API Copyright of JVM

At this stage of the copyright litigation in Oracle v Google, Oracle needs to demonstrate to Judge William Alsup that there is a “genuine issue of fact” whether Android infringes the Java Virtual Machine APIs. That’s enough to get Oracle’s copyright case in front of a jury. To get the copyright issue thrown out before trial, Google must rebut the arguments that Oracle has presented. Addressing each specific fact, Google’s Reply last week offers an exceptionally detailed and clear tutorial on API copyright law. A legal monograph published by Professor Efthimios Parasidis in 2005 provides a similar analysis.

There are two possible outcomes to the copyright claims of Oracle: Android infringes the Java APIs or it doesn’t. It may appeal the partial summary judgement on the copyright issue once there is a final judgment on the rest of the case. If Judge Alsup rules in favor of Oracle, then the copyright infringement issue will be decided by a jury later this year.

Windows API Example

Google’s Reply makes a strong case against copyright protection of APIs. But there are additional examples where APIs were considered unprotectable. In the antitrust case against Microsoft, a U.S. District Court stated “Theoretically, the developer of a non-Microsoft, Intel-compatible PC operating system could circumvent the applications barrier to entry by cloning the APIs exposed by the 32-bit versions of Windows (Windows 9x and Windows NT).” The court went on to say “Applications written for Windows would then also run on the rival system, and consumers could use the rival system confident in that knowledge.” This is the same circumstance in which U.S District Court Judge Alsup finds Android.

API Copyright and the GPL

Oracle has made Android a target in spite of the fact that Oracle has little or no stake in mobile devices, now or on the horizon. The chief beneficiary of taking down Android would be Apple, chaired by Ellison’s friend Steve Jobs. It seems questionable whether the Oracle Board of Directors is providing oversight of this case, since it doesn’t appear to benefit Oracle shareholders. One wonders if Ellison has other goals in mind. Oracle might like to see the API copyright issue head to the U.S. Supreme Court. If so, losing may ultimately benefit Oracle, eliminating concerns about linking to Linux header files or the GNU Classpath, and taking the air out of vague GPL license terms that create extraordinary copyright hazards for software companies.

John Koenig is the founder of Compute Media and designer of The Patent Studio. You can follow him on Twitter @johnkoenig.

What DSL Technicians Know

Although the telephone company has many tools to troubleshoot problems with their lines and equipment, they cannot help you much with the phone wiring in your home. A weak DSL signal inside your home can be caused by long wire lengths, poor connections, multiple wires, multiple connectors, improper grounding and other variables. Your DSL speed will be better if you eliminate these issues. DSL modems are good at working around noise on the line, but do so at the expense of top download speed and latency (delay). DSL technicians tell us that many line problems originate from bad inside wiring, so splitting the DSL signal from the telephone line as early as possible would certainly eliminate this problem.

DSL Pots Splitters are the Key

To do that, you can install an inexpensive pots-splitter where the telephone line enters your home or garage at the box called the Network Interface Device (NID). By installing a pots-splitter at the NID, the DSL signal from the telephone company to your modem is as short and uncluttered as possible. No longer does the DSL signal wind through your home over internal phone wiring — even though most telephone company installation instructions tell you to do that. Why do they recommend that? Because installing pots-splitters yourself inside the home saves the telephone company the expense of making a trip to do the installation right. Those “pigtail” pots-splitters you self-install don’t offer the optimum DSL signal path. The excess in-house line length, the phone jacks and the additional phone equipment in your home all contribute to noise and attenuation of the DSL signal — and therefore slower speeds.

Make DSL Troubleshooting Easier

Instead, to achieve the shortest, cleanest connection, you should buy a pots-splitter and put your DSL modem next to the pots-splitter at the NID. By installing the pots-splitter at your NID, you keep your home telephone wiring out of the DSL signal path, and consequently your line condition is now the responsibility of the telephone company. The telephone company can then easily use their central equipment to monitor and troubleshoot the condition of the DSL line to your home. They otherwise cannot do the best job troubleshooting the line if the DSL signal also runs through your house. With the DSL signal terminating at the NID, they have no excuse to deliver speeds less than the one offered under your service plan. If the speed is much less than promised, ask your telephone company to fix their line until it comes close to the DSL rate offered under your service plan.

Finish with Wireless Router

Once you’ve installed your pots-splitter and modem next to the NID, you also need to install your Ethernet router there too. You might wonder how to use your computer when the Ethernet router is in the garage. There are a couple of solutions. You can use a wireless router, many of which offer exceptional range, or use HomePlug devices. Although these add a little cost, your improved DSL access speed should be worth it. If your wireless Ethernet connection is blocked by the walls, wireless extenders and HomePlug devices offered by many vendors provide a fast, reliable Ethernet connection to any room in your home.

John Koenig is the founder of Compute Media and designer of The Patent Studio. You can follow him on Twitter @johnkoenig.

At the time it was indeed an infernal battle with computers; monotonous tinkering, prone to error and failure. Out of this problem arose a solution from Berners-Lee, and a standard which revolutionized computing and communications.

The Documentation System in the Sky

Berners-Lee decided to write a paper about it. To Berners-Lee it was a difficult idea to explain at the time. He imagined it as “some big, virtual documentation system in the sky” he said. He sent the proposal to his boss, who called it “vague, but exciting” and gave Berners-Lee the green light to work on the project. Indeed his implementation worked so well that he is considered the inventor of the world wide web. Extensions of the HTML standard today, make it possible for anyone with a computer to share information in writing, on a moments notice, with everyone, virtually anywhere in the world. It wouldn’t have happened this way without the work at CERN.

The History of the Browser

The world wide web Berners-Lee invented in 1990 didn’t catch on immediately. In January 1992 there were only 50 web servers in the world. In July of 1992, Perry Wei at UC Berkeley demonstrated the Viola browser for Unix X Windows. In November of 1992, Tony Johnson at SLAC delivered the Midas browser for X Windows. Jim Calliau at CERN started development of the Samba browser for the Macintosh. In December 1992, Perry Wei, embedded programs in HTML pages, which he demonstrated to Sun Microsystems engineers, including the Viola source code. More accomplishments have followed. Today, Internet Explorer is the chief browser and Google is the main search engine for sorting through the billions of documents on the web.

A Call for Raw Data Now

But despite the current success and sophistication of web-based sharing, Berners-Lee directs our attention to a new priority he calls “Raw Data Now.” Speaking at the TED Conference, he made his point with a simple premise, paraphrasing here that: you cannot naturally use data by itself. In other words, for it to be really useful, we should combine and share our data with other data. Berners-Lee calculates that without sharing, data serves a very limited purpose. Not only should we share our data, but we should demand that governments and businesses share the data they prepare as well, he says. Accessible raw data is his new objective for the world wide web. As he points out, “data drives a huge amount of what happens in our lives… because somebody takes the data and does something with it.” To Berners-Lee, it is essentially from this sharing of data, that advances in science will emerge.

Three Rules from Tim Berners-Lee

If the past was document sharing, the future is data sharing. Berners-Lee says now, “I want you to put your data on the Web.” But how should we go about that? To answer that question, he provides three points of instruction. One, a URL should point to the data. Two, anyone accessing the URL should get data back. Three, relationships in the data should point to additional URLs with data.

These three rules are a much simpler departure from the past 10 years of discussion, chiefly focused on the “semantic” web and a “resource description framework”. Those concepts have so far received little mainstream acceptance because of their high level of abstraction. Other technology is faring better, in particular the hardware devices. For example, wider data collection through common 3G devices can now monitor traffic, temperature, emergencies and other events with transparent data connectivity. If the past is any indication, hardware advances will continue to arrive much earlier than software advances. So while the raw data is coming, we still have a long way to go before the software to access a world wide web of data is mature.

John Koenig is the founder of Compute Media and designer of The Patent Studio. You can follow him on Twitter @johnkoenig.

Berners-Lee Photo Silvio Tanaka

These are still the early days of the smartphone. The innovation in smartphone products and services is similar to the rise of the personal computer and the web browser. In the early PC business, uncertainty was everywhere. Buyers were concerned about software applications, usability and maintenance. Price and performance were points of constant contention between manufacturers. Developers eagerly chased the most popular platforms.

The browser growth period was a compressed and magnified version of the PC period. The browser spawned an investment bubble and an antitrust battle of the century. Like the PC period, entepreuners and investors watched closely for waves they could ride to profitability. Publishers covered the whole heated debate. Yahoo rose and Netscape disappeared. Google rose and Inktomi disappeared. These and many more, succeeded or failed due largely to differences in management and strategy, but the opportunity was there for everyone.

In both the case of PC and the the browser, it took a number of years for patterns to appear. Today, in the smartphone business, we are seeing some trends and patterns, like Apple’s success in the consumer market and the continuing success of Rim in the enterprise space.

iTunes for Windows in the Enterprise

For consumers and publishers, the iPhone and its popular iTunes store make a lot of sense. Because Apple knows every publisher, there are no issues for consumers about software security, malware and viruses that plague software downloaded from the wild wild web. As Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster explains, “Apple’s dominance in the [consumer electronics] and online music markets is going seemingly unchecked.” Publishers benefit too. For one, consumers cannot resell downloaded software from the iTunes store under the first-sale doctrine. There is no piracy. There is no gray market. iTunes controls exactly who gets what from the software publisher. Apple even provides mechanisms to allow ongoing subscriptions, and this is going to pull in the content publishers. Rupert Murdoch, Chairman of News Corp announced last month a plan to charge iPhone and BlackBerry users a weekly rate of $1 for subscribers and $2 for non-subscribers to access its mobile site. Other publishers have already started. For them, the iTunes and Blackberry stores offer certain advantages, but will have to compete with free content on the Internet.

iTunes for Windows is about as far as Apple can get with enterprise IT departments, and even that’s probably not welcome. No business would choose to funnel its business applications through an application store like iTunes. For the enterprise, the iTunes store is mostly friction and overhead. Apple slowly responds to enterprise requirements, such as remote wipe, and the Apple documentation for enterprise features are superficial and under-supported. The Apple business of smartphone products and services for consumers can succeed without the rigor and options that businesses demand. Consumers may be perpetually happy to download applications through an iTunes store. For businesses, the logistics and complexity of the iTunes store are a nuisance. As a result, we see the repeated pattern of Apple succeeding in the consumer market but not the business market.

ATT vs Verizon

The largest two carriers, ATT and Verizon are both important factors in the consumer market. ATT has not announced an application store. The iPhone exclusively uses the iTunes store. But Verizon wants some of that action. Verizon has 87 million subscribers it needs to keep happy or lose to vendors offering better smartphones. To control content iTunes style, Verizon appears to be ready to require smartphone vendors to sell their application exclusively through an online Verizon application store. Lowell McAdam, president and CEO of Verizon Wireless, made a deal recently with Google to offer smartphones pre-loaded with innovative applications on Android-based devices from several manufacturers. The advantages to developers are parallel to the iTunes store, since Verizon simplifies billing through its existing customer relationship.

To maintain control like Apple, Verizon may preclude customers from getting their applications from Blackberry App World or the Android Marketplace. According to reports from GigaOM, Verizon is reportedly demanding Verizon handsets include default access to only Verizon’s app store. This includes the popular Blackberry Storm smartphones.

But the bigger issue for carriers is bandwidth. AT&T’s chief technology officer, John Donovan, recently stated that smartphones and associated applications have produced a 5,000 percent increase in data usage over three years. That’s not going to let up. AT&T now requires that every smartphone subscriber have a data plan.

Handsets or Operating System

Motorola has received recent Federal lab approval of a smartphone planned for sale by Verizon for the holiday season. ATT may start working with Dell on offering an Android-based phone for the eventual day when ATT’s exclusive iPhone deal runs out. Apple’s introduction of the $99 iPhone 3G is generating significant market share gains in the last six months, for a “leading position in music and mobile markets,” according to Munster. Yet hardware is rapidly becoming a commodity, eventually to be dominated by Asian manufacturers, just like the VCR. The future of the smartphone will be dictated by software and content, not hardware. The obvious conclusion? Instead of competing on hardware, profitability in the smartphone business will be driven by software capabilities. Right now the strategic key to the smartphone software opportunity is the operating system, and with respect to the operating system, the enterprise market for smartphones is wide open for competition.

The question is therefore, who will prevail as the smartphone vendor of choice to businesses. Rim has a history of being the leader. But if we examine the state of mobile operating systems, we see another pattern. The early generations of mobile operating systems, like Symbian and Windows Mobile are quickly losing ground to Android. This trend will accelerate. The Blackberry operating system may be the next victim of Android. Dell and Motorola have set a clear path on the Android platform. Dell spokesman Andrew Bowins recently told Reuters: “We are deeply engaged with our operator partners around the world to deliver mobile broadband enabled computing devices.” But manufacturers like Dell and Motorola, and even Rim will lose ground to the superior strategies of Google and Apple, companies focusing on operating system software and application developers, where most of the value is added. Apple produces great hardware, but at the core of its strategy is a plan that leverages software and content from the developer community. Many companies can deliver the hardware. Few can deliver the software and developer enthusiasm. Google is one of the companies that understands this well. Those who don’t, risk becoming another Netscape or Inktomi.

Photo Credit: M. Yoshihito

Moreover, during the past 10 years, nearly every business has saved extensively on travel and marketing costs by using video-conferencing. Yet live video traffic further stresses network hardware and bandwidth.

Web applications like email and SaaS-based ERP, CRM and other business applications don’t require a lot of bandwidth. But running voice and video traffic on a single, IP-based network with multiple real time applications is now commonplace. Unfortunately, businesses too often expand their networks piecemeal, in reaction to new application and performance issues identified by employees and customers.

More Network Challenges are Coming

In addition to the current challenges of data, voice and video, other challenging network scenarios are here or on the horizon:

• Traffic over unmanaged networks, such as a telecommuter connecting over a virtual private network (VPN) and mobile 3G networks.
• The logical next step towards cloud computing, with virtualization either on a third party cloud or an enterprise data center.
• Storage, servers, switches and routers combined into a unified, multi-purpose footprint in the data center.

To accommodate these new bandwidth intensive architectures and services, many businesses have upgraded their network hardware ad hoc, spending extensive time and labor on network administration. It’s easy to overlook the cost of labor when measuring IT productivity. According to McKinsey, labor is now the largest cost component of IT operations, eclipsing the sum of software, hardware and maintenance costs.

Many businesses alternatively choose to outsource much of their information technology. But on-premise networking equipment is still required, even with application outsourcing. System administrators can handle many network issues, but with voice and video traffic, some network engineering expertise is helpful. For instance, there are great variations in network demand throughout the business day, as call volume or conferencing traffic rise and fall.

Network Quality of Service is Key

The major problems with most networks are well established. The big difficulties with voice and video quality are latency, jitter and packet loss. Poor audio quality is more annoying to users than poor video quality, since the human ear is more sensitive to noise and delays than the human eye.

To avoid the imperfections caused by latency, jitter and packet loss, a network must be properly designed and managed. There are three basic areas of focus. Capacity management refers to the amount of bandwidth available. Most local area networks have very high capacity, so bandwidth problems are usually only associated with the wide area network (WAN) or the interfaces to the WAN.

The key to making most efficient use of the WAN is to prioritize traffic in the routers and switches. In other words, voice and video quality can be maintained by giving them a higher priority than data traffic. Such prioritization has almost no noticeable effect on the data traffic.

Network monitoring helps identify potential issues related to peak usage and server capacity, so degraded performance can often be avoided, and less investment is made on bandwidth or equipment.

Enter the Multi-Service Business Gateway

Socrates once asked, “How many things are there which I do not want?” An excellent question, not just for philosophers, but for IT Managers, CIOs and CEOs as well. In the past there may have been three, four, even five or more pieces of equipment and associated software required to operate a business network. Today, there are single-source solutions containing both the hardware and the software needed to run a converged data, voice and video network. Known as a Unified Communications Gateway (UCG) or more commonly as a Multi-Service Business Gateway (MSBG), these solutions simplify and lower the equipment and administration needed to operate a high-capacity business network.

Businesses previously interested in IP-PBX solutions, are now combining a diverse range of voice and data functionality on a single appliance. Many businesses require LAN compatibility with multiple wireless IP handsets and access to multiple types of SaaS applications. “Application performance is a big concern,” says Jeff Dixon, Chief Strategy Officer of U4EA Technologies. “The impact of a non-optimal network includes loss of productivity among employees and potential loss of business.” MSBG solutions can identify network issues before they become a problem, eliminate software incompatibility and simplify network configuration.

Combs’ cites the project’s rapid popularity as the initial milestone. Over the following months, he received emails asking about his plans for the project. He realized it needed his full-time commitment. His employer at the time had little interest in an open source network analyzer but eventually Combs found the right partner. Today CACE Technologies is the project sponsor, a change he cites as the second significant milestone — as well as CACE becoming his employer.

A third milestone was the build-up of the user and developer community. “We attracted people who stuck with Wireshark — people smarter than me”, he claims. “And we needed an infrastructure including CVS and mail lists that could leverage their talents.” Combs explained that most Wireshark contributors work for larger companies than CACE. The parallel architecture of Wireshark makes their participation easier, letting them work simultaneously on their own pieces, such as protocols.

The Asterisk Project

Mark Spencer, founder of Digium and the Asterisk project, was in San Francisco for the Open Source Business Conference in April and gave us his thoughts. As Spencer explains, Asterisk was started from a real business requirement — his own company needed a phone system. “Telephony” he recalls, “was a large market with no Microsoft-like monopoly, and back then phone systems were expensive.”

To keep a complex development project like Asterisk running smoothly, Spencer set up an issue tracker, something he still considers a significant milestone. Asterisk has many contributors to manage, he explains. He initially targeted a technical audience with Asterisk, adding further, that he designed the code base to support “extreme customization”.

Spencer likewise encouraged the developers to earn income from the Asterisk ecosystem. Digium sponsored the first Asterisk conference to provide them an opportunity to do commercial business and discuss how to move the project forward.

The Mondrian Project

The MySQL Conference in Santa Clara offered an opportunity to speak with Julian Hyde, founder of the Mondrian project. Mondrian is an OLAP cube that Hyde wrote as a skunk project with his company’s permission. Mondrian, he explains, is based on an OLAP standard he created — one which is similar to the Microsoft OLAP product.

Mondrian’s popularity took off when an industry analyst highlighted it in an article. “Open source” Hyde tells us, “provided a multiplier effect, allowing people with the same interests to converge on one project.” But the milestone was when people started to use it, he adds. Hyde explains that using SourceForge was not a watershed but it helped get visibility. Awareness attracted Andreas Voss, for example, a developer with whom Hyde agreed to provide cross-support, giving Mondrian a technical boost through JPivot’s navigational capability.

Even with Mondrian’s success, Hyde didn’t want to start a company. Instead he looked for someone to back the project. He met Richard Daley of Pentaho at a conference, and was impressed with their business model and professionalism. Hyde now has two roles there: architect of the roadmap and community advocate. “Engineers at other companies using Mondrian are full-time contributors” he explains, and “these people have a strategic interest in stable Mondrian code.” Having a commercial sponsor helped the project achieve maturity and industry strength, including regular releases, Hyde says.

Hyde is looking ahead to another milestone. He would like the open source community to help adopt OLAP4J, because, he explains, “the commercial world has failed to provide us with a standard.”