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Tesla Gigafactory Begins Production (reuters.com)
Thelasko writes: Right on schedule, Tesla's Gigafactory has begun production of battery cells. The fact that the factory has opened on schedule has surprised many critics of the company. Reuters reports: "Electric car maker Tesla Motors Inc has started mass production of lithium-ion battery cells at its gigafactory in Nevada along with Japan's Panasonic Corp, the company said on Wednesday. The cylindrical '2170 cells,' which will be used to power Tesla's energy storage products and the new Model 3 sedan, have been jointly designed by Tesla and Panasonic, its longstanding battery partner. The gigafactory will initially produce battery cells for the company's Powerwall 2 and Powerpack 2 energy products, Tesla said. The factory is expected to drive down the cost of battery packs by more than 30 percent, the company has said. At peak production, the gigafactory is expected to employ 6,500 workers and create between 20,000 and 30,000 additional jobs in the surrounding regions, Tesla said."
Let's be honest, it's an open secret that the Linux kernel contains large sections of copyrighted code from SCO UNIX. For those familiar with both collections of source code, it was generally assumed that SCO would win their lawsuit, and simply a question of what the fallout would be. Although dismissed out of hand by IBM and members of the open source community who were constantly moving the goalposts, SCO did provide a comprehensive list of source files and line numbers in Linux that matched portions of SCO UNIX. The fact is, SCO's claims of copyright violations by Linux developers and users were valid, factual, and completely legal. To this day, the Linux kernel contains large sections of copyrighted code that came straight from SCO UNIX. The open source community generally is vocal in favoring the "little guy" against large corporations like Microsoft and Google, whose motives and actions are frequently called into question. It's bemoaned that the so-called little guy is unlikely to stand a chance against the massive and well-funded legal teams retained by large corporations. This is for good reason, that everyone should be entitled to the same rights, regardless of their ability to afford top notch legal teams. SCO was the little guy compared to IBM, a small company with limited resources simply trying to ensure their copyrights were protected. IBM squashed them like a bug, not because the lawsuit was invalid. In fact, SCO's claims of copyright infringement are generally accepted as mostly correct. Rather, IBM had the legal resources to draw out legal battles and win a war of attrition against SCO, no matter the validity of the claims. If the open source community truly cares about ensuring the little guy has the same rights as large corporations, they should have been supporting SCO against a behemoth like IBM. To this day, I fail to understand the hypocrisy in supporting the little guy against giants like Apple and Microsoft, but rooting for another giant, IBM, to decimate SCO.