Slashdot Mirror
Does Unisys Really Get It?
Joe Barr writes "There's an interesting story on NewsForge today about Unisys and its new-found love for Linux. In the story, Robin Miller interviews Unisys VP of engineering Anthony Gold and asks such delicate questions as how Unisys 'planned to make amends for its use of GIF patents against open source projects'? It's a good read, and in this day and age of software dinosaurs trying for peaceful co-existence with Linux, a very timely one."
Unisys is trying to survive any way it can. They are a dying dinosaur of a company who has always dreamed of being IBM.
"You might as well get your son a ticket to hell as give him a five string banjo." -unknown minister
Granted that Unisys makes crappy code (I cite the Bally Fitness credit card processor system built by them that 98% of the Bally fitness employees I've talked to complain about as proof, anyone who goes to Bally fitness might know what I mean).
So in going open source, Unisys is planning on developing crappy code for Linux and souring the reputation of the OS everywhere. To Microsofts gain.
To quote Admiral Akbar once again, IT'S A TRAP!!!
...in bed
It's a good read, and in this day and age of software dinosaurs trying for peaceful co-existence with Linux
They coexist with Linux the same way Ralph Nader coexists with Bush and Kerry: occationally he makes noises and sounds really serious, but ultimately he doesn't really matter...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I don't believe that is what the editors meant--the fact that they DID put pressure on the open source projects because of using their patented technology shows how Unisys did not, in the past, respect the ideals of open source.
And what does that have to do with this article? Nothing in the summary mentions Unisys currently going after GIF patent usage in Open Source. You should read it as:
how Unisys 'planned to make amends for its [former] use of GIF patents against open source projects'
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Most of the comments so far have been along the lines of "UNISYS IS TEH EV1L!!!" but I'll break from the trend.
The dynamic partitioning stuff strikes me as very useful. I'm on some large Solaris machines here with static partitioning; if the Unisys boxen can shuffle CPUs around to adapt to load, that'd be pretty damn cool.
They might actually have some interesting products to offset their general cluelessness.
One could argue the world actually benefitted from their greed - it inspired the creation of the vastly superior format, PNG. Thanks, Unisys! :)
Honestly man, when it comes to open source, the more the merrier!
Besides we'll have lots of l33t coders to go through their code and make snide comments. I'm sure the devs at Unisys will die of shame, if they don't revise their coding practices.
Or even better (this way no one dies) someone who's better can fix their code and submit it back to them.
Wow, I love open source. Can you tell?
The .GIF dispute didn't do *that* much damage.
It didn't do any damage to anything apart from Unisys' reputation. Everyone who cared just used PNG, and laughed everytime Unisys was mentioned. Would you invite a chainsaw wielding a madman into your house? No, you'd point him to the nearest Microsoft developers convention. Begone Judas.
Unisys has counted for approximately diddly-squat in the computer industry since they jumped on the NT bandwagon. Their influence is nil, their credibility is somewhat less than that.
There's no point in applying some ideological purity test to Unisys. As Rob pointed out, they speak with forked tongue. Not unlike IBM, who claims to be investing billions in Linux, but recommends Microsoft ® Windows ® XP Professional and generally assumes Windows is the only OS on the planet when they're not putting on their Linux act.
Unisys exists to make money, primarily by selling to big, dumb organizations that have a poor understanding of technology. If Linux is trendy they'll sell Linux. They don't care what slashdotters think. Nobody reading this will buy or recommend anything from Unisys, no matter how "nice" they act, because they simply inhabit a different sphere.
This idea that Unisys "sinned" by asserting their patent rights and should now beg for forgiveness is childish. Companies are moving to exploit their intellectual property. Read Rembrandts in the Attic if you don't understand this trend yet. You think they're going to carve out an exception for free software, when that free software is being used by businesses to make money by infringing patents?
Quit attributing moral good and bad to profit-driven companies. They are all essentially running the same algorithm.
But funny how when it comes to legal matters that might work out to its advantage, the whole company acts in unison... I mean, I didn't see anyone else from Unisys breaking away from the prosecution side and join the fight along with the defensive side.
See, the difference between corporations and a community of people is that:
(a) There is no single atomic point where a "partner/foe" evaluation is made.
(b) Communities actually care about percieved relationships and treatments, and have a long memory. Every bias and irritation from years of experience comes out, because there's no requirement to "present a corporate front".
(c) If you have screwed people over quite a bit, you will pay for it for a long, long time in attacks, even when unjustified. Microsoft screwed a *lot* of people over for a long time (not that they've stopped). As a result, a lot of people really don't like Microsoft, and will bash them for anything they do (take SP2 as an example).
This means that there is no "person" who Unisys can win over to win over the open source world. Not ESR, not RMS, not Linus, not Perens, Lessig or PJ. It will take a long time and a lot of nice treatment for a long time, and probably be very discouraging.
If you want someone to support your platform, to write documentation for it and to avoid introducing compatibility issues, and they are doing this in their *hobby time*, then they have to feel rather friendly toward you. Unisys has spent years screwing people over in a rather unjustified manner. They wasted the time of *many* open source developers and users in the form of removed and disabled features, legal problems, anguished discussions, reformatting images, information campaigns, debugging software ported to PNG and other alternatives, and so forth.
So, is it impossible for Unisys to get OSS people to like them? No. Are there people in the OSS community that don't have any problem with them? Sure. Is it going to be long, hard and expensive (much more expensive than all the money they got from the GIF licensing stuff)? Probably.
May we never see th
At the time I sent them a letter saying they weren't allowed to use any more of my code so they are still violating my copyright.
Sorry, you can't retroactively revoke the terms of a license, unless provisions exist in the license to do so. If you licensed them under the GPL, they can continue to use your code under the license you provided them.
No comment.