Shocked, amazed, and not surprised at all. You don't know me, but I met you and the/. crew at Linuxworld nearly a dozen years ago. You guys were hot stuff back then, but today? Who knew?
Still, so many things have changed --
No more World Trade Center and no more Space Shuttle. Innocent little cellphones are now GPS-enabled computers more powerful than my old workstation. Steve Jobs is moving on from Apple (again) But he's leaving behind iPods and iPhones and iPads. Madonna's still around, but we're no longer GaGa for her. Which still leaves her better off than Saddam Hussein and Moamar Gaddafi.
Change is a good thing, partly because the wistfulness it brings drives home how great things were and partly because of the hope -- and real possibility -- that things to come will be greater still.
Congrats for a great run. Live long and prosper. Or something like that.
Well, there is one more significant aspect of registration.
You need not register your copyright to obtain copyright protection (prior to adapting the Berne convention, the United States DID require registration), but, in the United States, you must register your copyright in order to sue for infringement. You need not, however, register prior to the infringement.
SCO is simply doing what they said they would do, and registering the copyrights is the expected next step. Absolutely predictable and having no bearing on the legitimacy of their claims.
This sounds like more than it is, but one must understand a fundamental difference between copyright and other IP, such as patents and trademarks.
When the PTO grants a patent, it awards the actual patent itself after an investigation and a determination that the invention meets the requirements for a patent. When a trademark is registered, a different process takes place, but one that also attempts to determine the validity of the trademark.
Copyright registrations don't do that. They just record the fact that someone claimed that something was theirs on such and such a date. This is a practical matter, as apart from very bare minimum standards, there isn't a very good way to investigate the validity of a copyright application short of an adversarial proceeding.
Commercial libraries rarely impose additional obligations for distribution of programs, as that would defeat their primary purpose, which is to make money.
Selling the binaries alone is a straw man, as that is not what developers want to do. That is what resellers do, and that is a different set of relationships/obligations. Developers want to distribute their programs. If those programs require the use of libraries, they want to distribute the required libraries, unless those libraries are reliably present on the target systems.
There is a fundamental difference, however. First, you're paying for the stuff and already aware of its contract limitations. This is actually a negative -- you're aware of the problem because it's bitten you from the beginning and it's a budget item.
Second, proprietary code rarely imposes different conditions for use/distribution within and without an organization. You pay the appropriate license fees and go your merry way.
The GPL is different. It effectively imposes no restrictions whatsoever on internal use. Everything kicks in when you distribute. You often don't have the option of paying the owners a license fee to distribute your proprietary code -- another significant difference.
I don't understand why so many GPL-heads deny that the GPL is no different from other licenses on this single topic. The GPL IS different from other licenses and those differences serve its purpose well.
Before you go calling people names, you might want to find out what it is you're talking about.
1. The GPL does not prevent you from copying GPL'd code into a non-GPL'd program. You are completely free to do that. The GPL prevents you from distributing that code as part of a non-GPL'd program. A company, for example, could create their own proprietary software based in part on GPL'd code and distribute it throughout, but not outside of, the organization.
2. Like it or not, viral is not an unreasonable way to describe the GPL.
Consider the program in point 1.
After using that program internally for some time, the company sees an opportunity outside of the company. At that point, the GPL, springs out of its dormant state and infects the rest of the program. It doesn't actually GPL the rest of the code (contrary to Microsoft hyperbole). What it does is revoke all rights to the GPL'd code, resulting in a derivatvie work that cannot legally be used or distributed.
This is neither good nor evil. It's the mechanism by which the GPL is able to do the things it does. It is, however, something that developers need to be aware of and plan for accordingly.
Mostly RMS being RMS, but he makes one point that stands out -- regardless of how many times its been said:
The term IP is dishonest in its use. Lumping the various property interests in code under one label creates both ambiguity and dishonesty, and the SCO case is a shining example.
SCO's contract/trade secret action against IBM concerns one kind of property interest in code. Even if upheld, it may or may not bear on copyright interests in Linux code and may or may not bear on SCO's right to seek recovery. A whole host of issues come into play, not the least of which is whether the code in question display sufficient authorship to warrant copyright. That's not an issue for trade secrets, but does matter for copyrights.
Notice that the single significant tangible move is to increase advertising budgets?
Good luck, Steve-o. I'm afraid you're facing a stealth advertising campaign that's hard to buck -- the very same one your company rode to the top in the early 80s.
It's the "I can't get signoff to buy the stuff I need, but I can put this together on my own authority and put it into place" ad, the "What do you mean we're already using it? Get it out now. What? We're doing THAT with it? Hmm. OK, maybe just this once" kind of advertising.
Microsoft knows the power of that publicity very well. It's what led PCs to prominence and the power of IT (Whoops! It was MIS back then) staffs to shrink.
Sure, OSS is a competitive force to reckon with, but the big problem for MS was a little further down in the story:
Microsoft also alienated many of its largest customers with its controversial new Licensing 6 and Software Assurance program, which took effect last year.
Businesses are willing to pay for value delivered. They are not, however, willing to be raked over the coals, especially by someone who is making the profit margins that Microsoft makes in an economy that has everyone else scrambling to make a buck.
Add in the costs of continual upgrades -- required by Software Assurance, BTW -- and the hardware to support them, and the lost productivity due to bugs and security flaws, and we have some unhappy campers out there.
OSS alternatives mean that Microsoft will have to lower prices, probably to a level lower than pre Software Assurance days. Customer anger and memories mean that it may not be enough to keep some of those customers from going away for good.
>Yes, but you do that through some sort of court (or court like) procedure, no?
Absolutely. But look at what this story is about. Some ISPs got a letter asking them to do something. If they choose to do it, fine. If they choose not to do it, also fine.
However, if they choose not to do it, they may be sued (in a court) and they, because of the letter , will be unable to claim that they were unaware of infringing activities.
Nothing extralegal here. In fact, it makes sense to send a letter before suing. Lawsuits cost a lot of money. Why spend it and why waste court time if you don't have to?
>Also, isn't it up to the authoroties (courts, police, whatever) to decide if some illegal activity has been done?
Yes and no. For example, copyright law has both civil and criminal components. Any copyright owner is entitled to bring civil action. In addition to that, many laws (I don't remember for the US copyright law -- and have never known for the Australian law) have "private Attorny General" clauses that allow pursue criminal offenses in civil courts.
Inviting people to watch a movie with you in your living room is fine. Charging people to watch movies at your house is not.
Putting a movie on a P2P network so that others can make copies of it also is not. Of course, that will almost certainly be viewed as distribution by a court, so maybe it doesn't come under your meaning.
Making copies for friends also is not ok in most parts of the world. The United States does allow people to make copies of audio recordings that can be shared on a limited basis, but that ain't movies.
First of all, Companies don't have jurisdiction, but courts do.
Any US (or Japanese or Lichtensteinian) company is perfectly free to hire an Aussie law firm and proceed through the Australian courts. Australia is a signatory to the Berne convention and is obligated to enforce copyrights.
Also, there are circumstances -- intentionally seeking US business, for example -- under which Australian ISP's could make themselves subject to US jurisdiction.
Finally, treaties between the US and Australia (and I have no idea what's there) could also expose Australian ISPs to American law. In that case, it's Australian law saying "OK -- what he said".
Sorry. Intent to distribute is pretty easily inferred by making files available on a peer-to-peer service.
Besides, copyright infringement does not require intent beyond intent to take the action that results in infringement. It does require knowledge, and there is such a concept as innocent infringement. However, even innocent infringement is a mitigating defense: it doesn't get you off the hook, just limits the extent of your liability.
When Y2K was getting ready to roll around, businesses spent billions of dollars ensuring that 30 year old code would handle the change of millenium.
Think about that!
How much new code, made with all of the zippy new tools in all of the latest and greatest paradigms, do you expect to be in critical use 30 years from now?
>But in Britain, unlike the US, the media are at least willing to admit, or brag about their particular editorial biases.
Which is something I find far more commendable than pretending to be objective when you are not.
The truth is that every human is biased and our biases affect what we do, even when we make a serious effort to be objective.
More to the point, if you really are trying to be objective, admitting to your own biases has a way of ensuring an extra bit of diligence WRT your efforts at balance.
I know many parents (my wife and I included) who work very hard at raising their children responsibly. Many of them forego income so that a parent can remain home with the children and many of those home-school because of deficiencies in our local public schools.
Trouble is, no matter how responsible you try to be, each of us is only human. Each of us gets tired, has off-days, etc. Even at our best, we have only two eyes, two ears, etc.
In the (not so) old days, people watched out for their neighbors' children, not just their own. That doesn't happen so much any more, at a time when parenting is harder than ever.
I greatly appreciate that Wal-Mart makes the job just a little bit easier.
I thought employment in all 50 states was at will unless you explicitly sign a contract with provisions to the contrary.
Mind you, being at will doesn't mean that employment is not a contract. It is. It just means that it is a contract that either party can sever at any time.
An employer can fire you for any reason or no reason at all, but there are important exceptions. These generally come under:
1. Statutory law. In the US, for example, it is illegal to fire someone because of his/her race.
2. "Other" law. My favorite example of this is a "violates public policy" case. The driver of an armored car got out of the armored car to save a person's life. I don't remember if the person was having a heart attack, had been hit by a car, or what. Anyway, the driver's employer fired him for violating clear company policy against leaving the vehicle for any reason that was not explicitly authorized. The court found that public policy favoring the preservation of human life overrode the company policy and found in favor of the driver.
A similar category would be retaliation firings. An employer takes a foolish risk by firing someone in retaliation for exercising legal rights. Many a person has won damages against an employer, even after losing on their initial claim. Why? Public policy will not be served if the threat of firing effectively removes legally granted rights to action.
3. Explicitly written contracts -- individual contracts and collective bargaining agreements.
4. Civil service regulations.
5. A company's own written HR policies. Remember that I said employment is a contractual relationship whether you sign a piece of paper or not? If your employer has written personnel policies, those become a part of the employment contract and the employer is bound to follow them. Mind you, they can be changed at will, but, while in effect, they are part of the contract.
Alas, severence pay is not a right unless explicitly provided for.
Re:That it deems appropriate?
on
CD Copy Stopper
·
· Score: 2
>but that artistic expression is itself information
That artistic expression contains information, but is more than "mere" information.
If you want to play semantic games, everything is information, including real estate and underwear.
The law recognizes a creative input that it seeks to encourage while trying to protect the freedom of prosaic facts.
Slashdot Mirror
Shocked, amazed, and not surprised at all. /. crew at Linuxworld nearly a dozen years ago. You guys were hot stuff back then, but today? Who knew?
You don't know me, but I met you and the
Still, so many things have changed --
No more World Trade Center and no more Space Shuttle.
Innocent little cellphones are now GPS-enabled computers more powerful than my old workstation.
Steve Jobs is moving on from Apple (again)
But he's leaving behind iPods and iPhones and iPads.
Madonna's still around, but we're no longer GaGa for her.
Which still leaves her better off than Saddam Hussein and Moamar Gaddafi.
Change is a good thing, partly because the wistfulness it brings drives home how great things were and partly because of the hope -- and real possibility -- that things to come will be greater still.
Congrats for a great run.
Live long and prosper.
Or something like that.
PS: Didn't need the fish, but thanks anyway.
Working as designed to protect you from all those nasty things out on the internet.
Pretty difficult, seeing as how ResierFS is GPL'd and thus can't be included with any of the BSD kernels.
And why would that be?
I don't see anything in the GPL that would prevent including ReiserFS with a BSD kernel.
Well, there is one more significant aspect of registration.
You need not register your copyright to obtain copyright protection (prior to adapting the Berne convention, the United States DID require registration), but, in the United States, you must register your copyright in order to sue for infringement. You need not, however, register prior to the infringement.
SCO is simply doing what they said they would do, and registering the copyrights is the expected next step. Absolutely predictable and having no bearing on the legitimacy of their claims.
This sounds like more than it is, but one must understand a fundamental difference between copyright and other IP, such as patents and trademarks.
When the PTO grants a patent, it awards the actual patent itself after an investigation and a determination that the invention meets the requirements for a patent. When a trademark is registered, a different process takes place, but one that also attempts to determine the validity of the trademark.
Copyright registrations don't do that. They just record the fact that someone claimed that something was theirs on such and such a date.
This is a practical matter, as apart from very bare minimum standards, there isn't a very good way to investigate the validity of a copyright application short of an adversarial proceeding.
>You're also incorrect about commercial licenses
No, I'm not.
Commercial libraries rarely impose additional obligations for distribution of programs, as that would defeat their primary purpose, which is to make money.
Selling the binaries alone is a straw man, as that is not what developers want to do. That is what resellers do, and that is a different set of relationships/obligations. Developers want to distribute their programs. If those programs require the use of libraries, they want to distribute the required libraries, unless those libraries are reliably present on the target systems.
There is a fundamental difference, however.
First, you're paying for the stuff and already aware of its contract limitations.
This is actually a negative -- you're aware of the problem because it's bitten you from the beginning and it's a budget item.
Second, proprietary code rarely imposes different conditions for use/distribution within and without an organization. You pay the appropriate license fees and go your merry way.
The GPL is different. It effectively imposes no restrictions whatsoever on internal use. Everything kicks in when you distribute. You often don't have the option of paying the owners a license fee to distribute your proprietary code -- another significant difference.
I don't understand why so many GPL-heads deny that the GPL is no different from other licenses on this single topic. The GPL IS different from other licenses and those differences serve its purpose well.
Before you go calling people names, you might want to find out what it is you're talking about.
1. The GPL does not prevent you from copying GPL'd code into a non-GPL'd program. You are completely free to do that. The GPL prevents you from distributing that code as part of a non-GPL'd program. A company, for example, could create their own proprietary software based in part on GPL'd code and distribute it throughout, but not outside of, the organization.
2. Like it or not, viral is not an unreasonable way to describe the GPL.
Consider the program in point 1.
After using that program internally for some time, the company sees an opportunity outside of the company.
At that point, the GPL, springs out of its dormant state and infects the rest of the program. It doesn't actually GPL the rest of the code (contrary to Microsoft hyperbole). What it does is revoke all rights to the GPL'd code, resulting in a derivatvie work that cannot legally be used or distributed.
This is neither good nor evil. It's the mechanism by which the GPL is able to do the things it does.
It is, however, something that developers need to be aware of and plan for accordingly.
Mostly RMS being RMS, but he makes one point that stands out -- regardless of how many times its been said:
The term IP is dishonest in its use. Lumping the various property interests in code under one label creates both ambiguity and dishonesty, and the SCO case is a shining example.
SCO's contract/trade secret action against IBM concerns one kind of property interest in code. Even if upheld, it may or may not bear on copyright interests in Linux code and may or may not bear on SCO's right to seek recovery. A whole host of issues come into play, not the least of which is whether the code in question display sufficient authorship to warrant copyright. That's not an issue for trade secrets, but does matter for copyrights.
And so on.
It's fishy as hell.
Read the licenses, read the court cases.
What you'll find is that you really can't sue Microsoft (or other shrink-wrap vendors) for much of anything.
This very sad news should remind us that many very good people have been hurt in the last few years by the IT implosion.
Sometimes nothing we do can make a difference. Sometimes the tiniest gesture can save a life.
Please remember to say "Hi, how are you?" to someone who might need it.
Notice that the single significant tangible move is to increase advertising budgets?
Good luck, Steve-o.
I'm afraid you're facing a stealth advertising campaign that's hard to buck -- the very same one your company rode to the top in the early 80s.
It's the "I can't get signoff to buy the stuff I need, but I can put this together on my own authority and put it into place" ad, the "What do you mean we're already using it? Get it out now. What? We're doing THAT with it? Hmm. OK, maybe just this once" kind of advertising.
Microsoft knows the power of that publicity very well. It's what led PCs to prominence and the power of IT (Whoops! It was MIS back then) staffs to shrink.
Good question.
Of course, farming work overseas doesn't do Microsoft a whole of good, either.
Businesses are willing to pay for value delivered. They are not, however, willing to be raked over the coals, especially by someone who is making the profit margins that Microsoft makes in an economy that has everyone else scrambling to make a buck.
Add in the costs of continual upgrades -- required by Software Assurance, BTW -- and the hardware to support them, and the lost productivity due to bugs and security flaws, and we have some unhappy campers out there.
OSS alternatives mean that Microsoft will have to lower prices, probably to a level lower than pre Software Assurance days. Customer anger and memories mean that it may not be enough to keep some of those customers from going away for good.
The mplayer folks are entitled to package and license their software as they see fit.
The Debian folks are entitled to package and distribute Debian as they see fit.
Reminds of the KDE dustup.
That's when I switched from Debian to SuSE.
Glad I did.
Similar options abound for anyone who doesn't like the way Debian does things.
>Yes, but you do that through some sort of court (or court like) procedure, no?
Absolutely. But look at what this story is about. Some ISPs got a letter asking them to do something. If they choose to do it, fine. If they choose not to do it, also fine.
However, if they choose not to do it, they may be sued (in a court) and they, because of the letter , will be unable to claim that they were unaware of infringing activities.
Nothing extralegal here. In fact, it makes sense to send a letter before suing. Lawsuits cost a lot of money. Why spend it and why waste court time if you don't have to?
>Also, isn't it up to the authoroties (courts, police, whatever) to decide if some illegal activity has been done?
Yes and no. For example, copyright law has both civil and criminal components. Any copyright owner is entitled to bring civil action. In addition to that, many laws (I don't remember for the US copyright law -- and have never known for the Australian law) have "private Attorny General" clauses that allow pursue criminal offenses in civil courts.
Depends on what you mean by sharing.
Inviting people to watch a movie with you in your living room is fine.
Charging people to watch movies at your house is not.
Putting a movie on a P2P network so that others can make copies of it also is not. Of course, that will almost certainly be viewed as distribution by a court, so maybe it doesn't come under your meaning.
Making copies for friends also is not ok in most parts of the world. The United States does allow people to make copies of audio recordings that can be shared on a limited basis, but that ain't movies.
First of all, Companies don't have jurisdiction, but courts do.
Any US (or Japanese or Lichtensteinian) company is perfectly free to hire an Aussie law firm and proceed through the Australian courts. Australia is a signatory to the Berne convention and is obligated to enforce copyrights.
Also, there are circumstances -- intentionally seeking US business, for example -- under which Australian ISP's could make themselves subject to US jurisdiction.
Finally, treaties between the US and Australia (and I have no idea what's there) could also expose Australian ISPs to American law. In that case, it's Australian law saying "OK -- what he said".
Besides, copyright infringement does not require intent beyond intent to take the action that results in infringement. It does require knowledge, and there is such a concept as innocent infringement. However, even innocent infringement is a mitigating defense: it doesn't get you off the hook, just limits the extent of your liability.
When Y2K was getting ready to roll around, businesses spent billions of dollars ensuring that 30 year old code would handle the change of millenium.
Think about that!
How much new code, made with all of the zippy new tools in all of the latest and greatest paradigms, do you expect to be in critical use 30 years from now?
>But in Britain, unlike the US, the media are at least willing to admit, or brag about their particular editorial biases.
Which is something I find far more commendable than pretending to be objective when you are not.
The truth is that every human is biased and our biases affect what we do, even when we make a serious effort to be objective.
More to the point, if you really are trying to be objective, admitting to your own biases has a way of ensuring an extra bit of diligence WRT your efforts at balance.
Why do I get the feeling you don't have kids?
I know many parents (my wife and I included) who work very hard at raising their children responsibly. Many of them forego income so that a parent can remain home with the children and many of those home-school because of deficiencies in our local public schools.
Trouble is, no matter how responsible you try to be, each of us is only human. Each of us gets tired, has off-days, etc. Even at our best, we have only two eyes, two ears, etc.
In the (not so) old days, people watched out for their neighbors' children, not just their own. That doesn't happen so much any more, at a time when parenting is harder than ever.
I greatly appreciate that Wal-Mart makes the job just a little bit easier.
I thought employment in all 50 states was at will unless you explicitly sign a contract with provisions to the contrary.
Mind you, being at will doesn't mean that employment is not a contract. It is. It just means that it is a contract that either party can sever at any time.
An employer can fire you for any reason or no reason at all, but there are important exceptions.
These generally come under:
1. Statutory law. In the US, for example, it is illegal to fire someone because of his/her race.
2. "Other" law. My favorite example of this is a "violates public policy" case. The driver of an armored car got out of the armored car to save a person's life. I don't remember if the person was having a heart attack, had been hit by a car, or what. Anyway, the driver's employer fired him for violating clear company policy against leaving the vehicle for any reason that was not explicitly authorized. The court found that public policy favoring the preservation of human life overrode the company policy and found in favor of the driver.
A similar category would be retaliation firings. An employer takes a foolish risk by firing someone in retaliation for exercising legal rights. Many a person has won damages against an employer, even after losing on their initial claim. Why? Public policy will not be served if the threat of firing effectively removes legally granted rights to action.
3. Explicitly written contracts -- individual contracts and collective bargaining agreements.
4. Civil service regulations.
5. A company's own written HR policies.
Remember that I said employment is a contractual relationship whether you sign a piece of paper or not? If your employer has written personnel policies, those become a part of the employment contract and the employer is bound to follow them. Mind you, they can be changed at will, but, while in effect, they are part of the contract.
Alas, severence pay is not a right unless explicitly provided for.
>but that artistic expression is itself information
That artistic expression contains information, but is more than "mere" information.
If you want to play semantic games, everything is information, including real estate and underwear.
The law recognizes a creative input that it seeks to encourage while trying to protect the freedom of prosaic facts.