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    Itka Safir on Patent Trolls and Business
  • In a commentary at the University of Chicago School of Business about troubles in the Patent Trolls and the Patent Review process.

    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.

    Reference:
    Itka's Article
    Data Analysis with charts
  • 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.

  • The 2007/8 Freedom-IT North American Free Software Conference

    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!

  • NYLXS InService

    NYLXS Inservice Presentation

    What: David Sugar: How to build a Phone Company with Free Software
    and Joining the Bayonne Telephony revolution

    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
  • Slackware and opensuse CD iso's are on line.
  • Server Upgrade coming Soon
  • Personel Webspace available for members
  • 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

The Politics of Free Software Video by Ruben Safir at Princetown, NJ

Free Software Media Player - as it could be with BUILT IN BIT TORRENT The Holiday Gift for the Free Software Family! Only $499.00 - Serious stuff

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

The Free Software Chamber of Commerce - New Yorks first Free Software Business Network, opens for Business!

First Draft of the September Journal

DRM is Theft - NY Fair Use

We are the Stake Holder - Rebutal of the P2P is theft gibberish. Also in Post Script

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.

See our Mission Statement

New Projects!

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 Helps Brooklyn Borough Hall achive it's computing needs through Free Software and GNU Linux

ANNOUNCEMENTS


GENERAL MEMBERSHIP MEETING

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

WHAT WE'RE DOING THIS MONTH
Calendar and Scheduling of events
WHO WE ARE
And, do you have what it takes to join us?
MEMBERS' CORNER
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.
RESOURCES
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
CONSULTANT'S CORNER AND JOBS
Resources for Businesses and Employees looking for Careers in Free Software
The NYLXS Quarterly Journal
NYLXS sponsors a Quarterly Journal which reports on the NYC Free Software and GNU Linux movement. Make a contribution it it today!