Wouldn't killing somebody stealing your identity suicide? If suicide is not a crime where you live then go ahead and commit suicide on the guy stealing your identity as much as you want;)
"THE VAST MAJORITY of current SCO users are CORPORATE SITES, who have no patience and time for open source politics, and just want to get on with life. This action may well alienate those customers"
That's unlikely. They will continue using the compiler shipped with their SCO Unix and if SCO still develop SCO Unix and they upgrade it is quite likely that SCO will ship it with a compiler that supports it.
They just won't get all the goodies in the new GCC versions unless SCO crossport them but by and large they should be unaffected.
" What I (personally) *think* (don't assume you know what I am thinking, please. think before you answer. This place is increasingly looking like slashdot) "
Sorry, where exactly do you think you are? I mean, I thought it *was* slashdot.
"but the fact that you are working to prevent a certain group of people from using your software is morally wrong from a Free Software point of view."
Nothing prevent them from using it, we just don't help them and if we don't help them by maintaining the SCO support it will bitrot sooner or later and will have to be removed anyway so better do it sooner rather than later.
The best solution probably is to stop work on the code but leave it in and if SCO or SCO users don't want it to bitrot they can send patches. If nobody cares it will bitrot and can be removed them. Seems a reasonable compromise, no?
"Yes, but they'd have to actually make that fork. I doubt they have all that much technical staff left, since they've shifted focus from production of code to production of lawsuits."
But they will have the right to do it, whether they choose to support their customers or not is their problem but the community is not bound to support their customers for them.
Or they could keep the code in but not bother to update it themselves, and if SCO still want to be supported they can continue sending patches. That probably would be the best compromise. We spend minimum energy to support them but don't completely drop them.
"Explicitly removing support for SCO systems from GCC goes against the open source definition, items 5 and 6"
No it does not.
Explicitely changing the terms of the GPL to discriminate against SCO would go against it and I certainly wouldn't approve of that (not that my opinion matters anyway) but if you remove support from SCO systems from GCC SCO still can put it back or fork the current release... with complete compliance with the GPL with respect to GCC (but not with respect to the Linux kernel) so the _license_ doesn't discriminate against them, only that branch of the software does.
"If you had any belief in the freedom offered by the GPL you might realise that taking support away from people who use your precious creations is not a good path to take."
We don't take support away from them, it still is in the current release, we just choose not to provide it anymore, if they need support they can ask SCO to support them, after all, they paid money to SCO for support, didn't they?
"What message does it send to people who happen to be using SCO, and decided upon Free Software (GCC) for their compiler?"
Put a message that GCC is developped by a community that SCO is deliberately trying to hurt after having lived from its work for years and as a result that community refuses to spend any more energy to support a company that tries to hurt them and, should they need support for this platform they should seek it from a SCO reseller or SCO itself.
Nothing stops SCO from supporting their own products and nothing forces us to support their product.
The FSF can only do that if we, as a community, want to let them do it.
If they do something similar with another company and the community doesn't agree there would only be a fork of the source and both project would go their own way, THAT'S the power of the GPL.
Now in the SCO case I believe that SCO pissed of enough people that if the FSF went ahead with it nobody except SCO maybe would bother supporting SCO.
And given SCO's violation of the GPL in their Linux distribution they may not even be able to do so (although they only violated the GPL for the Linux kernel so far AFAIK).
Not for me, I just got back from seeing T3:Rise of the machines for the first time, check slashdot, and what is the first story on the front page? A story about a virus that automatically infects machines and reached "critical mass" today. That's really creepy I tell you.
Of course, tomorrow, when some karma whore cut and past your post during the dupe tomorrow then it will be old.
With a share price ten times what it was before all the FUD slinging selling 7000 shares now is equivalent to selling 70 000 then so he oly needs selling 22 105 more shares at around $10 to get as much value out of his stock as if he had sold everything at $1 and he still has more than 195 000 shares to sell then.
I don't know about California but in the UK tobacco use is illegal under age 16. What makes you believe that she is for the legalisation of marijuana for all age groups?
I doubt SCO sold SysV code to the public. They had source code licenses with companies like Sun, IBM, HP, SGI... but they were accompanied by confidentiality agreement.
As for the Linux source sold to the public, yes they sold it to the public with source code but it is the subject of the lawsuit.
Using that as an example would be like saying that you had your blurb shown only to a few selected friends with some kind of confidentiality agreement and then, as a distributor of Britannica, you found out that they were using your blurb.
That wouldn't work. How did they find your blurb? Certainly not in the public given that you didn't distribute it publicly. They either created it on their own (independent creation, legal) or got it from one of the persons you had a confidentiality agreement with (violation of trade secret & copyright infringement, illegal).
Of course the SCO case is even more convoluted by the large number of source distributions of Unix in the 70's and early 80's and SCO's own distribution of antique Unix source code, but recent Unix source code that was not distributed in such a fashion is not subject to that.
"It may not have been quite as public as my hypothetical web page, but the copyright notice rules in any case."
Unless they can show that they didn't have access to it and created it independently. Of course, the bigger the identical part the less likely independent invention is.
"Whether my IP was plagiarized intentionally or not, I would still have rights to it."
You would have right to it but if Britannica could prove independent creation so would they to their very similar IP.
Also, in your example you would have to see if your blurb looks like a typical Britannica entry. If they have your blurb standing out in its style with respect to the rest of Britannica is makes it more likely that they copied you.
I don't even know why I am arguing with you, I found your example quite good (with the exception of the public/not public publication of the blurb).
Oh well, Have a nice day (and no, I was not trolling you;)).
Actually, SCO is a US firm so I think that it is in fact a horrible conspiracy destined to give SCO more footing in its lawsuit by saying that if Linux, a kernel developed by an European didn't copy SCO's copyrighted code they wouldn't have the US spelling. Thus, by changing the spelling to US they can claim ownership of more code in 2.6.
We need to stop this conspiracy immediately and translate the whole kernel sources to finnish to put to the ground any allegation of copying!
I've got mixed feeling about KotH, the character's voices tend to annoy me to hell as do the redneckinessin general but most of the few episodes I saw were good ones despite all the things that annoyed me about it.
So I don't like it because of the form but I must say I respect it because it seems to have some good writing (from what I saw).
You can't give a blanket statement "there would becopyright infringement" or "it would all be GPL'd", it would be decided by a judge on a case by case basis.
However, if the company violating the GPL uses a vast amount of GPL code with only a few modifications that are not redistributed under the GPL then it is quite likely that the judge will force them to GPL the few changes.
On the other hand, if the amount of GPL code is small with respect to the rest it is unlikely that the judge would apply the GPL to the whole program and instead order that code removed (possibly with damages awarded).
The problem would be if the amount and importance of the GPL code and of the added code is roughly similar, then I do not know what would happen.
And also you have to consider the specifics of the case: did the company knowingly violate the GPL (decision to use the code made by a manager) or is it just a "mistake" (say, an employee getting lazy and copying and pasting some GPL code).
Slashdot Mirror
"Sounds like they may be joining Martha Stewart in jail soon ;^))"
;)
So is Martha going to be their new "Boyfriend"
Wouldn't killing somebody stealing your identity suicide? If suicide is not a crime where you live then go ahead and commit suicide on the guy stealing your identity as much as you want
"THE VAST MAJORITY of current SCO users are CORPORATE SITES, who have no patience and time for open source politics, and just want to get on with life. This action may well alienate those customers"
That's unlikely. They will continue using the compiler shipped with their SCO Unix and if SCO still develop SCO Unix and they upgrade it is quite likely that SCO will ship it with a compiler that supports it.
They just won't get all the goodies in the new GCC versions unless SCO crossport them but by and large they should be unaffected.
" What I (personally) *think* (don't assume you know what I am thinking, please. think before you answer. This place is increasingly looking like slashdot) "
Sorry, where exactly do you think you are? I mean, I thought it *was* slashdot.
"but the fact that you are working to prevent a certain group of people from using your software is morally wrong from a Free Software point of view."
Nothing prevent them from using it, we just don't help them and if we don't help them by maintaining the SCO support it will bitrot sooner or later and will have to be removed anyway so better do it sooner rather than later.
The best solution probably is to stop work on the code but leave it in and if SCO or SCO users don't want it to bitrot they can send patches. If nobody cares it will bitrot and can be removed them. Seems a reasonable compromise, no?
"Yes, but they'd have to actually make that fork. I doubt they have all that much technical staff left, since they've shifted focus from production of code to production of lawsuits."
But they will have the right to do it, whether they choose to support their customers or not is their problem but the community is not bound to support their customers for them.
Or they could keep the code in but not bother to update it themselves, and if SCO still want to be supported they can continue sending patches. That probably would be the best compromise. We spend minimum energy to support them but don't completely drop them.
"Explicitly removing support for SCO systems from GCC goes against the open source definition, items 5 and 6"
No it does not.
Explicitely changing the terms of the GPL to discriminate against SCO would go against it and I certainly wouldn't approve of that (not that my opinion matters anyway) but if you remove support from SCO systems from GCC SCO still can put it back or fork the current release... with complete compliance with the GPL with respect to GCC (but not with respect to the Linux kernel) so the _license_ doesn't discriminate against them, only that branch of the software does.
"If you had any belief in the freedom offered by the GPL you might realise that taking support away from people who use your precious creations is not a good path to take."
We don't take support away from them, it still is in the current release, we just choose not to provide it anymore, if they need support they can ask SCO to support them, after all, they paid money to SCO for support, didn't they?
"What message does it send to people who happen to be using SCO, and decided upon Free Software (GCC) for their compiler?"
Put a message that GCC is developped by a community that SCO is deliberately trying to hurt after having lived from its work for years and as a result that community refuses to spend any more energy to support a company that tries to hurt them and, should they need support for this platform they should seek it from a SCO reseller or SCO itself.
Nothing stops SCO from supporting their own products and nothing forces us to support their product.
And nobody has that power.
The FSF can only do that if we, as a community, want to let them do it.
If they do something similar with another company and the community doesn't agree there would only be a fork of the source and both project would go their own way, THAT'S the power of the GPL.
Now in the SCO case I believe that SCO pissed of enough people that if the FSF went ahead with it nobody except SCO maybe would bother supporting SCO.
And given SCO's violation of the GPL in their Linux distribution they may not even be able to do so (although they only violated the GPL for the Linux kernel so far AFAIK).
"then the whole issue of placement of braces (not to mention brace-less languages like Python)"
Just use Lisp, then you will only have to worry about Lots of Insipid and Stupid Parentheses.
"OK this is getting old....."
Not for me, I just got back from seeing T3:Rise of the machines for the first time, check slashdot, and what is the first story on the front page? A story about a virus that automatically infects machines and reached "critical mass" today. That's really creepy I tell you.
Of course, tomorrow, when some karma whore cut and past your post during the dupe tomorrow then it will be old.
If SCO is really a fortune 500 compan then America's economy is really down the crapper.
Think of it this way:
With a share price ten times what it was before all the FUD slinging selling 7000 shares now is equivalent to selling 70 000 then so he oly needs selling 22 105 more shares at around $10 to get as much value out of his stock as if he had sold everything at $1 and he still has more than 195 000 shares to sell then.
"I never thought I'd come to this, but in the US system right now the prime factor is whether they're corrupt or not"
I don't know, to me it seems more that the prime factor is not whether they are corrupt but which way are they coorupted.
Luckily there are exceptions.
I don't know about California but in the UK tobacco use is illegal under age 16. What makes you believe that she is for the legalisation of marijuana for all age groups?
Actually I have two questions for her:
1. You have made your position with regard to Gay marriages clear, however what is your position with respect to polygamy.
2. If you are favorable to polygamy, would you marry me?
If she did agree to that then how would she know you would vote for her and therefore reduce the chance of you seeig her doing it?
What about having kids and say you aren't the dad.
"Your honor, it's not my DNA".
The left ball produce the first set of DNA, the right one the other set.
How cool is that?
"SCO sold its source code to the public."
I doubt SCO sold SysV code to the public. They had source code licenses with companies like Sun, IBM, HP, SGI... but they were accompanied by confidentiality agreement.
As for the Linux source sold to the public, yes they sold it to the public with source code but it is the subject of the lawsuit.
Using that as an example would be like saying that you had your blurb shown only to a few selected friends with some kind of confidentiality agreement and then, as a distributor of Britannica, you found out that they were using your blurb.
That wouldn't work. How did they find your blurb? Certainly not in the public given that you didn't distribute it publicly. They either created it on their own (independent creation, legal) or got it from one of the persons you had a confidentiality agreement with (violation of trade secret & copyright infringement, illegal).
Of course the SCO case is even more convoluted by the large number of source distributions of Unix in the 70's and early 80's and SCO's own distribution of antique Unix source code, but recent Unix source code that was not distributed in such a fashion is not subject to that.
"It may not have been quite as public as my hypothetical web page, but the copyright notice rules in any case."
Unless they can show that they didn't have access to it and created it independently. Of course, the bigger the identical part the less likely independent invention is.
"Whether my IP was plagiarized intentionally or not, I would still have rights to it."
You would have right to it but if Britannica could prove independent creation so would they to their very similar IP.
Also, in your example you would have to see if your blurb looks like a typical Britannica entry. If they have your blurb standing out in its style with respect to the rest of Britannica is makes it more likely that they copied you.
I don't even know why I am arguing with you, I found your example quite good (with the exception of the public/not public publication of the blurb).
Oh well, Have a nice day (and no, I was not trolling you
And all that thanks to cheap labour using
Some are so addicted that they pay to do their work early.
Actually, SCO is a US firm so I think that it is in fact a horrible conspiracy destined to give SCO more footing in its lawsuit by saying that if Linux, a kernel developed by an European didn't copy SCO's copyrighted code they wouldn't have the US spelling. Thus, by changing the spelling to US they can claim ownership of more code in 2.6.
We need to stop this conspiracy immediately and translate the whole kernel sources to finnish to put to the ground any allegation of copying!
I've got mixed feeling about KotH, the character's voices tend to annoy me to hell as do the redneckinessin general but most of the few episodes I saw were good ones despite all the things that annoyed me about it.
So I don't like it because of the form but I must say I respect it because it seems to have some good writing (from what I saw).
Given the amount of edited stories posted on
You can't give a blanket statement "there would becopyright infringement" or "it would all be GPL'd", it would be decided by a judge on a case by case basis.
However, if the company violating the GPL uses a vast amount of GPL code with only a few modifications that are not redistributed under the GPL then it is quite likely that the judge will force them to GPL the few changes.
On the other hand, if the amount of GPL code is small with respect to the rest it is unlikely that the judge would apply the GPL to the whole program and instead order that code removed (possibly with damages awarded).
The problem would be if the amount and importance of the GPL code and of the added code is roughly similar, then I do not know what would happen.
And also you have to consider the specifics of the case: did the company knowingly violate the GPL (decision to use the code made by a manager) or is it just a "mistake" (say, an employee getting lazy and copying and pasting some GPL code).