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ru.linux
- RU.LINUX ---------------------------------------------------------------------
From : Sergey Lentsov 2:4615/71.10 01 Feb 2002 14:56:24
To : All
Subject : URL: http://www.lwn.net/2002/0131/
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Recent features:
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- [22]Gael Duval
- [23]Kernel Summit
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Here is the [26]permanent site for this page.
See also: [27]last week's LWN.
Leading items and editorials
Intellectual property issues never go away. While we're sure that our
readers would much rather see a page full of press release hype from
LinuxWorld, we're going to start by inflicting a bunch of legal stuff
on them instead.
The new draft W3C patent policy is out. This policy was, of course,
the subject of a great fuss back in September when it turned out that
it allowed patented technology to be included in W3C standards as long
as it could be licensed under "reasonable and non-discriminatory"
(RAND) terms. Quite a few people felt that the web had flourished as a
direct result of having been built on open standards, and they did not
welcome the change. The W3C responded by backing off and promising to
reconsider the policy.
The result can be seen in the [28]Current Patent Practice note
published on January 24. The core of the new policy can be seen at the
beginning:
This current practice has evolved in order to satisfy the goal held
by a number of W3C Members and significant parts of the larger Web
community: that W3C Recommendations should be, as far as possible,
implementable on a Royalty-Free basis.
In fact, the policy does not, directly, allow for standards to contain
anything but royalty-free technology. Should an "essential" technology
arise which is governed by patents, and for which royalty-free
licensing is not a possibility, the issue will be sent off to pasture
in a "patent advisory group" (PAG). The PAG will have 90 days to
figure out how to resolve the issue. One of the possible resolutions
is RAND licensing, but the policy cautions:
Note that there is neither clear support amongst the Membership for
producing RAND specifications nor a process for doing so. Therefore
if a PAG makes a recommendation to proceed on RAND terms, Advisory
Committee review and Director's decision will be required.
In other words, those who wish to push RAND-licensed technology into a
W3C standard have to wander into uncharted territory, marked only
"here be dragons." If there were any further doubt that the W3C would
like to be done with this issue, the standard also says that "*It is
also possible that a the PAG could recommend that the work be taken to
another organization."
To summarize: it looks like we won. Let it not be said that this sort
of obnoxiousness can not be overcome by speaking up. Congratulations
are due to all of the (many!) people who let the W3C know what they
thought when this issue first came up. (For those who have more to
say, there is [29]another comment period that will be opened up before
the policy is submitted for its final review).
Patents and real-time Linux. [30]Version 24.1.8 of the Real-Time
Application Interface (RTAI) was released this week. This release
includes a number of interesting new features, including a MIPS port
and the latest Linux Trace Toolkit support. Many people, however, may
be most interested in the note from FSF attorney Eben Moglen at the
end of the announcement. Mr. Moglen addresses the question of whether
RTAI users need to be worried about the real-time Linux patent held by
Victor Yodaiken (covered in LWN [31]last year).
With regard to RTAI itself, Mr. Moglen states that there is no
difficulty in using it within the RTLinux patent license:
The new patent license allows the teaching of the patent to be
practiced without any additional obligations in any program
released under GPL. If RTAI is released under GPL, as it can and
should be, it is fully protected against any infringement claim by
the license we negotiated.
Note that the validity of the patent (and associated license) are not
being questioned. As long as RTAI fits within the terms of the
license, there is no need to look further. To ensure that RTAI is in
compliance, the developers have, with this release, relicensed the
core code from the LGPL to the full GPL.
Then, there is the question of whether proprietary applications
running on top of RTAI infringe the patent. Mr. Moglen refers to the
patent claims:
These eleven claims, like all claims in all patents, are written as
broadly as possible, so as to bring as much behavior as possible
within the scope of the patent. But none of the teachings of the
patent, as specified in its claims, is practiced by any
applications program running under any OS kernel. No application in
a running RTLinux or RTAI system does any of the things the patent
claims.
Meaning that:
No applications program is therefore potentially infringing, and no
applications program is covered, or needs to be covered, by the
license.
Victor Yodaiken's patent, then, should not be an issue for any RTAI
users, as long as they comply with the GPL licensing requirements of
the RTAI core. This will be good news for these users. This situation
is a reminder, however, of the sort of traps that software patents can
set for the unwary. The next patent may be more difficult to work
around.
When the GPL is not the right license. Ximian [32]announced on
January 28 that the license for the Mono class libraries would be
changed from the GPL to [33]the X11 license. This license is, perhaps,
the simplest free software license available; it says, essentially,
"do as you will with this code; just preserve the copyright and don't
hold us responsible." There are no restrictions on distribution of
proprietary derived products, and no requirement to disclose source
for any changes.
This change makes it easier for corporations contributing code to Mono
(i.e. Intel and HP) and their customers to distribute proprietary
versions of the class libraries. It will, says Ximian, "have the
effect of expanding the pool of potential contributors to the project,
further speeding its already impressive progress." This statement
almost has to be true; it is easy to imagine (though impossible to
confirm) that one or more of the corporate contributors insisted on
this license change.
The momentum of the GPL is sometimes unstoppable. A look at [34]this
week's software announcements shows that the vast majority of projects
use the GPL. So, when a project moves in the opposite direction, it
attracts attention.
The immediate conclusion that can be drawn is an obvious one: there is
no "one size fits all" free software license, and there probably never
will be. When developers apply a license to a body of code, they are
making a statement on how they want that code to be used. The choice
of the GPL indicates a desire to see all versions of the code be free,
and to block anybody who wishes to use the code in a proprietary
manner. Those who chose a looser license, such as the X11 or BSD
licenses, are making a choice to work with proprietary vendors.
That choice is mostly to be made when the resellers are seen as
supporters of the code, rather than competitors who would like a
proprietary advantage. In the Mono case, Ximian has concluded that the
developer base will be increased by the adoption of the X11 license.
Those who would sell proprietary products that include the Mono class
libraries are not competing with Mono itself; it is in their interest
to see Mono thrive.
A similar reasoning was behind last year's [35]Ogg Vorbis licensing
change. Allowing the Ogg Vorbis libraries to be used in proprietary
products (and things like portable sound file players are likely to
stay proprietary) should increase the chances of the Vorbis standard
being widely adopted. And that can only help with the development of
the code.
As free software works its way deeper into the software economy, it
will not be surprising to see more thought given to the choice of
licenses. To an extent, this can be a good thing; the right license
can help a free software project to thrive. We can only hope, however,
that we will not see a resurgence of custom corporate and "half free"
licenses, which proliferated a few years ago.
The Linux Standard Base is complete. As LWN went to "press," the Free
Standards Group was expected to announce the availability of the
[36]Linux Standard Base, version 1.1, for the IA-32 architecture. With
this release, the LSB is essentially complete. The specification is in
shape, the test suite is available, and there is a sample
implementation and cross-development environment. A long development
process has come to a conclusion.
As if that weren't enough, the 1.0 release of the "[37]Li18nux"
internationalization standard is also about to be released. Here, too,
there is a specification, test suite, and sample implementation
available.
At this point, these standards lack only one thing: a list of
compliant distributions. It is time for that to change. These
long-awaited Linux standards will help simplify the management of
Linux systems, and they are crucial for independent software vendors
who wish to support more than one Linux distribution. Their adoption
can only help increase the user and development base for Linux and
free software in general. We need LSB- and L18nux-compliant
distributions.
The time has come for the Linux distributors to either announce their
plans for standards compliance, or to explain why they feel this
compliance is no longer necessary. The time for waiting is over.
LWN.net becomes independent once again. In April, 2000, we were
pleased to announce that LWN.net had been acquired by Tucows, Inc. It
was an optimistic time, and there appeared to be a great many ways in
which Tucows and LWN could complement each other.
The times, of course, have changed. Tucows has found other lines of
business which are serving the company well, but which have little to
do with Linux and free software. Tucows has also found it difficult to
earn money from LWN's operation. In these times, it is difficult for a
company to carry a loss-making group for any time. For its own future,
Tucows must concentrate in the areas where it can bring in revenue -
and that's not LWN.
As a result, as of the beginning of February, LWN will operate, once
again, as an independent publication of Eklektix, Inc., which will be
owned by the current LWN staff. All of our financial issues remain,
and they have only gotten more pressing over time, but we will have
more freedom in how we try to address those issues. LWN's future is
far from guaranteed, but we intend to try our hardest to continue to
be a part of the Linux community.
We would like to take this opportunity to offer a whole-hearted
"thanks" to the people at Tucows. They have treated us with great
courtesy and respect throughout, they have always respected our
editorial independence, and, not least of all, they have financed LWN
for almost two years. We have no regrets for our decision to join with
them. We will miss working with Tucows, but we look forward to
watching that company thrive in the coming years.
Meanwhile, expect more announcements in the near future as we work out
how we will turn LWN into a sustainable, profitable company. It is the
beginning of a new and challenging period, but we intend to meet those
challeges and be here for a long time.
There is no history page this week, and probably not again for the
forseeable future. We know that some of our readers really enjoyed the
"this week in Linux history" feature, but most people didn't manage to
get that far. By putting the History page on hold for now, we can
better concentrate on the pages that most of our readers enjoy. We do
hope to be able to resume this page sometime in the future.
Inside this LWN.net weekly edition:
* [38]Security: Distributor response to security problems; lots of
updates.
* [39]Kernel: Patch penguins; rmap, fork, and COW.
* [40]Distributions: Distribution list progress report; New releases
from Caldera and Monta Vista.
* [41]Development: Eclipse C/C++ IDE, MySQL 3.23 stable, FreeWRL
0.30 3D browser, KDE 3.0 release plan, Open Motif 2.2,
gphoto2-2.0beta4, TinyCobol 0.56.
* [42]Commerce: LinuxWorld press releases from HP, LPI and many
more.
* [43]Letters: LWN's birthday; printer drivers.
...plus the usual array of reports, updates, and announcements.
This Week's LWN was brought to you by:
* [44]Jonathan Corbet, Executive Editor
January 31, 2002
[45]Next: Security
[46]Eklektix, Inc. Linux powered! Copyright Л 2002 [47]Eklektix, Inc.,
all rights reserved
Linux (R) is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds
References
1. http://lwn.net/
2. http://lwn.net/2002/0131/security.php3
3. http://lwn.net/2002/0131/kernel.php3
4. http://lwn.net/2002/0131/dists.php3
5. http://lwn.net/2002/0131/devel.php3
6. http://lwn.net/2002/0131/commerce.php3
7. http://lwn.net/2002/0131/press.php3
8. http://lwn.net/2002/0131/announce.php3
9. http://lwn.net/2002/0131/letters.php3
10. http://lwn.net//2002/0131/bigpage.php3
11. http://lwn.net/daily/
12. http://linuxcalendar.com/
13. http://lwn.net/stocks/
14. http://lwn.net/Reviews/
15. http://lwn.net/Gallery/
16. http://lwn.net/archives/
17. http://lwn.net/op/headlines.phtml
18. http://lwn.net/op/Contact.html
19. http://lwn.net/2001/features/Timeline/
20. http://lwn.net/2001/features/oreilly2001/
21. http://lwn.net/2001/features/OLS/
22. http://lwn.net/2001/features/MandrakeSoft.php3
23. http://lwn.net/2001/features/KernelSummit/
24. http://lwn.net/2001/features/Singapore
25. http://lwn.net/2001/features/djbdns.php3
26. http://lwn.net/2002/0131/
27. http://lwn.net/2002/0124/
28. http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/NOTE-patent-practice-20020124
29.
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-patentpolicy-comment/2002Jan/0151.html
30. http://lwn.net/2002/0131/a/rtai-24.1.8.php3
31. http://lwn.net/2001/0215/
32. http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/f_headline.cgi?bw.012802/220282250
33. http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html
34. http://lwn.net//2002/0131/bylicense.php3
35. http://lwn.net/2001/0301/
36. http://www.linuxbase.org/
37. http://www.li18nux.net/
38. http://lwn.net/2002/0131/security.php3
39. http://lwn.net/2002/0131/kernel.php3
40. http://lwn.net/2002/0131/dists.php3
41. http://lwn.net/2002/0131/devel.php3
42. http://lwn.net/2002/0131/commerce.php3
43. http://lwn.net/2002/0131/letters.php3
44. mailto:lwn@lwn.net
45. http://lwn.net/2002/0131/security.php3
46. http://www.eklektix.com/
47. http://www.eklektix.com/
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URL: http://www.lwn.net/2002/0131/ |
Sergey Lentsov |
01 Feb 2002 14:56:24 |
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