Take a look at the home page for these folks, and read portions of the article. This isn't an attack on open source for it's own reason, but because Nader supports it. That's enough to convince them that it's bad.
(Now, I'll admit to a high correllation, but almost nothing is 1.0)
While the use of a word in the language does not prevent it from becoming a trademark, or being registered as a trademark (the two are not the same), a trademark cannot push aside such prior use.
I cannot obtain or register a trademark for "tennis racket" in any way that will stop a manufacturor from selling what we now know as tennis rackets under tha tname. I could, however, use it as a trademark for a microprocessor.
Similarly, no registration of "Open Source" can stop it's use in the manner prior to the registration.
The ownership & validity of a trademark come from its use, not registration. Registration is a way of notifying the world that someone claims a trademark.
It is not rare for a national or regional chain to have a properly registered trademark, and find, upon trying to expand in a new market, that there is already a business there with the same name which predates the registration. The chain's trademark is not valid in that region; the local owns it. The typical result is that the chain pays far more than the small business is worth to either buy it or to get it to change its name.
The trademark application, as i understand it, is for "Open Source." "open source" is a term that was in common use prior to the application, and could not receive a valid trademark in this context. It is also, as near as I can tell, what MS said.
I'm not going to touch the question of whether the "Open Source" trademark is valid . . .
>Seriously, there are people talking about doing >this, either intentionally, or as a side effect >of, another project.
There's also a general "distaste" that forms. I calmed down and stayed with debian (for the moment) when I found/etc/issue[.net] so that I could remove the phrase, but the "in your face" does create a subtle "friction" just from natural reaction. Probably not enough to switch in most cases, but enough to be a subtle influence on future behavior.
My new faculty system in the fall will probably get a *bsd instead of linux. The distataste isn't the primary reason (i generally prefer the "flavor" & philosophy of the bsd distributions), but I can't honestly say that it isn't a factor.
[I can't switch right due to the mutual hostility of the ext2 and ufs file systems. FreeBSD hangs about 20% of the time on boot if there is an extended partition full of linux logical partitios physically after it on the ide drive]
when they rever to "n alleged 'thin server appliance' "
It's obviously not going to be positive at that point . . .
I wish I could remember the old tale about the cub reporter getting the lecture on "alleged," "purportedly," etc. Before being sent to a society function.
"Mrs. Johsnon is allegedly the wife of Jack Johnson, and claims that Paul Smith is her father . .."
While, as an anti-trust attorney and economist, I don't find it clear that intel *is* a monopolist (I'm inclined to say they're not), if they are, it makes a difference here.
Assuming that they're enough of a monopolist to apply anti-trust principles, the best analogy would be to the (alleged) former Microsoft practice of "charge per unit made" rather than per copy used. For back of the envelope calculations, assume 90% market by MS at the time, and a $60 price. If MS offers $50/unit, it costs the OEM less to pay this, and completely cuts out DRI.
But the intel rules don't go this far; they seem to explicitly allow another "sub-line" which could be an identical machine with a non-intel processor. I don't see a problem here.
g77 still relies on gcc and c optimization. Also, it is incomplete. It seems to me that it is missing support for parts of f77, though I forget which. And it only has tidbits of f90, missing showstoppers such as operations on full matrices, WHERE, and other things that new fortran work is likeley to use on a daily basis.
Current projects that don't need either the modern fortran features or hard-core optimizing are unlikely to choose fortran for the language. Part of Fortran's ability to optimize come from what is left *out*, allowing the compiler to make assumptions that would range from invalid to fatal in c. Dynamic binding of functions, arrays of pointers (though f95 got these), and the like.
I went into it more fully href=http://www.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=99/03 /30/1344200&cid=915> here, but in addition to the federal law regarding release of virii, the law attributes the same intent to the natural consequences of your actions as the acts themselves. The use of the computers was a criminal trespass, vandalism, and a common law misdemeanor.
>The only way you can find your code subject to >its requirements is by either distributing GPL'd >code or by including GPL'd code into your >programs.
If this were the only way, that wouldn't be a problem. I don't believe that anybody objects to either of those. The problematic ways are:
a) I write software under a freer license. You use it, perhaps modifying it, and slap the GPL on my code as well as yours, taking advantage of my contribution but denying it to others (yes, they can take your changes under the GPL, but not under the free license that created it).
b) I want to write a free program, and would like to have it link to a GPL package. I must GPL it instead of using a freeer license
Check out the reports of interviews & appearances. He interrupts to "correct" those who say "Linux," and refuses to answer questions when someone doesn't use his version.
If your application really calls for fortran, gcc is not a substitute in that usage, nor are any of the free fortran-like programss (g77, f2c . ..). Fortran is generally used for it's numeric optimizations; while a good c compiler can sometimes produce comparable performance, this only happens after hand-optimization.
not nearly as much work as a superconductor
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which the article states is used in the design.
And Kremvax upset people, too . . .
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On April 1, 1984, an announcement that kremvax now had a connection to the usenet, with a cleverly forged retuirn to kremvax. In a parody of typical soviet propoganda of the time, it explaind that this was a peace initiative. Many were taken in, in spite of april 1 or 4/1 appearing in several locations, and the silliness of the idea. Several of them became angry at the mocking of peace/lost opportunity/lost chance/whatever. While UF wasn't *as* easy to detect, it is just as clearly a hoax; the legal positions cannot be real (without an even less probable coincedence of incompetence). I explained more fully in another comment
And Kremvax upset people, too . . .
on
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· Score: 1
On April 1, 1984, an announcement that kremvax now had a connection to the usenet, with a cleverly forged retuirn to kremvax. In a parody of typical soviet propoganda of the time, it explaind that this was a peace initiative.
Many were taken in, in spite of april 1 or 4/1 appearing in several locations, and the silliness of the idea. Several of them became angry at the mocking of peace/lost opportunity/lost chance/whatever.
While UF wasn't *as* easy to detect, it is just as clearly a hoax; the legal positions cannot be real (without an even less probable coincedence of incompetence). I explained more fully at http://www.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=99/04/01/1 225225&cid=1995
then all four lawyers and the judge failed the bar
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First hint: the demand for portrayal in "a more positive light." Large corporations hire expensive law firms that can afford lawyers that wouldn't toss something this silly in with a defamation claim.
Second hint: shutting down under advise of councel. The alleged claim is silly; the chances of advice this bad coming from all three lawyers is slim.
Third Hint: the injunction itself. In the U.S., there is no prior restraint, saving only dire security issues, such as shipping schedules during a declared war. Lesser security matters and defamation are left to the courts after the fact. While there was a rogue court order a year or two ago blocking a publication, it was overturned immediately.
Fourth hint: the secret plaintiff. You're not going to get an ex parte temporary restraining order in a sealed case. Won't happen.
OTOH, when I think of some of the lawyers nand a few of the judges from my practice . . .
Speaking as an antitrust attorney, but this isn't legal advice . . .
*If* the memo says what sparks says, and it's not just his comment on the effects, this is probably bigger news than anything in the DOJ antitrust trial:
>In one 1990 internal report, for >instance, Microsoft discussed >plans to "block out" DR-DOS >by pushing one computer >equipment manufacturer, >Hyundai Electronics, to sign a >license that required it to pay a >license fee for every machine it >shipped, regardless of whether >the computers ran on Microsoft >products. > The practice "acted as a tax for >any other viable alternative" to >DOS, Sparks said.
*If* the memos show that the tax or lockout was the intent, the fat lady's sung. This would be *use* of monopoly power, whether the underlying monopoly was legal or not. (This is not to say that the same thing might not be proved without explicit intent in the memos).
The only way that I can see for MS to win in the face of such memos is to successfully disassociate themselves from the memo (which is no small task).
And with such intent shown, the damages become staggerring. Drdos had about 10% of the market, and climbing. 10% of windows/dos revenue for the last 10 years, which is then tripled for antitrust violations, is a staggering figure . . .
There's web pages out there on this, but I don't remember what they are off the cuff.
Microsoft claims that the code existed only in test versions of windows, and that it gave the error/stopped if an "unknown & untested" dos was detected, and that this never made it into the shipping version.
I've never seen verification that this made it into shipping versions (doesn't mean it doesn't exist), but someone tried to debug the section of code that does it. He had to use a *hardware* debugger to freeze the machine. The code that does the check is encrypted & decoded on the fly, and is the *only* piece of windows 3.x that was encrypted this way.
If you're looking for me to argue that MS products are any good, look elsewhere:) The last ones I have *anything* non-negative to say about are word 5.1 and excel 4.
But harmful as the products may be, and even if they're more dangerous than the virus, the fundamental legal difference is permission (except for transmission of data to microsoft, which would also violate assorted laws)
First of all, some of the mailservers were put out of operation, and some sites had to disconnect mail service. That's harm.
Second, the change in machine state causing an undesirable activity is vandalism. Painting the next Mona Lisa on the side of a building would be vandalism, even if the owner was then able to sell the wall for $1M.
Third, while it may impose no additional cost to the victim, sending mail from his machine was an act with economic value; the improper use is theft and/or trespass.
Fourth, the message sent would be likely to cause problems between the sender & recipient.
It's not the *writing*, but the willful and knowing *release* of the virus that's a crime.
The Common Law, and I presume most other legal systems, attribute the same intent to the natural consequences of an act as the act itself. Even without any modern "computer" crimes, the release & spread created numerous criminal trespasses against chattels (improper contact with machine), vandalism, and (the law of the individual state permitting) a general common law misdemeanor.
Larceny (theft) probably wouldn't cut it in this case, as an element is the intent to permanently deprive.
Started the VCR a few minutes before the simpsons, put the board back in front of it to keep the toddling twins away, and let the kids finish watching the ballons on disney.
Sent them to bed, reemoved the board, and somehow they'd manage to stop it 20 minutes into the simpsons. . . . argh
$25 on PPV, over-under is three rounds. Straight up is 2:1 for taco.
A minor technical glitch is expected due to the GPL'ing of the fight, which requires you to share your television with RMS and that forever more, all commercials on your set become GPL'd, requiring the advertisor to fork over the product^H^H^H^H^H^H^H source code.
Slashdot Mirror
Take a look at the home page for these folks, and read portions of the article. This isn't an attack on open source for it's own reason, but because Nader supports it. That's enough to convince them that it's bad.
(Now, I'll admit to a high correllation, but almost nothing is 1.0)
No, I'm not.
While the use of a word in the language does not prevent it from becoming a trademark, or being registered as a trademark (the two are not the same), a trademark cannot push aside such prior use.
I cannot obtain or register a trademark for "tennis racket" in any way that will stop a manufacturor from selling what we now know as tennis rackets under tha tname. I could, however, use it as a trademark for a microprocessor.
Similarly, no registration of "Open Source" can stop it's use in the manner prior to the registration.
The ownership & validity of a trademark come from its use, not registration. Registration is a way of notifying the world that someone claims a trademark.
It is not rare for a national or regional chain to have a properly registered trademark, and find, upon trying to expand in a new market, that there is already a business there with the same name which predates the registration. The chain's trademark is not valid in that region; the local owns it. The typical result is that the chain pays far more than the small business is worth to either buy it or to get it to change its name.
The trademark application, as i understand it, is for "Open Source." "open source" is a term that was in common use prior to the application, and could not receive a valid trademark in this context. It is also, as near as I can tell, what MS said.
I'm not going to touch the question of whether the "Open Source" trademark is valid . . .
>Seriously, there are people talking about doing
/etc/issue[.net] so that I could remove the phrase, but the "in your face" does create a subtle "friction" just from natural reaction. Probably not enough to switch in most cases, but enough to be a subtle influence on future behavior.
>this, either intentionally, or as a side effect
>of, another project.
There's also a general "distaste" that forms. I calmed down and stayed with debian (for the moment) when I found
My new faculty system in the fall will probably get a *bsd instead of linux. The distataste isn't the primary reason (i generally prefer the "flavor" & philosophy of the bsd distributions), but I can't honestly say that it isn't a factor.
[I can't switch right due to the mutual hostility of the ext2 and ufs file systems. FreeBSD hangs about 20% of the time on boot if there is an extended partition full of linux logical partitios physically after it on the ide drive]
when they rever to "n alleged 'thin server appliance' "
."
It's obviously not going to be positive at that point . . .
I wish I could remember the old tale about the cub reporter getting the lecture on "alleged," "purportedly," etc. Before being sent to a society function.
"Mrs. Johsnon is allegedly the wife of Jack Johnson, and claims that Paul Smith is her father . .
Gore seems to have topped Quayle's hoof-in-mouth disease, and may even pass Reagan's.
Qualye at least realized he said stupid things (and later added, "I stand behind all my mistatements.")
Gore defends them, though. I'm becoming more convinced that the Gore in reality is pretty close to Quayle's media image . . .
While, as an anti-trust attorney and economist, I don't find it clear that intel *is* a monopolist (I'm inclined to say they're not), if they are, it makes a difference here.
Assuming that they're enough of a monopolist to apply anti-trust principles, the best analogy would be to the (alleged) former Microsoft practice of "charge per unit made" rather than per copy used. For back of the envelope calculations, assume 90% market by MS at the time, and a $60 price. If MS offers $50/unit, it costs the OEM less to pay this, and completely cuts out DRI.
But the intel rules don't go this far; they seem to explicitly allow another "sub-line" which could be an identical machine with a non-intel processor. I don't see a problem here.
hawk, esq.
>Open source software traces its roots to GNU, remember?
:) Open source predates GNU and RMS by decades.
That depends upon how short your memory is
Note: I am *not* writing this to knock g77.
g77 still relies on gcc and c optimization. Also, it is incomplete. It seems to me that it is missing support for parts of f77, though I forget which. And it only has tidbits of f90, missing showstoppers such as operations on full matrices, WHERE, and other things that new fortran work is likeley to use on a daily basis.
Current projects that don't need either the modern fortran features or hard-core optimizing are unlikely to choose fortran for the language. Part of Fortran's ability to optimize come from what is left *out*, allowing the compiler to make assumptions that would range from invalid to fatal in c. Dynamic binding of functions, arrays of pointers (though f95 got these), and the like.
I went into it more fully href=http://www.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=99/03 /30/1344200&cid=915> here, but in addition to the federal law regarding release of virii, the law attributes the same intent to the natural consequences of your actions as the acts themselves. The use of the computers was a criminal trespass, vandalism, and a common law misdemeanor.
>The only way you can find your code subject to
>its requirements is by either distributing GPL'd
>code or by including GPL'd code into your
>programs.
If this were the only way, that wouldn't be a problem. I don't believe that anybody objects to either of those. The problematic ways are:
a) I write software under a freer license. You use it, perhaps modifying it, and slap the GPL on my code as well as yours, taking advantage of my contribution but denying it to others (yes, they can take your changes under the GPL, but not under the free license that created it).
b) I want to write a free program, and would like to have it link to a GPL package. I must GPL it instead of using a freeer license
Not answering questions can be classified as simply bizarre/eccentric/whatever.
Interrupting another speaker is not free speech, but the interference with the other speaker's speech.
Check out the reports of interviews & appearances. He interrupts to "correct" those who say "Linux," and refuses to answer questions when someone doesn't use his version.
If your application really calls for fortran, gcc is not a substitute in that usage, nor are any of the free fortran-like programss (g77, f2c . . .). Fortran is generally used for it's numeric optimizations; while a good c compiler can sometimes produce comparable performance, this only happens after hand-optimization.
which the article states is used in the design.
On April 1, 1984, an announcement that kremvax now had a connection to the usenet, with a cleverly forged retuirn to kremvax. In a parody of typical soviet propoganda of the time, it explaind that this was a peace initiative. Many were taken in, in spite of april 1 or 4/1 appearing in several locations, and the silliness of the idea. Several of them became angry at the mocking of peace/lost opportunity/lost chance/whatever. While UF wasn't *as* easy to detect, it is just as clearly a hoax; the legal positions cannot be real (without an even less probable coincedence of incompetence). I explained more fully in another comment
On April 1, 1984, an announcement that kremvax now had a connection to the usenet, with a cleverly forged retuirn to kremvax. In a parody of typical soviet propoganda of the time, it explaind that this was a peace initiative.
1 225225&cid=1995
Many were taken in, in spite of april 1 or 4/1 appearing in several locations, and the silliness of the idea. Several of them became angry at the mocking of peace/lost opportunity/lost chance/whatever.
While UF wasn't *as* easy to detect, it is just as clearly a hoax; the legal positions cannot be real (without an even less probable coincedence of incompetence). I explained more fully at http://www.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=99/04/01/
First hint: the demand for portrayal in "a more positive light." Large corporations hire expensive law firms that can afford lawyers that wouldn't toss something this silly in with a defamation claim.
Second hint: shutting down under advise of councel. The alleged claim is silly; the chances of advice this bad coming from all three lawyers is slim.
Third Hint: the injunction itself. In the U.S., there is no prior restraint, saving only dire security issues, such as shipping schedules during a declared war. Lesser security matters and defamation are left to the courts after the fact. While there was a rogue court order a year or two ago blocking a publication, it was overturned immediately.
Fourth hint: the secret plaintiff. You're not going to get an ex parte temporary restraining order in a sealed case. Won't happen.
OTOH, when I think of some of the lawyers nand a few of the judges from my practice . . .
Speaking as an antitrust attorney, but this isn't legal advice . . .
*If* the memo says what sparks says, and it's not just his comment on the effects, this is probably bigger news than anything in the DOJ antitrust trial:
>In one 1990 internal report, for
>instance, Microsoft discussed
>plans to "block out" DR-DOS
>by pushing one computer
>equipment manufacturer,
>Hyundai Electronics, to sign a
>license that required it to pay a
>license fee for every machine it
>shipped, regardless of whether
>the computers ran on Microsoft
>products.
> The practice "acted as a tax for
>any other viable alternative" to
>DOS, Sparks said.
*If* the memos show that the tax or lockout was the intent, the fat lady's sung. This would be *use* of monopoly power, whether the underlying monopoly was legal or not. (This is not to say that the same thing might not be proved without explicit intent in the memos).
The only way that I can see for MS to win in the face of such memos is to successfully disassociate themselves from the memo (which is no small task).
And with such intent shown, the damages become staggerring. Drdos had about 10% of the market, and climbing. 10% of windows/dos revenue for the last 10 years, which is then tripled for antitrust violations, is a staggering figure . . .
There's web pages out there on this, but I don't remember what they are off the cuff.
Microsoft claims that the code existed only in test versions of windows, and that it gave the error/stopped if an "unknown & untested" dos was detected, and that this never made it into the shipping version.
I've never seen verification that this made it into shipping versions (doesn't mean it doesn't exist), but someone tried to debug the section of code that does it. He had to use a *hardware* debugger to freeze the machine. The code that does the check is encrypted & decoded on the fly, and is the *only* piece of windows 3.x that was encrypted this way.
This isn't legal advise, etc.
hawk, esq.
If you're looking for me to argue that MS products are any good, look elsewhere :) The last ones I have *anything* non-negative to say about are word 5.1 and excel 4.
But harmful as the products may be, and even if they're more dangerous than the virus, the fundamental legal difference is permission (except for transmission of data to microsoft, which would also violate assorted laws)
hawk, esq.
First of all, some of the mailservers were put out of operation, and some sites had to disconnect mail service. That's harm.
Second, the change in machine state causing an undesirable activity is vandalism. Painting the next Mona Lisa on the side of a building would be vandalism, even if the owner was then able to sell the wall for $1M.
Third, while it may impose no additional cost to the victim, sending mail from his machine was an act with economic value; the improper use is theft and/or trespass.
Fourth, the message sent would be likely to cause problems between the sender & recipient.
I see no way in which the virus *isn't* harmful.
hawk, esq.
It's not the *writing*, but the willful and knowing *release* of the virus that's a crime.
The Common Law, and I presume most other legal systems, attribute the same intent to the natural consequences of an act as the act itself. Even without any modern "computer" crimes, the release & spread created numerous criminal trespasses against chattels (improper contact with machine), vandalism, and (the law of the individual state permitting) a general common law misdemeanor.
Larceny (theft) probably wouldn't cut it in this case, as an element is the intent to permanently deprive.
hawk, esq.
And no, this isn't legal advice.
Started the VCR a few minutes before the simpsons, put the board back in front of it to keep the toddling twins away, and let the kids finish watching the ballons on disney.
Sent them to bed, reemoved the board, and somehow they'd manage to stop it 20 minutes into the simpsons. . . . argh
>Its Taco vs. Katz.
$25 on PPV, over-under is three rounds. Straight up is 2:1 for taco.
A minor technical glitch is expected due to the GPL'ing of the fight, which requires you to share your television with RMS and that forever more, all commercials on your set become GPL'd, requiring the advertisor to fork over the product^H^H^H^H^H^H^H source code.
*sigh* time to get to work.