Apple may be abusing the patent system, but not all abuse is trolling. Patent troll has a specific meaning.

Companies who sell products which use patents have incentives to cross-license with other similar companies. If you need my patent and I need your patent, we can come to agreement about reasonable terms. If I don't need your patent because I found a way around it, then you have incentive to drop your demands down to the cost of my work-around. But if I don't need your patent because I don't sell any products at all, then I can demand unreasonable royalties. The royalties don't make me a troll, it's not selling products that makes me a troll. Patent trolling is all about asymmetrical relationships between patent holders; those who need patents because they make things, and those who don't need patents because they don't make things.

There are many ways to abuse patents. Trolling describes only one. Apple is a patent abuser, not a patent troll.

Apple does what it does very, very well, but innovation is not the correct word for it.

Innovation is doing something for the first time. Granted, Apple does have patents, as do most successful technology companies. But those patents, those actual innovations, are not what the public associates with Apple.

Apple is known for being the first to do something well. Not the first to do it, not to invent it, but the first to do it well. That's not innovation, that's called execution. Execution may well be more important than innovation. It's worth celebrating, it brings in lots of money, it's the key to success.

Xerox PARC innovated like crazy, but executed poorly. It took other companies, such as Apple, to take Xerox's innovations and turn them into successful products. Ethernet was an innovation that was limited to the niche of Xerox-only networks until Xerox teamed with Intel and DEC. Intel executed well, making chips that made Ethernet affordable. DEC executed well, incorporating Ethernet into nearly all of their products. 3Com and Novell then took it into the PC market. That's the difference between innovation and execution. Xerox innovated. Intel, DEC, 3Com, and Novell executed Xerox's innovation well.

Apple is very good at recognizing when the time is right to meld multiple innovations into a product. They don't need to be their own innovations. In other words, Apple excels at product development rather than research. The issue is muddled because most companies and the press usually lump the two together as R&D, but innovation comes out of research rather than development.

Apple does many things well, you've pointed out some of the things that Apple does well, but you've used the wrong word to describe it. You aren't the first and won't be the last to misuse the word; advertising agencies and marketing departments misuse the word daily.

It's more than that. This is the Republican version of Public Campaign Financing. Corporation bribes, that is, makes campaign contribution to politician. Politician arranges sale of public property to corporation at discount price, or finds other ways to ensure windfall profits in excess of contribution. Lather, rinse, repeat.

This happens over and over again. Politician steers public property or tax dollars to corporation, corporation contributes part of that money back to politician. Yes, Democrats do it too. The difference is that Democrats are willing to talk about real public campaign financing, while the Republicans rail against it. Rail against spending tax dollars on campaigns, while making sure that tax dollars go to their own campaigns, suitably laundered through corporations.

You've misread that first part. It states that the SFC has asked for source code unrelated to Busybox, and makes no statements about the license of such non-Busybox code. Perhaps they asked for other GPL code, such the Linux kernel. Perhaps they asked for proprietary code that's covered by an NDA.

Lawyers like fishing expeditions against their adversaries, and oppose them against their clients. It's their job. But I'd be happier if they stuck with their own client's code, not looking through all code trawling for potential clients.

Read again. Sony doesn't want to infringe the terms of the license. Other companies do not want to infringe copyright, either.

Pretend that you work for Sony. Your project uses the Linux kernel. You're sure that you comply with the GPL, so there's not much risk in using the Linux kernel. You want to comply, you're taking steps to comply, and someone on your project screws up, you know that the kernel developers just want the additions to the kernel source code released. That's what you want, too, so no big deal.

Then there's Busybox. The lawyers involved with Busybox might use your use of it to demand a look at all of the code for your project, not just Busybox. They might want to look at other projects, too. They might want an open-ended fishing expedition into all projects in all divisions of Sony. Even if everyone, including suppliers, is clean, that would cost too much time and manpower to be worth the risk. The amount of time it saves your project to use Busybox is not worth risking every project in the entire company to an audit.

The GPL has advantages for businesses. Companies can collaborate on software without violating antitrust law. But there are risks, too. No one likes audits. Not by the IRS, not by the BSA, not by SFLC. Audits cost you time and money even when you did nothing wrong. Some people think that the risks of using Busybox are higher than the rewards, even if you fully comply.

Some people are too annoying to buy from, to sell to, to work for, to deal with in any way. Yeah, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and FreeBSD each have a slightly different focus, but personalities also enter into why there's more than one BSD project. Yeah, XFree86 introduced an unnecessary, unacceptable change to their license, but when you get down to it, Xorg forked because of personalities; people in control were holding the project back.

I like the GPL as a license. I like most of the developers who choose the GPL. But in any group, there are bound to be some assholes. I don't know if that's the case with Busybox, but I'm open to the idea that assholes can choose the GPL.

Game companies do get paid when the company sells the game. Now that copy belongs to someone else. That's what 'sell' means. No company deserves to be paid when someone else's property is sold. But that's what they want. They want to be paid for selling it once, and then get paid again when the original purchaser sells his own property. It ain't your property any more after you sold it. What's hard to understand about that?

There are other business models that would keep money flowing to the game company. They could lease or rent games. They could sell under a contract that governs resale. But if they want to make a simple retail sale under state laws following the Uniform Commercial Code, then the terms are simple: once you accept value in exchange, what you sold no longer belongs to you and you have no say in its resale.

Game companies, if you don't like the terms and conditions of retail sales under the UCC, then don't sell your games that way. If you like the simplicity of sales under the UCC, then suck it up accept that purchasers have the right to resell when they no longer want your game. Maybe you should figure out why purchasers don't want to keep your games. Maybe you should stop worrying that someone else made money from reselling something that you already got paid for once.

Making used copies worth less just proves that you're control-freak assholes. Sales of used copies does NOT lower the initial sales; people will pay more when they know they have the option to sell their copy later. Anything you can do to reduce the value of a used copy reduces the value of the first sale. Car companies advertise the high resale value of their brands as a good reason to buy. Why do you guys have this backwards?

I don't see anyone claiming that all accidents can be avoided. Some can be avoided, others can be made less serious.

When I drive, my eyes are always moving. I was taught to use all three mirrors. When I get in an unfamiliar car, such as a rental, I adjust all of the mirrors before moving. This seems to be unusual; most people jump in, adjust the seat, and leave. I know women who seem to think that the center mirror is for applying makeup. It's not hard to be more aware than the average driver, and you can avoid accidents if you are.

No, you can't avoid all accidents. I was rear-ended in city traffic, a friend's car was hit in his driveway by someone who jumped the curb and drove across his lawn. But I've avoided being hit by someone who suddenly changed lanes into me, avoided a crate which fell off the truck in front of me, avoided the car that passed me in the rain and then spun across all four lanes.I slowed when the rain came down harder and the road went from wet to standing water, I knew he was going too fast for conditions, and didn't panic when he spun. I braked hard enough to avoid him, but not so hard that the guy behind me hot me. Situational awareness is critical.

There are good habits and bad habits. They make a difference.

No, Universal does not have copyright to the music involved, which was what made it newsworthy.

"They're saving quite a bit of money by not printing and storing a physical copy of the book in question."

That's not true. It's not even close to true. Printing and shipping are a minor part of the cost of a book. The major cost is editorial and marketing, which are the same for printed and e-book versions. Authors need to be paid. Editors need to be paid. Cover artists need to be paid. Proofreaders need to be paid. Book designers need to be paid. Books rarely sell themselves; marketing is important, regardless of the book's physical form.

You can skip some of these steps and related expenses if you self-publish. Conventional print publishers won't let you make that mistake. It's easy to find e-books that show how big a mistake it is, but the difference is not between print and electronic formats, it's between standard publisher-financed books and self-published books.

What I miss with electronic delivery is time-based pricing. Print disguises this with different physical forms - hardcover, trade paperback, mass market paperback - but the essence isn't the form, it's that early adopters pay higher prices than those who wait.

If the contention is that money spent on Firefox is yielding poor results, what does that suggest about money spent on projects that most people can't remember?

Of course people complain about change. But there's more, and you've dismissed it.

There are tasks which can be done with the old version which cannot be done with the new version. It's not a question of learning a new way to do it, it's that there simply is NO way to do it.

Sure, people complained about the ribbon interface in the new version of Word. That's what you are talking about. What if it couldn't open old documents? That's what I'm talking about. What if the new version couldn't print? Those are the type of issues some users are complaining about. If all you ever did was business letters, maybe you wouldn't miss opening old documents. If all you ever did was email documents, maybe you would never miss printing. Those people are happy with the new version, which is better in other ways. But the new version is not usable by businesses which must provide printed documents, or revise old documents, and so on.

Yes, professionals is too broad a category. But the article does have a point; Apple is moving away from software that scales. They are very good at delivering products that meet the needs of single users. If you have one copy of FCP, you'll probably be happy to switch to the new version. If you have 20 copies, you not only won't be happy, you probably can't switch. The new version isn't designed for multiple people working on the same project. Multiple independent projects? Try it and see.

It's not just the software. Apple does a great job of providing service and support to one user at a time. Home user or business user, you can take your MacBook into an Apple store and get it fixed. Need some training? Same deal - works great for one or two users at a time, if you are near a store, and during business hours. But Apple doesn't scale to enterprises. I'm talking about 24/7 on-site repairs, on-site training for large groups, and so on. That's OK, it may be better for Apple to elect to stay out of certain markets rather than do it poorly.

Apple is focused on consumers. There are professionals whose needs match those of consumers, so Apple serves them. Other than tools, developer's needs overlap home users, so you shouldn't worry. Other professionals are finding that Apple no longer serves them. The more your professional workflow differs from that of home users, the more you should worry.

Because FCX won't ever catch up. It's a question of scale.

The old versions of FCP are designed to allow teams to work on projects. The new software is designed to be used by a single user. If only one person at a time is editing, the new version may well be better than the old version. That workflow matches how a huge number of people work, so it makes sense for Apple to focus on that market. From amateur home user to professionals working on smaller projects, Apple is moving in the right direction.

For the broadcast market, it's the wrong direction. If your work scales beyond one user per project, it's time to move on. Apple makes high margins on consumer electronics, lower but OK margins on home computers, and not much at all from businesses or government sales. Apple is going to focus on the market segment where they make higher profits, not the niche market with high sales and support costs.

At one time, if it had an engine, Ford and GM made it. Ford sold tractors and airplanes. GM sold buses, locomotives, and heavy trucks. Those markets are willing to pay a higher initial price for products which last a long time and can be repaired and rebuilt over and over. The market for cars is different. People will junk cars after 10 years if they get a lower price up front. Consumers don't see cars as an investment used to make money, cars are an expense. Make it as cheap as possible and sell me a new one every couple of years, driving the latest model impresses people. Ford and GM still sell light trucks, and probably always will. But they got out of those other markets. Some of the technology may be the same, but each market demands a different set of trade-offs, a different way of doing business. It's easier to structure your business around one large market than try to do everything.

Apple sells to consumers. They're good at it. If they sold vehicles, they'd sell cars. If you need the equivalent of a van or pickup, Apple is still in that market. But they won't, can't, scale up a pickup to a tractor trailer.

Oracle donated the copyrights and trademarks to ASF. The ASF OpenOffice.org effort is not shutting down. Among others, IBM employees are paid to work on it. Suggesting that OO.o is shutting down is just plain wrong.

What may shut down is a separate group in Germany that Oracle used to fund. That group does not own the copyrights or trademarks. It is not the project. It may be part of some broader community, just as the GPL fork called LibreOffice is part of a broader community. Communities don't own copyrights, trademarks, or domain names. People and legal entities own them.

Oracle may have left this group high and dry, which entitles them to some sympathy. Alarmist press releases misrepresenting who owns the project and the software cancels that sympathy. Guess what? When you work on a project that requires copyright assignment, you give up ownership. When you work on a project under a name trademarked by someone else, they own the name. Oracle screwed them. The 'I've Been Screwed By Oracle Club" is not exclusive, anyone can join.

Perhaps I did not explain that well enough, if that's what you think. I'll try again.

Developing proprietary software for internal use is indeed a common and successful business model. Developing proprietary software which is embedded within some greater product is a common and successful business model. So are using open source software for internal and embedded applications. In all of these cases, profits do not come from sales of software. Software is a necessary expense, not a profit center. Open source development can lower those expenses.

That's completely different than the proprietary software business model, which is developing software and selling it to others.

Another example: Ford and GM are in the business of selling cars, not bolts. Anything they can do to lower the cost of bolts is good for them, but not good for the bolt makers. So auto makers cooperate to standardize threads and so on, turning bolts from specialty items into commodities. There will still be places where a standard bolt won't do, so some specialty bolts are still needed, but fewer of them. The push for open standards does not come from bolt makers, it comes from bolt buyers.

The push for open source software comes from businesses who make profits from using software, not businesses who sell software. Software that everyone needs is becoming a commodity. Specialty software will still exist, often as a layer on top of commodity software.

Look at the phone market. Apple basically treats phones as embedded systems. They don't sell the OS separately. HTC uses a commodity open source OS, and spends a small amount to customize a thin layer on top of that. Both of those models are working for the phone makers.

Nokia made a lot of money using the embedded system business model, but their software development was mismanaged. Their very success with Symbian in the feature phone market blinded them to the smart phone market. They tried to upgrade their proprietary software into smart phone territory, and failed. They tried using open source software to make smart phones, and failed. The problem wasn't the software business model (they tried all the models), it was that their upper management never learned how to manage software projects. Costs were too high, projects were late, the software wasn't good enough. So now they are buying the software from Microsoft. I think that's a mistake; Microsoft will skim off the profit on every phone sold, leaving very little for Nokia.