Sybreon Ones Nought

This article first appeared on DNA here.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and this is not a legal opinion. Please seek professional advice.

I WAS driving home one day when my mind began to wander, from some reason, onto the intersection between copyright laws and Open Source Software (OSS), and I began to mull over the consequences of recent amendments to our Copyright Act.

The Malaysian Copyright Act was amended in 2012 with many new sections added, but my focus is on Sections 26A – 26C. These sections create a Register of Copyright and spell procedures to apply for and amend registrations. The combined effect is the voluntary registration of copyright in Malaysia.

The entire OSS ecosystem relies on strong copyright laws to thrive. Without strong copyright laws, we will not be able to propagate OSS. So, these amendments simplify certain things as there will now be a central directory of all copyrighted works in Malaysia.

In principle, copyright vests automatically with the author the moment that the work is created, and this is clearly spelled out in Section 26 of the Act. Unlike trademarks or patents, there is no need for someone to register a copyright for it to exist.

What the new Section 26B(5) says is that all registered copyrights are secured and admissible as evidence in court. This means that there is now a rebuttable presumption that the person listed on the Register is the copyright owner.

From here on, this article is pure speculation as this is uncharted territory in Malaysian law. However, some insight can be obtained from the United States, where similar laws already exist. Over there, you cannot sue in court if your copyright is not registered, even if you do own the copyright. This may prove to be a problem.

As an illustration, let’s assume Mr Rekacipta wrote some software but did not register his work. Then Mr Cetakrompak copied his code and registered it. After a while, Mr Rekacipta found out that Mr Cetakrompak was selling his software. He was unable to sue because he did not register his work. Instead, Mr Cetakrompak sued Mr Rekacipta.

Since Mr Cetakrompak has a registered copyright, he is presumed to be the ‘true’ owner. So, Mr Rekacipta has the burden to prove that he is the ‘true’ owner. If he fails to prove it, then the law presumes that the owner is actually Mr Cetakrompak.

So, all that we need to do is to register our work and all will be well, right?

Then we need to understand how OSS is developed. There are two main models of OSS development, often called the Cathedral and the Bazaar models.

The Cathedral model is similar to a lot of proprietary software development, where the development work happens behind closed doors. It is centrally driven. The software is only opened up at the end of the development cycle when released to the public.

In this model, it is certainly possible to register the copyright as the code is under tight control from beginning to end. So, it is difficult for someone to copy the code and register the software ahead of the original owner; and the software only needs to be registered when it is finally released.

However, the Bazaar model is the exact opposite, where the development work happens in the open. It is usually community driven. An example of this is the Linux operating system, which is worked on by thousands of developers spread across the entire globe with new code ‘released’ practically every day.

Projects using this development model release new code continuously, whether due to bug fixes or adding new features. These projects are most at risk of being copied and registered by Mr Cetakrompak.

With this model, since copyright merely protects a specific expression of an idea, continuous releases of new code may constitute a new work and would potentially need to be registered, particularly if they added features or changed things significantly. For some actively developed projects, this could mean a new registration every day.

Unfortunately, under Section 26A(2) of the Malaysian Copyright Act , no voluntary registration will be entertained unless a prescribed fee is paid. While the fee may be a nominal one, multiply it across the daily release lifetime of the project, and it is no longer merely ‘nominal.’

Unlike patent registration, there is no requirement under the Copyright Act for the registering body to conduct a search of prior art. All that is needed to register a copyright is to submit the proper forms with due payment, accompanied by a statutory declaration.

For community developed projects, most of the developers are not paid and are contributing code on their own time and dime. Asking them to contribute additional money to register their copyrights regularly, would be a little unreasonable.

Therefore, this new voluntary registration ‘requirement’ has the potential to affect the Bazaar model of community driven software development in Malaysia, to our detriment.

First published on DNA here.

AT a recent dinner with several friends, I was asked what Snapdragon was. I was tempted to answer: “Trademark,” but decided against making that wisecrack. My friends had a vague idea that it had to do with the microprocessor in their phones, but was that not an ARM processor?

I think that some people out there might also be a little confused about it. Seeing that microprocessors are my little hobby, I tried to answer their question.

The technical term for the Qualcomm Snapdragon is a system-on-chip or system-on-a-chip (SoC). It is somewhat similar to products like the Apple A6, Samsung Exynos or TI OMAP devices also found in modern smartphone devices. There are a lot of SoC devices out there.

An SoC is essentially an electronic device that contains a number of other electronic devices that were traditionally found in separate chips that took up a lot of space on a circuit board. With the magic of modern technology, we can now integrate a lot of different functionality and powerful capabilities into a single silicon device.

Hence the term system-on-chip.

Integrating multiple chips into one saves on-board space that is already very limited in our increasingly smaller phones. This means that we can all look forward to having physically smaller devices as more and more functionality gets integrated into an SoC.

Furthermore, integration improves communication capacities between the different devices, keeping all circuit paths on-chip instead of on-board. Although electrons move very quickly, it still takes a finite amount of time for them to move from one place to another. So, shorter circuit paths will improve speeds and give us a better user experience.

In addition, integration also improves power consumption by having less circuitry overall. By squeezing everything onto a single chip and allowing all the different parts to communicate directly with each other, it reduces the amount of power needed for everything, which gives us better battery life.

Let us not forget that integration also means economies of scale and brings down the cost of manufacturing. Instead of manufacturing multiple devices using different technologies and processes, a fully integrated device could be manufactured at one time, using a single manufacturing process.

Therefore, SoCs are the way to smaller, faster and cheaper gadgets.

A typical SoC would contain one or more microprocessors with a number of other peripherals or devices all tightly integrated within it. These microprocessors do not even need to be of the same type or architecture, but are commonly so for convenience. Some makers couple big microprocessor cores with little cores in order to improve power efficiency.

It is not uncommon these days to find a modern smartphone with quad-core microprocessors and graphics processors integrated into the same SoC. This is where companies like ARM come in – to supply the microprocessors that power most mobile computing devices today.

A microprocessor is essentially the brains of all modern computing devices. But for a brain, it is actually pretty dumb. It is essentially an over-powered calculator, merely capable of performing billions of computations each second and moving bits of data around.

But through the modern sorcery of software, all this calculating and moving bits around actually give us our videos, music, games, the Internet and all other manner of modern entertainment, information and communication capabilities.

So, what about Intel?

Intel is definitely a major supplier of microprocessors, especially for the desktop, laptop and server markets. However, Intel microprocessors have traditionally been sold as standalone microprocessors and not fully integrated SoCs.

Only recently has Intel released a line of Atom-based SoC for use in smartphones and tablets, which has found use by several manufacturers. It is a late entry into the mobile phone market, which is the traditional stronghold of ARM microprocessors. This is the reason why most phones run on an ARM microprocessor.

So, how does all this change our lives?

Since nearly all mobile phone SoC use ARM microprocessors, their computational capabilities are fairly similar with all else being equal. However, the difference in the types of devices integrated into the SoC by different makers mean that different devices will have different features and capabilities.

However, unlike traditional PC markets, all this tight integration means that the consumer loses the option to mix-and-match capabilities. We cannot pick and choose different microprocessor, graphics, radio and other capabilities. Consumers are only left with using the set of capabilities that the device makers have decided to put in.

One does sometimes wonder if the world would be a different place if the smartphone market developed like the PC market – where one could assemble custom hardware and load it with any software they liked instead. Wouldn’t it be great if someone out there provided the tools for consumers to easily assemble their own SoC?

It seems that in our pursuit of having smaller, faster and cheaper devices, we may have sacrificed some personal freedom. If that does not matter, then it’s a non-issue.

But if it matters, supporting product ideas like Project Ara, Phonebloks and Neo900 would be a good start as it would tell device makers that consumers want more freedom. And to take things further, supporting open-source SoC efforts like ORPSoC, Milkymist and T3RAS would be even better.

Disclosure: Milkymist was originally powered by my AEMB2 microprocessor and T3RAS is the upcoming SoC from my company.