Software Patents in New Zealand, proposed Law

In some countries, like the USA, it is practically impossible to write software without violating someone's patent claim. Even if it were feasible to read find and read all possible applicable patents, often only courts can rule on the scope and validity of such patents.

Even if 99% of software patents can be shown to be invalid, it takes a lot of time and money to do so, and that has to be done for each and every patent.

So software patents are practically impossible for solo developers, and even moderately sized software companies, to defend against or to successfully avoid. Hence software patents discourage innovation in practice, if not be intent.

Certain vested interests wish to establish software patents, here The New Zealand Open Source Society presents a response:
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First I would like to thank the Commerce Committee for the carefully consideration of the issues around software patents and applaud their decision to introduce an exclusion for software from patents.
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There are many powerful interests who will be very upset by this decision, and no doubt they will do bring every influence they have to bear on changing this decision.

Two law firms with an interest in patent law have already weighed in, and so I have taken the time to reply to their comments.
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Previous post: How Microsoft really wants people...

My previous post: How Microsoft really wants people to adopt the GPLv3 Licence.

Was an April Fool's joke, just in case someone was fooled, but it did link to genuine sites.

How Microsoft really wants people to adopt the GPLv3 Licence

Hi just a short note to say how much I appreciate the change of heart of Microsoft towards open source.

A good example: is how Microsoft wants people to adopt the version 3 of the General Public Licence put out by the GNU people.

I know that many people are very happy to stay with Microsoft, not every one wants to use a Linux Distribution.

How to get started with Linux

The choice of one's first Linux distribution is important, I started with Debian almost 20 years ago, because my friends who introduced me to Linux ran Debian, and they still do.

The reality is, that the best Linux distribution depends on a number of factors, some of them quite personal. I tend to favour Fedora over Ubuntu, as I have found it easier to use, it tends to have more up-to-date packages and Red Hat contributes considerably more to Linux and upstream packages.

The following is from a good article getting started with Linux, regardless, of what distribution you choose to use, as many of the comments apply directly to other distributions or with only minor changes.
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Fedora is a great choice of distribution to start with. It's easy to install and just as easy to use. It's one of the most well-respected distributions available, and has a very tight relationship with its parent and chief sponsor, Red Hat.

With Fedora, you have access to one of the largest communities in the world of Linux, and one of the the biggest selections of software to play with.
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7 of the Best Free Linux Document Processors

A document processor is a document preparation system that allows the author to concentrate on what they actually want to say and the overall structure, rather than getting mired in details of presentation.

My youngest son asked me to install scribus and lyx, which I did. However, I will bring his attention to this article which lists 6 others besides Lyx, but does not include Scribus. Some of these are very suitable for submitting papers to scientific journal, as they can produce LaTeX output.

These are all free to download for Linux, so we can use them on any of our 3 desktop computers, as we use Fedora Linux (naturally they are also available for other Linux distributions such as Ubuntu).

However, most of us are quite happy to use a word processor such as what comes with the OpenOffice.org suite of programs, which has just had a new version (3.2) released. This new version is much faster to start up, and has even better ability to read proprietary formats, plus is generally easier to use as well has having additional features.

Opening Government data for the public is not easy

Nat Torkington is very keen on openness for Government data, and has been involved in at least 2 such projects. He admits he made mistakes, such as not initially looking to determine who the users actually were, and then finding that there were several dissimilar groups who had had conflicting requirements. Here he shares some of what he learnt to help others not to repeat the same mistakes.

The open data projects he worked on:

Open New Zealand
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Welcome to open.org.nz. We develop and host projects around transparency, participatory democracy, and generally making central and local government useful to citizens and businesses.
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Government datasets online
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Official Statistics are produced by government departments to provide information for government and government departments, local government, businesses and the general public.
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Free software alternative to the iPad

A Spanish company is releasing a free software alternative to the iPad, called the iFreeTablet and will cost about half the price of Apple's iPad. The iFreeTablet naturally supports multi-tasking, as it is based on a Linux distribution.

If this pans out, then this could be hugely significant. However, even if the iFreeTablet does not succeed - either way, it will have shown that there are ways to develop things as least as good as the iPad, that other people can build and expand on.

So I wish the iFreeTablet, the best, and looking into the usability research behind the iFreeTablet, done at the University of Cordob - it should be easier to use and more useful than the Apple product.

NZPT is moving again!

Sorry guys, but the NZPT blog is moving again. Hopefully now in a more permanent location, it is now on Supermathu-net site MediaPT.

MediaPT is a site about Public Transport in NZ.

GO HERE for the new location.




About Supermathu:
Supermathu is Matthew Flower (NZ) online.

A New School in New Zealand commits to Open Source

Even though the Microsoft tax has already been paid, one new school found it cheaper and much more useful to go the Open Sourceway with: Linux, OpenOffice and other free software, for both the computers used by students and the servers. To quote from Angus Kidman:
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The school in Auckland's North Shore City has been running an entirely open source infrastructure since it opened in 2009. The 230-pupil school was set up to follow open learning principles, offering large "learning commons" areas where multiple classes interact rather than conventional classrooms and setting aside one day each week for pupils to work on self-driven research projects.

Albany SHS' unorthodox approach is also reflected in its IT infrastructure. Deputy principal Mark Osborne was determined to use open source software throughout the school, even though planning for that process began less than two months before the school opened (read his blog about it).
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This even got mentioned in Slashdot, which has an international audience!

The school is in Albany Senior High School is now running an entirely open source infrastructure since it opened in 2009. It also features in the New Zealand Educational Gazette, where it is revealed that students play a significant part in the IT infrastructure.

A friend who attended the Australian Linux Conference (which just so happened to be held in Wellington new Zealand!) said that Mark Osborne who set it up was considered the bravest man in New Zealand.

The film Avatar was created with Linux

Most computer graphics you see in modern films is either done with Linux or on a Mac. However, from what I can gather, Linux boxen are used for the majority of computer graphics in films, in fact I don't know of any that used the Apple Mac (if anyone knows of any film with extensive computer graphics that is not produced with Linux, please let me know!).

Note that 'boxen' is Geek talk for two or more computers, derived from the slang term 'Vaxen' for a group of computers running the VAX operating system. The VAX O/S is no longer used to the best of my knowledge.

In fact the Linux render farms (the boxen that create the computer graphics) used at WETA Digital are in the list of the top 500 super computers of the world. Needless to say that over 90% of the top 500 super computers use Linux, and most of the rest use a variety of Unix.


For some reason, successes due to Linux, tend to have the Linux part omitted from articles in the media:
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A review of the company that made the Linux computer graphics happen, known as WETA Digital (Wellington, New Zealand, a Peter Jackson spin off company), is notoriously absent from the articles.
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IBM confirms Linux is mainstream

IBM clearly knows that Linux is big business, as it is adding even more products for the Linux Market, as this article clearly shows.
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IBM has expanded its server lineup with a new mainframe system designed just for Linux that may be aimed, in particular, at higher-end x86 systems.
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Five things Free Software has taught me

There are many reasons for using open source, here is a summary of "A High School Student’s Views on Software Freedom" reasons. The student gives a well written in depth explanation associated with each of the following points - they are not mere slogans.

1. Centralized control isn’t worth it

2. The strongest approach is a philosophical approach

3. An open and creative mind does wonders

4. Knowledge was meant to be shared

5. Anyone can make a difference

Linux Task Scheduling Revisited

A good technical explanation of Linux scheduling is given by the article Inside the Linux 2.6 Completely Fair Scheduler. Non technical readers can get some of the drift without looking at the code snippets. Students of Computer Science can use this as a good introduction to the subject. In the beginning the Linux scheduler was simple, as you can see from this excerpt:
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A short history of Linux schedulers

Early Linux schedulers used minimal designs, obviously not focused on massive architectures with many processors or even hyperthreading. The 1.2 Linux scheduler used a circular queue for runnable task management that operated with a round-robin scheduling policy. This scheduler was efficient for adding and removing processes (with a lock to protect the structure). In short, the scheduler wasn't complex but was simple and fast.
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Open Source Geology

This is not the usual type of Open Source I was thinking of covering, but it fits the philosophy even though it it is not directly about software.

British Geological Survey's (BGS) new OpenGeoscience portal is well worth exploring. The BBC news had two interesting articles about it being free and the beautiful pictures.

The general public can now access maps and other useful information about the geology of the British Isles - unfortunately it is not fully open source, as it is available with the restriction that commercial use is not allowed (though I assume some arrangement can be made via negotiation).


There is also coverage of climate aspects, maps, and scenic photographs.

Open Source Leads to Innovative Companies and Increased Competition

The real costs of using Open Source are considerably less than for Proprietary Software, and Open Source allows companies greater freedom to modify it to meet their own particular needs.

Increasing numbers of companies are being created based on the use of Open Source software and resources available via the Internet (often themselves based on open source!), that reduce startup costs considerably, but that most fail or are barely viable. However, there are some spectacular successes - driven by the increased rate of innovation fostered by adopting the Open Source approach.


As Matt Asay says (10-Dec-09):
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That certainly seems to be one lesson to take from the success of Linux, Firefox, and other open-source projects, particularly those that are community-led, as opposed to company-led. It's hard to compete with a group of self-selected, highly focused developers who can focus on good code, not good financial quarters.
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But it's equally true of relatively new companies like Salesforce, Red Hat, and Google, which have eschewed gimmicky software and flimsy business strategies to give customers tangible, ongoing value. None of these companies sought an early exit through acquisition. None of them were content to build for the quick flip.
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Is Linux ready for Mission Critical Systems?

There are many examples were senior managers are totally unaware that Linux already plays a significant role in Mission Critical Systems, and has done so for several years.

In the recent article Open Source Poses “Huge Risk” To Organisations the CIO essentially said that Linux was not suitable for Mission Critical Systems, though the article goes on to say how the company GE already uses a lot of Open Source Software:
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Responding to a question from eWEEK Europe UK on the first day of the Central and Eastern European IT Leaders Summit & Expo, in Budapest, Peter Gyorgy, chief information officer of GE's Consumer and Industrial division in Europe, said non-proprietary code presents a significant risk to companies.
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The following article shows how much more that GE CIO is out of touch with reality Newsflash for GE, you're already using 'risky' open source:
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First, it's ridiculous to suggest that because something is "low cost" it is inherently risky. Gyorgy seems to believe that the more he spends, the safer he is. Last time I checked, Google et al. were running their networks at more significant scale than GE, and all on open source.

Maybe Gyorgy simply doesn't like equal or better performance for less money. In this, he's apparently alone. The 451 Group's survey data has roughly 90 percent of the 1,700 IT executives surveyed declaring that they have realized cost savings with open source. These are IT executives that a few years ago might have shared Gyorgy's views on open source.
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In the article The CIO is the Last to Know a CIO was totally unaware that his Data Centre already used Linux in 25% of the servers!, and that was written in 2002 - now Linux is even more widespread.
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It always happens this way with new technology. As the leader of North America sales for Red Hat in 2002, I remember calling on the CIO of a company in the financial services industry that processed millions of transactions daily in support of the equities market. I sat in his office while he explained to me that his operation was mission critical – the markets depend on this operation. He would never consider using Linux and open source. “Why don't we take a tour of the datacenter,” he asked. I was game, so I replied “Sure.”
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How Competition and Cooperation benefits Linux

First I must explain what a scheduler is and outline some history. To avoid writing hundreds of pages and getting into too much technical detail, I have simplified things a somewhat and not included a lot of scheduler variants that have also played a part.

Girls don't do Linux!

Some people feel that Linux is too difficult to use, let alone install, so they would implicitly believe it is out of the question for children do so, let alone a very young girl.

If that was true then no six year old boy, let alone, his five year old sister, could possibly install a Linux distribution!

Here is an article from a 'mere' woman (who just happens to head up a very successful company selling Linux boxen), about her 5 and 6 year old children installing Linux, and getting stuck in to assembling computers:
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One early spring day as we were walking home from the bakery on the corner, we passed by a neighbor and struck up a conversation. He complained about his desktop being constantly attacked by viruses. We suggested Ubuntu. A professional man in his 50s, he said he wanted to try installing a Linux distribution on his desktop but that, “it looks too complicated. I probably couldn’t install Ubuntu. I don’t want the hassle.”

My little five year old daughter had been snuggled in my arms while I was talking to this neighbor. She had been listening closely. When we got home, she said, “Mom, I can install Ubuntu. I bet I can. Can I try? Can I try?”
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Fedora 12 Reviews

Some reviews of Fedora 12 taken from: Fedora Weekly News #203 (which covers a lot of other topics related to Fedora):
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1. ↑ http://www.linux-mag.com/cache/7618/1.html
2. ↑ http://community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,1000000567,10014494o-2000498448b,00.htm
3. ↑ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/19/fedora_12_review/
4. ↑ http://www.ghacks.net/2009/11/18/major-improvements-with-fedora-12/
5. ↑ http://www.itpro.co.uk/617824/fedora-12-tweaks-virtualisation-video
6. ↑ http://www.techworld.com.au/article/326717/fedora_linux_12_arrives_ups_multimedia_support
7. ↑ http://www.techspot.com/news/37004-fedora-12-released-brings-multitouch-support-more.html
8. ↑ http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3848891/Building-On-Ramps-on-the-Fedora-12-Highway.htm
   

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Some open source sites I follow

Some of the sites I follow are:

Daily summary of news about Linux: linuxtoday.com

Home page for probably the fastest and most reliable open source database: http://www.postgresql.org I first started using databases on Mainframes (specifically an ICL 4/72, a massive machine with one megabyte of core memory) in the 1970's, now I have to support MySQL because a client uses it, but PostgreSQL is much easier to use - I felt compelled to buy a book about MySQL administration, whereas the documentation that came with the PostgreSQL was sufficient. PostgreSQL is also known as Postgres. Funnily enough. I have also had a couple of years experience with PROGRESS 4GL, which is both a database and what they call a 4th generation language - I only mention it, as I have to remind myself to say "Postgres" rather than "PROGRESS" at times!

News about court cases involving Open Source, such as the long running attempt by a company to claim money from Linux users, also about software patents: http://groklaw.net