over at opensource.com…
I’ve written a brief piece on the open source law community over at opensource.com. May be of interest for those hackers who wonder if they have any lawyer/guardian angels, and if so, do they ever talk to each other?
Syndicated 2010-03-29 18:43:19 from Luis Villa's Internet Home » Blog Posts
two great quotes from this weekend
“We are working well when we use ourselves as the fellow creatures of the plants, animals, materials, and other people we are working with. Such work is unifying, healing. It brings us home from pride and from despair, and places us responsibly within the human estate. It defines us as we are: not too good to work with our bodies, but too good to work poorly or joylessly or selfishly or alone.” –Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America
“The strongest “copyleft” … is having a vibrant and active community” –Shaver, of shaverfacts fame, in mozilla.governance
Syndicated 2010-03-29 02:23:50 from Luis Villa's Internet Home » Blog Posts
More Patent 101, and some Patent Licensing 201 (advanced class ;)
More patent lessons- first on submarine patents (basics!) and then on how patent pools are licensed. I don’t really want to continue this series, but the past few days have been a good reminder that there is a lot of misinformation out there around patents.
To start with, OSNews wants to claim that there are no such thing as submarine patents anymore, relying on a very specialized, nuanced definition of submarine patents. Their definition is… well, it is internally consistent, but I’ve never heard the term ’submarine patents’ used that way before, and if you define it that way you run the risk of thinking that submarine patents are no longer a problem. This is sadly not the case.
Most people define submarine patents not as patents which are unknowable (because of the PTO’s process), but as patents which are unknowable or effectively unknown and therefore can’t be dealt with effectively.
The problem here – with software patents in particular- is that they are so numerous, so broadly worded, and so inconsistently worded, that searching for them is like searching for a submarine in the ocean. It is incredibly difficult, incredibly expensive, and very frequently ineffective to look for the ones that could torpedo your software product. And so most of the industry doesn’t bother- they just cross their fingers and hope.1
Patent pools like MPEG-LA’s are an attempt to avoid this problem, not by searching the ocean, but by bribing the submarines to surface and getting them to agree not to use their torpedoes. So they do reduce the risk of submarine patents, but they definitely don’t eliminate them- each company will still have to do their own risk analysis when they sign into a patent pool, to make sure they are comfortable with the risk from patents outside the pool.
It is worth noting here that patent rights are like copyrights, and not like trademarks: you can let them sit as long as you want without enforcing them (generally speaking.) This is another part of what makes submarine patents messy- merely using the technology in a very public way (like many companies do with MPEG) does not necessarily guarantee that there are no risks; it only means that if there are risks, they haven’t surfaced yet.
So, bottom line: if the OSNews article made you more comfortable about submarine patents, get nervous again. Using their technical definition, the risks are zero, but using the more common (and more reasonable) definition the risks are usually low but they definitely aren’t zero.
On the other point: Gruber said yesterday that Google, as an MPEG-LA licensee, would be protected if Ogg violates an MPEG-LA patent. This is possibly correct, but highly unlikely. Companies who give their patents to patent pools don’t actually give them up completely- they typically only promise not to use them against very specifically described technologies. If you’re not that specifically described technology, the patent owner is completely within their rights to track you down on their own.
In the case of MPEG-LA, the patent license is almost certainly for implementations of MPEG codecs, not for implementations of any random video codec you want (like ogg.) So Google probably has some other reason they feel safe about ogg- it may be that they’ve done thorough research on the codec, or it may be that they have other cross-licensing agreements outside of MPEG-LA, or they may just be unusually tolerant of risk. Unfortunately, we can’t know, and they’d be crazy to tell us.
Again, like yesterday, I haven’t seen the MPEG-LA licensing terms; it is possible that they do in fact cover implementations of any random codec. But that would be very unusual.
Syndicated 2010-03-26 16:49:28 from Luis Villa's Internet Home » Blog Posts
patent 101
[Disclaimer: I'm not saying this on behalf of my employer, I have no exposure to MPEG-LA's licensing agreements, and I'm not making a broader claim about the h264/ogg debate; I just want to clarify one specific point of law.]
“If some patent troll decides H.264 violates a patent, they must go to court with MPEG LA, not individual licensees.” — John Gruber, Daring Fireball
Let this be a friendly public service announcement: patent law says that anyone who uses a patent, not just the manufacturer or licensor of the patent-infringing good, can potentially be dragged into court on a charge of patent infringement. (This is not the first installment of this reminder.) This misunderstanding of how patent law functions gives people a false sense of security- they think they are safe because they are ‘just’ using, when in fact patent trolls are known to go around to small individual consumers of ‘infringing’ software and extort settlements from them in order to build their war chests for later, larger suits. Or in other, more specific words: there is certainly nothing in patent law that says that an H264 patent troll ‘must’ go after MPEG-LA and can’t go after individual licensees.
Of course, going after users is rare. Furthermore, it is certainly possible that MPEG-LA might (for political reasons) try to enter into a court fight on the side of someone being attacked by an H264-related troll; it is even possible that the licensing agreement requires such entry if the defendant is an MPEG-LA licensee. (If the latter is what Gruber was getting at, that would be interesting to know.) Even entry by MPEG-LA on your sideis not likely to completely protect you; even if they were to promise to cover all costs and settlements, the engineers and businessfolks who made the decision would still likely be hauled into court to testify as to whether the infringement was done on purpose, how it was done, etc.
Bottom line: there may be contractual obligations at play here, and if so, I’d love to hear clarification, but as far as statute goes, what Gruber says about who can sue whom is mistaken.
Syndicated 2010-03-25 07:39:09 from Luis Villa's Internet Home » Blog Posts
thunderbird plugin I suddenly want
I’d love a thunderbird plugin (or really just a feature) that says “you were bcc’d on this email- are you sure you want to reply to all and accidentally disclose that you were bcc’d?”
(And yes, of course that means I did that today- pretty sure the first time in a very long career of email that I’ve done that. Doh.)
Syndicated 2010-03-24 05:44:47 from Luis Villa's Internet Home » Blog Posts
Mailing lists are parties. Or they should be.
I can’t go to bed because Mairin is right on the internet and so I want to (1) say she’s awesome and (2) add two cents on mailing lists and using the power of a web interface to make them better. Bear with me; maybe this is completely off-base (probably I should just stick to law), but it has been bouncing around in my head for years and maybe me writing it down will help the lightbulb go off for someone who can actually implement it :)
Here is the thing: I think mailing lists are almost like parties in a lot of ways, and so we can steal ideas from parties to help write better mailing list software. I know this sounds silly, but bear with me.
First, the similarities. At most parties, like most mailing lists, most people want to have interesting conversations, and they understand the shared social standards and interests of the other people at the party. And at most parties and most mailing lists there are a handful of people are boors who probably don’t want to spoil the party, but who violate those shared norms- some in very mild ways (boring, talking too loud, posting too much), or maybe some less mild (the guy who doesn’t think he’s a racist, but really is.)1 If you’ve got similar mixes of people, why then do parties usually handle boors well, while mailing lists often fail and flame out?
At a party, one thing that helps keep conversations functional is that people who lack social graces or are uninteresting get social cues which encourage behavioral change. Sometimes these cues are very explicit- someone saying out loud ‘you’re not interesting, I’m leaving.’ But those direct cues are a pain to send- they are usually considered ‘rude,’ they require a lot of emotional energy, and they often mean more interaction with the boor- which is the last thing anyone wants. And blatant signals are often counter-productive too, since they make well-intentioned people defensive instead of giving them a face-saving way to learn they have a problem. Since direct signals are a pain, at parties we’ve evolved a range of more subtle cues to use- people cough and shuffle their feet, or quietly move to another part of the room, or say ‘how about the weather?’ And this actually works pretty well- worst case, people walk away from the boor and have good conversations elsewhere; best case the boor gets the message, changes their behavior, and becomes more fun to be around.
Mailing lists have no low-cost equivalents to coughing and walking away. There is only silence, or confrontation. Mairin’s mockup excites me since, if implemented, it could provide those more subtle, less confrontational cues by allowing ‘-1′ digg-style votes on posts. You could imagine making the cues even more subtle and non-confrontational than she suggests, perhaps by sending positive cues to everyone but negative cues anonymously and only directly/privately to the boor.
Another way that parties and mailing lists aren’t enough alike: in a party, if you are part of a boring conversation, you just walk away. Besides giving the social cues already discussed, this also has the awesome effect of allowing you not to hear that conversation anymore. In contrast, a mailing list is like a party where you can’t walk away from a conversation. You hear every single conversation whether you like it or not. Some of the best email software allows killing entire threads, but that doesn’t give the social cue to the boor. They think everyone is paying attention and so they keep talking. And for people with less good email clients (most of us), the options are to just tolerate the boors or leave the list altogether. Imagine if you had to leave every party that had even a single boring conversation. You wouldn’t go to many parties. That is what most mailing lists are like, though.
We can fix that. You can easily imagine mailing list software that allows you to tell the server ‘don’t send me this thread anymore.’ As a side-effect, if enough people ignored a thread, you could tell people posting in the thread that ‘X people have walked away from this conversation- maybe you should take this off-list?’ These would probably both require a fair bit of hacking, but it seems like the upside is a more party-like list.
On the more positive side (Mairin said she liked to focus on the positive!), at a party it is easy to find the good conversations. Just wander around the room at any decent-sized party; you’ll see a tight knot of people and hear they are talking excitedly. Can’t do that with a mailing list; you’ve got to at least start reading every thread. Once you know which threads people like (maybe via a ‘like’ link in the footer?) you can offer a party-like ’subscribe only to threads that already have a crowd.’ Twitter/identica sort of do this through the idea of retweets/repeats; you don’t have to follow everyone on earth- some people will just pass the cool stuff along- and that seems like it could be pretty useful for mailing lists.
Note that virtually none of these behaviors require browsing the email through a web interface or a specialized mail interface. All of them could be implemented by ‘click here to mod up/click here to mod down’ links in the footer of each email, so people who live in their mail clients could still participate and benefit, which I think is a must.
Bottom line: Software can’t save a mailing list full of people who actively dislike each other. Maybe I’m crazy, though, but it seems like software that helped mailing lists function more like parties could really help mailing lists cope better with anti-social people.
Syndicated 2010-03-17 06:08:06 from Luis Villa's Internet Home » Blog Posts
Updating the MPL
Yesterday Mozilla announced that we will be updating the MPL, with the aim of making the license simpler, easier to use, and more robust. Mitchell’s post captures what we want to do in more depth; if you’re interested in the process, you should go read it and our full website at mpl.mozilla.org.
I have the privilege of being heavily involved in this project. I use the word ‘privilege’ because, since right around the time I went to law school, my home page has said something to the effect of ‘Luis’s goal is to help innovators do their thing with minimal interference from and maximum assistance from lawyers.’ ‘Helping innovators do their thing’ is exactly what this project is all about, so I’m excited to be part of the process.
Firefox Cupcake, by M i x y, used under CC-BY
We’re looking to involve the Mozilla community, of course, and we’re also looking to involve people who aren’t normally part of the Mozilla community, like licensing lawyers. So the process will involve a lot of very smart, experienced, and often opinionated people, some of whom will have been working with the license for a decade. I will get the luxury of being the project manager/cat-herder: working on this much of the day, encouraging involvement, organizing feedback, sifting it for gems, and collating all of it into the starting points we’ll use for further discussion and improvement. I’m just the organizer, though- Mitchell (as original author and tentative module owner) has the final say on the text, and the voice of the community will be the community themselves- we’re looking for broad involvement from anyone who has something valuable to say about the license or their experiences with it. If you’re interested in helping out in any way, check out our participate page for more information.
The day-to-day work that this huge community of volunteers does to produce software actively chosen by 100 million people is much more important than the legalese that binds them. But the legalese does matter- it communicates our values and helps structure how we work with each other. So improving this legalese is important for the community, and a great opportunity for me to help out, and I’m excited to get started on it.
Syndicated 2010-03-11 16:25:47 from Luis Villa's Internet Home » Blog Posts
Digging up my old Red Hat/e-voting posts
The DOJ is breaking up ES&S, the country’s largest provider of voting machinery, the OSDV project seems to be gaining some attention, and RHAT stock recently hit a five-year high. This seems like as good a time as any to dig up my ‘Red Hat should be in electronic voting‘ post and followup. Take the gamble, Raleigh! Buy the ES&S assets at bargain prices and get into the game.
Syndicated 2010-03-09 15:48:44 from Luis Villa's Internet Home » Blog Posts
looking for locomotives
I got some nice birthday gifts (mostly the ability to be around family) but possibly the best gift I got was this Wondermark strip:
I will henceforth refer to reading a contract as ‘looking for locomotives.’
As a bonus, and related to my recent post about plain english in the law, Wondermark is apparently working with the Center for Plain Language on a contest to reward plain (and terrible) use of plain English in communication. That is terrific to hear, and I wish them great luck with it. I only wish I had some appropriate examples to submit to the contest.
Syndicated 2010-03-01 12:30:50 from Luis Villa's Internet Home » Blog Posts
Happy birthday to me
Visiting family for my birthday; if I don’t respond to your email it is because I am soaking in sunshine.
Syndicated 2010-02-26 16:41:26 from Luis Villa's Internet Home » Blog Posts
New HTML Parser: The long-awaited libxml2 based HTML parser code is live. It needs further work but already handles most markup better than the original parser.
Keep up with the latest Advogato features by reading the Advogato status blog.
If you're a C programmer with some spare time, take a look at the mod_virgule project page and help us with one of the tasks on the ToDo list!
