I fail to understand why the inclusion of "under god" in the Pledge is even thought to be a good idea in the first place. The United States has so many different religous opinions in it that such a statement doesn't seem very appropriate. Putting aside the validity of the idea of the pledge in the first place, let's assume its purpose is to make young people aware of their obligations to a larger common society of which we are all a part. OK, fine. What does "under god" have to do with the governmental unit that is the subject of the pledge? Not one darn thing. Religous communities are a different and private setup. Not what the pledge, even in its best light, is supposed to handle.
I strongly oppose ANY inclusion of anything religious where government is concerned. It's simply too dangerous to toy with - religion is typically absolutely convinced it is RIGHT, and everyone else is WRONG. The worst possible environment for democracy to flourish - it has no place in the United States government. Look at things like Pi being set to 4, or evolution not being properly taught in schools. These are not the people I want running the show - they are free to believe what they like, but making it a matter of law is something else entirely.
I think that's the core issue of this debate. The religous right has gained too much power in this country (it seems to parallel a rise in religous conservatism all over) and I think some of them view this as a threat. All the more reason to push the issue - if people are so gung ho to have some kind of religous sentiment included in an official government sponsered pledge, they should be fought just because of that eagerness. It is a dangerous attitude. Religion and government should be like oil and water - no mixing. At least officially. Of course, individuals may be religious if they want, but keep it out of government.
Equally interesting to me was the fuss made over the ten commandments display recently - some judge was willing to go way out of bounds to fight for it, and got a lot of supports to rally. To me, that's scary. People are at their most dangerous when they know they are RIGHT, and everyone else is WRONG. Religion seems to bring that out in people. Ergo, keep it away from government.
My solution - take the phrase out of the pledge. It serves no purpose. Remove in god we trust from currency. Instead of opening the meetings of Congress with a prayer, open it with something like
"Let all those who stand here on this floor today remember it is their first, greatest, and final duty to serve the best interests and carry out the will of the American people who have chosen to put you here. For honor, trust, loyalty, and the sake of our children's future, wield your power with the hand of justice."
No appeals to deity, nothing supernatural. Simply duty, honor, and justice. Let's get any and all religious overtones out of the governmental system. If taking them out upsets religous folk who are determined that religion have a place in government, I'd say mission accomplished. Problem is, we seem to have elected a lot of those people who want them. Is it really true that more people want religion in official expression? I hope I'm reading this wrong, because if I'm not it's a very scary time to be a citizen of the US. Not to mention the more and more fundamentalist Earth.
My favorite bit: "He [Justice Antonin Scalia] also reportedly said removing references to God from public forums would be 'contrary to our whole tradition.'" If that's all the reason, let's make new tradition. If a tradition gets squashed in removing a dangerous influence from government, so be it.
Re:Eye Candy
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GTK+ TTY Port
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· Score: 4, Informative
TurboVision has apparently been somewhat modernized from the original source release. Here's the website:
but I'm sure SCO is going to be reading it looking for ways to sue him, not to hear his message.
News Flash: SCO wants our money, not their code removed. In the case of Linux, they have no financial incentive to show their cards - they cannot occupy a better position than they do now. As soon as problems are solved they newspapers lose interest, and SCO has to be a product producing business again. We have see how well they do on that basis, and anyway who wants to deal with them knowing how they've approached this issue? I sure don't want to deal with people like that.
This is not going to go away until they get squashed in court. They have made absolutely sure of that, by making incredible claims of ownership. The suspicion of free software from proprietary software trained CEOs plays into their hands. Those people, the ones who make the decisions, don't trust the opinions of the geek world. They listen to lawyerspeak. Hence, the SCO problem doesn't go away until it is clear in the never-never land of legal affairs that they have no teeth, however far fetched we might find their claims.
Nor would it matter even if the community took the extreme action of moving to FreeBSD or Hurd, or developed a new kernel altogether. SCO would simply make more claims that they have IP that any possible functional OS kernel would have to infringe on. As awful as it sounds, that is in fact the purpose of some IP claims - people want to occupy strong positions to be able to legally make claims like that. So it doesn't sound as bizarre to some people as it does to us. I doubt it is true, but they have nothing to lose at this point and SCO will cling to the ankles of the open source community until they are struck off by a judges gavel. Nothing else will carry any weight whatsoever.
So kudos to ESR for telling them off as they deserve, but aside from those already convinced SCO has lost it this won't do much. In corporate america lawyers are IT in matters such as this. We are going to have to batten the hatches and weather the storm, because SCO has targeted open source. This has (IMHO) been about destroying the free software world from day one, and they won't stop even if the linux kernel gets abandoned. There will still be a viable free operating system out there of some kind, and they will still have more work to do. We can't satisfy them as long as we exist.
Continuing to cover this is not particularly useful. SCO won't be bothered by anything so trivial as facts. They are out for blood and maximum damage, and no possible response from anyone is going to stop them now. They will have to be defeated, but no action we take or not take will do anything significant. They know they aren't popular and don't care in the slightest. They may even know they are wrong, but that won't stop them from trying to use the system to get $$.
If we want to do something interesting, let's look ahead to how we might lobby and/or structure the GPL 3.0 to fight this kind of crap. Maybe create an auditing trail software package people can use to know not just the origin of a piece of code, but how it is used and what code is based off of it. Also give more press to the idea of mutual defense clauses in licenses - kind of the counterweight to the cross licensing of IP between companies. Let's think of some positive steps we might take in the future to make our position so obviously strong that anyone short of an SCO type wouldn't waste their time. I think someone who earlier said SCO really believes it is actually impossible for open source to produce what it has was right on the money, and with that settled in their own minds SCO goes into attack mode. There is nothing that can be done about such attitudes but fight. For the rest of the (semi) sane world however, making our position more obviously strong might be good. Let's focus there, and wait until SCO does something that we can actually respond to before rewarding any more of their tantrums.
Interesting, although I don't think this ultimately will do much to silence the noise. We already knew that SCO was up to no good, and the public sees us as rather biased. (Which is true, of course.) The PHBs will "wait for the trial" since they know darn well reality may or may not have much to do with the law or what's "right". There are so many levels to this nonsense, but almost none of the worrysome ones have to do with the source code. Let's review some of the tidbits:
Issue #1: Contract dispute between IBM and SCO.
Impolite to say the least, but not directly the business of the Linux community. Not directly our problem.
Issue #2: Claims of infringing code in the kernel. Wildly varying claims, with no proof to date that has withstood any study.
Not much we can do here (except wait for them to point out where all the crappy code is for us:-). The real annoyances here are their refusal to make their claims explicit (remember this was a leak) and them saying (in essence, afaict) that they don't want to provide the opprotunity to remove the code because that would allow people to stop infringing and limit their options for collecting $$$, and expecting that to be a justifable reason for not saying anything. It's disturbing, mainly because you have to wonder what kind of mind is coming up with this.
Issue #3: Claims that they are owed money for a "Linux license"
Now it begins to get personal. They want to go after end users. Lots of things wrong with that, only one of which is...
Issue #4: Bizarre attack on the GPL, claiming it is invalid.
I still don't understand this. Someone speculated they might be hoping to get GPL code ruled public domain, and then suck it in with SCO rights arguements. Mind numbingly stupid. The only worrisome part is how dumb the courts are, and I don't think they are that stupid.
Issue #5: Claims that virtually all OS software in existance has it's roots in SCO IP, and thus owes them money.
They haven't hit this one too hard yet, but depending on how bad things get for them...
Anyone else get the feeling we are watching the legal equivalent of a suicide bombing?
Until a company starts to sue people who post negative reviews of their products. It starts out with the best of motivations, but will it stay there? Particularly in the hands of Microsoft? The temptation to scope out who their most intelligent and dangerous competitors in the Linux field are would be very strong. What could they do with that knowledge? And once other people start to use it? What if the Neo-nazi groups use it to figure out who to go after? Or a con artist trys to scan for vulnerable profiles, in a sort of Spamming Plus setup. Feel free to think up other possibilities - I'm sure there are many.
Note that I'm not saying this is something we shouldn't have done - technology happens regardless of whether we want it to or not, and always has both positive and negative implications. I am saying the implications need to be considered, because once someone does it they won't be alone for long. And the next guy to come along might not be well intentioned. How do we as a society respond to potential misuse of this technology? Or worse, if the misuse if it becomes instituitonalized. That's what we need to consider.
A software maker granting a refund for a product (even if it is under threat)? I can hear the fuses popping in certain brains in a nameless northwestern city.
Seriously though, this tells you a lot about the both the Mac community and Apple. The machines are so good that people are able to file a lawsuit due to expecting X performance on a machine and not getting it, and expect to have a case. Wow.
Personally, I doubt Apple deserves this (I mean, come on - older machines tend to not be supported as well, and early releases of software are know to be less solid than later ones.) But it does say a lot about the Apple World.
guppi is OK, but I really wish they would port the guts of something like Grace over to Gnumeric. One of the things MS did correctly on Excel was decent graphing, and I would like to see Gnumeric use some really powerful plotting tools from the open source world (scigraphica might be easier to incorporate) and take that to the next level.
Oh - is there any way to keep the scroll bar from reflecting the fact that there are 65000 rows or whatever in a sheet? It really limits the use of the scroll bar.
I think they discuss this somewhere. The whole point of ASCII is that it can be accessed simply, by almost any machine. It is as stable a format as you will find for data storage, anywhere. They are commited to these books being widely readable, and ASCII is the best way to assure this.
However, I agree that some books (most actually) lose something in ASCII. What I would like to see is a project which works off the basic Gutenberg texts and formats them in a readable way, preserves illustrations, etc. But it should be an add on to the project, not the main project. Also, remember that that level of preservation is much harder than just typing in and proofreading - you have to consider formatting and scanning images as well.
As a temporary measure, it would be nice to see someone do an XML markup that can be easily translated into LaTeX, so people can have pdfs with nice fonts, table of contents, title page, etc. That would be a step up. But to do it properly would take a separate effort, and a very large scale one even by Gutenberg standards. Worthwhile, yes. But involved.
Indeed. Those pictures are originally from Mike McMahon's site at http://world.std.com/~jdostale/kbd/ They are the only images I have ever seen of a Space Cadet keyboard, which is why I created the mirror (with permission).
I have never come close to finding one, and I'm not even sure where one would start. The one or two Lisp machine sellers I've found don't seem to have one. What I would love to see happen would be for ThinkGeek or someone to work with PcKeyboard.com or another keyboard company with the ability to make keyboards of ultimate quality, and reproduce this sucker in all it's incredibly complex detail. Even better perhaps would be a DVORAK version of the space cadet keyboard:-). I don't know what such a beast would cost, but I'm betting there are at least a few geeks out there who would put up some $$, provied it was made to the same standards as the originals.
Anybody wondering what the "unfair compeition" part of the whole SCO lawsuit might entail? IANAL, of course, but I sort of wonder what would be considered unfair. Releasing secrets and code to Linux that belong to SCO would seem to be different offenses - would they qualify as unfair competition too, or might that be refering to creating a free system to do what SCO can do, and more? Would that be ruled unfair?
I've often wondered if someone wouldn't sue open source software projects based on the argument it isn't fair that they have to compete against a free product, and asking that no one be allowed to distribute free software on the grounds it is unfair competition. Utter nonsense, of course, but the "I have a right to make a profit" thinking in the US is so strong sometimes it makes me wonder if someday we will see it.
The blitz of press about SCO leaves one very confused about all of this. This press release doens't seem to contain a whole lot that is new, and unfortunately does little to resolve any of the significant issues.
The IBM vs. SCO dispute appears to be something that Linux itself is not involved in except as a matter of evidence of violation of contract, unless I misunderstand what the initial lawsuit was about. (IANAL.) IBM does not have any control over the Linux kernel.
The involvement of free software, and I think the reason many of us are so up in arms, is certain statements SCO has made which seem to indicate it thinks a) it can treat Linux, and all the contributions made to Linux by people everywhere, as SCO property and b) that any Unix like system, of any type, also owes SCO for IP use. Those are the really dangerous thoughts, because a lot of us don't trust the court system to acknowledge common sense. The whole IBM thing is just a prelude as far as Linux is concerned - contract disputes between IBM and SCO are secondary. It's whether SCO thinks they can go after Linux that is the real issue. And the reason for the sound and fury is they seem to think they can, or at least they say that. Not to mention their statements that they don't believe the Linux kernel could be enterprise ready so quickly (whatever that means) without commercial software being included. How do they know that? The attitude of "well, we know you aren't capable of creating this, so if you have it it must be from us" is extremely insulting and arrogant. No one has ever put a bounds on what the free software community can achieve with any success. It's just too diverse.
The nightmare scenario seems to be this: A US Court grants SCO the right to all Linux IP, based on some bizarre reading of derivative work definitons. Consequently, if people in the US want to use Linux they now have to license it from SCO, despite the fact that SCO did not create most of the code in Linux. Our efforts will have essentially been stolen out from under us - most developers for Linux have worked in good faith to create a totally free system. If SCO is allowed to destroy that, the result is many years of work down the drain, because free software and open source both would sooner abandon Linux than pay SCO anything. Indeed, if SCO succeeds in such an attempt, Linux will become non-free. The effort will have to be recreated elsewhere, and if SCO's claims to all Unix like operating systems holds up it will have to be on something completely new. Plan9 perhaps, or Hurd, or maybe something totally new. But in any case, years gone.
The mistake SCO seems to be making is that they can grab Linux and make people pay for it. That is, of course, utter nonsense. People would sooner abandon it and start over. Linux is not special because of its technology. It is the freedom of Linux that makes it a powerful force in the software world. The technology is secondary. SCO controlling the technology would, by definition, destroy that which makes Linux worthwhile. We would be pissed as heck if they somehow managed it, but maybe just for that reason the rise of a new system without any IP ties would probably be all the faster. SCO is like the child who wants to hold a snowflake in their hand - the mere act of grabbing it destroys it.
What their motivations might be, there has been a lot of speculation. The obvious possibilities have already been mentioned time and again. SCO will not succeed if their goal is to make money from controlling open source software, because any software they control is not, by definition, open source. We will go elsewhere.
Do I think it will come to that? No. But the law is a strange animal, and one is never 100% sure what will happen. So the sooner this is over with, the happier we will all be. And whatever happens, SCO can forget about ever being a viable commercial business again. I would not do business with any company who uses methods such as those I have seen from them.
"... SCO will have the courts declare that *ALL* of the Linux kernel is now legally considered to be a "derivative work" of SCO's I.P. and therefore they will have successfully, and legally, hijacked the Linux code and I.P. in its entirely, and seize ownership of all copyrights and trademark of Linux."
Utter BS. IBM is not stupid, and has vast resources. Many of the authors are beyond the reach of US copyright laws or legal systems in any case. And development can just resume starting at whatever point it was before the SCO crud got in, and build up again. They can't award the efforts of independant developers to SCO based on IBM's misuse of code. That violates the rights of those individuals. I don't and can't believe they would view all of Linux as a derivative work. Certain parts after certain dates, at the worst. Most of Linux was explicitly and deliberately coded independantly, and that can probably be proven at need. Of course SCO might try to claim they own anything vaguely Unix/System V like, but I don't thing they'll have a leg to stand on. Why wait five years to act? What what about a show of good faith efforts to get the code removed?
Not that it matters. If Linux dies, the authors and developers will move elsewhere, making darn sure this time that this can't happen. I expect GNU Hurd and L4 would be the logical paring for the next great free OS, and would be the final answer to the "prior IP" BS.
"it is ironic that the OSS movement main goal is to avoid corporate lock down and give freedom for the end user."
That is still the goal of a large number of people. Remember, "Linux" doesn't have a goal. Only the people who use it and develop it do. And they do not (and should not be expected to) speak with one voice. It's a sign that things are normal. When very large numbers of independant people speak with one voice, it's generally a sign that things are really, really bad. (Think war. Real life war. Not software war.)
"...until Tux became the darling of IBM and that dragged us into a sleazy corprate war, i think the whole matter stinks especially when lawyers creep in."
Pfft. You don't understand how sleazy these creeps can be. What if they decided they wanted control of all Linux IP, and decide to argue that Linux is a derivative of System V, which they own the rights to? We have heard this as one of the (numerous) pieces of crap that have flown out of SCO, and this does not depend on IBMs involvement.
"Maybe its time to question the benefit of corporate support to Linux."
They can support it or not, as they please. If you want to impliment a more rigid IP scrubbing before things get to the Linux kernel that might be OK (possibly an over-reaction) but as long as a viable free alternative exists to commercial OS software some commercial toad will want to kill it to make more $$.
"IIRC SCO said that whatever IBM put into the kernel magically turned Linux from a "toy bicycle" OS to an enterprise grade OS, and in another/. article the source code that found its way to the kernel was like 60 lines of code, so I'm suppose to believe that 60 lines of code is all what is needed to make an enterprise OS out of a toy OS? yeah sure.."
We don't know the full details yet. It's impossible to say what their arguments are in detail. I daresay they won't be able to hold on to the tiger's tail and will be badly mauled, but the sooner it happens the better for everyone else.
Of course, if everyone just picks the best clean IP from Linux, heads over to Hurd, and injects Hurd with resources, code, $$$, developers, etc. a new next generation OS might just appear out of the sands, something totally new. Or maybe Plan9 will become more than a research OS. Or OpenBeOS jumps to the front ranks. Or something unknown rises from nowhere. Open source and free software will never go away. They can't kill it. Ever. But they are unlikely to stop trying.
"It's a nice thought, but I don't think you can just give someone a level playing field, all anti-trust laws to the contrary. Ultimately, OSS has to stand on its own merits, or it's not a competitor, it's just an also-ran."
That's exactly the point. EXACTLY. OSS can't stand on it's own merits as software if it has to keep handling Word document bull, and a lot of other bizarre closed formats. Reality check - all governments/businesses/etc. want is to read their documents. They don't pick software based on quality, they base it on their current use and what the least complicated thing will be. Time=money. This isn't the 80s and early 90s, when everyone was figuring out what software they wanted to use. That already happened. Now, the question is what is the best software that can be used in our current setup? OSS has to be a drop in replacement and it can't do that until standards can be open. Toyota is a drop in replacement for Ford, because everyone can get the same gas and put it in both cars. If Toyota had to use hydrogen, they'd never sell any cars because everyone's already using gas and no one uses hydrogen, and people want to run their gas cars. But Toyota can handle the gas from the local pump too, and thus they can compete on merit. That's what we need for software. Microsoft is a monopoly, and closed standards are one of the things that will keep them there. This makes that expensive for them, and I say it's worth considering seriously.
"But *why* does it matter if Twain intended that connection, so long as others find it to be present?"
Primarily because students are getting grades for these classes, and teaching people what the "right" answer to something like that is defeats (IMHO) any useful purpose of the class. It doesn't matter that people know Clemens ment a) instead of b) in this part of the book. What DOES matter is whether people are able to think about the work, instead of memorizing for the test. Of course, sometimes it's an effort just to get them to read the darn book at all, but that's another post.
"This is not a distro targetted at advanced users."
That's EXACTLY the problem - why on EARTH would you put such a person in the root account to start? Who's more likely to do damage to the system running root, someone unfamiliar with Linux or an expert? For one thing, we WILL get to see a virus or two for Linux if this happens. Social engineering can do terrible things.
"As a pretty advanced user, I'm not going to be using Lindows (I installed Gentoo a while ago...that'll put hair on your nuts). Let me check...yep, just making sure, there is no law mandating that any of us 133t's have to use it. Phew. Freedom of choice still exists. But this company is doing a good thing. "
On the whole, yes. Root install, no.
"Incidentally, it's refreshing to see a CEO out there who doesn't use newspeak and cares about something other than $$$$."
We agree there.
"Try to understand -- he's not making an OS for advanced computer users."
Which is exactly why the default account should not have the ability to destroy the OS with an accidental command.
"He's not taking away the option to create user accounts. You want an account -- you can ADD one. By the way, all you jerk-offs should NOTE that when you finish installing Gentoo -- a pretty technically orientated distro -- there IS NO USER. ONLY ROOT. That's following the protocol of the install-guide. Look at the Gentoo Install Guide. Nowhere along are you forced to create a user-account, and the install guide doesn't even cover creating a user account, though it does suggest doing so, and references you to their FAQ (I've recommended that they cover how to create a user account at the end of the install guide). So, if you're going to bash Lindows for not having a user/root separation by default, you can only do so consistently if you also bash Gentoo. If you choose to bash Lindows but not Gentoo for this, then you are a hypocrite and are just doing this because you want to bash Lindows because it's easy."
Nonsense. If someone is using Gentoo, they are assumed to know enough about things to know that using the root account for everything is basically putting a KICK ME sign on your computer. Lindows users, almost by definition, don't need or want to know that. Most of the time, they won't care who they are running as. Simply make them choose a "system" password for things like installing software and handling device drivers, and leave it at that. Don't even tell them about root, just prompt them for the system password when they try to do something that normally is restricted to the root account.
"thirty-year-old computer science manuals aren't in particularly high demand"
Not always true. Well written computer science books can often be timeless, and occasionally software can last that long or longer. An example is Maxima (http://maxima.sf.net) which was largely written back in the late sixties and early seventies and is still active today. I'm involved with the documentation effort on that project, and we would dearly love to be able to include the older manuals written about the system. Recreating docs is not simple!
There are also other very good reasons for these books to survive even if their subject matter doesn't do so well - 1) If the manuals are collected in a huge central archive as their copyrights expire and they become free, then the poor sucker who has to deal with a rare and/or obscure legacy system will have a place to go 2) The design and usage priciples of the software will be documented. They may suck, but old program != bad ideas. In fact, quite the contrary. Look at TeX, or Emacs. Old programs, but masterpieces of their art.
Don't knock old manuals. Yes there are huge amounts of crap out there in the computer world, but don't casually throw away knowledge. Even of old computer systems. You never know when you might wish you still had it.
"As for the idea that open source software should be exempt - I doubt that you'd accept the idea that cars should be exempt from safety standard if they provided you with the blueprints:-)."
But I would if the car were given to me for free with the blueprints. When I use such a car I am knowingly accepting the conditions that, while the designers may have done their best to make it work properly, I accept the risk of failure. That's where the no free lunch part comes in for free stuff - you don't get to nail hides to the wall if it doesn't do what you want. If you want someone behind it, pay them to take the legal risk. Otherwise, you're at the mercy of the developer's good will unless you want to become an auto mechanic. The difference is - with the blueprints, I can figure my way out. Commercial software sues you if you try the equilivent operations.
Anyway. Bad analogy. The act of paying someone an agreed upon sum for support is where the responsibility part comes in. Not supplying blueprints.
"do you think people new to computers have inertia?"
Individually? Of course not. But they will be surrounded by Windows users, and since computing is now a social activity the tendency will be to follow the herd.
"what is the best way to thwart the blind inertia that they may well pick up from those around them, from their predecessors, from so-called "insightful" slashdot posts?"
Education. Schools need to stop teaching off of one operating system. Make people learn everything there is out there. Force them to adapt to new interfaces. Make them learn how to learn a new interface. Then they can decide for themselves what they like using, and adapt more quickly as advancements come out. I have a huge issue with the way computers are taught in schools now.
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I fail to understand why the inclusion of "under god" in the Pledge is even thought to be a good idea in the first place. The United States has so many different religous opinions in it that such a statement doesn't seem very appropriate. Putting aside the validity of the idea of the pledge in the first place, let's assume its purpose is to make young people aware of their obligations to a larger common society of which we are all a part. OK, fine. What does "under god" have to do with the governmental unit that is the subject of the pledge? Not one darn thing. Religous communities are a different and private setup. Not what the pledge, even in its best light, is supposed to handle.
I strongly oppose ANY inclusion of anything religious where government is concerned. It's simply too dangerous to toy with - religion is typically absolutely convinced it is RIGHT, and everyone else is WRONG. The worst possible environment for democracy to flourish - it has no place in the United States government. Look at things like Pi being set to 4, or evolution not being properly taught in schools. These are not the people I want running the show - they are free to believe what they like, but making it a matter of law is something else entirely.
I think that's the core issue of this debate. The religous right has gained too much power in this country (it seems to parallel a rise in religous conservatism all over) and I think some of them view this as a threat. All the more reason to push the issue - if people are so gung ho to have some kind of religous sentiment included in an official government sponsered pledge, they should be fought just because of that eagerness. It is a dangerous attitude. Religion and government should be like oil and water - no mixing. At least officially. Of course, individuals may be religious if they want, but keep it out of government.
Equally interesting to me was the fuss made over the ten commandments display recently - some judge was willing to go way out of bounds to fight for it, and got a lot of supports to rally. To me, that's scary. People are at their most dangerous when they know they are RIGHT, and everyone else is WRONG. Religion seems to bring that out in people. Ergo, keep it away from government.
My solution - take the phrase out of the pledge. It serves no purpose. Remove in god we trust from currency. Instead of opening the meetings of Congress with a prayer, open it with something like
"Let all those who stand here on this floor today remember it is their first, greatest, and final duty to serve the best interests and carry out the will of the American people who have chosen to put you here. For honor, trust, loyalty, and the sake of our children's future, wield your power with the hand of justice."
No appeals to deity, nothing supernatural. Simply duty, honor, and justice. Let's get any and all religious overtones out of the governmental system. If taking them out upsets religous folk who are determined that religion have a place in government, I'd say mission accomplished. Problem is, we seem to have elected a lot of those people who want them. Is it really true that more people want religion in official expression? I hope I'm reading this wrong, because if I'm not it's a very scary time to be a citizen of the US. Not to mention the more and more fundamentalist Earth.
My favorite bit: "He [Justice Antonin Scalia] also reportedly said removing references to God from public forums would be 'contrary to our whole tradition.'" If that's all the reason, let's make new tradition. If a tradition gets squashed in removing a dangerous influence from government, so be it.
TurboVision has apparently been somewhat modernized from the original source release. Here's the website:
http://tvision.sourceforge.net/
but I'm sure SCO is going to be reading it looking for ways to sue him, not to hear his message.
News Flash: SCO wants our money, not their code removed. In the case of Linux, they have no financial incentive to show their cards - they cannot occupy a better position than they do now. As soon as problems are solved they newspapers lose interest, and SCO has to be a product producing business again. We have see how well they do on that basis, and anyway who wants to deal with them knowing how they've approached this issue? I sure don't want to deal with people like that.
This is not going to go away until they get squashed in court. They have made absolutely sure of that, by making incredible claims of ownership. The suspicion of free software from proprietary software trained CEOs plays into their hands. Those people, the ones who make the decisions, don't trust the opinions of the geek world. They listen to lawyerspeak. Hence, the SCO problem doesn't go away until it is clear in the never-never land of legal affairs that they have no teeth, however far fetched we might find their claims.
Nor would it matter even if the community took the extreme action of moving to FreeBSD or Hurd, or developed a new kernel altogether. SCO would simply make more claims that they have IP that any possible functional OS kernel would have to infringe on. As awful as it sounds, that is in fact the purpose of some IP claims - people want to occupy strong positions to be able to legally make claims like that. So it doesn't sound as bizarre to some people as it does to us. I doubt it is true, but they have nothing to lose at this point and SCO will cling to the ankles of the open source community until they are struck off by a judges gavel. Nothing else will carry any weight whatsoever.
So kudos to ESR for telling them off as they deserve, but aside from those already convinced SCO has lost it this won't do much. In corporate america lawyers are IT in matters such as this. We are going to have to batten the hatches and weather the storm, because SCO has targeted open source. This has (IMHO) been about destroying the free software world from day one, and they won't stop even if the linux kernel gets abandoned. There will still be a viable free operating system out there of some kind, and they will still have more work to do. We can't satisfy them as long as we exist.
Continuing to cover this is not particularly useful. SCO won't be bothered by anything so trivial as facts. They are out for blood and maximum damage, and no possible response from anyone is going to stop them now. They will have to be defeated, but no action we take or not take will do anything significant. They know they aren't popular and don't care in the slightest. They may even know they are wrong, but that won't stop them from trying to use the system to get $$.
If we want to do something interesting, let's look ahead to how we might lobby and/or structure the GPL 3.0 to fight this kind of crap. Maybe create an auditing trail software package people can use to know not just the origin of a piece of code, but how it is used and what code is based off of it. Also give more press to the idea of mutual defense clauses in licenses - kind of the counterweight to the cross licensing of IP between companies. Let's think of some positive steps we might take in the future to make our position so obviously strong that anyone short of an SCO type wouldn't waste their time. I think someone who earlier said SCO really believes it is actually impossible for open source to produce what it has was right on the money, and with that settled in their own minds SCO goes into attack mode. There is nothing that can be done about such attitudes but fight. For the rest of the (semi) sane world however, making our position more obviously strong might be good. Let's focus there, and wait until SCO does something that we can actually respond to before rewarding any more of their tantrums.
Interesting, although I don't think this ultimately will do much to silence the noise. We already knew that SCO was up to no good, and the public sees us as rather biased. (Which is true, of course.) The PHBs will "wait for the trial" since they know darn well reality may or may not have much to do with the law or what's "right". There are so many levels to this nonsense, but almost none of the worrysome ones have to do with the source code. Let's review some of the tidbits:
:-). The real annoyances here are their refusal to make their claims explicit (remember this was a leak) and them saying (in essence, afaict) that they don't want to provide the opprotunity to remove the code because that would allow people to stop infringing and limit their options for collecting $$$, and expecting that to be a justifable reason for not saying anything. It's disturbing, mainly because you have to wonder what kind of mind is coming up with this.
Issue #1: Contract dispute between IBM and SCO.
Impolite to say the least, but not directly the business of the Linux community. Not directly our problem.
Issue #2: Claims of infringing code in the kernel. Wildly varying claims, with no proof to date that has withstood any study.
Not much we can do here (except wait for them to point out where all the crappy code is for us
Issue #3: Claims that they are owed money for a "Linux license"
Now it begins to get personal. They want to go after end users. Lots of things wrong with that, only one of which is...
Issue #4: Bizarre attack on the GPL, claiming it is invalid.
I still don't understand this. Someone speculated they might be hoping to get GPL code ruled public domain, and then suck it in with SCO rights arguements. Mind numbingly stupid. The only worrisome part is how dumb the courts are, and I don't think they are that stupid.
Issue #5: Claims that virtually all OS software in existance has it's roots in SCO IP, and thus owes them money.
They haven't hit this one too hard yet, but depending on how bad things get for them...
Anyone else get the feeling we are watching the legal equivalent of a suicide bombing?
"It's called market research."
Until a company starts to sue people who post negative reviews of their products. It starts out with the best of motivations, but will it stay there? Particularly in the hands of Microsoft? The temptation to scope out who their most intelligent and dangerous competitors in the Linux field are would be very strong. What could they do with that knowledge? And once other people start to use it? What if the Neo-nazi groups use it to figure out who to go after? Or a con artist trys to scan for vulnerable profiles, in a sort of Spamming Plus setup. Feel free to think up other possibilities - I'm sure there are many.
Note that I'm not saying this is something we shouldn't have done - technology happens regardless of whether we want it to or not, and always has both positive and negative implications. I am saying the implications need to be considered, because once someone does it they won't be alone for long. And the next guy to come along might not be well intentioned. How do we as a society respond to potential misuse of this technology? Or worse, if the misuse if it becomes instituitonalized. That's what we need to consider.
A software maker granting a refund for a product (even if it is under threat)? I can hear the fuses popping in certain brains in a nameless northwestern city.
Seriously though, this tells you a lot about the both the Mac community and Apple. The machines are so good that people are able to file a lawsuit due to expecting X performance on a machine and not getting it, and expect to have a case. Wow.
Personally, I doubt Apple deserves this (I mean, come on - older machines tend to not be supported as well, and early releases of software are know to be less solid than later ones.) But it does say a lot about the Apple World.
guppi is OK, but I really wish they would port the guts of something like Grace over to Gnumeric. One of the things MS did correctly on Excel was decent graphing, and I would like to see Gnumeric use some really powerful plotting tools from the open source world (scigraphica might be easier to incorporate) and take that to the next level.
Oh - is there any way to keep the scroll bar from reflecting the fact that there are 65000 rows or whatever in a sheet? It really limits the use of the scroll bar.
I think they discuss this somewhere. The whole point of ASCII is that it can be accessed simply, by almost any machine. It is as stable a format as you will find for data storage, anywhere. They are commited to these books being widely readable, and ASCII is the best way to assure this.
However, I agree that some books (most actually) lose something in ASCII. What I would like to see is a project which works off the basic Gutenberg texts and formats them in a readable way, preserves illustrations, etc. But it should be an add on to the project, not the main project. Also, remember that that level of preservation is much harder than just typing in and proofreading - you have to consider formatting and scanning images as well.
As a temporary measure, it would be nice to see someone do an XML markup that can be easily translated into LaTeX, so people can have pdfs with nice fonts, table of contents, title page, etc. That would be a step up. But to do it properly would take a separate effort, and a very large scale one even by Gutenberg standards. Worthwhile, yes. But involved.
Your proposal is... acceptible.
Indeed. Those pictures are originally from Mike McMahon's site at http://world.std.com/~jdostale/kbd/ They are the only images I have ever seen of a Space Cadet keyboard, which is why I created the mirror (with permission).
:-). I don't know what such a beast would cost, but I'm betting there are at least a few geeks out there who would put up some $$, provied it was made to the same standards as the originals.
I have never come close to finding one, and I'm not even sure where one would start. The one or two Lisp machine sellers I've found don't seem to have one. What I would love to see happen would be for ThinkGeek or someone to work with PcKeyboard.com or another keyboard company with the ability to make keyboards of ultimate quality, and reproduce this sucker in all it's incredibly complex detail. Even better perhaps would be a DVORAK version of the space cadet keyboard
Anybody wondering what the "unfair compeition" part of the whole SCO lawsuit might entail? IANAL, of course, but I sort of wonder what would be considered unfair. Releasing secrets and code to Linux that belong to SCO would seem to be different offenses - would they qualify as unfair competition too, or might that be refering to creating a free system to do what SCO can do, and more? Would that be ruled unfair?
I've often wondered if someone wouldn't sue open source software projects based on the argument it isn't fair that they have to compete against a free product, and asking that no one be allowed to distribute free software on the grounds it is unfair competition. Utter nonsense, of course, but the "I have a right to make a profit" thinking in the US is so strong sometimes it makes me wonder if someday we will see it.
The blitz of press about SCO leaves one very confused about all of this. This press release doens't seem to contain a whole lot that is new, and unfortunately does little to resolve any of the significant issues.
The IBM vs. SCO dispute appears to be something that Linux itself is not involved in except as a matter of evidence of violation of contract, unless I misunderstand what the initial lawsuit was about. (IANAL.) IBM does not have any control over the Linux kernel.
The involvement of free software, and I think the reason many of us are so up in arms, is certain statements SCO has made which seem to indicate it thinks a) it can treat Linux, and all the contributions made to Linux by people everywhere, as SCO property and b) that any Unix like system, of any type, also owes SCO for IP use. Those are the really dangerous thoughts, because a lot of us don't trust the court system to acknowledge common sense. The whole IBM thing is just a prelude as far as Linux is concerned - contract disputes between IBM and SCO are secondary. It's whether SCO thinks they can go after Linux that is the real issue. And the reason for the sound and fury is they seem to think they can, or at least they say that. Not to mention their statements that they don't believe the Linux kernel could be enterprise ready so quickly (whatever that means) without commercial software being included. How do they know that? The attitude of "well, we know you aren't capable of creating this, so if you have it it must be from us" is extremely insulting and arrogant. No one has ever put a bounds on what the free software community can achieve with any success. It's just too diverse.
The nightmare scenario seems to be this: A US Court grants SCO the right to all Linux IP, based on some bizarre reading of derivative work definitons. Consequently, if people in the US want to use Linux they now have to license it from SCO, despite the fact that SCO did not create most of the code in Linux. Our efforts will have essentially been stolen out from under us - most developers for Linux have worked in good faith to create a totally free system. If SCO is allowed to destroy that, the result is many years of work down the drain, because free software and open source both would sooner abandon Linux than pay SCO anything. Indeed, if SCO succeeds in such an attempt, Linux will become non-free. The effort will have to be recreated elsewhere, and if SCO's claims to all Unix like operating systems holds up it will have to be on something completely new. Plan9 perhaps, or Hurd, or maybe something totally new. But in any case, years gone.
The mistake SCO seems to be making is that they can grab Linux and make people pay for it. That is, of course, utter nonsense. People would sooner abandon it and start over. Linux is not special because of its technology. It is the freedom of Linux that makes it a powerful force in the software world. The technology is secondary. SCO controlling the technology would, by definition, destroy that which makes Linux worthwhile. We would be pissed as heck if they somehow managed it, but maybe just for that reason the rise of a new system without any IP ties would probably be all the faster. SCO is like the child who wants to hold a snowflake in their hand - the mere act of grabbing it destroys it.
What their motivations might be, there has been a lot of speculation. The obvious possibilities have already been mentioned time and again. SCO will not succeed if their goal is to make money from controlling open source software, because any software they control is not, by definition, open source. We will go elsewhere.
Do I think it will come to that? No. But the law is a strange animal, and one is never 100% sure what will happen. So the sooner this is over with, the happier we will all be. And whatever happens, SCO can forget about ever being a viable commercial business again. I would not do business with any company who uses methods such as those I have seen from them.
"... SCO will have the courts declare that *ALL* of the Linux kernel is now legally considered to be a "derivative work" of SCO's I.P. and therefore they will have successfully, and legally, hijacked the Linux code and I.P. in its entirely, and seize ownership of all copyrights and trademark of Linux."
Utter BS. IBM is not stupid, and has vast resources. Many of the authors are beyond the reach of US copyright laws or legal systems in any case. And development can just resume starting at whatever point it was before the SCO crud got in, and build up again. They can't award the efforts of independant developers to SCO based on IBM's misuse of code. That violates the rights of those individuals. I don't and can't believe they would view all of Linux as a derivative work. Certain parts after certain dates, at the worst. Most of Linux was explicitly and deliberately coded independantly, and that can probably be proven at need. Of course SCO might try to claim they own anything vaguely Unix/System V like, but I don't thing they'll have a leg to stand on. Why wait five years to act? What what about a show of good faith efforts to get the code removed?
Not that it matters. If Linux dies, the authors and developers will move elsewhere, making darn sure this time that this can't happen. I expect GNU Hurd and L4 would be the logical paring for the next great free OS, and would be the final answer to the "prior IP" BS.
"it is ironic that the OSS movement main goal is to avoid corporate lock down and give freedom for the end user."
/. article the source code that found its way to the kernel was like 60 lines of code, so I'm suppose to believe that 60 lines of code is all what is needed to make an enterprise OS out of a toy OS?
That is still the goal of a large number of people. Remember, "Linux" doesn't have a goal. Only the people who use it and develop it do. And they do not (and should not be expected to) speak with one voice. It's a sign that things are normal. When very large numbers of independant people speak with one voice, it's generally a sign that things are really, really bad. (Think war. Real life war. Not software war.)
"...until Tux became the darling of IBM and that dragged us into a sleazy corprate war, i think the whole matter stinks especially when lawyers creep in."
Pfft. You don't understand how sleazy these creeps can be. What if they decided they wanted control of all Linux IP, and decide to argue that Linux is a derivative of System V, which they own the rights to? We have heard this as one of the (numerous) pieces of crap that have flown out of SCO, and this does not depend on IBMs involvement.
"Maybe its time to question the benefit of corporate support to Linux."
They can support it or not, as they please. If you want to impliment a more rigid IP scrubbing before things get to the Linux kernel that might be OK (possibly an over-reaction) but as long as a viable free alternative exists to commercial OS software some commercial toad will want to kill it to make more $$.
"IIRC SCO said that whatever IBM put into the kernel magically turned Linux from a "toy bicycle" OS to an enterprise grade OS, and in another
yeah sure.."
We don't know the full details yet. It's impossible to say what their arguments are in detail. I daresay they won't be able to hold on to the tiger's tail and will be badly mauled, but the sooner it happens the better for everyone else.
Of course, if everyone just picks the best clean IP from Linux, heads over to Hurd, and injects Hurd with resources, code, $$$, developers, etc. a new next generation OS might just appear out of the sands, something totally new. Or maybe Plan9 will become more than a research OS. Or OpenBeOS jumps to the front ranks. Or something unknown rises from nowhere. Open source and free software will never go away. They can't kill it. Ever. But they are unlikely to stop trying.
Does this mean we get another shot at punting Lance Bass into orbit? ;=)
"It's a nice thought, but I don't think you can just give someone a level playing field, all anti-trust laws to the contrary. Ultimately, OSS has to stand on its own merits, or it's not a competitor, it's just an also-ran."
That's exactly the point. EXACTLY. OSS can't stand on it's own merits as software if it has to keep handling Word document bull, and a lot of other bizarre closed formats. Reality check - all governments/businesses/etc. want is to read their documents. They don't pick software based on quality, they base it on their current use and what the least complicated thing will be. Time=money. This isn't the 80s and early 90s, when everyone was figuring out what software they wanted to use. That already happened. Now, the question is what is the best software that can be used in our current setup? OSS has to be a drop in replacement and it can't do that until standards can be open. Toyota is a drop in replacement for Ford, because everyone can get the same gas and put it in both cars. If Toyota had to use hydrogen, they'd never sell any cars because everyone's already using gas and no one uses hydrogen, and people want to run their gas cars. But Toyota can handle the gas from the local pump too, and thus they can compete on merit. That's what we need for software. Microsoft is a monopoly, and closed standards are one of the things that will keep them there. This makes that expensive for them, and I say it's worth considering seriously.
"But *why* does it matter if Twain intended that connection, so long as others find it to be present?"
Primarily because students are getting grades for these classes, and teaching people what the "right" answer to something like that is defeats (IMHO) any useful purpose of the class. It doesn't matter that people know Clemens ment a) instead of b) in this part of the book. What DOES matter is whether people are able to think about the work, instead of memorizing for the test. Of course, sometimes it's an effort just to get them to read the darn book at all, but that's another post.
Your proposal is... acceptable.
"This is not a distro targetted at advanced users."
That's EXACTLY the problem - why on EARTH would you put such a person in the root account to start? Who's more likely to do damage to the system running root, someone unfamiliar with Linux or an expert? For one thing, we WILL get to see a virus or two for Linux if this happens. Social engineering can do terrible things.
"As a pretty advanced user, I'm not going to be using Lindows (I installed Gentoo a while ago...that'll put hair on your nuts). Let me check...yep, just making sure, there is no law mandating that any of us 133t's have to use it. Phew. Freedom of choice still exists. But this company is doing a good thing. "
On the whole, yes. Root install, no.
"Incidentally, it's refreshing to see a CEO out there who doesn't use newspeak and cares about something other than $$$$."
We agree there.
"Try to understand -- he's not making an OS for advanced computer users."
Which is exactly why the default account should not have the ability to destroy the OS with an accidental command.
"He's not taking away the option to create user accounts. You want an account -- you can ADD one. By the way, all you jerk-offs should NOTE that when you finish installing Gentoo -- a pretty technically orientated distro -- there IS NO USER. ONLY ROOT. That's following the protocol of the install-guide. Look at the Gentoo Install Guide. Nowhere along are you forced to create a user-account, and the install guide doesn't even cover creating a user account, though it does suggest doing so, and references you to their FAQ (I've recommended that they cover how to create a user account at the end of the install guide). So, if you're going to bash Lindows for not having a user/root separation by default, you can only do so consistently if you also bash Gentoo. If you choose to bash Lindows but not Gentoo for this, then you are a hypocrite and are just doing this because you want to bash Lindows because it's easy."
Nonsense. If someone is using Gentoo, they are assumed to know enough about things to know that using the root account for everything is basically putting a KICK ME sign on your computer. Lindows users, almost by definition, don't need or want to know that. Most of the time, they won't care who they are running as. Simply make them choose a "system" password for things like installing software and handling device drivers, and leave it at that. Don't even tell them about root, just prompt them for the system password when they try to do something that normally is restricted to the root account.
(By the way, I too run Gentoo.)
"thirty-year-old computer science manuals aren't in particularly high demand"
Not always true. Well written computer science books can often be timeless, and occasionally software can last that long or longer. An example is Maxima (http://maxima.sf.net) which was largely written back in the late sixties and early seventies and is still active today. I'm involved with the documentation effort on that project, and we would dearly love to be able to include the older manuals written about the system. Recreating docs is not simple!
There are also other very good reasons for these books to survive even if their subject matter doesn't do so well - 1) If the manuals are collected in a huge central archive as their copyrights expire and they become free, then the poor sucker who has to deal with a rare and/or obscure legacy system will have a place to go 2) The design and usage priciples of the software will be documented. They may suck, but old program != bad ideas. In fact, quite the contrary. Look at TeX, or Emacs. Old programs, but masterpieces of their art.
Don't knock old manuals. Yes there are huge amounts of crap out there in the computer world, but don't casually throw away knowledge. Even of old computer systems. You never know when you might wish you still had it.
"As for the idea that open source software should be exempt - I doubt that you'd accept the idea that cars should be exempt from safety standard if they provided you with the blueprints :-)."
But I would if the car were given to me for free with the blueprints. When I use such a car I am knowingly accepting the conditions that, while the designers may have done their best to make it work properly, I accept the risk of failure. That's where the no free lunch part comes in for free stuff - you don't get to nail hides to the wall if it doesn't do what you want. If you want someone behind it, pay them to take the legal risk. Otherwise, you're at the mercy of the developer's good will unless you want to become an auto mechanic. The difference is - with the blueprints, I can figure my way out. Commercial software sues you if you try the equilivent operations.
Anyway. Bad analogy. The act of paying someone an agreed upon sum for support is where the responsibility part comes in. Not supplying blueprints.
Right - I'll see the movie if that's in it. Otherwise, being ripped off twice is plenty, thanks.
Let Chewbacca take out Jar-jar! Please? I'd pay money to see that.
"do you think people new to computers have inertia?"
Individually? Of course not. But they will be surrounded by Windows users, and since computing is now a social activity the tendency will be to follow the herd.
"what is the best way to thwart the blind inertia that they may well pick up from those around them, from their predecessors, from so-called "insightful" slashdot posts?"
Education. Schools need to stop teaching off of one operating system. Make people learn everything there is out there. Force them to adapt to new interfaces. Make them learn how to learn a new interface. Then they can decide for themselves what they like using, and adapt more quickly as advancements come out. I have a huge issue with the way computers are taught in schools now.