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Getting the windows API onto other machines seems to have once been a core part of Microsoft's anti-competition plan (go down to where WLM is mentioned). I'm not certain if this really removes control of the API from Microsoft. Possibly Google should have worked to move make the Gimp interface less confusing.

As PJ pointed out over on Groklaw, MS are giving a "Promise" not to sue but this is very very far from a license. Careful analysis suggests that any GPL'd software using these binaries could easily fall foul of the fury of MS lawyers.

It doesn't take much to be better than MySQL and PHP. What about PostgreSQL and the various Python frameworks, like Pylons, Django, TurboGears, or even something heavy like Zope?

Oh, and what about freedom to run my business without interference? With free software, I don't have to trust that Microsoft doesn't really see me as a pawn.

Microsoft: Call me back once you've had a clean record for a decade. Until then, bugger off.

Developers are pawns ... if they can't or won't help [Microsoft], Screw `em! Help their competitors instead.

Groklaw has all relevant info related to SCO lawsuit. http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080214125705140

Meanwhile, this is the funniest comment I've seen so far, from Slashdot

I would think that whatever subsequent cases happen, judges and defense will be informed by this case.

I think this is probably the most important point you make with regard to future lawsuits.

The courts in the SCO cases have given SCO every opportunity to produce evidence to back their case. SCO has spent millions trying to find that evidence and by the time they realized it did not exist they had already dug themselves in way too deep and could not back out.

Also, as a result of the SCO cases, the BSD lawsuit agreement was brought out in to the public. What is interesting here is the amount of Unix code that is now licensed under a BSD license. It is my understanding that BSD licensed code can be included in the Linux kernel and released under the GPLv2 along with the rest of the Linux kernel.

Being that there is no Unix code illegally included in Linux, it would seem this avenue of attack is no longer open (or at minimum, not feasible). What worries me more is the next logical vector of attack, patents. I agree with a statement you made earlier, "I think Darl was just a front, as Ransom Love was for Caldera. Ralph Yarro was the real boss of both. I guess he's out too (not sure), but IMO the new investor is pursuing the same program, and Microsoft is still behind it.".

Microsoft themselves could never sue a Linux company directly for a couple of reasons. First of all MS does not need the bad publicity it would bring. They currently have the perfect scapegoat, why not continue using it? Secondly, Microsoft has anti-trust issues to concern themselves with that their scapegoat does not have.

The only solace that I find in the fact that the next war will be based around patents is that the courts have become better educated in technology and that Linux has been virtually exonerated of any copyright issues. Quite frankly, patents scare me.

Here is the article: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080214125705140 After a lot of searching, the friends/money trail lead to a pig hiding in the corn field. I'm sure that his retirement from M$ will act as a poor excuse this time.

Assuming all of this stuff is approved by the bankruptcy courts for starters.

The headlines and article contents are not 100% accurate. After reading the MOU it turns out that they are only paying $5 million, not 100.

The other $95 million is a line of credit from which they can borrow at a whopping 17% interest rate.

I could be wrong but this looks more like a pay off for the perps and a privatization veil to cover their tracks once they pay off the coming judgments using the line of credit and then allow the entire scam to vanish into vapors.

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080214125705140

Can't believe they forgot the Groklaw link!

SNCP has developed a business plan for SCO that includes unveiling new product lines aimed at global customers. This reorganization plan will also enable the company to see SCO's legal claims through to their full conclusion.

And no, "Space this like Word 95" does not require an extension.

If you're going to call BS on my statements I'd like to direct your attention to this page, in particular to the autoSpaceLikeWord95 element (which can be found on pages 1378-1379 of the Draft 4 for OOXML if you really like reading 6,000 page document format specs). http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=2007011720521698

Then you reveal that you actually don't know of features that ODF doesn't support that Microsoft "requires" but you have "friends" who you trust who tell you what to think. It's always easier to argue your case when you actually do your own primary research and don't rely on hearsay. The rumour mill is active enough without people posting allegations without facts. Oh damn - I've just realised I'm posting this on Slashdot...

Cheers,
Toby Haynes

P.S. WAG - Wild Assed Guess, most likely. Just a WAG you know ...!

Evidently J2/JFax was suing Protus, which also threatened Hylafax the last couple-few years. But I've just been advised elsewhere in this thread that that specific suit has been dismissed. I'm not sure whether Hylafax is in the clear. But if not, it should be cheaper and easier now for the EFF to finally kill that last major obstacle to FOSS voice apps.

This bias however has nothing whatsoever to do with:

Actually, it does. Take the latest squabble over Trend Micro's patent infringement suit against Barracuda. In that article, PJ writes "And Trend Micro has accused ClamAV of infringing a patent it owns..." That simply is not true. It's obvious to anyone that's actually read the documents that it isn't true, but PJ wrote it anyway. I'm sure PJ read the documents, so...

This in an interesting piece of communication. The author has recently taken an interest in the BSA, including this recent article that promotes their Fear Uncertainty and Doubt message.

Quoted in the fine article are a director of enforcement for the BSA and as counterpoint noted analyst Laura DiDio. Ms. DiDio was originally famous for her role promoting the Amityville Horror hoax. These days she is perhaps better known for her astonishing (and curiously persistent) analysis of the SCO debacle in which she promoted SCO's position in front of the press and wound up a creditor in their bankruptcy(pdf) for her trouble. Her employer is alternately given as Yankee Group and G2 Computer Intelligence.

One can only wonder whether Erika Chikowski bothered to check her sources or if this is a case of envelope journalism.

I read all the way through the article. I want my five minutes back.

If you're going to trudge through it at least skip the ads and vote it down.

In 2002 scandal broke out when it was found that a European Commission proposal on software patents was actually written by a BSA official, as discovered by whistleblowers who found evidence in the Microsoft.

And this would be a worthwhile part of the article if she hadn't omitted the final "Word document".

This in an interesting piece of communication. The author has recently taken an interest in the BSA, including this recent article that promotes their Fear Uncertainty and Doubt message.

Quoted in the fine article are a director of enforcement for the BSA and as counterpoint noted analyst Laura DiDio. Ms. DiDio was originally famous for her role promoting the Amityville Horror hoax. These days she is perhaps better known for her astonishing (and curiously persistent) analysis of the SCO debacle in which she promoted SCO's position in front of the press and wound up a creditor in their bankruptcy(pdf) for her trouble. Her employer is alternately given as Yankee Group and G2 Computer Intelligence.

One can only wonder whether Erika Chikowski bothered to check her sources or if this is a case of envelope journalism.

I read all the way through the article. I want my five minutes back.

If you're going to trudge through it at least skip the ads and vote it down.

In 2002 scandal broke out when it was found that a European Commission proposal on software patents was actually written by a BSA official, as discovered by whistleblowers who found evidence in the Microsoft.

And this would be a worthwhile part of the article if she hadn't omitted the final "Word document".

This in an interesting piece of communication. The author has recently taken an interest in the BSA, including this recent article that promotes their Fear Uncertainty and Doubt message.

Quoted in the fine article are a director of enforcement for the BSA and as counterpoint noted analyst Laura DiDio. Ms. DiDio was originally famous for her role promoting the Amityville Horror hoax. These days she is perhaps better known for her astonishing (and curiously persistent) analysis of the SCO debacle in which she promoted SCO's position in front of the press and wound up a creditor in their bankruptcy(pdf) for her trouble. Her employer is alternately given as Yankee Group and G2 Computer Intelligence.

One can only wonder whether Erika Chikowski bothered to check her sources or if this is a case of envelope journalism.

I read all the way through the article. I want my five minutes back.

If you're going to trudge through it at least skip the ads and vote it down.

In 2002 scandal broke out when it was found that a European Commission proposal on software patents was actually written by a BSA official, as discovered by whistleblowers who found evidence in the Microsoft.

And this would be a worthwhile part of the article if she hadn't omitted the final "Word document".

Seriously, the problem might be you assuming I'm a 10yr old MS Faniboi when I'm actually an OS engineer/theorist and the chances are good that you are using an OS running code or modified code I wrote up to 25 years ago.

I think my current guess is closer to the truth than that. If what you say is true, I've read your work. There was some really elegant work in there. Continuing on the "if it's true" theme: you are in a position to know that in 1992 Windows NT 3.5 achieved usability and multitasking parity with the System V which had been released only nine years prior. Three notable differences being NT's impossibly complex security model, Unix's much higher price and the unambiguity of the licensing.

After Microsoft decided to recruit Unix and VMS wizards to emulate these platforms for their New Technology kernel, but two years before the release of NT 3.5 (about the same time they were knifing their IBM lovechild OS/2), USL sued BSDi and eventually the Regents of the University of California. You know all this -- I'm going over it for the crowd that isn't even going to go back to a thread this old. Just after the release of NT3.5 the Regents settled, agreeing to be paid a huge amount of money and being allowed to continue doing what they had always done with Unix. The only catch was that the terms of the settlement would remain secret essentially clouding ownership of Unix in a way that is eerily similar to many Microsoft tactics since then including the SCO case that brought light to this dark bit of history. If it had not been for this disastrous settlement I think by now there would be neither Windows nor Linux.

I'll bet playing on BSD back before the lawyers started peeing in the pool was a lot of fun -- afterward, not so much. I have wondered for many years if Microsoft pulled a BayStar here long before we had a name to stick to the tactic. You know the rest: Ransom Love's hubris drove him to buy Unix with the hope of releasing it as open source after his IPO went huge. Not only did he mangle the deal, but the deal he wanted didn't exist because the rights he wanted had already been licensed away in ways that could not be retrieved. Fast forward 15 years and Microsoft technology is now falling behind the fully vetted and totally open product of a Finnish college student who just wanted to create something for "just a hobby, won't be big and professional".

Don't get me wrong: although I dislike what Microsoft has done with their market dominance I am mindful that what IBM had planned for us with their Planar Boards and MCA was far worse. The pity is that they could do far better if their goal was only to release an excellent product.

This makes it very difficult to discuss Windows as credible, when most people here think of a different architecture design (Win9x) when they think Windows, let alone people that have virtually no understanding of OS architectures or why things are done specific ways.

No most people here prefer XP to Vista. Only a vocal minority prefer open source solutions and even they are schismatic. We know that when the issue is XP or Vista we already have tons of stuff for XP, we've learned to secure XP. We have learned to deploy, update and service XP. Our customers are used to XP and absent a compelling feature in Vista the cost benefit analysis comes down in favor of not re-architecting our entire environments just to suit Microsoft.

From a technical standpoint, Vista's kernel is the best in terms of general consumer based OSes. Vista also employs technologies that other designers are not even considering or realize are there yet, and this will give MS a serious advantage in a couple of years.

The first one to check is of course Groklaw, which provides the following answer (see http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2006062204552163): "No. One can't retroactively revoke licenses previously granted, unless the license terms allow you to do so. The most you can do is stop granting new licenses."

Simple and just as you would expect.

Bzzzt, wrong.

The GPL is a license in that it grants additional privileges not already granted under copyright law. There is no contractual obligation on the part of the recipient except that the GPL is the only means by which he can get those privileges so if he doesn't agree to it then he does not have any other means to obtain permission to copy and (re-)distribute the software (unless the software is dual-licensed). The only way that your privileges under the GPL can be revoked is if you violate one of its provisions.

If I were to redistribute atscap and conform to all the conditions required by the license and this guy were to take me to court to try to stop me, all I would have to do is show the license that I recieved with the software which explicitly gives me permission to redistribute to the judge and the case would be dismissed (note: IANAL and it may not be quite this easy, but that is the general principle of it).

BTW, Groklaw has had a very good article on the difference between a license and a contract a few years ago, I highly suggest reading it, especially if you fail to grasp why the GPL is a license and not a contract.

Is Microsoft going to stop looking for new ways to be anticompetitive, now?

This was the best I could find so far as summaries go: http://www.sandw.com/assets/attachments/CLIENT_ADV._-_Open_Source_Software_(B0670583).PDF
From here: http://www.sandw.com/news-publications-155.html

More info that's a headache to read here, also a little older but probably up to date: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20060118155841115

I was a big time WordPerfect user. I tried to stick around through their sale to Novell and lack of effort from them. Later, sold to Corel, the company sat on it and did nothing allowing Microsoft Word to over take it and take over Office Suite dominance. This is what turned MS into the big monster it is now.

1) Any patent lawsuit against a user of a software component used by major vendors will automatically result in those vendors lending legal support to reduce the chance that their own customers will also end up being sued.
2) Any patent lawsuit costs the suing party at least several hundred thousand dollars.
3) Any patent put before the courts is at very great risk of being destroyed by prior art.
4) Any payout awarded from a single end user has to be in proportion to value of the patented technology. The value of a single instance will could only be measured in hundreds of dollars, not coming close to covering the costs of the lawsuit to the platiff.
5) Patent lawsuits take six years to over a decade to work it's way though appeals.
6) Developers will release new software using a method that circumvents the patent in question within two months. This will be quickly adopted and by the time the first patent case is resolved there will be no further customers for the patent holder to sue.
7) The outrage generated in taking out a case against any open source will result in Groklaw and other groups putting the suing party and their lawyers under the closest scrutiny. You will not believe the level of bad publicity, let alone the the amount of prior art, dirty business practices, and legal suspect practices and even violation of statutes that will be uncovered.

Lastly to quote Pulp Fiction, and then "we are going to get medieval on your ass."

Any IP case against users of open source puts the attacker at a far greater risk.

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071201221628452

It appears that the disputed keyboard layout was only used in the development devices and not in the production devices. By this there should be no injunction on the distribution and likely no/minimal payment for infringement.

From Groklaw: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071203061340580#c652659

----
If you examine the OLPC Wiki's edit history for the West African (Nigerian) keyboard you can see what Adé Oyegbola is on about. To save you trawling back and forth here it is in a nutshell. Note that where I write "create" I am referring to the Wiki entires - these dates may not correspond to the physical devices.

      1. 2006-08-07 OLPC buy KONYIN keyboards
      2. 2006-11-13 OLPC create Nigerian layout based on KONYIN layout
      3. 2006-11-13 OLPC Nigerian image updated; layout unchanged
      4. 2007-03-02 OLPC image updated to show Beta-3 model; layout unchanged (Original Image March 2nd)
      5. 2007-08-?? LANCORP sends OLPC Cease & Desist Notice
      6. 2007-08-20 OLPC B3 layout revised completely, no longer looks like KONYIN (Revised Image August 20th)
      7. 2007-08-21 OLPC replaces B3 with B4 Ng-MP-Alt layout (more dialect symbols) and new image.

So this boils down to prototype XOs that used the KONYIN layout. I'm not sure how many prototypes were made with the Nigerian keyboard (I'd guess not many more than the 300 used at Galadima primary school, Abuja) but the total quantities were B1: 875, B2: 2,500, B3: 100, B4: 2,000, C1: 300 (see Development Schedule.

Since August 2007 with the C1 (pre-production) the West African (Nigerian) layout has been as you see it on the current Wiki page.

So the crux is that LANCORP are upset over those beta prototypes but the production XOs (and all XOs made since August 2007) have not used the KONYIN layout.
--

"I want to give one to my mother to get her on the Internet. She only needs to be able to do some light email and web browsing on it."

Then why not buy her an OLPC, under the "buy one, give one" plan. Better screen (readable in full daylight), much longer run-time (12 hours), included webcam, etc. People really like them.

Besides, the eee pc runs Xandros, and they're on our shit-list, remember?

As far as I can tell, the olpc blows the Nokia internet tablet pc out of the water.

The trouble with Amazon is that it will naturally focus on stuff you can buy. Here is Groklaw's review of the olpc. http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071223132431291

My gripe with the Nokia is battery life. My wife's Blackberry goes for days without charging. It has a keyboard (sort of). The Nokia is reported as getting only a couple of hours under heavy use.

Apparently the buy one, give one, program for the olpc is available until the end of the year. I'm sorely tempted. Of course it runs linux and even its bios is open source. The only thing holding me back is two kids in university. AARGH!

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20061118000708715&query=SCO+bonus+executives

Isn't Dan this guy. Not sure why you'd believe anything in his blog. He has a very very very long history with fud & SCO.

bbaston on Groklaw received his XO laptop (see this story) seems to think that it will work really well for that purpose. I'm going to find out in a few weeks. Give one, get one!

Ms. Van Sickle, In response to "Part I - General Questions," under "I. Information Requested," pertaining to "Terminology - Access," in addition to the very reasonable points listed there, I define a format's "accessibility" to include openness -- namely, the format must be based on open standards, and be guaranteed to stay that way in the future. This means that those standards are completely documented and specified, and available to anyone, and will remain so. The Microsoft OOXML standard does not meet this criteria. In fact, Microsoft has failed to keep its public promises regarding control of the standard (please see http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071206131310362 for more information on this from people involved in the ISO standardization process). Essentially, once the format is approved as an ISO standard, Microsoft wants to keep the standard under its own control; they will be able to accomplish this because, rather than turning the standard over to ISO, the standards body they plan to turn over maintenance of the OOXML standard to, ECMA, has an OOXML group chaired by not one, but two Microsoft employees (http://www.ecma-international.org/memento/TC45.htm). Once the standard is in the hands of ECMA, Microsoft will then be free to add or change features at their whim, leaving any who attempt to implement their standard unable to take advantage of the now *undocumented* features. Therefore, they will fail to be in full compliance with the standard. This will have the effect of locking businesses and government departments into the use of their software, just as if they were to continue to use MS' current, proprietary ".DOC" format. It will also have the effect that, in order for taxpayers to access documents whose creation they've paid for, they must also pay a private company an additional sum in order to access that information. That is plainly wrong. As a lifelong New York State resident, I am deeply opposed to this standard, for the simple reason that it encroaches on fundamental liberty. There is no justification for creating a de facto requirement that individuals or organizations will, now or in the future, purchase software from a *private company* in order to access public documents. Please consider following the good example of the Dutch government in adopting a completely open standard, such as the Open Document Format (see http://www.odfalliance.org/ for more information), and keep private companies from hi-jacking my public documents.

Recently the MPAA widely pirated some software written by commercial software developer Matthew Garrett. Verizon recently has publicly and repeatedly violated the copyrights of many software developers working on a widely-used product called Busybox.

If this bill passes, wouled we see Verizon's and the MPAA's Internet infrastructure and all the developer machines used to build and distribute those illegal warez confiscated and auctioned off?

(Note to trolls: Matthew Garrett is a commercial software developer in the sense that he gets paid to code. That he gets paid is orthogonal to the licensing, if any, attached by his employer to the code he writes.)

Whoops, I forgot to include a link to the APA, in case you do want to read it for yourself.

According to a Groklaw article, it is a design patent, which is a patent on how it looks, not how it works. The article also says that the copyright on the design appears to have expired.

The Nigerian OLPC Dispute - How Does It Look? - Updated

According to a Boston Globe article, Negroponte said the lawsuit is without merit, because OLPC uses a keyboard programming technique developed in 1996, long before the Nigerian patent was filed. The article also mentions that the founder of Lagos Analysis Corp., Ade Oyegbola, was convicted of bank fraud in Boston in 1990 and served a year in prison.

One Laptop Per Child orders surge

A Groklaw article also says that it is just a design patent, which registers how it looks, not how it works. She says that "it turns out it's not a patent in the usual sense. It's a design registration." Her article, also says that the copyright on the design appears to have expired. Here is the link:

The Nigerian OLPC Dispute - How Does It Look

She already has cried 'Havoc!', and let slip the dogs of war.

I would include some sort of reference to enjoying Shakespeare in the original Klingon here, but gotta go.

Kimball was just about ready to empanel a jury in SCO v Novell...

There's no jury. At this point, that case is down to claims for "equitable relief", and Judge Kimball ruled that a jury trial wasn't necessary.

It might not take five days of trial, either.

Thanks. I missed that one.

Kimball was just about ready to empanel a jury in SCO v Novell...

There's no jury. At this point, that case is down to claims for "equitable relief", and Judge Kimball ruled that a jury trial wasn't necessary.

It might not take five days of trial, either.

The bankruptcy judge in New Jersey has lifted the stay on SCOX's suit in Utah.

Remember how that went down:
1. Utah judge agrees with Novell in Summary Judgements that SCOX did not get the copyrights, that they owe Novell money, and are guilty of conversion.
2. Novell tells the judge that SCOX is about to go bankrupt and that he should put the money in constructive trust.
3. SCOX successfully convinces the judge that they are NOT about to go bankrupt, and the judge says there is no need before the trial.
4. On the Friday before the trial was to start Monday, 17 September, 2007, SCOX declares bankruptcy in New Jersey, causing an automatic stay in Utah.
5. Novell asks the BK judge to lift the stay.
6. Today, the BK judge agreed.
7. Now the SCOX v. Novell case in Utah will go before that judge, who may not be happy with the way he was very publicly suckered and made to look foolish by SCOX's bankruptcy ploy.

It will be interesting to watch... on Groklaw.

:-)

when will people realize, "Pamela Jones" is a pen name for some unknown person(s) who have an axe to grind with SCO. whether it's a team of IBM lawyers, as some have suggested, I don't know. but NOBODY has ever actually met her, and no picture exists of her. every single contact with her has been through email.

every time an occasion comes up when she might HAVE to make an appearance she suddenly "gets sick" and disappears (like when SCO threatened to subpoeana her, and even when she won the Knowledge Masters Award for Innovation and had to accept it in absentia because she "got royally ill").

even the authors of her wikipedia page are debating whether she should be treated as a real person.

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071021231933899
http://www.openrightsgroup.org/2007/11/09/iplayer-open-rights-group-on-groklaw/
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071108235140236
http://www.opensourceconsortium.org/content/view/77/55/
http://www.opensourceconsortium.org/content/view/78/55/
http://www.opensourceconsortium.org/content/view/79/55/

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071021231933899
http://www.openrightsgroup.org/2007/11/09/iplayer-open-rights-group-on-groklaw/
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071108235140236
http://www.opensourceconsortium.org/content/view/77/55/
http://www.opensourceconsortium.org/content/view/78/55/
http://www.opensourceconsortium.org/content/view/79/55/

About BBC iPlayer and Ashely Highfield:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/ashley_highfield/
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071118205358171
http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/news/archives/2007/10/iplayer_drm_and_1.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2007/11/linux_figures_1.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2007/11/groklaw_interview.html
http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/news/archives/2007/08/defective_by_de.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley_Highfield

This may help you to understand the issues.

MicroSoft's Patent: Consent-or-Die
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, September 11 2007 @ 01:00 PM EDT
theodp writes on Slashdot:
"Maybe you shouldn't get too attached to those new Windows Live services. On Tuesday, the USPTO granted Microsoft a patent for privacy policy change notification, which describes how to threaten users with the loss of their accounts and access to web sites and services should they refuse to consent to changes in a privacy policy. This includes the case where a user might object to allowing personal information, collected earlier with a promise of confidentiality, to be shared in the future with third parties. Also described is a 'Never Notify Me' option so you won't have to 'worry' over privacy policy changes."

MicroSoft's Patent: Consent-or-Die
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, September 11 2007 @ 01:00 PM EDT
theodp writes on Slashdot:
"Maybe you shouldn't get too attached to those new Windows Live services. On Tuesday, the USPTO granted Microsoft a patent for privacy policy change notification, which describes how to threaten users with the loss of their accounts and access to web sites and services should they refuse to consent to changes in a privacy policy. This includes the case where a user might object to allowing personal information, collected earlier with a promise of confidentiality, to be shared in the future with third parties. Also described is a 'Never Notify Me' option so you won't have to 'worry' over privacy policy changes."

Well, 3522 comments ought to be enough for anybody ...