– by Richard Stallman –

There are major problems with priorart.org. Actually, two
problems — one tactical, and one strategic. In the U.S. patent system, if the PTO looked at certain prior art and
decided to issue the patent anyway, the court is supposed to presume
the PTO was right to regard that prior art as insufficient.
But if the PTO was unaware of the prior art, then the court can look
at it with an unbiased eye.As a result, prior art is more effective against patents if the PTO
does not know about it. For potential patent victims to inform the
PTO about prior art is a self-defeating project.

The effect of this is worse than you might think, because of the way
the PTO uses prior art. The question they are supposed to ask is, “Is this
idea unobvious given the known prior art?” But their threshold of
“unobvious” is so low, that in practice the tiniest difference from
the known prior art is enough excuse for them to issue a patent. The
courts are much more likely to apply a sensible definition of
“unobvious”, if they are not blocked by a prior PTO decision about the
same prior art.

Then there is the strategic problem. I have seen publicity associated
with this activity, and it serves as an excuse to whitewash the system
of software patents. The publicity suggests that we could live with
software patents, if only we “work to make the system function” in
this way. It encourages people to think that the only problem in
software patents is when non-novel ideas are patented, and that
software patents on new ideas (some brilliant, most pedestrian) are
ok. And that will undermine the efforts now under way in Europe to
prevent software patents there.

Organized efforts to collect prior art could be useful if they avoid
these two problems. But if they have these problems, they can easily
do more harm than good.

This is a non-exclusive message sent to us by Richard M. Stallman. It is published here with his permission.

Johannes Ullrich writes “DShield.org, a site that collects
firewall excerpts from volunteers, is now plotting a daily world
map of current activities submitted to the site. With about 100,000
lines of firewall logs being submitted daily, DShield.org generates
not only a number of reports, but also forwards these reports to
ISPs from which the attacks originate.
… The map, as well as the time laps Movie
illustrate the focus of hacking activity on North America and Asia.
The fast switch of attackers form one attack mechanism to the next
is well ilustrated by the animated graphics, which covers the last
10 days.
… Data submitted to DShield.org is exchanged with SANS’s
incidents.org site.”

Info World reports that IBM has launched a Linux resource portal in an effort to bring together Linux business partners, employees, and developers closer together.

Info World reports on the fact that both Bill Gates, and his father, also Bill Gates, support the Death Tax, which is a US tax on the wealthy, where as much as 55% of their estate goes to the government when they die, in an effort to prevent the excessive accumulation of wealth in one family. Gates is estimated to be worth US$78,000,000,000 and the tax would cost his family over $40B when he dies.

Linux Devices is carrying a partial announcement from Cambridge, England: “Going beyond their previous announcement, Aleph One Ltd of Cambridge, England and Remote 12 Systems Ltd of London, England are now able to supply both LART and KSB boards, plus a User Guide, software, and cables.[…]” which are being released as Open Hardware.

International Data Group reports that the CEO of Rambus “said that the company was undeterred in its efforts to pursue further legal battles to protect its intellectual property and would maintain efforts to collect licensing revenue for its patents.” This after a series of legal defeats stemming from a law suit against Infineon.

From LinuxGram: “Well, criminy, no wonder Compaq tried to bury the terms on which it settled that lawsuit it brought against
RLX Technologies under the barbed wire of mutual nondisclosure agreements.

RLX caught Compaq copying the design of RLX’ Transmeta-based dense server down to the widget’s
plastic rivets, so to speak, after RLX disclosed its secrets to Compaq under another NDA that said Compaq
couldn’t do that.”

LinuxPlanet has a column saying that sometimes being a Linux fan is not so fun. The column recaps the controversy over the last week involving a Microsoft v.p. ripping on Open Source and the GPL. “The issue with the Raymond mail was that if ESR had his story straight, it was going to be a long week of sorting
through assorted ‘reactions’ and ‘analyses’ from all and sundry. This is a mixed bag. Sometimes you get some
good stuff, sometimes not.”

LinuxGram reports that Borland is planning to open offices in Beijing and Shanghai. “Borland president and CEO Dale Fuller said that the decision to go to China was the result of the Chinese
government’s decision ‘to standardize on the Linux operating system instead of Windows.’ Borland, he
says, figures that should mean a lucrative market for its Kylix rapid applications development (RAD) kit for
Linux.”

Anonymous Reader writes, “The demonstration project brings together three unique technologies that result in a new type of low cost motion base simulator.
The technologies include: An immersive display solution from Panoram;
an ingeniuos pneumatic actuator; and an Open source operating system and flight software. Rethinking the components of traditional simulation systems, Panoram has eliminated costly visual systems, high pressure hydraulics, and expensive image generation. The result is an effective, compelling solution which sets a new standard for cost, maintenance, flexibility and transportability. More

information at Panoramtech.com.”