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Hans Reiser to Sell Company
DVega writes "Due to increasing legal costs, murder suspect Hans Reiser is seeking to sell his company. His lawyer William DuBois said he is running out of money to pay for his defense. DuBois added, 'This is a unique opportunity for someone to buy the company for pennies on the dollar. We welcome all vultures.' This is a good opportunity to own a filesystem and rename it after your own."
Provided you licensed it under the GPL, yes, you could do that.
The copyright holder has additional options, however -- Hans Reiser says that he actually makes some money selling the right to use his file system without telling anyone else that they're using it.
(Yes I know, but the corporate world is weird.)
Also, if you RTFM, you'll see that they mention proprietary add-on products, such as a file compressor
From the evidence it doesn't look like hes very innocent.
Blood found in his mother's house and a sleeping bag found in his car match his former wife's
Prior history of aggression toward her which led to a restraining order.
A motive in that he has been trying to get custody of his children and they will not give them to him.
And of course this gem from SFgate:
Hans Reiser's Honda was missing its front passenger seat when police seized it Sept. 19, Cavness testified in an Oakland courtroom. After technicians removed the carpeting from the front seat area, they noticed that the floorboard had been saturated with water, Cavness said.
Inside the car, police found a 40-piece socket set, Cavness said. The tools appeared to have been used to remove four bolts that had been used to attach the passenger seat to the floor, she said.
Also found inside the car, according to police, was a roll of trash bags, masking tape, a siphon pump, absorbent towels and two books: "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets," by David Simon, about the Baltimore police homicide squad, and "Masterpieces of Murder," by Jonathan Goodman, about notorious murder cases.
All in all, I'd say its not looking good for him.
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
As has been said, nope.
Win or lose, you pay your own lawyer fees (which, if you go with the court-appointed attorney, is free,) and any fine. The fine is *NOT* considered paying back court costs, it is a deterrent.
And you can only get your money back (and compensation for the hassle,) if you sue the government for wrongful prosecution and win. Basically, you have to prove that the government charged you when they knew you were innocent. (i.e. if they charge someone with murder, knowing full well that the accused didn't do it, because they know that the accused knows who did it. So they are charging one person with murder SOLELY to get that person to break and testify against someone else.) The trick, of course, is PROVING that the government KNEW that you were innocent. If they had even the slightest shred of circumstantial evidence, it can be hard to win one of these cases. (I was on a jury for one of these once. It was rather obvious that the government PROBABLY knew, but that wasn't enough to find against the government. The judge's instructions were very clear.)
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
...The judge's instructions were very clear.)
Please don't forget that a judge's instructions are worthless and that you as a member of the jury have all the power and the final say. You have the power to decide whether a law is just or unjust and are free to ignore it and do as you wish. Anything that comes out of the judge's mouth means diddly-squat. What the law says means diddly-squat. You create the law if you're on a jury.
Google for "jury nullification" if you want more info.