In other words, the intrinsic value of the Minix patches was not high enough to make the approach viable in the long term. (Remember that Minix was never more than "hobby" computing.)
But suppose that the patches incorporated patented technology that made database queries run 10 times faster. I expect that some companies would be willing to pay a lot of money for something like that, and would be prepared to put up with the long term inconvenience of patching.
How practical would that be? Probably not enough to make a dent at the original program community, as any patches if useful would probably be small enough to be quickly replicated...
On the contrary, the patches would probably be either large or hard to reproduce without knowledge entailed in patents / trade secrets. Otherwise why bother?
The viability of this approach would depend on the intrinsic "added value" of the patches, versus the costs to both the software vendor and the end customer. Bear in mind that the software
vendor would typically require the end customer to hold the patches as trade secret and/or forbid any reverse engineering.
In addition, anyone who distributes proprietary patches to GPL'ed software must be prepared for the possibility of legal action against them. And they must also be prepared to go after people who violate their patents / trade-secrets. At the end of the day, it will be the courts who decide if this approach is a violation of the GPL.
My advice is for the poster to ask a lawyer to be sure that the way that he asks for compensation does not constitute an illegal act (e.g. extortion). Also the poster needs to be sure that he isn't comitting/admitting an illegal act under the DCMI. I offer this as common sense advice, on the basis that 1) some ways of "asking for compensation" definitely are extortion, 2) it is better to be safe than sorry.
Are you really saying that the original poster doesn't need to ask a lawyer about these things? What is the basis for this advice?
As the previous poster said, an attempt to solicit compensation from the software vendor for "work done" could constitute attempted extortion, and as such could be illegal.
Even if you do this in a legal way, you stand a good chance of being portrayed in the media as an evil money grubbing bastard.
If you get branded as evil, other people who are looking for a exploits as a genuine public service will also tend to be "tarred with the same brush". That is likely to put them off doing this important work, which would be a BAD THING!!
If you are nervous about the whole position, your best bet is to inform your school. (Do it in such a way that you don't give them any evidence they could use against you until you know that they will treat you fairly.)
Your school has a vested interest in not having students hack the marking software they use. They won't want their grading schemes to be publicly called into question. They should also have the resources to deal with the question. If they decide to ignore the issue, they may get into legal trouble later on when they are sued by ex-students whose degrees have been "devalued".
make sure your people are all the right people. All the time.
You can't, because you can't always predict that
someone is going to be the wrong person, and...
Make corrections immediately when that's not the case.
... because you can't always get rid of someone who doesn't fit.
In reality, there are many workplaces where it is hard to rid of an employee who doesn't fit in or isn't competent. For example:
Someone employed in the public service typically cannot be dismissed without going through lengthy formal processes. (These processes are intended to help to protect against corruption and abuse, but they also shelter the lazy and incompetent.)
Tenured academics basicly have a job for life unless they are found to have committed acts of "gross moral turpitude"... or some such.
Executives often have contracts which entitle them to be fully paid out if the contract is terminated ahead of time. Even if the CEO is doing a rotten job, it may cost millions to get rid of him/her.
In Australia, an employer must go through a process in which the employee is warned and given a chance to correct his/her behaviour. If the employer dismiss someone out of hand, they risk being taken to court under federal Unfair Dismissal legislation. [This was the case a few years ago...]
When a company migrates away from IBM proprietary operating systems to Linux, this will tend to reduce their dependence on the diminishing pool of people with "mainframe skills". Skills in developing software and/or using Linux are applicable across a wide range of hardware platform. If anything, Linux on IBM would be a reason to invest personal effort in acquiring these skills.
If companies are really desperate for people with mainframe skills, then they will have to consider on-the-job training. However this doesn't necessarily help you. If you don't have mainframe skills, you will have to beat all of the other job applicants without mainframe skills. However, if you demonstrate commitment by attempting to self-educate on mainframe technology, this could make you stand out from the crowd in the eyes of a prospective employer.
My point was that your "moral" was saying that you could solve the problem by not employing the wrong
people. This is of course unrealistic, as my silly Titanic analogy attempted to suggest.
Given that we accept that we sometimes employ the wrong person, we get back to the original discussion... which is that we need some way to deal with this. Sacking the bad employee is (usually) one option.
Linux offers a much better interface than Windows. I run a shell, I type commands, they do stuff. I don't need to download and install Cygwin to make the machine useful. All that desktop window dressing is just a means of displaying multiple terminals.
Most average (i.e. non-geek) computer users are far more comfortable with a point-and-click user interface than a type-at-the-command-line user interface. For the kind of task that the average user does, point-and-click works just fine.
As other people have pointed out, paying for commercial support doesn't get you the right to demand that bugs are fixed. Read the support contract... and the EULA.
In fact, you are better off with Free Software in this context. If an OSS developer gives you the brush-off when you ask for a bug fix, you still have the option of fixing the bug yourself... or employing someone to do it for you. Besides, if the problem is hurting lots of other people, there is a good chance that some other user will be motivated to fix it.
By contrast, if you are using a closed source product, and the vendor won't fix the problem, you are stuck.
In short, no matter how hard you try, there is always a significant chance that you will employ someone who is a problem. IMO, your "moral" is a bit like this one:
Most of the passengers on the Titanic died as a result of exposure. Moral: when your ship sinks in the North Atlantic, and you end up in the water, be careful to avoid heat loss.
If the company paid for the subscription, then the employees were doing company work when they filled out the coupons (or whatever) and therefore the company owns the devices.
If I buy a lottery ticket on company time and win the first prize, is the company is entitled to take the money? I think not! If a co-worker gives me a bar of chocolate, if is my boss entitled to grap it out of my hands and scoff it? I think not!
It has been reported that Microsoft say that the offer is open to individual end-users, rather than the organisations that paid for the MSDN subscription. The PDA is a "gift" from Microsoft to the end-user. AFAIK, the company could only legally claim the PDA if there was a contract (e.g. an employment contract) or law that required an employee to surrender "gifts" to the company.
A workplace requirement for communication monitoring; e.g. finance, defence, etc.
A futile maneuver that can easily be flouted by using steganography in e-mails.
This is not futile. The monitoring system will record the email including the steganographic content, and a (later)
forensic audit may reveal that content. This may
be sufficient to secure a criminal conviction, if not to deter the activity in the first place.
A need to protect infrastructure; e.g. against viruses.
That's also futile, if they're using windows. Messenger is a tiny minor hole compared to the gaping ones in the OS itself.
In the real world, organisations will employ
various mechanisms to protect their infrastructure, even though they know
those measures to not be completely effective.
Instant messaging might be a "tiny hole" (I don't know what evidence you have for the statement).
But it may also be
the security hole that gets exploited,
because the other holes are adequately plugged.
A need to conserve bandwidth, or control network usage charges.
Text messaging uses negligible bandwidth, and bandwidth costs less than 1/10 of a cent in bulk, meaning that If I used IM a lot for years and years it might cost the company an extra 1/10 of a cent in bandwidth out of my $50,000+/year salary. It's a grain of sand in the sea. All of those reasons are bunk, and would only provide justification to those who truly have their headfs up their asses.
A month ago I was installing software at a client site. They had 500 odd employees, and all of their external communications went through an overloaded 500Kbit pipe. Downloading a 40Mbyte installer took 1 1/2 hours. This is not
bullshit! I didn't ask why they couldn't simply upgrade their network connection, but I didn't need to. The answer would have been that they didn't have flexibility to reallocate resources to address the problem. (This was a government dept.)
Just because you haven't had enough real-world experience to recognize these situations, doesn't mean that they do not exist.
Yes. Some employers don't trust their employees.
And in some cases, the distrust is entirely
justified. (In the same way, some high-school
students are not worthy of trust. BTW, when I
went to high school, we weren't allowed to
leave the school grounds at lunch time. Those
of us who had at least half a brain were capable
of understanding why... and it was nothing to
do with pettiness.)
Banning instant messaging might be counter
productive if the aim is to increase the amount
of work done. (It is bad for staff morale.)
However, it is management's responsibility to
manage productivity. If the workplace culture
(or the nature of the work) is such that people
find excuses to "bunk off" all of the time,
then banning instant messaging as a time waster
may be necessary.
Besides, there are other
(much stronger) reasons why instant messaging
might be banned. For example:
A workplace requirement for communication
monitoring; e.g. finance, defence, etc.
A need to protect infrastructure; e.g.
against viruses.
A need to conserve bandwidth, or control
network usage charges.
No, but hanging your butt out of an office
window probably is!!
The point is that management has the right to
set rules about what is not acceptable behaviour.
Within limits of fairness, due process, etc, they
are entitled to take action against people who
break the rules... including dismisal. The fact
that an employee might think the rules are petty
is not relevant.
You can't go around firing people for petty reasons like instant messaging.
Who are you to say that this would petty? I can think of any number of reasons why instant messaging might be deemed highly inappropriate in a particular workplace. If that is the case, AND management has made this clear to all employees, then somebody who willfully flouts the rules deserves to be sacked.
I disagree. The original intent of the
patent system was not to stiffle competition
but to encourage inovation. I believe this is
what the US Constitution says...
Can you think of a single product
(medical products exempted) that society as
a whole cannot do without for 20 years?
If the patent holder makes unreasonable
requirements for granting a patent license
then you just wait 20 years for the patent
to expire and THEN build one.
Obviously, society in general can do without
almost anything except food, water and air,
though it would be a different society as a
result.
But that doen't mean that it is equitable
that a patent assignee is granted monopoly
rights for 20 years... or that it is in
society's interest that this should happen.
Limitting license fees and similar tweaks
would restore the equitability and reduce
the unwanted anti-competitive nature of
patents.
I disagree completely on license fees. When the two parties enter into an agreement in good faith, it tends to be an equitable one. This way the person wishing to use the patent can decide whether to use it or not in their product, based on the fees that the patent holder is willing to license for.
The problem is that the patent assignee has an absolute monopoly on licensing the patent, and can unfairly exploit that monopoly by asking for an unreasonable amount in license fees... or by refusing to grant licenses. This (with the associated threat of lawsuits) makes patents a mechanism for stiffling fair competition. This is NOT in the public interest.
Can you think of another way (than a fee cap) to avoid the anti-competitive aspects of the patent system?
Here is a better link for the AVEL website.
The AVEL portal is based on DSTC'sMetaSuite
software for managinq Dublin Core metadata. The portal provides simple and advanced search functions, as well as browsing by category.
While I'd agree that patents are a good idea, there are particular problems with patent system as it works now, especially in the USA.
It is
too easy for someone to get a "bad" patent; i.e.
one that is overly broad, for an obvious "invention", or for an "invention" for which prior art exists. You could blame USPTO for this, but in reality they are just trying to operate within their legal and budgetary constraints.
It is too hard to get a "bad" patent overturned. You have to resort to the Court system, which is far too expensive and time consuming for most SMOs or individuals to contemplate.
Once a patent has been granted, the patent holder is in a position to demand license fees that are out of all proportion to the true R&D cost of developing the invention.
Here are some possible fixes:
A fast, zero-cost system for getting dubious patents reviewed and (if appropriate) overturned. The process should be triggered by complaints from the general public; e.g. based on reports of prior art, etc. Questions of "obviousness" should be assessed by independent panels of domain experts, rather than run-of-the-mill patent officers.
Financial or other penalties for patent applicants who fail to mention prior art, or otherwise try to rort the patent system. Also sanctions for patent clerks who approve patents that are later overturned.
Patent lifetimes that match the timescales of the
industry in question.
A legal cap on patent license fees (or damages) which is based on the audited R&D cost for the invention... NOT the "loss of earnings" due to having a competitor.
Slashdot Mirror
But suppose that the patches incorporated patented technology that made database queries run 10 times faster. I expect that some companies would be willing to pay a lot of money for something like that, and would be prepared to put up with the long term inconvenience of patching.
The viability of this approach would depend on the intrinsic "added value" of the patches, versus the costs to both the software vendor and the end customer. Bear in mind that the software vendor would typically require the end customer to hold the patches as trade secret and/or forbid any reverse engineering.
In addition, anyone who distributes proprietary patches to GPL'ed software must be prepared for the possibility of legal action against them. And they must also be prepared to go after people who violate their patents / trade-secrets. At the end of the day, it will be the courts who decide if this approach is a violation of the GPL.
Are you really saying that the original poster doesn't need to ask a lawyer about these things? What is the basis for this advice?
- As the previous poster said, an attempt to solicit compensation from the software vendor for "work done" could constitute attempted extortion, and as such could be illegal.
- Even if you do this in a legal way, you stand a good chance of being portrayed in the media as an evil money grubbing bastard.
- If you get branded as evil, other people who are looking for a exploits as a genuine public service will also tend to be "tarred with the same brush". That is likely to put them off doing this important work, which would be a BAD THING!!
If you are nervous about the whole position, your best bet is to inform your school. (Do it in such a way that you don't give them any evidence they could use against you until you know that they will treat you fairly.)Your school has a vested interest in not having students hack the marking software they use. They won't want their grading schemes to be publicly called into question. They should also have the resources to deal with the question. If they decide to ignore the issue, they may get into legal trouble later on when they are sued by ex-students whose degrees have been "devalued".
In reality, there are many workplaces where it is hard to rid of an employee who doesn't fit in or isn't competent. For example:
When a company migrates away from IBM proprietary operating systems to Linux, this will tend to reduce their dependence on the diminishing pool of people with "mainframe skills". Skills in developing software and/or using Linux are applicable across a wide range of hardware platform. If anything, Linux on IBM would be a reason to invest personal effort in acquiring these skills.
If companies are really desperate for people with mainframe skills, then they will have to consider on-the-job training. However this doesn't necessarily help you. If you don't have mainframe skills, you will have to beat all of the other job applicants without mainframe skills. However, if you demonstrate commitment by attempting to self-educate on mainframe technology, this could make you stand out from the crowd in the eyes of a prospective employer.
You haven't been taking your pills ... naughty boy :-)
My point was that your "moral" was saying that you could solve the problem by not employing the wrong people. This is of course unrealistic, as my silly Titanic analogy attempted to suggest.
Given that we accept that we sometimes employ the wrong person, we get back to the original discussion ... which is that we need some way to deal with this. Sacking the bad employee is (usually) one option.
Most average (i.e. non-geek) computer users are far more comfortable with a point-and-click user interface than a type-at-the-command-line user interface. For the kind of task that the average user does, point-and-click works just fine.
If you find Slashdot offensive, you don't have to read it you know ...
In fact, you are better off with Free Software in this context. If an OSS developer gives you the brush-off when you ask for a bug fix, you still have the option of fixing the bug yourself ... or employing someone to do it for you. Besides, if the problem is hurting lots of other people, there is a good chance that some other user will be motivated to fix it.
By contrast, if you are using a closed source product, and the vendor won't fix the problem, you are stuck.
Most of the passengers on the Titanic died as a result of exposure. Moral: when your ship sinks in the North Atlantic, and you end up in the water, be careful to avoid heat loss.
If I buy a lottery ticket on company time and win the first prize, is the company is entitled to take the money? I think not! If a co-worker gives me a bar of chocolate, if is my boss entitled to grap it out of my hands and scoff it? I think not!
It has been reported that Microsoft say that the offer is open to individual end-users, rather than the organisations that paid for the MSDN subscription. The PDA is a "gift" from Microsoft to the end-user. AFAIK, the company could only legally claim the PDA if there was a contract (e.g. an employment contract) or law that required an employee to surrender "gifts" to the company.
Perhaps you can explain how an employer can determine that a potential future employee will not be a source of management problems?
Not in Australia is can't!
This is not futile. The monitoring system will record the email including the steganographic content, and a (later) forensic audit may reveal that content. This may be sufficient to secure a criminal conviction, if not to deter the activity in the first place.
In the real world, organisations will employ various mechanisms to protect their infrastructure, even though they know those measures to not be completely effective. Instant messaging might be a "tiny hole" (I don't know what evidence you have for the statement). But it may also be the security hole that gets exploited, because the other holes are adequately plugged.
A month ago I was installing software at a client site. They had 500 odd employees, and all of their external communications went through an overloaded 500Kbit pipe. Downloading a 40Mbyte installer took 1 1/2 hours. This is not bullshit! I didn't ask why they couldn't simply upgrade their network connection, but I didn't need to. The answer would have been that they didn't have flexibility to reallocate resources to address the problem. (This was a government dept.)
Just because you haven't had enough real-world experience to recognize these situations, doesn't mean that they do not exist.
Banning instant messaging might be counter productive if the aim is to increase the amount of work done. (It is bad for staff morale.) However, it is management's responsibility to manage productivity. If the workplace culture (or the nature of the work) is such that people find excuses to "bunk off" all of the time, then banning instant messaging as a time waster may be necessary. Besides, there are other (much stronger) reasons why instant messaging might be banned. For example:
No, but hanging your butt out of an office window probably is!!
The point is that management has the right to set rules about what is not acceptable behaviour. Within limits of fairness, due process, etc, they are entitled to take action against people who break the rules ... including dismisal. The fact
that an employee might think the rules are petty
is not relevant.
I disagree. The original intent of the patent system was not to stiffle competition but to encourage inovation. I believe this is what the US Constitution says ...
Can you think of a single product (medical products exempted) that society as a whole cannot do without for 20 years? If the patent holder makes unreasonable requirements for granting a patent license then you just wait 20 years for the patent to expire and THEN build one.
Obviously, society in general can do without almost anything except food, water and air, though it would be a different society as a result. But that doen't mean that it is equitable that a patent assignee is granted monopoly rights for 20 years ... or that it is in
society's interest that this should happen.
Limitting license fees and similar tweaks
would restore the equitability and reduce
the unwanted anti-competitive nature of
patents.
Can you think of another way (than a fee cap) to avoid the anti-competitive aspects of the patent system?
(Disclaimer: I work for DSTC ...)
Here are some possible fixes: