SPARC No Fun At All; Threatens SparkFun

from the spark-up-the-lawyers dept

John Fenderson was the first of a few of you to send in a link (via Slashdot) to the story of how SPARC, the computer architecture company owned by Sun, is threatening SparkFun over trademark infringement claims. SparkFun is an electronics shop, which sells components and kits and the like. The two are pretty different. This whole situation apparently was "sparked" (heh heh) when SparkFun applied for its own trademark, at which point SPARC sought to block the trademark application. From there, they went on to sending a cease & desist. The folks at SparkFun do a nice job breaking down why the two marks are entirely different, and why even Sun employees seem to have no trouble understanding the difference between the two. This seems like yet another case of overly aggressive trademark enforcement, just because some lawyers feel the need to oppose anything that might conceivably be considered even close to similar.

17 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Eolas Is Baaaaaaaaack; And It's Suing Everyone Over Embeddable Web Widgets

from the because-otherwise... dept

Well, here we go again. As you may recall, Eolas is a company that claimed to hold a patent (5,838,906) on browser plugins. The company sued Microsoft, and a long drawn-out battle ensued. Even though web inventor Tim Berners-Lee presented prior art and asked the USPTO to invalidate Eolas' ridiculously broad and obvious patent, the USPTO eventually upheld the patent (after initially rejecting claims). Even as Microsoft began presenting evidence that it actually had made use of the technology in question before Eolas applied for its patent, losses in the courts and the Supreme Court's refusal to hear the case eventually resulted in Microsoft agreeing to settle rather than continue to fight.

Since then (two years ago), plenty of people have been waiting for the other shoe to drop, concerning Eolas' plans to sue others. Now we know why it waited. It's now received a new patent -- a continuation patent, which is often used to abuse the patent system by putting forth a broad patent, then filing for continuations to make changes that let an earlier "invention" cover technologies that later become popular. In this case, the new patent (7,599,985), which basically just extends the earlier patent on browser plugins, and extends it to javascript widgets. Yes, those embeddable widgets used all over the web? It appears that Eolas thinks that those are infringing and everyone should pay up.

The new lawsuit has been filed against Adobe, Amazon, Apple, Blockbuster, Citigroup, eBay, Frito-Lay, Go Daddy, Google, J.C. Penney, JPMorgan Chase, Office Depot, Perot Systems, Playboy Enterprises, Staples, Sun, Texas Instruments, Yahoo, and YouTube. Apparently, starting small isn't part of the plan. Not surprisingly, Eolas filed in Eastern Texas using McKool Smith -- one of the most popular law firms representing patent holding firms in East Texas.

I am honestly curious how patent system defenders, who are also programmers, can defend this. I'm sure non-programmers will claim that the patent is valid, but I can't imagine how anyone who has any knowledge of basic programming principles can claim that such a patent is valid. In the meantime, tons of companies doing an incredibly basic thing on the web will now have to waste millions of dollars fighting a ridiculous patent lawsuit. How is this promoting innovation in any way shape or form?

51 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Insight Community Webinar On Enterprise Knowledge Management

from the midmarket-innovators dept

A few weeks back, we had an Insight Community case, sponsored by Sun & Intel, soliciting proposals for a webinar on enterprise knowledge management, targeting mid-market companies. We're happy to announce that this Thursday, August 6th, at 9am PT, we'll be hosting that webinar, moderated by me, led by Joel Alleyne, a member of the Insight Community, and a widely recognized expert on knowledge management, along with some additional guests as well. If you're interested in enterprise knowledge management, especially in the mid-market, hopefully, you'll be able to attend. If you have any useful questions that you'd like addressed in the webinar, feel free to ask them here and we'll see what we can do!

Dear Australia: Software Knows No Borders

from the yeah,-that'll-work dept

Ross Lazarus points us to the rather surprising news that an increasing number of Sun MySQL employees have been barred from entering Australia on short-term business visas, due to the worry that they'll somehow "compete" with local businesses. There certainly may be more to this story, but on the face of it, it seems pretty ridiculous. Preventing employees of a certain company from entering your country may (barely) have made sense in the past and in some specific industries, but with software on today's internet, it's positively laughable. Somehow I doubt that the "local" Australian database developer community is resting easier thanks to their country's border patrol safely keeping MySQL employees abroad.

15 Comments | Leave a Comment..

You Don't Have To Sell Software

from the seriously dept

Reader Philip writes in to ask about our thoughts on a commentary on News.com by Dave Rosenberg concerning Sun's open source strategy. Rosenberg seems very concerned that Sun has decided to forego trying to sell software directly:

Sun's approach--at least the way I'm reading it from Jonathan Schwartz's statements, is about making the software totally free and trying to sell support and hardware. This clearly diminishes the value of the products and doesn't offer a mechanism that encourages people to pay for software.

It's difficult to see what Rosenberg is worked up about here. Sun seems to be following pretty closely an economically sound approach to a market: using infinite goods (software) to make scarce goods (hardware and services) more valuable. That's a lot more reasonable than using infinite goods to try to get people to pay for more infinite goods. There's no reason why Sun needs to encourage people to pay for software, and there are many reasons why they should not try to make people pay for software.

Yet, for some reason, Rosenberg seems to think that this strategy is somehow damaging to the open source movement:

It also puts an unnecessary burden on the notion of open source--such that if Sun is wrong, everyone else will look wrong too.

Why? If, as Rosenberg notes elsewhere in the article, Sun's open source strategy is different than other companies', then such a failure should be seen as a failure of Sun's model, not a strategy of embracing open source. There are plenty of reasons why Sun may (or even is likely to) fail in this endeavor. The Sun brand name has been tarnished. People may not find the hardware or services Sun is selling as providing enough value compared to alternatives (even with the software included). On the whole, it's not clear what's compelling about Sun's offer compared to the alternatives, and that's its biggest challenge. But that hardly reflects poorly on open source software or on the idea of not selling software.

45 Comments | Leave a Comment..

What Sun Should Be Doing With MySQL

from the good-advice dept

Earlier this year, Sun scooped up MySQL for a cool $1 billion. However, while Sun has been somewhat friendly towards open source software, there were plenty of concerns about what the company planned to do with MySQL. Some of those fears are now being realized. After first disappearing some of MySQL's public statements on the evilness of software patents, Sun caused quite a bit of controversy with a plan to close source certain new features in an attempt to push people to upgrade to a premium, paid version of the software. While that's certainly one strategy, it could be a dangerous one, ticking off many MySQL users who will go searching for alternatives.

So, what could Sun do with MySQL to help build a bigger and better business that doesn't involve locking up any software? The blog Milking The Gnu has a very interesting suggestion that makes a lot of sense (and certainly fits in directly with the economics we discuss around here). The idea is not to worry about locking up the software, but to turn MySQL into a cloud computing web-platform. The reasoning makes a tremendous amount of sense (much more than Sun's current strategy). Basically, on the low end, you have folks who will never pay for a premium version of MySQL anyway. At the high end, most of those companies (if pushed) will probably lean towards Oracle or IBM. But in the middle-tier there's a real opportunity -- not to be a database software company, but to build that all important web platform we've been discussing.

Already, Amazon and Google are trying to build that platform, with Amazon seeing a fair bit of success (and Google just starting). Sun has promoted the concept of cloud computing for years, so why not flip things around and make MySQL the database part of a cloud computing offering. With so many folks already comfortable with MySQL, it will be much easier for many of them to embrace this offering, rather than having to figure out the details of Amazon's SimpleDB or Google's AppEngine/BigTable setup. Then, the more people you get to adopt the free open source version of MySQL, the more likely they are to make use of Sun's cloud computing offering over the alternatives. And, then, Sun can charge for the use of cloud computing resources (scarce resources) while knowing that the infinite nature of MySQL promotes that scarce good. Given that Sun's been such a promoter of cloud computing for so long, you would think this was a no-brainer. But it's latest actions with MySQL suggest it may be going in a different direction, and that's unfortunate. Update: Marten Mickos of MySQL/Sun responds in the comments, and Glyn Moody points us to an interview he recently conducted with Mickos suggesting that Mickos is thinking along similar lines about cloud computing.

12 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Is Sun Backtracking On Software Patents?

from the hopefully-not dept

MySQL's execs have always been outspoken critics of software patents. Back in 2004, we wrote about the company CEO's well-reasoned article about how software patents had become the nuclear stockpiling of the modern era. Companies were forced to patent everything just to have enough ammo to make sure others didn't sue them for patent infringement, and the end result was huge legal bills and wasted money that wasn't going towards innovation at all. Since then, the company has remained vehemently against software patents. However, now that Sun has purchased MySQL, the company is apparently being pushed to cut back on its anti-software patent stance. Someone who prefers to remain anonymous sent in some blog posts highlighting how Sun has removed MySQL's anti-software patent page. To be fair, among larger companies, Sun has certainly shown a much better understanding of how patents can be anti-innovation as well as how the patent system is often abused. But, at the same time, it also has a bunch of patents and has demonstrated in quite explicit fashion just how those patent nuclear wars work. So, of companies out there, Sun seems less bad concerning software patents than other firms. But it's still rather disappointing to see it erase MySQL's excellent public stance against software patents from the web -- even if it did make a silly April Fool's joke about open source software this week.

3 Comments | Leave a Comment..

The Enterprise Landgrab Continues: Oracle Buys BEA For $8.5B, Sun Buys MySql for $1B

from the buying-in-the-air dept

Something must be in the air today, as two big acquisitions were announced this morning. First, Oracle announced that it will fork over $8.5 billion for middleware maker, BEA. BEA has been on the radar since last October, when BEA rejected Oracle's unsolicited $6.7 billion offer. Carl Icahn, BEA's largest shareholder, had initially agreed with BEA's counter offer of $21 per share, but then later started pushing publicly for the sale. Oracle held fast to its offer of $17 per share, so it's surprising to see that they were able to agree on $19.375 per share, especially when there were seemingly no other bidders. These acquisitions continue an overall trend of consolidation in the enterprise software market, kicked off by Oracle's 2004 acquisition of PeopleSoft. Since then, Oracle has spent about $110 billion in its acquisition of about 30 companies. Oracle is in a battle with German software giant, SAP, who is also knee deep in the land grab with its recently successful $6.7 billion acquisition for Business Objects. Meanwhile, Sun will spend $1 billion for open source database maker, MySql, making a strong play in the $15 billion enterprise database market. This deal makes sense for Sun, who has been building up its stable of open source products. That said, when will the speculation begin for an Oracle-Sun merger? Both hate Microsoft deeply, and both have been trying to expand beyond their core markets. And, MySql even rejected Oracle's acquisition offer back in 2006. At some point, someone's going to think it makes sense for the two to combine.

7 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Nissan Builds Internal MySpace While Sun Builds Internal Second Life

from the social-media-inside-the-enterprise dept

There's been a lot of talk over the last couple years about "enterprise 2.0" efforts to bring the types of applications in the "web 2.0" world into the enterprise. How successful those efforts have been is still an open question -- but companies keep on looking for such solutions to improve internal communications. Two stories today suggest exactly how that's happening. Business Week has a story about how Nissan is trying to build an internal "MySpace" to get employees more connected with each other and make the flow of information and the sharing of ideas more useful. Meanwhile, Sun, who has been trying to push more workers to telecommute for years, is now trying to build its own Second Life-type virtual world for employees from around the world to interact as if they were in an office together. While it's worth noting both of these experiments as clearly taking a consumer internet service and moving it into the enterprise, there's still a huge question of how useful either service will be. They both make nice stories for the press, but that doesn't mean either will get enough adoption to really be useful. Lots of companies have had internal intranet-type collaboration services in the past that don't get any use. Repainting the same thing with the broad 2.0 brush won't automatically make them useful.

8 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Sun Notes That Both It And NetApp Are In California... So Why Is The Patent Lawsuit In East Texas?

from the ah,-the-lure-of-east-texas dept

The latest news in the patent dispute between Sun and Network Appliance is that Sun is trying to move the case to California. NetApp filed the lawsuit in east Texas, a favorite location for patent holders, since the judges there are known for fast trials that almost always end with the patent holder coming out on top. Even if companies have no real presence in east Texas, they figure out how to get something resembling a presence there in order to file the lawsuit there. Amusingly, patent reform in the early 80s was designed to stop this type of jurisdiction shopping at the appeals court level, but all it seems to have done was push it down to the district court level. In trying to move the case, Sun points out that both it and NetApp have headquarters approximately 10 miles away from each other in California -- and there seems to be no reason whatsoever to have the case filed in east Texas unless you were jurisdiction shopping. There's been some talk lately suggesting that the folks in east Texas are getting a little annoyed at their reputation for being so friendly for patent holders, so hopefully they'll agree that this case really belongs in California.

17 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Sun Shows NetApp How A Patent Nuclear War Works

from the you-sure-you-want-to-do-that... dept

While you can question the motives, Sun has actually been quite vocal recently over the question of software patents. Sun CEO Jonathon Schwartz has pointed out that successful companies innovate while unsuccessful ones litigate. And, indeed, Sun hasn't been going around filing patent lawsuits left and right, (or threatening to do so) like some other companies. However, it's quite clear that Sun understands the value of defensive patenting, since patents have become the nuclear stockpiling of the software world. Thus, it should come as no surprise that following Network Appliance's decision to sue Sun for patent infringement that Sun has struck back hard, accusing Network Appliances of violating 12 patents, and basically saying that many of NetApps' offerings are in violation and should be blocked. Schwartz makes it clear that he'd prefer to avoid this sort of nuclear response, but he's sending a message: if you're going to sue rather than innovate, you need to be prepared for the response to come back much more forcefully. There's no doubt that some of this is clearly posturing on Sun's part, to win more fans in the open source community -- but that's a perfectly good reason for doing what they're doing. The end result is expressing what many of us around here believe: competition drives innovation. Patents, on the other hand, remove competition -- and therefore tend to hinder that innovation. Having to use patents defensively is an unfortunate and expensive negative externality of the system, and it's nice to see Sun publicly supporting that position.

22 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Sun And Google Finally Get Around To StarOffice

from the that-took-some-time dept

Back in 2005, there was a lot of hype about a joint partnership between Google and Sun that turned out to be a big load of nothing. While there had been expectations that the companies would partner up to push Sun's StarOffice (an office suite based on OpenOffice), the announcement turned out to be nothing of the sort. As for StarOffice, they did mention that they might do something with it down the road, but that there hadn't been much thought put into it. Well, two years later, we're getting our answer. StarOffice is now available for free as part of Google Pack. Still, it seems unlikely that the move will do much to boost StarOffice. In the two years since the initial announcement, there's been a surge of interest in web-based applications, which will remain Google's priority. If there was ever a time for another offline office suite to steal significant share away from Microsoft, it would seem that time has passed.

6 Comments | Leave a Comment..