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RedHat Starts "Open Source Now" Fund
celston23 writes "According to this article (near bottom), RedHat is intending to use their Open Source Now Fund to support open-source (GPL) developers who are sued for copyright infringement. Might be used during the SCO legal battle."
This is awfully familiar, don't you think? (again, near the bottom)
That's absurd. You've already licensed the software to them under the terms of the GPL. If you could just say "Oh, we changed our minds", then what's the point of the GPL?
The post to which you refer announces the countersuit. This post announces the actual launching of the fund, complete with a website where you can join and make contributions.
Finding God in a Dog
This is a non-sequitur. The simple fact is that it is going to cost money -- a lot of money -- in order to prove that Linux doesn't contain any SCO material. Lawyers need to be paid, witnesses need to be briefed, exhibits need to be made, etc. All that takes cash, regardless of the merits of the case.
Finding God in a Dog
I still don't see anywhere to donate money. The open source fund right now seems little more then redhat.
You still own all copyrights to your work under the GPL, and can "multi-license" your own work (provided it is not based on GPL'ed work).. so if you built a driver for some such video card and it was completely your own, you could "dual-license" it.. the customer would choose the license. if SCO don't like the GPL license - they can choose the other one, where you fleece the crap out of them.
meh
But I'm digressing. Yes, here in the US, you _do_ need to protect yourself from litigation, even if the litigation is totally unjustified and spurious. And countersuing for abuse of process offers little relief when the entity suing you has no assets of values anyway. SCO has nothing to lose, that's what makes it dangerous!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
This seems different (though related) to the "Open Source Now Fund", which would specifically target legal threats against Linux and related things, like the FSF does for GNU.
I haven't been able to find any info on how to contribute to the fund. I spoke with many Red Hat people at Linux World about it, and they didn't know. I sent an email to opensourcenow@redhat.com, and they never replied. I've also been talking with Red Hat salesmen for the past week or two trying to put together a proposal, and they don't know either.
What's the hold up Red Hat? TAKE MY MONEY DAMMIT.
Wow, a lucrative publishing contract! I don't have to be evil anymore. --Meteor
If there is SCO code improperly copied by IBM into Linux, then...
So just what would happen? IBM might have to cure the infringement and pay whatever damages that SCO can proove. Even in the worst possible outcome, this will be a bump in the road for Linux. In fact, the FUD is doing much more damage than a successful SCO outcome could possibly do.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Sorry, having worked as a paralegal for three years, "An understanding of the law, a stack of envelopes, and occasionally plane fare are more than enough" is rarely enough.
As a defendant you *MUST* pay the costs of a stenographer for any depositions and you can rarely get a witness in without them being properly deposed. Also, expert witnesses are rarely free. You normally have to pay for those. Then there is the cost of multiple plane tickets, if the trial is out of your area. Plus board, meals, etc. Then there are the amount of money you spend at Kinko's. Its downright amazing how many hundreds or thousands of dollars you can spend just on making copies of briefs, depositions, and interrogatories which you MUST pay yourself. There are many hidden costs involved in even a minor case.
The delays, the frivilous filings, the mountains of paperwork, hyperbole, press leaks, etc. That is what you are actually paying a lawyer for these days.
That's like saying I only pay my sysadmin to backup some files, reset my password, post on slashdot, and forget to apply patches. hmmm... Then again, I guess some places do pay their sysadmins to do just that.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
Open Source was never about freedom, it was and is about pitching the Open Source development methodology primarily to businesses: when businesses share source code they ostensibly get better programs developed with less expense because they can tap a large community of programmers who are willing to work on their project for no fee. Open Source talks about the practical outcome of sharing source code, not the freedoms that make those practical ends possible.
Freedom to share and modify programs was and is the message from the Free Software movement which started over a decade before the Open Source movement began. I recommend this essay for an instructive look at the differences between the two movements. It was the Free Software Foundation that brought us the GNU General Public License which secures the freedoms to share and modify and the community the Open Source movement has leveraged to spread their message. The FSF did these things well before the Open Source movement got started. I'm grateful the Open Source Movement is bringing users to Free Software and encouraging use of the GNU GPL (one of many Free Software licenses), but let's not overstate what the Open Source Initiative did--adding a license to a list of approved licenses cannot compare with writing and defending the license (links to parts one and two of Eben Moglen's essay).
SCO FUD aside, is Oracle interested in what's in the Linux kernel, or were you referring to the GNU/Linux operating system? I don't understand what you mean by "hijacking" here either--Red Hat has contributed a great deal to Linux and (as far as I know) all in accordance with the GPL. Everyone is free to study, share, and modify their contributions as well as the rest of the kernel.
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