The use of the word "pawn" is very loaded and the author knows it. Now it may be that MS really does see the rest of us as either competitors or pawns, but let's reread the same text only replacing "pawn" with "customer".
...The field of battle is the computer industry and its neighbouring vertical markets. Every person, company, product, etc., on this battlefield that is not a competing platform vendor, is a customer in the struggle between such vendors.
We win the battle when a critical mass of customers chose to support our platform, such that the rest will too. We cannot compel this choice at the barrel of a gun. Our weapons are psychological, social, and economic â" not military. Each customer that choses to support a Microsoft platform, does so as a rational decision to serve its own ends, whatever those may be.
To win, we must understand every relevant fact about the customers â" their fears and desires; their likes and dislikes; their beliefs and doubts; their motivations and obstacles. We can only win the allegiance of the customers by understanding what they need, and supplying it; what they fear, and alleviating it; what they believe, and reinforcing it; where they want to go tomorrow, and taking them there...
They're offering a deal to indie lables. The text doesn't say much new about the tech. What it talks about is the deal. This gives two groups time to react before the deal is signed. The big 5 can complain and try to improve their deals (they don't want competion, their power will be seen in the banner ads.) Competitors (MS, Real) can try to out-bid them for "Exclusive" deals. i.e. MS will pay them more if they don't sell on iTMS.
90 days would have all the indies onboard with the offers set. Now they might lose a few labels.
SCO told us how the lines came to be. Whether SCO is full of hot air is what has to be determined in court.
I agree that this is a legal issue and will be decided by lawyers. However, what decision they come to depends on what evidence is at hand. The evidence is buried in the archives of the OSS development process. That archive is distributed and not the most organized. We all know that documents can be edited. Therefor the lawyers need legaly responcible entities (people) to back up those documents. They need consistent histories.
Which lines makes a huge difference. As you said at the very end, it could have all come from BSD. It could also be the simplest posible solution to something, or in a textbook. The Lawyers don't know these things. If we can't tell them, they can't reach correct conclusions.
Changing the code doesn't effect the lawsuit. Documenting the history of the code does. Because they'll tell you a lot of things.
Yeah, there's still the "time for FUD" issue. However, for SCO's legal case, the "time to document refutations" could be much more important i.e. SCO doesn't want to give the Linux comuntity time to get their ducks in a row.
SCO knows that the authorship of Linux is much messier than it would be at a traditional company. By making a shotgun claim to many parts of the kernel they can win if any one peice hits. If one author of one peice can't be found, they can win the suit against IBM. If they tell us now what peices they are we can start scouring the globe. If they don't tell us until the legal procedings begin, it becomes a race between the legal procedure and the Linux comunity. Like a life or death game of seek and find. Better, if they can get a judge to only let IBM see the code, it becomes a seek and find where only IBM can play and they can't tell us what they are looking for. They couldn't even say "Does anyone have Linus's email address?" [Or more likely, "does anyone know who wrote lines 1047 to 1052 of kernelfile.c?"]
If they told us what lines were in question, we could all write memiors about how those lines came to be, with CVS snapshots and mailinglist discussions to back it up. If they don't tell us we can either do nothing and be unprepared, or start documenting everything and not get any real work done.
It looks to me like they are testing if the Linux comunity is able to generate a coherent document trail faster than they can generate code. We have lots of data. Can we seperate the wheat from the chaff on demand?
Yeah, I agree that you have to have such clauses. Things you have already writen are fairly easy though. The problem tends to be when I write "utility" code mid-project. Especially if you happen to have more than one project going on at one time. [If one is OSS...oy...] The issue isn't if you can contract to keep your toolkit. Rather, where does the line between your toolkits and their contract fall? Sometimes you have to stop work on one project to do the other; Do you have to mind wipe yourself as well?
The interesting bit would be in the "colaboration" areas. Are you working with or are you working for the other company? If the work is about interoperability between code I own and code they own, do I own everything which runs on my environment? If we're talking about ownership of "ideas" which come forth when two parties are working togeather....
You could end up with entire teams of lawyers and a hemispherical labotomy trying to keep things seperate.
Legal precedence for contractually shared code ownership is a minefeild. If this really is a test of colaboration ownership, it's interesting. Even if only to tell you how to word your contracts in the future.
It rather sounds like SCO is claiming that they contracted for IBM to write code for Project Monterey (the AIX runs SCO bit); Then, when IBM ditched that project, IBM took the code that IBM wrote (and the team that wrote it) over to the AIX-5L project (the AIX runs Linux). It would be virtually the same effort since all the work is in coordinating with AIX, OS/400 and MVS. IBM spent time figuring out how to do it once. If they do it again, even if they do it again with new people, the basic systems will be the same because they talk to the same systems using the same protocols, built in the same culture with the same IBM tools.
This would then be a contract fight over how much free reign IBM has with the code it wrote. The results would come down to "Did IBM write the code for SCO, or did it write the code for IBM and use it as a part of the SCO project?" It has interesting implications for independent contractors who write toolkits they use for all their projects.
This is under-edited, because I have to get back to work.
You can use the money to hire a linux guy, the issue will be whether you have to pay both during the transition.
For you: The place to start is to grab a linux distribution and install it. Get one with all the gew-gaws and an easy installer. (I use Mandrake because I use it as a workstation/desktop.) The really nice thing is that you can just get it.
If you're a computer guy this is probably the fastest way to get a feel for it. Start monkeying with the graphical overlays and then start digging into the real config files that interest you. Install all the documentation. Hell, install everything. (Well, with caveats.)
The graphically overlayed desktop instalations aren't what you'd run a server off of, but they give you buttons that let you get a feel for the shear mass of stuff that is available. Once you strip off the gui there is a server beneith it. It's a good way to start.
If you want to see how the other people will like it as a desktop, make your personel play with the desktop stuff while you watch. Similarly they can install open office for MSWindows.
The real issue is deciding what you need your computers to do. Which is to say, things like finding out if people in your office are actually using MSExchange as a groupware server, or if it's just email.
You have to make a list of the functions these systems play, and then (one by one) find out what the potential replacements are. You can hire a consultant to do this, or do it yourself. As has been noted there is no lack of willing small and large scale contractors. (Heck, I'll be available for light duty work in April.)
You need to ask your ERP provider if they will run atop Linux or BSD. Replacing that is a serious process, but switching the under OS is much less. Oracle already runs on Linux.
Remember that the whole point is that system changes should be guided by that actual work you want done. That is always where you want to start. Then search on freshmeat.net for projects adressing that work.
That paragraph also stood out to me. It should have said:
"When CIOs need help with their systems and software, they don't have to depend on vendors with their own agendas because when an open-source app doesn't work, administrators can always hire someone else."
I'll take the iBook for the Missouri contingent. Iowa and Texas have already chimed in, but I'll take Kansas and Nebraska if they don't want to jump on bashing the coasters.
Perhaps you'd like to try for "quaint New England townships?"
If you care to fund iBooks for inner cities, we have those too. We have a diverse selection of impoverished areas.
If Redhat or whoever I have my support contract with won't support me because of an old version, I'm in the exact same boat.
Not the exact same boat. The reason is the "Whomever I have my support contract with." If RedHat won't support it, you can change support providers.
It is possible to pay someone to support old MSWindows. However, If you need something that requires actually changing the software, your quoted price will quickly skyrocket. Your choices for support are extremely limited, and may be so expensive as to be effectively non-existent. How much would a company have to pay Microsoft to be able to access the old code?
With an old Open Source project, the cost of entry for a new support company is very small. It's actually possible to call around shops that don't provide support and get a quote on what it would take to start. That low cost-of-entry is the real winner for Open Source: more competition.
That said. The problem of legacy apps is much diminished with OSS. You have to ask yourself, "Why am I running legacy apps?" Usually, it's because your business depends on them. What do they depend on? Who owns them? Should they be replaced?
From the USDA: "By far, soybean meal is the world's most important protein feed, accounting for nearly 65 percent of world supplies. Livestock feeds account for 98 percent of soybean meal consumption" http://www.ers.usda.gov/briefing/soy beansoilcrops/ background.htm
The part we eat is the seed. Therefore the seeds you sow have to get to the point of producing another set of seeds. The first seeds will sprout, grow to maturity, and polinate each other. Thus creating another set of seeds. These seeds can be eaten, but if you plant them, they won't sprout.
A plant is infertile if it can't produce other plants. Irrespective of how many seeds it can grow.
If you cross a "terminated" plant with a "normal" plant, they will both produce seeds. The question is "What will grow if you plant those crossed seeds?"
A "Caller Pays" button on your phone. Or maybe a "Bill Caller $3" button. Everyone who has this phone can exact punative damages from people they don't like calling them. --"Take that telemarketer!"
Seriously, the caller has chosen to call you so they've agreed to pay "something" for this call. This is effectively automating billing for phone consultation, the same as your lawyer bills you when you call them. Your lawyer can choose not to bill his mom, and so can you. People who bill a lot, stop getting calls.
Whether the money just goes to the phone company or gets credited to your account would be left to the market. [I think spliting the money will be the final result.]
Your original argument was that the Linux desktops are not written in a recent language; Therefore they are behind MSWindows desktops. Since you agree that this is also the case for MSWindows, there is a disconnect.
If you're wishing to argue that MS's new dotnet architecture will be superior to existing technologies, then dotnet vs. existing architectures stands across desktops and applies to MSWindows, Gnome, and KDE similarly.
You can write programs for all of these environments in many languages. The language that the environment is written in is not required.
If you're comparing C# to equivalent efforts in the OSS comunity, then you will want to explore Python, Ruby and the like. Again, you can write aplications using all of these on all of the above platforms (with C# support on UNIX a bit lagging.)
The reason for the "troll" modification was the leap from language war to platform war... At this point I peter out on the issue and stop caring.
What if we standardize on a way of forming and describing formats. I think this is why XML is usually brought up. DTDs provide the format description and translation rules.
We might mandate a translation table to specific "portability formats." As long as a program can read the portability format, it can read (maybe not as well) the document. Then you can always start with the native and still have a fallback.
A big question would be whether the format definition needs to be encoded in every document. Perhaps only the relevant peices, giving you a different format for every document. You could also have a compression format which removes common format definitions. The decompression program would put them back in.
It could be worse. It's always fun when My wife gets papers she can't read, because they're in a later version of word. I usually just tell her to flunk them. (She hasn't as of yet.)
Clarification: A Windows license is cheaper than a new Mac. A new Windows PC is cheaper than a new Mac. (Which I think was the next statement.) You get stuck shelling out for (or stealing) a copy of the latest office anyway.
I wasn't suggesting that students weren't getting ripped. They would often be better off with what they have. However, given that they have been forced to spend extra money, they're not going to choose to replace their Win98 boxen with Macs. If they already had a Mac it's a different game, unless they need office...
I often suggest an ibook. But they'd still have to buy office.
Your best bet is to request non-office dependent materials, and have all of your friends do it, until the proffessors provide portable formats. I would stage a sit in on the presidents office.
Complain. Most of the Profs don't realize you can't read their stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
They're offering a deal to indie lables. The text doesn't say much new about the tech. What it talks about is the deal. This gives two groups time to react before the deal is signed. The big 5 can complain and try to improve their deals (they don't want competion, their power will be seen in the banner ads.) Competitors (MS, Real) can try to out-bid them for "Exclusive" deals. i.e. MS will pay them more if they don't sell on iTMS.
90 days would have all the indies onboard with the offers set. Now they might lose a few labels.
Acording to their website, their US ops are based in Minnesota.
http://www.coredevelopers.net/contact.jsp
SCO told us how the lines came to be. Whether SCO is full of hot air is what has to be determined in court.
I agree that this is a legal issue and will be decided by lawyers. However, what decision they come to depends on what evidence is at hand. The evidence is buried in the archives of the OSS development process. That archive is distributed and not the most organized. We all know that documents can be edited. Therefor the lawyers need legaly responcible entities (people) to back up those documents. They need consistent histories.
Which lines makes a huge difference. As you said at the very end, it could have all come from BSD. It could also be the simplest posible solution to something, or in a textbook. The Lawyers don't know these things. If we can't tell them, they can't reach correct conclusions.
Changing the code doesn't effect the lawsuit. Documenting the history of the code does. Because they'll tell you a lot of things.
Yeah, there's still the "time for FUD" issue. However, for SCO's legal case, the "time to document refutations" could be much more important i.e. SCO doesn't want to give the Linux comuntity time to get their ducks in a row.
SCO knows that the authorship of Linux is much messier than it would be at a traditional company. By making a shotgun claim to many parts of the kernel they can win if any one peice hits. If one author of one peice can't be found, they can win the suit against IBM. If they tell us now what peices they are we can start scouring the globe. If they don't tell us until the legal procedings begin, it becomes a race between the legal procedure and the Linux comunity. Like a life or death game of seek and find. Better, if they can get a judge to only let IBM see the code, it becomes a seek and find where only IBM can play and they can't tell us what they are looking for. They couldn't even say "Does anyone have Linus's email address?" [Or more likely, "does anyone know who wrote lines 1047 to 1052 of kernelfile.c?"]
If they told us what lines were in question, we could all write memiors about how those lines came to be, with CVS snapshots and mailinglist discussions to back it up. If they don't tell us we can either do nothing and be unprepared, or start documenting everything and not get any real work done.
It looks to me like they are testing if the Linux comunity is able to generate a coherent document trail faster than they can generate code. We have lots of data. Can we seperate the wheat from the chaff on demand?
The interesting bit would be in the "colaboration" areas. Are you working with or are you working for the other company? If the work is about interoperability between code I own and code they own, do I own everything which runs on my environment? If we're talking about ownership of "ideas" which come forth when two parties are working togeather....
You could end up with entire teams of lawyers and a hemispherical labotomy trying to keep things seperate.
Legal precedence for contractually shared code ownership is a minefeild. If this really is a test of colaboration ownership, it's interesting. Even if only to tell you how to word your contracts in the future.
-sh
It rather sounds like SCO is claiming that they contracted for IBM to write code for Project Monterey (the AIX runs SCO bit); Then, when IBM ditched that project, IBM took the code that IBM wrote (and the team that wrote it) over to the AIX-5L project (the AIX runs Linux). It would be virtually the same effort since all the work is in coordinating with AIX, OS/400 and MVS. IBM spent time figuring out how to do it once. If they do it again, even if they do it again with new people, the basic systems will be the same because they talk to the same systems using the same protocols, built in the same culture with the same IBM tools.
This would then be a contract fight over how much free reign IBM has with the code it wrote. The results would come down to "Did IBM write the code for SCO, or did it write the code for IBM and use it as a part of the SCO project?" It has interesting implications for independent contractors who write toolkits they use for all their projects.
Those are the same guys.
m l
http://www.otherpower.com/otherpower_aboutus.ht
They sell magnets.
Surely a lot of people can find some friend in the US who will let you use their credit card number for buying songs.
We need something that will satisfy both camps, something meaningfull AND cute.
How about WebLizard and MailLizard.
(or "Web Lizard" and "Mail Lizard" with a space.)
How about LiGNUx? Lignux. I might even have a silent 'g'.
Darn You Slashdot! I've managed to put off buying these things because I couldn't justify the cost.
I grabbed the $180 hsn. Now I have to explain it to my wife. I was softening her up for a camera. Now I have to start over.
Good thing I have a job.
This is under-edited, because I have to get back to work.
You can use the money to hire a linux guy, the issue will be whether you have to pay both during the transition.
For you: The place to start is to grab a linux distribution and install it. Get one with all the gew-gaws and an easy installer. (I use Mandrake because I use it as a workstation/desktop.) The really nice thing is that you can just get it.
If you're a computer guy this is probably the fastest way to get a feel for it. Start monkeying with the graphical overlays and then start digging into the real config files that interest you. Install all the documentation. Hell, install everything. (Well, with caveats.)
The graphically overlayed desktop instalations aren't what you'd run a server off of, but they give you buttons that let you get a feel for the shear mass of stuff that is available. Once you strip off the gui there is a server beneith it. It's a good way to start.
If you want to see how the other people will like it as a desktop, make your personel play with the desktop stuff while you watch. Similarly they can install open office for MSWindows.
The real issue is deciding what you need your computers to do. Which is to say, things like finding out if people in your office are actually using MSExchange as a groupware server, or if it's just email.
You have to make a list of the functions these systems play, and then (one by one) find out what the potential replacements are. You can hire a consultant to do this, or do it yourself. As has been noted there is no lack of willing small and large scale contractors. (Heck, I'll be available for light duty work in April.)
You need to ask your ERP provider if they will run atop Linux or BSD. Replacing that is a serious process, but switching the under OS is much less. Oracle already runs on Linux.
Remember that the whole point is that system changes should be guided by that actual work you want done. That is always where you want to start. Then search on freshmeat.net for projects adressing that work.
-sh
That paragraph also stood out to me. It should have said:
"When CIOs need help with their systems and software, they don't have to depend on vendors with their own agendas because when an open-source app doesn't work, administrators can always hire someone else."
Unfortunately, it didn't.
I'll take the iBook for the Missouri contingent. Iowa and Texas have already chimed in, but I'll take Kansas and Nebraska if they don't want to jump on bashing the coasters.
Perhaps you'd like to try for "quaint New England townships?"
If you care to fund iBooks for inner cities, we have those too. We have a diverse selection of impoverished areas.
-sh (in Missouri.)
Not the exact same boat. The reason is the "Whomever I have my support contract with." If RedHat won't support it, you can change support providers.
It is possible to pay someone to support old MSWindows. However, If you need something that requires actually changing the software, your quoted price will quickly skyrocket. Your choices for support are extremely limited, and may be so expensive as to be effectively non-existent. How much would a company have to pay Microsoft to be able to access the old code?
With an old Open Source project, the cost of entry for a new support company is very small. It's actually possible to call around shops that don't provide support and get a quote on what it would take to start. That low cost-of-entry is the real winner for Open Source: more competition.
That said. The problem of legacy apps is much diminished with OSS. You have to ask yourself, "Why am I running legacy apps?" Usually, it's because your business depends on them. What do they depend on? Who owns them? Should they be replaced?
[Whoops, times-up.]
Soybean production is Cattle Production.
y beansoilcrops/ background.htm
From the USDA:
"By far, soybean meal is the world's most important protein feed, accounting for nearly 65 percent of world supplies. Livestock feeds account for 98 percent of soybean meal consumption"
http://www.ers.usda.gov/briefing/so
From the "Heartland of Missouri."
The part we eat is the seed. Therefore the seeds you sow have to get to the point of producing another set of seeds. The first seeds will sprout, grow to maturity, and polinate each other. Thus creating another set of seeds. These seeds can be eaten, but if you plant them, they won't sprout.
A plant is infertile if it can't produce other plants. Irrespective of how many seeds it can grow.
If you cross a "terminated" plant with a "normal" plant, they will both produce seeds. The question is "What will grow if you plant those crossed seeds?"
A "Caller Pays" button on your phone. Or maybe a "Bill Caller $3" button. Everyone who has this phone can exact punative damages from people they don't like calling them. --"Take that telemarketer!"
Seriously, the caller has chosen to call you so they've agreed to pay "something" for this call. This is effectively automating billing for phone consultation, the same as your lawyer bills you when you call them. Your lawyer can choose not to bill his mom, and so can you. People who bill a lot, stop getting calls.
Whether the money just goes to the phone company or gets credited to your account would be left to the market. [I think spliting the money will be the final result.]
Ah... one of those times when a name change actually makes sense.
Your original argument was that the Linux desktops are not written in a recent language; Therefore they are behind MSWindows desktops. Since you agree that this is also the case for MSWindows, there is a disconnect.
... At this point I peter out on the issue and stop caring.
If you're wishing to argue that MS's new dotnet architecture will be superior to existing technologies, then dotnet vs. existing architectures stands across desktops and applies to MSWindows, Gnome, and KDE similarly.
You can write programs for all of these environments in many languages. The language that the environment is written in is not required.
If you're comparing C# to equivalent efforts in the OSS comunity, then you will want to explore Python, Ruby and the like. Again, you can write aplications using all of these on all of the above platforms (with C# support on UNIX a bit lagging.)
The reason for the "troll" modification was the leap from language war to platform war
What if we standardize on a way of forming and describing formats. I think this is why XML is usually brought up. DTDs provide the format description and translation rules.
We might mandate a translation table to specific "portability formats." As long as a program can read the portability format, it can read (maybe not as well) the document. Then you can always start with the native and still have a fallback.
A big question would be whether the format definition needs to be encoded in every document. Perhaps only the relevant peices, giving you a different format for every document. You could also have a compression format which removes common format definitions. The decompression program would put them back in.
MSWindows and MSOffice are also written in C and C++ (plus some MSVisual Basic).
It could be worse. It's always fun when My wife gets papers she can't read, because they're in a later version of word. I usually just tell her to flunk them. (She hasn't as of yet.)
Clarification:
A Windows license is cheaper than a new Mac. A new Windows PC is cheaper than a new Mac. (Which I think was the next statement.) You get stuck shelling out for (or stealing) a copy of the latest office anyway.
I wasn't suggesting that students weren't getting ripped. They would often be better off with what they have. However, given that they have been forced to spend extra money, they're not going to choose to replace their Win98 boxen with Macs. If they already had a Mac it's a different game, unless they need office...
I often suggest an ibook. But they'd still have to buy office.
Your best bet is to request non-office dependent materials, and have all of your friends do it, until the proffessors provide portable formats. I would stage a sit in on the presidents office.
Complain. Most of the Profs don't realize you can't read their stuff.