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"Show Us the Code" Breaks Its Silence
DigDuality writes with an explanation of the silence of the Show Us the Code initiative. The push he began — to gather influential sponsors demanding that Steve Ballmer reveal what Linux code he believed to be infringing Microsoft patents — was discussed here last February. "Show Us the Code has been silent since March 23. May came and went — the deadline allotted for calling Ballmer's bluff — but the site gave no update. I now explain the silence. After a scheduled interview with Forbes columnist Dan Lyons didn't happen, and my place of employment falsely accused me of representing that they endorsed my own political goals, I decided it was best to shut my mouth so I would be able to keep paying my bills. I'm glad to see Linus now publicly echoing the sentiments that this site espoused. Maybe someone already accustomed to the limelight will have better luck in challenging Microsoft's FUD machine."
In the real world, though, that sort of thing is nearly impossible to document fully and, even if it is well documented, one must still retain the services of an attorney ($$$) willing to stake their reputation against what could be a multimillion dollar company, and their respective insurers and financiers, with more than enough legal backing of their own.
Not that I would know anything about how that sort of situation plays out. It would most certainly be indicative of an "OMG teh evil conspiracy!" if I were to suggest that I've been on the worse end of a similar situation.
All that said: sell-out. =P~~~~
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
I'm sure he'll show you a chair or two
...is that there wasn't a general claim "that we believe one or more patents may have been infringed upon" but rather a very specific claim that they know some 200 specific patents were violated.
If they know exactly how many were allegedly violated, then they have already done their research.
Here is the funny thing. If M$ released that list, immediately people would score the code of the Linux/GNU system to verify the claims. In the possibility that M$ has a legitimate claim, people would write new workaround-code and destroy M$'s case. If the claims are shown to be less than legitimate, it detroys M$'s case.
M$ has nothing to gain by releasing this information, and everything to lose. This is a huge scare tactic, that may work to scare large businesses away from considering what may turn out to be illegal software. And why migrate if you may be forced to migrate back?
This is a rotten tactic, but a very effective and insidious one. Luckily, I don't think this will destroy Linux, as Linus pointed out, many of the basic patents of a GUI that M$ may be referring to are likely pretty much public domain at this point. If anything, there is prior art from vast numbers of previous GUIs that M$ copied, so it is absurd to think they invented everything, let alone own exclusive rights to it.
When companies like Novell were first approached by M$, they should have gone to the Linux Foundation, or EFF. Instead they took a payday that inherently casts a doubt of suspision upon the entire Linux community. And while I was a fan of SuSe and many of the things they did, I will never again advocate the use of any Novell products, nor any major distro/vendor that strikes such a deal.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
This guy has no credibility whatsover. He goes out and blows out a big stink, doesn't get his advertising hits, and then blames it all on the mysterious and evil forces of dark capitalism in order to cover his ass.
Seems to me you are a fully qualified cretin. MS shill?
The site does not have any advertisements. He did get his hits.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Thank you for putting up an explanation on what happened.
Thank you for trying to help the community.
Thank you for putting your ass on the line and going as far as you could before you were silenced.
I'm sorry you were put in such a position.
Keep up the good work, and keep your chin up.
It was brave to explain what happened, and it was the right choice you made.
The open source community is important, but keeping a roof over your head should always be your top priority.
If we knew what the patents were it wouldn't be FUD, it'd just be something to work around. Fear is power, remember that.
- I voted for Nintendo and against Bush
Here's a challenge for all Americans.
Compose a paragraph, consisting of two or more sentences which does not contain an obscure (or any) television reference, or a "catch phrase" of any sort.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I have a hard time finding any references to this guy's employer anywhere in his blog. So, what asshat translated the mere existence of this blog into "representing the company"? With respect to his need to pay the bills and all, maybe he should have stood up for himself.
Coderz 4 Life
TFA makes reference to the possibility that a certain author may have tipped off his company that he was hosting an "anti-Microsoft" website. I think this is unlikely. As he mentions himself, his website garnered a lot of attention not least of all on Slashdot. I think it is much more likely that Microsoft themselves contacted his employer. They must have known what was going on and this would be a relatively simple way to shut down the site. As his employer was a Microsoft partner, the result was predictable.
Which leads me to some advice. Aligning your profession with personal ideals is generally a good idea. But if you are planning on being any kind of activist at all, it's imperative. You can pretend all you want that it shouldn't matter what you do in your spare time. But when push comes to shove, your livelihood is a powerful piece of leverage in a political spat.
After 20 years in the proprietary software industry I'm finally waking up and smelling the coffee. As of Friday I'm retiring and going to work on something unrelated to computers. This will leave me unfettered to do the things I believe in in my spare time. It's funny, I've always valued freedom, but I've spent the majority of my career voluntarily chained to something I fundamentally disagree with. Life is strange...
The loss of free speech is not acceptable just because he took a break and used his work computer to upload something to the internet. There has to be a balance and if lawyers can weasel out of denying free speech based on a one time use of a computer for 20 minutes, then the system is utterly broken and should be bulldozed over.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
I work for a Microsoft partner, and I own and use a Macbook Pro - at work. I bought it because the company refused to replace my (very under-spec) company laptop when it died, and I wanted to run Unix, OS X, and Windows on the same machine at the same time. (Think universal debugging - I can use any browser on any platform simultaneously.) I took the machine to the IT head to have him clear it into the office, and he they expressed some concern over the non-removable camera, he and his manager came to the conclusion that it and I presented a very low leak risk. (I have worked for the company for almost a decade.)
The next day I was called into a surprise meeting with the CIO and the head of sales, and I was told to bring the Mac with me. We had a discussion revolving around my "unfortunate" choice of vendor. Someone had mentioned the machine to someone who told someone and so on until somehow our contact at Microsoft was involved. By the time it got to MS they were told the company had bought the machine for me, and several other employees, and wanted to buy an unspecified "apple server". Understandably he was concerned. He called our sales head and asked that the "situation" be "taken care of".
We determined that nothing of the sort had happened, that I had paid for the machine with my own money, that I was taking it with me at such time that my employment ended. All well and good. Then a few more conditions on my use of the machine came up:
1) I am to call it a laptop or PC. I cannot use the words "Apple", "Mac", or "Macintosh", not even with other employees.
2) When entering or leaving the building, or where customers might see it, I am to hold the logo side of the case against me so the logo cannot be seen.
3) If our area is being exhibited to customers/press or pictures are being taken, the computer is not allowed on the premises.
4) When on company property I must be running Windows. I cannot boot OS X unless absolutely necessary. (A fullscreen Parallels session, however, was deemed acceptable.) The OS X interface cannot be displayed.
5) When I leave the company, I have to submit the entire computer to a third-party security consultant who will check the machine to ensure I am not leaving with any company intellectual property. I must reimburse the company for the costs involved in this.
The company was TERRIFIED that Microsoft might somehow take some offense to ONE EMPLOYEE out of hundreds having a competing product, and was scared to the extent of considering disciplinary action against a senior employee.
THAT is power, kids.
Slashdotters on Mardi Gras?
while [ 1 ]; do echo -n -e "\xe2\x95\xb$((($RANDOM&1)+1))"; done
You must be a student.
No, you might not have been in a position to start 'bucking your employment over a political cause' but it sure sounds like you were a victim of political oppression
I'm as anti-Microsoft as anybody (well, as most people). However, being anti-Microsoft is not a political affiliation. For some, it's personal. For some, it's business. For some, it's religious. For some, it's >= 2 of those. Some people are so pro-Microsoft they bleed blue when they cut themselves. But no matter where you fall on that spectrum, Microsoft is not a political party. It's a company. A big, anti-competitive company with a big patent portfolio, but a company nonetheless (the market leader with a big patent portfolio is always anti-competitive, though; some people here are doubtless familiar with the refrain "I BM, You BM, we all BM for IBM" and the word to the wise that "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM." When IBM was the undisputed heavyweight champion of the computer business, they were at least as anti-competitive as Microsoft, and they invented FUD).
Now, if he were put under pressure for being a Republican, Democrat, Green, Libertarian, Communist, Nazi, or whatever, that would be political, and he might have a case (IANAL). However, the situation was that his employer was a direct partner of Microsoft and they felt that his running an anti-MS site cast them in a bad light with Microsoft. Did MS put pressure on them, that his site was problematic and it could have financial repercussions if he kept at it? We'll never know, but I'd be very surprised if they didn't. Does that suck? Yes. Is it fair? Maybe. Maybe not. If we look at things from management's point of view, they have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to make money, and are answerable to the board if they fail. If an employee's anti-MS site is going to make them fail to make money, or at least as much money, they are going to request that he make a choice between running the site or working there. They pretty much have to.
Now, I could probably run an anti-MS site and even if my employer were to become aware of it, I doubt that would be a problem. However, you never know how a site might snowball out of control and become a lightning rod, or where you might want to work in the future where it might be an issue. I have a family to support, and my obligation to my wife and kids outweighs any obligation that I may or may not have (just for the record, I have none), to publicly oppose Microsoft. But, I do other things. I have a Mac. I have an iPod, not a Zune. I run Linux and FreeBSD on several machines. My kids' computers are Linux boxes. I work for a Microsoft competitor. I subscribe to a couple of Linux magazines. If people ask me for computer advice, I steer them toward Mac or Linux, whichever I think might be best for them. And not just to be anti-MS, but because I consider the Mac platform to be better than Windows at pretty much everything, and the better Linux distros to be better than Windows at most things (and gaining ground all the time; it took about five years to grind out Vista; if they take five years to grind out the successor to Vista, will anyone still want it? Apple on one side and Linux on the other will eat their desktop lunch in those five years.
So, I think you should cut the showusthecode.com guy some slack. You're not walking in his shoes and don't have his obligations. Or if you do have his obligations and would put hatred of Microsoft ahead of your family, I think now would be a good time to reassess your priorities. He did what he could, which was to call attention to the issue, and later he voted with his feet and left that employer. If he's still not in a position to run that site and others have to pick up the torch now, I have nothing to criticize him for. He's done more than me, and I'd be very, very surprised if he hasn't done more than you. You sound like you're nothing but a mouth, without even the guts to post logged in.
I think it becomes political when said company has enough power to influence governments, laws, international markets, and the majority of the developed world's population.