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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."
Darl? Is that you?
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
If PJ or someone else so chose, Groklaw could have a mission. I found the dissection of the legal ramifications of the moves by the various parties in the suit to be education and valuable information. There are many high profile suits for which this sort of information would be quite helpful. The suit by Sony, for instance, is one of these. Some sort of knowledgeable coverage of the various patent lawsuits going on in the smart phone arena would be interesting too.
Good coverage of legal stuff and quality analysis is very hard to find. If a tip jar was put up, some of my money would likely find my way into it.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
"But I'm not dead yet!" -- Darl McBride
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Groklaw started with the fiasco over SCO, but there was a lot more than just the Linux fight with SCO. It demonstrated to the entire Linux community the minefield that had been lurking: patents, copyrights, and the fiasco that is the American Intellectual Property Industry. Its far more destructive to innovation and advances in science, progress and technology now than at any previous period in history (although the early middle ages and alchemy come close). But with Alchemy, you could claim that what you created in your castle cellar is yours (and no one would try to stop you). Where we are now, if you create something new that you've never seen before, and isn't yet on the market, someone somewhere will claim that all your research, design and development belongs to them, and will insist that you turn over all your work to them (stuff they don't have) because they were granted a broad, general patent, claiming everything you have (so hand it over, and if you don't a judge will make you). People don't even want to do R&D because some company will claim everything. Groklaw showed us this (and I learned what 'with prejudice' means, what 'pink sheets' are, and what the abbreviation NASDAQ (N.A.S.D.A.Q.) stands for, among other things). Thanks P.J.
Their are zero pictures of PJ on the Net. She didn't even show up to to collect the award the EFF gave her.
I don't have a picture of you. Therefore you are also a IBM manifestation.
Thanks for all your hard work Pamela. The open source community has benefited greatly from your efforts. Good luck in you future endeavors!
Really? Astroturfing? Could you troll any more?
Showing facts when people show misinformation is only called astroturfing by people who don't like facts.
Although Groklaw was founded because of SCO's actions, it, or a site like it, is badly needed. We all need to grok law. I hope the site will be spun off to other writers, or another site will take its place.
SCO later down the line chose to pick on IBM, Groklaw pre-dated that particular decision. Whilst I don't wholeheartedly agree with what PJ said about Google not needing the communities help, in so much as I think it would be valueable for the community to help itself, Linux of 2003 was a world away from Android of 2011.
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!
PJ deserves a thank you for everything she has done for us all. Show her that her efforts have been appreciated before it is too late!
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
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.
Yeah, and Republicans too!
Caveat Utilitor
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.
Their are zero pictures of PJ on the Net. She didn't even show up to to collect the award the EFF gave her.
This is because she doesn't exist. She is a product of the IBM legal department.
That fails to explain her positions on other cases, such as her obvious pro-Google stance in Oracle v. Google, where Sun's Java guru and now-Google employee James Gosling was quoted as saying that Google definitely violated Sun's and now Oracle's patents.
IBM's lawyers would stay far away from taking sides in an Oracle-vs-Google pissing match over money.
No, she's Obama's twin sister, born in Kenya.. She's actually a triple agent created by Apple. Nobody else has the resources..
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Incontinent Bald Men
rewriting history since 2109
RIP Groklaw. You changed the world for the better.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Egregariously? No, you mean egregiously, sir.
Anyone could have reported what she did by just simply reading the filings from each side of the fight and doing a bit of analysis. There are some of us who have been using Unix since the mid '80s. SCO attempted to rewrite history.
When I first read the headline, I thought Groklaw had finally defeated "a", "an" and "the".
You are welcome on my lawn.
Who cares? The nature of PJ is irrelevant, its the content of the articles one should judge. If they are valid and true and well written, then it doesn't matter if PJ is really a team of forty journalists from Mars, now does it?
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
If I where a betting man, I would say it is probably that shill that has been spawning sock-puppet farms and astroturfing for MS over the past few months. My guess is that it is just more make believe controversy for posterity so that someone can pretend the issue is not clear enough.
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
Let's say that that battle is over, but the war isn't over.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
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.
I perfectly understand PJ's right to privacy, but I have always been puzzled by the fact that nobody seems to have ever met her physically.
I think at least a few people have met her (or at least have claimed to have doesn't and there doesn't seem to be any reason to doubt them).
But the only one a quick Google search brings up is Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols and he does admit that he didn't check her passport, and those can be faked anyway, so I guess there's still room for mystery if you're into that sort of thing.
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
I found Groklaw in 2003. I can't even remember exactly how i found it. All I remember is that on the first article, I was chuckling to myself and then laughing out loud while reading Pamela's exquisite humor while recounting some absurd action on the part of SCO. Over the ensuing weeks, I became fascinated by this lawsuit and all it's gory details. By 2006, I was spending an hour or so everyday reading the pleadings, understanding the arguments and reading the comments.
There was something that came out of that whole experience that I will never forget. The teamwork. Those guys were committed, totally committed to getting it done. People went to the courthouse, got the pleadings, scanned them, OCR'd them and checked for errors and then formatted them for ease of reading.
Groklaw is also what pushed me over the edge away from Windows, forever. Their description of the Linux community, their enthusiasm and their sheer drive to make Linux a pleasing environment to work in just blew me away. I had to have this, I thought. By mid-2007, I was completely off Windows for my personal computing. I'm a late starter, but now I'm learning the shell, exploring regular expressions and basic bash programming. I'm learning more about how computers work with Linux than I ever have with Windows. I can even see the humor in the help files.
Groklaw gave me a gift that I will never forget. So when Pamela says it's time to quit, I totally understand and wish her well in all her endeavors. They are still putting together the Comes exhibits and tracking lawsuits. There will be plenty of reference material to work with, and all of it will still be in the Library of Congress.
Groklaw is also how I discovered Slashdot. I'm really happy to be a part of this community, even if only a very small part.
The diversity and expression of human opinion is essential to human survival.
IBM has not launched any lawsuits against anyone for supporting Hercules, they just declined to SUPPORT or license their software for use on Hercules.
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/04/ibm-breaks-oss-patent-promise-targets-mainframe-emulator.ars
"In a letter that IBM mainframe CTO Mark Anzani recently sent to TurboHercules, Big Blue says that it has "substantial concerns" that the Hercules project infringes on its patents. The letter is a brusque half-page, but was sent with nine additional pages that list a "non-exhaustive" selection of patents that IBM believes are infringed by the open source emulator."
One of the reasons they gave for not supporting Hercules was that they feel Hercules infringes on their patents, but that is far different from suing someone.
Sending threatening letters with a clear intention to sue is nearly as bad. There's no way somebody who is a friend of open source would defend this action from IBM. You're defending a rotten position.
Quoting court filings extensively, in many cases the complete document, is hardly FUD.
Of course, that's in stark contrast to trolls/shills like Florian Mueller, who keep on making the same assertions over and over, whether it's about PJ or your attacks on open source in general ...
Jealous much?
First, Groklaw is NOT shutting down. Just that no new articles will be posted. The site will remain running, all the content will still be there, including the proof that you're a shill and a troll.
Second, the policy is only used to prevent groklaw from becoming a platform for the dissemination of FUD - you know, the stuff you like to spread because you have nothing better to do.
Third, as another poster asks, what do you do for a living and who pays you? .
However, I'm the one who posted the original story, and I do have a history of attacking FM when his lies do attract my attention (as they did starting with his lies wrt TurboHercules, and his subsequent attacks on RedHat). My motivation is simple - the guy lies, and his lies happen to attack something I value - F/LOSS.
Now throw in that he is still continuing to claim that PJ doesn't exist, despite Steven Vaughan-Nichols saying that he's met her several times. The guy lies, knows its a lie, but continues to do so because that's the only way he can't come across as a spineless cur slandering a grandmother.
His unfounded attacks on open source are also well known, as are his attempts to give an impression he's a lawyer when he's not. When asked who pays him, he doesn't say. Instead, he refers people to wikipeida, but nowhere does that say who is paying him to do his current 2-year FUD campaign against open source. The questions he tries to avoid answering, rather than saying "none of your business", are most revealing.
Yeah. If they win, the government might actually leave you alone.
Or worse, leave your neighbor alone. Can't have that.