• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Playing with Technology

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. ~Arthur C. Clarke

What is Open-Source Software?

November 28, 2005 by Jon

Dr. Hornsten has asked me to talk about open-source software with you today. So let’s get started.

  • What do we mean by open-source?
  • Can you name two open-source software programs that you use on a daily basis?
  • Have you ever thought about what qualifies a program for open-source status?
    • Open Source Definition
  • Does open-source mean free?
    • It’s all about the license
      • Can you name some open-source licenses?
        • Some licenses on Wikipedia and OSI.
      • What in the heck is copyleft?
  • Do you read the EULA? What is an EULA?
  • Can you patent open-source software?
    • Patent Commons.
  • What is community source?

On a different note. What about mathematical algorithms, can they be patented?

The background. In the early 1970s several researchers were working on a way to send and receive messages electronically in a secure manner. The idea that developed was public key cryptography and was initially developed by Diffie, Hellman, and Merkel, but they couldn’t find an algorithm to make it work. Enter Rivest, Shamir, and Adelman.

The algorithm idea. It is really very simple and everyone should be able to understand the basics of how it works. Find two prime numbers p and q (Can anyone tell me what this means?) and multiply them together and call the answer n. Now find a number less than n and relatively prime (Can someone tell me what this means?) to (p-1)*(q-1) and call this number e. Now break the message into numbers Mi that are less than n and compute Mi^e mod n (What does mod mean?). This is the encrypted message. Through the magic of number theory we know that there is a number d so that (Mi^e)^d mod n will be Mi.

The patent. In 1981, after several key Federal Circuit Court decisions lead to the Freeman/Walter/Abele test for patentability and a US Supreme court decision Diamond v. Diehr, patent #4405829 “Cryptographic communications system and method” was issued for the RSA algorithm. These decisions are still reshaping the face of patent law. It is an interesting exercise to read the decisions and try to understand exactly how one can patent an algorithm. What do you think?

Share this:

  • Tweet

Filed Under: Presentations

About me

Avatar of Jon Breitenbucher Sometimes I'm an Instructional Technologist and sometimes I'm a Mathematician, but I'm crazy all the time.

Inbound Marketing Certification Badge

Subscribe through an RSS feed reader

News Feed Comments Feed

Or one of the options below:

Subscribe

Genesis Framework for WordPress

Blogroll

  • Blogical Construction
  • Bootstrap Analysis
  • D’Arcy Norman
  • Infocult
  • jill/txt
  • Jim Groom
  • Liberal Education Today
  • Mark Pearson
  • Thoughts and Experiments
  • webbedENVIRONMENTS
  • WPMUtutorials

Interesting sites

  • 9 Rules
  • Inksmith

it blogs

  • instructional technology
  • Matt Gardzina

My Sites

  • Jon Breitenbucher
  • My static site
  • Orthogonal Creations
  • Voices
  • WoW Ravings

Software

  • Textpattern
  • Wordpress
  • WordPress Planet
  • Wordpress.com

Teaching

  • Extreme Teaching

Typography

  • baseline 50
  • disdributed proofreaders
  • fontzone
  • PRINT
  • Project Gutenberg
  • The Terminal

Web design

  • 960 grid
  • A List Apart
  • Blueprint
  • CSS Zen Garden
  • Typogridphy
  • W3 Schools

site cloud

Classroom Conferences Educause Futurism Gaming Geek General Hardware Instructional Technology Interesting sites Multimedia NMC Personal Policy Presentations Site Social Software Software Teaching Typography Web design woodle

Now Playing:

Recently Played:

pages

  • About
  • MU Admin Bar

categories

  • Classroom (rss)
  • Conferences (rss)
  • Educause (rss)
  • Futurism (rss)
  • Gaming (rss)
  • Geek (rss)
  • General (rss)
  • Hardware (rss)
  • Instructional Technology (rss)
  • Interesting sites (rss)
  • Multimedia (rss)
  • NMC (rss)
  • Personal (rss)
  • Policy (rss)
  • Presentations (rss)
  • Site (rss)
  • Social Software (rss)
  • Software (rss)
  • Teaching (rss)
  • Typography (rss)
  • Web design (rss)
  • woodle (rss)

archives

Social network

  • Facebook
  • Linked in
  • Flickr

feed me

  • RSS
  • Atom
  • Comments RSS

Counter

  • 1 currently online
  • 12 maximum concurrent
  • 913177 total visitors

| home |

return to top of page

inspired by a not (that) ugly design modified by jon breitenbucher to use the genesis theme framework by StudioPress and powered by WordPress | Log in |
diigo My Diigo Tags
Green Web Hosting! This site hosted by DreamHost. Use OpenDNS Creative Commons License