money and they still want more? They want to make us think that something is right and something is wrong… This is just not true. OSS projects have (theoretically) as much freedom to cry out as these old blokes have the right to say OSS are just a bunch of bad guys.
I mean, they have already tried to convert us to people who’d eat anything they’d been offered constantly living in hallucination. Maybe it’s time to wake up and think for once about what the rich are going to do next to enforce their rule. Silently. You’re going to think you’ve retained your freedom while actually it will not be true anymore then.
“I have just one thing for you: # ln -sf /dev/brain .”
I’m sorry to hear that’s the best argument you can come up with instead of contributing something useful. But I guess I shouldn’t have expected anything more than this from someone as clueless on real issues as you are.
http://autopackage.org/
Clue: There are some things bigger in this world than putting a good face towards business users. Software patents have been a giant pain in the US, and if they get passed in the EU, they will open up OSS developers to lots of trivial lawsuits. It does them more harm to not protest than it does for them to protest. If a few stupid PHBs look at the protest site and decide not to buy into OSS software, then frankly, the OSS world doesn’t need them. Fortunately, most people in charge of IT at big businesses are not morons. They analyze products based on cost/benifet to them, regardless of the political dealings of particular organizations.
PS> A lot of people seem to have a low opinion of protest. Why? Protest is one of the fundemental ways to get your voice heard in a democracy. It is especially important when you are in a weaker position because you don’t have the money to drench politicians with your personal viewpoint. OSS is fundementally different. OSS organizations are not faceless companies that whore themselves to the status quo. They are individualistic entities that hold certain higher ideals than maximizing quarter profits. If you want to play with OSS, you’re going to have to do it on their terms, not try to mold OSS into your “I’ll trade freedom for cash” mentality.
But on the other hand, suppose I develop some wizbang new sorting algorithm that can sort a list 100 times faster than any other algorithm currently in existence. If I’m a software company who actually has to PAY my programmers, what is my motivation for developing such an algorithm? My motivation is that I can patent it and get rich on it. Take away my ability to patent it, and my incentive for developing it is gone.
Why does the same logic not apply to discoveries but it does to inventions?
Patents grant a monopoly to the holder, preventing free market competition. Economists are rightly wary of monopolies, because, although they have the potential to satisfy demand at the cheapest price, there is no reason for a monopoly not to under supply the market and raise prices, and so they do, unless regulated by governments.
The free market will allow inventors to recoup the costs of research and development, no government grant of monopoly required. The following paper makes this point from a theoretical economics point of view:
http://minneapolisfed.org/research/sr/sr303.pdf
There is also plenty of emperical evidence of innovation in the absence of government grants of monopoly. The paper referenced above mentions several examples of such free markets. In fact, the emperical evidence is that patents retard innovation, not promote it.
“If a few stupid PHBs look at the protest site and decide not to buy into OSS software, then frankly, the OSS world doesn’t need them.”
Yeah. That’s a good attitude. “I don’t need them anyway”. Well, when the last busienss customer leaves OSS for commercial software, they can still be saying that.
“It does them more harm to not protest than it does for them to protest.”
Once again, it’s not the fact that they protested that is the problem. It’s HOW they protested. They did it in a childish and abnoxious manner.
“Fortunately, most people in charge of IT at big businesses are not morons.”
You haven’t dealt with corporate buerocracy very much have you?
“If you want to play with OSS, you’re going to have to do it on their terms, not try to mold OSS into your “I’ll trade freedom for cash” mentality.”
On the contrary. If OSS wants me to use their software as opposed to Microsoft’s software, they are going to have to play on MY TERMS and on the terms of the corporations they are trying to convince to use open source.
If they want to make me try to play on their terms, I won’t play, and neither will the corporations and businesses. And then OSS will be nothing more than a bunch of unemployed programmers on welfare writing software that no one uses. It’s a game of give and take. If they don’t give, no one will play with them.