50K Linux Man Bites At Merkey.net

magnany writes "In a recent article, former TRG CEO Jeff V. Merkey had offered to pay 50K USD for a BSD-licensed Linux. Groklaw did a followup on his offer, to which Jeff responded by notifying the FBI of Groklaw's 'hate crimes violation.' Merkey doesn't exactly have a great record, either, which is made even more apparent by his recent threats to file suit against Merkey.net for slander and trademark infringement, amongst others. In addition, he has also reported Merkey.net to the FBI's hate crime department. What could Merkey.net do to get Jeff V. Merkey off their backs?"

Comments

Re:Give him 50K USD

[TheRaven64]

That would let us make copies and derived works and distribute them (with or without the source code). Somehow, I don't think the idea of making copies of this guy would be entirely popular. I suspect that more people would be interested in `modifying' the original...

Not really.

[WindBourne]

Merkey is with dr dos. Dr Dos is another one of the companies owned by the Nordas, and is actually controlled by Brian Sparks. Brian is the same guy who started this whole fiasco with caldera. It should be obvious that this will be where the next major attack is going to be coming from.

Jeff can be easily googled and his affiliation seen.

Re:Grammar in the Letter?

[onion2k]

Note that "forums.merkey.net" is the "winner of the first round of Nigritude Ultramarine", an SEO competition to find new ways to get things in search engines. The entire thing is liberally scattered with references to Seraphim Proudleduck, which I can only guess is round 2.

This entire thing is an attempt to win a competition designed to find new ways to spam Google.

Well done Slashdot, what a guy to help out..

Offering $50K... / Code ownership map

[j.leidner]

...for a BSD-licensed 2.0 Linux kernel is not evil at all. The guy is free to offer whatever he wants, but of course his bid might be too low. Note, though, that since his request for a BSD-licensed instance of the code doesn't necessarily have to be exclusive. Making available an old version of Linux BSD-style could raise a lot of money from e.g. embedded development companies, so the question whether $50K is appropriate depends on whether

• (a) there is some consensus among the developers about the price, which in turn depends who many such private licenses are likely to be granted (which in turn depends on whether Mr Murkey plans about sharing his acquisition with others), and
• (b) whether he can practically manage to locate and convince all developers. Not all developers might be known, but that's not HIS fault. If people contribute to the kernel without leaving a comment of what they did and who they are, I'm not sure what copyright law says about claims those people can make. Think about somebody who came out in 2004 claiming to have authored your favorite folklore song; I don't think any court would assign rights a posteriori, with the song being printed in thousands of song books marked "traditional".
  Even the unknown authorship in Linux sources could be solved by asking all known authors to delineate sections of code in Linux they have developed. Regions that have no known owner would have to be re-implemented. (Does such an ownership map exist? How many LOC are owned by 'Anonymous'?)

Would such a procedure harm the open source/free software world? I doubt it. The main development will be on the GPLed branch. And it is not a particular snapshot of the source code that constitute the value of Linux, it's the process of continuous incremental innovation, refinement, and debugging watched my more competent and sceptical eyes than any company could hire for quality control. Without such a powerful task force behind it, a BSD-licensed branch would of verly limited value, because quickly out of date. PANTA RHEI!

--
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Re:Offering $50K... / Code ownership map

[Empty Threats]

Not all developers might be known, but that's not HIS fault. If people contribute to the kernel without leaving a comment of what they did and who they are, I'm not sure what copyright law says about claims those people can make.

In that case, copyright law allows the owners to sue to stop infringement. That is, while they cannot sue for damages unless they have a registered copyright, they can sue everyone who is distributing and have the court order them to stop. In the United States, you hold copyright unless you very carefully and explicitly abandon it. It's actually not all that easy to put something directly into the public domain. While registration gives you a few more legal protections, you can certainly stop unlicensed distribution of your work under any circumstances.

Courts have also upheald the right to anonymous copyright.

Think about somebody who came out in 2004 claiming to have authored your favorite folklore song; I don't think any court would assign rights a posteriori, with the song being printed in thousands of song books marked "traditional".

Heh, the irony: This has actually happened. In the 90's, ASCAP threatened to sue several groups that ran children's summer camps, including the Girl Scouts, for not paying royalties on songbook tunes like "Ring around the Rosie."

Re:Offering $50K... / Code ownership map

[Anonymous Coward]

Making available an old version of Linux BSD-style could raise a lot of money from e.g. embedded development companies, so the question whether $50K is appropriate depends on whether ...but why would they do this? Presumably, the chump who makes the BSD-licensed Linux wants to sell it to said companies (and everyone else) w/o revealing the source. Already, embedded companies seem to have embraced Linux. They're geeky enough to take the source and make it work on their hardware. It may not seem like much, but their capital expenditure on acquiring Linux for this is 0.

How much money has Linksys made by selling their Linux-based wireless equipment, vs. selling that hardware BECAUSE it has embedded Linux in it? Embedded Linux and the opennes of this hardware is why I bought a WRT54GS, although I haven't gotten around to getting any other firmware for it, yet. But I can, and that is cool. The value of the Linksys equipment isn't their firmware (because it does have problems), but in its openness.

Drugs?

[Majik]

I've been following him since I needed his NWFS. Shame the guy is crazy, he could have put out a useful tool.

IIRC, he also smokes pejote(sp).. might explain a few of the more absurb claims. Evil I know, but you never know.

Yes, there would be harm.

[IBitOBear]

One of the big problems is that the BSD license, which is parahprased: take this and do what you want, of some otherwise GPLed code could dangerously muddy waters.

Right now there is one License for Linux, so it is *known* that all Linux is accessible only via that license.

Were you to add a second license then you would add plausable deniability to the war-chest of people determined to "steal" the code (by not allowing access to the source code for "their version.")

In short, you would end up with a bunch of people who could then say "yes, this is Linux, but its from the can-be-secret version of the license."

It just muddies waters *WITHOUT* *NEED*. Since the existing license is sufficent, adding a second provenance to the blood line would only serve to make things complex.

Plus, even the effort would be devicive. You could never _find_ and get the aproval of all the copyright holders in order to create the new provenance.

In a way it would be like a fudal lord having illegitimate idential twins, then deciding to recognize one and not the other. It (1) wouldn't make sense and if you did it, it (2) would only lead to problems.

There is anit-value in even discussing the possibility.

It would be better if Linux got so popular that the big companies decided to fight the movie/music industry to reduce copyright terms. If we were back to the original 14 year terms then in about five years (?) 2.0 would be public domiain anyway. That is how Copyright was _SUPPOSED_ to work in the first place. The ??AA(s) of the world have just managed to really screw the software industry a-priori. If M$ wants Linux, they should just just buy some senators and get the whole thing fixed anyway.

[Side Note: patents cannot let microsoft (etc) steal linux, they could make it mighty uncomfortable, but even if they had a patent on every single concept on every single line, they could never take possession of it for themselves. As long as it can live in free countries like Brazil it will be unkillable. The same unstealability goes for coercing a license change, or buying one. As long as Copyright is at these untenable extremes, everything GPLed is irrevocably public unto the Nth generation. If copyright were back where it belonged M$ (etc) would be "free to innovate" (liberate?) (e.g. steal) some of the older versions in like 2006. If you follow my hyperbole.]

Re:Yes, there would be harm.

[orkysoft]

Like a Slashdotter says in his sig: "IANAL, but I write like a drunk one."

If Microsoft were to reduce copyright terms (boy, Disney would get mad!), it would mean the older Linux versions would become public domain, which means they might get proprietary forks.

I don't think Disney would actually have much to fear from the old Mickey Mouse cartoons going into the public domain, because anyone who were to copy or modify those cartoons, would still be in murky legal waters considering trademark infringement (as all the well-known Disney characters are of course also trademarks).

Re:Yes, there would be harm.

[IBitOBear]

yes, like I said, or meant to imply anyway... 8-)

I suspect that part of the return-swing of the pendlum of IP will be large numbers of companies deciding/discovering just how useful it would be for a lot of code and information to find itself in the public domain where it belongs.

The watershed events, as I see them, would be

1) Software patents don't pass in Europe.

1a) they pass in Europe and so India and South America, and maybe Asia start kicking economic butt. Signaled by a sharp rise in U.S. and European students rushing abroad to study.

2) Trademark Saturation critical mass in about 15 years, where essentially no useful noun-like words remain viable for even old companies to persue markets without fear of significant legal exposure.

3) The "useful life" of IP workers drops to about eight years due to NDA/no-compete actions causes a serious disruption in the realestate markets.

Then corporations and politicians will begin to fall all over themselves to roll-back the IP boom-time legsliation of the eighties.

(Barring a "proper war" of couse) I figure 22 to 40 years. I may actually live to see it.

Ignore him...

[sgant]

...what he wants is to be in the spotlight. Deny him the pleasure of seeing his name all over the net.

It amazes me that when people want someone or something to go away, they put a spot-light on it and almost guarantee it won't go away...much like religious fanatics condemning a movie or TV show, they're basically making more people want to watch.

Some things should be ignored and left to decay. Unless a REAL lawsuit is issued forth from these lawyers he draws as like a weapon.

Compare and contrast to...

[Eggplant62]

... this kook. Regularly invents conspiracy scenarios in his own mind, creates complaints about spam and forwards them to people who shouldn't even be targeted for complaints, then blames everyone around him for his own mistakes.

Kooks of the first water. Jamie, meet Jeff. Jeff, this is Jamie. You two should get along rather well, I'd think.

Merkey

[WCMI92]

This guy is insane. IMO, Merkey is a "rabid dog" that SCaldera has tossed over our fence in the hopes he bites someone and gives them rabies.

This guy has slandered Linus, he's slandered PJ, and everyone else who has dared question him or his motives. I bet /. gets a nastygram (CC'ed to Darl McBride of course)for daring to post this story.

If Merkey gets to claim that

[Anonymous Coward]

Then what about the FBI Public Corruption Unit, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, The Federal Trade Commission, The US Dept of the Treasury, NYAG Spitzer, CTAG, TXAG, SEC and everyone else who have been given sufficient information to warrant a deep probe of the SCO Group and its associates? Escpecially the specific instances of violations of the laws: Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, Rule 33-7881, Lanham Act, RICO, Restraint of Trade, etc.?

Merkey's complaint lacks substance - the letters to the above have pointed out specific instances of violations of the laws of the USA.

Nah, feed him to...

[leonbrooks]

...the demoroniser. Be warned that you might not get anything out the other end. This guy looks like being such a waste of half a square meter of Earth's surface that even hate is overspending on him. D'ohl's unsuspected secret twin.

Trouble with BSD

[ajs318]

The trouble with the BSD licence is that it does not oblige you to distribute the source code with any derivative work {unless you go for the two-clause, source-only distribution licence ..... which is fine for stuff written in an interpreted language, but not much cop for something like an OS kernel}. This means that someone else can take all your hard work -- which you intended to be for the benefit of everyone -- and "fence it in" by distributing a modified version in binary form only, and not giving anybody the source code. While it may well be a trivial matter to reproduce their effort and release a functional equivalent in source code form, it's still work that you shouldn't have to do. This is one of the things meant by "the price of freedom is eternal vigilance" -- in this case, if you give other people too much freedom with your code, then you have to watch over them forever to make sure they don't compromise any further people's freedom.

Of course, not everyone who uses the BSD licence is a fencer-in. But why give them the chance? If you think the right of the majority to make use of the code you wrote overrides the supposed right of a minority to keep that code to themselves, then use a strong copyleft licence such as the GPL or ShareAlike. If on the other hand you think that the owner of a knife {howsoever it may have come into their possession} has the right to decide who they stab with it, and you don't mind that it might be you or your friends or family they stab, then go ahead and use a weak copyleft licence such as the BSD licence. And watch your back.

The Linux kernel developers collectively want to guarantee the freedom of their source code, so they have chosen the GPL. If you want a BSD-licenced kernel {and why would you want a BSD-licenced kernel anyway, if not to fence it in? What else does the BSD licence permitthat the GPL does not?}, then you have a choice: FreeBSD, NetBSD or OpenBSD.

Earth to Merkey

[hey!]

Geez, I really need access to a Unix with source code and a license that allows me to modify it to create a closed commercial product.

I got it! I'll pay somebody $50K to give me a copy of Linux under a BSD license!

Does anybody else think this guy has to be a moron?

Re:For the Love of God...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because in FreeBSD, it's possible to update a shared system library without rebooting the computer. Among other things...

Re:This is stupid and sad

[Anonymous Coward]

As I recall, he got sued for taking all source code while at Novell and then giving it to Microsoft. He returned his laptop to Novell with smashed hard drive platters. Also, we had a competing product to Netware within 3 months of leaving Novell.

Yeah, he's a great one.

Just like any other lifetime conartist

[Facekhan]

There seems to be a lot of these con artists pretending to be business men. Their main skill is speaking well and convincing people that doing what they he wants is in their own interest.

I worked for Stelor Productions. www.stelorproductions.com which owns www.googles.com

The CEO is Steven Esrig, a lifelong con man who pretends to be a businessman. After discovering what kind of scum he really is I quit and he refuses to pay me my last few weeks of wages.

When I confronted him on this by sending him a letter telling him I intended to sue him he actually had the gall to threaten to sue me and members of my family frivolously and to accuse me of stealing documents which he knows I did not do and in fact the entire event where the accusation comes from where another former employee was accused of stealing documents was a complete fabrication on his part intended to force her to sign a release and relinquish claims on copyrighted works that she claimed she was never paid for. Of course I do kind of want him to accuse me of it because then instead of a few weeks pay I will have a million dollar slander open and shut slander lawsuit.