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Groklaw Starts Unix/Linux History Project

Posted by simoniker on from the back-in-the-day dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Over on GrokLaw, PJ and others have decided to create a 'timeline' for Unix and Linux development. The plan is to recreate, as completely as possible, the history of these two operating systems '...from the perspective of tracing the code by copyright, patents, trade secret, and trademark. The idea is that the final timeline will be a publicly-available resource, released under a Creative Commons license, that will assist the community in defending against - or better yet in deterring - future lawsuits against GNU/Linux code.'"

4 of 71 comments (clear)

  1. Score another victory for Creative Commons by nil5 · · Score: -1, Redundant

    Lawrence Lessig's response:

    "EEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHHH"

    hmmm darn caps filter hehehe

  2. Summoning Slashdot... by aweraw · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Is this really news? Or is this an attempt to summon the collective UNIX/Linux knowledge of /.

    Either way, I hope this kicks some asSCOles inside out...

    --
    5468652047616D65
  3. Licensing of mass disruption by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Redundant

    Do you want to:

    Let people distribute copies of your whole work for noncommercial purposes (for example, on a file-sharing network, or among friends)?

    http://creativecommons.org/license/sampling

    Sorry to say but this whole licensing scheme is getting out of hand. Not to troll about this but how many licenses are there? GPL, BSD, etc? Now another scheme? Now supposing I decided as an admin on one of the machines I -obviously ADMIN - I decide to go with the "non commercial" license. Say I run my own machine with 60 users. Friends, friends of friends, etc. Now I decide to host a domain for one of these friends, and he decides he's going to run something commercial then what? Am I breaking license standards here. Aside from that, what the hell difference would it honestly make these so called Licenses being they would have to be a worldwide universal license.

    Just because you say it's law here, why should someone follow the laws of land A when they live in land B. Don't you think there is a huge window for abuse here. Not only by cheapskate corporations who can circumvent these laws, but by lawmakers who for one wouldn't understand computing as a whole, but would be quick to indict Average John for a quick hit in the paper on "How I cracked down on international program crackers who acted with disregard those terrorists."

    Seriously, why is the community (Open Source) even waisting their time on another licensing scheme.

    AmeriCONNED the Beautiful

  4. Unix History Tree by noselasd · · Score: 1, Redundant

    I suppose they want to track it down on the almost individual source file level.
    The Unix History still makes a good wall poster though.