DOCSLIB.ORG

Important Information

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Important Information LIBREPLANET 2012 Thanks for coming to LibrePlanet 2012 — We've worked hard to make this the very best LibrePlanet conference we've run. The venue this year is great, and I'm very pleased to personally welcome you. I would love to hear your opinion of the conference, but there's time for that later. We have some amazing speakers lined up for this year's event, and while you won't be able to see all of them, I hope you'll give them all a warm welcome and listen to what they have to say. To fully enjoy LibrePlanet you will need something to take notes, maybe a computer running free software or even a notepad. You'll also need a smattering of genius, but the fact you're reading this is a sure indication that you are eminently qualified on that score. If you're not speaking, but would like to say something, we have a lightning talk session open on Saturday e)clusively for people who aren't speaking. You can sign up to give a talk at http://libreplanet.org/wiki/LibrePlanet2012 /LightningTalks In this booklet you'll find all the information you need at this event, including emergency contact information, where to eat and drink, the code of conduct we expect of everyone and of course, how to connect to the wireless network And on the back of this booklet, you'll find information on the G,U Press store and social events where you can hang out with your fellow conference attendees. But there's time for all that later. Have fun! Matt Lee Campaigns 1anager Free Software Foundation Important information Getting to the conference — the conference is at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. We'll leave getting to Boston to you, but once you're here, take the MBTA's Red Line toward either Ashmont or Braintree (these are the only choices in the correct direction) and get off at JFK/U Mass station. From here, 1 LIBREPLANET 2012 you can take a Shuttle Bus to the University campus. The shuttle bus leaves fairly regularly from a parking lot ne)t to the station, and you should get off at the main campus center building, a large white building. Eating — Every day there's breakfast, on us. If you'd like to kick in a few dollars, you'll find a %ar to do so next to the breakfast. If you bought a food ticket as part of your registration, keep it safe as you will be re'uired to give it up in exchange for lunch. If you lose it, you lose your lunch, so to speak If you chose to not get food from us, you'll find a grocery store back near the MBTA station. You can also bring your own food. We will not have extra food available for sale, but you may also find food at the nearby JFK Library. On Saturday, food will be served in the room where the majority of the talks take place. On Sunday, food will be served in the ballroom. Drinking — It's really important to stay hydrated. All over the university are water fountains. Vending machines are all over the place as well, and we'll be providing soft drinks for peo#le who bought lunch. In terms of social events and that kind of drinking! see the back page Code of conduct — We do not tolerate harassment of conference participants in any form. Offensive or graphic sexual language and imagery is not appropriate for any conference venue, including talks. Conference participants violating these rules may be sanctioned or expelled from the conference at the discretion of the conference organizers. You can see the full anti-harrassment policy at http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Anti-harassment_policy Wireless — there's wireless internet all over the place at UMass — here are the connection details you need: Wireless network: guest A web page will appear when you try and access anything in your browser. Enter the following information. Login: cc-guestuser Password: Boston13 Remember, this is not your network. Anything you do on the network will reflect on the FSF. Help! — If you need any kind of assistance from the conference staff, please go to the information desk. Emergency: In the event of any kind of medical emergency, please dial 911 first and inform the FSF, in person, at the information desk second. Conference areas Information desk + registration GNU Press Store Hacking Space Directory Sprint Talks Information desk + registration This will be the place to register. You will be given this booklet at registration. If you lose it, we have some extra copies. More importantly? this is the place to go if you have any questions, feel unwell, have a problem, feel harassed or anything else. 2 LIBREPLANET 2012 GNU Press Store Donald and Jasimin will be here throughout the conference, with a range of books and other items you can buy. We've put a price list on the back cover of this leaflet, and you can pay with cash or credit card. Hacking Space This is a little more of a free-for-all — a quiet (possibly) space for you to work on projects alone, or with others. If you need to take a phone call when you're in here, please take it outside. Directory Sprint The FSF runs a project called the Free Software Directory — http://%ire tory.fsf.org — join us in the directory sprint room and add your favorite projects to the Directory. Talks The most important thing of all — the talks. We've put all the speakers and all of the information we have on their talks here. Streaming We'll have various streams going throughout the conference. See http://li/e.fsf.org for streams. Saturday Conference The Saturday conference has two tracks, space for hacking, and a directory sprint. Track One: 2551 (room 2551 on the second floor) Track Two: 2540 (room 2540 on the second floor) Hacking space: 2550B Directory Sprint: 254C Sunday Conference The Sunday conference has one track, plus a space for hacking, and a directory sprint. At 4pm, all the rooms other than the main ballroom will be closed down for the Free Software Awards Speaking track: 3550A — Third floor ballroom, section A Directory Sprint: 3545 — Third floor Hacking space: 3215 Saturday Sche%ule (first talk in 2551, se ond in 2540) 9am —Breakfast and Registration / GNU Press Store —.reakfast served in room U02-2551 only 10am —Welcome to the conference, 7ohn Sullivan, Matt Lee, Josh +ay (U02>2551 only) —Event in room U02-2551 only @ LIBREPLANET 2012 10?20am —FSF Campaigns Update, Matt Lee, Josh +ay (U02>2551 only) —Event in room U02-2551 only 11am —Trisquel 5.5 release, Rubén Rodríguez —TBA, Masayuki Hatta 11?@5am —Break —Break 11?D5am —GNU Telephony, David Sugar —Running events that attract and retain newcomers, Asheesh Laroia 12?@0pm —Lunch —Keysigning 1:25#m —GNU Savannah, Michael J. Flickinger —Digital Justice: How Technology and 3ree Software Can Build Communities and Help Close the Digital Divide, Joel Izlar 1:55#m —Why Cars need Free Software, Alison Chaiken —Lightning Talks 2:30#m —The 3(3 +PL compliance Lab, Brett Smith — 3:10#m —Libre Graphics magazine: Go, go F/LOSS designers!, ginger coons —Lightning Talks 3:50#m —Break —Lightning Talks 4:00#m —A View from the Server Room, Ward Vandewege —Lightning Talks 4:30#m —Community Organizing for Free Software Activists, Deb Nicholson —Lightning Talks 5:10#m —Decentralized Social Web, Evan Prodromou (U02-2551 only) —:vent in room U02-2551 only Sunday Schedule 9am —Breakfast and Registration / GNU Press Store 10am —Welcome to Day Two — 7ohn Sullivan, Matt Lee, Josh +ay 10?10 —Free Software's Future Amidst the Commercial Open Source Wars? How to Turn the Patent Disaster and Compliance Issues to Our Advantage, Eben Moglen 11?00 —Creative Commons, Mike Linksvayer + Chris Webber 11?D0 —Break 11?C0 —How Emacs changed my life, Yukihiro 'matz' Matsumoto 12?@0 —Lunch and Keysigning 1:20 —Preserving user freedoms in the 21st century, Matthew Garrett 2:20 —GNOME3 and Accessibility, Karen Sandler 3:10 —GPL panel: Richard Fontana, .radley M. Kuhn, Brett Smith @?CC —Free Software Accessibility, 7onathan Nadeau 4:35 —Break D?DC —The importance of GPLv3, 7eremy Allison 5:20 —Richard Stallman, plus FSF annual awards and GNU Press Auction D LIBREPLANET 2012 Talks in detail Saturday Welcome to the conference (U02-25513 John Sullivan Matt Lee Josh Gay Join F(F e)ecutive director John Sullivan, and campaigns managers Matt Lee and Josh Gay in this introduction to LibrePlanet 2012, including essential information for the conference, last minute notices, surprise guests and more. John started working with GNU Press and the 3ree Software Foundation in 2003 and then became the 3(3's first campaigns manager, working on outreach efforts like Defective by Design, BadVista, and PlayOgg. In 2011, John became the executive director after four years as manager of operations. His background is mainly in the humanities, with an MFA in Writing and Poetics and a BA in Philosophy, but he has been spending too much time with computers and online communities since the days of the Commodore 64. He's become a dedicated GN- Emacs user after first trying it around 1996, and contributes code to several of its e)tensions. Prior to the FSF, John worked as a college debate team instructor for both Harvard and Michigan State University FSF Campaigns Update (U02-2551) Matt Lee Josh Gay Matt Lee and 7osh Gay are the two campaigns managers at the 3ree Software Foundation.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Download (PDF)
    CULTIVATING OPEN INFORMATION PLATFORMS: A LAND TRUST MODEL MOLLY SHAFFER VAN HOUWELING* INTRODUCTION James Boyle has led a recent call for intellectual property “environmentalism”—a movement to fend off perceived threats to the public interest posed by expansions in the scope and term of intellectual property protection.1 Inspired in part by Boyle’s message, a number of organizations have sprung up that aspire to expand and cultivate the body of intellectual works that are not subject to proprietary control.2 The Internet’s original development as a non-proprietary in- formation platform is another source of inspiration for this incip- ient movement.3 The Internet is built on a suite of protocols— * Assistant Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School. Thanks to Kenneth Bamberger, Stefan Bechtold, Glenn Otis Brown, Julie Cohen, Bruce Damer, Rebecca Eisenberg, Edward Felten, Frank Hecker, Daphne Keller, Thom LeDoux, Mark Lemley, Lawrence Lessig, Douglas Lichtman, Ronald Mann, Thomas Nachbar, Maureen O’Rourke, Timothy Schoechle, Theodore Ts’o, Robert Van Houweling, and Jonathan Zittrain for comments. This essay was the basis for a presentation at the Silicon Flatirons Telecommunications Program Conference on Regulation of Information Platforms. Thanks to Philip Weiser for organizing the conference and to him and the other conference participants for their comments. 1. See, e.g., James Boyle, A Politics of Intellectual Property: Environmentalism for the Net?, 47 DUKE L.J. 87, 108-16 (1997); James Boyle, The Second Enclosure Movement and the Construction of the Public Domain, 39-43 (paper presented at the Duke conference on the Public Domain, Nov. 2001), discussion draft available at http://www.law.duke.edu/pd/papers/boyle.pdf; see also Seth Shulman, Intellectual- Property Ecology, TECHNOLOGY REVIEW, Mar.
    [Show full text]
  • Linux Journal | August 2014 | Issue
    ™ SPONSORED BY Since 1994: The Original Magazine of the Linux Community AUGUST 2014 | ISSUE 244 | www.linuxjournal.com PROGRAMMING HOW-TO: + OpenGL Build, Develop Programming and Validate Creation of RPMs USE VAGRANT Sysadmin Cloud for an Easier Troubleshooting Development with dhclient Workflow Tips for PROMISE Becoming a THEORY Web Developer An In-Depth A Rundown Look of Linux for Recreation V WATCH: ISSUE OVERVIEW LJ244-Aug2014.indd 1 7/23/14 6:56 PM Get the automation platform that makes it easy to: Build Infrastructure Deploy Applications Manage In your data center or in the cloud. getchef.com LJ244-Aug2014.indd 2 7/23/14 11:41 AM Are you tiredtiered of of dealing dealing with with proprietary proprietary storage? storage? ® 9%2Ä4MHÆDCÄ2SNQ@FD ZFS Unified Storage zStax StorCore from Silicon - From modest data storage needs to a multi-tiered production storage environment, zStax StorCore zStax StorCore 64 zStax StorCore 104 The zStax StorCore 64 utilizes the latest in The zStax StorCore 104 is the flagship of the dual-processor Intel® Xeon® platforms and fast zStax product line. With its highly available SAS SSDs for caching. The zStax StorCore 64 configurations and scalable architecture, the platform is perfect for: zStax StorCore 104 platform is ideal for: VPDOOPHGLXPRIILFHILOHVHUYHUV EDFNHQGVWRUDJHIRUYLUWXDOL]HGHQYLURQPHQWV VWUHDPLQJYLGHRKRVWV PLVVLRQFULWLFDOGDWDEDVHDSSOLFDWLRQV VPDOOGDWDDUFKLYHV DOZD\VDYDLODEOHDFWLYHDUFKLYHV TalkTalk with with an anexpert expert today: today: 866-352-1173 866-352-1173 - http://www.siliconmechanics.com/zstax LJ244-Aug2014.indd 3 7/23/14 11:41 AM AUGUST 2014 CONTENTS ISSUE 244 PROGRAMMING FEATURES 64 Vagrant 74 An Introduction to How to use Vagrant to create a OpenGL Programming much easier development workflow.
    [Show full text]
  • Upstage Timeline
    www.upstage.org.nz Timeline January 2014 Tenth birthday celebrations of UpStage: planned activities include the release of UpStage V3, a mini-festival of commissioned cyberformances, and a meeting to develop a strategic plan for the next steps for UpStage. January-June UpStage is the primary tool for the trans-European networked 2013 performance collaboration We Have a Situation! January 2013 Vicki Smith and Helen Varley Jamieson present UpStage (remotely) at TIP2013, Hawaii. December 2012 The 121212 UpStage Festival of Cyberformance features online performances in UpStage and other online platforms, presenting an incredible 41 performances by about 150 artists, over a one-week period 5-12 December. October 2012 The CyPosium, a one-day online symposium on cyberformance, is held in Waterwheel Tap and UpStage; the idea for the CyPosium emerged from a meeting to plan the 121212 Upstage Festival, and it is organised by the UpStage community and other artists. August 2012 S/Zports: A Training for the Possible Wor(l)ds (from 101010) restaged as part of an exhibition of extended media, Zagrebi Dublje (Scratch Deeper) at the ULUS Gallery in Belgrade. May-December Vicki works with primary students in Aotearoa/NZ and the Chatham Islands in a learning programme, Online story telling through UpStage, producing ten works for the 121212 UpStage festival. May 2012 Workshop and “UpStage Apero” at Electropixel, Nantes (France), featuring performances from 11:11:11 UpStage presentation at the Libre Graphics Meeting, Vienna, by Helen Varley Jamieson, Martin Eisenbarth and Jenny Pickett (remote), followed by a 5-minute Lightning performance (with Miljana Peric online).
    [Show full text]
  • SFLC V Conservancy
    Trademark Trial and Appeal Board Electronic Filing System. http://estta.uspto.gov ESTTA Tracking number: ESTTA863914 Filing date: 12/11/2017 IN THE UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE TRADEMARK TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Proceeding 92066968 Party Defendant Software Freedom Conservancy Correspondence PAMELA S CHESTECK Address CHESTEK LEGAL P O BOX 2492 RALEIGH, NC 27602 UNITED STATES Email: [email protected] Submission Motion for Summary Judgment Yes, the Filer previously made its initial disclosures pursuant to Trademark Rule 2.120(a); OR the motion for summary judgment is based on claim or issue pre- clusion, or lack of jurisdiction. The deadline for pretrial disclosures for the first testimony period as originally set or reset: 07/20/2018 Filer's Name Pamela S Chestek Filer's email [email protected] Signature /Pamela S Chestek/ Date 12/11/2017 Attachments Motion for SJ on affirmative defenses-signed.pdf(756280 bytes ) Kuhn-Declara- tion_summary-judgment_as-submitted_reduced-size-signed.pdf(2181238 bytes ) Sandler-declara- tion_summary-judgment_as-submitted-reduced-size-signed.pdf(1777273 bytes ) Chestek declaration_summary-judgment-signed-with-exhibits.pdf(2003142 bytes ) IN THE UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE TRADEMARK TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD In the Mater of Registraion No. 4212971 Mark: SOFTWARE FREEDOM CONSERVANCY Registraion date: September 25, 2012 Sotware Freedom Law Center Peiioner, v. Cancellaion No. 92066968 Sotware Freedom Conservancy Registrant. RESPONDENT’S MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT ON ITS AFFIRMATIVE DEFENSES Introducion The Peiioner, Sotware Freedom Law Center (“SFLC”), is a provider of legal services. It had the idea to create an independent enity that would ofer inancial and administraive services for free and open source sotware projects.
    [Show full text]
  • The Walled Gardens of Ebook Surveillance: a Brief Set of Arguments Against DRM in Libraries
    City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works Publications and Research CUNY Graduate Center 2015 The Walled Gardens of Ebook Surveillance: A Brief Set of Arguments Against DRM in Libraries Alycia Sellie Graduate Center, CUNY How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_pubs/162 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] The Walled Gardens of Ebook Surveillance: A Brief Set of Arguments Against DRM in Libraries There are three claims I will make in this article about including electronic books with DRM restrictions in library collections. These arguments center upon what the presence of restricted ebooks signifies to patrons about libraries. The first argument outlines how providing books with DRM encourages library users to adopt low expectations for how their personal information will be shared and collected. Second, when users encounter DRM within library collections, not only are they frustrated by the ways that these systems restrict their use of a text, but they become more broadly disappointed in their library. Finally, I will show how the current technological landscape that allows third party surveillance via DRM threatens the professional standing of librarians as protectors of patron information. What is DRM? To me, DRM stands for Digital Restrictions Management. But choosing to call it such is a political choice.1 Others refer to DRM as Digital Rights Management. In a nutshell, DRM controls access to digital content and restricts the functionality a devices, such as an ebook reader or computer.
    [Show full text]
  • Anarchism Triumphant: Free Software and the Death of Copyright
    Anarchism Triumphant: Free Software and the Death of Copyright Eben Moglen£ May 17, 1999 I Software as Property: The Theoretical Paradox SOFTWARE: no other word so thoroughly connotes the practical and social effects of the digital revolution. Originally, the term was purely tech- nical, and denoted the parts of a computer system that, unlike “hardware,” which was unchangeably manufactured in system electronics, could be al- tered freely. The first software amounted to the plug configuration of ca- bles or switches on the outside panels of an electronic device, but as soonas linguistic means of altering computer behavior had been developed, “soft- ware” mostly denoted the expressions in more or less human-readable lan- guage that both described and controlled machine behavior.1 £ Professor of Law & Legal History, Columbia Law School. Prepared for delivery at the Buchmann International Conference on Law, Technology and Information, at Tel Aviv Uni- versity, May 1999; my thanks to the organizers for their kind invitation. I owe much as always to Pamela Karlan for her insight and encouragement. Thanks are due to Jerome Saltzer, Richard Stallman, and numerous others who freely contributed corrections and im- povements to this paper. I especially wish to thank the programmers throughout the world who made free software possible. 1The distinction was only approximate in its original context. By the late 1960s cer- tain portions of the basic operation of hardware were controlled by programs digitally en- coded in the electronics of computer equipment, not subject to change after the units left the factory. Such symbolic but unmodifiable components were known in the trade as “mi- crocode,” but it became conventional to refer to them as “firmware.” Softness, the term “firmware” demonstrated, referred primarily to users’ ability to alter symbols determining machine behavior.
    [Show full text]
  • Coase's Penguin, Or, Linux and the Nature of the Firm
    Coase’s Penguin, or, Linux and The Nature of the Firm Yochai Benkler* Abstract For decades our common understanding of the organization of economic production has been that individuals order their productive activities in one of two ways: either as employees in firms, following the directions of managers, or as individuals in markets, following price signals. This dichotomy was first identified in the early work of Ronald Coase and was developed most explicitly in the work of institutional economist Oliver Williamson. In this paper I explain why we are beginning to see the emergence of a new, third mode of production, in the digitally networked environment, a mode I call commons-based peer production. In the past three or four years, public attention has focused on a fifteen-year- old social-economic phenomenon in the software development world. This phenomenon, called free software or open source software, involves thousands or even tens of thousands of programmers contributing to large and small scale projects, where the central organizing principle is that the software remains free of most constraints on copying and use common to proprietary materials. No one “owns” the software in the traditional sense of being able to command how it is used or developed, or to control its disposition. The result has been the emergence of a vibrant, innovative and productive collaboration, whose participants are not organized in firms and do not choose their projects in response to price signals. This paper explains that while free software is highly visible, it is in fact only one example of a much broader social-economic phenomenon.
    [Show full text]
  • Jaromil's Research 2009
    Jaromil’s Research 2009 Jaromil’s Journal of Musings November 12, 2010 Almost every day I dedicate 2 good hours to research: nothing in particular, just looking around for inspirations, tools, publications and what not. Thanks go to the NIMk1 employing me in research and development. This diary is still in fieri: some links are scattered and still lacking comments, while it will grow complete over time, you might be also interested to read the research diary 20082. : Mon, 5 Jan 2009 John Maddog Hall: http://www.linux-magazine.com/online/blogs/paw_prints_writings_of_the_ maddog/campus_party_brazil_maddog_s_challenge_multimedia_and_free_software : Wed, 7 Jan 2009 uscito zeitgeist final ??? Not quite in the zone Fri, 9 Jan 2009 http://www.metamute.org/en/content/not_quite_in_the_zone Ben Watson http://www.militantesthetix. co.uk/ Politics in Israel Tue, 13 Jan 2009 Just before the elections in Israel and right after the massacre of civilians in Gaza, which also included bombing of UN headquarters and public incitations to murder peace activists3, it’s maybe time to have a look at how reasonable people are doing over there. One impressive campaign is December 18th4: at the motto of FREE THE SHMINISTIM“ young conscious objectors (among them also the daughter of a former deputy head of Mossad) stepped forward and refused to serve the omnipresent militarization of Israel, the country where they are born and that still forces them to serve IDF for 2 to 3 years. Since 20 years now (and finally) we had abolition of coercive military service for youth in Europe: this is definitely one of the most important political standpoints for Israel to work on, if it intends to get closer to Europe.
    [Show full text]
  • Open Source Software
    Open Source Software Agenda ● Definitions of different “types” of software ● Key characteristics of each type ● Key points of difference ● Cost of free/open source software ● Historical overview ● Licenses ● Examples of free/open source alternatives in a few domains Agenda (cont.) ● Extensions of the “open source” philosophy to other domains ● The anti-open-source brigade ● Reasons for using OSS Open source software ● Software whose source code can be viewed, modified and re-distributed in its modified form after it meets certain licensing restrictions, e.g., – indicating the authorship of various components – requiring that the modified version of the product also be open-sourced Free software ● As defined by Richard Stallman, affords the following freedoms to its users: – Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program for any purpose. – Freedom 1: The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish. – Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor. – Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits. Source: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html Differences between open source and free software ● “The term 'open source' software is used by some people to mean more or less the same category as free software. It is not exactly the same class of software: they accept some licenses that we consider too restrictive, and there are free software licenses they have not
    [Show full text]
  • Free Software Foundation, Inc
    Comment Regarding a Proposed Exemption Under 17 U.S.C. 1201 Item 1. Commenter Information Donald Robertson, III Free Software Foundation, Inc. 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor Boston, MA 02110-1335 [email protected] This comment is filed by the Free Software Foundation, a charitable corporation founded in 1985. The Foundation is the largest single contributor to the GNU operating system (used widely today in its GNU/Linux variant). The Foundation's GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, covering major components of the GNU operating system and tens of thousands of other computer programs used on hundreds of millions of computers around the world. Item 2. Proposed Class Addressed Class 7: 7(a) Motion Pictures—Text and Data Mining 7(b) Literary Works—Text and Data Mining Item 3. Statement Regarding Proposed Exemption The GNU/Linux operating system has become one of the most widely used operating systems on the planet. The GNU System and the kernel Linux are called free software because users are free to study, share, and improve the software. Those who promote free software believe that controlling one’s own computing should be a universal right. Digital restrictions interfere with the ability to enjoy these freedoms. Circumventing such restrictions for any use should not come with the threat of legal sanction. The process of continually applying for exemptions under 17 U.S.C. 1201 is onerous and instead any circumvention for a non-infringing purpose should be permitted. However, where exemptions are used to safeguard the public from these laws, it must be the case that exemptions should cover the sharing and distribution of software and instructions for circumventing access control technologies.
    [Show full text]
  • The Ethical Visions of Copyright Law
    GRIMMELMANN FINAL 3/30/2009 10:08:14 PM View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Digital Commons @ UM Law THE ETHICAL VISIONS OF COPYRIGHT LAW James Grimmelmann* INTRODUCTION All of intellectual property law is an act of imagination. If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to call it “property,” the tree still exists. But the objects of intellectual property have no existence apart from what we give them. You can’t copyright an unwritten novel; you have no trademark rights in a word the consuming public has never heard of. We must imagine these things into being before we can make them the subject of legal rights and obligations. Nor is the work of imagination done at the moment of creation. We must constantly play a game of practical metaphysics to grant legal rights over things that can’t be seen or touched. When the legal system says that this assembly of gears and levers infringes on that set of marks on a piece of paper, it’s calling an abstraction into being. The “invention” that connects the two is itself a creation of the legal mind no less than the arrangement of parts is a creation of the engineering mind. Lawyers must decide whether a given abstraction is an invention at all (most of us would agree that a short story isn’t one); whether it has attributes like “new,” “useful,” “obvious,” and so on; and what exactly its limits are. None of these distinctions come ready-made in nature; they require continuous, purposeful, collective imagination.
    [Show full text]
  • Annex I Definitions
    Annex I Definitions Free and Open Source Software (FOSS): Software whose source code is published and made available to the public, enabling anyone to copy, modify and redistribute the source code without paying royalties or fees. Open source code evolves through community cooperation. These communities are composed of individual programmers and users as well as very large companies. Some examples of open source initiatives are GNU/Linux, Eclipse, Apache, Mozilla, and various projects hosted on SourceForge1 and Savannah2 Web sites. Proprietary software -- Software that is distributed under commercial licence agreements, usually for a fee. The main difference between the proprietary software licence and the open source licence is that the recipient does not normally receive the right to copy, modify, redistribute the software without fees or royalty obligations. Something proprietary is something exclusively owned by someone, often with connotations that it is exclusive and cannot be used by other parties without negotiations. It may specifically mean that the item is covered by one or more patents, as in proprietary technology. Proprietary software means that some individual or company holds the exclusive copyrights on a piece of software, at the same time denying others access to the software’s source code and the right to copy, modify and study the software. Open standards -- Software interfaces, protocols, or electronic formats that are openly documented and have been accepted in the industry through either formal or de facto processes, which are freely available for adoption by the industry. The open source community has been a leader in promoting and adopting open standards. Some of the success of open source software is due to the availability of worldwide standards for exchanging information, standards that have been implemented in browsers, email systems, file sharing applications and many other tools.
    [Show full text]