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Comment Start of a patent war? (Score 3, Interesting) 473

by Pfhortytwo (#20952689) Attached to: Linux Patent Infringement Lawsuit Filed Against Red Hat/Novell
Wasn't http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/ created to combat this sort of event? What happens if the linux camp responds with suites of their own? Looking at OIN's portfolio, some of those patents look rather weighty. Not to mention that Novell, IBM, Redhat, and Sony all support linux and all have extremely large portfolios of their own. Did the principle of M.A.D. that the industry has relied on to keep from imploding just fly out the window? [IANAL, Rampant Speculation, etc, etc]
GNU is Not Unix

Submission + - iD and Valve violating GPL

Submitted by frooge
frooge writes: With the recent release of iD's catalog on Steam, it appears DOSBox is being used to run the old DOS games for greater compatibility. According to a post on the Halflife2.net forums, however, this distribution does not contain a copy of the GPL license that DOSBox is distributed under, which violates the license. According to the DOSBox developers, they were not notified that it was being used for this release.
Security

Submission + - Dateline NBC Mole Caught at DefCon (wired.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Dateline NBC allegedly attempted to infiltrate the DefCon hackerfest with a producer using a hidden camera. The show allegedly hoped to tape hackers admitting to illegal activities, but DefCon got wind of the plot and displayed the would-be-mole's photo before every presentation. Dateline refused to deny the planned infiltration.
Music

Submission + - Elton John wants Internet Shut Down (hollywoodrag.com)

Submitted by jrsumm
jrsumm writes: Elton John agrees that music today is worse than music of yesteryear. And he knows the culprit. The internet. Because now anybody can become an artist. "Instead they sit at home and make their own records, which is sometimes OK, but it doesn't bode well for long-term artistic vision". Quick blurbs, not real stories, at hollywoodrag and news.com.com. Of course you can find more sites(mostly blogs) with the exact same info at google news.
Announcements

Submission + - Interview with LugRadio Team (lugradio.org)

Submitted by
mrBen
mrBen writes: "With the end of Season 4 reaching it's climax next week with the 3rd LugRadio Live event, I thought it would be interesting to hear some thoughts from some of the LugRadio team about Linux, LugRadio, past and future, so I spoke with Jono Bacon and Stuart "Aq" Langridge, 2 of the presenters.


Tell us a bit about the history of the LugRadio podcast?
Jono: LUGRadio was an idea conceived at a Wolverhampton Linux User Group meeting back in 2003 between Stuart Langridge, Matt Revell, Steve Parkes and Myself. The idea was to create a fun, loose and social audio show (this is before the term 'podcast' become so widely known). We wanted it to look at a range of issues and have the atmosphere of a bunch of guys chatting in a pub with all the irreverence, joking and passionate discussion associated with it.
Aq: Jono, being a musician, had microphones and mixing desks and so forth, which made it a lot easier to get off the ground. We put out the first episode, complete with renditions of the Free Software Song, and the rest is history...


Has its popularity and longevity surprised you?
Jono: Totally. We half-expected people to not listen because it is so typically English in its humor and at times controversial. We never expected its level of success and that so many people around the word listen to it.
Aq: Yep. Long-time listeners to LugRadio will know about a chap called Peter Oliver, one of the crew at LRL2007 and Wolves LUG member, who was highly scornful that we'd ever actually record a show at all. I'm sure the reason we did the first one was at least partially to spite him. Why we're still going after four seasons, though, can't be just to annoy Peter.
Jono: It is so cool to meet LUGRadio fans all over the world. We are also so incredibly thankful for having such an incredible LUGRadio community and for them helping the show grow and scale so much. LUGRadio is not just us four on the show, it is the community mirror network, the forums, the ninjas (our sysadmins), the gaming clan, #lugradio and the hashlugradio community podcast.
Aq: We always wanted to do the sort of show that *we* wanted to listen to; not formal, not dry-as-dustest reviews of the latest kernel point revision, but something like the conversations we all had about Linux, free software, philosophy, and the people involved. That there's an audience for that doesn't surprise me too much: most people I talk to are really more interested in that sort of thing than in what's new in the latest revision of Gnu Emacs!


How do you think podcasts fit in with the overall Linux/OSS community?
Jono: I think they work pretty well on the whole. The key thing is that different people look for different things, and that is the ethos behind Open Source.
Aq: There's a pretty big overlap between the sort of people who use free software and the sort of people who aren't believers in Big Media spoon-feeding us the latest "approved" music and films. We're iconoclasts, to some extent, and podcasts (along with other "user-generated media", if I can use such a horrible perversion of a term) fit in with that quite well. The fun part there is finding the balance; there comes an epiphany where you realise that the big media companies don't *just* drain money out of the market, and the expertise that they bring does take effort. I'm pretty proud of how good LugRadio sounds (which is pretty much entirely down to Jono as sound editor), and we do put in some effort to keep the quality high; people appreciate that, I think.
Jono: As such, some people will love LUGRadio, but other people will prefer their podcast in the form of other great shows such as The Linux Action Show or The Linux Link Tech Show — there is room in this tiny fishbowl for everyone.
Aq: In terms of the wider community, now that the hype around podcasting being something revolutionary has died away we're seeing it take a place along with weblogs and wikis and mailing lists as another way to get information out and to bring people together. I'm all in favour of that; anything that helps our community work better together, and stand on its own feet more without support from others who don't care about the ideals we share, is a great thing.


What prompted the decision to move to a live event?
Jono: We wanted to take the ethos and soul behind LUGRadio and produce a very fun, social and interesting event that is different and entirely community focused. This was partially inspired by one of the evenings of the annual UK Linux expo when the UK Linux community would congregate in a pub in Olympia in London. We wanted to take that seedling and grow it into a full weekend with fascinating talks, interesting things to see and do, a consistent humor and a friendly, welcoming atmosphere. We are really pleased with how it has grown and taken off, particularly as none of us had really organised events before.
Aq: LugRadio Live is a capturing of that spirit but running for a whole weekend. Every time I see someone with a smile on their face there I mark it as a success!
Oh, and getting to walk out on stage when everyone cheers. Ego, yes, but...there's no feeling like it.


Describe how you think the event has evolved in the last 3 years?
Jono: It has just grown and grown. The first year was an experiment with one day, 14 speakers a small exhibition, all crammed into a tiny venue. We expected about 45 people and around 230 showed up. Stunned and surprised, we organised the next event with two days, over 35 speakers and a full exhibition and this time had around 400 people show up. For the 2007 event we have two days, over 40 speakers, a full exhibition, BOF sessions, special events, live LUGRadio recording, social events, and more. The event has grown, but we have been keen to always keep it community focused and be a really special experience for everyone who attends.
Aq: It's got bigger, and we've got better at doing it. We've learned quite a few things about what you need to do this sort of event, like how much time it takes to set up all the microphones, how many people we need in the crew, that sort of thing. As LRL's got bigger we've also been seen by speakers as a good place to come to; the first year we chased most of the speakers to ask them to talk, but this year we had most of the speakers approach us.


What's the most exciting thing (that isn't a secret) about this years event?
Jono: I am really looking forward to Adam Sweet's Gong-a-thong Lightbulb Talk Extravaganza [Aq: it's a succession of three-minute talks; what other conferences call "lightning talks"]and also looking forward to a bunch of LUGRadio Live virgin speakers such as Nat Friedman, Alan Cox, Chris diBona and Aaron Seigo. Should be a blast!


You've released 2 promo videos this year (Freedom March and Don't Listen Alone) — what was the thinking behind these?
Jono: We wanted to help jack up the event in the blogosphere and Linux community in the build up to the big weekend, so we decided to do a few promo videos. We were very keen to have two very different videos to get people thinking and talking about different things.
Aq: We can say "come to LugRadio Live" as much as we like, but something to capture the imagination or make people laugh is going to get attention a lot more than a post on a weblog. We've talked about making videos for a while (although there's no LugTV in the pipeline, so don't get your hopes up), and this seemed like the perfect opportunity!


'Freedom March' in particular has received some mixed reviews/criticism — any thoughts on this?
Jono: When we were brainstorming ideas, I came up with the idea of Freedom March and Aq had the idea of Don't Listen Alone. I wrote the script for Freedom March and was keen to project a very different side of LUGRadio. Most people know LUGRadio for its raucous discussion and comedy, but we often spend a lot of time on the show discussing serious subjects in a serious and passionate way. I quite liked the idea of us pushing out this side of us and trying to write as rousing a script as I could for it. I love the fact it caused a chunk of discussion and I knew it would not be everyone's cup of tea, but I love the fact that both videos caused such a reaction.
Aq: The Freedom March was designed to inspire people who might be new to free software, who are interested in becoming part of our community, and maybe just a little for those of us who are a bit jaded with the whole thing. It's difficult sometimes, in between wars about whether the GPLv3 is a good idea and which desktop environment to use, to remember how far the free software movement has come and what the goals that we all share are. That's what The Freedom March tries to embody.
Don't Listen Alone was much more the fun side. Just the idea of throwing a laptop off a tall building made me laugh so much that we had to make a video out of it! The two videos should, between them, cover most of our audience, I think. If you didn't like one, hopefully you liked the other!


Last year saw the event double in size — are you expecting any more growth?
Jono: We hope so, but it is so difficult to tell. So long as the event feels busy and has a buzz, we will be happy. We are not bothered about everyone and their dog showing up, we just want a fun, electrifying atmosphere on the weekend, and we are looking forward to it this year. It is certainly not something to be missed.
Aq: I imagine it'll be a little bigger this year, but I don't think we'll double in size again. On the other hand, the number of people that turn up is always a bit of a guess, even after the event; most of the people who come to LRL pay on the door and don't pre-register, so we have to stick our fingers in the air and guess numbers a lot. If five thousand people show up then it'll be pretty exciting. We can't put that many people in the venue, mind!


What's next for LugRadio / LugRadio Live?
Jono: (With) LUGRadio Live, we hope to keep running it and bringing new and exciting features to it while always retaining its key community ethos. We want LUGRadio Live to be *the* community free software and Open Source event that people want to get along to each year.
Aq: We've got a few ideas for the (next) season. One of them is that we'd like to do more things involving the LugRadio community: we're very proud that so many cool people have joined the LR community and we want to get more people in to that. We've also talked about LugRadio on tour, which would be a deeply fun week or so of doing live shows around the country (and other countries?) On a more mundane note, I'm rewriting the scripts that underlie the website so that we'll release at a more predictable time, to make things easier on our mirror maintainers! We want to hear ideas from everyone about what they'd like to hear LugRadio do: tell us!
Jono:We are always trying to keep the show fresh, and we are always keen to get ideas and views from our listeners. We love trying new things out and seeing if they sink or swim.


LugRadio Live 2007 is this weekend, 7th and 8th July, at the Lighthouse Centre in Wolverhampton, UK. Tickets are £5 for the whole weekend.
LugRadio is a fortnightly podcast covering all topics of interest to all levels of Linux users"
Linux Business

Submission + - Is it Time for a Patent War?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: With the state of current patent laws, and Microsoft's refusal to disclose which patents it views linux as violating, is it time for the lawyers in both camps to suite up? Linux has some rather hefty portfolios (ibm, sony, redhat) behind it, and it's likely the fallout would benefit open source. Regardless of which side wins a large amount of patents would be ruled invalid, and it is likely that a re-evaluaton of US patient law would be triggered. What does the Slashdot community think of a legal showdown? Isn't this why groups like the OpenInventionNetwork were formed?
GNU is Not Unix

Submission + - GPLv3 Released (fsf.org)

Submitted by
A GNU Dawn
A GNU Dawn writes: "The GPL v3 has just been released. Among other things, the released version grandfathers the Novell deal so that Microsoft's SLES coupons will undermine their patent threats, replaces references to the Magnusson-Moss Warranty Act with more specific language, and clarifies that using BitTorrent to convey a GPLed work is not a breach of the license (it might be one, technically, in GPLv2). The GPL FAQ has been updated to cover the new changes."

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