... software, that is here the question.

There have been quite a few comments for the leadership of my employer lately (GregP, JonathanS), and now Mark Shuttleworth of Ubuntu chimes in.

His argument goes as follows: Microsoft (and in extension most, if not all major corporate software player) really do not have an interest in software patents. Why? Simply because they are obviously the most juicy target a patent troll can hope for: deep pockets, big software products that cover vast areas of intellectual property. Examples of this can be found at Mike Dillon's blog.

In the light of these developments, Non-assertion covenants such as Sun's for OpenID are of crucial interest to the developer community and the public as a whole. These initiatives truly create a "patent cold war" in a good sense, at least within the software industry.

What remains is the patent-troll industry, and here is where regulatory bodies are required to evolve the current patent and copyright legislation ^[1] to a model where inventors and practitioners (like developers or artists) are rewarded, while parasites (like patent trolls and ...) have their air supply cut for good.

I am wondering one thing (and maybe there is a legal expert/lawyer out there who could clarify this): Can I license e.g. software in a way that would revoke license rights from potential patent plaintiffs?  So that any software license has a 'nuclear' provision, that renders the entire license provision null and void, if the licensee (i.e. user of the software) uses software patents for the sole purpose of suing without practicing such patents in a meaningful way. Note that this provision should not be directional, but cover any suit based on horded patents.

If the open source community and the commercial software community adopted a model like this, the patent trolls would at least be relegated to using paper and pen for all of their fillings.

tag: patents, IPR, intellectual property, NAC

[1] absolutely including the completely brainless DMCA and its WIPO relatives

UPDATE: After talking to a few folks (that are quite cynical at times ), I guess my license idea would not work: It would be quite easy for a troll to setup a front and 'outsource' business activities ...

You can find some information on this at the "On The Record" blog, including a link to the official text of the NAC. Now let's hope that more folks issue a similar covenant.

This time, Eve was faster than me ...

tag: Identity, OpenID, Open Source, iiw2007, sunopenid

Drummond blogged about semantically meaningful identifiers - really interesting. I particularly like his example ... and Drummond: I am perfectly happy for you to use my identifier in this example

tag: identity, XRI, OpenID

Wow, sensible ideas *do* seem to spread by themselves ... I just read in eWeek that more and more companies are using desktop virtualization. No kidding. I have been using desktop virtualization for more than 4 years now, with my production machine (Email, Blog reading, OpenOffice, etc.) virtualized now for almost a year. Anything else would be totally insane for me, especially since I use a lot of beta (or alpha) software that has a tendency to break certain OSes.

tag: Virtualization

Mike Jones has blogged about Microsoft's latest OSP covered specification. Large chunks of the InfoCard protocols that appeared on Kim's blog over time are now in this refatored version of the spec. I did not have the time yet to go through this in detail, but I am quite interested to figure out if I can build a managed card provider and consumer based solely on this spec. Mike assures me that this works, so I hope to report back about this soon ...

BTW: Thanks for all your work, Mike (and Kim, of course).

tag: Identity, Microsoft, InfoCard

Last night's untalend show was - as usual - quite interesting. Here is the lyrics of some of Eve's andmy song (snippets):

Twinkle, twinkle WS-Star
How I wonder what you are

Architecture in the sky
Now in part in WS-I

Twinkle, twinkle WS-Star
How I wonder what you are
(traditional)

and

Bye, Bye, Mr. InfoCard guy
May be managed some day later
Now he's self-certified

When he left Dot Net
And kissed Kim Cameron goodbye
Saying "Soon I'm gonna be a profile,
soon I'm gonna be a profile."
(after Wierd Al - The Saga Begins, after Don McLean - American Pie)

tag: IIW2007, un-talent

Today, we (pre)-announced at the IIW 2007 a non-assertion covenant (NAC) for OpenID. What does this mean?

First, the NAC is a short (three paragraphs) legally binding document that licenses all of Sun's patents (and not only necessary claims) to anybody for the purpose of implementing OpenID 1.1 Auth and Simple Reg 1.0 ... in perpetuity ... royalty-free. This license will only be withdrawn, if someone decides to sue Sun over this technology.As far as I know, this is the first covenant like this around OpenID.

Sun has issued already some of these - one on ODF and another one on SAML. Everytime, this prompted similar licenses and promises from other companies. Note that this move is so far totally unilateral - we (Sun) clear the way for the OpenID community as much as we can. Now it is up to other companies to do the same thing and show their commitment to the open source community.

The official announcement of this NAC will appear soon on the "On the Record" marketing blog at blogs.sun.com.

Finally, here is a picture by David showing Eve, Bill and myself making the announcement:

tag: OpenID, sunopenid, IIW2007, opensource

Here are my slides to yesterday's mini talk in the java.net community corner.

OpenID JavaOne.pdf (380.11 KB)

tag: identity, OpenID, sunopenid

I will be giving an OpenID talk at JavaOne this afternoon at 4:00pm in the java.net Community Corner in the Pavilion. In this, I will explain Sun's recent press announcement and shed some light on what we are planning to do next. Slides (and a podcast) will be available soon at the community wiki.

tag: OpenID, identity, sunopenid

Marina Fisher and I will be presenting on AJAX interoperability here at JavaOne on Thursday at 5:30pm in Esplanade 302. We will be covering jMaki, WCF, Silverlight/ASP.NET AJAX and Java REST API interoperability. For more details, go here. 

tag: AJAX, jMaki, Silverlight, Interoperability