Microsoft Patent Application for 'sudo'? | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft Patent Application for 'sudo'?

groklaw.net

28 pointsmscarborough13 comments

It doesn't so much sound like sudo as:

  1) User attempts non-permitted action.
  2) Computer informs user about the policy problem.
  3) Computer displays list of accounts that are permitted to perform the action.
  4) User enters a password for one of the permitted accounts.
  5) Computer proceeds.

Trivial and obvious to ones skilled in the art, but not exactly sudo.

Except for the bit about listing accounts with the proper rights, this has been a part of OSX for as long as I can remember. Certainly before April 2005. Is it really that easy to patent a well-known process by adding a trivial thing?

Surely this "trivial thing" is what is being patented though. I mean let's say hypothetically MS sues Apple, well Apple can say sure there are similarities but we don't do the accounts bit.

Does someone know the backstory on Groklaw? From the domain name, I presume I'm supposed to trust them about legal issues; that, for instance, they might have some legal training.

If they do, it's not in evidence here. "Dude. It's sudo. With a GUI. For dummies." Presumably, the author knows that it's valid to take an existing idea and patent an improvement on it.

The author also wisecracks about the likelihood that Microsoft wants to collect a "toll" on everyone else's use of sudo. Leaving aside the fact that Microsoft isn't patenting sudo, surely the author realizes that if Microsoft wanted to patent troll the rest of the industry, they have a huge arsenal of far better patents to do it with?

Groklaw came to fame during the SCO crisis and offered great insight into the workings of the trial. PJ is|was not a lawyer but a para-legal who tracked the proceedings and converted all the legalese to human-speak.

I don't see a byline on this post. Did PJ write it?

Historically, It was the site to go to for day to day coverage of SCO V. Novell.

Personally, I go for the very well researched, though strongly biased, articles on issues pertaining to FOSS and licensing.

Particularly telling is the link on the left hand side of the site labeled "About Groklaw" where it states "It is Pamela Jones personal Creation" and "The information on Groklaw has been prepared as a service to the FOSS community in particular and the general public. It is not intended to constitute legal advice. PJ is a paralegal, not a lawyer."

Groklaw became popular for their incredibly earnest legal reporting on the SCO debacle, despite being incapable of ever getting their technical details straight.

Since I can immediately see when they constantly get the technical facts wrong, I feel I can't trust their legal interpretations at all, since I can't judge them so easily.

If you fuck up in a subject matter I know well, I'm not going to trust you about your claimed expertise.

I remember when one of my friends told me that Intel had a trademark on the letter i. Of the alphabet. I grinned. Then he opened an Intel spec manual for some chip or other, and right there on one of the opening pages was a trademark statement for the lower case letter i.

Looks like a patent for a novel user interface to sudo, not sudo itself.

You are right. I am not sure whether the claims as listed are novel and non-obvious, but they are definately not patenting sudo.

In fact the interface they present is quite more complex than sudo. It looks like it shows you a bunch of other accounts and asks you whether you would like to log in as any of them.

    su - [username]

Switching to a named user you know and starting a login shell isn't the same as presenting a list of possible users who have the privilege.

One possible hypothetical Unix equiv would be:

    command
    <failure message returns 'sudo -l' from everyone that does have access>
    <user interface to PAM-type app to prompt for credentials and 'sudo -l <command>' as one of the above users>

This doesn't exist as far as I know.

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