VidReview: Trademarks and Your Free and Open Source Software Project

Who?

Karen Sandler - CEO of Software Freedom Conservancy

What?

All Things Open 2014 - Karen Sandler - Trademarks and Your Free and Open Source Software Project

Where?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY6AtbtAuts

When?

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Posted on youtube: Nov 14, 2014

The Gist

Presentation on Trademarks, what they are, how they are enforced, and a bunch of real life examples of cases involving trademarks.

The Good

1. Nice to hear someone talking about trademarks who really knows her stuff and is extremely qualified to give the talk.
2. Lots of example cases involving very well known companies from the FOSS world.
3. Provided both cases where it was determined it was not worthwhile to enforce a trademark, and cases where it was very important to take action.

The Bad

1. The guy with the big hair could not stop shaking his foot, which I found very distracting.
2. Kind of a giant recap of a lot of the points I already learned about in the reading from my previous LitReview post.
3. Seems like there is a lot of stuff that has to be argued in cases involving trademarks - not very concrete

Questions

1. How is the scope of distribution determined for a project distributed through the internet
2. How do we enforce trademarks internationally especially if it is an extreme case where you would want to enforce - Any examples of these cases?
3. Is there a concrete definition or explanation of how it can be determined that a trademark is no longer in use?  At what point can it effectively be argued that a trademark is obsolete?

Review

A lot of repetition from my last reading on Trademarks, but it was helpful in further solidifying my understanding on the topic.  It was also nice to hear someone talk about trademarks in a presentation setting rather than having to read about them.  I also greatly appreciated the relevant examples from the qualified speaker.

7/10 

LitReview: FOSS Primer Chapter 5

Who?

• Richard Fontana
• Bradley M. Kuhn
• Eben Moglen
• Matthew Norwood
• Daniel B. Ravicher
• Karen Sandler
• James Vasile
• Aaron Williamson

What?

FOSS Primer - A Legal Issues Primer for Open Source and Free Software Projects (Chapter 5)

Where?

http://bizlegfoss-ritigm.rhcloud.com/static/books/decause-foss-primer.pdf

When?

4 June 2008

The Gist

This chapter of the FOSS Primer was all about trademarks, from what they are, to how to go about registering one.  It also describes situations in which a trademark can be lost, and how a FOSS Project might want to make use of a trademark.

The Good

1. Great quick general description of what a trademark is.  I found this helpful because I really did not know what a trademark was prior to reading this.
2. I like how this explains how trademarks work, but always tries to focus on how they would apply in the world of FOSS, for example when they recommend using class 9 for classification of goods.
3. It's nice that the primer explains the scare tactic behind cease and desist letters, because I think my first reaction to a cease and desist would be to panic.

The Bad

1. Does not constitute legal advice so might not be what someone in a specific situation is looking for
2. I would have liked explanations of other goods classifications aside from just the recommendation of class 9.
3. I wish it was not so expensive to register trademarks.

Questions

1. Exactly how is the scope of a product distributed through the internet determined in trademark issues?
2. At what point is a trademark legally no longer in use due to circumstances like genericide or failure to enforce?
3. Using the "R" symbol, how do you determine whether it is registered by state or federal level?

Review

Next to the Patent Chapter, I think this was my favorite chapter of the Primer so far.  It is extremely to the point and very helpful for someone like me with little prior knowledge in the legal areas.  I also like that although this does not constitute legal advice, the primer does give extremely solid examples of possible scenarios and suggestions of what action to take in such scenarios.

9/10

Weekly 4

So this week was pretty heavy on work.

My Global Cinema German Film class had our first essay due.  I chose to write about the expressionist art style prominent in the movie Metropolis.  In the movie, characters are given an outward image that directly correlates to their inner emotions.  The film also uses special effects to further convey how characters are feeling internally.

My Japanese Film class finished up Rashomon and we discussed the film afterwords.  Overall reaction to the film was pretty good, with the average rating being around a 7 or an 8.  I was closer to the higher ratings as I think this is one of the best, most innovative films ever made.

My Casual Game Development class assigned teams of 2 and started coming up with game ideas for our project 1.  My friend Alan(github.com/AlanLeeson) came up with the idea for a game where the player controls a rabbit that can burrow into the ground by planting bombs.  The theme for the game is "Chain Reaction" so we kept that in mind when first coming up with the idea.

My Production Studio class put together a demo where I worked really hard to make the terrain, and ultimately, I realized that we didn't have floating islands in the scene, so I added those as well.  We are currently using Three.js for the 3D scene building, and sonic.api for music analysis.

LitReview: Various Patent Promises

Who?

The folks at:

• Red Hat
• IBM
• Google

What?

• Red Hat - "Statement of Position and Our Promise on Software Patents"
• IBM - "Statement of Non-Assertion of Named Patents Against OSS"
• Google - "Open Patent Non Assertion Pledge"
• Red Hat Patent Promise: Encouraging - Patent Pledge Comparisons

Where?

• http://www.redhat.com/legal/patent_policy.html
• http://www.ibm.com/ibm/licensing/patents/pledgedpatents.pdf
• https://www.google.com/patents/opnpledge/pledge/
• https://www.redhat.com/magazine/001nov04/features/patents/

When?

• Red Hat - 2014
• IBM - 2005
• Red Hat Comparisons - 2004

The Gist

Description of the promises made by Red Hat, IBM, and Google granting permission to infringe upon patents held by each company without fear of enforcement of said patents.  Also, a comparison by Red Hat highlighting differences on how individual types of pledges work and exactly what is promised by each pledge.

The Good

1. Nice to see big companies promoting the development of Open Source Software as opposed to inhibiting innovation.
2. IBM gives a long list of specific patents which is helpful for me to better understand what kinds of things are patented.
3. Pledges are specific to Open Source Software, which really promotes the development of Open Source projects over proprietary software.

The Bad

1. Each company states that they can terminate their promise.  Makes it sound like they will just use the promise however they see fit.
2. Promises are very broad and don't clearly explain how they specifically apply.
3. Red Hat admits this, but they are being quite hypocritical by fighting against software patents and then still owning tons of patents themselves.

Questions

1. Why are large companies able to acquire large libraries of patents that they could use against an ordinary person contributing to open source software who doesn't even know they are infringing a patent?  This seems unfair.
2. What do the patent promises for other companies look like?  Specifically, I would like to see a company like Apple's stand on this type of thing.
3. What are some companies that do not make patent pledges to help FOSS that would be helpful if they did.

Review

I liked this reading because the pledges are short and to the point, although I do really wish they made the pledges more clear.  I also would like more specific examples that show holes in the pledges or ways in which the pledges completely protect people.  The Red Hat comparison was helpful, but it did not list all that many examples.

7/10

LitReview: FOSS Primer Chapter 4

Who?

• Richard Fontana
• Bradley M. Kuhn
• Eben Moglen
• Matthew Norwood
• Daniel B. Ravicher
• Karen Sandler
• James Vasile
• Aaron Williamson

What?

FOSS Primer - A Legal Issues Primer for Open Source and Free Software Projects(Chapter 4)

Where?

http://bizlegfoss-ritigm.rhcloud.com/static/books/decause-foss-primer.pdf

When?

4 June 2008

The Gist

Chapter of the Foss Primer that I blogged about earlier, helping people interested in FOSS familiarize themselves with what patents are, how patents can be used to harm FOSS projects, and what contributors accused of patent infringement can do to defend themselves.

The Good

1. Learned a lot about patents, what they are, how they are composed, what they do.
2. Teaches people to defend against patents through - License, Non-infringement, Invalidity, and unenforceability
3. Gets right down to how to read a patent, what parts to look at first, and what parts to use for backup information.

The Bad

1. Tries to make patents not look scary, but still makes it seem difficult to take any steps to ensure prevention from patent infringement.
2. Pretty heavy document on the legal side
3. Everything is dependent on the situation, information is not specific to any single case.

Questions

1. What is the simplest way to just avoid patent infringement through prevention.
2. If I feel I am likely to infringe upon a patent, can I go about requesting a license?  How?
3. What are some examples of big patent cases in the FOSS world?

My Review

I thought this read was extra informative because I knew virtually nothing about patents prior to reading this chapter.  It was not written too difficultly and I really liked how it gets right to the point explaining which parts of the patent to not worry about, and mentioning that the claims are the most important part.

9/10

Weekly 3

This week in Bizlegfoss...we discussed the GPL license - see the litreview post for more on this.  I like finally getting to dive deeper into the FOSS licenses that are a part of basically every project that I work on through github.  I quickly realize that I know so little about what the licenses actually do, which is funny because it turns out it's all actually extremely interesting stuff!

In production studio, we split into 2 groups - 1 group for getting as much information from an audio file as we can, and 1 group for putting together a 3d scene with floating islands, terrain, and a sky in.  Hence the project has been titled "Floating Islands" which I would link to if the project was not private on github :(

My Casual Game Development class continued working on our chain reaction circles game.  The game involves a bunch of 2d circles floating around.  When the user clicks one circle, it explodes and causes all circles around it to explode.  The player wants to remove as many circles from the game as they can.  This is all programmed in javascript and is playable on the web, although I do not currently have it hosted anywhere.

My German film class watched Metropolis, another old black and white infamous melodrama.  My Japanese film class watched the even more infamous movie Rashomon by director Akira Kurosawa.  This film is awesome if you are in to samurai culture, or even if you just want to see a revolutionary movie.

Last thing to note about this week is that my music class got started on the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque Eras.

LitReview: Various Agreements

LitReview Pending

Notes:

Itunes TOS: - more bad things - you're using their stuff
-1 Click licensed through Amazon - interesting that they have to state that
-A lot of obvious things said very verbosely
-Card value is 1/10 of one cent - wat
-Not a lot on preorders
-Why 6 members, why 5 authorized computers, why 25000 songs?
-A lot of things that you might want to consider before agreeing - ex. Family Organizer
-Apple is not responsible - they don't care
-"Apple is not responsible for typographic errors"
-interesting that the biggest section was for family sharing and I don't even use that
-pretty strict and binding
-exact opposite of licenses - "you shall not modify, rent, lease, loan, sell, distribute, or create derivative works"

Fedora Project Contributor Agreement - more good things - they're using your stuff
-Not to be confused with licensing
-does not supercede the license
-does not apply to upstream code
-code vs content - specifying terms++
-MIT
-lol at defining "You"
-interesting copyright holder employer clarification
-goes to CDL if you haven't yet licensed it


Python Contributor Agreement - way shorter
-an actual form - you have more of a say
-More of a contract and agreement on both sides
-You pick your initial license
-Does not prevent contributor from licensing contributions under different terms from initial

Similarities
-all agreements
-regarding use of something by someone else

LitReview: GPL Compliance Guide

Who?

• Bradley M. Kuhn
• Anthony K. Sebro, Jr.
• Denver Gingerich
• Free Software Foundation, Inc.
• Software Freedom Law Center

What?

Copyleft and the GNU General Public License: A Comprehensive Tutorial and Guide

Where?

http://bizlegfoss-ritigm.rhcloud.com/static/books/comprehensive-gpl-guide.pdf

When?

First Published 2008, up to date as of 2014

The Gist

A very helpful comprehensive guide that clarifies things like Software Freedom, Public Domain, Copyleft, Copyright, and licensing software.  The guide specifically explains how the GPL v2 and v3 are meant to work and mentions some benefits and reasons for licensing software.

The Good

1. Clarified a lot of topics.   Questions I had after my last litreview were answered in this reading.  Also really liked reading up on the 4 Freedoms of Free Software.
2. Very up to date and tries to give full explanation of key concepts before diving straight into the license.
3. I was very happy to read more about this license in particular because it is the most widely used free software license.

The Bad

1. Software Freedom is not a legal concept so it's just going by what the FSF defines it as.
2. Meant to explain a lot of information to a broad audience, so it is pretty dense and I had to read some parts multiple times.
3. A lot of repetition of things I already knew, so I felt at points like parts were almost obvious to me.

The Questions

1. Can I, depending on the license, open Github, find a project that I think is very good, compile the source code to an executable and sell that executable via perhaps CD or USB as long as I ship the source?
2. What are some big reasons not to license under the GPL?  V2 or V3?
3. This question was asked in class but I am very curious - does Obfuscated code legally count as source code?

My Review

There were a lot of things about this article that I liked.  I found it very helpful to read about the 4 Freedoms of Free Software and I liked clarifying the difference between software being Free as in freedom vs Free as in price.  I think it was important that I read this document because I find the GPL to be the most interesting license, as it is the most widely used.

8/10

Weekly 2

This week picked up pretty quick especially when compared to week 1.  We got our assignment for Production Studio.  Basically, the entire semester is devoted to our class outputting a demo project based on the professor's requirements.  Our project is supposed to ultimately be a web browser based application that takes in a song and crafts a 3d artistic scene based on the musical data.  For this initial week, we were supposed to put together research presentations about present web technologies, api's, music data, and sound files to determine what tools we would end up using to make the project.  I did a presentation on the visual style of Roger Dean(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Dean_%28artist%29) who was the main influence for this project, and the artist behind many 70's classic rock album covers.  I also covered model loading in THREE.js.

For my Modern Japan Film class, we read some poetry collections from the Heian Period of Japan.  In my other film class, Global Cinema - German Film, we watched the old German films The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and The Last Laugh.  I enjoyed both of these classes and found the videos surprisingly entertaining despite the lack of any color.

In my Casual Game Development class this week, we did in class exercises to put together a chain reaction game called "Boomshine".  In my BizLegFOSS class, we performed a FirstFlight assignment to hook us up to github, and we did a Literature Review and Video Review on Everything is a Remix(http://everythingisaremix.info/).  The First Flight assignment was a breeze because I had already done the assignment last year in HFOSS.  Last thing to note this week is that my music class started learning some basics about reading musical notes and figuring out how to objectively describe a song.

LitReview: FOSS Primer

Who?

• Richard Fontana
• Bradley M. Kuhn
• Eben Moglen
• Matthew Norwood
• Daniel B. Ravicher
• Karen Sandler
• James Vasile
• Aaron Williamson

What?

FOSS Primer - A Legal Issues Primer for Open Source and Free Software Projects(Chapters 1&2)

Where?

http://bizlegfoss-ritigm.rhcloud.com/static/books/foss-primer.pdf

When?

4 June 2008

The Gist

An informational primer to help people interested in FOSS familiarize themselves with things like different licenses, different terms like "copyright" or "copyleft", and the enforcement of licenses and copyrights.

The Good

1. I didn't find it too hard to read.  Wasn't written in heavy legal jargon with citations everywhere
2. I finally have a better understanding of different licenses now
3. Makes it clear that you should search for more specific information if you are interested in something rather than just going straight off from the primer

The Bad

1. This is a very important modern topic, and this version of the primer is from 2008.
2. Some of the licenses could have been a bit better explained in more detail.
3. The Apache License was talked about early on, but I don't think it was very in depth when describing the specific licenses.

The Questions

1. Do we have certain default copyrights to our code, the second we start writing it?
2. Which license could potentially allow for the most profit?
3. Why are companies allowed to just claim rights to code written by their employees in free time on non-company machines?

My Review

As someone interested in FOSS with little knowledge on the different licenses, the meaning of copyright, and the enforcement of said licenses, I found this reading incredibly enlightening.  I am very glad I got to read it and it sheds a lot of light on my understanding of FOSS in general.

9/10

VidReview: "Everything is a Remix"

Who?

Kirby Ferguson

What?

Everything is a Remix

Where?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coGpmA4saEk

or

http://everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/

When?

Published on youtube on June 25, 2012

The Gist

The video "Everything is a Remix" is an eye-opening video showing numerous examples of how everything is derived from everything else.  The main parts of the video are titled "Song Remains the Same", "Remix Inc.", "The Elements of Creativity", and "System Failure", and the major point that gets repeated throughout the video is that progress is made through copying, transforming, and then combining.

The Good

1. I really liked the number of examples that are given in this video.  They make it hard to argue against the points of the video.
2. The video is only a few years old and the information is still very relevant today.  Problems stated are still around today.
3. The video is segmented into parts quite well and is consistently interesting.  I especially liked the portion about the hypocrisy of people acting towards copied work.

The Bad

1. Although this gives a lot of objective information, it doesn't really provide any concrete solutions or changes that could be made to better benefit everyone.
2. Jumped around to cover a lot of information
3. At the end of the video, he tells the audience "it's up to us" but I'm not 100% clear on exactly what or how he wants us to change things.

The Questions

1. What is arguably the most popular remix of all time?  What is the heaviest lawsuit against a remix?
2. How can we both protect unique ideas and allow people to profit off of their creativity, but still encourage people to copy off of original ideas.
3. How can we prevent companies or people from amassing wealth simply by bullying innovators with copyright lawsuits.

My Review

I enjoyed this video.  It was not too long and yet it covered a lot of ground.  The video was very well put together and I like that every point was supported by tons of relevant examples.  I did find the video very objective, which isn't bad, but it made me seriously question how we can find solutions for the problems in this world of remixes.  Overall, the video was both enlightening and thought provoking.

8/10

First Flight

Welcome to another one of my FOSS blogs!  This blog is mainly a place where I can put up posts for my Business and Legal Aspects of Free and Open Source Software Course.  I am super excited to be taking this class especially after how great my Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software Course was.  One incredibly cool thing about this course is that it is 1 of the only classes in the world managed through a github open source repo website.  This can be found and forked from here: https://github.com/decause/bizlegfoss or if you want to just see what the site looks like on the user side, check it out here: http://bizlegfoss-ritigm.rhcloud.com/

This website and repo are managed by the one and only awesome course professor Remy Decausemaker (github.com/decause).  As a student in the BizLegFoss class, I am required to add things to the repo and this specific blog post is a part of one of those assignments.  For this post, I am supposed to detail what my experience was like in terms of setting up a github account, making my blog, and editing the course repo.

I would be speaking about how I downloaded HexChat and used commands to register my IRC username(snapschott), and then proceeded to signup with blogger to make this blog that you are reading, and then signed up with github to work on open source projects, but I already did all of these things last semester.  You can read my "first" first flight here: http://andrewhfoss.blogspot.com/2014/08/first-flight.html.

For this iteration of my First Flight, all I really had to do was make a new blog on my account, and then create a new file in the github repo I linked to in the first paragraph of this post.  It was definitely nice to have already had a head start for this class and I really look forward to continuing in the Remy Decausemaker series of FOSS classes.  Stay tuned for more posts coming soon!

Weekly 1

Week 1 of classes

Classes started on Monday, August 25.  This semester I originally grabbed these courses:

• Business & Legal Aspects of Free and Open Source Software
• Production Studio
• Casual Game Development
• Linux Software Development -Switched for Modern Japan in History, Fiction, and Film
• Global Cinemas
• Introduction to Music

Unfortunately, after a lengthy talk with my adviser, I decided to switch out my Linux Software Development class for Modern Japan in History, Fiction, and Film.  I am still quite interested in minoring in Free and Open Source Software, but I made this move because my adviser and I decided it would be best to knock out my Immersion requirement before going full force at getting a minor.  This new class fits the immersion of "Film Studies" which I am extremely interested in.

While I was sort of pleased with my final schedule, it was a real pain getting all of my classes sorted out because a lot of the one's I initially wanted to take filled up before I could even enroll.  Another unfortunate outcome of this schedule is that I ended up enrolled in 6 classes whereas I have only ever taken 5 at a time.

Aside from the bad news of the somewhat heavier course load with 6 total classes, 3 of which are advanced Interactive Games and Media electives, my courses actually seemed pretty enjoyable.  Nothing much to report this week aside from that initial positive reaction.  All of my profs just went over the course descriptions.