I just received an email the other day, which was worded something like:
"Please do not trust any URLs in email, unless they contain https. Using https ensures your session remains secure. If the email you receive doesn't include <a href="http://www.e-qo1d.com/">https://www.e-gold.c om</a>, it may not be secure. Only trust emails which contain <a href="http://www.e-qo1d.com/">https://www.e-gold.c om</a>"
Look very closely at that content, and you'll see the subtle exploit in it.
How can John Q. Public or your grandmother be sure of this, without actually viewing and auditing the source of the webpage/email they're receiving? This assumes that some mail readers can actually allow you to view the raw source of the email, to see if it contains any maliscious flaws like this.
If you visit e-qo1d.com in a browser, you'll see the exact exploit it uses. Not to worry, it is relatively safe (unless you are a customer of e-gold.com, and purchase gold online).
This is one example of how these companies are misusing this type of exploit to liquidate people's bank accounts. Nice.
Ok, so they looked at your code, and wrote their code to be functionally equivalent. Where's the problem?
Simple paraphrasing of existing code is not allowed by the GPL. This particular company clearly cut and pasted 5 existing functions (and maybe more, we're not sure yet) and my exact wording of error messages (which actually don't even appear in their application at the user-level, because it is a Windows-only implementation which uses our POSIX code, and our codebase doesn't even build on Windows natively, without a bit of porting). They not only used our code for "documentation" purposes, but they copied our function names and error strings verbatim, into their application.
The fact that the error strings never appear to the user (the function that delivers those error strings can never be reached, because of the way Windows handles this particular piece of error handling code), means that they probably copied those entire functions line-for-line into their Windows products. 3 out of their 5 commercial products contain these strings. The only reason I can't test the other two, is that they cannot be downloaded for free or in "demo" mode. I can only assume that if three of them have our code, the other two do also.
In short, paraphrasing of code, is copyright infringement.
Two projects I contribute heavily to, and one of them is a project I am the primary maintainer of, are being "tentatively" violated by 4 commercial companies, and there may be a 5th on the way.
I've sent emails, asking for the reasons why snippets of our source end up mysteriously in their commercial applications. In one case, a company (in Germany) came back stating that they happen to have the 5 same exact function names in their application, and byte-for-byte identical perror() strings to our application, but they insist they're not using any of our code, but claim that they did use it "for documentation purposes" when writing their application. That one is still open and pending, and we'll be doing protocol sniffs to see if theirs match ours. We have certain "fingerprints" in our protocol, which can only be done by using the source directly.
Another company I just found several days after the one above, seems to be using our code in a commercial BeOS project. They responded to my email, claiming that our code was used "as is" in their project, and then goes on to say "the use was re-configured to allow for easier additions". I don't see how they can claim both, in the same project. Either the code was used as-is (impossible, our code doesn't build on BeOS), or they modified it (and they must give us back the changes to those sources).
Another company directly took our code, removed all of our names from the project, replaced them with their own, slapped their own (non-GPL) license on it, and sold it to "partners" for quite a hefty fee. When we confronted them asking for an explanation, they basically told us to piss off. When we escalated, the CEO came back with, and I quote "If we end up in court, I will bankrupt these guys".
We also contacted this company's "partners", and asked them for the source to the changes they were also distributing. Every time we would contact these companies, the original company would threaten to sue us if we contacted their partners.
The FSF is involved in all of the cases. The investigations are still open, and pending.
Companies seem to think that because they have money, and most Free Software developers do not, that they can just slap us around left and right. The other point companies seem to try to "leverage" when they are clearly violating the GPL, is that the common myth that the "GPL Has Never Been Tested In Court(tm)", and since it has no basis, they can take whatever they want, and not give back. They seem to forget that the U.S. Copyright system backs up all of this code.
So what do we do? There are dozens upon dozens of cases where the GPL is clearly being violated; the MPlayer violation from KISS Technologies, the BusyBox Hall of Shame, and many more.
"There are WAY TOO MANY DISTROS. Confuses the hell out of newbies. The mainstream demands conformity and wants 1 desktop and 1 distro to be dominant."
You're right. Let's turn Linux into Windows, where we have one desktop, one window manager, one (and only one) choice of every type of application.
Part of the reason Linux is so successful is because of choice. Remove that, you remove the flexibility. You remove that, and you remove the dominance.
But you might be confusing things. Linux doesn't want to be "dominant" in the way that businesses want their products to dominate (i.e. make revenue, squash competition, etc.), Linux already is successful, because it does what it does, mostly because of the spare time and talent of thousands of developers. It was roughly 8-9 years before companies really started investing some effort in supporting Linux. I'm not talking about companies using Linux, but companies who are actually helping Linux, by writing documentation, drivers, and so on.
Linux will take some effort to learn for newbies, and "Joe Sixpack". That's something they'll have to deal with. Vendors will have to start supporting Linux. That's also not our problem as developers and authors either.
For Linux to be "successful", it is going to take a lot of effort on the part of everyone; developers, users, and vendors. Don't keep pointing the finger at "Linux" itself, as the problem. If vendors were more forthcoming with their documentation years ago, Linux would have already overtaken several markets. The more time we have to spend reverse-engineering protocols, drivers, and other interfaces, the longer it will take for "Joe Sixpack" to learn to use it as easily as they do with Windows.
But please, don't assume that all these "choices" are what is causing the confusion. It isn't.
"Say the courts struck down the GPL as invalid, why is it SCO and KISS believe that, it instantly makes the source code public domain?"
This is a common misconception among companies who are probably already violating the license anyway, and need an excuse to ease their guilt.
If the GPL is violated, your rights to continue to use the code under that license are immediately revoked. This means that each new violation, after the GPL has been stripped from you, is now a U.S. Copyright violation, subject to penalties of $30k to $150k USD per incident.
The code certainly does not automatically go into the "Public Domain", if the GPL is thrown out of court. The original authors of the code still hold copyright on that code, and until they give up those rights, the code belongs to them, and only they can tell you how you can use it. The GPL adds rights, it doesn't take them away. It isn't a contract, and it isn't a EULA. It is backed by the U.S. Copyright system.
You can bet that if the GPL is thrown out of court, that the entire U.S. Copyright system will be hauled into the Supreme Court for a lengthy review.
This was over 2-3 years ago. But again, the GPL itself, will not be "tested" in court, because violations and violators are easy to find, and prove. Once you violate the GPL, everything else above and beyond that, are U.S. Copyright violations (and in some cases, Lanham Act violations).
Most companies settle out of court, because the cost of public embarrassment would be much more damaging to them. I personally know, because I've got 4 active GPL investigations of my own going on three projects I actively contribute to (and one I am the primary maintainer of), and one company backed WAY down, once they realized the huge financial and public penalty for not complying with our license.
No company wants to take the GPL to court, mostly because if it gets that far, the developers/FSF/community have already done their homework, and can prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, a violation. Penalties range from $30k/USD to $150k/USD per violation once the GPL itself is violated and rights to continue using it are stripped. For a site that provides "free downloads" of a product that might contain violating code, that can get quite expensive.
Take a good, close look at your AUP from your broadband provider, and see if they have a clause in there that prohibits you from sharing your connection with anyone outside of your personal residence. I've checked the 11 top national providers, and they all have it in their policies, including the two I've used most-recently on the East Coast for my own bandwidth.
I have a bubble of 802.11b and 802.11g wifi around my house that extends about 1/4 of a mile in radius, from my local equipment in the server room. I'm not sure if anyone else near me can see/use/associate with my equipment, but it is there. Lucky for me, my current provider has no provisions against sharing my connection with others, as long as I'm not reselling the bandwidth to them.
Scanning U.S. currency, and manipulating it in an image manipulation program, such as Photoshop or The Gimp, is completely legal, and allowed via the constitution.
Reporting people who scan U.S. currency into these applications, to the U.S. Treasury Department, as counterfeiters (or other "criminals") however, is not legal.
Last time I checked, we were still innocent until proven guilty, not guilty until proven innocent.
How does Adobe benefit from adding such "restrictions" to their software? Did some large company ask for this feature? What justified the change? As other posters have suggested; how far of a leap is it from adding restrictions from manipulating company logos (Coca-Cola), fonts (Pepsi, Burger King), or pr0n (child porn vs. 100% legal adult images) in Photoshop is this? Not much.
The URL in your sig, points to WindowsUpdate, which returns:
"Thank you for your interest in Windows Update
Windows Update is the online extension of Windows that helps you get the most out of your computer.
You must be running a Microsoft Windows operating system in order to use Windows Update."
With all of the "techniques" Adobe uses to secure, protect, and "manage" their software (DMCA, active "online" activation, etc.), it wouldn't be a far stretch for them to simply notify the proper authorities/Treasury Department. when you decide to try to copy a piece of U.S. currency. I know many (all? perhaps it is mandatory now?) copiers are required to flag the date/time/etc. when currency is copied on their machines. When a service technician comes in to repair the unit, or perform regular service, they are required to report this list of dates/times to the local authorities, who handles it from there.
Why wouldn't it be possible for Adobe Photoshop CS (or any other commercial, proprietary, non-Open Source) application to just report it automatically, online, via a couple of small UDP/TCP packets to the proper authorities? Not only will they get your machine name, serial number of the software, IP address, provider, etc. but we're all connected anyway, you probably wouldn't even see the packets go across.
"the plucker authors created plucker based on the aportisDOC standard...which was and still is the standard with the most commercial and non commercial ebooks out there.
plucker is better but it was not arrived at independantly. the gold standard is still the aportis DOC format."
Besides hiding behind the moniker of AC, you provide no basis for your assertions (as incorrect as they are, but I digress). I happen to be one of the core Plucker developers, and have been using and working with Plucker since 1997/1998, when it started, as a 7k text-only reader, using an awk parser to convert the content into a format suitable for Plucker.
Aportis, contrary to popular misbelief, acquired the rights to the "DOC" format (formerly PalmDOC), back on November 17, 1997. They did not develop it, nor improve it on their own. It already existed prior to that, and hasn't really improved much since (hence the reason for the 17 other proprietary ebook formats currently in existance for Palm devices).
So, back to your issues, Plucker was not a "fork" of AportisDOC, nor was it a replacement for "DOC". Plucker never, even to this day, read "DOC" files. If it was based on it, you would think it would at least be compatible with it. That isn't the case, and Plucker provides hundreds more features than "plain old DOC" for Palm devices.
The CVS is online, as are the mailing lists going back several years. You might want to research a bit before you open your mouth and stick your foot right back in it.
Plucker is not, and has never been, an extension of anything other than text, then text + images, then text + images + hrefs, and so on. It matured independantly of any other eBook format or "standard".
Also, AportisDOC is not open, documented, or freely usable, without substantial commercial licensing.
Please drop the false accusations.
Additionally, you can see that LinuxDOC uses Plucker format. Oddly, I don't see their HOWTO docs in AportisDOC format. Project Gutenberg is considering the move to Plucker as well, last I heard.
Plucker. It does ebooks and formatting better than anything else out there, and also does HTML content, RSS feeds, local text files, and lots of other formats.
The extensive Data Format is public, well-documented, and used in dozens of other projects. Lots of companies, commercial and non-profit, have adopted the Plucker format for their content delivery. Out of the other "free" options out there, Plucker reigns supreme (it is also the ONLY one out there that is publically documented, and "Free" to use).
One thing I am seeing overlooked over and over, is the actual business perception to Linux adoption.
I spoke with a client the other day on a concall, a very large hotel chain in the US, who were in the midst of replacing their CRM systems (front desk check-in systems) with Linux, 600 installs to start with. They wanted some ideas about how to consolidate their server facilities using Linux, and to remove the "low-hanging fruit" (Samba servers, print, file, domain controllers, web, etc.). They also wanted to know if we could 'guarantee' that they would not be sued if SCO wins this case. Since anyone offering such a guarantee would be risking a lot, I mentioned that it was impossible to "insure" against a lawsuit, especially in the U.S., where anyone can be sued for anything, wrong or right, frivolous or legitimate.
Since we can't offer a "Linux Guarantee(tm)", this hotel chain mentioned that they are internally budgeting $699.00 for each Linux deployment they do, to indemnify themselves against the chance that SCO may win, and may sue them.
This is reality.
Companies are unsure about whether Linux is violating SCO's IP, or not, but they don't want to take the chance, no matter how much we advocate, educate, and teach them about the frivolousity of this FUD and lawsuits.
Add to this, the "risk" to a company like this, if I, for example, contribute to Linux (the kernel, or the OS proper), and am an employee of this company. I am now a "risk" to them, because right now, I could be contributing to a project (Linux) that is violating a commercial company's IP (SCO). Companies do not want this risk, and you can bet I'd be laid off/fired for it.
Deploying Linux (right now, to them) is a "risk". Employing people who contribute to Linux is also a "risk", until this thing is settled in the courts.
This is going to affect a lot of industries, jobs, and employment, in an economy which is already ragged and in tatters. The "economy" as a whole is improving, financially, because domestic jobs are being eliminated and offshored. Let's not let it continue, because some commercial litigation company (SCO) decides they want a piece of the pie they don't own and didn't create.
We didn't pass on the copy of this sent to our LUG mailing list (nor did several other LUGs that I've heard of getting this same email). Luckily we run a moderated mailing list, and the person couldn't be bothered to subscribe, or download the list archives, or actually research the material that he wants answers on.
The best reply I've seen so far, from any LUG member is the following:
"I turned him down. There are a number of reasons why, but they mostly boil down to this: There is no incentive for us to give Microsoft our time and advice. They could never reciprocate. They're not interested in making the computing world better, they're only interested in making their next quarter revenues. That's fine, I'm not anti-business. But business is business and Freedom is Freedom; they want free beer and I want free speech. I have definite goals in using Linux and helping someone who's bosses (for example) fund SCO contradicts that."
"Hopefully there will be some free tool that automate the process of "test case1: click file, click open, choose/home/xx/ss.xx, choose node33 in treeview, TAB", so that the GUI parts of GUI applications can finally be as well tested as traditional command-line applications."
Android is the only open source testing tool for GUI programs. It can watch you work with a GUI program and as you do it will write a script that will enable you to precisely replicate your session. While you work with your program you can indicate testing points to android, taking snapshots of the screens that are supposed to appear. Later, when re-running the tests, android will check to see that these screens remain as expected, and will signal a test failure should any of them change.
Something nobody has mentioned in this thread yet, about legs vs. wheels, is that we are trying to integrate robots into our lifestyles, as "assistants", primarily, and to do that, they should at least be unobtrusive. This means modeling humans to a certain degree.
Would you prefer to see a humanoid-looking "Maid Bot v1.0" in your kitchen answering the phone, cooking dinner, and doing dishes, or a 6-legged, 4-armed tetrapod? I would prefer the former, though the latter may have more capabilities.
In short, it reduces the "rejection" of the people who are supposed to easily adopt this kind of technology.
Also, think of this as a research platform, where the actual "robot" itself is never put into homes, but the technology used in it, is applied elsewhere, such as prosthetics, mobility enhancement for the handicapped, and so on.
Seriously, Affero is an interesting concept, whereby your helpful code, suggestions, usenet posts, emails, etc. can be rated by people within the community that benefit from that help, and donations given by those individuals gets contributed to the organizations of their choice. The developer/user themselves gets 0% of the donation, 100% of it goes to other organizations, such as the FSF, EFF, Software Libre, and so on.
"The fee will be used to provide much needed bandwidth and hosting space."
Excuse me, aren't they already backed by VA and IBM commercially as well as funded by dozens of non-Free Software banner ads littering the site's pages as it is?
If this donation system actually begins to improve the service quality of SourceForge, while removing ALL banner ads, I see it as a good thing, except, that's not going to be the case here.
Let's also not forget about SourceForge drifting away from the community, being non-Free itself (with the code being unavailable), crippling common development and project management tools, and hijacking projects for personal gain.
"It does NOT support W3 better or worse, since it uses exactly the same Gecko engine."
Actually, the HTML rendering in 1.6 changed in very ugly (i.e. broken) ways. I can have 1.5 and 1.6 running against a site, such as our bugtracker for Plucker, and the way it renders the tabled HTML changes. colspan is broken and appears to be "reversed" (adding a colspan incrementor, shrinks the width of colums spanned).
There are a few places where it completely ignores CSS values for coloring as well, leaving pages which contain a named class in one place colored, while that SAME CLASS in another place on the SAME PAGE is left white.
So far, 1.5a is the best I've tried. Fast, lean, and properly handles validated HTML and CSS constructs.
That obviously won't work on OSX, FreeBSD and Linux systems. I've been working on the SDK for pilot-link, but it isn't quite ready yet... that doesn't mean it can't be used to develop a cross-platform conduit to do this, however, or even a Java-based one (Yes, we support that too!).
Slashdot Mirror
I just received an email the other day, which was worded something like:
Look very closely at that content, and you'll see the subtle exploit in it.
How can John Q. Public or your grandmother be sure of this, without actually viewing and auditing the source of the webpage/email they're receiving? This assumes that some mail readers can actually allow you to view the raw source of the email, to see if it contains any maliscious flaws like this.
If you visit e-qo1d.com in a browser, you'll see the exact exploit it uses. Not to worry, it is relatively safe (unless you are a customer of e-gold.com, and purchase gold online).
This is one example of how these companies are misusing this type of exploit to liquidate people's bank accounts. Nice.
You can't read, can you. Look CLOSELY at the email address, and adjust accordingly.
Simple paraphrasing of existing code is not allowed by the GPL. This particular company clearly cut and pasted 5 existing functions (and maybe more, we're not sure yet) and my exact wording of error messages (which actually don't even appear in their application at the user-level, because it is a Windows-only implementation which uses our POSIX code, and our codebase doesn't even build on Windows natively, without a bit of porting). They not only used our code for "documentation" purposes, but they copied our function names and error strings verbatim, into their application.
The fact that the error strings never appear to the user (the function that delivers those error strings can never be reached, because of the way Windows handles this particular piece of error handling code), means that they probably copied those entire functions line-for-line into their Windows products. 3 out of their 5 commercial products contain these strings. The only reason I can't test the other two, is that they cannot be downloaded for free or in "demo" mode. I can only assume that if three of them have our code, the other two do also.
In short, paraphrasing of code, is copyright infringement.
I've sent emails, asking for the reasons why snippets of our source end up mysteriously in their commercial applications. In one case, a company (in Germany) came back stating that they happen to have the 5 same exact function names in their application, and byte-for-byte identical perror() strings to our application, but they insist they're not using any of our code, but claim that they did use it "for documentation purposes" when writing their application. That one is still open and pending, and we'll be doing protocol sniffs to see if theirs match ours. We have certain "fingerprints" in our protocol, which can only be done by using the source directly.
Another company I just found several days after the one above, seems to be using our code in a commercial BeOS project. They responded to my email, claiming that our code was used "as is" in their project, and then goes on to say "the use was re-configured to allow for easier additions". I don't see how they can claim both, in the same project. Either the code was used as-is (impossible, our code doesn't build on BeOS), or they modified it (and they must give us back the changes to those sources).
Another company directly took our code, removed all of our names from the project, replaced them with their own, slapped their own (non-GPL) license on it, and sold it to "partners" for quite a hefty fee. When we confronted them asking for an explanation, they basically told us to piss off. When we escalated, the CEO came back with, and I quote "If we end up in court, I will bankrupt these guys".
We also contacted this company's "partners", and asked them for the source to the changes they were also distributing. Every time we would contact these companies, the original company would threaten to sue us if we contacted their partners.
The FSF is involved in all of the cases. The investigations are still open, and pending.
Companies seem to think that because they have money, and most Free Software developers do not, that they can just slap us around left and right. The other point companies seem to try to "leverage" when they are clearly violating the GPL, is that the common myth that the "GPL Has Never Been Tested In Court(tm)", and since it has no basis, they can take whatever they want, and not give back. They seem to forget that the U.S. Copyright system backs up all of this code.
So what do we do? There are dozens upon dozens of cases where the GPL is clearly being violated; the MPlayer violation from KISS Technologies, the BusyBox Hall of Shame, and many more.
You're right. Let's turn Linux into Windows, where we have one desktop, one window manager, one (and only one) choice of every type of application.
Part of the reason Linux is so successful is because of choice. Remove that, you remove the flexibility. You remove that, and you remove the dominance.
But you might be confusing things. Linux doesn't want to be "dominant" in the way that businesses want their products to dominate (i.e. make revenue, squash competition, etc.), Linux already is successful, because it does what it does, mostly because of the spare time and talent of thousands of developers. It was roughly 8-9 years before companies really started investing some effort in supporting Linux. I'm not talking about companies using Linux, but companies who are actually helping Linux, by writing documentation, drivers, and so on.
Linux will take some effort to learn for newbies, and "Joe Sixpack". That's something they'll have to deal with. Vendors will have to start supporting Linux. That's also not our problem as developers and authors either.
For Linux to be "successful", it is going to take a lot of effort on the part of everyone; developers, users, and vendors. Don't keep pointing the finger at "Linux" itself, as the problem. If vendors were more forthcoming with their documentation years ago, Linux would have already overtaken several markets. The more time we have to spend reverse-engineering protocols, drivers, and other interfaces, the longer it will take for "Joe Sixpack" to learn to use it as easily as they do with Windows.
But please, don't assume that all these "choices" are what is causing the confusion. It isn't.
This is a common misconception among companies who are probably already violating the license anyway, and need an excuse to ease their guilt.
If the GPL is violated, your rights to continue to use the code under that license are immediately revoked. This means that each new violation, after the GPL has been stripped from you, is now a U.S. Copyright violation, subject to penalties of $30k to $150k USD per incident.
The code certainly does not automatically go into the "Public Domain", if the GPL is thrown out of court. The original authors of the code still hold copyright on that code, and until they give up those rights, the code belongs to them, and only they can tell you how you can use it. The GPL adds rights, it doesn't take them away. It isn't a contract, and it isn't a EULA. It is backed by the U.S. Copyright system.
You can bet that if the GPL is thrown out of court, that the entire U.S. Copyright system will be hauled into the Supreme Court for a lengthy review.
Anyone recall the MySQL vs. NuSphere case? A few reminders:
GPL enforcement goes to court for first time in MySQL case
Affidavit of Eben Moglen on Progress Software vs. MySQL AB Preliminary Injunction Hearing
FAQ on MySQL vs. NuSphere Dispute
This was over 2-3 years ago. But again, the GPL itself, will not be "tested" in court, because violations and violators are easy to find, and prove. Once you violate the GPL, everything else above and beyond that, are U.S. Copyright violations (and in some cases, Lanham Act violations).
Most companies settle out of court, because the cost of public embarrassment would be much more damaging to them. I personally know, because I've got 4 active GPL investigations of my own going on three projects I actively contribute to (and one I am the primary maintainer of), and one company backed WAY down, once they realized the huge financial and public penalty for not complying with our license.
No company wants to take the GPL to court, mostly because if it gets that far, the developers/FSF/community have already done their homework, and can prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, a violation. Penalties range from $30k/USD to $150k/USD per violation once the GPL itself is violated and rights to continue using it are stripped. For a site that provides "free downloads" of a product that might contain violating code, that can get quite expensive.
I have a bubble of 802.11b and 802.11g wifi around my house that extends about 1/4 of a mile in radius, from my local equipment in the server room. I'm not sure if anyone else near me can see/use/associate with my equipment, but it is there. Lucky for me, my current provider has no provisions against sharing my connection with others, as long as I'm not reselling the bandwidth to them.
His homepage is the windowsupdate page? That's odd.
Scanning U.S. currency, and manipulating it in an image manipulation program, such as Photoshop or The Gimp, is completely legal, and allowed via the constitution.
Reporting people who scan U.S. currency into these applications, to the U.S. Treasury Department, as counterfeiters (or other "criminals") however, is not legal.
Last time I checked, we were still innocent until proven guilty, not guilty until proven innocent.
How does Adobe benefit from adding such "restrictions" to their software? Did some large company ask for this feature? What justified the change? As other posters have suggested; how far of a leap is it from adding restrictions from manipulating company logos (Coca-Cola), fonts (Pepsi, Burger King), or pr0n (child porn vs. 100% legal adult images) in Photoshop is this? Not much.
Pardon me, but... I don't get it.
Why wouldn't it be possible for Adobe Photoshop CS (or any other commercial, proprietary, non-Open Source) application to just report it automatically, online, via a couple of small UDP/TCP packets to the proper authorities? Not only will they get your machine name, serial number of the software, IP address, provider, etc. but we're all connected anyway, you probably wouldn't even see the packets go across.
Just something to think about.
Not if the coating absorbs light produced within a certain wavelength, specififally that produced by a photocopier.
Besides hiding behind the moniker of AC, you provide no basis for your assertions (as incorrect as they are, but I digress). I happen to be one of the core Plucker developers, and have been using and working with Plucker since 1997/1998, when it started, as a 7k text-only reader, using an awk parser to convert the content into a format suitable for Plucker.
Aportis, contrary to popular misbelief, acquired the rights to the "DOC" format (formerly PalmDOC), back on November 17, 1997. They did not develop it, nor improve it on their own. It already existed prior to that, and hasn't really improved much since (hence the reason for the 17 other proprietary ebook formats currently in existance for Palm devices).
So, back to your issues, Plucker was not a "fork" of AportisDOC, nor was it a replacement for "DOC". Plucker never, even to this day, read "DOC" files. If it was based on it, you would think it would at least be compatible with it. That isn't the case, and Plucker provides hundreds more features than "plain old DOC" for Palm devices.
The CVS is online, as are the mailing lists going back several years. You might want to research a bit before you open your mouth and stick your foot right back in it.
Also, AportisDOC is not open, documented, or freely usable, without substantial commercial licensing.
Please drop the false accusations.
Additionally, you can see that LinuxDOC uses Plucker format. Oddly, I don't see their HOWTO docs in AportisDOC format. Project Gutenberg is considering the move to Plucker as well, last I heard.
How about checking out the thousands of Plucker ebooks out there, before spinning your tripe.
The extensive Data Format is public, well-documented, and used in dozens of other projects. Lots of companies, commercial and non-profit, have adopted the Plucker format for their content delivery. Out of the other "free" options out there, Plucker reigns supreme (it is also the ONLY one out there that is publically documented, and "Free" to use).
One thing I am seeing overlooked over and over, is the actual business perception to Linux adoption.
I spoke with a client the other day on a concall, a very large hotel chain in the US, who were in the midst of replacing their CRM systems (front desk check-in systems) with Linux, 600 installs to start with. They wanted some ideas about how to consolidate their server facilities using Linux, and to remove the "low-hanging fruit" (Samba servers, print, file, domain controllers, web, etc.). They also wanted to know if we could 'guarantee' that they would not be sued if SCO wins this case. Since anyone offering such a guarantee would be risking a lot, I mentioned that it was impossible to "insure" against a lawsuit, especially in the U.S., where anyone can be sued for anything, wrong or right, frivolous or legitimate.
Since we can't offer a "Linux Guarantee(tm)", this hotel chain mentioned that they are internally budgeting $699.00 for each Linux deployment they do, to indemnify themselves against the chance that SCO may win, and may sue them.
This is reality .
Companies are unsure about whether Linux is violating SCO's IP, or not, but they don't want to take the chance, no matter how much we advocate, educate, and teach them about the frivolousity of this FUD and lawsuits.
Add to this, the "risk" to a company like this, if I, for example, contribute to Linux (the kernel, or the OS proper), and am an employee of this company. I am now a "risk" to them, because right now, I could be contributing to a project (Linux) that is violating a commercial company's IP (SCO). Companies do not want this risk, and you can bet I'd be laid off/fired for it.
Deploying Linux (right now, to them) is a "risk". Employing people who contribute to Linux is also a "risk", until this thing is settled in the courts .
This is going to affect a lot of industries, jobs, and employment, in an economy which is already ragged and in tatters. The "economy" as a whole is improving, financially, because domestic jobs are being eliminated and offshored. Let's not let it continue, because some commercial litigation company (SCO) decides they want a piece of the pie they don't own and didn't create.
The best reply I've seen so far, from any LUG member is the following:
You mean something like Android?
Would you prefer to see a humanoid-looking "Maid Bot v1.0" in your kitchen answering the phone, cooking dinner, and doing dishes, or a 6-legged, 4-armed tetrapod? I would prefer the former, though the latter may have more capabilities.
In short, it reduces the "rejection" of the people who are supposed to easily adopt this kind of technology.
Also, think of this as a research platform, where the actual "robot" itself is never put into homes, but the technology used in it, is applied elsewhere, such as prosthetics, mobility enhancement for the handicapped, and so on.
I think you misspelled the word misinformed.
Haven't you joined Affero lately?
Seriously, Affero is an interesting concept, whereby your helpful code, suggestions, usenet posts, emails, etc. can be rated by people within the community that benefit from that help, and donations given by those individuals gets contributed to the organizations of their choice. The developer/user themselves gets 0% of the donation, 100% of it goes to other organizations, such as the FSF, EFF, Software Libre, and so on.
If this has helped you in any way, please take the time to rate the value of this post: http://rate.affero.net/hacker/
If this donation system actually begins to improve the service quality of SourceForge, while removing ALL banner ads, I see it as a good thing, except, that's not going to be the case here.
Let's also not forget about SourceForge drifting away from the community, being non-Free itself (with the code being unavailable), crippling common development and project management tools, and hijacking projects for personal gain.
Actually, the HTML rendering in 1.6 changed in very ugly (i.e. broken) ways. I can have 1.5 and 1.6 running against a site, such as our bugtracker for Plucker, and the way it renders the tabled HTML changes. colspan is broken and appears to be "reversed" (adding a colspan incrementor, shrinks the width of colums spanned).
There are a few places where it completely ignores CSS values for coloring as well, leaving pages which contain a named class in one place colored, while that SAME CLASS in another place on the SAME PAGE is left white.
So far, 1.5a is the best I've tried. Fast, lean, and properly handles validated HTML and CSS constructs.
That obviously won't work on OSX, FreeBSD and Linux systems. I've been working on the SDK for pilot-link, but it isn't quite ready yet... that doesn't mean it can't be used to develop a cross-platform conduit to do this, however, or even a Java-based one (Yes, we support that too!).
This brings us much closer though.