[DMCA-Activists] Re: [Patents] Re: IBM, Microsoft, BEA Snub W3C

[Russell McOrmond]

(I received this on address@hidden, and suspect that only that forum 
will receive my reply given I am not a member of the others)

On Sat, 19 Apr 2003, Richard Stallman wrote:

> I wonder if what we are seeing is an attempt to create a
> patent-restricted standard.  If so, perhaps public pressure
> is called for now.

  It should be remembered that this is not the only standard that is part
of OASIS, with the Open Office technical committee being very important to
our community. 
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=office

  We need to look at this not as a single standard that may become an
issue, but try to bring whatever pressure we can onto all software
standards bodies to not accept royalty-bearing or "field of use"
restricted patented methods.

  I tried to have a conversation with an IBM person at a recent government
conference that featured some FLOSS presentations(*), and he simply didn't
get it. There is a misconception that patents can not be used defensively
against other patents if they are RF licensed, and this misconception
needs to be cleared up.  Anyone wanting to use RAND (or worse) licensing
are doing so because they want to use them for offensive purposes, not
defensive purposes, and this fact needs to be made clear.

  While what Microsoft is doing with software patents makes sense given
their clear dependency on legacy business models, what IBM is doing is
sitting on the fence by both supporting Free Software (such as Linux) and
opposing Free Software (via RAND software patents) at the same time.  I
often surprise customers when I recommend against purchases from IBM until
I explain IBM's position on software patents.


(*) I described Eben Moglen's awesome presentation at:
http://www.canopener.ca/pipermail/discuss/2003-April/000951.html

---
 Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>
 Any 'hardware assist' for communications, whether it be eye-glasses, 
 VCR's, or personal computers, must be under the control of the citizen 
 and not a third party.   -- http://www.flora.ca/russell/