linux-l: patent, patent

[Bernd Claßen]

Hi,

wieder etwas vom Großen Bruder (v.a. für Debianer und Rothütler von
Interesse). Vielleicht kann ja jemand helfen...


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To: debian-doc at lists.debian.org, debian-legal at lists.debian.org
Subject: Help: Microsoft patent covers package download and upgrade
Date: Tue, 2 May 2000 22:04:32 +0300

Hi all,

Microsoft was recently granted a patent that covers a core
part of Debian, and probably Red Hat too. (If you have
contacts in RH you can forward this, their contact page
seemed a bit slow in retrieval.) (If you forward this to
public place, any other than debian-doc and debian-legal,
please drop my name and company from mail body and headers.)

The project I'm working in has some interest in automatic
SW upgrade, so I _might_ be able to persuade Nokia to take
interest in this patent. To do it I need some historical
data that shows that the invention was known art at that
time.

Below is some data on the patent and some historical data
I dug out from Debian web site. It seems to show that some
time between -95 and -97 dselect supported upgrading from
internet. If 0.93R6 already did it I'd be happy. In any
case I'd appreciate a man page or dselect-beginner.txt or
something similar from first release supporting ftp access
method, with release date. (If rpm did it before Nov 97
that would also be nice to know.)

MS patent seems to be somewhat limited by not having any
info on versions, dependencies, conflicts etc. but that
is to be expected, I suppose.

[signature omitted at author's request]
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Ciao
Bernd