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Ah yes, the increasing the digital divide routine...I work in a school as a computer science teacher. Some students have access to the best computers, with the 100 M internet connection. And in the SAME school, other students are given old junk computers with no internet connection... Who do you think is getting more access to more information, to more opinions, to better info, etc.? Yes, people will spend some time on their private matters...so what? Are you in favour of denying people the opportunity to communicate, to expand their horizons, etc.?

Well, all I can say is, schools of the U.S. of A., Canada, etc., you are being bypassed by the rest of the world...have a look at:
http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS9016897370.html
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/22/2038209
http://www.osnews.com/story/12611

So, yeah, you keep up with that DRM, filtering/blocking, etc. crap. See how far that gets you.

And an article that came out when this began:
http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS2013674721.html

Reasonable people understand that PJ works for IBM. Reasonable people understand that there is no "PJ", that IBM spun up a screen name and went to town.

Yes, but intelligent people at least look stuff up before spouting unsubstantiated claims.

http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS7673520174.html
http://www.groklaw.net/pdf/IBM-621-E19.pdf

The following article Linux Watch details a couple of old SCO systems which did the same thing.

Now, before you slam SCO, remember that before 1995 SCO wasn't "The SCO Group" which is infamous for the lawsuit. Back then SCO make some damn fine systems. I had a 80286 system running 32 users for one customer, at a time when Microsoft said it was impossible. That was running SCO Xenix, which was the first good Unix port to the PC.

Read the article, the web conference is hosted by the "license-sniffing", Microsoft partner Black Duck software.

stacked panels are an ongoing tactic of M$.

Anyway, the GPL has already been proven more than a few times in court on both sides of the Atlantic.
First U.S. GPL lawsuit heads for quick settlement
A GPL compliance case against Iliad

Ah, mods... this is a factual and informative post about Debian policy.

The controversy over Mono in Debian is hardly offtopic and the viewpoint expressed here is quite rational, given that we are still in the midst of a massive Microsoft-backed anti-free-software lawsuit and FUD campaign (SCO, tomtom, etc).

References:

• http://boycottnovell.com/2008/07/23/mono-controversial/
• http://linux.slashdot.org/story/09/06/15/1251228/Mono-Squeezed-Into-Debian-Default-Installation?from=rss
• http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS7392358109.html
• http://boycottnovell.com/2009/06/16/debian-not-including-mono/
• http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3828231/Lets-Settle-the-Mono-Debate.htm

no no... dont mention the war!!!!!!

--john cleese

What, you mean this war?

(Sorry, couldn't resist, and yes, it's perfectly SFW)

Kernel development is an example where problems can occur. There was a dispute not too long about about a GPL wifi driver in the OpenBSD kernel that was originally derived from BSD code. Here's a summary of the events. The irony being because of the BSD/GPL dispute, the driver code is now licensed under neither one.

I don't really think there is any serious buyer. Previously SCO tried to launch an emergency sale to York management only to have the bankruptcy court and all its creditors object to the deal. What SCO never made clear (or tried to hide) in that deal was who would get the liabilities from the Novell judgment against them. If the sale had gone through, Novell would have had to spend years figuring out who owed them the money. This is just another ploy to stall for time.

You're way behind. Microsoft has bought Novell body and soul. Nothing that comes out of that is useful. A tool is a tool, but we don't make our tools out of metals this weak.

I think you're being a little naive (and the mods too) because this looks precisely like what happened with SCO, which was also a fairly small company that was trying to find (rediscover in their case) "a niche to grow in". To actually push their claims, they required large influxes of cash from a Microsoft shell corporation. The way to answer this is to find who is financing Psystar and what conditions that financing is contingent on, e.g. in the case of Baystar, they actually threatened to sue SCO if SCO failed to continue their strong-arm legal tactics against IBM and linux in general. If Psystar were "just a small business" and not being pushed by someone else, why would they sue Apple so dramatically? More likely they would try to stay under the radar off Apple until they were comfortably profitable to resist the inevitable law suit from Apple.

http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS7235986827.html

Novell gets $348 million from Microsoft

CC.

Wine
Is
Not an
Emulator!

It is *quite* possible, and it wouldn't be the first report of better performance in WINE than in Windows.

No, it was under a license that prohibited commercial use.

As an example, Torvalds then cites his own, self-made, original Linux source license, which basically said: "Give all source back, and never charge any money". It took me a few months, but I realized that the 'never charge any money' part was just asinine. It wasn't the point. The point was always "give back in kind".

"In other words," he continued, "my original license very much had a 'fear and loathing' component to it. It was exactly that 'never charge any money' part. But I realized that in the end, it was never really about the money, and that what I really looked for in a license was the 'fairness' thing."

http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS5627827397.html

First off, you seem to not know what that thread was about. I suggest that you read it before making any other comments that suggest that you haven't a clue as to what was discussed.

Secondly, his beliefs have changed significantly over time. It's just that the changes are viewed by his followers as still "in the spirit" of his previous views. If you would have been involved in that thread, or even had read it, you would have seen his position change significantly even in that short period of time.

You see, the problem with his opinions is that they are very context sensitive. He'll take a point of view that allows him to "win" an argument. Then later on, when that point of view works against him, he'll say that people misinterpreted him ignoring quotes and requests for explanation side stepping the issue by ignoring the issue itself.

Trust me, I've had conversation(s) with him before, and he completely ignores any questions that the answers would work against him. He'll even ignore further requests at answering the questions. It's extremely frustrating to have non-discussions that go like this:

Me: You said "quote 1" and now you say "quote 2". These contradict each other.
RMS: You're misquoting me. You're taking "quote 1" out of context.
Me: We were talking about x then and we are talking about x now. How is that taking it out of context?
RMS: --- talks about something else ---
Me: Please answer the question.
RMS: --- continues along another line ---
Me: Seriously, just answer the question.
RMS: ...

You get the point.

Third, this didn't have anything to do with Theo's moving or unmoving attitude. It had everything to do with RMS spreading FUD about OpenBSD then RMS coming on misc@ and picking a fight. He's done that before to the Subversion project among others.

http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS6278881818.html
http://fitz.blogspot.com/2007/07/stallman-shoots-free-software-movement.html

Among others.

Fourthly, you're going to have to explain to me how the below describes a stable person (i.e. clicking links in posts helps):

http://openbsd.org/lyrics.html#43
"""
We are just plain tired of being lectured to by a man who is a lot like Naomi Campbell.

In 1998 when a United Airlines plane was waiting in the queue at Washington Dulles International Airport for take-off to New Orleans (where a Usenix conference was taking place), one man stood up from his seat, demanded that they stop waiting in the queue and be permitted to deplane. Even after orders from the crew and a pilot from the cockpit he refused to sit down. The plane exited the queue and returned to the airport gangway. Security personnel ran onto the plane and removed this man, Richard Stallman, from the plane. After Richard was removed from the plane, everyone else stayed onboard and continued their journey to New Orleans. A few OpenBSD developers were on that same plane, seated very closeby, so we have an accurate story of the events.

This is the man who presumes that he should preach to us about morality, freedom, and what is best for us. He believes it is his God-given role to tell us what is best for us, when he has shown that he takes actions which are not best for everyone. He prefers actions which he thinks are best for him -- and him alone -- and then lies to the public. Richard Stallman is no Spock.

We release our software in ways that are maximally free. We remove all restrictions on use and distribution, but leave a requirement to be known as the authors. We follow a pattern of free source code distribution that started in the mid-1980's in Berkeley, from before Richard Stallman had any powerful influence which he could use so falsely.

We have a development sub-tree called "ports". Our

Agreed

First of all, the Linux community is not that naive. Does anyone really believe that we are ready to bend over and cave to M$'s rhetoric of empty promises, lies, and business deals based on coercement. Remember this deal? http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS9843352777.html

30+ years of observation is sufficient evidence for me to not trust Microsoft. I have no doubt the Linux community will, as a whole, remain uncompromising with their principles (Principles - Microsoft: oxymoron).

The company just exists to piss us off and spread FUD. If they didn't want the stigma of the company they would have started fresh just putting the money to another company hiring the same legal team and taking it from a slightly different point of attack. They're one step away from being a new company anyway, Darl is being let go there's just going to be another one. If it wasn't for them getting so much time in people's web browsers no one would even know they existed. So in short there are people with enough money involved to make the SCO company keep to its purpose, they aren't going to win anything since the OSS community is too fluid to necessarily point out a single block of code to bring down the whole "framework".

If anything now would be the time to advocate the Linux idea / OS more than ever. Computer kids out there get called all the time to fix friends and families computers, you should offer a special $20 install that would involve you installing a distro on their computer. The price is variable of course but distro's could work with the installers to make the going rate tempting enough for anyone to attempt to offer it at the price. People would look at it as quick cash, distributions would see that the easier it is for someone to install and educate the end user the more people will install their distribution for a price. Eventually as people grow more aware of the OS they will search out to install it themselves, at this point the OS will be so easy to install and run it will catch like wild fire.

Now the ones who were installing the OS move up to support / customization. What ever the price charged to do an install will be used as a type of yard stick of value. Eventually with computer power increasing and OS developers cooperation the time to install a running OS will take less time but as long as the price remains set and the operation is exact and efficient you will be making that $20-$40 in under 10 minutes. From there you can use that as a reference to charge for time in support and customization. As long as the initial price does not waver much people will build trust in the concept and the best will be in demand. This is the most diverse and distributed industry that will ever be.

Hey Bruce, you know you could have just linked to your article which explains all that. :D http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS9312220011.html

I'm curious how you know about this "NIB" system, and a bit more importantly, why a Google search for more information does not seem to yield more information. Microsoft has actually always been fairly open about the underlying architecture of their operating systems. MSDN if full of such information, even the the point that it probably leaks things Microsoft had intended to be trade secrets. So it kind of surprises me that it is hard to get any additional information about this system. Any pointers to documentation about this system would be appreciated. Thanks.

Interesting that you use CUPS as an example to prefer Linux over Mac OS X since Apple bought CUPS.

Thank you. It's refreshing to see someone who "gets it". I only wish Novell would have licensed Microsoft's marketing department! One thing that everyone seems to skip when discussing the Novell/Microsoft deal... Who was the company that helped defeat the SCO lawsuit? Who is the company that holds the IP rights to UNIX? http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS4446359842.html

- More than 3000 people/companies have moved away from SuSE, OpenSuSE and Novell products [0]
- Novell is going to incorporate GPL3 [1]
- Vista still sucks

[0] - http://techp.org/p/1
[1] - http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS3755005405.html

You're re-writing history. Microsoft proposed .NET so that they could get people off of web-based applications. THAT is why they stopped developing IE after version 6. Talk to people who were in the financial industry, and you'll see the massive push they made to try to get everyone to switch from web apps to .NET apps.

> "Shall we shit on Ford because they'd like to see everyone driving one of their cars?"

We don't have to - their cars are shitty enough already :-)

As for Mono, and Microsoft "shared-source" and other licensing in general, this guy is repeating what I said 3-4 years ago http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS3695984068.html

Phase one - embrace.

Phase two - extend.

Phase three - extinguish.

Been good knowing you, Novell.

Matusow continued, "To do this, Novell and Microsoft are providing covenants to each other's customers, therefore releasing each company from the other's patent portfolio. This may sounds odd vs. a traditional patent cross-license agreement but it is one of the things that makes this deal so unique."

http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS2927608517.html

If you ask Oracle - they didn't fork it. They are just offering support and patches to RHEL - and pulling out all the proprietary RH stuff so that they can put it out there themselves, at least that is how I understand it.
 
  Here is a Linux-Watch article about it.
 
From what I've seen Oracle wants all the certs, and other things RHEL has earned, but to be able to sell their own support and have more control of patching for their stuff. The skeptical part of me wonders if this is also a very early attempt to make sure Red Hat's work to build any kind of database product around PostgreSQL never takes off. I'm just a dba who reads slashdot too much - so I don't know all the how or why, but I'm definitely interested in stuff like this to keep track of where it is all headed.

Although it shouldn't come as any surprise, once again SJVN shows his true colors, trolling and misquoting - which is partly what prompted Mark to repeat himself more clearly.

http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS5160975921.html

Once again, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols proves that he is a Microsoft shill who should be forever ignored by intelligent, thinking people.

Bruce Perens wrote this back in March.
http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS9312220011.html
He basically said Tivo have nothing to worry about if they are willing to do a bit of work to implement their checking process in a different way.

Given that the text of the GPL3 has changed since he wrote this, do his points still stand true?

1/ wine is named in this agreement.
2/ dell joins the game.
http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS2035907410.html
3/ " Wine for Dell Ubuntu Users, Says Shuttleworth" and bullshit us about the true reasons:
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/11/ 1220219
4/ profit for who?

The Register link did just refer to my 2004 story. By the by, Dan Ravicher, who's been traveling in Europe since this whole thing blew up, tells me his position hasn't changed a bit since then. What a surprise, eh?

Steven
http://www.linux-watch.com/

Here ya go. This is just one of the links from that time. The google search was trivial:

http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS7235986827.html

Note the following:

"Novell, it appears, may need those funds. This news comes just one day following rumors, still unconfirmed by Novell, that the Linux company had laid off some employees. In addition, Novell announced on Nov. 6, for the third time, that it was extending its deadline to get the holders of its Convertible Senior Debentures to not demand immediate payment of the total $600-million owed in 2024.

Wells Fargo Bank N.A. demanded the early payment in full when it claimed that Novell had defaulted on its payment agreement by not turning in its July 31 quarterly earnings report to the SEC in a timely fashion.

This, in turn, had been caused because Novell, like many other technology companies, has delayed its financial reports while it audits its past stock option practices."

Sounds like someone dosn't know much about the linux enviroment to program in it in the first place. This easily sounds like a case of I don't know it and don't understand it so I will not work with it. This is easy seen even when people try Open Office. Because they don't understand the differences between it and MS Office. They are not willing to spend the learning curve time it takes to be perficiant in it. Thing is no matter what you deal with and decided to switch to something else, you will always have a learning curve.

First off, if it is about a GUI. Well then pick one of the more popular ones - KDE or GNOME You don't have to pick all of them. Second, this talk about "Windows provides all that. Free. Built in" and "OSX. Nice GUI layer, free, built-in.". Last time I worked with developing programs and stuff, I had to either purchase the package, and install it (or at least download it to install). In any case with most Linux developement tooks it is either builtin or you download it (moslty) for free and install.

Not sure what your trying to prove except the fact that you are uncomfortable about change. "linux core gets BUILT-IN windowing and graphics" - just becuase Linux has differnet windows managers and you will not pick one to program through, and because you don't want a learning curve, or are to lazy to take the time to actually learn how to program for cross-platforming OS developement you want to blame it on Linux's desktop?

"That's been the unanimous decision of the linux community: no coherence." - Hmmm, sounds to me like another excuse here. Man addmit it, you are wanting to change programing or any

I don't know how many times the Linux community has pushed for commercial to take a hold of what it has to offer. Examples...

http://www.devx.com/racetolinux/Door/33508

http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS8802144045.html

Seems to me that the Linux community / Open Source Community can only do so much. It's up to company's like your self to jump in and stop making excuses of why you won't do what needs to be done!

I don't feel like your position is valid for anyone to take against linux, infact to me it sounds like you are wanting more then your fair share of the work.

It never ceases to amaze me how much developement tools and realestate is attainable on the Linux desktop for free and you get people with this type of additude that feels Linux owes them more. Unreal!

LinuxWatch has an article by Steven Vaughn-Nichols about the March 2007 SCO conference call reporting their quarterly financials. They're doing a bit better, due to cost-cutting, but they still show no evidence of having a real business. I suppose they could do a 1:50 reverse stock split ...

"Only a few weeks behind the release of RedHat Enterprise 5"? Whereas StartCom released its clone almost two weeks ago! However /. doesn't think it was news ;-) , but Linux-Watch did...

ljaguar, you've been plagiarized by the famous Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols. You made it to eweek.com, too.

I don't agree. I think Unbreakable is a meta distribution, based on REHL, ultimately catering to customers that need more support for Oracle than for RHEL. It's a good thing (tm), I mean I'm sure no one wants to call Red Hat and be told to call Oracle or vice-versa, while your boss sits their getting ready to explode. Unbreakable is CentOS with enterprise support, but I don't think it really offers the same thing that Red Hat does. Now if you use Red Hat's support to cover your ass then you can switch to Unbreakable to save money, but the pointy hairs will ultimately question that decision should all hell break loose, if your answer is "it cost less" as opposed to "support for our Oracle DB was more important, given budget constraints ...", then you ought to start packing your stuff. On the other hand if your team is very capable, with a proven track record, that never uses the support, then you can use unbreakable as a customer assurance without spending money where you don't need to.

Oracle is in bed with Red Hat more than ever and Unbreakable cannot survive without RHEL.

http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS7266264422.html

Personally, I'm glad Red Hat has the market share they have (regardless of my personal experiences) and I'm glad Oracle is stepping in and adding their years of experience into the mix. Red Hat's decision not to support legacy systems was a mistake, a mistake that Oracle surely learned a long time ago. This gets back at what my original problem was with Red Hat - a virtual collapse of support for a system I had just invested in.

Hopefully, this statement will be enough to put those SCO-induced conspiracy theories to rest.

Vaughn-Nichols recently interviewed Darl McBride, who remains "not entirely convinced that Jones is a real person." He confirmed the subpoena attempt, then went on to say, "Pamela, if you read this, please, give me a call. We just want to chat."

Given SCO's history, I'd guess even if she did call, he wouldn't believe her. After all, anyone could be on the other end of that phone!

The GPL specifically states that patents must be licensed for free use by everyone or not licensed at all. By sublicensing Microsoft's patents for their customers, Novell is violating that clause and risks having their rights under the GPL terminated.

And yet, Richard Stallman and Eben Moglen seem to agree that you are mistaken.

>> The Novell deal is completely within the bounds of the GPL...

> While I agree that this is probably true, it is a legal opinion. I am not a lawyer. Are you?

Richard Stallman has publicly stated that the deal is within the bounds of the GPL, so I think it is fair and reasonable to state it as a fact and not an opinion.

What Linux is inhibited by is the collectively anti-proprietary attitude of the open source community. The linux community quietly wants linux to be a walled-off open-source-only world. They have never quiet been comfortable with commercial software running on the linux platform. This is further reinforced by install systems like apt and yum, which make installing OSS software easy. But commercial software?

THAT is what's stifling linux, not user-friendliness or hardware support. I admin linux servers all day long, but I'll never run it on my desktop until I can run Adobe apps native in linux. Not through wine or whatever, NATIVE. And I can't blame Adobe for not supporting linux given the massive fragmentation and the anti-commercial attitude of the linux community.

This feeble attempt is the only hope for desktop linux, and it's too little too late:

http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS4586903228.html

The FSF foundation is: "reviewing Novell Inc.'s right to sell new versions of Linux operating system software".

...in a e-mail interview with Eben Moglen at Linux Watch. The essence, as I understand it, is "Novell may not be able to distribute software released under GPL v3 because of the deal with Microsoft" wich is hardly any real news for us. Reuters is delivering business news and for them the reason is a little less important... what is important is the effect of a decision.

Ahhh, another AC spreading FUD...
The whole Reuters article is FUD. Novell has not crossed any license, nor anybody at FSF thinks they can ban Novell from anything. What they are thinking about, is including something in GPLv3 to forbid wording that may suggest OSS breaking patents in those public deals. They even already posted a clarification!

I prefer Linix-Watch's coverage.

(I hate e-week's site.)

I don't know why we don't hear more about things like this: http://www.law.com/jsp/ca/PubArticleCA.jsp?id=1159 567622720

FTA:

The fact that Novell had guidelines for option grants -- and that directors strayed from them -- is particularly disturbing, said lawyers and academics.

"It should be an issue of shareholder concern whenever a board changes its own compensation," said Kirk Hanson, the director of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University and a former Stanford University business professor.

While directors are generally permitted to award themselves whatever they want as long as it is publicly disclosed, Hanson said basic principles of corporate governance hold that they should avoid giving themselves pieces of the company just because they can.

And then there's the spectre of delisting: http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS3941903118.html

B) One or several competing corporate entities will successfully be able to offer the same updates (so-called "support") by free-loading off Redhat's efforts...

Isn't Oracle doing that already?

If the GPL doesn't allow this, how come Stallman himself says that it doesn't violate the GPLv2. He does state that it will violate GPLv3, however.

So...this deal is bad for Novell how??

http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS6962961128.html

So far it is just Miguel who supports it ... and everyone else who opposes it.

You forgot about Hubert Mantel

Seems more mixed to me with different developers having different views. http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS6962961128.html

These translators will then be made available as plug-ins to Novell's OpenOffice.org product. Novell will release the code to integrate the Open XML format into its product as open source, and will submit it for inclusion in the OpenOffice.org project. Thus, all OpenOffice.org end users will eventually be able to share files between Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org,

For more see:

http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS5248375481.html

Steven

Here's his opinion on the whole sordid mess, but in brief, he says that SCO no longer matters, and that he probably won't report further on it until final resolution.

I'm happy to see things finally start to kill off SCO's FUD machine. This, friends, is the beginning of the end for IBM v SCO.