Tobias Schlitt - a passion for php

In the past years privacy issues have increased more and more in our civilisation. Sometimes under the hood of "fighting against terrorism", but in many cases simply straight forward, authorities and companies start violating our privacy more and more. In Germany the "Payback" (German link) card is a more or less harmless example for tracing customers, where the "Bundestrojaner" (German link) is a really dangerous one.

I have to admit that I sometimes even understand the intention (would I behave different if I had the chance to realize "Payback"?). Anyway I'm really shocked how few people realize the problem and see the affection of their own life and privacy. In fact the only group of people who seem to understand and act against it are geeks and other technology affine people. The everyday user (of those I know) does basically not care. Answers like "So what, I have nothing to hide!" are most common, if you try to inform and sensitize them. I really get the feeling, that most people just don't care. No idea if they are too lazy to deal with the (indeed mostly technology related) topic, if it is pure ignorance or if they simply don't understand.

For the latter case I found a really good Flash video (German link) that tries to explain the whole issue in a way that non-technical people can also understand it. So, please, if you have no clue about what I've been talking before, please take a look here (German link). Thanks!

Update: I just found this animation of a pizza call which goes into the same direction and is in English language.

The Mozilla Development Center has a new mascot called "developer kit":

Really sweet and a nice slogan! :)

My friend Zak remindes us, that this topic is still dangerous, so keep eyes and ears open! The devil is not banned, yet...

Update -2- (Jan 20th 2005, 13:45):

I still recieve lot's of comments on this issue, which all have basically the same content, affirming my opinion. The most common sense is, that abusing the content created by somebody else to put ads into it (in the way it is done, by modifying the content) is a real shame and has to be considered equal with spam. Today an anonymouse reader pointed out, that they actually violate the OPL, under which the PHP manual is provided. The OPL says "The modified version must be labeled as such." and "The person making the modifications must be identified and the modifications dated.". Both points seem not being fulfilled on that site.

Other commentors pointed out to me, that the freaks also link the word "Perl" to their hosting service. Maybe this is interessting to peoplei of the Perl community?

Anyway, thanks for everyone who added an affirmation and showed to this strange freaks, that their ad practices are despicable. If you want to raise your opinion, please don't hesitate to add a comment here!

Update (Jan 17th 2005, 13:45):

Many people replied to my article, so I feel I should post an update. Thanks for everyone who stated his opinion so far.

Today I saw that phpfreaks.com actually changed the links on the word PHP to point to their start page and now link the word hosting to their webspace provider. At least, this does not harm my PHP evangelism feelings that much anymore. Anyway, the difference between ad and content is still not clear at all. Pretty many people (compared to the usual comment traffic on my blog) already claimed their support against this kind of ads here.

Most funnily phpfreaks.com even aggregated this article through an indirection of phpdeveloper.org. While I like getting aggregated on sites like phpdeveloper.org, planet-php.net and so on quite much, I strongly discourage that my content is reused by this phpfreaks page. Sorry guys, I do not permit you any longer to use my words for your advertisements.

Do you have an opinion on this? Please leave a comment here!

Original (Jan 12th 2005, 19:06):

As Vidyut pointed out, phpfreaks.com seems to automatically create a link everywhere on their website, where the word "PHP" appears. They do this even in user comments. Apparently this seems to be a nice service, if the link would direct you to php.net (or maybe some explaination page or something). But instead they link to some hosting provider which supports PHP (what also well known as a "sponsored link").

I have to admit that this is one of the largest brazennesses I every saw. Beside that, it's absolutely frowned upon in journalism circles (even the famous German "Bild-Zeitung" does not do advertisment in such a abject way, also they are wellknown for borderlining adverts) and in many states even completly illegal.

You should really feel ashame, you strange PHPFreaks!

Via Jan Wildeboer and FFII:

Strasbourg, 6 July 2005 -- The European Parliament today decided by a large majority of 648 votes to reject the directive "on the patentability of computer implemented inventions", also known as the software patent directive. This rejection was the logical answer to the Commission's refusal to restart the legislative process in February and the Council's unwillingness to take the will of the European Parliament and national parliaments into account. The FFII congratulates the European Parliament on its clear "No" to bad legislative proposals and procedures.

This is a great victory for those who have campaigned to ensure that European innovation and competitiveness is protected from monopolisation of software functionalities and business methods. It marks the end of an attempt by the European Commission and governmental patent officials to impose detrimental and legally questionable practises of the European Patent Office (EPO) on the member states. However the questions created by this practise remain unsolved. FFII believes that the Parliament's work, in particular the 21 cross-party compromise amendments, can provide a good basis on which future solutions, both at the national and European level, can build.

Jonas Maebe, FFII Board Member, comments on the outcome of today's vote:

This result clearly shows that thorough analysis, genuinely concerned citizens and factual information have more impact than free ice-cream, boatloads of hired lobbyists and outsourcing threats. I hope this turn of events can give some people faith again in the European decision making process. I also hope that it will encourage the Council and Commission to emulate the European Parliament to improve transparency and the ability of stakeholders to participate in the decision-making process irrespective of their size.

Hartmut Pilch, president of FFII, explains why FFII supported the move for rejection in its voting recommendations:

In recent days, the big holders of EPO-granted software patents and their MEPs, who had previously been campaigning for the Council's "Common Position", joined the call for rejection of the directive because it became clear that the 21 cross-party amendments championned by Rhoitová, Buzek, Rocard and Duff were very likely to be adopted by the Parliament. It was well noticeable that support for these amendments or a substantial part thereof was becoming the mainstream opinion in all political groups. Yet there would not have been much of a point in such a vote. We rather agree to the assessment of the situation as given by Othmar Karas MEP in the Plenary yesterday: a No was the only logical answer to the unconstructive attitude and legally questionable manuevers of the Commission and Council, by which this so-called Common Position had come about in the first place.

The FFII also wishes to thank all those people who have taken the time to contact their representatives either by email, phone or in person. We also want to thank the numerous volunteers who have given so generously of their time and energy. This is your victory as well as the Parliament's.

A great victory in a huge war. Thanks to all you anti-sorftware-patent-activists!

Quoting Aleksander Farstad, CEO of eZ Systems:

"As a company, we have made an official decision to be against software
patents - they go against our principles of openness, sharing and innovation
and have a strong potential to harm our business.

• to defend ourselves against nonsense patent litigation
• license multiple patents
• register and defend a significant patent portfolio."

Thanks a lot to eZ systems for supporting the fight against software patents in Europe!

I recently updated my anti software patents demo page (see here) in respect to the newest incidents.

Brussels, wednesday 19th Jan 2005 -- The EU Software Patent Directive has been or will be scheduled on the agenda of the Agriculture and Fishery Meeting of the 24th of January as an A item, i.e. an item that is to be adopted without a vote. This was announced today by officials of the European Commission and of the EU Council Presidency at various meetings. The entry is not on the official meeting calendar yet.

This text is now used in the demo page (instead of the appeal I used last time). Thanks for putting a page like that in front of your entry page to protest against software patents. You can download the actualized version here.

Find more about the actual situation and software patents in general.

Later this week, on November 25th and 26th, the EU Competitiveness Council will convene and soon attempt to formally adopt a proposed "Directive on the Patentability of Computer-Implemented Inventions", commonly referred to as the "software patent directive". On May 18th, the Council reached political agreement on a draft legislation, however, did not take a formal decision to adopt it.

We urge the governments of the EU member states, which are represented in the EU Council, to oppose the debateless adoption of the said proposal as a so-called "A item". In the interest of Europe, such a deceptive, dangerous and democratically illegitimate proposal must not become the Common Position of the member states.

That's the original text of the announcement of Linus, Michael and Rasmus, which I pratly stole to quickly setup a protest webpage for the following 2 days. All entries for my website (main, blog & gallery) now show that page by default. If anyone likes to, please just download it and upload it to your website. It should more or less work with any PHP driven site (using index.php as the index page).

In best hope for the next days...

Appeal to the EU Council by

23 November 2004

From the appeal:

...
We urge the governments of the EU member states, which are represented
in the EU Council, to oppose the debateless adoption of the said proposal
as a so-called "A item". In the interest of Europe, such a deceptive,
dangerous and democratically illegitimate proposal must not become the
Common Position of the member states.
...

Read more here.

I finally managed to watch Fahrenheit 9/11 in cinema. It's been a very splitted experience. On the one hand Michael Moore manages to emazingly show some backgrounds on the happenings since George W. Bush's "election". On the other one it's horrible to see how they brought people the fear, how they attacted innocent people and how they convinced thei own folks to join the army...

One of the most scaring scene was, when a young souldier describes, that he listens to "The roof is on fire" by "Bloodhoundgang" when he's driving a tank...

I recently got an article on Golem to know, where my current company (the research division) warns against software patents. I really did not expect that, but I really appreciate.

(Sorry, the artile is in German language.)

Here is the original paper, in Englisch.

Today I received my copy of the german Ct magazine (magazine for computer technic), which has a 1 page article on the Linuxtag (see page 48, issue 15/2004). The article is focused half onto Linuxtag itself and the other half is focused on our demonstration. Best thing: In the middle of the page there's a photo of the 10 jailed programmers, where I'm in the very middle! ;)

Nice to see that Heise (publisher of Ct and the famouse Heise