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I find your analysis very interesting, and troubling. I took your comments over to groklaw to see if anyone had any ideas. I got this in reply and would be very interested in your response to copied post below. The actual post is here: Groklaw post

Your comments:

"If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License."

In case you've forgotten:

Paragraph 0: ... Each licensee is addressed as "you".

If Microsoft files suit against, gets a court order against, or makes an allegation of infringement against someone who is not me, then I need not be concerned because not-me is also not "you." It's there in black and white in the license.

Paragraph 6: ... You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License.

If Microsoft asserts patent infringement against everyone except SuSE, SuSE is perfectly free to distribute the program under the GPL.

Groklaw reply:

See the bold 'agreement'. Novell ('you') has now made an agreement that gives them and their customers rights to patents in Linux, but doesn't allow their customers to give those rights to others. In short, they are licensing patents from Microsoft and sublicensing them to their customers. Any attempt to sublicense Linux under anything but the GPL is void and terminates their license. You can dress it up as a 'covenent not to sue', but that is basically what a license is. In my mind, Novell is now violating the GPL by distributing Linux under a patent license to their customers.

Under your interpretation of the GPL, specifically your interpretation of paragraph 2(b), essentially every version of the Linux kernel since at least version 2.4 is almost certainly being distributed in violation of the GPL. Unless you know of someone who happens to have 283 clearance opinions or royalty-free, non-exclusive, and sublicenseable license agreements, then you are merely assuming that all 283 patents do not apply. I suggest that you notify the FSF of this rampant license violation immediately.

That is not correct. Read this section again:

"If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License.

Until conditions are imposed on you (as the agreement with Microsoft does to Novell), you are not violating the GPL. There may be 283 patented concepts in Linux, but I have yet to see a court case or decision about any of them. If one does happen, the infringing code MUST be removed from Linux. Otherwise, NO ONE can distribute it. Read the preamble to find the purpose of the GPL.

"now only Novell's SUSE Linux customers are the only Linux vendors that have any assurance that Microsoft won't sue for patent infringement..." Steve Ballmer

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200611032 01234813

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200611021 75508403
"Novell has effectively traded Long-Term Liberty for Short-Term Safety."
- me 2006/11/02

The Primary Goal of the Fedora Project:
Rapid Progress of Free & Open Source Software.

Red Hat engineering invests millions every year in FOSS development. These developers contribute in a great many ways to stimulate growth in the FOSS ecosystem and the community itself. Red Hat makes this investment for three key reasons:

• It makes business sense: A healthy relationship with community builds quality products faster, and with lower expense. It is indeed possible to make money and not compromise on values.
• Perhaps the technology leaders who made many of these key FOSS improvements are best able to support business customers.
• Many of the people at Red Hat believe in the ethical values of FOSS and the benefit that it brings to society.

As long as I work on the Fedora Project, Fedora will never compromise on the essential liberties of FOSS nor will it betray the community. But the price of liberty is not free, nor is it comfortable. And unfortunately, some "leaders" of our community are willing to compromise liberty for short-term convenience. I am disgusted by people like this, and by Novell's betrayal of the community today.

Red Hat supports causes that matter like providing the original seed money for Creative Commons. Or being a key partner in the anti-software patent movement during the miraculous last-minute turnaround at the European Parliament last year. I am proud to be part of an organization that demonstrates such moral and ethical commitment.

But ultimately, Red Hat cannot change the world alone. That is why the Fedora Project exists. We want to enable the community to work together to improve FOSS at a rapid pace, in partnership with the large and consistent contributions from our engineers. We strongly believe that this is the most effective way for the entire FOSS movement to advance. Yes, we made some big mistakes in our community relationship earlier, but we are learning, and continue to improve at an ever accelerating pace.

For these reasons that I urge the FOSS community to support the Fedora Project through volunteer contributions of time and effort. Or if you lack time to contribute, please consider monetary donations toward any of the shared causes that we are fighting for.

Contribute to Fedora
The Fedora Project needs your contributions in many ways. If you know how to make RPM packages, you can become a maintainer in Fedora Extras where you can contribute your favorite FOSS software into the central repository for all to benefit. We have many opportunities for even non-developers to get involved. We need help with things like Documentation, Artwork, or promoting Fedora in the Ambassadors team. Even simply using Fedora, responsibly reporting bugs in Bugzilla, and helping each other helps the entire community.

Donations
The Fedora Project does not need your money[1], but I hope that you would consider donating to one of the major charities that fight for your liber

Groklaw doesn't mention any of this when it reported that the JPEG patent had been surrendered by Forgent. Earlier this year, USPTO reversed their position and rejected the broadest of Forgent claims after the non-profit PubPat informed the USPTO of prior art that Forgent did not disclose in their application. PubPat also pointed out that Forgent knew about the prior art since one of the inventors of the prior art was one of the inventor on three of its patents.

Groklaw http://www.groklaw.net/ reports that Forgent has dropped the patent case. So what gives?

Oracle is offering cheaper support and services essentially identical to Red Hat Linux

You might want to read some more before you make a blanket generalization like this.

This earlier Slashdot thread also has lots of accurate commentary and links as well. I suggest reading those also.

In short, the CDDL is great, as long as you don't want to:
a.) Incorporate it with anything covered by the GPL or the LGPL (so most of Linux is out),
b.) Distribute it to the public
c.) Sell anything built with CDDL code commercially

Doesn't sound very useful to me (and several thousand other developers who agree with me), and in fact, with OSI's discussions of changes to the model, they may end up deprecating the CDDL anyway.

The OSI has explicitly stated that one of its new policy goals "will be to promote unrestricted reusability of code." The CDDL is incompatible with that strategy. (More on that over here).

Take a look at www.groklaw.net for the current issues of the day. There is lots of discussion over the corporate slime-balls who are unethical, even if their actions are not provably illegal(yet). Take a good look at the page for Microsoft and discuss the methods employed for dealing with their competition.

"The vendors aren't offering indemnification, Ellison said, and because of SCO, there's all this uncertainty and doubt about intellectual property. He says he will offer indemnification. In the Q&A at the end, he was asked if Oracle was planning to buy SCO to bring that uncertainty to an end. No, was the answer.

"Red Hat has a separate indemnification policy. In Red Hat's case, this policy is called the Open Source Assurance program."

Presumably if Larry really believed the SCO case had any validity he wouldn't even consider using RHEL. And in relation to RHEL and the GPL what's stopping anyone buying a single copy of Oracle Linux and repackage it and selling it with support contracts. Presumably if Larry doesn't allow this then Oracle is in breach of the license.

"We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software"

Microsoft will operate 64-bit versions of Windows Vista as a tabernacle, with the kernel as the holy of holies, where only its own high priests of security may venture."

I think the crux of debate will be what MS considers its own high priests. If that means MS security products that compete with Symantec and McAfee, then the two vendors have a legitimate gripe that MS is using its monopoly power to lock them out. MS has said that its security products will not have access to undocumented APIs, but how much do you trust MS at their word? I don't trust them that much because I think MS still plays dirty. As recently as the Burst lawsuit in 2004, you can still see MS is refusing not only play fair but abide by court orders: Both parties were told to disclose emails as part of discovery. Burst.net discovered that not only did MS destroy emails but it was the policy of a multi-billion dollar company not to retain any emails over 30 days. And Burst listed out the many ways the company actively followed this policy.

Maybe its referring to the appeal filed by Spamhaus on the 13th. I wasn't aware of one until I saw the article about the case on Groklaw.

I'm just curious as to what you guys think (IANAL).

I see you're new here. I think this is the blog you're looking for. Because on /. NOIAL.

The author of the piece, Daniel Lyons, has a history of not exactly being friendly to Free Software and open source.

How much, if any, has your strategic partnership with SCO hurt MySQL, either financially or image-wise?

What SCO relies on as evidence of code copying is their employee Sandeep Gupta's Redacted Declaration, in which he details what he believes to be the major copying offenses. However, Gupta's analysis of the code, as rebutted by Brian Kernighan, doesn't exclude materials that SCO couldn't claim copyright over, such as code that is mandated by standards and common industry practices, materials which have already been placed in the public domain, and elements of code over which SCO couldn't claim ownership. Also, IBM claims that they have received from Caldera licenses to use the code.

IBM's Summary Judgment motions are works of art. They're clear, they're concise, and I cannot see how SCO could squirrel out of having their entire case tossed away like so much garbage. I'm looking forward to the 25th of this month as we'll finally see what the SCO weasels try to pull to keep this whole farce alive. I expect to be laughing like a hyena as I read those memos.

What SCO relies on as evidence of code copying is their employee Sandeep Gupta's Redacted Declaration, in which he details what he believes to be the major copying offenses. However, Gupta's analysis of the code, as rebutted by Brian Kernighan, doesn't exclude materials that SCO couldn't claim copyright over, such as code that is mandated by standards and common industry practices, materials which have already been placed in the public domain, and elements of code over which SCO couldn't claim ownership. Also, IBM claims that they have received from Caldera licenses to use the code.

IBM's Summary Judgment motions are works of art. They're clear, they're concise, and I cannot see how SCO could squirrel out of having their entire case tossed away like so much garbage. I'm looking forward to the 25th of this month as we'll finally see what the SCO weasels try to pull to keep this whole farce alive. I expect to be laughing like a hyena as I read those memos.

It's pretty close to being done here too. The scheduling orders linked on groklaw (last full sched and amendment) have summary judgment oppositions in October, replies in November, and a jury trial starting in February for any surviving claims. If that schedule is kept, the case should be done no later than April. Depending on the outcome, IBM may be entitled to reasonable attorney's fees.

As for the SCO's claims being fraudulent, as asserted in another response to the parent, that's awfully hard to establish. They may ultimately be dismissed or ruled on summarily but so far as I know IBM hasn't asked for Rule 11 sanctions, which you would normally do in the face of patently frivolous or fraudulent claims and before any meaningful discovery.

I personally doubt that the final SCO/IBM decision will be a groundbreaking and haven't taken the time to read all of the filings because it looks, on its face, to be a relatively mundane suit. I'd like to think that SCO is estopped from making its claims in the first place because they operated a Linux business that distributed the purportedly infringed code under GPL, inducing reasonable businesses (e.g., IBM) to use/market the same code under the assumption that there would be no claim of infringement. The case may very well be decided in a way that creates no meaningful precedent and the court could avoid some of the issues of interest to the FOSS community by, for example, deciding based on IBM/SCO contract provisions w/o discussing the GPL or Linux.

Regardless of the outcome, the U.S. and European systems are so different that it's not terribly fair to compare the District of Utah case with the cases in Germany and elsewhere. We could fairly knock the U.S. courts if an action had been brought and already disposed of in the United Kingdom :-)

It's pretty close to being done here too. The scheduling orders linked on groklaw (last full sched and amendment) have summary judgment oppositions in October, replies in November, and a jury trial starting in February for any surviving claims. If that schedule is kept, the case should be done no later than April. Depending on the outcome, IBM may be entitled to reasonable attorney's fees.

As for the SCO's claims being fraudulent, as asserted in another response to the parent, that's awfully hard to establish. They may ultimately be dismissed or ruled on summarily but so far as I know IBM hasn't asked for Rule 11 sanctions, which you would normally do in the face of patently frivolous or fraudulent claims and before any meaningful discovery.

I personally doubt that the final SCO/IBM decision will be a groundbreaking and haven't taken the time to read all of the filings because it looks, on its face, to be a relatively mundane suit. I'd like to think that SCO is estopped from making its claims in the first place because they operated a Linux business that distributed the purportedly infringed code under GPL, inducing reasonable businesses (e.g., IBM) to use/market the same code under the assumption that there would be no claim of infringement. The case may very well be decided in a way that creates no meaningful precedent and the court could avoid some of the issues of interest to the FOSS community by, for example, deciding based on IBM/SCO contract provisions w/o discussing the GPL or Linux.

Regardless of the outcome, the U.S. and European systems are so different that it's not terribly fair to compare the District of Utah case with the cases in Germany and elsewhere. We could fairly knock the U.S. courts if an action had been brought and already disposed of in the United Kingdom :-)

The reason this has been such a slow process is that SCO is the plaintiff, and they're stalling. Usually, the plaintiff, who initiated the case, is pushing the case forward, while the defendant tries to stall. This case is backwards.

But stalling only works for so long. SCO was able to drag out pretrial discovery for years. But now, discovery is over. No more surprises. No more "we'll disclose the evidence when the time comes" from SCO. That deadline has past. Now the pace picks up. Here's the final part of the case schedule, as set by the court:

• 17-Mar-06 Close of All Remaining Discovery (DONE)
• 19-May-06 Initial Expert Reports (DONE)
• 17-Jul-06 Opposing Expert Reports (DONE)
• 28-Aug-06 Rebuttal Expert Reports (DONE)
• 22-Sep-06 Final Deadline for Expert Discovery (DONE)
• 25-Sep-06 Dispositive Motions Summary Judgment Motions (DONE)
• 13-Oct-06 Responses to Requests for Admissions (DONE)
• 25-Oct-06 Oppositions to Dispositive Motions Summary Judgment Motions
• 24-Nov-06 Reply Briefs on Dispositive Motions (Reply Memoranda)
• 12-Jan-07 Rule 26(a)(3) Disclosures
• 19-Jan-07 Final Pretrial Order
• 22-Jan-07 Deadline for Exchanging Proposed Jury Instructions
• 26-Jan-07 Motions in Limine
• 30-Jan-07 Special Attorney Conference and Settlement Conference
• 05-Feb-07 Oppositions to Motions in Limine
• 09-Feb-07 Reply Briefs on Motions in Limine
• 26-Feb-07 5-week Jury Trial

Notice how the events come closer and closer together as the trial date approaches and the judge becomes more directly involved.

The next exciting moments will come in late November or early December, when the judge decides the summary judgement motions. SCO will then be worse off than they are now; the only question is how much worse off.

Crooked politicians and businessmen are very aware of the concept of deniability. It's the art of structuring a deal so that if it blows up in your face you can deny that it ever existed, without flat-out lying.

As Mr. Goldfarb of Baystar has declared under oath, Microsoft did encourage them to do this, and implied that they would cover the loss, if there was one, but would (of course) not sign a paper. Mr. Goldfarb, fairly reasonably, interpreted that as they didn't want a paper trail, but when the *** hit the fan, Microsoft instead renegged on the whole thing, leaving Baystar with a $37 million dollar tab.

This, if anything, should be a lesson to anyone else who is willing to let Microsoft use them as a sock puppet. It's also worth noting that Mr. Goldfarb produced his declaration voluntarily. Hell hath no fury...

There's actually MORE to the story as innitially thought. Groklaw has some cracking new stuff: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200610091 52706664

There are certainly lots of honest lawyers with no interest in any of this. And, no I don't jolly myself along about lawyers' interests. The truth is, when you need a lawyer, you need a lawyer. I have needed a lawyer myself: e.g. two failed marriages. Point me to a VC-lawyer web site with better coverage of the SCO farce & I'll tell you what I think--if you give a sh*t. Meanwhile, Groklaw has put up a link to Goldfarb's deposition here although there is not yet as link to the pdf version. Interesting, particularly Godfarb's assertion that Boies assured him that IBM would settle quickly. If I recall correctly, Boies was at one time going to accept a big pile of SCO stock in lieu of, or in addition to his fee. Oops.

Finally, the remark about penecillin, was a cheap shot that I shouldn't have taken. I owe the original poster an apology, you, if that was you. Post in [angry] haste, repent at leisure. I hate having to apologize, but what is right is right.

You're stuck in the mindset of proprietary programming. Just publish a couple of videos under the GPL, then everyone who wants to can modify them into their own ideal TV Shows.

In my opinion, the "manifesto" (*PDF) published recently by the British Libarary, and called to my attention by this GrokLaw story, on the subject of DRM, best explains how DRM is harmful to our culture, and inconsistent with our tradition of creativity, from which tradition we may distill the adage nihil sub solum novum.

That's expandable by SD/MiniSD/MicroSD, right? And how much working memory is there? Or is this the same memory and do you lose everything when you power down?

Yeah, that was my first reaction, too. When I first glanced at the article, I figured I would almost be able to forgive D-Link for claiming the GPL was invalid . The phone sounded good enough that my convictions would have kept me feeling guilty while I imagined having this thing.

But without expandable storage (1GB minimum), I really cannot imagine even paying one hundred dollars for such a device (even if D-Link did do the honorable thing and apologize publically to the Linux community).

Fortunately, a few Chinese companies and one French one have come out with similar things. These others, however, do not come with D-Link's stigma of being the first company to bring the GPL into court. And the "unlocked" thing is irrelevant outside of the US because only US phone companies are so greedy as to "lock" users cellphones from them. This is the same stupid mentality that gave rise to stupid ideas like DRM.

a work that is based on, or modifies, one or more preexisting works. A copyright owner has the exclusive right to prepare or authorize the preparation of a derivative work based on the copyrighted work. If a derivative work, considered as a whole, represents an original work of authorship, it may be separately copyrightable. However, the copyright covers only original portions of the derivative work.

Even the MS anti-virus programs like OneCare and Defender have to go through the EXACT same APIs that McAfee and Symantec are being forced to use.

If MS was simply ONLY letting Defender and OneCare have access to the Virus and Spyware scanning in Vista

Here's the SCO vs IBM case schedule. Note how many key steps are now complete and in the past. Discovery is over. Expert reports are over. The final deadline for expert discovery passed last week. No more surprises. No more "secret evidence". No more stalling. We're past that. All the evidence is on the table now. The process grinds slowly, but it does grind.

Now the process speeds up. There's a significant deadline every few weeks now. Right now, summary judgement motions are being briefed and decided. That may end the case in favor of IBM, and it will almost certainly narrow it, as SCO's unsupported claims are knocked down. Those will be decided by the end of the year.

In January, the pace speeds up even more. As trial approaches, there are judge-set deadlines every few days.

If there's anything left to try, trial starts February 26, 2007. Not that far away.

...but I have heard they would have a tough time even if they wanted to open source *nix because all the different copyright holders to individual pieces would have to agree. I don't think open sourcing *nix would be that beneficial anyway....

"Mr. Emerson [Microsoft's senior vice president of corporate development and strategy] and I discussed a variety of investment structures wherein Microsoft would `backstop,' or guarantee in some way, BayStar's investment....Microsoft assured me that it would in some way guarantee BayStar's investement in SCO."

"Microsoft stopped returning my phone calls and emails, and to the best of my knowledge, Mr. Emerson was fired from Microsoft"

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200609292 12013816

This is not about "programmers vs users". That's a totally false dichotomy, exactly the same way it's a totally false dichotomy to make it about "DRM vs the good guys". That's not how "freedom" works (and, that's not how DRM works either. It can be used for good, it can be used for evil. It's just technology).

The thing is, "freedom" is not a thing that you can say "freedom for some people, not for others". You have to respect the people who do the work, and you absolutely have to respect their freedoms too. And you cannot and must not try to make it about some group vs another.

You're way too eager to throw away the rights of people who actually work on things. You're way too eager to say that people who worked on something for decades should just do what you want. Here's a hint: that's not freedom.

So whenever you say "freedom for group X", you're using a totally invalid argument. That's like saying that slavery was "freedom for the white people", and that I'm against freedoms, because I think your arguments are bad. Don't you see that? You can't willy-nilly try to limit the freedoms for one group versus another. That's not "freedom", that's just using a word that sounds good to make your argument for you.

So don't talk to me about "programmers vs users". That's a deeply flawed argument, and that's not how freedoms work. It's especially not how freedoms work with the GPL, since the two aren't even distinct groups. I'm a user too, and part of the whole point is that users now have the option of becoming doers.

Finally, there's a distinct logical fallacy in the argument that "users" should be protected. It's the fallacy of thinking that people who consume are equal to people who produce. And that's not true. People who produce are the one who get to decide how things are done, because they are the ones doing it. It's that simple.

This is your board, so you get to set the rules, right? If people complain that you're doing something wrong, you can tell them to make their own board, right?

That's right. That's how the world works. And it is how the world should work, because that's what motivates people to get off their lazy behinds and do something.

In other words, if you're just a user, and you don't like how you're treated, you have the choice of becoming something more. If you don't like Tivo, you can buy a regular PC, and put MythTV on it. You'll even get to use the Tivo code, thanks to the GPLv2 (not that you'd want to).

OK if you insist on getting bitchslapped then stand there and take it like the bitch you are.

I will refer you this URL on groklaw in which PJ posts a letter she got from the FSF. Here is a quote.

" The Free Software Foundation wishes to clarify a few factual points about the Second Discussion Draft of GNU GPL version 3, on which recent discussion has presented inaccurate information.

        1. The FSF has no power to force anyone to switch from GPLv2 to GPLv3 on their own code. We intentionally wrote GPLv2 (and GPLv1) so we would not have this power. Software developers will continue to have the right to use GPLv2 for their code after GPLv3 is published, and we will respect their decisions.

        2. In order to honor freedom 0, your freedom to run the program as you wish, a free software license may not contain "use restrictions" that would restrict what you can do with it.

        Contrary to what some have said, the GPLv3 draft has no use restrictions, and the final version won't either.

        GPLv3 will prohibit certain distribution practices which restrict users' freedom to modify the code. We hope this policy will thwart the ways some companies wish to "use" free software -- namely, distributing it to you while controlling what you can do with it. This policy is not a "use restriction": it doesn't restrict how they, or you, can run the program; it doesn't restrict what they, or you, can make the program do. Rather it ensures you, as a user, are as free as they are.

        3. Where GPLv2 relies on an implicit patent license, which depends on US law, GPLv3 contains an explicit patent license that does the same job internationally.

        Contrary to what some have said, GPLv3 will not cause a company to "lose its entire [software] patent portfolio". It simply says that if someone has a patent covering XYZ, and distributes a GPL-covered program to do XYZ, he can't sue the program's subsequent users, redistributors and improvers for doing XYZ with their own versions of that program. This has no effect on other patents which that program does not implement.

        Software patents attack the freedom of all software developers and users; their only legitimate use is to deter aggression using software patents. Therefore, if we could abolish every entity's entire portfolio of software patents tomorrow, we would jump at the chance. But it isn't possible for a software license such as the GNU GPL to achieve such a result.

        We do, however, hope that GPL v3 can solve a part of the patent problem. The FSF is now negotiating with organizations holding substantial patent inventories, trying to mediate between their conflicting "extreme" positions. We hope to work out the precise details of the explicit patent license so as to free software developers from patent aggression under a substantial fraction of software patents. To fully protect software developers and users from software patents will, however, require changes in patent law. "

Look if you want to shill for your favorite corporation or are a paid astro turfer then you really need to a better job. All you are doing is embarrasing yourself and your corporation otherwise.

I think they've certainly been hunting for evidence for that sort of thing, see e.g. this Groklaw article from February. However, I don't follow everything closely enough, I don't know if anything came of that later.

...circumvented with the intention of gaining commercial advantage or profit to be an offence.

And our judges will require them to ACTUALLY BE TPM's; legal precedent here is already clear that region coding, for example, is *NOT* a TPM but rather an illegal barrier to trade.

There is still debate about the specific implementation, but the judicial review has clearly indicated that the offences "...which mimic the infringing acts identified above, but for the addition of the action being done "with the intention of obtaining a commercial advantage or profit"."

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200609051 04554107 Groklaw had a good discussion of the exposure draft.

Panic is fun, but facts are better.
err!
jak.

The phone records of non-reporters were also alegedly targeted. Groklaw has some details.

There is another lawsuit going on very similar to this. The plantiff sued on nothing, went through discovery on a fishing expedition to try to find anything, given time and time again to find something, and still has found nothing. It's been talked about a little here (although the site is currently down for maintainance).

SCO digs into PJ's personal life in an attempt to intimidate her coverage of their public actions. That's pretty damn well related.

This hits privacy and First Amendment issues to their core.

This is a legal matter and PJ has had her own share of similar hijinx in relation to her reporting on the SCO debacle.

This hits privacy and First Amendment issues to their core.

This is a legal matter and PJ has had her own share of similar hijinx in relation to her reporting on the SCO debacle.

This hits privacy and First Amendment issues to their core.

This is a legal matter and PJ has had her own share of similar hijinx in relation to her reporting on the SCO debacle.

It's a zipped XML file. I'm a middling programmer at best and I can parse an XML doc. There will be a converter for OO.o two days after release. If Java didn't make me feel slimy inside, I'd write one myself!

If you'd been following the extensive coverage, you would have noticed all the IBM, Sun, RedHat, OpenOffice, KOffice and OASIS people pointing out that the so-called 'OpenXML' is indeed XML... except it's binary-encoded data stuffed between XML tags.

Also, even if OpenXML converters for OO.o/KOffice & friends do become available, I doubt that Debian/Fedora/OpenSUSE will distribute them due to the fact that OpenXML is patent-encumbered, and Microsoft's supposedly 'Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory' patent licensing terms are very unreasonably worded in order to discriminate against open source by being incompatible with nearly every open source license out there. (LGPL and GPL in particular).

The topic's been rehashed several times on Groklaw, and also the Open Standards Blog.

Do people REALLY get bent out of shape like this when they get a format that they can open perfectly well--in fact, just about seamlessly with their suite of choice? Does your blood pressure spike when someone sends you a link to a Flash file?

Yes. Sites which embed video players into Flash applets particularly annoy me (*cough* YouTube *cough*).

Amusingly, people who use MS Office have more to gain from getting Microsoft to standardise on ODF that I do. My copy of OpenOffice handles .doc files from older versions of MS Office (e.g. '97) far better than my college's expensive copies of Office 2003 do. I've done file format conversion for friends and colleagues on several occasions before now.

"The Groklaw article does not say they have asked these things, but that they could - on the latter it seems to me Groklaw is likely wrong." - TekPolitik

Because OSI complied to microsoft's demand and didn't evaluate the license, we won't know their stance about it.
On the other hand the FSF has shown what they're thinking about it.

Although both institutions (read: ESR and RMS) are known to have divergent point of view, this hints about how much this license can be free, and what one should think before starting his own project using this kind of licensing (something for which knowing OSI, FSF and DFSG's stance can be genuinly useful, as some other /. signaled).

I know that most /.ers think that it's best to stick to known licenses that are widely used, documented and proven (including tested in court), and most of the time the debate is only about the duality BSD vs. GPL (Should we allow the code to be forked into a proprietary branch or not), and that's maybe what most home-brewed projects do.

But there are a lot of place (I've whitnessed some), particulary those big places that are new to the open-source concept, that don't automatically trust GPL and consider it proven (they've usually never heard of Groklaw, or the numerous cases of GPL-violation that were successfuly resolved). They don't start with a small subset of preferences (BSD/GPL), but do extensive - but, alas, sometime un-educated - researchs about everything they can encounter, they often start considering obscure licenses that the average OSS user has never heard of, often on the account of some higher hierarchy member or some beancounter that are affraid to 'lose control', and may end up using a solution that will turn up to be not as useful as expected.

It is in such case that organisations like OSI can come handy to help choose and discern among the huge diversity of licensing scheme.

okay so http://www.groklaw.net/pdf/SCOsinks.jpg would make a cool image after you mod it into a 1080p 32 bit color gloating (maybe add some fx to the water??)

Time is running out for SCO. Check the scheduling order. We're past the stalling of pretrial discovery. We're past wondering if SCO has some surprise evidence. Discovery is over. Now things speed up. Expert reports are coming in now and end on September 22. On September 25, summary judgement motions start, and undoubtedly IBM will make some. Things can only get worse for SCO in the summary judgement phase, where some or all of SCO's case may be thrown out and IBM might win on some of their counterclaims. This whole thing could end in September.

If not, trial starts in February 2007.

This is not true, PJ confirms that the posts are from Linus: http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&si d=20060727140038810&title=This+is+or+is+not+Linus& type=article&order=&hideanonymous=0&pid=466194#c46 6294

PJ Deleted Linus' first comment due to language restrictions, but has redacted the swearing, reposted and continued the discussion (and the discussion reads like Linus, so I believe in MathFox's opinion on the identity of these posts). The discussion is well worth the read, no matter if Linus has PGP signed his posts or not.

PJ Deleted Linus' first comment due to language restrictions, but has redacted the swearing, reposted and continued the discussion (and the discussion reads like Linus, so I believe in MathFox's opinion on the identity of these posts). The discussion is well worth the read, no matter if Linus has PGP signed his posts or not.

Here in the peanut gallery I am anxiously awaiting the moment where IBM lawyers get to dissect SCO's line of reasoning from beginning to end...

Actually, they already have. I read some of the court proceeding in Groklaw and IBM's lawyers said something like, "Your honor, if their interpretation is correct, if IBM was to license technology from a third party and incorporate it into AIX, this information will also become 'protected'." I do believe this is absurd.

They (the court, IBM, SCOX) are currently working on what information SCO gets to use as evidence after discovery but IBM's dissecting of SCO's line of reasoning will come up in front of the judge at a later time. That is at one point, the judge will have ALL evidence in front of him and make a decision based on that.