From: Pierre Machard
> Do you have any reason to think that the position you defend will
> satisfy Patent holders ?

Some of them have threatened to walk off of W3C in response to even so
mild a position as the draft policy. Nobody thinks they'll really do it.
But your question shows the problem: we can't control their behavior
through the standards organization. We need their cooperation to make
this work. Thus, we can't take a draconian position. The only way around
this is to get legislation, which is a worthy but uphill battle.

From: Nick Phillips
> I presume you've seen Rik van Riel's suggestion as posted
> to one of the SPI lists earlier. In fact it wouldn't surprise me if the same
> things triggered his message as yours, either directly or indirectly.

A number of people have suggested defensive patent pools. I think
I remember doing so in a 1997 article in LinuxWorld.com . The three
problems are:

        1. Getting inventions.
        2. Getting money to file for patents. This is both legal fees to
              format the patent claim (which has to be right if you want to
              be enforcible), and filing fees.
        3. Getting money to file lawsuits. If you can't sue, nobody's going
              to be very interested in your claims.

I think that #1 could be handled by the community, #2 could at least be
started with pro-bono assistance from legal and engineering students, etc.
#3 doesn't have to come until later. If you want to run with the project,
please do so.

From: Wouter Verhelst
> It may not be a bad idea to have patent holders turn to a different
> standards body than people that object to software patents. If there are
> expensive 'standards' from one standards body and free standards from
> another, I feel that people would use the free standards, so that the
> patent holders would lose. Even if they have their own standard.

Well, there are about 100 existing organizations they could turn to,
including IETF (which has a joke of a patent policy IMO) and OASIS. It
would be very easy to do. I don't think making them do that would win
us anything.

From: James Antill
From Bruce:
> > The code that makes use of
> > the patented principle must be under the MIT license, which allows a
> > scope-limited patent license. That may be linked into GPL code and
> > distributed.
>
> How does this work?
> Say I have "xmms", which is GPL code that I didn't write ... and I
> want to implement some w3c std. that contains one of these patents. So
> I do the code as an MIT license, but I'm going to have to link it to
> the GPL'd code ... it's going to be a _derivative work_ ... so the
> code is basically GPL, no matter what I put at the top of the file.

The GPL terms on linking are that all parts of the derivative work must be
under a license with _no_additional_restrictions_ on top of those in the
GPL. The GPL does not prevent you from _removing_restrictions_, as long
as you are the copyright holder on the portion of the code in question.

From: Andre Lehovich
> I've been trying to comment on the draft patent policy.
> The link below -- to approve inclusion of my comments in the
> official archive -- doesn't work for me, returing a 404.

It's breaking for everyone, I think. I notified Danny Weitzner, the Patent
Policy Working Group chair.

Attention anyone whose message doesn't appear here: thanks for writing!
As usual, I am buried in mail and stuff to do, so although I read them
all, I can't answer every message individually.

        Thanks

        Bruce Perens

To All Members of the Free Software and Open Source Community,

For the past two years, I've been working on the W3C patent policy on
your behalf, to make it safe for Free Software to implement W3C standards.
Now, I'm worried that we could lose that fight, not because of the patent
holders, but because of our own community.

There's a long discussion below. I'm asking you to do something once you
read that discussion: Please write to
and tell them something like this (please elaborate - everyone discounts
rubber-stamp comments):

        To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
        Subject: Approve of draft policy - disapprove of software patenting.

        I request that W3C approve the draft patent policy, because it's a
        compromise that protects the right of Open Source / Free Software
        programmers to implement W3C standards.

And you may want to add this:

        I object to software patents, and support efforts to eliminate them
        at the legislative level.

Now, to the discussion.

Three representatives of the Free Software / Open Source community:
myself, Larry Rosen of the Open Source Initiative, and Eben Moglen of
the Free Software Foundation, worked on the W3C patent policy for two
years. We spent between 1/8 and 1/4 of our time on the project for all
of that time, participating in many face-to-face meetings and conference
calls. Across the table were some companies that, I feel, wanted to
"farm" their own patents in W3C standards and would have erected
lucrative "toll-booths" to collect royalties from every implementor of
web standards. If they had their way, we would have been locked
out.

We got you the best deal we could get. It's not everything we want,
and it can't be. The draft policy is at
http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-patent-policy-20021114/ .

The proposed W3C patent policy grants a royalty-free right for everyone
to practice patents that are embedded in the standard by W3C members who
own those patents. It prevents "patent farming", the biggest problem
that faced us. The problem is that the patent grant is limited - it only
applies to code that actually implements the standard. This is called a
"field-of-use" limitation. The problem this creates for the Free Software
community is that other uses of the same patent in our code, for anything
but implementing the standard, could be covered by royalties.

I object to software patents entirely, and many of you do as well. Why,
then, did I (on your behalf) approve of a policy containing that
limitation, and why am I asking you to support it?

The answer is simple. Patent holders won't continue their membership
in W3C if that membership forces them to give up their patent rights
for non-standards-related applications. They will instead move their
standards-making activities to other organizations that allow them to
charge patent royalties on the standards. And we will have lost.

It comes down to what we can compel people to do, and what they won't
stand for. The patent holders want the W3C brand on their standards,
and will give up something for that. If we ask them to give up more,
they'll do without the W3C brand, and we have no way to control what
standards organization they move to. If we wish to fight software patents
outside of standards, I think our only choice is to do so at the legislative
level.

The field-of-use limitation presents special problems regarding the GPL,
because the GPL disallows a field-of-use-limited patent license. There is a
work-around for this. The code that makes use of the patented principle
must be under the MIT license, which allows a scope-limited patent
license. That may be linked into GPL code and distributed. I'm less than
comfortable with this, but my discomfort arises from the basic injustice
of software patents. A work-around is the best we can do in this case.

FSF, by its tenets, was bound to protest the field-of-use-limitation.
I respect that protest, as it is rooted an a belief that I share - that
software patents are fundamentally wrong. However, if the Free Software /
Open Source community comes out against the W3C patent policy, and the
patent holders who want unlimited rights to charge royalties come out
against it, just who will speak for it? The result will be that W3C
will fail to give final approval to the policy, and we will not even have
the limited protection from software patents that we've won. Thus, I
have to ask you _not_ to do what FSF asks this time. Of course, this
disagreement does not diminish my respect of FSF, and I will continue
to work with them as I have on many projects for years.

Thus, I'd like you to write that email now. It's very important that W3C
see support for the draft policy, or we'll be back to the old, bad policy
again. Thanks!

As always, please feel free to call me to discuss this at 510-526-1165
(California time) or write me at bruce@perens.com .

        Thanks

        Bruce Perens

In less than an hour, I will see The Walt Disney Company's second attempt to adapt Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio to the silver screen. I wonder how Disney's going to screw this one up. (Update: See my review in the comments.)

Before October 1998, my biggest beef with Disney was the fact that the writers mutilated classic stories beyond the minimum necessary for a movie adaptation, often completely changing the meaning of a story. Just look at what Disney did to, say, the story of Pocahontas.

After October 1998, I find the fact that Disney lobbied hard for the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act more than enough to demonize Disney. The company goes in, takes advantage of stories that have fallen into the public domain, then goes and gets a copyright extension so that other companies can't do the same thing. Now how hypocritical is that?

You can find more reasons to hate Disney at the web site of The Society of Disney Haters, which has been discussed on Kuro5hin.

Who else has something to say against The Walt Disney Company?

. . . It's clear that people knew for a long time that Lott had, to put it charitably, issues: issues of racism, and issues of the tin-eared, foot-in-mouth sort. Put those together, and he was a disaster waiting to happen. Some people even said that before the elections. Yet somehow he wound up as Majority Leader anyway.

Pick the wrong people for important jobs, and you have problems every time. That's a lesson worth remembering.

Hear hear! And it applies to every human endeavor, not just politics.

Well, I got my LoTR fix finally. And I gotta tell ya, it was pretty damn good. The action sequences were especially nice. The battle sequences will set new standards. Gollum was, well, just plain amazing. The Ents looked just like I had always imagined them.

Downsides... This film missed several opportunities to work on the Strider-to-King Aragorn transformation. There was limited character development with Gollum and (surprisingly) Gimli coming across as the most three-dimensional.

The Faramir thing? Well, I already knew about it so I wasn't surprised, but it is pretty damn egregious. I think they could have kept it like the book without losing a beat. Sometimes changes add to a movie because they are needed to keep the flow. Other times they strike a false note, and I think that is the case here.

And, although I really liked the Ents I felt they got pretty short shrift scriptwise. Maybe there are some cut Ent scenes that will show up in the TTEE (Two Towers Extended Edition) DVD when it comes out.

I am going to have to see it a couple more times before I can make the call as to which is the better movie, but right now Fellowship gets the nod as a more rounded picture. Still, any complaint I make is because TT isn't perfect, not because it isn't the best movie to come out this year. Go see it. See it soon so you can share the experience with other LoTR fans instead of the mundane masses.

And remember to go to the bathroom right before the previews start. It is three hours long and you won't want to miss a second...

This is a patch to PostgreSQL that allows hierarchical queries in Oracle's style. Way cool, and yet another example of someone scratching an itch and turning the result into Open Source code. I hope the PostgreSQL maintainers consider this one for integrating into the main source tree.

It has been a day of strange coincidences between my personal life and and that slice of my virtual life that occurs here on slashdot.

Today I finished reading David Brin's novel Glory Season, and was thinking of reviewing it here. Meanwhile Brin is also featured on the front page of /. for an article by him published in Salon asking people to take a slightly different look at the Lord of the Rings. To which I did a short response during a break.

Hmm...

And it doesn't end there either, but the other coincidences are something I will leave for a separate post because they have no LoTR connection. In the meantime I meant to take a nap before leaving for the movie, but finished Brin's book instead just a little while ago.

My take? Definately worth the read. In person Brin is brilliant, but annoying. In print he is often simply brilliant, and always readable. Glory Season is a very good science fiction book if you like the kind with fully realized societies and fascinating speculation. Perhaps the speculation itself is way off base, but it works in context. And the story itself is a good read.

I understand many feminists really do not like this book, and I can see why. But I have to wonder if Brin isn't right about one thing; a matriarchical society will be no more perfect than a patriarchical one. The problems are different, but both are composed of imperfect human beings.

I really should be taking that nap...

Update: I forgot to add my favorite Brin story. I wasn't there, but my friend Paul C. was and this is how he reported it to me -- This occurred right after the release of the movie version of Brin's 'The Postman', which many people were derisively referring to as 'Dirtworld'. Brin was one of the panelists at a discussion of movie novelizations at an SF Convention and someone asked him what he thought of 'The Postman'. His response was "They can rape my book, but they can't rape me." Heh.

But only 3 minutes to the Tonight Show.

Almost there, getting down to the wire. We have a good group going and will be lining up about an hour and a half early. Probably too late for good seats in a major city, but should be about right for this one-horse town.

In the meantime I am going to watch Leno tonight. Normally I watch on Mondays anyway, because I like the headlines segment. But tonight Elijah Wood (Frodo) is a guest. So there is a LoTR connection!

This is some very interesting data to consider when you look at the recent FBI Crime figures.

Apparently the murder rate isn't really going down, instead the 'surviving a murder attempt rate' is going up! Advances in emergency medicine and faster ambulances are saving more people who would otherwise die. Especially interesting is the connection between murder and prohibition (scroll down in the linked article to the graph): During alcohol prohibition murder went up to 10 per 100,000 and dropped after prohibition was anulled to a low of less than 5. Then went up to 10 again after the 'war on (some) drugs' began in the 1970s. Then dropped again in the 1990s.

However, after re-figuring with the increased survival rate in attempted murders as actual murders, the current figure is closer to 25 per 100,000!

Other side effects of this trend include some people going to jail for attempted murder (only a few years), while others get the full force of the law simply because they committed the same basic crime in a place with limited access to good emergency health care...

I am not certain I really understand the 'Semantic Web', but projects like HEML (Historical Event Markup and Linking) definately help me to understand the enormous power of the concept.

HEML is an XML Schema for historical events that includes dates, people, places and more. It also includes XSLT transformation files to generate lists, maps and graphical timelines. This is really very cool and I would love to play with it.

(Note to self: Review current personal projects. If number of projects > 50 then discard some.)

(Second note to self: New project, develop criteria for selecting projects to discard.)

Along with the post dotcom job market comes many stories of bosses who are happy they can start treating their prima-donna programmers and tech workers like any other employees. No more flexible work hours. No more buying them free tickets to Star Wars so they won't call in sick when it opens. Casual day is back to Friday (instead of every day of the week) and 'casual' means a polo shirt and slacks. Yes folks, the whip hand is back now that the economy is in the dumpster. Legions of PHBs (Pointy-Haired-Bosses) once again call the tune in Cubicleville!

But not every boss wants to be a PHB. Many were once ordinary geeks themselves, Peter-Principled into lower-level management and afraid to rock the boat because they have a family to support (or at least car payments to make). Yet the dark-side is seductive, easier than the light. If such are not careful they will find themselves taking on the habits, even the appearance, of the dread masters. If you are in this position, take great care. And read the following handy guide I have prepared to see if your hair is already starting to develop points...

You might be a PHB if:

• You ever changed an employee's priorities twice or more in the same day
• You take it personally when people don't come in on time
• You don't think the Jargon File definition of recursion is funny
• It never occurred to you that posting a printout of someone's work next to the water cooler with the words 'Cool Code' scrawled on it is almost as good as giving them a raise
• You ever sat in a meeting and nodded as if you understood the technical stuff, but didn't bother to look it up afterwards
• You see a new project as a way to increase your budget instead of a way to do something cool
• You ever refer to employees as 'assets', but treat them like liabilities
• You ever refer to employees as 'headcount', but treat them like they have nothing between the ears
• You can use three or more buzzwords in the same sentence, without really saying anything important
• You think coming in late the day after the Lord of the Rings midnight opening is somehow a bad thing
• It never occurred to you that saying "I understand you are having problems with this, perhaps we could get Sue to do it instead?" is the best way to motivate someone to meet their deadline
• You carry a PDA, but hardly ever use it
• You think it unfair to give Sue an 'excellent' evaluation and/or a raise when no-one else gets one -- even though she is clearly (by far) your best programmer -- and then don't understand why she has an attitude problem
• You don't want to use Open Source code because "The company lawyers would never approve it."
• You are surprised (and a bit hurt by the disloyalty) when Sue quits in the middle of a project because she found another job, somehow despite the economy
• You ever brought in a high-priced consultant and didn't follow their advice, but did hire them again for the next project
• You think it is perfectly appropriate to require five years of buzzword technology experience on a job posting, even though that buzzword technology isn't a year old
• You have different standards for personal web surfing and phone calls for yourself than you do for others
• You don't understand why a programmer needs a different computer configuration than an accountant
• You think an after-hours Quake-Fest is a misuse of company equipment
• You ever referred to your employee's workspace as 'Cubicleville'
• You ever found yourself walking around Cubicleville looking at computer screens for people reading Slashdot

Well, now that I have seen Nemesis I can positively state, without fear of contradiction, that someone really needs to kick Rick Berman's ass. There is probably a line forming as I speak. If the people that own the franchise want to keep it viable they will make certain he has nothing ever to do with another Star Trek film.

That out of the way, let me talk about something more hopefull; only two more days and a bit to go before I get my LoTR fix! Hopefully then I can wash the sucky effect shots of Nemesis out from my mind with some truly 'Massive' scenes.

In the meantime I am watching my Extended Edition DVD of 'Fellowship' to reduce the cravings...

Ya, I am going to see it. In fact a group of local SF people are going. During the day, so we don't have to pay full price. Hopefully that, and my lowered expectations, will allow me to enjoy the film to some extent. And, if not, I will be with the right people for the bitching I will do.

In the meantime I leave you with this thought to ponder: If 'life is pain', then why aren't the masochists happy all the time?

Jerry Pournelle has posted a fascinating essay by Gregory Cochran (along with some commentary by Jerry and others) on the possibility of 'Overclocking' the human brain. Apparently it would come with some risks, but it seems possible.

Warning; heavy reading in the essay. Lots of neurochemical details...

I have my ticket to the midnight show, 12:01 AM next Tuesday. I can't wait!

Even frame by frame analyses of the previews don't help. I gotta bad LoTR jones and I can't get a fix.

"Gotta monkey on my back, can't shake it..."