Some personal information must be collected in order to provide the services and functions we feel our viewers may desire. All of this disclosure of information is voluntary on the part of the user. The exact information collected is always kept to a minimum depending on the needs of the transaction(s) conducted between TopClick and the user.
What jumped out at me was "Viewer" and "Transaction(s)". What transactions? searching? They also reference opt-in services as well as future chat rooms, forums, message boards etc.. Who knows, they're Canadian 'eh
Googlesque and very quick. The interface is simple as any out there and with no fingerprints. Privacy as a mainstream development goal? Nice change. I wonder if the folks over at doubleclick and ICQ are paying attention. Their privacy statement page says "Your privacy is our TOP priority." they even address childrens privacy specificaly. Nice approach. The catch is that they withhold the right to share the collected data with their business partners. Wonder what implications that will have in the longer view.
I'll support the site, hopefully this is the beginning of a trend.
Point well taken. . . However, M$ actually hasn't been found guilty of being a monopoly yet. There was a finding of fact ruled on by a judge, that does not make them guilty with imminent punishment. I think it's safe to day that that day is coming. And they know it. They are currently in a form of arbitration with the DOJ. If they can prove, act or justify to an extent they they are going to change their monopolistic ways, the DOJ HAS to listen and this WILL have an impact on the possible breakup of M$. They are/will do anything they can to protect their domain and keep their shareholder value as high as they can. If this means tossing a few meaningless morsels to the open source community to save a much bigger % of marketshare and stock value, they'll do it. Seems like a pretty good defense to me.
They are looking at CE because this way they can tell DOJ "we are seriously looking at open sourcing our products now". CE is the least impacting product they could do this with, if they actually move ahead and release the source. Who would care about hacking CE? Palms killing them anyway. If they have even one open product they get leverage with DOJ and say, hey we're the new M$, please be nice and give us a break, look we support open source and open competition.
This has to be a public relations move only. As they have stated in the past they will not turn CE or anything else into an open source project and release under GPL. They are only planning to make CE available to embedded licenses. This is not Open, this is not GPL, this is not even what Sun did. The only reason they even leaked this is to get a little public feel for the possibilities, and this is enough to soften the DOJ. Personally I don't beleive any of it.
Radionewspaper: "Arrival of the afternoon 'radio newspaper,' on schedule at 2 P.M., rain or shine, is the signal for the folks at home to gather around the facsimile receiver to see the cartoons, news photos, etc., that regular radio programs leave to the imagination."
Todays internet: "Arrival of the afternoon 'internet newspaper,' on schedule at 2 P.M., rain or shine, is the signal for the folks at home to gather around the Windows 98 box to see the cartoons, news photos, pron, warez etc., that regular programs leave to the imagination."
So very true, to the not support part. Many companies hang on the this type of stuff for eons, just to say we were there first, many inventors hold on to it as well, to dispute Big Co.'s claim they came up with it. Reminds me of the guys that sued Chrysler. He was an inventor and came up with the delayed wiper mechanism. He tryed to sell it to the big car companies and when thay all said no, he gave up and went on to something else. This was like 1935. In the late eighties, he sued Chrysler and won, the same mechanism he had locked away in his basement was the same one they "announced" somwhere around 1973.
We did the same with audio cassettes, for storage, you could buy the equivelant of a 30 minute audio cassette labeled "Data Storage Gold" or some bs like that for 15 bucks, or you could just get a 90 minute audio cassette for.25
I like the history aspect to some of it. Some technologies just faded out for no apparent reason, maybe just a little ahead of their time, like the BetaMax for instance. Just kidding. Seriously It's cool to look at the motivations behind some of that stuff, unfortunately, just that one site would take a week to get through.
I'm glad they included this. AT&T developed it was the forerunner to the fax machine, although so crude it never took off and this was back around 1920. One that I thought would be on the list was the "Radio Newspaper" developed by a St. Louis newspaper, can't remember which one. Essentially It was newspaper content on demand broadcast over radio waves, a high freq. receiver in the home would tune to a specific freq and print out, (How I don't know) a customized newspaper. People would phone in their requests for comics x,y, and z, sports on team x etc. Someone at the broadcast station would customize the profile to just send these items. Pretty cool stuff, sort of a clunky internet, the cool part is they had it in place around the end of 1929 and left it operational for 10 years. Don't know why they canned the idea, they had something like 15,000 customers.
Honestly I'd be a little scared to mirror early and often. AOL hooked up with TW has some pretty big legal teeth, although there are good arguments, honestly I wouldn't want the hassle of being targeted by them. Having to defend against a big mega corporation could be devestating finacially, even if you did win.
If they get a little cheaper, it would be faster, and more than likely cheaper in the long run just to Mirror the drives rather than just dumping to tape. Although I would end up not using the mirrored drive as a true mirror, If I was lucky enough to have two 75Gb drives, I'd use 'em collectively.
I know it was fairly lame, but with the article in mind, I thought the bullet, 4. The windshield would have an extra dark tint to protect the driver from seeing better cars. was fairly relevant. Win some, ya lose some. Oh well, Fridays almost here.
"I think in the end they decided they didn't have enough time to pull it together," Campbell said.
The first couple got pulled together in a matter of weeks. I know with the increased size of the event it would be somewhat tougher, but not impossible. So I think that the reason is a little weak. I think it more than likely has to do with the money it would take to pull it off. Many more RH type companies in the mix now, along with many more large players like HP and IBM. I'll bet RH is hoping someone else just picks it up and RH can go back to being an exibitor rather than sponsor, it's substantially cheaper for essentially the same exposure.
1. The AOL car would have a TOP speed of 40 MPH yet have a 200 MPH speedometer. 2. The AOL car would come equipped with a NEW and fantastic 8-Track tape player. 3. The car would often refuse to start and owners would just expect this and try again later. 4. The windshield would have an extra dark tint to protect the driver from seeing better cars. 5. AOL would sell the same model car year after year and claim it's the NEW model. 6. Every now and then the brakes on the AOL car would just lock-up for no apparent reason. 7. The AOL car would have a very plain body style but would have lots' of pretty colors and lights. 8. The AOL car would have only one door but it would have 5 extra seats for family members. 9. Anyone dissatisfied could return the car but must continue to make payments for 6 months. 10. If an AOL car owner received 3 parking tickets AOL would take the car off of them. 11. The AOL car would have an AOL Cell phone that can only place calls to other AOL car cell phones. 12. AOL would pass a new car law forbidding AOL car owners from driving near other car dealerships. 13. AOL car mechanics would have no experience in car repair. 14. Younger AOL car drivers would be able to make other peoples AOL cars stall just for fun. 15. It would not be possible to upgrade your AOL car stereo. 16. AOL cars would be forced to use AOL gas that cost 20% more and gave worse mileage. 17. Anytime an AOL car owner saw another AOL car owner he would wonder, M/F/age? 18. It would be common for AOL car owners to divorce just to marry another AOL car owner. 19. AOL car owners would always claim to be older or younger than they really are. 20. AOL cars would come with a steering wheel and AOL would claim no other cars have them. 21. Every time you close the door on the AOL car it would say, good-bye.
If it's this easy, I wonder how it will impact the US encryption import policy on hassles of getting it released into the us. They went to all that effort to make "bulletproof" encryption in and out of memory. Seems like such a waste of time, both on Sonys' behalf and on the US govt. for making such a stink. If everyone knows it'll be reverse engineered anyway, why all the fuss in the first place?
1. If you can find someone else's unique ID (easy because they used the phone number), you can get them in trouble by impersonating them to websites.
Isn't this sort of a major problem now? ie: Hemos., Signal.11,.Jesser
2. Websites can track you without cookies - and this includes tracking across websites. No, Sprint needs to set up a proxy that gives a number unique to each website by which Sprint can track abuser
True, but what would be Sprints motivation? They really don't care, there is not revenue impact either way, just more money thown into development. Sort of like all the rest of the bigger wireless and LD companies on the web. Coninuing to expand on legacy systems, with bad architecture because it's cheaper.
Unfortunately I sort of agree with you here. The thought that kept coming to mind when I was reading the comments was, why did the DMCA publish these in the first place? Are they sincere in the effort, or are they just doing PR diligence. I really feel it's the latter. Making a token effort to say we did our research, got input from all sides, etc. In the long run I think the DMCA is going to do whatever the big corporate mongers want them to do. Quite depressing.
. We're not trying to make any money on this... We're just providing a good service.
Although I like what you guys are doing, The "Were not in it for the money comment,doesn't seem all that innocent and charitable, according to your press releases
KC computer firm gets $30 million in venture capital Talley said the $30 million investment would allow the company to go into a "hypergrowth" mode and hire top industry professionals. In addition, "strategic acquisitions are very important to us, and this will allow us to pay in cash if we have to," he said. Linux firm hopes cash infusion will steer it to IPO "As things move along, we certainly see the professional services side moving up to 50 percent
Again, I like what you guys are doing and Linsight overall, good services and you have picked out your own nitch market, but being owned by Atipa, with 30M in venture capital to repay, the revenue has got to come from somewhere. The division your in my be more of a marketing branch for brand awareness etc., but this still goes back to revenue generating efforts. You may not see the marketing impact from where you sit, but beleive me it's there. I can't see Atipas VC's giving up 30M so you and Wells could code for the good of the Linux community, your are part of the revenue stream.
Couple of thoughts, 1) Under DMCA I thought that the breaking of the ecription was permitted as in the Connectix case. Although the physical apps were different, the reverse engineering aspect was the same. I do agree however that in the Sony vs. Connectix case, Connectix seemed to have thought the implications through prior to their interoperability efforts.
2) Haselton was performing interoperability testing. Interoperability with what?, misc. everyday sites on the web, hence all the.edu and such. Although I'd be curious to know how many worked correctly, and what metrics were used as a baseline. Numbers can be misleading when tweaked this way or that.
3) DMCA does criminalize action we take for granted. You put it plain and clear. Very scary stuff if we don't get the law changed soon.
The DMCA does permit cracking devices to conduct encryption research for the purpose of interoperability and to test computer security systems. Fair Use. This is what Haselton has done, plain and simple. Reverse engineering is addressed in the DMCA for certain areas. Haselton was fully within the realm of information security validation.
Remember when Sony filed suit against Connectix for essentially the same thing? End result was Sonly lost because the court of appeals stated that Connectix was in compliance with the DMCA and that this use of reverse engineering is protected under fair use.
WASHINGTON, D.C.-The Institute for the Investigation of irregular Internet Phenomena announced today that many Slashdot posters are becoming infected by a new virus that causes them to believe without question every groundless story, legend, and dire warning that shows up on the site. The Gullibility Virus, as it is called, apparently makes people believe and forward copies of silly hoaxes relating to E-Mail Sony Playstation releases, Slashdot, viruses, get-rich-quick schemes, and conspiracy theories. These are not just readers of tabloids or people who buy lottery tickets based on fortune cookie numbers, & quotes; a spokesman said. Most are otherwise normal people, who would laugh at the same stories if told to them by a stranger on a street corner; However, once these same people become infected with the Gullibility Virus, they believe anything they read on the Internet.My immunity to tall tales and bizarre claims is all gone, reported one weeping victim,.I believe every warning message and sick child story my friends forward to me, even though most of the messages are anonymous. Internet users are urged to examine themselves for symptoms of the virus, which include the following
* the willingness to believe improbable stories without thinking * the willingness to post meaningless comments on the hoax at Slashdot * the urge to forward multiple copies of such stories to others * a lack of desire to take three minutes to check to see if a story is true.
A. C. is an example of someone recently infected. He told one reporter,I read on the Net that the major ingredient in almost all shampoos makes your hair fall out, so I've stopped using shampoo.; When told about the Gullibility Virus,A . C. said he would stop reading e-mail, so that he would not become infected. President Clinton has been advised by the National Health Council. He has had an emergency session with former presidents Bush, Reagan, Carter, Ford, and Lincoln. All agreed he should not quarantine the country. This is not being reported in the major news media to avoid panic. Anyone with symptoms is urged to seek help immediately. Experts recommend that at the first feelings of gullibility, Internet users rush to their favorite search engine and look up the item tempting them to thoughtless credence. Most hoaxes, legends, and tall tales have been widely discussed and exposed by the Internet community. Many companies have internal support groups to help employees minimize the impact of this terrible virus
Forward this message to all your friends right away! Don't think about it! This is not a chain letter post! This story is true! Don't check it out! This story is so timely, there is no date on it! This story is so important, we're using lots of exclamation points!!! For every message you forward to some unsuspecting person, the Home for the Hopelessly Gullible will donate ten cents to itself.
We will be spinning merrily off to form a separate company-- Slackware Linux, Inc.
That's somewhat disturbing. I immediately had visions of the Slackware core team skipping and twirling down the street, all decked out in pastel colors, taped glasses and little pointy elf shoes. Ugh, I need more coffee.
Interesting that he phrased the answer to who "Owns" BSD in this manner.
FreeBSD is "owned" by the FreeBSD Project, which is made up of the core team, the committers, and all the other people who write the code. No company can ever own FreeBSD, anymore than a company can own Linux. The FreeBSD Foundation will be an independent non-profit organization. It will be controlled by a board of directors, which will contain some members of the core team. The Foundation and the core team are still separate entities going forward.
Non-profit, not for profit's and foundations essentially mean that the company CAN be for profit, the not for profit part comes from the stipulation that the board members are not allowed to profit. With his answer he clearly and firmly syas the corporate structure surrounding FreeBSD is structured in such a way that it will keep FreeBSD free. The foundation of keeping it in the spirit of open source is firmly in place. Got to hand it to Walnut Creek et all, they seem to be doing everything right. Makes me wonder with models like this that obviously work, and work well, why do fly by nights' like LinuxOne keep driving down the wrong path. Reminds me of that far side cartoon with the Midville School for the Gifted. Has a guy trying to go in the front door, pushing real hard. Right above his head there is a big sign that says "Pull". Good to see that the folks behind FreeBSD are not pushing on the pull door.
Slashdot Mirror
The TopClick Privacy Resource Center
A central point for thousands of links to online privacy information and resources that includes:
Links to hundreds of on-line privacy sites that offer information and advice.
Daily news and breaking stories on the companies that create Privacy Headlines.
A Privacy Bookstore.
A Privacy Market Place that contains links to product solutions that protect your personal privacy.
Links to consumer surveys and research reports on privacy issues.
Links to on-line advocacy groups and government organizations who are concerned about privacy.
Looks like the beginnings of a personal privacy clearinghouse
Some personal information must be collected in order to provide the services and functions we feel our viewers may desire. All of this disclosure of information is voluntary on the part of the user. The exact information collected is always kept to a minimum depending on the needs of the transaction(s) conducted between TopClick and the user.
What jumped out at me was "Viewer" and "Transaction(s)". What transactions? searching? They also reference opt-in services as well as future chat rooms, forums, message boards etc.. Who knows, they're Canadian 'eh
I'll support the site, hopefully this is the beginning of a trend.
Point well taken. . . However, M$ actually hasn't been found guilty of being a monopoly yet. There was a finding of fact ruled on by a judge, that does not make them guilty with imminent punishment. I think it's safe to day that that day is coming. And they know it. They are currently in a form of arbitration with the DOJ. If they can prove, act or justify to an extent they they are going to change their monopolistic ways, the DOJ HAS to listen and this WILL have an impact on the possible breakup of M$. They are/will do anything they can to protect their domain and keep their shareholder value as high as they can. If this means tossing a few meaningless morsels to the open source community to save a much bigger % of marketshare and stock value, they'll do it. Seems like a pretty good defense to me.
They are looking at CE because this way they can tell DOJ "we are seriously looking at open sourcing our products now". CE is the least impacting product they could do this with, if they actually move ahead and release the source. Who would care about hacking CE? Palms killing them anyway. If they have even one open product they get leverage with DOJ and say, hey we're the new M$, please be nice and give us a break, look we support open source and open competition.
This has to be a public relations move only. As they have stated in the past they will not turn CE or anything else into an open source project and release under GPL. They are only planning to make CE available to embedded licenses. This is not Open, this is not GPL, this is not even what Sun did. The only reason they even leaked this is to get a little public feel for the possibilities, and this is enough to soften the DOJ. Personally I don't beleive any of it.
Radionewspaper: "Arrival of the afternoon 'radio newspaper,' on schedule at 2 P.M., rain or shine, is the signal for the folks at home to gather around the facsimile receiver to see the cartoons, news photos, etc., that regular radio programs leave to the imagination."
Todays internet: "Arrival of the afternoon 'internet newspaper,' on schedule at 2 P.M., rain or shine, is the signal for the folks at home to gather around the Windows 98 box to see the cartoons, news photos, pron, warez etc., that regular programs leave to the imagination."
So very true, to the not support part. Many companies hang on the this type of stuff for eons, just to say we were there first, many inventors hold on to it as well, to dispute Big Co.'s claim they came up with it. Reminds me of the guys that sued Chrysler. He was an inventor and came up with the delayed wiper mechanism. He tryed to sell it to the big car companies and when thay all said no, he gave up and went on to something else. This was like 1935. In the late eighties, he sued Chrysler and won, the same mechanism he had locked away in his basement was the same one they "announced" somwhere around 1973.
We did the same with audio cassettes, for storage, you could buy the equivelant of a 30 minute audio cassette labeled "Data Storage Gold" or some bs like that for 15 bucks, or you could just get a 90 minute audio cassette for .25
I like the history aspect to some of it. Some technologies just faded out for no apparent reason, maybe just a little ahead of their time, like the BetaMax for instance. Just kidding. Seriously It's cool to look at the motivations behind some of that stuff, unfortunately, just that one site would take a week to get through.
I'm glad they included this. AT&T developed it was the forerunner to the fax machine, although so crude it never took off and this was back around 1920. One that I thought would be on the list was the "Radio Newspaper" developed by a St. Louis newspaper, can't remember which one. Essentially It was newspaper content on demand broadcast over radio waves, a high freq. receiver in the home would tune to a specific freq and print out, (How I don't know) a customized newspaper. People would phone in their requests for comics x,y, and z, sports on team x etc. Someone at the broadcast station would customize the profile to just send these items. Pretty cool stuff, sort of a clunky internet, the cool part is they had it in place around the end of 1929 and left it operational for 10 years. Don't know why they canned the idea, they had something like 15,000 customers.
Honestly I'd be a little scared to mirror early and often. AOL hooked up with TW has some pretty big legal teeth, although there are good arguments, honestly I wouldn't want the hassle of being targeted by them. Having to defend against a big mega corporation could be devestating finacially, even if you did win.
If they get a little cheaper, it would be faster, and more than likely cheaper in the long run just to Mirror the drives rather than just dumping to tape. Although I would end up not using the mirrored drive as a true mirror, If I was lucky enough to have two 75Gb drives, I'd use 'em collectively.
I know it was fairly lame, but with the article in mind, I thought the bullet,
4. The windshield would have an extra dark tint to protect the driver from seeing better cars.
was fairly relevant. Win some, ya lose some. Oh well, Fridays almost here.
The first couple got pulled together in a matter of weeks. I know with the increased size of the event it would be somewhat tougher, but not impossible. So I think that the reason is a little weak. I think it more than likely has to do with the money it would take to pull it off. Many more RH type companies in the mix now, along with many more large players like HP and IBM. I'll bet RH is hoping someone else just picks it up and RH can go back to being an exibitor rather than sponsor, it's substantially cheaper for essentially the same exposure.
1. The AOL car would have a TOP speed of 40 MPH yet have a 200 MPH speedometer.
2. The AOL car would come equipped with a NEW and fantastic 8-Track tape player.
3. The car would often refuse to start and owners would just expect this and try again later.
4. The windshield would have an extra dark tint to protect the driver from seeing better cars.
5. AOL would sell the same model car year after year and claim it's the NEW model.
6. Every now and then the brakes on the AOL car would just lock-up for no apparent reason.
7. The AOL car would have a very plain body style but would have lots' of pretty colors and lights.
8. The AOL car would have only one door but it would have 5 extra seats for family members.
9. Anyone dissatisfied could return the car but must continue to make payments for 6 months.
10. If an AOL car owner received 3 parking tickets AOL would take the car off of them.
11. The AOL car would have an AOL Cell phone that can only place calls to other AOL car cell phones.
12. AOL would pass a new car law forbidding AOL car owners from driving near other car dealerships.
13. AOL car mechanics would have no experience in car repair.
14. Younger AOL car drivers would be able to make other peoples AOL cars stall just for fun.
15. It would not be possible to upgrade your AOL car stereo.
16. AOL cars would be forced to use AOL gas that cost 20% more and gave worse mileage.
17. Anytime an AOL car owner saw another AOL car owner he would wonder, M/F/age?
18. It would be common for AOL car owners to divorce just to marry another AOL car owner.
19. AOL car owners would always claim to be older or younger than they really are.
20. AOL cars would come with a steering wheel and AOL would claim no other cars have them.
21. Every time you close the door on the AOL car it would say, good-bye.
If it's this easy, I wonder how it will impact the US encryption import policy on hassles of getting it released into the us. They went to all that effort to make "bulletproof" encryption in and out of memory. Seems like such a waste of time, both on Sonys' behalf and on the US govt. for making such a stink. If everyone knows it'll be reverse engineered anyway, why all the fuss in the first place?
1. If you can find someone else's unique ID (easy because they used the phone number), you can get them in trouble by impersonating them to websites.
Isn't this sort of a major problem now? ie: Hemos., Signal.11, .Jesser
2. Websites can track you without cookies - and this includes tracking across websites.
No, Sprint needs to set up a proxy that gives a number unique to each website by which Sprint can track abuser
True, but what would be Sprints motivation? They really don't care, there is not revenue impact either way, just more money thown into development. Sort of like all the rest of the bigger wireless and LD companies on the web. Coninuing to expand on legacy systems, with bad architecture because it's cheaper.
Unfortunately I sort of agree with you here. The thought that kept coming to mind when I was reading the comments was, why did the DMCA publish these in the first place? Are they sincere in the effort, or are they just doing PR diligence. I really feel it's the latter. Making a token effort to say we did our research, got input from all sides, etc. In the long run I think the DMCA is going to do whatever the big corporate mongers want them to do. Quite depressing.
Although I like what you guys are doing, The "Were not in it for the money comment,doesn't seem all that innocent and charitable, according to your press releases
KC computer firm gets $30 million in venture capital
Talley said the $30 million investment would allow the company to go into a "hypergrowth" mode and hire top industry professionals. In addition, "strategic acquisitions are very important to us, and this will allow us to pay in cash if we have to," he said.
Linux firm hopes cash infusion will steer it to IPO
"As things move along, we certainly see the professional services side moving up to 50 percent
Again, I like what you guys are doing and Linsight overall, good services and you have picked out your own nitch market, but being owned by Atipa, with 30M in venture capital to repay, the revenue has got to come from somewhere. The division your in my be more of a marketing branch for brand awareness etc., but this still goes back to revenue generating efforts. You may not see the marketing impact from where you sit, but beleive me it's there. I can't see Atipas VC's giving up 30M so you and Wells could code for the good of the Linux community, your are part of the revenue stream.
Couple of thoughts,
1) Under DMCA I thought that the breaking of the ecription was permitted as in the Connectix case. Although the physical apps were different, the reverse engineering aspect was the same. I do agree however that in the Sony vs. Connectix case, Connectix seemed to have thought the implications through prior to their interoperability efforts.
2) Haselton was performing interoperability testing. Interoperability with what?, misc. everyday sites on the web, hence all the .edu and such. Although I'd be curious to know how many worked correctly, and what metrics were used as a baseline. Numbers can be misleading when tweaked this way or that.
3) DMCA does criminalize action we take for granted. You put it plain and clear. Very scary stuff if we don't get the law changed soon.
Regards,
Ernie
Remember when Sony filed suit against Connectix for essentially the same thing? End result was Sonly lost because the court of appeals stated that Connectix was in compliance with the DMCA and that this use of reverse engineering is protected under fair use.
* the willingness to believe improbable stories without thinking
* the willingness to post meaningless comments on the hoax at Slashdot
* the urge to forward multiple copies of such stories to others
* a lack of desire to take three minutes to check to see if a story is true.
A. C. is an example of someone recently infected. He told one reporter,I read on the Net that the major ingredient in almost all shampoos makes your hair fall out, so I've stopped using shampoo.; When told about the Gullibility Virus,A . C. said he would stop reading e-mail, so that he would not become infected. President Clinton has been advised by the National Health Council. He has had an emergency session with former presidents Bush, Reagan, Carter, Ford, and Lincoln. All agreed he should not quarantine the country. This is not being reported in the major news media to avoid panic. Anyone with symptoms is urged to seek help immediately. Experts recommend that at the first feelings of gullibility, Internet users rush to their favorite search engine and look up the item tempting them to thoughtless credence. Most hoaxes, legends, and tall tales have been widely discussed and exposed by the Internet community. Many companies have internal support groups to help employees minimize the impact of this terrible virus
Forward this message to all your friends right away! Don't think about it! This is not a chain letter post! This story is true! Don't check it out! This story is so timely, there is no date on it! This story is so important, we're using lots of exclamation points!!! For every message you forward to some unsuspecting person, the Home for the Hopelessly Gullible will donate ten cents to itself.
That's somewhat disturbing. I immediately had visions of the Slackware core team skipping and twirling down the street, all decked out in pastel colors, taped glasses and little pointy elf shoes. Ugh, I need more coffee.
FreeBSD is "owned" by the FreeBSD Project, which is made up of the core team, the committers, and all the other people who write the code. No company can ever own FreeBSD, anymore than a company can own Linux. The FreeBSD Foundation will be an independent non-profit organization. It will be controlled by a board of directors, which will contain some members of the core team. The Foundation and the core team are still separate entities going forward.
Non-profit, not for profit's and foundations essentially mean that the company CAN be for profit, the not for profit part comes from the stipulation that the board members are not allowed to profit. With his answer he clearly and firmly syas the corporate structure surrounding FreeBSD is structured in such a way that it will keep FreeBSD free. The foundation of keeping it in the spirit of open source is firmly in place. Got to hand it to Walnut Creek et all, they seem to be doing everything right. Makes me wonder with models like this that obviously work, and work well, why do fly by nights' like LinuxOne keep driving down the wrong path. Reminds me of that far side cartoon with the Midville School for the Gifted. Has a guy trying to go in the front door, pushing real hard. Right above his head there is a big sign that says "Pull". Good to see that the folks behind FreeBSD are not pushing on the pull door.