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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."
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.
Thanks for all your hard work Pamela. The open source community has benefited greatly from your efforts. Good luck in you future endeavors!
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.