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Linus Corrects Darl on Copyright Law
cybermancer writes "ITWorld.com has a rebuttal by Linus Torvalds to Darl McBride's latest FUD on copyrights and Open Source. In a nutshell Darl states "SCO asserts that the GPL, under which Linux is distributed, violates the United States Constitution and the U.S. copyright and patent laws" and Linus points out that "the notion that the GPL has, of "exchange of receipt of copyrighted works," is actually explicitly encoded in U.S. copyright law". With Linus of course providing a link allowing the reader to see the law for themselves."
"They are smoking crack."
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
Acronyms, Acronyms, Acronyms.... What do they all mean??????????????
Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
After getting some ice cream, and fritos. And pretzels.
Darl said in his letter that this was only the first of many letters... Is Darl going to try and rebutt Linus' statement in the next letter, or is he going to go spread more FUD?
Can someone please translate the law into normal english speak?
Next thing you know, McBride will try to sue Linus for interpretting the law.
It's not just a crazy idea that some lefty Commie hippie dreamed up in a drug-induced stupor.
So if Darl calls that notion unconstitutional, he is actually attacking the U.S. code as it stands today.
Clear. Concise. Accurate. Funny. That's why people trust and love Linus Torvalds. He is the uber-geek that so many of us aspire to be like.
Ruby on Rails Screencast
Talking in reference of GPL.
"It's not just a crazy idea that some lefty Commie hippie dreamed up in a drug-induced stupor."
I just love how Linus say what is on his mind.
Get Movie Posters
Just because a bunch of high level people call somthing a property right, does not mean that it is, and with copyrights and intellectual property - it's gotten way out of hand.
The GPL is good not because it upholds copyrights or intellectual property but moreso because it fights fire with fire. It undoes much of the damage caused by copyrights, which might have been bearable 25 years ago when the biggest issues were cassete tapes and xerox machines, but in the information age will just not work.
Apparently I'm not quick enough to avoid being redundant.
philcrissman.com.
It doesn't sound like the judges are at all swayed by SCO's legal antics, and that's only been regarding SCO showing proof of violated code. I think they'll be dead in the water before they even get to the GPL bit.
Maybe someone can explain to Darl that the GPL is designed so that people receive the value of other peoples copyrighted works in return for having made their own contributions. That is the fundamental idea of the whole license -- everything else is just legal fluff.
Said it better than anyone on /. has :)
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
why just not admit that one is stupid and leave it there. at least DMcB would then save face. but at this rate, all he will have in his face is a creampie on the next public speech...
linus: thanks for the link. actions speak louder than words... and DMcB has spoken too many...
Linus is correct about copyright law, but he's got to watch getting too involved in a back-and-forth with SCO. Imagine Linus on the witness stand in a year and a half (if it ever gets to that) being asked if he said that everything else in the GPL besides the expectation of some form of return is "legal fluff."
I'm not looking at my Murphy's Law poster right now, but isn't there a saying like 'never argue with an idiot, people might not know the difference'? And, the more serious side is the possible legal significance of any statement. SCO is all but finished, but nevertheless, they should probably be allowed to continue shooting off their collective mouth and digging their hole deeper, while everyone else just sits back and waits. Sure, some of the statements are so silly, stupid, or outrageous that they just beg to be countered, but...
Uhhhh... *points behind Linus* What the hell's that!
*While Linus is distracted, Darl jumps into a giant Bob's Big Boy statue, launches himself into orbit and freezes himself for 30 years*
Technoli
Everyone blasted Darl last week for his challenging use of the english language.
To be fair, I must say that Linus's piece is not very cogent, either. At the end of it, I'm left wondering what he's really trying to say. Is he saying that Darl is right (in a sense), that copyright does require profit motive, but the GPL has it because people are exchanging copyrights? On one level, that seems to agree with Darl, doesn't it?
I'm confused. I think Linus should leave this one to all those EFF lawyers.
OR
Darl can continue to spread paper thin FUD (backed by the whore Bois) to continue to try and run up the SCO stock price, enabling top management to pump and dump and also enabling his corporate masters at Canopy to run various stock transfer schemes to siphon off more of their falsely created "value".
Gosh, it's difficult to guess which course of action he'll take.
... here
is it just me, or do i recently see heaps of old stuff appearing on the front page?
Buy all your crazy japanese videogames from
Ugh, I'm sorry, but regardless of it being inline with the views of 90% of those who are reading, I find the word "corrects" in the subject line of this story to be more biased than should be occuring on a site where people often rip others for their biases.
Since that's all we have, and all we're going to get.
does anyone else think these sco guys are just releasing all these inflamatory statements just to bait the leaders of the oss movement. playing on their passions to force them to make comments that will eventually be used against them in court?
Pertinent, if you will.
And note how copyright law expressly includes "the expectation of receipt" of anything of value, and expressly mentions "receipt of other copyrighted works" as such a thing of value. And that's the very definition of "financial gain," as far as U.S. copyright law is concerned.
Obviously, Darl's argument is that (in the same way as the GPL is unconstitutional) this part of the copyright law is also unconstitutional. You will argue that does not make sense. I reply: perhaps not, but which of SCO's "case" does?
Now that's just absurd. The GPL is unconstitutional?!? The Constitution doesn't even have anything to do with copyright. How can anyone take this guy seriously?
Oh wait, I guess nobody does. I hope.
So what else is new? Linus has showned that the framers of the US copyright law were unusually far sighted people, who saw that money was but one of the mediums of profit. Darl however in interpreting profit in monetary terms only, is wrong. He knows this of course, and is merely trying to confuse other people.
...left-wing commie hippie. There is nothing wrong with copyrights. We have problems with forcing others to enforce them by questionalble means. We have problems with expanding them indefinitely and stretching definitions beyond reason. We have problems with assuming that those with tools capable of bootlegging could not be doing anything else... etc. But the principle of copyright is sound, usefull to society, and the basis of the GPL!
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficinetly advanced.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
Last week, we were arguing about how believing that everything is profit-oriented, including the Constitution is just cheap and bad. Infact, Linus starts off by hinting at something like that - since it would hinder scientific progress (universities/etc).
And he ends up with a quote/explanation, which backs up the fact that the Constitution does include wording to ensure financial gain (does it really?)...albeit in the form of copyrighted work.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
While some of his responses are rather terse to Mr. McBride, Linus certainly is being a bit more forgiving than he is in some of his Linux related newsgroup responses.
I expected something like:
"Mr. McBride. Obviously you cannot read so I have decided not to put any effort into a response. Maybe you should try the SCO-general list instead."
Go Linus!
If you think this is fun, maybe SCO will go after Apple/Jobs. I'm sure Steve would hold his tongue?
of a programmer from Norway having a better understanding of U.S. law than a CEO from Utah? Hahahahahah
It's like when 20/20 or 60 minutes does a special on how kids from China know US Geography or History better than US students.
And while I'm at it, "KLERK! You have some explaining to do!!!!"
Mr. Lessig had an equally interesting rebuttal of the latest FUD from Darl the other day:
l
http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/001611.shtm
Despite RMS's aversion to the term, the GPL trades on a property right that the laws of the US and EU grant "authors" for their creative work. A property right means that the owner of the right has the right to do with his property whatever he wishes, consistent with the laws of the land. If he chooses to give his property away, that does not make it any less a property right. If he chooses to sell it for $1,000,000, that doesn't make it any less a property right. And if he chooses to license it on the condition that source code be made free, that doesn't make it any less a property right.
The laws of the US and the EU don't purport to restrict the conditions under which the owner of a copyright in software might license his software (except in ways that are not relevant to this debate). Under those laws, the owner of this property right has the right to sell his property, or license his property, or lock his property in a drawer. Again, it is his property, and he gets to do with it as he wishes.
The GPL thus precisely advances the "effect" of Congress's and the EU's copyright laws: it gives the owner of a property right the right to do with his property what he wants.
Basically, Darl seems to be saying that copyrights exist only where financial gain is to be made...and somehow overlooks the fact that a copyright is a property and thusly may be dealt with as the owner wishes within the context of law.
It's easy to see why SCO recklessly continues their pursuit of a fatally flawed litigation when the management of SCO has such a skewed and obviously fallacious view of American law. At the same time, you have to wonder why their legal team continues this pursuit with them. Surely they are smart enough to know at the end of the day (hopefully real soon now) they are all going to end up with large chunks of egg all over their collective faces.
Isn't he friends with Chuck?
With Linus of course providing a link allowing the reader to see the law for themselves.
That's low.
Darl would have provided a URL to SCO's business model - you know, the one based on RAMBUS -- but he quickly realized that such a business method was likely to already be patented.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
SCO has ran into quicksand and is pulling every string they can possibly get grip on. No matter if their stories are ridiculous or not, they don't have much to lose anymore. It's all gone already.. they just don't know it yet. Ya know, like dead man walking..
SCO's contention that copyright is primarily for the economic benefit of the copyright owner is utterly without merit. Copyright law exists to promote the advancement of knowledge. One of the tools it uses is allowing authors to be rewarded.
The classic example is "Noah Webster[,] who supported his entire family from the earnings on his speller and grammar during the twenty years he took to complete his dictionary." (House Hearings on Copyright Term Extension Act of 1995, at 165.)A better example would be "Linus Torvalds, who used the notoriety he received from Linux to allow him to do what he wanted to do: write code."
(I'm a computer geek, not a lawyer)
sigs, as if you care.
Otter: Ladies and gentlemen, I'll be brief. The issue here is not whether we broke a few rules or took a few liberties with our female party guests -- we did. But you can't hold a whole fraternity responsible for the actions of a few sick, perverted individuals. For if you do, then shouldn't we blame the whole fraternity system? And if the whole fraternity system is guilty, then isn't this an indictment of our educational institutions in general? I put it to you ... isn't this an indictment of our entire American society? Well, you can do what you want to us, but we're not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America!
Hold the broken rules, substitute profits for females, open source community for fraternity, and Darl for Dean Wormer.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Look, as much as I enjoy hearing Lessig, Linus, et al dismantle Darl's insane FUD, it's already been done to death. Particularly with this last GPL-violates-constitution lunacy, Darl and SCO have become self-mocking. I fully expect the next press release from Darl to claim that the GPL makes apple pies taste sour, especially ones made by nice old grandmothers. Is this news? "Lunatic continues to babble, tricks 'reporters' into listening" is kinda newsworthy, I guess.
The real news is that SCO got a sizeable portion of their ass handed to them last Friday. SCO has one month to put up or shut up, and all their actions so far (in court!) have shown them very reluctant to put up. In the meantime its unlikely that Darl will shut up, but that is really, truly irrelevent. The FUD portion of this fiasco is over. It's court time now, and we're going to see exactly how shoddy SCO's claims were put together. Nothing SCO does or says until they walk into court next is of any significance.
January. It's not that long to wait. In the meantime, I'm all for ignoring SCO's public spewage.
The enemies of Democracy are
Excellent debate, if I'd say. He articulately said, "Your argument is wrong, but even if your argument had a point, that point is wrong too." Really an effective way to take FUD out of the equation.
The only thing more dangerous than a file named -rf is renaming it -rf\ /
I think Linus should be very careful when he starts discussing the law. Look at the quote he uses:
"The term 'financial gain' includes receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works."
I think it's a tough argument that releasing code under the GPL includes receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value.
When I release code under the GPL, there is definitely no receipt of anything of value, and I would argue that there is no expectation of receipt of anything of value.
The fact that copyrighted works are included in anything of value does not validate the GPL in any way.
Explain to me how I get more access to copyrighted works (my financial gain according to Linus) by releasing code under the GPL.
He is a programmer and not a lawyer. I hope he cleared his statment with a good copyright lawyer before he posted it. Lawyers are the ant-programmers. Programmers try to use logic to create someting useful. He sounds correct for the most part to me but then I am also not a lawyer.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
While the front page article looks like some one just felt the need to show the caldera icon once more there seem to be interesting things happening at SCO, apparently some of the investors are not that happy with the current state of events:
SCO Finalizes Agreements With Investors and Law Firms
and...
Santa Claus Operation
A new look for SCO - not supreme but funny enough to take a look.
sco_christmas
605413? Yes, it's a prime.
Communist? What!!!!
Look, free societies are not about markets, but about freedoms. Copyrights are the antithesis of freedom, shall we believe they (originally) put an expiration date on them for good luck? Does free speech have an expiration date? No they did it because they realized that the right to restrict what other people copy is not a right, but a forn of controll. In the information age it is an unbearable form of controll.
But how on earth could the GPL "violate the United States Constitution". Isn't the Consitution only binding to the Federal govt? ie, even if there was a clause in there saying "RMS is a kook and the GPL == evil and bad, use SCO Unixware instead", that wouldn't prevent anyone but the Feds from using/dealing with the GPL. Right? Have I been smoking too much crack?
(Yes, I know, it's Darl, I shouldn't assume it makes even the slightest bit of sense.)
isn't government, at best, just a necessary evil?
Linus makes an excellent case for the legality of the GPL under the constitution as it stands, but who's to say that the constitution, in its current incarnation, is anywhere close to adequate? What if, for once, Darl actually got something right and the constitution DID say that copyrights REQUIRED a pure profit motive? What sense is there in enforcing an antiquated law if the result of that action ran contrary to the best interest of society, progress, or just general common sense?
I mean, fundamentally speaking, all governments begin with the purest form of democracy - a person or group of persons decide what is in their best interest and then act upon that decision. It is only later, when a group becomes too large to govern itself effectively, that it chooses to allow some other person or group to act on its behalf. There is always choice involved; even dictators would be powerless if their soldiers simply laid down arms and said "screw you buddy".
All i'm saying is that MAYBE we (and by we, i mean "the government") should be debating wether Darl's ideas on copyright are in anyone's best interest other than his OWN rather than trying to decide if he has some shaky, defunct legal leg to stand on.
The constitution is and has always been a dynamic document . . . else women would still be a silent majority.
** Chigusaaa!!! You're the coolest girl in the WORLD!!! **
More fodder for the fire, folks.
Foolish words.
th3m0nk
-- The Hollow Man
Non illegitimati carborundum
Because if the GPL is held to be valid (which it of course, IS, to anyone with half the brain of an ant), SCO can't escape the fact that they distributed linux under the GPL for a LONG time, even after their lawsuit was filed.
For charging licensing fees and whatnot for other works, and NOT following the GPL.. sco will either win this suit, or die.
...Finland, Norway - not the same.
Since when has the GPL prohibit[ed] any proprietary use of software? One is free to sell or give away their software.
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.?
These comments by RedHat are taken way out of context to bolster SCO's arguments! Shame on SCO!
Whoa! I thought is was "'free' as in beer, not 'free' as in money". Anyone can own the software. Really, though, the community owns the software.
Not to slight the Euros, but when did legal precedent in the EU bear any relevance to US law?
What Darl needs to learn is that the Open Source idea/belief/movement is all about choice and the betterment of the community at large.
"It's not just a crazy idea that some lefty Commie hippie dreamed up in a drug-induced stupor." -- L.T.
The thing I like about the hippie quote is how non-exclusionary it is...the GPL is not MERELY a crazy idea, etc.... The GPL is all that and MORE!
First the DMCA, and now DMCB.
I wonder what stupid thing DMCC is...
It is blanantly obvious that SCO is only doing this to make Darl and his buddies as much money as they can, before this issue is finally put to rest (pump and dump anyone?). And there is little or no merit to their claims chatsoever. So given that, is there any merit to grace their blathering with rebuttals?
I appreciate IBM's stance in this whole affair. They have their lawyers do the talking (in the courtrooms), and outside of that they dont bother to comment on it, thereby not providing any more fodder to the scumbags that is SCO.
All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be
This whole SCO thing has become such a joke. I find it hard to believe that anyone can take it seriously. I find it amazing that a company with such idiotic management can survive this long.
In any case, I don't think Linus should grace this crap with a response. He's shown in his discussions on binary modules that he doesn't understand copyright law. If he wants to respond with legal arguments, he should get a lawyer who knows a lot about copyright law to do it for him. In this particular case, it seems he got it right, though.
The definition Linus relies on for "exhange of copyrighted works" is actually from the NET ACT ("No Electronic Theft") and is only used in the law to define criminal infringement, e.g. swapping CDs with no dollars exchanging hands. Context and intent of the law, even portions of it, is very important. With this example, Linus has pretty much shown himself to be a fraud or a tool when it comes to the law.
0 5-147.htm
Please, before you criticize, look up the NET ACT, read it, put the definition in context, and see if you can reasonably conclude that the definition in question is in any way what Linus claims.
Here's a link to get you started:
http://www.techlawjournal.com/courts/eldritch/pl1
>It's not just a crazy idea that some lefty
>Commie hippie dreamed up in a drug-induced stupor.
So, Linus... why don't you tell us what you really think of RMS?
Sitting Walrus Blog
I don't think Linus' rebuttals will have any effect on SCO. SCO seems fixated on the idea the the opensource community stole code from them and GPL'd it. SCOs argument is still on the fact that "their" code cannot be legally distributed simply because a GPL notice is distributed with it.
Any arguments put forth that attempt to clarify the GPL for them won't have any effect because I think that SCO would see this as the OS community avoiding the real issue at hand.
I read the GPL in its entirety once, and it was perfectly clear to me, and I believe it is perfectly clear to SCO as well. But if you put yourself in SCOs shoes and truly believe (as SCO does) that your code has been jacked and the GPL is a way to legalize this action, then SCOs arguments do make sense.
The best christmas present of all will be if SCO gets totally destroyed. Which looks to be very probable.
Linus did correct Darl. Darl said that the GPL goes against the constitution by invalidating the profit motive that (he says) is so important to copyright. Linus corrected Darl's interpretation of profit motive by citing U.S. law.
t'nera semordnilap
if it lasted ten to twenty years.
With the Lex Disney, our cultural heritage will be lost. I'm serious about this. Most films older than a few decades have already been lost (est. 80%). And this won't get better with changing data formats, DRM and ever prolonged copyrights.
Here's a template to help understand what they are saying. Where (roughly): -- MarkusQ
It's worth pointing out that the GPL is an example of a way for companies to cooperate for mutual benefit without running afoul of antitrust.
There is nothing in the Constitution or common sense or antitrust laws that requires companies to engage solely in cutthroat competition for profit, or that says that companies can't cooperate for their mutual benefit. Care, however, is needed to make sure that cooperation doesn't run afoul of antitrust.
The GPL provides one of a number of available mechanisms for companies to cooperate for mutual benefit in a way that does not create antitrust problems.
Another way is the creation of voluntary industry standards--such as C, Unicode, the use of 120 VAC 60 cycles for home wiring in the U.S., etc. Presumably SCO opposes this, too.
SCO may win the FUD war if we aren't careful. We should make the point that SCO is fundamentally opposed to the whole notion of cooperation.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
After looking further into the law, I have to conclude that Linus doesn't even know what he's talking about on this issue. The line about financial gain was added in 1999, by the No Electronic Theft Act, and it is meant to determine when copyright infringement becomes a criminal offense. In other words, if you "trade" one copyrighted work for another over the internet, you are guilty of criminal copyright infringement.
As fun as it would be to see these two legal morons battle it out in the courtroom, I'm glad they're going to have lawyers to do it for them, for the sake of the law being upheld.
Ok Mr. Uninformed here's just one hint from here in the USA; The current copyright system is, as you refered to "intellectual property" a "DISASTER".
Get it? Got it? Good.
Dumb Moderator Cracking Cunts?
litigious bastards
suck it sco!
Do you think SCO is just keeping these lawsuits up to pay for the bandwidth of being Slashdotted four times a day?
I think we're all waiting for the other shoe to drop. None of the things McBride has said either via his legal proxies in the courtroom or in the public arena come particularly close to passing a giggle test.
We know he's going to be laughed out of court, and then SCO sued into oblivion by IBM (go, IBM!), and Darling Darl himself will probably be put in jail for his accumulating crimes.
At this point, all we wanna do is hit the fast-forward button and see the punchline. How the rest of this will all turn out is a foregone conclusion at this point.
Should be allowed, encouraged, kept working by stabalizing kernel interfaces and not harassed by any type of intellectual property.
Linux is not so hot on the desktop, where lots of drivers are needed and I suspect most vendors write a Linux driver to make a small minority of users happy, not because it makes them a lot of money. This could be improved perhaps if they only need to update their driver once a year, not for every kernel patch and distribution.
As for releasing the source code, well sometimes they don't own it all in the first place and getting/buing permissions from everyone would be too expensive. Or in case of NVIDIA, driver optimizations could be easily used by competitors. Again, they don't have a huge market to look forward to as a compensation.
I think this is one case where Linus and a few other kernel developers care more about having fun - freedom to change interfaces to do something cool - then the end users of their work. Nothing wrong there too - it's their code and thanks to GPL other people can even make other versions more to their taste. The thing is, someone might do just that with Linux or BSD one of these days.
Good point! Note that Linus didn't say "It's not a crazy idea that some lefty Commie hippie dreamed up in a drug-induced stupor." The word "just" implies that it is indeed "a crazy idea that some lefty Commie hippie dreamed up in a drug-induced stupor" but that there is more to it.
But one should be cautious...
While the SCO menace may be simply a minor diversion (akin to Lurtz) the true menaces may be more corrupting and more difficult to fight.Defending or defeating attacks from the closed source enemy means a need to unite and to pool the copyrights we each develop individually. But such power placed in any one man is a difficult thing to manage, to defend, and to resist the corrupting greed that arises from it.
Of course there doesn't seem to be much alternative:
- Stay low, hidden in the woods while others feed the corruption of the ruling closed source
- Unmake the power and release all copyright into the public domain. This destroys the corrupting influence, but it strenghthens the enemy as well.
- Continue to weild the GPL until the problems and corrupting influence of the intellectual property system can be worked out and the evil truly unmade.
Sorry, if the above arguments are a bit muddled. I guess I have something else weighing on my mind.If you want to find the collective IQ of an assembled group, you take the IQ of the lowest person in the group and you divide it by the number of people in the group.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
so he founded linux, big deal some one had to do it.
in proving marx wrong in a few short statements. Maybe you should thank the russians for their little social experiment that proves you're right.
I think he means that the constitution doesn't deal with the specifics of copyright - as in, it does grant Congress the power to create copyright laws, but it doesn't go into what is allowed or disallowed in those laws (except that the rights they grant must be for a limited time.)
There's an article over at Motley Fool that gives some insight into the minds of investors on this issue:
...on Friday, The SCO Group postponed filing its fourth-quarter earnings report until December 22. The reason: To allow time to hammer out the details of its $50 million private placement.
While the company insists this would not affect its prior guidance for revenues of $22 million to $25 million, it does seem strange that a public company would have problems with what looks to be a relatively routine process. For short sellers, this is a textbook clue that there may be internal disarray or perhaps, even some finagling.
I guess today's post by Linus will also help investors get out while the gettin's good.
Ruby on Rails Screencast
Darl addresses the courts with this moving speech to justify that Linux and GPL is evil.
... (heckler starts yelling and gets dragged out by security... heckler seen wearing a 'Linux Owns Joo' t-shirt and shouting praise be unto Linux!)
Ladies and Gentlemen, the CEO of SCO, Darl McBride... (applause)
Darl: 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 democracy, liberty, and copyright protection. This group I speak of are murderers, criminals, and terrorists. That is why SCO will not stop until Linus, the head of this terrorist organization is held accountable because they hate democracy. We know that Linus is sponsering terrorism because we know terrorists have used Linux in the past. The GPL licence does not disciminate against any parties, so evil doers are using it against America and her allies. Linux is providing a safe operating system haven to terrorists like Al Qaeda. If you help a terrorist, you are a terrorist.
Mark these next 16 words, Linus possesses weapons of mass free redistribution. Notice in these satellite pictures of Linus' van, it looks like an ordinary van, but no, this is a mobile Linux lab. We also know that Linus is pursuing nuclear weapons because several nuclear power plants are run using Linux. This is clearly a duel use technology which represents a clandestine nuclear weapons program. We have also received intelligence from our British allies, SCO Britain, that Linus owns a mouse named Larry. Clearly this mouse is used for chemical weapon research.
Therefore, we must go to court against Linus and prevail for democracy, freedom, and copyright protection! Thank you, and non-denominational specific (supreme)/(equal)/(lesser)/(none existent) (please circle one) being bless America.
"There is no spoon." - The Matrix
How about Dork McBride?
Only a dork would continue these futile attempts to fight Linux/GPL/OpenSource and the community that supoorts them.
Rican
Want a free iPod?
The part about GNU not being a product of a drugged-up hippie sounds familiar. I think I read it on Slashdot yesterday...
People or Companies who have given SCO money should not be called "investors" by any stretch of the definition. Lottery ticket holders perhaps or maybe conspirators, depending on their motivation and expectations.
Copyrights is what makes your thing your. Even a drawing is copyrighted to you. The Swedish wording is better "upphovsratt". It's 'the legal right to your creation'.
I do however enjoy some of this fud like the blatant misquote of RedHats patent statement. (They don't even mention copyright, so what pipe did Darl smoke when he saw that??)
We don't need no litigation
We don't need no spin control
No Darl McBride praise in the chatroom
Pumpers, leave this stock alone!
Hey! Pumpers! Leave this stock alone!
All in all it's just another turd in the stall
All in all you're just another turd in the stall
We don't need no litigation
We don't need no spin control
No Darl McBride praise in the chatroom
Pumpers, leave this stock alone!
Hey! Pumpers! Leave this stock alone!
All in all it's just another turd in the stall
All in all you're just another turd in the stall
"Wrong! Dump it again!"
"If you can't beat the street, how can you have any earnings...
How can you have any earnings, if you can't beat the street?"
"You! Yes, you behind the bodyguards, stand still laddy!"
Anything that you produce would have been impossible without the society that brought you into this world, fed you, cared for you and educated you. You get a monopoly over your own contributions because the government offers that to you as an incentive. If you truly owned an invention it would be yours to pass down to your descendents until the end of time.
Copyright law should give people just enough incentive that they create things, while always being conscious of the fact that works should return to the public domain as quickly as possible. You never truly own anything you create...that's the way it is, and it's always been that way. It is most certainly NOT a matter of semantics...this principle is the only thing that prevents one revolutionary invention (say an AIDS vaccine) from allowing one person to take over the world.
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
I don't feel that is an appropriate comparison. Shakespeare, Mozart, and most other artists prior to the 20th century had an implicit "copyright", since they made their living in one of two ways:
In Shakespeare's case, he controlled access to his plays. You only got to experience a play by going to the Globe Theatre and paying the admission price. The money helped him eat long enough to write something else, whether that was another play, a sonnet, or whatever. Other artists made their living in much the same way, creating works that were presented at local venues that charged admission.
Bach, Handel, Mozart, and many other composers were essentially payrolled. Some worked for the church, some for royalty, and others for wealthy nobles. They were free to work, safe in the knowledge that there was food on the table, but they almost always turned over the finished work to their sponsor / employer.
(Sidebar: Isn't this starting to sound like the same options we have when we write code today? We can work on our own and control it ourselves, including the option to give it away freely, or we work for someone else and they keep what we write.)
Either way, it was difficult for their work to be stolen. The manuscripts could be physically stolen (but that is a physical object, subject to ownership) or their sponsor / partner could refuse payment (but that is breach of contract). The artist had recourse either way.
Copyright law came into play to prevent talented, but unethical people from going to hear the opera or see the play and then depriving the author of their livelihood by recreating it somewhere else. Prior to that, the independent artist's options were very limited. In short, copyright law provided additional protection for the artist's livelihood, but otherwise simply codified what had already been happening for centuries. The main difference is that prior to formal copyright law, the "copyright" expired upon the death of the author, which makes sense because the creator no longer needed to make a living.
How can the eyes be the Windows of the soul when they never blue screen?
3) Remove the "viewing/listening/reading" right from copyright law. The fact is, once you've released something into the wild you have no rights as to who may view it or listen to it. Return copyright law to its original purpose: protecting artists from malicious publishers, not from their audience.
This isn't a protection or rightb that copyright holders have under the current law anyhow. What needs to happen is that EULAs for use need to be abolished. You should only need a licence if you copy, distribute, ect. Section 117 addresses making copies into RAM for the use of software it needs to be expanded to cover all copyrightable materials.
I'd plonk everything from Darl and SCO, but like the kook he is, he'd just morph the name and keep posting. (Of wait, they already morphed to SCO. See!)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
So, according to US copyright law, even if Linux is an "unauthorized derivative" of UNIX, SCO still doesn't own the copyright!
SCO is simply a troll at this point. Under US law, they can't assert ownership of Linux, regardless of the origins. Maybe this is why HP chose to idemnify their customers - they knew that even if SCO's claims of Linux being a UNIX derivative were true, SCO still couldn't collect royalties. (legally, at least).
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Since when did Darl's house have anything to do with all this??
...while the interpretation of the Constitution by the judicial system (the Supreme Court) has shifted over time, the Constitution itself is not very dynamic. The Constitution is governed by a specific process to alter its content, and one that is nontrivial to engage - I think it requires 3/4 of both houses of Congress and 3/4 of the state legislatures or the convening of a Constitutional Convention. Since these methods have been successful 25? times in 200 years (and one of which was to repeal a previous amendment), I wouldn't say the Constitution is dynamic or at least in the manner of being instantly responsive to public opinion.
That being said, a public debate could be useful - the rules governing copyrights are made by law, and so are much easier to pass than constitutional amendments. Of course, as long as Congress can get away with putting misleading titles on bills (in many cases, the titles are the negation of the actual consequences of the bill) to garner public support, a public debate and subsequent laws won't do much good.
The surprising thing about all this is the stock price. SCO is locked in a legal battle with IBM, isn't doing well, and is being sued by others. That's not a good position to be in. Yet SCOX is still hovering around $16. Volume is low; yesterday's news doesn't seem to have induced much trading.
Danny McCheese. What, you never knew that Mayor McCheese's first name was Danny?
that is classifiedized.
...is actually explicitly encoded in U.S. copyright law.
The word is "codified" not encoded.
Though it was nice of him to do some legal research that he thought would help, I don't think that Linus' discovery actually helps. Apparently he forgot that, by placing a work under the GPL, you are not transferring the copyright but are simply granting a license. Thus, the copyright is never given to anyone else and there is no "financial gain" involved.
This just proves his point. These guys were very unique and gifted, and had patrons to support their work, while they did it full-time. If these guys had to work a separate job to support themselves, they might not have been able to devote the time necessary to achieve the things they did.
Free your ecomony and enact the FairTax
Here is a direct link to the insider trading info...
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/it?s=SCOX
Linking is not hard. Searching for it is annoying...
The legalese was one thing - I can understand the need for it, to limit overly broad and possibly ambiguous speech, which can make or break laws. But the rest was a complete mess. As I went through the laws, I started to realize that the law was really one large program (and it reads like code as well), where a set of inputs leads to a set of outputs. However, due to the large number or possible inputs, the large number of possible outputs, and the fact that legislators and lawyers are not programmers - it is all spaghetti code, filled with numerous goto's and other such nonsense. In fact, what I saw was a monolithic, top-down code structure, which was badly maintained.
I have since come to the conclusion that for law coding, our Constitution seems to be the best example of code we have - easily read, somewhat easy to interpret, stays fairly reliable over the years, easily maintainable with a declared maintenance interface, some parts even seem object oriented. The founding fathers were lawyers-cum-code hackers, of some ye olde sort.
Those that came afterward have lost that ability to code - and have left us citizens with an extreme mess.
However, one data point does not make a fair sample, so I turned to the laws of my own state - and found the same thing. I looked at surrounding states (NV, CO, NM, etc) - and found the same thing (some were better, some were worse - all were pretty bad, though).
Citizens in no way can know the law, because they are least versed of all to be able to read it. Even lawyers will tell you they don't know all of the law - there is too much of it, it is too convoluted, and some of it doesn't even matter anymore because it has been usurped by "case law" (hidden code, anyone?). Yet, the common citizen isn't allowed to claim "ignorance of the law" as a defence - even though it is a perfectly valid and logical defence given the current poor structure of our law systems. I doubt most judges know all of the laws for the jurisdiction they are in, and how they all interrelate - in fact, it would be crazy to think they could or should - which is why when you go into a courthouse or a lawyers office, you notice all of those books everywhere? Guess what those contain (no, it current fiction for the lobby): the current law, as well as TONS of case law, for reference. It is scattered everywhere in every nook and cranny on miles of bookshelves because there is so much of it and it is so convoluted.
What individual can ever hope to be able to understand and KNOW all of this? NONE - that's who. Yet ignorance of the law isn't a defense. Sound like a set up for the common man yet?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Think like the enemy and you will come to understand him.
Business is war. McBride sees open-source as a real threat to his business. He realizes that he can not fight a conventional war against this enemy. How can you under-cut the price when your competition happily gives their product away? How can you build a better product when the enemy doesn't pay it's developers so they can have as many as they want? The only weapon in his arseneal that can gain an upper hand is the legal system.
McBride may be right (in this assumption).
Lawyers, good ones, don't usually work for free. The companies that are exclusivly open source are not (yet) cash rich and don't have much of a war-chest. Companies like IBM and Novell can not fully defend open-source because they have plenty of conventional closed-source software themselves and in some ways have a conflict of interest. They will defend themselves against the charges leveled directly against them but their shareholders wouldn't let them go beyond that.
So this is a war that is being fought in the courtroom, an arena where true open source issues may be under-represented and, under-funded. McBride hasn't found a hole in the defenses but he has found the position most weakly defended and he is attacking there.
Still since he played the "unconstitutional card" I'm wondering how long it will be before the open-source side of the issue says that software is written and that it is a freedom of speech issue? Given the size of the work it has to be expected that some of the sentences used within it may appear in someone else's work? I am sure that a writer like Steven King has probably used a sentence or two that appeared in someone else's book. This alone is not a copyright violation. If someone copied an entire chapter out of his book he would be compelled to show that his work was copied before a court would hear his complaint. That is pretty much what is happening to McBride right now. Show us the stuff or go away.
Personally, I think he will go away.
You know, having some foreigner correct him on US law and all.
we don't need gov't, they are glorified neurotic parents with ego/image problems
your last line is asinine, the rest i didn't even read.
anarchy means the freedom of choice; God chose anarchy for you, you have allowed gov't to get out of hand to the point it has. (editorial you)
democracy is the illusion of choice enforced by a brutal elitist class minority
This text sounds awfully familiar. Wasn't it placed there by the No Electronic Theft Act just a few years ago in response to the Brian LaMacchia case? He was accused of exchanging copyrighted software not for money, but in expectation of receiving other pirated software. At the time, I believe you had to take money or tangible property for piracy to constitute a criminal offense. Non-commercial file swapping didn't qualify; it was merely grounds for a civil suit by the copyright holders. NETA plugged up this "loophole".
That Linus could take a lemon like the NETA and turn it into lemonade like this is just wonderful.
...well, probably not, but he should stick to writing code, not about law. His understanding of the law is nearly as messed up as Darl's.
Whenever the law provides definitions, those definitions are valid ONLY WHEN THOSE TERMS ARE USED IN THE THE LAW ITSELF. The sec. 101 definition of financial gain therefore applies only to uses of the term "financial gain" in title 17. Linus's analysis would be correct if somewhere else the law said something like "Copyright law should be interpreted to promote financial gain." But it doesn't.
The only time "financial gain" is used in the copyright law (that I am aware of) is to show when certain copyright violations are elevated to criminal, as opposed to civil, wrongs. See http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/506.html
The fact that sec. 101 defines financial gain doesn't mean a anything outside of that very narrow context which is inapplicable to the discussion.
Darl's "interpretation" is clearly bogus, of course. I won't get into why here, but I could tear apart his argument very easily. Anyone who knows anything about US copyright law got a good laugh from the screwed up analysis of both articles.
IANAL (I will be eventually, but that doesn't mean this is legal advice, it isn't)
from comparing the responses, it appears that apple has more fanbois than Linus.
at least apple pronounces it's own name correctly
Their latest was issued hours before a _very_ adverse judge's ruling, forcing SCO to comply with IBMs discovery. Clearly, the letter was designed to distract attention from the financial press.
USENET also has a response: "Don't feed the Trolls"
Seriously, I read everything thats happened, why is Linus defending the GPL against attacks from SCO about how unamerican the GPL is?
I thought SCO was pissed off because they said some of their code was in Linux. Why did this turn into an argument about how the open source community is a bunch of communist hippies conflicting with America's founding fathers? What the hell is SCO blathering about?? What happened to their intellectual property argument?
I dont know.. these lines that SCO is spitting out are pretty much word-for-word what Microsoft started saying about the GPL all of a sudden about a year ago.
"SCO asserts that the GPL, under which Linux is distributed, violates the United States Constitution and the U.S. copyright and patent laws."
"asserts" is definitely correct. The article nowhere attempts to provide any evidence that the GPL violates the US Constitution. It claims that it was written by people with a different value system, but that's far from the same thing. If McBride's article leads to the conclusion that anything violates the US Constitution, it's that US copyright law does.
Question about GPL: Doesn't the GPL require that if you write a program that includes a piece of GPL code, then you must release your program under the GPL?
Second, doesn't the GPL require that you make the source code of your new program available for free to anyone who wants it?
> As we see from these two legal morons
If the law is written in such a way that even Linus can't understand it, the law should be changed. The layperson ought to be able to understand it fully. Obviously it's now full of contradictions and special cases and exceptions and it's just way too large (U.S. tax code alone is 46,000 pages).
A non-lawyer is just as likely to be right as a lawyer -- look at what SCO is doing with their excess of attorneys and deficit of developers.
Lawyers are right, on average, LESS than 50% of the time. In every case, at least one side loses; and you may win not because of your arguments, but because the judge finds something applies that the winning side didn't think of, or because of a technicality.
"Seek legal advice" -- how many times have we all read that? And yet, the advice differs so much from attorney to attorney that we have a constant stream of legal cases to settle them, and APPEALS after that!
All that the convoluted, arbitrary and ambiguous laws and regulations get us is an endless succession of lawsuits and employment for lawyers.
640 laws ought to be enough for anybody.
This is actually the first time I read this FUD from SCO... I'm surprised that McBride didn't come out and say that the Copy-Lefts are just sinister and SCO upholds copyright laws since they are dextrous.. but I guess that would require him to have some knowledge of Latin... and considering this FUD, I don't think he's all that educated.
How about a spell checker for slashdot, or even more impressive, a spell checker for strings in C-Code? Use lint! -DG
Seems people in the US immediately become gun-ho as soon as they ear the word "Unconstitutional". Luckily the majority of people behind OSS aren't so dumb as to not see past that. I wonder though if people not involved with OSS are so lucky.
in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that
Francis Smit
Haven't you all figured out SCO's approach yet? They are trying to disrupt the Linux community by creating an issue and taking manpower away from doing real work. The mere fact that Linus and Perens and others are wasting their precious time on SCO is evidence that SCO's approach is working.
Quit paying them any attention, and the problem will go away.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
So much for originality - the _EverQuest_Companion_?
That WILL be valuable 50 years after your death, assuming you use a time machine to go back and kick off in the year 1950!
Your work is entirely based off a computer game. Everything we do is derivative of the world we live in, and in this case, the obvious influences are extremely narrow. Copyright is a bargain, in which the author gets a non-free-market government-granted monopoly in exchange for making the work available to the public. The key point here is that enriching the public is what is supposed to happen; the idea is not to magically increase the size of your bank account because you "made" something.
> What the founding fathers intended in 1776 is irrelevant in 2003.
I really care about your opinion on this, Mr. "I live in Canada". Lucky for you the founding fathers instituted copyright in the first place! So what they intended is entirely relevant, seeing as how Canada "me toos" everything from the U.S.
>What is important is how our society is NOW. And now, not only according to U.S. Copyright law, but to the Berne Convention, I own my own work
What is important is NOT merely how things are now, but how they SHOULD be. Right or wrong is not determined by laws.
Laws are now increasingly bought by corporations to enrich their shareholders, not to increase the public good.
Your other book looks like a novelized D&D campaign, which of course is derivative of all sorts of published fantasy. Your "creations" are not only not original, they are unusually dependent on what others have done. Of course, any man is entitled to his thoughts, though they may have been thunk by many others before.
>What copyright prevents is people stealing things
Everything you write seems to be stealing from all over Fantasyland.
Ah well, I'm off to write the Great American Novel about this group of dwarves and elves and humans who have to save the world...
You DO NOT own the work you hold copyright on
That is perhaps the stupidest thing I have ever heard of. Of course you 'own' the rights to your own work. It is the same idea that allows you to own the 'rights' to property of any kind, including real estate. Ownership of real estate is embodied in a title which describes your property and its history and is registered with a legal authority, ownership of copyright is automatically given to the author because they originated the work and the author can entitle others to use it as if it were an asset such as real estate. If you didn't own the right to a work, copyright would be useless as a commercial or personal asset, just like property would be useless without a title, anyone could claim ownership.
I am an architect. When I make a drawing I hold the copyright to the work. That is the only way I can enforce my legal right to be paid by a client. The client purchases the right to build a design based on my copyrighted drawings, but they have no rights to use my copyrighted work without my permission, they do not own the drawings, they own the built design. If the client decides not to pay me...sorry, they can't use any of my drawings legally, and if they do, I can sue them. This happens all the time.
Copyright allows me to enforce my rights with contractors. The contractor can deviate from the design, but since I am the creator, only I have the legal authority to interpret what it is. Take away my copyright, and the design belongs just as much to the contractor as the architect, he can change it as he sees fit, something contractors always try to do (usually to skim money out of the project). Copyright is the only thing I have to ensure these rights. Take that away and the whole building industry will go staight into merciless developers pockets who can steal ideas at will and can claim full ownership of a design that I made, and I would get no credit for my work.
Copyright is legal ownership of an idea or artistic work in principle. Copyright describes how and under what conditions you can own something like that. The only reason it needs to fall back into the public domain is that works gradually get absorbed into a culture, and when that happens, they form a basis for public discourse. You cannot have free speech or pursue daily activities when someone owns a chunk of your lexicon. That is why rights should expire. My ideas do not belong to society however, if they did, everything I am and will be would not be my own, that is ludicrous. That kind of ownership is in the worst traditions of totalinarianism and slavery. Go live in North Korea if you want that kind of copyright law. If you try to enforce that crap on me I am thankful for another right, THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS.
Just thought everyone might be interested in knowing where the definition of "financial gain" came from in section 101.
I think Linus's reliance on the definition is misplaced; see my above post.
The term "financial gain" was defined as part of the No Electronic Theft (NET) Act in 1997. The purpose of the phrase "including the receipt of other copyrighted works" was to create criminal copyright liability for file swappers. Criminal charges for copyright infringement would otherwise only be applicable when the infringement was done for financial gain in the traditional sense of the term. By adding "including the receipt of other copyrighted works", Congress expanded criminal liability to include file swapping, not just the resale for cash of illegally copied works.
Section 101's definition of financial gain really has nothing to do with the underlying purpose of copyright law and certainly does not equate to "explicit encoding" of the idea into copyright law as Linus seems to think. (Not that McBride has any logical legs to stand on.)
See the text of the bill.
How exactly is GPL encoded to the US law? I fail to see it in document Linus is pointing to.
Less is more !
Welcome to last week's news. I read this Linus rebuttal last time on Groklaw.
People should just visit Groklaw, because they post EVEN MORE often about SCO, and most of their stuff trickles down to Slashdot a week or two later!
"Sufferin' succotash."
There is an exception which could get let SCO worm its way past the GPL. If IBM is found to have taken SCO owned material (remotely possible), and included it in Linux where SCO did not know that this material was included in Linux (doubtful in the extreme) and SCO took adequate remedial measures (laughable effort so far) then they could claim some kind of damages as long as they were not shipping Linux in any form (highly unconvincing effort). If Linux users continued to use the infringing code (extremely unlikely) then SCO could charge them. So if you add it up
(remotely possible + doubtful in the extreme + laughable effort so far+ highly unconvincing effort + extremely unlikely)
you are left with the amount of risk Linux users face based on the law. I am thinking SCO has about the same odds as being struck by an asteroid *based on the law*. However, they were last represented in court by Darl McBride's brother and, US senator for Utah, Orinn Hatches son, Brent Hatch of Hatch James and Dodge... the fix could be in...hmmmmmmmmmm.
Based on your past argumentative lack-of-style.
Based on your absurd modding to +4, though, that may not matter. Much like SCO and stock prices.
I see the point made here about Linus being wrong at some points, but the man didn't major in law, and niether did Darl, so between the two I'd have to say that Linus definatly comes out the overwhelming winner. Some of you seem to think SCO is trying to disrupt the Linux community, or is taking out some kind of a vendetta against users of Linux because their product failed, and a free product is winning. I'll tell you right now, they're not trying to disrupt anything. That's just silly and counter-productive, though I wouldn't put it past SCO's execs to engauge in such nonsense, but I doubt the stockholders and chair members would support such a thing. Perhaps they're enacting some kind of rage on the community for their jealousy and vengful anger witch undoubtedly exists, but it's unlikely. The thing that seems most likely to me is an idea which has been presented many times before, which is that SCO is a failing company, and they are using this little scandel to become annoying enough to companies such as IBM and Sun that they'll be bought out or merged with, thus eliminating any responsibility the execs SHOULD have to pull the company out of the gutter. Whatever the cases, whatever the reasons, though, I still say this is just another sick example of stupid corporate execs who lack any sense, logic, or morality, being stupid corporate execs. In my perfect world, this so-called white collar crime (or maybe just white-collar stupidity, in some cases) would be punishable by death, without any stops in court. But that's just me.
(posted this in the wrong section earlier. This is where it should be.)
/http://www.my31337warezSite.com
I am sick of the propaganda machine.
Get this junk into court, fight it out, and let the winner write the history book.
In 2 years I will buy the book off of amazon and save the countless hours of time reading it piece by piece on-line.
I have read every comment SCO has made, every rebuttal that XXXX has made, every opinion posted by reader/reviewer/journalist and we all know it amounts to nothing till a judge says how things will be.
Perhaps SCO will win, Perhaps XXXX will win.
In the end it all amounts to nothing, SCO will die.
And if we have to we will just download the latest versions of Linux from
As others here have said, SCO have only made themselves look stupid with the twisted comments made by their executives.
IBM has said nothing in public apart from refuting all of SCO's allegations and launching a return legal action.
If Linus really is going to start sticking his neck out, I hope that OSDL and the FSF have very deep pockets to support him with.
Your honour, 'It's the constitution... it's Mabo ...it's the vibe'
OWNED
Actually you are wholly right, but so what? The fact
is the copyright law grants people some rights,
and people do treat them synonymously with property right. This difference will be important in other contexts (for example - inheritance issues), but it is unimportant in the current context.
HEY SCO
Hey SCO, it's time to go.
Take your sad code and make it better
Remember you knew it all from the start
Now you can start to make it better
Hey SCO, don't be dismayed
Scams are made to crumble and shatter
The minute you let the GPL in
It would begin to make things better
And anytime you feel the blame, hey SCO, relate
To USL they still have the t-shirt
For all we know your precious code is all a load
Of BSD stuff any way
Hey SCO, don't make me laugh. You have sent so so many letters
Remember you knew it all from the start
Now you can start to make it better
So take your code and leave the spin, hey SCO begin
You're waiting for someone to compete with?
Well don't you know that it's just you, hey SCO, you'll do
The movement you heed has many shoulders
Hey SCO, don't die just yet
Take your sad code and make it better
Remember we knew it all from the start
Now you can start to make it better
Darl-la-la la-la-la-la Darl-la-la-la hey SCO
-- "Hey Jude" (c) John Lennon & Paul McCartney
-- This is satire
-- IANAL but AFAIK and IIUC this specific parody can be considered to be in the public domain
-- Hi Darl! And your brothers Darl, Kevin and Kevin! Hi!
Darl and his brother?
His legal team?
Sun?
Is Darl's next move to sue himself?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I mean it!
The enemies of Democracy are
Never get involved in a land war in Asia, and never bet with a Sicilian when death is on the line!
Ha ha ha! HA HA HA! *THUD*
(Posted anonymously to avoid charges of karma whoring)
I agree with all of Linus' statements, except for the part about hippies. I'm a left wing Commie (socialist really, there is a difference!) drug using hippie that loves Linux.
Proverbs is a fantistic book and has lots to say about "fools". Just a couple of examples:
Do not speak to a fool, for he will scorn the wisdom of your words (23:9)
Wise men store up knowledge, but the mouth of a fool invites ruin. (10:14)
Of what use is money in the hand of a fool, since he has no desire to get wisdom? (17:6)
A mocker resents correction; he will not consult the wise. (15:12)
Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates correction is stupid. (12:1)
And my personal favourite:
As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly. (26:11)
Linus Googled for the truth and came up with results. Who cares if its irrelevant?
Parent is known troll! But in this case it was good troll...
Reminds me of the show, "Jackass". Why does anyone watch that? (if you don't see American TV, the show is essentially a series of home-movies of someone apparently striving to do everything their mother said to avoid).
Who would _you_ elect as village idiot of the global economy?
science is a religion
DUmbaSS!!
Just an FYI
Yes, this is important because authors never made any money before copyright. Amazing how with one act of law, whole fields of human endeavour, writing, music, art, finally become worthwhile. Thank you Government, I don't know what we'd do without you.
The simple truth is that for every token artist millionare (who rarely write their own songs BTW) that they parade up there - there are literally thoushnds who copyrights havent helped a bit, or squished like a bug.
Also, it is no longer even the slightest about artistic talent. It is more about how hard you can suck up to industry executives.
Thank you. I thought you put that very nicely.
Once upon a time, in a far away land
the Silly Computer Organisation took a stand
'Alas', they crowed
'You've stolen our code
'We plan all hackers be banned'
Now the hackers were rightfully flounced
until Linus, their leader, pronounced:
'Our GPL has us covered
'Stick your law in the cupboard
'If you think any different you'll be trounced!'
The moral of this poor story, it seems
was quite possibly more due to the means
by which a poor market strategy
(surely not hacker mentality)
can lose a business it's beans.
Rather than write this to sell
the author will use GPL
to further the cause
for tidying the laws
so that such companies can BURN IN HELL!
There are a lot more people outside the U S than inside.
Darl claims that's what it says. Linus's analysis is therefore correct: it shows that Darl's premise does not lead to Darl's conclusion. The fact that Darl's premise is bogus is another reason that Darl is wrong, not Linus.
"That narrow context" is the whole of U.S. copyright law, which is the topic of this discussion.
-- . . ramblin' . . .
Free societies are about freedoms. Upon a tautology your argument is based. I'll give you some credit - at least you did not start your argument from a fallacy.