"It's an effort to split the open-source community into two camps, one around the GPL and "ideology," and another around the BSD and MS licenses and "pragmatism." In time, Microsoft can just grab all the code from the BSD and MS license camps, incorporate it into its own products, break compatibility, and walk away from the whole thing. At the very least they get a lot of work done for free, at the most, they've killed the GPL, which is open-source's main weapon against proprietization." Well said!
IMO, the major difference between the GPL and "more liberal" licenses is the fact that with GPL licensed code, nobody can walk away with your code, modify it and sell it without showing the code. They *have to* give the added code back for everyone. With BSD-like licenses, they can simply steal your work and you cannot do a thing about it. With the GPL, it is now possible to take a corporation (however huge) to court over non-submission of modified code. In short, the GPL *protects* the programmer *and* the user from any single evil commercial entity robbing the good work. No other license than GPL does this one thing so well.
One other pertinent point is that if you are a programmer of one open source project, you are most definitely the user of a few other open source projects. If they were all (or most) rebranded (cosmetic changes) and sold in competition to the original code, you have the user freedom problem yourself.
So, if A uses B,C,D and B and D are rebranded, A cannot use the good features added to B and D because it is proprietary and probably locked in to the underlying platform as well! Now if A also were to be rebranded, B,C,D cannot use the good new features of A. Eventually, A,B,C,D all stand to lose and the corporation wins just as they would in closed source scenario. A will be happy ONLY IF B,C,D are GPLed. Likewise for B,C,D about A.
This discussion is far from complete or perfect, but at least think well about this. Programmers who are lazy enough to accept the "shared" and "permissive" licenses without properly thinking of the possible consequences, are doomed to feel robbed and cheated eventually.
This *isn't* reverse-FUD. Think carefully, search online. For example, OS X uses BSD code and sells more than any of the BSD code contributors can sell BSD individually or as a group.
As a programmer or a small team, you simply have no resources to match the marketing and sales tactics that earn the corporations their billions. Your BSD-licensed code has no chance to fight a re-branded *cosmetically* improved version of your product, sold in competition to your own.
That should clearly explain why the GPL is better - with the GPL *everyone* earns, even the corporation, but it *keeps them honest*.
IMO, the true Microsoft open or shared source initiative would be to open the source code of any popular and widely used *existing* application like Internet Explorer source code.Net Framework Virtual Machine / MSIL source code Win32 API source code NT Kernel source code Indexing Service source code And if I am not asking asking too much, Windows Automatic Updates and Windows Firewall source code.
Till even one of these sources is made open, no amount of press is going to make any open source community member feel even one bit secure or comfortable with Shared Source.
(opposite FUD?) "There is another huge fundamental danger in developing Shared source code on the Microsoft platform - complete destruction of the Shareware System. The Association of Shareware Professionals is a body of shareware authors, each of whom have spent weeks or months trying to secure their code against being cracked. They have likely also spent hundreds of dollars to buy expensive anti-cracking solutions. If Microsoft pushes for people to write open source code, what do these shareware authors do? They have to rewrite all their applications from scratch!
IMO, shareware authors should keep selling shareware and migrate to real time-tested truly open source platforms like Linux, OpenJDK (or Java), gcc, Eclipse, PHP, MySQL, Python, Perl and so on. And then use the services methodology to earn from *existing* FLOSS projects. You really can make a lot of extra money off PHP based web applications, CMSes, Intranet applications and so on. Smart phones are also a big market with ready-to-use development systems present in true FLOSS like OpenJDK.
In a few rare admissions in press interviews, Microsoft has even asked of resellers and existing solution providers "to bear a little loss of revenue" in the transition to the next version of their operating system. I wonder what treatment the Share ware author community will get!"
Now that you have read the obvious opposite FUD, and now that you have read my admission of it being clearly FUD tactics, maybe you could read it one more time, please, even with that knowledge?
Has anyone noticed the judicious omission of the term "open source"? Directly targeted at PR.
So that you cannot *today* say: m$ also is now adopting "open source". They do not have the ready "shared source" stack to sell to corporates, unlike other FLOSS vendors. If people start saying "open source has won" or "open source is now validated" *now*, business and IT managers will buy *ready* FLOSS stacks - NOT m$ stuff.
So, they will get ignorant coders to rewrite those stacks in m$ technologies. Till that is done, they will keep up the other methods. FUD, loopholes, campaigns, etc.
Then, when enough shared source code is ready, they will come out with a campaign saying this: "Shared source is now OPEN SOURCE! Another mighty act of benevolence from our beloved technology leader!"
Chief FUD Officer Neksjen SpinKing speaking: "The GPL is the more restricive of licenses. It does not reward the programmer with freedom of his own code. We expect people to realize this fact and move to OUR better opensource model which gives complete freedom to the programmer to do as he/she wishes with their contribution. We do not even expect those insane license maniacs at FSF to change their crippling GPL version 3. We fail to understand why no other industry leader stood up to the fanatical FSF! We will show the way open source is done! (But first, please *buy* our 'doze platform!)"
That kind of nonsense is all lined up. Probably six months, probably a year from now. They will make it sound great just like the Ow! compaign. They are going to sound exceptionally chummy and pally over the next few months. As it is, they are known for their legal and marketing skills and not for their technological capacities, for which they *have to steal* top programmers from competitors to produce anything durable and stable.
After the recent legal battle which PJ followed so closely, could we use the term "Spin Champ Officer" for anyone from m$ trying to make too much FUD noise? And the tagline could be: "Shred Source - Too Good To Be True"
"Thus, Microsoft creates this license, releases sufficient open source code to make people think twice about using the GPL (extend), and then once the GPL is dead, leaves the open source world (extinguish)." Well said! But as long as the platform or OS itself is closed, things are not too good for them.
Mono, Moonlight and such other are the things to keep a watch on. They could go either way. If PR goes bad, shut up and let users get comfortable with mono/moonlight. If PR goes good (they do believe that will happen, since they still spend billions on marketing rather than good programmers), sue the hell out of Mono and Moonlight.
Do you think m$ is limited to existing laws on "Intellectual Property" - Patent and Copyright? Hell no! It is far cheaper to make a new legal theory altogether and get a law passed than to compete on technological merit. See their shareholder reports and do some smart guessing. And then estimate the hire price of legislation services. And compare the two.
Like take these new legal theories for instance: "Shared Knowledge Ownership Rights" "Special Public Domain Knowledge" "Business Practice Knowledge Rights"
So watch for those new laws in the next few months if all else fails.
one of their execs is on record at zdnet news saying that the real threat to microsoft's dominance on the web is web2.0 and all these scripting technologies. google it. its about 1.5-2 years old, IIRC.
Novell *has* been a good opensource company before the deal. In many ways they still are. But corporate decisions are pretty radical "when necessary" or "unavoidable" So, the idea is: don't put all your eggs in one basket - keep other Linuxes/systems as well.
Especially since change of CEO, Management, Board of Directors can happen overnight for instant effect, or OTOH, slowly over a period of time to evade detection.
"Sold out for $N billion" "CEO retires" "Change of direction from the top" "Team breaks up after internal spat over XYZ product" "Allows maximum interoperability" (nothing wrong with interoperability, mind you, but everything wrong with hidden agendas in the name of interoperability). IMO, such struggles never *end*, they merely change form, names, methods, playgrounds. Essentially, prevent a monopoly by *anybody*.(RH, N, anyone else) At all times, no one player should be dominant in the Enterprise Linux market. He will be bought-off / threatened / interoperate / blah blah Someone mentioned a thing about bringing a law to keep a max allowed market share of 50% to any one player. Today, with such widepsread use of FLOSS software, that is a really progressive legislation, although everyone is going to shout out hoarse about it being communist or dictatorial. It isn't. A market share limit *ensures* beyond repeal, freedom of choice to the user. However, cartels can always be formed. And laws can always be changed. It is a never-ending fight.
But for today, Novell, WELL DONE! We really hope the promise is not broken, whatever be the reason.
Same goes for Ubuntu, Canonical and Mark Shuttleworth - his assumption that monopolists will improve in the future is *foolishly dangerous* to say the least.
RTFM/Google Lots of the Windows API is undocumented and that very part is fast and makes Office fast. IF they open the API, (i said IF, and just theoretically) OO.o will be much faster, so will Java, GTK+, PHP, and so on. Apache will be stable as well. But that is IF.
Those are the names, IIRC. Also, the artist ears much lesser than the distributor. The artist often has to quietly accept the distributor's rules. I have read here and elsewhere that the artist gets as low as f-o-u-r percent
The distributor is mighty angered if the artist distributes a free album or number. Who do you side with, the artist or the distributor?
The distributor surely does not make the good music and great lyrics.
Nobody is forcing anything on to code that you have written. If you have borrowed code, you did not work on it, you are getting it for free (beer), surely you should respect the wish of the author. IANAD (Developer) essentially removes any claim to validity you may have in this topic. You really should write some code of immense worth and come to the point where you decide between GPL 2 and 3. Then you will find that people can rob your rights from you if you just keep it GPLed v2. Best is to let the user choose (which here mainly refers to the developer user who uses your GPL code to build a project around it)
One exceptionally good stance was of a kernel developer (forgot his name) who clearly said that he did not want to stop either side from using his code, so he said it is dual-licensed - use any GPL version(2 or 3 or later), at your choice. What is wrong with that? Is that not nearly the best solution? Almost noble.
If all the chief Linux distributions actually roll out installation-training (NOT installation AND traning - that is different) and support websites, making full use of web2.0, Linux might spread quickly (....virally?). See EyeOS and Cornelios for example. Google Docs/spreadsheets, Zoho, Thinkfree etc. show that the GUI can be handled pretty well.
Move from man2html to man-2-web2.0
A man(ual) page-like web widgets system with: + autocomplete dropdowns, + popup Javascript help boxes, + videos of personal real-installation experiences, + running known issues ticker, + integrated web interface to IRC servers in a small live-chat window at the bottom left/right corner of the screen, + a linked-commands graph (a network graph - with nodes and traversal, not a statistics bar graph), + VOIP(!), + [insert your cool idea here]
Make one in each language with user groups or forums in that language. So there! Don't ever complain again that Linux adoption is a markteing problem.
And if you want to pay some good bucks to a squatter domain use: lol.com - linux online learning or loiter.org -Linux Online Install TrainER
Imagine this conversation at the high seat of power:
"Linux is a community, it can be fractured by buying a few players. They are soft targets. First we divide them and conquer, upto legal and marketing requirements. Then we dump SCO - SCO's boss gave us a lot of support, we give him a nice house beside the beach in California. And a nice bank balance. Now, Novell is SCO Reloaded! With a hand in OIN and a big market following with SUSE, we can now fight the real emerging enemy who actually has a legal department to stop us at our game using our IP tricks, and that is SUN
Now it is SUN versus Novell, a newer, much more organized, battle where we have more powerful instruments - plus we have Linuxers hating SUN and we have SUN with all their best open sourced. Now BOTH Linux AND SUN are soft targets,
Cheers Embalmer, Pearly! To your wealth!" (single "l", mind you)
Surely, Noorda is crying.
This is not apparently related, but after you read it, you will find just how deeply connected to this issue it is - you do not need to spend millions on marketing, just write the code and announce it on digg/here:
Note that they have also _threatened_ Jim Zemlin to say what he has been saying and they are going to _threaten_ everyone who tries to speak against them.
I doubt they have bribed anyone, especially because Jim Zemlin was the only person to say: "dont touch the community, you touch even one of us and we will all unite and fight against you".
Now they've threatened Jim to say what he has said. He is not bribed, I am sure. There's something very very fishy going on out there. It looks like a threat from all angles, but IANAPolitican.
So the best we the community, could do, is this: A thousand people shouting out loudly against _threats_ of all kinds will definitely help save these leaders who are being individually singled out as targets. The mighty $$ powers are doing everything they can to stop _anything_ opensource that will give them even a minor problem. Linux, SUN, GNU, all are their daily _nightmares_
However, before speaking up or shouting loud, remember what they did to the guy who wrote: "show us the code" - he lost his job or website or both.....
Now that law isn't going to help them on the 235 patents and their product is exposed to be technically rubbish, they are losing market share because of _their_ _own_ technical mistakes - so many unfulfilled promises and such a bad product, they are using _threats_ to FOSS leaders and being opportunistic (sure?) with favorable judgements. Really nice way to fix bugs in your program - sue your competitor.
They are extremely good legally and so they use other entities as proxies.
PJ might be happy that this is the end of SCO. But dont think they have waited for more than a day or two to file against SUN, now that they have succeeded in breaking Linux unity. Someone has to do what PJ did all this while. Who is PJ v2.0?
Essentially, no company _likes_ their users. They all like _money_. Users are, well, users. Use and throw. That's why they are "user"s.
I am new to writing on slashdot but have been reading evry now and then. Although this might seem unrelated, I insist that you see this and if anyone has the time, effort, contacts or anything positive to give to this, go ahead and do it:
Maybe it is crap. Or already made somwehere. If so, mod me down, and that is the end of it. If not, pleeeaassee write the code.
yubnub.org (Ruby on Rails) has code ready for the shell imitator. Eyeos / Cornelios / 100+ AJAX/GUI toolkits have the code ready for the GUI imitator. ibiblio has the bandwidth and so do slashdot, sf.net, linux.com AND www.linux.org (and yes, I have a keyboard and you have the "bad karma" widgets in your browser Maybe, you think that the project is unimportant, but I am damn sure not everyone on the sother side of the fence thinks the same and they *DO* read these pages as well --*not* fud.
As a side plus, you could make good money as well And yes, remove the XUL part - nowadays, mozilla sux.
Slashdot Mirror
"It's an effort to split the open-source community into two camps, one around the GPL and "ideology," and another around the BSD and MS licenses and "pragmatism." In time, Microsoft can just grab all the code from the BSD and MS license camps, incorporate it into its own products, break compatibility, and walk away from the whole thing. At the very least they get a lot of work done for free, at the most, they've killed the GPL, which is open-source's main weapon against proprietization."
Well said!
IMO, the major difference between the GPL and "more liberal" licenses is the fact that with GPL licensed code, nobody can walk away with your code, modify it and sell it without showing the code. They *have to* give the added code back for everyone.
With BSD-like licenses, they can simply steal your work and you cannot do a thing about it.
With the GPL, it is now possible to take a corporation (however huge) to court over non-submission of modified code. In short, the GPL *protects* the programmer *and* the user from any single evil commercial entity robbing the good work.
No other license than GPL does this one thing so well.
One other pertinent point is that if you are a programmer of one open source project, you are most definitely the user of a few other open source projects. If they were all (or most) rebranded (cosmetic changes) and sold in competition to the original code, you have the user freedom problem yourself.
So, if A uses B,C,D and B and D are rebranded, A cannot use the good features added to B and D because it is proprietary and probably locked in to the underlying platform as well!
Now if A also were to be rebranded, B,C,D cannot use the good new features of A.
Eventually, A,B,C,D all stand to lose and the corporation wins just as they would in closed source scenario. A will be happy ONLY IF B,C,D are GPLed. Likewise for B,C,D about A.
This discussion is far from complete or perfect, but at least think well about this. Programmers who are lazy enough to accept the "shared" and "permissive" licenses without properly thinking of the possible consequences, are doomed to feel robbed and cheated eventually.
This *isn't* reverse-FUD. Think carefully, search online.
For example, OS X uses BSD code and sells more than any of the BSD code contributors can sell BSD individually or as a group.
As a programmer or a small team, you simply have no resources to match the marketing and sales tactics that earn the corporations their billions. Your BSD-licensed code has no chance to fight a re-branded *cosmetically* improved version of your product, sold in competition to your own.
That should clearly explain why the GPL is better - with the GPL *everyone* earns, even the corporation, but it *keeps them honest*.
IMO, the true Microsoft open or shared source initiative would be to open the source code of any popular and widely used *existing* application like .Net Framework Virtual Machine / MSIL source code
Internet Explorer source code
Win32 API source code
NT Kernel source code
Indexing Service source code
And if I am not asking asking too much,
Windows Automatic Updates and Windows Firewall source code.
Till even one of these sources is made open, no amount of press is going to make any open source community member feel even one bit secure or comfortable with Shared Source.
(opposite FUD?)
"There is another huge fundamental danger in developing Shared source code on the Microsoft platform - complete destruction of the Shareware System.
The Association of Shareware Professionals is a body of shareware authors, each of whom have spent weeks or months trying to secure their code against being cracked. They have likely also spent hundreds of dollars to buy expensive anti-cracking solutions.
If Microsoft pushes for people to write open source code, what do these shareware authors do?
They have to rewrite all their applications from scratch!
IMO, shareware authors should keep selling shareware and migrate to real time-tested truly open source platforms like Linux, OpenJDK (or Java), gcc, Eclipse, PHP, MySQL, Python, Perl and so on. And then use the services methodology to earn from *existing* FLOSS projects.
You really can make a lot of extra money off PHP based web applications, CMSes, Intranet applications and so on. Smart phones are also a big market with ready-to-use development systems present in true FLOSS like OpenJDK.
In a few rare admissions in press interviews, Microsoft has even asked of resellers and existing solution providers "to bear a little loss of revenue" in the transition to the next version of their operating system. I wonder what treatment the Share ware author community will get!"
Now that you have read the obvious opposite FUD, and now that you have read my admission of it being clearly FUD tactics, maybe you could read it one more time, please, even with that knowledge?
Has anyone noticed the judicious omission of the term "open source"?
Directly targeted at PR.
So that you cannot *today* say: m$ also is now adopting "open source".
They do not have the ready "shared source" stack to sell to corporates, unlike other FLOSS vendors.
If people start saying "open source has won" or "open source is now validated" *now*, business and IT managers will buy *ready* FLOSS stacks - NOT m$ stuff.
So, they will get ignorant coders to rewrite those stacks in m$ technologies.
Till that is done, they will keep up the other methods. FUD, loopholes, campaigns, etc.
Then, when enough shared source code is ready, they will come out with a campaign saying this:
"Shared source is now OPEN SOURCE! Another mighty act of benevolence from our beloved technology leader!"
Chief FUD Officer Neksjen SpinKing speaking:
"The GPL is the more restricive of licenses. It does not reward the programmer with freedom of his own code. We expect people to realize this fact and move to OUR better opensource model which gives complete freedom to the programmer to do as he/she wishes with their contribution.
We do not even expect those insane license maniacs at FSF to change their crippling GPL version 3. We fail to understand why no other industry leader stood up to the fanatical FSF! We will show the way open source is done! (But first, please *buy* our 'doze platform!)"
That kind of nonsense is all lined up. Probably six months, probably a year from now.
They will make it sound great just like the Ow! compaign.
They are going to sound exceptionally chummy and pally over the next few months. As it is, they are known for their legal and marketing skills and not for their technological capacities, for which they *have to steal* top programmers from competitors to produce anything durable and stable.
After the recent legal battle which PJ followed so closely, could we use the term "Spin Champ Officer" for anyone from m$ trying to make too much FUD noise?
And the tagline could be: "Shred Source - Too Good To Be True"
"Thus, Microsoft creates this license, releases sufficient open source code to make people think twice about using the GPL (extend), and then once the GPL is dead, leaves the open source world (extinguish)."
Well said!
But as long as the platform or OS itself is closed, things are not too good for them.
Mono, Moonlight and such other are the things to keep a watch on. They could go either way. If PR goes bad, shut up and let users get comfortable with mono/moonlight.
If PR goes good (they do believe that will happen, since they still spend billions on marketing rather than good programmers), sue the hell out of Mono and Moonlight.
Do you think m$ is limited to existing laws on "Intellectual Property" - Patent and Copyright?
Hell no!
It is far cheaper to make a new legal theory altogether and get a law passed than to compete on technological merit. See their shareholder reports and do some smart guessing. And then estimate the hire price of legislation services. And compare the two.
Like take these new legal theories for instance:
"Shared Knowledge Ownership Rights"
"Special Public Domain Knowledge"
"Business Practice Knowledge Rights"
So watch for those new laws in the next few months if all else fails.
one of their execs is on record at zdnet news saying that the real threat to microsoft's dominance on the web is web2.0 and all these scripting technologies. google it. its about 1.5-2 years old, IIRC.
Novell *has* been a good opensource company before the deal. In many ways they still are.
But corporate decisions are pretty radical "when necessary" or "unavoidable"
So, the idea is:
don't put all your eggs in one basket - keep other Linuxes/systems as well.
Especially since change of CEO, Management, Board of Directors can happen overnight for instant effect, or OTOH, slowly over a period of time to evade detection.
"Sold out for $N billion"
"CEO retires"
"Change of direction from the top"
"Team breaks up after internal spat over XYZ product"
"Allows maximum interoperability" (nothing wrong with interoperability, mind you, but everything wrong with hidden agendas in the name of interoperability).
IMO, such struggles never *end*, they merely change form, names, methods, playgrounds.
Essentially, prevent a monopoly by *anybody*.(RH, N, anyone else)
At all times, no one player should be dominant in the Enterprise Linux market.
He will be bought-off / threatened / interoperate / blah blah
Someone mentioned a thing about bringing a law to keep a max allowed market share of 50% to any one player.
Today, with such widepsread use of FLOSS software, that is a really progressive legislation, although everyone is going to shout out hoarse about it being communist or dictatorial.
It isn't.
A market share limit *ensures* beyond repeal, freedom of choice to the user. However, cartels can always be formed. And laws can always be changed. It is a never-ending fight.
But for today, Novell, WELL DONE!
We really hope the promise is not broken, whatever be the reason.
Same goes for Ubuntu, Canonical and Mark Shuttleworth - his assumption that monopolists will improve in the future is *foolishly dangerous* to say the least.
RTFM/Google
Lots of the Windows API is undocumented and that very part is fast and makes Office fast.
IF they open the API, (i said IF, and just theoretically) OO.o will be much faster, so will Java, GTK+, PHP, and so on. Apache will be stable as well. But that is IF.
yeah she causes a lot of stress - no no not like that....
i cannot even see the login box sometimes.
damn! the ****ing browser
Those are the names, IIRC.
Also, the artist ears much lesser than the distributor.
The artist often has to quietly accept the distributor's rules.
I have read here and elsewhere that the artist gets as low as f-o-u-r percent
The distributor is mighty angered if the artist distributes a free album or number.
Who do you side with, the artist or the distributor?
The distributor surely does not make the good music and great lyrics.
Nobody is forcing anything on to code that you have written. If you have borrowed code, you did not work on it, you are getting it for free (beer), surely you should respect the wish of the author.
IANAD (Developer) essentially removes any claim to validity you may have in this topic.
You really should write some code of immense worth and come to the point where you decide between GPL 2 and 3.
Then you will find that people can rob your rights from you if you just keep it GPLed v2.
Best is to let the user choose (which here mainly refers to the developer user who uses your GPL code to build a project around it)
One exceptionally good stance was of a kernel developer (forgot his name) who clearly said that he did not want to stop either side from using his code, so he said it is dual-licensed - use any GPL version(2 or 3 or later), at your choice.
What is wrong with that? Is that not nearly the best solution? Almost noble.
If all the chief Linux distributions actually roll out installation-training (NOT installation AND traning - that is different) and support websites, making full use of web2.0, Linux might spread quickly (....virally?).
See EyeOS and Cornelios for example.
Google Docs/spreadsheets, Zoho, Thinkfree etc. show that the GUI can be handled pretty well.
Move from man2html to man-2-web2.0
A man(ual) page-like web widgets system with:
+ autocomplete dropdowns,
+ popup Javascript help boxes,
+ videos of personal real-installation experiences,
+ running known issues ticker,
+ integrated web interface to IRC servers in a small live-chat window at the bottom left/right corner of the screen,
+ a linked-commands graph (a network graph - with nodes and traversal, not a statistics bar graph),
+ VOIP(!),
+ [insert your cool idea here]
Make one in each language with user groups or forums in that language.
So there! Don't ever complain again that Linux adoption is a markteing problem.
And if you want to pay some good bucks to a squatter domain use:
lol.com - linux online learning or
loiter.org -Linux Online Install TrainER
The outline is ready. What are you waiting for?
Its simple to see the game:
Imagine this conversation at the high seat of power:
"Linux is a community, it can be fractured by buying a few players.
They are soft targets. First we divide them and conquer, upto legal and marketing requirements.
Then we dump SCO - SCO's boss gave us a lot of support, we give him a nice house beside the beach in California. And a nice bank balance.
Now, Novell is SCO Reloaded!
With a hand in OIN and a big market following with SUSE, we can now fight the real emerging enemy who actually has a legal department to stop us at our game using our IP tricks, and that is SUN
Now it is SUN versus Novell, a newer, much more organized, battle where we have more powerful instruments - plus we have Linuxers hating SUN and we have SUN with all their best open sourced.
Now BOTH Linux AND SUN are soft targets,
Cheers Embalmer, Pearly!
To your wealth!"
(single "l", mind you)
Surely, Noorda is crying.
This is not apparently related, but after you read it, you will find just how deeply connected to this issue it is - you do not need to spend millions on marketing, just write the code and announce it on digg/here:
http://savannah.gnu.org/task/?7027
Note that they have also _threatened_ Jim Zemlin to say what he has been saying and they are going to _threaten_ everyone who tries to speak against them.
I doubt they have bribed anyone, especially because Jim Zemlin was the only person to say:
"dont touch the community, you touch even one of us and we will all unite and fight against you".
Now they've threatened Jim to say what he has said. He is not bribed, I am sure.
There's something very very fishy going on out there.
It looks like a threat from all angles, but IANAPolitican.
So the best we the community, could do, is this:
A thousand people shouting out loudly against _threats_ of all kinds will definitely help save these leaders who are being individually singled out as targets.
The mighty $$ powers are doing everything they can to stop _anything_ opensource that will give them even a minor problem. Linux, SUN, GNU, all are their daily _nightmares_
However, before speaking up or shouting loud, remember what they did to the guy who wrote: "show us the code" - he lost his job or website or both.....
Now that law isn't going to help them on the 235 patents and their product is exposed to be technically rubbish, they are losing market share because of _their_ _own_ technical mistakes - so many unfulfilled promises and such a bad product, they are using _threats_ to FOSS leaders and being opportunistic (sure?) with favorable judgements.
Really nice way to fix bugs in your program - sue your competitor.
They are extremely good legally and so they use other entities as proxies.
PJ might be happy that this is the end of SCO.
But dont think they have waited for more than a day or two to file against SUN, now that they have succeeded in breaking Linux unity.
Someone has to do what PJ did all this while. Who is PJ v2.0?
Essentially, no company _likes_ their users. They all like _money_. Users are, well, users.
Use and throw. That's why they are "user"s.
I am new to writing on slashdot but have been reading evry now and then.
Although this might seem unrelated, I insist that you see this and if anyone has the time, effort, contacts or anything positive to give to this, go ahead and do it:
http://savannah.gnu.org/task/?7027
Maybe it is crap. Or already made somwehere. If so, mod me down, and that is the end of it.
If not, pleeeaassee write the code.
yubnub.org (Ruby on Rails) has code ready for the shell imitator.
Eyeos / Cornelios / 100+ AJAX/GUI toolkits have the code ready for the GUI imitator.
ibiblio has the bandwidth and so do slashdot, sf.net, linux.com AND www.linux.org
(and yes, I have a keyboard and you have the "bad karma" widgets in your browser
Maybe, you think that the project is unimportant, but I am damn sure not everyone on the sother side of the fence thinks the same and they *DO* read these pages as well --*not* fud.
As a side plus, you could make good money as well
And yes, remove the XUL part - nowadays, mozilla sux.