SCO's other option is to try and compete with Linux with OpenServer and UnixWare, both of which suck. This will be especially difficult considering the fact that SCO has almost no R&D personnel.
The fact of the matter is that SCO's tactics are actually working. Before the lawsuit SCOX stock hovered around $1.00/share, and now it's at $12.00/share. Canopy Group has already used SCO's high stock price to rid themselves of Vultus. SCO essentially paid top-dollar (then some) for Vultus in stock (mostly to Canopy Group) this stock was then cashed for more than $3 million dollars. The kicker, Canopy Group owns SCO as well. In essence the Canopy Group took $3 million of investor's money and bought out one of their other worthless companies, putting the proceeds in their own pocket. Not to mention all of the SCO executives that have been selling their personal shares while the stock is up.
SCO has years before the case even goes to trial. In the meantime they simply threaten the world and watch their stock price go up. Canopy Group and SCO executives can use the inflated stock price in a myriad of ways, and since the trial won't happen for years there is very little chance of SEC involvement. SCO management simply has to pretend like they believe they have a case.
Not to mention the fact that the government oftentimes loses court cases. Juries apparently don't mind picking the pockets of Uncle Sam. In the meantime, it's good press. Investors love the idea of some company dipping their hands in Uncle Sam's pockets.
I'd like to know what the "bomb-making materials" were...plenty of common household materials, such as fertilizer, could be used for making bombs if you were so inclined. Does that mean you're caching bomb-making materials if you have some fertilizer?
Remember, this is the sort of case that gets national attention. The Feds know that they aren't going to convince any jury on the planet that this "kid" is guilty because he had a few boxes of Miracle Gro (R). My guess is that our friend actually had tried out some of his recipes and had a few assembled pipe bombs.
Growing up, about half my friends growing up assembled pipe bombs (or some other dangerous illegal artifact) at one point or another. Posession of small amounts of explosives gets overlooked all of the time. I personally never did get involved with this sort of stuff because my father was a defense attorney and so I grew up with plenty of stories about what happens to the perpetrators of teenage pranks. The legal system does not have much of a sense of humor. However, I also was able to see first hand how the court system is often very lenient with "good kids" that do something stupid.
This kids problem was that he was simply involved in too much subversive stuff for his actions to go unnoticed and unpunished. If he would have stuck to having a web site, nothing at all would have happened to him. When you start mixing in violent protest (peaceful protest doesn't get you arrested), then things become more serious. The fact that he had actual explosives at his house was simply the straw that broke the camel's back.
Even so, the Feds could have easily thrown the book at him. As he said himself they could have charged him under the new anti-terrorist laws which would have carried a minimum 20 year sentence. As it stands now he got a year sentence (probably in a nicer facility), of which he'll serve a couple of months.
Actually most of the newer BSD-style licenses are GPL compatible. This means that I can use GPLed and MIT licensed source (as an example) in a project and distribute the new project without problems (under the GPL). Mix APSL and GPLed source and you have created something that can't be distributed.
In the end there is so much GPLed software that most Free Software licenses trend towards becoming GPL compatible. The change in the Python license, and the change in the license for QT (to the GPL), are two well-known examples of this trend.
Re:From a European viewpoint
on
Linking Dangerously
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· Score: 4, Insightful
This kid was demonstrating illegally (not a big deal), and it turned out he was wanted by the FBI for his website (still probably not too big a deal). The kicker came when they searched his parent's house and found bomb making materials.
Once you start caching explosives, the equation changes somewhat.
Ghandi, Martin Luther King, and Jesus were all a) right:), and b) decidedly non-violent. This kid was a crackpot, pure and simple.
Glamour my @$$. There is nothing remotely glamorous about doing tech support for small businesses. It's all about showing up, getting things to work, and getting the heck out. He runs a one person consulting business. At the end of the day his stuff either works, or he doesn't get paid. Yes, talking to people is a requisite part of being in business for yourself, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't have to actually fix his clients problems.
$50 to $100 may sound "glamorous" to someone who has never been in business for themselves, but the fact of the matter it is that this fee is so low that larger consulting firms can't even pretend to compete. Those prices simply don't leave any room for overhead. Once you take into consideration that you only get paid for "billable" hours, and the fact that you get to do all the bookkeeping, billing, tax work, etc. it isn't nearly the deal that it appears to be. Being a plumber or an electrician is probably more lucrative.
It's definitely doable, and there really is plenty of work. However, it's hard work, without paid vacations (or respite of any kind:).
Actually, there are several commercial offerings that replace all of the functionality of Exchange including Samsung Contact, SuSE's OpenExchange, and Bynari's Insight all will happily replace Microsoft Exchange (and all are less expensive to boot). There are also several Free Software projects (including Kolab) that have working beta software that replaces Exchange functionality. The majority of Exchange users are still using Exchange 5.5 because of the difficulties in upgrading to the newer Active Directory versions of Exchange. In many cases these Linux compatible choices are not only less expensive than Exchange, but they are an easier migration to boot. Not to mention the fact that Exchange doesn't have a reputation as being easy to administer.
As for SQL Server, I use both SQL Server and PostgreSQL at work and I actually prefer PostgreSQL for what I need. If PostgreSQL isn't good enough for you there is always DB2 or Oracle (DB2 has some especially nice licensing offers right now). It is more than possible to migrate away from SQL Server.
Basically, if you don't believe that Linux can replace Exchange and SQL server then your information is several years out of date. Companies can and are replacing Windows boxes with Linux, and it is only going to get worse for Microsoft. Microsoft has a lock on the desktop, but they are definitely sliding on the server.
Precisely. Linux has gotten big enough that Microsoft can't afford to ignore it. All sorts of places have Linux-based NAS servers running SAMBA, Apache web servers, or Linux-hosted databases or messaging servers (think Bynari). By and large these folks are happy with their Linux servers.
Several years ago if a Linux server and a Windows server didn't get along the Linux box got yanked out and replaced. Recently, however, lots of companies are starting to do just the opposite. If Windows doesn't play well with their Linux servers then they yank the Windows servers out and replace them with something that plays nice.
Exactly, and if I walked into your store to buy some gum and I didn't like the price, I would get some gum elsewhere. I am beginning to think that most slashdotters do their grocery shopping at a movie theater or something. Apparently they have never even considered taking their money elsewhere.
Frankly, the article was pure crap. Most of the price discrimination examples used are models that all us recognize. My favorite was Amazon's "buy two books get a discount" scheme. Who hasn't heard of that before?
In fact, the only negative example I saw in the article was the Coke example, and it was ridiculous. Smart retailers do not "take advantage" of their loyal repeat customers. For sale prices to be effective they have to be advertised. There is no such thing as a "hidden" sale price in retail marketing. Now imagine what your repeat customer would think if he had to pay *more* simply because he or she has shopped at your store before.
You would lose a customer, that's what would happen.
The fact of the matter is that as Information Technology advances retailers are going to know more and more about their customers. However, this is no different than what folks in small towns have faced since the dawn of time. I grew up in a small town, and the guy that ran the grocery store there knew all sorts of stuff about my family. As far as I could tell, he used this information to make sure that he had enough of the candy that I liked.
Uh, I think that we agree. Although it is possible that I wasn't clear in making my point.
Most programmers have to assume that the licenses that they accept are legal. You might believe that a particular section of your software vendor's click-through license is invalid, but unless you are willing to accept the risk of an expensive legal struggle you had probably better do what the license says.
Likewise, coders should assume that autogenerated code falls under someone else's copyright. The FSF believes that the code output from Bison is protected by copyright, code generated from a wizard could easily fall under the same category. My guess is that most code generating tools allow you to use the resulting code however you want, but that isn't necessarily the case.
When in doubt read the license (and then ask your lawyer).
Actually, you have that backwards. You actually have to assume that Microsoft's licenses are valid until a court finds them to be invalid. After all, what happens if Microsoft decides to choose you to be the test case? Unless you can afford to go to war in the courts with Microsoft you can't really afford to pretend that their licenses are nonsense (even if they are).
Like it or not, legal issues are becoming a large part of software development. You can hide your head in the sand if you want, but the question posed is actually a good one.
Actually, much of the process could be boiled down to a set of form letters. There's no need to actually get on the phone and argue with the customer service personnel. Send them a letter via certified mail demanding your refund. Depending on how the company responds you send them a second certified letter that stating that you are taking your claim to small claims court.
In court you simply show up with the evidence outlined in the article (I would include a copy of the EULA taken with a digital camera or something personally) and calmly make your case. Microsoft's EULA makes it very clear that the vendor is on the hook for a refund if the end user doesn't agree to the terms of the agreement.
If the whole process only took 3 or 4 hours (mostly spent in small claims court) then the economics shift quite a bit.
Actually, most habitual speeders get caught on a regular basis. Show me a guy with a new fangled radar detector and a penchant for speeding and I will show you a guy that probably has several speeding tickets and who pays far more for his auto insurance than I do. People that make a habit of driving more than 10 miles over the speed limit (give or take, it depends somewhat on the area) almost certainly have several speeding convictions no matter what sort of gadgets they own.
More importantly, the fact that they are consequences for speeding means that the vast majority of drivers are at least conscious of their current speed (which is the desired result).
The point that this article misses is that the RIAA doesn't have to sue every file sharer. In fact, there really isn't much of a case against the folks that simply download music. If they already have a copy of the single on a CD (or other media) then their actions might not even be illegal. However, there is a very good case against those folks that are sharing music. Folks sharing music are distributing copyrighted material without the copyright owners consent, and that's a very cut and dry case. The file sharers who end up in court are going to pay dearly for their actions.
Without folks that are willing to share files, the whole system collapses. The RIAA isn't hoping to stop file sharing completely. They simply want to restrict file sharing to small groups of friends and to the criminal underground. In other words, they want to go back to how things were before Napster. By actively pursuing file sharers they are very likely to do just that. Already people are becoming far more careful about the files that they share. When the news starts filling up with stories of the wrecked lives of those that get prosecuted folks will become even more careful.
IMHO this is good. The media industries are going to get what they want one way or another. If they can stop file sharing by utilizing existing laws, then they are less likely to press for new laws or new technological means of controling their media. I would prefer to avoid having DRM shoved down my throat just because everyone else wants to steal the newest Eminem album.
Microsoft lost the DOJ case, with fairly serious repercussions. Yes, Microsoft didn't get broken up into baby Microsoft's, but that was a very radical solution with serious political repercussions. Personally, I think that it is much better, and much easier to simply let the market sort out these sorts of problems. There is no question that Microsoft is in a weaker position as a monopoly than they were when the DOJ case started. OpenOffice.org, GNU/Linux, and Free Software in general is giving Microsoft their first credible threat in a long time. Yet, by your own adminssion Microsoft walked away "scott free."
I also think that you are sadly mistaken about the chances of foreign-owned companies in U.S. courts. As it stands right now it would appear that Sony and friends are on the fast track to owning major chunks of all of Microsoft's DRM-enabled software (which is nearly everything). If you read the article you will note that Microsoft, and not InterTrust, that was laughed out of the courtroom.
Perhaps the world is not as simple a place as you think.
Both Sony and Microsoft can basically afford to spend unlimited amounts of money on this case. In short, this is a battle between two highly prominent (and rich) companies.
Not to mention the fact that in this particular case InterTrust could almost certainly lure armies of the best lawyers on the planet simply by offering them a piece of the settlement pie. This lawsuit makes SCO's little mix-up with IBM look like a junior high school debate. The amount of money at stake is staggering. Most lawyers would chew off their left arms to get a piece of this particular case.
Actually, I am beginning to doubt whether it is ever a good idea to put your precious information into someone else's proprietary data store. You might think that Larry McVoy has unreasonable demands from BitKeeper licensees, but there are plenty of other software packages that are far worse. The second that you start putting your hard work into someone else's software that information becomes a hostage, and the vendor eventually will use this information as leverage against you.
The problem with proprietary software is that it gives vendors a great deal of power over the end users. This might be acceptable if the information that you are creating is trivial. If I am making a throw away flyer it doesn't really matter what tools I use. However, when you start talking about projects like the Linux kernel then maintaining access to the information created is a big deal.
Exactly. If SCO is going to do this then they had better spell out precisely what I am licensing from them. Otherwise they are simply asking for protection money, and probably would be liable under racketeering laws.
Of course, the second that SCO spells out precisely what they believe they own then they are done. The code will either be removed and replaced, or the actual owners of the code will slap SCO straight into an early grave.
If you think that is bad the FSF's Deluxe Software Distribution set costs $5000. Clearly the FSF really means it when they say that it is Free as in Freedom and not Free as in Free Beer. Cheapbytes probably sells the same package for $10 + s/h.
$500 is actually a ridiculously low price for what is offered in the seminar. Heck, the State Bar of California has approved this program for 7 hours of MCLE credit, for crying out loud.
The FSF has all sorts of documents that state their opinion of how the GPL *should* be applied. Not only that, but they are happy to provide legal advice on the subject. Just call them up and you will see.
In other words their meaning is not at all ambiguous. It only seems that way because groups who have *political* issues with the FSF are encouraging folks to put their heads in the sand. Basically if you don't agree with the FSF's stance on what the GPL means (and they are quite happy to make their beliefs clear) should probably write your own license that says what they want instead of using the FSF's license.
Not to mention the fact that the GPL is a license not a contract. It's not the same thing at all. The FSF hasn't signed a contract with folks distributing GPLed software, they have simply given them a license to distribute their copyrighted material assuming that they follow a very particular set of rules. Disobey those rules, and your license to distribute the code is revoked, and the FSF gets to whack you around with a big stick.
Believe me, the lawyers at the FSF are not newbies at this sort of thing. They've argued in front of the Supreme Court, for crying out loud. Not only that but they have years of experience bullying cooperating out of commercial enterprises. The reason that the GPL hasn't actually been in court is that the people that cross the FSF quickly realize that they are very likely to have their heads handed to them on a platter. You can pretend that you know more about how the GPL and LGPL should be interpretted than they do, but chances are good that you are wrong, and the only way to really find out is to get yourself in a position to be sued by the FSF.
That's not a particularly tenable position.
Lots of people have groused about how the FSF interprets the GPL, but no one has been interested in pressing their luck.
Sure, you can pretend that you have come to some sort of "arrangement," but the fact of the matter is that if the GPL and LGPL are ever tried in court chances are good that the FSF will be the folks that take someone to court. The FSF has piles and piles of GPLed and LGPLed code, and they are actively involved in protecting their intellectual property.
So when the GPL and LGPL precedents are finally set it is very likely that the lawyers at the FSF will be the ones that make the clarifications. If you are using the exact same license then it is very likely that the FSF precedent will suddenly apply to you no matter what you thought it meant.
In short, it isn't wise to assume that you know more about the FSF's licenses than the lawyers at the FSF. After all, they are the ones that are likely to actually go to court to prove their point.
If you trust all of the parties that you share GPLed and LGPLed code with implicitly, then that's not a problem. Of course, if that is the case why use the GPL in the first place?
I agree OpenOffice.org is slow to start. However, that is easily remedied by using a quickstarter that loads OpenOffice.org into memory when you log in. Quickstarters are available for Windows, Gnome, and KDE and they cut down the load time considerably.
Yes, this "wastes" memory, but you can buy a lot of memory for the price of MS Office.
All that means is that this particular group of coders got lucky. Microsoft bought their software instead of creating their own software or purchasing from a competitor. The point is that Microsoft has all of the cards, and you are literally at their mercy. The best that your friends could hope for was that Microsoft would be merciful and purchase their software (at a price that was convenient to Microsoft). In short, you are sharecropping. You do the work, and if you get lucky and your business starts making money Microsoft can shut you down. If you are lucky Microsoft buys you out. If you are unlucky, then you end up as yet another footnote in computing history.
Take the anti-virus vendors, for instance. Now that Microsoft has bought RAV you know that they are sweating bullets. If Microsoft decides to bundle their own anti-virus software with Windows they are all likely to go out of business (even if Microsoft's software sucks).
If you base your application on open systems, on the other hand (like a web application), then you aren't tied down to one single vendor.
Excellent point. This particular business model would be ridiculous no matter who was behind it. The fact that it is the brainchild of a startup that no one has heard of makes the idea even more ridiculous.
Heck, Phantom's idea isn't that different from Microsoft's XBox strategy (except, of course, that Microsoft doesn't have to pay itself licensing fees to use Windows). Microsoft has flushed billions down the toilet trying to get the XBox to fly. The paltry $25 Million that Phantom has is literally a drop in the bucket.
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SCO's other option is to try and compete with Linux with OpenServer and UnixWare, both of which suck. This will be especially difficult considering the fact that SCO has almost no R&D personnel.
The fact of the matter is that SCO's tactics are actually working. Before the lawsuit SCOX stock hovered around $1.00/share, and now it's at $12.00/share. Canopy Group has already used SCO's high stock price to rid themselves of Vultus. SCO essentially paid top-dollar (then some) for Vultus in stock (mostly to Canopy Group) this stock was then cashed for more than $3 million dollars. The kicker, Canopy Group owns SCO as well. In essence the Canopy Group took $3 million of investor's money and bought out one of their other worthless companies, putting the proceeds in their own pocket. Not to mention all of the SCO executives that have been selling their personal shares while the stock is up.
SCO has years before the case even goes to trial. In the meantime they simply threaten the world and watch their stock price go up. Canopy Group and SCO executives can use the inflated stock price in a myriad of ways, and since the trial won't happen for years there is very little chance of SEC involvement. SCO management simply has to pretend like they believe they have a case.
Not to mention the fact that the government oftentimes loses court cases. Juries apparently don't mind picking the pockets of Uncle Sam. In the meantime, it's good press. Investors love the idea of some company dipping their hands in Uncle Sam's pockets.
Remember, this is the sort of case that gets national attention. The Feds know that they aren't going to convince any jury on the planet that this "kid" is guilty because he had a few boxes of Miracle Gro (R). My guess is that our friend actually had tried out some of his recipes and had a few assembled pipe bombs.
Growing up, about half my friends growing up assembled pipe bombs (or some other dangerous illegal artifact) at one point or another. Posession of small amounts of explosives gets overlooked all of the time. I personally never did get involved with this sort of stuff because my father was a defense attorney and so I grew up with plenty of stories about what happens to the perpetrators of teenage pranks. The legal system does not have much of a sense of humor. However, I also was able to see first hand how the court system is often very lenient with "good kids" that do something stupid.
This kids problem was that he was simply involved in too much subversive stuff for his actions to go unnoticed and unpunished. If he would have stuck to having a web site, nothing at all would have happened to him. When you start mixing in violent protest (peaceful protest doesn't get you arrested), then things become more serious. The fact that he had actual explosives at his house was simply the straw that broke the camel's back.
Even so, the Feds could have easily thrown the book at him. As he said himself they could have charged him under the new anti-terrorist laws which would have carried a minimum 20 year sentence. As it stands now he got a year sentence (probably in a nicer facility), of which he'll serve a couple of months.
Actually most of the newer BSD-style licenses are GPL compatible. This means that I can use GPLed and MIT licensed source (as an example) in a project and distribute the new project without problems (under the GPL). Mix APSL and GPLed source and you have created something that can't be distributed.
In the end there is so much GPLed software that most Free Software licenses trend towards becoming GPL compatible. The change in the Python license, and the change in the license for QT (to the GPL), are two well-known examples of this trend.
This kid was demonstrating illegally (not a big deal), and it turned out he was wanted by the FBI for his website (still probably not too big a deal). The kicker came when they searched his parent's house and found bomb making materials.
Once you start caching explosives, the equation changes somewhat.
Ghandi, Martin Luther King, and Jesus were all a) right :), and b) decidedly non-violent. This kid was a crackpot, pure and simple.
Glamour my @$$. There is nothing remotely glamorous about doing tech support for small businesses. It's all about showing up, getting things to work, and getting the heck out. He runs a one person consulting business. At the end of the day his stuff either works, or he doesn't get paid. Yes, talking to people is a requisite part of being in business for yourself, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't have to actually fix his clients problems.
$50 to $100 may sound "glamorous" to someone who has never been in business for themselves, but the fact of the matter it is that this fee is so low that larger consulting firms can't even pretend to compete. Those prices simply don't leave any room for overhead. Once you take into consideration that you only get paid for "billable" hours, and the fact that you get to do all the bookkeeping, billing, tax work, etc. it isn't nearly the deal that it appears to be. Being a plumber or an electrician is probably more lucrative.
It's definitely doable, and there really is plenty of work. However, it's hard work, without paid vacations (or respite of any kind :).
Are you kidding? This was the best /. interview ever.
Actually, there are several commercial offerings that replace all of the functionality of Exchange including Samsung Contact, SuSE's OpenExchange, and Bynari's Insight all will happily replace Microsoft Exchange (and all are less expensive to boot). There are also several Free Software projects (including Kolab) that have working beta software that replaces Exchange functionality. The majority of Exchange users are still using Exchange 5.5 because of the difficulties in upgrading to the newer Active Directory versions of Exchange. In many cases these Linux compatible choices are not only less expensive than Exchange, but they are an easier migration to boot. Not to mention the fact that Exchange doesn't have a reputation as being easy to administer.
As for SQL Server, I use both SQL Server and PostgreSQL at work and I actually prefer PostgreSQL for what I need. If PostgreSQL isn't good enough for you there is always DB2 or Oracle (DB2 has some especially nice licensing offers right now). It is more than possible to migrate away from SQL Server.
Basically, if you don't believe that Linux can replace Exchange and SQL server then your information is several years out of date. Companies can and are replacing Windows boxes with Linux, and it is only going to get worse for Microsoft. Microsoft has a lock on the desktop, but they are definitely sliding on the server.
Precisely. Linux has gotten big enough that Microsoft can't afford to ignore it. All sorts of places have Linux-based NAS servers running SAMBA, Apache web servers, or Linux-hosted databases or messaging servers (think Bynari). By and large these folks are happy with their Linux servers.
Several years ago if a Linux server and a Windows server didn't get along the Linux box got yanked out and replaced. Recently, however, lots of companies are starting to do just the opposite. If Windows doesn't play well with their Linux servers then they yank the Windows servers out and replace them with something that plays nice.
Exactly, and if I walked into your store to buy some gum and I didn't like the price, I would get some gum elsewhere. I am beginning to think that most slashdotters do their grocery shopping at a movie theater or something. Apparently they have never even considered taking their money elsewhere.
Frankly, the article was pure crap. Most of the price discrimination examples used are models that all us recognize. My favorite was Amazon's "buy two books get a discount" scheme. Who hasn't heard of that before?
In fact, the only negative example I saw in the article was the Coke example, and it was ridiculous. Smart retailers do not "take advantage" of their loyal repeat customers. For sale prices to be effective they have to be advertised. There is no such thing as a "hidden" sale price in retail marketing. Now imagine what your repeat customer would think if he had to pay *more* simply because he or she has shopped at your store before.
You would lose a customer, that's what would happen.
The fact of the matter is that as Information Technology advances retailers are going to know more and more about their customers. However, this is no different than what folks in small towns have faced since the dawn of time. I grew up in a small town, and the guy that ran the grocery store there knew all sorts of stuff about my family. As far as I could tell, he used this information to make sure that he had enough of the candy that I liked.
What's the problem with that?
Uh, I think that we agree. Although it is possible that I wasn't clear in making my point.
Most programmers have to assume that the licenses that they accept are legal. You might believe that a particular section of your software vendor's click-through license is invalid, but unless you are willing to accept the risk of an expensive legal struggle you had probably better do what the license says.
Likewise, coders should assume that autogenerated code falls under someone else's copyright. The FSF believes that the code output from Bison is protected by copyright, code generated from a wizard could easily fall under the same category. My guess is that most code generating tools allow you to use the resulting code however you want, but that isn't necessarily the case.
When in doubt read the license (and then ask your lawyer).
Actually, you have that backwards. You actually have to assume that Microsoft's licenses are valid until a court finds them to be invalid. After all, what happens if Microsoft decides to choose you to be the test case? Unless you can afford to go to war in the courts with Microsoft you can't really afford to pretend that their licenses are nonsense (even if they are).
Like it or not, legal issues are becoming a large part of software development. You can hide your head in the sand if you want, but the question posed is actually a good one.
Actually, much of the process could be boiled down to a set of form letters. There's no need to actually get on the phone and argue with the customer service personnel. Send them a letter via certified mail demanding your refund. Depending on how the company responds you send them a second certified letter that stating that you are taking your claim to small claims court.
In court you simply show up with the evidence outlined in the article (I would include a copy of the EULA taken with a digital camera or something personally) and calmly make your case. Microsoft's EULA makes it very clear that the vendor is on the hook for a refund if the end user doesn't agree to the terms of the agreement.
If the whole process only took 3 or 4 hours (mostly spent in small claims court) then the economics shift quite a bit.
Actually, most habitual speeders get caught on a regular basis. Show me a guy with a new fangled radar detector and a penchant for speeding and I will show you a guy that probably has several speeding tickets and who pays far more for his auto insurance than I do. People that make a habit of driving more than 10 miles over the speed limit (give or take, it depends somewhat on the area) almost certainly have several speeding convictions no matter what sort of gadgets they own.
More importantly, the fact that they are consequences for speeding means that the vast majority of drivers are at least conscious of their current speed (which is the desired result).
The point that this article misses is that the RIAA doesn't have to sue every file sharer. In fact, there really isn't much of a case against the folks that simply download music. If they already have a copy of the single on a CD (or other media) then their actions might not even be illegal. However, there is a very good case against those folks that are sharing music. Folks sharing music are distributing copyrighted material without the copyright owners consent, and that's a very cut and dry case. The file sharers who end up in court are going to pay dearly for their actions.
Without folks that are willing to share files, the whole system collapses. The RIAA isn't hoping to stop file sharing completely. They simply want to restrict file sharing to small groups of friends and to the criminal underground. In other words, they want to go back to how things were before Napster. By actively pursuing file sharers they are very likely to do just that. Already people are becoming far more careful about the files that they share. When the news starts filling up with stories of the wrecked lives of those that get prosecuted folks will become even more careful.
IMHO this is good. The media industries are going to get what they want one way or another. If they can stop file sharing by utilizing existing laws, then they are less likely to press for new laws or new technological means of controling their media. I would prefer to avoid having DRM shoved down my throat just because everyone else wants to steal the newest Eminem album.
Microsoft lost the DOJ case, with fairly serious repercussions. Yes, Microsoft didn't get broken up into baby Microsoft's, but that was a very radical solution with serious political repercussions. Personally, I think that it is much better, and much easier to simply let the market sort out these sorts of problems. There is no question that Microsoft is in a weaker position as a monopoly than they were when the DOJ case started. OpenOffice.org, GNU/Linux, and Free Software in general is giving Microsoft their first credible threat in a long time. Yet, by your own adminssion Microsoft walked away "scott free."
I also think that you are sadly mistaken about the chances of foreign-owned companies in U.S. courts. As it stands right now it would appear that Sony and friends are on the fast track to owning major chunks of all of Microsoft's DRM-enabled software (which is nearly everything). If you read the article you will note that Microsoft, and not InterTrust, that was laughed out of the courtroom.
Perhaps the world is not as simple a place as you think.
Both Sony and Microsoft can basically afford to spend unlimited amounts of money on this case. In short, this is a battle between two highly prominent (and rich) companies.
Not to mention the fact that in this particular case InterTrust could almost certainly lure armies of the best lawyers on the planet simply by offering them a piece of the settlement pie. This lawsuit makes SCO's little mix-up with IBM look like a junior high school debate. The amount of money at stake is staggering. Most lawyers would chew off their left arms to get a piece of this particular case.
Nice try though.
Actually, I am beginning to doubt whether it is ever a good idea to put your precious information into someone else's proprietary data store. You might think that Larry McVoy has unreasonable demands from BitKeeper licensees, but there are plenty of other software packages that are far worse. The second that you start putting your hard work into someone else's software that information becomes a hostage, and the vendor eventually will use this information as leverage against you.
The problem with proprietary software is that it gives vendors a great deal of power over the end users. This might be acceptable if the information that you are creating is trivial. If I am making a throw away flyer it doesn't really matter what tools I use. However, when you start talking about projects like the Linux kernel then maintaining access to the information created is a big deal.
Exactly. If SCO is going to do this then they had better spell out precisely what I am licensing from them. Otherwise they are simply asking for protection money, and probably would be liable under racketeering laws.
Of course, the second that SCO spells out precisely what they believe they own then they are done. The code will either be removed and replaced, or the actual owners of the code will slap SCO straight into an early grave.
If you think that is bad the FSF's Deluxe Software Distribution set costs $5000. Clearly the FSF really means it when they say that it is Free as in Freedom and not Free as in Free Beer. Cheapbytes probably sells the same package for $10 + s/h.
$500 is actually a ridiculously low price for what is offered in the seminar. Heck, the State Bar of California has approved this program for 7 hours of MCLE credit, for crying out loud.
The FSF has all sorts of documents that state their opinion of how the GPL *should* be applied. Not only that, but they are happy to provide legal advice on the subject. Just call them up and you will see.
In other words their meaning is not at all ambiguous. It only seems that way because groups who have *political* issues with the FSF are encouraging folks to put their heads in the sand. Basically if you don't agree with the FSF's stance on what the GPL means (and they are quite happy to make their beliefs clear) should probably write your own license that says what they want instead of using the FSF's license.
Not to mention the fact that the GPL is a license not a contract. It's not the same thing at all. The FSF hasn't signed a contract with folks distributing GPLed software, they have simply given them a license to distribute their copyrighted material assuming that they follow a very particular set of rules. Disobey those rules, and your license to distribute the code is revoked, and the FSF gets to whack you around with a big stick.
Believe me, the lawyers at the FSF are not newbies at this sort of thing. They've argued in front of the Supreme Court, for crying out loud. Not only that but they have years of experience bullying cooperating out of commercial enterprises. The reason that the GPL hasn't actually been in court is that the people that cross the FSF quickly realize that they are very likely to have their heads handed to them on a platter. You can pretend that you know more about how the GPL and LGPL should be interpretted than they do, but chances are good that you are wrong, and the only way to really find out is to get yourself in a position to be sued by the FSF.
That's not a particularly tenable position.
Lots of people have groused about how the FSF interprets the GPL, but no one has been interested in pressing their luck.
Sure, you can pretend that you have come to some sort of "arrangement," but the fact of the matter is that if the GPL and LGPL are ever tried in court chances are good that the FSF will be the folks that take someone to court. The FSF has piles and piles of GPLed and LGPLed code, and they are actively involved in protecting their intellectual property.
So when the GPL and LGPL precedents are finally set it is very likely that the lawyers at the FSF will be the ones that make the clarifications. If you are using the exact same license then it is very likely that the FSF precedent will suddenly apply to you no matter what you thought it meant.
In short, it isn't wise to assume that you know more about the FSF's licenses than the lawyers at the FSF. After all, they are the ones that are likely to actually go to court to prove their point.
If you trust all of the parties that you share GPLed and LGPLed code with implicitly, then that's not a problem. Of course, if that is the case why use the GPL in the first place?
OpenOffice.org files are somewhat more complex than that. Basically they are a zip file containing several different individual files.
I agree OpenOffice.org is slow to start. However, that is easily remedied by using a quickstarter that loads OpenOffice.org into memory when you log in. Quickstarters are available for Windows, Gnome, and KDE and they cut down the load time considerably.
Yes, this "wastes" memory, but you can buy a lot of memory for the price of MS Office.
All that means is that this particular group of coders got lucky. Microsoft bought their software instead of creating their own software or purchasing from a competitor. The point is that Microsoft has all of the cards, and you are literally at their mercy. The best that your friends could hope for was that Microsoft would be merciful and purchase their software (at a price that was convenient to Microsoft). In short, you are sharecropping. You do the work, and if you get lucky and your business starts making money Microsoft can shut you down. If you are lucky Microsoft buys you out. If you are unlucky, then you end up as yet another footnote in computing history.
Take the anti-virus vendors, for instance. Now that Microsoft has bought RAV you know that they are sweating bullets. If Microsoft decides to bundle their own anti-virus software with Windows they are all likely to go out of business (even if Microsoft's software sucks).
If you base your application on open systems, on the other hand (like a web application), then you aren't tied down to one single vendor.
Excellent point. This particular business model would be ridiculous no matter who was behind it. The fact that it is the brainchild of a startup that no one has heard of makes the idea even more ridiculous.
Heck, Phantom's idea isn't that different from Microsoft's XBox strategy (except, of course, that Microsoft doesn't have to pay itself licensing fees to use Windows). Microsoft has flushed billions down the toilet trying to get the XBox to fly. The paltry $25 Million that Phantom has is literally a drop in the bucket.