Bittersweet news from Groklaw: mission accomplished, signing off | Hacker News Reader

Bittersweet news from Groklaw: mission accomplished, signing off

groklaw.net

303 pointsgrellas64 comments

Groklaw filled a huge void. Done by someone who is a proponent of free software but also knowledgable about the law. As similar debates rage on in copyright and patent spaces, I think the need for that perspective will remain. We don't need more commentary from folks who don't know what the patent act §101 bars are. We need folks who understand the legal framework and can advocate for consumer rights within that framework. Hopefully someone steps in to fill PJ's shoes.

Groklaw has been a fantastic resource, reporting on important legal developments affecting IP with a depth, sagacity, and honesty that is not easily found elsewhere. I strongly second the idea that this leaves a huge void. It will take a lot to fill it.

I know the following sentiment will not be popular here, but here I go anyway(bye bye karma).

I really liked Groklaw in the SCO days but after that it seems to have degenerated into a place for Microsoft haters. I do not know if her investigations led her to seeing a Microsoft shadow everywhere but it felt like too much of a witch hunt to me, along with related sites like boycottnovell.com (now techrights.org). And Apple almost always gets a free pass even if they attack 'open'. Even her last post is a microcosm of this.

>But the world has moved from computers and desktops to mobile and the cloud. Now it's Microsoft and all its venal little helpers and proxies attacking Google and Android....No matter what tricks Microsoft may pull going forward, the world knows now that when there was free choice in the marketplace, people chose Android, which runs on Linux, over Microsoft's phone. Nothing they do can change that. All they can prove perhaps is that dirty tricks and misuse of the courts and regulatory bodies can distort the marketplace. But without the benefits of a monopoly, people don't actually choose Microsoft phones, at least not in comparison to Android. All they can do about that now is try to force you to use their products.That's in a way what a monopoly is.

People did not choose Android because it was open or because it was Linux. They choose it because the devices had multitouch capacitative screens(same as the iPhone) and ran on non AT&T carriers while Windows Mobile devices had resistive screens forcing use of a stylus and were not touch friendly, didn't have proper GPUs, suffered fragmentation etc. Windows Phone 7 is a total ditching of the old paradigm and a fresh start, but it came quite late and is facing an uphill battle against the network effects(yes, the same network effects that a monopoly or duopoly entail). If it was around when Android started, it could've been a very different market now, regardless of PJ's ramblings about monopolies. The new Windows phones are actually not bad compared to Androi but are missing many features. How can she declare victory for Android when WP7 has been barely out 5 months yet?

Interesting to see that she sweeps under the carpet things like Apple filing patent lawsuits against Android phones, and Jobs insinuating that Android is for porn. I sometimes feel that she plays to her primarily anti-MS audience, especially to keep things interesting to them after the SCO case ran out of gas but at the same time cannot criticize Apple too much even if deserved since that would anger the pro-Apple portion of the crowd.

In short, while the legal analysis was great, the bias, witch hunts and paranoia got too overwhelming once the SCO case stopped being interesting and it was the time that I stopped reading it regularly and I've seen some people who share this sentiment so I am not alone on this. Microsoft is definitely not an angel, but to obessively see it as a devil behind everything is a bit too much.

I agree completely, but think you should've done without the "disclaimer" at the beginning - that always comes off as whiny (or egotistical - a martyrdom complex).

I think the conspiracy theories, etc. were certainly bothersome, but they were far from overwhelming. It's important to keep in mind that basically nobody is in the business of following and publicly reporting on Microsoft's money trail, so in recent years we've only had weak evidence for their ties to SCO and their influence over the ISO standardization of OOXML. The myriad other possibilities probably were never investigated enough to have a chance of leaving the crackpot realm. We're left with only shreds of evidence, like certain lawyers being shared by everybody trying to undermine the GPL with a lawsuit, and Novell's IP being bought by a consortium that Microsoft put together.

To me, the greatest immediate loss is her reporting on Sony's legal activities. Even Ars Technica has not gone to the level of depth that PJ's analysis has, and I don't think anybody else has been diligent about tracking what Sony says in prosecuting Hotz vs. defending against the class action. There have also been several occasions where PJ has been the one to dampen sensationalism by not taking the legal filings at face value (eg. the accusations that Hotz had fled the country, or that Sony had a smoking-gun match for his serial number and IP address).

During all those years Groklie never once criticized IBM for any of its wrongdoings. In connection with IBM's software patent threat letter to TurboHercules, Groklie even said in a headline that IBM was "free to sue the pants off TurboHercules". Seriously, which free software advocate would ever cheer a patent aggressor on?

In the article you refer to[1], it is shown that IBM was not the aggressor, as TurboHercules filed the first complaint, and the "threat letter" was merely IBM calling their bluff: "Your suggestion that TurboHercules was unaware that IBM has intellectual property rights in this area is surprising." Furthermore, the letter was a response to a request that IBM identify any intellectual property TurboHercules infringed.

Your refusal to take those facts into account is far more damning than PJ's belief that IBM's patent pledge did not cover TurboHercules.

[1][http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20100408153953...]

You are wrong about IBM not having been the aggressor. Here's a documentation of the entire correspondence: http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2010/04/turbohercules-entire...

TurboHercules didn't make a "request" to IBM as a "bluff". Instead, IBM threatened TurboHercules with a previous letter.

Also, TurboHercules never attacked IBM with patents (I guess TurboHercules doesn't even own any patents). All that TurboHercules did later was to lodge an antitrust complaint with the European Commission. However, lodging a complaint with a regulator is not an act of aggression. Regulatory agencies will only take action if a company's conduct is suspected of being anticompetitive and unlawful. The European Commission launched an investigation in July: http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2010/07/european-commission-...

That would not have happened if there weren't serious concerns over what IBM is doing. The outcome of the in-depth investigation remains to be seen, but the European Commission doesn't launch such investigations unless there's at least a strong indication of possible wrongdoing.

lodging a complaint with a regulator is not an act of aggression. Regulatory agencies will only take action if a company's conduct is suspected of being anticompetitive and unlawful.

Wow.. that's an interesting spin.

The cynic in me wants to say "lodging a lawsuit is not an act of aggression. Courts will only take action if a company's conduct is proved to be unlawful."

Contrary to my statement being "an interesting spin", your statement displays a total lack of understanding for antitrust law and patent law.

Worse than that, you don't even seem to understand that antitrust regulators aren't courts of law.

If you sue someone over patent infringement allegations, and as long as you satisfy some basic criteria (such as "Rule 11"), there will be a lawsuit. It's a given that the court will hear your case. Period. And it's only because you as the patent holder want to assert your rights, regardless of whether that particular case is good or bad for the economy at large, and for society.

By contrast, an antitrust complaint like the one TurboHercules brought against IBM (many months after the initial - even if then not yet totally specific - patent infringement threat) is lodged with a regulatory agency that doesn't have an obligation to follow up. They can always say there's no public interest in what you complain about. In that case, you could try to bring an antitrust lawsuit, and then you just satisfy some basic criteria and a court will hear the case. But if you ask an antitrust regulator to act, the regulatory agency will look at your complaint and its merits, and will compare it to other complaints and their merits, and will then decide to pursue only the most important issues, i.e., the ones that the economy at large, and society, have the greatest benefit from.

Depending on the jurisdiction, the antitrust regulator will either have to go to court at some point (unless a case is settled before) or, such as in the EU's case, the regulator may be in a position to impose remedies and fines, but all of that will be subject to review by a court of law if the affected company appeals.

I understand perfectly well.

Complaining to an antitrust regulator is analogous to making a police complaint. The police may or may not do anything, in which case you can always file a civil lawsuit.

Trying to present making a complaint as some kind of innocent move is misleading at best.

Is there any way for IBM to notify someone of potential infringement that you wouldn't call a threat?

There can be different objectives of informing someone of potential infringement:

1) making someone aware but saying right away that it's fine (that's what IBM as a self-declared friend and protector of open source should have done in this context)

2) making someone aware and offering a license deal on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms; that would have made sense in this case, too, since TurboHercules stated in its first letter that it wanted to reach an agreement with IBM on such terms

3) making someone aware while simultaneously pursuing exclusionary, anticompetitive objectives

I like the first possibility, I can accept the second one if the offered terms are truly FRAND, but I despise the third option.

How about option

4) making someone aware and giving them the opportunity to cease and desist from commercial infringing activity

Is that a threat?

It's one thing to tolerate infringement from a community open-source project. It's another thing to let someone commercialize that technology and bundle it with hardware when a fully proprietary competitor would reasonably expect to be sued in to bankruptcy in no time flat. Should the fact that part of your business is "open" give the whole business immunity from patent infringement claims?

Also, IBM isn't "a self-declared friend and protector of open source". They only made a limited non-aggression pledge. They aren't (and aren't trying to be) in the same category as the FSF and EFF, or even RedHat.

Your point 4 is just a different way to phrase my point 3, the worst option of all.

Similarly, your distinction between a "community open-source project" and someone bundling it with hardware makes no sense. Companies bundling open source software with hardware or commercializing it in other ways are simply part of the community as long as they comply with open source terms.

So any use of software patents is unduly "exclusionary [and] anticompetitive", especially when applied to commercial users of open-source software?

I hadn't really picked up a strong "they're all wrong" vibe from what I've seen of your coverage of the smartphone mess.

You're now trying, not for the first time in this discussion, quite desperately to pretend not to understand what I say.

You previously just phrased my 3rd option differently to artifically create a 4th option.

Now you don't take into account that I explained 3 different approaches: grant a free license, grant a FRAND license, and prohibit any implementation of the patented invention only to foreclose competition, which is exactly what IBM (a monopolist in the context we're discussing) tried. Fortunately, the European Commission is investigating IBM for suspected violations of EU competition law.

You're implying that any use of patents to stifle competition is probably illegal, and should certainly be investigated. That rather thoroughly contradicts the definition of "patent".

Further, IBM's decade of tolerating Hercules development suggests that they do see a difference between community infringement and commercial infringement.

Your first paragraph is, once again, a complete strawman as opposed to what I said or implied. Not granting a license to a patent on FRAND terms is certainly anticompetitive, but not necessarily illegal. If, however, a monopolist does so in order to foreclose competition, then it raises serious antitrust issues and can, as the result of a regulatory process or lawsuit, be deemed illegal.

Your second paragraph doesn't make sense to me given that the patents asserted by IBM in that correspondence were related to the Hercules open source emulator, not specific to any commercial offering. The maintainer of the Hercules project explained on his blog why this was an attack on the Hercules project as a whole: http://ibmvshercules.com/

> I know the following sentiment will not be popular here, but here I go anyway(bye bye karma).

Eesh.. please don't do that. It's not really 'baiting people to downvote you' per the comment guidelines, but baiting the contrarians to upvote you.

Big shame. While in the SCO case groklaw was useful as an information source and an advocacy conduit, I feel there is a need for detailed coverage on court cases that revolve around technical issues or major technical players, even if there is no obvious position to advocate for.

I hope somebody else can take up the torch.

PJ is very knowledgeable and well respected. She also ran groklaw on a voluntary basis at a great cost in terms of time and energy. In some sense, she will probably feel that she's getting her life back.

The big battles are now about software patents, not copyright, and particularly take place in connection with mobile devices: http://www.scribd.com/my_document_collections/2770688

I never intended for my FOSS Patents blog to be a discussion community like Groklaw, but I do cover those issues and try to help a broader audience understand the strategic battlelines, such as with the visualizations available in the above folder.

Is the Sony mess not important? It's all about copyrights and license agreements, and it seems like it could have major repercussions for the right to run the software of your choosing on hardware that you own. (Not to mention the horrible privacy precedents Sony is trying to set with their subpoenas.)

I'm not saying that the software patent issues aren't big, but they're battles between corporate giants, and will have limited effect on developers until most of them are settled. The Sony cases, on the other hand, could mean that you would need the manufacturer's permission before putting free software on the hardware they sold you. Most companies selling hardware would love for that to be the case, but it would make it nearly impossible for open-source communities to form around consumer hardware.

Groklaw was very useful for getting documents out, and explaining procedural things. Basically, the practical aspects of law. Even when a legal document is public domain, it often requires someone with access to a for-pay system to find it, grab it, and put it up on free site.

The analysis side of Groklaw, on the other hand, was so-so, especially the farther it got away from actual legal issues.

I'd like to see a site that gathers legal documents related to the same kinds of issues Groklaw covered (and more, perhaps) and makes them available for free, but that either does not do analysis and editorializing the way Groklaw does, or that has several independent people providing analysis from a wide variety of perspectives.

>I'd like to see a site that gathers legal documents related to the same kinds of issues Groklaw covered (and more, perhaps) and makes them available for free,

This is the goal of RECAP. It's a Firefox extension that will automatically upload documents you view from PACER (the for-pay system to access documents) to a public internet archive. It will also let you know if free versions of the files for a case you're looking up are already available.

You can also search the already available documents, without the extension, here: http://archive.recapthelaw.org/

Firefox extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/recap-195534/

Their 'About' page also has a FAQ if you're interested in more about how it works: https://www.recapthelaw.org/about/

There's some pretty good legal analysis and discussion in the Groklaw comment threads, once you sort out who to follow.

Groklaw is an interesting model in how to manage community discussions. Having an explicit "Off Topic" section on each post does seem to quarantine a lot of dreck.

There's an art to knowing when to move on. Congrats to PJ and kudos to groklaw!

Sad.

Kudos.

I've only ever come across Groklaw on HN, it's not a blog I've ever kept up with regularly (my loss). But every memory I have of Grok' content is of competent, sensible and inciteful commentary.

The SCO stuff kinda passed me by, mostly because I ''assumed'' it was purely frivolous and would be beaten. It is only on the prompting of this post that I dug into the archives and saw the work that was done.

But, kudos for sticking to the idea of switching off once done. I have the perennial XKCD cartoon above my desk about someone being wrong on the internet (see: http://xkcd.com/386/), too often I ignore it. Anyone that can do so has my respect.

''In short, we dood it, y'all.''

Amen :)

I really think you meant "insightful" rather than "inciteful". Usually it was the former, only occasionally the latter. ;-)

Oh crap. Typing too late again :s

I wish a few more campaign groups would have the decency shut-up-shop when they achieve their stated mission.

(but not before, obviously)

It shows a genuine integrity which enhances their legacy.

Never been there much (groklaw), but remember how sad I was the day flipcode.com closed :(

Still the archives are there, and I keep reusing things from the code sections...

I'm really, really glad. Fuck Groklaw.

Groklaw was like a big, angry shark gobbling up all of the material that a half-dozen journalists in open source and technology journalism would have loved to cover, had they not been emasculated by editors who were in love with PJ. It was a big ego game for her, not to achieve fame, but to achieve some level of personal satisfaction. It was always my hunch that she was filling some empty void in her life with Groklaw -- mommy and daddy made her feel useless, so Groklaw was her way of fighting back. Or she had an abusive husband and Groklaw was her only power in the world. Whatever. It doesn't matter now.

Apparently all the PJ lovers missed the posts where she promoted religion, and called for the censorship of OSTG/OSDN journalists because NewsForge published an editorial about being okay with using proprietary software, and told people that it wasn't okay for kids to believe in Santa Claus. PJ executed hit jobs on anyone who publicly disagreed with her or her ideology.

She reveled in that power. She had the entire tech journalism establishment by the balls, and she wasn't afraid to use that to satisfy her personal vendettas. Anybody who questioned PJ in the least was accused from every angle of being a Microsoft or SCO shill, or taking money from some front company. Anyone who asked who PJ was and how she was making her living (perfectly valid questions -- the same ones she asked of everyone who spoke out against her or did anything she didn't like) was subjected to an Anonymous-style attack from her community of blind followers. One person even claimed to have been the victim of arson at the hands of a Groklaw fan, but nobody could print those stories because PJ had a stranglehold on the tech news publishers. Nobody was allowed to publish anything about Groklaw.

Except of course the one rogue publication that did the same thing to PJ that she did to her enemies. PJ deserved what Maureen O'Gara dished up to her -- and more. There were so few actual journalists in that industry anyway... everyone was either starfucking Groklaw and promoting Linux and the FSF with fluff pieces, or they were prevented by editors from chasing stories that showed those shadow-gods in a negative light. Had Groklaw never existed, open source and Linux journalism would have been so much better for it... there would have been real story-chasers, not free software worshippers and fanboys.

You make a lot of good points but overstate Groklie's influence on the professional press. It came down to a few journalists who wanted to present themselves to their audiences as open source activists. Serious media didn't care.

A few days ago, I was quoted on Google's $900M bid for Nortel's patents by the Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, BBC News, law.com, and on Android's patent problems by Bloomberg. I started my FOSS Patents blog only a year ago. Did Groklaw ever get quoted by media like that? I can't remember having seen that ever. That doesn't mean that it hasn't happened, but I'm not aware of any example.

Sorry for bringing the general level of HN down with this comment, but after reading all your comments in this thread I just have to let it out - man, you're the biggest douche I've ever seen online, and that counts for something.

It has been that way for years. One day, I hope we will find out who is pulling his strings.

On LWN, a user pointed out that text analysis tools show that some Groklaw articles were definitely written by male authors and others definitely by female authors: http://lwn.net/Articles/437741/

This is yet another clear indication that "PJ" was just an avatar.

I have run text analysis tools against nearly everything I've written. Well over 75% of my writing is identified as likely to be female. Last I checked, I'm male. Don't put so much stock in this stuff.

Don't forget the dark side of Groklaw -- censorship: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/groklaw-accused-of-cen...

Please, when you link to an editorial titled "Groklaw accused of censorship", have the integrity to note that you're the accuser.

And don't use childish epithets like "GroklXX" and "Groklie" and still expect to be taken seriously on a forum like this.

The ZDNet article concerning Groklaw's censorship quoted a plurality of persons, not just me. I was one of them, but there were several others.

"I will have no such integrity."

It remains to be seen whether this is true, or just a scheme to provoke an outpouring of support ("support" in various ways, shapes and forms).

What exactly are you insinuating?

Interesting, you seem to already harbour ill feelings toward Groklaw:

http://lwn.net/Articles/401923/

It's nothing personal, he's just doing his job: http://lwn.net/Articles/434587/

For those not familiar with the above poster's relation to Groklaw:

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20091021164738392

http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20100408153953...

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20110122054409107

Edit, for a little more context: http://twitter.com/FOSSpatents

"I never drink beer" --FlorianMueller (http://lwn.net/Articles/402113/)

Really explains a lot in my humble opinion. (Not necessarily the not drinking of beer, but the rather unnecessary pointing out that he doesn't drink beer)

A German who doesn't drink beer? Stereotype ruined!

I have to admit I need a tldr here

His wikipedia article is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florian_Mueller

In short, he and the author of Groklaw have opposing viewpoints regarding various software patent cases, including the Google v. Oracle case, and have been very directly criticizing each other. Groklaw has accused him of spreading FUD, and its readers have accused him of being sponsored to do this (see orangecat's link below), while Mr.Mueller has accused Groklaw of lying and attacking him to get attention.

> Mr.Mueller has accused Groklaw lying and attacking him to get attention.

There is no shortage of irony in that statement.

Your first link is to an article that cites no real sources that actually back up what the article claims. The external sources it cites either do not say what it claims they say, or they are opinion pieces with no cites to their sources. Most of the cites, however, are just links to early articles on the same site that similarly lack any basis.

The standard MO of that site is to make up something, occasionally even actually labeling at as speculation. Then in later articles they mention it in passing, just saying they have written about it before, and citing back. Then in still later articles, they mention it as fact, and cite one of their secondary articles.

I don't want to assert that anything in the above links is unbiased fact, I just want to provide context for the comment, i.e. Groklaw makes direct and critical reference to the above poster, and that relates to his comment. The first link (to techrights.org) was added later, because it provides some summary, but admittedly it's very biased, so I'll remove it in the interest of fairness.

> techrights.org

rofl. You know that's boycottnovell, right? They just changed the branding.

I was not aware of that, actually, and I've now removed the link.

For reference, the link is here:

http://techrights.org/2010/04/11/florian-mueller-and-erika-m...

Apparently Mr.Mueller thinks my removal of the link was significant enough to make note of on Twitter. I want to make it clear that my removal of the link was not in any way indicative of my opinion of him or BoycottNovell/TechRights, and I don't appreciate his attempt to imply that it is.

http://twitter.com/FOSSpatents (His twitter feed, for reference.)

Yesh, what a scuzball.

I didn't make note of it on Twitter for the general public -- I just informed a TechRights skeptic (@verofakto) of it.

Concerning the article you linked to, here's an additional link: http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2010/04/id-rather-discuss-pa...

Anything posted on twitter is for the general public.

It can be read by the general public, but a tweet beginning with @ is shown only to the addressed person and to those who jointly follow the sender and the addressed person. So that's quite different from something that all followers see in their stream automatically.

My reply can be read by the general public, but is addressed to you.

Quit being such a fucktard.

Jealous? Forget what an outpouring of support feels like? Or do you just never pass up an opportunity to divide people and call attention to yourself, in a quest to remain relevant?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com