Slashdot Mirror
Groklaw Putting Comes v. Microsoft Docs Online
An anonymous reader writes "PJ of Groklaw is working on putting the documents from Comes v. Microsoft online, to make them searchable and accessible to everyone. If you don't remember their history, the plaintiffs got these documents from Microsoft during discovery after fighting the lawyers tooth and nail. After realizing how embarrassing the documents were to Microsoft, they put them online and later got a very large settlement from Microsoft by agreeing to take their website down. The web being what it is, these documents had already been mirrored and were later (legally) made available on the Pirate Bay. Now Groklaw has put them online and is looking for people to help transcribe them, so that documents like the infamous Evangelism is War presentation will not be forgotten."
I somewhat doubt microsoft fought and bribed to suppress anything complimentary. I like the way you smear PJ, btw. Wouldn't PJ's best source of income be getting a microsoft bribe to keep the records obscure?
Being a shill is bad enough, but is anybody even paying you to post this shit, or is this some sort of public service? Groglaw is also a sort of public service, but somehow they have credibility.
When you get out of grammar school they'll teach you about reasoning in a little more detail, but for now, what you did there is called a "false dichotomy", arguing from the premise that only two alternatives are possible.
It works very well to trap the unwary, because the dishonest part is unspoken.
If this post is making you angry, perhaps you'd like to put more effort into detecting false premises in your own.
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
"Too bad those people caved, but that need not cost us the ability to know what they wanted so badly to hide."
Note to potential "cavers": You can certainly sanitize the information you plan to agree to keep secret, give it to reliable third parties, then take the money.
It isn't honest, but there is no reason to be honest with your enemies. We are past the point of moral obligation to such people.
Doesn't look like they turned it over to anybody. It was mirrored by others and Microsoft made a bad deal. Someone on their team should have known this could happen and advised, like the OP mentions, to ignore it rather than drawing more attention.
Home of The Suki Series
The Judge granted Plaintiffs authority to personally watchdog Microsoft.
The watchdogs are granted, first among other things,
"The whole document" is the evidence that got the Judge to do that.
Thousands of pages. Gigabytes of video.
Somehow, I think the Judge's response to that evidence is a bit ... harsher ... than your description would support.
Hmm. Whose assessment of the evidence should I rely on? Hmm. Hmmm.
I'm going with the newly-signed-up /. poster who read the whole case and weighed all the evidence in a case that took six months to present, overnight. I mean, speed-reading skills like that command respect.
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
Can we have an example of an open format that Microsoft can't implement? And no, the GPL does not prevent a proprietary software maker from making a compatible application.
The Streisand Effect is just an observation that cover-ups make for great gossip, and that gossip can spread rapidly over the Internet, so that the fact that a well known person (or entity) tries to suppress the dissemination of information can achieve greater circulation amongst the population than the information itself would have.
I doubt the terms of the settlement actually did anything to further the spread of these documents, so there is not need to mention the so-called 'Streisand Effect'. Again.
While patents are clearly BS protectionism, what you describe is an extra layer of BS. Patents do not work that way at all. You can only patent a method, not an implementation. You cannot selectively license a patent (0|+inf). You are intentionally mixing ideas from copyright and patent to create bullshit.
If it "would not be hard to do...", please do. Otherwise, being shamed as a bullshitting shill will lose you your $241 bonus.
If Google wins then there will be available numerous facilities available in the Google cloud that are attractive alternatives to doing things the hard way, for every case where excellent cloud apps make sense.
Google's not trying to take your personal workstation away. If you want to host your own data and crunch your own numbers your way that's up to you. But if you don't, they want to be the easiest and best way to assemble and reference information online. I don't see that as a bad thing.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
This behaviour is in Microsoft's DNA from the first dealings with Gary Kildall to the current i4i debacle. It didn't mysteriously originate at the moment that Microsoft turned the corner from logarithmic growth to slow decline in January of 2000. For that radical course correction we need look no further than the appointment of Steve Ballmer to the helm on that day.
Obviously Ballmer isn't responsible for the culture that established these behaviours - he inherited that. We should just be thankful he's not as good at executing it.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Of course, the world might change after the Supreme Court decides Bilski, but to take a real-world example, back when CompuServe decided to be stupid and start charging royalties on GIF implementations, wouldn't it have been smarter of them to say that, if your implementation is under the GPL, then there is no royalty? They killed that golden goose about the time it should have started laying them some serious eggs if they had treated it better.
So, if an implementation of GIF was under the GPL (and also available not under the GPL) both the software author and the patent holder could have profited from selling the non-GPLed software version (these could be one and the same entity/person, but that's not strictly necessary). A sane strategy would have charged "x" dollars for the use of the patent, "x+y" for the patent + software, or "0" for the software and patent in a GPLed application.
I don't know what you think people do with patents, but most patents are, in fact, quite selectively licensed.
Let's start with ISO/IEC 29500. This is Microsoft's own bought-and-paid-for International Standards Organization format that includes such rigorous definitions as "whitespace like Office 95 does it". Microsoft managed to destroy the credibility of a 60 year old standards organization devoted to international cooperation in order to get their "standard" accepted but can't be bothered to implement it:
Microsoft, which currently has no products which are compatible with ISO/IEC 29500,[45][46][47][48] has voiced commitment to using the ISO/IEC 29500 standard in their future products.[49]
Help stamp out iliturcy.
To be fair it's not like the other side go out of their way to make their 'standards' easy for Microsoft to implement.
Others have focused on the fact that there is a big difference between not making standards easy to implement, and deliberately making them more difficult. However, there is another issue here: you are a liar. The "other side" does in fact make their standards easy for Microsoft to implement them. As if publishing RFCs which describe the protocols wasn't enough, the source code is Open. That means that Microsoft can look right into the code and see precisely how the system is implemented — a benefit not available from Microsoft platforms, at least not for the common user.
You are either an ignoramus who should keep his hands off the keyboard when he doesn't know shit, or a troll. Pick one; there's no third way.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The only way MS could then implement software to work with the data format would be to use the gplv3 source code which would require that the entire application be gplv3'd.
Wrong, only the decoder need be GPLv3. An application is only required to be GPL'd if it has GPL dependencies; WiMP could continue to be closed-source, while the decoder went GPLv3, because WiMP still functions without the decoder. Nice try, though.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"