Mechanisms to root out real patent trolls are imperative, but what else is Inter Partes Review being used for? Are we rewarding the entrepreneurial spirit, or have we created a new method for our tech goliaths to swallow it up? I’ll leave you with one more tidbit to think about. Administrative Patent Judges do not operate in a vacuum sealed off from the biases of the tech world. One of the most prominent cases of this is former Judge Matt Clements, who had served as part of Apple’s infringement defense counsel in an earlier stint . Not surprisingly, Apple did pretty well on cases brought before Clements. These kinds of fraternization exacerbate the power gap and more critically, highlight just how effectively Inter Partes Review can be leveraged in today’s competitive landscape.
She has overlooked the basic problem of patent law at its root.
We wrote a reply that better defines the problem which is available
here.
The post has disapeared from the papers website, so we present it here.
In answering the questions brought up by Itka Safir on Patent Law and the Inter Partes Review
Patents and Problems:
Ruben Israel Safir
Ms Safir, who is studying law at the University of Chicago, enters the fray of an area of law which she
has deep understanding in. She is well versed in the principles and legal consequences of patent and
copyright law, and her analysis with regards to he merits of the “Inter Partes Review process” rightfully
looks at whether the implementation of the Leahy–Smith America Invents Act of 2011 reaches the
goals set forth by the supporters of the legislation. Her assessment is that we need to review if the Inter
Partes Review stops patent trolls, and she evaluates the side effects of the law.
I think we need to question what was the cause of patent trolls and what was the effect. Patent trolling
was the natural result of bad patent policy in legislation and implementation. Trying to solve the
problems of patent trolls was initiated not just from the Free Software and Open Source movements,
but supported by, and pushed by, the large companies who felt they were being cut by a million paper
cuts, with frivolous lawsuits. They were perfectly happy when they were the ones in control of the
situation, and perpetrated protracted lawsuits against individual inventors in order to steal there ideas
and patents. The most famous case of this, of course, was when RCA strong armed Edwin Armstrong
into submission, which contributed to his ultimate suicide. And if that wasn’t good enough, RCA’s
legal vultures also attacked Philo Farnsworth, in his initiation of employment with Philco. RCA
brought frivolous lawsuits claiming interference against Farnsworth, arguing that another patent had
priority over Farnsworth's invention, despite the fact it no evidence of a competing instrument was ever
produced within the time frame of the patent. To this day we are arguing with ventilator manufacturers
whether outsiders can fix ventilators or obtain even standard designs and diagrams to support them,
without the permission of patent holders.
Big companies have swallowed up small competition with quality inventions since the start of the
industrial revolution. Patent trolling has been an effective means of suppressing competition since
Andrew Carnegie and even before that. The question that we need to ask isn’t “does the Inter Partes
Review process” serve the purpose of preventing patent trolls. Using the courts to push around
inventors and artists is seemingly inherent to the legal process itself. The real question needs to be if
the process contributes to producing better patents, and good law. The problem is not that the lawsuits
brought by shell companies holding patents for legal purposes were in some way frivolous. It was all
ok until someone got the bright idea to gather all these patents up together so that enough financial
power could be brought to the system to defend small patents. This is not an excuse for trolling, but it
an accurate description of the facts. The problem was, and still remains, that patents were frivolous to
start with and system was, and probably still is, fundamentally broken.
The purpose of patent law is to benefit the public, and not make either inventors or large corporations
wealthy. It says so right in the constitution in plain language that even a twelve grader can understand.
[Congress has the right to] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited
Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." This
is really the standard by which we need to measure how well any patent and copyright law measures
up. Between 1999 to 2019 the number of patents approved by the US Patent Office has been steadily
increasing.
Calendar Year
Utility Patent Applications
Design Patent Applications
Plant Patent Applications
Utility Patents incentions
Design Patents
Plant Patents
Patent Grants of Foreign Residents
2019
621,453
46,847
1,134
354,430
34,794
1,275
204,656
2018
597,141
45,083
1,079
307,759
30,497
1,208
177,915
2017
606,956
43,340
1,059
318,828
30,870
1,311
182,002
2016
605,571
42,571
1,177
303,049
28,873
1,235
172,818
2015
589,410
39,097
1,140
298,408
25,986
1,074
169,764
2014
578,802
35,378
1,063
300,677
23,657
1,072
166,999
2013
571,612
36,034
1,406
277,835
23,468
847
154,891
2012
542,815
32,799
1,149
253,155
21,951
860
142,180
2011
503,582
30,467
1,139
224,505
21,356
823
125,998
2010
490,226
29,059
992
219,614
22,799
981
122,694
2009
456,106
25,806
959
167,349
23,116
1,009
96,677
2008
456,321
27,782
1,209
157,772
25,565
1,240
92,929
2007
456,154
27,752
1,049
157,282
24,062
1,047
89,007
2006
425,967
25,515
1,151
173,772
20,965
1,149
93,942
2005
390,733
25,553
1,222
143,806
12,951
716
75,046
2004
356,943
23,975
1,221
164,290
15,695
1,016
87,051
2003
342,441
22,602
1,000
169,023
16,574
994
88,258
2002
334,445
20,904
1,144
167,331
15,451
1,133
87,101
2001
326,508
18,280
944
166,035
16,871
584
85,173
2000
295,926
18,292
797
157,494
17,413
548
78,871
1999
270,187
17,761
863
153,485
14,732
420
74,877
As one can see, since 1999 there has been a steady rise on the number of patent applications and patent
grants. And while the number of applications rise, as well does the grants, the percentage of grants per
application has remained starkly steadfast at rough between 30% and 40% of granted patents to
applications. According to the October 2019 report to the Congressional committee on the Judiciary,
Commissioner for Patents Andrew Hirshfeld says that the agency has employed more than 8,300 patent
examiners to cover all these applications.
Looking back over the data, it would seem that the 2011 Leahy-Smith Act has had negligible impact
over all on the granting of patents. There has been an upturn in patent applications and patent grants,
that largely follow each other since before the act, starting in 2010. There has been a steady increase
since 2008 on the percentage of grants/application, when in 2007 it reached a minimum of about 28%
and has steadily risen since them to about 37%. This trend was prior to the act and continues. The real
question has to be, why is it that after a century of working on patents, that in review of the USPOs
work, a full “81% of instituted proceedings that result in a decision have at least one claim
invalidated”. Why are we still producing junk patents? Why does this continue to be more of a
business strategy and gimmick rather than a real stimulus for producing quality inventions for the
public good? Can Americans really trust a patent system that rigs our healthcare market by distorting
drug competition, that impedes hardware standardization because of patent fears among video card
manufacturers, etc etc etc. If the law was designed to bring parties into negotiations rather than ratchet
up wasteful litigation, then indeed, the rough treatment of bad patents in the Inter Partes Review is
effectively bringing parties to the table faster and at less cost. Otherwise, it seemingly has no impact
on the overall system. The patent office had been producing bad patents in the past, and to this day, it
still does so.
The most important part of this act, happens to be the alteration of first invented to first filed. It would
be interesting in another analysis to see how this has affected outcomes in the granting process and in
judicial litigation.
Recently, Richard Stallman decided to step down after considerable pressure, from the
Free Software Foundation and has been under fire for retaining his position as head of GNU.
There are several maintainers, including Andreas Enge, Carlos O'Donell, Mark Wielaard
and Ludovic Courtes who are aggressively organizing maintainers with the goal of removing
Richard from GNU and deposing him from his position as the controlling authority. It is a
very ugly power grab and these individuals
need to be broadly censored for their activities.
The incident that triggered this current
controversy involved a private
mailing list conversation where Stallman defended an old friend of his, Marvin Minsky, who
died in January 2016. Richard, while expressing compassion for the victim, defended Minsky
by questioning if Minsky assaulted anyone, let alone sexually assaulted Virginia Giuffre. Aside
from Richard's emotional attachment to his friend, he made the sound logical defense of Minsky
arguing that while Giuffre was a victim of manipulation by Epstein, that any sexual relations
between Giuffre and Minsky, as inappropriate as it might have been, would not constitute assault
as RMS understand assault.
The exact quote is :
The accusation quoted is a clear example
of inflation. The reference reports the claim
that Minsky had sex with one of Epsteins harem. (See
https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/9/20798900/marvin-minsky-jeffrey-epstein-sex-trafficking-island-court-records-unsealed.)
Lets presume that was true (I see no reason to disbelieve
it).
The word assaulting presumes that he applied force or
violence, in some unspecified way, but the article itself
says no such thing. Only that they had sex.
We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible
scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely
willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein,
he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal
that from most of his associates.
Ive concluded from various examples of accusation
inflation that it is absolutely wrong to use the term
sexual assault in an accusation.
Whatever conduct you want to criticize, you should
describe it with a specific term that avoids moral
vagueness about the nature of the criticism.
Stallman is making a grammatical and syntactical
argument. He makes no points here that can be reasonably
disputed. If Minsky had sex with Giuffre, who would
at that time been under age, coerced or not, she would
have presented herself as willing to Minsky and that no
violence was used by Minsky. That is the Espstein crime.
He manipulated young women into a life of prostitution,
and the girls were intimidated by him and brainwashed.
RMS did not defend statuary rape, Epstein's behaviors,
nor did he defend the broader issue of the abuse of
young women, or the patriarchal social structure.
He simply, as he is often wont to do, complained about
what he perceives as a misuse of language in order to
misinform as to the facts of a matter. This argument
is nearly identical to the argument against the term
"Intellectual Property" and "Open Source". For the
reasons he outlined, he has taken a dislike to the term
"Sexual Assault" and for good reason in that it is a hot
button term designed to push aside reason and to inflame
passions. In essence, Stallman is objecting to a lynch
mob mentality disparaging a personal and deceased friend.
Chief among the lynch mob is one of
the most greedy, power hungry, and self-aggrandizing
villains in the GNU universe, Ludovic Courtes.
Ludovic will say just about anything, and do just about
anything, in order to take over the GNU project, and
this controversy gave him an exploitable hot button
argument to suspend rational thinking and rush to
remove Richard Stallman as the head of the GNU project.
Ludovic is a French volunteer who is a maintainer of GUIX.
Previously he tried to walk away with the GNU trademark by
changing his GUIX project to the name GNU. That failed.
Now he is working on a new scheme to take over GNU,
and that scheme involves generating hatred and lynch
mobs to punish people he disagrees with. His goal is
to expand GNU to be proactive in a number of radical
social positions, including affirmative action towards
women within GNU and internal support for other areas.
There is no end to where it stops. Eventually, his social
justice agenda for GNU, and his attempt to democratize
the GNU leadership will just destroy the organization
and its position of the standard bearer for Free Software.
These are the same forces
that years ago would have folded GNU into the Open
Source movement, and such an organization could never
had held out to create the GPL3 and stayed on message
about the importance of code and hardware access to our
digital systems. GNU could all but be guaranteed to do
inconvenient things in order maintain that we have a free
software base that is unowned by cooperate and government
organizations. GNU alone has been able to protect open
discourse, empowerment of the individual and democracy
through its code base. It takes a militant organization
to resist the economic and political forced designed to
destroy individual political liberty, and these threats
come from the left and the right (and the center).
GNU was established over
3 decades ago in order to combat the critical and
specific threats that a digital society can impose on
individuals and society as a whole. It was established
to focus on a series of ideas and political positions
that were debated over several years, and which
eventually distilled into what the GNU project,
and Richard Stallman calls the Four Freedoms (not to
be confused with the Fantastic Four). This is the
social contract between GNU, the public at large, and
the end user. This is the purpose of GNU and it is
plainly stated on the FSF website and the GNU Website.
It is repeated by Richard Stallman at nearly every
reception and speech. In order to learn what is the GNU
Social Contract listen to it here:
GNU and the FSF have always
faced popular rebellion. All kinds of people, often for
selfish purposes and often believing in the righteousness
of their cause, have organized efforts against GNU.
GNU is not a democratically run organization. GNU is a
political organization based on volunteers operating of
their own free will and directed by Richard Stallman.
The GPL and its ancillary licenses are the social
contract between its users and the governance. The
internal governance and mechanism for comment, input
and deliberation are outlined on the website, and it
outlines much of how the GNU leadership is appointed,
and its channels of relationships with developers.
GNU maintainers, contributors, and coders are not
responsible for steering the governance or political
direction of GNU. They are not the target of the GNU
movement. GNU is not a hackers organization in this
sense. It is not controlled or created for the benefit
of maintainers or hackers. It is controlled and created
for the benefit of the public, under the guidance of
Richard Stallman who has effectively communicated
these goals.
The current effort to depose Richard Stallman from his
life's work is a lynch mob. Their hysterical libel
had Stallman homeless for a few weeks, and caused
him to resign from the Free Software Foundation.
Stallman has been a tireless frontman for digital
rights for decades. He has never been off message,
and he has encouraged individuals from all walks of
life to strive for their individual digital freedom,
without exception, and without consideration of their
race, nationality, gender, religion, family situation
or personal political orientations. Outside of GNU
he has advocate to other causes outside of GNU, many
of which I strongly disagree with, dabbling in left
wing politics, foreign policy, and nearly anything of
interest that might pass under his nose. His approach
to all these issues have been separately included on
his personal website. Occasionally a snippet of his
leanings ends up in a comment of code or documentation,
but nothing of anything ever substantial. In one
case, he objected to the government's attempt to reduce
information available to pregnant women considering
abortions with a comment about the abort function in
a manual. It was a position largely supported by coders
and users of GNU software and went largely unnoticed for
decades before the comment was removed. Those of us who
would have objected to the position barely noticed it.
But in the hands of Stallman's lynch mod opponents,
it has become cause of celebre. But the truth is,
Stallman has professionally firewalled his individual
political positions from the political intent of GNU.
GNU has been fully focused on Digital Rights, enough so
that members of the larger Linux Kernel and GNU Desktop
communities have been made to feel uncomfortable
with GPL3's ground breaking provision against DRM and
Software as a Service provisions that were designed to
prevent the very kind of human rights abuses that affect
national politics in social media today. It is not
the job of GNU or the FSF to win popularity contests,
or to promote commercial opportunities, especially if
such activities erode individual freedoms as it affects
digital systems, electronic surveillance, copyright
and wiretapping.
Maintainers for GNU projects have organized against GNU
and fully intend to remove their projects from the parent
organization's control, and to to walk away with the GNU
trademarks and infrastructure. This has been openly
repeated on the GNU mailing list, gnu.misc.discuss
which has been copied into the NYLXS archives so that
discussions can be examined without moderation. Some of
the moderators for the list are supporters of the break
away, and moderation on the list has been problematic.
The objective has been to create a shadow government for
the GNU project and to create a wedge between GNU and
the FSF, in the hopes to get FSF support in replacing
the GNU mission with their own. The guilty parties in
this affair include:
Ludovic Courtes - Born 1980 and from Inria at Bordeaux France
Andreas Enge - Research Director
Head of research team Lfant
INRIA BordeauxSud-Ouest & IMB
200, avenue de la Vieille Tour
33405 Talence cedex
France
Carlos O'Donell - Canadian-born Red Hat
employee. Team lead at Red Hat for the GNU C
Library (APIs for string, memory, threading,
math, ISO C, POSIX, BSD, Linux, etc); supporting
Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the many-layered
products and stacks above the core runtimes that
use these APIs and ABIs.
Mark Wielaard -
Another Red Hat engineer from the Netherlands,
born in 1973. A proponent of FLOSS and a
developer of Java software
Andy Wingo -
Honestly, Andy is a social warrior nutcase with a
passion for ideas like "keep opensource free".
He is repressive in his treatment of others
and is cruel in punishing those who violate
his his views on social justice. When he isn't
doing that he works with Guile. He is a young
man from the Carolinas by way of Namibia and
maybe Spain.. who can keep up..
Stallman has chimed in that he does not want to ban
these participants of
the GNU project. This is unfortunate. Ludovic Courtes has particularly
been involved the the RMS smear campaign and needs to be removed from all
GNU projects. Furthermore, Ludovic has run into the issue of trying to steal
the GNU moniker for GUIX previously. According to the gnu-misc-discuss
mailing list, he tried to check GUIX into Savanah as the GNU operating
system. That was corrected. In the wake of the misrepresentation of
Stallman's comments on Epstein, Ludovic used the moment to kick
Stallman and GNU and to bully him out of the FSF. His blog post on the
GUIX website which he wrote accused Stallman of discrimination against
undescribed groups of people. He wrote in the petition:
Yet, we must also acknowledge that Stallman's behavior over the years
has undermined a core value of the GNU project: the empowerment of all
computer users. GNU is not fulfilling its mission when the behavior
of its leader alienates a large part of those we want to reach out to.
The underlined emphasis is from the original petition. Subsequent
communications from this group on gnu.misc.discuss and other forums make
it clear that Ludovic is reinforcing the accusation that Stallman has
discriminated against women in GNU. This was followed up by a lynch
mob mentality on the mailing list, with false claims that Stallman
is a pedophile, that he supports statutory rape, that he makes women
uncomfortable at meetings, all of which is not only provably lies,
but they are a blatant hostile attempt to take over the GNU project
and make it like an Open Source project. What most upsets us at NYLXS,
however, is the adaption of a policy by a few maintainers for censorship
of speech and thought. What they are insisting on is removing Stallman's
independent right to free speech and thought in his own blogs, webpages,
private email correspondence. It is fundamentally wrong and a threat to
everyones freedom. Ludovic doesn't think his is a bad actor, but neither
did Mussolini.
Since then, this group misappropriated the GNU trademark, a second time
for Ludovic, and created a new domain, gnu.tools, to use as a location to
organize on-line opposition to Richard Stallman and the GNU leadership.
This amounts to an unprecedented attack on the core GNU mission and its
organization. What has now happened is that a number of maintainers how
come to believe that since they write a healthy part of the code base that
GNU supports, that they deserve ownership of the organization as a whole.
It is a nasty dog fight and it is based on greed and a fundamental
disagreement on the GNU mission and who the GNU stakeholders are.
GNU and its software are not playthings for the coding and hacking
public. It is an organization devoted to the publics right to free
expression and for individuals to participate in their culture and
heritage. It was organized by hackers, because hackers were the first
group of people to be negatively affected by digital and legal controls
of digital systems. But it was a farsighted initiative, not focused
on specific software projects, but on a goal of universal suffrage and
emancipation with regard to digital communications. Stallman has been
spot-on about this from the very start, and the most important work
for GNU has been the spin off of the FSF and the creation of rock-solid
copyleft licenses, such as the GPL.
Stallman's unrelenting emphasis on software freedom has upset many people
over the decades. Efforts to de-radicalize GNU's message has spawned
conflict within the hacker community, especially, OSI and the Open
Source movement, The Gnome Foundation and even Linus Tovalds and the
Linux Foundation. Linus was especially irritated by the effort to move
the Linux kernel to the GPL3 and had choice words about the FSF at the
time. In truth though, Moglin and Stallman were a decade ahead of the
curve and failure to adopt the GPL3 broadly has had very negative
consequences for the public that suffers under a surveillance blanket today.
But this radical emphasis within GNU has always been job number one for
the GNU leadership, even when that meant losing coding talent and Software
projects. The broader hacking community could never be trusted with the
GNU mission, something we have come to learn repeatedly over time.
The hacker community sells out to broader interests every time. And the
reason of this is that the interest of the hacker community is not
lined up with the public interest on key matters of essential political
consequences.
Intellectually, this is the crux of the cause for dissent. It is
assumed by some maintainers that GNU is their own personal country club
and that they are the stakeholders. And they aren't. If GNU is a
plaything for some weathly, upper middle class Ivy Leaguers and their
cohorts to provide free software for themselves, then it is a total
waste and not worth the time and effort that anyone puts into it.
The purpose of GNU is to encourage and provide universal emanicpation
of all of us. Therefore, we are ALL stakeholders. There is no democracy
in a GNU run by maintainers' popular opinions. It is a tyrany of a
subclass of GNU stakeholders. It is not what Richard has promoted. It
is not even sustainable. It is laughable that a few folks think that
libelous attacks are justified because without Richard, the elegance of
a functional init system based on Guile will enlighten the world!
Maintainers aren't stakeholders. They are not even GNU supporters,
although some might be. GNU stakeholders are the public at large. It
is anyone who has participated in the use and development of GNU
Software as a political act. It is anyone who has downloaded a GNU
project and help put it in the hands of an otherwise disenfranchised end
user, to show them that it is possible to use such software to take
control of their own future. GNU's stakeholders include anyone who used
a GNU license to assure that their software is protected by strong
copyleft freedoms. It is your mother, your brother, your cousin, your
neighbor, your coworker. Everyone is a GNU stakeholder. That
protection and goal is being attacked by a select few maintainers.
But it doesn't matter. Even if every maintainer signed up to this
repressive action, to reorient GNU from its outreach by providing a
platform of emancipation and freedom to the public, into a private
repository of code for a select few maintainers, it would do nothing
to change the moral equation with regard to governance. Maintainers
can not be trusted to run GNU. We have seen this over and over again,
and we are see it now.
These coders don't reach into local schools to put Free Software in the
hands of children in the deep ghettos of NYC, and Baltimore, and St
Louis. They don't get Free Software into the hands of chidren in
Nigeria, and Bangladesh. They don't promote the principles of Four
Freedoms that are needed to assure individual freedom in the digital
age. Maintainers serve a purpose, and have a say, but they do not have
a veto to interpret the public interest; Not in GNU, and not in our broader
lives. If this gang of thieves manage to get control of GNU, then
we see no longer any point to the project as a whole and we would drop
support for GNU and the FSF.
New Summer FSI Educational Projects Announced. See above
NYLXS April Journal Release
NYLXS March Journal Release
NYLXS Quartly Journal Meeting
The NYLXS Quarterly Journal committee will be meeting on Tuesday, March
10th at 7PM at the Brooklyn Marriot 333 Adams Street.
Committee Chaired By Michael Richardson
As always, Beer and food will be flowing
All trains to Boro Hall Brooklyn
C++ Workshops now underway
NYLXS C++ Workshops, focusing on Templates currently
Where - 1163 East 15th Street, Brooklyn, NY
take the Q train to Avenue J
Tuesday and Sunday Nights, 7PM - 11PM
Perl I Class
I'm announcing the new Perl I class for June. The class will be 6 weeks
and we need to get 5 people to sign up for the program which will be
taught in Brooklyn unless a better venue makes itself available.
Class cost is $600.
It will be twice a week Monday and Thursday Nights beginning the second
week of June
PERL_1
Perl_1: Introduction to Programming with Perl
at: NYLXS Education Center
1163 East 15th Street
Brooklyn, NY
Q Express to Avenue J
Limited to 20. Our Introduction to Programming with Perl class is
designed to teach proper, real-world programming techniques using Perl.
Introducing the core concepts of the language, this class will take you
through Perl's underlying structure, and help you see the internal logic
of the language. You will learn to write your own programs, and be
exposed to working with real programming situations in collaborative
environments.
* Operators
* Variables
* Functions
* Control Structures
* Regular Expressions
* Pattern Matching
* Scope
* Use of Subroutines
* Object Oriented Programming
Planning Meeting an C++ Workshop
The Next NYLXS Meeting is at a new Location:
Who: NYLXS Planning Meeting
What: PLanning Events and Some C++ Talk
Where: Suspenders
111 Broadway
New York, NY 10006
(212) 732-5005
That is near Trinity Church
Wall Street and Broadway
Where: January 11th, 2010
8:00 PM
Tech Night
Time Sunday, 2/21/2010
6:00PM til Midnight
Place: 1163 East 15th Street
Brooklyn, NY 11230
Topic: Hacking: C++ Workshop, Ice Cast, possible PHP
NYLXS Video Show
NYLXS Video Proposal
Every Month NYLXS will make a video journal interviewing and showing successful Free Software projects, with concentrations in commercial applications, educational programs, political events surrounding Free Software and the Arts, within the New York Metropolitan area, and to air the 1 hour video on the NYLXS wesite. Like all NYLXS events, this will be a non-profit enterprise run by NYLXS volunteers.
Volunteer Opportunities:
NYLXS members can earn volunteer hours for the following assignments attached to the video program:
Executive Producer: Find interesting Free Software projects and arrange for interviews, assigning team membership to assignments according to schedule.
Producer: Assists Executive Producer in show discovery and help omnibus problem to assure regular schedule productions.
Director: Overviews interviews, and realtime production recording. Work with editors to create a finished video product.
Writer: Writes the outline of the interview and creates the introduction and epilogue of shows
Editor: Edits the finished video, using free software tools, to create the finished video under the direction of the director.
Hosts: Two on air hosts who will conduct the interviews
Cameraman
Possible targets for shows:
Free Software projects in New York:
Mozilla, Debian, Gnome, Museums (the Planetarium at AMNH), schools that use free software, The Software Freedom Center (Columbia University)
Commercial implementations in NY and NJ:
Google, Banks, About.com, small enterprises (free PR), Steiner Movie Studio's in Downtown Brooklyn.
Political Interests -
FSF, Software Freedom Day, Court Cases on copyright, the legal definition of copyright
Volunteers are needed to fill out all of these slots and to join the team.
NYLXS – We are Do'ers...
We will be doing Introduction to C Programming using the book
C Programming: A Modren Approach
by K.N.King
We'll be developing C programming notes on line as we go. This book is fairly intensive
Also we will do Perl Porgramming
using the Perl Programming Notes of NYLXS on
http://www.nylxs.com/docs/perlcourse/
I'll be reediting these notes as we go, but they are fairly complete as they are
Finally, we will be learning C++ with the text
C++ Primer
Stanley Lippman and Josee Lajoie - I have the 3rd addition
I took C++ at NYU but frankly have not nearly enough background, so I'll be making notes
and learning along with everyone else.
Anyone who wants to join is welcome to. NYLXS Accounts are available on the server for a
NYLXS membership fee of $45 (and then you need to do volunteer hours to become a voting
member). We will also use the NYLXS irc channel to meet on line weekly as announced
The irc channel is on freenode #nylxs
The mailing list itself is published on the NYLXS site. Hope you join us!
NYLXS Agenda Spring 2008
This month NYLXS is going to implement several programs and workshops
which will be hopefully of interest and use to membership and the general
gnu/Linux public.
After the last meeting March 4th, 2008 it was determined the following
programs are to be put in place. This email is a general notification
to the public and a call for participation. Programs are developed with
NYLXS funding and due.
Workshop Programs and proposed start up dates and locations:
GTK and C programming Workshop: BiWeekly evening Meetings
C programming, game programming with Xgalaga Arcade Game: Weekly Weekdays
This old time game has GPLed Source code that demonstrates some
of the less commonly used graphic and sound libraries available
for GNU Programming and teaches basic game theory
Network security and Hacking Workshop: Evening Weekend Weekly Program to
explore methods of hacking into programs and networking with emphasis on
learning how such malware exploits are created and how one can
protect against such exploits. The first sessions will focus
on PHP exploits using Data Injection techniques as outlined in
'Hackin9 Magazine' January 2008
Practice Networking Workshop and LDAP Services: Evening Weekly: Lead
by our resident expert, Robert Marino, LDAP, and SASL will be explained
and configured in this workshop.
ASUS EEE PC Workshop and Users Group: Catch the latest wave which is sweeping
the computing world and putting GNU in the hands of everyday users.
Project Leaders are being solicited and are welcome. Although we have
leadership in place for these workshops, the burden of the NYLXS board
and leadership is considerable and has put a joyful strain on resources.
Anyone interested in helping to lead any of these events are welcome.
General Educational and Charitable Workshops with proposed time lines
of endpoints and goals:
The East Flatbush Children's Education Center: Help bridge the digital
divide Internet Radio Show: Opening the World of Digital Rights Politics,
General Computing and Free Software World
Video Lecture Series: Video Files to be loaded on Archive.org and YouTube
Community is Strength Programming: Job Search Workshop: Resume Workshops,
Interviewing Techniques and Job Hunting Help for the GNU Programmer,
and Sysadmin
GNU/Business: Help learn to create the business proposals and marketing
techniques to put you and your business on the map.
Web Space and Development Classes: Join NYLXS and become eligible for
Free Web space and Development Tools
Kids and Linux - 'Nuff Said
Gaming with GNU and Crossfire – Play and compete in this great Free
Software Networked Role Playing extravaganza. Learn to script Crossfire
Robots and defeat
GNU/Linux Demo is
Sat Oct 27th 2007
Time: 3 PM to 4:00PM.
Place: Hon Marcus Garvery Holistic Center
5105 Church Avenue Brooklyn.
This is just the Demo an installfest will be held later.
What: February 2008 serious Free Software Experts will converge
on Lake Placid New York for the 3rd Annual Lake Placid Freedom-IT
North American Free Software Conference. This Years topic is Free Software
Multimedia - the Rebel Alliance Strikes Back!
David will be speaking about the mystery that is the
local Phone System and how the infrastructure works.
In the discussion will include where Free Software
and be used to connect to the system and how one
can become a Phone Company in your own home
Finally, David will be discussing the exciting
developments of his tool of choice to do such deeds,
his Bayonne Telephoney software and its future map
and plans to develope a larger development team to
reach new planned services for Bayonne
Join NYLXS for Wine and Cheese, and a great conversation with one
of Free Softwares true pioneering geniuses: David Sugar
When: June 6th, 2007 7:00PM - 10:00PM
Where: First Unitarian Congregational Soceity in Brooklyn
50 Monroe Place,
Brooklyn, NY 11201
meeting in the Undercroft.
www.firstuubrooklyn.org
The Free Software Chamber of Commerce is starting up again
Need to generate more sales contacts or to find a 9-5 for your Free Software
business and skills? Join the Free Software Chamber of Commerce. Email ruben@nylxs.com
and find save a seat at the next meeting.
Freeom-IT and Lake Placid
NYLXS is ready to launch its second Freedom-IT conference in Lake Placid
We need Computers for a Brooklyn Based Students Lab. Donate Old Equiptment
Volunteer for the Ubucon Installfest
on Friday Febuary 16th at Google. Registration is needed.
Freedom-IT Lake Placid Conference 2007 - Organization - Target Febuary 24th and 25th
The New Free Software Junior Acheivers Program! - Crossfire Scripting Session Coming Soon
Programming GIMP with LISP Inservice Lecture coming in March
NYLXS Installfest #60
Sunday May 20th, 2006
1163 East 15th Street
Brooklyn, USA
BarbQ Cookout will be available
Local Network Available and lots of help. We have a commitmment of 7 helpers so
far.
NYLXS installfests tend to be great fun with friends, food and Free Software!
Freedom-IT Winter Meeting
Freedom-IT Meeting in Lake Placid February 24th and 25th being planned now
NYLXS is taking its yearly confernce and vacation break this month. If interested
in hooking up
email us at ruben@nylxs.com. Free Software and Skiing in the most beautiful of
+places on earth
a few hours from the City!
Free Software Chamber of Commerce
Join with other Free Software people in order to expand your contracts
and increase your options without being in danger of over promising or
losing your business contact to a another vendor.
Bring in the bigger fish by bringing a better guarantee to your clients.
Meeting Biweekly
NYFAIRUSE is holding a meeting Monday Night, Febrary 17th, at the Killarny Rose to discuss
Free Software in Government and the problems with Microsoft atre the egov-os conference in Washington. Also discussed
will be the related effort to bring up the heat for Free Software in New York City Government
Corperate Support of the Free Software Linux Based and BSD Based GNU Desktops Is beginning right here RIGHT NOW.
See our New Open Office Class Schedule for this Month!
New York GNU Linux Scene is an organization
dedicated to providing resources to the New York Linux Community. It's about
developing open source leadership. Bound to no
specific local NYC or NY Metro Area organization, it's members support the NY Linux and Free
Software Scene with manpower, technology, money and time. It's goal is to enable
NYC Area Linux users, Free Software users, and the NY population in general through their
lugs, schools, businesses, and government agencies.
NYLXS helps with installfeasts, lectures, tutorials, mailing lists, scheduling
of events, political lobbying, educational support to public schools and
libraries, training, publicity, and more.
Our membership is doers, not watchers. If you are a doer, then join us, and
make a difference for the future.
Our New Rapid Demonstration Project
is underway to help local businesses and consultants show off the power of GNU/Linux quickly
and effectively. Join us on this today!
NYLXS will have its general membership meeting on
Wednesday: June 7th, 2006
Time 6:30PM
Sutton Inn
1015 2nd Ave, New York, NY 10022 · 212-207-3777 in Manhattan
Assembly Language Workshop
FSI Classes
Elections
Server Move (Ruben is moving)
Freedom-IT - Yes it can and will happen - Free Software Exposition on both
East and West Coasts
The GNU Traveling Circus - 2 weeks - 5 boroughs - lots of fun
NYLXS Journal
Publication of GNU/Linux 1 - High School Text Book
NYC Live on Saturday Night - GNU/Linux, Music and Live Bands
K-12 Education with Free Software
GNU and Children
New Web Site Design for NYLXS
Membership Drives
Membership Dues
Jobs Jobs Jobs!!!
FREE SOFTWARE BUSINESS NETWORK
The Free Software Chamber of Commerce meetings every Tuesday for business development and strategry. If your in the Free Software Business, with GNU/Linux or other software and systems, your welcome to join. Meetings are held at 845 3rd Ave, Manhattan NY on the 13th floor at Rosenzweig and Maffia: Noon to 1PM
Aside from volunteering, lobbying, protesting and
installing GNU Linux in schools and offices all across the NYC Metro Area, we
like to show off a little too. This section will soon allows us to strut
our stuff and/or prove our points.
Help build our member generated resource list. You'll Find our Journal, Radio Show and selective wrtitings of our members HERE. See the GNU/Linux1 Class Text