Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft (Probably) Didn't Just Buy Unix
jfruhlinger writes "Word came down this morning that when Attachmate bought Novell, certain intellectual property rights were sold to a Microsoft-led consortium as part of the deal. Since Unix is the most valuable piece of IP Novell owns, there was a certain amount of panic that suddenly Redmond is in charge of this foundational technology for Linux and a number of other open source projects. But, while MS is being cagey, Brian Proffitt doubts that Unix was part of the IP package that was sold — and believes that Linux would be safe even if it were."
I absolutely love Patton and hate how he was treated (even if he was brusque).
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
Yeah, we could try a new scheme where people can only own physical things...
Hope you like keeping gold bricks under your mattress.
Like it or not, we live in a world with non-tangible property. Most folks would still like to have real-estate deeds, stocks, bonds, and bank deposits, personal property be considered "owned".
Ah, but you say money is a physical thing, but sadly, this is often not true. If you deposit the money into a bank which can loan it out (as opposed to keeping in a big steel box in the basement), the money is not yours, all you "own" is a promise for the bank to honor your deposit (or a debt instrument to be more precise) . It is no longer a physical thing. If you borrow money for a car, the bank has the actual title to the car and you really own a piece of paper that represents a contract.
How about owning stock in a company? Well some companies may or may not have some tangible assest, but most companies have large amounts of "good-will" on their books, so in a way that is non-tangible as well.
If you wanted to get pedantic, if you own a "deed" or some other physical manifestation of a instrument of ownership, could you form it into whatever pattern you want w/o asking permission (say change the wording of a title), I think most folks wouldn't agree with that idea either.
SO... what we are left with is that perhaps there should be some limits on ownership of non-tangible items.
Almost all folks would probably agree that share drafts, debt instruments, titles to real property are things that should be ownable. Depending on your political persuasion, you might include partnerships, corporations, and other legal arraingments to fall into the "ownable" umbrella.
Of course then there are other non-tangible things that some folk debate should be ownable. For example ideas, inventions, creative works. Are these ownable? Well, they certainly aren't much different that the other non-tangible things which most folks would agree are ownable except whatever laws we make for them. During the majority of recorded history, these non-tangible things were not ownable. However at least in the USA, the founding fathers thought there was some economic advantage to allow these things to be owned for a limited period of time. You of course can debate the merits of this, but there is some historical evidence that there is some advantage to this.
On the other extreme, most folks might argue there are things that are detrimental to public policy and should NOT be allowed to be owned even if physical (e.g., slavery).
As with all things there are lots of grey in this whole idea of ownership. It's really just a matter of current law to say what is ownable and what is not ownable, but just drawing the line at physical objects does a big disservice to the complexity of the situation.
Linux is not using Unix. It is unix-like, but that is about it. Also don't fix what ain't broke. Even MS is now admitting they must go that way with their powershell and even headless setup.
Remote & scalable management is not a "unix-like" quality buddy. Anyone with real UNIX/Linux experience knows it's something you have to bolt onto a unix-like system's "I'm the only thing in the universe" way of doing things. While we fuck around with hundreds of different configuration file grammars, Windows has scriptable, kerberos protected, remote instrumentation, and centralized policy management. I'm a UNIX admin, and you really should be jealous of Windows. Linux on the server has only advanced baby steps from decades old UNIX. But zomg1, it has cool window manager effects.
He is dead. What's your reason for being a dick?
(\__/) This is Lapinator
(='.'=) copy it in your sig
(")_(") so it can take over the world