Ummm, OO.o is/already/ installed on the Linux EEE. As is Skype, Firefox, a ton of KDE apps and applets, etc.
This is going to sound kind of snarky, and I apologize for that. But still. Have you bothered to read any of the reviews of the EEE that have come out? Bothered to spend a minute or two Googling eee and OO.o? These are questions that were answered before you posted.
I don't think the SCO v IBM case will actually test the GPL as it has more to do with contracts between SCO and IBM relating to Project Monterrey than anything else.
Your analysis is sort of on target for how the case started. However, if you take a look at Groklaw's IBM timeline, you'll note that IBM's counterclaims (as amended) which have been waiting to be settled since March of 2004(?!?), lean very heavily on the concept of FOSS and the GPL in particular. The first 18 pages or so spend a great deal of time laying the groundwork. The specific counterclaims that I referred to in my previous post; the sixth, seventh, and eighth, start on page 33:
SIXTH COUNTERCLAIM
Breach of the GNU General Public License
SEVENTH COUNTERCLAIM
Promissory Estoppel (basically asserts that SCO broke a promise to abide by the GPL and should be forced to meet their original promise)
EIGHTH COUNTERCLAIM
Copyright Infringement (asserts that since SCO is in violation of the GPL, they have infringed IBM's copyright)
As I understand it, all legal actions have to be settled as part of winding down SCO's affairs even if Novell forces SCO into chapter 7 bankruptcy. After IBM spent all this time and money grinding SCO's case into the dust, I can't imagine that they'll settle for anything less than a ruling from the bench on these points. I don't think that they'd be happy even if a trustee for what's left of SCO offered to beg forgiveness of the court's time.
I think that IBM wants to settle the legal question that the GPL is a valid license under U.S. law once and for all. I don't think they want anybody to try this kind of legal shenanigans against them ever again.
Of course, what do I know? I'm just some semi-anonymous poster on Slashdot.:)
If Judge Kimball rules that Novell should get some of the money, he is validating that the contract was valid and case closed regarding Sun. If he rules it was invalid, Sun's position has been that they were granted the rights in the 1994 contract and it doesn't mean anything. The fact that Novell didn't call anyone from Sun to the stand, hasn't taken any legal action means a lot. (emphasis added to highlight an important point)
We are in agreement, I think, that we'll have to wait to see what the judge decides. That will either give Novell a solid foundation or not for any potential legal action against Sun. No we're not. This is clearly FUD spread by a company in bad shape that feels threatened. And you're falling for it.
Sigh. You obviously care far more passionately about this issue than I do. I don't own any products from either company. I don't run OpenSolaris/or/ OpenSuse, although I will admit to trying out Suse about 6 or 7 years ago. I'm not even sure why I'm still replying.;)
I haven't "bought into" anything Novell has been saying on this subject. If anything, my sole interest in this has been because of my obsessive following of SCO vs. Everyone through Groklaw. Unlike you, I have found it fascinating reading the articles and commentary on that site. It's the only site that I'm aware of which brings together such highly competent technical viewpoints such as Dr. Salus and lawyers of all stripes.
I still think we have to wait and see what Judge Kimball says. If he rules simply that Novell's case is invalid, then clearly the whole question is moot. This, however, is a highly unlikely outcome when you consider the entirety of the history of the case to date.
If the judge simply rules that Novell gets their money back and does not comment any further on Novell's other statements (unlikely), then Novell's other statements don't mean anything from a legal perspective. I find this particular outcome unlikely because so far, Kimball has shown himself to be a very careful and thorough man. He'll want to make sure that SCO has no chance of a successful appeal, so he'll have to explain his reasoning very clearly.
If, however, the judge also has some comments in his ruling about how Novell's case persuaded him (very likely), then it is possible that we may (stress the word, "may", here) see some statements in there that Novell can point to when it comes time to go after both Microsoft and Sun.
Will Novell choose to do so? I don't know. You have persuaded me that their case for going after Sun is weaker due to their lack of action in 1999. However, I don't think it's non-existent. Novell's next steps really depend upon what Judge Kimball says, I think.
BTW, don't forget that SCO vs. IBM is still waiting to move forward. That is the case that I'm far more interested in as it is the one that has the potential to finally see the GPL validated in a U.S. court case, which will in turn/finally/ put to rest one of the fatuous objections that I still run into time and again when talking to PHBs. That's because one of IBM's counterclaims is that SCO is in violation of distributing nearly 800,000 lines of IBM's code without their permission specifically because their actions and statements repudiate the GPL. (You'd think by now that those PHBs would realize that the reason no one has challenged the GPL in court/because/ it's so solid, but nooooo! >:( )
"No doubt, I don't see how they proved that. The most telling point for me is that Sun first released the Solaris source code in 1999 under the SCSL before the agreement with SCO. They didn't do it secretly. There was a lot of press around it. Novell didn't make a peep."
I assume this is what you meant when you said earlier in this trail that Sun had released Solaris as open source in 1999? I don't see the SCSL on Opensource.Org's website. While granted, that is not conclusive in determining whether or not I always regarded the SCSL more or less as just exposing the source code without allowing people to actually do anything with it. In my view, that is not an open source license. It certainly doesn't meet the OSI's 10 point model, RMS's four freedoms, or even Lessig's 4 point model. Novell may not have had a problem with Sun's release for these reasons.
Yes, I know I was quoting Novell's argument and a _very_ short excerpt of the cross examination. I only did so because the thread that you pointed me to had only one or two people who seemed to know what they were talking about from a legal perspective, and they claimed that there was nothing "there" there. Worse, they provided no evidence, just assertions.
I simply trying to indicate that Novell's position is that there is plenty of "there" there, and I gave a link to a snippet of relevant statements from the legal records.
We are in agreement, I think, that we'll have to wait to see what the judge decides. That will either give Novell a solid foundation or not for any potential legal action against Sun.
Rather than read speculation by non-lawyers, how about
I see your link and respond with another?:) Cross examination of Andrew Nagle, "Senior Director of Product Development." He's been associated with UNIX development since 1984:
Q. Let's talk about OpenSolaris again. OpenSolaris is released under a license that allows the public to see the OpenSolaris code, isn't that right?
A. Yes.
Q. If I wanted to, I could go to Sun's web site, download the OpenSolaris code and look at it myself?
A. Yes.
Q. And it's Sun's 2003 SCOsource license that gave Sun the right to expose SVRX source code to the public; isn't that right?
A. It's my understanding that it gave Sun the right to expose the UnixWare code as well.
Q. But it gave -- the answer is: Yes, it gave Sun the right to expose to the public the SVR 4.0 code that you have admitted is in OpenSolaris.
Isn't that right?
A. That's correct.
Q. And you and I can agree, can't we, that the right to release code under an open source license, the right to say to the public that you can come and download this code as you will, that's something that has market value, doesn't it?
659 (page number)
A. That's a debatable point, I would have to say. There are those who would say that the ability to expose code for people to download and review at-will does have market value, that -- and certainly Sun hoped that it had market value. Sun hoped to garner a better position in the marketplace by publishing their code. There are others that would say that it has no particular market value, that, in fact, protected code has as much market value or more than open source code.
So, I will concede that it might have market value but, that it absolutely does, I would probably side on the -- with those that would say that it has less market value than others.
Further on, we get to Novell's arguments in the case:
So, what Sun has done is they have taken 4.0, which is listed on the APA, they have made that the base of their Solaris operating system and they have stopped taking refreshers, or they have stopped taking new code.
And Mr. Maciaszek continued:
"Q. You are right. I didn't actually ask that quite precisely enough. In so far as the UNIX code is concerned, once they're frozen in time as of their latest schedule, that is the UNIX code on which they were relying, correct?
A. Correct.
Q. And as to Sun in that case, that UNIX code has substantial value, doesn't it?
A. Well, you'd to have ask Sun that. I mean, I can't answer that question."
And here's the telling part, Your Honor. Mr. Jacobs asks Mr. Maciaszek, who I submit was a very credible witness:
"Q. And if you went to them and say -- after the Asset Purchase Agreement, went to them in 1996 and you said; you know what, we want to strip out all of that UNIX System V Release 4 code from Sun Solaris. What do you think their reaction would have been?"
And the answer, and he got a chuckle from the gallery:
"A. It wouldn't have been favorable."
Sun has built their operating system on that code, Your Honor. For them to go in and rip it all out, it has huge commercial value to them, and Mr. Maciaszek confirmed that:
"Q. Because it would have been a substantial injury to their business, would it not, sir?
A. Yes."
In addition, Mr. Patterson(sic), when he realized what it was that Sun was able to do with the new license, when he saw this article in August of 2003, he wrote an e-mail to his boss, Chris Sontag and said:
"Hey, Chris, it looks like Sun intends to use its broader license to protect its Linux customers. That is fine, but I hope they don't decide to go after the rest of
And you're missing a few big points as well. Except for one comment by McNeally, who is known to say weird things, Sun's position has always been that it's right to open Solaris source code wasn't what the deal was about. They had broad rights to SYSVR4 code for a long time. Remember, they worked on SYSVR4 with AT&T long before Novell purchased USL.
In fact, the Solaris code was opened under the SCSL in 1999 and I don't remember Novell saying anything.
What Sun was lacking was support on intel and amd hardware. UnixWare was the only Unix to have really good i386 support. To be able to offer Solaris on x86 they needed drivers from UnixWare and if you search most of the news stories I have seen regarding SCO/Sun's deal it talks about drivers. Solaris was heads and shoulders above UnixWare other than in it's x86 support so I doubt that anything in SYSVR4 code that Sun would want that they already didn't have.
All true. However, all of that may may or may not be relevant in the context of the legal and contractual issues at hand. I still haven't seen the agreement between SCO and Sun. Have you?
What Novell is doing in regards to OpenSolaris, is basically what SCO was trying to do to Linux. They're just trying to make waves and scare people.
Maybe. That would certainly make sense from one point of view. I still think that it would be a bad move on Novell's part. However, there are certainly plenty of examples of mis-steps in their past.:)
Except that you're missing one point: Novell claims that SCO never had the authority to make the deal that it did, and they so informed Sun last year once they got hold of the agreement between SCO and Sun. Odds are very high that the judge in the case will agree with Novell and rule in their favor. They've certainly built a much stronger case, as evidenced by the continual stream of decisions in their favor to date.
BTW, you're taking the APA out of context. It only amends the original agreement, it doesn't replace it. That's why most observers believe that no matter how SCO tries to frame the conversation, the clear language of the full contract can only be interpreted one way. That's why they are all predicting a slam dunk win for Novell.
I make no predictions as to how Novell may proceed in relation to Sun once they've crushed SCO. I'm simply pointing out that Sun has to deal with Novell _regardless_ of what SCO told them. What SCO may or may not have told them is no longer relevant, and only a fool at Sun would think otherwise at this point. I'd be very surprised if Jonathan Schwartz isn't spending a few hours with his lawyers framing possible strategies to deal with whatever Novell decides to do.
My guess? Novell will either let things lie, demand that OpenSolaris move to GPL/LGPL (opening up the possibility of blending the best of OpenSolaris with OpenSuse), ask for a token payment of some kind, or some combination of the above. I just don't think it's in Novell's best interest to pursue action aggressively. However, they do have every legal right to do so if they choose.
Those manuals must have really improved in the past 30 years, then. Back in the late '70s early 80s (otherwise known as the Stone Ship Age), I found that the best cure for insomnia around was a Navy manual on anything. After getting done with a pair of mid-eve double back watches I'd normally be so wired from gallons of Navy coffee that I'd be twitching for hours. Crack one of those bad boys open, though, and I'd be out before I finished the first paragraph.
It was an amazing effect, really. I often thought at the time it would make the perfect weapon if we could only teach the Soviets to read US Navalese.:D
I think the point of misunderstanding is that you are treating this solution in isolation while everyone else is thinking in terms of a fabric of similar plants scattered across the country. They don't all have to be wind farms, btw. Some can be solar, some nuclear, etc.
The point is, if you're on the grid, you share capacity with everyone else. Peak usage will vary by timezone, so if the grid is large enough, no problem from having to build too much overcapacity in any single plant.
"Novell is currently suing SCO to get their 95% of the fees paid by MS, Sun and some other smaller fish. How is it that Novell can say SCO didn't have the rights under the APA to license what they did, and then on top of it claim SCO owes them 95% of what Sun paid because it was under the APA? That doesn't make any sense."
Sigh. Yes, it does. The point is, Sun needs to deal with _Novell_, not SCO. Sun has been warned by Novell that they do not regard the deal as valid. What Novell is doing is demanding that SCO give them the money that is rightfully theirs from an invalid deal. Once that money is in hand, Novell will decide whether or not to pursue Sun for violation of their original contract.
I imagine that the first step in such a case might be to give Sun their money back. Maybe not, though. Dealing with high finance makes my head hurt.:) In any event, I'm sure that if it came to legal action, who owes who what amount for what bad action will surely be a contentious point.
Static code analysis tools (e.g. Coverity). They take your source code, run a heavy-duty static analysis program on it, and point out memory leaks / double frees, uninitialized variables, and other flaws. My educated guess is that 1/3 of viruses involve such a problem. Useful, but to a manager, you can find a different 1/3 of flaws with a manual code audit that costs about as much. I'd argue that if your software is important enough to deserve a thorough manual audit, you should probably consider doing both as they tend to catch different sorts of problems. Witness all the code cleanup that has been done in FOSS code on the basis of bugs found through Coverity's DHS funded code scanning service. Other than that, I'm pretty much in agreement with what you say.
"Transactions are atomic, consistent, isolated, and durable (ACID) even after system crashes and power failures." The other two issues that you raise may be there for all I know. However, for the class of apps that SQLite is aimed at, who cares?:)
I'll concede the point if you're talking about someone attempting to install Linux on a laptop. However, I would argue that virtually no one either one of us knows would attempt such an install would buy a wireless card from Walmart anyway. They'll go to newegg, tigerdirect, buy.com, etc. _after_ they've spent a little time researching their peripheral hardware needs.
If you are talking about a new laptop with Linux already installed, I would argue that it's still not an issue. Virtually all laptops sold these days come with an integrated wireless card. At that point, it's the laptop vendor's responsibility to have the wireless driver working before the laptop gets delivered. Again, a non-problem.
Actually, I've found that I have rarely had the most up to date XP drivers for peripherals on CD. I can't get through a Windows install without at least 3 reboots to get through all the necessary driver updates. It's generally more like 6 by the time I'm done because every driver update seems to require a forced reboot before moving on to the next. By contrast, whenever I install any LiveCD version of Linux, the install process generally downloads all the current drivers before rebooting the first time.
BTW, why are you struggling so much to avoid Ubuntu's repository? I've used nothing but Nvidia cards for years (Gentoo then Ubuntu). With Gentoo, I used to go through the pain you describe whenever I decided to update the Nvidia driver, but I was expecting that. After all, when you use a distro that requires compiling everything by hand, you have to expect that kind of pain.
With Ubuntu, for 7.04 and later all I had to do was enable the non-free repositories during the initial installation process. Ubuntu's package manager (well, OK, Debian's package manager) handles all the rest. No worries. As to how well it works? Well, I've got Compiz in all its glory and I can run Counter-Strike:Source (under wine, of course) in fullscreen. That takes care of what I want out of it.:)
Umm,no, that's not actually true. I haven't had a commercial off the shelf copy of Windows XP supply all of the drivers for any PC that I built in I don't know how long.
You see, the latest release of Windows XP that you can buy off the shelf is SP2. That most certainly does _not_ come with all the drivers you need for a new system. At most you'll get some generic drivers from peripheral manufacturers that will be several years out of date.
Nope, to get current drivers for a modern machine, you have to have the OEM's release of XP for that machine. At which point, you're not really loading generic COTS XP, are you?
By contrast, a Ubuntu LiveCD (or a LiveCD from just about any major Linux distro) is FAR more likely to have the drivers available for your hardware. And if it doesn't, it's a quick automated check of the repositories to find them. This works for everything except wireless from the two major vendors and even that works about 70% of the time. When you are talking about installing OSes, let's make sure we're comparing apples to apples, mmmk?
Besides, the truth is that we geeks tend to obsess far too much about the install process. 99.999% of the world never does an OS install. That's not the dealbreaker as far as Joe Sixpack is concerned. The real issue is, when Joe buys a Linux box, is he confused, or can he get things done with it? The eee answers that question rather handily, don't you think?:)
One potential issue is that at least one and possibly two of the reviews that I read mentioned that the screen itself wasn't perfect. One reviewer complained that the screen didn't rotate far enough back for comfortable viewing when the notebook was on a lap.
Another complaint, possibly from the same reviewer, noted that the laptop had a second, coating of some sort that made it tough to read in bright light conditions due to a lot of glare. Pictures of the problem showed that reflections off this second coating were pretty apparent. It was bad enough that the reviewer complained of a headache from eye strain after just a couple hours using the laptop.
If these issues are really that bad, they are deal killers for me. I want a laptop I can use on my lap as I sit on my front porch.:(
I'd say that the evidence is that C# and.Net are nowhere near as important as you think. Take a look at TIOBE's language chart. C# is currently ranked 8th overall with only 4.1% of the mindshare. Java, C, and C++ are all well above it.
BTW, Visual Basic (all versions) is currently ranked 3rd with 10.8%. Even if you stipulate that all of those VB users are VB.Net, you're still talking about a grand total of about 15% or 20% (assuming other, smaller languages using the CLR) of the entire global developer community's interest in.Net. Not exactly earth shattering by any means. Nope, I'd say that FOSS can continue to safely ignore.Net.:)
All of the libraries and the service(s) associated with it are still there, though. The services are still running, too. This violates the First Rule of System Administration Paranoia: Disable and remove all unnecessary elements from a server. Leaving unnecessary stuff installed (let alone running!), simply increases the number of attack vectors and points of failure with no additional benefit.
I have yet to see a service function that required a GUI on a server to manage it. I've seen client side GUIs of various sorts interact with servers. I have no problem with that model. The MVC model has been around long as it has because it works, after all.
Nope, I slam MS Windows for making their GUI an integral part of their server OS. I have no problem with slamming Apple for the same thing.
"They've even filed (and received) copyrights on things that were previously in the public domain."
Can you give an example? The only ones that I can think of off the top of my head all involve getting a copyright on a re-telling of a story. The movie Beowulf, for example. (I've never seen it, so I make judgments as to how bad or good it is. I only bring it up because it's a recent example.)
Slashdot Mirror
Ummm, OO.o is /already/ installed on the Linux EEE. As is Skype, Firefox, a ton of KDE apps and applets, etc.
This is going to sound kind of snarky, and I apologize for that. But still. Have you bothered to read any of the reviews of the EEE that have come out? Bothered to spend a minute or two Googling eee and OO.o? These are questions that were answered before you posted.
Your analysis is sort of on target for how the case started. However, if you take a look at Groklaw's IBM timeline, you'll note that IBM's counterclaims (as amended) which have been waiting to be settled since March of 2004(?!?), lean very heavily on the concept of FOSS and the GPL in particular. The first 18 pages or so spend a great deal of time laying the groundwork. The specific counterclaims that I referred to in my previous post; the sixth, seventh, and eighth, start on page 33:
SIXTH COUNTERCLAIMBreach of the GNU General Public License
SEVENTH COUNTERCLAIM
Promissory Estoppel (basically asserts that SCO broke a promise to abide by the GPL and should be forced to meet their original promise)
EIGHTH COUNTERCLAIM
Copyright Infringement (asserts that since SCO is in violation of the GPL, they have infringed IBM's copyright)
As I understand it, all legal actions have to be settled as part of winding down SCO's affairs even if Novell forces SCO into chapter 7 bankruptcy. After IBM spent all this time and money grinding SCO's case into the dust, I can't imagine that they'll settle for anything less than a ruling from the bench on these points. I don't think that they'd be happy even if a trustee for what's left of SCO offered to beg forgiveness of the court's time.
I think that IBM wants to settle the legal question that the GPL is a valid license under U.S. law once and for all. I don't think they want anybody to try this kind of legal shenanigans against them ever again.
Of course, what do I know? I'm just some semi-anonymous poster on Slashdot. :)
Sigh. You obviously care far more passionately about this issue than I do. I don't own any products from either company. I don't run OpenSolaris /or/ OpenSuse, although I will admit to trying out Suse about 6 or 7 years ago. I'm not even sure why I'm still replying. ;)
I haven't "bought into" anything Novell has been saying on this subject. If anything, my sole interest in this has been because of my obsessive following of SCO vs. Everyone through Groklaw. Unlike you, I have found it fascinating reading the articles and commentary on that site. It's the only site that I'm aware of which brings together such highly competent technical viewpoints such as Dr. Salus and lawyers of all stripes.
I still think we have to wait and see what Judge Kimball says. If he rules simply that Novell's case is invalid, then clearly the whole question is moot. This, however, is a highly unlikely outcome when you consider the entirety of the history of the case to date.
If the judge simply rules that Novell gets their money back and does not comment any further on Novell's other statements (unlikely), then Novell's other statements don't mean anything from a legal perspective. I find this particular outcome unlikely because so far, Kimball has shown himself to be a very careful and thorough man. He'll want to make sure that SCO has no chance of a successful appeal, so he'll have to explain his reasoning very clearly.
If, however, the judge also has some comments in his ruling about how Novell's case persuaded him (very likely), then it is possible that we may (stress the word, "may", here) see some statements in there that Novell can point to when it comes time to go after both Microsoft and Sun.
Will Novell choose to do so? I don't know. You have persuaded me that their case for going after Sun is weaker due to their lack of action in 1999. However, I don't think it's non-existent. Novell's next steps really depend upon what Judge Kimball says, I think.
BTW, don't forget that SCO vs. IBM is still waiting to move forward. That is the case that I'm far more interested in as it is the one that has the potential to finally see the GPL validated in a U.S. court case, which will in turn /finally/ put to rest one of the fatuous objections that I still run into time and again when talking to PHBs. That's because one of IBM's counterclaims is that SCO is in violation of distributing nearly 800,000 lines of IBM's code without their permission specifically because their actions and statements repudiate the GPL. (You'd think by now that those PHBs would realize that the reason no one has challenged the GPL in court /because/ it's so solid, but nooooo! >:( )
"No doubt, I don't see how they proved that. The most telling point for me is that Sun first released the Solaris source code in 1999 under the SCSL before the agreement with SCO. They didn't do it secretly. There was a lot of press around it. Novell didn't make a peep."
I assume this is what you meant when you said earlier in this trail that Sun had released Solaris as open source in 1999? I don't see the SCSL on Opensource.Org's website. While granted, that is not conclusive in determining whether or not I always regarded the SCSL more or less as just exposing the source code without allowing people to actually do anything with it. In my view, that is not an open source license. It certainly doesn't meet the OSI's 10 point model, RMS's four freedoms, or even Lessig's 4 point model. Novell may not have had a problem with Sun's release for these reasons.
Yes, I know I was quoting Novell's argument and a _very_ short excerpt of the cross examination. I only did so because the thread that you pointed me to had only one or two people who seemed to know what they were talking about from a legal perspective, and they claimed that there was nothing "there" there. Worse, they provided no evidence, just assertions.
I simply trying to indicate that Novell's position is that there is plenty of "there" there, and I gave a link to a snippet of relevant statements from the legal records.
We are in agreement, I think, that we'll have to wait to see what the judge decides. That will either give Novell a solid foundation or not for any potential legal action against Sun.
I see your link and respond with another? :) Cross examination of Andrew Nagle, "Senior Director of Product Development." He's been associated with UNIX development since 1984:
Q. Let's talk about OpenSolaris again. OpenSolaris is released under a license that allows the public to see the OpenSolaris code, isn't that right?
A. Yes.
Q. If I wanted to, I could go to Sun's web site, download the OpenSolaris code and look at it myself?
A. Yes.
Q. And it's Sun's 2003 SCOsource license that gave Sun the right to expose SVRX source code to the public; isn't that right?
A. It's my understanding that it gave Sun the right to expose the UnixWare code as well.
Q. But it gave -- the answer is: Yes, it gave Sun the right to expose to the public the SVR 4.0 code that you have admitted is in OpenSolaris.
Isn't that right?
A. That's correct.
Q. And you and I can agree, can't we, that the right to release code under an open source license, the right to say to the public that you can come and download this code as you will, that's something that has market value, doesn't it?
659 (page number)
A. That's a debatable point, I would have to say. There are those who would say that the ability to expose code for people to download and review at-will does have market value, that -- and certainly Sun hoped that it had market value. Sun hoped to garner a better position in the marketplace by publishing their code. There are others that would say that it has no particular market value, that, in fact, protected code has as much market value or more than open source code.
So, I will concede that it might have market value but, that it absolutely does, I would probably side on the -- with those that would say that it has less market value than others.
Further on, we get to Novell's arguments in the case:
So, what Sun has done is they have taken 4.0, which is listed on the APA, they have made that the base of their Solaris operating system and they have stopped taking refreshers, or they have stopped taking new code.
And Mr. Maciaszek continued:
"Q. You are right. I didn't actually ask that quite precisely enough. In so far as the UNIX code is concerned, once they're frozen in time as of their latest schedule, that is the UNIX code on which they were relying, correct?
A. Correct.
Q. And as to Sun in that case, that UNIX code has substantial value, doesn't it?
A. Well, you'd to have ask Sun that. I mean, I can't answer that question."
And here's the telling part, Your Honor. Mr. Jacobs asks Mr. Maciaszek, who I submit was a very credible witness:
"Q. And if you went to them and say -- after the Asset Purchase Agreement, went to them in 1996 and you said; you know what, we want to strip out all of that UNIX System V Release 4 code from Sun Solaris. What do you think their reaction would have been?"
And the answer, and he got a chuckle from the gallery:
"A. It wouldn't have been favorable."
Sun has built their operating system on that code, Your Honor. For them to go in and rip it all out, it has huge commercial value to them, and Mr. Maciaszek confirmed that:
"Q. Because it would have been a substantial injury to their business, would it not, sir?
A. Yes."
In addition, Mr. Patterson(sic), when he realized what it was that Sun was able to do with the new license, when he saw this article in August of 2003, he wrote an e-mail to his boss, Chris Sontag and said:
"Hey, Chris, it looks like Sun intends to use its broader license to protect its Linux customers. That is fine, but I hope they don't decide to go after the rest of
In fact, the Solaris code was opened under the SCSL in 1999 and I don't remember Novell saying anything.
What Sun was lacking was support on intel and amd hardware. UnixWare was the only Unix to have really good i386 support. To be able to offer Solaris on x86 they needed drivers from UnixWare and if you search most of the news stories I have seen regarding SCO/Sun's deal it talks about drivers. Solaris was heads and shoulders above UnixWare other than in it's x86 support so I doubt that anything in SYSVR4 code that Sun would want that they already didn't have.
All true. However, all of that may may or may not be relevant in the context of the legal and contractual issues at hand. I still haven't seen the agreement between SCO and Sun. Have you?
What Novell is doing in regards to OpenSolaris, is basically what SCO was trying to do to Linux. They're just trying to make waves and scare people.Maybe. That would certainly make sense from one point of view. I still think that it would be a bad move on Novell's part. However, there are certainly plenty of examples of mis-steps in their past. :)
Time to change schools to a place that knows how to teach you to understand computers, not just how to be a button pusher.
Except that you're missing one point: Novell claims that SCO never had the authority to make the deal that it did, and they so informed Sun last year once they got hold of the agreement between SCO and Sun. Odds are very high that the judge in the case will agree with Novell and rule in their favor. They've certainly built a much stronger case, as evidenced by the continual stream of decisions in their favor to date.
BTW, you're taking the APA out of context. It only amends the original agreement, it doesn't replace it. That's why most observers believe that no matter how SCO tries to frame the conversation, the clear language of the full contract can only be interpreted one way. That's why they are all predicting a slam dunk win for Novell.
I make no predictions as to how Novell may proceed in relation to Sun once they've crushed SCO. I'm simply pointing out that Sun has to deal with Novell _regardless_ of what SCO told them. What SCO may or may not have told them is no longer relevant, and only a fool at Sun would think otherwise at this point. I'd be very surprised if Jonathan Schwartz isn't spending a few hours with his lawyers framing possible strategies to deal with whatever Novell decides to do.
My guess? Novell will either let things lie, demand that OpenSolaris move to GPL/LGPL (opening up the possibility of blending the best of OpenSolaris with OpenSuse), ask for a token payment of some kind, or some combination of the above. I just don't think it's in Novell's best interest to pursue action aggressively. However, they do have every legal right to do so if they choose.
Those manuals must have really improved in the past 30 years, then. Back in the late '70s early 80s (otherwise known as the Stone Ship Age), I found that the best cure for insomnia around was a Navy manual on anything. After getting done with a pair of mid-eve double back watches I'd normally be so wired from gallons of Navy coffee that I'd be twitching for hours. Crack one of those bad boys open, though, and I'd be out before I finished the first paragraph.
:D
It was an amazing effect, really. I often thought at the time it would make the perfect weapon if we could only teach the Soviets to read US Navalese.
. Really, no text.
I think the point of misunderstanding is that you are treating this solution in isolation while everyone else is thinking in terms of a fabric of similar plants scattered across the country. They don't all have to be wind farms, btw. Some can be solar, some nuclear, etc.
The point is, if you're on the grid, you share capacity with everyone else. Peak usage will vary by timezone, so if the grid is large enough, no problem from having to build too much overcapacity in any single plant.
Make sense?
"Novell is currently suing SCO to get their 95% of the fees paid by MS, Sun and some other smaller fish. How is it that Novell can say SCO didn't have the rights under the APA to license what they did, and then on top of it claim SCO owes them 95% of what Sun paid because it was under the APA? That doesn't make any sense."
:) In any event, I'm sure that if it came to legal action, who owes who what amount for what bad action will surely be a contentious point.
Sigh. Yes, it does. The point is, Sun needs to deal with _Novell_, not SCO. Sun has been warned by Novell that they do not regard the deal as valid. What Novell is doing is demanding that SCO give them the money that is rightfully theirs from an invalid deal. Once that money is in hand, Novell will decide whether or not to pursue Sun for violation of their original contract.
I imagine that the first step in such a case might be to give Sun their money back. Maybe not, though. Dealing with high finance makes my head hurt.
From SQLite's Features page:
"Transactions are atomic, consistent, isolated, and durable (ACID) even after system crashes and power failures." The other two issues that you raise may be there for all I know. However, for the class of apps that SQLite is aimed at, who cares?I'll concede the point if you're talking about someone attempting to install Linux on a laptop. However, I would argue that virtually no one either one of us knows would attempt such an install would buy a wireless card from Walmart anyway. They'll go to newegg, tigerdirect, buy.com, etc. _after_ they've spent a little time researching their peripheral hardware needs.
If you are talking about a new laptop with Linux already installed, I would argue that it's still not an issue. Virtually all laptops sold these days come with an integrated wireless card. At that point, it's the laptop vendor's responsibility to have the wireless driver working before the laptop gets delivered. Again, a non-problem.
Actually, I've found that I have rarely had the most up to date XP drivers for peripherals on CD. I can't get through a Windows install without at least 3 reboots to get through all the necessary driver updates. It's generally more like 6 by the time I'm done because every driver update seems to require a forced reboot before moving on to the next. By contrast, whenever I install any LiveCD version of Linux, the install process generally downloads all the current drivers before rebooting the first time.
:)
BTW, why are you struggling so much to avoid Ubuntu's repository? I've used nothing but Nvidia cards for years (Gentoo then Ubuntu). With Gentoo, I used to go through the pain you describe whenever I decided to update the Nvidia driver, but I was expecting that. After all, when you use a distro that requires compiling everything by hand, you have to expect that kind of pain.
With Ubuntu, for 7.04 and later all I had to do was enable the non-free repositories during the initial installation process. Ubuntu's package manager (well, OK, Debian's package manager) handles all the rest. No worries. As to how well it works? Well, I've got Compiz in all its glory and I can run Counter-Strike:Source (under wine, of course) in fullscreen. That takes care of what I want out of it.
(Raises hand)
:)
Umm,no, that's not actually true. I haven't had a commercial off the shelf copy of Windows XP supply all of the drivers for any PC that I built in I don't know how long.
You see, the latest release of Windows XP that you can buy off the shelf is SP2. That most certainly does _not_ come with all the drivers you need for a new system. At most you'll get some generic drivers from peripheral manufacturers that will be several years out of date.
Nope, to get current drivers for a modern machine, you have to have the OEM's release of XP for that machine. At which point, you're not really loading generic COTS XP, are you?
By contrast, a Ubuntu LiveCD (or a LiveCD from just about any major Linux distro) is FAR more likely to have the drivers available for your hardware. And if it doesn't, it's a quick automated check of the repositories to find them. This works for everything except wireless from the two major vendors and even that works about 70% of the time. When you are talking about installing OSes, let's make sure we're comparing apples to apples, mmmk?
Besides, the truth is that we geeks tend to obsess far too much about the install process. 99.999% of the world never does an OS install. That's not the dealbreaker as far as Joe Sixpack is concerned. The real issue is, when Joe buys a Linux box, is he confused, or can he get things done with it? The eee answers that question rather handily, don't you think?
One potential issue is that at least one and possibly two of the reviews that I read mentioned that the screen itself wasn't perfect. One reviewer complained that the screen didn't rotate far enough back for comfortable viewing when the notebook was on a lap.
:(
Another complaint, possibly from the same reviewer, noted that the laptop had a second, coating of some sort that made it tough to read in bright light conditions due to a lot of glare. Pictures of the problem showed that reflections off this second coating were pretty apparent. It was bad enough that the reviewer complained of a headache from eye strain after just a couple hours using the laptop.
If these issues are really that bad, they are deal killers for me. I want a laptop I can use on my lap as I sit on my front porch.
I'd say that the evidence is that C# and .Net are nowhere near as important as you think. Take a look at TIOBE's language chart. C# is currently ranked 8th overall with only 4.1% of the mindshare. Java, C, and C++ are all well above it.
BTW, Visual Basic (all versions) is currently ranked 3rd with 10.8%. Even if you stipulate that all of those VB users are VB.Net, you're still talking about a grand total of about 15% or 20% (assuming other, smaller languages using the CLR) of the entire global developer community's interest in .Net. Not exactly earth shattering by any means. Nope, I'd say that FOSS can continue to safely ignore .Net. :)
My favorite variation of that was Ackroyd's "Jane, you magnificently ignorant slut." A whole new scale of ignorance was born! :)
Yep. Whooooooooosh. :)
Troll??? C'mon, mods. It was FUNNY! :)
All of the libraries and the service(s) associated with it are still there, though. The services are still running, too. This violates the First Rule of System Administration Paranoia: Disable and remove all unnecessary elements from a server. Leaving unnecessary stuff installed (let alone running!), simply increases the number of attack vectors and points of failure with no additional benefit.
I have yet to see a service function that required a GUI on a server to manage it. I've seen client side GUIs of various sorts interact with servers. I have no problem with that model. The MVC model has been around long as it has because it works, after all.
Nope, I slam MS Windows for making their GUI an integral part of their server OS. I have no problem with slamming Apple for the same thing.
"They've even filed (and received) copyrights on things that were previously in the public domain."
Can you give an example? The only ones that I can think of off the top of my head all involve getting a copyright on a re-telling of a story. The movie Beowulf, for example. (I've never seen it, so I make judgments as to how bad or good it is. I only bring it up because it's a recent example.)
He might be using Kubuntu, though. :)