Officials from China, South Korea and Japan meet in Beijing today to map out plans to promote the Linux computer operating system and other "open source" software as alternatives to the products of US software giant Microsoft.
The meeting reflects the deep concern among Asian countries over the virtual monopoly enjoyed by Microsoft's Windows operating system and its Office suite of software. Officials hope its grip on the market can be challenged in the region by Linux.
The message from this country's Fair Trade Commission was clear: Japan is not about to sit idle as other global powers raise concerns over Microsoft's suspected abuses of its domination in the computer software business.
Many voices speaking the same message can make one loud sound.
An open letter to antitrust, competition, consumer and trade practice monitoring agency officials worldwide.
The role of trade practice and antitrust legislation is to provide the consumer with protection from abusive business practices and monopolies. In one of the most serous cases of monopolization in the information technology industry, the agencies charged with protecting the competitive process and the consumer have utterly failed to stem the offending corporation's anti-competitive practices.
An open letter to antitrust, competition, consumer and trade practice monitoring agency officials worldwide.
The role of trade practice and antitrust legislation is to provide the consumer with protection from abusive business practices and monopolies. In one of the most serous cases of monopolization in the information technology industry, the agencies charged with protecting the competitive process and the consumer have utterly failed to stem the offending corporation's anti-competitive practices.
The Microsoft corporation has been under continuous investigation by antitrust policing agencies since 1989. Despite this scrutiny, the Microsoft corporation, using covert and overt anti-competitive business tactics, has maintained an unabated campaign against alternatives to Microsoft Windows operating system platforms and Microsoft applications.
For years the Microsoft corporation has earned around 70% to 80% net profit from sales of its operating systems and application software. Only in areas like Thailand where Linux on the desktop has just begun to gain a foothold has Microsoft stated that it will release versions of its operating system platform and application software at a lower price to Original Equipment Manufactures (OEMs) and retail consumers than is available in the rest of the modern world. Consumers benefit where real competition exists.
The world desktop operating system market remains predominantly monopolized by Microsoft. Over the last decade, Microsoft continued to lever its desktop platform monopoly to the point where it now holds a dominant position worldwide in the application office suite and web browser software markets. On its own, the current USA Department Of Justice (DOJ) settlement with the Microsoft corporation has failed to bring about any restoration of serous competition to the desktop operating system market. Microsoft continues to use similar anti-competitive business tactics in an attempt to monopolize the digital media player and the desktop services server markets. Competing vendors increasingly find that they can no longer compete with Microsoft if they limit themselves to only the traditional closed source model of software development.
In the last six years information technology vendors have adopted techniques and resources from two existing movements geared toward the construction of software. The newer open source movement, represented by the non-profit Open Source Initiative (OSI) corporation, emphasizes the licensing of software in a manner which encourages its collaborative development in an open environment. The older free software movement, represented by the non-profit Free Software Foundation (FSF), focuses on the ethical issues surrounding the licensing of software. The free software movement emphasizes freedoms which are often taken for granted outside of the field of software: the freedom to use, study how something works, improve or adapt it and redistribute.
The Free Software Foundation offers two software license schemes which are compatible with their own goals and those of the Open Source Initiative: The GNU General Public License (GPL) and the GNU Library General Public License (LGPL). Essentially, the GPL and LGPL licenses grant the recipient extra rights than that granted by copyright law. Both licenses insure that a contributer or distributer of a GPL or LGPL licensed work may not further impede downstream recipients the rights granted by the same license. Many developing software in an open source manner have realized that this benefit offered by the GPL and LGPL licenses outweigh any potential losses. The licensing also insures that no contributing or distributing vendor or group of vendors could potentially monopolize the market, insuring that real market competition dictates price. Just as the automotive industry can commonize on standards for the production
For a system like this to be truly effective you would need an operating system which supported a truly transactional filesystem.
Remounting a filesystem with ACID on, a process sets a rollback point , executing a series of commands with the operating system keeping a record of the changes to the filesystem made by the process and its children. The process would inform the OS to either commit or rollback the changes.
This still raises questions on how to deal with with two or more competing "transactional" processes which rely on read information which another process chooses to rollback to an early state.
On Fri, 18 Jan 2002 15:16:08 GMT, Alun Jones <alun@texis.com> wrote:
>In article <u0O18.81315$Sj1.32399626@typhoon.ne.mediaone.net> , Simon Chang
><schang@quantumslipstream.net> wrote:
>>It remains to be seen whether Gates & Co. continues to treat inadequate
>>security policy and implementation as just public relations issues.
>
>In Microsoft's favour, look what happened when Gates wrote a memo suggesting
>that the company should get with the Internet. Complete U-turn on the part of
>the whole company, with a huge emphasis on Internet development. What Gates
>says, goes. Just maybe those doomsayers within Microsoft who have been saying
>yes, but what about the security angle? (I presume there are some) will now
>be listened to, and their recommendations acted on. I certainly hope so.
>
I fully admit, it is a Great Leap Forward, just like another one in history...
http://www.asiaweek.com/asiaweek/magazine/99/0924/ cn_economy.html
+Mao launched the Great Leap Forward program in 1958, arguably the greatest
+economic folly of the 20th century. To help China surpass the economies of
+Britain and the U.S. in 15 years, he decreed that every Chinese should
+produce smelt iron. Hundreds of millions of citizens neglected farms to make
+low-grade pig iron. Beijing did not know that grain was rotting in the fields
Why the above quote? Check out the language Mr Gates uses in his letter
( see the register http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/23715.html
). Remind you of the announcements of the old five year plans from
the old Soviet and Maoist regimes? Even down to the use of catch phrases!
If Microsoft's Management is serous ( and given their past pronouncements
on the security of their products - thats a very big if ) , it is a
Herculean but not impossible task ahead. It will not happen overnight.
Microsoft Makes Software Safety a Top Goal - January 17, 2002 http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/17/technology/17SEC U.html
+Every developer is going to be told not to write any new line of code, Mr.
+Allchin said, until they have thought out the security implications for the
+product.
YES !!! Finally, but a little too late since almost all of the core OS and
application code has already been written.
Microsoft should have started this process three years ago.
The attempt to turn their current inherently designed insecure products
into a trusted system is like that of turning a sows ear into a silk
purse. The result is more likely to be pots and pans into useless,
unsaleable pig iron. A lot of the core design for many of the products
is going to have to be rewritten.
As for Trustworthy computing See
Avoiding bogus encryption products: Snake Oil FAQ... http://www.faqs.org/faqs/cryptography-faq/snake-oi l/ ... the warning principals apply as much to secure software
products as it does to cryptographic products.
For software to be Trustworthy it requires that both the source and
build processes be verifiable by public inspection by peers in the
industry. That *requires* an unrestrictive license such as open
source (
don't know whether to be pleased or angry at SCO's assertion that IBM must have assisted AutoZone's transition to Linux due to the "precision and efficiency with which the migration occurred". You see, I was a Sr. Technical Advisor at AutoZone, where I was an employee for over 10 years. During my tenure, I participated and led in the design, development and maintenance of many of AutoZone's store systems. More importantly, I initiated AutoZone's transition to Linux and I directed the port of their existing store software base to Linux. I personally ported all of AutoZone's internal software libraries for use under Linux. I personally developed the rules by which other AutoZone developers should make changes to their code to support both Linux and SCO's OpenServer product. I believe at one point I had as many as 35 AutoZone developers performing porting work for me, much of which was trivial, given that our code did not generally rely on SCO specific features and that the more technologically sophisticated portions of our code tended to reside in our libraries. The developers were also responsible for testing their individual applications under both SCO and Linux; I supplemented this activity by performing builds of the entire AutoZone store software base on my desktop, which I had converted to Linux.
As to the claim that SCO's shared libraries were a necessary part of the port: false. No SCO libraries were involved in the porting activity.
As to the claim that IBM induced us to transition to Linux: false. It was, in fact, SCO's activities that 'greased the skids' and allowed the business case for using Linux to be made more easily. That is a story long in the telling; perhaps I'll share it another day.
One should remember the Linux business environment that existed at the time the AutoZone transition began. Several vendors - the original Caldera Linux distribution company, Red Hat, and Linuxcare - were offering support for enterprise installations of Linux. In fact, Bryan Sparks, then CEO of Caldera, flew to Memphis and met with me during my evaluation of the various distribution and support offerings. I also met and talked briefly with Dave Sifry of Linuxcare during the 1999 Linux Expo. AutoZone settled on Red Hat chiefly because of my familiarity with their distribution and the ease with which AutoZone could negotiate a support agreement with them.
I must add that SCO was eventually made aware of AutoZone's transition to Linux. They responded by offering to assist AutoZone in the porting activity. By the time of their offer, AutoZone had already completed the initial porting activity and had already installed a Linux-based version of their store system in several stores.
Finally, I'll add that I was for a time a member of SCO's Customer Advisory Board. As such, I believe I have some useful insights as to why SCO lost AutoZone's and several other large accounts' business.
Since 1994, both Caldera ( which only changed its name to The SCO Group in 2003 ) and the Santa Cruz Operation ( The original SCO which changed its name to Tarentella ) have accepted, profited from and redistributed copyrighted source code from hundreds of developers under the terms of the GPL license. http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl.html
The SCO Group has failed to put forward ANY substantial legal theory why the SCO Group should not be obligated to abide by the terms of the GPL.
http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/sco/sco-without-fear.html
The SCO Group obligations under the GPL has been reiterated and reinforced in the legal positions of IBM, Redhat and Novell in their respective cases against the SCO Group.
It is a criminal offense to claim, with fraudulent intent, that you have a copyright if you do not. The SCO Group does *NOT* hold the copyrights to the UNIX source code. Novell has *NOT* transfered the title for the works that the SCO Group fraudulently filed for copyright in 2003. The SCO Group do not have the right to sue anybody for violation of copyright works without the assent of the title holder.
The SCO Group claims the right to sue for work in standard UNIX and POSIX interfaces that AT&T and Novell granted full rights to use royalty free in perpetuity for the ISO, ANSI and FIPS federal standards.
The SCO Group's contract claims against IBM and others based upon the AT&T license in respect to rights of so called derivative works is in direct contradiction to evidence presented to the SCO Group by Novell.
The SCO Group though the press and SEC filings, has bolstered the share price of the SCO Group based upon demonstrably false claims to the contrary of above points 1,2 and 3. The SCO Group CEOs and legal agents were notified by Novell and IBM *before* making these false claims and presenting them as fact. The actions of the SCO Group must be in violation of several SEC regulations.
The McBrides, jointly -- I feel sometimes as though I'm in a Quentin Tarantino movie of some sort with them [laughter] -- the McBrides have failed to distinguish adequately between dicta and holding.
I do not like Eldred against Ashcroft. I think it was wrongly decided. I filed a brief in it, amicus curiae, and I assisted my friend and colleague Larry Lessig in the presentation of the main arguments which did not, regrettably, succeed.
Oddly enough, and I will take you through this just enough to show, oddly enough, it is the position that we were taking in Eldred against Ashcroft, which if you stick to holding rather than dicta, would be favorable to the position now being urged by Mr. McBride. What happened in Eldred against Ashcroft, as opposed to the window dressing of it, is actually bad for the argument that Mr. McBride has been presenting, whichever Mr. McBride it is. But they have not thought this through enough.
Let me show you why. The grave difficulty that SCO has with free software isn't their attack; it's the inadequacy of their defense. In order to defend yourself in a case in which you are infringing the freedom of free software, you have to be prepared to meet a call that I make reasonably often with my colleagues at the Foundation who are here tonight. That telephone call goes like this. "Mr. Potential Defendant, you are distributing my client's copyrighted work without permission. Please stop. And if you want to continue to distribute it, we'l
Since 1994, both Caldera ( which only changed its name to The SCO Group in 2003 ) and the Santa Cruz Operation ( The original SCO which changed its name to Tarentella ) have accepted, profited from and redistributed copyrighted source code from hundreds of developers under the terms of the GPL license. http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl.html
The SCO Group has failed to put forward ANY substantial legal theory why the SCO Group should not be obligated to abide by the terms of the GPL.
http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/sco/sco-without-fear.html
The SCO Group obligations under the GPL has been reiterated and reinforced in the legal positions of IBM, Redhat and Novell in their respective cases against the SCO Group.
It is a criminal offense to claim, with fraudulent intent, that you have a copyright if you do not. The SCO Group does *NOT* hold the copyrights to the UNIX source code. Novell has *NOT* transfered the title for the works that the SCO Group fraudulently filed for copyright in 2003. The SCO Group do not have the right to sue anybody for violation of copyright works without the assent of the title holder.
The SCO Group claims the right to sue for work in standard UNIX and POSIX interfaces that AT&T and Novell granted full rights to use royalty free in perpetuity for the ISO, ANSI and FIPS federal standards.
The SCO Group's contract claims against IBM and others based upon the AT&T license in respect to rights of so called derivative works is in direct contradiction to evidence presented to the SCO Group by Novell.
The SCO Group though the press and SEC filings, has bolstered the share price of the SCO Group based upon demonstrably false claims to the contrary of above points 1,2 and 3. The SCO Group CEOs and legal agents were notified by Novell and IBM *before* making these false claims and presenting them as fact. The actions of the SCO Group must be in violation of several SEC regulations.
The McBrides, jointly -- I feel sometimes as though I'm in a Quentin Tarantino movie of some sort with them [laughter] -- the McBrides have failed to distinguish adequately between dicta and holding.
I do not like Eldred against Ashcroft. I think it was wrongly decided. I filed a brief in it, amicus curiae, and I assisted my friend and colleague Larry Lessig in the presentation of the main arguments which did not, regrettably, succeed.
Oddly enough, and I will take you through this just enough to show, oddly enough, it is the position that we were taking in Eldred against Ashcroft, which if you stick to holding rather than dicta, would be favorable to the position now being urged by Mr. McBride. What happened in Eldred against Ashcroft, as opposed to the window dressing of it, is actually bad for the argument that Mr. McBride has been presenting, whichever Mr. McBride it is. But they have not thought this through enough.
Let me show you why. The grave difficulty that SCO has with free software isn't their attack; it's the inadequacy of their defense. In order to defend yourself in a case in which you are infringing the freedom of free software, you have to be prepared to meet a call that I make reasonably often with my colleagues at the Foundation who are here tonight. That telephone call goes like this. "Mr. Potential Defendant, you are distributing my client's copyrighted work without permission. Please stop. And if you want to continue to distribute it, we'll help you to get b
EV1 provide hosted with pre-installed Linux (RedHat Enterprise) systems with root access for the customers to allow customization.
With root access the customer is free to download the Linux kernel binaries.
Therefore if EV1 installs the Linux Kernel and provides root access to customers then EV1 are implicitly allowing distribution of Linux kernel binaries to those customers.
If you are an EV1Servers.net customer with a linux hosted server with root access, you could effectively Catch 22 the company with a GPL Vs SCO licensing paradox.
1) Logon to your EV1Servers.net hosted Linux webserver.
2) Download a copy of the Linux kernel binary and all the modules.
3) EV1Servers.net are making use of derived works under the terms of the GPL. They are obligated to provide the source code under the terms of the GPL if they make the binaries available to the customers.
4) Under the terms of the GPL, EV1Servers.net must either make the binaries avilable on the same place, or
http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#SourceAnd BinaryOnDifferentSites
Note, however, that it is not enough to find some site that happens to have the appropriate source code today, and tell people to look there. Tomorrow that site may have deleted that source code, or simply replaced it with a newer version of the same program. Then you would no longer be complying with the GPL requirements. To make a reasonable effort to comply, you need to make a positive arrangement with the other site, and thus ensure that the source will be available there for as long as you keep the binaries available.
5) Any such arrangement in (4) would be a violation of the SCO Group's License with EV1Servers.net - Catch 22.
Title: Why Linux will conquer the world - Expanded AntiFUD
EXPANDED DRAFT.
PREFACE
This is an extended version of a reply to John Carroll's article...
(http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1107-958923.html)
My original reply matched John Carroll's article style and language
in a attempt to create a side by side comparative document as
a measure of the credibility of each sides argument.
This extended edition incorporates my responses to
the criticism John made concerning the original reply. It is still
a draft, but please feel free to adapt and adopt the content and
republish at will.
Why Linux will conquer the world
By David Mohring
Special to anyone willing to publish it.
September 28, 2002,
COMMENTARY--. GNU/Linux clearly bears a strong resemblance to
Unix. It offers many of the same features, while adding
interesting additions of its own ( free licensing, open sourced
development, etc).
With the Linux platform the open source/free software community
has already created a cross-market software unification
infrastructure better than Microsoft has ever had ( or is ). This
has result in rapid expansion in Linux's popularity which has
eaten into Microsoft server market share as Linux also grows
toward taking over the governmental,enterprise, desktop and
development world.
There are a number of reasons for this:
1. The breadth of Linux's market presence.
Due to the liberal nature in which Linux is licensed, any real
measurements of Linux's current level of deployment is as
difficult to determine as the real number computers running
pirated versions of Microsoft windows.
Trying to measure the current level of Linux deployment based
around the number of computers/servers sold with operating systems
installed is flawed. Linux based solutions are often efficient
enough to be deployed on pre-existing hardware, whereas Microsoft
is dropping support for NT4 and a Windows2000/XP based solutions
almost always have a higher level of minimum requirements to do
the same job. Also unlike Microsoft OEM license releases, there is
no price advantage to purchasing the Linux with the computer, and
Evans Data survey discloses that a full 38.9% of new Linux
hardware deployments is assembled from parts.
(http://www.evansdata.com/computer.htm)
The one exception to measuring the level of Linux based
deployments is publicly accessible and query-able Internet
servers. In the netcraft September 2001 web server survey.
Linux based servers occupy 30% of the market compared to
Microsoft's IIS webserver's 27.46% share. As of August 2002, the
open source Apache webserver has 63.51% share compared to
Microsoft's IIS 25.39%.
Even so, You would be hard pressed to find a software or hardware
market where Linux does not have a rapidly increasing presence.
Linux works on obsolete hardware (so you needn't throw the
hardware away), common modern PC hardware, prototype wrist
watchs,PDAs, the Playstation, PlaystationII, Dreamcast and even
the XBox consoles, IBM mainframes, massive clusters, and a number
of supercomputers . Linux runs on a vast number of different CPU
chips, including the x86, Intel Itanium, AMD Hammer, ARM, Alpha,
IBM AS/400, SPARC, MIPS, 68k, and Power PC. Linux securely hosts
many databases, webservers, file and print servers, from many
vendors, scaling both in price and ease, according to need. Linux
now has two fully interoperating desktop systems and Libraries,
KDE and GNOME, the latters Accessabilty Toolkit with the
OpenOffice.org office suite has been singled out in this year's
"Helen Keller Achievement Award in Technology".
(http://newsvac.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/09/13/1955240)
Many vendors are now coming out with Linux based
The term Intellectual Property is a misnomer, a more correct term would be intellectual monopoly
Adam Smith and *Intellectual monopoly* (Score:5, Interesting)
by NZheretic (23872) on Fri 18 Oct 12:11AM (#4467943)
MONOPOLY AND GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIES: The principal theme set forth in The Wealth of Nations is that a country most effectively promotes its own wealth by providing a framework of laws that leaves individuals free to pursue the interest they have in their own economic betterment. This self-interest motivates individuals? propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another and thereby leads them to meet the needs of others through voluntary cooperation in the market place:
...man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and shew them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. (p. 14)
Everyone realises and acknowledges that Microsoft is a business, there to make a profit to share with it's marjor stakeholders, from it's shareholders to it's employees. However...
Smith also argues that the harmony between private goals and larger socially desirable goals promoted by voluntary cooperation between individuals in the market place is interfered with by monopoly and government subsidies. In contrast to competition, monopoly and government subsidies cause individuals to devote either too few or too many resources to particular markets:
....the private interests and passions of individuals naturally dispose them to turn their stock towards the employments which in ordinary cases are most advantageous to the society. But if from this natural preference they should turn too much of it towards those employments, the fall of profit in them and the rise of it in all others immediately dispose them to alter this faulty distribution. Without any intervention of law, therefore, the private interests and passions of men naturally lead to divide and distribute the stock of every society, among all the different employments carried on in it, as nearly as possible in the proportion which is most agreeable to the interest of the whole society.
All the different regulations of the mercantile system, necessarily derange more or less this natural and most advantageous distribution of stock. (pp. 594-5) Every derangement of the natural distribution of stock is necessarily hurtful to the society in which it takes place; whether it be by repelling from a particular trade the stock which would otherwise go to it, or by attracting towards a particular trade that which would not otherwise come to it. (p. 597)
.... sometimes, because of the overiding profit motive, the end consumer can be put at a disadvantage, and the natural model can become unbal
Enforcement of consumer law under Enterprise Act
on
Germany Muzzles SCO
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Under Part 8 of the Enterprise Act, the OFT and other bodies responsible for consumer law enforcement, have stronger powers to seek court orders against businesses who breach certain consumer protection laws.
Before taking court action (ie seeking an Enforcement Order), the OFT and our enforcement partners will always invite the trader concerned to respond to the allegations against them, and they will be able to give binding commitments (undertakings) instead of going to court.
The enforcement procedure is based on the Stop Now Regulations which it replaces along with Part III of the Fair Trading Act.
The EU Commission on Competition is about to rule on Microsoft's ongoing antitust issues. Part of the complaint is based inclusion and tying of it's Mediaplayer to the Windows OS platform. Essentially a replay of the Netscape affair.. Microsoft still faces some competition in streaming media from Apple's Quicktime and to a lesser extent Real Realplayer mediaplayers,but Microsoft, though it's position as dominant desktop platform, is gaining the lions market share. Other vendors hardware based audio/music players, either proprietary DRM based such as Apple's IPod or various MP3 players are for the moment holding their own in the marketplace.
Microsoft's negotiated settlement with the US DOJ and the settling US State Attorney Generals teminates after five to six years.If Microsoft remains unconstrained by either the EU or the US DOJ, it would be free to use the same tactics has it has done with the X-Box. Microsoft could use it's billions ripped from dominating the desktop market to subsidize streaming content providers bandwidth and flood the market with proprietary Microsoft-protocol-only mediaplayer hardware. Given the ongoing downward trend in chip prices, in five to six year time, Microsoft could easily afford to virually give away the hand held mediaplayers.
Attempting to regain a foothold back into such a Microsoft dominated market would be even more difficult than competing against Microsofts desktop monopoly is today.
Microsoft and the recording industry are slealthfully pushing Media Player 9 on the market, by requiring it to view increasingly ever more "exclusive" content...
In the words of contemporary 80s artist of both Costello and Gabriel, Dire Straits Mark Knofler - this is Money for Nothing...
[ With deepest apologies to Mark Knofler and Dire Straits ]
"Money for Microsoft" by Dire Warnings Sung by Steve Ballmer, backing by Bill Gates
You must buy... You must buy Win-XP,You must buy... You must buy Win-XP,You must buy... You must buy Win-XP,You must buy... You must buy Win-XP
Now look at them bozo's that's the way you do it You lock them always on the Win-XP That ain't workin' thats the way we do it Money for Microsoft from Dot Net usage fees Now that ain't workin' thats the way we do it Lemme tell ya them guys are dumb Maybe get a licence on your little desktop Maybe get a licence on everyone
They gotta install Media Player Passport Dot-Net deliveries They gotta take these applications They gotta take these subscription fees
Look at that, look at that
See the little Win-Troll spreading spin we makeup Yeah buddy thats our own fear That little Win-Troll got them always complain' That little Win-Troll makes us billionares
They gotta install Media Player Passport Dot-Net deliveries They gotta take these applications They gotta take these subscription fees
They shoulda learned to use the Linux They shoulda learned to use them Macs Look at that user, we got it stickin' to the customer Man we could have some fun And their down there, whats that? Protesting noises? Plannin' on me dancing like a c
As a regular slashdot user, you should know about Samba file servers and being able to access linux directories with Win2000 and XP. If you are following this story, you should also remember that the company in question is porting Microsoft software to Linux. It is more likely that it was one of the Microsoft boxes used as a reference system that was hacked.
You might have forgotton how recent last great leak of source code occured.
October 2003:Valve Software,Half Life 2 source,Microsoft Outlook
Valve Software, maker of the popular first-person shooter, confirmed that code posted online late last week was in fact Half Life 2 source code stolen from the Kirkland, Washington-based software company through a simple breach of security, namely Microsoft Outlook e-mail.
Paul Rogers, network security analyst at MIS Corporate Defence Solutions, said the QAZ Trojan theory is "certainly one of the three most likely scenarios in this case and seems perfectly plausible".
Another involves scanning the network for weaknesses, while a third cause could be a disgruntled employee disabling security protection methods such as firewalls.
Rogers expressed surprise that the hack could possibly have gone undetected for so long. "Large organisations such as Microsoft should be more proactive in their security. The QAZ Trojan hasn't had much publicity but is well known within the security industry," he said.
The QAZ Trojan was confirmed as the source of the leak.
larry bagina states: " I've seen torrents for the source code in tar.bz and tar.gz format as well as the.zip"
Do you have the creation dates for those archives or bitorrent headers? I can only find evidence of the said file in zip format before the story broke in the press.
Phillup rightly raised the point: "Perhaps it got into the computer (from MS) as a zip file? And... they kept the original.".
The expanded contents of the zip file is around the size of a single CD. This points to the contents being originally distributed from Microsoft on CD-rom.
Either Jim Allchin lied under oath, to prevent code revelation being any part of the settlement, OR the Microsoft corporation is behaving traitorously, by exposing national security issues to foreign governments.
The exposure of Microsoft source code put users at risk because of the inherent design and implimentation flaws built into the source code.
In comparison open source development practices enables open source distributions and users to evaluate the source code from the start. This forces developers to build in security from the early outset of each project or risk abandonment for more secure alternate solutions. End users can particpate in the development process.
If the code was leaked from a Linux/Unix computer, why was the code found being distributed in a zip archived file instead of a compressed tar archived file?
Zip files are rarely used for distributing source code amongst the Linux/Unix community because compressed tar files are far more efficient.
zip -r source.zip/usr/src/linux-2.4.22-1.2149.nptl
ls -l source.zip
-rw-rw-r-- 1 build build 49091705 Feb 14 06:20 source.zip
tar cjf source.tar.bz2/usr/src/linux-2.4.22-1.2149.nptl
ls -l source.tar.bz2
-rw-rw-r-- 1 build build 31964979 Feb 14 06:23 source.tar.bz2
tar czf source.tar.gz/usr/src/linux-2.4.22-1.2149.nptl
ls -l source.tar.gz
rw-rw-r-- 1 build build 40689187 Feb 14 06:31 source.tar.gz
The resulting tarred archive compressed by bz2 is is around 35% smaller than the zipped source. With the exception of the the jar format for java classes, the zip format is rarely use by Linux/Unix developers for distributing source code.
IMO this points to the source code being lost by from a Microsoft based platform.
Given the history of Microsoft's security flawed implementation and design, any such client based search engine implementation would inevitably become a set of road signs for spyware, virus and worm malware developers.
Would you want to trust your private data, gathered from govenment departments, purchases and financial transactions etc, being accessed by such a system run by any old govenmental or business agency?
How about your private correspondence on friends and acquaintances home computers.
Microsoft culled the URL name:password@ functionality from Internet Explorer because it claimed it could not create a secure enough fix, yet in the same month, it yet again proposes a privacy nightmare such as this? Madness.
Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates must submit to questioning under oath by lawyers for Burst.com Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc. as they prepare antitrust claims against the world's largest software maker, a U.S. judge said Friday.
U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz in Baltimore ordered Gates to undergo the pretrial questioning for three hours.
Burst.com has sued Microsoft, accusing the company of breaking antitrust laws to prevent competition for software used to broadcast sound and audio programs over the Internet.
Motz noted that a federal appeals court has limited use in private suits against Microsoft of evidence from the government's antitrust case against the company. Given that, lawyers for Sun and Burst must have a freer hand to prepare their own evidence, he said.
"It seems to me you ought to be able to depose Mr. Gates or anybody else deposed by the government as much as you want to," Motz told Lloyd Day, a lawyer representing Sun Microsystems.
Motz accepted Burst's argument that Gates "is no Lee Iacocca" and should be forced to answer questions about allegations that Microsoft illegally stifled competition.
Iacocca, when he headed Chrysler Corp., was excused from being questioned under oath in a product-liability lawsuit after arguing that he wasn't personally responsible for the alleged design flaws in cars that were at issue in the case.
Reprise:Evidence of origin,ownership,copyright+GPL
on
Darl & SCO Overview
·
· Score: 5, Informative
SCO's evidence of origin and Function dictates form
What proof did SCO present for the origin of both fragments of source code?
What proof did SCO present to show the SCO code did not originally from old BSD,Linux or public domain publications?
Who put the SCO source into Linux? - Was put there by Old Novell/SCO/Caldera in the first place?
What proof did SCO provide to show that the person had access to SCO's Unix sources?
The latter question raises another issue. The similarity is just as likely to be due to both operating systems performing the same role. Form is often directed by the function it performs. Function and variable names are often dictated by the API and common terminology.
Both the current Linux and Unix kernel developers have attended the similar university courses and read the same publicly available documentation. The works of W. Richard Stevens are very influential as a reference toward modern Unix and Linux and have dictated the implentation of APIs and TCP/IP stacks in both.
SCO held another telephone conference today, but you had to be on time. I tried to call in later, when I was free, to hear the recording, but although the operator told me it had been recorded, it wasn't being made available. She suggested I contact SCO and ask to hear it. Meanwhile, someone who did listen posted on Slashdot as "mec" and he or she heard this question and answer:
[question #3] Stephen Shankland, CNET --
"Q: Copyright office does not have an assignment on file [for the Unix copyrights from Novell]. 'Is it your understanding that the copyrights have not been registered yet?' A: 'Stephen is correct... [if we need] we will change the assignment of copyright...' [we can do that at any time]."
If this is true, that they failed to register, it puts another interesting twist on this story. (Novell put a twist of its own, by posting a press releaseon its site saying that while the Amendment that SCO sent them seemed to support their claim "that ownership of certain copyrights for UNIX did transfer to SCO in 1996", Novell doesn't seem to have the amendment in its own files, and patents for sure didn't transfer.)
It's true you can register a copyright any time, but you can't sue for infringement until you have registered and you can't get certain damages for infringement that occured prior to registration: "Before an infringement suit may be filed in court, registration is
necessary for works of U. S. origin." Section 411 says it precisely like this:
" 411. Registration and infringement actions10
(a) Except for an action brought for a violation of the rights of the
author under section 106A(a), and subject to the provisions of subsection
(b), no action for infringement of the copyright in any United States work
shall be instituted until registration of the copyright claim has been made
in accordance with this title...."
You are limited as to remedies without registration, as Section 412 sets forth:
" 412. Registration as prerequisite to certain remedies for infringement11
Slashdot Mirror
A plea for relief from Microsoft's escalating anti-competitive tactics.
An open letter to antitrust, competition, consumer and trade practice monitoring agency officials worldwide.
The role of trade practice and antitrust legislation is to provide the consumer with protection from abusive business practices and monopolies. In one of the most serous cases of monopolization in the information technology industry, the agencies charged with protecting the competitive process and the consumer have utterly failed to stem the offending corporation's anti-competitive practices.
The Microsoft corporation has been under continuous investigation by antitrust policing agencies since 1989. Despite this scrutiny, the Microsoft corporation, using covert and overt anti-competitive business tactics, has maintained an unabated campaign against alternatives to Microsoft Windows operating system platforms and Microsoft applications.
For years the Microsoft corporation has earned around 70% to 80% net profit from sales of its operating systems and application software. Only in areas like Thailand where Linux on the desktop has just begun to gain a foothold has Microsoft stated that it will release versions of its operating system platform and application software at a lower price to Original Equipment Manufactures (OEMs) and retail consumers than is available in the rest of the modern world. Consumers benefit where real competition exists.
The world desktop operating system market remains predominantly monopolized by Microsoft. Over the last decade, Microsoft continued to lever its desktop platform monopoly to the point where it now holds a dominant position worldwide in the application office suite and web browser software markets. On its own, the current USA Department Of Justice (DOJ) settlement with the Microsoft corporation has failed to bring about any restoration of serous competition to the desktop operating system market. Microsoft continues to use similar anti-competitive business tactics in an attempt to monopolize the digital media player and the desktop services server markets. Competing vendors increasingly find that they can no longer compete with Microsoft if they limit themselves to only the traditional closed source model of software development.
In the last six years information technology vendors have adopted techniques and resources from two existing movements geared toward the construction of software. The newer open source movement, represented by the non-profit Open Source Initiative (OSI) corporation, emphasizes the licensing of software in a manner which encourages its collaborative development in an open environment. The older free software movement, represented by the non-profit Free Software Foundation (FSF), focuses on the ethical issues surrounding the licensing of software. The free software movement emphasizes freedoms which are often taken for granted outside of the field of software: the freedom to use, study how something works, improve or adapt it and redistribute.
The Free Software Foundation offers two software license schemes which are compatible with their own goals and those of the Open Source Initiative: The GNU General Public License (GPL) and the GNU Library General Public License (LGPL). Essentially, the GPL and LGPL licenses grant the recipient extra rights than that granted by copyright law. Both licenses insure that a contributer or distributer of a GPL or LGPL licensed work may not further impede downstream recipients the rights granted by the same license. Many developing software in an open source manner have realized that this benefit offered by the GPL and LGPL licenses outweigh any potential losses. The licensing also insures that no contributing or distributing vendor or group of vendors could potentially monopolize the market, insuring that real market competition dictates price. Just as the automotive industry can commonize on standards for the production
Remounting a filesystem with ACID on, a process sets a rollback point , executing a series of commands with the operating system keeping a record of the changes to the filesystem made by the process and its children. The process would inform the OS to either commit or rollback the changes.
This still raises questions on how to deal with with two or more competing "transactional" processes which rely on read information which another process chooses to rollback to an early state.
http://itheresies.blogspot.com/
Subject: Pig iron [Was: Article: Gates memo calls for security focus]
http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl.html
The SCO Group has failed to put forward ANY substantial legal theory why the SCO Group should not be obligated to abide by the terms of the GPL.
http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/sco/sco-without-fear
The SCO Group obligations under the GPL has been reiterated and reinforced in the legal positions of IBM, Redhat and Novell in their respective cases against the SCO Group.
It is a criminal offense to claim, with fraudulent intent, that you have a copyright if you do not. The SCO Group does *NOT* hold the copyrights to the UNIX source code. Novell has *NOT* transfered the title for the works that the SCO Group fraudulently filed for copyright in 2003. The SCO Group do not have the right to sue anybody for violation of copyright works without the assent of the title holder.
The SCO Group claims the right to sue for work in standard UNIX and POSIX interfaces that AT&T and Novell granted full rights to use royalty free in perpetuity for the ISO, ANSI and FIPS federal standards.
The SCO Group's contract claims against IBM and others based upon the AT&T license in respect to rights of so called derivative works is in direct contradiction to evidence presented to the SCO Group by Novell.
The SCO Group though the press and SEC filings, has bolstered the share price of the SCO Group based upon demonstrably false claims to the contrary of above points 1,2 and 3. The SCO Group CEOs and legal agents were notified by Novell and IBM *before* making these false claims and presenting them as fact. The actions of the SCO Group must be in violation of several SEC regulations.
So how is the lawsuit going to go if it gets to court?
Eben Moglen's Harvard Speech
http://jolt.law.harvard.edu/p.cgi/speakers.html [harvard.edu]
The Transcript
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200402260 03735733
Watch (RealMedia), Listen (Speex codec), Or just Read (HTML text) and become more informed.
http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl.html
The SCO Group has failed to put forward ANY substantial legal theory why the SCO Group should not be obligated to abide by the terms of the GPL.
http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/sco/sco-without-fear
The SCO Group obligations under the GPL has been reiterated and reinforced in the legal positions of IBM, Redhat and Novell in their respective cases against the SCO Group.
It is a criminal offense to claim, with fraudulent intent, that you have a copyright if you do not. The SCO Group does *NOT* hold the copyrights to the UNIX source code. Novell has *NOT* transfered the title for the works that the SCO Group fraudulently filed for copyright in 2003. The SCO Group do not have the right to sue anybody for violation of copyright works without the assent of the title holder.
The SCO Group claims the right to sue for work in standard UNIX and POSIX interfaces that AT&T and Novell granted full rights to use royalty free in perpetuity for the ISO, ANSI and FIPS federal standards.
The SCO Group's contract claims against IBM and others based upon the AT&T license in respect to rights of so called derivative works is in direct contradiction to evidence presented to the SCO Group by Novell.
The SCO Group though the press and SEC filings, has bolstered the share price of the SCO Group based upon demonstrably false claims to the contrary of above points 1,2 and 3. The SCO Group CEOs and legal agents were notified by Novell and IBM *before* making these false claims and presenting them as fact. The actions of the SCO Group must be in violation of several SEC regulations.
So how is the lawsuit going to go if it gets to court?
Eben Moglen's Harvard Speech
http://jolt.law.harvard.edu/p.cgi/speakers.html
The Transcript
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200402260 03735733
EV1 provide hosted with pre-installed Linux (RedHat Enterprise) systems with root access for the customers to allow customization.
With root access the customer is free to download the Linux kernel binaries.
Therefore if EV1 installs the Linux Kernel and provides root access to customers then EV1 are implicitly allowing distribution of Linux kernel binaries to those customers.
1) Logon to your EV1Servers.net hosted Linux webserver.d BinaryOnDifferentSites
5) Any such arrangement in (4) would be a violation of the SCO Group's License with EV1Servers.net - Catch 22.2) Download a copy of the Linux kernel binary and all the modules.
3) EV1Servers.net are making use of derived works under the terms of the GPL. They are obligated to provide the source code under the terms of the GPL if they make the binaries available to the customers.
4) Under the terms of the GPL, EV1Servers.net must either make the binaries avilable on the same place, or http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#SourceAn
Adam Smith and *Intellectual monopoly* (Score:5, Interesting)
by NZheretic (23872) on Fri 18 Oct 12:11AM (#4467943)
Everyone realises and acknowledges that Microsoft is a business, there to make a profit to share with it's marjor stakeholders, from it's shareholders to it's employees. However ...
Enforcement of consumer law under the Enterprise Act
The EU Commission on Competition is about to rule on Microsoft's ongoing antitust issues. Part of the complaint is based inclusion and tying of it's Mediaplayer to the Windows OS platform. Essentially a replay of the Netscape affair.. Microsoft still faces some competition in streaming media from Apple's Quicktime and to a lesser extent Real Realplayer mediaplayers,but Microsoft, though it's position as dominant desktop platform, is gaining the lions market share. Other vendors hardware based audio/music players, either proprietary DRM based such as Apple's IPod or various MP3 players are for the moment holding their own in the marketplace.
Microsoft's negotiated settlement with the US DOJ and the settling US State Attorney Generals teminates after five to six years.If Microsoft remains unconstrained by either the EU or the US DOJ, it would be free to use the same tactics has it has done with the X-Box. Microsoft could use it's billions ripped from dominating the desktop market to subsidize streaming content providers bandwidth and flood the market with proprietary Microsoft-protocol-only mediaplayer hardware. Given the ongoing downward trend in chip prices, in five to six year time, Microsoft could easily afford to virually give away the hand held mediaplayers.
Attempting to regain a foothold back into such a Microsoft dominated market would be even more difficult than competing against Microsofts desktop monopoly is today.
Which gives me the segway to repost a "Lambaste from the past"
You might have forgotton how recent last great leak of source code occured.
October 2003:Valve Software,Half Life 2 source,Microsoft Outlook
March 2000:Microsoft, "Whistler"/XP source code, QAZ Trojan The QAZ Trojan was confirmed as the source of the leak.sangreal66 desperately proposed " Or... Perhaps they've improved their code.". I hardly think thats the case.
See Shattering Windows: Is a Disaster Lurking?
Do you have the creation dates for those archives or bitorrent headers? I can only find evidence of the said file in zip format before the story broke in the press.
The expanded contents of the zip file is around the size of a single CD. This points to the contents being originally distributed from Microsoft on CD-rom.
Microsoft has made so much fuss about retaining control of the source code. In May 2002, under oath at the antitrust hearing Jim Allchin, group vice president for platforms at Microsoft, stated that, because the Windows operating systems contained inherent flaws, disclosing the Windows operating system source code could damage national security and even threaten the U.S. war effort.
It's going to be interesting if it is subsequently found that Microsoft itself has been distributing said source code over the internet in zip format.
By the way, In February 2003, Microsoft signed a pact with Chinese officials to reveal the Windows operating system source code. Bill Gates even hinted that China will be privy to all, not just part, of the source code its government wished to inspect.
Dispite gaining more favored trading status with the USA, there remains many embargos over technology transfers which could put the US at future risk.
Either Jim Allchin lied under oath, to prevent code revelation being any part of the settlement, OR the Microsoft corporation is behaving traitorously, by exposing national security issues to foreign governments.
The exposure of Microsoft source code put users at risk because of the inherent design and implimentation flaws built into the source code.
In comparison open source development practices enables open source distributions and users to evaluate the source code from the start. This forces developers to build in security from the early outset of each project or risk abandonment for more secure alternate solutions. End users can particpate in the development process.
Zip files are rarely used for distributing source code amongst the Linux/Unix community because compressed tar files are far more efficient.
zip -r source.zip /usr/src/linux-2.4.22-1.2149.nptl /usr/src/linux-2.4.22-1.2149.nptl /usr/src/linux-2.4.22-1.2149.nptl
ls -l source.zip
-rw-rw-r-- 1 build build 49091705 Feb 14 06:20 source.zip
tar cjf source.tar.bz2
ls -l source.tar.bz2
-rw-rw-r-- 1 build build 31964979 Feb 14 06:23 source.tar.bz2
tar czf source.tar.gz
ls -l source.tar.gz rw-rw-r-- 1 build build 40689187 Feb 14 06:31 source.tar.gz
The resulting tarred archive compressed by bz2 is is around 35% smaller than the zipped source. With the exception of the the jar format for java classes, the zip format is rarely use by Linux/Unix developers for distributing source code.
IMO this points to the source code being lost by from a Microsoft based platform.
Would you want to trust your private data, gathered from govenment departments, purchases and financial transactions etc, being accessed by such a system run by any old govenmental or business agency?
How about your private correspondence on friends and acquaintances home computers.
Microsoft culled the URL name:password@ functionality from Internet Explorer because it claimed it could not create a secure enough fix, yet in the same month, it yet again proposes a privacy nightmare such as this? Madness.
by NZheretic : Mon 09 Jun 03:30AM: