April 22, 2019

0x66: The End of Hellwig vs. VMware

Summary

Bradley and Karen discuss the details of the completion of the lawsuit (which Conservancy supported) between Christoph Hellwig and VMware in Germany.

This show was released on Monday 22 April 2019; its running time is 00:38:29.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:37)

• Bradley mentioned the episode of Red Dwarf, White Hole, where the characters are speaking too slowly or two quickly due to time differentials. (01:30)
• Bradley explained that the Hellwig vs. VMware suit in Germany has concluded. (03:30)
• German is a civil law legal system. (05:15)
• Christoph Hellwig announced on his website that he has decided not to appeal. (07:18)
• Bradley did a technical analysis how much of Christoph's code appeared in the infringing VMware product. (07:50)
• Till Jaeger was Christoph's lawyer; Till was also the lawyer for Harald Welte's (currently defunct) gpl-violations.org project. (09:04)

Segment 1 (09:26)

• “Trolling” refers to being a non-practicing entity. Patrick McHardy is specifically a practicing entity, since he upstreamed a lot of code in Linux. (09:50)
• Bradley was thinking of the patent troll, Intellectual Ventures. (10:40)
• Bradley that the Eastern district of Texas hears many patent cases in the USA. (10:50)
• Bradley mentioned a This American Life, Episode 411, which discussed patents. Show hosts/producers Laura Sydell and Alex Blumberg visit one of those “empty-but-not” office buildings in the Eastern District of Texas. (11:18)
• Bradley and Karen wrote about Patrick McHardy's behavior back in July 2016 — Conservancy was the first to talk about it publicly. Bradley sought to prevent the “compliance industrial complex” from using knowledge of Patrick's behavior to unduly scare people. (13:10)
• Conservancy (with FSF) also published the Principles of Community-Oriented GPL Enforcement (15:10)
• The rest of the Netfilter team, except for Patrick McHardy, endorsed the Principles. (16:30)
• The VMware suit started 2015-03-05, and began before Patrick McHardy started his problematic behavior. While the VMware suit was working its way through the court, McHardy had filed many inappropriate lawsuits. (18:30)
• German court decisions are very rarely published, but thanks to hard work by everyone involved, the appeal decision, and the lower Court's decision (the latter of which was also translated into English.) (27:30)

Segment 2 (33:01)

In the next episode, Karen will discuss the Kernel Enforcement Statement Additional Permission, and the Red Hat “Cooperation Commitment”. (35:40)

Tags: faif, copyright, patents, copyleft

July 30, 2014

0x4A: See LA?

Summary

Bradley and Karen discuss Contributor Licensing Agreements, which pulls material from Bradley's blog posts on the subject.

This show was released on Wednesday 30 July 2014; its running time is 00:44:34.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:36)

• Bradley mentioned FSF's copyright assignment process. (05:50)
• Bradley mentioned RMS' essay regarding what you should do if a company asks you to assign copyright on Free Software. (14:00)
• Open Stack is reconsidering their CLA.
• Bradley mentioned again that goofy Eclipse contributor poster. (27:22)

Tags: faif, commercial, licensing, copyright, IBM, patents, CLAs

June 5, 2012

0x2B: Deb Nicholson of OIN

Summary

Karen and Bradley interview Deb Nicholson of Open Invention Network, GNU MediaGoblin and Open Hatch.

This show was released on Tuesday 5 June 2012; its running time is 00:48:12.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:36)

• Karen announced her pregnancy. (01:50)
• Bradley will be at OSCON, Karen might be, and Karen will be at GUADEC. Bradley will be at LinuxCon North America and LinuxCon Europe. (03:00)

Segment 1 (04:40)

• Deb Nicholson was previously on the show as Episode 0x25: FOSDEM 2012 Patents Panel. (06:00)
• Deb mentioned Linux System Definition, which is the OIN-published list of things that OIN members license their patents to each other on. (07:12)
• Deb and Bradley are debating Bradley's comment regarding Deb's points on the panel on 0x25. If you go back to listen to 0x25, the context for the comment they're debating starts around 38:00 in 0x25. (19:20)
• It's possible etymology of the verb “to harp” may indeed come from the musical instrument, not harpy. (31:00)
• Karen mentioned The Ada Initiative. (32:52)

Segment 2 (38:54)

Bradley and Karen talk about plans for upcoming shows.

Tags: faif, GNU, patents

March 29, 2012

0x25: FOSDEM 2012 Patents Panel

Summary

Karen and Bradley play and discuss Panel on Patents, moderated by Karen Sandler, with Ciarán O'Riordan, Benjamin Henrion, and Deb Nicholson from the FOSDEM 2012 Legal and Policy Issues DevRoom.

This show was released on Thursday 29 March 2012; its running time is 00:48:59.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:35)

• This American Life issued a retraction of the story we mentioned on 0x24. This American Life released a transcript or mp3 of the audio of the retraction. (02:21)
• Karen and Bradley introduce the panel.

Segment 1 (03:58)

This is the recording of the panel. Some of the questions aren't completely audible, but Dan did a pretty good job boosting it in places.

Segment 2 (32:21)

• IBM's amicus brief in Bilski clearly shows that IBM is pro-software patent. (33:48)
• The Linux System Definition which defines the only patents available for licensing by OIN licensees, was unilaterally updated recently without consulting the Free Software community.
• Keith Bergelt of OIN will speak at Linux Collaboration 2012 on the Legal track, which Bradley is chairing (35:29)
• OIN is a for-profit company. (37:54)
• IBM has attacked Free Software projects with patents, such as TurboHercules (39:22)
• IBM is the largest software patent holder in the world. (44:27)
• Red Hat refuses to grant a patent license for patent use in Free software, they have only a weak promise that allows them to sell of patents to others who may enforce against Free Software projects, or which could be revoked. (46:26)

Tags: faif, licensing, Richard Fontana, IBM, patents

June 21, 2011

Episode 0x12: Karen's New Job; Supreme Court on Patents

Summary

Karen announces her new job, and Bradley and Karen discuss the recent USA Supreme Court decisions on patents.

Be sure to make sure you're subscribed to feeds available on faif.us if you haven't already!

This show was released on Tuesday 21 June 2011; its running time is 00:54:31.

Show Notes

Segment 0 (00:37)

• If you have not moved your RSS feed already away from softwarefreedom.org, and to faif.us, you should do that now! Here's links to the ogg RSS feed and mp3 RSS feed. New FaiF shows won't appear on softwarefreedom.org.
• Karen is now the Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation. (04:30)
• Bradley served on the GNOME Foundation Executive Director Hiring Committee, but resigned when Karen became a serious candidate. (05:13)
• Karen will continue as General Counsel of Question Copyright, and pro-bono counsel to Software Freedom Conservancy, and will also continue pro bono on some matters for SFLC. (06:30)
• Bradley has been working on GNU Bash. (07:34)
• Berlin's Tegel airport is closing soon. (14:40)
• Bradley mentioned that he incorrectly said in 0x11 that Red Hat doesn't provide sources publicly for RHEL. The RHEL SRPMS are actually on Red Hat's FTP site. (18:20)
• There are various identica threads on the RHEL issue from 0x11.(18:47)
• Bradley has previously explained the history of the term “punditocracy” in episode 0x0A. (27:46)

Segment 1 (28:58)

• Bradley and Karen discuss the USA Supreme Court decision in the Global-Tech Appliances, Inc. v. SEB S. A. case, on which SFLC submitted an amicus brief, which was previously discussed in FaiF Episode 0x05. (29:55)
• Bradley and Karen discuss the USA Supreme Court decision in the Microsoft Corp. v. i4i Ltd. Partnership case, on which the EFF submitted an amicus brief. (40:11)

Tags: licensing, patents, gnome