Slashdot Mirror
Groklaw Shifts Gears, Now Stressing Preservation
dan of the north notes a change of direction at Groklaw. Pamela Jones (PJ) writes: "I think we need to use this time to perfect our work and ensure Groklaw's preservation. It will require shutting down the daily articles and News Picks, at least for the forseeable future, but I'm convinced it's important to do it. One of the core purposes of Groklaw has always been to create a reliable record for historians and law schools to use our materials to teach and inform. ... I choose to make sure our work as fully reliable, comprehensive and, to the degree humanly possible, permanent. ... Groklaw's collection of materials is really valuable. I'd like to ensure that it survives. ... We've covered the SCO litigations since May of 2003, and it's the only complete record of this important phase in IT history."
Naw, it is just that SCO has made so many outlandish claims that there is a mountain of material to refute them all. Kudos, Groklaw. What an amazing blog. What an example of what online collaboration can achieve.
The record of SCO also includes press coverage, lawyer biographies, etc. It also spans across multiple litigants and across multiple courts in multiple jurisdictions. No single court will have a complete archive of SCO filings, and none will have press coverage and commentary. So yes, groklaw is the ONLY archive that includes the complete story.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
It is not that original materials are not available -- rather Groklaw has collected the materials from multiple cases, multiple courts and converted documents to text.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Oh yeah, I forgot, the entire thing took place in a single courtroom! Seriously though, while the court records will be very important, I think they do have a point, I mean there were press releases, public discussion and third parties involved. I think relying on the court record for a complete historical documentation of the entire fiasco would leave a lot out for future generations.
Not to mention analysis, reaction, and discussion. No court record includes that.
Those were halcyon days, back when Groklaw was in eveyr technorati's bookmarks, and all nerd-rage found a unifying enemy in SCO. 6 years later, Linux is free and clear, the Alex de Tocqueville institute is forgotten, as is Dan Lyons, Daniel Wallace, Maureen O'Gara, the Yankee Group, and the guy who did tech news and SCO-shilling who is so forgotten I can't even find him on Google anymore (a testament to how old this stuff is: I read about him every day and I can't even remember or find his name).
Back then, it was the few and informed fighting against the ignorance of an entire market of empty-headed, buzzword-filled suits. It stoked my ego to have a "cause" to fight for, even if it was exclusively by arguing with trolls on the internet.
But the job's done. I'm not aware of any rampant corporate FOSS-phobia (every big player's got their hands in the pot, now). SCO's dead. Linux lives. And it survives merely on its merits, not because of any inherent philosophical superiority. Technorati and business pro's alike (it's a Venn diagram; I know) choose the best tool for the job. The old arguments are, for the most part, dead.
I think the end of Groklaw as a significant force in FOSS started around the time of the "GrokWars." It's obvious to me that if allies have enough time to fight each other (over stupid stuff, at that), then whatever common enemy it was that held them together is either dead or irrelevant.
While Groklaw had some significant voice in the GPL v3 debate, I think that was its last hurrah. Today, we simply don't need Groklaw anymore.
Of course, I would call that success of mission.
Surely your amazing prowess is unsurpassed in the known universe.
Women want you, men bow their heads, and all of creation wants to be just like you.
Truly, the Übermensch has arrived !!
PJ said in the first interview (31 July 2003):
"I was forever reading Slashdot comments about legal news and most of the comments would be way off..."
I'm shocked!
I read PJ's post on Groklaw, linked to in the article summary. It seems as if she's effectively defining Groklaw's purpose as being to deal with the threat to free and open-source software brought on by the SCO cases; that being so, if the threat from SCO is over, there's not much to do except to make sure that the tons of archived information is correct, and to work to make it easily accessible to those who might come to need it in the future.
1. Is it really the case that the SCO cases are over? It's true that SCO's cases against IBM, Autozone, and Red Hat are moot if SCO doesn't hold the copyrights they use as the basis for their claim; but SCO plans to appeal the judgment in Novell's favor. Until that appeal is done, it doesn't seem to me to be over.
2. Even assuming the SCO aspect of this situation is over, the fundamental issues here haven't been decided. Essentially, the judgment against SCO means that SCO doesn't have standing to bring a lawsuit against IBM. But if Novell were to become evil, then who's to say they couldn't bring such a lawsuit? The fundamental question of whether Linux infringes on UNIX copyrights has yet to be decided on in court (however ridiculous any of us may feel such a claim to be). That was the issue when Groklaw originally got started, and it's still out there.
3. Furthermore, it's not the only legal issue that could threaten Linux or other FOSS projects in the future. Groklaw has at times addressed issues associated with patents and trade secrets, and those aren't going anywhere. And we still have yet to finish cases in which software companies attempt to invalidate the terms of the GPL, to exculpate themselves from appropriating code from projects licensed under the GPL -- also a topic occasionally covered by Groklaw. I understand that it's PJ's blog, and her life, and the focus of Groklaw is whatever she says it is. But it's still sad, because the decision to define the focus of the resource (for that's what its archives and especially its participant base are) narrowly leaves behind a vacuum at a time when there are still real threats to oppose.
I understand the need to draw down, but I certainly would hate for PJ to totally throw in the towel. She's accomplished something by harnessing the output of the legal system to an FOSS platform in a way Geeks can understand. That is elegant and original and incredibly, incredibly important. What about net neutrality and invasion of privacy and the next organization that decides, "Who cares about legality, we can get away with it." Groklaw is the 11th commandment. Thou shalt not get away with it. The legal system as it is, is the OS of our society. Groklaw is the repository for documentation of that OS and the ways it can be played with or corrupted, the same way exploits can be carried out in computer operating systems. It's stretching a metaphor naturally.
What would Richard Feynman do, if he were here right now? He'd do some math and he'd follow through!
In addition, many of the press releases, blog entries, etc. that SCO posted over the years have been withdrawn from their web site and/or revised.
In many cases, Groklaw made a copy of the relevant pages at the time that they were relevant, so that later revisionist history could be seen for what it was.
That's pretty damned scary.
I have finally understood it! Society is running Windows! That's why the legal system is slow, overly complex, buggy, expensive, designed by marketing I mean campaign contributions, applies itself to things that are not legal problems, and not under the control of the average end users! Suddenly it makes sense.
Yeah, that's still pretty scary.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
There's groups like the EFF, sites like Chilling Effects, and individual blogs like NYCL's, news aggregators like Slashdot, magazines like Wired, and many others... I can only begin a list of the categories, let alone the sites themselves.
Groklaw has been a rallying point for part of the online civil discourse, but it's not the only one. Perhaps the community that has grown around Groklaw can keep using it as a touchstone, as they shift their own emphasis to other parts of the web, but that doesn't need Pamela's continued engagement and daily involvement, does it?
Doesn't this lend credit to the idea that perhaps PJ was hired solely to cover the SCO trial?
Was her mysterious identity ever uncovered?
Why in hell should a person subject their identity and private information to the whim of the trolls on the Internet in any capacity, just to "prove" they aren't hiding something sinister? Try proving there WAS something sinister, I'll certainly take that complaint more credibly.
Internet anonymity is here to stay (as it should be) as there is no proof positive way to identify other Internet going users without subjecting them to very real risks in meat-space (stalkers, or worse). Come to think of it there are very very few ways to positively identify people in meat-space (even with fingerprints and SSN cards) let alone verify their intentions...
It is ALWAYS up to you, the reader, browser, and consumer to attempt to determine truth and fiction based on your own balance of values, experiences, and interpretations. Use your own trust network to find that out for yourself. Come back and stir the pot once you have something more legitimate than a suspicion about someone else's suspicion about someone else's theory. Second hand truth is better than third hand theory in my opinion.
If you think there is bias in her reporting then go ahead and think there is bias in her reporting. Seek another truth if you believe it to exist. However, in that same stroke, the air of credibility seems to be on PJ's side to many many people. I have found minimal reason to be concerned personally with whether or not she WAS hired. I'm just glad to be informed of her take on the matter.
However, you are perfectly free to be paranoid about her identity all you like, but expecting her identity to be proven in an environment of suspicion is just stupidity. Being proven so you feel better about it is simple idiocy.
Fanatics and conspiracy nuts will always be good at inadvertently burying the truth when it comes out in a sea of accusations anyways because people are blinded by their opinions. So what does it matter? The truth could already have been said.
- Toast
P.S. Nothing personal, I'm having my second Monday of the week here at work...
I think this would be a good time to seek some formal honours for PJ. Granted she has all the respect she has earned from the community over the course of the SCO epic, but it would be nice to find some appropriate gesture to show her in some tangible way just how valuable we believe she is as a person.
I don't know what she includes in her formal qualifications, but an honourary doctorate from some high profile law school (whether she has an LLD already or whatnot) would probably not go astray. For that matter, I wouldn't think a Presidential Medal of Freedom would be inappropriate either, but that's just me. PJ has not been just a breath of fresh air, she's been the only air we had. To honour her appropriately for that accomplishment would also be to honour an example of where people exercised their democratic right to resist bullying by people who see the courts as just another business tool.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Which trial are you referring to? There are multiple cases still pending.
What cases? The only one that matters, SCO already lost. They do not own the copyrights that everything else rests on.
They're appealing that, but a decision already exists. And given that, there are no cases currently "pending" that I know of - Novell had already waived IBM's licensing responsibilities, and they reiterated that after winning their case against SCO. So SCO has no basis on which to sue IBM. And they owe Novell a bunch of money - probably more than they can afford and stay in business.
There might be a few minor claims remaining related to financial things that SCO has against IBM, but it's no longer a major case even if so. More of a minor business dispute.
If SCO somehow wins its appeal, then sure. But the one case upon which everything else hinges is already decided; it would need to actually be overturned for any other cases to go forward. And judges don't like to overturn other judges without a really good reason. (And as PJ points out, it's not like SCO can present any further evidence - the new judge looks at the same evidence.)
As a supporter and advocate of open source software, and more importantly, the principle of openness, I don't understand how PJ can come now to the open source community in general, and veteran groklaw readers in particular, with a straight face, and claim that she is suddenly interested in preserving the so-called 'complete' record of groklaw.
This, after she has spent the last five years systematically avoiding transparency in groklaw's operations, and maintaining an iron grip on its contents by blocking access to user's comments from archive.org, and the major search engines such as google, msn, and yahoo via robots.txt. And not only has she blocked outside search engines, but she has also deliberately disabled the ability within groklaw to search for comments by author, thus making it much more difficult to see how her own comments have changed over time, and have sometimes even contradicted themselves.
I think that PJ has, through her own behavior, irreparibly harmed, if not totally destroyed, the value of groklaw as a historical reference, by her relentless exertion of absolute control over every comment posted, quickly deleting all posts that do not sufficiently toe the party line, and literally "disappearing" the accounts of some of groklaw's most valuable contributors when they dared to disagree with her even slightly. As a result, groklaw has become little more than a strident speaker on a soapbox, in the center of a large echo chamber, resounding to the shouts of "Amen!" by the true believers.
Those of you who have followed groklaw from its earliest days will remember one frequent contributor by the handle of "AllParadox", who learned firsthand how groklaw really operates. A retired attorney by his own account, his insightful posts were the product of years of legal experience, both in and out of the courtroom. In the beginning, he was one of PJ's staunchest defenders and advocates, vociferously rebuking any and all criticism of her. Then, something happened, and his posts disappeared. In an instant, he became an un-person, and all who asked about him or mentioned him also ran the risk of being made un-persons by PJ. His own comments about what happened to him on groklaw can be found here: http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/Stocks_(A_to_Z)/Stocks_S/threadview?m=tm&bn=2942&tid=383807&mid=383807&tof=10&so=E&rt=2&frt=2&off=1&p=mq611k_AWrbLlqArvKx.K_r6c55v2m5DOHmUgyxq6.J5PYFCet.LUhM-
What is perhaps even more troubling than the heavy-handed censorship of different voices on groklaw, is that PJ reportedly uses a very deceptive practice, sometimes called shadow-banning or shadow-deletion. The way that it reportedly works is to make the posts of a shadow-banned member invisible to everyone except PJ and the banned poster. Because of this, nobody except PJ can see, or know, what exactly is on any given page of the site. The version of groklaw that one ordinary user, "Alice", sees may be very different from the version that another user, "Bob", sees. This alone means that groklaw can never be taken seriously as an historical archive. An archive must have a fixed and immutable content; it cannot change itself depending on who is accessing it.
Moreover, one of the most important aspects of an archive is that it provides us with an accurate record of the nature of the *debate* about controversial issues in the past, and to show how one side won the *argument* with reasons, and persuasion. Seeing how arguments were won and lost can be very informative, and helpful to us as we face new challenges. An archive would be virtually useless if it systematically expunged one side of every argument. Indeed, it would be very Orwellian.
Over the years, when she has been questioned about her management of groklaw, PJ and he