Slashdot Mirror
1994 BSD/Unix Settlement Released On Groklaw
davidwr writes "Groklaw has the newly-released-previously-secret 1994 Berkeley/UNIX Systems Laboratories settlement which gave rise to BSD4.4(Lite) (as pdf and text with commentary). This may have an impact on the SCO vs. Linux war."
For the convenience of the moderators, please note that there is no exhibit G in the article, and that the poster is a troll.
So, what is the significance of this? Does this document say what it was speculated to say, and will IBM or Redhat lawyers have either reason or legal ability to introduce the text of this settlement into the SCO case at this late stage? I have no idea! And neither do you! But that isn't going to stop us from discussing this!
Expect this document to be the single biggest source of disinformation on Slashdot for the next three weeks as we all misunderstand minor parts of it and then excitedly repeat our misunderstandings to each other. Then about three weeks from now, about the fourth time PJ from groklaw posts an analysis explaining what this document actually says, it will become publically clear what this all means and we'll just shift to six months of people repeating misunderstandings from the three weeks after today so that people can respond to them with the correct version of events and get voted up to Score: 5
Two words. One of them is Viet.
rj
Anonymous idiot Coward, you can't even understand a clear Slashdot post, let alone how the legal costs and risks of business are subsidized by taxpayers. I am not talking about the court costs of the litigants . Those are the costs that they minimize by settling. I am talking about the cost of the state running the abortive trials, which you and I pay in taxes. I am not talking about traffic courts, I am talking about civil courts, with lots of staff, facilities and other state budget items, that you and I pay for. So corporations can have a fancy, high-stress, moderated conference room for their most difficult, adversarial negotiations. When they settle, all those costs produce their settlement, though they pay only a fraction of it, and no product whatsoever for the people who pay most of the costs of the institution. That's exactly why these secret settlements are a bad deal for taxpayers.
Unfortunately, our moron lawyers in Congress are all too much like *you* Anonymous bigmouth Coward, picking one wrong aspect of a slightly complex issue, and making a federal case out of screwing it up at top volume. Go sue yourself.
--
make install -not war
Also, I don't think the framers had to consider crack, meth, coke, and heroin. Don't get me wrong, as a law abider, I love that 4th (and 2nd!) amendment, but I imagine the founding fathers would have written things a bit differently if they'd forseen the horrific things that would happen in private homes after their own time.