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McBride's New Open Letter on Copyrights
dtfinch writes "An open letter was posted today by Darl McBride, where he restates his claim that the GPL violates the U.S. Constitution, patent laws, copyright laws, and the DMCA. Mostly he just builds up a false image of the Free Software Foundation and open source supporters claiming that they have no respect for intellectual property and believe copyrights should be eliminated, then attacks that image, AKA the straw man attack. Nothing we haven't seen before."
Hm... Darl McBride writes an open letter. I thought that openness was against the US Constitution, ad nauseum.
#define DRM chmod 000
Nothing we haven't seen before.
Yet it qualifies as news here. No wonder McBride keeps running his mouth (:
From Linuxtoday.com: "The GPL is based on copyright law, unlike the 'shrink wrap' licences we are familiar with, which are based on contract law. Most countries worldwide have signed the Berne Copyright Convention, which protects software automatically upon creation. So the GPL has a more solid international grounding than if it were based on contract law, which can vary greatly from country to country..."
Esoteric reference.
Ok, then just copy paste links to every other slashdot discussion that's been had on this subject to date.
Unless there's something new to say, that is.
In summary:
SCO is smoking crack
Their case has no merit
yada yada yada
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
Thanks Darl, I was just thinking it'd been a while since I last set my watch. Now I know I'll be on time!
if I don't RTFA. I just ate and I'm pretty sure it would make me feel nauseous.
WHY post about it? I mean, come on. We're going to hear nothing but bullshit from SCO until they go under, why even bother listening? The only possibly important part will be the court hearings and we have awhile before those.
Everyone, breathe in, breathe out. Chill. Just chill.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
Thank god people are picking up on such simple, yet often unnoticed, ways to redirect an argument, and argue on the new point instead of the original. AKA the straw man attack
The reason Santa is so jolly is that he knows where all the bad girls live.
The software license adopted by the GPL is called "copy left " by its authors. This is because the GPL has the effect of requiring free and open access to Linux (and other) software code and prohibits any proprietary use thereof. As a result, the GPL is exactly opposite in its effect from the "copy right " laws adopted by the US Congress and the European Union.
What a fucking douchebag. Darl, it's called contract law. Look into it.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Hey Dayl please keep your letters like the Unix source and your mind - closed.
What, nothing about it violating the Ten Commandments to boot?
ProofReading Markup Language - and yes, I find typos.
Nothing we haven't seen before.
Indeed. It's just become so predictable by this point there's no sense paying attention to it anymore. It's so out of my own hands I'm just giving up, taking some personal hybernation time on this issue, and coming back when IBM's lawyers are finished with this.
In short: Ask not for whom the Darl trolls. He trolls for thee, not me.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Darl missed a few salient points that I will enumerate:
1) The GPL kills small cute furry animals.
2) The GPL causes cancer in laboratory animals.
3) The GPL encourages terrorism.
4) It hurts THE CHILDREN.
5) Reciting the text of the GPL backwards will cause the appearance of the Anti-Christ and will initiate the apocalypse.
from the article:
"The software license adopted by the GPL is called "copy left " by its authors. This is because the GPL has the effect of requiring free and open access to Linux (and other) software code and prohibits any proprietary use thereof. As a result, the GPL is exactly opposite in its effect from the "copy right " laws adopted by the US Congress and the European Union."
This makes it seem as though software writers are being persecuted by having their code forcibly ripped from their hands and given away for free. What new (or revivalist?) idiocy is this? They left out the whole part where the creator chooses to release it under the GPL or not.
Esoteric reference.
This guy is way out of control...I'm really beginning to think he has completely lost it. Doesn't he realize that the GPL is based on Copyrights? I mean.....HELLO...Earth to Darl...You there?
read his journal...
The GPL does not violate copyright laws. It doesn't stop SCO or anyone else from distributing *their* software how they want, it just says what you have to do in order to use *our* software. That's what a license does.
Nowhere do I recall ever reading anything on compensation, that to me is more of an ethical issue if you ask me, but IANAL so I really don't want to stick my foot in my mouth... Or the kb in my ass. As I take the Constitution regarding copyrights is just as stated 'securing for limited times the exclusive right to their work'. SCO is turning this into a circus fanfare with a) either money the underlying issue, or b) other entities are using SCO as a puppet to do their deeds.
However, there is a group of software developers in the United States, and other parts of the world, that do not believe in the approach to copyright protection mandated by Congress. In the past 20 years, the Free Software Foundation and others in the Open Source software movement have set out to actively and intentionally undermine the U.S. and European systems of copyrights and patents.
This is serioulsy bold, and slanderous statement of this guy to make, and I'm wondering who's going to be the first to open a can of lawsuit ass on SCO. It's one thing to make known your beliefs, but to claim someone is intentionally breaking a law is no laughing matter. Pretty ballsy move. Stupid but ballsy.
Leaders of the FSF have spent great efforts, written numerous articles and sometimes enforced the provisions of the GPL as part of a deeply held belief in the need to undermine or eliminate software patent and copyright laws.
Know something, I couldn't even finish reading it because it's so dull, overrated, cumbersome to understand, and downright dumb at this point. Isn't it about time someone maybe IBM or some other bigwig came in the picture, did a hostile takeover and demoted this clown to mailroom janitor, or parking lot car washer.
MoFscker
This latest little piece from SCO tops anything the Iragi Info Minister ever spun.
First please take note SCO the GPL is based on the notion of intellectual property (that would be the stuff you are trying to highjack) and firmly rests on Copyright law.
As far as "the motive of profit is the engine that ensures the progress of science" from whence do you quote this little jewel. I am sure after Einstien sent in his little paper he was thinking "oh boy if I pull this on off I will be set for life".
I'm not even remotely nervous about this case anymore. Paraphrasing his argument: intellectual property laws are critical to business (agreed), open-source advocates disagree with a lot of intellectual property laws (irrelevant generalization), and the fact that they share information under their own terms should be illegal. That last point is patently ridiculous. OSS people can share or not share their own work under whatever terms they like. They cannot share SCO's work without SCO's permission, but that's fine because nobody wants SCO's work anyway.
It appears the SCO stock price pump is wearing out. Today's FUD did not have the effect they are used to getting. What will be plan C once the stock scam no longer works?
If it weren't for Stallman and others acting like obnoxious 5 year olds to get their attention in public, people wouldn't believe this drivel about Free Software.
But since they scream, take over public hearings, etc, they have created a simpathetic public.
Darl is saying that all rights for non profit are disabled.
Does that mean that anyone can:
1. go to Pentagon and take one Atom bomb. If I remember correctly they are illegaly competing as non-profit organization with profit weapon traders, thus destroying their bussines?
2. Go to university where students papers are disposed for viewing and proclaim them as mine since they are non-profit users
3. Basicaly take anything what non-profit users have done, since I own a company?
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
dropped again recently.
From the letter:
Red Hat has aggressively lobbied Congress to eliminate software patents and copyrights.
This statement smells like bullshit. They are intentionally muddling the difference between copyrights and patents; trying to make it look like RedHat is the one taking the indefensible position.
No one who has any relevance to this case opposes software copyrights. On the other hand, software patents are an entirely different issue and debate. Muddling the two together as "intellectual property" is misleading to the point of libel.
I shouldn't get worked up about this stuff, but for some reason it just really pisses me off.
Pathetic.
— darco
Sco is only greed. All they do is talk and show nothing to back it up. they want money and they need to goto hell sco is a bunch of bastards
Some software money can't buy. For everything else there's Micros~1
Right here...
Also there is some other SCO news on the front page.
Personally I can't get past how SCO reckons they can make the GPL invalid and then face all the angry kernel developers suing them for illegally distributing their copyrighted works....
This guy is smoking some serious crack.
Copyright laws only say that someone can make copies if they have permission. How someone gets permission is left to the author of the work. The law does not require permission AND the exchange of money.
Can't we start a fund to send this guy to legal camp or something? Maybe buy him "law for dummies"?
So now it's clear: SCO intends to argue that the so-called "viral" nature of the GPL makes it 'unconstituational' (whatever that means).
By McBride's reckoning, the GPL deprives creators of their right to profit from their creations if they incorporate GPL'd code into their creation.
SCO have made reference to the GPL "virus" in previous (nonsensical) claims that the GPL would prevent, e.g., a brokerage firm from 'distributing' an application that uses GPL code internally within the company.
Utterly. Barking. Mad.
Technology leadership? In 1986?! During the height of the Japanese bubble? This guy cracks me up! You're such a card, McBride.
--AC
I read his letter, it was just a string of non-sequiturs, AFAICT. What exactly about the GPL is allegedly in violation of the constitution, or any other law for that matter? Seriously, I couldn't see anything in the letter about how the GPL violates anything. He just says "we hate the GPL because we want to write proprietary software and make money off of it". Well, good! Have at it, champ! Who's stopping you? Certainly not the GPL, the FSF, Redhat, or whatever else he's attacking this week.
Oh, and I like how he lumps patents and copyright together, so if you are against software patents, that means you are against Copyright. o_O WTF?
I know IHBT, but my God, I hate this guy. I thought Ransom Love was Clueless, but he's a genius compared to this waste of DNA.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
In speaking of the DMCA
"...without protection, American companies would unfairly lose technology advantages to companies in other countries through piracy, as had happened in the 1970's.
This statement offers no explanation, whatsoever.
...the issue is clear: do you support copyrights and ownership of intellectual property as envisioned by our elected officials in Congress and the European Union, or do you support "free" - as in free from ownership - intellectual property envisioned by the Free Software Foundation, Red Hat and others? There really is no middle ground.
I think it is possible to be in the middle. I doesn't especially bother me that copyrights exist, and I'm happy that there are people who willingly give up that right for the free use of their ideas by others. Maybe some people hate all copyright, but surely not everyone involved in FSF and RH and "others".
Interesting that he never mentions the fact that IBM is not only defending the GPL, but suing SCO for not complying with it.
But I guess when you're trying to suggest that the GPL is supported by capitalism-hating commies, the fact that one of the largest corporations in the world also supports it doesn't really do anything to strengthen your argument.
Man oh man, I hope he ends up in jail.
SCO Misses the point. Darl quotes: Congress shall have Power ... [t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
No one at SCO is an author or an inventor. They fired those guys. A company built for the sole purpose of lawsuits should have no right to other peoples' writings or discoveries.
The Childen. Won't somebody think of the children!
"Red Hat has aggressively lobbied Congress to eliminate software patents and copyrights. (see http://www.redhat.com/legal/patent_policy.html )." How is Redhat aggressively lobbying to eliminate copyrights? McBride is constantly confusing terminology, either purposefully to obfuscate the truth, or out of utter ignorance. Likely the latter.
If you read this:
... is the conviction that encouragement of individual effort by personal gain is the best way to advance public welfare through the talents of authors and inventors." ... Accordingly, "copyright law celebrates the profit motive, recognizing that the incentive to profit from the exploitation of copyrights will redound to the public benefit by resulting in the proliferation of knowledge.... The profit motive is the engine that ensures the progress of science."... Rewarding authors for their creative labor and "promot [ing] ... Progress"
"[t]he economic philosophy behind the [Copyright [C]lause
not once does it mention "monetary gain", only "profit".
I don't know about others, but I'm profiting very nicely by the (admittedly very small) contibutions I've made to GPLed software. It just doesn't always show itself as $ in my hands.
Think about it, Darl.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
December 4, 2003
An Open Letter:
Since last March The SCUM Group (SCUM) has been involved in bullyish tactics over the use of something we have no real idea of what it entails. What we assert is the widespread anal actions of others involving the portions of our copyrighted Joonix source code in Penix. These controversies are petty, and we have to stoop to a lower level and ruin a good thing for others.
SCUM assumes that the GPL, under which Penix is distributed, violates our feelings, and may be harming those hidden hands who are paying our legal beagles throughout the case. Constitutionally we have no basis, and we are hoping to obscure this entire situation in efforts to make millions and drive the entire Open Source community and the evil stealing Penis Throbalds out of existence.
The software license adopted by the GPL is called "copy left " by its authors. We are left handed and are appalled the constitution grants permission for others to make fun of us. This psychological warfare was not brought on by SCUM, but rather the thieves who stole the functions in our work.
We ask that the words main, print, printf, seek, scanf, stdio, and the {}, () characters be placed under martial law against the evil GPL renegades.
Sincerely,
Mike Hock
President & CEO
The SCUM Group, Inc.
MoFscker
"Hell, I could write a program like that, make it compare two source trees that make up 10,000 lines of code, and have it print out that 1,000,000 of those 10,000 lines are identical."
Hmm.... 1,000,000 out of 10,000.... Interesting math. I bet not even SCO would would use that kind of math in their logic! Oh wait, we are talking about SCO here....
that giving away things for free is unconstitutional and therefore illegal?
That's gonna be a very boring Christmas this year.
I asked for a refund - and got my monkey back.
Don't they actually have to put up in court tomorrow?
If I remember right, tomorrow is the oral discovery arguments for their case against IBM. Doesn't this mean that tomorrow they have to actually justify their unwillingness to clarify the nature of their case and answer to a judge for it?
Can't wait to see what that does to their stock.
Am I totally mistaking the nature of Discovery, but doesn't it mean that any evidence they haven't submitted by tomorrow, they can't use in the case? Meaning if they don't clarify their violations, rather than just giving the names of a bunch of documents (some of which contain nothing but some #includes and a "not implemented" comment), the "linux community" can then go around confidently stating that no such violations exist?
When's Redhat's Lanham Act case get to hit court to ask for injunctions?
Anyway, it probably wouldn't be too far-out to assume Darl's letter is some kind of diversionary tactic. Or that they won't try to do something even bigger and noisier tomorrow to draw attention away from the court.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
The logic is so fundamentally flawed, it inspires awe. I'll assume (for the sake of argument), there is actually some shred of code in Linux that wasn't stolen from BSD or elsewhere.
OK, I'll agree the Constitution provides the basis for copyright law. If you want to copyright, patent or enforce trade secrets as a business model, Congress has made sure you can and the courts have upheld the laws.
But, the GPL is voluntary, and you are not forced to use its protections of free use. If Scaldera voluntarily released code under the GPL, its too late to go back unless they can come up with some twisted logic to justify their current actions. Reading Darl's arguments require a voluntary suspension of disbelief. "If our employees released code to Linux, it was without permission." "The GPL is unconstitutional and a sin against nature." Yada, yada, yada, I'll see you in 8 to 12 months.
Here is a brief GPL for Dummies analogy, Darl:
I tend to harp on about Ben Franklin and how he refused a patent for the Pennsylvania Stove; in doing so he had no choice but to allow others to patent the ideas he publicly released. If he had the option of GPL'ing the Pennsylvania Stove, other people could not have leached his ideas for their own patents. The GPL was written for those who want to make sure their code remains free.
After reading Darl's wonderful letter of ignorance and greed I'd have to conclude that it was largely written by David Boies or one of his minions. Though it's been mentioned that the author, as indicated from the doc's headers, was not McBride, or one of the lawyers, my guess is that it was just composed by the authors mentioned, but the actual text originated with a lawyer.
First of all it doesn't sound like the Darl we know and love. I've read enough of his BS and listened to him enough to know his style and this letter just doesn't have it. It tries to show some hint of intelligence which we all know McBride is devoid of. Second, the information about the Supreme Court rulings, the constitution, and the DMCA all read like a lawyer wrote them. It reads like it came from the world's most ignorant and incompetent lawyer, but it was definitely from a lawyer.
It's too bad for Boies that his name is being put on such utter trash. He did have a good reputation once, but it'll be ruined before this case is over.
infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
It's a little clever, actually. The DMCA is opposed by many who also support the GPL, the common ground being that both groups tend to be deeply concerned by the proper application of intellectual property rights. The DMCA is also opposed by scofflaw copyright infringers, those being the people it was nominally designed to fight. Therefore, people who support the GPL are copyright infringers and scofflaws.
It's not a tactic that works against people who habitually apply logical analysis to what they read, but that isn't the majority of people, is it? (If it were, many a war would never have taken place.)
Check his journal for details.
(Credit where it's due.)
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
I know what you mean. I mean, my Mac is just as slow.
What's this "Post Anonymously" box do?
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
From this article is one the best quotes from Linus yet:
... is the only one that is expressly designed so that individual people can (and do) get them without having scads of lawyers on their side."
I'm a big believer in copyrights," Torvalds wrote in an e-mail interview. "Of all the intellectual property (laws), copyright
"If Darl McBride was in charge, he'd probably make marriage unconstitutional too, since clearly it de-emphasizes the commercial nature of normal human interaction, and probably is a major impediment to the commercial growth of prostitution," he wrote.
I looked up several definitions of profit and all of them reference getting value, but none explicitly mention money. Increased stature in the community is a profit. Getting source code back because it is under the GPL is a profit.
The closest definition is:
Profit
\Pro"fit\ n. 1. Acquisition beyond expenditure; excess of value received for producing, keeping, or selling, over cost; hence, pecuniary gain in any transaction or occupation; emolument;
Getting back more source code than you produced is certainly acquisition exceeding expenditure.
The more apt one for GPL is:
profit
n. 2. Accession of good; valuable results; useful consequences; benefit; avail; gain;
--Keith
is dumb, wrong, and ignorant.
Red Hat and its lawyers *must* understand that the GPL gets all, as in 100%, of its power by copyright. Copyright gives you no authority to reproduce, distribute, or make derivative works of copyrighted code. The GPL relaxes those burdens. Without copyright it doesn't matter if there's a GPL statement on code you come across because the US isn't going to enforce rights in that code. It is copyright, for all its flaws and warts, that provides the fundamental power of the GPL.
Red Hat would be insane to argue against copyrightabilty of code because of this. And they don't
Second, and importantly, the GPL is therefore a *grant* of rights to the receiver of copyrighted code. Since in the U.S. code is subject to copyright which restricts, basically, everything, the GPL relieves some of those restrictions while imposing other requirements. the GPL is therefore generous, and abundantly so, in the face of U.S. copyright requirements. This is why the GPL will not be struck down and the very idea of its being so is fundamentally, frankly, dumb.
McBride is proving himself an idiot and his lawyers at Boies, Schiller, Flexner and embarrassing themselves ever more as each day passes.
The biggest assumption this letter makes is that the FSF forces this GPL requirement on everyone who writes software, completely ignoring the fact that the person who writes the code decides to use the GPL. Mr. McBride creates the scenario where the FSF controls the copyright law like a vicious dictator, forcing all software to the GPL (by possibly firebombing "proprietary clinics"), creating anarchy. I guess this makes sense then:
"There really is no middle ground. The future of the global economy hangs in the balance."
I feel like I should pop into my X-wing or something and blow up Stallman's house.
--Stephen
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
The jokes are so thin now, that they get a -2 redundant instead of +5 funny and McBride's stupidity seems to quanitify an order of magnitude each week.
Reading the letter made one thing perfectly clear though.
McBride like many executives these days seems only interested in the constitutionality of the copyright and patent rather than freedom of speech. ergo, the citizen should have no right to dictate how their creative works can be copied, modified and reused and that only the copyright office can do as such.
Such a perversion of the terms of the constitution I have never seen, well until 1998... but this line of thinking keeps getting more pronounced each and every year.
Maybe it's time we stopped pointing and laughing at SCO and looked at the bigger picture. McBride is but one of thousands of execs who wish to lay the smack down upon personal freedoms in order to kill competition and lockout the individual from the marketplace.
The recent move by the RIAA to secure anti-trust law exemption is based upon the very views expressed today by McBride: That the indivuals rights should be trampled by the government in the name of corporate self interest.
Just a jack handy moment...
So why was this even worth submitting?
Ya know, I think Darl got his business plan from a piece of spam last year.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
From his letter it is very much clear to me that, this guy is determined to play dirty.
He mentions about the DMCA, which has nothing to do with the current issue as far as I know. My understanding is that DMCA prevents people from circumventing the digital copy protection, whereas SCO\ case is related with copying code from closed source to another software, which is distributed with another license. It is related with stealing code, not DMCA,
Although GPL is started with some political motivation for certain individuals, it was success because many other people who doesn't even agree with the GNU guys adopted, it. The reason is simple, cause GPL enables you to develop software in a way you can't otherwise. BSD is another license which you can use, but you may feel that you are working for other guys for free. So GPL is an option to people for their software. According to this guy, only leftists guys support it and that, it is un-American.
It is however quite interesting to see the clash between corporate interests and individual interests. WIth GPL you can develop your software without any fear that a corporation can steal your work. The license by its nature guarantees that. On the other hand, I don't see how GPL is a threat to a corporate. In fact, for companies like SCO, it is a great opportunity to increase your revenue, stock price etc... I personally don't like and prefer GPL because it doesn't allow you to develop software with open source and yet have some control over your software, but it is a choice there which I can use.
According to Darl, the GPL is designed to take profit incentive out of copyright ownership. Copyright is defined in the Constitution. In the case of Eldrid v. Ashcroft, the Supreme Court decided that the constitution's description of copyright existing to an advancement of arts and sciences includes the possibility of profit as a motivation. So, according to Darl, The GPL is unconstitutional.
I've read other odd things that he has said, but this seems to be a new one.
If you head over to groklaw, you will see the latest filings. I am not even finished reading them yet and IBM has pulled several examples of public statements SCO has made about it knowing exactly what code infringes in order to convince the court that it should not allow SCO to delay anymore.
It felt really good to see all that crap they have been spouting out to finally be used against them. I am sure there is a lot more from where that came from.
Btw, I donated money to Groklaw today , and it felt very, very good.
Things may suck, but if you decide to give in, so do you.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
My Linux boxes run circles around my Windows boxes and they never, let me say that a little louder, NEVER crash. I think you're experiencing the ID-10-T error.
- - - If the sun is a star, why can't I see it at night?
If you don't like GPL software so much and it's so unconstitutional, STOP FUCKING RELEASING IT!
Fscking morons!
Your mom always said, a PB&J is better than nothing, and God is nothing, is a PB&J better than God?
I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Linux box (a P4 3200 w/1024 Megs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder.
:)
Sure someone hasn't 0wned your box?
At home, on my Athlon 900 running Windows XP, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Linux box, the same operation would take about 2 minutes.
Two minutes? Damn, looks like your Windows box is 0wned too. Takes me 10 seconds to copy a 20 meg file on my Athlon 1200 Linux box.
Hate to say this, but your boxen are some lucky skiddie's prize bitches.
Even vi is straining to keep up as I type this.
Wow. You actually took the time to learn Vi whilst simultaniously loathing Linux?
"Gaaah! Hate Linux! Must troll slashdot! But... will... learn... Vi. Escape-colon-double-you. What that mean? Graaah! Getting angriererer."
Open Source over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
Cheaper systems? You get paid money to use some other OS? How much per copy? Because I could use some spare cash.
Redundant, Flamebait, Overrated, Troll and boring.
Offer your employer a refund. You've been overcharging them. Its the moral thing to do. Oh... wait... you're a Windows zealot. Morality isn't an issue for you. Nevermind.
Darl, you are a dangerous idiot.
Now wash your hands.
But as far as I know Red Hat doesn't oppose copyrights and as far as I know the global economy doesn't hang in the balance! Likewise it's interesting that he summarized Eldred -- interesting but irrelevent.
I don't think this silly letter will persuade anyone on either side.
So for a copyrighted work, I as the copyright owner have to give permission to you the consumer to make a copy.. With the GPL , I give permission for the comsumers to make copies.. They just don't have to ask for everycopy I explicitly give it to them under certain restrictions.. I'd say that perfectly follows and is compatible with the copyright laws. And if the user wishes to use the software I have written under a less restrictive use, they may contact me and we can negotiate a different licensing scheme assuming I get permission from all copy right holder of said software..
his claim that the GPL violates the U.S. Constitution, patent laws, copyright laws, and the DMCA.
For good measure, let's throw in a few more which we all know he meant to add: the Sherman Anti-trust Act, the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, the Magna Carta, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, Marbury v. Madison, Brown v. Board of Education, Occam's Razor, Zeno's Paradox, Quantum Mechanics, Evolution, and (of course) 42.
This was posted several months ago, but I think it still stands now. Copyrights are wrong, and anti free market, and immoral, and too many people are being spoonfeed poor beliefs.
BITTER PROTEST AGAINST COPYRIGHTS
If I said I didn't have an incentive to grow oranges unless I could plant a tree in your yard, or if I said I didn't have an incentive to grow cotton unless I could own slaves on the plantation, most people would see this is these as the worthless shallow arguments that they are. But if I said I didn't have an incentive to to make beneficial or creative works without a copyright monopoly, then all of a sudden people just take it on faith, they don't even question it, they just assume that society would fall apart without them. In my humble opinion, this is intellectually dishonest, especially considering that the entire Renaissance happened without copyrights.
The simple fact is, there is no equivalency relationship between copyrights and property rights - incentive does not a right make. The moral and historical foundation of property derives from the fact that property has physical limits, while the foundation of copyrights dervives from kings who granted publishers monopolies in return for not publishing bad things about the monarchy. The history of copyrights is not one of rights, but control of sharing and restricting the open use of knowledge.
That is why people who copy are not criminals, thieves, or akin to pirates who board ships and murder people. No, infact they are really victims of a cruel deception. A deception that copyrights somehow financially benefit artists and creators. The simple fact is, that for every artist that makes it "big" there are literally thousands who copyrights haven't helped a bit, even hindered, or destroyed.
However, this is not the only failure of copyrights - it is just one in many issues related to copyrights that are just blown off ignored, or glossed over. Like the failures of Hollywood culture, the failures of big media to provide quality material, the failures to provide reasonably priced books to college students while tabloids are dirt cheap, and massive anti-trust behavior in the software industry to name a few.
While the problems associated with copyrights might have been bearable 20 years ago when the biggest issue was Xerox machines, today we are entering into the information age where information is so easy to copy and manipulate that there can be no middle ground. Our society will either have to control all of it or none of it. Our communications will either have to be monitored or free, our privacy to be either contunuiously probed or protected.
In that sense, copyrights are like a vine that will never stop growing to choke off our freedoms until we cut it off at the root. The DMCA, infinite extensions, billion dollar lawsiuts, are all just symptoms of a poor belief system - not the cause. So the efforts to find a "middle ground" on copyrights are a failure because they do not address the core issue. That contrary to copyrights, the right to copy and distribute creative works and knowledge is a right!
Like freedom of religion, and freedom of the press, the right to copy things is a right that exists above government. It is a moral right, it is an inherent right, it defines the very nature of the human condition. It is beyond politics and the petition of leaders.
In fact, the entire foundation of politics rests on the notion that it's better to fight wars with words than wars with bloodshed. But to copy things does not require coercion or viloence at all, the rules are not the same. We will not change the copyright situation by petitioning our leaders, or voting to change the system. No it can only be changed by defiance.
Defiance by holding the belief that people have rights, even if those rights appear contrary to the popular mob or to the system. Defiance, by shedding off the guilt and shame that those who try to impose copyrights impose on us and understanding that they are
And boy, did they ever find similar lines of code. Do you have any idea how many lines in the Linux kernel end with a ";"? I'm amazed Linus hasn't fuckin folded already against this overwhelming evidence.
Only in a Slashdot fantasy can a Slackware install turn into several hours of sex . . . . .
>By McBride's reckoning, the GPL deprives creators of their right to profit from their creations if they incorporate GPL'd code into their creation.
I think McBride is failing to see that nobody has to incorporate GPL'd code into their creation. If you don't want to use the GPL on your code, then don't use code covered by the GPL already. It makes perfect sense to the rest of us, but he seems to have some kind of ego thing going on where he thinks that SCO should be free to rip off everybody else without giving anything in return. That seems to be his entire argument, albeit in more verbose language.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Of course, SCO stories have been beaten to death like a red-headed stepchild, so go to town.
You mean this illustration?
There was no debate that Congress had authority to legislate in the Copyright arena. We had a 1909 Copyright alteration and another one in 1976 by Congress. McBride is trying to create an issue where there simply is none whatsoever.
Second, McBride's reliance on Eldred is misguided at best and (giving him intellectual credit he probably doesn't deserve) otherwise subersively misguided. Eldred was about extension of copyright terms retroacvitely (eg mickey mouse). "Profit" in the Mickey Mouse context is different than copyright and its use in the GPL context. It is obvious that the profusion of open source code incentivizes like-minded coders to promote the progress of science and the useful arts. Behold the Linux kernel, apache, samba, and all readers' other favorite free software/open source advances in our culture. This is both profitable for our culture and profitable for, eg (and devastatingly for MdBride's case) Red Hat and IBM. In short, McBride is an idiot.
The other obvious point, tied to the above comment, is that McBride completely fails to recognize the diffence between free as in beer and free as in speech. IBM hasn't missed this and IBM is profitable. Which is more than one can say for SCO.
SCO (and Boies, Schiller, Flexner)'s position is profoundly retarded and disingenuous. They should be spanked hard and often and until bleeding.
What a joke.
Even for people who don't care at all about free software he'll sound evil in this one.
This one is far more harsh, but I think makes my point just as well.
COPYRIGHTS AND PATENTS ARE THE SLAVERY OF THE INFORMATIOn AGE(Part II)
There seems to be this attitude that the suffering of slaves prior to 1850 was something that only happened back then. That it has nothing to do with now, that we are more civilized, more modern, more mature, and more sophisticated. With it comes the arrogance that what happened then, means nothing now, that what happened there has no value here, that the great torment and suffering back then can safely be ignored now as we blow off history and all the values that go with it in terms of understanding, freedom, markets, property rights, and the information age.
Surely anyone who claimed that there is no incentive go grow cotton without "niggers" on the plantation would be considered a barbaric. But if someone claims that there is no incentive to create intellectual and knowledge works without copyrights and patents, then society calls them enlightened. If someone had said that the great wealth of America rested on slavery as a property right and the plantation system, they were a foolish idiot. But if someone says that the great wealth of societies in the information age rests on "Intellectual Property", then they are called wise. Anyone who says that slavery was about property rights and not control, is a liar. However, if they say that copyrights and patents are not about control, but "Intellectual Property" then they are considered trustworthy. How about - if you don't like slavery - don't own slaves, and if you don't like copyrights no one forces you to buy those creations. How about - if you don't believe in slavery, you must be an anarchist, if you don't believe in copyrights and patents you must be communist. How about - you are a thief if you free slaves from the plantation, you are a thief when you copy someones "Intellectual Property".
So why are we spoon-feed these poor logical explanations over and over again? Because, like the rapist who drugs his victim and gently penetrates her, rather than beat her and tear into her where all the scars, blood, and bruises can be seen. Like the assassin who befriends and mis-places his victims heart medications, rather than pull out a rifle and pop a bullet in the head. Copyrights and patents are the pinnacle of quiet violence. So seemingly innocent, so seemingly civilized and friendly, so hard to see and identify any direct evil, any direct consequence. After all, what could be less harmless then providing an incentive to artists and inventors, right? But do they really promote art - or just promote works that have the most hype rather than the most meaning and educational value? Do they really help inventors, or do they hinder collaboration and sharing in a way that would put a police state to shame?
Perhaps the old lady has none to blame when her patented diabetes medication is too expensive to afford anymore. Who can the workers blame when the proprietary technology they bet their career on becomes obsolete and it becomes ever harder to relearn from scratch as they get older. Who can a child in Africa blame when they are dying of AIDS, and there are no generics to treat it! Who do we blame when researchers seeking a cure for cancer encounter massive obstacles to sharing there individual research for fear that their peers will get one up on them, get a key patent, and lock them out! Who do our nations students blame when tabloids are pennies on the dollar, but textbooks dollars on the page! Who do we blame for Hollywood culture being such a failure, and so strongly influencing society in their own failed image.
As people die because patented medicines are too costly and alternatives too sparse, and the needy go without, not because of genuine shortage, but because artificial human made restrictions. Our government who is the enemy of overt violence, has become the friend of quiet violence. Our government who has organized world wars to protect our freedoms, now promotes a world orde
Dear Person Reading this Letter:
You are in violation of copyright law, as I have copyrighted this letter and encoded it using an advanced version of english which we have developed at SCO group.. Each sentence, as you can see, ends in two puncuation marks, however, you seem to be able to read the text just fine..
We regret to inform you that there is no possible other implementation for this english derivative, is our copyright, and therefore, you must be circumventing our extremely intelligent and work with the intent of profit..
Sincerely,
Darl McBride
Perhaps someone with shares in SCO should initiate a shareholder's lawsuit arguing that, by keeping McBride in charge, the SCO board is failing in its responsibilities to shareholders.
Bottom of page 9 in IBM's recent filing. Supposedly, as an obvious delay strategy, SCO tried to give IBM 1 MILLION dead tree pages of the source code instead of a digital version.
WTF!? What kind of judge stands by and let's such obvious waste of the court's time occur? That's TAX dollars being wasted (judges and courts are paid by tax payers, right?) on childish delay tactics!
Damn, this is starting to sound like the plot of a very stupid movie . . .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
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Did anyone notice SCO changed the design of their site? Previously, it was mostly a scummish yellow, but now they adopted a yellow on blue design. Now I have to overhaul my site design... (see sig)
What do Darl and dirty diapers have in common?
They are both full of shit and they both stink.
Time to change the diaper and the Darl.
Well, not exactly. I'm not sure if this would fall under ex-post-facto. (pardon my spelling).
If the GPL is found to be invalid, I don't think you can retroactively impose penalty. Although my memory tells me that is if a new law is passed.. but I would have to imagine it would be the same if a law is interpreted for the first time in court.
Yay! We got a mention!
I just came back from a night out.... and I'm drunk...
and...
I see this little peice of shit Darle McFuckwit with his stupid "open letter" a I just skimed it...
So... I pronunce Darle is a complete nin-com-poop. Even drunks like me can see that he's an idiot.
I'm fucking drunk and I'm smarter than everybody at SCO!!!!!
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
10. Because L. Ron Hubbard told him to.
that by declining your right to own exclusively your creation you violate the constitution; we would all be in violation of the constitution every time we DIDN'T: speak, own a firearm, practice a religion, etc.
m =2208034696&category=14014
... went to Utah.............
what a bag...
oh by the way, i thought of a great way to spread chaos. what if an enterprising group of troublemakers
1) hopped on to ebay and spend $10 to get some of those NASTY NASTY potent stink bombs that come in glass vials. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ite
2) purchased a sling-shot to go along with it.
3)
SCO: 800-726-8649
Verisign: 800-361-8319, 888-642-9675
Diebold: 800-433-VOTE (8683)
Any lawyers out there care to share the possibility of a libel suit here? Or is that what the current RH/SCO case is about? I can't remember. Too much litigation going on.
It's amazing how McBride can continuously attack the GPL and open source. Yet in the back of my mind all I can think is, "Caldera Linux... Caldera Linux..." If McBride is so against the GPL, then why did he agree to take the CEO position of a company with it's foundations built upon everything he attacks? Quote:"However, there is a group of software developers in the United States, and other parts of the world, that do not believe in the approach to copyright protection mandated by Congress. In the past 20 years, the Free Software Foundation and others in the Open Source software movement have set out to actively and intentionally undermine the U.S. and European systems of copyrights and patents." Funny how he forgets that for a good couple of those 20 years, the company he now leads was a part of the Open Source software movement he despises. "Yes your honor, we would like to sue IBM for being more sucessful with open source than we were. We hate it because we lost all our money in it." Back in beginning months these stories really made me angry, now it's my weekly /. humor!
, and the DMCA. Does the term Civil Disobedience mean anything to you, Darl?
Mcbride may be playing loosely with the term, but still he made aver rediculous statement that i would like to point out:
We believe that the "progress of science" is best advanced by vigorously protecting the right of authors and inventors to earn a profit from their work.
If any real scince was carried out that way, we would still be in the dark ages. Real science is developed through scientific journals. Open publication of their discoveries and progress. How far would we be if lived in a society where Mathematicians had to pay roalities for using other peoples theroms in their proofs?
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I think it's becoming more apparent that SCO wants to see this go to court. I'm pretty sure that they've figured out nobody's going to buy them, so they're onto plan B.
I think their reasoning is that if they can invalidate the GPL, they can somehow gain some sort of ownership of the conglomeration of code. I've seen people make reference that this is a double-edged sword for SCO, because they're in violation of either the GPL or general Copyright Law whichever way it goes, but is there a way that they could gain ownership of it should the GPL be found invalid? I mean, could they claim that since the code was released under a 'bogus' license it's effectively 'public domain'?
I mean, judging by Darl's open (ironic wording) letter he not only thinks he has the DMCA and Copyright Law on his side, but also Supreme Court Decisions and the U.S. Constitution itself...
I truly think the man is delusional enough that it'll take a court of law to smack him back into reality, but by then he'll have had his 4 profitable quarters and his fat bonus... so why should he care? It's also a good time to be a corporate crook... they seem to be getting off easy these days...
There's nothing particularly wrong with Copyrights (although terms are now excessive) but it is SCO who is assaulting them by trying to steal the work of thousands of developers, not the other way around.
stop publishing SCO's sounds for cthulu's sake!
stop letting this SCOtree make noise as it falls over, stop approving " SCO news that is not new"
Check with Groklaw.net... I think that they only have to defend their reluctance to provide IBM with the materials that they have asked for, or defend their "motion to avoid discovery and compel IBM to give them money"....
I don't believe that tommorrow means the close of items which they could possibly bring to trial... The issue is that, IBM has twice demanded information, they have claimed that IBM needs to give them some too (so they're bad too..).
Most interesting is Darl's statement that "this nonsense will continue for 18 more months...we've got a schedule with MS to keep..."
THAT'S INTERESTING!!!!...he's finally put a schedule behind how long they are going to keep this up.
Darl says:
The software license adopted by the GPL is called "copy left " by its authors. This is because the GPL has the effect of requiring free and open access to Linux (and other) software code and prohibits any proprietary use thereof. As a result, the GPL is exactly opposite in its effect from the "copy right " laws adopted by the US Congress and the European Union. - But, Darl, you can use GNU/Linux and other Free Software as much as you want. It is when you try to redistribute Free Software under a different licence, it is the moment when you violate the GPL - you violate a licence. GPL is your EULA if you will, only it does not affect your USAGE of Free Software in any way, only your redistribution of Free Software. You do know what a contract means, don't you?
In taking this position SCO has been attacked by the Free Software Foundation, Red Hat and many software developers who support their efforts to eliminate software patents and copyrights. Internet chat boards are filled with attacks against SCO, its management and its lawyers. Personal threats abound. At times the nature of these attacks is breathtaking - the emotions are obscuring the very clear and important legal issues SCO has raised. This is to be expected when the controversy concerns such deeply held beliefs. - Darl, when you try to STEAL people's copyrighted work, it is the moment when you start getting these kinds of reaction. At the moment when you decide to enslave the free, at the moment when you decide to take away something that belongs to everyone by the expressed permission of the copyright holder, at this moment you become an enemy. When you LIE, you become an enemy and an annoyance.
Despite the raw emotions, however, the issue is clear: do you support copyrights and ownership of intellectual property as envisioned by our elected officials in Congress and the European Union, or do you support "free" - as in free from ownership - intellectual property envisioned by the Free Software Foundation, Red Hat and others? There really is no middle ground. The future of the global economy hangs in the balance. - Darl, but it is you, who do not recognize the copyright, you do not want to recognize a contract for redistribution of Free Software that you enter, once you start redistributing Free Software. You are going against simple contract and copyright laws, nothing else.
The Free Software Foundation, Red Hat and other GPL advocates take the contrary position. The FSF and Red Hat believe that the progress of science is best advanced by eliminating the profit motive from software development and insuring free, unrestricted public access to software innovations. The Free Software Foundation was established for this purpose. The GPL implements this purpose. Red Hat speaks for a large community of software developers dedicated to this purpose. However, the U.S. Supreme Court has dramatically undercut this position with its guidance in Eldred in how to define the term "promote the Progress of Science and the useful arts..." under the Constitution. - Supreme Court is misguided at best and at worst it has a hand in the pie. What you call innovation, others call extortion. If a hundred programmers come up with an exactly same solution algorithm to a problem why should one of them be able to subdue the rest into paying royalties for something that must be free? An algorithm? It is bound to happen simply by the nature of mathematics - anyone familiar with math knows, the Pythagorus theorem could be discovered by many individuals simply because in math it is natural to find the most optimal solutions to problems, and the proven theorems are such solutions. Software is all about algorythms and thus it is about the most optimal solutions, and these solutions can be expressed as theorems. Such ideas must be free for everyone to use, since they are the tools, the building blocks that we use in order to solve our real life problems. If we are not allowed to free
You can't handle the truth.
let's see how he likes them apples.
Grandparent is a variant of an anti-Mac troll from the 1990s. Addressing each of his points is like making fun of a clown for his big floppy shoes: you look like the bigger fool.
It's true the FSF doesn't like copyright...
No one is proposing the abolition of copyright laws, and that includes the FSF.
The letter clearly stated that RedHat has lobbied to remove software copyrights, which is blatantly false. There are numerous other inaccuracies (perhaps even lies) in the letter.
The letter is most definitely inaccurate, and is quite possibly libel.
— darco
Now McBride was talking about copyrights and IP here, but I think the global economy hangs in the balance more because of the conduct by companies like SCO (i.e. dishonest ones) than it does by the GPL.
----
"Ours was a free culture. It is becoming much less so."-Lawrence Lessig
Let me get this straight.
SCO is going to go to court to force me to keep my code to myself.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the GPL works with copyright by saying "This is my code; I CHOOSE to allow others to see it and use it however they see fit, as long as any code they write that works with mine is also made available".
No, I don't think SCO is seriously thinking of forcing people to keep their code closed; instead I'm starting to think that this is intended to get people to think twice about using open source alternatives. But what can I do about it? I guess educate myself first and secondly be willing to explain to anyone who is wondering whether SCO has a case. (Or wondering what the heck that case is). Anyone have any better ideas?
Dood you are lame and off topic too. You are the kind of folk Darl "I'm a crack monkey" McBride is trolling.
I was not aware that the US Congress passed judgment on its laws.
"The great thing about multitasking is that several things can go wrong at once." -me
For me, this quote from the article sums up the essence of their argument:
'SCO argues that the authority of Congress under the U.S. Constitution to "promote the Progress of Science and the useful arts..." inherently includes a profit motive, and that protection for this profit motive includes a Constitutional dimension. We believe that the "progress of science" is best advanced by vigorously protecting the right of authors and inventors to earn a profit from their work.'
So, he's saying that to give your work away is unconstitutional.. if you're not pursuing monetary gain, you are in violation of the U.S. Constitution. He can't possibly be serious can he?
In any case, how the hell did this morph into an argument about the constitutionality of the GPL? What happened to the contract dispute with IBM?
According to the www.groklaw.net article "Darl's "Greed is Good" Manifesto", and to this source from Yahoo, Darl's open letter was written by Kevin McBride and Dean Zimmerman, (a tech writer). At least the word document meta data says so.
:)
And there I was hoping Darl at least understood his position well enough to write garbage like this by himself. Does Darl even exist, or is he like the Wizzard Oz, a non-existant entity? Just kidding. He may become a non-existant entity after the court-room is done with him, though
You can't handle the truth.
Dear Mr. McBride,
Shit or get your whiny, retarded (white-collar-criminal-slimebag) ass off the pot.
With love,
Everybody.
I don't get it. How can the GPL be unconstitutional ? It's not a law, it's just a license -- a private contract between two parties. The Constitution simply doesn't apply. Now, SCO can claim that the GPL is unenforceable, but that's a different story altogether. What next ? Reading is declared unconstitutinal because it can potentially detract from the market of audio books ?
>|<*:=
I believe IBM has indicated that if SCO does not produce the documents IBM wants soon, IBM will ask for a dismissal of SCO's claims. After all, if SCO won't tell IBM what IBM has done to harm SCO, what case does SCO have against IBM?
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
This has to be the most fucked up philosophy in the history of the world. On the bright side, if McBride continues on this path Redhat, the FSF and co. will be the least of McBride's worries. Last time I read religious literature unbridled greed was a qualification for a one way ticket to Hell.
He (Mr. McBride) says the GPL is against the constitution. How?
... but most radically of all d) if you then want to distribute this modified work then you can, on the same terms i gave you the original work. Ok it's a bit more complex than that.. but you probably get the gist of it.
He goes on to quote a case which from the text he is quoting appears to be about extending the time that copyright applies to an item that is copyrighted and when it falls into the public domain.
How does this case apply to the GPL which is at the end of the day a licence? I would contend that it has little or no relevance whatsoever to the case in hand.
If anyone's interested I found this site contains useful information about the case Mr. McBride quotes.
Of course, anyone who is enlightened knows that the GPL in summary states a) I own my work and I keep my copyright, b) you can copy my work freely, c) if you modify my work it's ok
Mark.
So if SCO is so against GPL software why don't they stop using it in their product. And hyping it as core parts of their products. i.e., Samba.
I guess I'm confused why if they are so against it they don't pull all of the GPL'd software from their products to show their resolve.
Oh. Wait. Could it be because ALL their software was written by other people?
Invalid Checksum. Retrying.
I am a bit confused...
First they said it only a contract dispute with IBM...
Not it is about copyright law? no wait..is it about money? or...?????
WTF!!!!!
He seems to believe that copyright is only valid if people charge money for a product???
So people have no copyright protection if they don't have an economic motive?
So does that mean that Microsoft looses control over IE?
Wasn't that distributed for free?
And then he claims that FSF is all about people should loose their right to their own code...
Damn, I must be tired, I don't get it..
I'm going back to bed
Yes, tragic that was. My eyes teared up at the irony of it all.
Ah, hubris! Ah, hypocrisy!
My own favorite part was where he discovered that Eldred v. Ashcroft affirms Congress's right to extend copyright protection, then morphed it into a sort of "Greed is Apple-Pie and the Founding Fathers" version of Gordon Gecko.
Oh, the surreality of it all.
(As a diclaimer, IANAL, but I have read Eldred and I am familiar with public policy issues on copyright.)
Straw man is the correct term for this letter, as the entire case McBride makes is on a complete misunderstanding of both the GPL and Eldred.
First of all, his use of Article I Section 8 of the US Constitution illustrates absolutely nothing. There is nothing in the GPL that precludes or infringes upon this statute in the least. Congress has the power to grant exclusive rights to a creation but has no power to legally mandate what the terms of those rights are. (See Graham v. John Deere Co. of Kansas City 383 US 1.) Congress has the right to grant me a patent, and if I want to take that patented product and license it to whomever, there is nothing that Constitutionally prevents me from doing so. In other words, if IBM patents a new storage device and they want to make those specifications publicly available through GPLed drivers they have every right to do so. If they want to license such technology to only one company, they may do so. If they want to take every existing model and shove it up their ass, they have every legal right to do so.
Furthermore, precedent sets that the patent power is limited only for the purpose of the "progress of science" - as Bonito Boats v. Thunder Craft Boats, Inc 489 US 141 states:
What McBride argues is that the public domain itself is somehow contradictory to the very notion of copyright, and argument which simply does not hold to much scrutiny. Even the majority opinion in Eldred acknowledges that the Constitution does not allow for a perpetual system of copyright, and that at some point material must fall into the public domain.
The argument that profit motive is the best way of ensuring the public good is fine, but it is essentially a non-sequitor in this case. If the Linux kernel contains SCO code then that code has to be legally removed. However, SCO has no right to dictate that only proprietary licenses are legally valid, and that argument does nothing to advance their particular case. Moreover, any judge who has to rule on such a prima facie idiotic argument will quickly rule that SCO has no legal ground. The GPL is, as many have already mentioned, based on an acknowledgement of copyright law and relies on copyright law as a basis for its licensing terms. SCO has no right to say that a copyright holder must use a proprietary license any more than Red Hat says that SCO must drop all claims to their proprietary source code. There is no legal foundation for such a position and McBride clearly has no understanding of the revelant law.
After a long history of governments going soft on corporate crime, he probably doesn't think he's doing anything wrong. Does he think the man with the strongest lawyer is always right? Do anything you like, and pay your weregeld when someone strong objects to you harming their relatives.
Yes, that's true....but that will not be decided tommorrow either...
I'm assuming that the judge will simply get angry at the foot-dragging and set some type of time-table for discovery to move forward. If SCO still doesn't produce anything by the end of the timeline, the judge might set another hearing to accept motions on behalf of dissmissal.
All in all, Darl's right. It's gonna be 18 months till this case gets thrown out (even over failure to produce during discovery)....I think they (SCO) will stretch this out that long before they get caught empty handed.
Here's the response I just posted on my blog:
If you're looking for some entertainment, read Darl McBride's latest tirade against the GPL. While there are indeed some people who'd really like to get rid of all intellectual property rights, his assertion or at least implication that the GPL itself is aimed at abolishing intellectual property rights is absurd. The purpose of the GPL is to empower copyright owners to give away their work if they want to, while ensuring that their gift to the world is not coopted by people who would profit from it without sharing their contributions too. The GPL is depends on copyright law and uses it to empower copyright owners to control the distribution of their work.
A common misconception about capitalism is that everything is about monetary profits--that money is everyone's motivation. Capitalism is a system that benefits society by reward people who provide others' needs and wants by giving the producers something they want. Most often, the reward is economic, true. But some capitalists are motivated by a desire to give ("philanthropists"), others by a desire for recognition (even if it isn't accompanied by copious amounts of money), others by a desire to do a particular kind of work that they find rewarding (and the money they earn enables them to do that, but the money is just a means to an end).
Darl's letter implies that people who create software for reasons other than earning profit are somehow anti-American, anti-capitalist, and even lawless. This is absurd. He states that "SCO asserts that the GPL, under which Linux is distributed, violates the United States Constitution and the U.S. copyright and patent laws." This is patently false. The GPL PROTECTS the rights of copyright owners who wish to give away their work with certain restrictions on how it can be used. Darl's attempt to abolish the GPL is no more an attack on the rights of copyright owners than the violations that SCO's lawsuit alleges.
Darl's letter overuses references to the Constitution, elected officials, and other terms and phrases obviously aimed at portraying SCO as on the side of legitimacy, American values, and lawfulness. Of course these are legitimate issues for him to make reference to in supporting is position, but sheesh! Darl, you'll sound a lot more credible if your letters don't smack so heavily of propaganda.
I myself have released some software I've created under the GPL. I give some of my work away for a few reasons: to attract people to the non-free versions of the same software, to bring people to my website where I can try to sell them something else, because I know some people will pay me to install it for them, and in some cases, because while useful, some of my products are simple enough that the price they could fetch would hardly be worth collecting. Without the GPL, I might just keep these things to myself. I don't mind people using them for free, nor do I mind them using it to create profits by its use, but I don't like the idea of people making money by selling my work after I gave it to them for free. The GPL is a tool that enables me to give my work away while preventing people from using it in ways that I, the copyright owner, don't want them to.
Does copyright protection of commercial software foster innovation? Of course. Most of the software development I've done would have been done without the profit motive (unless I were independently wealthy). Does free software foster innovation? Of course. Lots of the software I've written depends on free software like Apache, PHP, Perl, and Linux. Without these, I never could have created my software. There's room in the world, and in a capitalist economy for both. The real point is that it's the right of the copyright owner to decide how copyright law will be applied to their work.
Convert RSS to HTML - integrate webfeeds into your website
You sir, are a genius.
Something distinct that people will remember better than my name
"After all, if SCO won't tell IBM what IBM has done to harm SCO"
While at the same time, SCO is causeing harm to IBM (defamation). How about a countersuit?
Darl,
I've got to tip my hat to you. It's rare that you can find someone so outspoken and with such an interesting interpretation of reality who is also able to elicit such vociferous and multitudinous responses from your friends and (more often) your enemies. Really, for your family's sake at least, I feel better knowing that when someone finally points out that the emperor has no clothes, you'll have no problems finding employment in the afternoon talk show circuit.
In the months since you've launched your Sisyphean attack on Linux and Open Source Software in general I've come to regard you with something of a grudging affinity. Like that crazy uncle you hope never shows up for family events but then miss terribly when he's not there, you've become a constant ache that I just know I'm going to miss. Who else can I count on to inspire such fits of laughter and frothing rage?
It's with this new found amiability towards you that I make the following offer. I know you've been wanting someone to buy up The SCO Group and in the interests of not seeing you completely financially devastated, I'd like to buy your company. I'd like to offer you a one crisp United States dollar bill for the entirety of The SCO Group. You may find the amount a little less than you'd hoped for, but as Homer Simpson was once counseled (if I may paraphrase) "I think you should take it."
You see I've been both amused, enraged, and more recently dismayed as the scope of your intellectual property land grab expands. I finally decided that some sort of intervention was necessary after I read your latest diatribe in which you both demonstrated a profound lack of understanding of intellectual property law as well as the GPL and made thinly veiled threats to employ the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to further expand your legal assault against Linux. Darl, have you even read the DMCA? Do you know what it is or says? Were you aware that you've got to actually demonstrate you've got copyright in something that's been infringed before you can even open that can of worms?
I'm sure it may have slipped your mind what with all the heavy composition you've apparently been engaged in, but although you've talked a lot about your lawsuits with IBM and RedHat, you haven't actually won either of them yet. As such, that presents a real problem for your DMCA strategy because so far you've been unable to demonstrate an intellectual property interest of The SCO Group that's been infringed in any way. Sort of putting the cart before the horse aren't we?
Surely it's also obvious to you now that you've painted yourself into a corner with respect to the GNU Public License (GPL)? If you prevail and the GPL is declared invalid, as a distributor of many works (including Linux) which were formerly licensed under the GPL, The SCO Group would appear to be guilty of copyright infringement on a rather unprecedented scale. (Without the GPL Darl you can't distribute Linux or Samba.) If you fail, and the GPL is valid, you've released all your supposedly infringed works into the Open Source community under terms where you lose all ability to make infringement claims on pretty much any IP grounds. In which case any value of any intellectual property left in the corpses of your versions of Unix is pretty much gone.
So please, I urge you, it's time to stop the madness. Take me up on my offer, let Mr. Boise have his cut of my buyout, and walk away a winner Darl. I'm pretty sure it's the best offer you're going to get.
Your friend,
Specter
http://www.sco.com/scosource/linuxlicense.html
End users who purchase this license are granted the right to use the SCO IP in Linux in binary format only. The license is available immediately and can be obtained by contacting your SCO sales representative or by calling SCO at 1-800 726-8649.
Does anyone else have questions?
allegation or about censoring McBride out
of the picture. Our issue is about covering
the SCO story every 5 friking minutes between
now and March 2005.
I think the issue has become a daily Slashdot spam,
which will be repeated later in the day if
McBride opens his mouth again, for whatever reason.
Enough!
I almost hate to write this, as SCO's lawyers might actually use it.
About the only attack on GPL that makes sense is that GPL creates a community which is colluding with each other in an anti-competitive manner artificially driving down prices. GPL code constitutes a "criminal cartel" with the members conspiring with each other to profit from the conspiracy and thus unfairly competing with closed-source products.
You can even argue that the GPL acts to preclude and punish users that don't participate in the community by pushing commercial products out of the marketplace with artificially deflated prices.
Thus, the FSF movement comprises the largest anti-trust entity ever to exist and this must be squashed in order to protect the just interests of world commerce.
The take of the open letter is that "Copyright exists to support profit" and that "GPL precludes using copyright to enforce profit, and even competes with non-GPL making profit for difficult". What is missed is that Copyright exists to enforce property rights. If the author chooses to leverage his copyright with thousands of others in a cooperative work, then this is the free choice of the author. If non-GPL vendors find this disturbing, then this just indicates that competition works.
And the whole take that the copyright laws and constitution are designed to equally protect business and "the people" is bunk. The people "vote", businesses only "lobby". Contrary to business belief, they don't own the people, yet.
Pasted from website for posterity.
... [t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
-----------
Open Letter on Copyrights
From Darl McBride, CEO
December 4, 2003
An Open Letter:
Since last March The SCO Group ("SCO") has been involved in an increasingly rancorous legal controversy over violations of our UNIX intellectual property contract, and what we assert is the widespread presence of our copyrighted UNIX code in Linux. These controversies will rage for at least another 18 months, until our original case comes to trial. Meanwhile, the facts SCO has raised have become one of the most important and hotly debated technology issues this year, and often our positions on these issues have been misunderstood or misrepresented. Starting with this letter, I'd like to explain our positions on the key issues. In the months ahead we'll post a series of letters on the SCO Web site ( www.sco.com ). Each of these letters will examine one of the many issues SCO has raised. In this letter, we'll provide our view on the key issue of U.S. copyright law versus the GNU GPL (General Public License).
SCO asserts that the GPL, under which Linux is distributed, violates the United States Constitution and the U.S. copyright and patent laws. Constitutional authority to enact patent and copyright laws was granted to Congress by the Founding Fathers under Article I, 8 of the United States Constitution:
Congress shall have Power
This Constitutional declaration gave rise to our system of copyrights and patents. Congress has enacted several iterations of the Copyright Act. The foundation for current copy protection in technology products is grounded in the 1976 Copyright Act. The 1976 Act grew out of Congressional recognition that the United States was rapidly lagging behind Japan and other countries in technology innovation. In order to protect our ability to innovate and regain global leadership in technology, Congress extended copyright protection to technology innovations, including software. The 1976 Act had the desired effect. The U.S. economy responded rapidly, and within 10 years had regained global technology leadership.
Most recently, Congress has adopted the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") to protect the intellectual property rights embodied in digital products and software. Congress adopted the DMCA in recognition of the risk to the American economy that digital technology could easily be pirated and that without protection, American companies would unfairly lose technology advantages to companies in other countries through piracy, as had happened in the 1970's. It is paramount that the DMCA be given full force and effect, as envisioned by Congress. The judgment of our elected officials in Congress is the law of the land in the U.S. copyright arena, and should be respected as such. If allowed to work properly, we have no doubt that the DMCA will create a beneficial effect for the entire economy in digital technology development, similar to the benefits created by the 1976 Copyright Act.
However, there is a group of software developers in the United States, and other parts of the world, that do not believe in the approach to copyright protection mandated by Congress. In the past 20 years, the Free Software Foundation and others in the Open Source software movement have set out to actively and intentionally undermine the U.S. and European systems of copyrights and patents. Leaders of the FSF have spent great efforts, written numerous articles and sometimes enforced the provisions of the GPL as part of a deeply held belief in the need to undermine or eliminate software patent and copyright laws.
The software license adopted by the GPL is called "copy left " by its authors. This is because the GPL has the effect of requiring free and open access to Linux (and other) software code and prohibits any pro
While I may be incorrect, I believe my interpretation is correct.
Both SCO's case against IBM and the GPL rely on very broad use of the term "derivative work" which is used to assert licensing restrictions on such works. An example of this is if I write a program that links (statically or dynamically) to a GPL'd library, then if I wish to distribute my program, I must release it under the GPL. As such, the GPL forces its restrictions on my code, even though my code isn't based on the GPL'd code.
In the same way, IBM uses portions of System V code in AIX. SCO claims that other portions of AIX are subject to restrictions since they are a derviative work of the System V code. As such, SCO seeks to force its licensing restrictions on the remainder of the code in AIX, claiming it is a derivative work.
While the scenarios are not exactly the same, I believe both rely on overly-broad definitions of what constitutes a derivative work. While I feel that SCO's case ought to be dismissed, I also believe the GPL needs to be modified to use a less broad definition of what is a derivative work. As the license exists now, it may indeed violate copyright law. Such modifications would mean the GPL is more likely enforcable under copyright law, and would make software licensed under the GPL more friendly to many commercial developers.
At the very least, it is something to think about.
Here
Open Letter to Daryl McBride from the Human Inhabitants of Planet Earth (HIPE).
Nobody's buying it. Give up.
-HIPE
Here
SCO filed a supplementary motion to expand the time (push back the deadline) for the discovery IBM is trying to compel. These kinds of things are almost always granted once, so forget about anything useful until the end of the month.
Bill Gates: Darl, just buy me 18 months, and Longhorn will be ready, after which i'll start my own patent/trademark/trade secret wars...
Want to tell me again who exactly is forcing you to read these stories and then post about them? Oh... thats what I thought.
Here AWWW. Modded you down on this one? Maybe someone noticed you are a Kharma Whore Troll?
OK Darl, Forget your rambling about how Linux users are zealous Communists and make your case that IBM intentionally stole your code!!!
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
If you look at the comments on the SCO stories over the past months, I'll bet you find the most wild predictions of SCO's motivations and intentions are the ones we are seeing today. They have broadened this attack as far as they possibly can. It would be fun to take a kind of "average" opinion of what SCO would try to do on a per story basis.
where ever did Darl learn to quote the Constitution?! The elipsis is commonly used to indicate the removal of a passage, and so you get what Darl and the rest of the politicians and advertisers like to do with written material.
... [t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
Congress shall have Power
As opposed to simply looking it up:
Article 1, Section 8 - 8 (a listed power of Congress)
Power to encourage progress in science and the arts by passing patent laws (laws that protect the rights of inventors and discoverers) and copyright laws (laws that protect the rights of authors, artists, and musicians), so that no one may steal and sell the ideas of anyone who seeks protection for his work under these laws.
Nope don't see it SCO; lay off the crack.
we are lurkers, we are many
Well...at least this letter spells out their "GPL is unconstitutional" argument. That's the first time I've seen anything more than vague hand-waving on that one. Even if the argument is misguided (which it is, don't get me wrong), at least there's an argument there now.
Despite the raw emotions, however, the issue is clear: do you support copyrights and ownership of intellectual property as envisioned by our elected officials in Congress and the European Union, or do you support "free" - as in free from ownership - intellectual property envisioned by the Free Software Foundation, Red Hat and others? There really is no middle ground. The future of the global economy hangs in the balance.
In a nutshell, copyright and patent law protects the rights of people who decide to try make money out of their ideas and inventions. The GPL and copyleft are intended to protect the rights of people who decide to give their ideas and inventions away freely. The choice is entirely up to the originator of the idea, or the inventor, and I don't see why someone can't support both choices. I certainly hope that the US version of common law decides to whenever the GPL is getting aired in court.
But Darl quite likely pretends to himself that the entire world is either black or white.
:wq
"[t]he economic philosophy behind the [Copyright [C]lause ... is the conviction that encouragement of individual effort by personal gain is the best way to advance public welfare through the talents of authors and inventors."
So my personal gain is knowing that others can modify and improve my code and I will be able to use their improvements. I guess the GPL is legal
So he claims that busineses like Red Hat are anti profit? Compare this and this.
You have to wonder why SCO bothers putting such crap on their website.
There are a few sites, like say the Enlightenment web site that I visit regularly for updates, waiting for the news of the fabled E-17 release. And yeah I visit the MySQL site for the same sort of reason - waiting for News on version 5 with stored procedures.
But for Christ's sake, who in their right mind visits the SCO site for some light reading and news? Who? Not me. Not you. Maybe some Microsoft employees?
But seriously, why do they bother? Perhaps poor Darl is just taking the opportunity to get some stuff off his chest after all the flaming, death threats, and other such niceties that come with the job at SCO.
SCO cannot get away with this bull. SCO will not get away with this bull.
:)
... Ok, slashdot wouldn't take the post. "Too few characters per line". So, here's a link to my journal. No need to slashdot my own server. :)
I couldn't resist.
False Claims and Shill
(an original parody, thank you very much!)
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
"I think it is possible to be in the middle."
Actually, it isn't, but not for the reasons Darl proclaims.
The GPL is based on copyright law, thus there is no conflict between supporting copyright and supporting the GPL. No conflict, no middle ground to worry about.
I am pretty sure old Darl is full of fecal matter. It's really impacted fecal matter. He is badly in need of a enema. The fecal mattter has pisined his body and that is the only explination for his most recent "open letter" Take a look at the meta data on the word document. He didin't write it. 2 other bozos did.
If you don't like what I write don't be a CS and mod it down. Refute it.
Yea I can't spell. So what is your point?
For some reason, Darl seems to think that Linux is an American product. Well, it's not. In the worst case they can mark Linux as illegal and forbid it's usage in the USA. They can't do crap outside the USA. Or am I wrong in this?
Except that Mr. McBride argues that copyrights are in effect invalid if they are not used "for profit". That's definitely not in the Supreme Court decision - nowhere that I am aware anyway. If that were the case, Disney should have been stripped of all old copyrighted material they fought so hard to defend and extend that they never intend to publish or sell ever again. What kind of profit or personal gain is that?
/. interviewed few months ago? How more plainly can SCO spell it out for them?
And of course that's not the case - RedHat (the case he presents) actually makes profit selling GPLed software and associated tech support.
Basically, he is saying - I don't like the GPL, therefore I feel free to violate it, and with it, relevant copyright laws. I said it before and I'll say it again - Mr. McBride, by continuing to distribute and sell Linux without any authorization, you are continuing to violate the same copyright laws you are "fighting" so hard to defend. That's a criminal violation these days.
Can I arbitrarily declare that I feel the Microsoft Shared Source or even regular EULA violates the U.S. Constitution and the spirit of copyright laws and start distributing bootleg Windows XP and 2003 server ISOs? Are you kidding me? I'd have FBI at my door in no time. So should SCO!
What else do the Feds need? Where are the criminal copyright prosecutors that
SCO argues that the authority of Congress under the U.S. Constitution to "promote the Progress of Science and the useful arts..." inherently includes a profit motive, and that protection for this profit motive includes a Constitutional dimension. We believe that the "progress of science" is best advanced by vigorously protecting the right of authors and inventors to earn a profit from their work.
If that is not the BIGGEST stretch, I do not know what is. I mean, if SCO argues the GPL is unconstitional based on that argument, the judges all the way up the tree will be looking at them increduously.
My favorite term now is "inherently includes a profit motive". In fact, every time SCO makes an argument, you can just explain it away with that phrase.
He's obfuscating the issues on purpose. Notice how he never mentions IBM in the document, but mentions Red Hat over and over?
It's because he wants to associate the GPL with Red. In particular, with Red Commie Un-American Bastards.
Darl's got a real Nixonian / McCarthyite streak in him. He keeps claiming that the "silent majority" is on his side, which is, weirdly enough, what Nixon kept saying up until he resigned in '73.
Eliminate software patents? Yes. Eliminate software copyrights? not in this lifetime. I don't work for Redhat, but any moron can see that this quote is a complete mischaracterizations of redhat's views found in the linked article.
-- Knowledge shared is power lost. -- Aleister Crowley
Ah I see. So the 1976 Copyright Act was responsible for the economic boom of the 1980's. I'd always assumed the end of the oil crisis and lower taxes got the credit. Silly me.
Clearly it also must have ended the Cold War and led to whiter and brighter teeth. What would we have done without the 1976 Copyright Act, I wonder? Why, we'd probably still be driving around in AMC Gremlins, listening to 8-track tapes and wearing platform shoes!
Soylent Green is peoplicious!
When McBride argues about the legal underpinnings and defending it by court decisions, he is backward looking. Courts are restricted to only looking at the past and existing laws and legislations in making decisions.
On the temporal scale the Judiciary has control over the past. The legislature is forward looking and has control over the future. So, any law that the legislature passes now, will become the touchstone by which the courts will judge later. And on the temporal Scale the Executive has control over the present. I beleive in this case, the Execution should be done by the Market forces, rather than by an arm of the Government. (And SCO must be executed too.)
Based on the results of the market forces, the legislature should then frame "forward looking legislations" that then become the laws which the courts must address. Currently, and in all the arguements that McBride advances, the fact is that the courts were restricted to INTERPRETING "Progress of Science and useful Arts" in the LEGAL sense only - obviously the legal framework is vvery restrictive in identifying what really "Progress" means, and is it must be understood that the courts had their hands toed behind their backs - thier's is a legal interpretation of Progress and not a broader economic, social, cultural, and political meaning of Progress.
The meat of my comment is above - the rest of the comment is just trying to build my case more ...
The global economy is not hanging in the balance, waiting breathlessly for SCO/McBride to vulturize millions so the "global economy" can breathe a sigh of relief. This is just another bluster from the McBride. McBride is nothing but a fly on the wall in terms of the current efforts and "real work" that are really advancing the state of the global economy. I highlight this McBride quote, because it captures bluster of the rest of his sophomoric argument.
It is interesting that he talks about the "legal underpinnings" being sound. If tomorrow the Legislature passes a law (legislations are forward looking), that makes it clear that there is no room for interopretation, and SCO is wrong and stupid, that will be the easy end to the SCO/McBride Extortion story. Like McBride says " Internet chat boards are filled with attacks against SCO, its management and its lawyers," and I think they are filled with attacks for a good reason. And since the chatboarders are also voters, it would be possible for them to choose the right representatives, who would go and legislate, and then carry the legal "attacks" on SCO rather than just have flame wars.
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
how do you avoid jail time (with big Leroy) after pump'n'dump? pretend being possesed, on drugs, plain stupid, proof just served ...
I think some companies increase their ability to create wealth by using Free Software.
That last one is Oxford. They run Debian. Cool.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
That's just the tip of the legalese iceburg. I'm sorry, but I looked at McBride's Bio and I don't see a law degree in there. Whatcha wanna bet that this was written my Mr. Boise?
-- Knowledge shared is power lost. -- Aleister Crowley
So, anyone have the original html (before sco stripped out that info)?
http://www.gr oklaw.net/article.php?sto ry=20031204195915515
"But here is the odd part: SCO's lawyers didn't write this manifesto and neither did Darl, judging by the headers on the Word file. Yes, thanks to Microsoft's utter disregard for user privacy, we know who actually wrote this document, or at least whose computer was used. You see, Microsoft preserves such info as metadata, little pieces of info about you in the headers of each document you write in Word. Someone on Yahoo took a look at the document's Properties, and the document records that it was written by Kevin McBride and Dean Zimmerman, who is apparently a tech writer."
He even has a little of that "complaint generator" sound in his writing style.
Un-news
"Despite the raw emotions, however, the issue is clear: do you support copyrights and ownership of intellectual property as envisioned by our elected officials in Congress and the European Union, or do you support "free" - as in free from ownership - intellectual property envisioned by the Free Software Foundation, Red Hat and others? There really is no middle ground. The future of the global economy hangs in the balance. "
I thought the EULA prevented me from "owning" any software of any kind, buy paying them money they allow me to use their software. If I'm supposed to be scared of this post-apocalyptic world where software is "without ownership" why is it any different from what we have now? (and because your not say, owning Windows XP or anything, wouldn't software use be a service?)
That is the most overwrought, misleading load of horseshit I've read in a long time. I honestly had to stop and start over at "facts". Then they got so verklempt singing the anthem that, once again, they forgot to tell us what those facts were...just what they asserted, believed, held and maintained. Oh, they also said those OSS types were meanies.
'Where did you make the change from Liberal Democrat to Conservative Republican?'
He said, 'Well, I was in Northern California in 1964 and I was making a film, Major Dundee. I was driving down the road and there was a Barry Goldwater for President billboard and it said, 'In Your Heart You Know He's Right'. I looked at the billboard and it was almost a vision and suddenly in my heart I knew he was right - and at that moment I made the switch'.
George Orwell, "1984":
He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast!
Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.
All of us stupid, short-sighted Free Software idiots:
Finally, we understood. In our hearts, we knew Darl was right. We won the victory over ourselves and mailed in our $699 checks, and we were thankful that we were given a Second Chance to avoid having to pay $1399. We loved closed source.
We loved SCO.
Don't you love a happy ending?
Your troll masters will be disappointed at your nonuniformity.
"'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."
First of all, Eldred v. Ashcroft was about whether the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) could change the lifetime of copyrights from 50 to 70 years. The main challenges were that the CTEA (1) overlooks the requirement of "originality," (2) fails to "promote the Progress of Science," and (3) ignores copyright's quid pro quo. The case only narrowly answers these questions for the CTEA. While some decisions have larger ramifications, not all decisions can be extended to other areas.
Profit motivates copyrights. Congress has power to legislate copyrights according to Constitution. And?
There's no logical flow here but I think what Darl is saying is that: GPL not motivated by profit. Therefore, GPL violates copyrights. Therefore, GPL violates Constitution.
Darl, given that logic, I would say that you are a good candidate for a future Darwin award.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
In the second paragraph, McBride writes:
"SCO asserts that the GPL, under which Linux is distributed, violates the United States Constitution and the U.S. copyright and patent laws."
He then spends the rest of the letter explaining why copyright is great, and why the FSF and Red Hat are evil for opposing copyrights. Fine. But *nowhere* is there any reasoning given why the GPL violates the consitution, copyright law or patent law. In fact, by the end of the letter, McBride is forced to write:
"Based on the views of the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court, we believe that adoption and use of the GPL by significant parts of the software industry was a mistake. The positions of the Free Software Foundation and Red Hat against proprietary software are ill-founded and are contrary to our system of copyright and patent laws. We believe that responsible corporations throughout the IT industry have advocated use of the GPL without full analysis of its long-term detriment to our economy. We are confident that these corporations will ultimately reverse support for the GPL, and will pursue a more responsible direction."
Note that there's *nothing* about the legality of the GPL. Adopting the GPL may be a "mistake", but nowhere does he even attempt to prove the point that he started with, that the GPL is a violation of the constitution and laws of the US.
Too bad for SCO. The only way they can have a long term money-making plan with Linux is if they get the GPL declared illegal, all developer contributions under it made into code in the public domain (I suppose public domain is against the constitution too?!), then they can assert ownership of the whole product based on whatever proprietary contributions they think were made against their wishes by IBM et al. IANAL, but it ain't gonna happen.
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
I love how the ignore the rest of the first amendment, that, and the very fact that copyright law gauruntees that the authors have the right to distribute as they wish, and impose restrictions upon it's distribution...
Thomas Jefferson always considered copyright to be along these lines.
"If you have a light, and you give your fire to me (to light my light), our light burns twice as strong".
That is how we setup our copyright (of which it was only 7 years, since we wanted to promote science and the academics, and keeping stuff bottled up for as long as Europe did, science would have crawled in the US).
Our copyright is now what, 90 years? If I can't use and own something unrestricted for that long, what the hell can I inovate and what the hell is the use? All because of some fucking "mickey mouse" company like Disney?
This is what happens when our Congress can be baught and paid for by fucked, rich corperations.
ye == the. y is a rune, pronounced like 'th'
'ye shalt' is then wrong. 'thou shalt'
'readeth' is not a proper conjugation, simply use 'read'.
'ye hearts' should be 'thy heart dost'
'I am using ye' => 'I be using the'
'hast thou hearest' => 'hast thou not heard'
'Remindest' is an improper combining of dost. Drop the do, and add an apostrophe: Remind'st
'ones'? just 'one' will do.
Most humbly, I remain _thy_ servant...
Support FSF: Stop thinking with your wallet, and think with your imagination. (cc/non-commercial)
Just when the big stock dump happens...
"These controversies will rage for at least another 18 months, until our original case comes to trial. "
SCO in particular, hasn't noticably changed their product since I was saddled with 286 Xenix a decade and a half ago. Neither their product nor their technical support improved from the first time I used it a decade and a half ago to the last time (And I swore it'd be the last time) I used it just about 4 years ago. I bet it hasn't noticably changed in those 4 years either, especially judging from SCO's current posturing.
So instead of cleaning up their own house (Because they don't know how) they'd rather try to destroy the only source of IT innovation around. People with SCO's mentality (Sadly widespread in corporate America) would shit in your dinner because they don't know how to cook themselves.
Currently the publicity's been pretty one-sided. How's about we start dusting off our technical contacts and start working to expose the lies?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
- Post some incendiary drivel about the GPL on the corporate website, hoping to lure the Slashdot crowd.
- Leave if up overnight, and check the logs next morning, quivering with anticipation.
- Pick through the catch for stuff like:
- Ooh! A Linux user agent! Transfer it to the hit list.
- Send out the DMCA subpoenas
...
Well, you know the rest. The RIAA wrote the refrain to that song.IAALS.
How do I get a "SW I-III" type of feeling about this whole SCO thing... Perhaps soon we'll have the "celebration at Naboo" at the end of Episode I, when SCO goes down... Or is this SCO fight part of the Clone Wars already? But who is Palpatine?
you don't like what is on TV, why don't you
go to the theater." Or, if "if you don't like
this station, why don't you switch to another
one."
The problem with such comments is that it
ignores the fact that Slashdot has become
a tabloid magazine. No! I don't want to read
such articles, shift through them, or associate
with the crowd that has losts its balls to
complain!
Complaining is healthy human attribute; at least,
it is a lot better than the characteristics of
people who have don't have given up in
complaining and no longer object to being
bombarded to Slashdot's SCO spam.
Do you receive spam through email? Should you
then complain about it, orjust close
your account in protest and stop
using the Internet?
And how about drug-trafficing in your home time. You
should complain about that too and do something
about it, instead of just moving to another town.
Take a look at this document (note: it's a PDF file). It's written in legalese, but if you read between the lines, it shows what happens when a lawyer loses patience. Basically, IBM's law firm can't call SCO a bunch of liars, cheats, four-flushers and shysters in a court document, but this document sure makes it sound like they wish they could. Highly entertaining, and highly recommended.
Someone you trust is one of us.
This is McBride's "Chewbacca Defense". Essentially, the whole letter boils down to this: "The Consitution forbids you to give software away for free!! And you're a commie if you want to!!"
If you don't want to read the whole thing, here's what it basically says:
- The Constitution grants Cogress the power to establish patent and copyright laws (This is the first and last thing he's right about).
- Therefore, it's clear (according to McBride Logic(TM)) that anyone who wants to GIVE things away instead of charging for them must, obviously, be a goddam dirty commie pinko pot-smoking hippy who wants to get your daughter pregnant while giving her VD.
- If we allow people to GIVE software away, that AUTOMATICALLY means that NO ONE can EVER sell software again. He even says "There is no middle ground".
- By the way, did I point out that Open Source advocates are filthy kiddie-porn-peddling spammers who want to destroy the American way of life and, - worse! - my clever plan to make myself rich with the biggest, stupidest, most frivolous lawsuit in American history?
- Giving away software is ILLEGAL! The Constitution and DCMA say so! I'm sure because I read it! Well, OK, I didn't really understand it, in fact almost all of it went right over my head, but I'm sure that's what it says!
- Hey, there's a lot of laws supporting copyrights and patents! Just ignore the fact that since Open Source software is NOT patented, those laws have nothing at all to do with it! Pay no attention to the illogic behind the curtain! See the cute teddy bear?
- Oh, here's another long section of legal analysis about things which have nothing whatsoever to do with the GPL. But it sure makes my letter look imposing and serious, doesn't it?
- So remember, kids: greed is GOOD. Abusing the legal system in order to enrich yourself is the American way! The Constition says so! Somewhere! I really think it does! I'm not a flaming rectal wart of a man, I'm just being a freedom-loving citizen - not like those smelly homosexual atheists over at the FSF who probably rape nuns when they aren't forcibly injecting heroin into the arms of preschoolers!
How anyone with even two brain cells to rub together (a group that clearly does not include Darl McBride) could read this "letter" without laughing their ass off is the only issue that needs to be examined here.Could Darl be sued for libel?
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
Darl McBride belongs in prison, not running a public company!
Look at the latest motions. SCO has asked IBM for all AIX source code, including incremental changes. Forget for a moment that this case is supposedly about Linux. Consider that access to AIX might be the actual goal, and the whole Linux issue is only a means to that end.
Look at the latest motions. They ask for AIX and Dynix.
"Series of i's and 0's", indeed.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Couldnt the open source community start suing this bozo for slander or something? This mudslinging of his is really getting on my nerves!
They've already entered several counterclaims. No sense having two trials when one will suffice, right? IBM has claimed Breach of Contract, Lanham Act Violation, Unfair Competition, Intentional Interference with Prospective Economic Relations, Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices, Breach of GNU General Public License, Promissory Estoppel (in regards to the GPL) Copyright Infringement, four counts of Patent Infringement, and is seeking a Declaratory Judgment. Should be enough to bury SCO, eh?
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
I'm so tired of everyone saying the GPL is unconstitutional. Does anyone remember the 9th amendment?
The language and history of the Ninth Amendment reveals that the Framers of the Constitution believed that there are additional fundamental rights, protected from governmental infringement, which exist alongside those fundamental rights specifically mentioned in the first eight constitutional amendments. . . . To hold that a right so basic and fundamental and so deep-rooted in our society may be infringed because that right is not guaranteed in so many words by the first eight amendments to the Constitution is to ignore the Ninth Amendment and to give it no effect whatsoever. Moreover, a judicial construction that this fundamental right is not protected by the Constitution because it is not mentioned in explicit terms by one of the first eight amendments or elsewhere in the Constitution would violate the Ninth Amendment. The Ninth Amendment shows a belief of the Constitution's authors that fundamental rights exist that are not expressly enumerated in the first eight amendments and an intent that the list of rights included there not be deemed exhaustive.
After reading the article all I have come away with is a sense of the CEO of SCO trying to redirect the issues at hand to matters of constitutionality in the US (never mind he later aligns his position with the EU).
I wonder what this is intended to accomplish. It reads as pure marketing and legalese fluff, especially considering all the USC (United States Code) references.
Now I will come out and say that I am NOT necessarily an advocate of open source software. Although I have no problem with OSS, I make my living off of building custom software for specific industries and organizations. I would never give up my source code to the public purely for the purposes of sharing (can you say communism).
On the other hand I do believe that these 'obvious' software patents are completely unfounded in the context of innovation. Over my many years in the software and electronics industries I have "invented" many concepts that I could have surely successfully patented at the USPTO. To my way of thinking though these were not really "inventions", but rather just new ways to present information using existing tools, development environments and operating systems.
"I resent that! It's 'slander' when it's spoken; in print, it's 'libel.'" - J. Jonah Jameson, "Spider-Man"
Im going to have to take a time trip. Darl Says:
"The 1976 Act grew out of Congressional recognition that the United States was rapidly lagging behind Japan and other countries in technology innovation. In order to protect our ability to innovate and regain global leadership in technology, Congress extended copyright protection to technology innovations, including software. The 1976 Act had the desired effect. The U.S. economy responded rapidly, and within 10 years had regained global technology leadership."
Ya know im just not quite remembering 1986 that way. I was pretty sure the Japanese were still quite ahead of us on the consumer electronic goodies, walkman and discman and so on.
I also read what Doofus had to say about copyrights and the constitution. I have to wonder if hes getting hsi drigs from the same dealer Rush Limbaugh is. So hes saying that GNU is illegal because you cant use it in a proprietary fashion. Thing isyou cantyou anything copryrigthed in such a fashion without the permission of the creator(s). Those creators get to say how the stuff is used. I donno how many 5 drink minimum lunches you have to go to to think that an author/inventor/whatever is forced, by law, to sell their material.
I have to wonder if he believes this crap or is just too stupid to know what hes saying.
When I was in grade school, there were always some alpha kids for whom rule and reason did not seem to apply. They could get their way by plugging their ears saying "LaLaLaLa" or whining until everyone gave in out of frustration.
I looked forward to the day when we would all be adults and those who had nothing to contribute would be swept aside. Sadly, I see that these bratty children are now all grown up, in charge and their manipulative behaviors are polished. And still the smart people are groveling at their feet for attention.
Darl and his kind are not concerned about programmers making money on software. Hell, thats what India is for. He is worried that people like him, who couldn't write "Hello World" to save their life, will not be able to make money off software anymore.
Notice he does not mention the word "Jobs" once in his open letter but mentions corporate interestes like IP and DMCA ad nauseum. Those represent the devices by which a company can stop producing and start fleecing.
And by God, what could be more American than that. Our Founding Fathers(TM), Congress (a division of Worldcom), and Supreme Court(R) have determined this is what is best for us. To question them would be unpatriotic and would be allowing the Terrorists to win.
I'm not going to give you my point of view about SCO, I think enough things have been said about it. This is crappy, and that's it.
However...
the McBride's special emphasis on the gap between closed and free software made me think about the relationship between those two communities. And a shocking question came into my mind, which I was not able to answer... Let me explain
Someone ?
Regards,
jdif
Let's overcome our weakness.
If you don't like whats on TV, change the channel. No one is making you watch that channel. Your spam and drug trafficing arguments are just plain silly. You wish to participate in slashdot, fine. Email Spam and neighborhood crimes happen TO you. You don't get a choice. By the way, to try and be helpfull, you can filter out SCO articles by going to your prefrences and filtering Caldera articles. It really does help on those days when you really cant stand another SCO article.
What is this SCO everyones so incensed about?
;)
</sarcasm>
Well, he's right in one thing. I do believe copyrights should be eliminated... or at least seriously shortened (something like at most 15 years would work out).
we discovered a new way to think.
It just shows, again, how this poor excuse of a human is bent on trying to line his own pockets at at the expense of everyone else.
The only bad thing if he went to jail is that he actually would end up an even worse person, than he already is.
What a pack of loosers...
I actually am starting to feel sorry for them. No self esteem left. Nothing productive to do. The only hope is to pull the wool over just about everybody else in the US without ANY evidence. Imagine having to walk their boots! Oy ve!
You can clearly tell the lawyers wrote it
That letter can't have been written by a lawyer: it just makes no sense whatsoever. Even someone who ordered his law degree by mail would know better.
The letter argues that because the FSF takes a certain political view of copyrights, its copyright-related contracts are invalid and violate the US constitution. That's roughly like saying that you would lose your drivers license because you have stated that cars are bad for the environment.
Fortunately, we live in a country where one's political views don't generally affect the validity of the contracts we enter in.
5) Reciting the text of the GPL backwards will cause the appearance of the Anti-Christ and will initiate the apocalypse.
/LarsWestergren
Y'know, that's not wholly untrue. I did that a few years back, when everybody thought Gore had won.
Soo... according to horror movie logic, you reading it forwards again will make GWB go away like a bad dream? Hurry, for the love of God! The world depends on you!
Overclocking? Huh?
.
...if the basis of our freedom is legally refuted.
I believe the chance of this is a slim one, but suppose the GPL is shot down...
I for one wont stand for it. I'll be out there with signs and all. Revolution I say!
Show me where to sign.
"Curse them. Curse them! We hates them!"
Disclaimer: I don't know what I'm talking about.
Larry Lessig, Eldred counsel and all-around bad-ass, put aside his obligations for the morning on his visit to Japan to pen this response (typos retained for the grammar nerds):
More SCO fud, this time insulting the constitution
"What happen?"
Someone set SCO up the bomb.
Uh oh, SCOX went down a few points - must be time for more FUD!
So after reading this latest POS I realized that a minor prediction of mine had finally come true. I was just waiting for SCO to mention the 'Copyleft'. As expected, they've twisted the real meaning and left out a few important details. From Darl's statement:
"The software license adopted by the GPL is called "copy left " by its authors. This is because the GPL has the effect of requiring free and open access to Linux (and other) software code and prohibits any proprietary use thereof. As a result, the GPL is exactly opposite in its effect from the "copy right " laws adopted by the US Congress and the European Union."
Uhhhmmmmm... '...prohibits any proprietary use thereof'? Alright, I call bullshit! Last I checked you can use GPL stuff any way you want FOR YOURSELF. A company could conceivably grab some GPL stuff offline, modify it for their use and not have to redistribute the source.
One thing is certain. It hasn't stopped these bastards at SCO from taking advantage of GCC or SAMBA - two GPL-based projects that have NOTHING TO DO with their so-called intellectual property. To put simply: when you distribute the binaries that you must provide the source. What's so hard to understand about this? Well... Nothing if you bother to read the GPL more closely. Darl's main focus here appeared to be intellectual property or the price or worth of software; but no where is it mentioned that one of the GPL's aims is to promote fair sharing.
It's not as if SCO/Caldera hadn't already agreed to this license in the past. As quoted from 'Airplane': "...they bought their tickets; they KNEW what they were getting into!" Unfortunately, more people are going to get sucked into buying their line of BS (and more of their worthless stock) while Darl and SCO's pack of lawyers continue planning their early retirement.
As it has been brilliantly said here before: "Gotta get me somma that SCOX!" (TM)
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
So...what this article tells me is that if I create something that is copyrightable, I am required by the constitution to sell it for money. There is no other option of course. That is just plain ridiculous - the GPL is a way for copyright holders to say "I don't want money, just prestige of having people use my work". Anyway, to summarize, stupid press people, stupid SCO.
check this out (from groklaw):
[...]
But here is the odd part: SCO's lawyers didn't write this manifesto and neither did Darl, judging by the headers on the Word file. Yes, thanks to Microsoft's utter disregard for user privacy, we know who actually wrote this document, or at least whose computer was used. You see, Microsoft preserves such info as metadata, little pieces of info about you in the headers of each document you write in Word. Someone on Yahoo took a look at the document's Properties, and the document records that it was written by Kevin McBride and Dean Zimmerman, who is apparently a tech writer.
[...]
However, there is a group of software developers in the United States, and other parts of the world, that do not believe in the approach to copyright protection mandated by Congress.
Yes. They work for SCO right?
Another laugher, developers in other parts of the world don't believe in US Congressionally mandated copyright laws? They don't have to idiot-Darl.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
Darl: I'm looking for the Wizard, he's going to give me a brain!
Boise: Darl, why do I have to be Toto?
fortune -o
The preamble to the General Public License (para 2) says:
No need to panic everyone, the profit motive is alive and well.
-- Nick "Hallo this is Beel Gates, und I pronounce weendows as
Just to make sure I'm getting the facts of this case and surrounding accusations right, here's a condensed summary of the course of events:
....
SCO: You stole from our UNIX intellectual property
IBM/Community: We did not
SCO: we own UNIX, so we should know
IBM: we own the contributed code
Community: we own linux and have publicly available records of everything that ever happened to it.
SCO: here's an example
Community: pfft, that's BSD / clean-room code
IBM/RedHat/Community: we know what we did and have records of everything, now please show us some proof.
=== WE ARE HERE ===
SCO:
So, anything else than evidence, including this particular letter, is entirely inconsequential, am I right?
Similarly,
hinges on one's interpretation of "our". I prefer to believe that it says, "using GPLed software has a long-term detriment to SCO's economy.", to which the appropriate response is "Duh!".
Lets all take a moment to remember that whilst McBride says that the GPL is non-constitutional, that doesn't mean didly for the other 5.7b people on the planet. /me gets frustrated when a case is made against the US constitution that the whole world must adhere to!!
Could McBride or one of his apologists please explain to me how for Linus to give other people permission to use something that the law quite clearly says belongs to Linus, on Linus's own terms, violates any law anywhere in the world? What law says you can't use your own property in the way you think fit?
I am interested to know this.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
I must admit, as a CIO of a Netware/Windows shop that is moving some of its server space over to Linux that I have been at first worried, and now simply utterly confused as to what SCO is actually trying to achieve with these extremely inconsistent public attacks on allmost all areas of the industry remotely related to SCO. First it was IBM, then it was Linux, then it was faked copyright issues at that conference earlier this year, then it was Novell and now it's the GPL.
Does SCO have any idea what this actually sounds like to serious professionals in the industry? People who were worried are now simply shaking their heads, and this letter claiming that the GPL is somehow against copyrights is simply misleading. Even I know that. I can read the GPL, and what I see, and what most lawyers will probably see is that the GPL is a software licence. It in no way damages copyrights as these are kept by the individual authors. It also has nothing to do with software patents. Does SCO actually know that even if the GPL were to be deemed invalid that it would make itself open to thousands of claims of copyright abuse by all the open source developers whose software SCO has distributed/is distributing?
I find this whole matter to be irritating. Rest assured that I will never recommend SCO software in any form, as SCO seems highly irresponsable at best.
What a joke. SCO is simply amazing in its childish fantasies.
enjoy the Spam on Slashdot and the garbage
at your TV without complain.
No. You are not in a position to tell me what
to do. It is up to me, what you desire is
irrelevent (and so is your argument, which
you faithfully repeating like a parrot what you have been
taught, and never had he chance to think how
silly it actually is.
I will continue to complain about Slashdot's spam. Thanks a million.
Exactly. I noticed the bait n switch technique too -
Darl's argument:
#1, Red Hat is anti-american, because we say they are against Patents and copyrights.
#2, evidence is shown that they are against software patents, with a copywright notice at the bottom.
#3, Conclusion: Red hat is bad because we say they are against patents and copywrights.
This is idiotic. It's obvious he's just making unsupported claims here. Darl & SCO are retarded and have no leg to stand on. I just hope the NYT points it out this time. There is no evidence that RH is against the US copyright system. And the KEY to the matter is that the SCO v. IBM case is not about PATENTS (which RH and the FSF are against) but about COPYRIGHT, which RH and the FSF are all about. Without copywright, the GPL would be meaningless. boil my blood, darl is a fool. -1, trolling for him.
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
"SCO argues that the authority of Congress under the U.S. Constitution to "promote the Progress of Science and the useful arts..." inherently includes a profit motive, and that protection for this profit motive includes a Constitutional dimension. We believe that the "progress of science" is best advanced by vigorously protecting the right of authors and inventors to earn a profit from their work. "
Note that their position in no way gives them right to earn a profit from other people's work. And yet their threat to charge money for Linux is exactly that.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
McBride seems to be claiming that unless you have the intent to make a profit and believe in making a profit off of your work, it can't be copyrighted?! Unbelievable. I thought his lawyers were supposed to be the best. I would have thought him better informed.
-1, flamebait. Seriously...Darl is just asking for it! he's like the world's BEST TROLL EVER. No one else in the entire world has gotten this many geeks mad! Amazing.
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
The only interesting statement is this one:
These controversies will rage for at least another 18 months
Darl is so lame he can't even write his own lies.
If you don't like what I write don't be a CS and mod it down. Refute it.
Yea I can't spell. So what is your point?
That still doesn't explain why SCO would be invoking the DMCA...
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Hrm. So...If linux is in violation of SCO's IP, then why are they running it on their WEB SERVER?
AAAUGH! SCO is so retarded...
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
The share price dipped yesterday, and has been on a decline for few days anyway, so we were due a public statement. You can predicate press releases from SCO, just watch their share price.
Plan9. Inferno. NeXTStep. Arguably the original Macintosh and the Xerox PARC work they extended.
Meanwhile, in the open-source world, we're fundamentally tweaking UNIX clones. Totally kick-ass, love-'em, best-of-breed unix clones, but still. You might cite Hurd but, comparatively speaking, it's a toy.
None of the commercial UNIX vendors has done a whole lot to advance the state of the operating system from where it was 30 years ago.
Isn't Apple a commercial UNIX vendor now?
SCO in particular, hasn't noticably changed their product since I was saddled with 286 Xenix a decade and a half ago
Sadly, that's probably true..
I think that what darl's saying is that if you put code up on GPL, then it is closed and that only SCO has rights to it.
Which makes no sense. yeah I know.
because if GPL'd code becomes open, then SCO has no case against linux (they distribute linux under the gpl, including there code. hint: check netcraft for sco.com). But if GPL'd code is author-owned, then SCO is in violation of kernel writer's code, for example. Either way, they are screwed. *smile*
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
I had to read 3/4ths of that stupid letter to finally get to the point. Apparently they contend that a license, like the GPL, strips the profit motive from a work, and is inherently illegal. To justify this, it pontificates broadly on some recent court cases and the constitutional basis for copyright law.
Just because the constitution defined copyright to help protect profit motives and thus speed along innovation, that does not mean we cannot use copyright law in a different way.
I'd like to direct Darl McBride to the ninth ammendment to the constitution of the United States of America. To paraphrase, it basically means that if something hasn't been outlawed, it's legal. Or in other words, nothing is illegal until it has been outlawed. When it comes to using copyright in a different way, that means that there's no law saying that we cannot use an existing law in a way that it wasn't intended (so long as that doesn't break any existing laws).
Yeah, it's a rather weak legal point, but if that's what you're screaming, then you've probably missed my larger point. Every (weak and rambling) point that the article puts forth can be countered by hundreds of examples that prove that this new use of copyright law fits in the mold of what the founding fathers intended. Innovation is happening under this model, the masses have found a way to be involved and to contribute to OSS and the greater good is being served every step of the way. To anyone who cannot see that, I would respectfully question their motives and/or their awareness of temporal reality.
-Chuck
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
Under the Copyright Extension Act, the "limited time" that a copyright lasts is now 70 years post-mortem the author. Something copyrighted today by someone who is not too old will still be copyrighted when everyone now alive is dead.
Is that really a limited time?
How about: if it is nothing new, you can just activate the filter and shut off anything about SCO, look for the option to shut off posts about Caldera, SCO's old name, huh?
By the same logic:
Since I oppose the death penalty and it's a safe bet that psycho-rapist-mass murderers also oppose the death penalty this makes me a psycho-rapist-mass murderer?
The sad thing is that some "analysts" seem to either believe this pile of shit or (even more sinister) must have an agenda of their own in this whole mess.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
The US Constitution permits Congress to use Copyright to "promote the progress of science and useful arts". It does not specify how that promotion should take place.
The Eldred case does not really apply here, as Eldred was contesting the authority of Congress to extend copyright, sadly rejected. Even so, profit can be defined in many ways, and Open Source developers do profit from the work that they put into their software. The normal method of profit is that they are able to consult or offer support contracts on the basis of their proven skill in software development. The more widely used the software, the more in demand their services. In addition, authors gain by improved status and recognition both inside and outside the community.
In recent letters published on Groklaw, it has been established that employees and officers of SCO were aware that their developers were actively assisting and contributing to all the projects now under dispute, including the parts under dispute with IBM. Given this tacit approval, one cannot now change your mind and withdraw those efforts.
Again in your letter, you have made the mistake of claiming it is your intellectual property that is being distributed. The weight of evidence now shows that any intellectual property owned by you has been released to the public domain with your knowledge, or was never your property in the first place. You have little grounds for claiming that any intellectual property truly owned by you is in Linux or any other Open Source software. All claims you have made so far have been proven to be untrue.
As I understand it, the offer still stands; release all files which you claim is your intellectual property, and if proven, it would be withdrawn from Linux. We fail to see what problems you have with releasing those files, since after all, you are claiming that they are already in Linux; thus any confidentiality has already been lost.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Wow. I would have expected you to have a very low subscriber id. Must be a late /. adopter then...
...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
Doesn't change the fact that the stories get published (what you seem to have a problem with; I somewhat agree), but it might help keep you from losing your mind.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
...If he had to put that load of tripe on their site himself, or if they had to pay some poor sod extra to do it for him.
Placing that in public view would be about the same type of job as pumping septic tanks, or emptying the tanks on the portable toilets.
Stand Fast,
tjg.
(Score -1, Troll)
And perhaps it should be moderated as flamebait too...
Pure class. That should be the icon used for all of these stories.
... is that these individuals (SCO "managers" and their "lawyers") make a living out of this.
You and I have to meet deadlines, pass appraisals, fear that our jobs are shipped to cheaper countries (and rightly so, but that is another matter), suffer the dialy commute just to make a living that will not makes us rich and that does not gurantee an easy retirement.
The thought that somebody (eather this person or his lawyers) has the aplomb to sit down, write such a piece of tosh and then publish it is just mindblowing.
These individuals have no regard for decency.
How do they get home, kiss hello to their loved ones: "honey, I am home! Yeah, I had a hard day, I had to come up with a document full of lies and misrepresentations in order to try to pump up our share price. What is for dinner?"
For the life of mine, I just don;t understand how they can live with themselves. No, I know. Only people without morals can achieve true wealth. Look at Saddam Hussein Palaces.
Pathetic.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Doesn't mean that I (or anyone else) has to necessarily agree with it though.
I've not read any other comments yet, so I apologise if I repeat what's already been said.
But I have read though the Article, and want to present my first opinions on parts of it.
I think his use of the terms "$186 billion global software industry" and "technology business" certainly show SCO's position on technological advancement.
Mainly that they think it's primary purpose is to generate a profit.
Darl has a point though. Such laws are critical in the survival of what could be called "The current model".
It's just that GPL, FSF, Linux, etc, are operating on another model. Yeah, they pose a threat. But to say that such a threat is illegal/unconstitutional/whatever is just plain arrogant.
Oh, and speaking as a Brit, there is one other thing that has to be taken into account.
What has the US Constitution got to do with companies/organisations outside of the US? Should European/Asian/etc software houses be stifled/restricted by what's good for the American economy?
"Oh, the drama!"
OK, so it's one side against the other. But, personally, I'm firmly on the side of "you can't own an idea".
You can be responsible for the specific application of a though or idea, but to own abstract concepts that one person happened to think of before another? I just find that a bit wrong really.
Doesn't the GPL predate the DMCA?
Though I'm not sure what - if any - effect that would have on the legal nature of things.
One thing, though. Is the DMCA US-only?
If so, that means that the GPL - being an itnernational license, as far as I know - is certainly legitimate in non-US companies irrespective of whether it's legan int he US. But certainly that would mean that US companies can't complain about it, wouldn't it? After all, surely it's outside of US jurusdiction that way?
if I'm wrong, let me know. I can rebuild a PC with no worries, but legal-matters lose me in no time flat!
Again with the "Profit Motive"
Actually, I kind of agree with the profit motive. What I don't agree with is the way that some companies (including SCO) want to use it.
Yeah, come up with an idea then you have the right to make money from it - well, as long as the idea isn't "ransom Darl McBride for ca$h" or something blatantly illegal and reckless like that. But I think such a profit motive has to be time-limited. If fact, if it's really to "promot
Tiggs
"120 chars should be enough for everyone..."
> 'ye hearts' should be 'thy heart dost'
Not "thy heart doth"? You're not talking to the heart, after all.
Sebastian
When they were making Linux sales? ... Hmm.... Odd...
The entire letter is amateurish though. The GPL doesn't prevent any sort of ownership or control. You can release code for GPL then later release it as PD, BSD, whatever else you want. It's your code. The GPL only controls what *other* people can do with your code.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
He also forgot the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act and Geneve Conventions.
Lisp is the Tengwar of programming languages.
lookout bullow.
seems as though without all this last gasper ?pr? ?firm? scriptdead stock markup fraud payper liesense softwar gangster execrable fear-biting, few would have even yet heard of the good gnus?
the daze of the whoreabull phonIE hostage scams of the naykid furors of the fraudulent kingdumb of payper liesense softwar gangsters, are WANing into coolapps/the abyss, at the speed of right.
consult with/trust in yOUR creators.... get ready..... see you there?
Name one
And I DO NOT mean "people who stupidly gave away their rights becausae they thought they would get rich in the music industry." Name one person who has suffered because they created a work and then were prevented, by copyright, from sharing or profiting from the use of their work.
Copyright is granted to the creators of works. If those persons are so stupid as to sign away that right, they have only themselves to blame.
just kidding?
"The profit motive is the engine that ENSURES the progress of science."
Absolutely NONE of the MAJOR advances in science have been advanced by the profit motive. See: Einstein, Newton (for which almost all kinds of physical engineering requires), Alan Turing...
Not ALL advances in science are motivated by profit! If the Constitution only supports profit-motivated advances then it would be unconstitutional to advance science without trying to make profit! The whole profit-motive thing is a red-herring.
"SCO argues that the authority of Congress under the U.S. Constitution to "promote the Progress of Science and the useful arts..." inherently includes a profit motive, and that protection for this profit motive includes a Constitutional dimension."
So, in other words, promotion of science is constitutional, destroying or preventing advance in science is anti-constitutional. This must be the extent of influence of the Constitution because if it only supports profit-motivated advances in science, then any science-advancing scheme which is NOT profit-motivated would be barred. By that argument, advances in science by the efforts of people like Einstein and Newtown would be unconstitutional! Ridiculous!
So: The only way the GPL is anti-constitutional is IF the GPL destroys or hinders advances in science. This is, of course, not so. The GPL protects non-profit-motive advances but does not interfere or prevent profit-motivated advances.
If propriety code is so good for science then on a global scale it should compete with GPL code favourably! The lovers of competition should have nothing to complain about.
- Matt K
and they can claim that the GPL infringes on copyright law (highly unlikely, but still)
What is going to happen?
Do we start over? Do we look for a different 'open source' project? They're trying to get BSD and Linux taken out of the server arena, and Darl doesn't care how much FUD he's got to spread or how thick it's spread up.
If the GPL's ruled invalid...then what?
I'm having a hard time fathoming anything like that happening. I'd be looking for a country that has less draconian laws (PATRIOT, DMCA, profit by legislation being the few), and moving there. That much I know for sure.
I disable sigs...do you?
believe copyrights should be eliminated,
Is that not the position of the FSF - that ssoftware should not have copyright? (Or patents for that matter)
Classic commercial software is sold for money. In exchange for a set of rights for a piece of software, the buyer gives the seller money (US dollars, euros, yen, whatever). The level of the rights determines, to some degree, the amount of money: use licenses tend to be less expensive than source code licenses, for example.
In barter, the exchange isn't between goods and money, it's between goods and goods. A radio station might barter radio commercial spots in exchange for computers, or prizes for giveaways, or whatever. A dentist might swap cleanings for checkups from a doctor. Et cetera.
So, there's nothing to say that somebody couldn't offer to exchange rights in a piece of software for, say, a banana. Or getting their car waxed. Or for a painting.
If you accept all of that, then it's easy to see that one might barter use rights in software for a painting, and might barter source code and redistribution rights in exchange for a painting and reproduction rights of the painting itself. That way, the programmer could not only hang the painting in their home, but if her friends liked it, she could give them reproductions.
Heck, if the programmer wanted, she could turn around and offer anyone in the world a reproduction of the painting, for the cost of actually producing the reproduction (canvas, frame, time for somebody to do the painting, etc.). It's just barter. The programmer is not losing anything by offering up these reproductions -- the fact that many people benefit instead of just one is the choice of the programmer.
All the GPL does is replace "painting" with "software use rights" and "reproduction rights" with "rights to modify and redistribute source code". Commercial software authors get paid with money. GPL software authors get paid with GPL'd source code. Software authors who happen to be chimpanzees might get paid with bananas. Whatever floats the author's boat and is amenable to the one buying the software rights. It so happens that, in the act of getting paid, the programmer provides benefits to society, since they automatically get the same rights, but that doesn't mean the programmer didn't get paid.
There's little doubt that the FSF isn't a fan of copyright protection for software, and the GPL is their way of getting the sense of a copyright-less environment by creative use of copyright itself. Such an intent is not illegal, any more than it is illegal for Democrats to want to elect somebody other than George W. Bush. To say the GPL is illegal is to say, in effect, that non-monetary forms of compensation are illegal, and it's rather difficult to see how a court will accede to that request.
So, the net of Mr. McBride's letter is simply a genteel form of name-calling, much like how McCarthy hunted for Communists. We can only hope that justice will be blind to this and will focus on the facts. It's eminently possible that there's some screwup or loophole in the GPL which will invalidate it, but at its core, the GPL is just barter, and so it is not illegal based on its premise.
IMHO. IANAL. TAFR (This Acronym For Rent).
The Busy Coder's Guide to Android Development
However, that's much different from what the GPL *does*, which is to use copyright law to attempt "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" by making it easy to publish software that's free as in speech (with other positive side effects) and know that the software you're using is free so you can do even more things with it and not have to hire bunch of lawyers telling you that that it's safe to touch before adding value to it.
Re: BTW - Confusing WindRiver with WinDriver would be like confusing MacOS 9 with Mac OS9....
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
OKay so SCO stop using GPL software--oh thats right then you wouldn't have a product worth offering. (Samba and other unamerican pieces are key to their business) Also you are forgetting that the American paranoia that was so rampant during the 70's is largely going away as we are a GLOBAL comunity (Hey I am an American living in Japan) so that your America is best B.S. and shove it. your allusions to the MickeyMouse extension is drawing on one of the worst court decisions in recent history and one that needs to be overturned. McBride get a clue-give up and admit you messed up and you loose. The GPL is a copyright used to product us developers that prefer to work together rather than be locked by some corporate lackey (like yourself) into doing what you want. We want to be able to inovate (something we can't do under your system)
>> You can clearly tell the lawyers wrote it
:-)
> That letter can't have been written by a lawyer:
> it just makes no sense whatsoever. Even someone
> who ordered his law degree by mail would know
> better.
Wrong!
"it just makes no sense whatsoever"
ergo it WAS written by a lawer!
Anyway, the fact is that SCO is still waging this
stupid campaign of FUD... and we'll just have to wait until SCO goes under.... it shouldn't take soo long
return 0; }
Complaining here will not help. These stories will continue to be posted. The fact that you are even posting in a SCO story yourself shows that you are actually interested in them, and as such, you seem to be complaining over nothing.
If you don't like what Slashdot has to offer, there is a simple solution: Stop reading Slashdot. No one has asked you for your opinion on the stories, and the editors sure as hell don't care.
If you really want to continue reading Slashdot but hate the SCO stories, simply filter them out.
But whining like a little crybaby isn't going to help. You have chosen to read Slashdot. You also have the choice to not read it. No one is forcing you.
And yeah, when people say "if you don't like what's on TV, change the channel", it is a perfectly valid response to pointless complaining. So you think Slashdot has become a tabloid magazine? I guess it sucks to be you then. Stop reading Slashdot. Complaining about Slashdot is useless, since Slashdot doesn't owe you anything. The editors decide what happens. I don't see a problem with valid complaints, but when you whine and bitch about something which is easily solved by simply filtering out SCO stories, that is just too much.
You also compare SCO stories on Slashdot with spam, which, again, is utterly ridiculous. For one, Slashdot is not the only geek news site. Also, again, you can easily filter out stories. No one is forcing your to read Slashdot or SCO stories.
So stop complaining already. Your silly excuses for being a big crybaby are simply not relevant, since Slashdot doesn't force itself on you, it is not the only site on the web, and you can even filter out stories on Slashdot itself.
It might be healthy to complain at times, but you are just whining pointlessly. It says more about your characteristics than about people who use their brains and don't complain about things they can easily fix themselves.
Clever signature text goes here.
Interesting that this letter is published the day before all 3 motions to compel in the case between SCO and IBM are scheduled for oral arguments? (http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20031123 184010235)
I reckon this is just a ruse to get their stock price as high as possible before they get their ass handed to them later today and it crashes through the floor.
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
1. Somebody shove a Yoda doll up McBride's ass!
2. In Soviet Russia, McBride thinks you're ridiculous.
3. I, for one, welcome our new open letter overlords.
4. All your open letter are belong to us!
5. Goat.scox
6. Netcraft Confirms: Open Letter is Dying
7. McBride's Open Letter Takes One For The Team!
"The judgment of our elected officials in Congress is the law of the land in the U.S. copyright arena, and should be respected as such."
Well, Darl "Brownnose" McBride, your elected gods are not saying that it's OK for SCO to take something that's not yours just because nobody else claims it. You apparently don't seem to understand what GPL is about.
"(...) the GPL has the effect of requiring free and open access to Linux (and other) software code and prohibits any proprietary use thereof."
Good thing that you seem to understand that. Too bad you don't get the idea of why GPL prohibits this propriatary use... If you don't like the GPL philosophy, fine. But remember, the laws you speak of so fondly, are copyright acts. As an author of software, you have the right to protect your property, you don't have to. If somebody doesn't claim these rights, it doesn't mean you can do so. If you don't like GPL, don't touch it then. I don't like commercial software, that's why I won't open shrinkwrapped boxes from Redmond.
"Red Hat's position is that current U.S. intellectual property law "impedes innovation in software development" and that "software patents are inconsistent with open source/free software." (...) SCO believes that copyright and patent laws adopted by the United States Congress and the European Union are critical to the further growth and development of the $186 billion global software industry, and to the technology business in general."
I'm sure there is some use in copyright laws. But to state that the GPL philosophy stilfles development is ludicrous. What do you think built the Internet? Most of what we use every day, is developed openly. Please, read The Cathedral and the Bazaar, it's good for you.
"Our stance on this issue has made SCO very unpopular with some."
No comment on that, you sure got that right ;)
Woefdram, l'apprenti sorcier
Damn. That's it!
I'm adding /. to my list of Websites not to Visit with a moutful of Coffee List.
Tiggs
"120 chars should be enough for everyone..."
LOL!
So,.... like I was reading Slashdot and Darl Mcbride writes this open letter .....talking smack on the GPL....And I was like ----WHATEVER!
CAUSE THIS IS MYYYYY UNITED STATES OF WHATEVER!!!!!!!!
http://www.sco.com/company/feedback/index.html
"Shave your nuts and meet me in the john, McBride"
it comes to me now. sco is simply trying to change the law so that copyright couldn't be copyleft anymore -- if ever you create something, you HAVE to claim the copyright for your work (regardless of the form, be it ideas or items). you can't just give it away, you can't give up your responsibility for the thing! now there's something that goes very nicely with the apparent polito-social environment in the america, there. if one can be sued for taking a toxic dump, well, it sure makes the war on terrorism a lot easier. and i'm not even going to think about how such a system could be seen to support the capitalist dream ...
perhaps it's all just another demonstration of subtle power from the us elected officials.
Think Darl's "Open Letter" gives a new definition to hate mail. Or maybe coin a new phrase "Mass hate mail" or "Mail of mass hate". Mind you the former expression is sure to get Bush on the war path. :/
Anyway back to trying to find a shruberry.
MODS:
He reposts other people's texts as his own to karma whore. DO NOT MOD HIM UP!
This is Sir Haxalot/Pingular, a REPOST TROLL who takes other people's comments and posts them as his own. MOD DOWN NOW!
> The only possibly important part will be the court hearings and we have awhile before those.
I believe the Utah courtroom hearings begin today. Now it begins to get really interesting....
Surely 'Hungry, horny penguins?' It'd make for a great headline - 'McBride fuxed, snaxed by Tux.'
While saying that Red Hat or the community in general are for the elimination of copyrights, it should be noted that originally RMS was for their elimination, and that the GNU GPL was seen more of a pragmatic revolutionary tool that would be unncessary once the elimination of copyrights was attained at least in the software domain.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
There is no problem with the GPL. All works released under the GPL are copyrighted, it is their distribution and modification that the GPL covers. Read Title 17 US Code Sec 106:
" 106 Exclusive rights in copyrighted works
Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has
the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:
(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;"
Translation: the copyright owner has the authority to distribute copies as much as he or she pleases.
If his point is that at least line of thinking within the IP universe sets out to devalue most forms of IP (copyright, patent) -- well, is that not right?
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
However, there is a group of software developers in the United States, and other parts of the world, that do not believe in the approach to copyright protection mandated by Congress.
Granting copy protection is mandated. Accepting that as what the author wishes is not mandated. As an author if I write my own software I can choose to GPL or not to GPL, that is my choice. If I GPL I give up the old system by choice, if the GPL breaks I STILL have the old system. If I use another authors I am bound to the terms of his license be it GPL or Proprietary. I am not enslaved by the GPL. In the past 20 years, the Free Software Foundation and others in the Open Source software movement have set out to actively and intentionally undermine the U.S. and European systems of copyrights and patents. Leaders of the FSF have spent great efforts, written numerous articles and sometimes enforced the provisions of the GPL as part of a deeply held belief in the need to undermine or eliminate software patent and copyright laws.
the GPL is exactly opposite in its effect from the "copy right " laws adopted by the US Congress and the European Union.
Why would you use the European Union to argue the constitutionality of a point? Barring the fact that the EU is only a couple years old, they have NADA to do with the US constitution. Maybe you should write a seperate letter about how the GPL subjugates the EU, but your point here is lost.
This stance against intellectual property laws has been adopted by several companies in the software industry, most notably Red Hat. Red Hat's position is that current U.S. intellectual property law "impedes innovation in software development" and that "software patents are inconsistent with open source/free software." Red Hat has aggressively lobbied Congress to eliminate software patents and copyrights.
How dare they lobby congress for something so self serving. They should follow the generous example of the RIAA and MPAA and lobby for the betterment of man kind. Oh wait, GPL puts software development in reach of non billionaires and thus it is for the better.
I can really see Red Hat wanting to remove profit from software developement. I'm sure DmcB - or the PR person who actually wrote this - knows that this is... less than accurate, but are there atually people reading this letter who don't see it?
Why is anything anything?
He says:
"SCO intends to fully protect its rights granted under these Acts against all who would use and distribute our intellectual property for free, and would strip out copyright management information from our proprietary code"
What a hypocrite, his very own company does the same to others. He also misses the point that
Eldred vs Ashcroft wasn't about getting rid of copyrights, but reducing the terms. Current copyright law gives (95%?), some rediculous %, to the copyright holder and basically nothing to the public domain. Yes, Open Source respects copyrights, its the copyright holders that don't respect the public. F**k you McBride. I hope IBM mows your ass down and lets the Winamp Llama eats your roots.
What the hell is SCO, who's involved in a minor spat with IBM in some local court over a contract issue commenting on European law ?. The EU and UK law on copyrights and patents are very clear and have worked well to date. If it wasn't for lobbying by certain vested interests who's contributions to the general commonweath are innovations in legal theory and tort. Sounds like its time to ask SCO for a copy of what is licensed by SCO. Can they produce this ?. I doubt it and if they did then it just tells you what to NOT use in your kernel.
Didn't I here Michael Douglas say that once?
Seriously this is what it reads like.
This stuff from McBride/SCO is delusional. There big picture is impaired reality testing. It is pointless to try to convince someone their delusion is false. The only thing that can help is some medications.
I wonder if posting stories like this encourages the delusion and the pathologic behaviors from SCO???
I'm not a lawyer but it seems to me that SCO is violating the DMCA for trying to circumvent the protections put on binary works covered by the GPL.
True. Very true.
However, every action of SCO is hurting the OSS/FS community badly.
Yes, most Slashdotters will see through the lies of SCO, but all those who could make a real effect would get the wrong idea, and OSS/FS will look like some shady business, equated to 'warez', 'pirating' and 'communism'.
Before we celebrate that SCO releases are nonsense and will not prevail, think that it has already reaped great rewards for SCO. I have seen it personally. Let us keep that in our mind, and don't be deluded that we have won the battle.
You're dealing with an entity that:
- Technically died a long time ago, but hasn't stopped moving
- Needs to suck the lifeforce out of other entities to ensure its own survival
You don't simply bury something like that. You need to cut off its head and put a stake through its heart first.A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.
"Meanwhile, the facts SCO has raised have become one of the most important and hotly debated technology issues this year" Debated by whom? I have yet to see a debate, we ALL know there is are no facts. The only persons debating are the world vs sco.
What he says can be summarized thus:
"I don't think free software is a good business model. The government supports business. Therefore the government must be against free software."
"Also, we're going to keep suing IBM."
Instead they get a big class action suit smacking them square in the face for copyright infringement, because now they've used other people's copyrighted material, without permission, for profit, etc, etc...
IANAL (of course), but it strikes me that this may just be a ploy to save their asses in said class action lawsuit. If they argue that they always thought that the GPL was unconstitutional, then they can claim that there was no willful infringement of others copyrighted works.
"oops, sorry Judge. Gosh, we won't do THAT again..."
How can the terms of one EULA be enforceable, yet the terms of another not be?
The community should come together and purchase the Unix rights from the smoking ruins of SCO and donate it to the Public Domain. That will forever end anyone from repeating McAssHat's antics.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Our founding fathers gave thier lives because they thought it was really important that companies make a profit.
"Red Hat has aggressively lobbied Congress to eliminate software patents and copyrights."
The link they provide mentions nothing about copyright (except the fact that the article/website is copyrighted. SCO just flat out lied in their "open letter".
Reading this letter it is being argued that the laws and ideals surrounding copyright are designed to protect the ownership of an author's work.
Ok, thats fine and I have certainally have no problem with that.
But the fact that an author may wish to give other people permission to create derivative work based on their work is against the law and unconstitional.
Well copyright law protects my right to own the work that I create. But I have never seen a part of the law that states I cannot give another permission to create derivative works. And if such a law did exist then the right of an author to give expressed permission to allow another to create a derivative work would be removed.
As an example outside of the world of computers : A writer could not allow a screen writer to write a script based on his book. An independant screen writer could not allow a movie studio to film a movie based on the script.
As stated in the first rule of Acquisition: Profit above all. McBride sounds like he's from Ferenginar. The only reason to this is: to get is pockets full of cash, nothing more. It drips and drools from this publication. You clearly see a misformed picture being drawn as: we are copyright owners, we are the democratics and you, you are communist since the code belongs to the common people. Both protected and open source can coexist. SCO knows it willingly contributed code to the open-source community and now tries to find a way to collect on that 'mistake' . An Idea: A hostile take over of sco by IBM ..
This letter only serves the belief that Free Software is winning, technology is advancing faster than SCO can keep up, and there's nothing that Darl McBride can do to stop it.
The letter serves one purpose. When Darl goes down for fraud he can pull out that letter and present it as proof he is insane.
Note that all of Darl's arguments become invalid when dual-licensing or BSD licensing is used. There really IS a desire by some in the free software industry to market leverage proprietary software out of the Linux market. This is unfortunate.
While I myself choose to give the software away for free, I do recognize the legitimate tradeoffs involved in copyright law. There are businesses that simply are not viable without a short-term (I favor 14 years) payment for use of their software. I don't think that the games that I play would be anywhere near as good if the developers were not paid for them --- it is very expensive to produce the fancy animations and graphics I enjoy.
Those of us who are (barely in my case) able to make it with free software businesses should not lock out others who cannot make it without charging. This is why I make all my software available under a non-GPL license for those who are willing to pay for such a license. That way they can make proprietary enhancements of my software, and sell them, and good for them!
I am one of the more technically successful developers in my industry, yet my business has been bouncing from one fiscal scare to another its entire existence. People who think GPL is the only way should try supporting a family and a payroll (the payroll is harder...) on free software for a few years, and they may find their ideology becomes less fervently fixated on the superiority of one way of doing business.
All that said, I still believe that copyright should require full disclosure of the source code, and the allowance of improvements to be made and sold by others, or else it serves no US constitutional purpose of advancing the arts and sciences.
"I don't think that the order of the first two amendments is coincidence" -- Admiral Nimitz
The Congress itself overturned the specific precedent of MAI v. Peak in a rider to the DMCA, which enacted section 117(c).
Estimata Darl:
Vi parolas kvazaux Anglo estas la solan lingvon. Se mi parolas Esperaranto, vi ne havas kruro stari je! Gxi estas posedion publikan.
www.wavefront-av.com
the straw man attack
When The Leader of The Party does the same to whole cultures, what's stopping some fuck with a lawyer from stealing our love? Heh.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
I must be tired and this headline seemed to blur with the one below it, and for a second I thought it said Darl McBride's Hordes of the UnderDark...
philcrissman.com.
We believe that the "progress of science" is best advanced by vigorously protecting the right of authors and inventors to earn a profit from their work.
What he seems to be arguing here is that it is unconstitutional to give inventions or works away without charging for them.
The FSF and Red Hat believe that the progress of science is best advanced by eliminating the profit motive from software development and insuring free, unrestricted public access to software innovations.
This passage (and the first one) seem to stem from a belief that there are forces out there trying to forcibly remove the right of inventors to receive patents and authors to maintain copyright over their works.
Does he not understand what "voluntary" means? No one is trying to take those rights away.
'I am using ye' => 'I be using the'
Inappropriately dialectal, I'm afraid. You're slipping into "yaharr me hearties" pirate English. "I am using the" is fine. "As thou canst see" is what needs correcting, as it's too modern an idiom.
Something like "Behold, how I use this ancient forme, of our vulgar Tung; the which hath, by custom and usage, been since Time immemorial held, by all Aucthorities, the Publick Domain, or Commune Propertie, of alle men."
We believe that responsible corporations throughout the IT industry have advocated use of the GPL without full analysis of its long-term detriment to our economy. We are confident that these corporations will ultimately reverse support for the GPL, and will pursue a more responsible direction.
This is the statement that to me sums it all up.
This adminstration that is currently running the government is nothing but driven by profit.
As far as my vote goes they are gone in 2004.
This is nothing but what Bill Gates has been saying all along. I got a free subscription to information week and they had a big picture of Bill with a flag behind him - I just about threw up - I am trying to cancel my subscription but I can't - they just keep sending it.
I hope our leaders see that the GPL creates a different economical model - one that allows companies total flexibility and their ability to concentrate on their business instead of getting locked to solutions that may or may not be there in the future. This is what hurts the economy when the small businesses have to pay these ILEGAL MONOPOLIES to keep their business running and when they can't they declare bankruptcy and have to pay more lawyers to help them out.
I wish Darl would just shut and let Bill speak.
He is nothing but a middleman that has hired lawyers for Bill.
Darl is talking about the same judges that let Microsoft off with a wrist slap because of their ILLEGAL activities - So this is just one more reason to vote the current adminstration out of office so we can get some people in there that know what they are doing and are working for the people instead of for a few companies that give tons of money to their political campaign.
This sounds like Darl is ready to take it to the supreme court because he must know he is going to loose in the local courts. I would like to see the phone records of Darl and his lawyer to see if there has been any phone calls to senators or even better the white house.
I smell a big political rat.
I wish /. would stop publishing drivel like this (Darl's latest rant, not my posting ;-) and stick to real news.
Somebody needs to write an open letter on the evils of 'pump and dump' for Darl and co.
Let's stop giving any attention to this fool
with ADHD. The huge amount of attention this
idiot gets may be seen as some sort of validation
of his claims by some.
Bram Stolk http://stolk.org/tlctc/
Dont you think that it is funny that SCO selles pertolium products along their "web" and "sco" services? Looks like they are in bed with the big oil companies.
Thinks that make you go hmmmm
Scott
janitor
sdn website family
email: scott at sboss dot net
That's the most interesting grammar flame I've ever read. Thank you.
me think'st thou hast too much fuckinth time on thine handsth.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Ladies and gentlemen, I hereby moderate this truly brilliant open letter as Score:5, Troll. Bravo, Mr. McBride. You won. We all HBT. HAND.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
You're forgetting that in the times of Ye Olde English, spelling itself wasn't really standardized yet.
I recently came upon a piece describing English spelling in brief. I don't agree with the sentiment that you should spell your English any way you want, though.
Keep em coming.
The more you, Mr. Sontag, your lawyers, etc. spew, the more nails you put into your corporate coffin.
Have a nice day.
Regards,
Fredrick
Sorry pedantic spell checking doesn't work with Middle English, a language with no formal spellings! However, grammer checking still applies
ye == the. y is a rune, pronounced like 'th'
Actually a form of the barred d. Pronounced as you say. But--
All though ye shalt is incorrect, Thee shall does work.
However, note that Middle English had no standard spellings, so there is no difference between ye shall and yee shall.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Whilst... oops ... While this is a very informative post, I'm afraid I must ask that you cease and desist immediately, since your screen name appears to be a derivative of my own, which I clearly own.
:-)
Take your time. I still need some time to starve my lawyers so they're REAL mean and hungry!
If this is the depth of Boies' legal genius, it's not surprising that Gore lost the court proceedings in Florida. And it's not surprising that Microsoft (effectively) won its anti-trust suit.
The smoking gun would be to see a contribution from Microsoft to Boies' law firm. (Oh, that's right, they bought a license from SCO and the money was used to fund this fiasco.)
Dear Darl,
You are a fucktard.
Sincerely,
The World
p.s. This is not flamebait. He really is.
that it also makes the Baby Jesus cry.
This is obviously some strange use of the word that I wasn't previously aware of.
</voice>
I bought this house and you know I'm boss
Ain't no h'aint gonna run me off
I think the poster forgot to mention that Darl probably also feels that when you support Open Source you are supporting terrorists. (oh, and drugs too ;-) )
Friggin' Nuts. I believe a kid with an 8th grade education would laugh at that open letter. If I get this straight, SCO's argument is that, since the FSF busts SCO's balls by putting out a better product for free, FSF should lose their privelege of using the copyright system? Like you say, I look forward to seeing all Sierra Club members walking to work under the automobile clause of the SCO decision.
Man, I really hope they try this shit in front of a judge.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
"It's consistent with the approach of trying to have this thing tried in the court of public opinion," said Jeffrey Neuberger, an IP lawyer at the New York firm Brown Raysman Millstein Felder & Steiner. "If it wasn't for the fact that David Boies is representing them, I'd say that they were acting in desperation."
I personally think that it IS an act of despiration. After reading Eben Moglen's bit, this may be indicative of a larger skepticism in the IP Law community.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
ye == the. y is a rune, pronounced like 'th'
You're right about the thorn (looks like /. doesn't support weird HTML character entities, or I'd show you; it's þ) being "th", and many people mistaking it for a "y" in "the". However, "ye" is also a plural/formal form of the word "you." Anyone who's taken French, or German, will understand when I say it's like "vous", or "ihr". It's a little more complicated than that, though, since it's only nominative: that is, you can say "Can ye come to me?" but not "I'm coming to ye." (For that, you want "you"--yes, it really was a word back then!)
'ye shalt' is then wrong. 'thou shalt'
Because of what I just said, "ye shalt" is not wrong for the reason you state. However, it is still wrong, for the following reason: forms like "shalt," "art," "dost" and such are only for the second-person singular familiar: that is, "thou." (And, of course, in the analog position to "you" we have "thee") But also, like I said, it's the familiar form, not, as many today incorrectly believe, the formal. So in a letter to someone you don't know, you should use "ye" and "you," not "thou" and "thee." (But I'll ignore that distinction for the remainder of the corrections)
'readeth' is not a proper conjugation, simply use 'read'.
'ye hearts' should be 'thy heart dost'
'I am using ye' => 'I be using the'
You're correct about "readeth;" that is the third-person singular form (eg, "he readeth," "she readeth," "it readeth"). You're also right about "thy heart dost [bleed]." As someone else pointed out, however, "I be using the" is weird pirate-talk*. It should be "I am using an," just as it would be today.
'hast thou hearest' => 'hast thou not heard'
The "not" is unnecessary; it can just be "hast thou heard." (the "not" just makes it more poetic, or something)
'Remindest' is an improper combining of dost. Drop the do, and add an apostrophe: Remind'st
'ones'? just 'one' will do.
As I said before, the forms ending in "-st" or "-est" are second-person singular familiar. I'm really not sure what the original poster's intent in this part was; I suspect it should be something more like "I remind thee," but the desire to obfuscate overcame them, and this dreck came out. It could also be "Remind yourselves," or, "It remindeth me" (though I'm not entirely sure about "remindeth").
Most humbly, I remain _thy_ servant...
Given that they're using the informal forms throughout, yes. However, formally and correctly it would indeed be "your servant."
Misuse of archaic language is one of my pet peeves.
Dan Aris
* As a matter of fact, what we tend to think of as "pirate-talk" is in actuality the dialect spoken in the furthest southwest of England, in Cornwall. A lot of smugglers operated there, because of the nature of the coastline. And please forgive me if I've gotten details wrong; I'm always happy to be corrected by someone who knows what they're talking about.
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
That's why the SCO intends to prove that GPL'd software is really Public Domain software. If the GPL is invalid as they say (it's not), then the only legal definition matching "offering original works for uncompensated distribution" is "Public Domain." As Public Domain, SCO would be as entitled as anyone to redistribute the Linux code base.
(BTW IMHO this is why they subpoenaed Torvalds and Stallman, to get them to testify that they intended free distribution without remuneration. The GPL intends "you must GPL your changes" as "consideration", but SCO hopes to get the court to agree that there's only one kind of "consideration" that matters, and that's money. Heck, read that "Open Letter" again; it mostly says that the GPL is anti-business, and on another occasion I recall Darl said the GPL is about "destroying value." Even if that's so, Buisiness isn't All That There Is, and "promoting public welfare" as the constitutional copyright clause intends doesn't always necessarily mean "profit.")
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Just when I think you've said the stupidest thing ever, you keep talking!"
The court wrote that they also felt that it was excessive, however it was not UNconstitutional and therefore applicable.
Supreme Court is misguided at best and at worst it has a hand in the pie.
Except that they're the fucking supreme court. Their job is not to legislate but to determine if the legislation passed follows the structure for government outlined in the US Constitution. They may have ideological perspectives, but they aren't corrupt.
There is that. There are some common theme with all of those too. Departments were essentially given free rein and had very open, very tight knit groups of developers. Kind of like the open source communities these days. I doubt companies would stand for that sort of thing these days. Oh yeah, and aren't most of thos BSD(ish) derivatives?
Meanwhile I've seen a lot of nifty features of the Linux kernel quietly copied by Microsoft. IIRC we had IP Masquerading before they implemented NAT, and I seem to recall that they implemented modem bonding (Where you dial up your ISP with 2 modems for twice the throughput) a year or two after I was using it with my ISP with Linux. I'm kind of surprised that no one's grabbed the kernel firewall stuff, though I think Microsoft ships a half-assed firewall now too.
Actually I'd cite Emacs heh heh. One of these days I'll have to post my E-Lisp database relationship finder on my web site, but it only took a couple of days to write and it's not very efficient about finding relationships (Basically one big recursive mapcar, I've seen it take 10 minutes on a fast machine for tables with a lot of relationships...)
For that matter where did html/http (And the Internet itself for that matter) come from? I forget if it was academic or from DARPA. Not that I'd describe DARPA as corporate.
Isn't Apple a commercial UNIX vendor now?
Yeah, but didn't they just take NextStep, cut out the best features and release it as OS/X? NextStep was UNIX under the covers, too. Hmm... Starting to notice that recurring theme again. Of all the commercial UNIX vendors, Apple's done the most with it, and they've been doing it for a blink of the eye in the life of UNIX. With a platform positioned for 64 bit computing and suitable for client and server side stuff, they should be able to crush the other vendors fairly quickly. I wonder why they haven't...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
everyone must view each other as competitors to be fought instead of companions to collaborate with.
Try "everyone else is a potential competitor who, if you cooperate with them, may steal your work unless you have a contract limiting them from doing so".
Which is really what GPL is about, also. It specifically prevents others from making an improvement (or incompatible change) to your code and blocking YOU (and your colaborators) from using and/or distributing that improvement (or change), i.e. Microsoft's "Embrace, extend, extinguish" approach applied to the code itself.
The real difference between GPL users and Daryl is that GPL users want to be paid for their code with more code, good reputation, or advancement of the field. Daryl prefers to be paid by having money come directly to his company.
He's not getting that money because the GPL codebase has become too strong a competitor, and he believes that codebase is built on the work he believes his company bought, in ways that amount to stealing it.
And by starting the suit he touched the tarbaby. If he backs out now he has nothing - and has destroyed his company. So, as the attention the suit brings leads to discoveries that various pieces of it are bogus, he has to keep pushing. Thus he ends up making progressively more convoluted claims.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Um... Linux is only producing toys?! I admit that saying non-gpl or non-linux was a wasteland was utterly incorrect, but what good is a counterargument that is just as obviously wrong!?
What about ogg (vorbis, speex, etc), vmware, Mozilla, Bugzilla, the growing spectrum of GUI's and GUI-based and web-based tools that Unix ain't never had? What about apache, perl and python (all born under Unix but solidly linux-born nowadays), and the device-specific linux flavors like embedded linux is in, and 'recreational' systems like ReplayTV and mythTV (admittedly still a bit more cooking needed), and so on? That last pair are 'serious toys' (or only deserves 'toy' if you're saying it with a degree of respect, not dismissiveness). We just saved a ton of money implementing a linux-based project/issue tracking tool (my last employer blew six figures writing one inhouse).
Frankly, freshmeat is at least 75% never-seen-life-before-linux (I don't intend to prove a majority, just the existence of a LOT of counterarguments to your toy argument). Over the last 15 years there *are* a lot of innovations coming out of some Unix stalwarts (AT+T, Sun, SGI, Apple). But there used to be so many Unix vendors. Most are gone, but a few sellers of 'dead' Unix flavors remain. These vendors whack the dead horse every year for another chunk of revenue, but otherwise ignore Unix. Or, in the case of SCO, they go lookin for a bigger horse to poison, so they can make money off it, a la Dead Souls.
Is Darls argument that free software people dont believe in the ideas of copyright like the government does, so therefore they dont get protection given to everyone else? The laws in this country only apply to those who agree with them ideologically? If im missing something please let me know because i cant see what his point is.
This appears so thin it only has one side.
I was crazy back when being crazy really meant something. (Charles Manson)
It still amazes me how some people can write so many words and not even touch upon the actual issues in the case. McBride's letter is one of these cases. I kept skipping the nonsense to get to an actual argument, but I ended up at the end of the letter instead.
Darl finds himself in an unwinnable situation and decides, "I'm going to fix the game just like my hero Capt. James T. Kirk". Unfortunately none of his actions have turned out heroic...
Sorry my bullshit sensor overloaded.
last year the 9th sent 24 cases to the supremes, 18 were overturned - that was way more than any other appeals court ... but only because the 9th carries way more cases ... the actual percentage overturn rate was pretty close to the mean for all the appeals courts - I guess you take the numbers that support your political views
I'm more concerened about "the facts". Daryl give us this promise:
the facts SCO has raised have become one of the most important and hotly debated technology issues this year, and often our positions on these issues have been misunderstood or misrepresented. Starting with this letter, I'd like to explain our positions on the key issues
I'm still waiting for them to present a single fact. Their opinions, much echoed in M$ trade rags, don't mean much without any factual support. They have yet to demonstrate a single copyright violation beside their own violation of the GPL. They have not even put forth a decent case of trade secret violation against IBM. Either of these factual issues could easily be presented in a single page of text. I'm not sure who, outide of Redmond, was impressed by Dayrl's binders of press releases at his stock holder's meeting. Not one word of any of this torrent of garbage has been used to present any real facts.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Your signature:
All posts are valid XHTML to the point that I can control...
The first line of every Slashdot page, in which said posts are included:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN">
Conclusion:
Making the abovementioned posts valid XHTML (or valid anything-not-HTML-3.2 for that matter) inevitably makes the whole page invalid, however valid it might be otherwise (it is not, but that is another problem).
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
The US Constitution also grants congress the exclusive right to regulate commerce. If someone gives his/her money to a charity, would Mr. McBride say that act is unconstitutional? His argument seems to indicate that.
FSF appears to support the copyright laws. FSF does not support proprietary ideas. Copyrights are how they prevent others from taking its materials and making them proprietary.
oh, and it's Jefferson, d00d.
Fatal error: unmatched '[' character.
Yes, I'm still a junky. Are you still a bitch?
If GPL is not valid:
-
SCO has been releasing Linux illegally
else:- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
My father was a lawyer, and a geeky one, too. He was the first in the state to use digital copies of case material in a court setting, and, during the final years of his profession, had repeatedly expressed his interest in digitizing his entire case archive - eliminating the need to store the past records off site, and use up a huge amount of space and paper.
What was holding him back? The digital documents were not yet proven to be legal, legitimate copies in a court setting. He said to me many times that "the biggest problem with our legal system is that we fear change". That's all I could think about when I read this article.
McBride states "The future of the global economy hangs in the balance." I say it could, but only if you think like the founders of our legal system. Could they have envisioned a world connected like we are?
This is a change - a recent one - in our model of commerce and development. Who would've thought that it could actually become more cost effective to share your ideas with others and see what you could all come up with?
The whole basis for this latest FUD will strike deep into the hearts of every lawmaker who had training in the ancient system. Should we take a giant leap forward, even with the appropriate research, into something that was never tried before? Should we let software patents be a thing of the past? Or should we sit here safely in the routines we didn't create?
There's a 68.71% chance you're right.
If his point is that at least line of thinking within the IP universe sets out to devalue most forms of IP (copyright, patent) -- well, is that not right?
No.
The FSF and EFF stand to promote Free software and Electronic Freedom. They do not support software patents because patents are, by their very nature, a restriction on freedom. A patent is a limited time state-mandated monopoly for the inventor(s). That does not mean that the EFF or FSF seek to devalue patents - merely that they do not support them.
On the topic of copyrights, the GPL could not survive without them as it provides the basis for the license. Without copyrights, the GPL could not require distributors to provide the source code because the distributor would have the rights to distribute the material freely. Because copyrights exist and protect the author(s) work, the GPL allows recipients of GPL'd material to further distribute that work under the terms of the GPL. If the recipient does not agree to such terms, then the GPL is not in force but the recipient can't distribute that material because it is protected by copyright. So I believe that the EFF and FSF are probably extremely staunch supporters of sane copyright laws as it helps them provide the framework for information exchange.
You use the word 'devalue' but your usage is ambiguous - it could be taken to be used as a purely monetary description. Nothing in the GPL prevents you from charging for your work. Coming from a scientific background where material is constantly made public knowledge through the many journals and scientific websites, the existence of this information in the public mind does not devalue it in a monetary sense since pure information has no monetary value. An implementation of that information may indeed lead to a monetary value - much advanced image processing software using maximum entropy theory exists which costs a significant chunk of cash is based on publicly accessible theorems and equations. The existence of a free software equivalent does not reduce the value of another solution either. Whether people are prepared to pay for a costly solution over a free implementation is up to the consumer to decide. Even in cases of direct competition between Free software and commercial software, I view the Free software as having a 'keeping everyone honest' effect. If a solution can be generated quickly or easily by a small group of developers working in their free time, competing commercial packages must do much more to justify their price. Without the Free alternatives, consumers would be at the mercy of companies massively inflating their profits by being able to pick their prices without reference to the cost of production.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
** Heller
I am fearful of his words, because many uninformed people will believe what he says.
I also find it terrible that in his eyes the "rights of private" seem to outweigh those "rights of the public".
He makes a case regarding Copyright under the US consititution and I accept that to a degree there is a broad generalization that all fall under, but in addition to those rights, there are rights provided by the GPL.
If he fails to accept this, then every single user agreement out today would be null and void. For that matter, the case could be made that this invalidates any user agreement that was placed on the existing sysV code. Can't have it both ways.
So am I correct in saying that the innovation present in Linux towards the public good (and even if there was bits of pre/post SysV code) is superceeded by the financial private good of SCO?
Has any code that may or may not have been included been used against the public good?
What is the public good or the promotion of innovation when development and innovation of Linux is hindered by this case.
I believe ultimately the US Consitition put items in to protect the rights of the individual when promoting the public good from being taken and abused by others whom they view as not using it towards the public good.
In SCO's case, they are using for their own good not for the public good.
Now a days all the patents, copyrights, etc are all held by big companies which have only the private/companies interests in mind...that seems counter to the intent of the Constitution.
Eric B
ebresie@gmail.com
that the GPL is the spawn of Satan and a Chia Pet.
Oh yeah, and that it causes cancer in laboratory rats.
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
Well, according to buffy the vampire slayer, cutting off the head should suffice, but I still fully support a stake through the heart.
"However, there is a group of software developers in the United States, and other parts of the world, that do not believe in the approach to copyright protection mandated by Congress."
Why the Hell should the rest of the world have to conform to US laws? I'd like to see the US conform to Saudi Arabian laws.
Bunch of assholes!
This guy is on the good crack.
Copyright is a way of encouraging people to create works, by saying that as long as Disney owns senators, you can have the rights to your work and decide what can be done with the work.
In other words, you can sell you work without fear of someone else copying the work and selling it as their own or otherwise distributing it, thus depriving you of money to compensate you for the time you spent creating it.
In the case of the GPL, the creators of these works have decided to say they are not greedy and don't care about anything other than making sure that anyone using their work does in a way that fits the GPL - ie, steal it and use it if you want, just if you do, you must make the work you used my work in avail under the same conditions. I'm sure an author could also dictate that "if you want to publish my work, you must do so with a red cover on the book".
It is still copyright, you just get to dictate the terms people can use the work under.
SCO is made because they can't take a work they see in the public domain and do as they wish with it. Either that, or my guess is the relevation the other day that SCO contributed code to some open source projects, and now they are pissed about it and this is how they are attacking that - that they should be able to charge for code they gave away...kinda like doing charity work and then deciding later you would have rather gotten paid for that.
He's probably at work.
Like you ARE NOT on slashdot answering someone who has too much time at their disposal ?
You crack me up.
A profit is some consideration you get over and above costs for the work you put into the sale of an item. (Not necessarily creation, as there are resellers to...but it's payment for the work you did in obtaining the good for sale in that case). Darl wants us all to believe that the only way you can profit is monetarily. He forgets that those who subscribe to the GPL "profit" from ease of use, a feeling of accomplishment, brag rights and software that is TECHNICALLY, not merely economically superior.
The GPL protects the profit motive, as copyrights were intended to do. Just because profit has been defined in non-monetary terms doesn't make that point any less valid.
If free software saves me time: I profit.
If free software saves me money: I profit.
If free software saves me from multiple crashes of my computer system: I profit.
If free software means a multi-billion dollar corporation such as IBM has to have MY name in the credits of the OS they release: I profit.
If free software gives me 75% of the product I need, so that I only need to develop the 25% that remains (for my own use): I profit.
Profit isn't always money.
America was built on the profit motive. GPL contributors deserve to profit too. Darl would rather have it that only monetary profits be preserved, as his mind is too small and concrete-bound to encompass a legal **principle**.
If the so-called defenders of the GPL would stop whining that "Darl is bad because he wants to profit, and profit is bad" and replace it with "Darl is bad because he wants to profit from OUR work, and take away OUR profits", SCO might be shown in the light they deserve: Crooks, trying to make a buck off a wilful misinterpretation of the law, instead of "defenders of property and profits".
If SCO and yousrselves truly believed in authors and inventors rights, you would honor their rights to dispose of their work as they see fit. Profit of the soul is still profit Darl, but I don't expect you to understand this sophisticated point.
If SCO want to purport that they are the defenders of authros and inventor's rights, how do they rationalize their attempts to narrow the options available to those self-same authors and inventors? Protecting inventro rights means event he ones you don't agree with Darl...
"Talk minus action equals nothing" - Joey Shithead, D.O.A.
"Talk minus action equals
Certainly the GPL is dependent on copyright. But you can't seriously tell me that the FSF -- and moreso the EFF -- is staking out an increasingly infringement-friendly position.
Which is it? The GPL and music are both protected by copyright, or neither are?
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
should be
Methink'st thou hast to much fuckynge time on thine hands
Years ago we made up a set of samples for a friend's band which he used on a demo tape which he hawked around record companies. Lo and behold, our samples (and most of the tune) ended up being released as the next big selling single by a well known band. Attempts to get credit for this failed because of squishing by big record company lawyers.
Nothing was signed away, but blatantly stolen.
"I think McBride is failing to see that nobody has to incorporate GPL'd code into their creation. If you don't want to use the GPL on your code, then don't use code covered by the GPL already. It makes perfect sense to the rest of us, but he seems to have some kind of ego thing going on where he thinks that SCO should be free to rip off everybody else without giving anything in return. That seems to be his entire argument, albeit in more verbose language."
It's dog logic. "What's mine is mine. What's yours is mine. What I see is mine." If you look at Caldera's history, it morphed from being a GPL-friendly company under one set of administrators to an IP lawfirm. I wonder if former officers of Caldera, from the 'Time Before SCO' era could be called to testify about their company's doings under their administration, and how they felt that the GPL was to be considered true and respected. This would demonstrate the about-face that the company did, and how it accepted the GPL initially, and later rejected it when it wasn't convenient. If this is documented in court, it would be legal establishing of the situation that would let Linus et al. sue Caldera for contract and copyright infringement.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
It is short-sighted to infer that this is the only reason the US economy reacted. In truth, it was around 1976 when garage-based innovators like Wozniak - who probably didn't give a damn about patents and the artifically world manufactured by the legal types - started their revolutionary work. The high-tech industry prior to 1976 resembled nothing at all like the high-tech industry of today, and this is no doubt due to advances by hobbyists and computer enthusiasts like Wozniak, not patent laws.
Moreover, patent laws realistically fail to protect innovation. Although they were drafted with that intent, it is clear today that some corporations (SCO with this amusing litigation, Microsoft with its recent assertion of FAT rights, Thompson Multimedia and MP3s) are consistently using and abusing this system, maintaining healthy "patent portfolios" that can be used to aggressively seek out and sue at any time those who they perceive violate them. The millions of people protesting in Europe over it cannot be wrong - the system of software patents is completely broken.
The DMCA was manufactured to protect the special interests of a select few corporations like the RIAA and MPAA. In the free, capitalist market the US claims to be, there is really no reason for why such things as the DMCA should exist. In a free market, the RIAA and MPAA would be left up to their own devices and not come cowering or crying to Uncle Sam for help. By protecting these decrepid business models, the US has given carte blanche authority for the RIAA at least to act above the laws in defending itself, even though in the free market the RIAA would rightfully cease to exist.
Historically, we find that governments (for example, pre-industrial China) that protect the special interests of a few select elites end up paying dearly for it later. As we see, the special interests of elites were protected and these newfound rights were aggressively used to stamp out any threats to their well-being and existence. As such, innovation was stifled and the industrial revolution was delayed in such countries.
So what does B8 00 4C CD 21 mean anyway?
MOV AX,4C00H
INT 21H
In x86 assembler language.
It seems as if SCO really dosen't truly understand what is going on.... not about their litigation compaign (they have that well under control) but about software, programmers and dare i say it computer science. Invalidating the GPL by dragging it through court won't do what I am assuming SCO thinks it will do, mainly turn all software proprietry. Because no one, will NEVER EVER tell me that I cannot give software I write away free of charge. If the GPL were to be invalidated, then I'd release under BSD (although i'd like something requiring source distribution) or some other 'free' license. So this entire fiasco is a complete waste of time. proprietry software is fine, profits are a good thing. but to say that open source software is somehow illegal or 'wrong' is just plain lunacy. SCO almost makes me embarrassed to be a programmer.
Do you know why 'y' is pronounced 'th'?
hmmm?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The laws under discussion in this comment are those of the United States of America. Nothing you read on Slashdot is legal advice; at best, Slashdot users are bad paralegals.
1) it must be software, which excludes all other sorts of creative works from the exception
The statutory definition of a "computer program" is apparently quite broad, "a set of statements or instructions to be used directly or indirectly in a computer in order to bring about a certain result." Could an MP3 file, which contains instructions to reconstruct a waveform, be considered a "computer program" under U.S. law? Relevant case law anyone?
2) the person making the adaptation must own the copy, which seems to not happen if you're licensing the software per a EULA.
This is largely a matter of state law. Softman Products Co. v. Adobe Systems Inc. (resale of individual software packages from a bundle is lawful) holds that the person who purchases a copy at retail owns the copy. Relevant text from the opinion vacating the injunction:
Then it goes on to explain who is the "owner" and what is a "sale" of a copy under the Uniform Commercial Code. Finally, "[t]he Court finds that the circumstances surrounding the transaction strongly suggests that the transaction is in fact a sale rather than a license."
As a logical analysis of the above...
If you meant, "If a thing is based on a profit motive, it is constitutional," which seems to be the most consistent interpretation of the wording in context (despite being a clearly false premise, c.f. antitrust law), the syllogism you present is of invalid form - in fact, it cannot be rephrased into the standard form for a categorical syllogism.
1. P -> C [premise]
2. G -> ~P [premise]
--
*. G -> ~C [*invalid*]
If, on the other hand, you meant "If a thing is constitutional, then it is based on the profit motive," then your syllogism is valid. (But I'd have to object to your premise in that case on the grounds that it's clearly false - many things the government has laws for are either neutral to or opposed to the "profit motive", again such as antitrust law.) This is an AAA syllogism with the first statement phrased oddly, viz. "all things which are not P are also not C."
1. C -> P [premise]
2. ~P -> ~C [2, contrapositive] A
3. G -> ~P [premise] A
--
*. G -> ~C [1, 3, modus ponens] A
I suspect Darl is using a slightly different meaning, that of a biconditional: "a thing is constitutional if and only if it is based on the profit motive", which would give:
1. C <-> P [premise]
2. (P -> C) & (C -> P) [def. <->]
And could therefore be turned into the second (and valid in form) argument. However, that premise is equally blatantly false.
If I were to try to formulate a logical with reasonable premises (unlike all of the above first premises, which I reject) and valid form, I would come up with the following (which needs to be expressed using first-order predicate calculus, and for which I've used E and A as substitutes for the standard predicate 'exists' and 'all' symbols):
1. Some things are both constitutional and based on the profit motive.
2. All things released under the GNU Public License are not based on the profit motive. (This premise is slightly questionable, but I grant it for the majority of cases.)
That is:
1. E(x) : C(x) & P(x) [premise]
2. A(x) : G(x) -> ~P(x) [premise]
However, there's nowhere I can go from that. There isn't a logical manipulation I can perform to get an interesting conclusion.
The letter says in part:
There sure is middle ground! It's what we have today: each producer (in theory) gets to choose whether their work will be copyrighted or open. (I say 'in theory' because so much of what individuals produce today is legally 'owned' by corporations.)
Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. -- Berthold Auerbach
Pirate-talk, at least in the era of the really great pirates such as Morgan (and just possibly Dread Roberts), indeed incorporates much of the southwestern coastal English of its time. However, in the interest of even greater precision than the abundance you have alreay provided, there are also some elements of southeast English (think London) slang (what is sometimes referred to as Thieve's Cant).
These get weaker as the "legendary" Pirates are replaced by more bland types (think SOBs just as bloody and cruel, but without the style and pinache of Morgan or even Teach/Blackbeard), possibly because fewer impressed sailors from the British Navy managed to desert in places where they could swing over to the pirate side.
Who is John Cabal?
"This is why ultimately software patents are invalid. Software being based upon math and logic, and math and logic being created by God, algorithms just exist to be discovered, not created (and therefore patentable)!!!"
I'm an Athiest you insensitive clod!
On a more serious note, removing all religious references, this can be stated as a function of the universe. That removed all religious tones but still has the same permanence.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Here, you are selling the product.
Here, you are selling the market
When it comes to marketing, there are several things that you try to do, depending on the market you are in and how you want to place your company. The fundamental reasons for this are sound, but the tactics used can seem so screwy as to make the whole concept of marketing seem like a scam.
The most important part of being a merchant is getting a first sale that goes off relatively smoothly. It doesn't have to be perfect, or even good, just not bad. People tend to do repeat business with a merchant that they know isn't horrible, as opposed to an unknown vendor. This explains all the loss-leaders and freebies in the market.
I am neither a marketing professional nor a psychologist, just someone who has read a bit of both and thinks about such things. People need to think about these basics in whatever market they are in, but integrate them with the market, the product, and the company itself. There's no one-size-fits all marketing strategy. So, as I am a techie with knowledge of business and who is available for work, you should hire me.
SCO is or has been distributing software that was released under the GPL and BSD licences. They have voided their right to do so. They have allowed software released under BSD and almost certainly GPL licenses to be inserted into their Unix variant.
Under the DMCA and CA76, the FSF and UC can demand that they stop distribution of any Unix-like operating system until all GPL/BSD code is removed.
Suing SCO for violation of the Copyright Act might not be successful in court, but it could be. Even if the suit were to fail (or more likely, SCO go under before a trial), the publicity of such a suit would make it obvious that Open Source adherents are not anti-copyright. We just prefer a different EULA.
What's really wrong with SCO's position?
In SCO's open letter, they say:
Their argument is that the profit motive is what is important about copyrights. According to SCO, the intent of the author and his right to control the distribution of his work are a secondary side effect of the profit motive and our economy's need for him to profit from his work.
That twisted paradigm underpins SCO's business plan, their market strategy, and their case against IBM.
I believe it's time to sue SCO, in order to make clear that it's the author's right to control his work and who profits from it that matters, and not just his right to profit.
sigs, as if you care.
that's bloody hilarious :)
Nah, that quote actually proves that SCO has no idea what the Eldred decision was actually about. The clause "for a limited time" was the crux of the case, not whether or not Congress had the power to create copyrights. Remember that the case challenged the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension act, and also called into question some of the previous copyright-term extension legislation.
Congress is explicitly allowed to create copyrights, and they have done so; this is in the Constitution. The "limited time", as it stands right now, is basically unlimited for purposes of the lifespan of a single person. Your (very old) grandchildren might have free access to use a copyrighted work which was originally published today.
"My license plate reads SOLARIS - I am a die-hard Stanislav Lem's fan."
My license plate reads CORDOBA. I must be a die-hard Ricardo Montalban fan...
Chicks dig the fine Corinthian Leather.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
where'd you learn all this? I didn't know olde timey english was taught anywhere. pretty cool.
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
So this is wrong on so many levels. Proprietary use of GPL'd software is fine. It's just that redistributing GPL'd software means you have to make your changes available, and anyone else can then modify your stuff. It still doesn't prevent you doing ANYTHING you want with it -- you just can't take someone else's GPL'd work and convert into a proprietary, closed-source item-for-sale. Right?
seven two six five
seven four six one seven
two six four two e
"The mark of any good manager is the ability to delegate responsibility effectively. You may be a fair writer, but if your reputation and your company's are at stake, why not hire an expert? "
Frankly, I expect people who run and manage a business to be experts at letter writing. I also expect them to be experts at everything their business does.
Delegation is used because you don't have the time, not because you can't. Managers and CEOs *should* (and I realize this is not what happens) be expert-level on, as I said, everything that concerns the business.
A point of note: I come from a family that has followed this formula successfully for 300 years. It is, as we have found, the only way to run an efficient and productive company that is ethical, trustworthy and doesn't fsck up. We also have other points of note, such as:
Social Responsibility trumps Profit
(which is another one of those old ideas that are being scrapped, despite the fact that it is the cornerstone of corporate trust).
It sounds unrealistic, but it ensures that no-one who comes in to a company is in it for the money. You have to slog your guts out to get the knowledge and experience to, in our opinion, run a company well and be able to know instantly what everyone is talking about. Sure, it takes time, but it's about being *responsible* and if you aren't aware of (and don't understand) every little thing your company does, then you don't deserve to run one.
SCO is the epitome of an irresponsible company. Then again, so is almost every large company out there. Too much short-term thinking and no long-term planning. Does no-one do exhaustive Business Plans that go through every possible combination of events any more? *sigh*
--N
Noone gets any satisfaction with modding ACs down.
Lets respond to the troll.
Why give away the programs? So the programmers can make money by selling support and consultancy services. Funnily enough, they often found companies of their own to do this.
In Eldred, they didn't rule in favour of SCO's opinion, they ruled in favour of Ashcrofts line. It had nothing to do with SCOs opinion. And while we disagree with the DMCA, it protects Linux hippies from companies like SCO too.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Who is this McClown? ATT Unix is pubic domain software and McBride helped put it there.
To SCO, Mr. McBride, and the Open Software Community,
I take exception with Mr. McBride's assertions about GPL and Open Software. He clearly has no comprehension of the meaning of freedom in America. If a collective of programmers wishes to pool their talents to create a greater good, how can this be against the US Constitution and Patent Law? The situation is analogous to Barn manufacturers sueing the Amish to prevent barn raisings! American government does not endorse socialism, but it should not prevent individuals from collectivism. SCO and its lawyers have a contract case with IBM that needs to be resolved on its own merits. Their attack on GPL and OSF in an effort to make their case is irresponsible, unwarranted, and frankly unAmerican. If SCO didn't like GPL, why in heavens name did they sell Linux? This one goes down with the "nouveau legal" premise that when something bad happens, someone with money has to pay. Clearly, nobody in SCO or their legal staff has ever taken a course in formal logic or ethics! I sometimes have trouble resolving my 22 years in military service against some of the idiots I was working to defend. I hope that Mr. McBride gets canned, SCO loses, that its lawyers lose money for the effort, and that contributing personal efforts to a common good never goes out of style! Hooah!
According to Darl: "The profit motive is the engine that ensures the progress of science." I suppose Uncle Albert was thinking of the trillions he would have earned developing the theories that underpin, among others, today's nuclear power plants and solar power cells (and yes, even WMD's).
Let me tell you, this isn't a fun thing - it is also known as "welder's blindness" - if you try to arc weld without proper dark shielding (or the arc light creeps under your sheild, for example, while wearing a white shirt), this is what happens. It feels like your eyeballs are on fire, massive pain. In severe cases, you won't be able to see for a couple of hours (in very severe cases, you will be permanently blinded). In almost all cases, your vision will be affected.
Perhaps your invention would be OK if they made the user's wear regular sunglasses with UV protection over the top of the contacts, plus sign a waiver/contract (might already be in most tanning salon contracts) - that would work. It would be either that, or full sclera contact lenses (such as used in the FX industry, which tend to be very uncomfortable to wear for any extended periods).
Other than that - great invention!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
The FSF and EFF stand to promote Free software and Electronic Freedom. They do not support software patents because patents are, by their very nature, a restriction on freedom. A patent is a limited time state-mandated monopoly for the inventor(s). That does not mean that the EFF or FSF seek to devalue patents - merely that they do not support them.
To be fair, they do agree with the usefulness of patents. They disagree with software patents because of their inherent problems. However, the GPL does allow for software patents. They simply require that a perpetual royalty-free license be granted to GPL'ed software containing patented code.
Certainly the GPL is dependent on copyright. But you can't seriously tell me that the FSF -- and moreso the EFF -- is staking out an increasingly infringement-friendly position.
Which is it? The GPL and music are both protected by copyright, or neither are?
Slashdot (or more pedantically random slashdotters) != FSF or EFF
If you pay attention to what the FSF has said, and read RMS's bio, you will understand that RMS preferes to use products unencumbered by IP concerns. This includes his taste in music, which seems to be restricted primarily to folk songs, classical music, and original works in a similar vein that are freely distributed.
The EFF has opposed the DMCA's abuse which has included punishment of the innocent as well as punishment of people who are probably not so innocent without due process. They have also opposed the erosion of fair use rights which are granted by original copyright law. They have never taken the indefensible position that copyright holders do not deserve compensation for their work, and neither have the FSF. In fact both vehemently defend this. The RIAA et al are actually fighting against due compensation for content creators and in some cases copyright holders.
With all those documents the GPL violates, at least it doesn't violate the 10 Commandments.
Or does it...?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
or anyone else. My understanding of GPL (flame me if I'm wrong) is that anyone can sell the code compiled from source code under GPL. All GPL requires it that, if you do deliver a binary for free or fee, you must also make the source code available to that party to, for no additional fee. Isn't this correct?
securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors
What I would really like to see is a much stricter interpretation of this phrase...
- no transfer of copyright: only the original Author or Inventor holds copyright (hence, SCO is SOL, because they DID NOT WRITE UNIX). If the author/inventor dies, or the company goes out of business -- then the work becomes PUBLIC DOMAIN. I always thought the copyright was intended to increase the works in the public domain, not decrease it. That's "for the public good"
- limited time - this means somewhat less than the lifetime of the author, ok? This business of copyright extending 50 years beyond death, or being effectively indefinite by passing to family members or corporations, is ludicrous. Even a flat 50 years seems too long to me. And there should be some clause in the law that, once a work is not actively published or produced or available for some period of time (e.g 10-20 years), it may be freely copied.
Any course in Chaucer includes rudimentary introduction to middle English. Most Linguistic courses also cover the evolution of English from Old to Early-Modern.
"the motive of profit is the engine that ensures the progress of science."
rubish..
...is that they're up against IBM, and not some linux hippies. Try telling the court that IBM isn't into GPL'd software because of the profit motive, but out of some anti-business, anti-profit anarchist agenda. Yeah. Right.
In business terms, think of Linux as the world's greatest co-op. Here's a little definition "An enterprise or organization that is owned or managed jointly by those who use its facilities or services." Pretty close at least, particularly if you replace "owned" with "mutually licenced through the GPL".
What's the purpose of a co-op, e.g. a cooperative apartment building? To avoid the overhead of having an outside company run it for profit. Linux is much the same. When you work for the co-op (Linux) you work for your own good, even when you're not getting a paycheck for it.
Darl's latest bullshit sounds like it's illegal to form a co-op because then a "real" company can't come in and make a profit off it. The entire argument is muddied up with other ravings, but that's the core of it. If they tried anything like that with a less tech-oriented subject, they'd be laughed out, both of court and in public.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
OK - first, when you hear the term "copyright", replace it with the phrase "right-to-copy". It gets easier to decode this stuff, and that's what it really means anyway.
They take every step of this too far. "Congress shall grant..." menas that they get to create a system of copyright. It does not mean that anyone who does other than an single exclusive agreement for publication is in violation of the mandate - that's because the mandate simply establishes that this all can be backed by the force of law rather than being merely contractual. But it is still contractual from the copyright holder on down.
Copyright is assigned / granted to an entity - the original author or its assignees. And that's the critical part. The holder of the copyright is allowed to then further enter any agreement they see fit for the use of the materials, as long as I don't violate other constitutional rights or established laws. The existence of copyright is law, its enforcement is stated in law, but the details of any specific agreement are contractual. I can say that only every fifth person who asks me can copy my stuff, but I can't say that only every white person can. I can't say Minnesotans can't, but Minnesotans can say they don't want to. I can say that anyone can or that no one can, the former kinda pointless for commerce, the latter absolutely pointless for commerce. But I can. I have the rights to copy.
By their logic, anything released to the public domain is in violation as well. Guess we start collecting royalties for singing the National Anthem. There's a nice scene for the Supreme Court.
"Copyleft" is a glib term designed to differentiate from the traditional limear, exclusive, adversarial/litigious implimentation of rights-to-copy. It is not literal "left" vs "right", but they seem to imply that. I find it hard to believe any lawyer worth their salt wouldn't have a problem with that intepretation.
They essentially claim that anyone who doesn't contract with others the way they assume they should is therefore not only guilty of bad taste, but in violation of the law establishing the system. Which is going way too far. By their logic, the military is in violation of the Consitution Article I, Section 8, Clauses 13 & 14 because they fly aircraft. The Constution only mentions the navy, militia, and land and sea forces.
Hard to believe their rabbit hole went this deep in the first place - and they're still digging.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Let me run this by all you experts to see if I've got this right.
The copyright laws say that the copyright owner can give authorization "to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies" or "to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work" (17 USC 106(1) and (2)).
The GPL says, "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."
I think a better way to say this is that, when the copyright holder distributes his/her code under the GPL, the receiver of the code is authorized to make and distribute copies and/or derivative works.
I see no violation of copyright law. Do you?
Intellectual property rights for all!
boo!
Intellectual property rights for none!
boo!
Intellectual property rights for some, miniature American flags for others!
yay!
> For that matter where did html/http (And the Internet itself for that matter)
> come from? I forget if it was academic or from DARPA. Not that I'd describe
> DARPA as corporate.
DARPA created the IP protocols and later when they gave the network away to corps it was renamed the Internet.
The web was made at Cern, which is a particle physics lab in Switzerland (For all of the past, and still now, the largest lab.)
And the FSF botched it when they failed to clearly state that the unauthorized release of WASTE could not be covered by the GPL.
I could provide countless examples, but do I really have to?
Sure the FSF and EFF do good things, but their copyright politics are quite screwy. Copyright as applied to GPL'd code should be respected, copyright as applied to music shouldn't be.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
This letter gave me some insight into SCO's think behind saying the GPL was invalid, which didn't make any sense at all before. They seem to be saying that the FSF is violating the spirit of copyright laws by not using copyright for personal gain, and therefore what they are doing is wrong. Of course this is bogus. If you have copyright, you should be able to dictate terms other than monetary to allow someone to copy the work.
Vote for Pedro
I mistakenly assumed you were concentrating on "operating systems" innovation. In the general sense you're right, of course. There are plenty of examples of free-software innovation. I would personally cite gnutella, ogg*, slashdot(!), and Mozilla's bayesian spam-filtering as innovative. Freenet has potential. I don't know the exact lineage of BSD's socket API and implementation but it certainly directed the course of history.
And yes, that last one's an example of free-software "operating systems" innovation, but if you'll allow me some wiggle room here, you'll notice I only said we're working on UNIX clones, not that we weren't innovating at the operating system level .. although sockets did happen a long time ago :-)
Um... Linux is only producing toys?
That's *definitely* not what I said :-)
No :-) (I'd give you NeXTStep, though)
Fine, but the FSF -- and especially EFF -- message is one that says that copying copyrighted music is cool.
And the FSF botched it when they failed to clearly state that the unauthorized release of WASTE could not be covered by the GPL.
I could provide countless examples, but do I really have to?
Sure the FSF and EFF do good things, but their copyright politics are quite screwy. Copyright as applied to GPL'd code should be respected, copyright as applied to music shouldn't be.
So I countered your FUD with facts and you just repeat it again? Were you paying attention?
The FSF and the EFF respect copyright and otehr IP law absolutely. The FSF choice is to avoid technologies that are encumbered by IP concerns. In other words, they FOLLOW THE LICENSE. RMS is obeying the MS EULA and the RIAA dictat to the letter, by not using their crap in the first place.
In the case of the EFF, they have advocated Fair Use rights such as copying and they have opposed abuses of the DMCA. That does not mean that they advocate distributing music illegally, which they never ever have done.
Here's the door, don't let it hit your ass on the way out.
Oh, that's simple.
Just get some sort of evidence that a pump-and-dump is taking place:
Darl the head will get his standard-issue handle socks in prison, well cut off from "leading" SCO.
And it'll be very easy to get a stake in SCO after the heart of their corporate strategy is debunked and stock can be had for change under your couch cushions.
So, which is McBride suing someone about, something he created as an Inventor? Something he created as an Author? Or something that some other inventor or author has exclusive rights to?
The most obvious example is the EFF's prominent "File Sharing: it's Music to our Ears" campaign.
That seems like it respects copyright to you? Come on.
Sure the EFF advocates Fair Use rights and oppose abuses of the DMCA. And the EFF also encourages file-sharing. You may not like it, but that's the way it is.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
I actually decided that this one was worth replying to SCO on, so I posted this throught the comment page of their website:
Having read your recent open letter, I'm a bit confused. I am not a lawyer, although I've been involved in enough work in contract and intellectual property law over the years that I think I have a well-tuned BS filter.
What are you trying to say?
Are you saying that you have a case against IBM? That is for the court to decide.
Are you saying that you have a case against all Linux users? Once again, that is for the courts to decide. You have claimed that you will offer indemnity to those that buy your binary licenses, but you have not made the delivery of such licenses actually possible, which could be used as a defense by anyone you choose to sue. You also have offered no evidence that you do, in fact, have a cause of action against Linux users. Short of evidence and some opinion that Linux DOES include code that was misappropriated (as opposed to contributed by SCO, its agents or assigns in the Caldera days), your threats border on barratry.
The way the letter was written is half legal argument, half sophistry. It reminds me a lot of the breathless non-sequiturs stock newsletter promoters string together for their hype sheets. Perhaps that is its intent, to hype your stock. It seems, more and more, that this is the intent of your whole suit and associated noise making.
What you are doing looks more and more like a pump-and-dump.
It's too bad. SCO used to be a half-way decent company. If you had stuck to improving your products, by coming out with SVR4 Open Server sometime soon after its general availability, as opposed to limping along with a set of kludges on top of SVR3.2 for nearly a decade, and doing some "reference implementation" that included a real UI, etc., instead of leaving Unix to degenerate into a Tower of Babel, you probably would have an actual business, as opposed to being a roadblock in the way of progress for the industry.
Why don't you go back to whatever hole you crawled out of, and let Boies go back to trying to thwart the electoral process.
nm
It seems to me that the Open Source movement is all about liberty (Stallman's definition of free) and pursuit of happiness and is just the tip of the iceberg that results from Internet connectivity creating such large communities that further enable us to pursue Life, Liberty and Happiness. Ballmer wants "butts on the line" to get productivity. Open Source Development wants committed individuals. The difference is that Ballmer can only draw on the employees of Microsoft whereas OSD draws on the world. Similarly SCO finds GPL as a tool to promote open communication in conflict with the constitution, and implys that open communication attenuates innovation.
It seems to me we are on the leading edge of a paradigm shift in group processes - and software development is leading the way. I find it useful to be reminded about what our political system is supposed to be all about.
If what you say is true, you had a case but you simply gave up because it "seemed to hard." Don't blame your lack of dedication to your rights on someone else.
copyright should require full disclosure of the source code
Software, and anything else that is copyrightable, are automatically copyrighted at the moment of creation. Registering the copyright gives a few bonuses, such as changing the amount of damages awarded.
Copyright is not based on something "working", just on something being similar. Our IP lawyer has a program that removes every 20th line from the source code that he runs before registering the copyright. What remains is (supposedly) enough to prove that plaguarism happened, if both sources are available. The code is not usable for a working (or even compilable) program.
There are several major flaws in this copyright method. One is that if we register every release of the code, then all the code might be available after a few releases. Another problem is that much of programming is very logical and repeatable. A skilled programmer should be able to replace the missing lines if he knows the code's prupose. (We also remove all comments to help avoid that.) A third problem is there are many functions that are not 20 lines long, so they are unchanged by his process.
The biggest problem is that there is no method to check for violations. Even if someone borrows major portions of our code, it will not be noticed unless a bug is found that affects both versions. [We never release software with bugs!] Unless they are a direct competitor, we may still not notice that we shared a bug. Check the list of all the various software products that were affected by the ZIP bug for a real world example of code being used everywhere.
---
Software patents should require the source to a working demonstration. Do you really think the patent office would attempt compiling it? Even if the code would work, who would provide production-ready code for a patent? Remove all error-checking; the demo works and nobody would steal your code.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
Thou and thy are second person familiar (reserved for mommy, daddy, sibs, and spouses, for example). Prayers use that form of address because those praying believe their relationship to God to be that close. So unless you are that close to Darl McBride, use the more formal, second person plural...
I cant wait to see this all go to court.. should be very entertaining.. blah