1. You plug in a new card/printer/USB device
2. The computer’s operating system, OS, sees the new device and sends a Friendly Utility Query, or FUQ.
3. The new device responds with a Reply to Your Friendly Message or RYFM, which reveals the nature of the device and it’s specific capabilities.
4. Now the OS sends a Polite Request for OS specific Driver, or PROD.
5. The Device responds by transmitting providing a basic driver and a URL where the OS can download the latest driver or patch.
6. The Operating System installs the generic driver, getting things running, and can then download the latest and greatest driver.

Now, I understand this will cost a little money, but Flash RAM is pretty cheap. The hard part will be getting some industry group to put the standard together and get companies to agree to it. Still, isn’t it about time? This idea originally occurred to me years ago. I’m really surprised it hasn’t been done already.

Read on for more …

An interface is the way one system talks to another. Right now, patents on interfaces are used to create monopolies that really have no benefit for society. Patents are intended to reward innovation that contributes to society in some way, not just to make people rich.

How about some examples? Printer ink cartridges have patented interfaces in order to block competitors from making replacement cartridges. This allows the printer manufacturer to charge exhorbitent prices for printer ink and sell the actual printer hardware at a loss, turning it into a throw-away product that clutters our landfills. These consumer printers aren’t meant to be repaired. If something goes wrong they are thrown away. In a world that needs to rapidly reduce it’s carbon footprint, we need to rethink the idea of what should be disposable and what shouldn’t be.

How about music file formats? Apple uses patents on iTunes to exclude others from the music business, then they produce iPod players that are more expensive than competitors devices. The ipods also have batteries that can’t be replaced. When they go bad, you have to throw it away and buy a new one. Many people disposing of their ipods won’t even think about the fact that the batteries have cadmium, a dangerous pollutant. So rather than tossing the ipod into a battery recycling bin at the local Best Buy (Kudos for Best Buy on providing those.) they toss the iPod into the trash.

Microsoft, for year, blocked competitors from creating products that could compete with Word and the rest of the Office suite, by using proprietary file formats. Converting from Word to any other file format and back again has been problematic until very recently. What I find astonishing is that it has taken so long for companies and governments around the world to realize that depending on a single vendor for the software they need to conduct day to day business is incredibly foolish. I applaud Massecheusetts for paving the way towards rationality by adopting a file format which really is free and open, Open Document Format.

If we abolished all patents for interfaces, life would go on. Perhaps, instead of ripping people off for ink cartridges, the printer manufacturers might build printers that are robust and easy to repair. Instead of depending on proprietary document formats to force companies to upgrade to the latest version of their software, Microsoft might be forced to actually provide compelling new functionality.

There’s another benefit, too. If all interfaces were free to use, I suspect it would be easier to develop standards and get people to adopt them. This would reduce the cost to develop many products. We could spend less time reinventing the wheel, and more time working on that fusion power plant we need.

A world without interface and file format patents would also be one in which it would be far easier to build and maintain open source software. I’d be able to get open source drivers for my nVidia graphics card, or open source drivers for the broadcomm wireless chipset used in my laptop. That would make it a lot easier for me to use Linux full time.

We need to rethink things. It bears repeating. Over the next few decades, we’ll have to wean ourselves off of oil and other fossil fuels. We’ll have to start paying the full cost of products, including the cost of energy and the cost to clean up the environmental damage done while producing those products. We can’t continue to live like teenagers, tossing our dirty laundry on the floor and hoping Mother Nature will clean it up for us.

We can do better than we have done.

Fortunately for Microsoft, but not so fortunately for me, the people who write the games I love to play don’t write them to run on Linux. They write them to run on Windows. So, while I’d love to use Linux as my normal desktop operating system, I’ve been reluctant to make the leap.

An announcement on June 18, 2008, brought the day of my emancipation from Windows a little bit closer.

You can read about it on SourceForge News – WINE 1.0 Announcement . WINE (WINE Is Not an Emulator) 1.0 has been released. This is a project that has been working hard to provide a stable working Windows API (Application Programming Interface) on Linux, which would allow you to run just about any Windows program on any Linux operating system.

“Hah!’, you say, “but that is only 1.0, how can I trust it? It’s barely a baby!”

But that’s not true. The makers of WINE long ago decided they wouldn’t release a 1.0 version until they had something rock solid. It has taken them fifteen years of beta testing and ongoing development to get there. While it’s still not 100% perfect, there are thousands of Windows programs that now run successfully on Linux, courtesy of WINE. You can check this list, at the WINE Application Database Headquarters. They rank programs by how much configuration you have to do to get them to work cleanly. There are over ten thousand applications listed in this database, so you can probably find yours.

One of the ones I care most about, Dungeons and Dragons Online, is rated Platinum. Lord of The Rings Online, my other MMO addiction, has some issues with the launcher, but there are people outside of Turbine (the company that built LOTRO) are working on. Since games, and in particular MMO games are extremely fussy, it’s likely whatever business application you want will work just fine.

Linux now looks a lot more like Windows than you might expect. You’ll even find that many of the eye-candy features of Vista are readily available on Linux, without the other problems.

Still, Linux is not yet the best choice for those who don’t like to have a bit of a learning adventure, you’d be surprised at how similar it looks to the OS you’ve been using, and all the things that it can do. (It’s pretty cool to install an OS that already has the word processing, spreadsheet, accounting, email, web browsers, drawing packages, and almost anything else you can name, already set up and ready to go.)

Oh, if you are interested in trying out Linux, you can download and burn a CD for a Live installation of most of the various flavors. I’d suggest starting with Ubuntu, which you can find at www.ubuntu.org. Once you’ve downloaded the .iso file, you can use your CD burning software to create a CD. If you boot up with that CD, you’ll be running Linux, but it won’t alter anything on your computer, without your permission. (That’s kind of nice, huh?) If you decide you like it, you can install it. There’s lots of good information on how to do that and lots of friendly Linux users that are ready to help you, all over the Internet. Maybe it’s time for you to get away from Windows, too.