[aklug] Re: Ought to be fun - Microsoft has patented "sudo"

On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 6:54 PM, Jim Gribbin <jimgribbin@gmail.com> wrote:
> I think Microsoft is doing entirely too much intrusion in general.
>
> I was trying to help my younger brother in accessing
> www.anchoragelive.com earlier today. His browser, IE7, wouldn't let him
> go there. It kept giving him a message about some sort of Microsoft site
> checker (I don't remember the name) being off-line so the browser was
> unable to verify that it was OK for him to go to that particular
> web-site. This continued after I had already tried telling IE this was a
> trusted site.
>
> I didn't realize Microsoft had set themselves up as the internet police
> and had the final say in where we can and can't go.
>
> What's next? All sites having anything to do with Linux or FOSS will now
> be off limits to anyone running Internet Explorer? Will IE users only be
> allowed to get their news from MSNBC?
>
> On Thu, 2009-11-12 at 13:36 -0900, Christopher Howard wrote:
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA1
>>
>> Jim Gribbin wrote:
>> > I'm not enough of a lawyer to quite get a handle on everything Groklaw
>> > was saying about it, but I did also have the impression that they think
>> > the patent covers sudo itself.
>> >
>> > I would have thought "prior art" would have killed the patent on it's
>> > face, but I've already learned that what looks like prior art to me
>> > doesn't necessarily qualify as prior art in the minds of the patent
>> > lawyers.
>> >
>> > On Thu, 2009-11-12 at 11:38 -0900, Christopher Howard wrote:
>> > Jim Gribbin wrote:
>> >>>> http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20091111094923390
>> >>>>
>> >>>> Jim G
>> >>>>
>> >>>> ---------
>> >>>> To unsubscribe, send email to <aklug-request@aklug.org>
>> >>>> with 'unsubscribe' in the message body.
>> >>>>
>> > Well, just when I thought no stupidity in the world could surprise me,
>> > the scumbags at Microsoft pull it off.
>> >
>> > But, the important question: are they trying to patent sudo itself, or
>> > an interface on top of it? These guys seems to be saying they are
>> > actually trying to patent sudo itself:
>> >
>> > http://ubuntulinuxtipstricks.blogspot.com/2007/05/did-microsoft-just-patent-sudo.html
>> >
>> > If that is the case, then they will be blown to pieces at the first
>> > lawsuit, right, since sudo has long been under a BSD-style license?
>> >
>>
>> > ---------
>> > To unsubscribe, send email to <aklug-request@aklug.org>
>> > with 'unsubscribe' in the message body.
>>
>> Well, at least its nice to see Microsoft being creative for a change.
>> Rather than threatening to sue us for patent violations we never
>> committed, they'll just threaten to sue us for using products we created
>> decades ago. How novel.
>>
>> Sigh... I'm getting tired of all the Linux users I run into online who
>> think that we should find a "balance" between proprietary software and
>> FOSS, and that Microsoft is some kind of neutral organization we should
>> work more closely with.
>>
>> - --
>> Christopher Howard
>> http://indicium.us
>> http://theologia.indicium.us
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
>> Version: GnuPG v2.0.11 (GNU/Linux)
>> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>>
>> iEYEARECAAYFAkr8jeMACgkQQ5FLNdi0BcVYkgCeLZAypaXFexbeCkM0zH/Thzyr
>> OHgAmwa+kmxk2czXe4Vaas6Y6lUVLeZ/
>> =rQQX
>> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
> ---------
> To unsubscribe, send email to <aklug-request@aklug.org>
> with 'unsubscribe' in the message body.
>
>

For what it is worth, Google Chrome has a "site checker" built into it
also. However in the warning it offers you the option to continue to
the site. Even Google's search engine has that feature when you click
on a link in the results.

As for the sudo issue, it doesn't seem to be directly aimed at sudo
itself, but it may affect some newer technologies. Arstechnica has
some decent coverage of the issue:

http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/11/microsofts-psuedo-sudo-patent-doesnt-really-cover-sudo.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss
---------
To unsubscribe, send email to <aklug-request@aklug.org>
with 'unsubscribe' in the message body.
Received on Mon Nov 16 07:18:45 2009