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

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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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.

[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.