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Groklaw Declares Victory, No More Articles
tomhudson writes "Pamela Jones announced that as of May 16th, she will no longer be updating groklaw: 'I have decided that Groklaw will stop publishing new articles on our anniversary, May 16. I know a lot of you will be unhappy to hear it, so let me briefly explain, because my decision is made and it's firm. In a simple sentence, the reason is this: the crisis SCO initiated over Linux is over, and Linux won. SCO as we knew it is no more."
Karma farmer alert! Parent replies to his own fake accounts to garner positive karma! Check Goatse links in parents and UIDs of both!
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
The battle may be over, but the war is far from won. Increases in popularity of open source projects will probably also cause an increase in litigation about open source projects. A central hub of anything law-related (w.r.t. Open Source) would be something very valuable in my opinion, both for developers and consumers. Not just for updates on current events, but also as a reference source. Android may have sufficient financial backing to survive an onslaught of lawsuits, but many others might not be so lucky. I'm thinking software patent debacles, Sony's crusade against homebrewers, draconian DRM, frivolous DCMA etc...
I saw it as a magnifying glass that hovered over cases, which could propel relatively unknown lawsuits from the dusty desk of a clerk to the eyes of the mainstream media, causing a discussion in the worst case, and a reaction/correction in the best case scenario.
For the short time I knew it, I was quite fond of it, and it had earned a good reputation. Sad to see it go.
I have an idea.
Why don't we have a party in Chicago to celebrate?
We could have Pam come and all of us who work in Open Source could buy pizza, drink way too many sugary caffinated drinks!
We could even have a pizza in the shape of SCO and slice the baby up and eat it!
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Wasn't that well-documented when I found out about it; only discovered Groklaw's unofficial comment policies myself due to a random cryptic troll comment on Slashdot, and that article is newish. Basically they delete comments that go against Groklaw's POV and the users posting them, then delete comments referencing the fact they've deleted comments or banned users to conceal the fact they're hiding stuff from their readers. They also "sandbox" comments so that the poster thinks the comment is visible but only they can see it. Oh, and the users they delete effectively become unpersons: the comments are re-attributed to Anonymous and their profiles 404.
Groklaw isn't the only site that does this kind of thing; Digg has a similar history deleting critical comments (most egregiously to make it seem no-one objected when they got caught secretly soliciting money for front-page posts on the site) and a similar "shadowban" mechanism for concealing from users that they've been banned and none of their comments are showing up. Several other sites use comment deletion to stop their readers hearing about contradictory opinions too. No matter who does it,it makes it hard to trust that site.