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Interview with Groklaw's Creator
McSnickered writes "Linux Universe interviewed Groklaw's creator and maintainer, Pamela Jones (PJ). It's a great tete-a-tete with a paralegal who devotes her free time to poking holes in SCO's dubious claims."
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Welcome to the club!
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
Pamela,
If anyone were in a position to author a book on this topic for the general public, it's you. I hope you'll consider it.
Good luck and thanks for keeping us wired.
PJ may be the highest-profile female member of the Linux community I'm aware of. She's doing legal work rather than coding, but damned if she hasn't done a hell of a lot for the Linux community and public perception during the last few dark months.
Someone who can come out and say "IAAL, and based on my research this person is in the wrong" is an awfully big deal. The FSF does a lot of legal work too (though in the software world it seems to stick mostly to FSF-owned software...even if it does a lot of nice technology civil rights work), but they don't often sit down and post their analyses.
The problem is that, while a lot of Linux developers are very smart, logical people, they sure as hell aren't lawyers (Linus: "I just ignore patents, since I really don't like them"). So far, most non-code help Linux has gotten (with the notable exception of documentation) has been paid by companies rather than volunteer, in the spirit of the Linux community. The legal area is one where a helping hand is terribly appreciated.
PJ is amplified by her Groklaw project. Groklaw tends to be regularly amplified in public awareness by Slashdot. Slashdot reaches people on both sides of the SCO issue (reading IBM's filings sounds suspiciously like PJ's work is helping them out) as well as in the mainstream media. CNN and the AP regularly use Slashdot as an "early warning" system for things that might be interesting to check out.
PJ is probably currently the single most influential person combatting Linux *legal* FUD. It used to be technical FUD was the only issue that Linux had to worry about, and folks did a pretty good job at shooting it down. Legalisms, however, left folks at a loss, and resulted in massive semiinformed arguments on Slashdot and other forums (which I certainly am guilty of taking part in).
Thanks, PJ. You've probably done more for Linux's marketshare in the last few months than anyone putting out, say, a VM patch.
May we never see th
"The more readers I have, the better Groklaw gets, because no one person is as smart as the rest of the world, and each reader has knowledge and skills to contribute. And they do contribute. That is Groklaw's secret sauce. I don't even worry too much about errors. When they happen, someone notices within the first hour of a story going up, and I can just correct."
Once again the internet allows the process of peer review to work its magic, only instead of being applied to open source code, in this case it's being applied to legal analysis.
Bravo Pamela.
What I keep seeing over and over again occuring to linux is something that (unfortunately) corporations anticipate. Seeing as how we continually describe the Free software MOVEMENT as a movement and not as an organization it limits the scope of influence Linux can truly have.
g -extreme-License-and-DRM-shoehorning bastards. We are a community and there is no state that governs us all. Who is to say you couldn't run a CVS tree with a published SSH console to VIM and run all your coding on that little gun platform offshore the UK. Or hell, get a laptop put an ISUN on it and fire it into space with a nice big Yagi Wifi antenna pointed at Linus's current GPS coordinates.
Unless there is a Software Alliance or even a Community Alliance where we throw down our entrenched religious Debates (VI! NO, EMACS!) (BSD! NO, LINUX!) (MANDRAKE! NO, REDH-er FEDORA!)
and say Screw you software-patent-mandating-closed-source-installin
Litigation won't stop the movement, it will only stop the legal adoption thereof. And I'm so SURE developing countries will listen to the US court ruling.
If anything this is giving microsoft time enough to lock people in with their horrendous DRM. And a big enough cash incentive for SCO that the current CEO will allow it to come to a head, if only so that he can cash out when he sees the train coming straight at him.
...which, had I mod points, I would do. =^^=
This sig no verb.
Between her stuff and stuff here on Slashdot, this is probably going to put enough conjecture to make things get interesting for SCO. Now if only the legal teams would start reading this drivel. =)
This sig no verb.
I think one of the things that has truly amazed me as I have watched the developments of the SCO/IBM case has been this development of the Open Source concept as it is applied to legal defense.
Groklaw, Slashdot, the Yahoo SCOX board, Usenet groups and other places have all formed autonomously directed, self-organizing groups that have actively done paralegal work for IBM gratis.
IBM has to have one of the largest, most well-funded legal departments of any corporation, yet there is no question that Pamela and the many Groklaw posters have done an incredible amount of work in expanding IBM's (and Red Hat's) legal case.
Just as poor SCO was stuck with a few developers, meager funds and a mediocre proprietary product trying to fight a hopeless battle against the legions of highly motivated and skilled Linux/GNU/Apache/Samba/etc.... programmers, SCO now finds itself stuck with a few lawyers, meager funds and a mediocre legal case trying to fight a hopeless battle against a much wider group of highly motivated people all actively devoting their time and effort to do anything they can to help IBM grind them into the dust and salt the earth when they are done.
It is truly an amazing phenomenon. I hope that PJ uses her highly analytical mind and great writing skills to write a book when this is all over. It would be nice to see her get some monetary reward out of this, and I've seen her writing skill so I know it would be fascinating. I'll gladly buy a couple of copies.
Pamela's Groklaw is making waves. Congratulations geek grrrl!
But what I love about it the most is the ethics behind it. I honor the folks that did this, because they made it possible for me learn what my computer is doing, instead of it being like a mirror or a wall I can look at but not get inside of or past.
And this is coming from a non-techie!! I blind myself sometimes by thinking that non-techs will not understand the power of open software. But something like this makes me realise that there are plenty of people that are not programmers/sys admins/tech heads, and still really appreciate the freedom that open software gives. What a great thought that is.
Most of my friends know a bit about technology. All of them are too young and too smart to have this "ain't broken" attitude. Maybe they just don't like me, but they mock Linux (and me, indirectly) whenever I bring it up.
Of course, there was a point when it was the other way around. I would walk into the Beatbox (thebeatbox.org) and sit down at a well-patched Win2k machine -- with public admin access. When I played CS for five minutes and it crashed, I'd blame Windows. The gamers would look over at me (if they were currently in spectator mode) and give me skeptical looks and comments. I would boot Knoppix, then ssh in to my Gentoo server (also at the Beatbox) -- and run uptime. Usually close to a month, and those Win2k machines can't stay up for a half hour.
Of course, I'm comparing apples to oranges, but this Gentoo server was a CS server, and there were at least two or three other people with root access, most of them not very knowledgable about Linux.
My point is, so few people I know appreciate the freedom of open software that sometimes I question my sanity. Then I remember that it's the rest of the world that's insane.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!