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The SCO Boomerang and the Strength of Linux
karvind writes "PJ of Groklaw has written an insightful article on benefits flowing from SCO's litigation: GPL stands up in court, the community bonded more tightly than ever, encouraged increased support for FOSS and last but not the least heightened awareness of the benefits of using GNU/Linux systems. Article is also on Yahoo and NewsFactor."
The GPL was not "tested in court" the lawsuit was a contract dispute between SCO and IBM. Though i think it may have resulted in a few more PHB's hearing about linux and maybe being curious how it could save money to switch.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
the community bonded more tightly than ever
*cough cough BITKEEPER cough*
... is not effective against charging penguins!
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
The GPL is so robust that, when violators are confronted with it, they invariably fold. It has been a complete non-issue. Even SCO does not argue that the GPL is invalid, only that the FSF and IBM haven't enforced it fairly.
The GPL is a work of sheer genius.
"will i be sued if i use this free software"
Microsoft is placing full page ads based on this angle in trade magazines now.
While the reality of being sued may ( or may not exist ), they are doing their best to instill the fear of it into businesses, so they will stay with 'safe' software.
With all the free press, its only helping Microsoft do this.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
1: Calling the system by it's proper name is trolling?, wow.
2: You want RMS to die?, do you want 20 years of fight against the stablishment, the GPL, the FSF, and 60% of the software on your average distro to die with him too?.
You sir, are an uneducated bastard.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Everyone seems to bitch about Roland, but looking on the slashdot hall of fame for most active submitters, I find that Roland is second.
The first person(prostoalex ) has more accepted submissions, also has a blog, and has nobody complaining about him.
Without regular roving reporters, digging out interesting stories, slashdot would be shit.
I have not come across a single article where Roland forces people to his blog, EVERY single article blurb links directly to his original source, the blog is just another more indepth writeup, you are NOT forced to go there at all.
However submissions by sheeple to NYT and salon etc are far more annoying by forcing signups and payments just to read the news.
The rest of your suggestions are pretty much spot on however.
liqbase
Free Software exists so that you can be a computer user without being held hostage by whomever owns the software you use. That was RMS's idea, that's the whole purpose of Free Software. Comercialization is something that may happend, but it's not the main purpose for having free software.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
The references to being tested in court is for the part Pamela mentions about SCO wrapping themselves in the GPL flag in court against IBM charges of copyright infringement. Also, one of the other cases had an element of GPL in it iirc.
And in Germany, the GPL has been ruled on in two cases where the GPL was held to be enforceable. I believe Stu Cohen or Eben Moglen have used those two cases as examples of cases that are going to be used in international law as a basis for future decisions, and will probably be used for similar legal reasonings in court decisions to come in the US.
So the GPL has been tested in court, at least twice directly in German court, and at least twice indirectly or as part of preliminary arguments for pre-trial hearings in the US.
How the fuck you got modded up to +5 insightful when you're talking out of your ass is beyond me. 5 mod points for first post?
PJ in the article says everybody knows that GPL software has no risks (or no more risks then other software). Well it's not true, a lot of of CIO still don't know and/or are still thinking of linux as if it was 1995.
If they were not like that, the article she wrote would not have been necessary. So, it is a good thing she wrote it, but there is no boomerang effect, just yet.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
No url, but here is the magazine and page #:
March 7 edition of Information Week ( print version ) Pages 30 and 31.
Entited "Adding up the costs of linux vs. windows? Be sure to add the intellectual property risks, too."
I have seen it elsewhere too, but that is the only hard refrence i can remember.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
You know, where the author of GPL -- Mr. Stallman -- lives, right? Cambridge, MA...
The dominant view of property in that town may be very different from yours. For example, this is the city that had the most anti-landlord legislation for years (resulting in great tenant-landlord animosity, of course). After the state-wide referendum repealed most of it several years ago, many people in Cambridge keep campaigning to put them back in. Tenants, you see, are people too.
Now, I don't know Mr. Stallman's views on the subject, but I would not be at all surprised, that his answer to the question:
is quite different from yours.Back to your original question, users are "people too", aren't they?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The big lie behind this FUD is that by using M$ software, or any propriatory packages, you are somehow covered against being sued.
However, people may remember not long ago, M$ SQL Server developers were being threatened with lawsuits, due to a patent conflict. See this Register Article...
The licence of your software really bears little relevance to how likely you are to be sued IMHO.
Copyright law says you can't copy something without permission from the copyright holder (personal and fair use notwithstanding). Period.
The GPL does nothing more than _GRANT_ permission to people that agree to abide by its terms. Period.
That's it. If you don't agree to the terms, you don't have the permission that it grants, and you have no more permission to copy it than if the GPL weren't there at all, but the work was still copyrighted.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
RMS may be a little freaky... Okay, he's a LOT freaky. I think that most people are put off more, though, by the near-religious aspects of his approach to free software.
I'm a big free software fan, but I frame it in highly practical terms. Copyright is a monopoly, by definition--to some extent, it's a justifiable monopoly, because of the benefits of guaranteeing an economic return to the parties that create and fund its development. It helps to economically rationalize the costs of software development, because the work of creating it can be rewarded in a way that would otherwise be difficult.
But the downside of the monopoly is pretty big, too--proprietary lock in is the big one, in my mind, but there's more. If you're reliant on closed-source software, you usually have to take it as-it, bugs and missing features and bloat, and all. OSS tends to encourage a lot more flexibility, interoperability, and choice in the way things work. The business benefits of these freedoms are huge, no question.
The great thing about OSS is that it still allows revenue streams for software creators and funders. The creators of MySQL get a lot of consulting business based on the fact that they know the software better than anyone else. People who make big Linux kernel contributions can find jobs easily with companies that need Linux expertise, because they have a proven qualification in that area that means more than a million certifications. So the people that contribute have a payoff.
And GPL-style licenses are more effective at preserving these revenue opportunities than BSD-type licenses, because they tend to prevent proprietary code-forking, which keeps projects under the control of the original creators more easily.
This is the great realization of OSS that can be couched in purely economic terms: all the benefits of copyrightable works, but minimizing the negatives of the monopoly that comes with it.
I don't know how much RMS agrees with this particular sentiment, but then again, I don't really care.
"Unless you have a problem with clean room reverse engineering"
If he's got a problem with reverse engineering, he must be buying all of his PCs from IBM right? I mean, wasn't the BIOS reverse engineered?
http://www.macintouch.com/pchistory.html
http://www.macintouch.com/pchistory.html
http://www.jmusheneaux.com/01.htm
Links from a quick google sesssion.
all the best,
drew
http://www.ourmedia.org/
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
No.
/. may say by posting I give unrestricted rights to them, but thats not related to the GPL or my browser).
If you read the GPL carefully (it seriously sounds like you havent - I suggest when you have a bit of free time that you pop over to http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl.txt and read it through - its quite interesting, and may well clear up a lot of confusion you have) you will note that it applies only to taking the GPL'd source code, and adding it (or adding other code to it) to produce a new program. It specifically says it does *NOT* apply to the act of loading the program onto hardware (which would include to a harddrive, into a CPU, all steps of its execution including whatever microcode might be involved).
"Making copies to CD" would fall under 'distribution', not 'use'. And you are only restricted (by the GPL) if you distribute *modified* copies. The basic premise is, if you are distributing a binary/complied program, that anyone that you distribute it to, has the ability to compile the same binary themselves, and the ability to pass that ability on to anyone they choose to distribute it to. It is unimaginable to me that someone *choosing* to license and distribute code that they wrote (or have copyright of) under the GPL, would ever interpret the GPL in the way you are thinking. Also note that the terms that commercial companies might want to impose on the persons who buy their software has nothing to do with what the GPL imposes.
In the case of fonts, only if you took a GPL'd font, and modified it to make a new different font, would the GPL come into play. And even then, unless you distributed the new font (and again, merely using it to produce a document wouldnt count - I mean actually distributing the font itself, in such a manner that someone else would be able to use it to produce a document), it would require nothing. If you did sell (or give away) copies of the font, you would be required to give away the 'source code' (is there such a thing, as regards to fonts? If not, then the entire thing may be moot anyway) to your new font.
Using a font to write a document would *not* require that the document be distributed under the GPL, or that it be distributed at all. If you use a GPL'd math-formula program to write and print some formula (maybe even the one that is the answer to life, the universe, and everything), you arent suddenly required to license your formula under the GPL - you can keep it secret, put it in the public domain, or license it under any terms you choose. Lets say I was using a GPL's web browser to type this post - doing so wouldnt require that this post be GPL'd, or remove my copyright to this post (now the TOS of
The GPL doesn't even require you to distribute modified works. The *ONLY* thing it requires, is that if you *choose* to distribute either a modification of the program you received under the GPL, or another program, that incorporates source code from the program you received, that you also make available the source code of the new program.
In other words the licenses scope is determined by copyright law's definition of a derived work.
Now what you may be thinking of is this passage:
My post specifically addressed that the courts are reconsidering exactly what "running" vs. "copying" is in terms of copyright law. So yes this would have impact on the GPL in terms of software.
Finally on the fonts issue:
The *ONLY* thing it requires, is that if you *choose* to distribute either a modification of the program you received under the GPL, or another program, that incorporates source code from the program you received, that you also make available the source code of the new program.
You are flat wrong regarding only distributing modified versions requiring source. Section 3 is quite specific that any distribution requires source " You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it,
under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of
Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following: [valid methods of distributing source listed]"
So in summary:
1) The GPL applies to any distribution
2) What constitutes a derived work vs. work constitutes use is a function of the law not the license, so court ruling dealing with commercial licenses will have impact.
3) The binary form of a word processing document can be in violation of a copyright claim even if the printed version is not. A trivial example would be distributing a work with the entire text of a best seller in a white font embedded within the document.