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LinuxWorld San Francisco 2005 - A Report by Groklaw's Douglas Burns
Friday, August 12 2005 @ 08:40 PM EDT

I asked Groklaw's News Picks Editor, Douglas Burns, to go to LinuxWorld and be our eyes and ears there. He has filed his first report, and I hope those of you who wonder if a patent commons is useful or who don't see the point of other legal strategies friends of FOSS have been coming up with to try to deal with the SCO's and Microsofts of this world will note that he reports from attending Daniel Egger's speech that Microsoft has apparently been telling people that they have patents being infringed by the LAMP stack, Wine and Samba. I've heard rumors they were doing this too, for some time, from other sources, but I have yet to hear what specific patents they were hinting about. Egger comments it might be all a bluff, a sophisticated form of FUD. If any of you are at companies that have been approached that way and know what patents they are allegedly hinting about, I'd surely like to know about it.

To those who say, instead of a patents commons, just publish, because the US is a first-to-publish, not first-to-file country, please note there is a patent "reform" bill working its way through Congress as we speak that intends to reverse that. And to other gainsayers, I would suggest you consider this:

  • Are you a lawyer?
  • Do you have all the facts?
  • Have you considered that there is strength in numbers? No individual FOSS programmer or even vendor can negotiate a patent cross-license. But if there is a place where everyone puts their patents, then you have something to talk to aggressors about.

Sometimes folks are negative because they feel something isn't a perfect solution, and they argue in effect that there's no use in a slingshot when your enemy is coming at you with a sword. But when you are in a fight for your life, you use what you have, and as you may remember, it worked for David against Goliath, after everyone told him he was nuts to even try.

Speaking of FUD, I have a copy of the email Microsoft sent out to journalists inviting them to lunch.

Here's a snip:

Why spend 10 bucks on a burger at Moscone when you can have a slice on Microsoft? Come join the Microsoft Embedded group at Moscone Pizza (across the street from the Moscone Center) on Tuesday, August 9 from 1pm - 4pm for lunch and discussion on the Windows Embedded operating systems. Product managers Mike Hall and Dan Javnozon will be available to provide demos of Windows Embedded developer tools and answer questions about Microsoft's strengths in the embedded space.

For instance, did you know... .

• Microsoft embraces shared source, and makes more than 2.5 million lines of source code broadly available to customers, partners, developers, governments, academicians and other interested individuals. In fact, more than 275,000 developers have downloaded Windows CE Shared Source

• Microsoft offers a shared success model that translates to low up-front investments for device makers, in addition to faster time-to-market. The Windowsembedded motto? "We don't make money until you do."

• Windows Embedded designs, on average, get to market 43% faster, on average, than embedded Linux designs - 14.3 months with embedded Linux vs.. 8.1 months with embedded Windows; 14.2 engineers with embedded Linux vs.. 7.9 engineers with embedded Windows (Embedded Market Forecasters, November 2003)

• Windows Embedded designs, on average, cost 75% less to bring to market than embedded Linux designs. (Embedded Market Forecasters, November 2003)

I'll be in touch to gauge your interest in setting up a one-on-one briefing with Mike or Dan during the lunch.

A little nauseating, don't you think (love the carrot -- a one-on-one -- which is hard for journalists to turn down), to set up camp across the street and trash talk Linux at LinuxWorld?

Burns also mentions that the Microsoft Linux Lab session was well attended. I believe that falls into the category of keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. If I had been there, I'd have attended that session too, even though I would prefer that Microsoft never be given a platform at any FOSS conference, personally. Shared source is not Open Source even, and it for sure isn't Free Software, and don't ever kid yourself about it. It's Brand X, and there is no reason to settle for so little.

*******************************

LinuxWorld San Francisco 2005 Aug 8-11
~ by Douglas Burns

You may have noticed that the News Picks section of Groklaw has not been updated much this week. I have been at LinuxWorld all week. I had a great time, met a lot of very interesting people from around the world, and learned some interesting things about Linux and the open source community. The only complaint I have was that WiFi at the show was very slow and localized, leading to a lack of posting.

I attended five keynotes, two tutorials, eight conferences, and two birds-of-a-feather sessions. I visited scores of booths and talked with hundreds of people. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and was totally exhausted each day. :)

There was an interesting keynote by Mark Webbink, Deputy General Counsel at Red Hat, and a conference session by Daniel Egger, Founder and Chairman of OSRM, that talked about patents and related legal issues. Most Groklaw readers would have been very familiar with the arguments.

Webbink talked about how patents are no longer being used for innovation, but instead are used as ammunition for companies to maintain monopoly. He cited Microsoft's recent attempt to patent the insertion and removal of white space in documents as two different patents and their twelve current and two pending patents on mouse cursor positioning.

He strongly praised the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) and MySQL for their efforts to defeat the Computer-Implemented Innovations (CII) Directive in Europe. Sun's and Red Hat's efforts in its defeat were also mentioned. The power of the pharmaceutical industry in the current debate on patent reform in the US was talked about. It seems that the industry has succeeded in having the second comment period stricken from the current bill. He encouraged us all to get involved to help restore it.

Egger talked about the legal landscape of open source. It was mainly from the point of view of legal risk. He said "there is a risk, but there is not a technical risk." He said more than once that "it's not that bad" and "the risk is worth it." He talked about the OSRM business model and how he is developing the insurance offerings OSRM provides to companies. He presented his insurance offerings as just another type of business insurance, like auto insurance.

He talked about people sharing with him that Microsoft is saying to its customers that they "have patents on some parts of the LAMP stack, Wine, and Samba." He also said "Microsoft has been very careful to not show the patents and thus they are probably bluffing." This will be an interesting area to keep ours eyes on.

Microsoft presented a very interesting session on their Linux/Open Source Lab. It was by far the best attended session I saw. It was standing room only. Bill Hilf, Lead Program Manager for Microsoft's Platform Strategy organization, gave the presentation.

The Lab is running almost every Linux and BSD distribution (some UNIX's and Windows too) and a wide variety of open source software. He talked about the building of the lab in arguably the most Microsoft-centric organization in the world. He was given a large room and a strand of fiber to the campus network pushed through the wall to start with. Because there was only a limited understanding about Linux networking within Microsoft, the lab was left mostly to itself to figure out how to interface to the campus network and to navigate the corporate proxy/firewall.

Hilf talked about the educational work his team is doing within Microsoft. He and his team visit each of the product groups to help them understand how Linux and OSS work and are developed. He talked about the extensive collection of Virtual PC disk images that the lab provides, which are loaded with Linux and OSS that can be downloaded for testing and use.

One of the main purposes of the lab is the testing of interoperability. He talked about how the lab built a web front end to Samba Torture (smbtorture) so product teams within Microsoft could use it for testing. He mentioned finding a bug and submitting a fix that was accepted. He also talked about providing a fix to GAIM to enable it to work with MSN via their HTTP proxy.

He also mentioned their Windows products and how they are improving interoperability and support through the adoption of standards. It did look somewhat like things might get better for shops where Linux and Windows must coexist, but I have heard this story before. A free (as in beer) copy of Virtual server 2005 and a 180-Day limited use version of Windows Server 2003 were handed out to all in attendance. Very few people turned the offer down.

There was no mention about changing the rhetoric and/or FUD coming out of Microsoft. While Bill Hilf and his team seem to have some respect for open source and the community, I did not see anything that indicated Microsoft is changing its anti-Linux views.

Microsoft did not have a booth on the main floor. They had a competing event across the street, for the media, at a pizza restaurant on Tuesday, August 9 from 1:00 PM - 4:00 PM for lunch and discussion on the Windows Embedded operating systems. I did not go; I had better things to do.

I attended several sessions that talked about Xen and virtualization. The differences between VMware and Xen were also discussed. While most of the information was very technical, two points stood out. First, there is a large effort by many of the main commercial interests in the open source community to standardize on a core set functionality and interfaces. A lot of discussion was about how to bring virtualization support into the main kernel. Second, while not all management software is fully developed, a large number of people see it as the future of enterprise server management. Many people see virtualization as a good way to increase uptime of servers (software) and to reduce the number of servers (hardware) needed.

One of the cool things you can do with virtualization is to move a running server to a different hardware system with little or no noticeable down time. This will be very helpful for systems that must run 24/7. The other great thing about virtualization is that server provisioning only takes a few minutes. If you need a server for testing or some new functionality just start another instance.

One of the interesting things to me will be to watch how virtualization will affect software licensing. The development of multi-core CPU's is putting a lot of pressure on software companies to relax licensing and I predict that virtualization will increase that pressure. If they do not respond in a favorable way, I also predict that an ever increasing number of people will move to OSS to get away from per server licensing silliness.

I enjoyed the birds-of-a-feather session on Windows to Linux Migration. It was well attended and it seemed we all had a good time. One of the main threads of discussion was about whether the migration to Linux on the desktop should be fat clients or server centric. There were those with the big enterprise view who did not see fat clients as the way to go. They mainly saw this as a ROI issue. Others saw the Linux fat client as needing to be on par with MS Windows for migration to happen. In the end we mostly agree that both ways were important if the desktop was going to migrate to Linux.

Two announcements stood out that are worth mentioning. The first was from the Debian Common Core (DCC) Alliance. The members of the alliance are creating a new distribution/standard (repository) of Debian, to be named DCC 3.0. The Alliance wants Debian to be seen as an enterprise distribution and not just for hackers. They made the argument that Debian should be seen as the number two most popular distribution. They plan to upgrade a subset of Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 (aka sarge) it to be LSB 3.0 compliant.

The other announcement was from Novell about SUSE Linux. Novell has started a new project, called openSUSE, to help improve SUSE Linux 10.0 with greater community involvement. As a long time user of SUSE Linux I think this is a great idea. Greater transparency of the development process will not only help Linux in general, but will also help Novell to become more fully a part of the community.

It was very interesting to see the mix of people at the show. While there were a lot of suits, there were also a good number of average folks, and a noticeable number of traditional geek types. I am not sure about the numbers, but it seemed well attended. Everyone looked like they were having a good time. I encourage you to consider going to at least one of the LinuxWorld's shows sometime, if for no other reason than to see how far Linux has come. You will be impressed. I was.


  


LinuxWorld San Francisco 2005 - A Report by Groklaw's Douglas Burns | 118 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Corrections Here Please
Authored by: rm6990 on Friday, August 12 2005 @ 09:02 PM EDT
Corrections Here Please

[ Reply to This | # ]

OT Here
Authored by: rm6990 on Friday, August 12 2005 @ 09:04 PM EDT
OT Here please.

Please also follow the instructions in red below the box where you type your
comment for posting links and other html posting hints (set mode to html when
using these)

[ Reply to This | # ]

Bill Hilf
Authored by: Mecha on Friday, August 12 2005 @ 10:08 PM EDT
"While Bill Hilf and his team seem to have some respect for open source and
the community, I did not see anything that indicated Microsoft is changing its
anti-Linux views."

I believe that is because he has seen first hand how wonderful FOSS and Open
Source Software has become. He is probably a convert by now, but must remain in
the closet for fear of losing his job. Though I do think it was great he found
and fixed some bugs (Even donated it back to the community).

---
************************************************************

I am not clever enough to write a good signature. So this will have to do.

*****************

[ Reply to This | # ]

Thanks Douglas Burns!!!!
Authored by: Mecha on Friday, August 12 2005 @ 10:19 PM EDT
I wanted to go, but having just moved to the west coast and started working for
an Ultra-Pro Microsoft System Intigrator (I know I have my work cut out for
me!!!), I couldn't get any time. Thanks for the info on those scaliwags accross
the street. I bet the beer wasn't free, even if the pizza was.

Well my company knew from the get go I want to support linux. Perhaps they just
hired me to just hedge their bets as they are betting Microsoft remains strong.
That and I am also a very talented Network Engineer (thanks to me farting around
with linux and learning how things really worked).

---
************************************************************

I am not clever enough to write a good signature. So this will have to do.

*****************

[ Reply to This | # ]

Lanham Act?
Authored by: pogson on Friday, August 12 2005 @ 10:31 PM EDT
He talked about people sharing with him that Microsoft is saying to its customers that they "have patents on some parts of the LAMP stack, Wine, and Samba." He also said "Microsoft has been very careful to not show the patents and thus they are probably bluffing." This will be an interesting area to keep ours eyes on

I agree. That sounds a lot like illegal interference in Linux businesses... and somewhat similar to the RH v SCO case in that they are not going after companies distributing Linux but the customers and not showing the goods.

see 15 USC 1125 False Designations

Any person who, on or in connection with any goods or services, or any container for goods, uses in commerce any word, term, name, symbol, or device, or any combination thereof, or any false designation of origin, false or misleading description of fact, or false or misleading representation of fact, which-- (A) is likely to cause confusion, or to cause mistake, or to deceive as to the affiliation, connection, or association of such person with another person, or as to the origin, sponsorship, or approval of his or her goods, services, or commercial activities by another person, or

It is not proper to put down the opponent with lies. If Microsoft were confident in its product and position in the marketplace, it would not need to cheat. If it's products are good, let them say so, not lie about Linux.

---
http://www.skyweb.ca/~alicia/ , my homepage, an eclectic survey of topics: berries, mushrooms, teaching in N. Canada, Linux, firearms and hunting...

[ Reply to This | # ]

Regarding LAMP
Authored by: inode_buddha on Friday, August 12 2005 @ 10:50 PM EDT
Regarding LAMP, isn't that what open standards are for? It seems very much to me
that some folks would *love* to either do away with open standards, or own the
standards.

Hint to the Fords and Rockefellers of our era: open standards does *not*
necessarily mean that you will lose your empire.

---
-inode_buddha
Copyright info in bio

"When we speak of free software,
we are referring to freedom, not price"
-- Richard M. Stallman

[ Reply to This | # ]

LinuxWorld San Francisco 2005 - A Report by Groklaw's Douglas Burns
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, August 13 2005 @ 12:14 AM EDT
Actually, I think the US is "first to invent", not "first to
publish."

Obviously, invention date can be proved by publishing.

[ Reply to This | # ]

LinuxWorld San Francisco 2005 - A Report by Groklaw's Douglas Burns
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, August 13 2005 @ 12:39 AM EDT
It will be interesting to see how GPL 3. handles this patent issue becasue as I
read it (perhaps we could have some lawyer comments on this) the strength of the
GPL is in some ways its Achilles heel in that (with quoting section and verse)
my understandging that the GPL must convey, unencumbered, the freedoms granted
by the licence to user, whether business reseller/value add or end user and that
a patent infringment could be the way I read it put a stick in the spokes.

As much as the afront to me that an idea can be patented, the reality is that
they are awarded in the US and as far as I know here in Oz courtesy of our FTA
and the fight is Europe has only been through round 1. That is not to say that
we should not support the idea that patent law needs major reform but I think a
contigency plan is always a good idea.

Baz

[ Reply to This | # ]

translation of "shared success model"
Authored by: paivakil on Saturday, August 13 2005 @ 01:17 AM EDT
Ever wondered what this means??
Microsoft offers a shared success model that translates to low up-front investments for device makers, in addition to faster time-to-market. The Windowsembedded motto? "We don't make money until you do."

Here we go:-

"Microsoft offers a shared success model"

"you share your success with us; `sharing' means giving us fruits of your efforts."

that translates to low up-front investments for device makers, in addition to faster time-to-market.

"You get it free as in in `free beer'; and fast as in `junk food'."

The Windowsembedded motto? "We don't make money until you do.

"and once you start making money it is all ours".

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • Call me cynical - Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, August 13 2005 @ 03:07 AM EDT
    • More of the same - Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, August 13 2005 @ 04:19 AM EDT
Deveolpment time.???
Authored by: mikebmw on Saturday, August 13 2005 @ 02:21 AM EDT
Give me a break... I have ported an embedded Linux platform to a new platform.
development time = 1 person 6 months. The difficult part is the applications
that run on the platform. And that is more dependent on the applicationn not the
platform.
-Mikejb

[ Reply to This | # ]

Legal question
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, August 13 2005 @ 02:30 AM EDT
the US is a first-to-publish, not first-to-file country, please note there is a patent "reform" bill working its way through Congress as we speak that intends to reverse that.

I understood that the constitutional basis for US patent law mentions that the aim is to benefit "inventors". (Publishing an invention is just one way of showing that you invented it, as an earlier post said). There's nothing in the constitution about benefitting "filers". So how does this new bill get around the constitutional requirements?

(Of course, most people realise that patent law as currently applied benefits lawyers and large corporations more than it benefits inventors, but that's beside the point here. It can be argued that a first-to-invent patent law is intended to benefit inventors. It can't be plausibly argued that a first-to-file patent law is intended to benefit inventors.)

[ Reply to This | # ]

Mottos
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, August 13 2005 @ 03:33 AM EDT
The Windowsembedded motto? "We don't make money until you do."

The linux motto? "We don't make money, you do."

[ Reply to This | # ]

Patent intimidation
Authored by: dyfet on Saturday, August 13 2005 @ 07:36 AM EDT
"that Microsoft has apparently been telling people that they have patents being infringed by the LAMP stack, Wine and Samba. I've heard rumors they were doing this too, for some time, from other sources"

I recall Eben Moglen was reported to have said this directly that Microsoft was shaking other companies down for cash payments for alledged or potential patent claims, in his speech at the Austrialian LinuxWorld earlier this year. I recall what was reported then got little or no attention anywhere. Nor had I ever been able to find out either what he might said, since that sounds much more like criminal extortion if true, whether any victims of this could be found to come forward, or even if he had been misquoted in some manner.

[ Reply to This | # ]

With respect PJ, I think your wrong.
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, August 13 2005 @ 10:07 AM EDT
# Are you a lawyer? :--No. Are you a business person considering these issues.
# Do you have all the facts? : --No, you never can in a patent dispute.
# Have you considered that there is strength in numbers? No individual FOSS
programmer or even vendor can negotiate a patent cross-license. But if there is
a place where everyone puts their patents, then you have something to talk to
aggressors about: -- The important thing is not the pool the important thing is
the business relationship. How does the patent pool help me in my negotiations,
I can’t use it to threaten.

Yes I have run an R&D group and yes I have considered the issues.

First the patent.

1) Is the patent valid? You will never get a straight answer from a patent
lawyer, and in my view you should not expect one. Because there are so many
patents, a patent is not what it used to be.

The questions you ask are questions about the set of patents in the field.

1) Is the field crowded? If the answer is yes then it's a safe bet patents
overlap. Find them.
2) Is their prior art? If the area has developed slowly through university
research there is a good chance the patenter is whistling in the wind. Find the
papers.
3) Is it obvious? Who knows?

And then there are the much more important business questions. These question
stop the question degenerating into a legal black hole that sucks up money.

1) Do you have patents in the area that the patent owner infringes?

2) Do you have the money to defend, does the patent owner have the money (or the
desire) to attack. In our case we hold a lot of patents for defense. Infringe
away, just don't attack us.

3) Is it all out war, or can a solution be negotiated.

4) Is there another option?

In this game the real danger is from a business whose business is the holding
patents. The answers to the business questions are not good. Going through the
questions:
1) No the patent holding business doesn't do anything so how can it infringe.
2) Yes they have the money (SCO thought they did, it looks like they came up
money and patents short).
3) Yep it's all out war, that’s what they do, but normally they only want
money.
4) If you negotiate, your only negotiation card in the business set is having
the option of walking away (another option).

When considering a patent held by a company producing nothing the real
negotiation issues come from the strength of the patent itself (the first set).
If it's a weak patent the patent holder runs the risk that you will go after the
patent and make it invalid. The FSF has played this card already with the
invalidation of the FAT patent, and those responsible making it clear that is
the preferred option.

If the company produces something then it's a business question. Microsoft
writes software, IBM writes software. IBM makes a lot of money out of FOSS.
Microsoft makes a lot of money out of their little patch.

The patent field in the WEB area is crowded. Its a safe bet every WEB creator
infringes patents and the a lot of the patents in the area are invalid.

IBM has the resources and the patents to make life very very difficult for
Microsoft and vicar versa.

From here you have to make a business judgment. Business is not risk free.
Making risk judgments is something business people do.

My judgment from my small perspective. Microsoft will not risk the consequences.
They may carry on about the LAMP stack infringing patents, but they are only
noises for those that don't understand the complex relationship between business
and the patent system and the mess created because the area has been so heavily
patented. It's noise for those that believe the issue only involves the law.

I agree with Bruce P. The FOSS patent pool has little value. The foundation of
my view, the patent pool is not backed up with the resources or the
responsibility to defend, or attack as needed. It is like have a standing army
that has no equipment and can't fight.

It is my view the work being done to invalidate patents is more useful. This
work will make attackers cautious.

But the greatest value comes from IBM making it clear that it will defend open
source. IBM has pulled Microsoft fangs, not the patent pool. They pulled them
with their reaction to the SCO fiasco.

Regards
CrazyEnginner

[ Reply to This | # ]

Wouldnt that be spam.
Authored by: waltish on Saturday, August 13 2005 @ 10:10 AM EDT
That MSoft invitation to Lunch and promotional event email, if it was
unsolicited wouldnt it be spam?



---
To speak the truth plainly and without fear,Is powerfull.

[ Reply to This | # ]

MS did the same thing at Netscape DevCon 97
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, August 13 2005 @ 03:10 PM EDT
> A little nauseating, don't you think, to set up camp across the street and
trash talk Linux at LinuxWorld?

Back in june of 97, at Netscape Deveveloper Conference, when Netscape was
presenting all the new stuff that was coming up with Communicator 4, I remember
MS passed a bunch of flyers near the entrance to the conference, announcing they
had setup a little get together at a bar nearby.
Their primary goal there was to showcase a beta of IE4. They had a few of their
engineers there too to chat about where they were going with IE.

So it seems this is the standard modus operandus for a company known for its
aggressiveness.

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • Interesting - Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, August 13 2005 @ 03:52 PM EDT
  • Hmm - Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, August 13 2005 @ 10:04 PM EDT
LinuxWorld San Francisco 2005 - A Report by Groklaw's Douglas Burns
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, August 13 2005 @ 04:53 PM EDT
You have to laugh at this sentence:

"Because there was only a limited understanding about Linux networking
within Microsoft, the lab was left mostly to itself to figure out how to
interface to the campus network and to navigate the corporate
proxy/firewall."

No, networking is networking, folks. A text config file is not going to stymie
any *competent* network administrator, particularly since they only need to
communicate the purpose of the settings, not actually do them - presumably the
Linux guy did that.

Which means that either Microsoft is full of incompetent network administrators
(not impossible, but unlikely), or - more likely - this was a case of "put
them in their place".

And THIS Microsoft guy (the one giving the LinuxWorld presentation) decided to
put a "happy face" spin on it.

Which means if you trust ANYTHING he says subsequent to that, you are a fool.

[ Reply to This | # ]

LinuxWorld San Francisco 2005 - A Report by Groklaw's Douglas Burns
Authored by: blacklight on Saturday, August 13 2005 @ 05:56 PM EDT
"He [Hilf] also mentioned their Windows products and how they are improving
interoperability and support through the adoption of standards."

Interoperability is asymetric when Microsoft takes advantage of the openness of
Open Source to implement interoperability with Windows, but won't disclose the
information that would make it easier for the developers of Samba to implement
interoperability with Windows. The way Microsoft plays the game is that
interoperability will be exclusively on Microsoft terms with Windows tools. And
Microsoft can change its terms at any time.

[ Reply to This | # ]

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