[Gslug-general] The next generation of Linux (or what it should be)

[Joel R. Voss]

Hi Thushara,

The problems you explain are not nearly as bad as you make them out to be. The 
DMCA is a bunk law and the EFF defeats it nearly every step of the way. The 
DMCA covers copyright not patent and allows Reverse Engineering for Fair Use. 
A hardware manufacturer with an exclusive arrangement with Microsoft cannot 
stop open source people from writing drivers, patents be damned.

These rights that open source developers have I take very seriously and no one 
should assume that there is any legal problem until it actually stops them. 
Driver development is currently unhindered by patents or the DMCA.

Bunnie's XBox crack was a DMCA thing (copyright, not patent) and affected 
reverse engineering a cryptography system. This does not affect any driver 
development. IMHO, Bunnie might have been able to get the EFF to fight that 
case.

The ASF format was a patent thing, but the author folded just because 
Microsoft's lawyer sent a C&D. That isn't a valid argument. Patenting a 
braindead file format like FAT has not stopped the Linux kernel from writing 
drivers for it. The victim of the patent ends up being a company like TomTom 
who sells thousands of GPS devices with that format being used on the SD 
card. The kernel developers and users do not need to worry about patents, 
it's businesses who put it in a key part of their product that need to worry. 
In the case of FAT and ASF, there are perfectly good patent free 
alternatives, which makes open standards all the more important. Sadly SD 
cards are fubar because they standardized on FAT.
http://www.pubpat.org/microsoftfat.htm

Btw, I am playing an asf file right now with mplayer (who completely 
disregards all copyright and patent law).

-- 
Regards,
Joel R. Voss
http://AltSci.com

On Sunday 13 September 2009, Thushara Wijeratna wrote:
> hi Joel - from the link you sent, it seems that under the DMCA, you need to
> obtain permission from the manufacturer of the system you are reverse
> engineering. so for noveau, seems like you have the permission and it is
> all good. but obviously, it is possible to be denied that permission. you
> are correct that a hardware vendor should have no issues from some one
> reverse engineering in order to make a driver, but it is possible that a
> hardware manufacturer has an exclusive arrangement with a company (like
> Microsoft) that forces their hand.
>
> the one case i can remember off the top of my head is Bunnie's Xbox crack:
> http://news.cnet.com/2008-1082-996787.html
>
> here is another instance where ASF file format decoding was not allowed by
> MS:
> http://www.advogato.org/article/101.html
>
> thanks,
> thushara
>
> On Sat, Sep 12, 2009 at 6:36 PM, Joel R. Voss <jvoss at altsci.com> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I just thought I'd chime in here to say that patent laws do not prevent
> > nor punish reverse engineering (nor does copyright). Reverse engineering
> > is protected under fair use. http://chillingeffects.org/reverse Also
> > hardware vendors and their patent holders have no reason to litigate over
> > patents because drivers make their hardware accessible to a larger
> > audience.
> >
> > Drivers are definitely a point where Linux is in heavy development. For
> > example nouveau is reverse engineering and developing nvidia drivers from
> > scratch. They are a few releases away from a stable 2d driver and
> > possibly a
> > year away from experimental 3d driver in the kernel. A few years ago wifi
> > was
> > in poor shape and now it just works for most of the drivers (b43 being
> > one where extra firmware needs to be downloaded once).
> >
> > --
> > Regards,
> > Joel R. Voss
> > http://AltSci.com
> >
> > On Saturday 12 September 2009, Thushara Wijeratna wrote:
> > > the biggest problem i've found with Linux is the lack of drivers. also
> >
> > GPL
> >
> > > has restrictions on shipping non-open drivers so one has to go and find
> > > them. patent laws prevent reverse engineering drivers.
> > >
> > > thushara
> > >
> > > On Sat, Sep 12, 2009 at 1:34 PM, Andrew Beyer <beyer.andrew at gmail.com
> > >
> > >wrote:
> > > > On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 12:13 PM, Joe moo <starquestnerd at gmail.com>
> >
> > wrote:
> > > > > One of the reasons Linux is not as popular as it should be in my
> > > > > opinion is inconsistencies. It is good to have many different
> > > > > options(distros) especially for Power Users (like myself) and
> > > > > Developers. However, the problem with that is all of the
> > > > > inconsistencies between them, this is a big issue for end users and
> >
> > is
> >
> > > > I won't argue that it isn't an issue, but I fail to see how you could
> > > > resolve all the inconsistencies without sacrificing  most of the
> > > > benefits of having the variety in the first place. There are things
> > > > that _should_ be consistent, where consistency does not meaningfully
> > > > impact people's choices,  but most of them already are...POSIX, LSB,
> > > > freedesktop.org, and others have already resolved most of the
> > > > low-hanging fruit here. I think the things that they haven't
> > > > approached or haven't succeeded in standardizing are mostly those
> > > > where by mandating a standard you take away choices people want to be
> > > > able to make.
> > > >
> > > > > probably why the end-user market doesn't extend much farther than
> > > > > netbooks.
> > > >
> > > > Major hardware vendors marketed netbooks with linux to a general
> > > > audience. That hasn't happened on the same scale for any other class
> > > > of hardware (at least any comparable to a pc -- I'll ignore more
> > > > deeply embedded devices for the moment), so I don't think its really
> > > > a valid comparison. The vast majority of people use the os that ships
> > > > on their computer and are unlikely to switch...many don't know they
> > > > can.
> > > >
> > > > > I believe that it is time to set some standards for all of
> > > > > the projects out there; standards that can be agreed upon and
> >
> > followed
> >
> > > > > by the majority of projects.
> > > >
> > > > Lots of people have tried...good luck.
> > > >
> > > > > is because Windoze has an architecture
> > > > > that most applications follow
> > > >
> > > > I'm going a bit off-topic here, but I'd take issue with that. For a
> > > > single entity, Microsoft can put out an amazing and bewildering array
> > > > of related and overlapping technologies with the attending
> > > > inconsistencies and incompatibilities. The core win32 api is
> > > > relatively clean and consistent, but is pretty much comparable to
> > > > what posix offers...not enough of a standard to build on from
> > > > scratch. I think .NET alleviated, if still not resolved the issue.
> > > > But
> > > > particularly before then, writing a significant application on
> > > > windows involved a fair bit of black magic making Win32, MFC, ATL,
> > > > COM, COM+, ActiveX, the VB runtime, et. al. cooperate unless any one
> > > > of them provided everything you needed, and you didn't interact with
> > > > any other software that used any of the others.
> > > >
> > > > >  WX is one of the greatest examples of a simple cross
> > > > > platform architecture
> > > > > ...
> > > > > One solution to that is the
> > > > > pitifully unused but amazing autopackage framework!
> > > >
> > > > Both technologies which, even if you can argue their technical
> > > > superiority to other options, are already uncommon/underrepresented.
> > > > Try to build a standard on that, and you get a "standard" on paper
> > > > which no one conforms to. Adoption has to come before standardization
> > > > unless you just want to put out well intentioned documents, or can
> > > > force people to comply.
> > > >
> > > > If you really think these are the solution, your task isn't
> > > > standardization, it's advocacy... you need to convince people to
> > > > adopt them. Get a modern and full-featured web browser and office
> > > > suite to adopt WX as their gui platform. (if you suggest this on the
> > > > mozilla or oo.org lists, please don't cc me on the resulting
> > > > flamefest :) Get everything (or some significant subset) in Ubuntu's
> > > > universe or multiverse (or some other sufficiently large set of
> > > > software) packaged as an autopackage file, and publish a central
> > > > collection somewhere.
> > > >
> > > > > Linux needs to stick to a standard that users can follow if it is
> > > > > to
> > > >
> > > > thrive!
> > > >
> > > > Does it? Why should every distribution that happens to use the same
> > > > kernel also make all the same choices and trade-offs in userspace? If
> > > > you want a consistent set of choices already pre-made  for you, why
> > > > not just stick with windows? Or choose a single linux-based distro
> > > > and use the software packaged for it? If you want to make your own
> > > > set of choices, what makes you think they will be any more generally
> > > > appropriate for everyone else than the ones various distros have
> > > > made?
> > > >
> > > > > PS. No I'm not putting down Linux I'm just suggesting new ideas!
> > > >
> > > > And I'm not putting down your ideas, but there have never been a
> > > > dearth of people with ideas of how linux should "standardize",
> > > > particularly when said standard would include their favorite bits of
> > > > software. I'm not saying that there aren't huge improvements to be
> > > > made in many areas, but I think the solution is to develop and/or
> > > > spread the better software, not to rhapsodize on the merits of it
> > > > being declared a standard.
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