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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."
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
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.
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.
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
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....
Technology leadership? In 1986?! During the height of the Japanese bubble? This guy cracks me up! You're such a card, McBride.
--AC
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.
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.
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
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
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
Darl is saying that all rights for non profit are disabled.
More like he's saying that a code author has no right to restrict their work in such a way that it can be distributed anywhere and modified freely by anyone within the terms of the licence provided by the original author. In Darl's view, copyright law is concerned with restricting works from being distributed without compensation, not with ensuring that authors are allowed to control distribution of their work as they see fit. He can't seem to wrap his head around the fact that many people have chosen to use their rights, as authors, under copyright law, to choose a set of restrictions that promotes copying and changing of their code, as long as anyone else can do the same. He only understands copyright in terms of sales and exclusivity.
Short version: in Darl's world, you can choose to restrict your works, but you can't choose to restrict your works into openness. Everything must be proprietary and closed, everyone must view each other as competitors to be fought instead of companions to collaborate with.
This seems to be the only logical way, outside of the obvious "pump 'n dump scheme" guess, to explain Darl's view of FOSS.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
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...
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 copyright didn't exist, the GPL could not exist -- everything would be public domain, and companies could release binary-only software.
I seriously doubt that RedHat has interest in blowing away copyright.
Most of this letter really is a straw man attack. It's not worth my time to punch holes in all of Darl's claims, but among other flaws:
(A) Darl claims that the GPL violates the Constitution and a number of other things. All "evidence", weak as it is, deals entirely with his claims about the motivations of several groups of people that happen to use the GPL. It has nothing to do with the GPL itself. This is a logical fallacy, on the order of saying "Bob owns a gun and Bob owns a big truck, so anyone owning a gun uses an excessive amount of gas".
(B) It's pretty clear that RH doesn't want to eliminate copyrights. Software patents are a significant disaster -- they are in a few company's corporate interests, but you will be very hard-pressed to find *any* engineer that supports them.
(C) McBride claimed that the GPL is invalid. Again. I'm wondering how he intends to argue that SCO didn't massively infringe copyrights of thousands of parties by then distributing Linux. Again. Same old, same old.
(D) McBride lies, and is happy to deliberately mislead people. We have seen this over and over and over in his claims and releases for almost a year now. It would be more of a surprise to find that he's being honest than that he's lying again.
May we never see th
GPL licensing isn't really giving up copyright protection. You've always been able to do that, just by placing something in the public domain. The GPL is just a fairly unusual license that deals with copyright.
It's kind of funny -- Darl claiming that he's fighting for copyright and justice and that the global economy depends on this case...and yet, the GPL works within the bounds of copyright, and most users of it are pretty happy, and the GPL's popularity has increased exponentially for years. SCO's own licensing schemes have crumbled in upon themselves, have on numberous times made bogus legal claims and tried to bend the law (such as refusing to disclose what code violated IBM's license to IBM after a judge ordered disclosure).
As for protecting technological advancement -- Darl, Linux is far more technologically advanced than SCO Unix. Furthermore, it's used in far more products, and facilitates research in a huge number of labs every day.
Darl's claims are so ludicrous that they start to enter the "so ridiculous that it's hard to get people to believe that he's really that far from the truth" zone.
May we never see th
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
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
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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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Exactly. The argument boils down to "The GPL is unconstitutional because the people who wrote it don't like some current laws."
Of course, not liking current laws is also constitutionally protected in the USA, as is the right to voice ones opinions on the matter.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
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.
(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.
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.
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
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
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
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
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."
'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?
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...
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[...]
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
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.
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.
-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?
not only that, but the SCO v. IBM case is about COPYRIGHT. the FSF and RH are bashed because they dont like "copyright and software patents." But, the FSF and RH only hate patents. They like copyright. And in the SCO v. IBM case, they fully support US copyright law. So it isnt' even a straw man, it's a false redirect, or bait n switch. or whatever. it's just plain RETARDED, man!
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..
Back in the 11th Century, King Cnut (I jest not) a Dane who invaded england was told by a toadying advisor, that he was so powerful and wise that the very sea itself would turn back on his command. Cnut (being wiser than his advisor) said it wouldn't and decided to prove the point by sitting on the beach and ordering the sea to retreat with obvious "pant's filled with sand" consequences, thus proving that though Cnut was appointed by god, only the Big G himself had power over the forces of nature.
Picture the scene:
Darl McBride in his office, playing with his executive toy. Enter a junior member of the SCO board. "Darl your a Genius! That DrDOS thing was fucking inspired, I mean, your mind and knowledge of Intellectual Property law is so great that even Big Blue itself would pay you billions of dollars if you made a claim against them. I mean they would be so awe struck at your wisdom and legal genius that they wouldn't even check to see if what you were saying was true no matter how ridiculous your claims".
Bullshit said Darl, and to prove it...........
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
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*
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
... 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..."
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.
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?
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)
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?
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
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.
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.
How can the terms of one EULA be enforceable, yet the terms of another not be?
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 doubt this can happen because there are (6,000?) licenses based on the System V code. Releasing System V code would undermind all of those licenses.
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.
me think'st thou hast too much fuckinth time on thine handsth.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
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.
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'
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 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.
"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
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).
...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