Because it happens natually no matter what we do. It's happened many times in the past, and will happen again and again until our solar system itself dies...
Perhaps, but I think it has far more to do with our capacity for living in denial. It really isn't just a river in Egypt, it is something we all do, almost all of the time.
Whether it is Republicans denying they stole an election, Democrats denying their political incompetence and lack of backbone in recent years, Arabs denying their own complicity and causation of the vast majority of their own probems despite unprecedented wealth flowing into their pockets, Israelis denying their cruelty to Palastinians, Palistinians denying their cruelty to Israelis, Europeans denying their incompetence at handling world affairs (remember their less-than-impressive track record in stopping the Genocide of Yugoslavia), Black Americans denying their own responsibility for many of their problems, white Americans denying the very real, continued existence of racism amongst the fringes of their own kind (all too often finding those fringes in positions of significant power and influence), or Americans in general denying their incompetence in handling world affairs (Somalia, Liberia, Ruwanda, Iran, Iraq, N. Korea, Libya, etc), or all of us in the developed world denying the very real and negative impact of our conspicuous consumption upon the environment which sustains us, we are all, each of us, engaged in any of several acts of denial practically every waking moment of our lives. (If I haven't hit on one of your pet denials and thereby both offended you and illustrated my point, then perhaps you can think of something else someone once said to you that made you react in a very knee-jerk, defensive, and probably highly emotional manner. I doubt there is anyone alive who isn't living in denial of something... their own mortality, if nothing else).
Denial seems to be one human trait that transcends cultural, political, ethnic, religious, and philisophical differences, and it should come as no surprise to anyone that those who do not wish, for whatever reason, to believe we could be altering our environment to our own great detriment will happilly deny it is happening, or spin it as either "this isn't such a bad thing" or "it would have happened anyway."
Historically, those who point out things we don't want to accept tend to be killed, imprisoned, or at the very least ignored. Rejecting unpleasant facts is, at the end of the day, a very human thing to do, reality notwithstanding. To our credit, we do as a species tend to accept and confront unpleasantness at some point. When we do it in time, we tend to address the problems and our civilizations tend to flourish. When we do it too late, our problems tend to address us and our civilisations fall into ruin. It will be interesting to see which is the case here, whether it is Global Warming, or any of a host of other issues which confront us, and which we studiously try to avoid, ignore, or deny.
... will there be a massive shift to BSD-style licenses. I like the BSD license just fine, but I'd be concerned that if the GPL is ruled invalid, that the BSD license wouldn't be valid either.
Good God, don't you people think before you type? Or, more to the point, have those who have moderator priveleges today been passing the crack pipe around a little more frequently than usual?
The argument being used in this incredibly weak attempt to overturn the GPL is that it violates copyright law because the creator of the work is offering terms more liberal than copyright's default restrictions.
Now, for those slow on the uptake, what does a Microsoft site license do? Yup, it grants (in exchange for money) a more liberal right to copy than that otherwise offered by copyright law.
And, for those even slower on the uptake, what does the BSD-style license do? Yup, you guessed it again. It offers a more liberal right to copy than that otherwise offered by copyright law, just like the GPL. The specific restrictions BSD-style licenses impose are different from those of the GPL (and don't think for a minute it doesn't impose restrictions, however benign. If it didn't impose restrictions, the work would be in the public domain. Instead, you are required to maintain the copyright notice... a clear restriction, albeit a benign one), but the net effect is to allow greater lattitude for people to copy the work than the default otherwise permitted under copyright law.
Which part of this progression escapes you? If in some perverse miscarriage of anything remotely resembling rule of law, much less justice, the GPL were to be ruled invalid on this basis, that would spell instant death by precident to not only the GPL, but BSD-Style licenses, Creative Commons style licenses, Artistic Licenses, and, yes, corporate site licenses of the variety Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, and just about every other software company on the planet eagerly offers their customers in exchange for cold, hard cash. For about three minutes, before an appeals court slaps a stay on the judgement, hears the case, and overturns the ruling.
Any other outcome would mean we could say goodbye to the software industry, the online content industry, and probably a whole slew of other industries we're not thinking of as well, upon which copyright law touches in one way or another. Not to mention saying goodbye to 220+ years of precident.
There is absolutely no chance this argument will hold up. It will be interesting to see if any lawyers are disbarred or fined for even bringing this argument to court.
IANAL, but I am a sapient being with a three digit IQ, which is all this level of insight really requires.
Because it happens natually no matter what we do. It's happened many times in the past, and will happen again and again until our solar system itself dies...
Perhaps, but I think it has far more to do with our capacity for living in denial. It really isn't just a river in Egypt, it is something we all do, almost all of the time.
Whether it is Republicans denying they stole an election, Democrats denying their political incompetence and lack of backbone in recent years, Arabs denying their own complicity and causation of the vast majority of their own probems despite unprecedented wealth flowing into their pockets, Israelis denying their cruelty to Palastinians, Palistinians denying their cruelty to Israelis, Europeans denying their incompetence at handling world affairs (remember their less-than-impressive track record in stopping the Genocide of Yugoslavia), Black Americans denying their own responsibility for many of their problems, white Americans denying the very real, continued existence of racism amongst the fringes of their own kind (all too often finding those fringes in positions of significant power and influence), or Americans in general denying their incompetence in handling world affairs (Somalia, Liberia, Ruwanda, Iran, Iraq, N. Korea, Libya, etc), or all of us in the developed world denying the very real and negative impact of our conspicuous consumption upon the environment which sustains us, we are all, each of us, engaged in any of several acts of denial practically every waking moment of our lives. (If I haven't hit on one of your pet denials and thereby both offended you and illustrated my point, then perhaps you can think of something else someone once said to you that made you react in a very knee-jerk, defensive, and probably highly emotional manner. I doubt there is anyone alive who isn't living in denial of something... their own mortality, if nothing else).
Denial seems to be one human trait that transcends cultural, political, ethnic, religious, and philisophical differences, and it should come as no surprise to anyone that those who do not wish, for whatever reason, to believe we could be altering our environment to our own great detriment will happilly deny it is happening, or spin it as either "this isn't such a bad thing" or "it would have happened anyway."
Historically, those who point out things we don't want to accept tend to be killed, imprisoned, or at the very least ignored. Rejecting unpleasant facts is, at the end of the day, a very human thing to do, reality notwithstanding. To our credit, we do as a species tend to accept and confront unpleasantness at some point. When we do it in time, we tend to address the problems and our civilizations tend to flourish. When we do it too late, our problems tend to address us and our civilisations fall into ruin. It will be interesting to see which is the case here, whether it is Global Warming, or any of a host of other issues which confront us, and which we studiously try to avoid, ignore, or deny.
Bribery is Both Legal and Institutional
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The "Techie" Vote?
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· Score: 1
Recall we have laws against bribery. Enforcement on the other hand...
We have laws against particular forms of bribery. Other forms are not only allowed, they are expressly permitted and encouraged by the law. These include campaign contributions and soft-money political donations.
Saying we 'have laws against bribery' is telling only half the story, the other half being encapsulated in 'but we also have legalized, institutional bribery.' And no, the two are not mutually exclusive, any more than having laws against killing excludes the possiblity of legalized, institutional killing ('death row' and the military being two such examples).
Unlike killing, however, it is difficult to imagine any circumstance in which legalized bribery is even debatably appropriate.
I mentioned this briefly in the post you are replying to. You even quote it later on. Granted, I said "less likely" and not "impossible", but you agree that it's not impossible. How was I asleep?
When you said:
Rewriting Linux now will not do a damn bit of good. It doesn't absolve anyone from past infringements, and it won't mean that IBM did not breach their contract.
Rewriting Linux does a great deal of good (assuming the very unlikely for the sake of a theoretical argument, namely that there is infringing code in Linux), as it stops the infringement. Furthermore, as has been pointed out (and IMHO your choice of verbiage seriously downplays), Caldera-now-renamed-SCOs own actions does make it impossible to collect damages of any kind (I merely included the extremely remote possiblity of a lower court judge making a foolish ruling in contradiction of basic civil law, which is extremely rare but can happen. I would go so far as to say it is virtually impossible that SCO would prevail at the appellate level even under those extremly unlikely circumstances).
I find your initial description "all the non-disclosure will have done" to be disingenuous (it implies a slight change in liklihood, dismissing the overwhelming, fundamental nature of the precidents as they relate to SCOs unconscionable actions and unwillingness to discose), and your spinning of my "well, a judge can do anything" as tacit agreement of your apparent dismissiveness likewise misrepresentative of what I was saying.
...when it was also pointed out numerous times that SCO's unwillingness to divulge what is infringing and where, thereby making it impossible for those alleged to be infringing to correct the problem and avoid doing so, makes them ineligable for any compensatory or punitive damages of any kind. This is a well established civil doctrine with a mountain of precident to dwarf Everest (look up "dirty hands" and "clean hands" with regard to civil law if you are still confused).
Rewriting Linux now will not do a damn bit of good. It doesn't absolve anyone from past infringements, and it won't mean that IBM did not breach their contract.
IBM's alleged contract violation is between IBM and Caldera-renamed-SCO and has absolutely no bearing on Linux. IF, and I stress IF (because as others have pointed out, an overwhelming amount of evidence indicates it is almost certainly not the case), Linux were infringing on a SCO copyright, liability would only exist AFTER SCO has provided the information and the kernel coders have had an opportunity to remove the infringing code. Interestingly enough, even that liability is probably close to zero as a direct result of SCO's current actions (not disclosing the source code, i.e. not doing everything in their power to alleviate so-called damages, thereby indicating rather strongly that the damages aren't significant. Again, there is a mountain of precident for this sort of thing...)
When it comes to trial, even if we all find out that Linux is infringing on SCO's IP, all the non-disclosure will have done is make the judge less likely to award damages to SCO.
No. The lack of disclosure will have made it impossible for the judge to award damages to SCO. Well, not impossible (a judge can do anything), but impossible for it to hold up on appeal. Again, the mountain of precident on that point is huge... indeed, it appears to be a basic tenent of civil law.
IANAL, this is not legal advice, do your own research, yada yada yada.
The only reasonable explanation I have heard for the secrecy is that they can't substantiate any of their claims.
That is a reasonable explanation, but not the only one. A couple of others include
1) an agenda to spread FUD against Linux and free software, financed, perhaps even contracted by, an interested third party who wishes to keep their own hands clean (three guesses on who that might be).
2) minimal claims are valid, but SCOX and Darl et. al. can benefit much more financially by keeping the specifics ambiguous than they can by disclosing exactly how minor the infringement is.
Again, I think your explanation is the most likely: there is no infringement whatsoever. But there are a few other explanations that are just as reasonable, and nothing precluding several of them applying in parallel.
Regardless, and here is the bottom line: SCO's own behavior has precluded any liability for those using, deploying, developing, and reselling Linux, with the exception of IBM, who may have some liability based on a contractual technicality (but probably does not, as their IP attorneys are quite savvy and would have likly settled were that the case). All muttering and innendo to the contrary is nothing more than SCO produced FUD of the lowest order, quite possibly at the behest of (and certainly financed by) SUNW and MSFT.
It seems to me that the very idea of paying someone to write free software is the very antithesis of what free software is all about. (Not to mention the practical problems of managing the stable of programmers, ensuring that work actually gets done etc...)
Then you don't know much about free software. Free software is about freedom, not price. GNU and the FSF have sold free software since the 1980s, on magnetic tape and later CD ROM. Some of their products were quite pricy (and available for gratis download besides), but they still made some money selling the media, as the convinience was worth it to some.
Government funded public works is a Good Thing(tm), whether it is highways, the last mile of connectivity (which alas, is privately owned by local monopoly barons in most, but not all, of the US), or basic software infrastructure used to hold and manipulate public data.
We would never tolerate our highway system being held hostage by a single company. Why on earth would we tolerate such a thing with our public information?
As for private funding, that is all well and good, but private funding has limitations (such as the profit motive, which works sometimes but, contrary to right-wing myth, does not always work or yeild the best results). Public funding has its limitations as well, but pulling projects that are serving the public interest because of no immediate exploitable profit generally isn't one of them.
Indeed, the best public goods are those which include both private and public funding, where the limitations of one are generally countered by the strengths of the other. Examples include, but are not limited to, academia and university research.
Seriously, I'd take this slow. Perhaps writing something up in printed form and submitting it via snail mail would be smarter than having executable code lying around on a computer you own or have access to.
...but it is an offense and an affront to everything our founding fathers stood for, and it is categorically unamerican. Which shouldn't surprise anyone, with the grandson of a traitor residing in the White House on the coattails of a stolen election and folks like Aschcroft running their withchunts virtually unfettered.
Your right to extend your fist ends when it hits my nose
Yeah, and not a moment before. Your right to tell me what I can and cannot say ends at your ear. Plug it if it offends thee, but don't think for a moment you're going to tell me what I can say, write, printer, or sell. If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, but do not tell another what they can and cannot do merely on the basis that it offends you.
Texas is an emberrassment to the US, the US is an emberrassment to the world, and it would not surprise me in the least to learn that humanity is an emberrassment to other sapient species throughout the comsos.
So does pimping, but that doesn't mean I'm going to recognize it as an overall benefit to society.
Absolutely. There are a number of professions in which every practitioner deserves to be unemployed and (preferably) starving on the street. Some that come immediately to mind:
Dictators
Hit men
Spammers
Telemarketers
Purveyors of Reality & Train Wreck TV
Terrorists
Secret Police & their agents
Preists, popes, cardinals, vicars, and other misc. spreaders of religious dogma and deception
Intellectual Property Attorneys (Not all attorneys, just all IP attorneys)
...to name just a few.
Some jobs offer an inherently negative value to the overall community and society, even if their immediate value to themselves and those who employ them is a positive. IP attorneys who shake down inventors for having violated submarine patents filed by someone with a vague idea and no idea, or intention, of how to actually impliment it are one example. Darl McBride is another (IP attorneys trying to hijack and heist the hard public work of others through false claims, FUD and innuendo). Osama bin Laden is a third example, while telemarketers scamming retirees out of their life savings are a fourth. Spammers certainly fit in this category as well.
You Have Freedom for All Speach or You have None
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Linking Dangerously
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· Score: 3, Interesting
His speech was deemed harmful, something we haven't had the right to (and shouldn't!) before. To say something just to hurt someone is the same as hurting them.
Nonsense. Until fairly recently Americans did have the right to speech, harmful or otherwise. The 'fire in the theater' decision did not preclude, nor was it intended to preclude, discussions on setting fire to a crowded theater, or even discussions on how to orchastrate the event for maximum entertainment to bystanders (perhaps by playing a flute?), but to address a particular, very narrowly defined, immediate cause of immediate harm.
Attempting to extend that narrow (and at the time very contraversial) exception to include any speech that might, possibly, incite harm at some point in the future (as has been done here) is not just exceptionally harmful to freedom of speech in general and political discussion and dissent in particular, but absolutely lethal.
Are you engaging in harmful speech when you come out in support of Al Q'aeda?
Are you engaging in harmful speech when you support president Bush's foreign policies?
Don't be too sure about the answer to either of those... it may well turn out that supporting Bush's foreign policies will have been to support policies that result in far more American deaths than Al Q'aeda could ever achieve in its most ambitious dreams. Just think of the potential consiquences of his failures in North Korea and Iran, or the possible consiquences of a regime change in Pakistan.
Ban 'harmful speech' and you will have essentially banned any and all speech, at the whim of whoever happens to be wielding authority at that point in time. Regardless of who that is (Bush, Chaney, or Howard Dean) you will have completely gutted the freedom the first amendment was intended to protect, in a way that will probably require 'harmful' actions in order to restore (if restoration is ever even a possibility).
This is a precipice we may have already crossed
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Linking Dangerously
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· Score: 1
But the word "peaceably" is not attached to the right to free speech or press. It is only attached to the right for the people to peaceably assmble (ie, it's ok to stand outside Congress and protest something, but not ok to start a riot over it).
That is exactly right.
Not only is 'peacably' applied solely to the right to assemble (i.e. you don't have the right to assemble with an army outside the whitehouse and threaten, or attempt, a putsch), the notion of even trying to apply the word peacably to speach or the press is doomed to catastrophic failure (either for the one trying to create the definition or, more likely, the no-longer-even-remotely-free society to which it is applied).
We're not talking about a slippery slope here, folks, we're talking about already being in the nadir of the valley if we attempt such a thing.
Ask yourself, what exactly is "peaceful" speach?
Is advocating the murder of a president peaceful speach?
How about advocating the overthrow of a government?
How about advocating the removal of a congressman? From office, that is.
How about advocating mass protests to raise public awareness of an unjust, preemtive war?
How about shouting obsceneties to the cops beating your friends with billy clubs during the protest you participated in?
How about particularly colorful descriptions of corrupt government employees or politicians, such as Senator "Disney" Hollings, particularly a description wishing ill upon such for the harm they've caused society and/or millions of innocents.
How about screaming obscenities to your spouse in during one of your more colorful fights?
Limit speach to only "peaceful" speach, and you go well beyond 'Disneyfying' human discourse, you eliminate it altogether. Even by reasonable definitions of 'peacable' Elmer Fudd, Bugs Bunny, and the rest of the Looney Toons would fail.
As soon as we impose that constraint on our speech, or our press, we have lost the freedom completely. There will be no slippery slope, merely an unscalable cliff we'll be at the bottom of, indefinitely, until less than peacable action corrects the injustice (be it in 10 years or 100) and restores the constitution.
If we haven't lost this fundamental freedom (along with all the others the Drug Warriors and Nationalists have already shredded over the last two decades), we are on the brink of doing so, and undoing that loss will be extremely costly and take many, many years, perhaps decades, of struggle (peaceful and otherwise).
Wow, that makes a Windows 2003 Server cluster look cheap! Windows 2003 Web Edition is only like $400. The standard edition is around $600.
That's the whole idea. Why do you think $CO priced their bogus (and illegal) licenses the way they did, so soon after Micro$oft purchased that expensive, utterly unnecessary license in order to prop them up (and $un added to their kitty as well)?
This is about FUD and misinformation, with Microsoft as the primary beneficiary and Sun as ugly and despicable opportunist. Both had better exploit it well, because it won't last, SCO will almost certainly not survive any legal activities that actually take place within the court room, and anyone found to be in collaboration on this may well end up in prison or in debt as well.
Which will be a delightful pleasure to watch, although if Enron is any indication, most of these rich fucks will walk away with their ill-gotten wealth, stepping over the corpses of those they defrauded on their way to the bank, laughing all the way.
If anyone is "ceding authority" it is you... by letting fear of Microsoft dictate what you think people should and should not build.
You mean, like the way a motorist cedes authority to a precipice they drive along, by chosing not driving over the edge?
Microsoft has a history of bullying tactics and abuse of their monopoly to shut down competitors, even small upstarts who pose no real immediate threat. They have a history of moving development targets and changing standards with little or no warning (and at great cost to their customers) to keep their competition off-balance. They have intimated an intention to use copyright and patent law to bury free software. Microsoft has a history of discriminatory licensing targetted specifically at the GPL, and vitrolic rhetoric accusing free software developers of being 'unamerican' (a strong accusation in American culture and politics).
And you suggest it is unreasonable to look at these facts, observe that Microsoft unilaterally controls this standard, that Microsoft has publicly stated it intends to destroy free software, and that it is the one who points this out that is somehow 'ceding authority', rather than those who wish to promote a unilateral Microsoft standard into a fundamental standard inherent in the infrastructure of future network based free software projects?
One does not 'cede authority' by recognizing a risk and chosing to avoid it. One does 'cede authority' when one places the standard of one's basic infrastructure into the hands of another. For free software projects to build upon a standard controlled unilaterally by their staunchest opponent (philosophically, ethically, politically, and economically), and incorporate said standard at a fundamental level of their infrastructure, is most definitely to cede authority to that opponent.
Indeed, much like driving off a cliff ("see, I'm not ceding authority by letting my fear of the precipice influence me!"), doing so is not only foolish, it is downright suicidal.
Your doublespeak skills are quite formidable, but fortunately for most of us, unconvincing.
Microsoft Watch: What's the future of Mono, Ximian's implementation of.Net on Linux?
Stone: We are going to continue to push it..Net on Linux is a great idea. We just hope Microsoft isn't against the idea.
And therein lies the fatal flaw in pushing a Microsoft-controlled (and possibly patented) standard on a free platform... it puts you in the position of looking over your shoulder for as long as it is deployed. Indeed, were the GNU/Linux desktop and server implimentations to fully embrace it, Linux servers and desktops could well put themselves in the position of existing solely at the pleasure of Microsoft... which would be a fleeting thing at best.
It isn't about 'sucking up valuable developer time and effort' (plenty of things suck up valuable developer time and effort, indeed, that is the very essence of free software and the freedom for people to explore solutions wherever they lead)... it is about ceding authority to an avowed enemy of software freedom ("Linux is Unamerican" Microsoft may or may not be inherently evil, but that they are an enemy of free software is indisputable), be it authority in unilaterally defining a standard or, worse, authority in having the legal clout via patent (and perhaps copyright) law to kill a free project dead... perhaps an entire genre of free projects if said project provides critical underlying infrastructure.
We dismiss such concerns at our own, rather substantial, risk.
It's odd... that kind of thing worked with the Boston Tea Party.
No, the Boston Tea Party FAILED. Had it succeeded, parliament (or King George) would have reformed their tax legislation, the colonies would have been given some form of representation in London, and the American revolutionary war would never have been fought.
Because it failed, there was a revolt with widespread support, ultimately a revolution and a change in government (forced at the barrel of a gun).
Now it seems that there is simply too much money in the corporations, and too many people who are ignorant and apathetic that the RIAA companies can count on for their revenue. Are the people who do give a damn hopelessly outnumbered? Or are we just too disorganized to make a difference?
The people who give a damn are ALWAYS outnumbered. Whether it is revolutionary era America, France under Louis XVI, or Afghanistan (remember them?) under the Taliban or the pro-American governnment, the majority simply want to go along to get along and make a living.
The key is having a well organized and potent interest group who can work for effective, peaceful change and legislative reform or, if that is impossible (remember Russia?), capable of mounting an effective revolt. Which may be well what America requires before the government can return to the hands of the people.
The problem with revolts and revolutions is that they are very costly to a society and a culture. People die, lives are turned upside down, the economy and industry are generally devistated, and post-revolutionary stability can be a very elusive thing. So, as much as a revolution may become neccessary, it is never a happy or 'good' thing... at best it is simply the lessor of great evils.
I can't believe the moderators were silly enough to moderate this up. Perhaps
Call me a troll, but something like SCO case was actually needed by the Linux community.
I don't believe you are a troll, so much as woefully (perhaps willfully?) ignorant of recent free software and open source history. I could speculate on an agenda you might push with such a reasonable sounding, but factually incorrect, comment, but as you are an Anonymous Coward it is pointless to do so. The moderators who modded this +5 on the other hand are fair game, and almost certainly Microsoft/Sun astroturfers in local garb.
While the game was "just for fun", no one really paid attention to any licensing issues.
Untrue. Linus released the original kernel he wrote under the GPL quite deliberately. Even then he was paying attention to licensing issues and their impact on his project (though he never dreamed of the magnitude of that impact).
RMS has always paid meticulous attention to licensing issues. Recall KDE/qt's GPL issues, that resulted in the creation of a competing project (gnome). Trolltech eventually addressed those issue, and KDE today is legal and solidly licensed under the GPL, but that entire process was a prime example of the community addressing licensing issues long before business issues were the driving force.
However, currently we're experiencing major expansion of Linux-based systems into business field, and business executives usually ask about IP rights and responsibilities.
Actually, that is rarely true. Business executives purchase a license (or not... there are still rampent copies of illegal windows installations running all over the place, as the BSA is all too willing to exploit and emphesize. Virtually every client I've done work for... my current employer excepted thanks to our meticulous internal audits conducted by yours truly... has been running numerous unlicensed programs, including Windows) and then write off any copyright or patent concerns as someone elses problem.
This despite the fact the neither Microsoft, nor anyone else, offers any substantive indemnification to end users against 3rd party lawsuits (Redmond PR comments notwithstanding).
If Linux wants to be a player in the business world, it's got to play by the rules, and that's what SCO case is about to clarify.
Linux has been playing by the rules, meticulously and in a very open manner. The SCO case isn't going to 'clarify' this, as it is a contract dispute between IBM and SCO. Quite the contrary, the SCO FUD and misinformation, which contradicts itself from one day to the next, is doing anything but muddy the issue with as much misinformation as they can squeeze into a daily press release.
This last outbreak of FUD attack by SCO will actually stop all the FUD and conspiracy theories surrounding Linux in the business world.
Long term you may be correct. In the ensuing years however it will have the opposite effect, do to a gaping flaw in the US legal system that allows companies to spread disinformation and FUD without legal consiquence (one can "allege" anything, even with zero evidence). Contrast that with the laws of more reasonable countries, such as Germany and Australia, where doing this sort of thing can and does land one in hot water.
Worse, legal disputes that have dragged on for years usually rate one report ("SCO Lost, IBM vindicated") and are no longer news... hardly an outcome that will undue years of repetition of untruthful innuendo and FUD that Linux and free software will have to try and combat in the meantime.
The result is that this is a net-negative for Free Software and Linux, and is clearly going to be the tactic employed by Our Masters in their efforts to divide and conquer those of us uppity enough to recognize and exploit economic value in cooperation, rather than cutting one anoth
Open Source Content has a value for two kinds of people. Those who initially create it, and those who want make money on it.
It has no value to entities whose business is in danger.
"Microsoft Software has a value for two kinds of people. Microsoft and those who want to make money on it (fixing it, in all liklihood).
It has no value to entities whose business is in danger."
Both those statements ignore another group for which the product has value: those who use it (although, if my girlfriend is any indication, Microsoft Software's value to the end user is a negative number, but I digress). Indeed, that is where Microsoft loses in value (and free software wins big... not just in value of quality, but in value in rapid development, improvements, and direct feedback to the creators that commercial entities such as MS are soreley lacking), but wins by making up for it in quantity (the power of marketing and inertia).
Free and Open Content is of great value to those who create it and those who enjoy using it, as well as those who enjoy creating with it. I know: I've created an open content novel available under the Creative Commons license. The work has great value to me, and to a decent number of people who have read and enjoyed it.
That value is real, and your inability to place a monetary amount on that value is your failing, not that of free content.
Think of it as "Homeland Security eats its own dog food..." In other words, they are using the same operating system that the vast majority of people use, so they will experience the same vulnerabilities. They'll be able to advise people about computer security from first-hand experience, not just from a few pristine 'test lab' machines.
That's a good spin on an incredibly incompetent IT decision, but at the end of the day, spin is all it is.
You want a testbed for vulerability? Fine. Set up a windows lab with its own dedicated internet connection and absolutely no way to talk to the rest of your internal network. Catalog, experience, and enjoy the chaos that ensues.
Do not, I repeat, do not deploy it as your platform for collecting, collating, analyzing, and addressing security threats. What good is Homeland INSecurity going to be when they need to address a real, meatspace threat and a Microsoft worm has taken down most of their IT infrastructure?
Some perhaps, but they certainly will be operating at a severely degraded effeciency level.
[metaphor] Street lines aren't repainted until there are a few major accidents on the road. It's an unfortunate fact of life. [/metaphor]
That is not a "fact of life." Birth, death, and the need to consume food in between are facts of life.
Street lines not being repainted until people are injured or killed, environmental laws being repealed to appease Baby Bush's oil buddies, and draconian laws that don't get fixed until the lives of thousands are ruined or threatened with ruination are NOT "facts of life," they are the actions of an unprecedented period of corruption in high places here in America (worse than even that which followed the civil war), and the fact that nearly everyone on capital hill, democrat and republican alike, is little more than a whore for those who bribe them, legally and on the public record via campaign contributions (what some would erroneously call "above board", as though making a bribe technically legal somehow makes it OK and undoes the terrible harm it cuases our civil institutions).
It is a fact of corruption and politics in a degenerate government of, by, and for attorneys and their corporate masters, not a fact of a properly functioning democratic republic (which, believe it or not, the US had for a brief time), much less a "fact of life" in its more general sense.
} } } } In the matter of SCO } vs. } Electric Cloud } } }
Said defendent is alleged to have been running an unlicensed version of Lie-nucks, violating vaguely alluded to (but impossible to produce) 'intellectual property' alleged to belong to litigant, by virtue of having been written independently to superficially resemble an unpopular operating system the litigant overpayed to acquaire the rights of (c.f. UNIX), said litigant thusly excersizing their Constitutional Rights (tm) to sue uppity upstarts who dare make use of a legally engineered and freely provided system that competes with their abysmally unsuccessful, outdated, and buggy commercial offering.
Said litigant cites as prima facia evidence of infringement "a post to slashdot that indicated a successful deployment of the demonic system."
Defendents declined to comment, but did point out to the court that the daemon was a mascott for another, competing free operating system, and that perhaps counsel for the plaintiff would be so kind as to wipe the froth from his mouth and clarify.
I'm not afraid to admit that I download stuff like a madman, and that's the only reason I have my high speed connection.
I do to. But I do not violate copyright to do so.
I download Knoppix and Gentoo ISO images.
I rsync portage trees, download and compile source tarballs of hundreds of free(dom) programs quite often.
I use bittorrent (and occasionally gnutella) to download free movies (remember that Star Trek Fan Fiction Episode reported here on slashdot a few months ago?) and cool projects (machinima films, Creative Commons content, and so on).
I download a bunch of stuff, and I share a bunch of stuff, but every single Byte of it is legal and with the permission, nay, desire of the author.
Broadband and P2P are critical technologies for the dissemination of information in large quantities, which has vastly more legitimate uses than infringing ones, RIAA and MPAA rhetoric notwithstanding.
It may be that a group of infringers makes use of the technology, and perhaps even pushes its development some (as pr0n has been known to do with respect to web technology), but at the end of the day this stuff is critical infrastructure for people simply being able to move and access information effeciently and quickly, i.e. for people to simply get work done.
The fact that it makes the media cartels' business model obsolete is a delicious side effect, but it is ultimately a minor and insignificant one, much like the demise of Buggy whip manufacturers, compared to the benefits (much like the benefits of automobiles).
Not that this won't necessarilly stop a hopelessly corrupt and backward looking government (Washingtonians, of both the Democratic and Republican variety) from trying to pry the Genie back in the bottle as a way of paying back their Hollywood Butt Buddies (and wrecking untold financial and economic damage in the process)...
They're not creating any data that's not already there, they're just centralizing it...the school already has all of this information on you, and no, they probably don't erase it.
A quick HOWTO in turning a democracy into a plutocratic fascist state:
1. Allow the collection and of private data by private institutions on whatever scale they wish (insert standard libertarian reference to the Constitution only restricting the behavior of the federal government, not private enterprise).
2. Allow institutions to trade unfettered in said data amongst themselves (lack of legislation insuring integrity and accuracy of data optional [USA does not select this option, c.f. any credit reporting agency])
3. Increase data reporting requirements by individuals to banks, for job background checks, and for security screening at airports. Retain said data.
4. Encourage aggregation of data by private business interests for resale to interested parties.
5. Pass legislation allowing government unfettered access to said data aggregation. (Make use of data quietly and extralegally if legislation doesn't pass). Allow "goodwill" use initially (e.g. Schools collecting data on students to lower dropout rates).
6. Outsource any data collection requirements for identifying suspected terrorists, dissidents, and collecting targets for the next Pogrom de Jour.
The outcry was initially the collection of the data. We were told not to worry, it is for private industry's use and, besides, we don't have a constitutional right to privacy in business.
Now the outcry is the use of data mining and aggregation to take the data thus collected and use it to profile our private lives in minute detail, effectively creating a defacto, if hybrid, police-surveillence state. And you dismiss it as "they're not creating any data that's not already there", as though that somehow negates the consiquences of such behavior.
The initial public outcry against the collection of private data on private individuals was right then, and it would be right today were it not for the deafening silence of those who have recognize a battle long since lost.
The public outcry against the sale and exchange of data between private corporations (and government agencies) was right then, and it is right today, even if the number of voices has declined over the years.
And the outcry against aggregating and mining this data to microanalyze our individual lives is justified, appropriate, and dismissed at our own peril. This isn't the start of a slippery slope we're talking about here, this is another in a long series of runs down it we're skiing... and one of the last, before we hit the bottom and do find ourselves in a very unpleasant surveillance society and police state.
The RIAA doesn't want to prosecute everyone who shares files, they want more people to stop sharing files. The idea is that if for everyone they do go after 10 (or whatever) other people will stop.
The idea is wrong, both ethically and practically. Ethically it is absolutely heinous to make some people pay an exaggerated price in order to frighten others. Indeed it could be argued that it is unconstitutional (14th amendment) to go around destroying some lives in order to 'communicate' a point to others (some are getting very, very harsh treatment, while others are being left alone). Practically, deterrence has been shown not to work, as we see every day with speeding and the woefully ineffectual and counterproductive War on Drugs(tm, Reagan & Daddy Bush). Indeed, deterrence of such crimes is only marginally effective at best, and more often ineffective altogether, particularly with teens, whose notorious "it will never happen to me" attitude is more or less hardwired into their biology and often remains intact well into adulthood. The entire youthful 'immortality syndrome' conspires against any such efforts at deterrence at several levels, something the RIAA and other cartels seem to be unable to grasp (talk about not knowing your market, or your customers).
A teenager sees a few thousand people get busted, out of several million, and (virtually every one) rightly concludes that they'll never be prosecuted. Indeed, any one filesharer is far more likely to be killed in a car accident than to be brought to trial by the cartels, and we've seen what a deterrence death by physical mutiliation resulting from a high speed automobile impact has on teen driving... i.e. none whatsoever.
Slashdot Mirror
Why are we not freaking out about this??
... their own mortality, if nothing else).
Because it happens natually no matter what we do. It's happened many times in the past, and will happen again and again until our solar system itself dies...
Perhaps, but I think it has far more to do with our capacity for living in denial. It really isn't just a river in Egypt, it is something we all do, almost all of the time.
Whether it is Republicans denying they stole an election, Democrats denying their political incompetence and lack of backbone in recent years, Arabs denying their own complicity and causation of the vast majority of their own probems despite unprecedented wealth flowing into their pockets, Israelis denying their cruelty to Palastinians, Palistinians denying their cruelty to Israelis, Europeans denying their incompetence at handling world affairs (remember their less-than-impressive track record in stopping the Genocide of Yugoslavia), Black Americans denying their own responsibility for many of their problems, white Americans denying the very real, continued existence of racism amongst the fringes of their own kind (all too often finding those fringes in positions of significant power and influence), or Americans in general denying their incompetence in handling world affairs (Somalia, Liberia, Ruwanda, Iran, Iraq, N. Korea, Libya, etc), or all of us in the developed world denying the very real and negative impact of our conspicuous consumption upon the environment which sustains us, we are all, each of us, engaged in any of several acts of denial practically every waking moment of our lives. (If I haven't hit on one of your pet denials and thereby both offended you and illustrated my point, then perhaps you can think of something else someone once said to you that made you react in a very knee-jerk, defensive, and probably highly emotional manner. I doubt there is anyone alive who isn't living in denial of something
Denial seems to be one human trait that transcends cultural, political, ethnic, religious, and philisophical differences, and it should come as no surprise to anyone that those who do not wish, for whatever reason, to believe we could be altering our environment to our own great detriment will happilly deny it is happening, or spin it as either "this isn't such a bad thing" or "it would have happened anyway."
Historically, those who point out things we don't want to accept tend to be killed, imprisoned, or at the very least ignored. Rejecting unpleasant facts is, at the end of the day, a very human thing to do, reality notwithstanding. To our credit, we do as a species tend to accept and confront unpleasantness at some point. When we do it in time, we tend to address the problems and our civilizations tend to flourish. When we do it too late, our problems tend to address us and our civilisations fall into ruin. It will be interesting to see which is the case here, whether it is Global Warming, or any of a host of other issues which confront us, and which we studiously try to avoid, ignore, or deny.
... will there be a massive shift to BSD-style licenses. I like the BSD license just fine, but I'd be concerned that if the GPL is ruled invalid, that the BSD license wouldn't be valid either.
... a clear restriction, albeit a benign one), but the net effect is to allow greater lattitude for people to copy the work than the default otherwise permitted under copyright law.
Good God, don't you people think before you type? Or, more to the point, have those who have moderator priveleges today been passing the crack pipe around a little more frequently than usual?
The argument being used in this incredibly weak attempt to overturn the GPL is that it violates copyright law because the creator of the work is offering terms more liberal than copyright's default restrictions.
Now, for those slow on the uptake, what does a Microsoft site license do? Yup, it grants (in exchange for money) a more liberal right to copy than that otherwise offered by copyright law.
And, for those even slower on the uptake, what does the BSD-style license do? Yup, you guessed it again. It offers a more liberal right to copy than that otherwise offered by copyright law, just like the GPL. The specific restrictions BSD-style licenses impose are different from those of the GPL (and don't think for a minute it doesn't impose restrictions, however benign. If it didn't impose restrictions, the work would be in the public domain. Instead, you are required to maintain the copyright notice
Which part of this progression escapes you? If in some perverse miscarriage of anything remotely resembling rule of law, much less justice, the GPL were to be ruled invalid on this basis, that would spell instant death by precident to not only the GPL, but BSD-Style licenses, Creative Commons style licenses, Artistic Licenses, and, yes, corporate site licenses of the variety Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, and just about every other software company on the planet eagerly offers their customers in exchange for cold, hard cash. For about three minutes, before an appeals court slaps a stay on the judgement, hears the case, and overturns the ruling.
Any other outcome would mean we could say goodbye to the software industry, the online content industry, and probably a whole slew of other industries we're not thinking of as well, upon which copyright law touches in one way or another. Not to mention saying goodbye to 220+ years of precident.
There is absolutely no chance this argument will hold up. It will be interesting to see if any lawyers are disbarred or fined for even bringing this argument to court.
IANAL, but I am a sapient being with a three digit IQ, which is all this level of insight really requires.
Why are we not freaking out about this??
... their own mortality, if nothing else).
Because it happens natually no matter what we do. It's happened many times in the past, and will happen again and again until our solar system itself dies...
Perhaps, but I think it has far more to do with our capacity for living in denial. It really isn't just a river in Egypt, it is something we all do, almost all of the time.
Whether it is Republicans denying they stole an election, Democrats denying their political incompetence and lack of backbone in recent years, Arabs denying their own complicity and causation of the vast majority of their own probems despite unprecedented wealth flowing into their pockets, Israelis denying their cruelty to Palastinians, Palistinians denying their cruelty to Israelis, Europeans denying their incompetence at handling world affairs (remember their less-than-impressive track record in stopping the Genocide of Yugoslavia), Black Americans denying their own responsibility for many of their problems, white Americans denying the very real, continued existence of racism amongst the fringes of their own kind (all too often finding those fringes in positions of significant power and influence), or Americans in general denying their incompetence in handling world affairs (Somalia, Liberia, Ruwanda, Iran, Iraq, N. Korea, Libya, etc), or all of us in the developed world denying the very real and negative impact of our conspicuous consumption upon the environment which sustains us, we are all, each of us, engaged in any of several acts of denial practically every waking moment of our lives. (If I haven't hit on one of your pet denials and thereby both offended you and illustrated my point, then perhaps you can think of something else someone once said to you that made you react in a very knee-jerk, defensive, and probably highly emotional manner. I doubt there is anyone alive who isn't living in denial of something
Denial seems to be one human trait that transcends cultural, political, ethnic, religious, and philisophical differences, and it should come as no surprise to anyone that those who do not wish, for whatever reason, to believe we could be altering our environment to our own great detriment will happilly deny it is happening, or spin it as either "this isn't such a bad thing" or "it would have happened anyway."
Historically, those who point out things we don't want to accept tend to be killed, imprisoned, or at the very least ignored. Rejecting unpleasant facts is, at the end of the day, a very human thing to do, reality notwithstanding. To our credit, we do as a species tend to accept and confront unpleasantness at some point. When we do it in time, we tend to address the problems and our civilizations tend to flourish. When we do it too late, our problems tend to address us and our civilisations fall into ruin. It will be interesting to see which is the case here, whether it is Global Warming, or any of a host of other issues which confront us, and which we studiously try to avoid, ignore, or deny.
Recall we have laws against bribery. Enforcement on the other hand...
We have laws against particular forms of bribery. Other forms are not only allowed, they are expressly permitted and encouraged by the law. These include campaign contributions and soft-money political donations.
Saying we 'have laws against bribery' is telling only half the story, the other half being encapsulated in 'but we also have legalized, institutional bribery.' And no, the two are not mutually exclusive, any more than having laws against killing excludes the possiblity of legalized, institutional killing ('death row' and the military being two such examples).
Unlike killing, however, it is difficult to imagine any circumstance in which legalized bribery is even debatably appropriate.
I mentioned this briefly in the post you are replying to. You even quote it later on. Granted, I said "less likely" and not "impossible", but you agree that it's not impossible. How was I asleep?
When you said:
Rewriting Linux now will not do a damn bit of good. It doesn't absolve anyone from past infringements, and it won't mean that IBM did not breach their contract.
Rewriting Linux does a great deal of good (assuming the very unlikely for the sake of a theoretical argument, namely that there is infringing code in Linux), as it stops the infringement. Furthermore, as has been pointed out (and IMHO your choice of verbiage seriously downplays), Caldera-now-renamed-SCOs own actions does make it impossible to collect damages of any kind (I merely included the extremely remote possiblity of a lower court judge making a foolish ruling in contradiction of basic civil law, which is extremely rare but can happen. I would go so far as to say it is virtually impossible that SCO would prevail at the appellate level even under those extremly unlikely circumstances).
I find your initial description "all the non-disclosure will have done" to be disingenuous (it implies a slight change in liklihood, dismissing the overwhelming, fundamental nature of the precidents as they relate to SCOs unconscionable actions and unwillingness to discose), and your spinning of my "well, a judge can do anything" as tacit agreement of your apparent dismissiveness likewise misrepresentative of what I was saying.
...when it was also pointed out numerous times that SCO's unwillingness to divulge what is infringing and where, thereby making it impossible for those alleged to be infringing to correct the problem and avoid doing so, makes them ineligable for any compensatory or punitive damages of any kind. This is a well established civil doctrine with a mountain of precident to dwarf Everest (look up "dirty hands" and "clean hands" with regard to civil law if you are still confused).
... indeed, it appears to be a basic tenent of civil law.
Rewriting Linux now will not do a damn bit of good. It doesn't absolve anyone from past infringements, and it won't mean that IBM did not breach their contract.
IBM's alleged contract violation is between IBM and Caldera-renamed-SCO and has absolutely no bearing on Linux. IF, and I stress IF (because as others have pointed out, an overwhelming amount of evidence indicates it is almost certainly not the case), Linux were infringing on a SCO copyright, liability would only exist AFTER SCO has provided the information and the kernel coders have had an opportunity to remove the infringing code. Interestingly enough, even that liability is probably close to zero as a direct result of SCO's current actions (not disclosing the source code, i.e. not doing everything in their power to alleviate so-called damages, thereby indicating rather strongly that the damages aren't significant. Again, there is a mountain of precident for this sort of thing...)
When it comes to trial, even if we all find out that Linux is infringing on SCO's IP, all the non-disclosure will have done is make the judge less likely to award damages to SCO.
No. The lack of disclosure will have made it impossible for the judge to award damages to SCO. Well, not impossible (a judge can do anything), but impossible for it to hold up on appeal. Again, the mountain of precident on that point is huge
IANAL, this is not legal advice, do your own research, yada yada yada.
The only reasonable explanation I have heard for the secrecy is that they can't substantiate any of their claims.
That is a reasonable explanation, but not the only one. A couple of others include
1) an agenda to spread FUD against Linux and free software, financed, perhaps even contracted by, an interested third party who wishes to keep their own hands clean (three guesses on who that might be).
2) minimal claims are valid, but SCOX and Darl et. al. can benefit much more financially by keeping the specifics ambiguous than they can by disclosing exactly how minor the infringement is.
Again, I think your explanation is the most likely: there is no infringement whatsoever. But there are a few other explanations that are just as reasonable, and nothing precluding several of them applying in parallel.
Regardless, and here is the bottom line: SCO's own behavior has precluded any liability for those using, deploying, developing, and reselling Linux, with the exception of IBM, who may have some liability based on a contractual technicality (but probably does not, as their IP attorneys are quite savvy and would have likly settled were that the case). All muttering and innendo to the contrary is nothing more than SCO produced FUD of the lowest order, quite possibly at the behest of (and certainly financed by) SUNW and MSFT.
It seems to me that the very idea of paying someone to write free software is the very antithesis of what free software is all about. (Not to mention the practical problems of managing the stable of programmers, ensuring that work actually gets done etc...)
Then you don't know much about free software. Free software is about freedom, not price. GNU and the FSF have sold free software since the 1980s, on magnetic tape and later CD ROM. Some of their products were quite pricy (and available for gratis download besides), but they still made some money selling the media, as the convinience was worth it to some.
Government funded public works is a Good Thing(tm), whether it is highways, the last mile of connectivity (which alas, is privately owned by local monopoly barons in most, but not all, of the US), or basic software infrastructure used to hold and manipulate public data.
We would never tolerate our highway system being held hostage by a single company. Why on earth would we tolerate such a thing with our public information?
As for private funding, that is all well and good, but private funding has limitations (such as the profit motive, which works sometimes but, contrary to right-wing myth, does not always work or yeild the best results). Public funding has its limitations as well, but pulling projects that are serving the public interest because of no immediate exploitable profit generally isn't one of them.
Indeed, the best public goods are those which include both private and public funding, where the limitations of one are generally countered by the strengths of the other. Examples include, but are not limited to, academia and university research.
... You've earned it. :-)
Seriously, I'd take this slow. Perhaps writing something up in printed form and submitting it via snail mail would be smarter than having executable code lying around on a computer you own or have access to.
...but it is an offense and an affront to everything our founding fathers stood for, and it is categorically unamerican. Which shouldn't surprise anyone, with the grandson of a traitor residing in the White House on the coattails of a stolen election and folks like Aschcroft running their withchunts virtually unfettered.
Your right to extend your fist ends when it hits my nose
Yeah, and not a moment before. Your right to tell me what I can and cannot say ends at your ear. Plug it if it offends thee, but don't think for a moment you're going to tell me what I can say, write, printer, or sell. If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, but do not tell another what they can and cannot do merely on the basis that it offends you.
Texas is an emberrassment to the US, the US is an emberrassment to the world, and it would not surprise me in the least to learn that humanity is an emberrassment to other sapient species throughout the comsos.
So does pimping, but that doesn't mean I'm going to recognize it as an overall benefit to society.
Absolutely. There are a number of professions in which every practitioner deserves to be unemployed and (preferably) starving on the street. Some that come immediately to mind:
- Dictators
- Hit men
- Spammers
- Telemarketers
- Purveyors of Reality & Train Wreck TV
- Terrorists
- Secret Police & their agents
- Preists, popes, cardinals, vicars, and other misc. spreaders of religious dogma and deception
- Intellectual Property Attorneys (Not all attorneys, just all IP attorneys)
...to name just a few.Some jobs offer an inherently negative value to the overall community and society, even if their immediate value to themselves and those who employ them is a positive. IP attorneys who shake down inventors for having violated submarine patents filed by someone with a vague idea and no idea, or intention, of how to actually impliment it are one example. Darl McBride is another (IP attorneys trying to hijack and heist the hard public work of others through false claims, FUD and innuendo). Osama bin Laden is a third example, while telemarketers scamming retirees out of their life savings are a fourth. Spammers certainly fit in this category as well.
His speech was deemed harmful, something we haven't had the right to (and shouldn't!) before. To say something just to hurt someone is the same as hurting them.
... it may well turn out that supporting Bush's foreign policies will have been to support policies that result in far more American deaths than Al Q'aeda could ever achieve in its most ambitious dreams. Just think of the potential consiquences of his failures in North Korea and Iran, or the possible consiquences of a regime change in Pakistan.
Nonsense. Until fairly recently Americans did have the right to speech, harmful or otherwise. The 'fire in the theater' decision did not preclude, nor was it intended to preclude, discussions on setting fire to a crowded theater, or even discussions on how to orchastrate the event for maximum entertainment to bystanders (perhaps by playing a flute?), but to address a particular, very narrowly defined, immediate cause of immediate harm.
Attempting to extend that narrow (and at the time very contraversial) exception to include any speech that might, possibly, incite harm at some point in the future (as has been done here) is not just exceptionally harmful to freedom of speech in general and political discussion and dissent in particular, but absolutely lethal.
Are you engaging in harmful speech when you come out in support of Al Q'aeda?
Are you engaging in harmful speech when you support president Bush's foreign policies?
Don't be too sure about the answer to either of those
Ban 'harmful speech' and you will have essentially banned any and all speech, at the whim of whoever happens to be wielding authority at that point in time. Regardless of who that is (Bush, Chaney, or Howard Dean) you will have completely gutted the freedom the first amendment was intended to protect, in a way that will probably require 'harmful' actions in order to restore (if restoration is ever even a possibility).
But the word "peaceably" is not attached to the right to free speech or press. It is only attached to the right for the people to peaceably assmble (ie, it's ok to stand outside Congress and protest something, but not ok to start a riot over it).
That is exactly right.
Not only is 'peacably' applied solely to the right to assemble (i.e. you don't have the right to assemble with an army outside the whitehouse and threaten, or attempt, a putsch), the notion of even trying to apply the word peacably to speach or the press is doomed to catastrophic failure (either for the one trying to create the definition or, more likely, the no-longer-even-remotely-free society to which it is applied).
We're not talking about a slippery slope here, folks, we're talking about already being in the nadir of the valley if we attempt such a thing.
Ask yourself, what exactly is "peaceful" speach?
Is advocating the murder of a president peaceful speach?
How about advocating the overthrow of a government?
How about advocating the removal of a congressman? From office, that is.
How about advocating mass protests to raise public awareness of an unjust, preemtive war?
How about shouting obsceneties to the cops beating your friends with billy clubs during the protest you participated in?
How about particularly colorful descriptions of corrupt government employees or politicians, such as Senator "Disney" Hollings, particularly a description wishing ill upon such for the harm they've caused society and/or millions of innocents.
How about screaming obscenities to your spouse in during one of your more colorful fights?
Limit speach to only "peaceful" speach, and you go well beyond 'Disneyfying' human discourse, you eliminate it altogether. Even by reasonable definitions of 'peacable' Elmer Fudd, Bugs Bunny, and the rest of the Looney Toons would fail.
As soon as we impose that constraint on our speech, or our press, we have lost the freedom completely. There will be no slippery slope, merely an unscalable cliff we'll be at the bottom of, indefinitely, until less than peacable action corrects the injustice (be it in 10 years or 100) and restores the constitution.
If we haven't lost this fundamental freedom (along with all the others the Drug Warriors and Nationalists have already shredded over the last two decades), we are on the brink of doing so, and undoing that loss will be extremely costly and take many, many years, perhaps decades, of struggle (peaceful and otherwise).
Wow, that makes a Windows 2003 Server cluster look cheap! Windows 2003 Web Edition is only like $400. The standard edition is around $600.
That's the whole idea. Why do you think $CO priced their bogus (and illegal) licenses the way they did, so soon after Micro$oft purchased that expensive, utterly unnecessary license in order to prop them up (and $un added to their kitty as well)?
This is about FUD and misinformation, with Microsoft as the primary beneficiary and Sun as ugly and despicable opportunist. Both had better exploit it well, because it won't last, SCO will almost certainly not survive any legal activities that actually take place within the court room, and anyone found to be in collaboration on this may well end up in prison or in debt as well.
Which will be a delightful pleasure to watch, although if Enron is any indication, most of these rich fucks will walk away with their ill-gotten wealth, stepping over the corpses of those they defrauded on their way to the bank, laughing all the way.
So much for capitalism, or justice, in America.
If anyone is "ceding authority" it is you ... by letting fear of Microsoft dictate what you think people should and should not build.
You mean, like the way a motorist cedes authority to a precipice they drive along, by chosing not driving over the edge?
Microsoft has a history of bullying tactics and abuse of their monopoly to shut down competitors, even small upstarts who pose no real immediate threat. They have a history of moving development targets and changing standards with little or no warning (and at great cost to their customers) to keep their competition off-balance. They have intimated an intention to use copyright and patent law to bury free software. Microsoft has a history of discriminatory licensing targetted specifically at the GPL, and vitrolic rhetoric accusing free software developers of being 'unamerican' (a strong accusation in American culture and politics).
And you suggest it is unreasonable to look at these facts, observe that Microsoft unilaterally controls this standard, that Microsoft has publicly stated it intends to destroy free software, and that it is the one who points this out that is somehow 'ceding authority', rather than those who wish to promote a unilateral Microsoft standard into a fundamental standard inherent in the infrastructure of future network based free software projects?
One does not 'cede authority' by recognizing a risk and chosing to avoid it. One does 'cede authority' when one places the standard of one's basic infrastructure into the hands of another. For free software projects to build upon a standard controlled unilaterally by their staunchest opponent (philosophically, ethically, politically, and economically), and incorporate said standard at a fundamental level of their infrastructure, is most definitely to cede authority to that opponent.
Indeed, much like driving off a cliff ("see, I'm not ceding authority by letting my fear of the precipice influence me!"), doing so is not only foolish, it is downright suicidal.
Your doublespeak skills are quite formidable, but fortunately for most of us, unconvincing.
Microsoft Watch: What's the future of Mono, Ximian's implementation of .Net on Linux?
.Net on Linux is a great idea. We just hope Microsoft isn't against the idea.
... it puts you in the position of looking over your shoulder for as long as it is deployed. Indeed, were the GNU/Linux desktop and server implimentations to fully embrace it, Linux servers and desktops could well put themselves in the position of existing solely at the pleasure of Microsoft ... which would be a fleeting thing at best.
... it is about ceding authority to an avowed enemy of software freedom ("Linux is Unamerican" Microsoft may or may not be inherently evil, but that they are an enemy of free software is indisputable), be it authority in unilaterally defining a standard or, worse, authority in having the legal clout via patent (and perhaps copyright) law to kill a free project dead ... perhaps an entire genre of free projects if said project provides critical underlying infrastructure.
Stone: We are going to continue to push it.
And therein lies the fatal flaw in pushing a Microsoft-controlled (and possibly patented) standard on a free platform
It isn't about 'sucking up valuable developer time and effort' (plenty of things suck up valuable developer time and effort, indeed, that is the very essence of free software and the freedom for people to explore solutions wherever they lead)
We dismiss such concerns at our own, rather substantial, risk.
It's odd... that kind of thing worked with the Boston Tea Party.
... at best it is simply the lessor of great evils.
...
No, the Boston Tea Party FAILED. Had it succeeded, parliament (or King George) would have reformed their tax legislation, the colonies would have been given some form of representation in London, and the American revolutionary war would never have been fought.
Because it failed, there was a revolt with widespread support, ultimately a revolution and a change in government (forced at the barrel of a gun).
Now it seems that there is simply too much money in the corporations, and too many people who are ignorant and apathetic that the RIAA companies can count on for their revenue. Are the people who do give a damn hopelessly outnumbered? Or are we just too disorganized to make a difference?
The people who give a damn are ALWAYS outnumbered. Whether it is revolutionary era America, France under Louis XVI, or Afghanistan (remember them?) under the Taliban or the pro-American governnment, the majority simply want to go along to get along and make a living.
The key is having a well organized and potent interest group who can work for effective, peaceful change and legislative reform or, if that is impossible (remember Russia?), capable of mounting an effective revolt. Which may be well what America requires before the government can return to the hands of the people.
The problem with revolts and revolutions is that they are very costly to a society and a culture. People die, lives are turned upside down, the economy and industry are generally devistated, and post-revolutionary stability can be a very elusive thing. So, as much as a revolution may become neccessary, it is never a happy or 'good' thing
Which, arguably, is quickly becoming the case
F22 HUD Display:
Critical System Error
Rebooting During Combat
This Action Will
Bring Certain, Fiery DEATH
+----+
| OK |
+----+
Would providing Windoze to the military in a time of war constitute giving aid and comfort to the enemy?
Well, "aid" certainly, but "comfort" is a more subjective judgement...
I can't believe the moderators were silly enough to moderate this up. Perhaps
... there are still rampent copies of illegal windows installations running all over the place, as the BSA is all too willing to exploit and emphesize. Virtually every client I've done work for ... my current employer excepted thanks to our meticulous internal audits conducted by yours truly ... has been running numerous unlicensed programs, including Windows) and then write off any copyright or patent concerns as someone elses problem.
... hardly an outcome that will undue years of repetition of untruthful innuendo and FUD that Linux and free software will have to try and combat in the meantime.
Call me a troll, but something like SCO case was actually needed by the Linux community.
I don't believe you are a troll, so much as woefully (perhaps willfully?) ignorant of recent free software and open source history. I could speculate on an agenda you might push with such a reasonable sounding, but factually incorrect, comment, but as you are an Anonymous Coward it is pointless to do so. The moderators who modded this +5 on the other hand are fair game, and almost certainly Microsoft/Sun astroturfers in local garb.
While the game was "just for fun", no one really paid attention to any licensing issues.
Untrue. Linus released the original kernel he wrote under the GPL quite deliberately. Even then he was paying attention to licensing issues and their impact on his project (though he never dreamed of the magnitude of that impact).
RMS has always paid meticulous attention to licensing issues. Recall KDE/qt's GPL issues, that resulted in the creation of a competing project (gnome). Trolltech eventually addressed those issue, and KDE today is legal and solidly licensed under the GPL, but that entire process was a prime example of the community addressing licensing issues long before business issues were the driving force.
However, currently we're experiencing major expansion of Linux-based systems into business field, and business executives usually ask about IP rights and responsibilities.
Actually, that is rarely true. Business executives purchase a license (or not
This despite the fact the neither Microsoft, nor anyone else, offers any substantive indemnification to end users against 3rd party lawsuits (Redmond PR comments notwithstanding).
If Linux wants to be a player in the business world, it's got to play by the rules, and that's what SCO case is about to clarify.
Linux has been playing by the rules, meticulously and in a very open manner. The SCO case isn't going to 'clarify' this, as it is a contract dispute between IBM and SCO. Quite the contrary, the SCO FUD and misinformation, which contradicts itself from one day to the next, is doing anything but muddy the issue with as much misinformation as they can squeeze into a daily press release.
This last outbreak of FUD attack by SCO will actually stop all the FUD and conspiracy theories surrounding Linux in the business world.
Long term you may be correct. In the ensuing years however it will have the opposite effect, do to a gaping flaw in the US legal system that allows companies to spread disinformation and FUD without legal consiquence (one can "allege" anything, even with zero evidence). Contrast that with the laws of more reasonable countries, such as Germany and Australia, where doing this sort of thing can and does land one in hot water.
Worse, legal disputes that have dragged on for years usually rate one report ("SCO Lost, IBM vindicated") and are no longer news
The result is that this is a net-negative for Free Software and Linux, and is clearly going to be the tactic employed by Our Masters in their efforts to divide and conquer those of us uppity enough to recognize and exploit economic value in cooperation, rather than cutting one anoth
Open Source Content has a value for two kinds of people. Those who initially create it, and those who want make money on it.
... not just in value of quality, but in value in rapid development, improvements, and direct feedback to the creators that commercial entities such as MS are soreley lacking), but wins by making up for it in quantity (the power of marketing and inertia).
It has no value to entities whose business is in danger.
"Microsoft Software has a value for two kinds of people. Microsoft and those who want to make money on it (fixing it, in all liklihood).
It has no value to entities whose business is in danger."
Both those statements ignore another group for which the product has value: those who use it (although, if my girlfriend is any indication, Microsoft Software's value to the end user is a negative number, but I digress). Indeed, that is where Microsoft loses in value (and free software wins big
Free and Open Content is of great value to those who create it and those who enjoy using it, as well as those who enjoy creating with it. I know: I've created an open content novel available under the Creative Commons license. The work has great value to me, and to a decent number of people who have read and enjoyed it.
That value is real, and your inability to place a monetary amount on that value is your failing, not that of free content.
Think of it as "Homeland Security eats its own dog food..." In other words, they are using the same operating system that the vast majority of people use, so they will experience the same vulnerabilities. They'll be able to advise people about computer security from first-hand experience, not just from a few pristine 'test lab' machines.
That's a good spin on an incredibly incompetent IT decision, but at the end of the day, spin is all it is.
You want a testbed for vulerability? Fine. Set up a windows lab with its own dedicated internet connection and absolutely no way to talk to the rest of your internal network. Catalog, experience, and enjoy the chaos that ensues.
Do not, I repeat, do not deploy it as your platform for collecting, collating, analyzing, and addressing security threats. What good is Homeland INSecurity going to be when they need to address a real, meatspace threat and a Microsoft worm has taken down most of their IT infrastructure?
Some perhaps, but they certainly will be operating at a severely degraded effeciency level.
[metaphor] Street lines aren't repainted until there are a few major accidents on the road. It's an unfortunate fact of life. [/metaphor]
That is not a "fact of life." Birth, death, and the need to consume food in between are facts of life.
Street lines not being repainted until people are injured or killed, environmental laws being repealed to appease Baby Bush's oil buddies, and draconian laws that don't get fixed until the lives of thousands are ruined or threatened with ruination are NOT "facts of life," they are the actions of an unprecedented period of corruption in high places here in America (worse than even that which followed the civil war), and the fact that nearly everyone on capital hill, democrat and republican alike, is little more than a whore for those who bribe them, legally and on the public record via campaign contributions (what some would erroneously call "above board", as though making a bribe technically legal somehow makes it OK and undoes the terrible harm it cuases our civil institutions).
It is a fact of corruption and politics in a degenerate government of, by, and for attorneys and their corporate masters, not a fact of a properly functioning democratic republic (which, believe it or not, the US had for a brief time), much less a "fact of life" in its more general sense.
}
}
}
} In the matter of SCO
} vs.
} Electric Cloud
}
}
}
Said defendent is alleged to have been running an unlicensed version of Lie-nucks, violating vaguely alluded to (but impossible to produce) 'intellectual property' alleged to belong to litigant, by virtue of having been written independently to superficially resemble an unpopular operating system the litigant overpayed to acquaire the rights of (c.f. UNIX), said litigant thusly excersizing their Constitutional Rights (tm) to sue uppity upstarts who dare make use of a legally engineered and freely provided system that competes with their abysmally unsuccessful, outdated, and buggy commercial offering.
Said litigant cites as prima facia evidence of infringement "a post to slashdot that indicated a successful deployment of the demonic system."
Defendents declined to comment, but did point out to the court that the daemon was a mascott for another, competing free operating system, and that perhaps counsel for the plaintiff would be so kind as to wipe the froth from his mouth and clarify.
I'm not afraid to admit that I download stuff like a madman, and that's the only reason I have my high speed connection.
I do to. But I do not violate copyright to do so.
I download Knoppix and Gentoo ISO images.
I rsync portage trees, download and compile source tarballs of hundreds of free(dom) programs quite often.
I use bittorrent (and occasionally gnutella) to download free movies (remember that Star Trek Fan Fiction Episode reported here on slashdot a few months ago?) and cool projects (machinima films, Creative Commons content, and so on).
I download a bunch of stuff, and I share a bunch of stuff, but every single Byte of it is legal and with the permission, nay, desire of the author.
Broadband and P2P are critical technologies for the dissemination of information in large quantities, which has vastly more legitimate uses than infringing ones, RIAA and MPAA rhetoric notwithstanding.
It may be that a group of infringers makes use of the technology, and perhaps even pushes its development some (as pr0n has been known to do with respect to web technology), but at the end of the day this stuff is critical infrastructure for people simply being able to move and access information effeciently and quickly, i.e. for people to simply get work done.
The fact that it makes the media cartels' business model obsolete is a delicious side effect, but it is ultimately a minor and insignificant one, much like the demise of Buggy whip manufacturers, compared to the benefits (much like the benefits of automobiles).
Not that this won't necessarilly stop a hopelessly corrupt and backward looking government (Washingtonians, of both the Democratic and Republican variety) from trying to pry the Genie back in the bottle as a way of paying back their Hollywood Butt Buddies (and wrecking untold financial and economic damage in the process)...
A quick HOWTO in turning a democracy into a plutocratic fascist state:
The outcry was initially the collection of the data. We were told not to worry, it is for private industry's use and, besides, we don't have a constitutional right to privacy in business.
Now the outcry is the use of data mining and aggregation to take the data thus collected and use it to profile our private lives in minute detail, effectively creating a defacto, if hybrid, police-surveillence state. And you dismiss it as "they're not creating any data that's not already there", as though that somehow negates the consiquences of such behavior.
The initial public outcry against the collection of private data on private individuals was right then, and it would be right today were it not for the deafening silence of those who have recognize a battle long since lost.
The public outcry against the sale and exchange of data between private corporations (and government agencies) was right then, and it is right today, even if the number of voices has declined over the years.
And the outcry against aggregating and mining this data to microanalyze our individual lives is justified, appropriate, and dismissed at our own peril. This isn't the start of a slippery slope we're talking about here, this is another in a long series of runs down it we're skiing
The RIAA doesn't want to prosecute everyone who shares files, they want more people to stop sharing files. The idea is that if for everyone they do go after 10 (or whatever) other people will stop.
... i.e. none whatsoever.
The idea is wrong, both ethically and practically. Ethically it is absolutely heinous to make some people pay an exaggerated price in order to frighten others. Indeed it could be argued that it is unconstitutional (14th amendment) to go around destroying some lives in order to 'communicate' a point to others (some are getting very, very harsh treatment, while others are being left alone). Practically, deterrence has been shown not to work, as we see every day with speeding and the woefully ineffectual and counterproductive War on Drugs(tm, Reagan & Daddy Bush). Indeed, deterrence of such crimes is only marginally effective at best, and more often ineffective altogether, particularly with teens, whose notorious "it will never happen to me" attitude is more or less hardwired into their biology and often remains intact well into adulthood. The entire youthful 'immortality syndrome' conspires against any such efforts at deterrence at several levels, something the RIAA and other cartels seem to be unable to grasp (talk about not knowing your market, or your customers).
A teenager sees a few thousand people get busted, out of several million, and (virtually every one) rightly concludes that they'll never be prosecuted. Indeed, any one filesharer is far more likely to be killed in a car accident than to be brought to trial by the cartels, and we've seen what a deterrence death by physical mutiliation resulting from a high speed automobile impact has on teen driving