SCO Invokes DMCA, Names Headers, Novell Steps In

Sparky writes "We've already heard that SCO have invoked the DMCA via 'letters sent to select Fortune 1000 Linux end users.' The specifics come via a copy of the letter reprinted at LWN.net - they've decided that they own the copyright to about 65 header files contained in Linux - largely errno.h, signal.h and ioctl.h." balloonpup also notes "CNet News has reported that SCO has reported a fourth quarter loss of $1.6 million, owing mostly to hefty legal fees in its war against Linux. SCO said they would have reported $7.4 million in earnings, if not for the $9 million payout to their lawyers. Way to go, SCO!" Many readers also point out a Groklaw article indicating Novell has registered for the copyrights on multiple versions of Unix with the U.S. Copyright Office, so that "both the SCO Group and Novell have registered for UNIX System V copyrights for the same code."

Comments

DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[rkz]

This article really shows why it is time for the DMCA to go. Anyone who happens to create any sort of device that someone figures out a way to use it to circumvent anything can be sued under the DMCA. (See also the Sklyarov incident.) Remember when someone discovered that you could use a Sharpie to circumvent the copy protection on a CD?
Manufacturers/programmers/whatever should never be responsible for what anyone does outside the intended uses.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[bethane]

The DMCA was created in the spirit that new forms of electronic media were not safe from potential copyright violations, and the act did what it set out to do. Yet it also did a great deal more as special interests and corporate schmoozers managed to get their paws on the bill and turn it into more of a "dominant market player protection act" than anything else. We all agree that the amount of innovation stifled using the DMCA as justification is staggering. Yet electronic media should also be protected from the loopholes the bill originally solved. Here are a few potential solutions:

1) Remove the current DMCA and amend it such that only specific uses of media are prohibited. Allow for the use of back-engineering tools with HARSH punishments for people who knowingly use them to break copyrighted material with intent to distribute. This leaves the burden of proof with a prosecutors instead of the "guilty-til-proven- innocent" tactics of the RIAA et. al.

2) Make a specific statement for "loser pays": anyone suing under using this legislation who loses the case pays for the legal costs of both parties. Settlements don't count, and this will outright favor the bigger players, but in the American climate of "legal attrition" as a business strategy I see no other effective means of trying to relieve this aspect of the DMCA problem.

3) Allow publications on computer security to be done freely and thoroughly if tied to legitimate academic or corporate entities. Hold computer manufacturers liable if one of their components has a security flaw that causes eggregious commercial/monetary damage but which could have been fixed by repair of one of these published flaws.

4) Ensure that American laws apply only to American citizens with the express wording that products purchased in other parts of the world which belong to the consumer are theirs to do with as they please. A clause allowing rightful action to take whatever steps necessary to use that product would be nice (mod chips et. al)

Pointing fingers makes us feel good, but unless we propose alternatives and compromises, are we really doing anything but venting? Does anyone else have potential solutions/thoughts on how to resolve this issue?

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[turbod]

The gun industry is trying to get that point across as well. I honestly hope they succeed. Almost every device on the planet can be used in a nefarious manner, but it seems some opportunistic folks in the world think they should get paid by the device's creators when someone actually does something with the device that it was not intended to do.

I would disagree with you on your subject title though... not all YMCAs are plagued with moral improprieties.

TurboD

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

Manufacturers/programmers/whatever should never be responsible for what anyone does outside the intended uses.

Hi, I invented asbestos acoustical ceilings, thalidomide, and phen/fen. I never actually intended for anyone to ingest my inventions though. Thanks for the absolution!

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

The solution is easy.

Get rid of the law.
Replace it with nothing.

Circumventing copyright protection should not be illegal. US copyright law grants the enduser the right to make a backup copy of any copyrighted material he owns. Also anyone is free to make copies of uncopyrighted material. The DMCA clearly violates established consumers rights.

What it amounts to is a law saying that it is illegal to pick locks. Well then what do you do if you are locked out of your house or car?

The DMCA does nothing to stop copyright infringement. Copyright infringement is illegal to begin with. Making it 'more' illegal isn't going to stop anyone who was going to commite the crime in the first place.

Say a thief is going to break into your home to steal your tv. Making it illegal to pick locks isnt really going to deter him. All it will lead to is poorly designed locks.

In short there is no reason to make a law to protect something that is already protected by law.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Jerf]

How about instead of patching the law with new special cases for electronic media, we recognize that the law is fundamentally broken and come up with coherent answers for the general case?

We've passed the point where the law can be patched back into usefulness; it's time to rethink on a more fundamental level.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

I would disagree with you on your subject title though... not all YMCAs are plagued with moral improprieties.

He might have been thinking about the song.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[yintercept]

Make a specific statement for "loser pays": anyone suing under using this legislation who loses the case pays for the legal costs of both parties.

So, when you want to do frivolous law suits, you need to create a special limited liability company first for the lawsuit to avoid costs when you lose. This will help create a lot of new businesses (that is, if you consider a shell business for risk management a new business).

Ensure that American laws apply only to American citizens with the express wording that products purchased in other parts of the world which belong to the consumer are theirs to do with as they please.

Yes, the purging of US tech jobs is not going fast enough. I agree with any law that gives a burden to US firms and leaves non-US firms to do as they please, as this will shorten the time to a level playing field. I hope India will start allowing emigration soon!!!!!!! It would be great to be able to get a job there before the real estate bubble makes it as unaffordable as the US.

but unless we propose alternatives and compromises, are we really doing anything but venting?

I agree wholly with your statement. I would even go further. The "information wants to be free" rhetoric, and the mantra that there is no such thing as "intellectual property" or that the internet will bring an end to capital created a climate where bad laws would get passed, as it was easy to dismiss those arguing for reform as music pirates.

On the bright side, the disgust that so many people have for the legal hassling of SCO will make way for a new debate.

Regardless, there is not an easy solution.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Simonetta]

The writer above has lots of good ideas for reforming the American DMCA law, but it goes against the current American political climate for any positive changes to take place.

The trend of the Americans to start using their vast police and military internal forces to enforce the whims of corporate copyright laws will multiply the effect of the parallel trend of outsourcing their technological corporate infrastructure to the third world. They are inducing a massive shift of their technological industry to the third world, without any thought given to the long-term consequences of such a strategy.
By the time that they realize how much these two trends are reinforcing each, their positive-feedback loop of technological suicide will be too far advanced to retard or reverse.

In another generation or two, America will be the new Argentina. Or even worse off considering that they created so much global hatred toward themselves in their schitzo period (1980-2010; when their mounting arrogance and delusional-self congratuation inversely paralleled their financial global decline) that the rest of the world will have no interest in revitalizing them.

In 2004 the smart young Americans are beginning to question the alternatives to being so closely tied to this declining empire, even if they rarely publicly acknowledge their doubts. Which is probably just as well, given the jingoistic politcal climate there.

An excellent overview of this trend is found in the book "The Sovereign Individual" by James Dale Davidson and Lord Rees-Mogg. They missed the revolution that technology is creating in corporate copyright, but they foresaw everything else.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

5) Require that copy protection be shown to be removable when the copyright expires.

The U.S. Constitution grants copyright protection only for a limited time. Information should not be in a locked box so society can never use it freely.

If Newton had legal protection for the Calculus, how much would science have progressed while unable to use it? And if the Calculus became unavailable when Newton died?

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

rkz
I've been meaning to ask you this for a long time. What's up with the trick in the sig? Is this a DNS trick? A URL encoding trick? Do you have any RFC references? (or am I just a complete idiot and missing the obvious).
Thanks!
Your pal, A.C.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[shaitand]

"The DMCA was created in the spirit that new forms of electronic media were not safe from potential copyright violations, and the act did what it set out to do."

Except that existing copyright law already made copyright violations illegal whether on a fancy new media or not. The DMCA was never needed to begin with. Being on digital media doesn't invalidate copyright on material under the laws that have been around since 1976.

"Pointing fingers makes us feel good, but unless we propose alternatives and compromises, are we really doing anything but venting? Does anyone else have potential solutions/thoughts on how to resolve this issue?"

What compromise? This law never had a purpose to begin with except to enact additional restrictions on certain types of copyrighted media. Why on earth do people feel that every few years the same issues of corporate interest need to be raised again and that the people should "compromise" a little further. We compromised when we created copyright, we compromised again in 1976, they compromised DESPITE US in 2000. Exactly how far do you feel we should compromise before we draw the line and say we won't give another inch, in fact we are taking back a few we shouldn't have ever given in the first place?

If you start with harsh restrictions on a subject, then compromise, the end result is more harsh than what you had to start with EVERY time. Now you do it on the same subject every few years over and over again and you have a pattern that results in giving more and more ground until you look back and realize that there isn't anymore ground to give and their just making up new bullshit ways to screw you now.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Hornsby]

The DMCA is unconstitutional, anti-competitive, anti-innovative, and anti-american; however, after a careful perusal, I can't find anything inherently homosexual or happy about the law. Maybe you can enlighten me.

(Score:-1, Homophobic)

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

please place a little [NSFW] tag next to that .sig link. thanks ;)

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[ameoba]

Personally, I think the DMCA should stand. What we need to do is get the STFU passed into law so we can have headlines like:

SCO, "DMCA"; FSF, "STFU"

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

Why was this loser modded up?

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[bl8n8r]

Office of the DMCA
December, 22 2003

Dear rkz:

This is your formal notification that you must stop
and desist the spreading of information about
circumventing copy protection on CDROM media.

Under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act of the United
States of America, you have violated section 17.b-1
subsection C3.1-27 titled "It is unlawful to verbally or
visually communicatie methods of copyright circumvention"

We know where you live........and you should be ashamed.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Pionar]

What it amounts to is a law saying that it is illegal to pick locks. Well then what do you do if you are locked out of your house or car?

Close, but not quite. A better analogy would be to make it illegal to make a hairpin, as it could be used to pick a lock. It's the instrument that the DMCA bans, not the action. The action (of breaking a lock that wasn't yours) was already illegal. Piracy has always been illegal, it just wasn't illegal to make the tools until the DMCA.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[afidel]

asbestos manufacturers who made products prior to the research on its link to lung cancer should not have been responsible beyond product recalls. Thalidomide and phen/fen were obviously intended for ingestion and in fact they made it through FDA trials so you can't say the blame lies solely at the feet of their inventors. In the case of Phen/fen it was not the manufacturers fault at all but the physicians who wrote prescriptions for their combined long term use despite the fact that one of the drugs was labeled and tested as a short term solution. For more info see This FDA link.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Kaishaku255]

What most people don't realize, but what I hope most slashdotters do, is that the DMCA was driven by the politicians who were backed by groups like the RIAA and MPAA. This means that despite it's seeming purpose of protecting rights (which it doesn't do anyways), it merely gives the groups mentioned above more ways to pursue "pirates" and "hackers." The sad fact is they don't have to really prove anything, just invoke the DMCA and they've got a case.

In light of recent events (i.e. the RIAA's mass suing of people), it would be nice to see some one in Congress tackle the problem of eliminating this law, which has no useful purpose and serves the interest of a select few over those of the majority of the populous of the USA.

Of course, I'd also like a pony for Christmas too.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Lumpy]

Allow for the use of back-engineering tools with HARSH punishments for people who knowingly use them to break copyrighted material with intent to distribute.

I call bullshit. only a person that is so seperated from reality would say such a thing.

PROPER punishment for illegal use. Sorry but someone violating the DMCA should get 1/10th the punishment than a mass murderer. Currently under US laws if you violate the DMCA, you will get a lighter sentence if you grab a shotgun and kill a few officers when they come to get you.

Copyright violation is a very very VERY MINOR offense and needs to be treated as such with only MONETARY damages.

sending anyone to prison for anything as silly as a stupid copyright violation is absolute stupidity.

you know this, and until this is how it is written I violently oppose any such legislation and those that support it.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Zak3056]

The gun industry is trying to get that point across as well. I honestly hope they succeed. Almost every device on the planet can be used in a nefarious manner, but it seems some opportunistic folks in the world think they should get paid by the device's creators when someone actually does something with the device that it was not intended to do.

I have to say that I have a problem with your statement--and my sig should leave no doubt as to my opinion of the issue. Guns are designed to kill people. DeCSS is designed to decrypt DVDs. This is the intended operation, and anybody telling a jury that someone is "doing something witht the device it was never intended to do" is a liar and is going to come off as such.

What you should have said is "criminal acts commited by third parties" which is the crux of the defense of gun manufacturers, Jon Johansen, etc. And a defense I agree with. DeCSS can be used to watch a movie on a non-supported platform. Guns can be used for by the police, or for self defense, or for hunting. The acts of criminals should not impact legal use by the rest of society--THAT is the point you should be making.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

Argentina was a relatively small country without global clout. America is the global hyperpower, with more military force than the next most powerful countries put together. Its decline will be rather messy for the entire world.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[jkabbe]

What it amounts to is a law saying that it is illegal to pick locks. Well then what do you do if you are locked out of your house or car?

Actually, I think the DMCA is more like a law saying it is illegal to distribute lockpicks.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

By the way . . . just how gay IS the YMCA? I've never noticed any homosexual people there before.

The Gay YMCA connection came about because back in the 60s & 70s, many YMCAs served as youth hostels with cheap room and boarding for transient men. Since all boarders at a YMCA were men, this quickly became a good hook-up scene for gay men. This is why the Village People celebrated the YMCA with a song.

Of course, the top post is just the sort of homophobic idiocy that gets modded up on Slashdot just for speaking out about the DMCA. There's nothing nearly so "7th grade" as calling thing you dislike "gay."

You may wish to turn your view away from the vitriol they routinely spew forth like so much bile, but you can not have an enjoyable and enlightening experience here on Slashdot until you dare to view at -1.

No, I think I'll have to disagree on this one. I've been reading, moderating, and meta-moderating Slashdot for years, and I'll have to say that 95% of posts modded down to -1 are a total waste of bandwidth and Slashdot server resources. I wouldn't call all the over-repeated memes, racism, and namecalling "cutting-edge" or "witty." It is extremely rare that anything of substance gets modded down that far, and quite frankly, I don't need my already cynical view of humanity's worth challenged any further by yet another GNAA post.

So, until this injustice is somehow remedied, I recommend to you all that you browse at -1. The posts you will find are wonderful, and often quite amusing. In some cases, they can even be educational. I know that I always want to find out who got the first post! Usually it's some AC though. Blah.

Yes, there's nothing quite so "educational" as finding out who hit the freaking "Post A Comment" button the fastest, and nothing's quite so amusing as -1 posts if you have a "Beavis and Butthead" sense of humor, but I think I'll stick with the trolls that are talented enough to actually get modded up.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[GrenDel Fuego]

I disagree.

The DMCA also makes it illegal to "pick the lock" as well, not just the creation of the tool to pick the lock. And it doesn't distinguish between locks you own and locks you don't own.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

This is easy to show. Disney and other big-copyright holders will make sure that copyrights never expire by pushing through new copyright-extending laws everytime copyrights approach expiry, thus all copy protections will only be effective as long as the copyright extends, which is forever.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Merk]

Yeah, but there's a difference. Say I make a 10cm x 10cm x 10cm hunk of steel and call it "your pet blockhead" and try to sell it as the pet rock of the year 2003. If someone takes that and uses it to kill someone, I can't really be blamed for that, unless somehow they can show that I knew that would be its use, and I did nothing to try to stop it. Even if it becomes the weapon of choice in gang fights, if I didn't design or market it for that purpose, I'm probably safe.

On the other hand, if say I create a sword that hides inside a cane and market it as "the Lady Killer", saying "this product is perfect for killing women, its patented design makes it easy to slip the blade between a woman's 4th and 5th vertebra, and its fingerproof handle makes sure the police won't catch you!" It would be pretty hard to argue that I should be completely in the clear.

Guns are meant to kill or injure animals and people, and some seem to be marketed especially for people to hurt other people. I've even seen some ads that seem to be trying to appeal to the guns being used for nefarious purposes.

The other thing to consider is how much harm something can do. I'm sure there are laws against buying or selling sticks of dynamite except in special cases. Why aren't people protesting this? Couldn't you use a stick of dynamite for legitimate uses like breaking a boulder on your property?

There are some things that are too dangerous to sell except in exceptional cases. Many people feel that certain types of gun (or even all guns) should fall in that category. Even if 99.999% of people use them responsibly, if 1 person uses a gun to shoot up a school, a factory, a convenience store or something that's too many. Even if you want to make sure that hunting stays legal, is it so unreasonable to make sure that it is hard to make the gun automatic, that the clip has fewer than 8 rounds in it?

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[escher]

Because he's right.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[andman42]

>> What it amounts to is a law saying that it is illegal to pick locks. Well then what do you do if you are locked out of your house or car?

> A better analogy would be to make it illegal to make a hairpin, as it could be used to pick a lock

Stop, you're both right. The DMCA bans both circumventing copyright protections (picking the lock) and tools for performing this circumvention (the hairpin).

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[sbennett]

So, until this injustice is somehow remedied, I recommend to you all that you browse at -1.

Or at 1 with a +2 Troll modifier.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Pitawg]

Make an original file, program, or image, run it trough a one-time-hash using the DMCA text. Have a friend post on some site how to crack your file using the DMCA text. Would it not reuire the DMCA to be banned?

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[SirWhoopass]

Well, this is an obvious troll but it seems the mods bit.

Let's pretend all your arguments are correct. The United States is going to collapse. Even still, the US is a massive country with a huge wealth of natural resources within its borders. It also has a powerful military to defend those borders. Argentina was never like the US.

If you want to pursue an analogy, then the US is headed to being another Russia. Russia may not be what it was at the height of the Soviet Union, but Russia is nothing like Argentina.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

The trend of the Americans to start using their vast police and military internal forces to enforce the whims of corporate copyright

It is sooo wrong. I don't have any other words for it - only BULLSHIT.

Or even worse off considering that they created so much global hatred toward themselves in their schitzo period (1980-2010; when their mounting arrogance and delusional-self congratuation inversely paralleled their financial global decline) that the rest of the world will have no interest in revitalizing them.

That is very narrow point of view. First, Americans were hated before, as anybody else (British, Chinese, Russians, Germans, French etc, well anybody who have a hand in global matters). Second, how do you know that it ends in 2010? Looks like dream on your part..

An excellent overview of this trend is found in the book "The Sovereign Individual" by James Dale Davidson and Lord Rees-Mogg.

You know there are hundreds books - each one saying something different from each other. If it printed it does not mean it's right.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[shane_rimmer]

Not to mention the fact that they would both be guilty of sharing the information on how to use said hairpin to circumvent said home security device.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[ccp]

Argentina was a relatively small country without global clout.

Well, I looked out the window and we still are.
A little chaotic, perhaps, but we're used to it.

For a moment, you made me wonder!

Cheers,

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[filmsmith]

How is that 'calling bullshit?' He didn't lie. He just said something you disagreed with.

Honestly, folks, can we drop this 'calling bullshit' bullshit?

fs

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[swillden]

The DMCA also makes it illegal to "pick the lock" as well

Sort of. Title 17, section 1201 (a)(1)(A) says that it's illegal to "pick the lock". However, section 1203, which describes the civil remedies available, says that "any person injured by a violation of section 1201 or 1202 may bring civil action", so since no one can claim injury from fair use civil remedies are not available. Also, the criminal penalties in section 1204 only apply to "Any person who violates section 1201 or 1202 willfully and for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain", so, again, most fair use is clearly not prosecutable.

So circumvention for benign purposes is illegal, but has no penalty.

Creation of circumvention devices is trickier. Even if you don't gain financially from the devices, if some of your users use them to make infringing copies and the copyright holder can claim injury, you may be subject ot a civil suit. Further, if you do sell the devices you are clearly subject to criminal prosecution.

IANAL.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[AllUsernamesAreGone]

"The United States is going to collapse."

All empires collapse. History allows for no exceptions. I live in the home of the previous Empire, Britain, and we got out of it quite lightly.

Pray you don't go down like the Romans.

"Argentina was never like the US."

True. It was never as powerful or dangerous.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[jacklndn]

How interesting that in all this invective there wasn't one comment about the pejorative use of the word 'gay'.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Deagol]

Even if you want to make sure that hunting stays legal, is it so unreasonable to make sure that it is hard to make the gun automatic, that the clip has fewer than 8 rounds in it?

Yeah, if that DC Sniper didn't have full-auto capability, he wouldn't have been able to take down so many people. Oh, wait a minute...

You see, if I walked into a random schoolyard and started shooting, does it fundamentally matter if I'm using a single-shot muzzle-loader rifle or a modified full-auto AR-15 with a 30-round clip? I'm still a monster, right?

Sure, in practical matters, there may be more dead bodies to clean up if I had a full- (or even semi-) auto, but the fact remains that I am a disturbed person who broke the law. If all guns vanished today, if I were that disturbed, I'd simply walk into the school yard with a 3-iron and start whackin' heads on the kindergarten jungle-gym. Are you going to argue that golf club makers should make their clubs less useful for clubbing someone to death?

And I don't buy the argument that guns are specifically designed to kill/injure people. They're designed to hurl small chunks of metal, accurately, for long distances, and at very high velocities. What people choose to do with them is their own business -- until they break the law.

Yes, this is a rather morbib way to make my point, but I hate it when people still insist on blaming the instrument of crime, rather than the criminal.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Malek the Damned]

It might be a troll, but the guy's pretty close to accurate. Scary though, innit?

ps. Close, not bang on, but I can't be bothered going through it - I haven't had my morning coffee =)

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[mpe]

The DMCA does nothing to stop copyright infringement. Copyright infringement is illegal to begin with. Making it 'more' illegal isn't going to stop anyone who was going to commite the crime in the first place.

It's more to make those who are passing the laws feel they are doing their job.

Say a thief is going to break into your home to steal your tv. Making it illegal to pick locks isnt really going to deter him. All it will lead to is poorly designed locks.

It can lead to all sorts of other issues. Especially if picking locks viewed as a more serious crime than burglary.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[chunkwhite86]

Anyone who happens to create any sort of device that someone figures out a way to use it to circumvent anything can be sued under the DMCA.

How much longer before Sears gets sued under the DMCA for producing hammers - because someone happened to use a hammer to break into a building.

Sound ludicrous? So did the DMCA before it was passed...

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[ccp]

Argentina was never like the US.

You're right if you're talking about size of the economy, global influence, and power of the war machine.

On the other side, what happened to Argentina was rather common, and happened to the USA in 1929: a massive bank collapse, then a very deep recession.

This sequence of events: bank collapse, depression, default, happens every few years to some country (think Mexico, Russia, Turkey). I don't know why people here seems so mystified by what happened to Argentina, as it were a Martian invasion.

In our case, it was caused by mismanagement of the budget, and an enormous public debt. When it was evident we were not going to be able to serve the debt, our bonds collapsed, then our banks, and the rest is history.

For the looks of your budget, you're in the first steps on the same road, the difference being that you have more than enough time to change direction.

Cheers,

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Canadian_Daemon]

Wow, you really proved your point there.
Hey, instead of arguing our points, to prove that America isn't 'dying', lets all 'call each other names' and bitch. Do you realy think that telling him to fuck off and die is going to change the fact that he is right, and that the entire world knows it. Or is that just going to prove that americans are egotistical, and cannot accept more than 1 viewpoint.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[mpe]

How about instead of patching the law with new special cases for electronic media, we recognize that the law is fundamentally broken and come up with coherent answers for the general case?

The reason that it is fundermentally broken is that current laws only serve a small minority. Thing is that this minority has a hugely disproportionate amount of political power. Often only members of this minority have "patch rights", let alone the ability to request a radical overhaul.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[milkman_matt]

On the other hand, if say I create a sword that hides inside a cane and market it as "the Lady Killer", saying "this product is perfect for killing women, its patented design makes it easy to slip the blade between a woman's 4th and 5th vertebra, and its fingerproof handle makes sure the police won't catch you!" It would be pretty hard to argue that I should be completely in the clear.

You know.. this reminds me, I think it was an HK or S&W (i'm not a gun guy) shirt that I saw some guy wearing, I think it had a profile picture of an M16-A1 I think on it and it had the caption of "Revenge has never been so easy" or something like that... I'd say that's about on par with your sword advertisement. Now I initially had a point behind posting this...

-matt

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we please have a DMCA discussion that doesn't devolve into a debate about gun control? Don't we have enough trouble discussing "intellekshul propitty" without also having a Holy War over the gun issue?

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[alienw]

Guess what, the act you describe is covered by many state laws. In fact, in many states simple possession of lockpicking tools is a felony. Even if you intend to pick only your own locks.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[mpe]

What most people don't realize, but what I hope most slashdotters do, is that the DMCA was driven by the politicians who were backed by groups like the RIAA and MPAA. This means that despite it's seeming purpose of protecting rights (which it doesn't do anyways), it merely gives the groups mentioned above more ways to pursue "pirates" and "hackers."

But apparently utterly useless to individual copyright holders.

The sad fact is they don't have to really prove anything, just invoke the DMCA and they've got a case.

If it were that simple then there is no way SCO would still be distributing any GPL software.
Dispite all these copyright laws piled on top of each other we have a business enguaging in industrial scale copyright infringement in public...

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Tassach]

"Loser Pays" is a *horrible* idea for tort reform. It puts the little guy at an even worse disadvantage. It gives the big guy an even bigger stick with which to threaten the little guy.

Instead of getting sued for $2000 for sharing MP3s, imagine being liable for $2000 in damages plus $20000 in legal fees, over and above what you have to pay your lawyer. With loser pays, there's no incentive for a big corporation NOT to sue -- they already have a platoon of lawyers on retainer, if they're not busy suing someone the company's not getting their money's worth. For a big corp, legal fees are already a sunk cost -- loser pays just gives them more of an incentive to sue so that they can recover what they've already spent on retainers. An individual's legal costs are going to be peanuts compared to what they already spend.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[SirWhoopass]

I won't claim that anything will last forever, least of all the United States. My argument was that, within a generation, the US would not resemble Argentina.

On a side note, the US isn't quite like previous western empires (Britain, Rome). It has no far flung colonies to support, defend, or suppress. It did once, Cuba and the Phillipines for example. Some states could leave and it could fall from within, that almost happened once before. I certainly don't think it will stay this way forever, I just believe that it will have to be different than previous "empires".

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

How interesting that in all this invective there wasn't one comment about the pejorative use of the word 'gay'.

Well, until yours, anyway. Comments like "the DMCA is gayer than the YMCA" don't really bother me, and I'm gay. For real, even.

The word means different things to different people. I don't get offended when the six year olds on South Park use "gay" pejoratively, because (alas) six year olds in the United States really talk like that.

Apparently so do the six year olds on slashdot. :)

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[SirWhoopass]

You are correct. In terms of national economies I certainly can see the same thing happening. I assumed the original poster was making a broader comparison, which is why I thought Russia was a better anaolgy.

Too many people see the government as an endless stream of money, and they don't look at the big picture. Politicians, being in the business of getting reelected, pander to those interests.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[zangdesign]

You're right, in one sense - the US is not and never will be Argentina, but the parallels are definitely there. What happened in Argentina should be a warning to us here that it is all too easy to head down that road, which we are clearly doing under Bush/Cheney and Ashcroft.

It is also useful to note that our government SUPPORTED what was happening in Argentina under Allende while it was politically useful, not because it was the right thing to do. Our government under the current administration is fighting to exactly the same thing here: handing more power over to powerful corporations and removing those same powers from the populace.

No, we don't have widows and mothers holding silent protests for the disappeared, mainly because the "disappeared" so far are the ones we'd be uncomfortable with even without September 11. But even the possibility (and it definitely exists under our existing legal framework) should be horrifying to us and it clearly isn't.

So how much farther down the slippery slope are we willing to go?

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh you don't understand, copyright violation is now something done by many people who are of the plebian type, ergo the punishment must be high because there's many of them.

If it was something only done by coperate fat-cats who are very few, say stealing bilions of dolars from copoerate funds, they should only get a slap on the wrist because there are very few of them.

Simple, if you do a crime a lot of others do, of course your going to get banged up for it.

Duh that's how the world works, :)

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[AllUsernamesAreGone]

"It has no far flung colonies to support, defend, or suppress."

Iraq? Afgahnistan?

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[rifter]

This article really shows why it is time for the DMCA to go. Anyone who happens to create any sort of device that someone figures out a way to use it to circumvent anything can be sued under the DMCA. (See also the Sklyarov incident.) Remember when someone discovered that you could use a Sharpie to circumvent the copy protection on a CD?
Manufacturers/programmers/whatever should never be responsible for what anyone does outside the intended uses.

No, the article shows what ridiculous legal advice SCO has. You cannot copyright facts, and that is all that is kept in these header files. Aren't these signals and errors dictated by POSIX standards anyway? Even if they weren't, making my OS use the same error codes as yours for the purpose of compatability is not a violation of copyright, because, again, the error codes are facts and not covered by copyright. If it is not covered by copyright, it is not covered by the DMCA.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[crankyspice]

"US copyright law grants the enduser the right to make a backup copy of any copyrighted material he owns"

Um, no, it doesn't. Software you *own* (not software that's licensed; guess which one most software is?), under section 117, and private audio copying under the Audio Home Recording Act, are exceptions to the rule. Take another look at 17 USC 106. Reproduction is an exclusive right, still.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[SirWhoopass]

You really think that Iraq or Afghanistan are anything like imperial colonies? Like British India? Has the US claimed they are now annexed territory? Do you really believe the US plans on being there for the long term? The US is actively forming government (local government) in Iraq. That is not the role of a colonial empire.

Look at the Phillipines, Japan, or South Korea. They were all once in an "occupied" state by the US. Now they are independent nations.

The notion of the US as a modern western empire may be true on many levels, but there are a number of significant differences between it and previous empires. The US "empire" cannot collapse because its colonies become independent-- the already are.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[SnowZero]

...change the fact that he is right

How exactly can you see the future in 2004, 2010, and two generations? Don't you mean you think he is right? This of course does not excuse people who bit on an OT troll, but whatever.

The empire disappearing does not make the country completely collapse. Last I checked, Italy and Rome still exist; They don't rule a vast empire but people live there and many are happy. Kind of like most of the rest of the world. It will be so sad when the US... ends up like other countries. Sounds like the sky is falling. I guess when Argentina recovers in a generation they'll have to choose a new "example" for our grim future.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

Geez. Thjey're not independent just because they are called independent by the USA. Britain already used that trick, with puppet "independent" governments in countries like Ireland.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

No, actually, americans have never been hated like they are now. The British and Irish people (not the puppet governments of those nations) now hate the USA, while less than a decade ago, it was still THE place to go to "make it". France started USA-hating a bit earlier, but the US WAS held up as a bastion of liberty. Gee, where _did_ the USA get that statue?

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[SirWhoopass]

You're claiming the governments of South Korea, Japan, Cuba, and the Phillipines are all US puppets?

Or are you only referring to Iraq and Afghanistan? In the latter case, I'll agree that you may be correct, but it is very early in the process. Not too long ago Cuba had a "puppet" US government. Not so any longer. Does that mean the US empire collapsed?

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope this gets modded up, because I'm going AC, but here goes:

Right to Bear Technology.

Example above demonstrates the clear point of view supporting the Right to Bear Arms. It is not the fault of the device, nor its maker, nor its enthusiast, when it is used to commit a crime. Fault lies only with the operator. Just as if the crime were committed without the device.

We can see this for guns (and many of us Americans accept it), so why not for technology too? Why not for PC's and DVD players?

If we start changing minds right now, we can get this passed as an Amendment. Then our childern will have some technology to look forward to and enjoy, just like we did before all this BS.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

You are ignoring what a gun is fundamentally made to do. Many people simply ignore the truth cause they feel disempowered by their job, relationship, or their religion... Lighten up, breath deep, look at the children outside ! WE DON"T NEED GUNS.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

The DMCA is unconstitutional, anti-competitive, anti-innovative, and anti-american; however, after a careful perusal, I can't find anything inherently homosexual or happy about the law.

Come to that, I can't see anything anti-American about the DMCA.

Anti-American is where you say "America is evil, 9/11 served them right, I hope Iraq turns into another Vietnam". I have studied the text of the DMCA carefully, using advanced pattern-matching techniques, but I have yet to find anything resembling those sentiments in the slightest.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[elton247]

Correct me if I am wrong, my western history is a bit rusty. What was so bad about the fall of rome? It took about 1000 years and simply split or dissolved over time. Considering is spanned the whole of the known world, its not too hard to see why. It didn't just collapse one day did it?

I don't think the grandparent is taking into consideration the global nature of corporation. If america is indeed run by corporations, these corps. are all multnational, with investors from all countries in the world.
All countries in the world have an interest in the American economy, because our economy effects all other economies. I can't find any evidence to the fact that USA could collapse without bringing down the global economy also.

In two generations, corporations will be even more ubiquitous, and economically, country borders will hardly matter. Of course there will still be patriotism and border defense. The USA will not collapse, but we will be less important then we have been in the twentieth century. And there will still be large gaps between rich and poor. Of course this could all be wrong if Marshal Brain is correct

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

You are fucking clueless. It's presently illegal to import an SKS into this country, but one can still be found with extreme ease sub-$200 due to tons of them being grandfathered in. An SKS is semi-auto 7.62x39mm rifle that can be modified into a full auto assault weapon(albeit an unreliable and dangerous to the user weapon) with a PENNY(as can a civilian model AK-47, no I'm not posting how).

You can do similar modifications to most bolt-action rifles, and there is a legal pseudo full-auto kit as well. So we should ban all bolt-action rifles? Oh and all semi-auto weapons as well, since you can fire them from the hip at damned rapid rates if you so chose.

Then we have handguns, which since they were/are used rather than shotguns the casualties in school shootings stay relatively low. Which takes more skill? A single bullet designed to wound(9mm) or a spray of shot? Which is more deadly and more suited to clearing out a room? Answer: The shotgun.

So we better ban those too. Now, we've banned shotguns, bolt-action guns, and we'll toss in handguns and rifles as a group as well. And we need to retroactively ban them. Now we need to go around and retrieve all these guns(some of them antiques and collector's items) from all of these people. A portion of which you'll need to kill to get them. And the vast majority of which have never been fired at a person either. Oh, how brilliant. Let's make the speed limit 15 mph and stick big rubber bumpers on our cars to reduce car accidents while we're at it!

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Angst Badger]

DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

Would you say the DMCA is more niggery than the NAACP? How about being more kikey than the ADL?

And if not, why not? It's the same difference -- casual and stupid use of an offensive slur.

Whatever point you may have had was obscured by the white hood.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

You disagreed with his words and called "bullshit". Good start.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Zeinfeld]

An excellent overview of this trend is found in the book "The Sovereign Individual" by James Dale Davidson and Lord Rees-Mogg. They missed the revolution that technology is creating in corporate copyright, but they foresaw everything else.

Lord Rees-Mogg is an avid fan of the war in Iraq, although from his somewhat eccentric point of view wellcoming the rise of an American empire. Lord William was famously described by Tony Benn as 'an Edwardian figure' and that was back in the 1960s.

I really do not believe that he holds the views that you ascribe to him, his regular articles in The Times show no trace of them.

There is certainly a risk of the US going the way you describe. This is exactly the type of historical circumstance that causes great states to be brought low by their own arrogance and greed. But things are by no means past the point where the end is inevitable. We could still see a government committed to a balanced budget and regaining its place as leader of the free world, primus inter pares rather than oderint dum metuant.

The histrionics of tinpot nationalism do bear a close resemblance to those of the SCO lawyers. Unsubstantiated claims are pressed, impregnable defenses ridiculed.

Fortunately the SCO case is subject to the arbitration of the courts. There is no such limit on states, and so they must suffer the consequences of their misleader's arrogance and hubris. In the case of the US correction will eventually be made by means of a currency crisis once the asians decide not to buy dollars to keep their own currencies artificially low. That will be followed by inflation and rapidly rising interest rates (so make sure you get a fixed price mortgage). The only way to bring the budget under control will be to cut corporate welfare and the bloated pentagon (which amounts to the same thing). Wars are won by armies, but armies are only possible because of the economy.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[YOU LIKEWISE FAIL IT]

Allow publications on computer security to be done freely and thoroughly if tied to legitimate academic or corporate entities.

Woah, woah, woah! That sounds dangerously close to state vetting and approval of security professionals - and bang, there goes half of the field talent. "Oh, I'm sorry. We're running the DOE on AIX/Solaris boxes, so I'm afraid we're revoking your advisory license."

YLFI

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[ralphclark]

I live in the home of the previous Empire, Britain, and we got out of it quite lightly.

Heh heh! It's hardly over yet!

The British Empire peaked during the Victorian era and ended effectively with WWII, but that was less than 60 years ago. From where we are today, it's still a long way down to the bottom. Which, I am pretty sure, is where we are headed. Same goes for the rest of the Western world.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Eccles]

Um, no, it doesn't. Software you *own* (not software that's licensed; guess which one most software is?)

Owned. I give 'em cash, they sell me the program. Looks like a duck, quacks like a duck? It's a duck. If they want to license it, then they need to handle it via contract.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

puppets come in many sizes. South Korea doesn't have to be doing everything the US commands. But there is a lot of goodwill and influence. Try to understand politics.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

Best post subject line ever, IMHO.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

You are ignoring what a gun is fundamentally made to do.

He's not ignoring it. He described it very precisely, in fact: "They're designed to hurl small chunks of metal, accurately, for long distances, and at very high velocities".

You're trying to say that a gun is made to kill people, but by any rational standard, that's hooey. Of all the small chunks of metal so hurled, only a very tiny percentage are directed at people. The majority aren't even directed at anything animate.

WE DON"T NEED GUNS.

Sure. And there's a rather large list of other things we don't need as well. Including many things that kill more people than guns do. There's also no evidence that reducing the number of guns stops people from killing one another. And further, there's no evidence that criminalizing guns takes them out of the hands of the people who do aim them at other people.

The whole gun control crowd is so misguided on so many levels...

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[SirWhoopass]

I do understand politics. Of course there are a lot of common interested between the US and South Korea. They export a lot of good to the US. There is a shared defense. This situation exists between many nations throughout the world. You are now claiming that any allied nation has a puppet government?

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Ancil]

What do you do if you are locked out of your house or car?

Buy a new house or car, of course. The law was written by the people who make houses and cars; what would you expect?

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Dalcius]

I have no figured, so please flame me if I'm wrong (or even better, correct me), but I get the impression that countries in the EU, home to some of these folks who think America is the most evil thing since the beginning of time, are spending much more per capita on programs that don't help their economy than the US. This is my impression from speaking with members of these countries and from reading the news.

Either this is quite ironic or I've just got my head up my ass (it wouldn't be the first time).

Cheers

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Dalcius]

Thank you for a reasonable approach to this issue.

It's nice to hear someone point out all the bad things that are going on without whining and yelling "conspiracy." I hate, at a fundamental level, our (the US) government. That said, these America haters piss me off to absolutely no end.

Cheers

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[einTier]

Right. That's why a better analogy (which is still flawed) is that of a crowbar.

The DMCA effectively outlaws the use or mere possession of a crowbar, because someone might use one to break open a door. Never mind that they have plenty of legitimate, useful uses besides breaking open a door -- or that you might have a need to break open your own door.

But the DMCA goes further than that. It's also illegal for me to sell one to you, or even give one to you, or to manufacture such an item. I can't even tell you where to buy one, even though I know the hardware store on Spicewood Springs sells them. I also can't tell you how to use a crowbar, and I certainly can't tell you how you might theoretically use one to break open a locked door -- even if you own the door in question. I can barely even acknowledge that such a tool exists.

Oh, and if you manage to find one, and manage to figure out how to break your door open with it, and you manage to get rid of the crowbar before the law shows up, you can still be arrested just for breaking your own locks!

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

Saying "Guns are designed to kill people" is like saying "All golf clubs are for putting."

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

Message-ID: 1991Aug25.205708.9541@klaava.helsinki.fi
From: darl@sco.com (Darl Benedict McBride)
To: Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: What would you like to see most in minix?
Summary: small poll for my new operating system

Hello everybody out there using minix-I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386 (486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on
things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat

Any suggestions are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them :-)

Darl

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[BitterOak]

In fact, in many states simple possession of lockpicking tools is a felony.

Can you name any? The only one I'm aware of is the District of Columbia, which technically isn't a state.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

4) Ensure that American laws apply only to American citizens with the express wording that products purchased in other parts of the world which belong to the consumer are theirs to do with as they please.

Do you mean something like the 11 amendment to the constitution of the United State?


The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Bob Gelumph]

That is a great idea :)

And if it was deemed that the meaning of the ascii version was different to the binary version, then it would also be a precedent for allowing copying of digital stuff by "looking at it a different way".

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, yeah... and be sure to include the consitution and bill of rights too; that way you can take over the world with your little plan. Be sure to include all the text of every city, municipal, state, district and federal legal codes as well. Of course, you'll probably need to make sure you do this in every language that has and will exist... God forbid you accidently convert the entire legal system over to spanish to get around your little whacked hack (although that would probably be a very interesting and just social experiment to preform).

If all of this is too much trouble, you could just fly a couple of airplanes into buildings and wait for the natural reactionary end result to take you to the exact same end location.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Licensed2Hack]

but I hate it when people still insist on blaming the instrument of crime, rather than the criminal.

And many (not all!) of the same people that blame guns (the instrument) for crime (murder, armed robbery) have contempt for the RIAA/MPAA for blaming the instrument (DeCSS anyone? P2P?) for copyright violations (i.e., the crime).

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Zleeper]

Or wait for assholes like you to get into power and fuck it up royally.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Zleeper]

Just another ploy to keep the fucking lawyers in power. Burn them all, and fuck their wives, and re-write the fucking constitution and the laws that they have perversed into readable laws like they are suspposed to be.
What a waste of protoplasm.
Thank god SOno Bono is dead alreay, he would high on the list to be held accountable for this ridiculous "law" I do not call it a law, just like I don't call the asshole in the whitehose the president.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[DataCannibal]

And I don't buy the argument that guns are specifically designed to kill/injure people. They're designed to hurl small chunks of metal, accurately, for long distances, and at very high velocities.

Thats a bit like like saying that an electric chair is just designed for passing high currents through anything that happens to be fastened to the correct contact points, but if governments want to starp people into them then it's their own business.

In other words you're talking bullshit. The main driver of the development of firearms over the last few hundred years has been to make them more efficient killers of people.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

and anti-american

Usage of 'American' as an adjective should really be limited to associative cultural descriptions and not a vague attribution to the style of laws in the country. America is not the only country that suffers from corporate-induced draconian and freedom-inhibiting laws.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[FurryFeet]

Somebody mod the asshole parent down. That sig is not funny.
And no, I didn't fall for it. I know how to chech and I know what's at nero-online. But I know it is a stupid joke.
The sig alone is worth a -1, Troll.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[FurryFeet]

Gay is offensive? Dude, you are stuck in the 60s. Gays don't seem to mind being called that .
Really, your point was obscured by political correctness run amok.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[gnuLNX]

Guilty I am of being patriotic to my country. I will stand toe to toe with someone over this issue. If you read your histroy books (oh wait we wrote them...they must be lies) you will see that this is how we gained our independance. I suppose that no canadians, germans, french, spanish, etc.. have ever been quilty of arrogance and egotistical behavious. Put it in context. Somehow just makes a generalization about you. About your entire people...that doesn't irk you just a little bit? Well forgive me. I do get a little upset about such things.

Also you have obviously not looked at any current trend numbers or you would see quite clearly that America is still on the upswing. Will it always remain on top? I guess I hope not. I would hope that people such as your self and the person I commented to could let go of some hatred and learn to work together as a world. No Americans vs. the world bullshit just one united (or insert canadian word if need be) world.

Oh and just out of curiosity what is it that I did to you for you to show such hate towards me. Did I some how harm your precious ego?

Wake up and get a clue.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

Missouri, for instance, has such a law. Relevant section

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

wow. I never thought of it that way. what an insightful post.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[DrMrLordX]

Actually, I find the entire GNAA phenomenon to be somewhat amusing, albeit incredibly stupid. They would have done a better job basing their fictitious group off lesbian women than gay men, though. They'd cover more minorities that way. Well, sort of. Women, the 51% minority!

As far as the rest of it goes, I think you're missing the point of a lot of the more repetative, inane, or offensive trolls(greased Yoda doll, for example). The actual content of said trolling is usually boring. That which is amusing is the reason behind posting it in the first place. The mere fact that someone, ANYONE, could be offended or put off by the thought of a Yoda doll being inserted into a person's rectum is actually pretty funny. The actual process described involving said doll is rather dull on its own.

In fact, it's really quite amusing that anyone would be upset by goatse links, constant repetition of IN SOVIET RUSSIA jokes, page widening, Taco Snotting FAQs, and all the rest of the garbage slung around here to get a rise out of overly-sensitive Slashdotters.

Also, I miss Foreign Language Troll. He/she/it was hilarious.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the YMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I think I'll have to disagree on this one. I've been reading, moderating, and meta-moderating Slashdot for years, and I'll have to say that 95% of posts modded down to -1 are a total waste of bandwidth and Slashdot server resources. I wouldn't call all the over-repeated memes, racism, and namecalling "cutting-edge" or "witty." It is extremely rare that anything of substance gets modded down that far, and quite frankly, I don't need my already cynical view of humanity's worth challenged any further by yet another GNAA post.

Amen! I browse at +4, highest scores first. The only stuff I see is either really funny, or interesting, or insightful. I don't waste my time on the crap.

SCO v. Novell

[cRueLio]

SCO vs. Novell? Jeez, how many more companies and people are SCO trying to piss off... I wonder wtf is driving them to cause all this trouble Just my $.02

Re:SCO v. Novell

[pizzaman100]

Jeez, how many more companies and people are SCO trying to piss off... I wonder wtf is driving them to cause all this trouble

SCO knows that without the lawsuits they have a losing business model. If you can't beat 'em, sue 'em, and hope that 1)One of the charges stick, or 2)Somebody buys you out.

This isn't the first time that someone has tried this.

Re:SCO v. Novell

[cyberconte]

Great. Now if Novell gets any patents *they* will be able to sue and try to claim ownership of linux.

Just what we need...

Re:SCO v. Novell

[Anonymous Coward]

Novell already owns the patents to Unix. At issue are the copyrights.

Re:SCO v. Novell

[fermion]

Just to be clear, this juncture of the game has little to with the lawsuit. It is a diversion created by SCO to create publicity and maybe generate some cash. The lawsuit is between IBM and SCO. It may affect those that distribute *nix code. I see no way it affects those that use *nix code, even if they modified it and distribute it internally. If my company buys 100 ford trucks, modifies the engine for internal use, and then ford gets sued by another company for stealing the engine design, I do not have to pay the third company funds to continue to use that engine. I do not see how this is any different.

Copyrighted Errors

[unixbum]

so does this mean that my errors are copyrighted matierial?

Re:Copyrighted Errors

[grub]

Sorry, your parents have prior art. :)

Re:Copyrighted Errors

[dwillden]

Yes and any attempt to use a spell checker is a direct violation of the DMCA. You can't use that evil technology to circumvent your own copyrighted errors.

Re:Copyrighted Errors

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. I patented them. Better pay up.

Seriously I bet that you could get "a software program containing a coding error" patented, provided you dressed it in the right patentese :-(

That's what usually happens

[eln]

As with most lawsuits, especially ones that drag out like this, the only people that really win are the lawyers.

Re:That's what usually happens

[PunXX0r]

Hrm.

I doubt that I will feel that "only the Lawyers won" when SCO is a distant, unpleasant memory thanks to the IBM countersuit. In fact, I think that there will be enough win to go around for every person interested-in, contributing-to, or using FOSS.

I agree that it is much easier to over-simplify this, but let's be honest... even if it takes lawyers to crush SCO, it will be a win for everyone when they are gone.

Re:That's what usually happens

[Deagol]

Tell me about it. I have on my desk two checks from Citibank: $0.24 and $0.35. They are the results of some lawsuit against Citibank and AT&T Universal Card.

I don't know how much I really got screwed (hell, I didn't even know there was a lawsuit -- I wonder how they even found my current adddress!). The letter states it was "not practical to provide individual caculations" for the refunds. Yeah, right!

I know sure as shit that the lawyers got a hell of a lot more than two checks totalling less than a dollar!

Re:That's what usually happens

[msobkow]

A lot of those delays stem from the simple fact that legal staff usually haven't got the vaguest understanding of how software is architected or compiled. They don't know that half the headers mentioned are part of ANSI and ISO C/C++ standards.

They don't know that every single platform with a C compiler since the early '80s has had an "errno.h" header file.

It's about time some limits were imposed in US courts, as in:

You have 12 months to prepare your case, unless the defending party opts to extend. Under no circumstances may the preparation extend beyond 24 months. Should your claims prove false, you will be responsible for all legal costs and damages direct and incidental, not only for the defendant, but for any business in the court's jurisdiction whose financial performance can reasonably be presumed to be affected by the accusations.

Then maybe the world can get back to doing business instead of letting these useless "IP companies" affect billions of dollars of purchase and deployment decisions, without fear of repercussions for their fraud.

Re:That's what usually happens

[kcornia]

My wife and I were just trying to figure out how much it must have cost to create and send the check we just got for .28 from ATT.

We didn't even get to the cost for the bank to process it, we had to come to work.

I know I know, offtopic. I just found it hilarious that I got a check for 28 friggin' cents!

Re:That's what usually happens

[roomisigloomis]

Two farmers are fighting over a cow. One grabs the cow's tail and pulls while the other farmer grabs the cow's head and pulls. This last for a long time. While all this pulling is going on, the two farmers' lawyers sit in the middle and milk it.

Re:That's what usually happens

[forand]

I would be very scared if something like this occured in the criminal courts system. While the defendant has a right to a speedy trial they should also have a right to gather as much evidence as possible to defend themselves. Usually there are limits imposed by the judges so it does not become a stalling tactic but it seems possible that one might need more than two years to get all the evidence if you have to deal with other companies or entities not wanting to give it to you. Now for civil cases it is another story but again setting hard limits is almost always a bad idea IMHO.

Re:That's what usually happens

[Gannoc]

As with most lawsuits, especially ones that drag out like this, the only people that really win are the lawyers.

Yes, only the lawyers win. I don't care, its a great system. If you didn't have the class action lawsuit system, whats to prevent Verizon from saying, "Hey, lets overbill a random 40% of our customers 35 cents each this month. Nobody will notice or care, and we'll make MILLIONS!"

Only the lawyers make money, but it punishes corporations that screw their customers.

Re:That's what usually happens

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you on most points. I would point out that the previous poster suggested that it be incumbent on the ligitigator not the defendant to produce their evidence promptly.

Personally, I think that tactics such as those used by the RIAA and SCO should be treated as contempt of court. In the case of the RIAA in particular, they have been using the courts as a vector for a particularly repugnant form of spam.

Re:That's what usually happens

[kelnos]

A lot of those delays stem from the simple fact that legal staff usually haven't got the vaguest understanding of how software is architected or compiled. They don't know that half the headers mentioned are part of ANSI and ISO C/C++ standards.

that is, unfortunately, irrelevant. if the file was blatantly copied from someone else's copyrighted implementation, then that does indeed constitute infringement. i don't think this is the case, i'm just playing devil's advocate.

They don't know that every single platform with a C compiler since the early '80s has had an "errno.h" header file.

i think you're confusing the compiler-supplied /usr/include/errno.h with the file that SCO is claiming is infringing. this file is a part of the kernel source, and would usually live at /usr/src/linux/include/asm-*/errno.h. (same or similar goes for the other allegedly-infringing files.)

now, the compiler-supplied errno.h in /usr/include contains a prominent copyright notice by the free software foundation. somehow i doubt they falsified that, and, even if they did, SCO would/should be going after the FSF and glibc and not linus torvalds and linux.

looking at the errno.h included with kernel source, it looks like a relatively boilerplate file. just a bunch of #defines for error codes. the only way you could really infer copyright infringement is from the comments on each line that says what the error code means. however, i would think that all these are documented somewhere, so even if SCO's file is identical, it's still arguable that in both cases the comments were copied verbatim from some specification document (where copying is possibly allowed).

looking through the files listed, it seems like all of them fall under this general premise - boilerplate kernel constants and macros for very basic stuff that's really hard and silly to try to implement any other way.

blah, SCO can bite me.

Re:That's what usually happens

[Stripe7]

Hmmm, two checks one for $.24 and one $.34. What was the postage cost of that? Its $.37 for standard mail. What is the cost to your bank for processing each check?

Re:That's what usually happens

[87C751]

I know I know, offtopic. I just found it hilarious that I got a check for 28 friggin' cents!

Hilarious, yes. But I think I had more laughs getting a refund from U.S. West for $0.09, complete with a 10-minute call from one of their representatives who told me I was going to receive that check and explained exactly why. I figure it had to cost at least $30.00 to send me 9 cents.

Re:That's what usually happens

[tntguy]

I wonder how they even found my current adddress!

Own a car? Have a telephone? Registered voter? Have a Social Security Number? Pay taxes? Have a checking account? Own a house? Have a job? . . .

Re:That's what usually happens

[Secahtah]

This is unfortunately true - and even more unfortunate, is that they are going to decide the outcome of the case.

The fact that SCO is going after so many people is clear evidence that they *know* they are doomed - they are gambling everything they have in the hopes that they can win at least one court case. All they need is a precedent; if they can win just one case, they can use that to win others, just like dominos.

Their only possible strategy is to confuse some judge who has no clue about software development. Anyone else would laugh them out of court.

Re:That's what usually happens

[Anonymous Coward]

This SCO mess may be only the beginning. MS or whoever is behind it is very likely to be planning an extended sequence of SCO-type attacks against Linux. As soon as the SCO case goes away, another will appear ad nauseum.

What can Linux developers do to head off a never-ending continuation of these attacks? I have a suggestion that probably won't work (since I'm not a lawyer), but here it is anyway.

When we find some real object that may belong to someone else, but we would like to keep, it doesn't become ours automatically. There is a process that in most parts of the US includes an attempt to find the real owner by advertising the find or some other means. If the owner for whatever reason doesn't claim his/her property in a reasonable time, we are allowed to keep it.

Why can't we do that with so-called "intellectual property"? Maybe we can.

I suggest that the kernel maintainers as a matter of policy, publicize the possibility that there may be proprietary code improperly included in upcoming releases, and if nobody identifies it and claims it as their own within 3(?) months or so, they will be understood to have agreed to its release.

It may also be a good idea to include in various places a notice something like this:

The following source code may or may not contain material owned by one or more proprietary software companies. We ask that if you own proprietary code in this package, and do not wish it to be included and released under the GPL, please take the time to show us that you have an interest in that code. Otherwise, we can not know your wishes, and will assume that you agree with our plans.

Do any real lawyers have an opinion?

Re:That's what usually happens

[johnnyb]

Actually, Cingular does this. Last month, we had $100 of roaming charges, and we NEVER LEFT THE CITY. This month, our phone bill is for about $400, and we have used the cell phone less than we ever have.

Re:That's what usually happens

[__past__]

A lot of those delays stem from the simple fact that legal staff usually haven't got the vaguest understanding of how software is architected or compiled. They don't know that half the headers mentioned are part of ANSI and ISO C/C++ standards.
They don't know that every single platform with a C compiler since the early '80s has had an "errno.h" header file.

AFAIK, (most of) errno.h is not part of ISO or ANSI C, but of POSIX. Anyway, errno and the actual error numbers are likely to be only defined as "symbolic constants", which is the usual Posix way to ensure that the standard is useless for any halfway sane language^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^Wportability, so from a copyright point of view, what matters is actually whether EWOULDBLOCK is 1 or 19.184, not that it is defined at all.

While defining any errno.h is not exactly rocket science, or any harder than defining a hello-world implementation, I fail to see why copyright would not apply. It's not as if there were a rule that laws must not be stupid and pointless, mind you.

Re:That's what usually happens

[Anonymous Coward]

I am sure McBride has hold of the backend since being a self proclaimed farm boy he is probably most familiar with that end of the animal...

Re:That's what usually happens

[Anonymous Coward]

They know a lot of this is old BSD code, such as most of the errno.h and other include files. What they're trying to claim is that the BSD licenses don't apply, by waving a magic wand and saying "pay no attention to that previous public domain publication behind the curtain."

Re:That's what usually happens

[inc_x]

> I fail to see why copyright would not apply.

The expression of the idea here is dictated by external factors for it to work --> not protected by copyright

See http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/6805/articles/int-prop /lotus/lotus-borland-appeal-Mar95.html Appeals Court decision Lotus vs Borland:

"Accepting the district court's finding that the Lotus developers made some expressive choices in choosing and arranging the Lotus command terms, we nonetheless hold that that expression is not copyrightable because it is part of Lotus 1-2-3's "method of operation." We do not think that "methods of operation" are limited to abstractions; rather, they are the means by which a user operates something. If specific words are essential to operating something, then they are part of a "method of operation" and, as such, are unprotectable."

Re:That's what usually happens

[DF5JT]

There has been a /. story about this phenomenon called "Stealth Inflation":

• http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/12/04/1648 249&mode=thread&tid=187&tid=98&tid=99

Re:That's what usually happens

[Duhavid]

Add to the above:

Neither side can mention anything related to the case in the press or other public forum until the case is settled, including appeals.

Big Red takes aim

[Crashmarik]

This is just novells first step.

The next step will be their own series of letters to SCO reminding them of their contractual obligations to Novell.

If you don't have a product sue!

[mpost4]

I doubt that they are lossing money only over the lawsuit. Also the info for erron could be derived by other methodes, it would be considered comman knolage for all unix programmers, so if they had to implement a compatablity layer, they could do it from memory.

also with Novel's Copyright on it, it seams to me that Novel's came first, so SCO could be a nice target if (big IF) they win this case, it has seamed to me that Novel does not want to see this case go though.

SCO is a dead company that just wants to be bought out, and they did not get IBM to buy them out liked they hoped.

Re:If you don't have a product sue!

[willtsmith]

SCO just keeps getting funnier every day. I've stopped being angry and have chalked it all up to entertainment.

The fact that they are now claiming copyrights on HEADER FILES is the ultimate testament to the weakness of their cases.

I mean, how could one re-engineer APIs without replicating headers. If Linux is in violation, than BSD must be in violation as well. They should be suing Apple.

Re:If you don't have a product sue!

[mpost4]

Well in one of the articals they clame that there is a deal that BSD is alowed to use them but not linux. But you are still right it is BS

Re:If you don't have a product sue!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't have a product COMMA sue!

I doubt that they are lossing money only over the lawsuit. Also the info for erron could be derived by other methodes, it would be considered comman knolage for all unix programmers, so if they had to implement a compatablity layer, they could do it from memory.

also with Novel's Copyright on it, it seams to me that Novel's came first, so SCO could be a nice target if (big IF) they win this case, it has seamed to me that Novel does not want to see this case go though.

SCO is a dead company that just wants to be bought out, and they did not get IBM to buy them out liked they hoped.

Re:If you don't have a product sue!

[erlenic]

Actually, if I remember correctly, Darl said in the conference call this morning that they generated cash from their UnixWare products either in the third quarter of FY2003 or the entire year (I forget which.)

Re:If you don't have a product sue!

[goon america]

Don't forget the huge cash payouts SCO has received from Microsoft in exchange for vaguely defined "licenses," etc.

I think it's a perfectly valid (if immoral and probably illegal) business model. There is a huge demand from well-moneyed interests (e.g., Microsoft) to get rid of Linux. Thus, there is a high market price for this "service," and one company (SCO) is stepping into the market to supply it.

Of course, since it's probably illegal, and since doing so would endanger their business methods (would be damaging to their court cases), they can never speak frankly about what they are doing, so instead they have to speak in codes, like the "licensing arrangement" with Microsoft, etc.

Re:If you don't have a product sue!

[Admiral Llama]

Hey, I saw ctype.c in there too. What's next, stdio?

"You have a printf, we have a printf. Cough up!"

Re:If you don't have a product sue!

[Paul d'Aoust]

shhhhhh shhhhhh shhhhhh! don't suggest anything to them! you don't want them suing Apple too...

actually, that may come to pass, if you believe SCO's vague suggestion that it has its sights set on BSD in the distant future.

Re:If you don't have a product sue!

[bovinewasteproduct]

If Linux is in violation, than BSD must be in violation as well.

Nope, the BSD header files carry the AT&T copyright statement as required by the settlement, do the Linux ones carry it???

BWP

Re:If you don't have a product sue!

[Anonymous Coward]

But that list of header files does not appear to be UNIX code, it appears to be pretty much part of standard 'C' compilers everywhere. I'll bet you can even see where Microsoft "copied" from SCO source. LAMO...Whadda hoot.

Re:If you don't have a product sue!

[Anonymous Coward]

holy shit learn to spell

Re:If you don't have a product sue!

[rgmoore]

Why should the Linux ones have to? Linus isn't a party to the USL/BSDI lawsuit, so he isn't bound by the terms of the settlement. There's no reason to think that there are any valid copyrights to files involved in the suit (USL settled because the judge was threatening to rule that their copyrights were invalid) so there's no need for any copyright notice unless it's forced by some other legal reason, like the settlement. And that's assuming that the files actually are copied and haven't been re-implemented from scratch using the POSIX standards.

Re:If you don't have a product sue!

[Camel Pilot]

They should be suing Apple.

My dear fellow just on the outside chance that SCO or their scum lawyers friends read slashdot do not give them anymore ideas or suggestions on who to sue next. Moderators moderate the above post (er... and mine as well) to /dev/null. thank you.

Re:If you don't have a product sue!

[bovinewasteproduct]

My post was in reply to someone who stated that if Linux was in violation, then the BSDs had to be also.

The USL copyright statements in the BSD files are why the BSDs are NOT in violation.

BWP

Re:If you don't have a product sue!

[Curtman]

Linus isn't a party to the USL/BSDI lawsuit

Nevermind that, are they squaking about the header files of libc now? How is anyone related to the development of the Linux kernel responsible for what comes with the GNU C library?

Re:If you don't have a product sue!

[bovinewasteproduct]

How is anyone related to the development of the Linux kernel responsible for what comes with the GNU C library?

Because the files in question are kernel headers, not libc headers...

BWP

clue me in....

[Anonymous Coward]

arent the headers (especially some of those, like errno.h) published publically as ISO/ANSI C and/or UNIX Definition documents? Hence, if they look similar, it's because they're defined standards from various standards committees? Perhaps someone should point out the document name and number and page numbers.

Re:clue me in....

[Maul]

This letter is designed for PHB's who will look at it and then look at Linux and say "Crap! errno.h IS in Linux," not people who look at it and think of defined standards and realize that SCO is stooping to the lowest levels in order to keep their schemes going.

Re:clue me in....

[msgmonkey]

Generally all those C/Unix headers come under general umbrella of POSIX compliance. I think what they are saying is that the files are directly lifted from BSD and that the settlement with BSD forbode redistribution.

This is strange in that 1) the full outcome of the settlement was sealed AFAIK and 2) the headers in question are licensed under the BSD license which would have been known of in 1.

Like has been mentioned earlier by many people here, maybe SCO want to re-open the BSD case as this seems to be there only line of defense.

Re:clue me in....

[Anonymous Coward]

The doctrines of waiver and delay probably scuttle any chance they have of reopening the BSD decision. IANAL, though.

Re:clue me in....

[Anonymous Coward]

Like has been mentioned earlier by many people here, maybe SCO want to re-open the BSD case as this seems to be there only line of defense.

So Linux can simply call itself a BSD UNIX - case closed.

Re:clue me in....

[PineGreen]

Well, probably, the problem is, however, that all the comments are exactly the same, so it is unlikely two people would come with exactly same description... i.e. the errno.h has things like:

#define EPERM 1 /* Operation not permitted */
#define ENOENT 2 /* No such file or directory */
#define ESRCH 3 /* No such process */
#define EINTR 4 /* Interrupted system call */
#define EIO 5 /* I/O error */
#define ENXIO 6 /* No such device or address */
#define E2BIG 7 /* Arg list too long */

etc. So if you say "arg list too long", instead of say, "too many arguments" in all comments, it is very likely that the actual .h was stolen... Not that I want to support SCO...

Re:clue me in....

[xactoguy]

So if you say "arg list too long", instead of say, "too many arguments" in all comments, it is very likely that the actual .h was stolen... Not that I want to support SCO... The only problem being that there are only so many ways in which to express something like that, so it's still not a complete proof. I do agree that is probably where the argument hinges, though.

Re:clue me in....

[Anonymous Coward]

SCO is a member of the Open Group and participated in the development of those standards. The FTC has sued Rambus for doing the same thing with JEDEC DRAM standards-- you can't participate in standards development if you're later going to claim ownership of the technologies involved!

Re:clue me in....

[Anonymous Coward]

ok, but those comments _could_ be defined in POSIX docs using the line "arg list too long" vice "too many args"

thus the reason I asked for doc name/number and what pages.

Re:clue me in....

[jenkin sear]

Or, they have a common ancestor, under a legitimate license, that both were derived from.

Re:clue me in....

[Anonymous Coward]

Heres the freebsd version of errno.h.

#define EPERM 1 /* Operation not permitted */
#define ENOENT 2 /* No such file or directory */
#define ESRCH 3 /* No such process */
#define EINTR 4 /* Interrupted system call */
#define EIO 5 /* Input/output error */
#define ENXIO 6 /* Device not configured */
#define E2BIG 7 /* Argument list too long */

Re:clue me in....

[J'raxis]

Those comments are just the strings that strerror() outputs for each of these error numbers. Other than extremely minor differences (The only one I've seen vary a great deal is ENOTTY: older systems have "Not a typewriter" whereas newer systems have "Inappropriate ioctl for device"), those strings are pretty standardized.

Re:clue me in....

[Admiral Llama]

errno.h... wouldn't this also be the same errno.h that is part of the ancient UNIX that has been GPLed?

Re:clue me in....

[torpor]

... if the standard (as good standards sometimes do) included some sort of generic descriptions (i.e. even section headers), then its feasible that the programmers could both have just copied text from the same standard text when writing the code ...

not a difficult argument to make. i've seen it in plenty of other code: section headers from the 'standard text', implemented with the same comments from different teams.

hell, i seem to remember some other microcomputer software company doing this, back in the day, with a few BIOS-like API's that were floating around ...

Re:clue me in....

[minkwe]

These comments are directly from the POSIX standard:

http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007904975/ba se defs/errno.h.html#tag_13_10

Re:clue me in....

[Anonymous Coward]

come with exactly same description... i.e. the errno.h has things like:
#define ENOENT 2 /* No such file or directory */
#define ESRCH 3 /* No such process */
#define EINTR 4 /* Interrupted system call */
#define EIO 5 /* I/O error */
#define ENXIO 6 /* No such device or address */
#define E2BIG 7 /* Arg list too long */

The above are the exact names, values, and descriptions used in my hardcopy of the 4.2BSD Programmer's Manual (dated August 1983, printed out no later than August 1986) in the Intro to Section 2.

Sometimes, there are just certain standard ways of phrasing things that may not even be relevant to present technology any more -- e.g. ENOMEM translates to "not enough core" in every errno.h I've ever seen, even though I don't think any computer built in the past quarter-century has actually used magnetic core memory....

Re:clue me in....

[msgmonkey]

In which case SCO could argue that they own the enumerations, ie 1 is EPERM, 2 is ENOENT, etc.. However the only area of law this could come under is "trade secrets" but if it a secret then it's not been a very well kept one for the last 30 years.

Re:clue me in....

[Greyfox]

Maybe SCO will sue POSIX next...

Re:clue me in....

[stevesliva]

SCO is a member of the Open Group.

Re:clue me in....

[Greyfox]

They were a member of some Linux consortium or other too. That didn't stop them from their current Linux tactics. And seeing as how the more deranged the statement is that comes out of SCO, the more their stock price climbs, SCO suing (or threatening to sue) the open group could easily be the next logical step for them.

Re:clue me in....

[gonar]

if you read page 33 (section 2.4) and later of the POSIX 1996 standard, all those comment strings are direct quotes from the description in the standard.

examples:
(p33):
[E2BIG] Arg list too long
The sum of the number of bytes used by....
(p36):
[EPERM] Operation not permitted
An attempt was made to...

Re:clue me in....

[Geckoman]

This letter is designed for PHB's who will look at it and then look at Linux and say "Crap! errno.h IS in Linux,"

If that statement has any meaning at all for your PHB, I'm pretty impressed....

Re:clue me in....

[Anonymous Coward]

I've just checked my "OS Design & Implementation" and lo and behold, the comments in errno.h for MINIX 2.0 are damn near identical to these, too. Including "Arg list too long", incidently.

Re:clue me in....

[deadbadger]

So basically, what we're looking at is the business equivalent of the jdbmgr.exe hoax :-). Next up:

"Dear Linux user,

Darl McBride has cancer of the spleen, and Bill Gates will give him a penny for each time we forward this legal letter in triplicate..."

Re:clue me in....

[snake_dad]

The PHB's are gonna love this response at Groklaw :)

Here is the letter from SCO warning recipients of alleged copyright violations. I must tell you that the list of files has everyone I am hearing from falling on the floor laughing. We will be issuing a statement explaining why as soon as they recover.

Re:clue me in....

[TekPolitik]

...I must tell you that the list of files has everyone I am hearing from falling on the floor laughing. We will be issuing a statement explaining why as soon as they recover.

The brief reason why is that these are interface files. It has been established for over a decade that there is no breach of copyright when interface files have been copied, even if they have been literally ripped off (Computer Associates v Altai). Even I thought they'd come up with something better than this, and I've thought they were full of it from day one. That's why Groklaw are doubled over laughing - SCO have literally come up with the weakest possible argument they could have attempted.

Re:clue me in....

[dotslash]

you forgot:

#define SCO 8 /* Full of shit */

Re:clue me in....

[Anonymous Coward]

nah.. #define ETOOSTUPID __SCO /* Deprecated, will be removed in the next release */

Re:You people called it upon yourselves

[Anonymous Coward]

Darl?

Law is Hard

[moehoward]

This stuff is too complicated for me to understand. Why didn't a slashdot editor add a quirky, sarcastic, biased comment so I would know how to think?

I don't want to read all those links. Is there any way that I can make fun of Microsoft based on any of this? That would make it easier. TIA

Re:Law is Hard

[destiney]

Awesome post :)

Wish I had mod points.

Re:Law is Hard

[Robotron2084]

Hopefully this can help you understand the situation:

Penguin Blood Ninja Fiasco!!

Shameless self plug....

Re:Law is Hard

[Dr. GeneMachine]

Hey - if you can't bash M$ based on any of this, you might try bashing the french, the democrats, the republicans, arguing pro/contra gun control or advocate the libertarians. There are so many popular troll contests going on at the moment! Sign up and join one!

Re:Law is Hard

[Random BedHead Ed]

You wouldn't have posted that comment, thus distracting us from the Microsoft angle of this story, if the liberals didn't secretly control Slashdot.

Re:Law is Hard

[kryptkpr]

ROFL! That was great! You've made a fan today..

Re:Law is Hard

[Anonymous Coward]

This frickin' rules! I love all the stuff on Ubergeek. Now, if I only had some pennies to contribute...

Re:Law is Hard

[Anonymous Coward]

excellent!!!
great stuff,
but the outro music only runs for 30 minutes or so, after that I have to play through it again :)

AC

Re:Law is Hard

[Anonymous Coward]

OCG -->

Re:Law is Hard

[gangien]

Great stuff! lol

Pull troops out of Iraq...

[Genghis9]

...and deploy them to SCO headquarters. There are WMD's (weenies of mass dumbness) in that building and they have to go, NOW!

Re:You people called it upon yourselves

[Anonymous Coward]

You probably have a good point there, but I hope you enjoy the -1 you're going to get anyway.

A more fun (accurate?) version of this posting...

[coupland]

"We've already heard that SCO have invoked the winged minions of hell via 'voodoo dools shaped like the CEOs of Fortune 1000 companies.' The specifics come via a photo of a doll made to look like Samuel J. Palmisano of IBM - they've decided that they own the souls of about 65 CEOs running Linux - largely IBM, HP and Ford." balloonpup also notes "CNet News has reported that SCO has reported a fourth quarter loss of $1.6 million, owing mostly to hefty witchdoctor and soothsayer fees in its war against Linux. SCO said they would have reported $7.4 million in earnings, if not for the $9 million payout to the Prince of Darkness. Way to go, SCO!" Many readers also point out a Groklaw article indicating Novell has been praying for the souls of CEOs running Linux with the Holy Catholic Church, so that "both the SCO Group and Novell have claimed the souls of the same people."

I feel so dirty but...

[nocomment]

GO NOVELL! GO IBM! :-) It may seem strange, but I really am feeling some sort of loyalty to these two companies. I am way more likely to use them in future than I think I would have before the whole SCO debacle. Although I'd still never ever in the coldest darkest hour in hell use netware or AIX again(blech).

Re:I feel so dirty but...

[Anonymous Coward]

It has probably been a long time since you have used NetWare, but you should check out v6 and v6.5--they are quite impressive. And despite anyone's claims on here, NetWare is still fully entrenched in governement and educational institutions--for good reason.

Re:I feel so dirty but...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why they can now offer you SuSe linux and Ximian products. Netware still rocks BTW..

Re:I feel so dirty but...

[Hayzeus]

Clearly, you've never done any NLM development...

Re:I feel so dirty but...

[JawFunk]

I am way more likely to use them in future than I think I would have before the whole SCO debacle.

Well yes! Haven't you heard? If not use them then depend on their future tech, as IBM is one of the main R&D contributors (fund$) to research for GRID technology, which among other things aspires to be self healing systems.

Re:I feel so dirty but...

[iminplaya]

" GO NOVELL! GO IBM!..."
Please remember what the communists did to the anarchists after the revolution (Russian). We appear to be on the same side now, but when the "war" is over...Well, as OJ said, "Look out!"

Re:I feel so dirty but...

[nocomment]

Yes, it has been since V4 (i think (was there a 3.5?, and no i'm not thinking nt)) since I used it. What rocks about 6.5? --you've peaked my curisoity

Re:I feel so dirty but...

[asr_man]

GO NOVELL! GO IBM! :-) It may seem strange, but I really am feeling some sort of loyalty to these two companies.

It's called Afghan Loyalty.

Re:I feel so dirty but...

[JLester]

The rocking'est thing about 6.x (in my opinion) is the Native File Access. All major clients (*nix NFS, SMB, and AFP) can access the server without installing any client software. It's a godsend in a mixed environment. Some of the other features like iFolder, NDPS, etc. are also very cool once you get started with them.

They are also still rock solid. Novell's uptime compares favorably with any i386-based server OS out there.

Jason

Re:I feel so dirty but...

[nocomment]

Isn't that something you can build relatively easily yourself? How much does something like that run?

Re:I feel so dirty but...

[Anonymous Coward]

s/peaked/piqued/

Look here: piqued/

Re:I feel so dirty but...

[DF5JT]

"It's called Afghan Loyalty." ITYM Stockholm Syndrom.

Re:I feel so dirty but...

[JLester]

You can build it yourself I'm sure, but it wouldn't be nearly as well integrated as the Novell solution. The management tools are awesome, everything works like it supposed to from one interface. We've been using Netware since version 2.15, so we have lots of experience with it too.

My department believes in using the best tool for the job, and I still think Novell has the best file/print services and directory setup. We use Linux, Windows, Novell, Mac OS, etc. as the situation demands.

Jason

Re:I feel so dirty but...

[plip]

I'm rooting for Novell so much after acquisition of SUSE, that I bought stock in them just to show my support. And my shares just keep on rising.
Go Novell!

9 million?

[westcourt_monk]

I love it... 9 million to lawyers, -1.6 to report to it's investors and they are no where. If they win I imagine they stand to make 10x whatever they pay for lawyers but how much do they have to put out before it is not longer worth the risk?

The investors must be getting worried.

Re:9 million?

[michael_cain]

I love it... 9 million to lawyers, -1.6 to report to it's investors and they are no where. If they win I imagine they stand to make 10x whatever they pay for lawyers but how much do they have to put out before it is not longer worth the risk?

The investors must be getting worried.

There are multiple reasons why you might purchase a particular stock. Sometimes it's because you believe it's a good company with great products. Sometimes it's because you're willing to risk some money speculating on a low-probability high-return outcome. If you bought SCO recently for the first reason, well, you're an idiot. If you bought it for the second reason, you don't really care what the share price or the operating results are -- you care what the judge in the case has said recently. If SCO were to eventually win $1B from IBM, the bulk of what remains after the legal fees will almost certainly be distributed as a special one-time dividend, enriching the insiders, the Canary Group, and some gamblers who were willing to hold on through all of the legal proceedings and appeals. Roughly 75% of SCOX is held by insiders and institutions.

For the right kind of fund, buying 50,000 shares back when it was selling for $3 might have been a very reasonable gamble. Suppose the dividend is $100 per share -- that's a 33-to-1 payoff and might justify "backing" a legal case with 20-to-1 odds. At today's price of about $18, the potential return would only be 5.5-to-1, no longer worth the gamble.

Re:9 million?

[milo_Gwalthny]

In other words, the legal case is all they got so they might as well invest their shekels there.

Re:9 million?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes it's just because you're day-trading on insider knowledge...

Re:9 million?

[roystgnr]

There are multiple reasons why you might purchase a particular stock. Sometimes it's because you believe it's a good company with great products. Sometimes it's because you're willing to risk some money speculating on a low-probability high-return outcome.

There's a third reason, which should resurge in popularity as the word "dot-com" fades away to it's place next to "tulip auctions" in investment history: because you think the company is a stupid buy, but you expect to find an even stupider buyer to sell to before that becomes obvious. I say that derisively, but this third group (which includes all the SCO Group insiders who have been picking up options and then selling like crazy) are the only ones who have made any money off SCOX that they can be sure of keeping.

Re:9 million?

[Reziac]

"The investors must be getting worried" ...

Not the ones who sold at $16! :)

One does have to wonder what SCO will try to claim ownership of next. "errno.h" fer ghu's sake...

Re:9 million?

[Anonymous Coward]

...and you haven't even included the millions in internal company loans granted at certain undisclosed stock prices only to be repaid at a much lower (and eventually inevatable) stock price... it's part of the "free money for corporate officers" compensationn plan, baby!

Anyone who doesn't understand that this is a cashing out will probably be seperated from their money quite quickly (but, hey, someone has to see the high water mark at which the loans can be granted, eh?). The entire 9mil to lawyers thing only completes the charade.

You know... I think CEOs and corporate officers who have nice golden parachutes should be required to sign promises to never participate in these types of expidetions on threat of risking everything (including their golden parachutes) even if everyone involved knows where the business is headed.

Hats off to Novell

[An0maly]

Beautiful. And props to whomever submitted my SCO fix for the day.

login.h

[mios]

I think I'm going to file a claim that I own a copyright to login.h ... this way, everytime anyone logs into their system I should be entitled to some roylaties ... this should work ...

Re:login.h

[TheRaven64]

Fine, but I own copyright on the shade of blue used in the well known Windows BSoD. Every time a Windows box crashes, I want $1...

Re:login.h

[Overly Critical Guy]

Hello, 1998 wants its BSOD joke back.

Re:login.h

[Darby]

Hello, 1998 wants its BSOD joke back.

Actually, I got a BSOD ( admittedly one of only a few ever ) last night when installing Diablo 2. After rebooting, it worked fine.

Re:login.h

[DA-MAN]

Hehe

You've obviously never installed driver updates via http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/.

It happened to my co-worker earlier today. His system was a clean install, it prompted him to install a newer driver that actually came with the system and BSOD.

I mean I can imagine on a fucked up system with all sorts of spyware, but on a clean system....

BSOD's are live and well, you must really be rubbing your box gently.

Re:login.h

[Anonymous Coward]

In A.D. 2003
War was beginning.
Slashbot 1: What happen ?
Slashbot 2: Somebody set up us the bomb.
Slashbot 3: We get signal.
Slashbot 1: What !
Slashbot 3: Main screen turn on.
Slashbot 1: It's You !!
Overly Critical Guy: How are you gentlemen !!
Overly Critical Guy: All your base are belong to us.
Overly Critical Guy: You are on the way to destruction.
Slashbot 1: What you say !!
Overly Critical Guy: You have no chance to survive make your time.
Overly Critical Guy: HA HA HA HA ....
Slashbot 1: Take off every 'sig' !!
Slashbot 1: You know what you doing.
Slashbot 1: Move 'sig'.
Slashbot 1: For great justice.

checking out insider holdings

[greechneb]

Larry Gasparro is the last to cash out with nearly $500k in December - Look at the latest holdings of the insider roster

BENCH, ROBERT K.
Chief Investment Officer
8-Oct-03 214,243 Shares Left

BROUGHTON, REGINALD CHARLES
Senior Vice President
17-Sep-03 95,000 Shares left

GASPARRO, LARRY
Vice President
10-Dec-03 0 Shares Left

HUNSAKER, JEFF F.
Vice President
13-Aug-03 20,494 Shares Left

OLSON, MICHAEL P
Vice President
11-Nov-03 47,330 Shares Left

WILSON, MICHAEL
Senior Vice President
14-Jul-03 0 Shares Left

WILSON, MICHAEL SEAN
Senior Vice President
15-Jul-03 0 Shares Left

Notice How little the insiders still actually own (Aside from Robert Bench)? Smells fishy to me

Re:checking out insider holdings

[eln]

I've been practicing to be a psychic so let's see how I'm doing so far...

I see these men having big problems with the SEC in the future.

Re:checking out insider holdings

[Anonymous Coward]

Insider trading is illegal isnt it :D

They have some explaining to do.

Just file a complaint to the SFO.

Re:checking out insider holdings

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, they might be flying into San Francisco and could then be pelted with pies!

Re:checking out insider holdings

[Anonymous Coward]

Note: this is to the replies, not to the parent.

I have a little reality check for you people who think SCO is gonna get shit for this little pump and dump:

-Our esteemed Commander and Cheif pumped and dumped his little oil company and sold all his shares 2 days before it went bankrupt. The appropriate investigative organizations where politely told to bug off.

-The above's best friend and cheif campain supporter via donations was the CEO of Enron. Need I say more?

-Worldcom went bankrupt over executive fraud and now has a cushy contract in Iraq.

-Microsoft pretty much got let off the hook as soon as someone they "donated" money to got the presidency.

-Our Vice President is busy riding a gigantic $100,000 a month retirement golden parachute from his company, Halburton, with strangely enough is getting the most, best, and highest paying government contracts.

What makes you guys think that ANYTHING bad will happen to SCO because of what they are doing? Wake up.

This is all of course assuming memory serves me correctly.

Re:checking out insider holdings

[Anonymous Coward]

Worldcom was in bed with the DNC chief Terry McCaullif,
Hillary and cattle futures, parlaying $1000 into $100000. Joe Kennedy made his millions running booze during the prohibition. Kerry marries into millions...
Al Gore uses a Budhist temple to launder campaign funds. Bill Clinton sells missle technology to potential enemies for campaign funds, for this he was impeached!

None of the politicians are clean.

But as a stock holder in Haliburton, I do ask you this:
Who should you hire to repair the oil fields that Haliburton built? Mr Goodwrench from the local jiffy-lube?

Re:checking out insider holdings

[wozster]

But the SEC is a corrupt "Good-ole-boys club", isn't it?

Re:checking out insider holdings

[dave1g]

Pretty much, The SEC has some real teeth and they have consistently chosen not to use it for fear of...who knows what.

This is apparent in all the financial scandals in the past few years including the newest mutual fund scandals.

The only person who has been doing anything is the NY attorney general, but I don't think SCO is in his scope, he gets jurisdiction on a lot of these matters because lots of the financial companies are located in NYC. An even then the SEC have been known to go behind his back and do closed door settlements with companies.

Pisses me off, and it should piss off all investors, people need to write their congress reps and senators and ask them to hold the SEC accountable for its non actions.

Re:checking out insider holdings

[dwillden]

Actually the insiders have sold about 2% of their holdings in the last six months. Don't forget that these insiders usually have very narrow windows each year in which they are allowed to sell shares or exercise options. And as Options are often a key component of their pay packages, when they get their annual sell window, they take it. Those counts you quoted don't usually include unvested options. Otherwise our good friend Darl would be at the top of the list, as well as a few others.

A prime example of this would be Michael Wilson, he was awarded options on 110,000 shares in July of 2002 yet in the last year he's only sold 24,000 shares. Where are the rest? simple they haven't vested yet and are thus not counted as belonging to him.

Basically, like you I am expecting the dumping to start soon, but this transaction doesn't convince me that it's started yet. Mr. Gasparro just sold 38,280 shares that's a big chunk, and it gathered him an estimated $484,659, but it's not dumping yet.

Okay I'm finished flame away.

Re:checking out insider holdings

[DraKKon]

Easy.. 3 words: No Government Contract

Re:checking out insider holdings

[/dev/trash]

*sigh*

It always comes back to Enron and Bush doesn't it? Can't we go back to Clinton and Whitewater?

Re:checking out insider holdings

[Anonymous Coward]

"None of the politicians are clean."

Where in the hell did I say, "Only Republicans are corrupt"?

If Gore had won...Microsoft would probably still have been let off the hook, MS was playing both sides. They rarely donated anything politically before 2000. Then they started pumping in the $'s in 2000 and 2002. Haliburton go it's no-bid status under Clinton. I don't play "one side is better than the other" because that isn't the way it is. Hell, the farking law -the DMCA- they are using was signed by Clinton.

"But as a stock holder in Haliburton, I do ask you this:
Who should you hire to repair the oil fields that Haliburton built? Mr Goodwrench from the local jiffy-lube?"

That's funny, since Haliburton often subcontracts it's no-bid contracts to smaller operations. And, on your note, what business does an oil infrastructure company have building military prisons and installations? Guantonimo is a Haliburton product.

Re:checking out insider holdings

[Anonymous Coward]

...yes, or the numerous others time has simply forgotten. I am mearly pointing out the current corporate/political environment. These guys could hee-haw for all I care, they are still shysters.

Re:checking out insider holdings

[JWW]

Do you really think Bush would think its in the best interest of the country (let alone the business world) to let SCO win a 3 BILLION dollar lawsuit against IBM? If that happens the repurcussions for the market and the economy would be horrendous.

If you want a Bush conspiricy theory try IBM giving him millions in donations and then a bill passing forcing Unix code to be public domain. Hell, its unlikey, but not quite so much as for Bush to be conspriing for a tiny good for nothing company to cause major damage to one of the largest corporations on earth!

Re:checking out insider holdings

[Anonymous Coward]

Notice How little the insiders still actually own.

They own options, not shares.

"Header" files

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, Darl didn't mention it the other night when he was giving me header files..?

Distract the sharholders

[Anonymous Coward]

Using the DMCA is nothing more than an attempt to distract the shareholders from the almost 2 million dollars that SCO just lost.

Ruckus and tomfoolery, indeed!

[FunWithHeadlines]

Poor SCO, no one takes them seriously any more. "We own Linux-- er, UNIX, um I mean, some of it, or do we Novell? And we're going to sue everybody in existence for theft-- uh, copyright violations of this code-- oops, not that code, don't look at the man behind the curtain, we mean this code over here -- what? not that code either? OK, I mean these header files -- um, you can't copyright ideas, you have to patent them, and we have plenty of patents -- we don't? Well, we'll be threaten-- um, sending letters to our partners (aren't you happy to be doing business with SCO?) telling to to keep their noses clean and line up for a nose inspection -- what, Novell just copyrighted the same stuff we claim to have copyrighted? Don't tell the judge that! Yikes! What's our stock doing now?! Quick read this press release about, um, yeah, that's it: we just got DDoSed, um, Again! Yeah, that'll work....what's that you say? How much are we paying our lawyers for this nonsense? It's contingency, people, don't worry. Contingency all the way...except for the huge fees we pay along the way...and 20% of the company...but otherwise not much -- and yes, that just wiped out any chance of profits in this quarter, but don't worry, next quarter the legal fees go up and we still don't have any licensees yet. But step right up with $699 and you can be the first on the block to say you got rooked--, uh squared yourself with the law-- um, not really the law, with our lawyers, yeah, that's it."

Re:Ruckus and tomfoolery, indeed!

[jelle]

"what? not that code either? OK, I mean these header files -- um"

Right. I was beginning to get the feeling that I was the only one who read the article, saw that it listed only *.h files, and concluded that those files contained no code at all.

hey, pass the popcorn please!

[tuxette]

This is becoming very entertaining! And it's a lot better than the Christmas crud they're showing on TV now!

Re:hey, pass the popcorn please!

[petabyte]

Aww, you can never have too much Christmas crud.

Besides, too much of this is like watching too many TV talk-shows (Springer et all). It starts to rot your mind.

Cheers.

not just Linux...

[TheSHAD0W]

SCO has now asserted ownership over not just Linux, but every single C/C++ compiler out there, and every OS based on C, including the BSD variants and all the other versions of Unix out there.

Re:not just Linux...

[kalidasa]

Next, they'll be asserting ownership over stdio.h and Hello,World.

#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
printf("Hello, Darl\n");
return (0);
}

Hey, did I just violate a SCO license?

Re:not just Linux...

[EricTheGreen]

This is just step #2 in their master plan. The final claim will be ownership of the '\n' character.

Re:not just Linux...

[scotch]

return is not a function. HTH.

Re:not just Linux...

[treat]

That's why he had the space after "return", of course.

Re:not just Linux...

[Anonymous Coward]

But does '\n' really exist?

Re:not just Linux...

[musikit]

i see this alot in text book examples of writing C code. i never understood it other then the fact that using parens () forces the evaluation of what is in them before continuing with the rest of the statement. however i could have sworn that return had the lowest priority of all operators.

I ask because 1. i am not a C/C++ expert (i do program in it alot) and 2. i've very interested

Q: can anyone provide me with sample code that will return one result with using parens () and a different result without the parens ()?

ex.

return X
vs.
return (X)

can someone give me an X for which

return X != return (X)

Re:not just Linux...

[Dominic_Mazzoni]

return is not a function. HTH.

The code still compiles and does what you'd expect it does. HTH.

Re:not just Linux...

[pclminion]

I'm sure he realizes it isn't a function. Using parentheses around a return expression is a matter of convention. Some people do it, some people don't.

For that matter, I could also say:

(printf("Hello, world!\n"));

The parens may be superflous, but they certainly don't hurt anything, and in fact they can allow you to play some cool tricks, such as redefining return:

#define return(x) {printf("Returning from %s:%d\n", __FILE__, __LINE__);return x;}

Re:not just Linux...

[Anonymous Coward]

int const x(int const y)
{
return y;
}

#define return return x

int main( int const argc, char const * const argv[] )
{
return (0);
}

Re:not just Linux...

[Magnus Reftel]

return is a statement, not an operator. To see how the parantheses affect the evaluation of the return statement, one can look at these snippets from the spec:

Section A9.6, 5th paragraph:

A function returns to its caller by the return statement. When return is followed by an expression, the value is returned to the caller of the function. The expression is converted, as if by assignment, to the type returned by the function in which it appears.

Section A7.2, 6th paragraph:

A parenthesized expression is a primary expression whose type and value are identical to those of the unadorned expression. The presence of parentheses does not affect whether the expression is an lvalue.

Thus, parentheses around the expression following the return keyword can never affect the result.

Re:not just Linux...

[musikit]

thank you.

Re:not just Linux...

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop! Stop!! You're violating the SCO license!

Re:not just Linux...

[Anonymous Coward]

SCO code used ASCII. You're using ASCII (or a charset derived from ASCII) so you're in violation too. QED.

Re:not just Linux...

[g1zmo]

If SCO owns 0x0D:
- would 0x0D 0x0A be a derived work?

If SCO owns 0x0D 0x0A:
- would 0x0D be prior art?

What if I define '\n' to be 0x00 in my next OS? Or 0x2A?

Just who's definition of '\n' might they own?

Re:not just Linux...

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm. your example is not an example where return X != return (X)

It still returns 0...

Re:not just Linux...

[hackstraw]

return x++ != return (x++)

Re:not just Linux...

[musikit]

that doesn't work
#include
int X()
{
int x=0;
return x++;
}
int Y()
{
int y=0;
return (y++);
}
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
int x = X();
int y = Y();
printf("x=%d y=%d",x,y);
return 0;
}

Re:not just Linux...

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, his example would fail to compile. the macro would resolve the return statement to "return x (0)"

Re: Re:not just Linux...

[frostman]

Dear EricTheGreen,

Your recent Slashdot post, titled "Re:not just Linux..." and currently moderated at +4/Funny, is in violation of the DMCA.

As you are probably aware, we have granted the general public a limited license to the character '\n' and this license does not include its representation in "escaped" format ('\n').

We hereby order you to remove the comment or to change it so that the copyrighted character in question is displayed in its properly licensed format, namely:

Be advised that this also applies to any posts you may make in the future, regardless of how they are moderated, and that similar restrictions apply to the character '\r' to which we own the copyright jointly with the Microsoft Corporation.

Failure to comply will result in legal fees.

Sincerely,

Dewey, Cheatham & Howe, on behalf of SCO.

Re:not just Linux...

[jd10131]

You are correct, return will always be evaluated last.

But if you are returning the result of an expression, it's just good form, IMHO. ie:

return (x != y);

is nicer than but equivalent to:
return x != y;

return (0); is just absurd, though. Excessive use of parenthesis. Must've been a lithp programmer in a previous life.

Getting further away from the topic...

Some would argue that returning directly the result of an expression is poor form; that it should be assigned to a variable. This has some merit in C++, due to the named return value optimisation. This part of the standard states that the compiler can elide the copy construction when returning an object by value, and return the object directly. This cannot be done with unnamed objects, such as might be returned from an expression you put in the return statement. (There is an arcane reason for this, which I do not recall.)

Re:not just Linux...

[Anonymous Coward]

although his program has bugs i see nothing wrong with it.

lets get less buggy version

int const x(int const y)
{
return y+5;
}

#define return return x

int main( int const argc, char const * const argv[] )
{
x= 11111; //return; //comment this line back in will return 11111
return (0); //this returns 5
}

Re:not just Linux...

[Waffle Iron]

i see this alot in text book examples of writing C code. i never understood it other then the fact that using parens () forces the evaluation of what is in them before continuing with the rest of the statement.

From the C language FAQ:

20.19: Are the outer parentheses in return statements really optional?

A: Yes.

Long ago, in the early days of C, they were required, and just enough people learned C then, and wrote code which is still in circulation, that the notion that they might still be required is widespread.

(As it happens, parentheses are optional with the sizeof operator, too, under certain circumstances.)

References: K&R1 Sec. A18.3 p. 218; ISO Sec. 6.3.3, Sec. 6.6.6; H&S Sec. 8.9 p. 254.

Re:not just Linux...

[Anonymous Coward]

...but every single C/C++ compiler out there, and every OS based on C...

Blake said this was going to be the case months ago, but he went farther. He said they own C++.

Re:not just Linux...

[swillden]

This is just step #2 in their master plan. The final claim will be ownership of the '\n' character.

Lucky for them Mac users -- they don't use '\n'!

Re:not just Linux...

[EricTheGreen]

They'll probably claim that '\cr' is a derived work and demand royalties anyway...

Re:not just Linux...

[swillden]

Good point. Under the SCO theory of derived works, the fact that '\r' has been found sitting right next to '\n' in millions of DOS/Windows text files is a clear indication that '\r' is derived. "But, look, Your Honor! '\r' has touched '\n' gazillions of times!"

Re:not just Linux...

[EricTheGreen]

And don't even get me started on '\t'...

Re:not just Linux...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wrote the code to prove that return 0; != return (0); not that the return vaules would be different. If it doesn't compile then they must not be the same.

Re:not just Linux...

[LavaDog]

// One last try, using the original post's // return X; != return(X); // (This one compiles)

#define X 1 + 1
#define return return 2 *
int main( int const argc, char const * const argv[] )
{
return (X);
}

Re:not just Linux...

[Reziac]

That silly '\n' is just the beginning. Whitespace, that's what they're REALLY after!!

Re:not just Linux...

[nytes]

Well, I think you've demonstrated that it can be done. (Looks like it would compile.)

But I'd plant a 19" CRT on the head of any experienced programmer that gave me code with either of those two #define's in it.

The X macro is asking for trouble in any statement:
X * 2 != (X) * 2

Redefining keywords?! Egad!

And if you had to do a define like that, at least make it accept an argument:
#define RETURN(zzz) return 2 * (zzz)

Re:not just Linux...

[Anonymous Coward]

The original poster wasn't asking for any real world situtation, just a case where it would make a difference.

What an odd business model

[Anonymous Coward]

SCO said they would have reported $7.4 million in earnings, if not for the $9 million payout to their lawyers.

So SCO has changed from a technology company to an employment agency for lawyers? I'd be interest to see what the step was just before "Profit!"

Re:What an odd business model

[RetroGeek]

I'd be interest to see what the step was just before "Profit!"

??
Profit!

Re:What an odd business model

[MachDelta]

Lobotomy?

Re:What an odd business model

[Anonymous Coward]

odd indeed. From the SCO website (is quoting this a DCMA violation?) :: The SCO Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: SCOX) helps millions of customers in more than 82 countries to grow their businesses with UNIX business solutions. Headquartered in Lindon, Utah, SCO has a worldwide network of more than 11,000 resellers and 4,000 developers. SCO Global Services provides reliable localized support and services to all partners and customers. For more information on SCO products and services visit http://www.sco.com . OK - so they would have made $7,000,000 in profit before lawyers, is that now call EBITDAL? (Earnings before interest, taxes, deductions, and lawyers). With 11000 resellers and 4000 developers, that is 15000 "people". 7000000/15000 yields $466.67 for the quarter per "person". But with the lawyers share, they owe $100. Where is their personel department?

Re:What an odd business model

[STrinity]

So SCO has changed from a technology company to an employment agency for lawyers? I'd be interest to see what the step was just before "Profit!"

"And then a miracle happens"

Obviously Gary Larson's found new work.

Re:What an odd business model

[Anonymous Coward]

"Get under-the-table funding from Microsoft"

Re:What an odd business model

[Anonymous Coward]

Right!

And my company made a 200 billion profit if not for the 400 billion costs...tjeees some new type of finacial insights??

No mister bank i did not made a loss we made a profit but...

Make it BSD v. SCO v. Novell

[Anonymous Coward]

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Fighting for a hidden IP Treasure.

AIX (ot)

[mekkab]

Sorry, but I love AIX. I like Kernel Extensions, I like the CDLI interface, I like the AIX trace facility, I like it all.

Re:AIX (ot)

[finkployd]

Same here, but I would contend that AIX really shines in huge enterprise settings, which most people have never come in contact with and do not really see the benefits of it.

Finkployd

Re:AIX (ot)

[mekkab]

yeah, desktop AIX isn't something that IBM has supported much... I mean there were some half-assed attempts but its pretty much server land.

Re:AIX (ot)

[nocomment]

Well I find it awkward, I fell like a rollerskating pig when using it. It may be a simple case of it being kinda old, as someone mentioned below about novell. The version of AIX I'm presently using is 4.2. Are the newer versions better? I will say that I have never seen AIX crash....ever. I just find it weird to administer (doing things through smit mainly), when compared with Solaris, BSD, or Linux.

Re:AIX (ot)

[Marrow]

Its hard to imagine how AIX could be further ahead of the rest of 'Nix. I wish I was working with it again. But I will settle for any 'Nix except HP.

Honk if you love ODM!

Re:AIX (ot)

[Anonymous Coward]

4.2? Well, then you might be using 4.2.0 or 4.2.1. After that, there was 4.3.0,.1,.2,.3. then 5.x became available, and you have 5.1.0, 5.2.0...

Basically, if you are at 4.2.x, I'd say you are still in the 199x when it comes to AIX.

Re:AIX (ot)

[lonesomeprole]

Interesting, this is the first time in a while that I have seen someone share my dislike for hpux. Congrats, welcome to the anti-SIGBUS crusade.

With great power...

[Quixadhal]

...comes great responsibility.

If SCO wants to claim ownership of things in errno.h, then I want monetary compensation for each and every segfault, since they are now SCO's responsibility, not mine!

Boy, no more having to double-check pointers in my code, whoo hoo!

Re:With great power...

[taniwha]

yeah one guy at work remarked this morning "cool now I don't have to check error returns ..."

Re:With great power...

[Anonymous Coward]

> ...comes great responsibility.

Ah. That'd be why I see The Idiot currently acting very responsibly by...uh..invading Arab countries.

Re:With great power...

[palmito]

yeah one guy at work remarked this morning "cool now I don't have to check error returns ..."

I assume you work for Microsoft.

Re:With great power...

[Anonymous Coward]

i assume you are the result of a hhuman elk erotic union

DMCA vs Godwin's Law

[NialScorva]

There needs to be some equivalent to Godwin's Law for the DMCA. How does "Given enough time, all legal battles in the tech industry will invoke the DMCA. This generally means that all constructive arguments have ended."

Re:DMCA vs Godwin's Law

[demigod]

Hence forth this shall be know as NialScorva's Law.

Re:DMCA vs Godwin's Law

[placeclicker]

thats going right into my sig :)

Re:DMCA vs Godwin's Law

[sharkey]

There needs to be some equivalent to Godwin's Law for the DMCA.

Ven der Darl says, "Vee ist der UNIX race,
Vee Heil, Heil, right in der Darl's face!"

Re:DMCA vs Godwin's Law

[Ghostx13]

Am I the only one who finds Godwin's law silly? Just because someone mentions Hitler or nazi's in no way negates an argument so long as it is sound in every other respect. I've found that Godwin's law is usually invoked when one cannot find a way to argue his(or her) side any further. Thus instead of admiting defeat or at least stalemate some one shouts "I invoke godwin's law, so I win. By the way, my daddy can kick your daddy's butt."

A better law would be something like when either party posts more than once in all caps all constructive arguments have ended.

Re:DMCA vs Godwin's Law

[Anonymous Coward]

Godwin's law actually just states that the probability that a comparison to hitler and/or the nazis will be made approaches 1 the longer a discussion goes on.

A popular corollary of the law is that you lose when you mention hitler and/or the nazis. Which is pretty fair, as they have no place in most discussions. Of course, some groups, like soc.history.war.world-war-ii, might do better to ignore the corollary.

Re:DMCA vs Godwin's Law

[ivern76]

The Chewbacca defense beats the DMCA, though.

Hrm? Facinating

[downix]

SCO is claiming that those headers were retrieved from BSDi. Well, there are folk out here that know more about headers than I, where did they come from?

Also, someone told me once that the BSD and GPL licenses were not in-exclusion, but that they could co-inhabit the same code. BSD has one set of limits, namely giving of copyright notice while GPL has other limits tied to it, but they were not mutually exclusive.

Worst spelling, EVAR!

[Anonymous Coward]

lossing - losing
erron - error
methodes - methods
comman - common
knolage - knowledge
compatablity - compatibility
seams - seems
seamed - seemed

Re:Worst spelling, EVAR!

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks, reading that post hurt my brain...

Re:Worst spelling, EVAR!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think that hurt, check out his journal:

This has not been a good weekend for me, it all started on firday when my debit card eather got losted or stolen. I hope only losted, and now my tolit in my appartment back fushed, I have reported the problem 3 times, it is when some one else flushes it comes out my tolet, the problem was I just did laundray recently and all my clean cloths were in a cloth bag in my bathroom witch was completly flooded, now I have to spend another 2 hours up so I can have cloths for tomorrow, well atlest cloths that will not smell like shit (litrualy) it is now 1:30 am for me, and I have to be up at 5:30 to help clear the snow from the parking lot at my church. and I have plans from 5:30am till atlest 8pm tomorrow (our should I say today, I tired I only got 5 hours sleep last night)

Even better news from SCO SEC filing

[zzabur]

Revenue from SCOsource licenses is expected to be minimal in the first quarter as the Company finalizes license agreements with vendors and continues to implement its intellectual property license initiative...

...Operating expenses relating to the Company's UNIX business are anticipated to remain flat during fiscal 2004. Expenses associated with SCOsource initiatives are expected to increase in fiscal 2004 as the Company pursues and expands the scope of its legal strategy to enforce and protect its UNIX intellectual property...

If the above information is correct, SCO revenue in Q1/2004 will be around 15 M$ and net loss could be >5-10 M$. It seems they don't get more money soon, they will be out of business before summer.

Re:Even better news from SCO SEC filing

[jonbryce]

Depends how much of their $70m bribe is left.

Re:Even better news from SCO SEC filing

[gamma male]

Not only do they need more money, but they need the money to be free. If they accept additional investment, like PIPE's, Boies' firm would get a contingency payout, and Baystar/RBC has the right to then veto the action as it would dilute the value of their PIPE.

About the only way that SCO can get money, is thru their existing heritage UNIX business, and their joing UNIX and Linux SCO Source venture. While SCO's got 15 million or so total from UNIX SCO Source, that appears to be dried up, and I doubt even MS will buy more of it. SCO seems to not yet have made a single dollar from Linux SCO Source.

I guess in theory, MS could realize that they've got a few linux machines for the purpose of knowing their enemy, and decide to fork over some money for them, but as MS won't admit to over a few hundred (at most!) linux boxen they won't even be able to cover Darl's $250K/year salary.

It looks increasingly like all the real cards have been played, and SCO is left grasping at straws trying to play out this game a bit longer.

Re:Even better news from SCO SEC filing

[OldManAndTheC]

Don't be surprised if some investor with deep pockets steps up to plug the hole with more cash. There seem to be plenty of folks willing to buy SCO shares on the (however remote) possibility that they will win their case. It's a long shot, but investing is gambling, after all.

Re:Even better news from SCO SEC filing

[dbIII]

It seems they don't get more money soon, they will be out of business before summer.

This is a bad thing. Darl will leave rich, have a high profile, will just tell people "If it wasn't for those pesky kids" and land an even bigger job than CEO of SCO. If something goes haywire and he ends up bankrupt, they'll be all those protected assets and the charity of his recently enriched brother who had his day in court for SCO.

In the meantime, the products for SCO will end up unsupported and die, and anyone that has worked for SCO will find it a bit more difficult to get work.

We have governments and legal systems to protect us from robber-barons like this - not the other way around.

SCO admitted ABI code was GPL

[cmcguffin]

In this interview from February, SCO themselves claimed the ABI code was GPLd:

MozillaQuest Magazine: Regarding binfmt_coff, abi-util, lcall7, abi-svr4, abi-sco; are any of these modules SCO IP?

Blake Stowell: No, none of the code in the Linux ABI modules contains SCO IP. This code is under the GPL and it re-implements publicly documented interfaces. We do not have an issue with the Linux ABI modules. The IP that we are licensing is all in the shared libraries - these libraries are needed by many OpenServer applications *in addition* to the Linux ABI.

Re:SCO admitted ABI code was GPL

[DaveAtFraud]

Your quote of Blake Stowell's interview is consistent with everything in the letter *except* the list of header files. The letter seems to be addressed specifically to existing SCO Unixware customers and seems to be aimed at keeping them from fleeing Unixware by way of running their old SCO applications under Linux using the Linux ABI.

I would think asserting an absurd copyright to a bunch of standard header files would weaken SCO's claim with little or nothing in return since their claim to hold copyright to these files will be rapidly shown to be false. On the other hand, they can probably claim that running some SCO Unixware programs under Linux using the Linux ABI violates some portion of the SCO EULA. The only thing I can think of is they are attempting to assert copyright to the defining ABI header files as a means of making the EULA violation enforceable under copyright law.

Odd coincidence: a finding in SCO's favor that an unauthorized, third-party ABI infringes their copyright would also allow Microsoft to go after Lindows and WINE.

I listened to the call

[El_Smack]

After seeing the number posted on /., I dialed it up and listened. I have to say that, even though I know what they are doing is messed up, they put some very posive spin on thier situation, albiet that is the purpose of this conference call.
One of the first questions in the Q and A period was "If I pay the $699, do I have rights to use the source and continue to run Linux?" Darl very neatly sidestepped half the question and answered "Yes, you can continue to run the binary (emphasis mine) within the agreement."

From that, I take it that if you pay, you can run the kernel, but they won't say you can play with it.

Re:I listened to the call

[f0rtytw0]

It would amuse me to no end if Linus called and asked that question.

Re:I listened to the call

[hackstraw]

...you can continue to run the binary...

What do you expect from a "Binary Runtime License"?

Slylandro

[Leffe]

The Slylandro incident... I remember that. Luckily I made peace in the galaxy.

Is it enough to change the comments at the top?

[BerntB]

SCO's only argument is that free distribution of errno.h (etc) is allowed -- but not with a GNU copyright header?!

It should then be enough to copy the BSD comments in the beginning and replace the copyright on errno.h, signal.h, etc.

Or?

(As another user noted, errno.h et al are also parts of ANSI standards for C...)

Otherwise -- thanks, SCO -- finally I might get a kick on my backside to take the trouble to install and try OpenBSD! :-)

Re:Is it enough to change the comments at the top?

[jonbryce]

Which of course is rubbish. The BSD licence allows you to put a GPL copyright header on it, or even an MS EULA on it.

Re:Is it enough to change the comments at the top?

[Edward Scissorhands]

NO. You cannot slap another license or copyright header on BSD code. I do not know how this rumour got started, but the BSD license is very clear. You must retain the BSD copyright notice in the source code, and, in the case of binary redistribution, you must have the software display the BSD license. If you read the copyright information for MS Windows, for example, either on the Windows installation CD, or, IIRC, at the bottom of the EULA flashed during installation, the BSD copyright notice is there.

If a Linux kernel programmer took some header files from FreeBSD or 4.4BSD, for example, but removed the BSD copyright notice, that is a violation of the BSD license terms. HOWEVER, that does not mean that SCO was wronged. The only party that could sue for violation of the BSD license is, of course, the Regents of the University of California. AFAIK, but IANAL.

Re:Is it enough to change the comments at the top?

[Minna Kirai]

I do not know how this rumour

It's not a rumor, it's true. Your very own post shows how it's true.

First you say "You cannot slap another license or copyright header on BSD code." Then you go on with "You must retain the BSD copyright notice in the source code, and, in the case of binary redistribution,"

What you might not understand is that the latter statement doesn't prevent the former. It's entirely possible to slap another license on BSD code, while still retaining the previous copyright statement.

Just take a BSD program, modify two lines, paste the GPL to the front of the file, and you're done (when a file is under multiple licenses, anyone wanting to copy it must obey all of them.)

Adding additional copyright headers happens all the time with real code: any company that has touched a file will append it's own notice to the top, while leaving the others intact.

Re:Is it enough to change the comments at the top?

[Zeelan]

The only thing that the BSD people require is that you put in their copyright notice. You can slap a different licence on it if you wished. Hence... windows sells BSD software... probable with a lot of modifications... but still gives BSD the copyright.

Re:Is it enough to change the comments at the top?

[Edward Scissorhands]

First of all, the link you provide doesn't address any issue related to this discussion. It merely outlines the changes to the BSD license wrt to the advertising clause from a few years ago.

I don't disagree with you that it's possible to add or modify a source code file released under BSD license and then add a GPL to the added or modified parts. But remember that the GPL will only apply to the code you've changed/added. The rest of the original code still falls under the BSD license, and you have to follow both licenses if you want to use the code. So, we agree.

However, there was nothing contradictory in the parent.

I do maintain that you can't relicense BSD code under the GPL. When you add the GPL to a source file that you've modified, the GPL only applies to the parts that you've modified, not all of the code in the file. If somebody came along and took your modified source file and copied and pasted some of the code into their own file, and if they only copied lines of code that you didn't modify, they would be bound by the BSD license and not necessarily the GPL. However, if they copied your code, they would be bound by the GPL and not necessarily the BSD license. Sure, it's difficult to tell which lines were in the original and which were in the modified version but it does seem like the licenses apply to the code itself, and not the entire file. Like I said, it seems like we agree, but I don't see how what I said was contradictory.

Re:Is it enough to change the comments at the top?

[gsfprez]

NO. You cannot slap another license or copyright header on BSD code.

really?

here are the terms of the BSD license...

(begin)
The BSD License

Copyright (c) 1998, Regents of the University of California.
All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
are met:

* Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

* Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above
copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following
disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided
with the distribution.

* Neither name of the University nor the names of its
contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived
from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS''
AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED
TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR
CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL,
SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT
LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF
USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND
ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY,
OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT
OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
SUCH DAMAGE.
(end)

i see nothing stopping me from slapping another license on it. Where am i told "thou shalt not modify this license". So long as i do the 3 things they ask, I can pretty much do whatever i want with it, seems to me.

That's the beauty of the BSD license - or the curse (ESR the All-Knowing, ESR the All-Compassionate) of it.

Now - ALL that said... SCO's arguement is just silly...

I went to my source code, put in the BSD license (above) into each of the files listed in their header. I'm now in compliance!

(Beavis)Thank you, drive thru.

Jeebus Tapdancing Christo... SCO is amazing.

Re:Is it enough to change the comments at the top?

[Edward Scissorhands]

I agree that the restrictions on BSD-licensed code are pretty much non-existent. But my understanding of licenses is that the licensor must be the copyright holder if the license has any chance of hell of being upheld in court. Licenses are grants of permission for use from the copyright holder to licensees. I was under the impression that it was this fact that made the GPL so potent. The BSD license does not transfer copyright from the Regents to the user. See my post elsewhere in this thread for the details on why I think that you can't technically relicense BSD code, though you can modify BSD code and release your modifications under a different license.

Re:Is it enough to change the comments at the top?

[Minna Kirai]

First of all, the link you provide doesn't address any issue related to this discussion. It merely outlines the changes to the BSD license wrt to the advertising clause from a few years ago.

Changes that were added at the FSF's request so that BSD code could be relicensed as GPL.

When a BSD file is relicensed GPL, all terms of BSD continue to apply. But since BSD is a strict subset of GPL, it is equivalent to GPL being the only license left.

But remember that the GPL will only apply to the code you've changed/added.

Nope. Unless you have some magical way of knowing exactly which lines were changed. And in practice, nobody documents edits that closely. The only way you could discover which parts were GPL and which were unmodified BSD was if you had an original BSD version to compare with (at which point it's a moot question, because you can copy directly from that)

The same goes for if a PD file is released under GPL (or any other copyright license, as when a publisher reprints Shakespere). You may copy it only once you can precisely determine which sections are PD. That can only be done with the PD version in hand, making it irrelevant.

However, there was nothing contradictory in the parent.

I never said it was contradictory- the opposite in fact. I said there is actually no contradiction between "You may not remove copyright notice" and "Slap on another license".

Your mistake is that you used "slap on" when you meant to say "replace". The latter may violate BSD, but the former doesn't.

Re:Is it enough to change the comments at the top?

[tigga]

Which of course is rubbish. The BSD licence allows you to put a GPL copyright header on it, or even an MS EULA on it

Please differenciate coyright and license. You can't change copyright on your own - only on agreement with author. You may change license but have to retain copyright notice.

Re:Is it enough to change the comments at the top?

[Edward Scissorhands]

Ah yes, I see what you mean. I did mean "slap on" as "replace", and I understood the parent of my post to mean replace. However, I am still under the impression that a specific product would be less likely to have its use challenged if the licensor is also the copyright holder. There is something that I find morally strange about licensing something and not being the copyright holder of that thing. I still think that in a very technical sense, the license does apply specifically to the lines of code in question. But I do think that you are right in the defacto case.

Re:Is it enough to change the comments at the top?

[greenrd]

I agree that the restrictions on BSD-licensed code are pretty much non-existent. But my understanding of licenses is that the licensor must be the copyright holder if the license has any chance of hell of being upheld in court.

No problemo. There is something called collective copyright (or similar, can't remember the exact name). Even though I might not be the copyright holder of A,B,C, if I publish A+B+C in a specific format I can copyright that specific collective arrangement of text/code/whatever. Of course, I am still bound by the licenses of A, B and C.

Dear Santa

[neurojab]

Dear Santa,

My christmas wish is for the SCO stockholders to wake up and realize they're being taken for a ride. That way the rest of the world could get on with their lives without worrying about being bitten in the ankles by Daryl McBride. For Daryl, I wish a long stay in the relaxing resort for his kind of folk known as Utah State Prison. I wish for him a large roommate named Bubba.

Peace.
An ordinary Linux user.

Re:Dear Santa

[Anonymous Coward]

Aww.. he'll have a cute darling bride indeed.

Re:Dear Santa

[sharkey]

That way the rest of the world could get on with their lives without worrying about being bitten in the ankles by Daryl McBride. For Daryl, I wish a long stay in the relaxing resort for his kind of folk known as Utah State Prison.

Santa,
While you're at it, could you possibly see your way clear to taking Darl McBride from SCO as well? I'm sure he and Daryl, whoever he is, will get along famously. They have the same last name, even!

Re:Dear Santa

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks, but no one cares how Dumbass McBride spells his name.

Re:Dear Santa

[thales]

Dear Santa,

I Would like the SEC to implement a freeze on the buying and selling of SCOX so that the slimeballs playing the pump & dump scam will take it in the ass when the stock collapses.

Re:Dear Santa

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean "Elder Bubba". Darl could be the latest of Elder Bubba's many "wives" (known in the Federal Temple as "bitches").

Re:Dear Santa

[Anonymous Coward]

Last Trade: 17.73
Trade Time: 3:59PM ET
Change: 1.07 (5.69%)
Prev Close: 18.80
Open: 19.28
Bid: 0.04 x 100
Ask: 892.00 x 100
1y Target Est: 25.50

Day's Range: 17.08 - 19.31
52wk Range: 1.09 - 22.29
Volume: 738,748
Avg Vol (3m): 334,636
Market Cap: 245.49M
P/E (ttm): 93.32
EPS (ttm): 0.19
Div & Yield: N/A (N/A)
----->

Speaking of which, look at that bid/ask spread!
Bid: 0.04 x 100
Ask: 892.00 x 100

Someone wants to buy 100 shares... for 4 cents... how generous of them, heh :)
Someone else wants to unload 100 of them... at $892 per share... !?

Perhaps Darl will be glad his brother is a lawyer, specializing in securities fraud litigation?

Re:Dear Santa

[Anonymous Coward]

Daryl McBride cares - he's continually getting the short end of the stick from careless semi-literate slashdotters. Poor bastard.

The smear continues

[crimethinker]

Can't you just feel the love?

The company has not made available for export, directly or indirectly, any part of UNIX covered by their agreement to any country that is currently prohibited from receiving supercomputing technology, including Syria, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and any other such country, through a distribution under the General Public License (GPL) for Linux, or otherwise.

That's right, boys and girls, the GPL is a tool for TERRORISTS and COMMUNISTS!

Every day I see SCO's stock price and I mutter to myself, "it's just not fair."

-paul

Re:The smear continues

[ivanmarsh]

That's funny... When I worked for SCO (proper) back in the '80's (the guys that actually wrote the code) were communists and socialists... a few of them were anarchists for that matter.

We are talking about Santa Cruz, California after all.

Re:The smear continues

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, that is not true.

Re:The smear continues

[Thavius]

Well, the US government just upped our terror level. I suppose this has something to do with it. I know I'm scared.

IBM will likely buy Novell

[Anonymous Coward]

for their Suse/Ximian Linux technology and just as a side-effect it will render this SCO lawsuit moot.

Could I use that excuse?

[UnknowingFool]

SCO said they would have reported $7.4 million in earnings, if not for the $9 million payout to their lawyers.

Damn, can I use that excuse? I would have been in the black this month if I had not had to pay my bills. But seriously, this really tells a great deal of SCO's financial picture. Their money is running out. Their legal bills are mounting. This letter is nothing more than it appears: Desperation to get any last revenue that they can get.

On another note, has anybody looked at the headers that SCO has mentioned. I'm willing to bet that some of them are legacy to BSD not SCO.

Re:Could I use that excuse?

[spuke4000]

I don't know if SCO's money is running out. They lost $1.6 million in a quarter. But didn't they get a $50 million investment not too long ago? At this rate they can go another 31 quarters just on that investment... (all of this assumes that the $1.6 million was their total loss for the quarter, after all expenses)

HAHAHAHAAHAH

[Anonymous Coward]

MUAHAHHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

this is so darn funny. I own headerfiles.. I own idea of compilation.. I own computer languages.. I own english.. hahahahaahahah

drinking game:

[gotem]

take a sip everytime the letter says "copyright"

Re:drinking game:

[LordLucless]

Taken from a SCO board meeting?

The FreeBSD file says:

[Anonymous Coward]

From /usr/include/sys/ipc.h

* Copyright (c) 1988 University of Utah.
* Copyright (c) 1990, 1993
* The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
* (c) UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
* All or some portions of this file are derived from material licensed
* to the University of California by American Telephone and Telegraph
* Co. or Unix System Laboratories, Inc. and are reproduced herein with
* the permission of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
*
* This code is derived from software contributed to Berkeley by
* the Systems Programming Group of the University of Utah Computer
* Science Department.
*
* Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
* modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
* are met:
* 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
* notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

The Linux code I just looked at is lacking the copyright notice like the above.

If taken from BSD or SYSV, it is a licence violation because of clause #1.

Re:The FreeBSD file says:

[Crispy Critters]

"The Linux code I just looked at is lacking the copyright notice like the above."

Accept hypothetically that some Linux coder got a little too happy with his cut and paste from BSD code and left out some copyrights. Then all that needs to be done is add the copyright notices back in.

Now the important question: How has SCO been monetarily damaged by the lack of BSD copyright notices in a few header files? About 37 cents? 'Cause all they can do is ask for damages and that the copyright notices be fixed.

Re:The FreeBSD file says:

[Anonymous Coward]

Accept hypothetically that some Linux coder got a little too happy with his cut and paste from BSD code and left out some copyrights.

In Linux 2.0.36 kernel there is a networking headder file where the BSD licence is gone and the coder admits that they took the code from FreeBSD.

So you say 'coder got a little too happy' I say 'thief' and Darl has to have lawyers convince a judge that is was a theft.

Then all that needs to be done is add the copyright notices back in.

Gee, what about actual PUNISHMENT for breaking the law? Rabid GPLers are more than happy to whine when the GPL is infringed....what about with the GPL zealots step on anothers rights?

How has SCO been monetarily damaged by the lack of BSD copyright notices in a few header files?

I don't know. My guess not 3 billion and a bit more than 37 cents. To make the judgement symbolic it would have to be at least $1.

Re:The FreeBSD file says:

[Anonymous Coward]

But is it the same file? To my knowledge it's been rewritten from scratch.

Re:The FreeBSD file says:

[plj]

Accept hypothetically that some Linux coder got a little too happy with his cut and paste from BSD code and left out some copyrights.

It's not like that. The coder could well have been Linus himself, and the reason is below (verbatim copy of a comment posted to LWN, emphasis mine):

(Posted Dec 22, 2003 18:03 UTC (Mon) by doitroygsbre) (Post reply)

IANAL

Ok, I read an article on groklaw (I think) that made a pretty good guess as to what SCO's claim is. They are claiming that the settlement reached between BSD and novell required that certain files in BSD have copyright notices added. The files that SCO is complaining about were added to linux before the settlement was reached and since the settlement was only made known to Novell and the BSD developers (sorry, can't quite remember exactly who was involved in the settlement) no one knew to add the copyright notices to linux. Now that SCO has possibly inherited the Novell side of the settlement, they're trying to claim copyright infringement because linux has these files without the notices. Even though they were released under the BSD license without the notices before the settlement.

Oh well, I'm starting to wonder if I'll live long enough to see this whole mess sorted

Re:The FreeBSD file says:

[RealAlaskan]

>>Accept hypothetically that some Linux coder got a little too happy with his cut and paste from BSD code and left out some copyrights.

>In Linux 2.0.36 kernel there is a networking headder file where the BSD licence is gone and the coder admits that they took the code from FreeBSD.

>So you say 'coder got a little too happy' I say 'thief' and Darl has to have lawyers convince a judge that is was a theft.

Copyright violations aren't theft, they're (follow this closely, it's tricky) copyright violations. They are not called theft because they're different. Different act, different name. Told you it was tricky.

Where does Darl come in? It's BSD's copyright; did BSD make Darl their agent? I don't think so. If there was a screwup (which remains to be shown), the quarrel is between BSD and Linux, with no room at all in there for SCO.

>>Then all that needs to be done is add the copyright notices back in.

>Gee, what about actual PUNISHMENT for breaking the law?

The usual, when there's a GPL violation, is that the violation cease, at least when the FSF is enforcing the terms of the agreement. I suspect that it would take some pretty egregious bad behavior, and some serious profits involved, to get a court to actually see monetary damages as being in any way appropriate.

Re:The FreeBSD file says:

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, these go back at least as far as Sys III. That's right, the "ancient Unix" freed by SCO when it was Caldera. Download it at planet mirror.

So, the BSD license probably isn't even relevant.

Re:The FreeBSD file says:

[Anonymous Coward]

Where does Darl come in? It's BSD's copyright;

Reading is a tricky part, no?

From the file * (c) UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.

So looks to me like Darl's Caldera (the Linux company) -> now called SCO is an owner of record.

Copyright violations aren't theft, they're (follow this closely, it's tricky) copyright violations. They are not called theft because they're different. Different act, different name. Told you it was tricky.

Did you go look at the 2.0.36 kernel code?

You will note 'new' authors.

So, yup, still theft.

Just because SCO hasn't been forthcoming, doesn't mean that theft and copyright violations havn't happened.

Re:The FreeBSD file says:

[Archie Steel]

Not theft. Copyright violation. Please learn the difference.

What will the judge say? If she has any sense (and judges usually do) she will ask that the situation be corrected. SCO has a duty to mitigate its damages, something which it hasn't done.

If damages were to be awarded for this, I'm pretty sure they would be symbolic (i.e. 1 dollar).

Re:The FreeBSD file says:

[frobisch]

But the code from ipc.h (glibc-devel-2.2.4-32, rh7.1) also looks very different beside the copyright notice than FreeBSD (4.6 i have here on a free shell accout), so why should there be that copyright notice?

I worry it could be worse

[Dr. Spork]

Novell might be thinking: "Hey, if the millions of legal fees actually produce some settlements for SCO, we can ride their gravy train with no investment at all; If a judge rules that someone owes SCO money, we will be owed that very same money. That would be money for nuthin, who can turn that down?"

So, I hope Novell has their heart in the right place. But really, this depends on the judges. To sue over header files is so damn crazy, the real winners are obviously the people who ran off with $9 million in legal fees. What did the lawyers tell SCO that made them think this is a good investment when the case is so absurdly flimsy? That must have been a home-run sales pitch!

Re:I worry it could be worse

[psychoid]

Novell is one of the good guys. They are moving all of their services to Linux; there is no way that they would jeopardize the goodwill of the community for a few bucks.

Re:I worry it could be worse

[dabraham]

Umm, didn't SCO do that exact same thing not all that long ago?...

Re:I worry it could be worse

[psychoid]

Think about it:
Novell is a company who used to be REALLY BIG then got spanked by the Great Beast in Redmond because of their marketing-department-that-couldn't. They had the best enterprise products, but nobody wanted to write apps on the NetWare platform. They've been in steady decline since '96.

NetWare is dying and Novell needs a new platform. Linux is perfect because people are writing applications for it. So, in Novell's thinking, if they can deploy the NetWare services like file/print/Directory/Web Svcs on a Linux kernel, they have the best of both worlds.

The one thing that they have to be conscious of, and I believe they have, is their perception in the OSS community. Novell knows that they need community approval in order to be successful. If the community dislikes what they're doing, people won't buy their products and they will become irrelevant.

So, I re-iterate that Novell has to be one of the "good guys" or they will just end up screwing themselves.

Re:I worry it could be worse

[red floyd]

NetWare is dying

I thought it was *BSD that was dying? :-)

Novell can now sue SCO!

[codepunk]

Now isn't this funny, Novell can sue SCO former Caldera for copyright and contract breach. Caldera placed the old SYS V code under a open source license and made it available for download. So what gave Caldera the right's to do this if the code is Novell's?

Makes for Interesting Thought!

Re:Vote bush out of office

[bethane]

Wait a minute! We're supposed to "Take back our freedom!" by voting Democrat??

Who was in office when the DMCA was signed? Bill Clinton. Umm, what party was he a member of again?

Here's the frustrating thing. I've talked to so many self-proclaimed "Democrats" who have plenty of good ideas, but don't seem to cohesively and logically put all of it together. They'll make statements I completely agree with, but then turn around and claim that members of their beloved party are all for those statements - when they're clearly (and publically) opposed to them!

Meanwhile, yes, Republicans are really screwing up the country too, in the name of "freedom and democracy", no less.

THIS is why the Libertarian party exists! Right now, nobody who can do basic math would sanely argue that a Libertarian candidate has good odds of getting elected next term. Still, what you CAN do is research the candidates on the major 2 platforms and pick out the ones who side with Libertarian beliefs. Next election, whatever you do - DON'T just pull that lever to vote for everyone on one party! Pick and choose the people who are doing the right things, no matter what title they run under. These days, you have "Republicrats" and "Demicans", and lots of people in between.

This is worth a lawsuit?!

[RyanFenton]

Error numbers, IO control function names, and abstract type specifications? Repeated 6 times, once for each platform?

This is a joke. Less than a joke - this is like the framework of a joke, without the topics or punchline filled in. It's like Microsoft hiring Yakov Smirnoff to sue anyone on Slashdot who had a .sig that could be seen as somewhat like his humor style.

Ryan Fenton

TTV, behind the code.

[Libertarian_Geek]

When all of this is said and done, TechTV needs to do a "Behind The Music" style documentary. Just let your imaginations run wild on this one. How about some ideas? Darl with a bad comb-over talking about how the technical community turned their backs on him during his cry for help. An exclusive interview with Tux.

HA HA HA, SCO!

[herrvinny]

Wow, two SCO stories in one day. It might be better just to dedicate a brand new /. section on sco (sco.slashdot.org or caldera.slashdot.org, etc).

Yes, SCO is definitely going down. Anyone have new ideas on what I should put up on SCO Report or SCO Countdown?

Re:HA HA HA, SCO!

[Anonymous Coward]

The goatse guy, obviously :)

Re:HA HA HA, SCO!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody cares about your shitty websites.

Stop plugging them. They suck.

Re:You people called it upon yourselves

[ivanmarsh]

There are VERY strict controls over what gets into the kernel.

This is nothing but FUD.

System 7 and ancient code

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how many of these headers are from System 7 and the ancient code that SCO itself made available?

Re:System 7 and ancient code

[hackstraw]

my (rh7.3) signal.h and errno.h say they are copyright of GNU C library and conform to ISO C99. The sys/ioctl.h says GNU C library (and has one function prototype in it) says its GNU. I'm pretty sure that there are at least a couple of thousand UNIX developers that could reproduce these files from memory.

The one that SCO could have writen is sys/errno.h which says: #include :)

Re:System 7 and ancient code

[Anonymous Coward]

Pedantic quibble: Version 7 is UNIX, which was follwed by System III and System V which is the current state of the art as original UNIX goes. There is no System 7 or System VII for UNIX.

"System 7" is an old Mac OS version.

Re:System 7 and ancient code

[Curtman]

I'm pretty sure that there are at least a couple of thousand UNIX developers that could reproduce these files from memory

So how long until Richard Stevens gets his subpoena? Because my texbook is full of SCO's IP! ;)

errno evil, cno evil, signal evil

[bunhed]

tune in next week when darl claims copyright on /dev/null and all computer dates since 1970...

#define COPYRIGHT NULL;
#define SCO SIG_HUP;

Look at the monkey!

[Zelatrix]

Claiming copyright on this list of files is so nonsensical, it must be a distraction tactic.

After all, SCO have already stated that 2.2 does not infringe.

So what are we supposed to not be looking at at the moment? Oh look, the quarterly financial statement just got published. And even booking revunue on shipment rather than payment (along with other dodgy accounting practices) couldn't stop a net loss.

Something crooked is going on here. This letter is an irrelevance.

Re:Look at the monkey!

[iminplaya]

"This letter is an irrelevance."
Yeah, and how they got into my pajamas I'll never know.

Re:Hrm? Facinating

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about other people, but my copies of those header files came with my copy of Caldera(R) OpenLinux(tm)! So I guess that means I'm immune to their lawsuits. And look! They gave me the right to redistribute them too! I'll have this whole thing cleared up in a jiffy.

Re:SIG Must gooo! its the gay GOATSE.CX guy

[turbod]

Didn't your Momma tell you not to click on strange sigs?!

Long ago I quit clicking on slashdot sig links. *Especially* when it has goat in the link text :P

TurboD

Breakdown

[chaoticset]

Profit for SCO's lawyers: 9 million
Earnings for SCO: -1.6 million
Watching SCO die and set a precedent for anybody who tries stupid legal things with Linux: Priceless

Re:Breakdown

[fermion]

We have to assume that the lawyers have significant costs, just like a mechanic or a software house or salesperson. It takes big wads of cash to send out DCMA notices, hire private investogators to harrass *nix people, and payoff congresspersons and prostitutes. I would suspect that like SCO, the profit will only be made if they win.

And remember, SCO says they would have made 7 million but they were high.

A few .h files?

[panZ]

Gee, my company's error.h and types.h are similar. Oh wait, every god-damn company I've ever worked for has similar .h files because this is basic, common interface shit.
Its like saying "we patented the play, pause, record and rewind buttons on our model of VCR, the rest of you fuckers with tape, CD and DVD players on the market better pay us for this inovative interface!"
I don't know whether to laugh or cry over this.

Re:A few .h files?

[jrexilius]

uhhm.. one-click shopping, embeded applications in a browser (plugins), geez.. what were all the other bullshit patents in the news this year..

point being that law and sanity have nothing to do with eachother. Think of them as the matter/anti-matter guys in star trek..

Re:A few .h files?

[panZ]

I'm sure this will be posted a billion times on /. but here is what Linux said in response. http:/ /marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=107212899 108511
hehe

MOD UP!

[Anonymous Coward]

modulicious

What happened to '4 quarters of profitabiity'? ...

[compactable]

... previous pump-n-dump speculation mentioned that there needed to be 4 quarters of profitabliy before Darl got a big bonus kick-in - this appears not to have happened. Am I missing something obvious, was this 100% fabrication, or did Darl get nailed here?

Thanks for clarifying, if possible

Listen to their conference call here

[ssheth]

SCO Group Fourth Quarter 2003 Webcast and Conference Call

Re:Listen to their conference call here

[moncyb]

Ah ha! So you're the one DDoSing SCO's website! Posting links to their servers on Slashdot. Naughty boy.

False economy

[base_chakra]

SCO said they would have reported $7.4 million in earnings, if not for the $9 million payout to their lawyers.

Of course, if they hadn't paid a team of lawyers $9 million, then they wouldn't have had any net earnings to report (again).

In other news

[nsushkin]

In other news, SCO filse a patent for the use of integers 1-7 for error numbers.

The Q and A part of the call

[El_Smack]

After Darl and Co. had finished, but before most of the FUD could settle, was a Q and A period.
One of the most interesting questions was "Of the really large Linux users, how many have licenced from you?" The answer was "We haven't had anyone over the 5000 CPU amount buy a licence, but a couple of them are thinking about it."

Or, in other words: "No one big is buying our BS, cause they have a legal team that knows we are full of it. Or at least is willing to wait it out and see where the chips fall, rather than believing our hype."
To me, that speaks volumes about their case.

Re:The Q and A part of the call

[AndroidCat]

They did have one really large Linux user buy a licence: The really large guy with the XXL t-shirt that's a few Xs too small, has a beard that's never been trimmed, glasses. Yeah, him.

Re:The Q and A part of the call

[Anonymous Coward]

That describes about half of all Slashdotters!

I'm afraid you're going to have to be much more specific than that!

mod parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

libertarian is the way to go


a href="http://www.cato.org/">The Cato Institute

seagulls from Finding Nemo

[potpie]

SCO, Novella- pretty much all the big players in this game... remind me of the seagulls from Finding Nemo. "mine?" "mine?" "mine?" "mine?" "mine?" "mine?" "mine!" "MINE!"

Re:seagulls from Finding Nemo

[RPoet]

Agree totally. Those seagulls are quite characteristic of a lot of things, not least of all SCO claims of lately. Pity about the offtopic mod.

No substance

[RDPIII]

So they're claiming they own the copyright on errno.h. This is insane. Even if there are substantial similarities between Linux's various errno.h-s and SCO's version, how many ways are there to implement errno.h? It's a bunch of friggin' macro definitions with more or less standard names and more or less standard values. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought one could only copyright original works, but what's original about a bunch of #define-s?

Re:No substance

[#define]

Nope. Nothing original about me here, now move along....

Re:No substance

[jrumney]

Not only errno.h, they are also claiming ownership of bsderrno.h!

Re:Thats not funny. #!*@& moderators

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm...methinks Bill is jealous coz his smashingly brilliant post didn't go anywhere

trump cards

[thoolihan]

Novell should have a pretty powerful position in this. Having formerly possessed the code, they could site a lot of examples of exposing the code to various companies and members of the public. Thus negating the strength of SCO's claims that these things are trade secrets or other types of information that *in legal eyes* deserves special protection. But, with as many companies as there are involved, who knows how this will shake down.

-t

At first glance...

[jd]

I wasn't reading clearly, or something. I could have sworn the title read "SCO invokes Devil, Hades steps in".

On second thought, maybe that wasn't so inaccurate.

Re:At first glance...

[subk]

Big Red == Hades?

I guess that means I work in a furnace.

The important question, I think

[mcc]

By sending out these clearly fraudulent DMCA notices-- which at best claim copyright over something which is uncopyrightable, and at worst is an attempt by a third party to claim that it is illegal for people to use the materials owned by the BSD raegents under the BSD license in the manner in which the BSD raegents intended the BSD license to be used-- has SCO opened itself up to legal action?

SCO has in the past managed to sidestep most allegations of fraud by being horrendously vague. They said that they were owned money but never sent any invoices, sidestepping mail fraud. They tried to present things as if you needed an SCO license to use linux, but if you tried to talk to talk to them, they were actually selling UnixWare licenses and not in the process actually distributing linux to you, sidestepping GPL violations. However, this is entirely non-vague. It seems to me that SCO has stepped over some sort of line here and this is actionable.

I know that the DMCA does not seem to have many consequences for people who send out bad takedown notices, but surely there must be something preventing company A from finding lists of competitor B's customers and sending them takedown notices for using some portion of competitor B's product that company A does not, in fact, own.

At the least, can this be added to the lanham act/ restraint of trade/ libel or whatever countersuits that Redhat and IBM have going? What are the options from here, and what will actually happen?

Re:The important question, I think

[Canis]

They bandy the DMCA about a lot, but it's not an official DMCA 'takedown' notice. If it were, it'd be a whole lot more interesting: A 'takedown' notice requires you to make a declaration under penalty of perjury.

Re:The important question, I think

[Anonymous Coward]

I know that the DMCA does not seem to have many consequences for people who send out bad takedown notices

It does, sort of. They have to swear an affadavit stating they have a good faith belief that the subpoena is based on something. Swearing an affadavit is the equivelant of testifying under oath, so perjury applies. Also, your standard Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 11 Sanctions apply, since the documents are signed. Now, a "good faith belief" is a very generous legal term, so it's hard to win with it. But at least it prevents one from going on absolutely nothing.

errno.h and signal.h are from POSIX

[minkwe]

http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007904975/base defs/errno.h.html#tag_13_10

Do these guys have any brains at all?

Re:errno.h and signal.h are from POSIX

[Kevinv]

Your url has an extra space in it. Run the base defs into one word and it'll work.

http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007904975/base defs/errno.h.html#tag_13_10

Re:errno.h and signal.h are from POSIX

[jrexilius]

Excerpt from the definition you linked above: "Some of the functionality described on this reference page extends the ISO C standard. Any conflict between the requirements described here and the ISO C standard is unintentional. This volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 defers to the ISO C standard. [Option End]" Which implies that ISO also defines this as a standard.

Re:errno.h and signal.h are from POSIX

[Animats]

Your url has an extra space in it.

Slashdot does that to long words. URLs should be expressed in HTML.

uhm?

[Anonymous Coward]

What gives Novell the right, any more than SCO, to claim these rights over UNIX? Is this not just Novell doing the exact same thing as SCO, claiming that not only do SCO NOT own them, but infact, Novell does.

Re:Vote bush out of office

[Scarblac]

Here's the frustrating thing. I've talked to so many self-proclaimed "Democrats" who have plenty of good ideas, but don't seem to cohesively and logically put all of it together. They'll make statements I completely agree with, but then turn around and claim that members of their beloved party are all for those statements - when they're clearly (and publically) opposed to them!

I'm looking from the outside, but it sure seems to me that Republicans are exactly the same.

Screw this

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pulling out my Commodore 64, so I don't have to put up with all this BS. Oh. Wait. It runs Microsoft Basic.... damnit, there is no escape!!!

Re:Screw this

[Anonymous Coward]

Avoid BASIC: ACE

ACE is an alternative uni-tasking operating system for the C128 and C64 that provides a Unix-like command shell.

:)

Headers

[tiny69]

So SCO is claiming ownership of a bunch of #define, #ifdef, #ifndef, and struct statements. What happened to the millions of lines of code that Linux was infringing on? Even IF (big if) they can prove ownership of those files, about all they can claim is Copyright infringement. I don't see how trade secrets, methods, or know-how (SCO's words since they can't claim anything stronger) can be found in header files.

The lawsuit against IBM is still a contract dispute. Even though SCO claimed they would be adding Copyright infringement claims against IBM, they have yet to do so. My guess is they haven't made any Copyright infringement claims yet because even they are not 100% sure if they really own any of the code. And making false claims in court would kill their lawsuit.

When Caldera first obtained the old UNIX source code, they wanted to release ALL of it under an Open Source license. But they were not able to because to many other people and companies still have rights via Copyright to the code the other parties added.

The letter that SCO is sending out is just one more thing that will come back to haunt them.

Re:Headers

[RevHippie]

So SCO is claiming ownership of a bunch of #define, #ifdef, #ifndef, and struct statements. What happened to the millions of lines of code that Linux was infringing on? Maybe they're counting every place those macros are used.

Re:Headers

[Anonymous Coward]

That is there trade secret. Unixware is written using only macro definitions...

Re:Headers

[OgGreeb]

There are millions of lines. 65 header files times the number of people using linux kernels. Should be in the billions soon. 8-)

Novell guaranteed IBM won't buy with SuSE purchase

[brokeninside]

IBM might invest a bit in Novell, but big blue will not be buying the red box anytime soon. IBM does not want control of Linux. They want the ability to add to Linux, but have Linux remain an independent entity. If Linux rules the software world, IBM can compete on its merits as a hardware/services company. Which other vendors would keep serving up Linux if IBM owned its own distribution?

I don't use guns, but.... (OT)

[rbird76]

I thought the only real rule for gun caliber was "Use enough gun."

Considering the topic of the thread, that might not be as offtopic as it seems - IBM seems to have no difficulty doing so, while SCO seems to have entered a gunfight with a slingshot and ice pellets.

Trade Secret Do not look

[codepunk]

int errorno;

I wish I was laughing...

[Chordonblue]

In my crystal ball I see Darl and his bro on a beach someplace warm and tropical... Not that I want to you understand.

Hey, it's like that 'water mirror' in FOTR - I can't control what it shows!

No, they might be right about that

[Anonymous Coward]

The letter states it was "not practical to provide individual caculations" for the refunds. Yeah, right!

Perhaps they have one guy hand writing out hundreds of thousands of checks for these small amounts like Steve Martin in The Jerk.

Dear lord man, learn to spell

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never seen anything so obscene in my life. Do the world a favor and run everything you type through a spell checker.

articals - articles
clame - claim
alowed - allowed

Re:Dear lord man, learn to spell

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh. I see it everyday in Washington DC.

Re:Dear lord man, learn to spell

[ResidentLinuxLunatic]

Hukt on fonix wurkt fir mee. Haow ubaowt u?

Re:Dear lord man, learn to spell

[Anonymous Coward]

come back when you know four languages.

till then go fuck yourself, you uneducated simpleton.

Post your comment at Groklaw

[bstadil]

Hi, This is an excellent analogy. Post it over at Groklaw as the IBM lawyers looks at that.

Analogies are important, as an example when IBM presented their case for discovery here in early december, they printed a HUGE book with thousand of pages and a little book with way fewer.

They then told the judge that SCO tells us that there is some code in here Pointing to the Big book, but will not tell us where it is.

Your analogy might play well with a Jury as well.

Re:Vote bush out of office

[Anonymous Coward]

When will you Libertarians just give up?! The LP (and I should know... I've been reading their newsletter for a year now) is hardly the party to join if you care about reforming things like the DMCA. The vast majority of the LP membership seems to believe that works of authorship (i.e. the stories, source code-- the ideas themselves) are the product of labor and deserving of the same protections as any other sort of property. This mentality is one that would not only endorse the current copyright regime, but strengthen it to the point where copyright infringement was legally indistinguishable from actual theft and where copyright terms were indefinite.

Tell me, Mr. McBride...

[plj]

...what good are your IP rights, if you're bankcrupted?

Re:What happened to '4 quarters of profitabiity'?

[SoTuA]

It seems to me like Darl finally ran out of decent "outrageous claims" and he couldn't keep the profits coming in... bye bye bonus, darly baby! And say hello to Ramiro(*), your cellmate in your new bars-in-the-windows stone hotel!

(*) Your regular six feet tall, three hundred pound heavy "host" on a proper federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison.

At least Microsoft ditched the comments

[SirTreveyan]

From Visual Studio 6.0

#define EPERM 1
#define ENOENT 2
#define ESRCH 3
#define EINTR 4
#define EIO 5
#define ENXIO 6
#define E2BIG 7

So whats the big deal??? The code is NOT, REPEAT NOT UNIX IP. 'C' compiler IP yes...UNIX NO!

Nobody's mentioned yet...

[rograndom]

Most of all this hubbub from Darl was that if managed to get four straight profitable quarters then he would get a fat bonus. A loss this quarter is a major, major setback.

Re:Nobody's mentioned yet...

[nzkoz]

A loss this quarter is a major, major setback.

Yep, it means at least another year of SCO mischief. Merry Christmas All!

Re:Maybe so...

[symbolic]

But it's more than likely a bunch of straight, heterosexual, penile/vaginal-obsessed junkies not only wrote it, but voted it into law. Let's keep things in perspective here.

SCO suicidal?

[drowstar]

"provide written certification that [...]:
- No employees or contractors that have had access to UNIX have contributed any software code based on that product to Linux"

If every named company does just that it's the end of SCO's claims, right?.
Wouldnt that show the world just how pointless this whole affair is?

I have just finished looking at some of the files

[pbug]

Linus is right!!! They are smoking crack!!

Re:Vote bush out of office

[Bananenrepublik]

Who was in office when the DMCA was signed? Bill Clinton. Umm, what party was he a member of again?
I think the relevant question is "Who held the majority in congress at that time?" (Disclaimer: I don't know the answer)

just explain this:

[gotem]

what is the diference between those headers and the ones in the 2.2 series? suposedly 2.2 kernels are "clean"
Every open letter from SCO should come with a default +1 Funny modifier

Re:just explain this:

[Anonymous Coward]

Every open letter from SCO should come with a default +1 Funny modifier

Would be cancelled by the -1 Troll

Re:Vote bush out of office

[CashCarSTAR]

The problem isn't "Democrats" or "Republicans", it's the public at large has absolutly no respect for freedom.

The thing is, freedom is often seen in the US as a means to an end, and not as an end in itself. Freedom is seen as something you are given, not as something you give. Notice that pretty much everybody will completely trample any reasonable concept of freedom, as long as they get what they want.

The answer is not in politics, but in cultural change. American politicians, for the most part, are either too patriotic, or too pandering to say..yes, we are very flawed, and we can be better than this.

And frankly, Libertarians are the worst. For all their talking about freedom, they still would tear down enviromental and private privacy law that probably does the most to protect our freedom.

actual link

[gumbi west]

The parent link is not correct. But This is

Are BSD headers copyrightables ?

[Cavalcanti]

I have one question: are the BSD header files subject to copyright ? I really tought that these files were declared as "no copyrightables" in 1973 ... Could someone explain this better ? Thank you.

Mac OS 9 and earlier

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a damn good thing that the earlier versions of Mac OS were based in Pascal then! ;-)

That's What I Figured All Along

[Inode Jones]

A few months ago I took a guess as to what the misappropriated IP was, and the only thing I could come up with is errno.h, signal.h and syscall.h.

Linux was/is a derivative of Minix. There is no real Minix code left in Linux, but back in the 0.9x days, Linux was still evolving. You can still download Minix from here.

Now, here's the key point: although the NAMES of the various system calls, IOCTLs, error numbers and signals are part of the POSIX standard, their numeric assignments are not. The implementor is left to define them. Not all implementations define these the same way - take a look at the Linux/FreeBSD/SYSV emulation code in NetBSD to see the kinds of translations that need to be done to provide cross-platform compatibility.

Now compare the Minix include files with those of Linux and FreeBSD. You will notice very much the same error code and signal numbers. The Linux code dates from 1991 and is pre-ATT/BSDI settlement. It's likely that Tannenbaum is also in violation of AT&T's IP, and Linux has just inherited it. Of course, there's no money in SCO suing Tannenbaum.

Does this damage SCO? Not really. Is it worth US$699/seat? Definitely not. Can SCO collect damages? Probably, knowing the U.S. legal system.

Re:That's What I Figured All Along

[Anonymous Coward]

It's likely that Tannenbaum is also in violation of AT&T's IP, and Linux has just inherited it.

Except that Minix is only licensed for free educational use, so Linux could/better not have taken any copyrighted material from Minix.

Re:That's What I Figured All Along

[jelle]

"Linux was/is a derivative of Minix."

Linux was a Minix replacement, not a derivative.

Linus Torvalds originally used the Minix OS on his system which he replaced by his own OS.

Re:That's What I Figured All Along

[msgmonkey]

The enumerations are not a copyright issue, the only area of law it comes under is a "trade secret" however since early UNIX code had been published as a book it would be extremely difficult to infer that the loss of this trade secret whas Linuxs' fault.

Re:That's What I Figured All Along

[schon]

Can SCO collect damages?

Probably not. In order to assess damages, you determine how much damage was caused (in this case, ~$0). Then you look at how quickly the plaintiff addressed the issue (more than two years, in this case.) Then you look at how quickly the plaintiff notified the infringer, and attempted settlement. In this case - well, we're still waiting on that (Linus, Eben Moglen, and others have contacted SCO attempting to find out the specifics of their claims - all were rebuffed. SCO released this "evidence" to third parties, they never once sent it to the actual alleged infringers.)

SCO can't collect damages because they have declared (through their actions) that they value the alleged stolen code at $0.

Re:That's What I Figured All Along

[terminal.dk]

SCO can't sue Tannenbaum. I am pretty sure that most european countries (like Denmark) has a basic legal principle of, that you can not stand on the sideline passive for n years, waiting for the peoduct become popular before you sue.

The case could never be won here, which is why SCO Germany removed all claims from their website. They did not want a parallel case here.

Re:That's What I Figured All Along

[tiny69]

http://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/V7/usr/include/err no.h.html
http://minnie.tuhs.org/VSTa/srctree/newsrc/include /errno.h.html
http://minnie.tuhs.org/FreeBSD-srctree/newsrc/sys/ errno.h.html

The some of the numbers in the above are identical, others are not. SCO claimed in court that there are no trade secrets in UNIX, only in the Unixware that SCO sells. So unless the different errno.h files in Linux are identical to what is found in Unixware, SCO doesn't have anything to stand on. The above files are from the same archive that contained a copy of malloc.c that SCO tried to use as proof that code was copied into Linux. It was later shown that the malloc.c code in question was released under a BSD style license at least twice and was probably in the public domain as well. So that can't make any Copyright claims.

Even if the headers are located in Unixware, SCO already acknowledged that some of the header files in question came from BSD. Much of the code from the AT&T-BSD settlement was placed in the public domain. http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/1028217/posts

AT&T claimed this code, among other portions of its Unix OS, as infringed by the University of California in the BSD litigation, and was denied a preliminary injunction on the ground that it could not show a likelihood of success on its copyright claim, because it had published the code without copyright notices and therefore, under pre-1976 US copyright law, had put the code in the public domain.

In SCO's letter that they recently sent, they are claiming Copyright to everything from the settlement.

The settlement agreement between USL and BSDI addressed conditions upon which BSDI could continue to distribute its version of UNIX, BSD Lite 4.4, or any successor versions, including certain "UNIX Derived Files" which include the ABI Code. A complete listing of the UNIX Derived Files is attached. The ABI Code identified above is part of the UNIX Derived Files and, as such, must carry USL / SCO copyright notices and may not be used in any GPL distribution, inasmuch as the affirmative consent of the copyright holder has not been obtained, and will not be obtained, for such a distribution under the GPL.

They seem to have forgotten that Caldera was founded on selling Linux under the GPL. SCO is trying to obscure that fact, in the media and in court, that they changed their name from Caldera.

SCO also seems to forget that they can't place their Copyrights on stuff that has been placed in the public domain. Some of the code that SGI added to Linux turned out to be from SCO who had wrongly placed Copyright notices on the files.

Re:That's What I Figured All Along

[psykocrime]

Except that Minix is only licensed for free educational use, so Linux could/better not have taken any copyrighted material from Minix.

I don't any of this is particularly relevant to the SCO case, but FWIW, the above statement is no longer correct. Minix is now license under a very liberal license similar to a BSD type license.

For more on the Minix license see:
here and here

Re:That's What I Figured All Along

[utlemming]

If you remember way back when there was some discussion about the SCO NDA -- which if Linus et al, were to sign would make it so that they could not even participate in the Linux process. So the even bigger issue is that they offered to show but the restrictions on the showing were so severe that no say developer would ever sign the documents.

Re:That's What I Figured All Along

[fermion]

So here is a question. If the numbers are the issue, how many programmers used best standards and programmed using only the defined names. How many did not assume that there was an order, or that the list starts with 1, or any of the other mistakes most of us occasionally make. How hard would it be to just change the numbers?

Re:Vote bush out of office

[Pionar]

You know, it always amazes me when Libertarians spout off on the internet. I'm sure Libertarians would frown on spending federal money for technology research when it should *obviously* be funded (and controlled) by private companies, yet they continue to use such technologies to spread their hypocritical views. If it pisses you off that the government gets involved in things, then boycott those products! That includes the Internet. The web would be a much more peaceful place.

Plus, one of the main points of that party is protection of property. That would include such measures as the DMCA. Maybe that's why they let an Indy pastor run for city council who thought his church didn't have to pay payroll taxes because of the "separation of church and state" (dumbass must not have realized that the separation he was talking about meant that his church was to be treated like other non-profits, not given tax-exempt status on payroll).

I know that the Libertarian dude that was running for senator in IN in 2002 (no, I didn't vote for him, he was an idiot) said he thought that the DMCA had the right ideas, it was just poorly implemented and too vague.

Re:Thats not funny. #!*@& moderators

[sinergy]

I agree with you 100%.

De minimis non curat lex!

[Tsu Dho Nimh]

"Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought one could only copyright original works, but what's original about a bunch of #define-s? "

Nothing ... if it's the only way, or one of a very limited ways to implement the standard, it's not copyrightable. I believe the format and switches are specified by the POSIX standard, which means you have no choice/originality involved. Do it their way or it doesn't work.

Leaving the copyright notice off, even on a one-liner, is wrong, but it's not a fatal error. Tracking down who may have stripped a 20-line notice from a 1-line header for an OS that's been around since the 1970s is not going to be an easy task, and a judge would probably say "screw this, de minimis non curat lex* applies" and tell them to shove off. (*the law does not concern itself with trifles, nothing to do with Lex Luthor)

Re:Vote bush out of office

[Anonymous Coward]

Repubilicans...More to the point Dean has been more open to reforming DMCA than say Bush and his money grabbing crowies. If we aew to have any serious effect with this president for now vote the democrats. By voting Green..your going to end up like the florida 2000 race, splits for the democrats there by vote goes to the republicans...

The next logical step...

[ca1v1n]

The caldera logo isn't enough. We need to be putting these stories on sco.slashdot.org

This comment space owned by SCO

[sethadam1]

<?php
if(!strstr($_ENV["TERM"], "SCO")) {
die("This comment is only available under NDA!");
} else {
echo $comment_body;
}
?>

does compiled code infringe too?

[little_blaine]

If SCO owns the header files, what kinds of claim does it have on all the software that's been written, compiled and distributed that #include's all these header files? Can their claim baloon to cover not just users of the operating system, but also all software that gets distributed for such?

Re:does compiled code infringe too?

[AKAImBatman]

One of the findings of the BSD vs. USL case was that header files cannot be copyrighted as they are merely open definitions for interfacing software. SCO is (as usual) spouting bullshit that they know to be false in order to make people think they have a case.

BTW, most of those header files are defined by POSIX, not some code copying fairy.

Re:does compiled code infringe too?

[Smallpond]

Plaintiff's first argument is that Defendants have copied the filenames and header files from 32V. ... One fact does seem clear: the header files, filenames, and function names used by Defendants are not trade secrets.

The ruling from Judge Debevoise was on whether the header files could be considered trade secrets. Berkeley had a license to copy and distribute derivative works, so the trade secret argument was an attempt to prevent them from distributing the source. The judge ruled for the Defendents.

Re:does compiled code infringe too?

[AKAImBatman]

...so the trade secret argument was an attempt to prevent them from distributing the source. The judge ruled for the Defendents.

And trade secrets are exactly what SCO is suing about. And as I said, those files are actually from POSIX standards, not SCO. Thus SCO is full of crap as usual.

Thanks for setting me straight tho. I still think a judge would find that either:

1. The files were created independently via open information and bear resemblance simply because they accomplish the exact same task.

2. The files are small snippets that are allowed to be copied by Copyright law.

I'm not sure how he'd phrase the later since copyright law is really referring to printed works, but interoperability with an open standard can probably be framed within those laws.

Re:Vote bush out of office (DMCA under Clinton?)

[lcsjk]

Seems to me, the president only gets to sign things that were inacted by the House and Senate. As best as I can remember, when the DMCA was enacted, we had a Republican dominated Congress, and a Democrat president. That made for a pretty good system of checks and balances, which is probably the best thing about our government. My guess is that at the time, we who could forsee the ill effects of such a bill, did not write our congressional representatives, since it is easier to whine on /.

Democrat or Republican? It makes not difference! As long as we are so engrossed in pointing fingers at the "other" party and don't take responsibility for being a part of the governing system, we will continue to have poor laws.

If every /. reader were to contact their representatives during the month of February,2004, by letter or Fax, asking them to do something about the DMCA we would see some action.

dmca passed by both parties

[Anonymous Coward]

The DMCA was passed 99-0 in the Senate, and a voice vote in the House (so yeas and nays were not recorded) (source) - that's a better reason to vote libertarian.

Some more SCO code...

[syusuf]

$ cat /bin/false
#!/usr/bin/sh
# Copyright (c) 1984, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989 AT&T
# All Rights Reserved

# THIS IS UNPUBLISHED PROPRIETARY SOURCE CODE OF AT&T
# The copyright notice above does not evidence any
# actual or intended publication of such source code.

#ident "@(#)false.sh 1.6 93/01/11 SMI" /* SVr4.0 1.3 */
exit 255

Broken code

[Anonymous Coward]

main() must be declared as either:

int main(void)

or

int main(int, char **)

Re:Broken code

[Anonymous Coward]

Void? Sheesh, kids these days...

Re:Broken code

[Anonymous Coward]

Well if you want to be totally asinine, main() should also only ever return either EXIT_SUCCESS or EXIT_FAILURE Any other value is undefined behavour and likely system specific.

I don't troll comp.lang.c but I play an anal-retentive poster to comp.lang.c on Slashdot.

Re:Broken code

[reddish]

Well if you want to be totally asinine, main() should also only ever return either EXIT_SUCCESS or EXIT_FAILURE. Any other value is undefined behavour and likely system specific.

Nope, that's no longer true. From the C99 spec, 7.20.4.1#5:

"Finally, control is returned to the host environment. If the value of status is zero or EXIT_SUCCESS, an implementation-defined form of the status successful termination is returned. If the value of status is EXIT_FAILURE, an implementation-defined form of the status unsuccessful termination is returned. Otherwise the status returned is implementation-defined. "

So returning 0 from main() or exit(0) is properly defined nowadays. Also, there's quite an important distinction between 'undefined behavior' and 'system specific' (more properly called 'implementation-defined') behavior, As you can see from the spec quote, return values other than 0, EXIT_SUCCESS and EXIT_FAILURE are implementation-defined, which means that your compiler/environment documentation should specify their meaning. Undefined behavior would mean any behavior is allowed (e.g., formatting the harddisk) with no mention of it anywhere.

Re:Vote bush out of office

[derF024]

Still, what you CAN do is research the candidates on the major 2 platforms and pick out the ones who side with Libertarian beliefs.

Sounds like what you really need is a system like Instant Runoff voting where you don't have to worry that you're "throwing your vote away" on a third party candidate. Then you (and everyone else) could vote for that Libertarian candidate without worrying about the bad guy winning.

HAhaha...

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoever it was must have had a HUGE majority by overriding Clinton's veto.

OH wait... he didn't veto.. it... oh yeah...

Re:HAhaha...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course he didn't veto it. Clinton the Democrat was a better conservative than the current neoconservatives in power.

Unless I am mistaken, ...

[hesiod]

> SCO has reported a fourth quarter loss of $1.6 million, owing mostly to hefty legal fees in its war against Linux. SCO said they would have reported $7.4 million in earnings, if not for the $9 million payout to their lawyers.

I suppose this takes away from the idea that Darl & crew were just trying to get bonuses for having 4 straight profitable quarters. Unless I am overlooking something...

Re:Unless I am mistaken, ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Overlooking that they tried but failed?

Maybe

[msgmonkey]

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidy. Maybe 1) this is a smoke screen or 2) they really do not have a clue and this is all they have. I'm personally hoping for no 2.

Re:Maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? Because then Darl can walk?

SCO has given up

[Moe Taxes]

These header files have nothing to do with the IBM lawsuit, but in less than a month they have to show code to the judge. Then when the case is dismissed they are going to need these claims to keep themselves out of jail on stock manipulation charges.

SCO seems to have misunderstood the GPL (again)

[MG]

I guess this is what $9 million in legal fees gets you. Check out this part of the SCO letter.

The ABI Code identified above is part of the UNIX Derived Files and, as such, must carry USL / SCO copyright notices and may not be used in any GPL distribution, inasmuch as the affirmative consent of the copyright holder has not been obtained, and will not be obtained, for such a distribution under the GPL.

They seem to be under the impression that all code within a GPL distribution must be GPLed. But mixing code with the GPL does not require that the all of the code become GPLed. It mearly requires that all of the code be free (as in speach.) O look, all those headers are covered under the BSD license. (Not that their copyright claim sounds credible anyways.)

Or maybe...

[Kjella]

...they just took it from them same damn error description table. This is about as much proof as it is that Apache and IIS both return "404 Not found". Why not "404 Document does not exist" or something else? They must have stolen it, yes sir.

Either way, this just comes out as pathetic. Even if some Linux developer copy-pasted the interface #define's from BSD (which you can't do by the old BSD licence, because of the advertising clause), it's basicly simple facts of the POSIX standard.

It's like copyrighting "#define PI = 3.14". Now all other programs that define PI, must be infringing on mine. Yeah. Right. It's yet another bullshit tactic just like the last "proof" they showed. They're going to display stuff that is common to SCO, BSD and Linux and state "look, they took our code (through BSD and BSD settlement)". It's enough to get past the idiot test "Umm these look similar. They must have stolen it"

Kjella

Re:not just Linux... use do-while loop

[dmeranda]

This is off topic, but your macro itself has problems. It permits its use without a statement-terminating semicolon. It is always best to define multi-statement macro blocks with a do-while loop as:

#define return(x) do{ ..... }while(0)

Notice no semicolon after the "while(0)". This makes it an error to omit the semicolon after the macro's use, and thus behaves more like an actual function in syntax. Oh, and this is one case where you really DO want the parenthesis around the return "value" x inside the macro, since "x" is not a variable but a macro argument which could contain a semicolon.

And the result is...

[OmniGeek]

that SCO is doing a Titanic-on-the-icberg number. I suspect Novell are savvy enough to realize that they COULD pull the same stunt, with essentially the same results... Fortunately they appear to recognize the value to be gained from working with Open Source rather than trying to squeeze it for ransom.

What a ridiculous demand letter...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny to read SCO's demand letter for unix licensees. It has some reasonable requests, like:

The company has not made available for export, directly or indirectly, any part of UNIX covered by their agreement to any country that is currently prohibited from receiving supercomputing technology, including Syria, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and any other such country, through a distribution under the General Public License (GPL) for Linux, or otherwise.

The company has notified each employee and its contractors to whom they have disclosed UNIX that their disclosure must be kept in confidence.

Then there are the funny demands:

The company, its employees and contractors have not transferred or disposed of, through contributions to Linux or otherwise, any part of UNIX.

I have no control over what the janitors who work for the contracted out janitorial service do on their spare time.

The company, its employees and contractors have not transferred or disposed of, through contributions to Linux or otherwise, any part of UNIX.

I can't dispose of it? I have to keep the old 150 meg qic tapes containing IRIX 4 forever? Riiight.

The company, its employees and contractors have held, at all times, all parts of the UNIX products in confidence for SCO.

I have no control over what contractors did before they come to work for my company. If a contractor disclosed copyright information they got from a previous job, that's the contractors fault, not mine.

No employees or contractors that have had access to UNIX have contributed any software code based on that product to Linux or any other UNIX-based software product.

access to UNIX???? You're claiming control based on on access to UNIX???? Most of the computer users in the world have access to unix - unix shell accounts, unix email servers, unix webservers. Access to unix source code, might be a reasonable demand, but this is ridiculous. And what is a software product? If I write a simple unix program (and is therefore based on unix) what I do with my program is my business.

No employees or contractors that have had access to UNIX have contributed any software code based on that product to Linux or any other UNIX-based software product.


There is a world of difference between "software code based on that product" and "software code based on that product in violation copyright law"

Sco isn't getting much value for their $9 million in legal fees. A 1st year law student can find a dozen holes in this demand letter.

ABI vs API code

[nzkoz]

Now forgive me if I'm being stupid here. SCO's letter states that:

Certain copyrighted application binary interfaces ("ABI Code") have been copied verbatim from our copyrighted UNIX code base and contributed to Linux for distribution under the General Public License ("GPL") without proper authorization and without copyright attribution.

Now all these header files that they've named, are just that, header files. Which relate to the POSIX|UNIX API. These are two different things right?

Re:ABI vs API code

[rmull]

YES - I've been thinking the same thing and I just don't understand why nobody else has pointed it out. Good show.

One could imagine that there's ABI code that relates to SCO binary compatibility. Perhaps there's a separate set of UNIX headers for such a subsystem that somebody snatched from SCO. They would be named the same, after all. And nobody's specified where these files are.

Re:ABI vs API code

[igomaniac]

I believe the ABI part means they are claiming copyright of the specific numbers assigned to each of these standard (API) defines. They can't claim copyright on the defined names since they are ANSI/ISO standardized, but the standards do not mandate which numbers are assigned so this is (or at least can be interpreted as) original work.

There is no copyright issue

[Rayban]

From:

http://finance.messages.yahoo.com/bbs?.mm=FN&act io n=m&board=1600684464&tid=cald&sid=1600684464&mid=7 4550

To All Licensees, Distributors of Any Version of BSD:

As you know, certain of the Berkeley Software Distribution ("BSD") source code files require that further distributions of products containing all or portions of the software, acknowledge within their advertising materials that such products contain software developed by UC Berkeley and its contributors.

Specifically, the provision reads:

" * 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software
* must display the following acknowledgement:
* This product includes software developed by the University of
* California, Berkeley and its contributors."

Effective immediately, licensees and distributors are no longer required to include the acknowledgement within advertising materials. Accordingly, the foregoing paragraph of those BSD Unix files containing it is hereby deleted in its entirety.

William Hoskins
Director, Office of Technology Licensing
University of California, Berkeley

Re:There is no copyright issue

[setantae]

EXPN?
Clauses 1 and 2 are still in full effect:

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

GWB vs SCO

[MoFoQ]

When it comes to fuzzy math, looks like SCO beats ol' W (GW Bush for those in the "WTF is 'W'?").

u know....I have one dollar in my wallet....if someone can point me the direction of the nearest anti-SCO organization....I'd like to donate it....(I would've spent it on something stupid like food anyways).

copyright protection != copy protection

[ThwartedEfforts]

Circumventing copyright protection should not be illegal. US copyright law grants the enduser the right to make a backup copy of any copyrighted material he owns. Also anyone is free to make copies of uncopyrighted material. The DMCA clearly violates established consumers rights.

So now there's confusion between "copy protection" and "copyright protection". How do you circumvent "copyright protection"? By passing new laws? By being acquited? Since when is the "end user" the same as the owner of a copyrighted work? The owner of a copyrighted work can make as many copies for whatever purpose as they see fit, backup or not. And of course anyone is free to make copies of uncopyrighted material -- uncopyrighted material is not copyrighted, essentially in the public domain.

Re:3rd parties

[kiatoa]

Right on the money. Until we have instant run-off voting we do NOT have a democracy in the United States. You have only two choices: dem or rep. Both suck, personally I think the Democrats suck a litle less but Nader (who I don't necessarily endorse) said it quite well: "The difference between the Republicans and the Democrats is the speed at which their knees hit the floor to accept corporate money." or something to that effect

It's worse than that.

[khasim]

$24.3 Million Income
$10.3 Million from SCOSource (MS & Sun)

The lawyers bills are $9 Million.

So, they spend $9 Million to make $10.3 Million
That's not too bad.

But they still lose $1.6 Million.
So, without that $1.3 Million extra from SCOSource they'd be looking at $2.9 Million loss on their $14 Million income from non-SCOSource.

Those are some seriously bad numbers.

And they'll just get WORSE next quarter. Unless they can find some way to sell another "license" to Microsoft.

Re:FP

[Anonymous Coward]

What does that mean in non-fat-nerd speech?

I know that Pingular is a karmawhore... so...?

Re:Vote bush out of office

[mushroom blue]

I'm looking from the outside, but it sure seems to me that Republicans are exactly the same.

see, this is why you should read the full post before replying.

if you'll note the grandparent's post, the next line talked about Republicans being just as bad.

Re:Vote bush out of office

[saden1]

I agree. We are culturally bankrupt. No one asks the tough questions and when politicians dodge the questions there is no penalty to pay. And then you have all these radio talk show host that simply trying to get you to buy their books. It is disgusting. America as it is today is not the World it was envisioned to be. We have inapt public and weaselly politicians....a very deadly combination.

Forgive me, I'm forced to use SCO at work..

[avij]

Oh, but SCO uses different errno.h files depending on the situation. I tried hard to include a fragment of the errno.h but the lameness filter totally prevented me from doing that. It complained about too many junk characters, but how can I be responsible for the junk in SCO header files? Some logic from errno.h:

"old, crufty environment" -> oldstyle/errno.h
"Xpg4v2 environment" -> xpgv2/errno.h
"Xpg4 environment" -> xpg4/errno.h
"Posix environment" -> posix/errno.h
"Pure Ansi/ISO environment" -> ansi/errno.h
"Old, Tbird compatible environment" -> ods_30_compat/errno.h
"Normal, default environment" -> just the standard errno.h file

Some of the comments, dated 94/12/04:

Portions Copyright (C) 1983-1995 The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.

The information in this file is provided for the exclusive use of the licensees of The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. Such users have the right to use, modify, and incorporate this code into other products for purposes authorized by the license agreement provided they include this notice and the associated copyright notice with any such product. The information in this file is provided "AS IS" without warranty.

Portions Copyright (c) 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993 UNIX System Laboratories, Inc. Portions Copyright (c) 1979 - 1990 AT&T All Rights Reserved
THIS IS UNPUBLISHED PROPRIETARY SOURCE CODE OF UNIX System Laboratories, Inc. The copyright notice above does not evidence any actual or intended publication of such source code.

Here are the comments from an older version of the same file, specifically 91/06/06. I wonder why they've dropped Microsoft from the copyrights list?

UNIX is a registered trademark of AT&T
Portions Copyright 1976-1990 AT&T
Portions Copyright 1980-1989 Microsoft Corporation
Portions Copyright (C) 1983-1991 The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. All Rights Reserved
The information in this file is provided for the exclusive use of the licensees of The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. Such users have the right to use, modify, and incorporate this code into other products for purposes authorized by the license agreement provided they include this notice and the associated copyright notice with any such product. The information in this file is provided "AS IS" without warranty.
Copyright (c) 1984, 1986, 1987, 1988 AT&T
All Rights Reserved

THIS IS UNPUBLISHED PROPRIETARY SOURCE CODE OF AT&T
The copyright notice above does not evidence any
actual or intended publication of such source code.

Re:Forgive me, I'm forced to use SCO at work..

[prgrmr]

Here are the comments from an older version of the same file, specifically 91/06/06. I wonder why they've dropped Microsoft from the copyrights list?

It appears that SCO may have dropped the MS copyrights all the way back in '97:

google groups

Whether this was done in accordance with the agreement reached at that time would be an interesting bit o' research.

Re:Forgive me, I'm forced to use SCO at work..

[gabe]

SCO Bought Xenix (a UNIX system) from Microsoft at some point. So I imagine after that point, Microsoft no longer owned the copyright on that material.

IT'S TIME FOR....

[macshune]

Mega Super Corporate Voltron Shit!


As a child of the 80's, I know what needs to be done when one member of a given group gets uppity and tries to take over. Just like in G.I. Joe, Go-Bots and Transformers, it's ok to team up between warring factions if only to defeat a common threat. Let me illustrate my point with some legal cases that made headway in the 80's:

Autobots, Decepticons et al vs. Omnicron

G.I. Joe, Cobra et al vs. Serpentor

He-Man, Skeletor et al vs. Hordak et al(correct me if i'm wrong)

5 Space Explorers vs. Zarkon, Lotor et al


You can see my point by now, I suppose. Consensus building between disparate groups was of immense importance in the early 80's and it should be no different today. While the Fortune 1000 companies have differing agendas governing what they should do with our money, teaming up and building a giant super-robot, ala Voltron sounds like a good idea.

...even if it's only for the purpose of travelling to Utah and beating the crap out of the Super Corporate Overdemon and then dissambling it and fighting over the patents, consuming all involved in a never-ending litigation war. Anyone agree? Disagree?

Clause one...

[the_flatlander]

Nope. Some number of these files are part of the UNIX specification and are copyrighted by no one.

Besides, to enforce copyright you'd have to prove you wrote it. And Novell and SCO Group have *both* filed for copyright on the self-same code. There is no issue here.

To quote Darl this morning: "All hat, no cows."

TFL

--

Little known fact: The Torvalds' Penguin, Tux-Linikus Kerilus, has been known to eat SCOnks.

Re:Vote bush out of office

[pyros]

Louis Black highlighted the differences between Democrats and Republicnas best when he said "A Democrat sucks, a Republican blows. A democrat won't let me keep my money, but a Republican won't let me spend it on drugs and hookers, so what am I supposed to do with it?"

"Loser pays" only benefits corporations

[gillbates]

Smithers: Did you hear? "Loser Pays" has now become law; if we sue someone and lose, we'll have to pay their legal fees!

CEO: Perfect.

Smithers: WHAT?! Do you know what this means?

CEO: I know EXACTLY what it means. It means we'll hire the most expensive lawyers we can find. It means that no one will risk paying a million dollars in legal fees if they lose their ten grand lawsuit against us. It means when we sue people, they'll settle because the cost of losing just got higher. It means that we can rip off the customer even more! We'll have the best lawyers in the country - we're bound to win, and we'll make our victims pick up the tab! Yessss, this is EXACTLY what we wanted....

Re:"Loser pays" only benefits corporations

[devilspgd]

You can put reasonable caps on the legal fees. If a company chooses to pay their lawyers more then that, it is out of their own pocket regardless of win or lose.

Re:"Loser pays" only benefits corporations

[pyros]

nice fear-mongering.

If you sue and lose, you pay for the defense. If you sue and win, you win your court awarded damages. If you are sued, and win, the plaintif pays your fees. If you are sued and lose, you pay the damages ordered by the court.

Besides, I would fell more encouraged to defend myself when I know I'm in the right. A high profile law firm would also be more inclined to take on such a case, as they know the plaintiff will have to pay their fees. The lawyers wouldn't have to worry about the little guy defendent being able to pay the tab.

Re:"Loser pays" only benefits corporations

[vontrotsky]

In a loser pays system, the loser is typically not requiered to pay the winner more than his (the loser's) own legal fees. The ensures some fairness.

Re:"Loser pays" only benefits corporations

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny?
More like REAL 5++ Points

Re:"Loser pays" only benefits corporations

[Anonymous Coward]

fear mongering? Since the US hasn't adopted "loser pays" laws, I don't think anyone is going to lose sleep over the parent comment. Sometimes a well-intentioned suggestion doesn't sound so good when one considers how one might use such a law against those less fortunate.

*blinks*

[Akardam]

You must be new here.

Slashcode inserts spaces so that there's never more than 50 non-space characters in a row. Hence, the plain text of the URL has an extra space. Of course, it doesn't insert spaces except in text that will actually be displayed. So, even if you look at your displayed text, it still has a space in it, though the HREF doesn't.

And now you know. Consider yourself edjumicated.

#DEFINE???

[Anonymous Coward]

they are going to go after linux for #define??? damn then I should copyright my declarations.

This is just too good to be true

[Kjella]

Linux header:
#define EPERM 1 /* Operation not permitted */
#define ENOENT 2 /* No such file or directory */
#define ESRCH 3 /* No such process */
#define EINTR 4 /* Interrupted system call */
#define EIO 5 /* I/O error */
#define ENXIO 6 /* No such device or address */
#define E2BIG 7 /* Arg list too long */

And the POSIX standard says:
The [errno.h] header shall provide a declaration for errno and give positive values for the following symbolic constants. Their values shall be unique except as noted below.
[EPERM]
Operation not permitted.
[ENOENT]
No such file or directory.
[ESRCH]
No such process.
[EINTR]
Interrupted function.
[EIO]
I/O error.
[ENXIO]
No such device or address.
[E2BIG]
Argument list too long.

Conclusion:
This is hogwash. Complete and utter hogwash. Even the descriptions are specified in the standard. You see some minor differences (Argument vs Arg, function vs system call) but it is simply trivial. If this is the "infringing" stuff, the replacement with completely non-infringing comments would be ready in about 30 seconds directly from the standard. I can volunteer to do a cleanroom implementation without neither SCO nor BSD code :p.

Kjella

Is the Dot Lawyer Bubble Bursting?

[serutan]

Here's an attractive theory: SCO's situation is a sign that the practice of petty litigation in lieu of actually doing something productive has inflated beyond the world's ability to sustain it. SCO will be the first in a series of companies to go bankrupt through irresponsible litigation, lawsuits will subside to a rational level, and thousands of lawyers will be working for porn sites to feed their families.

At least we can hope.

Two questions...

[emil]

1. McBride was supposed to get a bonus for several consecutive quarters of profitable earnings. The bonus is trashed now, correct?
2. The Linux 2.2 kernel is supposed to be free of infringing code. Aren't the errno.h, signal.h, and ioctl.h unchanged or very similar since 2.2?

So that explains it...

[TrentC]

...I was wondering why the "KDE in Userlinux" argument was getting quiet, so I went back to the home page, and we have a good SCO story!

Now all we need is a good emacs vs. vi article and our /. flamewar quota for the rest of the year is met!

Jay (=

Get rid of that link in your sig

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, that's not on! (It's a goatse if you haven't yet clicked and are wondering)

How dare you...

[terminal.dk]

post copyrigthed code here ?

They will soon come and close slashdot down.

Darl's brother is hard at work

[Platinum Dragon]

Someone at Groklaw pointed out that the MS Word version, hosted at LWN, still has the good ol' properties saved. Kevin McBride apparently created the document, with the last modification being made by "bstowell"--presumably, Blake Stowell.

Nice to see that $9 million in legal fees is going to great use.

SCO vs. Linus Next?

[kmassare]

I don't have the 2.4.21 kernel source cited by SCO handy, but the the 2.4.20 kernel file lib/ctype.c, which is on SCO's list, indicates a 1991, 1992 copyright by Linus Torvalds. So SCO is saying that Linus did a cut and paste from System V source and removed their copyright notice? Give me a break!

Re:SIG Must gooo! its the gay GOATSE.CX guy

[Tackhead]

> Didn't your Momma tell you not to click on strange sigs?!
>
> Long ago I quit clicking on slashdot sig links. *Especially* when it has goat in the link text :P

This is a SCO thread. Pictures of Darl McBride may be repulsive, but they're definitely on topic.

Poisoning the well...

[gillbates]

There has been a lot of controversy surrounding Linux - first with DeCSS, and now with SCO.

I wonder if the entertainment cartel is aware that SCO has probably, at some point in the past, distributed the DeCSS code with the Linux kernel. I wonder how the RIAA would react to SCO claiming ownership of this "Linux". If indeed, they owned Linux as they claim, wouldn't it make them liable for distributing a "circumvention device" under the DMCA?

I'm wondering if the RIAA is going to sue SCO should SCO win "ownership" of Linux? After all, SCO won't reveal exactly which parts it "owns", so we have to assume they claim all of it - the good, the bad, and the DeCSS....

As for Linux proper, it's no big deal to remove DeCSS should it exist in the kernel. But for a company such as SCO to claim ownership of it implies that they created it - a fact which would make them guilty of willful infringement under the DMCA. So Linux could very easily survive the scourge by claiming ignorance, whereas SCO could go from predator to prey.

Re:Poisoning the well...

[Anonymous Coward]

DVD CSS code is not in the Linux kernel, it's in userspace libraries, like libdvdread. Now go away.

Tis the season to sue yourself into poor house

[AwesomeJT]

What wonderful news! I couldn't hope for a better Christmas gift than news of SCO beginning the descent into bankruptcy. Way to go SCO! Keep up the negative cash flow!

Next, copyright * and / and various combinations like /* and */ and sue every C, C++, Java, Perl, and PHP programers out there. Why hold back now? Bring it on!

/*
* I'm a DMCA violation waiting to happen. SO SUE ME!
*/

Re:Tis the season to sue yourself into poor house

[DylanQuixote]

/* */ is not a comment in perl... it's a badly formed regex. Though * and / are important operators in most languages...

Re:Tis the season to sue yourself into poor house

[AwesomeJT]

Oh, I forgot. I work in so many languages I forget what are comments in what languages. * and / are still used in Perl, just not as comments.

Worse yet

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think anyone who commented yet codes.

Check out the paths to those header files.

I guess they're hoping that the people who read the letter are as hysterical as the average slashdot commentator.

Now I know why MS bought into it

[terminal.dk]

Every single copy of Windows also violates the copyright, as they are written using C and C++.

SCO ownz Windooze.

Note that Linus says the same thing about .h files

[Anonymous Coward]

While I thought that right to use *.h files and copy them as necessary to match an interface was settled years ago with AT&T vs. BSDI, it seems that Linus is heading the same direction as SCO with his change in thinking that drivers must be GPL'd if they are derived from kernel code and that including the *.h files makes them a derived work. If this line of thought is accepted and a driver or filesystem module *must* be GPL'd if it is compiled under Linux and included as a module, then SCO is right that any driver developed and compiled under proprietary UNIX must therefore be a derivative work and assume the terms of the orginal license.

Earth to Darl

[nagora]

inasmuch as the affirmative consent of the copyright holder has not been obtained, and will not be obtained, for such a distribution under the GPL.

Er, apart from that one SCO distributed after it "realised" (ie invented) there was an infringement.

What a bunck of fuckwits.

TWW

Re:Vote bush out of office

[cyberformer]

I'd vote for anyone who isn't Bush, which of course means a Democrat. But even someone who hates both major parties should still vote, because independent or third-party votes do make a difference.

If the major parties see a substantial portion of votes going to a single-issue candidate, they'll see that people feel strongly about that issue and try to adjust their platform to attract those voters. When people don't vote at all, politicians just assume that nobody cares what they do.

I dislike the libertarians because (like Bush) they often seem to be more interested in the rights of corporations than of human beings, but the principle still stands.

Re:Note that Linus says the same thing about .h fi

[Anonymous Coward]

http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/1735

Slashdot is losing it

[Anonymous Coward]

The first thing I did was read the letter, and notice the strange paths to the header files and the use of the word "binary". These are not the usual errno.h, etc, but the following:

include/asm-arm/errno.h
include/asm-cris/errno. h
include/asm-i386/errno.h
include/asm-ia64/errn o.h ...

I'm not sure what SCO is trying to say. It has been several hours since the initial post. In the old days, a couple of years ago, I could have sorted the comments by highest score and found a useful analysis of what the /asm-*/ means and what SCO is really claiming copyright to.

But now I just find a couple dozen 5 ranked comments that are sort of glib and somewhat misinformed. I mean, they all miss the point.

Slashdot used to be a useful resource, but now I'm not so sure anymore. It seems like anything of value is getting lost in the noise, sort of like the Web in general. There may be a thoughtful comment in here somewhere, but it isn't so easy to find anymore.

Ohhhh., How Eeeeevil!

[cgreuter]

Is it just me or is Darl going through the "How to Annoy the OSS Community" checklist?

He's already repeated every bit of MS LinuxFUD out there and publically supported the RIAA lawsuits so really, it was time for a DMCA takedown. Wake me up when he gets to biting the heads of cute baby penguins.

Re:Vote bush out of office

[thales]

"I dislike the libertarians because (like Bush) they often seem to be more interested in the rights of corporations than of human beings"

I Dislike Liberals because they forget (or ignore) the fact that the owners of those corporations are human beings who have rights. The "Rights" of a corporation are derived from the rights of the indiviuals who own it. An attack on "Corporate Rights" is actually an attack on the indiviual rights of the human beings who own the Corporation.

Re:Vote bush out of office

[Bull999999]

So Clinton gets all the credit for the economic boom, but if anything bad came out of Clinton era, it's all Republican Congress' fault, right?

Re:return is not a function

[Anonymous Coward]

True, but
return (0);
will optimize to
return 0;
nevertheless :-)

errno.h from Microsoft....

[rongage]

I thought this bit interesting - from Microsoft Visual Studio .Net Enterprise Architect...

/***
*errno.h - system wide error numbers (set by system calls)
*
* Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
*
*Purpose:
* This file defines the system-wide error numbers (set by
* system calls). Conforms to the XENIX standard. Extended
* for compatibility with Uniforum standard.
* [System V]
*
* [Public]
*
****/

Better call the SCO police on their licensee Microsoft - releasing "Unix" proprietary methods without authorization....

One thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't all those header files part of gcc, not part of linux? And as Stallman would be quick to point out, GNU and Linux are not the same.

Re:Vote bush out of office

[kin_korn_karn]

Nope.

The corporation is its own entity. That's the whole point of a corporation - the business' liabilities are incurred by the corporation, not by its owners, so that if it fails, the owners don't lose their asses.

When you attack a corporation, you attack a business entity. The owners (shareholders) have nothing to do with it; in fact shareholders have a right to anonymity. Why do you think nobody goes to jail when Exxon destroys hundreds of miles of Alaskan coastline, but if you take your dirty oil and dump it in the storm drain and get caughty you get fined and maybe thrown in jail? It's because the shareholders aren't personally liable for the actions of the corporation. Again. That's the whole point of the corporation.

This takes a leap of one level of abstraction to get, so I can see why a lot of people don't comprehend this. Libertarians and conservatives tend to be concrete-reasoning keep-it-simple-stupid types that can't recognize a non-corporeal entity - unless it's a middle eastern diety that's been pounded into their head from birth.

Re:Vote bush out of office

[Stray7Xi]

Ya that'd be great, a system where voting for someone can CAUSE them to lose.

7 votes for A, B, C
6 votes for B, A, C
5 votes for C, B, A
3 votes for D, C, B

D gets dropped, then B gets dropped, and finally A wins (A:13 vs C:8).

But if the last three voters instead voted A, D, C, B then A loses BECAUSE they voted for A:

7 votes for A, B, C
6 votes for B, A, C
5 votes for C, B, A
3 votes for A, D, C, B

D gets dropped, then C gets dropped, and finally B wins (B:11 vs A:10)

In instant RunOff Voting there are the following problems:
-Raising your vote for someone can cause them to lose (Monotonicity Criterion)
-Lowering your vote for someone can cause them to win (Monotonicity Criterion)
-A one on one comparison between the winner and any other candidate should show the winner being preferred in every pair. IRV doesn't do this. (Condorcet Criterion)
-Doesn't scale at all. The possible votes are basically a factorial. Sorry if its hard to describe the formulaes. But the number of possibilites without truncation is N! with truncation its the summation of permutations. sPn (where s=1 to n-1) xPy = x!/(x-y)!

California's recall would of just not scaled with IRV. Suppose 100 candidates then the number of possible votes is 100! + 100!/2! + 100!/3! + ... + 100!/98! + 100!/99!

-It's not easy to understand by the common guy (not /. ) imagine the news trying to explain HOW a candidate won.

For detailed explanation of these problems:
http://electionmethods.org/evaluation.htm

A condorcet method would be a more sound election method, because basically the voter ranks the candidates. Then the method sees which candidates are preferred by one-on-one comparisons. Joe Shmoe can understand this because when the news comes on, it just shows the comparison of the winner to every other candidate.

incidentally...

[Anonymous Coward]

How can SCO claim copyright on code written for platforms that its own products don't run on?

Karma Entropy

[Anonymous Coward]

I just made up a term to describe this phenomena.

It's "Karma Entropy".

(Remember, it was made up by ME, the famous Anonymous Coward.)

Karma Entropy is a natual law which predicts that any blog using the karma scheme will degenerate over time into into chatter, with the same quality characteristics as an un-moderated blog.

No, I'm New Here

[New Here]

No, I'm New Here

Losses

[StormReaver]

If SCO hadn't filed the lawsuit to pump up its stock price, neither Microsoft nor SUN would have given SCO money. In that case, SCO would not have had that 10 million dollars in revenue.

Seeing that Linux had been eating SCO's lunch prior to this, it's reasonable to think that SCO would not have had brought in any new business and hence no new revenue.

So without the lawsuit, SCO would probably have posted a quarterly loss of 11 million dollars.

Then we have Baystar's 50 million dollars. Again, without the lawsuit, Baystar most likely would not have given SCO the money. Without this, SCO's quarterly losses would have topped 61 million dollars.

The bottom line is that, as we all knew, without the phoney lawsuit against IBM, SCO would no longer exist as an organization. It would be bankrupt now.

SCO can only exist as long as it can delay court proceedings. Once IBM gets into full gear, SCO will vaporize.

Re:Oh man...

[Canadian_Daemon]

What do you base this on? Do you have any facts to determine that he makes 'jack shit' or are still in that collective egotistical american delusion?

Re:Vote bush out of office

[Archie Steel]

Man, I wish I had points to mod you up. What an excellent response!

How could you screw this joke up?

[Anonymous Coward]

Behold, the truth lies within.

% cat /bin/true
#!/usr/bin/sh
# Copyright (c) 1984, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989 AT&T
# All Rights Reserved

# THIS IS UNPUBLISHED PROPRIETARY SOURCE CODE OF AT&T
# The copyright notice above does not evidence any
# actual or intended publication of such source code.

#ident "@(#)true.sh 1.6 93/01/11 SMI" /* SVr4.0 1.4 */
%

Re:Vote bush out of office

[RLiegh]

What I hate about libertarians is that to the last they have no sense of responsibility. They are the ULITIMATE "gimme gimme gimme" party: they want anarchy without being responsible for protecting themselves, they want capitalism without being responsible for the welfare of their workers or the area around their corporations.

To specifically address your point: "corporate rights" are a direct attack on society, which is comprised of -wait for it- MANY INDIVIDUALS. Therefore, corporate rights (which are used to squelch consumer and societal rights with things such as the DMCA) should be very subservient to the rights of the individuals in society.

And your individal joe jackass corporate CEO should seriously be on the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to making decisions which affect LARGE NUMBERS of individuals.

End of story.

OK, let's rewrite errno.h

[Animats]

Here's a start. This is a complete rewrite; only the textual identifiers and numeric values required for backwards compatibility are the same.

• /*
  POSIX standard error return values.
  Modernized descriptions.
  */
  enum errno_t {
  EOK = 0, /* No error was reported. */
  EPERM = 1, /* Permission denied - not the owner */
  ENOENT = 2, /* The requested file, directory, device, or socket does not exist. */
  ESRCH = 3, /* The requested process does not exist. */
  EINTR = 4, /* A system call was interrupted by a signal. */
  EIO = 5, /* General I/O error */
  ENXIO = 6, /* The requested device or device address does not exist */
  E2BIG = 7, /* An argument or argument list was too long. */
  ENOEXEC = 8, /* Incorrect call to "exec" function */
  EBADF = 9, /* The requested file descriptor is not valid. */
  ECHILD = 10, /* This process has no living children. */
  EGAGAIN = 11, /* Try again later; resources are tight now. */
  ENOMEM = 12, /* Memory is full. */
  EACCESS = 13, /* Permission denied - access not allowed. */
  EFAULT = 14, /* Bad pointer value passed in a call */
  ENOTBLK = 15, /* The requested operation (probably 'seek') is not defined for this non-block device */
  EBUSY = 16, /* Some other process is using this resource. */
  EEXIST = 17, /* Can't create - file already exists. */
  EXDEV = 18, /* Can't link across file systems. Try a symbolic link instead. */
  ENODEV = 19, /* The device number is not valid. */
  ENOTDIR = 20, /* The requested directory operation is not valid for this non-directory file. */
  EISDIR = 21, /* The requested operation (probably 'write') is not allowed on a directory. */
  EINVAL = 22, /* General bad argument error. */
  ENFILE = 23, /* Too many open files system-wide. */
  EMFILE = 24, /* Too many open files for this process. */
  ETXTBSY = 26, /* Attempt to install a new program over one that is running. */
  EFBIG = 27, /* File too large for the file system type. */
  ENOSPC = 28, /* File system full. */
  ESPIPE = 29, /* The requested operation (probably 'seek') is not allowed on a pipe or socket. */
  EROFS = 30, /* Attempt to write on a read-only file system */
  EMLINK = 31, /* Too many links to one file. */
  EPIPE = 32, /* Read failed - pipe closed by the writer. */
  EDOM = 33, /* Numeric input out of range. */
  ERANGE = 34, /* Numeric output out of range. */
  ENOMSG = 35, /* General error - no further information */
  };

This provides modernized descriptions of the errors, and makes errno an enum, which is still compatible with integer declarations of errno, but cleaner. The list is not complete, and should be updated with the additional error numbers defined in Linux.

Offered under the GPL by John Nagle, the author.

Re:OK, let's rewrite errno.h

[Anonymous Coward]

EOK = 0, /* I'm OK */
EPERM = 1, /* Screw you, your not the owner */
ENOENT = 2, /* Nuttin there dude */
ESRCH = 3, /* Indigo Montoyo not found */
EINTR = 4, /* Bugger. */
EIO = 5, /* I/O bugger */
ENXIO = 6, /* Indigo Montoyo's address not found */
E2BIG = 7, /* Argument too long, seek councling. */
ECHILD = 10, /* My name is indigo Montoyo, you can kill-9 my parent process, but you can't kill-9 my children, they don't exist. */
EGAGAIN = 11, /* bugger, no room. */
ENOMEM = 12, /* bugger no memory. */
EACCESS = 13, /* Bugger off - your access is inadquate. */
EFAULT = 14, /* Bad pointer value, very bad pointer value */
ENOTBLK = 15, /* bugger, no blocks */
EBUSY = 16, /* Bugger off, i'm busy. */
EEXIST = 17, /* Bugger, it's there already. */
EXDEV = 18, /* Hey bozo, try symbolic linking. */
ENODEV = 19, /* The device number is buggered. */
EINVAL = 22, /* General bad argument bugger. */
ENFILE = 23, /* Bugger, too much shit open. */
EMFILE = 24, /* Bugger, too much shit open for this process. */
EFBIG = 27, /* Bugger, file too big. */
ENOSPC = 28, /* Bugger, system is full of shit. */
EROFS = 30, /* Bugger, can't write */

Re:OK, let's rewrite errno.h

[linuxbikr]

I would mod this up! :) This is too funny.

Re:OK, let's rewrite errno.h

[TiggsPanther]

You do realise that there probably are things out there with comments like this... ...right up until the point of release.

Tiggs

Re:Vote bush out of office

[frkiii]

Demon-crats or Crepublicans, different sides of the same coin, IMHO.

They just take turns being the "bad guy", while our freedoms are erroded, taxes and "fees" are raised, the government plunged deeper into debt, etc.

Fact of the matter is we are all responsible for what goes on in the government, the good and the bad. We are the government.

Yes, we have represnetatives, but we have a responsibility as citizens, to ensure that the present and future course, laws, etc. of the country are such that the country thrives, the freedoms are protected, that our children and grand children will live in a U.S.A. that is slightly better (in regards to what I just mentioned), than the U.S.A. we currently live in.

Voting is actually not enough, you also have to write your representatives, be a bit more involved and informed about what is going on.

We all have a responsibility to help curb things in this country that are, overall, destructive to its freedoms, goals, citizens (as a whole), etc., and to promote and defend the things that are beneficial, grant more freedom, etc., for the good of all citizens.

O.K., I will get off my soap box now.

Regards,

Fredrick

The step

[Chuck Chunder]

"Attend law school"

Re:Vote bush out of office

[bnenning]

I think the relevant question is "Who held the majority in congress at that time?"

IIRC, Republicans had the House and Democrats had the Senate. The DMCA was yet another instance of lawmakers putting aside their political differences and coming together to reward special interests and screw the general public.

Re:What happened to '4 quarters of profitabiity'?

[Belegothmog]

Well, what happened is that Darl is claiming profitability anyway: "For the entire fiscal year 2003, SCO reported net income to common stockholders of $5.3 million, or $0.34 per diluted common share, reversing a net loss of $24.9 million, or $1.93 per diluted common share, in fiscal 2002. McBride claims that this marks the first time that the company has been profitable on a full-year basis." See eweek I guess the $9 million in lawyer fees doesn't count toward being profitable or not.

Re:Vote bush out of office

[thales]

The Legal Fiction of a Corporate identity is nothing more than a means of creating a shared ownership model. It's existance still depends on the indiviual rights of the people who own it.

I'm not a worshiper of any of the "middle eastern dieties", and I fail to see what "middle eastern" religon has to do with the subject. It's introduction says more about your personal bigotry than about the concept of indiviual rights which originated in Greek and Roman (Pagan) philosophical ideas on Natural Law.

So what are they claiming?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are they claiming copyright violations on a public interface specification (header files)? That's ridiculous. Even if the headers were bit for bit copies, you could override that by simply re-writing with the same values but marginally different formats.

Court decision history specifically denies that kind of protection, even the DMCA doesn't go that far. A recent decision even went so far as to say that the DMCA was not meant to prevent reverse engineering.

SCO probably isn't arguing the derivative works angle here and I'm guessing that's because inter-operability interfaces are specifically prevented from being considered as such.

Being forced to produce source code, it sounds like SCO's lawyers are grasping at the last straws of an argument. If I had stock in SCO (and I don't thank god) I'd be dumping them on the greater fools really quick.

Do they really expect the Courts to assign any amount of code theft to IBM/Linux because Linux is POSIX compatible?

Really lame.

SCO, the clue phone is ringing. It's time to pick it up before the strategic IBM bombers unleash their wave of carpet bombing.

Sad.

Bill Hicks on political parties in America

[Overly Critical Guy]

Bill Hicks on the two-party system:

I'll show you politics in America: "I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs." "I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking." "Wait, there's one guy holding up both puppets!" "Shut up! Go back to bed America. Your government is in control. Here's Love Connection, watch this and get fat and stupid. By the way, keep drinking beer, you fucking morons!"

Re:What happened to '4 quarters of profitabiity'?

[Belegothmog]

Well, what happened is that Darl is claiming profitability anyway: "For the entire fiscal year 2003, SCO reported net income to common stockholders of $5.3 million, or $0.34 per diluted common share, reversing a net loss of $24.9 million, or $1.93 per diluted common share, in fiscal 2002. McBride claims that this marks the first time that the company has been profitable on a full-year basis." See eweek

I guess the $9 million in lawyer fees doesn't count toward being profitable or not.

Maybe SCO has more tricks up their sleeves?

[NaveWeiss]

SCO scares me.
They are so sure of themselves. They also said that.. they showed many people the offending source if they signed an NDA. Has anyone ever spoken to these people?
I mean.. if SCO wastes so much time on this seemingly-absurd plan, maybe they have a reason to believe they might win.

Re:Maybe SCO has more tricks up their sleeves?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi Darl!

No, none of us buy your bluff.

Re:Maybe SCO has more tricks up their sleeves?

[NaveWeiss]

Really? Bummer. :((((

Sys V R3.x

[martin]

was pretty yuk. Alot better than r2.x which was hideous. Maybe just 'cos at the time 2.x and 3.x can out I was used to BSD varients.

I think the only thing Sys V did better at this time was the startup/shutdown procedure (rc1.d etc and the init scripts).

They want Sys V - they are welcome to it!

a big :-) as ever.

Good thing Microsoft bought a license

[zjbs14]

From the VC++ 6.0 errno.h header:

/* Error Codes */

#define EPERM 1
#define ENOENT 2
#define ESRCH 3
#define EINTR 4
#define EIO 5
#define ENXIO 6
#define E2BIG 7

They could have been in BIG trouble.

Re:Good thing Microsoft bought a license

[Anonymous Coward]

i presume apple are not so lucky!

Re:Good thing Microsoft bought a license

[Anonymous Coward]

These Header files are in virtually all C,C++ Compiler header files. Microsoft may have a license, but does everyone else who used VC need a SCO license too to produce code?

If I understand it correctly, SCO owns all the source code and compiled binaries for any program that was built using C and C++, because these Header files are a part of all C and C++ compilers. That means SCO could collect royalies from every software company and every End-user no matter what the OS platform is! Its Not just Linux users anymore! Its now SCO verus the Entire World!

Realistically, this has no merit. You cannot release information for public use and then start charging people a decade later for using it. I see the Dept of Justice getting Medieval on Darl and friends. Whats really obnioxous is that the DoJ has plenty of more important matters to deal with. Like the prosecution of Enron, WCOM and other frauds that ripped off millions.

I say we declare Darl and the rest of the Gang as enemy combatants and lock them away at camp X-Ray. This is nothing less the Software Terrorism!

"Novell is desperate" says Darl

[Belegothmog]

"Finally, McBride responded to a report that Novell Inc. was still pursuing its own copyright claims on Unix. "Novell is desperate," McBride said. "SCO has produced documents that say we own the Unix copyrights. Let me be real clear: SCO acquired all rights for Unix and UnixWare, includes copyrights. We see this as a fraudulent notice." McBride added that SCO sees Novell as being "all hat, no cattle." from eweek

Well, if that's not the pot calling the kettle black... They really are a joke.

Re:Vote bush out of office

[bnenning]

I'm sure Libertarians would frown on spending federal money for technology research when it should *obviously* be funded (and controlled) by private companies

The Internet came out of DoD research. Libertarians support the military as one of the primary purposes of government. And the Internet exploded in popularity only when private companies realized there was mone to be made.

Plus, one of the main points of that party is protection of property.

Yes.

That would include such measures as the DMCA.

No. Even leaving aside the distinction between physical and intellectual property, protection of property means "you can't take my property". It doesn't mean "you can't make any device that could conceivably be used to take my property, regardless of its legitimate uses".

Disclaimer: I don't support the Libertarian Party. I agree with some of their principles, but many of their positions are completely unworkable. I support smaller (but not nonexistant) government and individual freedom, which means I generally hold my nose and vote Republican.

Buy SCO

[MontSegur]

Has it been asked yet why Linux supporters just can't buy control of SCO, fire the current management and just OpenSource the whole mess? Their market cap is about 350million.... How many people (including IBM) might just support a complete take-over? The market is open tomorrow, perfect gift to give your favorite geeks, control of the .h files.

Re:Buy SCO

[whittrash]

Novell owns the copyright, not SCO, you would have to buy Novell and open source it.

DMCA: Dominant Market Conservation Act?

[Anonymous Coward]

and turn it into more of a "dominant market player protection act" than anything else.

That would be DMPPA. Hmm.. How about...

Dominant Market Conservation Act?

Dominant Market Clamping Act?

Hmm.

I have a serious problem with this...

[jasonrfink]

SCO is asserting that because a BSD/USL agreement was somehow not honored that SCO is entitled to recompense. Here is the problem, SCO therfore implies that it was making an eanest effort to improve the core operating system, SCO UNIX, during said time.

I know for a fact that SCOs system has bugs in it that other systems and projects fixed years ago, instead, SCO was busy making up, for the most part, utterly useless, products. Their userland is horrible, the kernel clunky, and the system is riddled with bugs that should have been fixed.

SCO claims, "they did their best" but the world owes them something.

Sorry, you can't make money for being incompetent and then blaming someone else's good fortune.

Kernighan and Ritchie should sue SCO

[Anonymous Coward]

Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie wrote the C language that UNIX is written in. They should claim copyright and sue SCO.

Copyright status of UNIX headers

[epmos]

#include

I am not a lawyer. I am not a paralegal. I do not offer legal advice to anyone, ever.
As someone who uses Linux and BSD every day, I do have an interest in this case, and in the history of UNIX.

Remember, copyright law has changed since UNIX was written. Be careful not to make incorrect assumptions based on what the law says today .

I have one question: are the BSD header files subject to copyright ? I really tought that these files were declared as "no copyrightables" in 1973

Not quite. IIRC they were not "declared 'no copyrightables'" in 1973 but in 1993 the court found that 32V may have entered the public domain due to AT&T's not following copyright rules in effect between 1978 and 1986.

Please read this document, esp. the section titled "1. Copyright Infringement".
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/bsdi/930303. ruling.txt
Please note that this is a ruling denying an injunction that would have prevented distribution of BSD, not a dismissal of the entire case. So it's not as strong as we might like.

There is a lot of information about the BSD case on the web, start here . Of course, the settlement itself is sealed, so it's hard to say exactly what it contains. However, such a settlement would restrict USL, BSDI and the Regents of the University of California, not the Linux developers or IBM.

And the general feeling is that USL asked for the seal because they had their ass handed to them, not because the wanted to spare the Regents a public humiliation.

<grin>

Does this help clear things up?

Re:Copyright status of UNIX headers

[Cavalcanti]

It helps a lot.
Thank you.

Re:Make it BSD v. SCO v. Novell

[No One's Zero]

I feel somewhat sad to have to quote the Teenage Muntant Ninja Turtles sequel.

But, here goes - "Which one's the ugly one?"

Clinton

[Overly Critical Guy]

Too bad Clinton let the DMCA pass, or we wouldn't be in half of this mess.

Yes, Virginia--both political parties are evil. We won't even get into the sleazy Marc Rich pardon.

Re:Clinton

[Anonymous Coward]

Read my other reply.

Yes, I agree, both are too corrupt to trust. However, the current set are so way off the deep end, I am actually willing to vote Democrat (for once in my life) just to do my best to make sure they get evicted.

Re:3rd parties

[Anonymous Coward]

Think of it this way:

Any political party that has out-lived the issue around which it originally coalesced has devolved into people trying to preserve their power. The issues become negotiable commodities to that end. The organization is then inherently corrupt, and must not be trusted.

Mac OSX, *BSD as well

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting as AC as I already modded here

I just took a look in the Mac OSX errno.h file (/usr/include/sys/errno.h) and the error definitions are all there, with the same attributed numbers as in the Linux and *BSD ones. Someone further down claimed that SCO was claiming ownership of the actual numbers, since the defined names are an ANSI/ISO standard and therefore can't be claimed.

What this means, I think, is that SCO is indeed attempting to roll open the BSD/LSI case again. I would be amazed if they were able to get away with this. I'm pretty sure a competent lawyer will be able to clam this one up in court.

Not only that but SCO is opening themselves up to truly massive claims of extortion and fraud if this is not legal, which although IANAL I really cannot see it being from their pretty wild claim in their letter. They simply claim they own these files, yet make NO mention of showing how that is so.

I am really interested as to who is going to sue SCO next.

Re:Mac OSX, *BSD as well

[PhilTR]

SCO is trying to claim ownership of any and all Unix-like code. Every line in *all* versions of any open source software has a known pedigree. SCO refuses to reveal the allegedly infringing code because any code they could possibly point to has already seen the light of day and its pedigree could be established within hours. Refusing to point out the code is a smoke screen to buy time. What SCO plans to do is wordsmith the meaning of the word *derivative.*

First of all they'll claim that *ownership* of the software product never transfered. Second, they'll say only permission to use the software product *and* its derivatives was granted. Third, they're going to claim that since ownership never transferred and only permission to use was granted they retain ownership in any derivative or derivative-like product. Finally, where placement of code into an opensource project was approved, they'll claim that transfer of ownership was never granted, only the right of use.

They will try to broaden the meaning of derivative works to include everything imaginable and narrow the effect/implications of placing the code in opensource projects. They're going to try to undermine the legitimacy of the GPL and using the DMCA claim massive infringment. If the court buys it, it's over.

MOD UP, INFORMATIVE!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

MOD UP

Fiduciary duties..

[ProtonMotiveForce]

Don't SCO's financial officers have a legal duty to shareholders to earn as much profit as possible? Sounds like SCO shareholders should be suing _now_, instead of waiting.

It's obvious to me that a lot of people _will_ be suing SCO when this all blows over and it turns out they squandered millions on a case they knew they couldn't win. But I think they should start now, and use this quarters' losses as their case.

Re:Vote bush out of office

[77Punker]

This problem is compounded by the mass media:

On election day (the big one), you'll see in the key red for Republicans, blue for Dems, and green for Greens. What you never hear from the main media outlets on TV is that Libertarians typically get twice the popular vote of the Greens with less than half the air time! Proposterous!

Re:Vote bush out of office

[avgjoe62]

If it's the readers that mod as opposed to the editors, that's called democracy....

One "...commie mods" cannot push an article off the page.

Re:Hrm? Facinating

[hal200]

Kind of. You can generally use BSD code in a GPL application, but the reverse is not true.

In short, the GPL forces you to release derived works under the GPL, but BSD has no such restriction. Thus, if you try to use GPL code in a BSD application, you have to license it under the GPL, which kind of defeats the purpose of choosing the BSD license in the first place. The Apache project runs into this all the time.

Re:Vote bush out of office

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is the party of Russ Feingold?

For the record, Clinton wasn't much of a Democrat, since he sold out to big business (in this case, the entertainment industry).

Re:Vote bush out of office

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the question should be, "Which party provided the most votes to pass the legislation?" It's entirely possible for a bill to pass when the majority party is strongly against it, if the minority party is unanimously for it and a handful of the majority party crosses over and votes for it.

I don't know the actual vote numbers on the DMCA. I remember Russ Feingold was one of the few who opposed it.

offtopic why?

[metalhed77]

This was very much on topic. It was a direct reply to the post above it. Why do people label things they disagree with or are non banal as offtopic. Ridiculous I say.

1 dead == 15 dead?

[Merk]

So what you're saying is that 1 death and 15 deaths are equally bad, and that an atomic bomb should be seen as simply an overzealous way to cook a pizza?

The argument that golf clubs and automatic weapons are equivalent because both could potentially be used to kill somebody is ridiculous. One is obviously more dangerous than the other one. That's like claiming that an atomic bomb and an oven are equivalent because both can cook a pizza.

There seems to be a general consensus that people shouldn't be allowed to own something that makes it easy for them to kill more than n people in a row. Right now, n is generally agreed to be about 1, although the difficulty in killing that 1 person is pretty low.

I don't want my neighbors owning atomic bombs, land mines, chlorine gas cannisters or guns. The ability to kill people with them is just too high. On the other hand, I don't mind if my neighbor owns a sword, which has never had any functional purpose other than killing and maiming other people. The difference is that if my neighbor goes nuts, I have some small hope of escaping from a crazy neighbor chasing after me with a sword. Bullets are a lot harder to escape.

I agree that the blame primarily rests on the shoulders of the person doing the killing, but I think it's stupid to make it easy for him/her to kill so many people. We have laws to prevent people from doing stupid things: running red lights, walking on a busy highway, etc. Why should we not have laws preventing someone from getting the tool necessary to commit a massacre? Is there some legitimate reason that someone would need a fully-automatic weapon with a 50 round clip?

Re:1 dead == 15 dead?

[psykocrime]

Why should we not have laws preventing someone from getting the tool necessary to commit a massacre?

It's called the 2nd Amendment.

Is there some legitimate reason that someone would need a fully-automatic weapon with a 50 round clip?

Yes. The main reason that comes to mind is an armed revolution against the existing government, should it ever become tyranical / dictatorial / etc.

It may sound unlikely, it may even BE unlikely... but fundamentally the 2nd Amendment is all about making sure that the ultimate power lies in the hands of "the people" where it belongs.

Also, you might be interested to know that legally owned / properly licensed fully automatic weapons are almost NEVER used in the commission of armed crimes. I don't have a direct link handy, but that's from the FBI's own crime statistics.

Re:1 dead == 15 dead?

[Deagol]

So what you're saying is that 1 death and 15 deaths are equally bad,

Pretty much, yes.

Can you seriously argue that the guy who kills a 7-Eleven clerk in a robbery is any less "bad" than Augusto Pinochet? Is murderig one somehow more forgiveable than murdering thousands? In my eyes, they both deserve the same penalty: death. Sadly, Pinochet, the former dictator of Chile, will likely never see as harsh a punishment as your typical armed 7-Eleven robber.

Re:1 dead == 15 dead?

[Merk]

Yes, a guy who kills a 7-Eleven clerk in a robbery is less bad than Pinochet. Pinochet killed thousands, that is thousands of times worse than killing 1. Would "September 11th" have been just as bad if only 1 person had died? Find me one person on the planet who thinks that the number of people who died didn't matter. But, let's put that disagreement aside.

My point was more about limiting the damage one nutcase can do. Murder has existed for centuries, it isn't going away, but who wants to make mass murder easy? If the most deadly weapon someone could legally possess was a musket or a sword, a nutcase on a rampage would be lucky to kill 10 people. If we make miniguns legal, what's to stop this nutcase from killing hundreds?

Re:1 dead == 15 dead?

[shepd]

>It's called the 2nd Amendment.

That doesn't protect individuals. It protects militias, which, by definition, aren't individuals.

>The main reason that comes to mind is an armed revolution against the existing government, should it ever become tyranical / dictatorial / etc.

Best done by... a well organized militia. Not a single nut going on a rampage in the white house.

>but fundamentally the 2nd Amendment is all about making sure that the ultimate power lies in the hands of "the people" where it belongs.

Agreed. That being said -- it was all about letting the north military beat the hell out of the south. Never about an individual nut being able to own an AK-47. There's a reason those words are present there. They weren't just put in for flowery reasons.

>Also, you might be interested to know that legally owned / properly licensed fully automatic weapons are almost NEVER used in the commission of armed crimes.

I can believe you. That's generally because the nuts grab the first thing handy, which is usually a handgun. The people owning fully automatic weapons are usually part of a gun club which would, in some ways, count as an organized militia. And, there's the crux of the matter, isn't it?

Re:1 dead == 15 dead?

[Merk]

Odd that someone with a .co.uk address would talk about the 2nd amendment. In any case, the 2nd amenment doesn't say: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear the tools necessary to commit a massacre, shall not be infringed."

The US one talks about "Arms", which at the time was flintlock muskets. If you want those, that's fine with me. I see nothing in that text about overthrowing a corrupt government. It talks about the "security of a free State", which seems to indicate it's about protection against outside forces.

These days, if you want to overthrow the US government it will take more than a machine gun. You'll also need fighter jets, cluster bombs, tanks, helicopters... If you think it's your right to own those... well tell me where you live so I can move far, far away.

Anyhow, I'm not at all surprised by the fact that criminals use illegal weapons. But what you've got to consider is that if nobody could ever own a certain weapon legally, it would be a lot harder for a criminal to obtain one. If I can buy a "Mark 9 Tyrant Killer Extreme" if I fill out a few forms, the guy at the gun store can have one sitting on his wall. It's an easy matter to slip me one if I don't have all the paperwork in place. On the other hand, if those guns are simply illegal, it is much harder to get one. Here's a better statistic to find: what fraction of crimes are committed using weapons that are completely illegal in every state (as in, not just modified versions of legal weapons).

Re:1 dead == 15 dead?

[Anonymous Coward]

Militias are *made up of* individuals. How else do you think a militia would come into being?

Hint: The National Guard is a subset of the US Army. That's why National Guardsmen and women are in Iraq right now.

If the ownership of firearms were restricted to "official" -- that is, under the control of the federal government -- militias, then there would be no way for individuals to ensure the security of a free state.

Re:1 dead == 15 dead?

[MrResistor]

The argument that golf clubs and automatic weapons are equivalent because both could potentially be used to kill somebody is ridiculous.

I agree with the point you're trying to make here, but consider this: according to the law nunchuks are equivalent to an automatic weapon. Arguably nunchuks are less dangerous than a golf club, in the sense that if the wielder is unskilled they are largely only a danger to themselves, which is certainly not the case with a golf club.

Re:1 dead == 15 dead?

[Merk]

Well I'm pro nunchaku, anti-gun then. ;)

Re:1 dead == 15 dead?

[psykocrime]

Odd that someone with a .co.uk address would talk about the 2nd amendment. In any case, the 2nd amenment doesn't say: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear the tools necessary to commit a massacre, shall not be infringed."

First of all, I'm American, not British. The .co.uk TLD is a lark.

Secondly, the same weapons necessary to wage war, if that need should arise, just happen to be the same ones that would conceivably allow one to commit a massacre. It's a (somewhat) unfortunate truth that living in a country with great freedom also entails a certain amount of danger, and maybe a little bit of self-responsibility. You worried about a gunman walking into the McDonalds where you and your family are eating, and beginning to spray bullets? Ok, get yourself a concealed carry permit and a nice legal, properly licensed handgun, and when that event happens, take the safety of you and your own into you own hands.

The other alternative is to move to a country with a restrictive, totalitarian, authoritative, government that protects you day in and day out, from cradle to grave. But god-damnit, leave those of us who love the freedoms that make America great, the hell alone. Quit being part of the system that's trying to systematically turn US into that totalitarian country referenced above.

Re:1 dead == 15 dead?

[psykocrime]

That doesn't protect individuals. It protects militias, which, by definition, aren't individuals.


There are valid arguments on both sides of whether or not the Framers meant the 2nd Amendment to apply to individuals, as opposed to an organized (by the state) militia of some sort. I happen to believe that the arguments in favor of the view that the 2nd Amendment applies to individuals, are much stronger than the others. You are of course, welcome to your own interpretation...


Best done by... a well organized militia. Not a single nut going on a rampage in the white house.


Nice strawman. I don't recall saying anything about nuts going on rampages in the white house. Since you brought it up, I'll just say that the White House is heavily guarded by armed security people for a reason. Your house, on the other hand, is not. So, what happens when some raging lunatic (maybe he thinks your sleeping with his wife / daughter / sister / whatever ) decides to go on a rampage in YOUR house? Still so in favor of gun-control?

Yes, I said the 2nd Amendment is primarily about keeping the power in the hands of the people, but self-defense is a nice perk as well...


Agreed. That being said -- it was all about letting the north military beat the hell out of the south. Never about an individual nut being able to own an AK-47. There's a reason those words are present there. They weren't just put in for flowery reasons.


IF, and again, this is unlikely to ever happen, but IF an armed rebellion against the government should ever become necessary, it would be nice if the good guys have weapons that give them a somewhat realistic chance of winning. Does that mean I advocate private ownership of assault rifles? Absolutely. Does it mean I advocate private ownership of atomic bombs? No, because atomic weapons would never be used in an internal war inside the borders of our nation, by either side...

Re:1 dead == 15 dead?

[psykocrime]

If the ownership of firearms were restricted to "official" -- that is, under the control of the federal government -- militias, then there would be no way for individuals to ensure the security of a free state.

Exactly.

Re:1 dead == 15 dead?

[ces]

Also, you might be interested to know that legally owned / properly licensed fully automatic weapons are almost NEVER used in the commission of armed crimes. I don't have a direct link handy, but that's from the FBI's own crime statistics.

That statistic applies to most legally owned and properly licensed firearms. Not just fully automatic weapons. Even legally owned and properly licensed handguns are rarely used in the commission of crime, even in states that permit concealed carry. While the numbers aren't quite as low as they are for fully automatic weapons and other similarly licensed arms they are still quite low.

The essential truth is few law abiding firearms owners ever commit armed crimes. On the other hand plenty of crimes are prevented by legally owned civilian firearms every day.

Re:1 dead == 15 dead?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see ... just recently, wasn't there a massacre in Rwanda that was done with machetes and old soviet rifles? The problem isn't the nut with the machine gun, it's the marxists like you.

Re:1 dead == 15 dead?

[Anonymous Coward]

The argument about assault rifles being sufficient to ensure the success of a revolt against a tyranical government is a fantasy. Against troops with heavy weapons and armoured vehicles/body armour they are virtually useless (as confirmed by recent events in Iraq). If this notion had any validity, internal opposition would have quickly ended the regimes imposed by, for example, the Taliban and Saddam. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, even with automatic weapons being readily available, the general population had neither the means nor organization to put up any effective resistance.

Re:1 dead == 15 dead?

[Anonymous Coward]

The US one talks about "Arms", which at the time was flintlock muskets.

At that time it also included cannons and Privateers (i.e.; privately owned, armed merchant ships). That's a bit more than just "flintlock muskets".

Re:1 dead == 15 dead?

[rhuntley12]

Hell, give the people that go on killing sprees fully automatics and they'll probably hit less people and run out of ammo faster. I'd be more worried about a weapon with Burst shot then a full automatic. Hell, it's hard to hit multiple targets with my AK47.(First time shotting one at 15 years off I almost shot my own foot;)

Re:1 dead == 15 dead?

[stor]

> Yes. The main reason that comes to mind is an armed revolution against the existing government, should it ever become tyranical / dictatorial / etc.

LOL. I love this argument.

1. The majority of American citizens probably wouldn't be motivated and organised enough to band together against their government.
2. The US government would protect itself from it's citizens. You bring the machine pistols, they'll bring the f-18s, stealths, MOABs and nucear/chemical/experimental weapons.

Doesn't sound like a fair fight to me

Cheers
Stor

Re:1 dead == 15 dead?

[dukerobillard]

Indeed. In fact, the reason the British were headed up to Concord when the war started, was to sieze some cannons a nut/patriot had stashed in his barn.

Re:1 dead == 15 dead?

[TheSpoom]

Hi, I'm Canadian. Seen Bowling For Columbine recently? Interesting how the most gun deaths, by far, come from the US.

In answering your question, am I worried about a gunman walking into the McDonald's near where I live, my response would be "not in the least". And I'll have to give Michael Moore credit for this one; your media plays a large part in it. Living near the border, I get a lot of American television stations, and all of their news programs seem to start off with shootings or some form of violence. Honestly, I haven't watched the local news lately, but I doubt I'd be seeing much of that.

Nonetheless, I object to your saying that a society without the Second Amendment translates into a "restrictive, totalitarian, authoritative government," and that said society would be your only alternative from living in the United States. We're democratic here, we have free health care (though it sucks), we elect our own leaders, and yes, you can obtain guns with proper licensing. The only thing is, we don't generally think of having the guns there for use against other human beings (at least, not any of the general population that I know). The very point of a democratic system is that if we don't like our leadership we vote them out or break the law if we can't. For example, if we needed weapons to fight a corrupt dictatorship that had taken over our government, we'd get them one way or another, since likely, even if we had a law or constitutional guarantee that we could obtain one, said dictator would probably repeal it.

Anyway, rant over. There's a lot wrong with your argument there, IMHO. And I personally don't need an automatic weapon to feel safe.

Re:1 dead == 15 dead?

[TheSpoom]

The problem isn't the nut with the machine gun

It is to the victim.

Re:1 dead == 15 dead?

[Anonymous Coward]

>It's called the 2nd Amendment.
>
>>Is there some legitimate reason that someone would
>need a fully-automatic weapon with a 50 round clip?
>
>Yes. The main reason that comes to mind is an armed
>revolution against the existing government, should
>it ever become tyranical / dictatorial / etc.

You know... I've always thought it was funny that whenever you interface with the federal government in an important way (such as becomming a citizen or a member of the armed services or getting an extended security clearance, taking office, etc.), they make you promise to never overthrow them by violent means... which as far as I am concered is an latent guaranteed right in the constitution and bill of rights... never said outright, but most definetly implied... a last resort to be employed in the event the whole United States of America experiment goes very, very wrong (which is the direction that it seems to be headed).

Re:1 dead == 15 dead?

[psykocrime]

The argument about assault rifles being sufficient to ensure the success of a revolt against a tyranical government is a fantasy. Against troops with heavy weapons and armoured vehicles/body armour they are virtually useless (as confirmed by recent events in Iraq).

I'm not saying they're sufficient, I'm saying they're necessary. And keep in mind, our own American Revolution showed how a determined band of rag-tag part-time "soldiers" can defeat a much better equipped, trained and armed force...

Anyway, even an all-out "overthrow" of the existing government might not be necessary... a variety of smaller revolts, which were quenched, still had an effect on American history. Maybe the day will come when the same thing needs to happen again... Or not.

Re:1 dead == 15 dead?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Sir,

If the Constitution only covers what was available when it was written with regards to the Second Amendment, then tell me how your computer and your free speech online apply to the First Amendment? Now, re-evaluate your response for logical consistency.

Then, go back and learn who the Founding Fathers were and what they did. They took up arms against a tyrannical government and made sure that one of the founding principles of the nation they formed after was the ability to do so again.

It talks about the "security of a free State", which seems to indicate it's about protection against outside forces.

If you read that line and use the term 'Free' as the operative, it makes a little more sense. It isn't about outside forces, that's not what the Militia was for.

Now, by today's standards, this may not be entirely agreeable, nor practical. A lot of people are against that whole 'killing' thing. Regardless, don't try to pretend that the Constitution means something else.

Re:1 dead == 15 dead?

[Licensed2Hack]

I don't mind if my neighbor owns a sword, which has never had any functional purpose other than killing and maiming other people. The difference is that if my neighbor goes nuts, I have some small hope of escaping from a crazy neighbor chasing after me with a sword. Bullets are a lot harder to escape.

Uh huh, read this. If it wasn't for Mr. Philips having a gun the nut with the sword would have undoubtably lived (unharmed even) and Mr. Philips would have died.

Is there some legitimate reason that someone would need a fully-automatic weapon with a 50 round clip?

First of all there is no such thing as a "50 round clip". It's called a magazine.

We don't need a "legitimate reason". It's called freedom. Oh, and FUN! Nothing like ripping off 50 rounds of .50 BMG from a Ma-Deuce.

Hmmm, belt-feds...

Re:1 dead == 15 dead?

[psykocrime]

Nonetheless, I object to your saying that a society without the Second Amendment translates into a "restrictive, totalitarian, authoritative government," and that said society would be your only alternative from living in the United States.

I'm not saying it **automatically** translates so... just that our 2nd Amendment, and private firearms ownership is one part of the equation when it comes to making sure that we *don't* become that (hypothetical) evil, totalitarian, repressive country that I'm describing.

And personally, I'll take living in a country with a few more gun deaths, to have the comfort of knowing it's less likely that we will collapse into that state.

We're democratic here,

Us too... the question is, will you always be? (Or will we, for that matter... which is really what this is all about)

The only thing is, we don't generally think of having the guns there for use against other human beings (at least, not any of the general population that I know).


So you're telling me that all Canadians who own guns own them exclusively for hunting and sport shooting? Uuhhhhh, Ok... if you say so.


The very point of a democratic system is that if we don't like our leadership we vote them out or break the law if we can't. For example, if we needed weapons to fight a corrupt dictatorship that had taken over our government, we'd get them one way or another, since likely, even if we had a law or constitutional guarantee that we could obtain one, said dictator would probably repeal it.

Sure voting them out is fine in theory. We can do the same thing of course. The idea behind having private firearms ownership is a "last defense" against tyranny. I mean, don't get me wrong.. I'm not advocating a new American Civil War or anything... It's just the principle that having a well armed populace helps ensure that we always have a **free** populace. It's not a guarantee, of course... again, it's just one more part of the equation.

As for "We'd get them anyway"... IF, the day came when the citizens of Canada needed guns for a revolution, don't you think it would be easier if a large percentage ALREADY HAD THEM, than everybody having to go out and acquire them on the spot? Also, what about training and experience shooting? All these (hypothetical) would-be "revolutionaries" need to learn to shoot, develop some accuracy, learn to clean / repair their weapons, etc. Again, don't you think you'd be better off with a population of people who already have these skills?

Re:1 dead == 15 dead?

[shepd]

>Militias are *made up of* individuals.

Yes. Just like religions. Made up of multiple individuals. Just like a single individuals rantings doesn't make a religion, a single person does not a militia make.

>If the ownership of firearms were restricted to "official" -- that is, under the control of the federal government -- militias, then there would be no way for individuals to ensure the security of a free state.

Well, you see, I didn't say "official" did I? I said gun clubs. It may be different in your corner of the world, but here they don't register with the government.

Try reading more closely next time. Thanks.

Re:1 dead == 15 dead?

[shepd]

>So, what happens when some raging lunatic (maybe he thinks your sleeping with his wife / daughter / sister / whatever ) decides to go on a rampage in YOUR house? Still so in favor of gun-control?

Actually, yes. I'd rather him be armed with something less than an AK-47. Also, I'd rather not be armed and make true the "most weapons in the house are used to shoot family members" argument. I'd rather give up everything I own than be forced to kill. I'm no murderer. Possessions are just possessions, you can always get them back. A life is a life, wether its a petty theif or a rapist. Nothing gives you the right to kill someone (IMHO), unless you're a judge in certain states (not that I'm all for that either).

Before the extreme argument is brought up, yes, if I had a daughter and she was being raped, I'd rather catch the guy and give him up to the cops than kill him. Why? Because, wether he rapes her for 30 seconds or for 2 minutes, it doesn't make any difference. She's been violated. The only way to win is to see the man pay for his crimes, and hopefully rehabilitate him. In jail. Or the nuthouse. Whatever works best for you. :-)

>IF, and again, this is unlikely to ever happen, but IF an armed rebellion against the government should ever become necessary, it would be nice if the good guys have weapons that give them a somewhat realistic chance of winning

Unless you have an Atom Bomb, I'd say you're hosed. Just my opinion, but I'm pretty sure a shooting any automatic weapons at a biological weapon isn't going to make a whole pile of difference.

>Does it mean I advocate private ownership of atomic bombs? No, because atomic weapons would never be used in an internal war inside the borders of our nation, by either side...

Agreed. But a nice, easy to contain, vaccinatable virus would make just the thing, wouldn't it? Guns don't fix that problem. Unless you decide to shoot yourself instead of infecting others. I suppose that could be a benefit. But that would certainly suck.

Re:1 dead == 15 dead?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, as Michael Moore pointed out, if it weren't for the ability of average citizens here to shoot and kill people, there wouldn't BE a US. Whether that would be a good or bad thing, I'll leave to you. But it's a lot to ask for any entity to demonize its own founders.

Re:1 dead == 15 dead?

[gonzo67]

More people are killed in the US by blunt objects than by guns (or all types). More are killed by drunk drivers each year. To massacre people without my guns, I would simply need to take a moter vehicle (car, or perhaps a larger truck based SUV) and drive into a pedestrian shopping center. I would lay odds that I could take out at least 30 to 40 people quickly and fairly painfully (deaths from crushing take longer than a head shot).

Does this mean we ban cars? Alcohol?

Re:1 dead == 15 dead?

[gonzo67]

At the time the Constitution was written Muskets were the Assault weapons of the day. Things improve. So did weapons. So therefore we should be able to have full automatic weapons (and you can with the right permit)

Re:1 dead == 15 dead?

[Merk]

Can we get rid of cars without ruining the economy, or trucks? No. Can we get rid of automatic weapons? Yes. I think drunk driving should be taken much more seriously. I'm sure you can find lots of ways to kill people. I just don't think it should be made easy.

Re:1 dead == 15 dead?

[Merk]

Did you even read that article you linked to? This gun nut had about 5 loaded guns lying around and it was dumb luck that the guy with the sword didn't kill him before he remembered he had one in his pocket.

If anything, that proves my point. First of all, if swords were legal, you'd stand a decent chance of not being killed if someone attacked you. Second of all, having a loaded gun in your pocket doesn't prevent you from being stabbed multiple times by a lunatic.

If the guy had had his own sword, he probably would have fared better. A sword is much more useful than a gun at parrying somebody's attack.

Re:1 dead == 15 dead?

[Merk]

So in your ideal country, McDonalds is covered in blood, and you just have to hope that most of it isn't yours or your family's. In my ideal country the only danger posed by McDonalds is from the food.

Would you call Britain a totalitarian society? It's more free than the US on many levels, and the murder rate is far lower. There are freedoms that make the US great, and there are many freedoms lacking in the US as well. I just don't happen to think that the freedom to buy guns is one of the things that makes it great.

Re:1 dead == 15 dead?

[Merk]

At the time the constitution was written, the "assault weapons of the day" could still only fire a handful of rounds every minute. In a one-on-one or one-on-many confrontation, the guy with the musket would be lucky to kill one person. With today's assault weapons, someone could kill dozens.

Can you really be so sure of the intention of the people who wrote the constitution?

What happens in 100 years when you can buy handheld "super-seekers" that fire 1000 heat-seeking rounds per second. One person with their finger held down could kill a small town in 10 seconds or so. Do you think the people responsible for the 2nd amendment would approve of everybody walking around with one of those?

Human beings make mistakes and have poor judgement. That's just a sad fact, and until that changes, I think it should be difficult for a human to wipe out hundreds more. If someone wants to carry a sword, or nunchakus, or a switchblade, I say let them. Deadly as those are, the damage they do is somewhat limited. If someone wants to carry a musket from the time when the constitution was signed, let them do that too. But if someone wants to walk the streets carrying a fully-automatic machine gun, why the hell should I accept that? My confidence in the ability of the average person to keep a cool head, to keep the safety on, and overall, to keep from going apeshit is pretty low. Just like the law steps all over your freedom to yell "Fire" in a crowded theatre, it should also step all over your freedom to carry a modern assault weapon. Stick with the assault weapons of the 1700s.

Re:1 dead == 15 dead?

[psykocrime]

Actually, yes. I'd rather him be armed with something less than an AK-47.

Gun control won't help with that. Criminals, by definition, don't obey laws. Laws about who can own what kind of gun ONLY affect law abiding gun owners. Granted, in my scenario above the "raging lunatic" could be an otherwise lawful citizen who just happens to snap when he finds out you're banging his wife / sister / daughter / whatever... but in general, the idea that "gun-control" affects the "bad guys" is mostly a myth.


Also, I'd rather not be armed and make true the "most weapons in the house are used to shoot family members" argument.


Obviously you accept that widely quoted argument. I on the other hand, am not convinced that it is true. Like a famous man (Mark Twain?) said "there are three kinds of lies... lies, damned lies and statistics." I think that "most guns in the household kill other family members" argument is an example of "lying with statistics." For example, I'm pretty sure I read that those numbers include suicides committed via gun. Obviously an intentional suicide isn't the same as accidentally killing your wife trying to shoot a burglar.


I'd rather give up everything I own than be forced to kill.


I can relate to that sentiment, I just don't feel quite the same way.


I'm no murderer.


Self-defense isn't murder, IMHO.

A life is a life, wether its a petty theif or a rapist. Nothing gives you the right to kill someone (IMHO), unless you're a judge in certain states

Well you certainly are entitled to your opinion. My feeling is that if a man attacks me, with the intention to seriously harm or kill me (or a family member) then he has forfeited his right to life if I can kill him before he does whatever it is he's trying to do.

Please don't get the idea that I'm blood-thirsty or anything though. Far from it. I hate the idea of ever having blood on my hands, and hope like hell I'm never put in a situation where I have to take another human life. But, I still remain aware that there are circumstances where I would do so (although I'm sure I'd feel a certain sense of regret afterwards, even if it was self-defense).

Re:1 dead == 15 dead?

[shepd]

>but in general, the idea that "gun-control" affects the "bad guys" is mostly a myth.

They say that, but in my home country (Canada), I rarely hear about any weapons being used in crimes apart from handguns and rifles (and even then that's quite the rarity and always front page news, every time). Fully automatic weapons, to be honest, the only time I've ever seen one on TV news was when Denis Lortie tried to take over the Quebec parliament. For an idea of Canada's gun control laws, here's a paper.

That all being said, there's limits to what I can take, and Canada's latest gun control bill, C68, is going way too far. Sorry to bring the Canadian perspective into this, I know the US is a different country with different needs, but we do seem to have fewer problems with people shooting each other.

As I've mentioned, I'm a fan of allowing organized groups ("militias") to own weapons. That's simply because as part of an organized group, with any luck you'll either be let go if you go insane, or better yet, others in the group will advise you not to do idiotic things.

>Obviously you accept that widely quoted argument

I did at one point, but I have had the figures countering it shown to me. That's why I say I wouldn't want to make it true -- it might not be right now, but it could be. No sense in helping it along.

>Please don't get the idea that I'm blood-thirsty or anything though

I wouldn't... the only people here like that are the deranged trolls. :-)

Re:1 dead == 15 dead?

[Licensed2Hack]

Did you even read that article you linked to?

Yes, I have read Mr. Phillips' account. Several times. What you don't understand is that during such an attack it is very difficult to think clearly. I've been there many times, and am now more psychologically equipted to deal with it than most. 14 years as a bouncer will make one ready for all kinds of bad things happening.

This gun nut

Mr. Phillips is not a "gun nut". This happened at his pawn shop. Just because someone owns several guns does not make them a "nut".

had about 5 loaded guns lying around and it was dumb luck that the guy with the sword didn't kill him before he remembered he had one in his pocket.

See the first part of my reply. YOU have never been attacked with a deadly weapon. I have. Thought processes get short circuited. His first thought was "survival", not "kill this bastard". Once one gets used to being attacked the thoughts get reversed. At least for me.

If anything, that proves my point.

Does nothing of the sort. Mr. Phillips would be DEAD without a gun.

First of all, if swords were legal,

Swords are legal. I own several. One is 5 feet long.

you'd stand a decent chance of not being killed if someone attacked you.

Again, you have never been attacked with a deadly weapon. You are talking out your ass.

Second of all, having a loaded gun in your pocket doesn't prevent you from being stabbed multiple times by a lunatic.

Nothing can prevent lunatics from being lunatics. All we can do is defend ourselves from them when they go off. I'll take a pistol over a sword any day.

Copyrighting an IFDEF?

[watermodem]

#ifndef _I386_ERRNO_H
#define _I386_ERRNO_H

#include <asm-generic/errno.h>

#endif

Please some lawyer out there. Please explain to this simple engineer... What the heck is copyrightable about an "ifndef" statement? This is the stupidest claim I have ever seen!!!! BAR NONE!!!

Your sig

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you not understand the difference between a region and a country?

Re:Vote bush out of office

[SnowZero]

...open to reforming DMCA...

I wonder how long that will last after/if he gets elected. Probably it won't.

By voting Green..your going to end up like the florida 2000 race, splits for the democrats there by vote goes to the republicans...

If the democrats wanted the vote of a green, then perhaps they should take up the issues the greens raise and not just pay lip service to them. Then they would *have* the votes, and you wouldn't need to beg for them. I'm not a green, but the whole "throw your vote away" stuff is BS. Look past one election... planning only for next year's is not planning for the future.

Re:What happened to '4 quarters of profitabiity'?

[Error27]

previous pump-n-dump speculation mentioned that there needed to be 4 quarters of profitabliy before Darl got a big bonus kick-in

That wasn't really speculation... That part of Darl's contract was documented in one of SCO's SEC filings. If he made SCO made a profit for four consecutive quarters then Darl would get 150,000 stock options.

If you read the article though, he still gets a ton of options regardless of the four quarters of profitability... It will be interesting to watch when they start to vest.

Re:Vote bush out of office

[jazuki]

Not quite right. While the shareholders of a corporation are not liable in case of corporate wrongdoing, its officers and board are. And they can be individually prosecuted if they were party to criminal activities, either in terms of making decisions or in terms of intentional execution. And they can go to jail as a result.

In the case of Enron, for example, Andrew Fastow is being criminally prosecuted.

However, many argue he's just a fall guy, since people that high up in a corporation often as far as they can to maintain plausible deniability. Like Ken Lay for example. But, this happens in politics, too. Say, Reagan and Iran-Contra.

$9 for Laywers that don't show up?

[utlemming]

ANYBODY else wonder what is going on with the laywers? I mean, SCO forked out $9 Million to pay for laywers, and then the laywers don't even show up to oral arguments for the Motion to Compel from IBM. Does this make sense to anyone else? Or am I the only confused one? Is Darl's brother Kevin earning some serious money here that maybe we should know about? And who is this Tibbit's guy? I don't know about you but I am thinking that SCO is using the term "laywer" pretty liberally.

Re:not just Linux... use do-while loop

[coyote-san]

If you put parentheses around the return value you'll get a recursive macro call.

Comparing SCO Openserver errno.h to Linux errno.h

[DDumitru]

I just pulled up /usr/include/asm/errno.h from a SCO OpenServer V system I have access to (which has a legal license). I compared this with /usr/src/linux-2.4.22/include/asm-i386/errno.h

I will not post the file here, but a couple of points are obvious.

1. The comments between the two versions are different. Even specific error message comments vary, such as:

SYMBOL - Linux - SCO

EPERM - Operation Not Permitted - Not Owner
E2BIG - Argument list too long - Arg list too long
EDOM - Math argument out of domain - Argument out of domain

and on and on.

2. There are a bunch of defines in Linux that don't exist in SCO.

3. Some of the defines are completely for different things:

SCO - EBADE 50 /* Bad Exchange Descriptor */
Linux - ENOCSI 50 /* No CSI structure available */

4. The SCO file has a bunch of errors for things like TCP errors that aren't in the Linux file at all.

5. The formatting of comments is very different.

In general, there is no way that the Linux code is a simple cut and paste of the SCO code, at least at this level.

Maybe the code started out closer, but all that is left is symbols and numbers. The numbers are arbitrary and vary from target to target. The symbols are a part of the POSIX spec. The files are available under a BSD license. Just how is this infringing on SCO's copyright and even if it were, just what are the damages.

Investors...lawyers...hmmm.

[Atario]

Is it possible to invest in law firms? 'Cuz it seems like they always profit no matter which way the wind blows...

Where SCO comes in...

[Kjella]

Where does Darl come in? It's BSD's copyright; did BSD make Darl their agent? I don't think so. If there was a screwup (which remains to be shown), the quarrel is between BSD and Linux, with no room at all in there for SCO.

I think it's part of the BSD settlement, which basicly goes like this AT&T licences to BSD, BSD licences to AT&T. Because they'd both been using eachother's work. Any code that should be attributed to both AT&T and Berkley, is SCOs business since SCO now owns the Unix code of AT&T. So their claims to a copyright notice is not without merit, the silly part is laying claims to the definitions of the POSIX standard.

Kjella

Re:Where SCO comes in...

[RealAlaskan]

Well, if it's copyright AT&T, then maybe SCO has standing. If it's copyright Regents of the University of California, they don't.

In any event, because it was distributed under the BSD license by someone who had the right to do so (Berkeley), it's a trivial matter, which can be mended by fixing the missing copyright notice.

Re:DMCA Must gooo! its gayer than the president

[rruckley]

What I'm afraid of is when the US uses it's muscle to ensure every country it deals with has a DMCA like theirs. Living in Australia I'm worried about our government bowing to US pressure to enact a DMCA like law just so we can trade with you guys.

SCO Better Sue Microsoft, Too.

[lophophore]

I found 4 different copies of errno.h on my Windows XP box!

Two were from Cygwin, but the other two were Microsoft's.

For instance, c:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\Vc7\include\errno.h says it is copyright Microsoft. This file includes preprocessor directives that seem strangely familiar

/* Error Codes */

#define EPERM 1
#define ENOENT 2
#define ESRCH 3
#define EINTR 4
#define EIO 5
etc.

Which look sufficiently like what SCO is claiming is their copyrighted code!

This is fun!

Re:Vote bush out of office

[acroyear]

Here's the frustrating thing. I've talked to so many self-proclaimed "Democrats" who have plenty of good ideas, but don't seem to cohesively and logically put all of it together.

"No, I don't belong to any organized political party. I'm a Democrat." -- Will Rogers, sometime in the early 1950s.

If SCO gets bought, the terrorists win

[Cid Highwind]

SCO's lawyers will recieve 25% of any buyout. The upper execs have been hanging on to preferred stock, even while they dumped their common stock, so they are also assured a healthy profit if someone buys SCO out. IBM has the resources to take them over and not even miss the money, but if they pay off SCO now, every failing IT company in the world will sue IBM on claims of copyright infringment, hoping for the windfall that SCO got.

Re:If SCO gets bought, the terrorists win

[utlemming]

What we need to do is a distributed buy out -- have every Linux user buy one or two or ten shares of stock from SCO -- privalaged with voting rights. But then it would not be a buy out perse, because it will not be a single entity doing the buy out. It will be individuals that do it and therefore not subject to the buy out clause.

With a distributed buy out, then we simply call a stock-holders meeting. To which we propose that we are going to raze the company from within. With Darl at the meeting, then the Linux users vote to opensource all the SCO source code -- every single bit of it. Well Darl is still in shock, we vote to have Darl booted with the whole board. As Darl is picking up the bricks he just dropped out of his pants then we vote to dissolve the company.

The way I figure is that if we get half of the /. community and the Linux users to spend a little money then we could dispatch this company to /dev/null.

The best part is that since it is no company but a group of stock holders that are really pissed off it is not illegal. How? Because it is not a hostile take over, and it is not the actions of one entity, but in this case the actions of several thousand people -- who hold interest in the company -- making the decisions to Enron it.

Re:If SCO gets bought, the terrorists win

[Cid Highwind]

You're missing the fact that we have to buy Darl's (and the other execs) stock for this to work. They're still going to make a big profit. It's inevitable that the lawyers would get their 25%. There's no way legal hotshots like Boies and co. are going to be screwed out of billions by a bunch of IANAL open-source nerds.

Even in a distributed buyout, the scummiest people within SCO will make the most of money. IMHO it would be better to let IBM destroy them in court, and hope that once SCO's lack of a credible case is exposed the top executives are proseuted for fraud and stock manipulation.

Pay attention

[filmsmith]

Sorry, son. Try again. If you'd pay attention, you'd see that I did not 'call bullshit.' I called for an end of the 'call[ing] bullshit' bullshit.

Ah, but what's the use. You're an AC anyway.

fs

Darl Conditional Statement

[frkiii]

if ( s_lipsMoving(Darl) )
{
for (i = 0; i {
printf ("\nAnd Darl said, \"%s\"\n", c_lies[i]);
}
}

Re:Darl Conditional Statement

[frkiii]

Never mind, didn't preview... ugh.

I understand now

[Ann Elk]

Linux has achieved dominance in the server market, is scalable from embedded systems up to giant NUMA machines, has proven itself reliable and secure for mission-critical enterprise applications, and is basically kicking SCO's butt. Linux does all this and more through the cunning use of errno.h, ioctl.h, and signal.h. Bastards!

Document SCO lie - from Groklaw

[Anonymous Coward]

From Groklaw:

No, none of the code in the Linux ABI modules contains SCO IP. This code is under the GPL and it re-implements publicly documented interfaces. We do not have an issue with the Linux ABI modules. The IP that we are licensing is all in the shared libraries - these libraries are needed by many OpenServer applications *in addition* to the Linux ABI.-- Blake Stowell, 2003-02-05

Think IBM will find this interesting?

Give SCO some credit

[roystgnr]

SCO have literally come up with the weakest possible argument they could have attempted.

They've attempted weaker arguments before!

"Here is a malloc implementation copied from our proprietary Unix (or possibly from our old public domain Unix, or maybe from an even older Knuth textbook)" might not be this weak, but both attempts are put to shame by SCO's best 'argument': "This packet filtering code looks kind of similar to our code (and even more similar to the public specifications describing that code's interface, and it turns out that 'our' code is owned by Berkeley and we must have illegally stripped their copyright notices not to realize that)"

They've said some stupid and contradictory things to the press and the courts, but nothing that tops the lines they were feeding their NDA suckers.

URL Encoding.

[Anonymous Coward]

here is the explaination.

You're *really* missing the point here

[danaris]

The reason people want to stop guns from being automatic or easy to make automatic is one you, yourself brought up, and it is, indeed, a practical one:

We want to stop more people from being killed.

Yeah, it would be great to stop people from going on rampages, but people are going to snap. It's unpleasant, but true. All we can do is try to save as many lives as possible.

The point isn't the philosophy of it all, it's the people. It may not make a difference in the "big picture" to save one kindergartener's life, but I guarantee you it makes a difference to him (or her) and to her (or his) family and friends.

The point is that guns are designed to kill people, and the more people they are designed to kill at a time, the less they should be allowed to fall--legally or otherwise--into the hands of ordinary civilians. Your argument that they are not is nothing but sophistry. They are, and always have been, designed for the purpose of killing and injuring, whether people or animals.

A good way of summing this whole issue up seems to be stated very well by Lois McMaster Bujold: Persons before principles. It's all very well to have high principles, but if they end up with more people getting killed...

Dan Aris

Hey! I OWN that name

[Iparadox]

Seriously. I used ERRNO in some old programs I wrote in the early 70's. 'Course it was a variable name and not a Definition, but there are no definitions in FORTRAN anyway, so that doesn't count.

SCO: if you have $9,000,000 to pay lawyers, you can pay me a $1,000,000. IAAL. 'Fess up, or stop threatening people with MY copyright.

sorry. Left .sig in other pants.

Re:Fiduciary duties.. (snowballs chance in hell)

[cdn-programmer]

The SCO shareholders have no case. Any who held SCO shares have seen a 10x increase since this shit started. They have had MONTHS to bail out at a tidy profit.

Any who bought in after the suit was filed clearly are speculating and deserve whatever medicine gets passed around.

Sorry folks - no case here.

Re:Buy SCO (good idea)

[cdn-programmer]

This is a really good idea - but not at $15 bux...

Lets just bide our time. Within a year SCO should be down to about 15 cents. That will be a market cap of 3.5 million and yes - each of us should toss in our 15 cents worth at that time.

Having purchased a share each - we should frame it because it never will be worth anything and meanwhile place all the copyrights into the public domain.

How much went to Darl's brother?

[dbIII]

I love it... 9 million to lawyers, -1.6 to report to it's investors and they are no where

How much went to Darl's brother? Was it a big inflated fee? IMHO the shareholders should look very closely into how much of the companies money is getting shunted into the pockets of friends and family - and get criminal charges applied if necessary.

Listening to the Imperial March from Star Wars

[Anonymous Coward]

I was listening to the Imperial March from Star Wars when I saw this article. Seemed somehow appropiate. And of course, I had to believe that Bill Gates is behind this, the only one with a motive and a history of similar behavior.

Linus proves he wrote errno.h and ctype.h

[close_wait]

Groklaw has just posted an email from Linus where he shows how he wrote errno.h and ctype.h for the original 0.01 release of Linux. So it's not from SCO and it's not even from BSD.

Can SCO really be that incompetent?

Re:Linus proves he wrote errno.h and ctype.h

[herrvinny]

Yes

Re:Vote bush out of office

[Dalcius]

I consider myself a libertarian on a fundamental basis; I'd like to know what you mean when you say...
"Libertarians...would tear down...private privacy law that probably does the most to protect our freedom."?

Perhaps I don't pay enough attention to the party stance, but most Libertarians that I know work from one profound desire: to control their own lives. Privacy, I would think, falls under that, as well as the phrase "life, liberty and the persuit of happyness" in the constitution.

Please enlighten me, I am honestly curious.

With bad puns...

[andrewagill]

...come great responsibility, as well.

I choose to ignore such responsibility.

ALL OUR SEGFAULT ARE BELONG TO SCO!

Terror

[Anonymous Coward]

GO NOVELL

Aaahhhh!! CompuServe flashback!

you forgot...

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot

#define EMACS 666 /* Editor too big */

Re:Vote bush out of office

[Dalcius]

"I dislike the libertarians because (like Bush) they often seem to be more interested in the rights of corporations than of human beings, but the principle still stands."

Perhaps you're talking to different libertarians than I, but I have a feeling that you might be misunderstanding due to a different point of view.

Libertarians prefer self government, hence the government shouldn't protect you from spending your money poorly. This isn't the same as favoring a corporation -- it's favoring individual choices over government ones. Depending on your perspective, however, it could be seen as losing ground to corporations. It really comes down to a judgement call then: should the government, a small body of shady people mostly interested in power who aren't responsible to their constituents, protect you from anything other than physical harm?

Still with me? Ok, time for a bad analogy:
Bought a CD player and got ripped off? Want to sue the monopoly that sold it to you? In all fairness, you could have done your research, discovered it was a lousy product, and moved on. Nobody forced you to buy it, you don't need a CD player to go about your life.

It's a poor analogy, but it gets the point across. Libertarians understand that the government is fundamentally flawed in that they're not responsible to the people and a minority body making a judgement for the majority isn't a good idea.

THAT said, I still don't believe a free market is possible, hence I do value government intervention in extreme cases.

My name is Dalcius, and I'll be voting Libertarian this year. Sure, some are big-time wackos, but by the time they get in power (if they do), things will have watered down a bit. I honestly think that a little more corporate-consumer rape might be a good idea; maybe people will start caring a little more about where their dollar goes as opposed to spending carelessly.

Linus comments from today on errno.h

[bstadil]

Look at Linus' comments here

Conclusion:

Quote: In other words, I think we can totally _demolish_ the SCO claim that these 65 files were somehow "copied". They clearly are not.

Re:What happened to '4 quarters of profitabiity'?

[fermion]

Most of it has been covered in the other responses. We don't know if there is a bonus or what the terms of the bonus would be. What we can speculate, however, is that, because of the langues of the current report, the 9 million might be counted as an extraordinary charge and not against the official profit.

Re:Vote bush out of office

[Anonymous Coward]

its LEWIS.

Comparing Linux-1.0 errno to Linux-2.4-20 errno

[MrHanky]

I compared errno.h in Linux versions 1.0 (from 1994) and 2.4.20, and they're practically the same. Some additions have come in the later version, but a diff shows that only 8 lines were changed between the two versions, for a file originally 132 lines long. At least when it comes to errno.h, SCO is pulling stuff out of its arse.

Linus also had some interesting things to say on the LKML:

For example, SCO lists the files "include/linux/ctype.h" and "lib/ctype.h", and some trivial digging shows that those files are actually there in the original 0.01 distribution of Linux (ie September of 1991). And I can state

- I wrote them (and looking at the original ones, I'm a bit ashamed: the "toupper()" and "tolower()" macros are so horribly ugly that I wouldn't admit to writing them if it wasn't because somebody else claimed to have done so ;)

- writing them is no more than five minutes of work (you can verify that with any C programmer, so you don't have to take my word for it)
- the details in them aren't even the same as in the BSD/UNIX files (the approach is the same, but if you look at actual implementation details

you will notice that it's not just that my original "tolower/toupper" were embarrassingly ugly, a number of other details differ too).
In short: for the files where I personally checked the history, I can definitely say that those files are trivially written by me personally, with no copying from any UNIX code _ever_.

It's rather long, so read the rest at http://lkml.org/lkml/2003/12/22/137

Re:Vote bush out of office

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice strawman, asshole.

Re:Vote bush out of office

[vsprintf]

I Dislike Liberals because they forget (or ignore) the fact that the owners of those corporations are human beings who have rights. The "Rights" of a corporation are derived from the rights of the indiviuals who own it.

First, the "rights" of a corporation is a legal fiction to protect the principals of the corporation from the consequences of bad management. How many corporations have you seen sent to prison? The only real corporate rights are the rights to shelter company executives and board members from prosecution while they remove money from the pockets of employees and shareholders. The government has repeatedly mangled the laws so badly in the name of *corporate reform* that we are left with a total monster designed by (corporate paid-for) committee. BTW, I'm neither liberal nor Libertarian - I'm a conservative.

Re:Vote bush out of office

[Minna Kirai]

Libertarians that I know work from one profound desire: to control their own lives. Privacy, I would think, falls under that,

Groups calling themselves "Libertarian" (with a capital L) typically claim that the government should protect its citizens from nothing but "force or fraud".

Invasions of privacy (like taking nude photos of someone through her bathroom window with a telescopic lens) is neither forceful nor fraudulent. Therefore, the ideal "Libertarian" government will do nothing to stop it.

For example, this Libertarian Party Statement says that freedom of action & speech is the 2nd most important thing (after right to life). Therefore, my right to sell nude photos of you overrides your non-right to stop me.

Re:Vote bush out of office

[thales]

It might be fun to get rid of the Legal Fiction. Then people could file Bankruptcy inducing lawsuits against indiviual members of non profit corporations like PETA and Greenpeace.

Re:3rd parties

[vsprintf]

Until we have instant run-off voting we do NOT have a democracy in the United States.

The United States is not and never was a democracy, nor did the founding fathers want it to be one. The U.S. was and is a republic with some traits of a representative democracy. (I do agree with the Nader quote, though.)

Re:Vote bush out of office

[thales]

A Coward wrote "Nice strawman, asshole"

Strawman?

About half the shit Leftists post about wealthy people looks like it was plagerized from Joseph Goebbels.

2.3.50 v 2.6.0 -- Diff anyone?

[utlemming]

Linus commented that he himself remembers writing those files. Well, thanks to Kernel.org and a little too much time on my hands, I did a little exploring.

Kernel 2.6.0 has errno.h in two files. To make my life a little easier, I combined the two files, errno.h and errno-base.h. In Kernel 2.3.50 it is one file.

Well, as we know, SCO is claiming that 2.4.21 is the kernel that started with the problems. If that is the case, assuming that SCO actually has a case then we have a problem.

But the thing is that the errno.h and errno-base.h in 2.6.0 and the errno.h in 2.3.50 have only one difference other than being split up and the appropriate location indicators. THe only difference is:

#define E2BIG 7 /*Argument list too long*/
#define E2BIG 7 /*Arg list too long*/

So if you buy SCO's argument they are saying that a comment is to blame on this. Again, this is an SCO FUD campaign, but come on.

Thanks to diff for the comparision.

Re:Vote bush out of office

[vsprintf]

If it's the readers that mod as opposed to the editors, that's called democracy....

If the readers are the ones who supplied the forum, then I would agree with you. But, since neither you nor I are subscribers, I don't think the democracy model applies to Slashdot - unless you think you are somehow entitled to bread and circuses.

Re:3rd parties

[kiatoa]

Thanks for pointing that out. I've seen that distinction made before but never really thought it through. The analysis here:
www.chrononhotonthologos.com/lawnotes/depvsdem.htm is fairly clear. It seems to me that IRV is even more important to a Republic than a Democracy. After all the nature of a two party system is to wash out the effects of smaller groups. Quite the antithesis of a Republic.

Self-fulfilling prophecies.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

The writer above has lots of good ideas for reforming the American DMCA law, but it goes against the current American political climate for any positive changes to take place.

And if nearly everybody believes that and acts on it, your prophecies (and their related gloom-and-doom) self-fulfill.

However, there are a lot of people in the US who believe in fixing the system - either with patches or with piecemeal rewrites - and occasionally they get the power to actually DO it.

Indeed, this usually happens when (as now with the DMCA) a bad chunk of law starts showing a massive amount of unfortunate side-effects. The set of bad side-effects gradually converts people to the "fix it" side of the fence and energises them, in some cases as their individual oxen are gored, in others as events bring the problems with the law to their attention.

But even if your prophecies of the collapse of the US come true, Argentina is the wrong model.

The correct model (and a very close match) is the Roman Empire. But that took centuries - at five generations per century - to fall.

Indeed, from the viewpoint of its citizens it didn't actually fall. Things just gradually changed. From our viewpoint they rotted. But the last reminants didn't go until the Communists exterminated the family of the Czar (= Caesar) in 1918.

Re:Self-fulfilling prophecies.

[MegaHamsterX]

What is important though is many of us have been here for some time, my family from 1635, even if something does happen we'd fight again to have the republic rebuilt.

It will never end, we survived being the underdogs for hundreds of years before we became powerful, we've slogged through it before, we can do it again.

No, I don't wave the flag, I do vote, it is my country with everyone else, there is no need for patriotism lest of all nationalism.

Not to say those accustomed to creature comforts will be happy, but that's not my problem, hehe imagine most people without any credit.....oh the horror :-)

Immigrants give us power, they are the ones that allow us to reinvent ourselves and inject new viewpoints(like the spread of the Spanish language), it was once Indian, European, African, then Asian, now South American, the best Americans are mutts.

Re:Vote bush out of office

[Qzukk]

An attack on "Corporate Rights" is actually an attack on the indiviual rights of the human beings who own the Corporation.

Explain to me how the corporation "inherits" these rights from its owner. Be sure to use an example illustrating this process, such as how I would give the car I own the right to free speech.

By hook and (mostly) by crook.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Desperation to get any last revenue that they can get."

By hook and by crook, whatever it takes.

Beg, borrow and STEAL.

Re:Vote bush out of office

[Minna Kirai]

Be sure to use an example illustrating this process, such as how I would give the car I own the right to free speech.

How silly. The car isn't made of people. A corporation is made of people.

It's only logical that characteristics of a object will be retained when that item is composed into a larger one, unless they are specifically taken away.

(In the case of corporations, there is a reason why some rights should be removed from the combined entity. After all, some responsibilities were removed from the entity, and some powers were granted beyond what the people forming the corp already had. Therefore, it's only fair that some of their rights could be denied to the new conglomerate)

Re:Vote bush out of office

[vsprintf]

It might be fun to get rid of the Legal Fiction. Then people could file Bankruptcy inducing lawsuits against indiviual members of non profit corporations like PETA and Greenpeace.

I think that's an excellent idea. (Heaven knows someone should sue PETA for that *rats have rights* tripe that we had to endure.) But, seriously, since you are talking about non-profits, that's a different group held to different standards.

I think holding individual owners in for-profit corporations liable up to their loss of investment would be a good thing (and an old thing). It would require people to actively investigate and *buy into* the company's ideals and management before investing and risking their money and privilege of *ownership*. These educated owners might hold company executives to *gasp* standards, just like it was intended. That was the whole point before the current *corporate no-fault* laws. The way it is now, anyone can invest in any sleazy company, claim no knowledge of sleaze, demand insane profits, deny responsibility, and sue if they don't get what they want. That's just ridiculous. So, thanks for bringing it back in perspective! I wish we could get back there again.

Re:Vote bush out of office

[Craig Nagy]

...reasonable concept of freedom

Ha, therein lies the rub, what is a reasonable concept of freedom???

Freedom is in the eye of the beholder; an abstract concept used all too frequently to accomplish someone's agenda...

Corporations (and many individuals) usually want freedom to make as much money as possible - at who's expense? Whenever someone talks about freedom, ask, "For whom?"

Freedom for one person/group/company/mob usually takes away some 'freedom' of another person/group/company/mob. The freedom for you to punch me in the face takes away my freedom to NOT be punched in the face.

Re:3rd parties

[Minna Kirai]

Thanks for pointing that out.

Don't thank him. It's a snow-job. Neither the sources quoted on that page, nor the definitions it presents, are correct.

First it starts with a quote from the Pledge of Allegiance, which has no legal weight in the USA. It means nothing. It was first printed on a Corn-Flakes box. It also refers to the US Constitution. Back when that was written, "republic" had a specific meaning: not ruled by heriditary royalty.

Then it goes along to present definitions of "Republic" and "Democracy" that are patently false. (Democracy is basically right, but republic is completely off) Get out your own dictionary and check. The page goes on to make further (intentional?) errors in reasoning, I won't bother with all of them.

What it comes down to is that the USA is both a Republic and a Democracy. There's no conflict between those words- no reason one country can't be both.

Some other countries:
France, India: democracy and republic
Japan, United Kingdom: democracy, but not republic
China: republic, but not democracy
Saudi Arabia: neither democracy nor republic

Just to be safe

[earthforce_1]

Just tell your PHB to delete all of the afforementioned files from /usr/src/linux and he/she can stop worrying.

It's unlikely BECAUSE of the armed population.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

It may sound unlikely, it may even BE unlikely... but fundamentally the 2nd Amendment is all about making sure that the ultimate power lies in the hands of "the people" where it belongs.

And it works. So well that some people now believe that a conversion to a tyranny is so unlikely that they argue for the elimination of guns as an unnecessary hazard - completely oblivious to WHY it is unlikely.

But it will only remain unlikely as long as a large part of the population is armed. The US has had a number of near-misses with tyranny even in recent times. Some examples:

In the period just before WWII, when the NAZIs were coming to power in Germany, the KKK actually HELD power (especially in law enforcement) in many of the towns, counties, and states of the US. Their ideology was similar. But in the US people were able to resist with firearms. (My wife is here because, in separate incidents, her grandfather and mother held off the Klan in battle.) So while the NAZIs were able to suppress opposition and rise to power in Germany, the Klan in the US was held at bay, and finally defeated, in thousands of tiny battles.)

Nixon, president during the peak of the '60s anti-war movement (with a terrorist faction that makes Alkaida look tame), actually hired a think-tank to examine what would happen if he suspended the presidential election. Answer: That would precipitate the population to oust him by armed might and restore the election - and this would succeed, mainly because over half the population was armed and partly because some of the military would side with them.

The Battle of Athens is another county-level example.

(Of course not all near-misses were averted by an aroused, armed population, or the threat of one. For instance, there was the "Butler Plot" in 1933, when the heads of several of the US' largest corporations plotted a coup to replace Roosevelt with a fascist regime under general Butler. Butler was appalled, went to a congressional committee (the predecessor of HUAC) about it, and the plot was suppressed. Imagine if they'd found a more sympathetic general...)

And I could go on.

Re:It's unlikely BECAUSE of the armed population.

[nalfeshnee]

Nixon was a wuss. You try an armed uprising against Bush and Rumsfeld and see where it gets you.

Hint: begins with 'Guantan..' and ends with '... AND NO FUCKING JUSTICE FOR ALL'.

Thanx and Merry Winterfest,

Nalfy

Ultimate Response

[Anonymous Coward]

I've looked at the supposedly infringing files, and it appears that they are all in fact derivative works using letters and numbers widely promoted by Sesame Street.

Look out boys - they're sending Oscar around to can your sorry asses !
This tip brought to you by the letters S, C and the number 0 (SCO's true market value)

Re:Ultimate Response

[LennyDotCom]

Look out boys - they're sending Oscar around to can your sorry asses !
Big bird and his buddy Mr. snuffilupigus will kick oscar's ass!!

Re:Vote bush out of office

[Minna Kirai]

-It's not easy to understand by the common guy

Instant Runoff is easy to understand. The name says it all ("Ah, it's like we were having a runoff vote, but the successive votes have been entered ahead of time"). While the

The single biggest obstacle to an adoption of Concordet voting is the name. "Concordet" says nothing to the average man, and the well read will just say "You form an agreement, somehow...?". If they could name it more obviously ("Ranked preference conciliation"?), then it'd have a better chance at acceptance.

Actually marketing didn't kill Novel

[rsilvergun]

Having one windows computer behave as a Novel client so you could hook Novel clients to it (and then just buy one Novel Client license instead of hundreds) did :). I think Novel actually won the resulting lawsuit (?) but their finances where a mess by then.

Re:3rd parties

[kiatoa]

O.k., now I'm both confused and feeling a little dumbfounded. The Pledge of Allegiance isn't a formal part of being an American? I admit I didn't go to school here (the US) but don't they say the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools? This is interesting because I have heard this differentiation between Republic and Democracy made before and I had sort of just passed it off as being mincing words. Thank you for your added perspective!

Re:Vote bush out of office

[Licensed2Hack]

a Republican won't let me spend it on drugs and hookers, so what am I supposed to do with it?

Spend your money on a vacation where you can buy drugs and hookers? You can get hookers legally in many places in Nevada, especially around Reno.

So I suggest you vote Republican. Why? If you are allowed to keep your money you can buy most anything you want. (Notice the success of the War on Drugs) It's called the free market. Just be SMART enough not to get caught buying/doing stuff that is currently illegal.

If Democrats have their way most of us won't have enough money to buy the stuff we need (legal or illegal, unless we become piglets at the teet of the Federal Sow), let alone drugs and hookers.

Re:Vote bush out of office

[thales]

The current laws are a liberal measure to "protect" lazy investers from the consequances of not bothering to check out the claims of Corporations they invest in, an apt subject in the case of SCO.

The most Irresponible corporate actions I see are from Non Profits. They pull SCO type actions on a regular basis, making wild charges before courts and regulatory agencies that result in far more time and money wasted than SCO has managed over the past few months. PETA and Greenpeace have been pulling shit like SCO is attempting for years, with their executives hiding behind the NPC legal fiction.

Re:Vote bush out of office

[Licensed2Hack]

and throw your support behind the democratic nom...

Would this be the same Democratic Party that is the recipient of more donations from Hollywood than the Republican party? Methinks things could get worse if you were to get your way...

Re:Vote bush out of office

[Anonymous Coward]

can't recognize a non-corporeal entity - unless it's a middle eastern diety that's been pounded into their head from birth.
----

Who, Mithras? But that guy was transplanted there, at least, if you believe the elder generation of scholars...

Re:Vote bush out of office

[Qzukk]

The car isn't made of people. A corporation is made of people.

True, but just because they form a corporation does not transfer their individual rights to the corporation. 100 people forming a company does not create a group that can (legally) cast 101 votes, unless you're diebold.

Re:Vote bush out of office

[Anonymous Coward]

>And frankly, Libertarians are the worst. For all >their talking about freedom, they still would tear >down enviromental and private privacy law that >probably does the most to protect our freedom.

You know... I'de respect that statement a whole lot more if environmental and privacy laws were *actually* enforced under the current way things are, but the harsh reality is that these laws are trophy laws that are rarely exercised and widely disregarded by corporate America.

So.... with regard to Libertarianism, I think the rational person must admit how close we already are to this "nirvana". Embracing Libertaranism would be nothing more than removing the facaid and admiting that this is (as close to) the natural state to which money, power and individuals who value their freedome gravitate.

Oh, BTW, I am *not* a libratrian; I was a registered independent when I lived and voted in your little fscked up country... I have since move on from the lie that is the USA.

Re:Vote bush out of office

[Anonymous Coward]

I fail to see what "middle eastern" religon has to do with the subject

I think he's commentating on the prevalence of Christ-worship amongst conservative political figures, Christianity and its root religion Judaism both hailing from the middle east.

Re:Vote bush out of office

[Anonymous Coward]

>Why do you think nobody goes to jail when Exxon
>destroys hundreds of miles of Alaskan coastline,

Becuase there is no corporate death penlty?

>but if you take your dirty oil and dump it in the
>storm drain and get caughty you get fined and >maybe >thrown in jail?

Because oil is valuable and corporations want to force you to "recycle" this valuable resource without paying you?

>It's because the shareholders aren't personally
>liable for the actions of the corporation.

Ah... so what you're saying is that corporations are a vaulable tool for shirking responsibility and circumventing legal systems while extracting at much money from economies as possible! That explains why the Eron shredders where so busy during the last few months of their existance. ...this is something that we (the people) average "concrete-reasoning keep-it-simple-stupid" already know.

Shareholders are ultimatly responsible, as they are the ones who are left holding the empty bag of life savings they invested. But... the more important fact of the matter is that the method of punishment for corporations (primarily fines) is completely out of whack for crimes "against nature and humanity" that corporations are often guilty of commiting.

In the long run money is worthless... and idea cooked up by "civilized people" to make things work in a fake "modern" (read unsustainable) world. A complete abstraction of the bond forming process that evolved from bartering, sharing, trading and otherwise building real bonds of faith and trust with your fellow human beings.

The last 200 years is but a fraction of a second in the day of the human race and corporations (and their behavior) and but an artifact of that reality.

Re:Vote bush out of office

[Anonymous Coward]

It is more than force or fraud, you dolt. Trespassing is mentioned in that statement, you shithead. Trespassing is not just physical land transgression, dipshit.

Furthermore, freedom of speech assumes that the speech itself is obtained legally, like an original work. I can't illegally obtain the "speech" by violating someone elses property (like taking nude photos of someone unwillingly). This would clearly hit the first stipulation that one can exercise ones rights except at expense of others.

Get a life, ignorant fuckwit.

"war against Linux"

[TildaBang]

war against drugs, war against terror....

Re:"war against Linux"

[Ogman]

all have bullshit in common.

Re:Vote bush out of office

[Anonymous Coward]

While you are right about everything else, you misstated the Condorcet criterion: "A one on one comparison between the winner and any other candidate should show the winner being preferred in every pair." That condition cannot be satisfied by any ranked voting method, since there may be intransitive cycles that lead to no candidate winning every pairwise contest.

The actual criterion is "If there is a candidate that beats every other candidate in pairwise vote counts then that candidate should win."

Condorcet isn't all that useful as a criterion. One could create a really rotten method that meets the CC if one wanted to (e.g., elect the Condorcet winner if one exists, otherwise elect the Borda loser). But the standard methods that meet CC (such as ranked pairs or SSD) are much safer than IRV.

Better than Condorcet-compliant methods, IMO, is approval voting (everyone vote "yes" for as many candidates as they find acceptable, and "no" for the rest; candidate with the most "yes" votes wins). Approval is much simpler, can be implemented with existing plurality style ballots, is monotonic, and so on. And unlike ranked systems, approval voting reveals something about the strengths of each voter's choices, in that any strategy tradeoffs that are made are reflective of the utilities of the candidates to each voter.

Re:Vote bush out of office

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer is not in politics, but in cultural change. American politicians, for the most part, are either too patriotic, or too pandering to say..yes, we are very flawed, and we can be better than this.

The answer is to invent robot nannies so all those single mom sluts can come over to my house more frequently so I can get more pussy.

Fuck this shit.

cars kill thousands more than guns every year

[steve_ellis]

"There seems to be a general consensus that people shouldn't be allowed to own something that makes it easy for them to kill more than n people in a row. Right now, n is generally agreed to be about 1, although the difficulty in killing that 1 person is pretty low"

You are right. Please surrender your automobiles, after all, "the ability to kill people with them is just too high".

Guns, like cars, are TOOLS. Both can kill multiple innocents, as well as stupid users with ease.

We have laws that say that you aren't supposed to kill people, whether you use a gun, a car, a sword, or golf club. Why should we have laws that prevent people from being able to defend themselves?

Believe me, if someone wants to kill you, there are countless tools they could use, but a gun is one of the easiest to use as defense/deterrrent.

Now, what exactly does this have to do with the DMCA? beats the heck out of me.

Gloom and doom...

[darco]

I don't know what's more distressing--the content of this gloom-and-doom post, or the fact that this post was moderated as +5 insightful...

The trend of the Americans to start using their vast police and military internal forces to enforce the whims of corporate copyright laws will multiply the effect of the parallel trend of outsourcing their technological corporate infrastructure to the third world. They are inducing a massive shift of their technological industry to the third world, without any thought given to the long-term consequences of such a strategy.

This is a clumsy and vague statement linking several america-is-a shithole themes in a pointless but seemingly insightful manner. What the hell is America's "Vast police and military internal forces" anyway? What does that have to do with outsourcing tech jobs to India? Of course no American corporation would think of the long-term consequences of outsourcing tech jobs... *cough*

In another generation or two, America will be the new Argentina. Or even worse off considering that they created so much global hatred toward themselves in their schitzo period (1980-2010; when their mounting arrogance and delusional-self congratuation inversely paralleled their financial global decline) that the rest of the world will have no interest in revitalizing them.

I highly doubt this scenario, but that's beside the point. You cite dubious wishful-thinking ("1980-2010; when their mounting arrogance and delusional-self congratuation inversely paralleled their financial global decline") as fact, providing zero information to back it up. "Financial global decline"? The DOW Industrial average has been over 10,000 for over a week, and is up almost 300 points in the past 5 market days. Delusional-self congratulation? In reference to areas that are relevant to this thread, just what are you talking about?

Positive and negative changes happen in the US government all the time. The Communications Decency Act came and went, and I am sure that the DMCA and Patriot Act will eventually follow the same path--although unfortunately on a longer timeframe.

Don't forget that evil corporations are the only lobbyists--the EFF is an excellent example of an organization fighting against the DMCA. There are countless others--and their voices are being heard.

In 2004 the smart young Americans are beginning to question the alternatives to being so closely tied to this declining empire, even if they rarely publicly acknowledge their doubts. Which is probably just as well, given the jingoistic politcal climate there.

Many Americans publicly voice their negative opinions about their government's behavior--and (correctly) see themselves as patriotic by doing so. Public dissent is a part of American politics. Also, considering that you (apparently) don't live in the United States, I question your ability to postulate on what "smart young Americans" are thinking.

I predict that America will do just fine over the next thirty years, with the usual ups and downs, just as it always has.

The mods are crazy...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a sad abuse of slashdot that the parent post was modded up... Moderating is not about pushing ideologies, it's about separating the shit from the diamonds. The parent was obviously neither.

PARENT IS NOT FLAMEBAIT

[Anonymous Coward]

How is the parent post flamebait? Perhaps it doesn't deserve to be modded up, but it certainly doesn't deserve to be modded down... It is expressing a legitimate point of view.

Argh! Shit like this pisses me off

Re:Thats not funny. #!*@& moderators

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

actually, I forgot to hit the "Post anonymously" button. But,seriously, thats stupid, not funny.

Arbitrary numbers same in both sources

[mec]

Okay, googled on "SCO Ancient Unix" and found a nifty mirror here.

I'm looking at usr/sys/user.h from Unix V6 in one window: #define EPERM 1, #define ENOENT 2, #define ESRCH 3, #define EINTR 4, and so on.
And I'm looking at include/asm-i386/errno.h from linux 2.4.20 in another window: #define EPERM 1, #define ENOENT 2, #define ESRCH 3, and so on.

Several posters have pointed to the Open Group spec. As you say, the names are part of the standard. It's also necessary that the names be identical for compatibility. Linus had no choice but to write "#define ESRCH ...". "#define ESEARCH" or "#define EPROCNOTFOUND" would not work.

However, the IEEE Std 1003.1 spec does not list the numeric values. In fact, the 2003 edition that I'm looking at lists the names alphabetically: E2BIG, EACCESS, EADDRINUSE, EADDRNOTAVAIL ...

There are 32 error code numbers in the V6 error number list. 31 of them are identical in Linux 2.4.20. In my opinion, SCO has offered credible evidence that the files are substantially similar. Now the burden is on Linus to show that he copied ENXIO=6, ENOTDIR=20, ENFILE=23, and so on, from a legitimate source.

(I agree with you about the extent of damages suffered by SCO -- nearly none. And IBM certainly didn't contribute any of this code to Linux.)

Pre-1976 code

[mec]

Hey, I've got user.h right here, from version 5 unix:

bash-2.05b$ ls -l usr/sys/user.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 mec mec 1217 Nov 26 1974 usr/sys/user.h

There's no copyright notice in the file. This is the file that defines all the errno's.

Same story with usr/sys/param.h (signal numbers). I dunno about ioctl's. They weren't in version 5 unix.

Re:Vote bush out of office

[root:DavidOgg]

Moderation of parent was unfair.

Re:Vote bush out of office

[You're All Wrong]

Like McDonalds did, you mean, in the "McLibel" case against 2 members of London Greenpeace?

YAW.

memory is not serving you correctly

[Shadowlore]

MS has been donating far longer than to the recent presidential campaign. In fact they have been the largest contributor in their field for many yeas, and in the top 3 for even longer.

MS got let of the hook not becuas eof their poltiical contributions, bt rather because there was no political drive once the government could declare victory to finish the job.

They also got let off the hook because nobody in government has the balls to do as they used to and revoke corporate charters over this crap.

Microsoft gives money to both sides, though they tend to give more to the democrats as I recall, Clinton got money, Gore got money, and Bush got money. I'll bet even McCain got some money.

MS seems to give to qwhomever is in office slightly more than who isn't. All during their trial, they gave MORE to Democrats than to Republicans. Yet, they still got went after. GO figure. Maybe that's why they flipped priorities in 98, and massively increased their efforts?

Maybe they realized the democrats were not their allies? It happens. My father swore he was a Republican for over 25 years. Then he learned more and realized he was a Democrat.

Haliburton is freaking huge, man. Do some homework. Haliburton and Bechtel both have done this before, they rebuilt the Kuwait fields after GWI. Hmmm might that play a part?? Out of Bechtel's 1.3 million in contributions, only 59% went to republicans.

Bechtel received an initial38+ Million dollar deal that can go up to 680Million or so. SOunds pretty good for them.

"""Bechtel Group Inc., the San Francisco-based engineering company, has been in the construction business for more than 100 years and has completed close to 20,000 projects in 140 countries."""

Furthermore, in most of those contracts, Haliburton is the only one submitting proposals and bids. Kinda hard to lose those when you are uncontested, no?

Abt Associates Inc. gave ZERO to the republicans, including Bush, yet got in on the deal. SkyLink Air and Logistic Support (USA) Inc. gave a mere 3900 or so total, of which 77% went to the repubs, and none to Bush, yet they got in on it too.

Many of the companies that got in gave very small sums, relatively speaking, and little if any to Bush's campaign.

According to opensecrets.org, Haliburton came in 12th in the Oil and gas top contributor for 2004, and not on the top list in 2000.

71 senators and 186 House members (43 percent) reported taking Enron cash over the last decade.

Does any conspiracy theory not get amplified by that tin-foil hat of yours? ;)

Fortunately, some of us your our brain and realize that we are most likely to contribute to people we already agree with. We realize this is the most logical explanation: that people will give to who they agree with over those they don't agree with.

Of course, the stupid and asinine campaign finance laws screw the whole thing up anyway by muddying the waters with concrete dust.

But back to SCO, SCO doesn't donate much, not even in the top 20 for the industry. So your assertion that money will buy them off is bunk. Nor are they friends with anyone in the beltway.

It is likely they won't get nailed over it because there won't be anything left to nail.

Thermonuclear pizza ovens

[Merk]

If your gun is a tool, so is my atomic bomb. I plan to use it to cook my pizza. I hope you don't mind if I accidentally vapourize you in the process.

You can argue anything is a tool. It's easy. The question isn't whether or not something may have a legitimate, legal use. Instead, it's whether or not it is too dangerous to allow the potential for misuse.

Cars, trucks, etc. can be very dangerous, that's why they're registered and licensed. Cars and trucks are also very important for commerce, etc. I personally would like to see far fewer cars and trucks, but at the moment our economy depends on them, so that outweighs the potential danger.

Guns are on the same level of dangerousness, but serve no other useful purpose. Sure, it's true that someone could go on a rampage with their car and kill lots of people -- but when was the last time that happened? When people go on a murderous rampage, they tend to use guns.

By outlawing guns, you don't necessarily eliminate the problem, but you sure will reduce it, and at almost no cost to the general population.

Re:FP

[LennyDotCom]

You hoped correctly

Re:Vote bush out of office

[FurryFeet]

I support smaller (but not nonexistant) government and individual freedom, which means I generally hold my nose and vote Republican.

So you voted for Bush because you support smaller government and individual freedom?
That's gotta win some kind of award for irony.

Re:3rd parties

[Strioa]

I do agree that the reasonning in the article was flawed, but I would like to point out that the concept of democracy is a tad bit more complicated than a simple dictionary definition.

Democracy is not a governement elected by the people, although it might be in a one line dictionary definition, it is a governement of the people. Your not in a democracy just because you vote.

The Greeks and Romans didn't have a democracy, although they arguably conceptualise the idea, because large sections of the populations weren't considered citizens.

Even today I can't see any country that has acheived democracy. We certanly have more freedoms than we had before. Nevertheless, large portions of the population are basically voiceless because of the representative systems. Furthermore, you basically give up executive and legislative power almost irrevocably for years at a time.

And then there are the economic circumstances that puts a select elite much closer to the center of power than everybody else. How can you have a democracy when not everyone has equal pull on the center of power?

I mean, we shouldn't throw around the word democracy as lightly as we do. It must be a subject of constant thought and debate in order to constantly move in a more democratic direction. It has been this way ever since the inception of the idea. Reading some of the works of political thinkers about democracy, on both sides of the political divide, is a must.

I'm partial to Cornelius Castoriadis. I recently read his last interview in which he cites Rousseau talking about the English(it's not a crack about the English). He said :"The English think that they are free because they elect representatives every 5 years. I say they're free one day every 5 years!". Same applies in every representative governement, just substitute the term length.

Just a thought.

Strioa

Re:3rd parties

[Minna Kirai]

Even today I can't see any country that has acheived democracy.

Then you're using a fantasy definition of democracy. One that could only be achieved by a civilization like Star Trek's "Borg", which uses neural implants to allow everybody to instantly vote on tiny decisions made everyday.

In reality, "democracy" doesn't require that. It only means that "the common people are the main source of political power". The Greeks were much closer to democracy than the Romans, but both should still be called "aristocracies" rather than democracies, because only a minority could vote. Once voting is available to the large majority of people, it's safe to call a nation democratic. (It would obviously be impossible for absolutely 100% to vote, because some people are small childern, and others are dangerous criminals)

However, it is a little interesting to consider just what percentage of franchisement is required to honestly call a country democratic. I'm inclined to say that Israel is not democratic, because around 20% of the people are denied voting on religious grounds.

Re:3rd parties

[Minna Kirai]

The Pledge of Allegiance isn't a formal part of being an American?

The Pledge of Allegiance has an interesting history. It first published in 1892, and said "I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all"

It only became popular with the official government in 1954, when the McCarthyist Red Scare was in full swing. US citizens were randomly forced to take "loyalty oaths" to test if they were communist spies (a silly idea, because good spies are usually good liars). The Pledge was used as one loyalty oath. They added "Under God" into the middle of it, so that it'd be further disagreeable to USSR-style communists, who were officially atheist. (And also more agreeable to some branches of Christianity, who are not allowed to swear to anything other than The Lord)

Of course, with the added religious reference, the Pledge really started to violate the US 1st Amendment, especially when it was required before anyone could be sworn into public office. In recognition of this, in modern times the Pledge is not required of anyone, but the habit established in the 50s lives on, and it was ritualistically used in both public schools and inauguration ceremonies.

Until last year... when it was finally noticed that kids in a classroom have little real ability to disobey their teacher when she orders them to recite an oath. Therefore, the Pledge of Allegiance was banned from school ceremony. (The legal case will probably continue through a few more appeals & countersuits). The end result might be either that "Under God" is dropped, or that the Pledge of Allegiance itself dimishes in popularity. (Here's a Flash cartoon on the topic)

Overly Critical Guy on political parties in Americ

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet you are one of the most vociferous right-wing wackos that posts here. You show this post by Bill Hicks on the hand hand while on the other you bash anyone who disagrees with the viewpoints of the right wing.

Who the fuck are you again?

Re:Vote bush out of office

[Stray7Xi]

It's easy to understand the system, what I meant is it's not easy to convey the results.

How would the news publish the results of an IRV vote, the whole vote, not just the final result?

Re:Vote bush out of office

[Anonymous Coward]

Nazis, threads, quality of discussion...

YUO==T3H Gh3y fl@m3r L0L!!1!1!!!!!!

OH LOOK!

[Anonymous Coward]

HEY! A post that I disagree with! And what'dya know, i've got mod points! I'll just mod down his point of view as "flamebait", and feel better about myself. ...

I'm going to copyright README.TXT

[OxfordRobotMan]

Could SCO be claiming copyright on the file names "errno.h", "signal.h", etc. If so, why don't we register README, README.TXT, and any other variants?

Re:Maybe so...

[dex22]

Symbolic,

If slashdot allows editing of posts, it creates a couple of huge problems. One moderation. A post may be moderated one way, then edited and moderated another way. Once a post has had moderation, the content either must not be changed or the karma must be reset for the new content. People could then reset negative karma by editing their posts. Second, if someone has replied to a post, the post can't be editable because it can change the contect of the reply. Yuck. Respectfully, and totally offtopic, but that's what I think.

Please do not mod this post up or down.

Re:3rd parties

[Strioa]

"Then you're using a fantasy definition of democracy. One that could only be achieved by a civilization like Star Trek's "Borg", which uses neural implants to allow everybody to instantly vote on tiny decisions made everyday."

That's not the point. I'm not saying that we should vote on every decision. Or hold referenda(is that the plural?) on every piece of legislature. But the point is that in a reprensentative governement, there should be much more accountability, and much more severe consequences for decisions that goes against what the populatiion want.

There is no easy way to do that, I don't have a ready solution. The only thing to do is something that is naturaly done, the gradual refinement of institutions, or the destruction or creation of political institutions when needed, under the pressure of social change.

I mean I have nothing against voting but it is not sufficient to acheive democracy.

As far as it being a fantasy definition of democracy, I would agree. But democracy is a concept. You can either dumb it down to apply it to reality or work your way towards it. Even if it means to never really acheive it, at least it gets better.

"However, it is a little interesting to consider just what percentage of franchisement is required to honestly call a country democratic. I'm inclined to say that Israel is not democratic, because around 20% of the people are denied voting on religious grounds."

That is a good point. I would be inclined to say that the percentage required depends of the situation. A situation where a group is denied the power to vote is obviously different than a situation where the population are disenfranchised. 20% percent in your example is really high, 20% in the latter situation is pretty good nowadays.

And what proportion, if equally equiped to make a decision, would be franchised, assuming everybody has the right to vote.

" Once voting is available to the large majority of people, it's safe to call a nation democratic. "

Again, I don't think that univeral sufferage alone is enough to acheive any kind of democracy. Because even though the governement is elected, it is elected between choices presented by a certain political elite, either overtly or de-facto. That of course is my view of it, it is open to interpretation.

What is not open to interpretation is the fact that people with more material ressources have a disproportionate amount of leverage on the center of power.

Electing your governing body is essential in democracy. But it's not sufficient, in my opinion.

Strioa

Re:3rd parties

[vsprintf]

I wish I had seen this sooner. If you're going to call someone a liar, you should have the courage to do it directly.

Don't thank him. It's a snow-job. Neither the sources quoted on that page, nor the definitions it presents, are correct.

It's not my link. If anyone is doing a snow job, it's you. Either that or you're just ignorant.

What it comes down to is that the USA is both a Republic and a Democracy. There's no conflict between those words- no reason one country can't be both.

You should really take some classes in national politics and history. In a democracy, you could not have a construct like the electoral college. You might want to note that the person who won a plurality of the vote did not win the presidency in the last election. And you obviously need a better dictionary. Mine, Webster's, says that a republic is a representative form of government, i.e., your representative casts the vote that matters. A democracy is one-person-one-vote with no intervention. If you can't see the distinction, that's your problem.

The founding fathers expressly did not want a democracy, some likening it to mob rule. "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch" - Ben Franklin.

Re:3rd parties

[vsprintf]

I am not the one doing a snow job on you. You might want to check my response to his rather clueless post.

Re:Overly Critical Guy on political parties in Ame

[Overly Critical Guy]

"Bill Hicks on the hand hand?" Learn to type before responding like a spastic prepubescent with his dick in one hand and his mommy's keyboard in the other.

Re:Maybe so...

[symbolic]

Thank you for your thoughtful response. I've previously suggested a system whereby many of these problems would be elimated, and it's not too complicated:

1. Allow editing only for the first 10 minutes after posting.
2. An edited post's moderation will be reset if it has received any positive moderation, but will not change if the moderation is negative.

Re:Vote bush out of office

[Anonymous Coward]

Excellent point. Unless a count showing the numbers of every ordering that can be found on actual ballots is published, nobody can verify that the announced results are correct. With 10 candidates you have up to 10! ways of marking a ballot (and even more, if tied preferences are allowed).

Of course, the number is capped at the number of actual voters. But don't expect to see this listing in your newspaper the day after the election.

Re:Overly Critical Guy on political parties in Ame

[Anonymous Coward]

And when you can't offend with substance, you offend with spelling and grammar.

Re:Overly Critical Guy on political parties in Ame

[Overly Critical Guy]

Um, sure, Mr. "hand hand."

Re:Overly Critical Guy on political parties in Ame

[Anonymous Coward]

In A.D. 2003
War was beginning.
Slashbot 1: What happen ?
Slashbot 2: Somebody set up us the bomb.
Slashbot 3: We get signal.
Slashbot 1: What !
Slashbot 3: Main screen turn on.
Slashbot 1: It's You !!
Overly Critical Guy: How are you gentlemen !!
Overly Critical Guy: All your base are belong to us.
Overly Critical Guy: You are on the way to destruction.
Slashbot 1: What you say !!
Overly Critical Guy: You have no chance to survive make your time.
Overly Critical Guy: HA HA HA HA ....
Slashbot 1: Take off every 'sig' !!
Slashbot 1: You know what you doing.
Slashbot 1: Move 'sig'.
Slashbot 1: For great justice.

Re:Overly Critical Guy on political parties in Ame

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe what the parent poster was trying to say (you fucking piece of shit):

Yet you are one of the most vociferous right-wing wackos that posts here. You show this post by Bill Hicks on the one hand while on the other you bash anyone who disagrees with the viewpoints of the right wing.

Who the fuck are you again?

Now why don't you go fuck yourself, you smug son of a bitch? Once again, you ignore the substance and fail to address what was said. You are a class 1-A loser.

Next!

Re:Overly Critical Guy on political parties in Ame

[Anonymous Coward]

There is evidence to prove Overly Critical Guy is a lying cocksucker. Think independently.

Can't go after the FSF

[siskbc]

now, the compiler-supplied errno.h in /usr/include contains a prominent copyright notice by the free software foundation. somehow i doubt they falsified that, and, even if they did, SCO would/should be going after the FSF and glibc and not linus torvalds and linux.

Perhaps they realize that, as a bunch of long-haired communist hippie freaks, the FSF have no money.

All joking aside, lawsuits find defendants with $$$$.