5 August 2011

New Zealand Open Source Society held its 2011 Annual General Meeting on Thursday, 5 August 2011. The meeting took place using a mix of technologies, including IRC and audioconferencing, to ensure that members throughout the country could participate in the meeting. Outgoing President Rachel Hamilton-Williams reported on the Society’s achievements and activities in the last year.

The NZOSS AGM has voted Dave Lane President. Dave has been a member since the formation of the NZOSS in 2003. His company Egressive has hosted the NZOSS web site throughout the recent geological disruptions in Christchurch with no downtime. He has served on Council since the formation of the society. The NZOSS itself was formed in the wake of a open letter to Government about Open Source that was published by Dave in 2002. The Open Letter collected over 400 signatures. From a personal point of view I congratulate Dave on stepping into this challenging role.

Evaluating submissions on software patents*

The New Zealand Herald is reporting that Google senior vice president and chief legal officer David Drummond is accusing Microsoft, Apple and Oracle of using patents in an attempt to kill the innovative and popular Android phone operating system. Android is an open source phone operating system based on Linux. It has taken the market by storm, and is now the most popular operating system for smartphones in the world. Ironically Oracle has made use of Linux in it's "unbreakable Linux" campaign.

The IP law community continues to peddle half truths about the New Zealand Patent Bill and the status of computer software. I notice that they never allow comments on their blogs which means that their misleading contentions are never challenged by people that actually understand software engineering. Readers will probably find lots of instances of this but compare the NZ Computer Society's newsletter on the latest information from MED with that of Baldwins IP. Keep in mind that the NZCS is our professional body...Baldwins is not.

The NZOSS 2011 AGM has been held. Thanks to all who took the time to participate.

The NZOSS will be holding its Annual General Meeting at 7pm this coming Thursday, 4 August. Groups connected by video and/or teleconference will be meeting at venues Auckland (at ICONZ), Wellington (at Catalyst IT) and Christchurch (at Egressive) - with meeting business to take place on Internet Relay Chat (IRC).

The Ministry of Economic Development has published the submissions in relation to the draft guidelines on for the Examination of Patent Applications Involving Computer Programs discussion document. The call for submissions was clear that this was not an opportunity to revisit the decision to exclude software patents, saying “"In releasing the draft guidelines for comment, it is not intended to re-open the debate regarding the patentability of computer programs, or whether an amendment should be made to clause 15(3A).

The US Patent Office has rejected 17 out of 21 patent claims from Oracle as a result of the reexamination of U.S. patent 6192476. Recently Oracle released information indicating it had asked the court for SIX BILLION DOLLARS. While the claims of Oracle are astronomically absurd their claims are being eliminated as the Patent Office continues to reexamine the patents in question.

James Bessen of the Boston University School of Law has published a paper demonstrating that software patents are not beneficial to the software industry. He finds that a overwhelming majority of software firms do not employ patents, that an overwhelming majority of patents are obtained by a few large corporations, and that both the number of patents and the risk of patent litigation are increasing dramatically.

The NZOSS is pleased to announce that its opposition to New Zealand patent application 536149, filed by Microsoft in relation to XML word processing documents has been successful. Yesterday we were informed by IPONZ that Microsoft has withdrawn their application.