UPGRADE Vol. II, No. 6, December 2001
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The European Online Magazine for the IT Professional http://www.upgrade-cepis.org Vol. II, No. 6, December 2001 UPGRADE is the European Online Magazine for the Information Technology Professional, Open Source / Free Software: Towards Maturity published bimonthly at Guest Editors: Joe Ammann, Jesús M. González-Barahona, Pedro de las Heras Quirós http://www.upgrade-cepis.org/ Publisher Joint issue with NOVÁTICA and INFORMATIK/INFORMATIQUE UPGRADE is published on behalf of CEPIS (Council of European Professional Informatics Societies, http://www.cepis.org/) by Novática (http://www.ati.es/novatica/) 2 Presentation – Joe Ammann, Jesús M. González-Barahona, and Informatik/Informatique (http://www.svifsi.ch/revue/) Pedro de las Heras Quirós, Guest Editors Chief Editors François Louis Nicolet, Zurich <[email protected]> 4 Free Software Today Rafael Fernández Calvo, Madrid <[email protected]> – Pedro de las Heras Quirós and Jesús M. González-Barahona Editorial Board The position of many major companies with regard to Free Software is changing. New Peter Morrogh, CEPIS President companies are becoming giants. It is vital for the data on which we base this idea to be right Prof. Wolffried Stucky, CEPIS President-Elect Fernando Sanjuán de la Rocha and up to date. Any impression based on data from a few months ago will very possibly be wrong. Rafael Fernández Calvo, ATI 12 Should Business Adopt Free Software? Prof. Carl August Zehnder and François Louis Nicolet, SVI/FSI – Gilbert Robert and Frédéric Schütz English Editors: Mike Andersson, Richard Butchart, David Cash, Arthur Cook, Tracey Darch, Laura Davies, Nick Dunn, We explain what Free Software is, and what its advantages are for users, and provide an Rodney Fennemore, Hilary Green Roger Harris, Michael Hird, overview of its status in business, in particular by looking at the obstacles which still stand in Jim Holder, Alasdair MacLeod, Pat Moody, Adam David Moss, the way of its use. Phil Parkin, Brian Robson 20 Harm from The Hague – Richard Stallman Cover page designed by Antonio Crespo Foix, © ATI 2001 The proposed Hague Treaty threatens to subject software developers in Europe to U.S. Layout: Pascale Schürmann software patents. The consequence is that you could be sued about information you distributed E-mail addresses for editorial correspondence: under the laws of any country, and the judgement would be inforced by your country. <[email protected]> and <[email protected]> E-mail address for advertising correspondence: 23 Software Patentability with Compensatory Regulation: a Cost Evaluation – Jean <[email protected]> Paul Smets and Hartmut Pilch Copyright The European Patent Office has proposed to remove limitations on patentability, such as the © Novática and Informatik/Informatique. All rights reserved. exclusion of computer programs. The French Academy of Technologies suggests additional Abstracting is permitted with credit to the source. For copying, reprint, or republication permission, write to the editors. regulation measures in order to reduce potential abuses of software patents. The opinions expressed by the authors are their exclusive 33 Open Source in a Major Swiss Bank responsibility. – Klaus Bucka-Lassen and Jan Sorensen This article highlights which advantages and disadvantages of Open Source Software are of significance for a financial services provider. It describes the problems that arose, and what convinced management to use Struts for Web application developments. 36 European Initiatives Concerning the Use of Free Software in the Public Sector – Juan Jesús Muñoz Esteban The European Commission is beginning to make use of Free Software for some of their strategic initiatives. A study of the use of Free Software in several administrations of different countries analyses the reasons for adopting it. 41 GNU Enterprise Application Software – Neil Tiffin and Reinhard Müller GNUe is a set of integrated business applications and tools to support accounting, supply chain, human resources, sales, manufacturing, and other business processes. We describe the project, the idea and motivation for developers and users behind it. 45 The Debian GNU/Linux Project – Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña The Debian GNU/Linux project is one of the most ambitious Free Software projects, involving a large number of developers creating a totally free operating system. 50 Journal File Systems in Linux – Ricardo Galli Linux buffer/cache is really impressive and affected, positively, all the figures of my compilations, copies and random reads and writes. 57 The Crisis of Free Scientific Software – David Santo Orcero The scientific world was among the pioneers in creating Free Software. In the 1990s Free Software started to spread into other areas. In certain fields this reached a point where there are either no free tools available, or no more free tools are being actively developed. 60 Counting Potatoes: the Size of Debian 2.2 – Jesús M. González-Barahona, Miguel A. Ortuño Pérez, Pedro de las Heras Quirós, José Centeno González and Vicente Matellán Olivera Coming issue: Debian is the largest Free Software distribution, with more than 4,000 source packages in the release currently in preparation. We show that the Debian development model is at least as “Knowledge Management” capable as other development methods to manage distributions of this size. 1 Open Source / Free Software: Towards Maturity Software Patentability with Compensatory Regulation: a Cost Evaluation Jean Paul Smets and Hartmut Pilch Europe is preparing major changes in its patent system. The European Patent Office (EPO) has proposed to remove limitations on patentability, such as the exclusion of computer programs in Art. 52 of the European Patent Convention (EPC). A report by the French Academy of Technologies supports this proposal but suggests additional regulation measures in order to reduce potential abuses of software patents. In this article, we try to assess the costs of such regulation measures. They add up to an estimated 1–5 billion € per year for the European Union. Various regulation approaches and cheaper legislative approaches are com- pared. Keywords: Software Patents, Copyright, European Patent tive tend to conclude that the introduction of patents in the soft- Office, Small Software Publishers, Cost of Regulation ware economy would have no impact at best but would proba- bly lead to less innovation and competition. Reports written 1 A Drive for Patenting Logical Functionalities in from a patent law perspective tend to conclude that there should Europe be no explicit limitation of patentability and that the European Europe is preparing major changes in its patent system. practice should come in line with that of the United States of Among proposed changes <http://www.european-patent-office.org/news/ America. Some reports (IPI and the two German studies) com- headlns/2000_08_17.htm>, the European Patent Office (EPO) has bine both conclusions: software patents probably have a nega- asked for a removal of the exclusion of computer programs in tive economic impact but should be legalised. Three reports Art 52(2) EPC together with all other explicit exceptions to pat- (DG-MKT, IPR Helpdesk, Frauenhofer) include a review of entability (intellectual methods, business methods, mathemati- opinion among software companies which shows that an over- cal methods etc.), in order to put the written Law in line with whelming majority (80% to 90%) of software companies is its recent policy of granting patents for all practical and happy with copyright and more or less hostile to software pat- repeatable problem solutions <(http://swpat.ffii.org/vreji/papri/jwip- ents, with the noticeable exception of large software corpora- schar98/indexen.html>, so as to clarify the legal status of approxi- tions (ex. IBM, Microsoft). Only one report <(http://www. mately 30,000 software patents granted under this policy <http:/ proinnovation.org/rapport brevet/brevets_plan.pdf> carefully explores /swpat.ffii.org/vreji/pikta/index.en.html> and to harmonise the practise of national jurisdictions, some of which have been reluctant to Dr. Ing. Jean-Paul Smets-Solanes is currently CEO of Nexedi, join the EPO on its quest for new frontiers of patentability. a software service company based in Lille (France) which special- Multinational companies in the fields of telecommunications ises in Open Source / Free Software solutions for small and (e.g. Alcatel, Siemens), computer electronics (ex. Thomson medium businesses. Jean-Paul Smets-Solanes is a former civil Multimedia), Aerospace & Defence (ex. Dassault, Matra, servant of the French Ministry of Economy, Finance and Industry. Thales), software (e.g. IBM) have been continuously lobbying He coordinated a report on software patents published in 2000 by European governments in order to get software patents fully the Conseil Général des Mines, a strategic body of the French legalised in Europe. The European Patent Office, most national Ministry of Economy, Finance and Industry (http://www.pro- patent offices as well as industrial property professionals are innovation.org) and organized in cooperation with the French Embassy in Japan the first Europe-Japan conference on Open equally lobbying European governments1. Source and Free Software in 1999. <[email protected]> Plans to legalise software patents in Europe have met oppo- Hartmut Pilch, MA in Chinese and Japanese philology and lin- sition from various groups. 300 small software publishers from guistics, is state-examined translator for Chinese, Japanese, Eng- the Eurolinux Alliance