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Patent Retaliation
Opposition to software patents is widespread in the free software community. In response, various mechanisms have been tried to defuse the perceived problem. Positions from the community Community leaders such as Richard Stallman, Alan Cox, Bruce Perens, and Linus Torvalds; companies such as Red Hat and MySQL; and community groups such as FSFE and IFSO all believe that patents cause problems for free software. Patent licensing Leading open-source figures and companies have complained that software patents are overly broad and the USPTO should reject most of them. Bill Gates has said "If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today’s ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today". Problems for free software Free software projects cannot agree to patent licences that include any kind of per-copy fee. No matter how low the fee is, there is no way for a free software distributor to know how many co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Software Patents
A software patent is a patent on a piece of software, such as a computer program, library, user interface, or algorithm. The validity of these patents can be difficult to evaluate, as software is often at once a product of engineering, something typically eligible for patents, and an abstract concept, which is typically not. This gray area, along with the difficulty of patent evaluation for intangible, technical works such as libraries and algorithms, makes software patents a frequent subject of controversy and litigation. Different jurisdictions have radically different policies concerning software patents, including a blanket ban, no restrictions, or attempts to distinguish between purely mathematical constructs and "embodiments" of these constructs. For example, an algorithm itself may be judged unpatentable, but its use in software judged patentable. Background A patent is a set of exclusionary rights granted by a state to a patent holder for a limited period of time, usual ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mark Webbink
Mark Webbink is an American lawyer and visiting professor of law at New York Law School (NYLS). At NYLS, Webbink serves as the executive director of the Center for Patent Innovations, the home of the Peer-to-Patent program. Webbink is also a senior lecturing fellow at Duke University School of Law and a member of the board of Software Freedom Law Center, which he joined in October 2007. Webbink worked at Red Hat Red Hat, Inc. (formerly Red Hat Software, Inc.) is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises and is a subsidiary of IBM. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North ... as its first general counsel from 2000 to 2004 and its deputy general counsel for intellectual property from 2004 to August 2007, when he retired. Webbink wrote a blog, now defunct, covering open source and intellectual property issues. On May 16, 2011, Groklaw's Pamela Jones announced that Webbink would be Groklaw's ne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
European Parliament
The European Parliament (EP) is one of the two legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it adopts European legislation, following a proposal by the European Commission. The Parliament is composed of 720 members (MEPs), after the June 2024 European elections, from a previous 705 MEPs. It represents the second-largest democratic electorate in the world (after the Parliament of India), with an electorate of around 375 million eligible voters in 2024. Since 1979, the Parliament has been directly elected every five years by the citizens of the European Union through universal suffrage. Voter turnout in parliamentary elections decreased each time after 1979 until 2019, when voter turnout increased by eight percentage points, and rose above 50% for the first time since 1994. The voting age is 18 in all EU member states e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
League For Programming Freedom
League for Programming Freedom (LPF) was founded in 1989 by Richard Stallman to unite free software developers as well as developers of proprietary software to fight against software patents and the extension of the scope of copyright. Their logo is the Statue of Liberty holding a floppy disk and tape spool. Among other initiatives, the League started the "Burn all GIFs" campaign in opposition to the actions of Unisys in enforcing their patent on LZW compression used by CompuServe when creating the image format. The League produced a newsletter, ''Programming Freedom'', in 11 issues from 1991 to 1995. These primary source materials chronicle the work of the organization. The single event that had the most influence on the creation of the League was Apple's lawsuits against Microsoft about supposed copyrights violations of the look and feel of the Macintosh in the development of Windows. After the lawsuit ended, the League went dormant, to be resurrected by those who were increa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mono (software)
Mono is a free and open-source software framework that aims to run software made for the .NET Framework on Linux and other OSes. Originally by Ximian which was acquired by Novell, it was later developed by Xamarin which was acquired by Microsoft. In August 2024, Microsoft transferred ownership of Mono to Wine_(software), WineHQ. History When Microsoft first announced their .NET Framework in June 2000 it was described as "a new platform based on Internet standards", and in December of that year the underlying Common Language Infrastructure was published as an open standard, "ECMA-335", opening up the potential for independent implementations. Miguel de Icaza of Ximian believed that .NET had the potential to increase programmer productivity and began investigating whether a Linux version was feasible. Recognizing that their small team could not expect to build and support a full product, they launched the Mono open-source project, on July 19, 2001, at the O'Reilly Media, O'Reilly ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Commerce One
Commerce One, Inc. operated online auctions focused on B2B e-commerce. At the peak of the dot-com bubble, the company had a market capitalization of $21.5 billion. The company's technologies included Schema for Object-Oriented XML (SOX), an XML schema technology that influenced the development of the W3C's XML Schema language and the Java Architecture for XML Binding (JAXB). History The company was founded in 1994 as DistriVision by Tom Gonzales and his son, Thomas Gonzales Jr. It was renamed Commerce One in 1997 after Mark Hoffman became CEO. In January 1999, the company acquired Veo Systems from Asim Abdullah for $300 million. In November 1999, the company acquired CommerceBid from Ramesh Balwani for $4.5 million in cash and 785,000 shares and the company partnered with General Motors to create an online marketplace. In July 1999, on its first trading day after its initial public offering, the company's stock price rose 190%. In September 2000, the company acquired ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Linux Operating System
Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution (distro), which includes the kernel and supporting system software and libraries—most of which are provided by third parties—to create a complete operating system, designed as a clone of Unix and released under the copyleft GPL license. Thousands of Linux distributions exist, many based directly or indirectly on other distributions; popular Linux distributions include Debian, Fedora Linux, Linux Mint, Arch Linux, and Ubuntu, while commercial distributions include Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise, and ChromeOS. Linux distributions are frequently used in server platforms. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses and recommends the name "GNU/Linux" to emphasize the use and impo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Open Invention Network
Open Invention Network (OIN) is an intellectual property rights company based in Durham, United States. It operates as an entity specialising in the acquisition of patents, subsequently granting royalty-free licenses to its community members. These members are obligated not to assert their own patents against Linux and its associated systems and applications as per the terms of the licensing agreements established by OIN. History OIN was incorporated on 31 October 2005 and is headquartered in Durham, NC. The founding members, IBM, Novell, Philips, Red Hat, and Sony initiated the organisation on November 10 of the same year. Subsequently, NEC joined the consortium as a member. Notably, in December 2013, Google became a member, while Toyota announced its membership in July 2016. On October 10, 2018, Erich Andersen, representing Microsoft, disclosed their participation as a licensee. Canonical and TomTom hold associate membership status within the network. Keith Bergelt serve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sony
is a Japanese multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at Sony City in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The Sony Group encompasses various businesses, including Sony Corporation (electronics), Sony Semiconductor Solutions (imaging and sensing), Sony Entertainment (including Sony Pictures and Sony Music Group), Sony Interactive Entertainment (video games), Sony Financial Group, and others. Sony was founded in 1946 as by Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita. In 1958, the company adopted the name Initially an electronics firm, it gained early recognition for products such as the TR-55 transistor radio and the CV-2000 home video tape recorder, contributing significantly to Japan's Japanese economic miracle, post-war economic recovery. After Ibuka's retirement in the 1970s, Morita served as chairman until 1994, overseeing Sony's rise as a global brand recognized for innovation in consumer electronics. Landmark products included the Trinitron color television, the Walkma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philips
Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), simply branded Philips, is a Dutch multinational health technology company that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, its world headquarters have been situated in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters is still in Eindhoven. The company gained its royal honorary title in 1998. Philips was founded by Gerard Philips and his father Frederik, with their first products being light bulbs. Through the 20th century, it grew into one of the world's largest electronics conglomerates, with global market dominance in products ranging from kitchen appliances and electric shavers to light bulbs, televisions, cassettes, and compact discs (both of which were invented by Philips). At one point, it played a dominant role in the entertainment industry (through PolyGram). However, intense competition from primarily East Asian competitors throughout the 1990s and 2000s led to a period of downsizing, including the divestment of its lighting and c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Novell
Novell, Inc. () was an American software and services company headquartered in Provo, Utah, that existed from 1980 until 2014. Its most significant product was the multi-platform network operating system known as NetWare. Novell technology contributed to the emergence of local area networks, which displaced the dominant mainframe computing model and changed computing worldwide. Under the leadership of chief executive Ray Noorda, NetWare became the dominant form of personal computer networking during the second half of the 1980s and first half of the 1990s. At its high point, NetWare had a 63 percent share of the market for network operating systems and by the early 1990s there were over half a million NetWare-based networks installed worldwide encompassing more than 50 million users. Novell was the second-largest maker of software for personal computers, trailing only Microsoft Corporation, and became instrumental in making Utah Valley a focus for technology and softw ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mozilla Public License
The Mozilla Public License (MPL) is a free and open-source weak copyleft license for most Mozilla Foundation software such as Firefox and Thunderbird. The MPL is developed and maintained by Mozilla, which seeks to balance the concerns of both open-source and proprietary developers. It is distinguished from others as a middle ground between the permissive software BSD-style licenses and the GNU General Public License. As such, it allows the integration of MPL-licensed code into proprietary codebases, as long as the MPL-licensed components remain accessible under the terms of the MPL. MPL has been used by others, such as Adobe to license their Flex product line, and The Document Foundation to license LibreOffice 4.0 (also on LGPL 3+). Version 1.1 was adapted by several projects to form derivative licenses like Sun Microsystems' Common Development and Distribution License. It has undergone two revisions: the minor update 1.1, and a major update version 2.0 nearing the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
