Florian Müller (born 21 January 1970 in
Augsburg
Augsburg ( , ; ; ) is a city in the Bavaria, Bavarian part of Swabia, Germany, around west of the Bavarian capital Munich. It is a College town, university town and the regional seat of the Swabia (administrative region), Swabia with a well ...
,
Germany
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
) is an app developer and an intellectual property activist. He
consulted for
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
and writes the FOSSPatents blog about patent and copyright issues. From 1985 to 1998, he was a computer magazine writer and consultant for companies, helping with collaborations between software companies. In 2004 he founded the NoSoftwarePatents
campaign and in 2007 he provided some consultancy in relation to football policy.
Software industry and computer books
In 1985, Müller started writing articles for German computer magazines. A year later, at age 16, he became Germany's youngest computer book author.
From 1987 to 1998, he specialized on publishing and distribution cooperations between US and European software companies. He initiated and managed such alliances in various market segments, including productivity software, utility software, educational software, and computer games. As a consultant to and representative of
Blizzard Entertainment
Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and Video game publisher, publisher based in Irvine, California, and a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard. Originally founded in 1991, the company is best known for producing the h ...
, Müller was involved in their marketing campaigns.
In 1996, he co-founded an online gaming service named Rival Network, which in early 2000 was acquired by the
Telefónica
, S.A. () is a Spanish multinational telecommunications company with registered office and headquarters located in two different places, both in Madrid, Spain. It is one of the largest telephone operators and mobile network providers in the ...
group. From 2001 to 2004, Müller advised the CEO of
MySQL
MySQL () is an Open-source software, open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A rel ...
AB, developer of the namesake open-source database management software product.
Campaign against EU software patents
In 2004, Müller received the support of corporate sponsors
1&1,
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 ...
and
MySQL
MySQL () is an Open-source software, open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A rel ...
for launching NoSoftwarePatents.com, which opposed the
European Commission
The European Commission (EC) is the primary Executive (government), executive arm of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with a number of European Commissioner, members of the Commission (directorial system, informall ...
's
. Following several years of intensive lobbying by many parties, this proposed directive was rejected by the
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 ...
on 6 July 2005, with 648 out of 680 votes cast.
For his political activities, Müller received several awards in 2005. A leading publication for
intellectual property
Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, co ...
lawyers, "Managing Intellectual Property", counted Müller – along with the Chinese vice premier
Wu Yi – among the "top 50 most influential people in intellectual property" (renominated in 2006). IT-focused website Silicon.com listed him among the Silicon Agenda Setters. A jury of EU-focused weekly newspaper "European Voice" elected Müller as one of the "EV50 Europeans of the Year 2005", and handed him the "EU Campaigner of the Year 2005" award. Jointly with the
FFII, Müller received the "
CNET Networks UK Technology Award" in the "Outstanding Contribution to Software Development" category.
Football policy
After more than 20 years in the IT industry, Müller became involved with
football (soccer)
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 Football player, players who almost exclusively use their feet to propel a Ball (association football), ball around a rectangular f ...
politics
Politics () is the set of activities that are associated with decision-making, making decisions in social group, groups, or other forms of power (social and political), power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of Social sta ...
in 2007. He advised the
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas
**Spanish cuisine
**Spanish history
**Spanish culture
...
football club
Real Madrid
Real Madrid Club de Fútbol (), commonly referred to as Real Madrid, is a Spanish professional Football club (association football), football club based in Madrid. The club competes in La Liga, th ...
with respect to a
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...
policy
Policy is a deliberate system of guidelines to guide decisions and achieve rational outcomes. A policy is a statement of intent and is implemented as a procedure or protocol. Policies are generally adopted by a governance body within an or ...
-making initiative concerning
professional sports
In professional sports, as opposed to amateur sports, participants receive payment for their performance. Professionalism in sport has come to the fore through a combination of developments. Mass media and increased leisure have brought larger a ...
.
Google
Oracle v. Google
In January 2011 Müller published an article suggesting that "evidence is mounting that different components of the Android mobile operating system may indeed violate copyrights of Sun Microsystems, a company Oracle acquired a year ago." and presented what he believed was copyright infringing material, an article which was heavily criticized by two technical bloggers. According to Ed Burnette, a ZDNet blogger, Google published those files on its web site to help developers debug and test their own code. ArsTechnica's Ryan Paul also said that these findings in the online codebase are also not evidence that copyright infringing code is distributed on Android handsets. Two days after his original assertions Müller claimed to have found the files in the official source availability packages of device makers Motorola, LG and Samsung. The lawsuit ended with both parties agreeing to zero dollars in
statutory damages
Statutory damages are a damage award in civil law, in which the amount awarded is stipulated within the statute rather than being calculated based on the degree of harm to the plaintiff. Lawmakers will provide for statutory damages for acts in w ...
for a small amount of copied code, so that Oracle could appeal.
In April 2012, Müller said he had been hired by Oracle to consult on competition-related topics including
FRAND licensing terms. In a court filing in the ''Oracle v. Google'' case, Oracle stated that it paid Florian Müller as a consultant.
[.] Müller said "In April, I proactively announced a broadly-focused consulting relationship with Oracle, six months after announcing a similar working relationship with Microsoft".
License violation accusation
Müller amplified a Huffington Post article by Edward Naughton, an intellectual property lawyer who has previously represented Microsoft, who suggested that
Google
Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...
likely violated the
GPL
The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first c ...
by copying
Linux
Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...
header files. The accusation was dismissed by
Linus Torvalds
Linus Benedict Torvalds ( , ; born 28 December 1969) is a Finnish software engineer who is the creator and lead developer of the Linux kernel. He also created the distributed version control system Git.
He was honored, along with Shinya Yam ...
, the original author and chief architect of the
Linux Kernel
The Linux kernel is a Free and open-source software, free and open source Unix-like kernel (operating system), kernel that is used in many computer systems worldwide. The kernel was created by Linus Torvalds in 1991 and was soon adopted as the k ...
.
Microsoft and Oracle consulting
After pressure to disclose from the free software community,
Müller acknowledged that he consults for both Microsoft and Oracle.
References
External links
*
* .
NoSoftwarePatents campaign
{{DEFAULTSORT:Muller, Florian
German video game designers
German lobbyists
1970 births
Living people
Writers from Augsburg