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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?"
There are numerous spelling and grammar errors in the letter that Merkey supposedly posted, and note the blatant CC to Maureen O'Gara. I don't know, my troll alarm is going off. Is it legit?
To follow knowledge like a sinking star, / Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. ("Ulysses", Tennyson)
Offer him 50K USD to make him behave as if he was released under a BSD-license.
I could be wrong. I'm always wrong...
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He's clearly trying to defame GrokLaw and put it's credibility into question. Why not sue him for libel, and tack on a charge that he's trying to con the Linux community into selling their nestegg to him for a mere pittance of what he would make if the deal went through?
After weeks of spreading FUD to the point you would think the guy is mentally challenged, he posted what might be seen as an apology:
l /0410.3/0506.html
http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kerne
Where's the BOFH when you need him?
"The mission is to rout [Merkey], to find [him] and bring [him] to justice[...] Or, as I explained to the [people of Slashdot] in Western terms, to smoke [him] out of [his] caves, to get [him] running so we can get [him]."
Thanks George.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
Groklaw is biased against bullshit. And this guy seems to be mired in it.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Why are responsible slashdotters encouraged to ignore trolls but such a blatant one gets an entire story? After the very professional way the kernel developers tore him apart you'd think the issue would be over.
Don't feed the trolls!
groklaw, wired and slashdot. The holy trinity of work based time wasting.
It's so pathetic. When does it all end?
She's built like a steak house, but she handles like a bistro....
And, in unrelated news, /. is being investigated by the FBI's hate crime unit...
What could Merkey.net do to get Jeff V. Merkey off their backs?
/etc/mail
assuming sendmail...
# cd
# echo "jmerkey@drdos.com REJECT" >> access
# make
I don't think he understands (or wants to understand) the narrowed definition of the word "hate" in that phrase.
I hope some FBI employee had a good laugh over this one.
This world is too violent as it is, please man, no more bloodshed.
Thank you !
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
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.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Here's the FBI's take on hate crimes. Who knows, maybe Jeff Merkey will read it and learn something.
-
(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".
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!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'?)
--
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As far as I can see this guy appears to be seriously abusing the minorities aspect of the hate crime laws, but AFAIK there's only so often you can waste FBI resources before they want a small chat with you, in a nice room with little in the way of comfortable furniture.
..
I mean, some of the hate crime work is really serious, what this guy is doing is almost insulting..
And, (AFAIK, IANAL) isn't it illegal to repeatedly threaten legal action without following it up?
Just musing
Insert
Actually, the hate crime law mentions nothing about being "a fucking annoying GUYS LISTEN TO MEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!! GUYS!? GUYS!!! hasbeen"
That said, if you were willing to think outside the box, this could be construed as a (mental) disability (which would be covered)
From the FBI website;
Although the Hate Crimes Statistics Act of 1990 (amended in 1994 and 1996) defines a hate crime as a crime against a person or property motivated by bias toward race, religion, ethnicity/national origin, disability, or sexual orientation, the FBI does not have any federal jurisdiction to investigate hate crimes motivated by a sexual orientation bias. The FBI's authority to investigate hate crimes motivated by a disability bias is generally limited to incidents interfering with the victim's housing rights.
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I am totally and completely outraged and offended by your little remark. We at the Church of Satan have no affiliation with the RNC whatsoever. We're evil, but we're not that evil.
--
What would Bill Clinton do?
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.]
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
...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.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
If any (and I do mean ANY...I don't care if you're a janitor) of Microsoft's staff read this, then please immediately do the following:-
1. Go to the highest person in the Microsoft heirarchy that you have access to, and persuade them to download a copy of the latest stable version of FreeBSD. I don't care HOW you persuade them, either. Use offers of drugs/various family members/their souls etc as needed. Be creative. This is important.
2. Explain to Jim Allchin and the various other hardcore Windows advocates (or get someone else to, if you don't have access to him) that by making a FreeBSD-derivative core with a Windows shell, he'll actually get to have his cake and eat it too:- The security/stability everyone wants, plus Windows' strengths in the user interface dept.
3. Round up MS's gaggle of programmers and make it happen. Don't get hung up on dumb, overly complex features that nobody needs (like WinFS) at this point. Keep the MS emphasis on user interface, (which we know Microsoft are good at) and backwards compatibility with other Windows versions (Which is half done for you - Go download Wine) and let the BSD peeps handle the nuts and bolts stuff. (which they're scarily good at) Wine is under the GPL, so you'll need to behave yourselves there, but you're in the clear with the BSD license, since without the advertising clause now you can basically do whatever you want with it. For PR bonus points, you MIGHT want to release source of at least some of your modifications as did Apple with OSX...and given Microsoft's image over the last couple of years, it's an idea to meditate on.
Do NOT, under any circumstances, remove/attempt to hide bash access, either. Make it so the newbs don't have to use it, sure...but leave it there for those of us who want it.
4. Profit. Which you will, presumably to an insane degree...because while people who need lots of user-friendliness can still have it, the rest of us poor souls who have to help such people in the face of Microsoft's currently non-existent security model will have our burden considerably lightened. (and thus be far more effective at our jobs) So while the first group will continue to give you money, there's a good chance that the second group might start to enthusiastically do so as well.
Dump the current licensing model, and profit from volume, support, and upgrades. (In terms of the number of people needing to install MS upgrades, you'd probably be a lot smarter charging for those rather than using ugly licenses and then making the upgrades freebies...the current licenses are a PR killer, if nothing else. This'd do wonders for the TCO argument, as well)
5. Due to 4, the company will notice that although its revenue level might initially decrease somewhat, it then stands a much more certain chance of stabilising afterwards. (Linux is causing you to start to lose money now anywayz, and the bleeding is only going to get more rapid if you stay the current course)
Because of this, eventually a realisation might be reached that it is truly unnecessary to continue to try to discredit/outlaw/otherwise neutralise those of us who just happen to like using Linux (which is hell on Microsoft's own image anywayz) especially seeing as there'd be a fair chance that this plan would convert a sizable number of them to the new product anyway. We could call off the entire Linux/MS war...Joe Sixpack would be happy, the CLI/blackbox geeks would be happy, MS would still make lots of money, and the world would keep turning.
Think about it. For the sake of everyone, including yourselves. Please.
No. NTFS is neither patented, nor dangerous to use.
The history. All started about 5 years ago. The old NTFS driver was written for NT4 NTFS but Windows 2000 introduced some improvements. The changes were important enough not to work with the NT4 driver. Unfortunately the driver didn't check the NTFS version, developers vanished thus it thrashed quite many people's filesystem. Unfortunately nobody cared to fix it for a long time.
Here comes Merkey to the picture. He generously offered people a Linux utility, free of charge that had Windows fix NTFS itself (aka run fsck during boot). Unfortunately he had an NDA with Microsoft, not to reveal internals of NTFS. According to him, Microsoft threatened him with a suit. Microsoft claims that it never threatened him or his company with a suit. More about the issue here.
The story got Slashdot attention but with some twists: Microsoft Litigation vs. Linux NTFS Kernel Support. The minor problem was, that the Linux support for NTFS had nothing to do with Jeff Merkey or his company. Still, the Linux community thought they were directly threatened by Microsoft.
Conclusion? Linux NTFS development slowed down a lot. Red Hat has removed NTFS support completely and after 4 years, they still refer to non-existent NTFS patents, even if they would be void due to laws, e.g. the project is for the purpose of writing interoperable software under Sect. 1201 (f) Reverse Engineering exception of the DMCA.
And why NTFS isn't dangerous? Write support was disabled about 3-4 years ago and a new driver was written from scratch for 2.6 kernels that doesn't implement write, except file overwriting.
I'll let Merkey speak for himself, and let other judge who and what he is...
All about me
Merkey came recently into the limelight due to more lkml posts, which were again clearly the product of his insanity. He's not an agent of SCO, Canopy, or Microsoft; he's just deranged. He didn't go to the press. If slashdot and (especially) groklaw hadn't picked up on the "story", this would have mercifully died away. His bizarre reversal should be ample evidence of that.
The best thing for him and for us would be to ignore his unfortunate condition. I can only find the current situation wasteful and tragic.
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.