I'm not sure it's as cut and dried as AC thhinks it is. M$ wants you to believe it is, but the whole point of the thread in question is that they are trying to make a new legal status that doesn't exist yet, and will possibly (hopefully) be struck down. I read that thread, and one of the issues involved was that M$ was saying this was a trade secret. not that it was copyrighted. IANAL, but once a trade secret is out, I'm not sure there is a copyright. If M$ can find someone who actualy acknowledged the agreement and then sent out the file, they would have an open and shut case. in the other instances, they might still have a case, but not necessarily open and shut. I understood that it was posted as "Open Source" but with the NDA. IMHO, that means that if you go through their site, you're bound. But if you got it somewhere else, Someone, somewhere may very well have broken the law, but you're just distributing open source code that you never promised not to. If you want a test case, get someone who posted the source but who didn't see the NDA to stand up. There's a real possibility there. I would hope that/. would keep them up. I feel pretty confident M$ doesn't have a legal leg to stand on. But then, I thought the same thing about a lot of similar suits. The courts seem to be putting the rights of corporations above the rights of people lately. If it looks like you can't win, keep/. up so we can keep fighting somewhere else.
This is an excelent idea! I would even ask Why wait until then. One of the big problems facing teachers is that for the most part, they don't know how to use this stuff. Mostly becasue, if they were into techie stuff they would probably be doing that instead of teaching. And they generaly really appreciate voulonteers.
I would bet that most principals who recieved a phone call saying sometthing like "I have x computer skills. Is there a way I can help at your school?" would jump up and down with joy. Public schools really do have a lot of problems, but the ones where the public actualy gets involved have the least.
I asked my wife (Jr. High school teacher) why the school never took advantage of the tax incentives for companies to give computer equipment to schools. She said that it would cost too much to hire someone to sort it all out. Now there's something even a/.er with no social skills could do. Linux is a great platform for making good use of old equipment. They aren't all that obsolete once you remove the bloatware
Volunteering is also great advocacy. You get to introduce people just thinking of entering technical fields, or maybe not even thinking about it, to an alternative to the Windows mindset which is probably all they have seen up to this point. All the problems "Old hackers" see in the script kiddies could go away if the old hackers would make themselves available to the kiddies, and teach them how to do things right.
Hipocrisy disclaimer: I've only volunteered maybe 6 hours in the past year to My wife's school. Mostly becasue she teaches deaf kids and I can't sign worth beans. But I've promised to come in once a week and teach a programming class to the kids who are interested as soon as she teaches me enough ASL that she's not embarassed to be seen with me. And handing me a screwdriver is simply asking for trouble.
I am contatly defending the craft of programming to my "artistic" friends who seem to have all decided that since what I make is useful and involves (eek!) math, it must obviously not be "creative". Looks like I have another Steve McConnel book to buy. If it's even close to as good as Code Complete, it's well worth it.
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I'm not sure it's as cut and dried as AC thhinks it is. M$ wants you to believe it is, but the whole point of the thread in question is that they are trying to make a new legal status that doesn't exist yet, and will possibly (hopefully) be struck down. I read that thread, and one of the issues involved was that M$ was saying this was a trade secret. not that it was copyrighted. IANAL, but once a trade secret is out, I'm not sure there is a copyright. If M$ can find someone who actualy acknowledged the agreement and then sent out the file, they would have an open and shut case. in the other instances, they might still have a case, but not necessarily open and shut. I understood that it was posted as "Open Source" but with the NDA. IMHO, that means that if you go through their site, you're bound. But if you got it somewhere else, Someone, somewhere may very well have broken the law, but you're just distributing open source code that you never promised not to. If you want a test case, get someone who posted the source but who didn't see the NDA to stand up. There's a real possibility there. I would hope that /. would keep them up. I feel pretty confident M$ doesn't have a legal leg to stand on. But then, I thought the same thing about a lot of similar suits. The courts seem to be putting the rights of corporations above the rights of people lately. If it looks like you can't win, keep /. up so we can keep fighting somewhere else.
I would bet that most principals who recieved a phone call saying sometthing like "I have x computer skills. Is there a way I can help at your school?" would jump up and down with joy. Public schools really do have a lot of problems, but the ones where the public actualy gets involved have the least.
I asked my wife (Jr. High school teacher) why the school never took advantage of the tax incentives for companies to give computer equipment to schools. She said that it would cost too much to hire someone to sort it all out. Now there's something even a /.er with no social skills could do. Linux is a great platform for making good use of old equipment. They aren't all that obsolete once you remove the bloatware
Volunteering is also great advocacy. You get to introduce people just thinking of entering technical fields, or maybe not even thinking about it, to an alternative to the Windows mindset which is probably all they have seen up to this point. All the problems "Old hackers" see in the script kiddies could go away if the old hackers would make themselves available to the kiddies, and teach them how to do things right.
Hipocrisy disclaimer: I've only volunteered maybe 6 hours in the past year to My wife's school. Mostly becasue she teaches deaf kids and I can't sign worth beans. But I've promised to come in once a week and teach a programming class to the kids who are interested as soon as she teaches me enough ASL that she's not embarassed to be seen with me. And handing me a screwdriver is simply asking for trouble.
I am contatly defending the craft of programming to my "artistic" friends who seem to have all decided that since what I make is useful and involves (eek!) math, it must obviously not be "creative". Looks like I have another Steve McConnel book to buy. If it's even close to as good as Code Complete, it's well worth it.