..to point out that reading SCOX press releases _and_believing_ them at face value is dangerous stupidity.
Just go read the documents. It clearly says: All rights _with_the_exceptions_listed_. Uh, oh, small omission, right? go to the exceptions list and you will see that nearly ALL Trademarks, Copyrights and Patents are excepted.
Apparently all the Intellectual Property that was transferred in the original Purchase Agreement were the trademarks UNIX and UnixWare. The open group now owns the UNIX trademark so all the Intellectual property left is the trademark to UnixWare. Now you know why you haven't seen a lawsuit for "intellectual property" from SCOX.
Amendment 2 indicates that additional rights may be transferred. Correspondence indicates that this transfer has not taken place (even A2 validity seems to be still "unverified")
In compliance with license agreement SOFT-___
("the Agreement") please find attached the information that you are entitled to:
location type serial number
Earth___ ***X 123-456-789
The use by Licensee of Software Products subject to the Agreement has been reviewed. Each
such Software Product is being used solely on such
Designated CPUs (or temporarily on back-up CPUs) for such Software Products in full compliance with the provisions of the Agreement.
We inform you that any other information or statement requested in your letter dated December 18 2003 is beyond the scope of the Agreement. Please provide us with some factual evidence that we are in breach of your rights if you have a legitimate complaint.
Yours Truly,
Current_SCO_customer_but_probably_not_much_longe r
After reading a few retarded opinions written by Lyons in the past I don't care what he says now.
That is what journalists have, credibility capital. Initially they have the benefit of the doubt, if they use it properly, their credibility capital increases. If they waste it on games and agendas, their opinions end up ignored.
The Motley Fools put it best: A good indicator that your decision is a good one is when Forbes is touting the opposite. Maybe I should say thank you Lyons for assuring us that Linux is the winning horse.
The ironic part is how clearly Lyons demonstrates his utter lack of understanding that there are forms of capital other than money (you can even put it in accounting terms, Goodwill). Certainly "free of charge" doesn't mean "no return on investment". Probably that is why he doesn't understand what "credibility capital" means.
Using Gartner - I think I read somewhere (was it Groklaw?) that Gartner is partially owned by BillG. They steer money towards their owners with just a little care not to make it too obvious.
India - Free Markets, globalization, blah blah. The real issue is: MIT [replace other institution or company name if you wish] gets certain benefits for being in the US (subsidies, law enforcement, legal structure, army protection, etc). These benefits have been traditionally allocated on the assumption that a portion comes back to the community that provides them (e.g., the government subsidizes education and gets higher tax-paying population in return). If these assumptions no longer hold true the benefits need to be re-evaluated (e.g., subsidies reduced, and other costs re-assessed, probably increasing taxes). Push your elected representative, they may even be able to understand that initially they may be able to increase taxation on the people to benefit the corporations but in the (not so) long term unemployed people and people on low wages eventually can't pay taxes and the lower total tax money they get, the less power they'll have. If you're in the US (or Europe) it is YOUR tax money being given away. Decide if that's OK with you (who knows?, you may be feeling charitable) and act accordingly.
Not exactly what you want but still useful r-tt's R-Linux is read-only (doesn't have write capabilities) but it can access damaged partitions. It is free (as in beer, not speech)
Shouldn't we print copies of Therighttoread and give them out to each schoolmaster and teacher?
We can certainly present a formal complaint for school activities that indoctrinate instead of educate. A lawsuit is not the initial choice (we're not SCOX) but it may be necessary if there is no reaction to the complaint.
This sh1t the **AA is trying to pull is not a joke. It is extremely serious. How do you feel about your children? I know how I feel about mine and I'm ready. Act now and they'll have a future.
>Ever tried explaining silly things like that to a screaming three year old?
I did something very similar. My son was 3 and mildly annoyed although not screaming. It went like this:
* Dad, why can't I watch my Ultraman DVD [present from auntie in Japan] on the normal DVD player?
* Well, son, there are these evil people called MPAA who decided that you shouldn't be able to buy in Japan and watch elsewhere...
* (Wife screaming from the kitchen): Stop it! Don't get the kid involved in your politics!
(Note: we have enough dvds and dvd-roms to play the silly encripted disks from all regions without even bothering with region cracks and the computers are connected to the TV anyway. It is a nuisance being forced to play movies from the computers because of some stupid business decision that is useles anyway)
The C64 was born to be fun. It simply made it easy to program fun things, in a way that only the spectrum and other C64 descendants ever achieved. I can remember when the IBM PC came out a little later and I asked, what can it do that is interesting? Word processing and spreadsheets was the answer I received. How could anybody think that was fun? Then I looked at games with CGA graphics. Definitely that didn't look interesting. It took some years until the EGA/VGA and Soundblaster turned the PC into something worth looking at (I mean, acceptable, it didn't have the Sprites and SID that I liked but at least other people wrote reasonably nice games)
The C64 was the platform where I made money programming for the first time in my life: A copy-protection circumventer that was published in Micro-bit magazine. Glad that there was no DMCA to sue 17-yr old kids at the time!
The IEEE had a very interesting article in Spectrum magazine 7 years ago on the issue of portable electronics and flight safety. As megahertz/gigahertz ratings increase for computing devices, this should only get worse (maybe until it gets to the point where computing is beyond "normal" RF?)
The conclusion was that there is little doubt about the interference and it is not just cell phones. The article relates an incident when too many people listening to the radio (there was some "important" sports match going on) did cause noticeable interference. It seems that in most cases the pilot can notice that some instruments are providing inaccurate readings (thanks to having redundant information around, different instruments would be affected differently) and it doesn't become a big problem.
So, by using your high-frequency electronic devices inside the plane you're making the pilot's job more difficult. During cruise flight it may be less risky and during takeoff and landing it is definitely not recommended. Personally I wouldn't even trust that much those skyphones. I'd rather err on the safe side. Read a book!
To all KDE Supporters - You know KDE uses Qt. Qt is made by TrollTech which has considerable participation from the Canopy Group (the puppet masters behind the SCOX soap opera, maybe themselves a puppet of someone else?).
Qt is GPL you say? Considering their stance of "the GPL is invalid", there is still a risk that the rug could be pulled out and leave KDE in a pretty serious quagmire. I certainly believe that this "GPL is invalid" assertments are pure crap but this risk needs to be very seriously considered before any attempt to make KDE the "standard" desktop.
Let's start an effort that squashes future obvious patents on technologies that are impractical today.
A joke I've already seen here in Slashdot is "let's patent Star-trek-style transporters". Actually, teleport-like tunnel-effects are possible at the quantum level but nobody has figured out yet how to do it at a macroscopic level. This makes it possible to write a "research" book (it cannot be a fantasy book because that wouldn't make prior art) that describes "innovative" uses of a device that manages to do this at a macroscopic level. If the descriptions have a sufficient level of detail that prevents future patents on the obvious it would be a really good thing.
The goal would be that the really innovative inventions can still be patented, but there is enough "prior art" to prevent the obvious from being fenced. E.g., whoever invents the teleporter will get rich, but nobody can patent afterwards a fire-extinguishing method of teleporting water over a forest fire.
Maybe Tim O'Reilly could be convinced to start a community site to fish for ideas and then get a good writer to compile them into a book series of "Future Trends" that describes what will be possible when certain technologies mature. I wish we had something like this that had described all Internet services over wireless devices and outrageous patents like email-over-wireless could be easily crushed.
The "Linux licenses" SCO is selling are worthless pieces of paper. Additionally, because of the GPL, using SCO licenses is the same as inviting every other contributor to the Linux Kernel to sue the licensee for copyright infringement. This needs to be said loud and clear (even the worst PHBs should be able to grasp that purchasing something that opens you to lawsuits is not a good idea)
If you find somebody who still has doubts, tell them that you also are willing to sell them a license stating that they will be protected from any lawsuit from you for any car accident with a third party. Cheap! Only $699! They'll be "protected" so they can save much more than $699 in car insurance premiums...
You're right that putting much effort into a detailed description of the GPL to a PHB is not worth the fight.
It can be very simple: "Well, FYI, that SCO license is not really protecting you from lawsuits because exercising it will actually enable the other copyright holders to sue you. Of course, it is your decision to decide what you prefer..."
Your example seems to indicate a group who does care about using computers to write its language. I have no problem with that.
My point is: if there are enough computer users who find it more useful to have available elvish or klingon, it doesn't matter that it is not "real".
It is like using dingbats or other character-graphics, if there are enough people wanting to use them, it is a good thing that they're incorporated into the standard. If more computer users find it useful to have a heavy teardrop-spoked pinwheel asterisk (U2743) than to have sumerian cuneiform letters, then it is irrelevant which is more of a "real language". If you really need cuneiform letters, there are still ways to produce them with a computer regardless of their status in the standard.
I personally prefer to have elvish letters available than 40 different varieties of stars, asterisks and snowflakes. Mmm... Let me check if my SA membership lets me vote on that...
> Unless there is proof, there is no need to pony up to SCO and fork out the dough
Actually, even if there is proof, this "license" is still worthless. If SCOX is finally found to have some proprietary IP (doubtful, but let's examine the possibility for the sake of the analysis) the GPL would forbid distribution of the combined result so your license would basically enable you to use only SCOX's pieces but it would effectively prevent you from legally using the rest of the kernel. You just paid for something that in the end has no use.
Companies buying this license are throwing away their money. If your company is thinking about purchasing one, it is your duty to warn the decision makers that the purchased item is unuseable.
> there are real languages / scripts w/ millions of speakers which aren't in Unicode yet
IMNSHO, when considering priorities in Unicode, there is one reason much more relevant than how many people speak a language: How many people want to use it in their computers? No matter how many people speak a certain language, if they don't care about writing it in a computer there is no "natural right" to inclusion.
The nice people at chillingeffects.org have been fighting for quite some time against abuse based on copyright and other intellectual property laws. If you are affected by SCOX's FUD, for example your company received a nastygram from SCOX or your boss comes to you with a copy of the Gartner report you may want to drop them a line describing the situation and they may be able to draft some Q&A and/or template answers.
I believe IBM could ask this same thing (and donating some funds wouldn't hurt)
Actually, I would enjoy seeing an ad based on this that answers Sun's cheap shot. Something like:
Sun seems to think we may have a little license problem
Don't let them chill you, says Chillingeffects.org (*) [appropriate links]
Because the world won't stop for you, we help you move forward. [or some other slogan concocted by the ad-heads]
(*)Chillingeffects.org is a joint project of the Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, University of San Francisco, and University of Maine law school clinics and the Electronic Frontier Foundation
At Computer Associates there are free yoga classes being offered to employees (at least in the HQ building, I don't know about other offices). They are held in the gym and they fill a very similar function: exercise and/or yoga do provide an intense break from work that in the end reverts in a more productive employee (for example, feeling more energetic when returning to your cube or being less prone to using a sick day because of a disorder).
Benefits like these (having a gym and others like "free" insurance, etc) are a good way to pay employees that can be more effective than salary (for example, you don't pay taxes on having a gym at the company, you may have to pay more taxes if you get a higher salary and pay for a gym because the company doesn't have one). As long as there is a significant number of employees actually using the benefit and usage of benefits is reasonably spread among different groups of employees, It is a good thing (tm)
Slashdot Mirror
Just go read the documents. It clearly says: All rights _with_the_exceptions_listed_. Uh, oh, small omission, right? go to the exceptions list and you will see that nearly ALL Trademarks, Copyrights and Patents are excepted.
Apparently all the Intellectual Property that was transferred in the original Purchase Agreement were the trademarks UNIX and UnixWare. The open group now owns the UNIX trademark so all the Intellectual property left is the trademark to UnixWare. Now you know why you haven't seen a lawsuit for "intellectual property" from SCOX.
Amendment 2 indicates that additional rights may be transferred. Correspondence indicates that this transfer has not taken place (even A2 validity seems to be still "unverified")
>The GPL is a weak license which has never been tested in court
== F U D
Copyright infringement on programs otherwise GPL licensed has been tested in court (and, as expected, it is still copyright infringement).
Deutsche Bank makes a market in SCOX (according to DB analyst releases)
In compliance with license agreement SOFT-___ ("the Agreement") please find attached the information that you are entitled to:
location type serial number
Earth___ ***X 123-456-789
The use by Licensee of Software Products subject to the Agreement has been reviewed. Each such Software Product is being used solely on such Designated CPUs (or temporarily on back-up CPUs) for such Software Products in full compliance with the provisions of the Agreement.
We inform you that any other information or statement requested in your letter dated December 18 2003 is beyond the scope of the Agreement. Please provide us with some factual evidence that we are in breach of your rights if you have a legitimate complaint.
Yours Truly,
Current_SCO_customer_but_probably_not_much_longe r
That is what journalists have, credibility capital. Initially they have the benefit of the doubt, if they use it properly, their credibility capital increases. If they waste it on games and agendas, their opinions end up ignored.
The Motley Fools put it best: A good indicator that your decision is a good one is when Forbes is touting the opposite. Maybe I should say thank you Lyons for assuring us that Linux is the winning horse.
The ironic part is how clearly Lyons demonstrates his utter lack of understanding that there are forms of capital other than money (you can even put it in accounting terms, Goodwill). Certainly "free of charge" doesn't mean "no return on investment". Probably that is why he doesn't understand what "credibility capital" means.
Biometrics as a technology to watch in 2004? Nah, probably Identity Theft will have more growth (I know, it sucks big time) :(
This is the first time I've seen in Slashdot a thread with this many IAAL
In your future:
Slashdot: News for nerds and lawyers
Not exactly what you want but still useful r-tt's R-Linux is read-only (doesn't have write capabilities) but it can access damaged partitions. It is free (as in beer, not speech)
Shouldn't we print copies of The right to read
and give them out to each schoolmaster and teacher?
We can certainly present a formal complaint for school activities that indoctrinate instead of educate. A lawsuit is not the initial choice (we're not SCOX) but it may be necessary if there is no reaction to the complaint.
This sh1t the **AA is trying to pull is not a joke. It is extremely serious. How do you feel about your children? I know how I feel about mine and I'm ready. Act now and they'll have a future.
>Ever tried explaining silly things like that to a screaming three year old?
I did something very similar. My son was 3 and mildly annoyed although not screaming. It went like this:
* Dad, why can't I watch my Ultraman DVD [present from auntie in Japan] on the normal DVD player?
* Well, son, there are these evil people called MPAA who decided that you shouldn't be able to buy in Japan and watch elsewhere...
* (Wife screaming from the kitchen): Stop it! Don't get the kid involved in your politics!
(Note: we have enough dvds and dvd-roms to play the silly encripted disks from all regions without even bothering with region cracks and the computers are connected to the TV anyway. It is a nuisance being forced to play movies from the computers because of some stupid business decision that is useles anyway)
Linear synthesizer music still sounds warmer to my ears than sample-based soundblasters
The C64 was born to be fun. It simply made it easy to program fun things, in a way that only the spectrum and other C64 descendants ever achieved. I can remember when the IBM PC came out a little later and I asked, what can it do that is interesting? Word processing and spreadsheets was the answer I received. How could anybody think that was fun? Then I looked at games with CGA graphics. Definitely that didn't look interesting. It took some years until the EGA/VGA and Soundblaster turned the PC into something worth looking at (I mean, acceptable, it didn't have the Sprites and SID that I liked but at least other people wrote reasonably nice games)
The C64 was the platform where I made money programming for the first time in my life: A copy-protection circumventer that was published in Micro-bit magazine. Glad that there was no DMCA to sue 17-yr old kids at the time!
Ah, halcyon days of youth 8)
SCOX has been babbling that this issue is about copyright.
Yet, their court filings didn't mention copyright.
Now this lawsuit points to the true violators of copyright and copyleft!
Glad to see SCOX a couple of $$$ down, looking forward to the day they're in the pink sheets or delisted
----------
Disclaimer 1: This is my opinion and does not necessarily reflect that of my employer
Disclaimer 2: I'm short SCOX
The IEEE had a very interesting article in Spectrum magazine 7 years ago on the issue of portable electronics and flight safety. As megahertz/gigahertz ratings increase for computing devices, this should only get worse (maybe until it gets to the point where computing is beyond "normal" RF?)
The conclusion was that there is little doubt about the interference and it is not just cell phones. The article relates an incident when too many people listening to the radio (there was some "important" sports match going on) did cause noticeable interference. It seems that in most cases the pilot can notice that some instruments are providing inaccurate readings (thanks to having redundant information around, different instruments would be affected differently) and it doesn't become a big problem.
So, by using your high-frequency electronic devices inside the plane you're making the pilot's job more difficult. During cruise flight it may be less risky and during takeoff and landing it is definitely not recommended. Personally I wouldn't even trust that much those skyphones. I'd rather err on the safe side. Read a book!
To all KDE Supporters - You know KDE uses Qt. Qt is made by TrollTech which has considerable participation from the Canopy Group (the puppet masters behind the SCOX soap opera, maybe themselves a puppet of someone else?).
Qt is GPL you say? Considering their stance of "the GPL is invalid", there is still a risk that the rug could be pulled out and leave KDE in a pretty serious quagmire. I certainly believe that this "GPL is invalid" assertments are pure crap but this risk needs to be very seriously considered before any attempt to make KDE the "standard" desktop.
Let's start an effort that squashes future obvious patents on technologies that are impractical today.
A joke I've already seen here in Slashdot is "let's patent Star-trek-style transporters". Actually, teleport-like tunnel-effects are possible at the quantum level but nobody has figured out yet how to do it at a macroscopic level. This makes it possible to write a "research" book (it cannot be a fantasy book because that wouldn't make prior art) that describes "innovative" uses of a device that manages to do this at a macroscopic level. If the descriptions have a sufficient level of detail that prevents future patents on the obvious it would be a really good thing.
The goal would be that the really innovative inventions can still be patented, but there is enough "prior art" to prevent the obvious from being fenced. E.g., whoever invents the teleporter will get rich, but nobody can patent afterwards a fire-extinguishing method of teleporting water over a forest fire.
Maybe Tim O'Reilly could be convinced to start a community site to fish for ideas and then get a good writer to compile them into a book series of "Future Trends" that describes what will be possible when certain technologies mature. I wish we had something like this that had described all Internet services over wireless devices and outrageous patents like email-over-wireless could be easily crushed.
The "Linux licenses" SCO is selling are worthless pieces of paper. Additionally, because of the GPL, using SCO licenses is the same as inviting every other contributor to the Linux Kernel to sue the licensee for copyright infringement. This needs to be said loud and clear (even the worst PHBs should be able to grasp that purchasing something that opens you to lawsuits is not a good idea)
If you find somebody who still has doubts, tell them that you also are willing to sell them a license stating that they will be protected from any lawsuit from you for any car accident with a third party. Cheap! Only $699! They'll be "protected" so they can save much more than $699 in car insurance premiums...
You're right that putting much effort into a detailed description of the GPL to a PHB is not worth the fight.
It can be very simple: "Well, FYI, that SCO license is not really protecting you from lawsuits because exercising it will actually enable the other copyright holders to sue you. Of course, it is your decision to decide what you prefer..."
Your example seems to indicate a group who does care about using computers to write its language. I have no problem with that.
My point is: if there are enough computer users who find it more useful to have available elvish or klingon, it doesn't matter that it is not "real".
It is like using dingbats or other character-graphics, if there are enough people wanting to use them, it is a good thing that they're incorporated into the standard. If more computer users find it useful to have a heavy teardrop-spoked pinwheel asterisk (U2743) than to have sumerian cuneiform letters, then it is irrelevant which is more of a "real language". If you really need cuneiform letters, there are still ways to produce them with a computer regardless of their status in the standard.
I personally prefer to have elvish letters available than 40 different varieties of stars, asterisks and snowflakes. Mmm... Let me check if my SA membership lets me vote on that...
> Unless there is proof, there is no need to pony up to SCO and fork out the dough
Actually, even if there is proof, this "license" is still worthless. If SCOX is finally found to have some proprietary IP (doubtful, but let's examine the possibility for the sake of the analysis) the GPL would forbid distribution of the combined result so your license would basically enable you to use only SCOX's pieces but it would effectively prevent you from legally using the rest of the kernel. You just paid for something that in the end has no use.
Companies buying this license are throwing away their money. If your company is thinking about purchasing one, it is your duty to warn the decision makers that the purchased item is unuseable.
IMNSHO, when considering priorities in Unicode, there is one reason much more relevant than how many people speak a language:
How many people want to use it in their computers?
No matter how many people speak a certain language, if they don't care about writing it in a computer there is no "natural right" to inclusion.
Some thoughts on multiculturalism "rights"
Active enforcement is a requirement for trademarks,
Enforcing or not enforcing copyrights or patents won't cause early expiration.
The nice people at chillingeffects.org have been fighting for quite some time against abuse based on copyright and other intellectual property laws. If you are affected by SCOX's FUD, for example your company received a nastygram from SCOX or your boss comes to you with a copy of the Gartner report you may want to drop them a line describing the situation and they may be able to draft some Q&A and/or template answers.
I believe IBM could ask this same thing (and donating some funds wouldn't hurt)
Actually, I would enjoy seeing an ad based on this that answers Sun's cheap shot. Something like:
Sun seems to think we may have a little license problem
Don't let them chill you, says Chillingeffects.org (*) [appropriate links]
Because the world won't stop for you, we help you move forward. [or some other slogan concocted by the ad-heads]
(*)Chillingeffects.org is a joint project of the Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, University of San Francisco, and University of Maine law school clinics and the Electronic Frontier Foundation
At Computer Associates there are free yoga classes being offered to employees (at least in the HQ building, I don't know about other offices). They are held in the gym and they fill a very similar function: exercise and/or yoga do provide an intense break from work that in the end reverts in a more productive employee (for example, feeling more energetic when returning to your cube or being less prone to using a sick day because of a disorder).
Benefits like these (having a gym and others like "free" insurance, etc) are a good way to pay employees that can be more effective than salary (for example, you don't pay taxes on having a gym at the company, you may have to pay more taxes if you get a higher salary and pay for a gym because the company doesn't have one). As long as there is a significant number of employees actually using the benefit and usage of benefits is reasonably spread among different groups of employees, It is a good thing (tm)