and ubuntu’s patent stand?

Posted on by Luis Villa

Seeing this (wherein the author leaves suse for kubuntu as a result of the recent hubbub) reminds me that Ubuntu still has no clear patent policy that I can find, nor are they (again, as far as I can tell) contributing to some of the anti-patent work being done by others. Compare to Red Hat’s strong patent policy, to Novell’s continued support of OIN, Red Hat’s support of NoSoftwarePatents.com, or IBM and Red Hat’s support of the patent peer review project. (Novell’s open letter gives a list of such steps they’ve taken; Red Hat has noted some caveats on some of Novell’s claims there. However you slice it, Novell has done more than Ubuntu/Canonical on this critical issue, even if you think their agreement with MS may make it a two steps forward/two steps back situation.)

Am I overlooking something, guys, gals? I’d like to think that the distro I’m using would take a clear stand on patents, and use some of their resources to make the situation better, but I’m not seeing it from Ubuntu/Canonical. I think that given Ubuntu’s position on mp3s, I’m pretty sure that Ubuntu, corporately, does have the right overall perspective on patents. But given where we are right now, it would be better if they came out and made it explicit, like Red Hat has done, instead of just implied by their codec packaging choices.

[Amusingly, or perhaps depressingly, the only page you get using the ubuntu.com search tool that mentions patents is… a broken link.]

[Ed: again, I hate wordpress’s whitespace handling. Anyone who has a fix for it, please let me know.]

[Ed. later: As I’ve pointed out in discussing IBM’s patents, I can at least understand any company that is pro-patent. So if Ubuntu wants to come out in favor of patents, but against the current patent system, as IBM has done, that would be understandable. What I primarily want right now is transparency- I want to be able to judge Ubuntu one way or the other, instead of the current situation, where they’ve been given a free pass to say nothing.]

Published by Luis Villa

28 thoughts on “and ubuntu’s patent stand?”

  1. or participate, or how to get specific items addressed, there will be something for you. I’ll also be on IRC on Tuesday 28th to answer any questions you may have of me specifically, such as Luis’ questions about our position on software patents at http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/11/22/and-ubuntus-patent-stand/ There are a couple of sessions that would be particularly interesting for folks familiar with OpenSUSE. The Kubuntu team is hosting some events during the week to look at KDE and Ubuntu and to discuss the roadmap of their project. There are also a few

  2. If you want to find out how Ubuntu works, how to contribute or participate, or how to get specific items addressed, there will be something for you. I’ll also be on IRC on Tuesday 28th to answer any questions you may have of me specifically, such as Luis’ questions about our position on software patents. There are a couple of sessions that would be particularly interesting for folks familiar with OpenSUSE. The Kubuntu team is hosting some events during the week to look at KDE and Ubuntu and to discuss the roadmap of their project. There are also a

  3. Linkblog Luis Villa’s Blog: and ubuntu’s patent stand? – Luis notes that ‘Ubuntu still has no clear patent policy that I can find, nor are they (again, as far as I can tell) contributing to some of the anti-patent work being done by others.’ I’ll be interested to hear the answers

  4. Ubuntu’s position on patents? What about their position on free software?

    Perhaps when he finds himself running binary xorg drivers when he upgrades to “feisty” he’ll have another think about whether or not Ubuntu is the place to be :/

  5. I’m not quite sure what you mean by a patent stand. Ubuntu won’t distribute software unless we believe that it’s legal for our users to use that software and redistribute that software without having to pay for the privilege. That’s made fairly clear by http://www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/licensing .

    Other than money, though, there’s not a great deal that Canonical/Ubuntu can provide to the community in this respect. There’s not really sufficient innovation to produce anything patentable, and as a result there’s nothing to donate to OIN. If you think that Canonical should be throwing money at the problem, then I’d tend to agree.

  6. Matt: ‘We will not ship software known to be patent-encumbered’ would be a nice start. That isn’t explicit in the link you gave, except inasmuch as a committment to Free Software is presumed to involve a committment to avoid patents.

    As Alex has pointed out Freedom is something that Ubuntu seems mostly to be commited to when it is convenient, so maybe the policy statement would not be this- it might well be ‘we will not knowingly ship patent-encumbered software, except when it is necessary’. I might not like that, but it would be a clear statement of policy, which is better than the current situation.

    ‘We think the patent system is broken’ would be a nice followup to that.

    ‘We pledge to use company resources to rip and replace patented software our users have sued over’, like Red Hat has done for their enterprise customers, would be even better.

    Finally, yes, ‘We pledge to use company resources to help fix the system’ or ‘We pledge to use company resources to help create defensive patents and grant them to OIN’ would be excellent.

    But really, all I can reasonably ask is the first one.

  7. (I actually disagree with the lack of innovation, by the way- I’d be shocked if some aspects of the liveCD installation trick weren’t patentable, for example.)

  8. Absolutely – I think too many people just take for granted the innovations in Linux – LiveCD is perfect example. How about patenting the ability to swap out just about any processor architecture? No other OS can do that – not Windows (x86 only), not Unix, not mainframe OS. Some of the optimization code in gcc has to be patentable. There’s also XGL – no one else is doing that. There’s probably a thousand un-patented patentable innovations in Linux… but nobody patents them and they become prior art.

  9. I wouldn’t be surprised if Ubuntu ships Fluendo’s proprietary mp3 plugin in the future, as they seem to like convenience over free software. What might be stopping them right now is that Rhythmbox can’t be shipped with that plugin, but James Livingston is working to relicense it. I think he works at Canonical.

    Also, a lot of Linux developers (and Novell and Red Hat) believe it’s a GPL violation to ship proprietary kernel modules, and Ubuntu does it anyway. It’s a no brainer to me: Ubuntu enhanced the Linux kernel (it accelerates nVidia cards, for example) and they’re not sharing the source code for those enhancements with everyone else. So I’d like to turn this a bit and ask you, Luis: do you think it’s legal to ship Linux without the entire source code, and do you think it’s a good thing to do that?

  10. bluesgnr: It is a really complex issue. It makes me very uncomfortable, but I am sympathetic to the notion that if my mother doesn’t use Linux because of binary/patent issues it is more damaging to us than shipping the patent-encumbered/binary-blob code. I’ll try to write more about it after Thanksgiving.

  11. Don’t forget UpStart — definitely innovative and (probably) patentable, given the broken state of software patents. Then again, does Apple have a patent on an event-driven startup model for Launchd? Either way, something Ubuntu could donate. And Launchpad?

  13. You appear to forget that Canonical is not a US-based company, so would find it very difficult to engage in any political activity there.

    The company is registered in the Isle of Man, and largely based out of the United Kingdom, a member of the European Union.

    Mark’s opinion on this is well noted, e.g:

    http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/38

    Canonical itself probably doesn’t have a more formal opinion other than the “we don’t believe that they’re a good thing”, fortunately we’re based in countries that share our beliefs.

    We certainly don’t have any money to throw at the issue, if we did I imagine we’d support any campaign with a likely chance of making them illegal.

  14. Scott: [i]most[/i] “US” corporations are actually incorporated in another country. This doesn’t stop them.

  15. Joseph: Canonical does not have a meaningful presence in the United States, full stop. It has offices in London (not actually Canonical’s office, but … handwave), and Montréal. I don’t believe you need more than one hand to count the number of Canonical staff from the US.

    Thus, more difficult than most companies incorporated in Vanuatu, but with a huge office in the Bay Area.

  16. Usually I tend to enjoy your posts Luis, but this one is a bit misguided. Redhat and Novell have much more motivation to have a concrete stand on patents since they sell products (their distribution). You can’t buy Ubuntu. Canoncial provides support for Ubuntu, but it isn’t sold, nor is there a enterprise edition.

  17. [Note that I’m not ducking the last round of comments, I’m just literally boarding a plane right now and might not have access all weekend. So quite possibly see you all Monday.]

  18. thebluesgnr: the source code of Fluendo’s MP3 GStreamer plugin is BSD licensed. In the absence of software patents, it is free software. The main difference between it and other free software MP3 codecs is that Fluendo can provide a binary distribution license for regions where the patent applies. Given all this, it is a potential candidate for the commercial repository, but wouldn’t make it into Ubuntu main or universe.

    Daniel: you need two hands to count the US employees now.

    Shams: sure there is an enterprise edition of Ubuntu. It just happens to be the only edition of Ubuntu.

  19. […] We are hosting a series of introductory sessions for people who want to join the Ubuntu community – in any capacity, including developers and package maintainers. If you want to find out how Ubuntu works, how to contribute or participate, or how to get specific items addressed, there will be something for you. I’ll also be on IRC on Tuesday 28th to answer any questions you may have of me specifically, such as Luis’ questions about our position on software patents. […]

  21. Fluendo’s MP3 codec has been available in Ubuntu for quite some time now (although it’s not installed by default).

  22. Please don’t cloud the software patent issue by referring to them as just “patents”. As far as I am aware, most opponents of software patents are not opposed to patents in general (such as for pharmaceuticals, etc).

  23. […] Relatedly, after I asked ‘where is Ubuntu’s patent policy‘, someone who I respect a lot pointed out that as a journalist, I had a responsibility to ask Ubuntu first instead of blogging the question publicly. I don’t think of myself as a journalist, so I’m not sure I agree that I have obligation as a journalist per se. But clearly I have an audience, and that power probably brings responsibility. So his point has definitely made me think. Groklaw silliness about a ‘fork’, which could easily have been avoided, brought home the point- I’ll certainly think more before making such assertions in the future. […]

  24. […] I’m still uncomfortable with a lot of what Canonical/Ubuntu does in this space (apparent sense that gratis is more important than libre, bragging when moving people from libre tools to gratis ones, lack of formal patent policy a la Fedora) but we should all give them huge thanks and due credit for taking this particular important step in the right direction. […]

  27. […] gratis is more important than libre, bragging when moving people from libre tools to gratis ones, lack of formal patent policy a la Fedora) but we should all give them huge thanks and due credit for taking this particular important step […]

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