The issue for Microsoft is that to keep their stock prices high, they've got to show continually rising sales.
But they're not going to convince anyone to switch to MS product at this point...everybody already runs a MS OS or MS Office, so there's no growth there. The market has matured.
The server market has slow turnover, and growth will come slowly there (if at all).
I see them doing two things:
1) Putting license key schemes in place on their OS's, this will get a marginal revenue increase by eliminating the bulk of casual piracy for the OS
2) I imagine the same thing will happen with MS Office soon
3) Hope to god the console business takes off...
4) Come up with a DRM scheme and convince the record companies and users its a good thing. Unfortunately, they don't have a good reputation as a strategic partner.
5).NET - next big thing....
6) Palladium - next big thing....
I mean, Ballmer's right, there's nothing there that will mean a big revenue increase for MS; its just a lot of nibble around the edges.
Frankly, MS would have been better off splitting into an application company and an OS company; each individual company would be forced to innovate and take chances. But as they are now, MS is a very very conservative company, and that's not going to lead them to any big breakthroughs.
"That's, quite frankly, a ridiculous point of view."
No, its not. If I go to IBM's website and I download the Eclipse IDE, its GPL. I use it, and two months later, IBM says "Oh, just kidding, its not GPL".
Have I stolen something? I don't think so. I have a legitimate, perpetual right to use it. The GPL doesn't allow you to revoke it. It's not a criminal matter, since IBM gave it to me to begin with.
"Furthermore, if Nullsoft had no right to release that code on their own,"
As an end user, how could I possibly know this? I downloaded a GPL's program from Nullsoft's site. You're saying its not a reasonable assumption that this site represents Nullsoft? Its not a warez site we're talking about, its the official corporate site of Nullsoft. What assumption, as an end user, should I make about something I download from Nullsoft?
And since the person who put it on the website was a corporate officer of Nullsoft, that would seem to be an internal matter for AOL and Nullsoft, but the genie is out of the bottle.
By this reasoning, if I strike a deal with Microsoft, two months later, Microsoft could simply say "The person who signed the contract didn't have authority to do it, sorry". You could void any contract this way by simply claiming the person who signed it didn't have any authority to do it.
You're right that I don't know any internal details, but as a downloader of the program, I shouldn't have to.
Nullsoft put software on their website. Nullsoft put a GPL notice along with the source code. From my viewpoint, I do have a legitimate license. I suspect this could only be resolved by a judge really.
I don't know that its that cut and dried. If it was released under Nullsoft's name, and Justin runs Nullsoft, then I'd argue that a company official in AOL has released it to GPL.
Its not like he's some staff programmer in the bowels of AOL doing it.
Its too slow on startup. I still use 2.04 because its small and its quick. It doesn't have a browser, it doesn't look up where I want to buy stuff, it doesn't try to lay video. It doesn't try to be everything to me.
"If they distributed their IP in GPL'd code without their knowledge, the GPL does not apply to that code, as it was licensed by someone who did not have the authority to license it."
As an OS vendor, and a Unix specialist, how can they have it both ways....
"your honor, we know Unix better than anyone on the planet. And oh, by the way, we released a Linux distro under GPL without knowing what was in it".
So their defense is stupidity?
I'm not trying to be clever here.
Its like Mario Andretti getting arrested for reckless driving and then him claiming the car was too hard to drive. Huh?
What's more interesting to me is after they "discovered" code in Linux they believe was causing a problem, >they continued to sell it.
Seems to me at that point, they *did* agree to distribute under GPL. How else can you interpret it?
" and that party redistributes it further, not realizing that their code made its way into the kernel improperly, doesn't mean that they have made the conscious decision to license their copyrighted works under the GPL. "
But think about it...its an attempt to have their cake and eat it too. This is a company that makes its living programming Unix OS's. They released source to another GPL OS they're working on.
What's to say the SCO themselves didn't put this mystery code into Linux, get it into the kernel, sit back for 18 months and then cry foul?
Nothing.
Because of the GPL, they had a responsibility to be sure they weren't distributing their own IP (as it turns out, they don't own any IP) under the GPL. To simply claim incompetence doesn't wash, BECAUSE THEIR PRIMARY BUSINESS IS CODING UNIX OPERATING SYSTEMS!!!
"Arithmetic compression for example is not at all obvious"
No, but mathematical expressions are not patentable by their nature because its effectively patenting a natural law, like gravity or gene sequencing....
"I think the problem is that the RIAA only know one business model."
I think the RIAA understands the problem and the solution better than you or I, but my guess is the transition is difficult.
What I mean is, if you sell CD's and Make $100M a year, how do you switch the revenue stream to something else without losing the revenue that you've got?
These are family businesses that will tolerate down years, they're public companies that have stockholders that insist on rising revenues year in, year out.
So to paraphrase a famous computer company, "How do you get there today?"
" But he was resposible for seeing that it got funding"
I'm sure that is some comfort.
Fact is, had Al not sponsored some legislation, 434 other reps would have. Al just got out in front of the wave. He showed no insight (if he had, he would have been sponsoring it 10 years prior). He showed no courage ("Internet good!" was never cotroversial). And for him to say he invented the internet is the same as Bush claiming that he figured out that Saddam was a bad guy.
Al was not reponsible for anything other than trying to pad his resume.
It is not at all obvious what the damange is to SCO.
SCO was not a market leader in UNIX at the time the alleged theft of code took place; they were already irrelevant in the bigger scheme of things as Windows NT Server had a significantly higher share of market than SCO. I daresay they were closer to BSDI in terms of marketshare, and they ended up like BSDI in terms of marketshare.
Pushing that aside for the moment, what commercial gain did "Linux" make based on the allegedly stolen code? Or perhaps its more relevant to ask, how did it harm SCO? More importantly did the alleged theft give Linux a commercial advantage over SCO they would not otherwise have?
I don't believe IBM stole any code from SCO, but even accepting that they did, SCO wasn't harmed in any plausible scenario.
I would use this analogy...SCO was and is dying from a debilitating disease. Everybody knew they would die 10 years ago, and they're finally dying now. So a janitor comes by and knocks the cord out of the heart monitor and SCO says "Ah HA! You killed me!".
You're saying the computers of today are more complex to operate than those of 20 years ago?
What was the popular platform 20 years ago.... (1983). The MacOS had not yet debutted, but the PC XT had. The Apple ][ was the main competitor.
So you had a DOS command line and an AppleDOS command line. Was that really a simpler than pointing and clicking in XP and OSX today? I mean, you can actually have your *mother* operate a computer today.
"Sega paid someone to make the Dreamcast. And the software is Windows."
Well, technically, Microsoft pays someone to make X-Box.
But to your point about Windows, while Dreamcast was able to use WindowsCE, many (if not most) games did not use WindowsCE. It was certainly not a key portion of the core Dreamcast product, but certain games would include portions of Windows CE. I suspect this was to make it easier to port games to and from the Windows PC platform.
"I would be mighty annoyed if I started getting bulk mail from (non-profit/non-commercial) political or religious groups"
True, but in the US, the difficulty is that religious and political speech has the highest protection, thus are impossible to regulate in any way. Love it or hate it, that's at the heart of the American political system.
Commercial speech, however, can be regulated; witness the ban on tobacco and certain types of alcohol ads on TV.
This reminds of a tale long ago, not so far away
on
Microsoft's Athens PC
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
When IBM released the PS/2 and OS/2 at the same time in a bid to lock out clone makers and Microsoft from the desktop?
The parallel here is so close that its amazing, particularly since Microsoft has now become the huge monolithic company instead of the plucky upstart that wants an open standard.
The 740 is a true laser printer. There are wax printers. Tektronix (now xerox) makes both. I have the laser version, as I'd heard archival problems with the wax, despite the fact that the wax prints are beautiful.
Slashdot Mirror
"you can patent a software invention"
There has never been software that has been written that is deserving of a patent.
The issue for Microsoft is that to keep their stock prices high, they've got to show continually rising sales.
.NET - next big thing....
But they're not going to convince anyone to switch to MS product at this point...everybody already runs a MS OS or MS Office, so there's no growth there. The market has matured.
The server market has slow turnover, and growth will come slowly there (if at all).
I see them doing two things:
1) Putting license key schemes in place on their OS's, this will get a marginal revenue increase by eliminating the bulk of casual piracy for the OS
2) I imagine the same thing will happen with MS Office soon
3) Hope to god the console business takes off...
4) Come up with a DRM scheme and convince the record companies and users its a good thing. Unfortunately, they don't have a good reputation as a strategic partner.
5)
6) Palladium - next big thing....
I mean, Ballmer's right, there's nothing there that will mean a big revenue increase for MS; its just a lot of nibble around the edges.
Frankly, MS would have been better off splitting into an application company and an OS company; each individual company would be forced to innovate and take chances. But as they are now, MS is a very very conservative company, and that's not going to lead them to any big breakthroughs.
They are equal to IBM in 1975.
"That's, quite frankly, a ridiculous point of view."
No, its not. If I go to IBM's website and I download the Eclipse IDE, its GPL. I use it, and two months later, IBM says "Oh, just kidding, its not GPL".
Have I stolen something? I don't think so. I have a legitimate, perpetual right to use it. The GPL doesn't allow you to revoke it. It's not a criminal matter, since IBM gave it to me to begin with.
"Furthermore, if Nullsoft had no right to release that code on their own,"
As an end user, how could I possibly know this? I downloaded a GPL's program from Nullsoft's site. You're saying its not a reasonable assumption that this site represents Nullsoft? Its not a warez site we're talking about, its the official corporate site of Nullsoft. What assumption, as an end user, should I make about something I download from Nullsoft?
And since the person who put it on the website was a corporate officer of Nullsoft, that would seem to be an internal matter for AOL and Nullsoft, but the genie is out of the bottle.
By this reasoning, if I strike a deal with Microsoft, two months later, Microsoft could simply say "The person who signed the contract didn't have authority to do it, sorry". You could void any contract this way by simply claiming the person who signed it didn't have any authority to do it.
Seems like its AOL's problem, not the end user's.
But what do I know? I'm not a lawyer.
You're right that I don't know any internal details, but as a downloader of the program, I shouldn't have to.
Nullsoft put software on their website. Nullsoft put a GPL notice along with the source code. From my viewpoint, I do have a legitimate license. I suspect this could only be resolved by a judge really.
I don't know that its that cut and dried. If it was released under Nullsoft's name, and Justin runs Nullsoft, then I'd argue that a company official in AOL has released it to GPL.
Its not like he's some staff programmer in the bowels of AOL doing it.
I'd argue that he had the authority to release.
Its too slow on startup. I still use 2.04 because its small and its quick. It doesn't have a browser, it doesn't look up where I want to buy stuff, it doesn't try to lay video. It doesn't try to be everything to me.
Bigger isn't always better.
In the article, it claims Nullsoft is saying there is no valid license for WASTE, yet it looked to me as if WASTE was released under GPL.
I wonder if the GPL license is valid at this point for WASTE? Or did Justin not have the rights to release it under GPL?
Here's the license:
http://www.apache.org/LICENSE.txt
It isn't; its an apache license.
And remind your CIO these same debacles can involve highly regarded corporate backed OS's, like AIX.
"If they distributed their IP in GPL'd code without their knowledge, the GPL does not apply to that code, as it was licensed by someone who did not have the authority to license it."
As an OS vendor, and a Unix specialist, how can they have it both ways....
"your honor, we know Unix better than anyone on the planet. And oh, by the way, we released a Linux distro under GPL without knowing what was in it".
So their defense is stupidity?
I'm not trying to be clever here.
Its like Mario Andretti getting arrested for reckless driving and then him claiming the car was too hard to drive. Huh?
What's more interesting to me is after they "discovered" code in Linux they believe was causing a problem, >they continued to sell it.
Seems to me at that point, they *did* agree to distribute under GPL. How else can you interpret it?
" and that party redistributes it further, not realizing that their code made its way into the kernel improperly, doesn't mean that they have made the conscious decision to license their copyrighted works under the GPL. "
But think about it...its an attempt to have their cake and eat it too. This is a company that makes its living programming Unix OS's. They released source to another GPL OS they're working on.
What's to say the SCO themselves didn't put this mystery code into Linux, get it into the kernel, sit back for 18 months and then cry foul?
Nothing.
Because of the GPL, they had a responsibility to be sure they weren't distributing their own IP (as it turns out, they don't own any IP) under the GPL. To simply claim incompetence doesn't wash, BECAUSE THEIR PRIMARY BUSINESS IS CODING UNIX OPERATING SYSTEMS!!!
"Arithmetic compression for example is not at all obvious"
No, but mathematical expressions are not patentable by their nature because its effectively patenting a natural law, like gravity or gene sequencing....
oh wait...bad example....
The units out there today (as of May 23rd), will do reportedly DVD-R.
However, the new unit being released early June will play both (also will have built in ethernet as well).
I ordered a new PS2 primarily because of the apparently common failure where it won't read one color disk type (silver/gold/black).
"I think the problem is that the RIAA only know one business model."
I think the RIAA understands the problem and the solution better than you or I, but my guess is the transition is difficult.
What I mean is, if you sell CD's and Make $100M a year, how do you switch the revenue stream to something else without losing the revenue that you've got?
These are family businesses that will tolerate down years, they're public companies that have stockholders that insist on rising revenues year in, year out.
So to paraphrase a famous computer company, "How do you get there today?"
" But he was resposible for seeing that it got funding"
I'm sure that is some comfort.
Fact is, had Al not sponsored some legislation, 434 other reps would have. Al just got out in front of the wave. He showed no insight (if he had, he would have been sponsoring it 10 years prior). He showed no courage ("Internet good!" was never cotroversial). And for him to say he invented the internet is the same as Bush claiming that he figured out that Saddam was a bad guy.
Al was not reponsible for anything other than trying to pad his resume.
"you have to have it be government-funded, and then you end up with socialism."
Socialism isn't the opposite of capitalism.
Particularly in the real world where there are no capitalist economies and no socialist economies.
You shouldn't be able to patent life forms.
The implications of this are staggering taken to its logical conclusion and man's increasing ability to generate variations of life.
I think the concept is abhorant, but then, I don't consider corporate "rights" to be an object of religious veneration.
"The damage done to SCO's business is obvious"
It is not at all obvious what the damange is to SCO.
SCO was not a market leader in UNIX at the time the alleged theft of code took place; they were already irrelevant in the bigger scheme of things as Windows NT Server had a significantly higher share of market than SCO. I daresay they were closer to BSDI in terms of marketshare, and they ended up like BSDI in terms of marketshare.
Pushing that aside for the moment, what commercial gain did "Linux" make based on the allegedly stolen code? Or perhaps its more relevant to ask, how did it harm SCO? More importantly did the alleged theft give Linux a commercial advantage over SCO they would not otherwise have?
I don't believe IBM stole any code from SCO, but even accepting that they did, SCO wasn't harmed in any plausible scenario.
I would use this analogy...SCO was and is dying from a debilitating disease. Everybody knew they would die 10 years ago, and they're finally dying now. So a janitor comes by and knocks the cord out of the heart monitor and SCO says "Ah HA! You killed me!".
Perhaps that helps put it in perspective?
According to this "authority", you must get permission before you record (video or audio) a worship service.
Right.
If you already have these recordings in your (church/religious) library, you must destroy them.
Right.
I think they presume a bit too much.
"But operating them is much more complex."
You're saying the computers of today are more complex to operate than those of 20 years ago?
What was the popular platform 20 years ago.... (1983). The MacOS had not yet debutted, but the PC XT had. The Apple ][ was the main competitor.
So you had a DOS command line and an AppleDOS command line. Was that really a simpler than pointing and clicking in XP and OSX today? I mean, you can actually have your *mother* operate a computer today.
I'm not sure I agree with the premise.
"Sega paid someone to make the Dreamcast. And the software is Windows."
Well, technically, Microsoft pays someone to make X-Box.
But to your point about Windows, while Dreamcast was able to use WindowsCE, many (if not most) games did not use WindowsCE. It was certainly not a key portion of the core Dreamcast product, but certain games would include portions of Windows CE. I suspect this was to make it easier to port games to and from the Windows PC platform.
"I would be mighty annoyed if I started getting bulk mail from (non-profit/non-commercial) political or religious groups"
True, but in the US, the difficulty is that religious and political speech has the highest protection, thus are impossible to regulate in any way. Love it or hate it, that's at the heart of the American political system.
Commercial speech, however, can be regulated; witness the ban on tobacco and certain types of alcohol ads on TV.
When IBM released the PS/2 and OS/2 at the same time in a bid to lock out clone makers and Microsoft from the desktop?
The parallel here is so close that its amazing, particularly since Microsoft has now become the huge monolithic company instead of the plucky upstart that wants an open standard.
The "shock and awe" effect.
/. effect outlawed in the Geneva Convention.
I wouldn't be surprised to see the
More likely you didn't know how to work your computer and delted them yourself.
The 740 is a true laser printer. There are wax printers. Tektronix (now xerox) makes both. I have the laser version, as I'd heard archival problems with the wax, despite the fact that the wax prints are beautiful.