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Slashback: Kororaa GPL, ICANN .XXX, BellSouth NSA
Kororaa denies GPL violations. AlanS2002 writes "Chris Smart, of the Kororaa Project, has written an update about the accusation that the Kororaa XGL LiveCD is in violation of the GPL. According to Chris, he has been shown no evidence that the nVidia/ATI drivers are derived from any code in the Linux Kernel or that the drivers link to the Kernel. From the best information he has it appears that the drivers make system calls to public interfaces of the Kernel, in the same way that a web browser makes calls to public interfaces of a web server but are not considered to be linked to the web server (they do not link to private functions of the web server). However the Kororaa project has decided to let end users download and install the drivers themselves if need be, which defeats the purpose of continuing to develop their Live CD. As such their will be no Kororaa XGL LiveCD 0.3, however they will continue to make Kororaa XGL LiveCD 0.2 available."
BellSouth demands retraction to NSA story. An anonymous reader writes "CNN reports that BellSouth has moved from strongly denying participation in providing the NSA with calling records to requesting a retraction of the article from USA Today." From the article: "The telecommunications giant sent a letter to USA Today on Thursday asking it to retract last week's story that BellSouth and two other companies helped the NSA compile a massive database of records on domestic phone calls."
South Korea rejects Microsft antitrust appeal. mikesd81 writes "According to MSNBC, the Korean Fair Trade Commission has turned down Microsoft's appeal to separate it's Window's OS and it's media service. The February ruling also included a 34 million dollar fine. Apparently, The commission began investigating Microsoft after a local Internet portal, Daum Communications Corp., filed a complaint with the commission in 2001."
Tim Berners Lee continues net neutrality fight. Kortec writes "As reported by The BCC, Sir Tim Berners Lee has spoken out against the current US bias towards the destruction of network neutrality at the Edinburgh WWW2006 conference. The man behind it all is quoted as saying the two tier system proposed recently on the floor of Congress is not 'part of the internet model,' and that 'the web should remain neutral and resist attempts to fragment it in to different services.'"
ICANN possibly pressured to nix .XXX domain. mobiux writes "Fox News reporting that the US Government allegedly pressured ICANN into denying the .XXX domain, despite orders not to do so. ICM Registry says the e-mails show how the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, a branch of the U.S. Department of Commerce, was subjected to intense pressure to intervene on behalf of the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family, two socially conservative lobbying organizations."
Another side to Vista Beta2 reviews. lordgreg writes to tell us that while Slashdot already talked about Vista Beta 2 Major Problems, which Gary Krakow addressed in his review. DotProject claims to have the other side of Vista Beta2's Major Problems, the users themselves.
Vonage IPO shaping up to be the worst tech IPO in 2 years. fistfullast33l writes "Vonage went public to great fanfare and poor results today, with it's stock price falling 11% by closing time. Analysts have cited the fact that Vonage has yet to post a profit and increasing competition for the lack of interest. 'It's a wildly unprofitable company still selling at a very high valuation,' said Tom Taulli of Newport Coast, California, an IPO analyst. BusinessWeek also discusses growth barriers listed in Vonage's filings, including 'finding enough customer-support staffers and long delays in getting traditional phone companies to let customers take their existing phone numbers [to Vonage].'"
Of course, the alleged actions that Bell South is denying they performed-- and demanding USA Today retract their reporting of-- is... the same stuff Bell South is currently being sued for. Maybe if we all just close our eyes real hard and think about other things the lawsuits will go away?
"Intense pressure?" Big guys named Guido and Luigi showed up at the reception desk and asked politely that they pressure ICANN? Concerned mothers sent them very sternly worded letters with comments like "I would send you to bed without dinner"?
The US Government does whatever the hell it wants to, generally. Especially branches nobody's ever heard about, unless someone threatens their budget. We generally term that "extortion", and that's certainly not very family-friendly. Nevermind that it seems absurd that some goofy little branch of the department of Commerce holds -any- sway over ICANN whatsoever; they're also fantastically good at ignoring people and doing whatever the hell they please.
Please help metamoderate.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
XGL is free, but shackled.
We all know that, to use XGL in GNU/Linux, you need to use non-free binary drivers from nVidia or ATI. That's why Kororaa included them. But, tautologically, these are not free, so XGL is completely useless to the free software community. Please see Richard's essay, which I've linked to above.
"...Family Research Council and Focus on the Family, two socially conservative lobbying organizations."
FYI, both organizations are founded/run by James Dobson. I would not necessarily refer to them as seperate entities rather than appendages of the same one. James Dobson, you know, the guy of Spongebob Squarepants is a conspiracy to turn kids gay fame.
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
Leave the legal arguments to the lawyers already. If someone doesn't like you linking X component with Y component, the very first thing you should ask them is: are you the copyright holder of X component or Y component? If the answer is "no" then kindly ask them to go away. Only the copyright holder can sue you so why should you pay any attention to them. If you are so worried about someone suing you, just call up the only people who can sue you, the copyright holders, and ask them if what you are doing is ok. If they say yes, put that on your web site and tell the distractors to piss off.
How we know is more important than what we know.
In the good old days, a new company (such as Vonage) would go public long before it was "discovered", allowing early investors to get rich (like Microsoft, for example). In today's world, major banks provide working capital and the objective is to delay the IPO as long as possible, so that only the banks and the founders make any real money. I'm predicting the disappointment seen today with Vonage is going to become the norm for technology IPO's.
I'm sure I'm not the only Windows Vista tester, that could say the core is improoving- ALOT!
1.) http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/improoving
2.) misplaced and unneeded comma
3.) misuse of dash character
4.) http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/alot
Regular users find Vista to be excellent, indeed. And I didn't even get past the first paragraph.
~Will
sig?
Gregors review of Vista, is not so much of a review as it is flaming. I wouldn't say that it presents the alternate viewpoint rather it points out errors in the original view. Just thought that should be clarified.
... use Macintoshes.
If someone doesn't like you linking X component with Y component, the very first thing you should ask them is: are you the copyright holder of X component or Y component?
The Linux® brand kernel uses a distributed copyright ownership model, in stark contrast to the copyright-assignment practices that GNU® brand software follows. If I write a patch to Linux, and a kernel maintainer accepts it, then I am an owner of copyright in Linux. I would wager that even FSF, the owner of copyright in GNU software, owns at least some of the Linux copyright.
You != "the free software community".
I am a rabid supporter of Free Software, and have been for many years. But I have no problem with closed source device drivers. Never have, never will.
Why? Because by their very nature, device drivers are not free to begin with, because you have to have possesion of that device to use them in the first place. Thus, "Freedom 0" as defined by the FSF is impossible. I guess RMS doesn't read his own manifestos?
Not to mention the fact that for both of these vendors, it is legally impossible to open their drivers because they license code from other 3rd party companies.
Don't agree with me? Fine, don't buy the hardware from these vendors, or contribute to the relevant projects to replace them. But don't go pushing your views on everyone else in the community - for a lot of us, drivers are a different class of software that do not neccessarily have to be free to be useful.
How exactly does an IPO fail?
First of all, as I understand it, most IPOs have a requirement that buyers not sell for anywhere up to 90 days. How does the stock price do anything worse than remain flat in that time?
Second - Conceptually, let's say I like Vonage and manage to get in on the IPO. I buy 100 shares, which initially dip. Now I've taken a small loss on something I expect to shoot way up within the next few days... Would I sell? Hell no! Now, at around a 10% dip I might get rather worried, but in order for that to happen, a ton of other buyers needed to already panic. What gives?
And finally, what business model does Vonage hope to capitalize on, anyway? They sell something that, in the end-game, doesn't require a third party!!!! It just requires a hardware handset and an IP address. Their business model, if it reached 100% succesfull, would kill itself as a result. We only need them until POTS goes the way of the dodo. Once everyone uses an internet-connected phone, the one valuable service VOIP providers currently offer (VOIP to POTS bridging) becomes irrelevant.
This sentence was a little confusing the first seven times I read it. So I did what I hardly ever do, go to the source, read the article and gain a fuller understanding of the situation... instead of just posting here about how the summary was confusing.
My misunderstanding stemmed from my thinking that the Kororaa project was just the Live CD. So I was thinking: if they decided to script the downloading and compiling of the nvidia modules why would they then go and decide to cancel the Live CD development? The key here is that they also have a non-live CD version called Kororaa 2005, and soon to be 2006. They are still continuing this distribution, which will prompt the user to download the modules manually as other distros do.
The author's reasoning was kind of strange though, he leads us on a very logical path towards concluding that the Kororaa Live CD does *not* violate the GPL in its current form. He even says For me, with the information at hand, I cannot see how the drivers constitute a GPL violation. Yet he still decides to discontinue the live CD. He also makes a good case about why he doesn't want to have the user download and compile the drivers themselves on boot.
I can't blame him though. He's clearly a supporter of the GPL. He's striving to adhere to the letter and spirit of the license. Oh well, maybe I should check out the standard Kororaa distribution.
We always knew Comcast was corrupt, here's the proof: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1909890&cid=34545432
It's odd to me that Vonage decided to go public right now. I received the notice that I was invited to the IPO, and there was a moment of excitement. But then I remembered that my service has been pretty poor over the last 6 weeks. Dropped calls, garbled calls, and the most mysterious problem: it won't stop calling me. That is, a friend calls, we talk, we hangup, and then I get ghost ringing from the friend for the next eight hours. Anyway, my point wasn't really to grouse about Vonage problems. My point is that a lot of customers have been having service problems over the last few weeks. That seems to make this a very bad time to go public.
"My girlfriend's got sodium laureth sulfate hair."
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
I'm sure I'm not the only one here who has wondered why we haven't seen wider circulation of this story and why immigration laws are suddenly the thing to discuss. As one slashdotter pointed out a couple weeks ago, the NSA makes Nixon look like an amateur.
There was a protest today outside the SBC building on Folsom Street here in San Francisco, but it drew hardly any attention and there was no media around.
The building itself is pretty scary looking. It's a huge brown rectangle with tinted windows that also somehow look brown. Compared with the nice architecture of the nearby buildings, it sure is an eyesore.
Anyhow, someone want to offer me any conspiracy theories on why nobody cares?
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
Drivers isn't hardware. Drivers is as much software as any other program. They can be free or non-free.
I've just read RMS's very well written essay about Java. It's not about Xgl, and you're mis-applying it to Xgl.
The authors of Sun Java have no (current) intention of making it free, so it's non-free by design and thus quite rightly gets RMS's ire. As RMS suggests, every enhancement that Sun makes to Java just makes matters worse.
In contrast, Xgl is currently tied to nVidia or ATI hardware only because the authors haven't yet made it work with anything else, but it could do so, so it's just a question of manpower and not a matter of non-free intent. It would probably work with Mesa anyway, but excruciatingly slowly.
Xgl is dependent on OpenGL, and you'd better not be complaining about that because it's the standard 3D API for free and open-source software. It just so happens that nVidia and ATI have the most efficient and widely used implementations of OpenGL for consumer PCs, that's all. The fact that the FOSS community hasn't yet fully implemented any competing 3D-accelerated version of OpenGL isn't Xgl's fault, nor is it OpenGL's fault --- there is no non-free OpenGL license blocking such implementations as there is with Java. (You might not be able to call it "OpenGL" unless it's validated, but that's peripheral.)
So, you're confusing the non-freeness of Java with nothing more evil than the early state of Xgl and the lack of 3D-accelerated non-proprietary implementations of OpenGL. Well, it may have escaped your attention, but a collosal proportion of all free programs are incomplete or still being worked on, and that doesn't make them non-free.
You need to use some commonsense here. By all means complain about ATI and nVidia, but not about OpenGL or Xgl. Xgl is free software, and OpenGL is an open standard. Xgl just needs some more work, as does our free OpenGL clone. Work in progress.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Then, fortunately, my brain kicked in. Why, if the Vonage IPO was going to be a blockbuster, would they give away so many shares to the unwashed masses?
Unless they needed the unwashed masses to drum up demand.
These finance guys aren't typically stupid. Yeah, sure, it was theoretically possible that they were giving out so many shares out of the goodness of their heart, but my experience in life is that there ain't no free lunch.
I'm glad my suspicians were borne out. I'd have been REALLY pissed if it shot up 10x or something. :D
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Geeks should shut out the lawyers from our world at least as much as they extend the favor to us. Maybe require all their briefs, filings and opinions ot compile against the Constitution, for starters.
--
make install -not war
Someone should edit the wikipedia and add the ICANN controversy to his
wikipedia entry.
Do the drivers actually work?
If so, they are more usefull to the free software community than 90% of the garbage out there. And certainly more usefull than what you've contributed. (read: nothing)
So rather than include support in Kororaa for Free Software 3D drivers like for the Intel GMA chipsets instead of the non-free drivers at issue.. they're going to take their ball and go home? Nice..
my service has been, and still is, functioning absolutely fine. No issues with "ghost calls", no garbeled text, etc.
I live out at about the end of the cable loop that can provide boardband service. I have adelphia service at that.... and I haven't had a single issue with vonage to date, and I've had the service and use it daily as pretty much my only phone line (besides cell) and not once had a hick-up.
Follow the money.
If this is a true story, and if the securities analysts pick up on it, expect a dumping of BellSouth stock because there is no money to be made on uncertainty.
Similar to the question, "how can we believe that rape exists in prisons?" The answer is simple: try to give blood.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Really, who believes in unicorns anymore?
A blog about stuff.
Should a similar exemption not apply to device drivers compiled as kernel modules?
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Why don't they just create the .XXX domain already. It would be easier to block .XXX domains from children.
How can we believe a single thing said by a company that is involved with national security?
Oh I see, they are involved in national security and therefore must be lying when they say they are not involved in national security!
You may want to read this book called "Catch-22" someday...
And we are to believe your fundamental assumption that the company is intimatley involved in national security because...? Your tinfoil is especially shiny and crinkle-free?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Why shouldn't pornography be censorable, say, by schools or libraries?
.XXX domain makes too easy a dumping ground for anything that offends anyone. One can in an extreme case imagine requiring the recent Mohammed cartoons being only publishable in a website located in the .XXX domain.
.XXX domain:
.xxx domain so long as it is totally volutary for companies to use that domain or not. Then most likley the domain space will naturally fill with things that a great majority of the populace would agree are pornography.
It should be, but the problem is a
Other possible things that may not be viewable outside of a
Michelangelo's David
Artistic Nudes
Sites with graphic how-tos on breast exams.
It's all a roll of the dice as to what the panel might keep in or out.
I don't mind the idea of a
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Depends on interpretation of Kernel - Joint Authorship or Collective Work.
Collective Work = Putting together many copyrightable things into one work.
Joint work = Mutual (objective) intent to create a cohesive whole.
Things can technically be both, but are typically thought of being one or the other.
Since patches are often too small too be copyrightable and the kernel, for the most part, acts as a cohesive whole, it's probably a joint work.
With regard to standing to sue w/ joint authors, it'll be differnet laws in different circuits as it's not in the statute. The 2nd Circuit has held that only one joint author has to sue. HOWEVER, the BIG BUT is that any joint author can grant a non-exclusive license to anyone. So, if the kernel is a joint work and even 1 contributor to it says it's okay in a formal license, then it's okay.
If it's a collective work, then it's even trickier. Typically a collective work, absent an agreement, they will be joint authors in the whole, but maintain individual copyrights in the individual parts. That way anyone can distribute as it is, but not modify from the collective work whole except by license.
The purpose of the GPL, as I have grown to understand it, is to ensure innovation is possible, and in fact encouraged. While preserving the rights of the creators of said technology in a manor they saw fit. Now the GPL is being used to stifle innovation. Shame too, Kororaa was a very enjoyable way to experiment with coming technology, without destroying my working environment.
Nearly every "pay for play" copy of Linux comes with nvidia and or ati commercial drivers included. It would seem that the biggest crime committed by kororaa was the crime of popularity. I guess it's easier to squash the little guys than to go up against the big boys. Call this flame bait if you must, but the GPL used to be a tool to enlighten not a bat to beat people up with.
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
But even by country is not good enough - people in North Dakota generally have a very different idea of what pornography might be compared to people in California or New York.
Either no-one forces sites into these domains, or it should not be at all.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Surely, a .xxx domain is good for conservatives as much as anyone else. That way children can easily be protected from porn with a simple filter of anything with a .xxx domain and people who want to have porn sites can easily make sure children don't have an easy time getting to their sites as long as the parents are competant.
and more importantly, it will free up randomcumdumpstersluts.com for the children
barack to the future?
I took some time this last semester to demo the Kororaa Live CD to an IT class I had at my university. Not only were alot of people impressed with the software, but several asked for copies or where to get it. If the Kororaa team is stopping their Live CD at this stage, it hasn't been a total loss. Several Windows students and a mac student have already been bitten by the bug.
"By the same logic, if he has no good reason for what he says, he is just making noise and we need pay him no attention.
From the CNN article:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is in conflict with Mark Klein's recent evidence in the separate Hepting vs. AT&T case:
From The documents released by Wired on Monday:
To me, this sounded far-fetched. Everything is a lot of stuff.
More background on Hepting vs. AT&T
Point 1 - Umm.. no. It's possible that INSIDERS (ie.- company employees) might have a restriction on them, but 90 days seems extreme. If nobody could sell an stock for 90 days after the IPO, then the stock would do nothing. It would sit there and not trade at all. As soon as it's public, the stock is tradeable by anybody who isn't restricted by their insider (or possibly other) position.
Point 2 - Depends on your strategy. Bear in mind that most stock trades are institutional, not mom and dad buying for their personal account. Pension plans, businesses, hedge funds, etc, will hedge their trades, ie.- They'll buy the stock, but also buy a put (or sell a call) option to cover their position. That's just one example of many though. There could also be stop-loss prices put on them (buy @ $10, but if it hits $9, sell it because I don't want to lose any more than 10%). Other speculators could short sell the stock in anticipation of it dropping. In the case of Vonage, that's quite possible.
As an aside, it's not uncommon in the financial industry that brokerage firm employees have minimum hold times on ALL stock ownership (ie.- you buy a stock, you have to keep it for a minimum of 30 days). The exception to this rule is usually a major price drop (5-10%), in which case the restriction is lifted.
Point 3 - Vonage is hoping on acting like a regular phone company. They sell the service for $40 a month, and tie it to POTS. They also offer your standard package of services - voice mail, caller ID, call forwarding, etc.. They're counting on the fact that people don't change quickly. They trust their phone system as it is. Phone's on the wall in the kitchen, cordless in the den, and it pretty much always works. Saying to them "Hey! Forget that thing on your wall. Just hook up a microphone and headset to your computer!" isn't going to fly. But saying, "We have a new technology that offers you cheaper phone service, cheap long distance, and you won't know the difference from your current phone." is far more appealing. You and I know that we can use Skype for free for VOIP, but the act of talking to a computer is still strange to some people.
Once POTS dies out (which is still likely a long time coming), non-geeks will still need someone to sell them the service, hook them up, etc.. The problem for Vonage is that all the telcos and cable companies will be doing the same thing, and already have a built-in base of users.
One interesting thing I saw a few months ago was that Skype, with almost no advertising, was still being searched for far more than Vonage. Skype announcing that calls to landlines are free in Canada and the US just before the Vonage IPO was a very nice kick in the gut to Vonage.
Regardless, I still use my landline and cell phone.
- In hell, treason is the work of angels.
So let me get this straight.
dotproject's hackish, typo-laden ranting (with, for God's sake, the word "sux" in the headline) is what passes for a rebuttal these days?
Look, I'm all for mocking clueless end-users who reveal their ignorance in the mainstream press. But if I linked that dotproject article in the same sentence as that MSNBC article, I'd be embarrassed.
All telcos have to work with law enforcement to some degree. The original poster however was insinuating that AT&T was basically an arm of the NSA, and was therefore lying about not really automatically feeding CDR records to the NSA.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley