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It's all there on groklaw, starting with the players and just go on from there. Even the lawyers go here, so it's GOING to be more than the pejorative stuff you wanted to go beyond. cheers...ank

It's all there on groklaw, starting with the players and just go on from there. Even the lawyers go here, so it's GOING to be more than the pejorative stuff you wanted to go beyond. cheers...ank

Corporations are not individuals; they have no conscience, and they can't be arrested. Of course, those working at the corporations have consciences and can be arrested, but we've seen a lot of examples lately where those in charge have abused their consiences and avoided being arrested for things an individual would get severe prison time for attempting.

I bring this up because of the following: let's say you want to use OpenDocument format for your business, but Microsoft doesn't want you to, as it hurts their business model. Using OpenDocument format anyway will cause the same loss to Microsoft as if you had pirated a version of Office and used that. If you've been following this, you'll realize that Microsoft *really* doesn't want the government to use OpenDocument, for exactly the above reason.

So, by your rationalization, we should use the Microsoft product. By the pirate's rationalization, we should use the Microsoft product. But by the logical rationalization, we should use OpenDocument. The answer lies somewhere in the middle; I fear we are arguing about the wrong thing.

Or, if you want a different kind of example: let's say that the estate of William Shakespeare wants to assert copyright control on all of his works, collecting money from everyone who makes copies or derivative works from those he has written. Would you say that this is moral, legal, just? Remember that Corporations are closer to estates than they are to people; the individuals have usually already been paid for assigning their copyright to the corporation; they no longer hold it.

Or, let's say that the estate of JM Barrie wants to assert copyright control over Peter Pan... this one is more at issue because currently, they *do* assert control over the work in the UK, but not in the US. As a US citizen, would you avoid downloading the etext from the pirates at Project Gutenberg because the estate would suffer for it? Or, do you download it, as you like the work, have no way of paying the original (dead) author, and it is currently legal to do so in the US?

Just some food for thought.

IBM has subpoened KPMG, SCO's accounting firm, story at Groklaw. KPMG was SCO's accounting firm till recently and had "difficulty" signing off on some of SCO's stuff. This should be rich.

The trolls and astroturfers are out in force on this one. Everybody should read this clear analysis of what OpenDocument offers MA that they can't get with MSXML.

Also, you can find out about the meeting too.

The trolls and astroturfers are out in force on this one. Everybody should read this clear analysis of what OpenDocument offers MA that they can't get with MSXML.

Also, you can find out about the meeting too.

For details and analysis you can't beat Groklaw's coverage, including notes by two bloggers who attended the meeting.

Also note that the hearing was convened by a senator who seems to confuse "OpenDocument" and "OpenOffice" and "open standards" with "open source software".

If any company bought SCO, they would have to make a decision right away. They would have to decide what to do about the lawsuit. If they decided SCO didn't have a case, they would still have to deal with all of the damage SCO has caused to other companies (if you buy a company, you buy everything, including liabilities). Very expensive. Plus, by deciding SCO did not have a case the purchasing company would effectively be giving up any purported value to whatever SCO actually does own of UNIX (which is not much if anything). If purchasing company decided to continue the lawsuit, they would inherit the same lack of evidence that SCO is contending with and end up with the same losing case and still have to face the consequences of SCO's actions. From a business perspective, the only thing SCO has that might be worth anything is their UNIX server software for small businesses (which is rapidly being superceded by Linux) and their customer good will (which SCO has pretty much destroyed). In other words, SCO as it stands today is already dead as a company. The only question is: What will they do as a response, liquidate or reform in a different business? Whatever that new business could be is anyone's guess -- but I would bet it could have something to do with Me, Inc.

It's been reported that IBM's contract with SCO stated that they weren't allowed to put technologies from their Unix into any other OS. This is not exclusive to those that weren't put there by IBM. That means that IBM could not use their "IP" in any other OS without consent from SCO. Many think that, if this stipulation were in IBM's contracts with SCO that SCO had a decent case against IBM.

2. Regarding Section 2.01, we agree that modifications and derivative works prepared by or for you are owned by you. However, ownership of any portion or portions of SOFTWARE PRODUCTS included in any such modification or derivative work remains with us.

Who would enter into a development license saying that any work they developed became the sole, secret property of the other party? That would be the Anti-GPL, and the answer is that no one ever did.

It's been reported that IBM's contract with SCO stated that they weren't allowed to put technologies from their Unix into any other OS. This is not exclusive to those that weren't put there by IBM. That means that IBM could not use their "IP" in any other OS without consent from SCO. Many think that, if this stipulation were in IBM's contracts with SCO that SCO had a decent case against IBM.

2. Regarding Section 2.01, we agree that modifications and derivative works prepared by or for you are owned by you. However, ownership of any portion or portions of SOFTWARE PRODUCTS included in any such modification or derivative work remains with us.

Who would enter into a development license saying that any work they developed became the sole, secret property of the other party? That would be the Anti-GPL, and the answer is that no one ever did.

SCO's original complaint was dominated by trade secret and copyright claims. Breach of contract was added relatively late into the party.

For a good overview, look at Groklaw's summary which has the original and ammended complaints in chronological order.

According to http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200511010 0443634 the Docs are under seal, and as PJ puts it "there is absolutely no reason not to show it without seal, because if it's literal, it's out there in the public already." and "SCO may be afraid the Linux community will pull the rug out from under them before they can get to trial, if they tell us publicly what they think they have. Every time they tell us what they think is infringing, somebody proves they are mistaken. At best."

IMHO SCO is just blowing smoke again, and trying to pump up the stock.

and part of that story says:

Yeah? We'll see. Or maybe only the parties and the judge will, but if they had found infringing literal code, there is absolutely no reason not to show it without seal, because if it's literal, it's out there in the public already. All Linux code is freely viewable by anyone on Planet Earth. The astronauts can look at it too. SCO may be afraid the Linux community will pull the rug out from under them before they can get to trial, if they tell us publicly what they think they have. Every time they tell us what they think is infringing, somebody proves they are mistaken. At best.

No one can indemnify you from delusional lawsuits, unless they have the spare money to fend it off or to succeed well enough to take back their court costs from the plaintiff. MySQL developers just don't have that kind of spare money.

Also note, SCO's lawsuit is draining their corporate sponsorship from Microsoft dry, and it's pretty clear from their income statements that they are being sponsored by Microsoft. Take a look over at http://groklaw.net/ for details. They don't have the resources to file another frivolous stock-pumping lawsuit like this one after they lose to IBM, becuase they're spending their core resources to pursue it. So if you're scared of SCO, I don't think you should worry about them after this: they haven't generated genuinely new or useful products in years.

In the meantime, Microsoft is threatening to take their marbles and go home from South Korea because that country has the temerity to continue an anti-competetive investigation against them.

And, of course, there was Microsoft's attempt to force the country of Israel to abandon Macs by refusing to properly support Hebrew (or any other right-to-left script) on Office-OS/X. They failed, because Israel decided to pay a group of local geeks (a fraction of the money that Microsoft had refused to fix office) to port Open Office to OS-X, and then announced plans to cut off all their contracts with Microsoft.

There are some signs that Microsoft intends to lock their customers more irretrievably into Office with patents and other tricks. That's one part of the reasons why MA may want to walk away from vendor lock-in.

In the meantime, Microsoft is threatening to take their marbles and go home from South Korea because that country has the temerity to continue an anti-competetive investigation against them.

And, of course, there was Microsoft's attempt to force the country of Israel to abandon Macs by refusing to properly support Hebrew (or any other right-to-left script) on Office-OS/X. They failed, because Israel decided to pay a group of local geeks (a fraction of the money that Microsoft had refused to fix office) to port Open Office to OS-X, and then announced plans to cut off all their contracts with Microsoft.

There are some signs that Microsoft intends to lock their customers more irretrievably into Office with patents and other tricks. That's one part of the reasons why MA may want to walk away from vendor lock-in.

Thats absolutely right. Since the dawn of time humans have been trading in a free competitive market economy, sharing ideas, changing (modding) their tools to better suit themselves and their needs, and overall pushing forward technology and innovation.

The US of A, became powerful, just like Britain before it, by having a competitive free market economy where ideas are shared and move everyone forward. But now the US is leading the world in restrictive laws and monopolies on ideas - i.e. restricting others from using ideas.

This trend is indeed bad for all of society. For society to improve, it must be able to freely share ideas and to change (mod) and their tools in the way the people see fit.

These restrictive practices will become evident within a generation how negative an effect it can have on society and the USs technological lead.

And some links:

1.1 Free Matter Economy, Part 1:
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/free_issues/is sue_07/free_matter_economy/
1.2 Free Matter Economy, Part 2:
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/free_issues/is sue_08/free_matter_economy_2/

2.
A Groklaw article complete with discussion:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200510251 65105685

3.
An Economist article:
http://www.economist.com/printedition/displaystory .cfm?story_id=5014990

4.
Slashdot discussion on Economist article:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/23/17 37218&tid=187&tid=155

5.
The GNU Organisation for the development of software, its official stance on the negative effect of IP on software development:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.xhtml

6.
A longish non-academic article, but starts getting to the point eventualy:
http://www.reason.com/0303/fe.dc.creation.shtml

7.
A pdf:
http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/papers/pci23.pdf
( http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/papers/pci23.htm )

8.
Discussion on the above pdf:
http://activeclub.homeip.net/forums/view.php?bn=ac discussions_activeclubreflections&key=1046014645

PJ's First runin with Mr Lyons. Could this be why he had the "Who is PJ" sidebar? Anyone care to ask Forbes Editor to explain?

Suddenly they are the ultimate vehicle for brand-bashing, personal attacks, political extremism and smear campaigns.

Suddenly they are the ultimate vehicle for brand-bashing, personal attacks, political extremism and smear campaigns.

"Poor guy. Did he not get the memo? This is what open source software is all about: creating knockoffs and giving them away, destroying the value of whatever the other guy is selling."

"What's new is that now open-source companies are turning on each other."

PJ made a very good point over at Groklaw. Consider: If you are the South Korean government, and you have historical documents written in Word, Excel, etc., and you play by the rules (i.e. you honor Microsoft's copyright, you buy Windows licenses for all your systems, etc.), and all of a sudden you cannot buy a new copy of Windows legally, what do you do? Keep running the old copies and never upgrade from then on?

This is exactly the problem with proprietary file formats. I would say that Microsoft's statement is destined to show up in a large number of conversations about OpenDocument and why it's the right thing to do...

So, if Microsoft withdrew Windows from the Korean market, could Korean citizens in the future access their goverment documents saved already in Microsoft formats? Extrapolate, please, to Massachusetts. Now do you understand why the government there wants to rely only on open standards and open formats for digital documents?

Reading http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200510261 95537674 describes how the body responsible for advising UK schools on IT policies (BECTA) is planning to force schools to

"...use software that saves files in open formats (see pages 25 and 26).".

Following from this, it probably won't be long until government bodies follow suit in the UK, and the trend spreads from country to country.

Microsoft will then definitely be forced to support the OpenDocument standard, or someone will get very rich writing plugin to do so.

Office vs competition will then be down to features and useability rather than format tie-ins (Microsoft purposely tieing people to their products surely stems from a satanic Sales/Marketing department rather than evil developers).

If the competition comes down to UI/useability I think Star Office and OpenOffice are a long way behind MS Office, both tending to looki like cheap shareware applications at the moment. Which then leaves the doorway open for a company to take OpenOffice, pretty-fy it and sell it for a vastly reduced amount compared to Office (unless the license restricts this?)

Fantastic ... Would same judge please slap Microsoft silly for the BS it is currently pulling in regards to the OpenDocument format?

If you really want to get involved, according to Groklaw the meeting Monday, October 31, in Boston, at the State House, room A1, from 1 to 5 that's open to the public. If you can't make that kind of commitment, Mass.gov. One useful page is this one which lets you type in your city and find out which state congress critters are yours. They're the ones who want your vote next time around. We also already know that Romney is in favor of ODF and Galvin (who wants to run for Romney's job) is against it, so writing them won't hurt either.

As for what to write I'd suggest you be nice, be brief and use your own words. That's more effective than just cranking out form letters. Let them know what you think and that you're paying attention.

Read the link.

Quote: Microsoft has stated that they will support the OpenDocument format in MS Office if there is customer demand:

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200510161 05739574

The purpose of this petition is to quantify the customer demand for OpenDocument support. EndQuote

1. It's not true that the GPL has not been tested in court. See http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200407231 5554313
2. Breaking news: DR-DOS no longer exists! DRDOS Inc. have removed it from their site and now sell only the old version 7.03!

A good explanation of why the GPL is a license and not a contract was posted at Groklaw a while back. It includes some quotes from Eben Moglen, who is quite familiar with the subject.

If you are talking about an individual or corporation then your inclination would be ok.

Public systems paid for with public tax dollars do not in any way go by the same litmus tests. Why should I not be able to access a government website because I use Firefox.

No government documents should ever be in a proprietary format. Also, when it comes to tax dollars, it seems to me that "good enough" makes a tool the right tool for the job when the price is free (OpenOffice.org) versus Microsoft Office. Price MUST be a factor when determining the "right" tool. Also, if proprietary vendor products attempt to lock in an organization and lock out competing products from interoperating, that is unacceptable.

Right tool for the job? Ok, but let's talk about what DEFINES the right tool. It isn't purely function.

It seems that Forbes has been drumming this conflict up a bit.

Interesting Groklaw article about some fishy reporting on the issue by Forbes.

Money taken from SCO is less money for their FUD machine.

It also gives people stuck on SCO a chance to migrate their stuff slowly to other platforms.

1. Move existing services to mySQl on SCO platform
2. replace SCO platform with *BSD or *Linux

So how is that a bad thing again?

Exactly! There was a recent ruling to that effect regarding a guy named Lemelson. Although the guy in question waited between 18 - 39 years before he started going after the industry. The original article I read on this is at Groklaw with a follow up concerning a ruling against Lemelson there as well. The basic gist is that a party may base a reasonable defense against patent infringement on the fact that the plaintiff waited too long to bring a case against them. I would hope that applies here as well!

Exactly! There was a recent ruling to that effect regarding a guy named Lemelson. Although the guy in question waited between 18 - 39 years before he started going after the industry. The original article I read on this is at Groklaw with a follow up concerning a ruling against Lemelson there as well. The basic gist is that a party may base a reasonable defense against patent infringement on the fact that the plaintiff waited too long to bring a case against them. I would hope that applies here as well!

Seriously, every time someone bashes on "blogs" it sounds to me like people bashing on television. Fine. Don't watch television. Or watch only the three or four shows you want to watch. Nobody is holding a gun to your head. The same thing is true of blogs. Don't want to see all of that trite bullshit that bothers you so much? Then don't read it!

Groklaw has a piece by a member of COSPA on their experience in migrating several thousands of desktops to OpenOffice.org (v1) in many sites across Europe.

Ms. Jones and Mr. Moglen refute the Forbes piece

The Groklaw interview with Mikos from MySQL AB

uhhhh...

From GrokLaw's interview with Marten Mickos:
no money went to SCO from MySQL, so MySQL is not supporting SCO financially

So, MySQL isn't accepting SCO money.

From The official Press Release:
As part of the agreement, the companies will work together on a range of joint marketing, sales, training, business development and support programs that will benefit customers throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. Additionally, SCO will include a trial subscription to the MySQL Network enterprise database service with each new copy of SCO OpenServer -- and offer full MySQL Network subscriptions through its reseller channel.

So neither MySQL nor SCO is writing any special code -- they're just cooperating on marketing and training support.

From a Cnet article on the subject:
Part of the bad blood in the suit stems from a flopped partnership called Project Monterey under which IBM, SCO and now-extinct Sequent agreed to create a version of Unix for Intel's Itanium processors. SCO shared expertise with IBM about how best to run Unix on Intel processors for that project, the suit said.

So, Project Monterey was a joint venture to rewrite an operating system for a new ISA. I fail to see any significant similarities between Project Monterey and the MySQL/SCO deal.

Nice FUD, though.

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200510112 11450706

* no money went to SCO from MySQL, so MySQL is not supporting SCO financially
* it was SCO seeking out the partnership, not the other way around
* MySQL had stopped supporting SCO in 2004
* MySQL did not put out the press release about the partnership. Mickos did provide a quotation for the press release however. Here's the press release in question, taken from MySQL's web site. http://www.mysql.com/news-and-events/news/article_ 948.html

Totally offtopic I guess. But..

I hope the interview on Groklaw with Marten Mickos (MySQL AB CEO) will help you
out of your missery..

    http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200510112 11450706

I found this comment on groklaw which itself is a comment on Brian Jones' (Office manager) blog. I believe that it gets to the core of the issue. I don't think it was ever answered. So yes, the patents are licensed royalty free but not in perpetuity.

"MS can stop granting the license when they want. At that point, anyone who already has a copy of the software I wrote that infringes the patents in question can continue to use it. Perhaps new versions could be distributed to those same people (since they already have a license). I cannot, however, continue to distribute my open source project, because only MS has the right to grant my potential user a license. That is, MS can effectively kill (or at least place in stasis) any project that gets big enough to pose a threat. This is at the core of every OSS license - the right to grant the same rights I have to the recipients of my software. "

The much more interesting story from groklaw is that SCO's motion for further delay was denied

Never, as far as I know. IANAL, but one of the legal doctrines that has been explained on Groklaw, repeatedly, is that you cannot copyright ideas - only the representation of ideas. SCO has been postulating a theory that they have copyrights on some of the 'methods' in Linux (what they call non-literal copying), because even though the representation is different, it covers the same basic operation. But that doesn't pass legal muster, according to precedent on how copyright infringement is determined (at least in computer software, according to some of the articles posted by Groklaw).

It might be a little trickier with music, because musical ideas are so tightly bound to it's representation that copyright is, I think, I little 'stronger' on musical ideas. But, you can't, I don't think, just say that music A is similar to music B, therefor it infringes. You have to show that it is substantially identical, at least that's my understanding. Again, I am not a lawyer.

This does NOT represent legal advice, by the way, but just what I've gleaned from reading Groklaw, which you may or may not believe is accurate. Think for yourself. =)

Unlike some posters on this board, I never hated fox news, until now.

FWIW: here is my email:

Subject: Where is the full disclosure on this biased article?
To: Comments@foxnews.com

In regards to your article:

Massachusetts Should Close Down OpenDocument
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
By James Prendergast

Should you not, at the very least, have mentioned that the ATL is a Microsoft funded organization? And that the ATL has been caught in pro-Microsoft "astro-turfing" before?

Aside from that, the article was poorly reasoned, and full of outright lies.

I refer you to the following link:'

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200509291 34232923

Thank you,

Walter Byrd
An ex-Fox News viewer.

In one case of "submarine patents", the court ruled them unenforcable. See
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200509131 31027544
It was, however, a rather extreme case, so I am not sure if the same reasoning would work in Eolas vs. Microsoft

AKA professional astroturf. See here.

What's being discussed is Microsoft's new XML formats, which will be used in Office 12. Microsoft has patents on them, so it is ILLEGAL to read them except under the terms that Microsoft permits. For example, there's universal agreement that it's illegal to write a GPL program that reads them, by those terms. So KOffice and Gnumeric, for example, cannot use them.

Groklaw has posted a lengthy legal analysis by Marbux, a retired lawyer (updated April 1, 2005). His detailed analysis found that Microsofts specification excluded competition, in contrast with Microsofts public claims. Competitors are... effectively precluded from bidding against Microsoft or its suppliers for any... contract specifying use of Microsofts software file formats.&#8221

"Not specifically directed at your comment, but it sure is surprising how much Microsoft defending has grown in Slashdot comments each year."

From Groklaw's An Anti-Linux Strategy for Microsoft:

"Have your PR firm hire astroturfers who will pretend to be Linux folks and have them leave comments all over the Linux Internet landscape. Have them lay low for a while, just planting helpful comments in numbers no one who wasn't paid to do it could possibly match, so they become fixtures. Then subtly start to undermine. ("I may be modded down for this, but Microsoft does have a point..."; "I used to love Groklaw, but now..."; use the same technique to point out "valid" points the phony baloney litigator has. They don't have to be true. Your overarching goal is to raise doubts and to lower respect for the Linux web site. Raise doubts about the web site's editor at all costs, so folks will discount what they read there.)

If the number of astroturfers is large enough, you'll definitely get some weak-minded individuals to follow along. It's all in the numbers. If there are enough, you could even take over Slashdot-type sites, because the real community members will get disgusted and leave, and numbers can win, as "The Wisdom of Crowds" points out, by tilting the balance so undecideds are influenced your way by the human tendency to want to be in the larger group. Work the mod system, so pro-Microsoft comments get modded up, Insightful, and comments you don't like get modded down to the center of the earth, so no one sees them. If there is no mod system, work in groups, so the group can thank the first operative for his comment, and so forth."