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It is worth noting that the UNDP actively promotes Linux in 3rd world countries.

That's right, the Sustainable Development Networking Programme (a UNDP Programme) has a category for Open Source News, and it's almost like reading /. :-)

I agree that a International Agency is needed in these disputes, but I imidiately get a little anxious when the agency that now exists has a "best viewed with" on their homepage. That's bad.

Also, if you check out their primer on electronic commerce, it has a bias towards protecting the rights of distributors:

If rightsholders are secure in their ability to sell and license their property over the Internet, they will exploit this market fully and make more and more valuable works available through this medium.

(This exactly BSA rhetoric.) They acknowledge that both the public's interest and the interests of rightholders must be taken into account:

[...] providing appropriate balance for the public interest, particularly education, research and access to information;

But then goes on in to describe the problems arising for rightholders in detail, but fail completely to even outline the problems faced by the public.

So, we need to educate this agency.

One of the most damning things of the ATL is the use of MicroSoft copyrighted advertizing material on the main page. The hand, arrow and info icons are taken straight from MicroSoft ad/PR dept. Also, none of the founding members have anything to loose from anti-trust activity from MicroSoft. Will Clarity Consulting business take a hit if Netscape Corp. goes under? Does CompTIA really care why MS-DOS made it on more machines than DR-DOS? Is there any reason CompUSA care if Lotus SmartSuite is still available? What percent of the 60 Plus Association members have use an alternative operating system daily anyways? And should we really look to e-mail spammer Staples.com to conduct an unbias survey?

But even more damning is the lack of need for the ATL. Couldn't most, if not all, of the ATL's main goals fit withen the charter of the Business Software Alliance or the Software & Information Industry Association? So, why aren't we seeing a survey from the BSA? Or at least a responce from the BSA? If more of us email the BSA about this then maybe we can get an unbias survey conducted.

One of the most damning things of the ATL is the use of MicroSoft copyrighted advertizing material on the main page. The hand, arrow and info icons are taken straight from MicroSoft ad/PR dept. Also, none of the founding members have anything to loose from anti-trust activity from MicroSoft. Will Clarity Consulting business take a hit if Netscape Corp. goes under? Does CompTIA really care why MS-DOS made it on more machines than DR-DOS? Is there any reason CompUSA care if Lotus SmartSuite is still available? What percent of the 60 Plus Association members have use an alternative operating system daily anyways? And should we really look to e-mail spammer Staples.com to conduct an unbias survey?

But even more damning is the lack of need for the ATL. Couldn't most, if not all, of the ATL's main goals fit withen the charter of the Business Software Alliance or the Software & Information Industry Association? So, why aren't we seeing a survey from the BSA? Or at least a responce from the BSA? If more of us email the BSA about this then maybe we can get an unbias survey conducted.

Yawn. Who cares about your problems. Who the hell do you think you are--Linus Torvalds or something? Chillout, asswipe. I'm sure your hack is just so cool that IBM is supposed to drop everything they are doing so that some crybaby hobbyist can play in the sandbox

No. I don't think it has anything to do with the "coolness" of my hack. I expect IBM to take redistributing software in a form that violates the license as being a serious problem because as a member of the Business Software Alliance Policy Council it is part of their stated mission to take such issues seriously.

But please feel free to explain your opinion in more detail. Is it your feeling that the Free Software Foundation wrote the requirements for redistribution of a statically linked work into the LGPL only for Linus Torvalds and others who achieve the same "coolness hack" level? Has Alan Cox be considered to have written a cool enough hacks to expect the LGPL to be honored? Has Richard Stallman? Has any of the glibc maintainers? Would you even recognize any of the names of the glibc maintainer's whos copyrighted works have been pirated through IBM's actions? Have you kept up with glibc modifications to rate different programmer's "coolness hack" level? Or can even an "asswipe" (like yourself) be able to expect International Business Machines to honor federal copyright law and either honor the licensing conditions of redistribution of software works or not redistribute it at all?

Based on what I have read of the LGPL, it doesn't bring up any of the "asswipe"/"coolness hack" certification that you suggest. The LGPL was written to provide all parties involved in a software product equal access to modifing the LGPL work. This is done by requiring at minium that a redistributor to provide the source code to the LGPL work and at least the object files for accomplishing relinking to modified versions of the LGPL work if the redistributor statically links against that LGPL work. International Business Machines has failed to do this for over a year and has failed to honor requests for the object files for over six weeks. Is this really the actions of a supporter of the Linux community as a whole and supporter of the open source licenses commonly associated with that community's work? If not, then exactly what does IBM's statements of commitment to Linux/open source mean? It seems reasonable to me to expect key companies that benfit from the Linux community works to choose more carefully what actions from their business partners they are willing to put up with. So far IBM's "commitment" to Linux has been fluff and the LGPL violation regarding ADSM v3r1 level 0.1 for Linux continues...

http://www.bsa.org/government/govhelp. html

"Today, we are declaring war on software piracy... At home or abroad, intellectual property must protected." (Vice President Al Gore, October 1, 1998)

http://www.gnu.org/philoso phy/words-to-avoid.html#Piracy

Publishers often refer to prohibited copying as ``piracy.'' In this way, they imply that illegal copying is ethically equivalent to attacking ships on the high seas, kidnaping and murdering the people on them.

If you don't believe that illegal copying is just like kidnaping and murder, you might prefer not to use the word ``piracy'' to describe it. Neutral terms such as ``prohibited copying'' or ``unauthorized copying'' are available for use instead. Some of us might even prefer to use a positive term such as ``sharing information with your neighbor.''