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[News] Call to Leave Software Patents in the Trash Bin, CSIRO Shows Their Harm

  • Subject: [News] Call to Leave Software Patents in the Trash Bin, CSIRO Shows Their Harm
  • From: Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 09 Jun 2010 21:35:30 +0100
  • Followup-to: comp.os.linux.advocacy
  • Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy
  • User-agent: KNode/4.4.2
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Software patents are a bad legacy to leave behind

,----[ Quote ]
| What neither of these gentlemen pointed 
| out is that this is exactly what happened 
| also with Sun. It wasn't widely mentioned 
| in public, although Mr Piana does single 
| out patents as his first motivation to 
| help Oracle clear the Sun acquisition. 
| (Personally his fear that Microsoft would 
| be allowed to buy any piece at all of Sun 
| was in my opinion always just completely 
| unrealistic (for the same reasons Oracle 
| was in trouble), but I'm willing to give 
| him a point about patent trolls offering 
| to buy Sun's patents.) Other than that it 
| wasn't spoken about (and journalists 
| reporting on the case were mostly nowhere 
| near the real issues anyway) but also 
| other FOSS personalities who took Oracle's 
| side did mention in private conversations 
| with me that for FOSS in general and Linux 
| in particular, it was absolutely vital to 
| make sure that Sun's Unix and other 
| patents would not fall into the wrong 
| hands.
| 
| A personal observation is that it seems 
| that particularly the lawyers of our 
| community subscribed to that way of 
| thought, whereas the "hacker" types like 
| Stallman of FSF, Karsten Gerloff of FSFE, 
| Alan Cox of the Open Rights Group, etc. 
| came out clearly on the side of us where 
| we argued that MySQL should not have been 
| allowed to be acquired by it's main 
| competitor. (I should add that within the 
| MySQL community, essentially old MySQL AB 
| employees and other external contributors, 
| the party lines followed completely 
| different logic than in the broader FOSS 
| community, and patents played no role 
| whatsoever in people's opinions.)
`----

http://openlife.cc/blogs/2010/june/software-patents-are-bad-legacy-leave-behind

Wi-Fi patent has driven CSIRO money mad

,----[ Quote ]
| When that grand old hoarder of 
| intellectual property, IBM, promised in 
| 2005 that it would make 500 patents in its 
| 40,000-strong database freely available to 
| anyone working on open source projects, it 
| was applauded.
| 
| âThis is exciting,â said famed Stanford 
| Law School professor Lawrence Lessig, who 
| is known for his strong opinions on the 
| need to reduce copyright and intellectual 
| property restrictions. âIt is IBM making 
| good on its commitment to encourage a 
| different kind of software development and 
| recognizing the burden that patents can 
| impose.â
| 
| [...]
| 
| We should be applying the same standards 
| to the CSIRO when it comes to patents as 
| we did back in 2005 to IBM. To do any less 
| will demean us and sully us in the eyes of 
| our descendants.
| 
| To illustrate my point I encourage you to 
| read an article published in the Sydney 
| Morning Herald yesterday which details the 
| CSIROâs actions in attempting to enforce 
| what it claims is its patent on the Wi-Fi 
| technology which is used everywhere in 
| modern society â from laptops to mobile 
| phones to the Nintendo Wii.
`----

http://delimiter.com.au/2010/06/03/wi-fi-patent-has-driven-csiro-money-mad/

Same as below.


Recent:

Wi-Fi patent has turned CSIRO money mad

,----[ Quote ]
| There's a good case to be made that
| Australia's peak science body is turning into
| a patent troll.
`----

http://apcmag.com/wi-fi-patent-has-turned-csiro-money-mad.htm


CSIRO to reap 'lazy billion' from world's biggest tech companies

,----[ Quote ]
| Australia's peak science body stands to reap
| more than $1 billion from its lucrative Wi-Fi
| patent after already netting about $250
| million from the world's biggest technology
| companies, an intellectual property lawyer
| says.
|
| The CSIRO has spent years battling 14
| technology giants including Dell, HP,
| Microsoft, Intel, Nintendo and Toshiba for
| royalties and made a major breakthrough in
| April last year when the companies opted to
| avoid a jury hearing and settle for an
| estimated $250 million.
`----

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/enterprise/csiro-to-reap-lazy-billion-from-worlds-biggest-tech-companies-20100601-wsu2.html


CSIRO seeking Linux cluster for SKA high performance computer

,----[ Quote ]
| CSIRO will spend up to $5 million on a Linux-
| based high performance computing system to
| help boost research efforts at the Pawsey
| Centre for SKA Science in Perth.
|
| The Pawsey High Performance Computer (HPC)
| will be used in the Square Kilometre Array
| (SKA) project, which will use a telescope 50
| times more sensitive than current instruments
| and about 3600 antennae spread over thousands
| of kilometres to peer into deep space.
`----

http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/332789/csiro_seeking_linux_cluster_ska_high_performance_computer/
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