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Groklaw Turns One
JuliusRV writes "Today is Groklaw's one-year anniversary! As PJ writes, 'What a difference a year makes. When we started, all the headlines were saying that SCO was going to destroy Linux or at least make it cry. Now, looking around today, I see almost everyone predicting SCO's imminent doom instead. I think the truth, as usual, isn't in the headlines, and that it's somewhere in between those two extremes.' Thanks, PJ and all other Groklawyers, keep up the good work!"
Now, looking around today, I see almost everyone predicting SCO's imminent doom instead.
You must remember that back in the days of the OJ trial many thought he would be convicted, but he wasn't. And people have said so often how Apple will die soon / tomorrow / whatever. So I would hesitate to predicate SCO's doom just yet... but a man can dream!
"Imminent doom" may be closer to the truth than you think.
Any news on how GrokDoc is comming along.. I really like the sound of this project.. :-)
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
Oops.
I mean Happy Birthday Grocklaw.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
I'm glad that I can still use Linux, as it's the best operating system for serving up obscene volumes of multimedia content over the web. If SCO had been able to make good on their threats (and I'm sure now that if it hadn't been for Groklaw, nobody would've ever heard about this), our operating costs would've gone through the roof and we would've ultimately had to shutdown. Cheers, Groklaw! And let us hope you have another 1 year of existence ahead of you!
Software piracy is victimless theft.
....as I know lawyers love to do, but PJ is a grokParaLegal I believe and not a grokLawyer. Regardless, great work and great site.
It must feel really nice to know you are largely responsible for the ongoing education of millions of readers.
The OJ case brought us extreme media saturation, and everybody was cognisant of the circumstances and facts around the case. This is different.. computer media shills trumpeted the virtues of SCO's case and the national magazines pickup up the shill's cries and gave them flight.
;)
Well, I am really glad that PJ's work has become pivotal in illuminating the real facts behind SCO's "case". It's an excellent central point of information against SCo's disinformation campaign. Excellent work PJ. Congrats on 1 year
-B
well, how has the sco ordeal affected linux already?
i think the linux people are more unified, but idk how much it has cut in to dev time...
December 2003 : The SCO Group cannot expect to win any case based upon application interfaces which it's AT&T, USL and Novell predecessors relased in open standards specifically for the purpose of interoperability
March 2004 : How the lawsuit is going to go in court
She's a GNU/grokParaLegal
... I'd like some more karma)
(please mod me underrated, not funny
... we had GrokLaw for Watergate, Rodney King, Clinton, and OJ, the world would be a much better place. WAIT- no way to get /. "discussions" on Watergate as-it-was-happening. Pity.
I wish I could write clever and witty sigs.
I wonder what it would take to bring about the demise of SCO. I always assumed that SCO were a company who had turned to litigation because they couldn't sell products. Given that they've started to lay off staff around the world you'd think that their belts must need tightening. Does history have any examples of these things turn out?
Regardless of what you think of the business direction SCO has taken, it must be worrying for the staff who still have families to feed. ATle ast they'll still be able to afford GNU/Linux...
Cogito, ergo sig.
This is human nature. As much as we like "bad girls" or "bad boys", we always pick the good. In 90% of the stories, the hero (mostly good) wins.
Hmm... you used to be an accounting intern at NASA and now you work for a major porn site? Fascinating career.
Today is Groklaw's one-year anniversary!
No, it's Groklaw's first anniversary. The "year" is baked in.
Look, working a varied career is the best thing that's ever happened to me. Variety is the spice of life! I pity someone like you who must have been wrapped up in the same corporate hellhole for the past 20 years. Have fun sucking up to middle management!
Software piracy is victimless theft.
I wonder what will happen to the patents that SCO allegedly own should they go bust or get bought out.
What, say, if Microsoft were to buy them all, as they seem to be in the habit of doing? I think they would be a SCO worse than SCO.
Fark and ArsTechnica probably have articles too.
The /. editors are terrible.
</satire>
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
The remaining question for SCOX is "how low can it go"? Except for that bump in early April, when SCO tried, unsuccessfully, a stock buyback to prop up the price, the decline from 14 to 5 has been close to linear. If you just project the line out, SCOX goes to zero around late summer. It probably won't go to penny stock levels for a while, though; they have some cash left. But with no licensing revenue and a huge legal burn rate, they can't go on for all that long.
The real question at this point, and it's one the players in the Open Source industry need to think about, is, who ends up with the rights to UNIX when SCO is gone? Sun? IBM? Red Hat? Boies?
It's sad, in a way, to realize that the best thing the original UNIX can do is go away.
It seems like groklaw is not accessible from China - or perhaps it is just from my location.
Anyone else in China able to get to it?
Why would it be inaccessible, I wonder?
...but I'm sure it was simply an innocent mistake on your part.
Someone who posts on Slashdot is a Slashdotter.
Someone who posts on Fark is a Farker.
Someone who posts on Groklaw is a Groklawer.
Try pronouncing 'Groklawer', or just 'lawer' for that matter. Doesn't work. That's why we say 'lawyer' in English, and that's what makes them a Groklawyer. Nothing to do with lawyers, AFAIK.
The remaining question for LNUX is "how low can it go"? If you just project the line out, LNUX goes to zero around late summer.
It's sad, in a way, to realize that the best thing slashdot can do is go away.
Could you stop stalking me now? Christ, that was posted over a year and a half ago. The last thing I need is some dweeb with a Slashdot subscription following me around online.
Software piracy is victimless theft.
I'm betting on Microsoft, maybe through Baystar but most likely directly.
-- Free software on every PC on every desk
First, let me start with congratulating PJ + the rest for the fine work on this SCO thing.
That being said, Groklaw is pretty much headed for self-destruction and irrelevancy.
The constituency over there is a mainly a strange new breed of Linux Zealot that has very little IT experience. That makes them even more mouth-foaming than your Slashdot Linux Zealot, who at least has some sense of perspective on real world systems. (I recall the story about the MS SFU download -- slashbots were like "NFS for Windows? Cool!" Growlawers were fiercy frothing flamebait.)
Next, PJ is basically a Board Nazi, and she doesn't know it. Her definition of a "troll" is someone who expresses an opinion that she disagrees with, while any sort of juvenile "Darl is a goatfucker' comments are allowed. This leads to illogical and capricious post deleting sprees, often taking some interesting discussion along with it. PJ doesn't seem to have a lot of experience in the 'online community' thing, so she's unaware that her behavior is going to cause a backlash and it's going to hit hard.
Then you have that whole "FUD insurance" thing that she's involved in which at worst frankly smells like a scam, and at best is just a FUD broadcasting mechinism.
Basically Groklaw has only worked so well because (1) SCO/Darl are so ridiculously wrong and have no case, and (2) Everyone in the Linux world is unified against SCO.
Once you take those constraints away, there's not much left but some opinionated people. As soon as they get into flamey territory, and the post deleting starts, the place is going to explode.
According to anyway :)
cLive ;-)
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
I always assumed that SCO were a company who had turned to litigation because they couldn't sell products.
Well, that was only the tip of the iceberg.
The rest of it is that BayStar (and others?) delivered a truckload of cash to SCO with a prod in the ribs and a wink.
SCO is evil.
BayStar is more evil, because it funds companies to play the asshole/evil war against the big guns - encouraging companies to take up the rifles of Intellectual Property (and I don't just mean those companies being funded - I mean other companies seeing BayStar make a dollar and wanting to jump on the bandwagon).
This ENCOURAGES shitty patents. The broader the better: the more you can sue.
Linux must have looked like a fucking gold mine to BayStar.
I find the whole idea disturbing. I'm crossing my fingers that before SCO dies, BayStar breathes its last too.
In Soviet Russia, SCO sue YOU...oh wait...
That's a gross oversimplification. Trial by jury is prone to the influence of money in that better lawyers can be hired by one side or the other, but in the end it's even more prone to the social context in which the case takes place.
For example, jury trials in the American South before the enacting of federal Civil Rights legislation were absurdly biased in favor of whites and against blacks. This had nothing to do with money and everything to do with racism.
Big companies in the age of Rockafeller and Carnegie were left relatively unfettered until Americans began to resent the range and depth of the Robber Barons' influence. Then in trial after trial, the monopolies were hit hard by plaintiffs seeking damages from large companies. When Americans perceive a powerful entity as being generally useful, they tend not to press it too hard, but when they see it as having overstepped its bounds, juries tend to come down against Big Business.
Witness the recent spate of Wall Street trials. While there was certainly widespread malfeasance during the Dot-Com era, the Tyco execs, Martha Stewart, et. al. are in some ways being convicted not because of what they specifically did, but because the American public, as represented by jurors, is tired of this sort of rampant greed and wants to send a message to the executive class.
Lawrence Friedman's Law in America is a great primer (only 200 pages) on how the American legal system evolved, and how it has shaped and been shaped by American society.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
UNIX will outlive all.
Personnally, I think it's Linux which is going to be quite different. In 5 to 10 years, I see one or two Linux distributions (IBM and maybe Sun) through their own development/distribution and acquisition, and a bunch of other distributions of no relevance in the marketplace (debian, gentoo, etc which have ideological importance).
Yeah, Linux will survive the same way UNIX survived -- by forking into a small number of barely "source-compatible" variants that can easily be contained by Microsoft in their respective market niches (mainly java/oracle/apache).
I couldn't have made a more redundant comment myself.
I believe you just did.
While I'll agree that American justice is too often based on who can pay for it, I take issue with the suggestion that the market will somehow self-compensate for this shortcoming.
For every SCO (where I'll assume that you're ultimately correct that SCO will "lose" by some reasonable definition), there are far larger corporations that continue to not "lose" in any serious way; their misdeeds go unpunished and unnoticed. Edwin Black showed how the Nazis would not have been nearly as effective without the help of IBM and Tom Watson Sr.; I don't think Union Carbide's actions in Bhopal have been taken seriously by the US or international investors; tobacco corporations sell carcinogens with impunity to this day. These actions involve killing people or at the least making their lives seriously bad. Watch "The Corporation" (a new documentary in theatres now) for more examples of how unchecked corporate power leads to a society built on chasing profit and denying importance to anything else like people's lives and well-being.
Digital Citizen
Sure, the American justice system may have its flaws, but I doubt that the prosecution in the OJ case went to court saying "We're going to try to put this innocent man in jail so that we can look good and get a promotion". Well, maybe one or two of them were characterized a having had a similar attitude, but it's not like they didn't have a case, and it's not like they didn't have any evidence.
The problem SCO is going to have is that they underestimated "free software", because they didn't really know ENOUGH about "free software". The people bringing the suit aren't computer scientists, and the analysts claiming that SCO "might have something" aren't computer scientists either. The only chance that they have of winning is if the justice system fails; it's not Linux that's being questioned; it's the US justice system that's being questioned; it's the US justice system that's being sued.
Furthemore, I think many of us now realize that you can't really sue Linux, because "free software" is everyone, because "free software" is freedom of speech; it's not a company like Microsoft that you can sue. All over the world, people aren't going to stop using Linux, and if SCO is going to get anywhere, they are going to have to win many court cases, and they are going to have to show the same evidence in each case, evidence that, with almost complete certainty, it can be said, does not exist.
Now... to be fair, I imagine that it would be possible to turn SCO around; look at what Lee Iacocca did with Chrysler - it's possible, but with four patent lawsuits from IBM hanging over your head, a Red Hat lawsuit, and numerous GPL violations to boot, this is going to be difficult, so in their case, there is, let's say, a grave danger of "Live by the sword, die by the sword", happening. Unlike some people, I don't really wish any harm to SCO, because it's not SCO's fault - SCO is a business, and I would never wish financial disaster on any business. That's unethical. It's PEOPLE who work at that business that have encountered misinformation. Misinformation about Linux, misinformation about Unix, misinformation about "free software". It's basically, if I were to boil it down to a simple statement, it's that these lawsuits against Linux are being brought by individuals who aren't computer scientists.
I remember that there was a case in the US where a man sued "the devil". He claimed the devil had caused him to commit all these sins and hurt his loved ones and that he was taking the devil to court because he wanted to bring him to justice. The reason that the case was thrown out was because the court did not know where to send the devil's subpeona to. So similarly, with Linux, the question is how do you subpeona free speech? Where does free speech live? What is free speech's address? Many would say America. See? But basically, it's freedom of speech that is giving all of these proprietary software companies headaches. And suing freedom of speech is, in a strange but opposite way, like suing the devil.
If VA Software (once known as VA Linux) goes out of business, there will be severe repercussions in the open source world. (I think that this is unlikely, but they might be pared down.)
VA Software owns OSDN, the collection of Slashdot, Newsforge, Freshmeat, Geocrawler, and Sourceforge and some other major OSS sites (I consider the above five to be the most critical). In most cases, if VA Software goes under, it's probable that VA will have to do what it can to sell off assets and data (rather than freely releasing them) to either return to profitability or pay off creditors.
Let's look at a couple of these:
* Newsforge. Without doing research, I'm guessing that Newsforge is not self-sustaining, and would probably have difficulty being very profitable, thus it probably could not be spun off. I don't think Newsforge has significant assets in the form of IP. On the other hand, Newsforge is a fairly biased, propagandaish news source that doesn't attract a lot of mainstream attention. The loss of Newsforge probably wouldn't do too much damage to the OSS world.
* Slashdot. Slashdot can probably (perhaps given some tweaks) be self-sustaining. There are a lot of things that can be done (like ad banners and subsucriptions, as is now the case) that would probably let Slashdot keep itself afloat without drastically changing the way Slashdot works or damaging userbase size, and a number of somewhat more intrusive things that could be done that would allow Slashdot to still remain a major tech forum. Slashdot is somewhat replaceable (especially since Slashcode is open) but it would take a long time to produce such a valuable database and user base -- and given the value of these, Slashdot could probably be sold to a number of organizations. Slashdot's comment database is enormously valuable, and may rival USENET for data on a number of tech issues. Its loss would be damaging.
Slashdot is frequently biased and sometimes inaccurate, but it has a significant degree of clout. Mainstream news sources definitely go over Slashdot to identify interesting tech topics. Slashdot is an important place to get people upset about or make them aware of things relevant to the open source world -- it is probably currently the single most important such forum. It helps produce rapid community response to issues -- there have been a number of times that (major) changes have been made (vendors making statements on Linux support, people finding alternative hosting to keep important resources alive, etc) after Slashdot highlights points. It is a significant political mobilizer, and assists other mobilizers -- it is unlikely that nearly so many people would frequent Groklaw without the attention Slashdot gave it. In general, Slashdot significantly improves communication, open source visibility, reduces response time, and facilitates the spread of memes in the open source community. I would consider it to be extremely important, and the loss of it a major setback.
* Freshmeat. Freshmeat is a major resource for *IX software. There is no other database that is nearly as comprehensive or helps get the word out about important updates. Google can replace some of Freshmeat's features (the ability to locate a project homepage is somewhat less useful that it used to be). However, while Freshmeat does not provide updated competitive reviews of software projects, it is *the* single place to go when one wants to find a list of potential *IX applications to solve a problem. This has significant trickedown effect to even end users -- if one works at Red Hat and is trying to find a good CLI FTP client to bundle with Red Hat, Freshmeat is where to start looking for one. Freshmeat can probably maintain itself, especially as it may have lower resource usage than Slashdot. Freshmeat is probably the primary location to spread warnings about an intentionally malicious application (such as one that adds backdoors to a system) since many people will see Freshmeat comments when doing initial-evaluation of soft
May we never see th
What the OJ, SCO and Microsoft cases have in common is that their future was not determined by the justice system (ie. the courts have not succeeded in materially altering anything). SCO will die not because of the courts but because Darl does not care and they have no real business.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
LinuxWorld already joined the congratulatory celebrations on Saturday
An anniversary is by definition a integral number of years from the date being observed. Today is therefore the first anniversary of Groklaw's founding. If one wishes to observe other important milestones, such as the passage of six months after an important event, one should refer to such observances using another phrase. Such observances are not called anniversaries for the same reason annual statements aren't released twice per year.
Maybe GNU/grokParaLegal was off ... she's really a java.lang.grokParaLegal.
... [down to public static void main] ...
; s erver.surviveSlashdotEffect();s hdot");n TheNews("slashdot");f ect();
import java.lang.grokParaLegal;
grokParaLegal pj = new grokParaLegal();
pj.writeNews();
pj.writeNews()
pj.writeNews();
pj.inTheNews("slashdot");
pj.
pj.inTheNews("sla
pj.server.surviveSlashdotEffect();
pj.i
pj.server.surviveSlashdotEf
when(grokLaw.age() == 1)
{
slashdot.congratsTo(pj);
}
When it's all about "sides", something important is missing. Both sides selecting jurors has to result in "balance of prejudice" and not "commitment to truth". In fact the latter quality could be seen as dangerous to both sides: an unknown quantity; better to have someone "on your team"!
Wikileaks, no DNS
The SCO thing happened and it seemed like that there was really nowhere to go to really get the information on the case. Basically, it's one case, one company, and we know enough at this point to be comfortable in realizing that the risks are basically limited to frivolous lawsuits (or were), and that there are millions of dollars available for anyone that becomes the innocent victim of a frivolous lawsuit. So basically, it sucks, but it's OK. It's the type of situation where remaining calm is of utmost importance. Yes, you are at risk if you use Linux, but at risk of what, and it might not necessarily cost you your business, you will have people to help you out if you need it, and life is full of risks anyway. Not to justify these underhanded legal tactics, just to say that what's really important is to "chill out", while keeping your eyes open. Outrage is not your friend in uncertain times. Peace of mind, the ability to relax, the ability to remain calm, think on your feet, etc... that's what will make the difference. Instead of reacting to idiots who incorrectly think that they know all about computers because they know how to point and click, remaining calm and being able to entertain their completely incorrect fantasies will get you (and Linux, I might add) much further than creating walls and burning bridges. Now is the time to shine with your calm, relaxed approach. That's my opinion, anyway. Life is full of risks, and in order to make the right decisions you need to be somewhat "chill". If you "freak out", you are more likely to execute poorly planned strategies and make bad decisions.
So with Groklaw, it is in part because the claims are SO outrageous and absurd, even funny, yet for some people quite serious legal problems, this is why that approach has worked. Just like the previous poster said. What concerns me now is this: what is fair and balanced? Is there any benefit to presenting both points of view?
What Groklaw has been doing recently is simply presenting anything and everything that is negative and incorrectly and unjustly critical of Linux. While this type of approach was certainly necessary, and entirely entertaining, even downright hilarious when the SCO claims first came out, it's not really necessary now, because we know the details, and we know that there wasn't REALLY anything misappropriated with Linux. I think that SCO has, in effect, cried wolf, and that now very few people will ever believe that Linux could possibly infringe. So it is important to stay alert, no doubt about that.
Reading Groklaw at this point is not what it used to be. It used to be that you needed more information about the SCO case, and didn't know where to look. It used to be rather amusing to read all those absurd press releases. Definitely entertaining. At this point in time, many of us realize that Linux is sometimes going to be attacked by those who don't know anything about computers, and we are all well aware of the absurdity of these individuals who don't really know what they are talking about while refusing to listen.
So, looking at it from a PURELY objective point of view, you have a website that takes anything and everything that is anti-Linux and re-publishes it and gets it "out there". So in a superficial sense, if you don't really look deeper, and see that Groklaw is disputing, or breaking down these anti-Linux articles and authors, what you have a website that presents to the world every anti-Linux article known to humankind. To maintain this "breaking down" momentum, to maintain the critical momentum necessary to justify what essentially amounts to giving a secondary platform to these anti-Linux authors and organizations is the balance that I am concerned about.
That's the thing that gets me. It's a choice. Number one, you can gloss over the headlines, which basically tend to be either voluminous legal documentation or empassioned reviews of anti-Linux articles, which tend to suck you in; or you can really understand WHY the headlines are posted, and you can really
Well you could try swapping away jurors who are perceived to be neutral, but it'd be foolish. Being the first person to swap a jury member puts you at a slight disadvantage, since the bad guys now have one more swap than you. And you probably don't have any control over the replacement juror either.
If they were inclined to ennumerate the potential biasedness of a juror, I imagine game theorists would say the opposite to what you're saying - the litigants would generally only weed out the ones who appear most biased, since knocking out a 'neutral' would a) invite retaliation and b) has a 50-50 chance of making the jury worse.
Insofar as it goes, it seems a reasonable system,
though it's probably broken somewhere, if those liberal horror stories about all-white Southern juries sending innocent black guys to death row are to be believed.
It's a real pity that you have to use it, or risk being moderated troll...
Want to see something even more scary? (fiction, but I wouldn't *doubt* that this doesn't happen every day).
Watch or Read John Grisham's "Runaway Jury". In the movie, the jury selection for the defense is done by a team of investigators hidden away in another building. (audio and video are transmitted via hidden wireless cameras in the defenses clothing) They have PI's that shadow all the prospective jurors and dig up everything on them, then they have psycologists determining the body language of the jurors.
incredibly illegal and expensive, but in a case where a company stands to lose billions, why not?
Steven V.
I patented screwing your mom. But it got revoked for "prior art."
My point is that this character would make the jury harder to predict, and would therefore be likely to be eliminated by at least one side, and probably both. If it's a close call, you don't want to be landed with an unknown factor.
Also, I would posit that those who are strongly motivated by truth are rare, so the probability of replacement with another is small, so there isn't much risk if you do replace them!
Wikileaks, no DNS
I just recently served on a Jury, and I assure you that it was evident with the questions they asked me and the other perspective jurors that the ability to look at the evidence and facts (the Court's best approximation of truth) was formost on their minds. Prejudices were seen as something that hampers that ability.
For instance this case involved someone getting a gun out and shooting his ex-girlfriend becuase she had an abortion. I was the first to be excused, even though my closest ties to the anti-abortion movement is affiliation with a unwanted pregnancy help organization that advocates adoption instead of abortion. I do not affiliate with any organizatio that bombs abortion clinics, or even lobbies to make abortion illegal.
And for reasons I do not know the prosecution (the one who I would figure was looking for people who did not like abortion) set me free before anyone else.
So in short, I do not know that the dilemma you pose between balance of prejudices as being an imprecise (or even counter-productive) to commitment to truth really exists.
By the way Morosoph, thanks for your participation in that survey. Unfortunately I can't keep everyone playing nice even when I want to. You've always been a true gentleman to deal with.
In your case, though, I suspect that the prosecution thought that maybe you would sympathise with the former boyfriend. They have no easy way of telling how extreme or moderate you are.
Wikileaks, no DNS
Thank-you. I don't think that I've been perfect though. I did say that your logic in our previous discussion was lacking when in fact there were really crossed wires due to coming from different perspectives; had I taken more care, I would not have said that.
Wikileaks, no DNS
I've thought of that. Another Jury member told me they were worried I might be grounds for a mis-trial. Personally I think they simply syphen off all the alphas that might disagree with them, in this case for the reason you specified. Lawyers, cops and judges are often the absolute first to be removed
And although I can see the right reasons behind what they do, I'm first to admit Lawyers are very, very good at doing all the wrong things for the professed right reasons.