God you people are selective in your memory and your choice of laws to enforce and ignore.
Much of this thread has involved what is and what is not constitutional. Over the years, the Supreme Court has interpretted the First Amendment to give us another freedom that is just as important as Freedom of Speech: Freedom of Association, sometimes called the Right of Free Association.
At a personal level they are equal (I offend you, you shun me). At a professional level the supreme court has ruled, numerous times, that "freedom of association" is quite limited. You do not have the right to 'disassociate' your business (i.e. refuse to do business, refuse to hire, etc.) from black people because you don't like the color of their skin. You do not have the right to 'disassociate' your business from jews/catholics/protestants/athiests becauuse you don't like them.
The supreme court has ruled uniquivocably that an individual's right not to be discriminated against on the basis of ethnicity, religion, etc. trumps any right you, in a business setting, have to freedom of association. And correctly so: freedom of association has limitations placed upon it just as freedom of speech does (libel, slander, screaming fire in a theater).
Freedom of speech must enjoy the same level of protection or it becomes meaningless. If a person can be fired for speaking their mind, they are not free to speak. I.e. "speak what I don't like and you starve/become homeless" isn't freedom of speech, any more than "speak what I don't like and I'll put you up for 20 years in my not-so-comfortable gulag" is.
Indeed, as we have seen in the past two years, the lack of this same level of protection has resulted in companies effectively becoming proxies for government silencing of opposing viewpoints. When Bush (or Clinton in years past) can turn to a company and say "Hey, one of your employees is spouting off" and thereby get that employee fired, that employee's freedom of speech is meaningless, indeed a mockery. There is little, if any, difference between censorship and sanction for speech conducted by a government directly, and conducted by a company at the behest of a government, or merely in support of that government. At the end of the day, in both cases, the individual is not free to speak out, and this is the antithes of what the founding fathers and the constitution intended.
Freedom of Expression must trump freedom of association with regards to conducting business, employment, etc. or freedom of expression simply doesn't exist in any practical sense. The Europeans for the most part know this, and have wisely encoded it into law. That is one of the primary reasons why you can have such lively debate in England and Germany, and diverse views can be represented so openly, while America remains a shining example of the sounds of silence (a few posterchildren and tokens aside).
Freedom of Association does not run counter to freedom of speech, or anything I am saying, or have said, when it is interpreted as originally intended: for individuals. When it is interpreted as carte blanche for corporations and business to have absolute disdain and disregard for individual constitutional rights, then it does. But, lest we forget, corporations were greatly mistrusted by the founding fathers: their charters were granted reluctantly and frequently withdrawm ("corporate death penalty") if the corporation were found to be acting against the public interest. Now we have the appalling fiction that corporations are "people" with all the same rights and priveleges, which has disempowered the individual almost completely.
Businesses do not have the same inalienable rights as human beings. Human beings may be free to associate as they will, but businesses are not. They are not allowed to discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, and so on, and they should not be permitted to discriminate on the basis of a citizen excersizing their constitutional rights.
The sad thing is that they may well turn out to be using even more illegally licensed software now if sco manage to actually win.
That is like saying John Wayne Gacy might turn out to be a national hero, if one day we decide the serial killing of innocents (and burying their corpses in your crawl space and beneath your driveway) is the finest thing a citizen can do. Possible, perhaps, but so unlikely as to be laughable. You'd be better off taking bets on the precise moment of the next comet or asteroid strike... you'll have much better odds than either John Wayne Gacy or SCO.
My only question to this is to what institution are we are speaking now? If you made the speech at a podium it would surely be video or tape recorded. If you post it on the internet, it is logged. This is to be expected.
As I said, the recording isn't the issue. The public record isn't the issue (although I suspect most people had no idea *how* public their musings and rants have become), Microsoft's Orwellian collection (and undoubtable soon to follow (mis)use) of the data isn't the issue. Were freedom of speech at all respected in our society this would be a minor issue with regard to privacy (if even that). But, because we live in a country where it has in recent decades become acceptable to fire someone for voicing an opinion one doesn't agree with (and yes, I do remember a time not so long ago when such an action by an employer was virtually taboo. Doesn't mean it didn't happen, but it was certainly not to be expected, and was firmly looked down upon by society and often by the courts), in which radical (and not so radical) groups routinely target people for economic and social sanction based upon their speech (another thing that would have been unthinkable just a couple of short decades ago), and in which the man holding our highest elected office condones the targetting of those who speak out against him, this really has become a problem. (As an aside, Bush's whole "freedom of speech has consiquences", comment was horrifically disingenuous. He is no different that Stalin would have been, had he said that exact same thing to the millions who died in his gulags. Indeed, by Bush's definition the Soviets had exactly as much freedom of speech as we do...which should tell you something right there.)
It is, however, not a problem with Microsoft's data collection practicies (although I do suspect we'll get to fully appreciate the Orwellian implications of that soon enough), it is a problem of the populace at large, in government, in private industry, and individually no longer even willing to maintain the pretence of upholding either the concept, or the intent, of our basic freedoms (in this case, that of speech), preferring instead to develope elaborate straw man arguments and justifications as to why they see no need to guarantee these rights any longer and, indeed, find it more convinient not to.
To take your arguement into the realm of the silly (though to a place that it will surely have to apply against your will), how can you then hold anything W says against him? If you don't like what he says, and therefore vote against him, isn't that "the freedom to gratuitiously sanction and harm another for speaking an opinion you don't like." I mean, its just what he said. And you harmed him by voting against him. And you probably convinced lots of people to vote against him.
Holding public office (elected or otherwise) is entirely different than living as a private citizen. So much so that our constitution, our laws, and our courts differentiate between the two in numerous ways (including the definition of a "reasonable expectation of privacy"). Equating my argument that a person being fired for voicing an opinion against Bush is in any way equivelent to that of pointing out an elected official's statements (or history) as reason to vote against him is yet another straw man argument, ignoring the underlying point, which I will reiterate for the dense among us:
Freedom of speech does not exist if you can lose your job, your freedom, or your life for expressing it. The fact is that the government is but one entity capable of denying a person their income, their freedom, or their life for expressing an unpopular opinion. The government is not the only one: an employer, a neighbor, or a lynchmob of angry (right or left-wing) zeolots is another. The constitution was clearly intended to protect our freedom of expression from both (a point reiterated by the 14th amendment), and yes, that does mean your freedom to fire an employee whose political opinion
Nonsense. Your freedom of speech does not guarantee anything in the private sector. I.e. it does not guarantee your employment contract, your image, your customers, others' opinions about you, or others' actions taken based on opinions expressed from your free speech.
It was never intended that one's freedom of speech guarantee anything in the private sector. What was intended (and what is in place in most enlightened western democracies, the United States being the exception (although with the Clinton impeachment and the events in Florida, California, and now Texas, many would argue the United States hardly constitutes an enlightened democracy anymore)) is that freedom of speech guarantee no punitive actions be taken against the speaker, be it in the private or public sector.
Indeed, ironically, the United States could learn a great deal from Great Britain on this specific point.
In other words, you may well express bad opinions about your employer, but your employer does not have to keep employing you as their salesperson, or spokesperson.
That is a strawman argument. Indeed, it is wrong on so many levels, most of your freedom of speech wouldn't exist in any context, nor most of your other rights as well. Which, coicidentally, is exactly the sort of reality your reasoning has led us to.
To be more speciric, that statement is an extreme example being used to obfuscate the original point. (Akin to the oft-misused 'fire in a theater' argument, another extreme applied in an overly broad and inappropraite manner in a similiar fashion). People are not being fired for telling a companies customers "hey, my employer sucks!" (although they can in numerous cases... that is what we have whistle blower laws for), they are being fired (or worse) for saying things like "with what my government is doing, I am ashamed to be American." That is unacceptable, and your complacency in dismissing this as OK is part of the reason our freedoms have become so eroded, and show every sign of eroding further.
It is obvious if you read the U.S. Constitution (the document you are referring to) that it refers to Government's actions to censor free speech, not your private life.
It is obvious in reading the 14th amendment that that oversight was intended to be corrected...our basic rights are intended to be upheld by everyone, be it federal, state, local government, private industry, or our neighbors.
Argh! I was trying to reply to another comment and juggled my windows in a rather silly manner. So much for cross referencing threads (and letting Mozilla's tabbed browsing get the best of me). Substitute "I" for "he" above and it makes sense, or cut-and-paste it into this thread, where it belonged in the first place.
(except that in my original statement, I should have made it clearer I was talking about threats and actions taken against people, not counterarguments as such).
There is nothing to fear from reaction speech. If you listen to the counter-point, you may actually find out you were wrong in the first place. Then where would we be without the counter-point? Free speech does not stop with the initial speaker.
He isn't talking about countering speech with speech. He clearly implies he has no problem with a good argument.
He is talking about people losing their jobs and being threatened physically. He is talking about the chilling effect this has on all speech. And he is right. It is unconstitutional and it is unamerican.
Um protesting someone's speech is also free speech. Why do you want to shut down the reaction? This would be the goal of someone who doesn't want their arguement to be challenged.
Protesting is one thing.
Trying to shut people up through boycotts, threats against their employment, termination of their employment, threats against their lives, etc. is something else entirely, and while boycotts may be legal (and should be), they are antithetical to our most basic principles when organized to silence people, as they all too often are in the United States.
As for the other actions (threats against people's employment, property, persons, families, etc.)... that is unacceptable whether it comes from government, business, or an individual. It makes an utter mockery of our freedoms and undermines our freedom to speak in its most fundamental form.
Freedom and democracy require more than just the government to uphold them, they require the people to uphold them, whether they are acting as politicians, government employees, private businesses, or individuals. Freedom of Speech is about the freedom to speak, not the freedom to gratuitiously sanction and harm another for speaking an opinion you don't like....if you put it on the internet, expect it to be read and recorded. If you don't you are just dangerously naive.
No. You are dangerously complacant in a time when our freedoms and our most fundamental democratic institutions are being eroded faster than ever before in our history. It is precisely this asinine attitude that is at the heart of our loss of freedoms in general, and freedom of speech in particular. Indeed, you appear to have entirely missed the point and constructed a strawman in its place (HINT: I never said anything about not wanting something read, I spoke of expecting the right to speak, or write, and be heard, without having to fear for my livelihood, my job, my safety, or even my life, as others have had to do with, perhaps most appalling of all, the tacit approval of said threats from the man holding this nation's highest elected [prior to 1997] office).
Since the early days of netnews (now Usenet) is has been fairly clear that everything you post is being saved, and anything you post if fair game to be responded to, analyzed, and/or held against you at a later date. If this disturbs you, don't post in public forums.
Or take a fucking stand for freedom of speech.
I mean real, honest, what-the-founding-fathers-intended freedom of speech, not Baby Bush style "freedom of speech has consiquences" (such as harrassment, death threats, destruction of one's livlihood, and other sanctions both official and extracurricular). We have all, over the years (since the 1980s in any event, perhaps longer) been selling out this fundamental principle everytime we hold our breath and don't speak for fear of "consiquences" (like losing one's job) and don't speak out when these sort of sanctions are brought against another.
Freedom of speech doesn't mean you don't have consiquences: others may disagree, yell at you, argue, even dislike and avoid you. It does, however, mean you should be able to speak without sanctions being taken against you, whether it be by an employer, an organization, or a government. Indeed, those who organize boycotts based upon people's speech ("Boycott X, he's a Baby Bush basher!", "Boycott Y, he's a right wing facist!"), while free to do so, are most assuredly taking a very firm anti-free speech stance, and should themselves be shouted at for doing so.
Were freedom of speech respected and upheld, not just by the government, but by the people, the sort of information tracking Microsoft is engagin in, while despicable, wouldn't really matter all that much, and one wouldn't have to fear for one's livlihood merely because one has a controversial opinion. Which was what the founding fathers wanted and intended, and what we as a society betrayed a long time ago.
Perhaps, slowly, as things grow worse, we'll rethink this, take a step back, and start upholding the concept of freedom of speech again rather than just paying it lip service, and tell idiots who fire employees, organize boycotts against country music singers who express their disdain for Baby Bush, organize boycotts against Rush Limbaugh (or his affiliated radio stations) for being a right-wing pundit, or endorse the harm and even destruction of lives of those whose views they don't share (Mr. Bush, are your goons reading this?) with such inane comments as "freedom of speech has a price."
The alternative is freedom of speech concentration camp style: i.e. using Bush's argument, and those put forward by those who either advocate or are ambivelent about our restricted freedom of expression, one can just as easilly argue that soviet Russia had freedom of speech: after all, under Stalin you could speak your mind freely, it is just that such freedom has consiquences (like spending 20 years in the Gulag).
Enough already. It is time we reasserted our fundamental right to freedom of speech, and damn any employer, government, church, or other organization to hell who tries to take it back again.
I agree mostly with what you are saying, but the point that (I believe this is the case (look at the changelogs, and there appear to be a bunch of people from samba.org) several of the people contribuiting to samba also contribute to the kernel, so infact, they have violated the GPL with some of the copyright holders.
Thoughts?
Talk to a lawyer (I am not one)...and make damn sure its a very good, competent lawyer you talk to.
Those holding copyright's on part of the kernal and part of Samba might be able to make something stick, they might not. I don't know... but any legal misstep on something like this could seriously undercut the GPL's legal clout in a way very unbeneficial to the free software community, so anyone thinking of doing this had better not fuck it up.
Now...I'm not saying anyone should kill Mr. McBride...but lets just say, I'd understand.
LOL!
On a much more serious note...
As satisfying as seeing Darl's grey matter (or what passes for it) splattered against a wall in true Hollywood fashion, that would be the aboslutely worst thing that could possibly happen to free software. Which is why, if I were Darl McBride, I'd be very concerned... not because some free software enthusiast (really an absolute zealot in this hypothetical case) would take it into their mind to shoot him, but because his backers, who have a great deal to gain by discrediting free software, might well find it to be very cost effective to bump him off. A propoganda ploy with a huge payoff in terms of denigrating free software (and tying up one loose end to boot).
Let us not forget that SCO's bringing this case is probably the best possible scenerio in which the GPL can be tried in court, and almost certainly upheld (assuming someone doesn't do something completely boneheaded, like try to revoke SCO's license to use any GPLed code, rather than just the code on which they violated the license... that is the only scenerio in which the GPL could lose, as most probably no one license can be applied to unrelated products, merely because they happen to be licensed under the same terms.)
Darl is an evil fuck, but he is, in a bizzar manner and at the end of the day, probably doing free software a favor. About the only way (other than the boneheaded maneuver I mentioned above) free software could lose this is if some deranged fool actually does go and physically threaten one of these evil pricks. In which case, we'll suddenly be the ones lookign like thugs and almost certainly have our own work stolen from us by a court seeing us in all the wrong light (remember Kaplan and deCSS).
The GPL is about to be upheld legally... and that will be the nail in not only SCO's coffin, but SCO's silent, if not so opaque, backer(s) as well. Or at least one of them (in Redmond)... Sun actually does have the viable option of embracing Linux and free software, and persuing their hardware+maintenance business model quite effectively. The other company likely wouldn't survive such a transition, but I digress.
Personally I'm going to customize the GPL for my work where you cannot use it with SCO software, for the SCO company, etc. etc.
What do you do when SCO changes its name, is bought out by Microsoft (or IBM), or otherwise metamorphasizes itself through corporate/legal slight-of-hand. Do you ban the canopy group? What if canopy purchases an innocent bystander (if they haven't already)... are they suddenly banned from using your software. Are you going to ban Darl McBride by name? The Mormons as a whole? America? Where does this sort of thing stop.
SCO has violated the GPL on Linux. They are no longer allowed to distribute Linux under US copyright law, and they are violating that law massively even as I type this. That is enough.
Do not try to revoke SCO's GPL license to products they haven't violated the license of... if anyone does so, they will put the GPL in a no-win situation, where if it is upheld, you cannot revoke SCO's license becauuse you don't like them, or it is not upheld, you can revoke the license of people you don't like later, and none of us are safe (the very foundation of software freedom is taken away). One thing is almost certain: violating the license of one product isn't going to mean you lose licenses to all products who happen to use the same license... I cannot imagine any court of law ruling that, for example, you lose the license to Samba because you violate the license of transcode, merely because the two products' licenses happen to have the same text (the GPL) and are otherwise unrelated.
This does not mean I lose my license to distribute other products also licensed under the GPL.
Actually it does. Violate the GPL on a GNU product and refuse to be reasonable when it's pointed out and they'll C&D you to cease modifying and distributing anything the FSF owns copyright on and licenses under the GPL, not just that one program.
Yes, but the FSF owns the copyright on all those programs. The FSF cannot tell someone violating the GNU copyright (by violating the GPL) that they cannot use Linux (even though Linux is GPLed) because they do not own the copyright, and can therefor neither license, nor revoke the license of Linux. Likewise, Samba's copyright is owned by a different group of people than Linux, so the fact that SCO has committed massive copyright violations of Linux does not mean the Linux folks can revoke SCO's GPL license to Samba. And, since SCO has not violated Samba's license (the GPL) on Samba, at least to our knowledge, the Samba folks can't revoke that license either.
This is one of the reasons the FSF recommends one assign copyright to them when one GPLs a project...it does buy you a great deal of clout when things like this arise.
As it is, were the Samba folks (or the FSF) to attempt to revoke SCO's license on distributing GPLed software unrelated to Linux (the product whose copyright SCO is violating), I doubt very much it would hold up in court.
Think about it. The GPL doesn't allow willy-nilly revokation without cause, and your violating a license on Microsoft's code (even that small amount of code Microsoft has GPLed... yes, even MS has GPLed some software!) doesn't have any bearing on whether or not you've violated the GPL on a completely unrelated product, owned by different people, such as, say, Linux.
I think any attempt to make one violation on one product apply to all licenses on all products who happen to be identically licensed won't stand a snowball's chance in hell of being upheld in court... this is exactly the sort of ploy that could hand SCO a victory it otherwise would never achieve. Disclaimer: IANAL, yada yada yada.
If you want to help people, write your firewall activation and configuration program as a tool that allows the user to control it and distribute it freely on a website. Advertise it. If it doesn't suck, people will use it and you'll help make the internet more secure. Popular magazines might even recommend it as a really easy fix for security, and you'll help even more people. And, if you screw up, you can fix the bugs in the next version and provide support. Added bonus - the police and corporate lawyers won't be hunting you.
I wish I had moderator points today. This is one of the most insightful posts I have seen on this subject today.
I say this as one who doesn't really have a problem with the 'white-hat' worm (assuming it really is white-hat, and not just a more subtle attack waiting to happen, which those open ports might well represent), and any damage it does cause could reasonably be considered collatoral in a battle to secure a system the vendor and user alike are either unwilling or too incompetent to secure, and I do find the argument that your autonomy over your own system ends the moment it attacks my network to be a compelling one in some respects.
Nevertheless, your advice, and your stance on this, makes a whole hell of a lot more practical and ethical sense: spend your energy writing software that fixes (or perhaps detects and fixes) security flaws such as this one in a manner that educats and empowers otherwise helpless users, and distribute it freely. Put your energy into something others can contribute to and improve upon, something that will allow you to receive the recognition you deserve, rather than become another hunted felon.
Excellent advice, and it trumps the pro v. con 'good-guy' worm argument completely, whichever side of that debate one stands on.
Wow Talking out your ass gets you modded to +5. Please tell me what article or what admendment in the constitution that even mentions copyrights. There is nothing.
For dumbfucks too lazy to google, lest others be misled by their inane spewage:
clause 8: To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
And for mindless trolls too literal to comprehend the above as it relates to US copyright and patent law:
I really hope that AOL interoperates with iChat AV.
Unlikely in the extreme.
As another, very informative post in this thread pointed out was noted in the dissenting FCC opinion, AOL-Time Warner has had the option to deploy instant messaging for the last two years, with all of these features, provided it interoperates with others (such as iChat).
They have chosen not to do so, because they anticipate greater profits through customer lockin despite the fact that it has taken them two years to buy off the FCC.
Hell, iChat already uses the AOL protocol and everything... What are they waiting for???
The FCC to lift the modest restrictions they have placed on AOL-Time Warner, so that they can break interoperability with those protocols, locking in their own customers (and those of their "strategic" partners) while locking the rest of us out. Apple may or may not be on the losing side of that equation, but rest assured that the internet at large, and the software, information, and communications freedom it has come to represent, most assuredly is on losing side, thanks to yet more bad governance from Baby Powell, the FCC, the Baby Bush administration, and Washington in general.
As a cynical aside, I do not expect to see good governance in this country again in my lifetime (and I am reasonably young).
So they are saying that communication is the reason for movie's failure? They should get rid of free speech.
You say that as a joke, but it is important to keep in mind that
copyright is the only thing in the constitution that is explicitly allowed to trump freedom of the press (i.e. freedom of speech). Copyright was originally instituted as a means for the British Crown to censor the printing press, a new technology (at that time) which they felt threatened by.
Copyright was later "reformed" in the Statute of Anne to give authors rights theoretically equal to those of the (by then) entrenched publishing cartel. This is the point in history that copyright advocates will try to pass off as the "beginning" of copyright, ignoring its much darker, earlier past, and the original reason for its inception: censorship.
That same publishing cartel ignored the statute and fought it in the courts for nearly a century thereafter, before the highest court ruled they had to respect author's rights and pay to publish their works.
It was this form of copyright that was encoded into the US constitution, with a significant change: said copyright was intended to be for a limited time, indeed, it was the intention of the founding fathers that it be a very limited time: originally 14 years plus an option to extend for another 14 years if the author was still living.
Copyright, even in its original form, was hardly benign. Under the guise of insuring that authors and publishers receive compensation (since when is a government mandated monopoly a requirement for one to get compensation?), information in the age of the printing press was quite stringently controlled, both in the British empire and, within a generation after the ratification of the US constitution, in the United States.
Copyright in its original form only applied to books. It's purview was then extended dramatically to include
cartography (maps)
sheet music
player piano music encodings
grammophone and other recordings
photographs
moving pictures
executable instructions (software)
Copyright was also extended numerous times in duration, now reaching life+70 years for individuals and 90 years for works-for-hire, with no end in sight now that the supreme court has ruled that retroactive extentions are now "constitutional", despite the obvious conflict that entails with the constitutions own requirement that terms be of limited length.
In addition, government has extended copyright's authority, making it a criminal offense for the first time in this nation's 200 year history, giving individual copyright cartels and corporations police and judicial powers to issue subpeonas and have people arrested, and banning certain creative works and expressions outright (anything that can be construed to circumvent a copy restriction scheme, which includes haiku poems describing how to decrypt DVDs for playback on Linux systems).
The DMCA allows web sites and persons to be silenced as a result of mere allegations of copyright violation, with no due process, no trial, no conviction, no proof required, and no opportunity for appeal. Copyright has come full circle, returning to its origins as the primary means of modern day censorship.
The domain, authority, and severity of copyright have grown and grown repeatedly throughout our history, as the tiny minority of people it benefits and the cartels they have formed demand greater privileges and greater profits. It is the only provision in the constitution that trumps freedom of expression and the press. Each time it grows, your freedom of speech shrinks by a corresponding amount (at least). Now that communicating certain information that can be construed as circumventing copy protection (this could, BTW, include memorization of certain inf
Slander, noun 1: the utterance of false charges or misrepresntations which defame and damage another's resputation 2: a false and defamatory oral statement about a person
SCO is making false utterances and charges not only against linux, but against Linus Torvalds personally and every developer, supporter, and user of the Linux kernel. In so doing, they have damaged the public, professional reputations of Linux distributors (Red Hat, IBM, and others), developers, advocates, and users. If libel law doesn't cover this behavior, then it is really a relatively useless piece of legislation.
What SCO is doing is not only slanderous, it is illegal in so many fashions (SEC violations, protection racket, copyright violation of the linux kernel, etc. etc.) that Darl McBride et. al. really should be doing hard time in a butt-slamming prison if there is anything even remotely resembling justice in this country. Which, I am sad to say, there almost certainly is not.
BTW - Libel fits what SCO is doing as well. To wit:
2 a : a written or oral defamatory statement or representation that conveys an unjustly unfavorable impression
SCO's press releases and public statements vis-a-vis Linux, the linux development community, Red Hat, and Linus Torvalds most certainly fall into this category.
Of course, the legal definitions of both slander and libel are more narrow, but certainly the dictionary definitions, for the purpose of discussion, have more than been met.
I know I'm going to sound like RMS here but the fact is, Free software really is free for EVERYONE - even those we happen to hate today.
Yes, BUT SCO has stated explicitly that they deam the GPL to be invalid and not to apply to them. So which is it?
It would not be inappropriate, in that context, for the Samba developers to request written assurances that SCO will abide by the GPL with respect to their distribution of Samba. SCO's unwillingness to comply would certainly be telling if they were to violate the GPL down the road, and if they did comply, it would be public refutation of their absurd notion that the GPL is invalid because it is more liberal than default copy restrictions under US copyright law (as is every single license ever granted).
Vis-a-vis the linux kernel, that particular free software is no longer free to SCO. Indeed, SCO's right to distribute the linux kernel under the GPL is invalid, as they have violated the GPL and continue to do so. They are, under the law, now out of business when it comes to distributing linux. I suspect when the numerous copyright violations within SCO's code (the Linux compatability layer, for example) come to light, that SCO will be out of the UNIX business altogether. Which will serve the neandrathalic throwback still supporting that company by buying licenses to their outdated product right.
This just in....companies out to make a profit!!:)
And this just in... the profit motive is one of a dozen motives that human beings operate from, and our propensity for elevating it above all else, and claiming that is a good thing under all, or even most, circumstances has blinded us to numerous problems it creates, catastrophes it has caused, and better solutions it cannot offer. Monsanto's profit motive killed people in a small southern town in the United States during the 1990s, when they dumped toxic chemicals into the ground water. The fact that smoking gun memos were found detailing how they would deal with the PR fallout if and when the behavior came to light managed to get them in the news briefly... until Enron, WorldComm, and 9/11 came along. No one in jail for murder, business as usual, and we still think the profit motive is a good thing for humanity. It isn't... it is a good thing for creating and selling trinkets, acceptable for food production when it is not corporatized, and appalling beyond belief for delivering medicine.
Ok, maybe it seems like they want to make an excessive profit. Don't like it? Well, it looks like the gov't already has a watchful eye on them (if that's any comfort;)) and is ready to impose regulations if they really get carried away.
Except that the republican and democratic FCC is in collusion with the telecom cartels, so rather than enforcing regulations, they are dismantling and, in the case of the requirement for last mile copper availability to competitors with reasonable and fair terms, ignoring and refusing to enforce them altogether (goodby Sprint ION 8mbit DSL service, but Ameritech will gladly sell you overpriced 512k/128k service instead). Similiar to how the Republican DOJ refused to enforce the Sherman anti-trust laws against Microsoft after their democratic predicessors had convicted Microsoft of abusing their monopoly, instead deliberately snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and giving Microsoft... well, one can't even call it a slap in the wrist. A tap on the shoulder, perhaps.
To be fair, were the republicans to go after the movie industry for their collusion, or the recording industry for theirs (and almost certainly obtain a conviction in either case), the democrats would probably pull the same nonsense, undermining the rule of law as well.
The problem isn't government regulation... regulation of these out-of-control industries is sorely needed. The problem is undue influence wielded by these companies and organizations over our government... a problem which must be resolved if we are to preserve and restore our democracy in any meaningful sense, and one which requires, as its first step, the election of officials who will support meaningful campaign finance reform.
Which is a very long shot, given past failures, and why I believe the United States has begun its final political and social decline. Libertarian ideas of replacing a dysfunctional democracy with corporate and capitalist plutocracy (which is what you get when you have fundamentally non-democratic, indeed feudal, corporations or priovate companies excersizing more clout over the people than an elected government, however dysfucntional that elected government might be) are not a solution... indeed, they only accelerate and exacerbate the problem.
Massive deregulation isn't the solution. A deregulated free market ultimately yeilds a monopoly, which becomes unassailable and ultimately even less effecient than the old, defunkt eastern block planned economies.
What is the solution is a restoration of the people's influence over government, and that can only be achieved through campaign finance reform in a manner that prevents corporations and organizations from buying politicians. At least legally... and if all forms of bribe
Take it from someone who's soon-to-be-parents-in-law are up to their necks in the power + safety industry... no, they don't run Windows.
Control frontends and GUIs may run Windows. They may also run Java apps. The back-end is ALL Unix (and specifically NOT Linux), because there are very few OS vendors who will certify and indemnify the use of their OS in that kind of safety critical environment.
I agree with the sentiment, though. Windoze users would just shrug and admit they would get no satisfaction from Microsoft, while Apple users are clearly accustomed to much better software, better service, and better support...
Wow, that's dogmatic. Appropriate for the thread though.
Well, I'm not exactly a Mac OS X zealot, although I have been pleased with my recently acquired Powerbook 17" (which I am currently installing Gentoo GNU/Linux on).
I have used both Apple and Microsoft's technical support, and Apple does win hands down. Apple's stuff, while still imperfect (and not free software, which means it has its own issues with regards to potential orphaning of products, forced upgrade cycles and obsolescence, and so on) really is superior to that offered by Microsoft, on the ease-of-use front, the stability front, and the support front. It may be speculative to assert that that is why Apple users were so willing, and ultimately successful, in suing Apple vs. Microsoft users who seem to be more inclined to submissive acceptance when their software breaks or even consumes itself (windows bitrot, worms, etc.), but it is hardly "dogmatic."
Apple's overall reputation, already good, probably gets better (if it changes at all).
I don't think so - I would have agreed had they been really interested in solving the problem before the plaintiffs got all lawyered up. This is more like the car company that got forced into issuing a recall after they got sued. I don't think that's a good image.
Good point. Apple should have done this of their own accord and did not. Short of spinning this defeat into a "we're here for our customers" gambit you are likely to be correct.. this little fiasco isn't going to help their image. OTOH their main competitor's image (MS) is so bad, Apple still looks pretty good in comparison.
It's because Apple said it would work on all G3's as mentioned in a higher thread. Had they not done so, plaintiffs would have had no case. So no precedent set, except that things won't be guaranteed to run on any older platform from now on.
Which is as it should be... marketers should be held accountable for what they say and imply (i.e. what the communicate, be it explicit or implicit through lies of omission). Indeed, marketers (and their clients) should be held accountable for what they say and imply, regardless of what the license you don't see until you tear off the celophane packaging (thereby losing your right to return the product for a refund in most cases). Microsoft's products, for example, contain a clause in their license essentially saying that the product they sold you may not work at all. While honest (their software is after all notorious for not working properly... add to that the security issues and that fact really begins to kick you in the face), the fact that their marketing people are constantly telling the world the opposite, and sticking the little factoid that their product really doesn't work in a seldom read document, and thereby stripping the consumer of all the rights to satisfaction and return they would otherwise have, is more than a little appalling.
I agree with the sentiment, though. Windoze users would just shrug and admit they would get no satisfaction from Microsoft, while Apple users are clearly accustomed to much better software, better service, and better support... the down side of that reputation being that they feel empowered to sue when they don't get it. >$400k plus some refunds from disgruntled customers is a pretty small downside I'd say... Apple's overall reputation, already good, probably gets better (if it changes at all).
I know this is a difficult request.. but could someone PLEASE start a project to replace what ever code SCO claims to have copyright over? And start NOW instead of after SCO wins or loses? This way half way through the case, SCO will lose plainly because they couldn't even claim they had hold in the kernel at all....
No. It is neither appropriate, nor reasonable, for hard working developers to throw out the code they wrote and reimpliment it anew because a dying company, owned by a group of litigious thugs, makes wild and unsubstantiated accusations designed to intimidate and extort.
If and when Caldera, now calling themselves SCO, reveals the specific source code they allege infringes upon their copyright, then and only then can developers begin to audit the code (and its history) and ascertain (1) whether or not there is any possible truth to the allegation (unlikely but possible) and (2) what action should be taken. Obviously if, once the nature of the alleged infringement is known, there is a possibility that SCO is right (again, very unlikely but not impossible), then they can begin rewriting the code in question. If on the other hand they have good evidence that the code is legal (either an original clean-room implimentation, taken from a common source such as FreeBSD, or provided by IBM from the source code SCO has already admitted IBM owns the copyright to) then they can tell SCO what they can do with their untruthful allegations and continue improving the kernel, rather than wasting their time jumping through Caldera created hoops of busywork.
This is made difficult by the fact that SCO refuses to tell anyone what code actually is "theirs" in the kernel, other than it has to deal with computers with more than one processor.
It is made utterly impractical. Keep in mind that, in several iterations of SCO's ranting, they claim ownership of all of linux, much of GNU, FreeBSD, and even Apple OS X. They have said, among other absurd things, that there are only two operating systems in the world: Windows and UNIX (so much for DR DOS/FreeDOS, VMS, et. al. I guess). So, for anyone to acede to your rather unreasonable request, the entire kernel and all unix-like tools would have to be thrown out and an entirely new system would have to be rewritten, with no similiarity to UNIX whatsoever.
And of course, there would be nothing to prevent SCO from alleging equally absurd claims of ownership to that new operating system as well, making the entire collassal effort an utter waste of energy anyway. After all, it talks to computer hardware, loads itself from disk, and provides a software abstraction layer between the hardware and userspace programs, i.e it is an operating system, and "there are only two operating systems in the world, so it must be a derivative!"
People have worked very hard to build Linux, for themselves and for others, and it is utterly unreasonable to request, much less expect, them to give up their hard work because of a despicable little group's stock pump-and-dump scheme and the unsubstantiated rhetoric that surrounds it.
It's disgusting really.
Indeed. But wasting our productivity aceding to their unsubstantiated, much less unproven, wild claims of ownership over other people's hard work is hardly the answer.
On the positive side, this is a GOOD case for the GPL to be tested with. It is pretty clear even to the casual observer who is ethical here and who is not, who is in the right and who is not. The GPL is about to get upheld in court irrespective of the outcome of the SCO v. IBM contractual spat (with IMHO almost 100% certainty at the outset, and a probability equal to unity at the appelate level and above), and thereby strengthened even further (although it really doesn't need to be), and those who bought SCO licenses are likely to have the terms of their employment reevaluated by their employers before this is all over. With a little luck we may even get to read about Darl McBride's new
So this one isn't terrorism (so they say), but I'm sure terrorists will be delighted to know that they can throw five major cities into utter chaos by taking out one substation and getting an assist from the domino effect.
Indeed. And if it were sabatage or a terrorist strike, the would still tell us it was an overloaded substation the blew (and it may well be. After all, they do overload and blow from time to time).
Which is probably one reason bin Laden had several planes kamikazee at the same time, and why a well organized al Q'aeda strike is likely to involve multiple targets... so that the authorities CANNOT dismiss the attack as an accident or other 'natural' occurance.
Of course, with the power grid that could still be ignored (claim it is a domino effect from an outage higher up the chain, and dismiss the five or six burning facilities lower down), but my hunch is that this time it is probably an outage of the kind that arise every few decades. However, I fully expect that, if and when there is a terrorist strike on our infrastructure, this is exactly the kind of story the authorities will feed us.
Which means that aging infrastructure decay and failure will appear indistinguishable from sabatage and terrorism for the next few years, until and unless the bad guys up the ante. Which, thanks to this fact, we can probably expect.
Slashdot Mirror
God you people are selective in your memory and your choice of laws to enforce and ignore.
Much of this thread has involved what is and what is not constitutional. Over the years, the Supreme Court has interpretted the First Amendment to give us another freedom that is just as important as Freedom of Speech: Freedom of Association, sometimes called the Right of Free Association.
At a personal level they are equal (I offend you, you shun me). At a professional level the supreme court has ruled, numerous times, that "freedom of association" is quite limited. You do not have the right to 'disassociate' your business (i.e. refuse to do business, refuse to hire, etc.) from black people because you don't like the color of their skin. You do not have the right to 'disassociate' your business from jews/catholics/protestants/athiests becauuse you don't like them.
The supreme court has ruled uniquivocably that an individual's right not to be discriminated against on the basis of ethnicity, religion, etc. trumps any right you, in a business setting, have to freedom of association. And correctly so: freedom of association has limitations placed upon it just as freedom of speech does (libel, slander, screaming fire in a theater).
Freedom of speech must enjoy the same level of protection or it becomes meaningless. If a person can be fired for speaking their mind, they are not free to speak. I.e. "speak what I don't like and you starve/become homeless" isn't freedom of speech, any more than "speak what I don't like and I'll put you up for 20 years in my not-so-comfortable gulag" is.
Indeed, as we have seen in the past two years, the lack of this same level of protection has resulted in companies effectively becoming proxies for government silencing of opposing viewpoints. When Bush (or Clinton in years past) can turn to a company and say "Hey, one of your employees is spouting off" and thereby get that employee fired, that employee's freedom of speech is meaningless, indeed a mockery. There is little, if any, difference between censorship and sanction for speech conducted by a government directly, and conducted by a company at the behest of a government, or merely in support of that government. At the end of the day, in both cases, the individual is not free to speak out, and this is the antithes of what the founding fathers and the constitution intended.
Freedom of Expression must trump freedom of association with regards to conducting business, employment, etc. or freedom of expression simply doesn't exist in any practical sense. The Europeans for the most part know this, and have wisely encoded it into law. That is one of the primary reasons why you can have such lively debate in England and Germany, and diverse views can be represented so openly, while America remains a shining example of the sounds of silence (a few posterchildren and tokens aside).
Freedom of Association does not run counter to freedom of speech, or anything I am saying, or have said, when it is interpreted as originally intended: for individuals. When it is interpreted as carte blanche for corporations and business to have absolute disdain and disregard for individual constitutional rights, then it does. But, lest we forget, corporations were greatly mistrusted by the founding fathers: their charters were granted reluctantly and frequently withdrawm ("corporate death penalty") if the corporation were found to be acting against the public interest. Now we have the appalling fiction that corporations are "people" with all the same rights and priveleges, which has disempowered the individual almost completely.
Businesses do not have the same inalienable rights as human beings. Human beings may be free to associate as they will, but businesses are not. They are not allowed to discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, and so on, and they should not be permitted to discriminate on the basis of a citizen excersizing their constitutional rights.
Now, perhaps th
The sad thing is that they may well turn out to be using even more illegally licensed software now if sco manage to actually win.
... you'll have much better odds than either John Wayne Gacy or SCO.
That is like saying John Wayne Gacy might turn out to be a national hero, if one day we decide the serial killing of innocents (and burying their corpses in your crawl space and beneath your driveway) is the finest thing a citizen can do. Possible, perhaps, but so unlikely as to be laughable. You'd be better off taking bets on the precise moment of the next comet or asteroid strike
My only question to this is to what institution are we are speaking now? If you made the speech at a podium it would surely be video or tape recorded. If you post it on the internet, it is logged. This is to be expected.
As I said, the recording isn't the issue. The public record isn't the issue (although I suspect most people had no idea *how* public their musings and rants have become), Microsoft's Orwellian collection (and undoubtable soon to follow (mis)use) of the data isn't the issue. Were freedom of speech at all respected in our society this would be a minor issue with regard to privacy (if even that). But, because we live in a country where it has in recent decades become acceptable to fire someone for voicing an opinion one doesn't agree with (and yes, I do remember a time not so long ago when such an action by an employer was virtually taboo. Doesn't mean it didn't happen, but it was certainly not to be expected, and was firmly looked down upon by society and often by the courts), in which radical (and not so radical) groups routinely target people for economic and social sanction based upon their speech (another thing that would have been unthinkable just a couple of short decades ago), and in which the man holding our highest elected office condones the targetting of those who speak out against him, this really has become a problem. (As an aside, Bush's whole "freedom of speech has consiquences", comment was horrifically disingenuous. He is no different that Stalin would have been, had he said that exact same thing to the millions who died in his gulags. Indeed, by Bush's definition the Soviets had exactly as much freedom of speech as we do...which should tell you something right there.)
It is, however, not a problem with Microsoft's data collection practicies (although I do suspect we'll get to fully appreciate the Orwellian implications of that soon enough), it is a problem of the populace at large, in government, in private industry, and individually no longer even willing to maintain the pretence of upholding either the concept, or the intent, of our basic freedoms (in this case, that of speech), preferring instead to develope elaborate straw man arguments and justifications as to why they see no need to guarantee these rights any longer and, indeed, find it more convinient not to.
To take your arguement into the realm of the silly (though to a place that it will surely have to apply against your will), how can you then hold anything W says against him? If you don't like what he says, and therefore vote against him, isn't that "the freedom to gratuitiously sanction and harm another for speaking an opinion you don't like." I mean, its just what he said. And you harmed him by voting against him. And you probably convinced lots of people to vote against him.
Holding public office (elected or otherwise) is entirely different than living as a private citizen. So much so that our constitution, our laws, and our courts differentiate between the two in numerous ways (including the definition of a "reasonable expectation of privacy"). Equating my argument that a person being fired for voicing an opinion against Bush is in any way equivelent to that of pointing out an elected official's statements (or history) as reason to vote against him is yet another straw man argument, ignoring the underlying point, which I will reiterate for the dense among us:
Freedom of speech does not exist if you can lose your job, your freedom, or your life for expressing it. The fact is that the government is but one entity capable of denying a person their income, their freedom, or their life for expressing an unpopular opinion. The government is not the only one: an employer, a neighbor, or a lynchmob of angry (right or left-wing) zeolots is another. The constitution was clearly intended to protect our freedom of expression from both (a point reiterated by the 14th amendment), and yes, that does mean your freedom to fire an employee whose political opinion
Nonsense. Your freedom of speech does not guarantee anything in the private sector. I.e. it does not guarantee your employment contract, your image, your customers, others' opinions about you, or others' actions taken based on opinions expressed from your free speech.
... that is what we have whistle blower laws for), they are being fired (or worse) for saying things like "with what my government is doing, I am ashamed to be American." That is unacceptable, and your complacency in dismissing this as OK is part of the reason our freedoms have become so eroded, and show every sign of eroding further.
It was never intended that one's freedom of speech guarantee anything in the private sector. What was intended (and what is in place in most enlightened western democracies, the United States being the exception (although with the Clinton impeachment and the events in Florida, California, and now Texas, many would argue the United States hardly constitutes an enlightened democracy anymore)) is that freedom of speech guarantee no punitive actions be taken against the speaker, be it in the private or public sector.
Indeed, ironically, the United States could learn a great deal from Great Britain on this specific point.
In other words, you may well express bad opinions about your employer, but your employer does not have to keep employing you as their salesperson, or spokesperson.
That is a strawman argument. Indeed, it is wrong on so many levels, most of your freedom of speech wouldn't exist in any context, nor most of your other rights as well. Which, coicidentally, is exactly the sort of reality your reasoning has led us to.
To be more speciric, that statement is an extreme example being used to obfuscate the original point. (Akin to the oft-misused 'fire in a theater' argument, another extreme applied in an overly broad and inappropraite manner in a similiar fashion). People are not being fired for telling a companies customers "hey, my employer sucks!" (although they can in numerous cases
It is obvious if you read the U.S. Constitution (the document you are referring to) that it refers to Government's actions to censor free speech, not your private life.
It is obvious in reading the 14th amendment that that oversight was intended to be corrected...our basic rights are intended to be upheld by everyone, be it federal, state, local government, private industry, or our neighbors.
Argh! I was trying to reply to another comment and juggled my windows in a rather silly manner. So much for cross referencing threads (and letting Mozilla's tabbed browsing get the best of me). Substitute "I" for "he" above and it makes sense, or cut-and-paste it into this thread, where it belonged in the first place.
(except that in my original statement, I should have made it clearer I was talking about threats and actions taken against people, not counterarguments as such).
There is nothing to fear from reaction speech. If you listen to the counter-point, you may actually find out you were wrong in the first place. Then where would we be without the counter-point? Free speech does not stop with the initial speaker.
He isn't talking about countering speech with speech. He clearly implies he has no problem with a good argument.
He is talking about people losing their jobs and being threatened physically. He is talking about the chilling effect this has on all speech. And he is right. It is unconstitutional and it is unamerican.
Um protesting someone's speech is also free speech. Why do you want to shut down the reaction? This would be the goal of someone who doesn't want their arguement to be challenged.
... that is unacceptable whether it comes from government, business, or an individual. It makes an utter mockery of our freedoms and undermines our freedom to speak in its most fundamental form.
...if you put it on the internet, expect it to be read and recorded. If you don't you are just dangerously naive.
Protesting is one thing.
Trying to shut people up through boycotts, threats against their employment, termination of their employment, threats against their lives, etc. is something else entirely, and while boycotts may be legal (and should be), they are antithetical to our most basic principles when organized to silence people, as they all too often are in the United States.
As for the other actions (threats against people's employment, property, persons, families, etc.)
Freedom and democracy require more than just the government to uphold them, they require the people to uphold them, whether they are acting as politicians, government employees, private businesses, or individuals. Freedom of Speech is about the freedom to speak, not the freedom to gratuitiously sanction and harm another for speaking an opinion you don't like.
No. You are dangerously complacant in a time when our freedoms and our most fundamental democratic institutions are being eroded faster than ever before in our history. It is precisely this asinine attitude that is at the heart of our loss of freedoms in general, and freedom of speech in particular. Indeed, you appear to have entirely missed the point and constructed a strawman in its place (HINT: I never said anything about not wanting something read, I spoke of expecting the right to speak, or write, and be heard, without having to fear for my livelihood, my job, my safety, or even my life, as others have had to do with, perhaps most appalling of all, the tacit approval of said threats from the man holding this nation's highest elected [prior to 1997] office).
Since the early days of netnews (now Usenet) is has been fairly clear that everything you post is being saved, and anything you post if fair game to be responded to, analyzed, and/or held against you at a later date. If this disturbs you, don't post in public forums.
Or take a fucking stand for freedom of speech.
I mean real, honest, what-the-founding-fathers-intended freedom of speech, not Baby Bush style "freedom of speech has consiquences" (such as harrassment, death threats, destruction of one's livlihood, and other sanctions both official and extracurricular). We have all, over the years (since the 1980s in any event, perhaps longer) been selling out this fundamental principle everytime we hold our breath and don't speak for fear of "consiquences" (like losing one's job) and don't speak out when these sort of sanctions are brought against another.
Freedom of speech doesn't mean you don't have consiquences: others may disagree, yell at you, argue, even dislike and avoid you. It does, however, mean you should be able to speak without sanctions being taken against you, whether it be by an employer, an organization, or a government. Indeed, those who organize boycotts based upon people's speech ("Boycott X, he's a Baby Bush basher!", "Boycott Y, he's a right wing facist!"), while free to do so, are most assuredly taking a very firm anti-free speech stance, and should themselves be shouted at for doing so.
Were freedom of speech respected and upheld, not just by the government, but by the people, the sort of information tracking Microsoft is engagin in, while despicable, wouldn't really matter all that much, and one wouldn't have to fear for one's livlihood merely because one has a controversial opinion. Which was what the founding fathers wanted and intended, and what we as a society betrayed a long time ago.
Perhaps, slowly, as things grow worse, we'll rethink this, take a step back, and start upholding the concept of freedom of speech again rather than just paying it lip service, and tell idiots who fire employees, organize boycotts against country music singers who express their disdain for Baby Bush, organize boycotts against Rush Limbaugh (or his affiliated radio stations) for being a right-wing pundit, or endorse the harm and even destruction of lives of those whose views they don't share (Mr. Bush, are your goons reading this?) with such inane comments as "freedom of speech has a price."
The alternative is freedom of speech concentration camp style: i.e. using Bush's argument, and those put forward by those who either advocate or are ambivelent about our restricted freedom of expression, one can just as easilly argue that soviet Russia had freedom of speech: after all, under Stalin you could speak your mind freely, it is just that such freedom has consiquences (like spending 20 years in the Gulag).
Enough already. It is time we reasserted our fundamental right to freedom of speech, and damn any employer, government, church, or other organization to hell who tries to take it back again.
I agree mostly with what you are saying, but the point that (I believe this is the case (look at the changelogs, and there appear to be a bunch of people from samba.org) several of the people contribuiting to samba also contribute to the kernel, so infact, they have violated the GPL with some of the copyright holders.
... but any legal misstep on something like this could seriously undercut the GPL's legal clout in a way very unbeneficial to the free software community, so anyone thinking of doing this had better not fuck it up.
Thoughts?
Talk to a lawyer (I am not one)...and make damn sure its a very good, competent lawyer you talk to.
Those holding copyright's on part of the kernal and part of Samba might be able to make something stick, they might not. I don't know
Now...I'm not saying anyone should kill Mr. McBride...but lets just say, I'd understand.
... not because some free software enthusiast (really an absolute zealot in this hypothetical case) would take it into their mind to shoot him, but because his backers, who have a great deal to gain by discrediting free software, might well find it to be very cost effective to bump him off. A propoganda ploy with a huge payoff in terms of denigrating free software (and tying up one loose end to boot).
... that is the only scenerio in which the GPL could lose, as most probably no one license can be applied to unrelated products, merely because they happen to be licensed under the same terms.)
... and that will be the nail in not only SCO's coffin, but SCO's silent, if not so opaque, backer(s) as well. Or at least one of them (in Redmond) ... Sun actually does have the viable option of embracing Linux and free software, and persuing their hardware+maintenance business model quite effectively. The other company likely wouldn't survive such a transition, but I digress.
LOL!
On a much more serious note...
As satisfying as seeing Darl's grey matter (or what passes for it) splattered against a wall in true Hollywood fashion, that would be the aboslutely worst thing that could possibly happen to free software. Which is why, if I were Darl McBride, I'd be very concerned
Let us not forget that SCO's bringing this case is probably the best possible scenerio in which the GPL can be tried in court, and almost certainly upheld (assuming someone doesn't do something completely boneheaded, like try to revoke SCO's license to use any GPLed code, rather than just the code on which they violated the license
Darl is an evil fuck, but he is, in a bizzar manner and at the end of the day, probably doing free software a favor. About the only way (other than the boneheaded maneuver I mentioned above) free software could lose this is if some deranged fool actually does go and physically threaten one of these evil pricks. In which case, we'll suddenly be the ones lookign like thugs and almost certainly have our own work stolen from us by a court seeing us in all the wrong light (remember Kaplan and deCSS).
The GPL is about to be upheld legally
Personally I'm going to customize the GPL for my work where you cannot use it with SCO software, for the SCO company, etc. etc.
... are they suddenly banned from using your software. Are you going to ban Darl McBride by name? The Mormons as a whole? America? Where does this sort of thing stop.
... if anyone does so, they will put the GPL in a no-win situation, where if it is upheld, you cannot revoke SCO's license becauuse you don't like them, or it is not upheld, you can revoke the license of people you don't like later, and none of us are safe (the very foundation of software freedom is taken away). One thing is almost certain: violating the license of one product isn't going to mean you lose licenses to all products who happen to use the same license ... I cannot imagine any court of law ruling that, for example, you lose the license to Samba because you violate the license of transcode, merely because the two products' licenses happen to have the same text (the GPL) and are otherwise unrelated.
What do you do when SCO changes its name, is bought out by Microsoft (or IBM), or otherwise metamorphasizes itself through corporate/legal slight-of-hand. Do you ban the canopy group? What if canopy purchases an innocent bystander (if they haven't already)
SCO has violated the GPL on Linux. They are no longer allowed to distribute Linux under US copyright law, and they are violating that law massively even as I type this. That is enough.
Do not try to revoke SCO's GPL license to products they haven't violated the license of
This does not mean I lose my license to distribute other products also licensed under the GPL.
... yes, even MS has GPLed some software!) doesn't have any bearing on whether or not you've violated the GPL on a completely unrelated product, owned by different people, such as, say, Linux.
... this is exactly the sort of ploy that could hand SCO a victory it otherwise would never achieve. Disclaimer: IANAL, yada yada yada.
Actually it does. Violate the GPL on a GNU product and refuse to be reasonable when it's pointed out and they'll C&D you to cease modifying and distributing anything the FSF owns copyright on and licenses under the GPL, not just that one program.
Yes, but the FSF owns the copyright on all those programs. The FSF cannot tell someone violating the GNU copyright (by violating the GPL) that they cannot use Linux (even though Linux is GPLed) because they do not own the copyright, and can therefor neither license, nor revoke the license of Linux. Likewise, Samba's copyright is owned by a different group of people than Linux, so the fact that SCO has committed massive copyright violations of Linux does not mean the Linux folks can revoke SCO's GPL license to Samba. And, since SCO has not violated Samba's license (the GPL) on Samba, at least to our knowledge, the Samba folks can't revoke that license either.
This is one of the reasons the FSF recommends one assign copyright to them when one GPLs a project...it does buy you a great deal of clout when things like this arise.
As it is, were the Samba folks (or the FSF) to attempt to revoke SCO's license on distributing GPLed software unrelated to Linux (the product whose copyright SCO is violating), I doubt very much it would hold up in court.
Think about it. The GPL doesn't allow willy-nilly revokation without cause, and your violating a license on Microsoft's code (even that small amount of code Microsoft has GPLed
I think any attempt to make one violation on one product apply to all licenses on all products who happen to be identically licensed won't stand a snowball's chance in hell of being upheld in court
If you want to help people, write your firewall activation and configuration program as a tool that allows the user to control it and distribute it freely on a website. Advertise it. If it doesn't suck, people will use it and you'll help make the internet more secure. Popular magazines might even recommend it as a really easy fix for security, and you'll help even more people. And, if you screw up, you can fix the bugs in the next version and provide support. Added bonus - the police and corporate lawyers won't be hunting you.
I wish I had moderator points today. This is one of the most insightful posts I have seen on this subject today.
I say this as one who doesn't really have a problem with the 'white-hat' worm (assuming it really is white-hat, and not just a more subtle attack waiting to happen, which those open ports might well represent), and any damage it does cause could reasonably be considered collatoral in a battle to secure a system the vendor and user alike are either unwilling or too incompetent to secure, and I do find the argument that your autonomy over your own system ends the moment it attacks my network to be a compelling one in some respects.
Nevertheless, your advice, and your stance on this, makes a whole hell of a lot more practical and ethical sense: spend your energy writing software that fixes (or perhaps detects and fixes) security flaws such as this one in a manner that educats and empowers otherwise helpless users, and distribute it freely. Put your energy into something others can contribute to and improve upon, something that will allow you to receive the recognition you deserve, rather than become another hunted felon.
Excellent advice, and it trumps the pro v. con 'good-guy' worm argument completely, whichever side of that debate one stands on.
Wow Talking out your ass gets you modded to +5. Please tell me what article or what admendment in the constitution that even mentions copyrights. There is nothing.
For dumbfucks too lazy to google, lest others be misled by their inane spewage:
The US Constitution
clause 8:
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
And for mindless trolls too literal to comprehend the above as it relates to US copyright and patent law:
Findlaw's Tretise of US copyright law.
I really hope that AOL interoperates with iChat AV.
Unlikely in the extreme.
As another, very informative post in this thread pointed out was noted in the dissenting FCC opinion, AOL-Time Warner has had the option to deploy instant messaging for the last two years, with all of these features, provided it interoperates with others (such as iChat).
They have chosen not to do so, because they anticipate greater profits through customer lockin despite the fact that it has taken them two years to buy off the FCC.
Hell, iChat already uses the AOL protocol and everything... What are they waiting for???
The FCC to lift the modest restrictions they have placed on AOL-Time Warner, so that they can break interoperability with those protocols, locking in their own customers (and those of their "strategic" partners) while locking the rest of us out. Apple may or may not be on the losing side of that equation, but rest assured that the internet at large, and the software, information, and communications freedom it has come to represent, most assuredly is on losing side, thanks to yet more bad governance from Baby Powell, the FCC, the Baby Bush administration, and Washington in general.
As a cynical aside, I do not expect to see good governance in this country again in my lifetime (and I am reasonably young).
You say that as a joke, but it is important to keep in mind that
Copyright was originally instituted as a means for the British Crown to censor the printing press, a new technology (at that time) which they felt threatened by.
The domain, authority, and severity of copyright have grown and grown repeatedly throughout our history, as the tiny minority of people it benefits and the cartels they have formed demand greater privileges and greater profits. It is the only provision in the constitution that trumps freedom of expression and the press. Each time it grows, your freedom of speech shrinks by a corresponding amount (at least). Now that communicating certain information that can be construed as circumventing copy protection (this could, BTW, include memorization of certain inf
Slander, noun
1: the utterance of false charges or misrepresntations which defame and damage another's resputation
2: a false and defamatory oral statement about a person
SCO is making false utterances and charges not only against linux, but against Linus Torvalds personally and every developer, supporter, and user of the Linux kernel. In so doing, they have damaged the public, professional reputations of Linux distributors (Red Hat, IBM, and others), developers, advocates, and users. If libel law doesn't cover this behavior, then it is really a relatively useless piece of legislation.
What SCO is doing is not only slanderous, it is illegal in so many fashions (SEC violations, protection racket, copyright violation of the linux kernel, etc. etc.) that Darl McBride et. al. really should be doing hard time in a butt-slamming prison if there is anything even remotely resembling justice in this country. Which, I am sad to say, there almost certainly is not.
BTW - Libel fits what SCO is doing as well. To wit:
2 a : a written or oral defamatory statement or representation that conveys an unjustly unfavorable impression
SCO's press releases and public statements vis-a-vis Linux, the linux development community, Red Hat, and Linus Torvalds most certainly fall into this category.
Of course, the legal definitions of both slander and libel are more narrow, but certainly the dictionary definitions, for the purpose of discussion, have more than been met.
I know I'm going to sound like RMS here but the fact is, Free software really is free for EVERYONE - even those we happen to hate today.
Yes, BUT SCO has stated explicitly that they deam the GPL to be invalid and not to apply to them. So which is it?
It would not be inappropriate, in that context, for the Samba developers to request written assurances that SCO will abide by the GPL with respect to their distribution of Samba. SCO's unwillingness to comply would certainly be telling if they were to violate the GPL down the road, and if they did comply, it would be public refutation of their absurd notion that the GPL is invalid because it is more liberal than default copy restrictions under US copyright law (as is every single license ever granted).
Vis-a-vis the linux kernel, that particular free software is no longer free to SCO. Indeed, SCO's right to distribute the linux kernel under the GPL is invalid, as they have violated the GPL and continue to do so. They are, under the law, now out of business when it comes to distributing linux. I suspect when the numerous copyright violations within SCO's code (the Linux compatability layer, for example) come to light, that SCO will be out of the UNIX business altogether. Which will serve the neandrathalic throwback still supporting that company by buying licenses to their outdated product right.
This just in....companies out to make a profit!! :)
... the profit motive is one of a dozen motives that human beings operate from, and our propensity for elevating it above all else, and claiming that is a good thing under all, or even most, circumstances has blinded us to numerous problems it creates, catastrophes it has caused, and better solutions it cannot offer. Monsanto's profit motive killed people in a small southern town in the United States during the 1990s, when they dumped toxic chemicals into the ground water. The fact that smoking gun memos were found detailing how they would deal with the PR fallout if and when the behavior came to light managed to get them in the news briefly ... until Enron, WorldComm, and 9/11 came along. No one in jail for murder, business as usual, and we still think the profit motive is a good thing for humanity. It isn't ... it is a good thing for creating and selling trinkets, acceptable for food production when it is not corporatized, and appalling beyond belief for delivering medicine.
;)) and is ready to impose regulations if they really get carried away.
... well, one can't even call it a slap in the wrist. A tap on the shoulder, perhaps.
... regulation of these out-of-control industries is sorely needed. The problem is undue influence wielded by these companies and organizations over our government ... a problem which must be resolved if we are to preserve and restore our democracy in any meaningful sense, and one which requires, as its first step, the election of officials who will support meaningful campaign finance reform.
... indeed, they only accelerate and exacerbate the problem.
... and if all forms of bribe
And this just in
Ok, maybe it seems like they want to make an excessive profit. Don't like it? Well, it looks like the gov't already has a watchful eye on them (if that's any comfort
Except that the republican and democratic FCC is in collusion with the telecom cartels, so rather than enforcing regulations, they are dismantling and, in the case of the requirement for last mile copper availability to competitors with reasonable and fair terms, ignoring and refusing to enforce them altogether (goodby Sprint ION 8mbit DSL service, but Ameritech will gladly sell you overpriced 512k/128k service instead). Similiar to how the Republican DOJ refused to enforce the Sherman anti-trust laws against Microsoft after their democratic predicessors had convicted Microsoft of abusing their monopoly, instead deliberately snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and giving Microsoft
To be fair, were the republicans to go after the movie industry for their collusion, or the recording industry for theirs (and almost certainly obtain a conviction in either case), the democrats would probably pull the same nonsense, undermining the rule of law as well.
The problem isn't government regulation
Which is a very long shot, given past failures, and why I believe the United States has begun its final political and social decline. Libertarian ideas of replacing a dysfunctional democracy with corporate and capitalist plutocracy (which is what you get when you have fundamentally non-democratic, indeed feudal, corporations or priovate companies excersizing more clout over the people than an elected government, however dysfucntional that elected government might be) are not a solution
Massive deregulation isn't the solution. A deregulated free market ultimately yeilds a monopoly, which becomes unassailable and ultimately even less effecient than the old, defunkt eastern block planned economies.
What is the solution is a restoration of the people's influence over government, and that can only be achieved through campaign finance reform in a manner that prevents corporations and organizations from buying politicians. At least legally
Take it from someone who's soon-to-be-parents-in-law are up to their necks in the power + safety industry ... no, they don't run Windows.
Control frontends and GUIs may run Windows. They may also run Java apps. The back-end is ALL Unix (and specifically NOT Linux), because there are very few OS vendors who will certify and indemnify the use of their OS in that kind of safety critical environment.
Ah.
SCO UNIX.
No wonder.
(*duck*)
I agree with the sentiment, though. Windoze users would just shrug and admit they would get no satisfaction from Microsoft, while Apple users are clearly accustomed to much better software, better service, and better support ...
.. this little fiasco isn't going to help their image. OTOH their main competitor's image (MS) is so bad, Apple still looks pretty good in comparison.
Wow, that's dogmatic. Appropriate for the thread though.
Well, I'm not exactly a Mac OS X zealot, although I have been pleased with my recently acquired Powerbook 17" (which I am currently installing Gentoo GNU/Linux on).
I have used both Apple and Microsoft's technical support, and Apple does win hands down. Apple's stuff, while still imperfect (and not free software, which means it has its own issues with regards to potential orphaning of products, forced upgrade cycles and obsolescence, and so on) really is superior to that offered by Microsoft, on the ease-of-use front, the stability front, and the support front. It may be speculative to assert that that is why Apple users were so willing, and ultimately successful, in suing Apple vs. Microsoft users who seem to be more inclined to submissive acceptance when their software breaks or even consumes itself (windows bitrot, worms, etc.), but it is hardly "dogmatic."
Apple's overall reputation, already good, probably gets better (if it changes at all).
I don't think so - I would have agreed had they been really interested in solving the problem before the plaintiffs got all lawyered up. This is more like the car company that got forced into issuing a recall after they got sued. I don't think that's a good image.
Good point. Apple should have done this of their own accord and did not. Short of spinning this defeat into a "we're here for our customers" gambit you are likely to be correct
It's because Apple said it would work on all G3's as mentioned in a higher thread. Had they not done so, plaintiffs would have had no case. So no precedent set, except that things won't be guaranteed to run on any older platform from now on.
... marketers should be held accountable for what they say and imply (i.e. what the communicate, be it explicit or implicit through lies of omission). Indeed, marketers (and their clients) should be held accountable for what they say and imply, regardless of what the license you don't see until you tear off the celophane packaging (thereby losing your right to return the product for a refund in most cases). Microsoft's products, for example, contain a clause in their license essentially saying that the product they sold you may not work at all. While honest (their software is after all notorious for not working properly ... add to that the security issues and that fact really begins to kick you in the face), the fact that their marketing people are constantly telling the world the opposite, and sticking the little factoid that their product really doesn't work in a seldom read document, and thereby stripping the consumer of all the rights to satisfaction and return they would otherwise have, is more than a little appalling.
... the down side of that reputation being that they feel empowered to sue when they don't get it. >$400k plus some refunds from disgruntled customers is a pretty small downside I'd say ... Apple's overall reputation, already good, probably gets better (if it changes at all).
Which is as it should be
I agree with the sentiment, though. Windoze users would just shrug and admit they would get no satisfaction from Microsoft, while Apple users are clearly accustomed to much better software, better service, and better support
I know this is a difficult request.. but could someone PLEASE start a project to replace what ever code SCO claims to have copyright over? And start NOW instead of after SCO wins or loses? This way half way through the case, SCO will lose plainly because they couldn't even claim they had hold in the kernel at all....
No. It is neither appropriate, nor reasonable, for hard working developers to throw out the code they wrote and reimpliment it anew because a dying company, owned by a group of litigious thugs, makes wild and unsubstantiated accusations designed to intimidate and extort.
If and when Caldera, now calling themselves SCO, reveals the specific source code they allege infringes upon their copyright, then and only then can developers begin to audit the code (and its history) and ascertain (1) whether or not there is any possible truth to the allegation (unlikely but possible) and (2) what action should be taken. Obviously if, once the nature of the alleged infringement is known, there is a possibility that SCO is right (again, very unlikely but not impossible), then they can begin rewriting the code in question. If on the other hand they have good evidence that the code is legal (either an original clean-room implimentation, taken from a common source such as FreeBSD, or provided by IBM from the source code SCO has already admitted IBM owns the copyright to) then they can tell SCO what they can do with their untruthful allegations and continue improving the kernel, rather than wasting their time jumping through Caldera created hoops of busywork.
This is made difficult by the fact that SCO refuses to tell anyone what code actually is "theirs" in the kernel, other than it has to deal with computers with more than one processor.
It is made utterly impractical. Keep in mind that, in several iterations of SCO's ranting, they claim ownership of all of linux, much of GNU, FreeBSD, and even Apple OS X. They have said, among other absurd things, that there are only two operating systems in the world: Windows and UNIX (so much for DR DOS/FreeDOS, VMS, et. al. I guess). So, for anyone to acede to your rather unreasonable request, the entire kernel and all unix-like tools would have to be thrown out and an entirely new system would have to be rewritten, with no similiarity to UNIX whatsoever.
And of course, there would be nothing to prevent SCO from alleging equally absurd claims of ownership to that new operating system as well, making the entire collassal effort an utter waste of energy anyway. After all, it talks to computer hardware, loads itself from disk, and provides a software abstraction layer between the hardware and userspace programs, i.e it is an operating system, and "there are only two operating systems in the world, so it must be a derivative!"
People have worked very hard to build Linux, for themselves and for others, and it is utterly unreasonable to request, much less expect, them to give up their hard work because of a despicable little group's stock pump-and-dump scheme and the unsubstantiated rhetoric that surrounds it.
It's disgusting really.
Indeed. But wasting our productivity aceding to their unsubstantiated, much less unproven, wild claims of ownership over other people's hard work is hardly the answer.
On the positive side, this is a GOOD case for the GPL to be tested with. It is pretty clear even to the casual observer who is ethical here and who is not, who is in the right and who is not. The GPL is about to get upheld in court irrespective of the outcome of the SCO v. IBM contractual spat (with IMHO almost 100% certainty at the outset, and a probability equal to unity at the appelate level and above), and thereby strengthened even further (although it really doesn't need to be), and those who bought SCO licenses are likely to have the terms of their employment reevaluated by their employers before this is all over. With a little luck we may even get to read about Darl McBride's new
So this one isn't terrorism (so they say), but I'm sure terrorists will be delighted to know that they can throw five major cities into utter chaos by taking out one substation and getting an assist from the domino effect.
... so that the authorities CANNOT dismiss the attack as an accident or other 'natural' occurance.
Indeed. And if it were sabatage or a terrorist strike, the would still tell us it was an overloaded substation the blew (and it may well be. After all, they do overload and blow from time to time).
Which is probably one reason bin Laden had several planes kamikazee at the same time, and why a well organized al Q'aeda strike is likely to involve multiple targets
Of course, with the power grid that could still be ignored (claim it is a domino effect from an outage higher up the chain, and dismiss the five or six burning facilities lower down), but my hunch is that this time it is probably an outage of the kind that arise every few decades. However, I fully expect that, if and when there is a terrorist strike on our infrastructure, this is exactly the kind of story the authorities will feed us.
Which means that aging infrastructure decay and failure will appear indistinguishable from sabatage and terrorism for the next few years, until and unless the bad guys up the ante. Which, thanks to this fact, we can probably expect.
Yes the US, NATO countries and the former soviet republics have WMD's, but they have never invaded a neighbor for oil
*cough*
Watch any news lately?
*cough* USA invades Iraq TWICE in 12 years *cough*
No, we'd never do so for oil. No, never!
[/sarcasm]