Slashdot Mirror
Eulogy For Groklaw
akgraner writes "When I got up this morning, the news was all over Facebook and the free software news sites: Groklaw, the site that was influential in the SCO legal cases, will stop publication on May 16. It's news that I hear with decidedly mixed feelings."
"You simply cannot invent any conspiracy theory so ridiculous and obviously satirical that some people somewhere don't already believe it."
-- Robert Anton Wilson
No, Beavis, it wasn't. The prior article was about Groklaw closing. This article is about one person's opinion on groklaw closing. It might be silly, but it isn't a dupe.
Probably this: http://slashdot.org/story/11/04/09/2315208/Groklaw-Declares-Victory-No-More-Articles
After Right won out, the soldiers returned to their homes, their fields and their shops. Preference for talk of the long bloody battle faded and was replaced by the need for a coat of paint on the house, the weather and cracker barrel politics. A memorial was placed somewhere, where those who remember the dark days could pay homage, but soon too the grass grew high and the leafs of Autumn covered it, all while a new generation ran with boundless energy in the park nearby and soon the heroes were forgotten, with what had passed before living on in the result of deeds.
And the perfect setting for a new battle to foment on yet another front.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Look, it isn't called grok sco, it's called grok law. Why not re-purpose toward legal issues in general or at least some broad subcategory?
Hah, that's just what they want you to believe.
A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.
You can see the crapfloods Florian Mueller makes there about how PJ isn't a real person (even though she worked for ODSL, and Steven J Vaughan-Nichols wrote that he met her several times, etc.), or hop over to LWN and hear him complain about how HE is more deserving of recognition.
May 16th is Red Dress Day, in honor of Pamela Jones.
It's common for people to create an organization to solve a problem when no solutions exist. Most of the time though those people keep going even after the problems have been solved. Greenpeace and PETA are examples. Their original goals were met and instead of going "ok we won", they just kept going. As they searched hard for relevance, their organizations become more radical and extreme in the process until they get to a point where they become a new problem.
It's nice to see someone actually be able to quit when there's no reason to still exist. I'm afraid groklaw would take the same route as it tried too hard to remain relevant.
Facebook? Isn't that MySpace with less child porn?
His moaning and groaning on LWN is typical
What a load of crap, considering
1. not only that Mueller is not a lawyer, but has done his best to give the impression he is, and not corrected it when people fell for it
2. has always been aware that PJ is a real person - he posted his crap on SJVNs blog at zdnet, the same Steven J Vaughan-Nichols who wrote that he's met PJ.
3. when I pointed out to this piece of work on the weekend that PJ had spoken with SJVN and RMS, he didn't ask for any citation for SJVN, just RMS. He already had seen the SJVN article. He's such a bad liar.
Of course, what can you expect from someone who is trying so desperately, and failing so badly, to re-invent themselves as a mouthpiece for hire for somebody ... ANYBODY ....
He's just another amateur troll, one of those "useful fools" we occasionally hear about ...
And more prom porn.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
... but it's worth posting here, but without the aliens.
Go on over to LWN and look at Florian's continued meltdown about how PJ isn't relevant and he is.
http://lwn.net/Articles/437650/
There's a lot said there that exposes Florian's true colors.
He heaps praise on the people who spread the most FUD about Linux. Robert Enderle, MOG, Dan "Lyin'" Lyons, and Ed Bott led the charge in the media against Linux. The only person he left out to praise was Rudy De Haas ("Paul Murphy" pseudonym). I'm sorry, but the list of above people have nothing worth listening to and his defense of them shows what side of the fence he's on.
--
BMO
And the amazing thing is Alex Jones is the curator for most of them.
BGE spotted.
(bitter groklaw exile)
Emphasis on the "bitter"
Even _Arthur has gotten over his exile, why can't you?
--
BMO
When PJ started this, it was to defend Linux, which at the time didn't have much in the way of large financial support, and only a very few outfits openly using it. The tides have simply turned. SCO no longer poses a threat since they're no longer able to do business in any capacity. They've sold their assests, their money is gone, their management team that brainstormed this whole mess has been scattered to the winds, and PJ wants to move on and go about her life. I think the mission of Groklaw has come to its fruition. Let the lady have her peace.
If anything, this further deconstructs the theories that there were big influences behind this small lady. Big influences can keep things going. PJ needing to step down and being willing to say so just confirms that there are no big interests pushing her to keep on.
hop over to LWN and hear him complain about how HE is more deserving of recognition.
He's right. He has received many major awards and is constantly being consulted by world leaders for opinions on free software, software patents, string theory and the meaning of life. He has saved the world many times over and is also popular with the ladies. So you should all stop talking about PJ who has achieved NOTHING and talk about me^Whim instead.
On a job well done. Many times the case was a PR campaign, and Groklaw painted the picture plainly from the legal briefs. Time to celebrate the victory, and victory it is, Its sad that a rogue bunch of idiots burned SCO to bankruptcy, as well as wasted a lot of time and money instead of improving a non-microsoft brand. But Groklaw stood as a beacon of clarity.
Thanks again, in honor of what you have done, and the standard you have set for others to follow.
It's a sad day ... There's no other resource like groklaw.net. I remember when the site first went up ... Any suggestions on similar resources?
Not really. It's not about groklaw shutting down, per se, but that some people have mixed feelings about it shutting down.
Does this re-enforce the conspiracy theories that Groklaw may have been a hired work by one of the parties in the SCO suit?
Blathering morons stand unitedly proud...The 9/11 Truthers are buying tickets to hear you in concert.
May 16th is Red Dress Day, in honor of Pamela Jones.
For some of us, Red Dress Day comes after I Drank So Much I Don't Remember What Happened Night you insensitive clod. For others of us, we fondly call that day, Wednesday. Don't judge me!
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Anyone can understand why P.J. would want to move on, but it's a shame! The legal complexities surrounding FOSS and patents and games that Microsoft and Google play seem to be getting more complicated, not less, than the days when SCO made it's bold and ridiculous claims. (At the point that SCO started its anti-Linux campaign, that company was already starting to whither.) There's some good work going on at Silicon Flatirons in Boulder by lawyers interested in tech. Maybe one of them will pick up the hole that Groklaw will be leaving.
Julie Bort
Open Source Subnet
look. PJ was posting about the Hotz case only a few days ago. She was digging into details of Caliornia vs New Jersey computer law because Sony was trying to sue Hotz in California even though he lives in New Jersey.
Now she just vanishes?
There is -more going on here-. we might not be able to know about it, for years. but something smells wrong. Someone who is as brilliant and inquisitive as PJ doesn't just dump everything for no apparent reason. The site is not called 'SCOvsLinux', it is not called 'scoville' or some other witty name, like so many other 'cause' based sites are (Operation Clambake). It was called Grok Law - > Grok the Law.
PJ obviously had a deep intellectual interest in matters of Law, Patents, and Copyright, and open source software, as well as writing and explaining it to the rest of us. That interest has not disappeared, it is like saying that Mick Jagger decided to give up singing or something. (OK, so actually some artists do stop, like Joni Mitchell. But show me anything where PJ has decided to become a painter or something).
Before Alex Jones, it was Art Bell
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
See also Mueller's remarkable performance over at lwn.net.
PJ was gracious enough to give us all many years or her life to increase public awareness of the truth, I suspect she is still quite overwhelmed with her famous anonymity.
I hope she is moving on to do something fun, and not being made "an offer she can't refuse".
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
Stop reading my mind
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
It's interesting how Mueller was widely praised in the free software world for his work in fighting software patents, and given financial support by major free software companies like Red Hat, right up until he started criticizing IBM for their use of software patents and their unbridled enthusiasm for them (IBM told the Supreme Court that software patents were necessary for free software!), and then suddenly a huge anti-Mueller FUD campaign started. Coincidence?
It's the whole "broken windows" economic fallacy.
The anti-Mueller campaign started on slashdot when he tried to BS a bunch of us on the weekend over TurboHercules, got caught in a bunch of misrepresentations, and tried to weasel out of them. There were more than a dozen of us who jumped in, because what he was saying was a huge distortion of history, as well as misrepresenting the instant situation.
I remember it because before then I didn't know the guy from a hole in the ground - I figured he was just one more idiot spouting nonsense. Then I find out that people think he's some sort of "authority", a lawyer (that I trashed immediately by pointing out that even the stupidest lawyer in the world wouldn't be making some of the statements he made since they had zero basis in law anywhere on THIS planet (I can't speak about Mars, or whatever :-), and if he's really a lawyer he should be disbarred, etc. - sure enough, he wasn't a lawyer, he just encouraged people to think he was, and never corrected the mistake when he had an opportunity.
The only "coincidence" was that he tried to continue elsewhere (as well as to some extent here), but people were now willing to challenge him head-on, and had the links to prove he was just spouting nonsense.
The whole groklaw thing was really pitiful - the guy who was the actual maintainer of the Hercules hardware emulator (istr his name was Jay Maynard) got stuck in the middle, made the mistake of assuming that the claim that IBM was threatening to sue the Hercules project was true (it wasn't), and really, REALLY put his foot into it.
TurboHercules (not the Hercules project) wanted to have IBM customers make unlicensed copies of IBM's mainframe OS to run on other machines, atop the Hercules hardware emulator. When that didn't fly, TurboHercules (again NOT the Hercules project) tried to claim it would be only "transferring" the OS to a second machine, for "recovery purposes."
But even under that scenario (again, not permitted under the license, since you'd still have 2 copies of the OS floating around, even if you weren't using both at the same time, and the OS is licensed to a specific machine because the fee is based on work units), at some point you'd have to have 2 copies running, to transfer updated data back to the mainframe.
TurboHercules then tried to pick a fight with IBM by asking what patents might be infringed by Hercules, and IBM sent them a list. All of a sudden, TurboHercules and Mueller are claiming that IBM is going to to sue the Hercules project for patent infringement, based on IBM's response to their request.
See the problem here? Then ask yourself if it's a coincidence that TurboHercules took money from Microsoft.
Pile on the FUD he pushed over supposed Android violations of the linux kernel, etc., and you have a clear agenda: The guy did what he could to worm his way into FLOSS territory so he could attack from inside, like a wolf in sheeps clothing, and it almost worked.
The problem is, when it comes to trolling on sites like slashdot, he's a rank amateur :-)