The REAL Mark Shuttleworth states his opinions on patents thread

[floke]

A thread on this topic by Anthem was hijacked and went brutally off topic (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=475702).

I thought it would be good to revive it so people could state what they actually thought of the topic. So here goes.

By Anthem:

This is a relief. Mark's a pretty well-spoken guy, when he wants to be.

http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/127

[Erunno]

The Gestapo is strong in this one.

Re-open the topic he will until all opinions match his'.

http://www.pixel2life.com/forums/style_emoticons/default/yoda.gif

[Adamant1988]

Ok, let's try this again:

I think that the entire patent clause thing happening is complete nonsense. There is no attack yet, hell the war-drums haven't even been brought out. I'm going to wait and see what happens before I start burning down bridges and declaring moral enemies.

I know that a lot of people are interested in how this will effect the CNR deal, but I don't think it will. Then again, Mark Shuttleworth has (in the past) been very opinionated about certain distributions that have made deals along these lines (Trolling in SuSE-devel) so, I suppose it remains to be seen if the heralded CNR deal will be cut based on moral grounds. Then again, we all knew that Linspire had no real moral stances anyway.

[floke]

You mean mine?
Not at all; in fact I have no real interest in posting in this thread; I just thought the original one was interesting enough to have deserved better than it got since it went seriously off topic. The intention is just to provide a place for people to post on the actual issue should they want to.

[FuturePilot]

I'm glad Mark has made a public statement on this. One of the reasons I started using Linux was to get away from MS, not to find them knocking on my back door.

[DC@DR]

This is definitely a relief. Thanks, Mark! :-)

[tactus]

Both the OpenSUSE and Xandros community was unaware about the patent deal Novel and Xandros CIOs where signing. In that regard I think it's nice Shuttleworth is open of the issue, and the stance he has taken sounds reasonable as well. It's amazing Xandros, Novel and Linspire could sign a patent deal without clearly knowing witch patents they are licensing.

BTW: That other thread went crazily of topic. What a waste of time reading through all that unproductive ranting. :roll:

[smoker]

I'm glad Mark has made a public statement on this. One of the reasons I started using Linux was to get away from MS, not to find them knocking on my back door.

Ditto, completely agree:D

[steven8]

I love Ubuntu and what it stands for, and I greatly admire Mark Shuttleworth. I admire the fact that he hasn't tucked his personal success under his arm and kept it to himself. He obviously has a great sense of community and cares about people. He is a very capable leader.

I worked at Goodyear as it spiraled out of control under Sam Gibara, and it was obvious that a big part of the company's issues was the fact that we had no clear leadership. We heard the words that were said, but it was apparent there was no real drive behind them. They were 'just words'. The company is now rebounding under a very solid and capable leader who knows how to bring his vision to the people and rally them around it. He is honest and forthright, and people respect that.

I believe that of Mark Shuttleworth as well. I believe he is a man with a clear vision who keeps his word. I thank him deeply for the work he has done and the quality people he has assembled to create this first rate piece of software which is now running my computer.

[Anthem]

I'm not somebody who's absolutely fanatical about Free Software. I use ndiswrapper when I have to, I install Flash immediately, I keep my music in mp3 instead of ogg, etc. But if Ubuntu had signed a patent license deal with Microsoft, I would have switched to another distro immediately.

[kinematic]

i would eat a baby kitten if mark told me to :popcorn:

[Anthem]

Where this is really interesting is in the distro arena. Linspire and Xandros have always had a hard time differentiating themselves (they're both Debian/KDE plus tweaks plus a proprietary app channel) and now that CNR is going multi-distro, the value equation is starting to change. With common licensing and a multi-distro CNR, there really isn't a difference between Xandros and Linspire. They have a similar codebase, so it would be cool to see if they'd consolidate. One less MS-happy distro is no big loss, plus they'd be much more effective together than they would apart. Xanspire? Lindross? Whatever it is works for me (I won't be using it anyway). Freespire users really got kicked to the curb here... anybody using Freespire is out to dry. I'd imagine that community will dry up in favor of Kubuntu before long.

The great thing about Open Source is the freedom to fork, but another great thing is the freedom to merge. I'd love to see some of the disparate "families" of distros come together to find some common ground and less redundancy.

[FuturePilot]

I'm glad to know that Ubuntu will be safe now:popcorn:

[blackspyder]

Mr. Shuttleworth did an excellent job of dispelling the rumors and explaining his beliefs on where to go from here. and i agree with him 100%

[Tuxbee]

The territiorial issue might be interesting. I live in Belgium, Europe, where software patents don't exist in law. Intellectual Property is mostly treated like copyright in continental European jurisdiction. This means judges grant authors protection for the soul and revenues of artistic work. This protection is more extended where matters concern software, as to not make it an art discussion. Employees typically transfer the rights to their employers (companies) by contract.

In Europe, we have a very limited and well defined area where you can get patents. I could even tell you the definition, I had the exam last week, but I won't. Software is not patentable, and will probably never be. Software is under copyright. We've had some lobbying on the European level to allow software patents. Then the European Parliament voted against a proposal on software patents. It just doesn't fit in our justice philosophy. (apart from England, which has the American system since... well, since before America was founded) It has probably been the last the world will hear about European software patents.

Off course, I love the European justice system. And I think it's by far the best system to promote software innovation. So does the European Parlament, and probably most of you here. Unlimited sofware patents favour large company organisations, since you need a legal department to do business. Apart from that, the justice situation in America seems kind of derailed to the European public. American companies have to worry about defending their intellectual property from strangers claiming it post factum. That's a problem we don't have in Europe, and we don't want to create it.

Ubuntu is lucky to be somewhat away from American territory. Being able to tell Bill to basically stuff it, is a rare commodity. After experimenting and using Linux for four years, I'm happy to withness that, really. Justice should not be an industry, it should be about... well, justice. The free market monopolizes by itself, it doesn't need help from the justice system. I think Mark understands that very well, and he is the first one who has a realistic vision to do something about Microsoft's market dominance.

I feel Ubuntu brings better intellectual property deals to users, companies and the market as a whole. At Microsoft, they know things are changing, and they are afraid. They wouldn't make the proposal if they were not. And they should be.

[floke]

A High Court ruling in England a few months back rejected the enforceability of software patents. So I can confirm that we are also in the free world (at least as far as software patents are confirmed).

[forrestcupp]

I respect the part where he said, "It’s not useful to characterize any company as 'intrinsically evil for all time.'"

To many people are out to get MS no matter what.

[floke]

Note: He didn't say they weren't intrinsically evil - just that it 'wasn't useful' to characterise them in this way.

[smoker]

i would eat a baby kitten if mark told me to :popcorn:

despite the woeful ruminations of some, i don't think this is likely to be a requirement!:D:D:D

[forrestcupp]

Note: He didn't say they weren't intrinsically evil - just that it 'wasn't useful' to characterise them in this way.

He wasn't saying that MS is not evil, but he was stating the possibility that there may come a time when they are not evil. Just like what is happening with Sun.

[st33med]

Let's face it. We all support Open-source, no matter who they partner with. We even (I think) respect Mac OSX for it's very great usability. We hate Windows and Microsoft because 1) MS has immoral business practices 2) Windows is inferior to most OSes I can think of and 3) Your paying for a license to use Windows.

So, don't flame until the developer comes out and lays his cards down. Be friends. (You people do know what they are... right? ;))

[forrestcupp]

What are you talking about?

[st33med]

What I'm saying is we sorta jumped the gun and came to the very scary (but inaccurate) conclusion that MS was pushing Linux around and taking us over. The developer completely realized that those patents would be pretty phony and would only allow CNR to be on Linspire and seeing if they have free apps to offer, not ruining Open Source.

[Anthem]

He wasn't saying that MS is not evil, but he was stating the possibility that there may come a time when they are not evil. Just like what is happening with Sun.
And what has already happened with IBM.