[Arm-netbook] Patent-Left

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Sat, Feb 24, 2018 at 1:48 PM, Jean Flamelle <eaterjolly at gmail.com> wrote:

>> devices, someone has to take action.
>>
>
> That makes sense.
> Recognizing standards organisations as a victim (of eroding public
> trust), that motivates the organization to perform more of a watch-dog
> service by initiating class-action lawsuits on behalf of themselves
> and the public-at-large.

 exactly.  the nightmare scenario, and one of the reasons for being so
extremely strict about this.  and also why the impartiality is
critical (no being an actual "business").

 but, most important, we need to work with the tools that we have
*right now*, and those tools are not patents, but Certification
Mark(s).  patents are obtainable on *business* processes and
*inventions*, not APIs or mathematics or "obvious stuff".  a Standard
is not a business process, some parts of it are blindingly-obvious
common sense, and in this particular case it's an aggregation of other
standards.  it wouldn't pass the "innovative step" process of
patenting in a million years.  oh, and it's comprised of prior art.
and i've published it.  and discussed it at length.  deliberately.

>>
>>  https://noram.pecb.com/en/about-noram
>>
>>  damn.  going to have to set something up that's pretty much exactly
>> like every single one of the *9* pages listed on the right-hand side.
>>
>>  dang.
>>
>
> I'll help with editing if welcome.

 really appreciated.

> Bear in mind, the most vital future audience of said documents will
> likely be the people you end up training down  the road.

 yes.  i made a huge reorganisation effort about... 2 years ago.  the
thing is that there are actually *multiple* sets of documents that
need to be written, one set for *each* type of person: END_USER,
TECHNICAL_END_USER, MANUFACTURER, REPURPOSER and so on.

 hmmm.... would it be reasonable to expect end-users to agree to
commit to proper re-purposing instead of disposal as "junk" [recycling
/ discarding of perfectly good Cards / Housings]?  and would it be
reasonable to expect a Manufacturer to sell it with an enforceable
license agreement, both for the hardware *and* the software?  we get
software EULAs all the time with major electronics manufacturers, so i
don't see why not...

> The ethics of
> the community may be obvious to the most vocal of us on the list, but
> having impactful reminders set in stone will sustain the focus of
> those who are less vocal and forget to set reminders for themselves of
> their own principles.

 precisely.  i can't hand over the project to such a group *until*
that's absolutely clear.

> (such people are rather common, but, for the more passionate among us,
> they maybe difficult to understand or empathize with. Such documents
> fuel cooperation when well written, but, also bear in mind, PECB's
> audience likely reads much more densely than ours will.)

 in certain segments... yes.  which says that for the END_USER segment
(audience), the documents must be much, *much* simpler.


>>  question: how do you propose that people not get murdered by the
>> incompetence of an individual who blatantly disregards a hardware
>> standard's safety warnings?  (we are extremely lucky that nobody has
>> murdered anyone through the deployment of "bad-usb").
>
> Yup, I'm thinking longterm and asking myself "out-loud" exactly that.
> Setting aside these really hack-y patent-left ideas, I can only
> imagine expressing deeper morals in design of global information
> networks is a prerequisite to any clean fix here and that will take a
> very long while even upon interest in such initiative hopefully
> growing soon.

 there's not really a lot that can be done without drastically pushing
up the costs to the point where nobody would buy anything.  but also i
feel that the fact that people *haven't* created USB-killing-devices,
despite the opportunity to do so (in the context of EOMA68 not being
in the picture) and despite the fact that it's public knowledge on how
to do it, tells us that people - in general - recognise that
deliberate destruction of peoples' electronics devices via ubiquitous
interfaces just... is anathemic.

> Another prerequisite is probably the simplification of PCB-design and

 this is why i kept the micro-desktop reference design so basic.  i
remember jonathon expressed complete surprise at learning that.


> more interest in auditing, but that's not even a topic that's
> noticeably talked about, except in the fringes of the open source
> community and often only with regards to RISC.

 software again.  hardware is *hard*.

> There are people who may have access to a large community without
> access to the internet (say an oppressive regime or in the
> wilderness), who might get a hold of a card with offline documentation
> and CAD-designs. Their adaptations and designs shouldn't be de facto
> dangerous if found and uploaded to the internet.

 that's a tough one to solve.

> I would hope this can be remedied before we colonize Mars.

 ha :)

> I never doubted you about the dangers.

 ... big responsibility, ehn?

l.