Authored by: jkrise on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 10:47 AM EST

By simply pointing to prior art to the patent office?



Or the only way is to wait for MS to sue someone and then show the prior art as

a defence? In any case, this proves the patent system in the US is completely

broken and in urgent need of an overhaul. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 10:50 AM EST

Guess I'm first or close to it. I have only one thing to

say.



"su" me.



The second thing ;-) is that since sudo has been in existance

for so long, there is no way the M$ patent can impact it.

Oh, for sure they can try, but they might as well patent

roads or the delivery of mail.



[ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Sunny Penguin on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 10:52 AM EST

Imagine if the patent application was treated as a court document and the patent

applier was sworn in under oath.

Could we then charge "Contempt of Court" for things like this?

The patent on sudo is a malicious lie, made by a monopoly with an extensive

history of false litigation and the backing of false litigation by pawn

companies.



I see this patent being sold to some SCO type scam.



---

EOD is a science of vague assumptions based on debatable data taken from

inconclusive experiments with instruments of problematic accuracy by persons of

questio [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Winter on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 10:53 AM EST

I always understood that you could patent everything that was not published in

the trade press nor has been patented before. And that is what the patent

examiner has to search.



If SUDO (gksudo and friends) has not been been presented in the trade press,

then MS does not have to know about it. Neither needs the USPTO



Remember that the USA has uphold patents on Basmati rice and Neem tree leaves

even though these had been in use for millenia in India.



The fact that they were know was never a problem in these cases.



Rob



---

Some say the sun rises in the east, some say it rises in the west; the truth

lies probably somewhere in between. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: ais523 on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 10:57 AM EST

This thread is for comments unrelated to the article. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: ais523 on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 10:58 AM EST

In case there's a mistake in the article. Please try to indicate the correction

in the title of your post. [ Reply to This | # ]



Wrong link to sudo home page - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 12:38 PM EST

Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 11:20 AM EST

I don't see where this would impact sudo.



The patent covers a specific version of a sudo application

that explicitly identifies users which have sufficient

rights to execute the task that the current user has no

rights to.



It's a more user-friendly version of sudo (which always

elevates to "root").



You can argue why making a task more user-friendly in an

obvious way (especially as there's no specificity whatsoever

in the claims as to how the "identification" of said

elevated users will be implemented) should (not) be

patentable, but at least it will not interfere with present

systems, correct?



__

magicmulder [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: designerfx on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 11:34 AM EST

I don't think disclosure is an excuse for why patents are good (see my comments

previous articles), but that was what the supremes said themselves.



I was trying to infer that it's not being fully disclosed, so if they are trying

to use that rationale as a reason *for* software patents, then their own reasons

don't even fit. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 11:37 AM EST

Or, at least, it will when Microsoft gets the patents written. :(



I notice in reading the patent (which I don't do often) that they are not

patenting the software, they're patenting the "media" that contains

the software. Is this common / relevant?



cpeterson, WINAL



[ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Steve Martin on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 11:43 AM EST

Oh, good grief! This concept goes back way past BSD, back to the mainframe days. (See, for example, the XDS Sigma 7 UTS Reference manual (1971), Appendix B, the listing for monitor error code 09, subcode 00: "The user privilege level was not high enough to allow issuing a direct device OPEN".) ---

"When I say something, I put my name next to it." -- Isaac Jaffe, "Sports Night" [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 11:44 AM EST

Perhaps the USPTO would like to apply for their own patent on stupidity. It would only be fitting as they seem to have cornered the market on that dubious commodity. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 11:58 AM EST

Why don't they go all out and patent micro code and RISC computers as well.

They were also innovations at the University of Buffalo.

Actually the academics have a word for this, its called plagiarism and the U of

B has a policy in regards to it. It will get you thrown out. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: complex_number on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 12:04 PM EST

Windows?



HeHe.



Seriously, I can't help see this as the next step in their grand plan to

eliminate Linux entirely. This is (IMHO) squarely targetted at Ubuntu as they

don't (OOTB) have a usable root account. Personally, sudo gets deleted on all my

Linux boxes right after installation. If I want to do stuff as root then I login

as root.



What's next?

Patent bash?







---



Ubuntu & 'apt-get' are not the answer to Life, The Universe & Everything which

is of course, "42"

[ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 12:35 PM EST

Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 12:57 PM EST

It may be a bad and dangerous patent, but it's not a patent on sudo, which has a

POSIX interface and not a GUI. There might be a problem for graphical dialogs

that authenticate a user to exercise root privileges, whether they use the sudo

mechanism or not. But tracing prior art on sudo itself is irrelevant. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: cxd on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 01:12 PM EST

I have the documents necessary for an ex parte re-examination of a patent

application. We can file this ourselves as a group. PJ if you would like to

contact me I would be glad to send you the forms and instruction sheet. I am

posting here because I think your spam filter is blocking my email.



cxd [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 01:20 PM EST

Obviously USPTO doesn't read Groklaw.

We tore this to shreds when the application went in :-( [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: ghopper on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 01:47 PM EST

This is business as usual for patents. I foresee the day when a creative lawyer

will sue the USPTO on behalf of all the programmers out there who have had their

inventions patented by other companies.



Don't say it can't happen. [ Reply to This | # ]



Software piracy - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 05:31 PM EST

Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 01:48 PM EST

As ironic as it sounds, every time you support microsoft when it gets sue over a

patent, you support patents on software..



Until these companies have to pay so much money for software patents that their

shareholders start objecting, you will only ever see laws around software

patents getting stronger. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 02:20 PM EST

"...earliest sudo reference in the patent database Microsoft told the USPTO

about is 1997..."



What year did they decide that software could be patented? If you are looking

for prior art, you don't look in the patent data base, unless you are trying to

game the system. You look in software publications such as Spectrum and

publications of teh Association of Computing Machines. The system is broken,

broken, broken!!! [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 02:30 PM EST

Their SUDO has a help icon and a GUI! That makes it unique!



And if that's not enough, they can graft 4 knowledge bases to it, just like in

that other patent! [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 02:37 PM EST

Any computer that presents the user with a login or user authentication prompt

before running the command line shell or GUI desktop fits the description of

this patent.



User tries to access the computer (shell, GUI, whatever), gets presented with a

prompt to supply credentials and is allowed or denied to run the shell or GUI

based on those credentials.



So, when was the first login prompt?? Multix or so? [ Reply to This | # ]



How about Login? - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, November 15 2009 @ 02:40 AM EST

Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 02:39 PM EST

Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 02:44 PM EST

Maybe someone can patent some of the basic DOS commands and then ask MS to pay

up. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 02:46 PM EST

"Etc. blah, blah. Dude. It's sudo. With a gui. Sudo for Dummies. That's

what it is."



Not exactly:



"...presenting a graphical user interface, the graphical user interface

having: multiple account regions, each account region identifying one of the

multiple accounts capable of permitting the task;..."



When I run Sudo, I have permissions to do things like

cd /

sudo rm -R *



Microsoft has a different security model. You would think that as

Administrator, Microsofts analogue for root, you would be able to do the same

thing. But Microsoft has such a convoluted security system with

"trusted" zones and so on, that ownership is not so clear. With

their dedication to digital restrictions management, that they needed a brand

new tool to be able to identify exactly which user can do what. "each

account region identifying one of the multiple accounts capable of permitting

the task" For example I'm willing to bet that there are some tasks that

can not be performed, unless you are remotely logged in from Microsoft's domain.

(Did you really think your machine was your own?)



This is a thing that would only have use on a Microsoft OS. So, if you are not

writing code to be run on a Microsoft OS, you probably don't have to worry about

it. And if you are writing code to run on a Microsoft OS, you have my deepest

sympathy. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Peter Baker on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 03:09 PM EST

Isn't there a way for going after the USPTO for causing harm

to the original authors by issueing a patent without the

search they're supposed to do?



At the rate they're making mistakes there should be justifiable cause for a

class action suit by now, and maybe

those that knowingly abuse the system despite prior art as

well.



Just musing about throwing a large handful of nuts into

those gears..

[ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: ThrPilgrim on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 03:13 PM EST

If Micosoft ever try to captalise on this Patent my I suggest the party receving

the letter from Microsofts lawers point them to the reply given by Private Eye

in Re: Arkell v Pressdram 1971



PS: If any one without knowledge of the case does look it up, be aware that it

contains strong language.



---

Beware of him who would deny you access to information for in his heart he

considers himself your master. [ Reply to This | # ]



Microsoft Patents Sudo?!! - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 12 2009 @ 04:34 PM EST

Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 03:19 PM EST

Is it me or does the "computer-readable media" strike a cord. I think that with the advent of OCR, virtually anything written on paper is "computer-readable media" which means that if I wrote a OCR to computer instructions conversion (a patent compiler) from reading the patent, the patent is itself patented. I thought that this was the realm of copyright in which case I would agree that anyone can write their own version of SUDO and have their copyright to it. I just don't see how "computer-readable media" ought to be relevant and why, for the sake of goodness, is the USPTO handing out patents to books. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Eeyore on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 03:25 PM EST

The Unix "su" command is the older equivalent of sudo. It was mentioned on page 174 of this 1979 Unix manual (and probably LONG before that).... [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: kattemann on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 03:33 PM EST

How about this gem, from the Technical Field - Background part of the document: But to elevate his or her rights to perform a task, the user will often need to find or remember an administrator account name. This may be disruptive; a user may need to call someone to figure out the name, find some scrap of paper somewhere on which the user wrote it down some time ago, and the like. You don't say. Security still isn't a concern, I see. Also, the user may need to type the name in. Typing a relatively simple account name may, on its own, be a disruption. But many account names are complex, having a mix of letters, numbers, symbols, and lower- and upper-case characters. These names may cause a further disruption because they may requite that the user type slowly and carefully. Thus, searching for and typing in an account name to elevate rights may disrupt the user's workflow on the computer, especially if the user needs to elevate his or her rights often throughout the day. Wow. The company I work for has tens of thousands of employees, yet generate 8-character user names based on initial and surname plus a number. Passwords, however, are required to have that sort of complexity. If they don't like work disruptions, let them fix their software so I never again have to wait TWO HOURS from turning on the PC until I can start working. Happened twice last month ... [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 03:44 PM EST

Part of the problem with examining software patents is that you can't just look

at a claim and say "that's stupid" or "that's obvious" - you

have to SHOW everything. So yes while Sudo has been around, this specific

implementation of sudo, with the graphical identifiers, etc. may not have been

done before.



When you're examining a patent, you have to find and show every nitty-gritty

little detail. We can use obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 to combine references,

but that doesn't help to reject something that hasn't been done before but is

nonetheless extremely stupid and/or obvious.



Unfortunately this means that patents can issue on more or less anything that's

'new'. Absent giving an Examiner the ability to make a judgment call that a

particular feature is stupid, obvious, or arbitrary, there is no way to put a

reasonable limit on what can be patented. Furthermore, even if we were allowed

to make such a judgment call, this would add a great deal of subjectivity to the

process. While it may result in less software being patented, it would make the

process of getting a patent even more of a joke than it is now. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: The Mad Hatter r on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 03:53 PM EST



PJ,



You stated in the article that this should show the USPTO that there is no value

in computer patents.



OK - here's a challenge. Tell me where the value is in any patent.



Now at this point I know you are going to say that you can read the patent to

learn how to build the invention. But if I'm an inventor, the last thing I'm

going to do is read a patent. If I do, it leaves me open to triple damages, at

least in the USA. So there's no value provided by disclosure. So what value is

there?





---

Wayne



http://crankyoldnutcase.blogspot.com/

[ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 04:26 PM EST

They list all these documents, that exist prior to the application date by

years, yet, they get a patent. Is it true anymore that you have to apply for the

patent within a year? I've seen nothing in this application that passes the

obviousness test. We have a tool that already exists to upping privileges to do

things, we have an existing system for presenting gui prompts to tasks

previously run from a command line.



How is adding a an old gui front end solution to an old command line function

non-obvious. Considering people have been adding gui front ends to console

preograms for decades?



Why is it there seems to be absolutely no organization of who reviews patents

related to computers. Should patents for computer software have like it's own

department within the PTO. Or at least train everyone on software. I sure hope

SCOTUS throws out all software patents, but I didn't get that warm and fuzzy

from the transcript.



If we must have software patents should we not at least get a PTO that knows

basic software history? Shouldn't there also be some kind of punishment for

companies that exclude pertinent prior art. There ought to be some serious

punishment for this.



Letting a company say they didn't know of the prior art should not be an excuse.

At least, not if the prior art is easy to find. I can certainly understand,

there will be cases of very obscure prior art. They obviously knew it was called

sudo in Linux and that Linux is a Unix like operating system. Therefore not

looking in Unix and not finding in Unix the equivalent prior art, using the same

name and going back even further than they mentioned, should be a felony crime.





There has to be some minimal measure of searching for prior art that one should

do, and if that level isn't reached, then there should be consequences. That

level should also be commensurate with the financial size of the company. That

is, a large company should have to incur an equivalent percentage of cost for

prior art search. This would help to balance the patent system, making it

comparatively as expensive for very large companies to innovate as it is for

small companies. A Sliding scale of prior art searching, with an established

minimum. With checks and balances to keep big companies from spinning off

research arms to do the dirty work of patents. So if some small company sells a

lot of patents to big companies, then they get their sliding scale jacked up

real high, even higher than an in-house research arm.



-- celtic_hackr [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 05:02 PM EST

Geez...even if Microsoft want to claim the GUI version

as "patentable", they need to talk to (at a minimum) the

folks over at Canonical. The very first version of Ubuntu

(4.10, released in October 2004) had a graphical sudo.



The USPTO make me sick. The US Supreme Court decision of

1989 that allowed this software-patentry nonsense makes me

sick (stupid, stupid decision). And if we allow software

patents in Europe, then we are equally stupid for it. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: globularity on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 05:10 PM EST

Interesting wording used in the patents, unless the legal definition of cause is

different to the regular one software instructs a computer it does not cause a

computer, whether or not the computer actually executes those instructions is

another matter. Letting lawyers get their hands on software is like wizards

performing chemistry or economists doing accounting.



---

Windows vista, a marriage between operating system and trojan horse. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 05:16 PM EST

Has anyone noticed that this may be an attempt at patenting the

implementation of Microsoft User Account Control? This is a similar

functionality

to sudo; however, there is no existing patent. There is only an existing GNU

license and much prior art and usage. Ergo, Microsoft should not be able to

proceed in asking for damages for prior use and continued use by prior

implementers of SUDO so long as the base remains the same; however, it does

open a portal of attack for future redevelopments of the linux kernel such as

Moblin, etc. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 05:19 PM EST

Arggh.



Isn't it also really just setuid, which WAS patented by Dennis Ritchie in 1972?



[ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 05:25 PM EST

Hello, I'm back again- me, the causal computer user with a working class

education. Not being a lawyer, I'm confused about all this patent stuff and

hoping somebody can tell me...if something like sudo can be patented, can new

elements that come out of academic atomic accelerators be patented? Can the way

the atoms were split be patented? Can an atomic accelerator, a combination and

collection of patented parts and subassemblies, be patented as a whole device?

Where is all this patent frenzy craziness going to lead and how far-fetched can

it get? A humble working stiff would like to know. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 06:04 PM EST

Wait: So we have prior art, right? DEFENDERS: SWITCH TO OFFENSE: They're using

"our" SUDO! :> [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 06:10 PM EST

Normally, I assume PJ has at least read the dcument .. but im guessing this time

she didn't.



Firstly I find the comment after the "history of sudo" .. about

"microsoft should have known that, I guess they didn't" odd .. because

they actually reference sudo in their patent.



Secondly, this patent is just so not about sudo, its about a graphical interface

for a start, sudo is command line. Its also about identifying and presenting

choices of suitably privileged user, sudo only pretends to be root ...and has no

mechanism for identifying which of a series fo user accounts could perform the

task .. so , I really don't get this "its just sudo" ..



they clearly cite the sudo documentation in the patent and this does soemting

quite quite different.



Thats said, software patents are still bad and wrong, lets hope re Bilski

despatches them all to the great bit bucket in the sky. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 06:12 PM EST

The claims quoted describe the program as providing a list

of user accounts that could be used to execute the

privledged task, as opposed to elevating the process to

superuser status. That's actually good thing, security

wise, because it helps to promote the user running that task

at the least-useable-privledge level for that task, instead

of automatic promotion to superuser status. Sudo and

the like don't do that.



I would like to call it an obvious or trivial modification

to sudo, but I have never thought of that particular

modification before, and I have never seen software that

does that yet (granted, my personal memory does not qualify

as an exhaustive search. Under the current patent regime, I

think those claims, at least by themselves qualify as a

novel, non-obvious improvement, and therefore patentable.



I hate to say it, but I don't think this patent can be assaulted on prior art.

On the other hand, it is a software

patent, which I think is the real problem. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: /Arthur on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 06:32 PM EST

priv is the same as the sudo command.



I have the habit of making note of the sources.

Back then you had to type everything from the magazine

and i found this on top of my source code

/*

* Priv Run a command as superuser

* By Ron Kuris, December 1988

* UnixWorld MAY 1989 Page 117

*/

So please don't tell me there are no published works on this subject. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 06:53 PM EST

You have no room to complain for the following reasons:



1.) The GNU/*NIX community knows MS is a patent troll.

2.) You know MS is out to get you.

3.) You have had tech out since 1979 that is open sourced, but not patented or

copyrighted.



Your argument sounds something like this:



1.) I live in a neighborhood filled with thieves.

2.) I saw some thieves casing my house.

3.) Hey, I will leave my front door open while I'm out, it will be great.

4.) Oh no, I've been robbed! How could this happen to me!



Here's the obvious question: Why hasn't someone in the GNU/Linux or Unix world

patented their stuff? Patent it, give it to a community trust of some sort, and

protect civilization from Microsoft. It doesn't take a genius. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 07:25 PM EST

I am a Patent Agent and I can tell you that it is NOT necessary for the

invention to be described in only the trade press. Even a conversation (that

can be documented) between two individuals can in some circumstances constitute

prior art. In any case sudo was certainly documented in some Unix manuals way,

way before MS documented what it "knew" about prior art.



There is also a requirement that the patentee swear that he/she has disclosed

all known prior art. To knowingly fail to do so is fraud on the Patent Office

and is a federal crime. But you have to show the patentee know about sudo and

failed to disclose it. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 07:33 PM EST

PolicyKit - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, November 13 2009 @ 02:16 AM EST PolicyKit - Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, November 14 2009 @ 06:43 AM EST

- Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, November 13 2009 @ 02:16 AM EST

Authored by: rhdunn on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 08:32 PM EST

ChangeLog for gksu references an initial version on 2002-02-18. On a quick check, I could not find out the earliest version of kdesu. Not to mention the obviousness of having functionality available on the command line and creating a GUI version of it (next it'll be on the web -- sorry, "in the cloud" -- or whatever technologies are currently in fashion these days). [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 08:54 PM EST

This may be a silly patent but we have to learn what a patent is before getting

outraged. For a patent to be infringed you must do everything in the claim.

That means not only have sudo, but the gui and the specific elements of the gui.

They talk about more than a normal gui. To infringe you have to have to show

the user what other users have the priveledge to do that you want to do and they

have to rank order them in some way using the characteristcs suggested in the

patent. There are more things you have to be doing all at once before you are

in any danger from this thing.



Rather than being a really dangerous one that affects all sorts of systems, I'm

surprised they wasted the money on the patent because it's really hard to write

something that they could go after -- and even after reading the claims it's not

clear why you'd bother to do what they are protecting. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 09:31 PM EST

Well, it's really sad that the USPTO allowed this, because there are existing

methods much more

similar to this patent than simple sudo. The most prominent is the

authorization framework in Mac

OS X, used by applications that rely on Desktop Services for authorization.

In a similar way, it can

prompt the session user to supply (or have supplied) the credentials of a user

who is a member of

another group, having elevated privileges.



However, there are some subtleties to this patent that make it kind of

unique. First off, it looks like

Microsoft is devising a way of presenting the session user with a list of

"other

eligible accounts"

based on some sort of proximity calculation to the session user. Perhaps

this would mean listing

local administrators first, above administrators defined in a directory

domain.



Who knows, really, because of the broad nature of software patents. They're

a perfect example of

inverse-inductive reasoning, going from the specific implementation to a

generally-worded "catch

all" patent. In some respects, I understand why the patents are written in



this way, but it's a short-

lived logic at best.



I know that we'll toss software patents one day, and innovation will be the

better for it. What's more,

it's really well-established that sudo predates this patent, so any

interpretation of the patent that

would include sudo's functions would be considered "prior art." So

this really

just boils down to

some subtleties in Microsoft's implementation, and that's all that it could

protect. Still, given the

expense of maintaining a patent like this, I'd think that Microsoft would be

better off funneling that

money into its own R&D efforts instead. [ Reply to This | # ]



Microsoft Patents Sudo?!! - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 12 2009 @ 03:26 PM EST

Authored by: Kevin Snodgrass on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 09:32 PM EST

Google? This is Microsoft, try bing! Bet you get different results there...



No, I'm not going to try it, I have useful things to do...

[ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 10:02 PM EST

could people please read up on sudo before they make a comment.



this patent is already done in sudo and gksudo.



there is nothing new about this patent and there is plenty of prior art.



even if this was only about a sudo gui that you can choose a user to run the

command as look no further than gksudo. has been around for a while now.



so please this is not unique and it is still all about sudo. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 10:33 PM EST

Seriously, is this only obvious to me?



The patent was applied for in 2005.



While Microsoft was working on Vista.



Which has UAC.



Which is exactly what is described in this patent. Hmm.



Yes, software patents suck, and this is definitely one they

should have rejected, but if you're trying to spin this into

some kind of Microsoft conspiracy theory, you're way off the

deep end. [ Reply to This | # ]



Why they did this - Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, November 14 2009 @ 04:19 PM EST

Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 10:59 PM EST

Whenever M$ sues anyone for violation of their patent, that person should sue

the USPTO for the damages. It would teach the USPTO to be a little bit more

careful in future. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: hAckz0r on Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 11:01 PM EST

There have been many implementations of SUDO.EXE on the Windows platform over the years, but Microsoft has always made this capability difficult. Other than Cygwin which I played with many years ago, some of the more recent links I can give are at ucalgary.ca © 2005-2008 Nathan Friess. All rights reserved. and huddledmasses.org and sourceforge.net 2007 and blueshiftlabs and suDown GPL to name just a few. It seems that the solution for the need of "Administrator privilege" was "invented" about the same time that Microsoft figured out just what a "user" was, or why you should even recognize one from another. ---

DRM - As a "solution", it solves the wrong problem; As a "technology" its only 'logically' infeasible. [ Reply to This | # ]



SUDO.exe - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 12 2009 @ 12:16 AM EST

Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 12 2009 @ 12:26 AM EST

From the patent front page:



"""

Other References



Andy Rathbone, "Windows XP for Dummies", 2001, Wiley Publishing Inc.,

pp.

62-64, 66, 106-107, 128 and 314. cited by examiner .

"""



This is kind of reflective of the depth of literature review that examiners

perform. [ Reply to This | # ]



Other References - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 12 2009 @ 06:16 AM EST

Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 12 2009 @ 12:31 AM EST

Full Disclosure: I am an inventor on 5 issued US patents and many additional

filings. I don't work for Microsoft. I run FreeBSD at work.



[1] This Microsoft Patent fully discloses sudo(1) in the reference section thus



I question whether the poster of the story (and most of the replies) has any

real clue at all about how to read patents in general (much less software

patents).



[2] sudo(1) takes a command line argument of a command to execute after

gaining privs; the Microsoft claim 1 has a limitation that explicitly states

that the command was attempted and failed before (effectively doing the

steps of sudo).



[3] Better prior art to cite against this patent: The FreeBSD ports system when



used "portupgrade -s". In this mode, sudo is executed for commands

that fail under the user privs that make(1) was run.



I guess "Microsoft Patents Sudo?!!" is a better title to inflame linux

users than

"Microsoft Patents something that, in their option, enhances sudo".



Groklaw, we expect better analysis from you.



Regards,

Anonymous [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 12 2009 @ 12:33 AM EST

They actually have more there than sudo with a gui. Their innovation is to allow users (or attackers) to see who has the privilege they need. Their innovation is an invitation to social engineering attacks as I mentioned here. Perhaps this would be a quick and easy to invalidate it, since the only innovation is to make it less secure? [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 12 2009 @ 12:56 AM EST

just how many trolls and M$ shills have come out of the woodwork on this one.

And they're so easy to spot, but I'm not sure if that's because they're a lower

caliber than usual or if I'm just getting better at spotting them.



(Hint: If you think I might be talking about you, I probably am.) [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 12 2009 @ 02:09 AM EST

$ patent sudo

-bash: patent: command not found

$ sudo patent sudo

$ [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 12 2009 @ 02:33 AM EST

Have you seen this?

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&am

p;u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=6&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&am

p;d=PTXT&s1=6,775,781&OS=6,775,781&RS=6,775,781

A very old patent on sudo. Heise (a German publisher) announced it, too:

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Microsoft-bekommt-sudo-Patent-zugeteilt-1

01653.html



Don't get the difference in there... [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 12 2009 @ 04:26 AM EST

Can somebody please tell me how a company can patent something that has been in

the public domain for 30 years? Am I missing something, here? [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 12 2009 @ 04:30 AM EST

Sudo is a command line-tool, but can be used through GUI too like it's been

stated regarding gksu/kdesu. sudo isn't all tied to elevate privilege up to

root, from "man sudo" :



"sudo allows a permitted user to execute a command as the superuser or

another user"



I use this feature everyday though the sudoers file.



Then there is Policykit, it has a GUI, and provides highly fine grained

privilege elevation.



http://hal.freedesktop.org/docs/PolicyKit/



Interestingly the documentation starts with a "History and prior art"

section.



Microsoft is evil. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 12 2009 @ 05:30 AM EST

If you're familiar with the sudoers mechanism (see the man page for sudoers), and read the patent, what Microsoft describes is not quite as good as sudo. The intent is the same, but the Microsoft mechanism is messier. Especially, administration of the scheme is not as well thought out. There are references to the sudoers documentation in the patent, and they certainly constitute prior art that should have invalidated the patent. We can only assume that the patent examiner either didn't read them or didn't understand them. The text of the patent does not seem to discuss them, which surprised me, because patents normally include a section describing the "prior art". [ Reply to This | # ]



Haven't you heard? - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 12 2009 @ 04:20 PM EST

Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 12 2009 @ 06:46 AM EST

Authored by: sciamiko on Thursday, November 12 2009 @ 07:09 AM EST

Reading through the comments, it occurs to me that the difference in views is almost entirely due to the misunderstanding on the part of the proponents for this patent of how software is envisaged by the writer of it. It's all about abstraction, just as PoIR has eloquently described. When a developer is considering how to solve a problem, he is thinking in very abstract terms, which he then maps onto whatever the available material is under the constraints the task places on him. Whether the interface is command line, GUI, keyboard, or mouse, is largely irrelevant to the solution technique he will adopt - that is just trivia to be added in to finish the job off (but trivia that may take a long time to implement and debug, though). In a similar manner, whether it will be written in Lisp, C++, or Python is akin to selecting the tools to use. An analogy might be with a cabinetmaker asked to make a chair. He will consider the wood available (equivalent to the OS), and any flaws in it (other environmental constraints), and design the joints appropriately (choosing the algorithm); he will use the appropriate tools (selecting the language), and he will supply upholstery according to the users requirements (putting on a GUI, or whatever). But to the joiner, it is the same job in abstraction - making a chair - and that is exactly the way a programmer looks at a problem. That's why we see these patents as stupid and obvious. The task here is to allow a user to change their privileges, not the exact details of how its done. s. ---



The road to wisdom? -- Well, it's plain and simple to express:

Err and err and err again but less and less and less.

(Piet Hein, Grooks) [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 12 2009 @ 07:39 AM EST

Even if you can sudo to another user than root, it still

requires you to tell sudo which user you want to elevate to.



The patent covers a method which automatically (!) suggests

users to elevate to.



It neither covers plain sudo (where you explicitly give the

user to elevate to) nor versions where you put a list of

candidates into a file.



So please stop pounding on my oversight that sudo isn't

limited to root elevation and get to the point I'm trying to

actually make. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 12 2009 @ 07:44 AM EST

Also check this, back on 2004:

"Administrative security systems and methods"

http://tinyurl.com/36mlpv



Seems that have the same meaning.



TaQ [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 12 2009 @ 09:50 AM EST

If this were hardware my understanding is that if you add something to, or

change something about something that already exists, your patent would only

apply to the part that you changed. Since Microsoft brilliantly added a GUI to

sudo, and since that took so much ingenuity, and must have taken a significant

financial commitment to achieve, the patent is surely warranted.

I know that if I financed the thousands of man hours which must have been

involved in even just the planning stage required to achieve a monumental leap

forward such as this, I would be wanting to protect my investment too.

[ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 12 2009 @ 11:06 AM EST

In the old days, circa 1989-1992, there was a Convex command called "op". Convex Computer Corporation had a BSD version of UNIX called Convex UNIX, later called ConvexOS. The good thing about "op", compared to sudo, was that each user could be given extremely granular elevated system rights; for example, a user could be allowed to run only a specific command or commands as root, and only with specific command line arguments in a certain order. There is apparently a GNU/Linux version of op, but this was all I could find in a quick Google search: http://linux.die.net/man/1/op [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Hop on Thursday, November 12 2009 @ 11:13 AM EST

Microsoft just plays the patent game like everyone else. It goes something like

this.



You patent everything you do. Don't even bother with a prior art search. At

best, you do a superficial search for prior art. The USPTO rubber stamps

approval of the application. They don't bother with prior art either because

they figure that if there is prior art and someone cares, it will eventually be

settled in court. They also don't care because they are fighting a losing battle

on trying to process a mountain of new patents from those abusing the patent

system, like Microsoft. The huge backlog of patents was created because the

USPTO became lax with what they allowed through in the first place.



Unfortunately it creates a system where only deep pockets can defend or get

patents revoked. Few can afford the money to fight on either side of a patent

dispute so deep pockets almost always win. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 12 2009 @ 11:20 AM EST

Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 12 2009 @ 12:34 PM EST

By patenting this, they protect THEMSELVES from being sued for

patent violation, and also reserve the patentable material;

thus protecting anyone else from being sued unless THEY do the

suing. In the past, Microsoft has never sued anyone for

anything but direct infringement. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 12 2009 @ 01:23 PM EST

What if the patent office were to allow all of us to contribute prior art information before they approved patents like this?? Crows Source the Patent Approval Process [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 12 2009 @ 01:27 PM EST

For what it's worth, here's Todd Miller's (current sudo maintainer) response to

this news as of this morning. Link to the sudo-users's mailing list archive:



http://www.sudo.ws/pipermail/sudo-users/2009-November/004228.html



Apologies for the double post.

[ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: egan on Thursday, November 12 2009 @ 01:34 PM EST

Did you get my email, PJ?



(Please delete after reading.)



[ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 12 2009 @ 01:46 PM EST

if you're bored, consider filing an ex parte reexam:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reexamination



http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/documents/2200.htm



an ex parte reexam allows members of the public to submit arguments and prior

art references indicating why the issued patent is invalid. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 12 2009 @ 02:11 PM EST

I don't know why everyone beats up on Microsoft. They make great software and

very reliable servers. Their products are easy to use and based on industry

standards. [ Reply to This | # ]



Oh, humor... - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 12 2009 @ 02:53 PM EST

- Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 12 2009 @ 02:53 PM EST LOL.... n/t - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 12 2009 @ 03:41 PM EST

Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 12 2009 @ 03:42 PM EST

I think you miss the entire point! Just patent the process of patenting and you

own the universe! No, wait? Is there prior art? [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 12 2009 @ 04:16 PM EST

because so many of the In Re Bilski amicus briefs in Bilski warned of financial devastation and decreased innovation if the US Supreme Court limits what is patentable, I wanted to highlight a research study that seems to demonstrate the opposite. There are several studies by economists that question the value of patents. For example, an article in the Economist (free registration required to read it) points out: THE DIRTY little secret about American patents is that they are too easy to file, too easy to defend, and too easy to use for nobbling legitimate competition. The patents exploited last year to extract $612m from Research in Motion, the maker of the BlackBerry e-mail gizmo, would have barely passed muster in another country. Nor would Vonage, the internet-telephony pioneer, have had to cough up $58m recently for infringing three unbelievably broad patents if they had been filed in Europe or Japan instead of America.

Patent law exists to encourage inventors by granting a monopoly for a limited period (now 20 years) in exchange for publishing their work so others can see how it affects their own innovations. Implicit in the deal is a trade-off between private incentive and public good.

Of late, the balance in America has been tipped too much in the patent-holders favour. In the process, American consumers have paid dearly through their loss of choice. The countrys competitiveness has also suffered,... [ Reply to This | # ]



Sudo patent - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 12 2009 @ 04:45 PM EST

Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 12 2009 @ 05:22 PM EST

Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 12 2009 @ 09:59 PM EST

You are barking at the wrong tree. Bad mouth the seller of Sudo for selling to

Microsoft. Not mad mouth Microsoft because they had a brain to buy the patent to

kill off the competition or make more money. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: argee on Thursday, November 12 2009 @ 10:38 PM EST

Folks, its a brand-new program because



IT RUNS ON WINDOWS !!!!!



True innovation at work.



$ sudo su-

# vomit

Microsoft Corporation (tm)

#



---

--

argee [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, November 13 2009 @ 02:56 AM EST

By patenting every little step they take it makes it harder for others to

follow. Not that FOSS folk want to follow MS, but the software can evolve in the

same direction. By littering the playing field with booby traps and land mines

Microsoft is able to discourage others from developing software in competing

areas.



The spirit of the patent system is to provide some security for those

who invest money and take risks innovating. This isnt an invention; this is

taking the two well known concepts of user level elevation, and graphical

interfaces, and combining them. Can two pre existing inventions when combined in

a common way, however in a situation in which it has not been applied before,

claim to have invented something novel?



Software, like books is served well by

the copyright system. Instructions are written and the computer carries them

out. A traditional author writes instructions in a technical manual and a person

carries them out. Does the fact that I read ORiellys DNS and BIND turn me

into a special purpose human - as arguments have suggested software does to

computers in the Bilski case? We all know I cant patent my moms recipe for

orange sponge muffins, even if for a short while the instructions do turn me

into a special purpose sponge muffin factory (of the highest calibre).

[ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, November 13 2009 @ 07:24 AM EST

Perhaps the USPTO are themselves victims of MS :) [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, November 13 2009 @ 10:17 AM EST

Another attempt by microsoft to steal an idea. Remeber how they began...

Hopefully our supreme courts will examine the facts and also I believe that the

patent should be revoked. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, November 13 2009 @ 01:52 PM EST

[bsmith@uspto bin] $ chown microsoft:microsoft sudo

chown: changing ownership of 'sudo': Operation not permitted [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, November 13 2009 @ 05:48 PM EST

I'm not an attorney, and I'm not used to stretching language in bizarre

twists. However, reading that patent, I see a particular configuration

described. In particular - the opening phrase, "computer-readable

media".



To me, I'm basically reading this as...a USB key. So, normally a user

can't perform some task - but upon inserting this special media the user

either performs the task or sees a GUI prompt.



However, this also reads like a smart card reader, finger print reader, or

other accessories for user validation.



While it can certainly be twisted in other ways - my view is this is far

less a battle for GNU sudo than it is for any of the hardware

authentication manufacturers. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, November 14 2009 @ 10:10 PM EST

To begain, I do think software patents should be stopped, and hope the court does that, additionally there may be solid prior art on this, but sudo (or even su) are not it. that said let's figure out what all this gobblygook actually says! The invention claimed is: 1. One or more computer-readable media having computer-readable instructions therein that, when executed by a computing device, It has to be a program on disk, tape, etc. cause the computing device to present a user interface in response to a task being prohibited based on a user's current account not having a right to permit the task, This is important! "In response to a task being prohibited" that means it ONLY presents the interface when you try to preform the action which is above your privilage level. sudo does not make that distinction. Also this does it automaticly, I have to preemptively think to use sudo. "rm /etc/passwd" does not automaticly activate sudo for me (it would for somthing which violates this patant). the user interface comprising: information indicating the task and an entity that attempted the task; a selectable help graphic wherein responsive to receiving selection of the selectable help graphic, It has a GUI with help. ho-hum. not really important. This alone would not be obvious. the computer-readable instructions further cause the computing device to present the information; identifiers, each of the identifiers identifying other accounts having a right to permit the task, sudo does NOT do this, identifing the users with permission to preform a task and providing that infomration to an attacker seems to be a requirement of this patent. I have no idea why they would do that, but maybe I should thank them for preventing anyone else from trying something so silly! wherein the identifiers presented are based on criteria comprising: frequency of use; association with the user; and indication of sufficient but not unlimited rights; Generally sudo is used to change to the super-user, although other accounts can be used. Frankly this really looks alot more like Solaris' Role-Based Access Controls then Linux's security model. one of the identifiers identifies a higher-rights account having a right to permit the task, wherein the one of the identifiers comprises: a graphic identifying the higher-rights accounts associated with the user; and a name of the higher-rights account; So it has a selector box for users, this has been done in some configurations of GDM, but I haven't seen it in a privalage escalation dialog, but because of the usage for logins, I wouldn't consider this "novel." an authenticator region capable of receiving, from the user, an authenticator usable to authenticate the higher-rights account having the right to permit the task, wherein: the authenticator comprises a password, and the authenticator region comprises a data-entry field configured to receive the password. OK, so we have a password box, nothing novel there. 2. One or more computer-readable media having computer-readable instructions therein that, when executed by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform acts comprising: determining multiple accounts capable of permitting a task not permitted by an account of a current user wherein the determining is based on criteria comprising: frequency of use; association with the current user; and indication of sufficient but not unlimited rights; receiving indicators for the multiple accounts capable of permitting the task; presenting a graphical user interface, the graphical user interface having: multiple account regions, each account region identifying one of the multiple accounts capable of permitting the task; an authenticator region capable of receiving an authenticator for one of the multiple accounts capable of permitting the task; receiving, through the graphical user interface, the authenticator for one of the multiple accounts capable of permitting the task; and responsive to receiving the authenticator for one of the accounts capable of permitting the task, packaging, into a computer-readable package, the received authenticator and the account capable of permitting the task associated with the authenticator, the package effective to enable authentication of the account capable of permitting the task. AFAICT this just says "the above program has to run the requested commands with the choosen privilages." They seem to be quite careful to have the same limitations on what it applies to though. (again important) So because it is in responce to an attempt to use a restricted privilage, rather then used by the user in anticipation of needing elevated privilages, and it identifies all users with elevated privilages, I can only conclude that it is differnt enough from sudo that sudo is not grounds for it being denied (although there may be other things which are). Oninoshiko. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, November 14 2009 @ 10:25 PM EST

I keep saying this again and again, but apparently it bears repeating:



Intellectual Property = slavery of the mind



Now, if you don't mind the thought of being born into a world of the mentally

enslaved then feel free to ignore this. I'm obviously just an open-minded freak

who should be labeled "insane" and ignored.



If you live by and approve of this dishonest way of thinking, don't be surprised

when you are severely punished for it. [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: kawabago on Sunday, November 15 2009 @ 04:15 AM EST

The patent is on a graphical system that provides a list of identities that have

the needed permissions. In other words, Microsoft has patented giving an

attacker a list of excellent targets.



Yeah, I'm gonna license that technology!

[ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, November 15 2009 @ 07:57 PM EST

I mean, can we research the histories of the "inventors"

and if it is patently (sorry) obvious, they must have known

of sudo, can we not charge them with attempting to obtain

money under false pretences? Or something? Do we have to

wait for the inevitable patent war spat? [ Reply to This | # ]



Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, November 16 2009 @ 09:56 AM EST