Yes, but you can't change these things retrospectively - If the claim was valid in 1968 (or whenever it was), then UK can't just extend their territorial claim and envelope the Principality. Otherwise we could take Northern France like that too (should we want to!).
Does anyone have a concrete, documented example of prior art? That's what B&N need (IANAL, but that much is obvious). This is probably the biggest thing that/. readers can do to help this case... now, what's the e-mail address of the B&N legal team?
This is a really good article - how come, whenever someone comes up with a view like this you look at it and say: "That was really obvious, why didn't I think of that?!" I guess that's what separates us into those who write this stuff, and those (like me) who merely read.
We see alot of these kind of articles, and I thnk that those would be good to quote (or at least draw from) for those internal justification type documents one is called upon to write from time to time. Could we get together a repository of this type of article as a reference for such situations? or is there one already? Naturally there would be copyright issues to consider, but I can't see anyone having major objections [not that I've asked]. Perhaps that's something for my 15Mb of free webspace...
Sorry, but I do think that they have given a huge amount already! _Everything_ they write is GPL'ed - you can download the whole RH distribution for the price of your own Internet Connection. They pay programmers to write lots of Software. They produce one of the definitive distributions, arguably with the widest reach, which encourages more people to get involved and discover what free software is about!
I don't speak for RMS, but it seems to me that FSF is not out there to [just] make a profit, its out there to promote Free Software - obviously the money helps, but RH has the right philosphy - I certainly don't care whether its FSF, RH, Debian or anyone else, so long as its free.
BTW - I suspect that the reason "Official" RH have stopped doing cheap CDs is that they've been priced out of the market! I bought the Powertools CDs when it came with every RH distrib, but now I can just get the £5 Cheapbytes CDs... So, RH concentrates on their core business which is Support - that's what your $70 is paying for (that and the physical bit of plastic/aluminium/dead tree)
So, when my new Dell PC loads Windows, can I sue them for not providing a WORKING system?
Quite frankly, a BIOS screen and an attempt to load an OS is evidence that the thing is working.
Working is a relative term.
If I order a PC without an OS, then its quite likely that I know what I'm doing - its an opt-out choice, the default is Windows, which is fine, but if I want a blank system, why should the EU or anyone tell me I can't, esp. if I'm a University, who tend to be full of techie types who can do this sorta thing.
I wish people would take more interest in what the EU does (esp. in this country - UK)
So stop moaning! Linux is a great stable server platform (at the very least) - we run Notes servers on NT currently, and they have to be rebooted every couple of weeks... (familiar story on/.) - Iris/Lotus have obviously noticed this and are providing a server platform for NT's nearest "competitor". This is a GOOD thing. In what way could it possibly be bad??? This is what we want isn't it? More commercial interest?
As far as client support goes... you can access most things thru a web browser, or mail via IMAP, SMTP and LDAP...
I'm sure as soon as GNU/Linux becomes the dominant desktop OS, there will be ports a plenty!
These types of "studies", whether accurate or not, make me as livid as the next person, however, aren't we missing the point. For years, whenever any "newbie" ( and Microsoft really is a newbie in the Linux World - they have barely contributed anything to the Gnu/Linux/OSS/Free Software/*BSD (or whatever you wish to call it )Community) said anything about a "feature" they considered "missing", or that something was "not good enough", what was the answer? "Fix it yourself!" (I paraphrase here...) Why, now, have we changed our tune? Our answer, in one voice to Microsoft, and other's like them should be: If you don't like it, then fix it! The next time one of these comes out, then how's about Everyone who posts on Slashdot, posts "Please, Microsoft, if you don't like it, then please contribute some resources to fixing it, otherwise, shut up!" or something like that.
Microsoft are still in the Business Mould... What do we care!!!!???? [idea for a poll - how many people's income depend on the market share of Linux against NT/Solaris/Netware etc. - OK, so the likes of Redhat/Suse/Caldera etc. do, and I wish them well, but your average kernel hacker is (as Microsoft themselves pointed out) just in it for the recognition/fun etc. Therefore, Linux will still be around, as long as people still wish to develop it, and when they don't, then it will die, and there will be no one who cares, since we will be all hacking some other OS, or project or something! When NT dies, which I'm sure it will, there will be lots of MS shareholders who do care, and will be most unhappy... Justice!
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but you can't change these things retrospectively - If the claim was valid in 1968 (or whenever it was), then UK can't just extend their territorial claim and envelope the Principality. Otherwise we could take Northern France like that too (should we want to!).
Does anyone have a concrete, documented example of prior art? That's what B&N need (IANAL, but that much is obvious). This is probably the biggest thing that /. readers can do to help this case... now, what's the e-mail address of the B&N legal team?
etc
This is a really good article - how come, whenever someone comes up with a view like this you look at it and say: "That was really obvious, why didn't I think of that?!" I guess that's what separates us into those who write this stuff, and those (like me) who merely read.
We see alot of these kind of articles, and I thnk that those would be good to quote (or at least draw from) for those internal justification type documents one is called upon to write from time to time. Could we get together a repository of this type of article as a reference for such situations? or is there one already? Naturally there would be copyright issues to consider, but I can't see anyone having major objections [not that I've asked]. Perhaps that's something for my 15Mb of free webspace...
etc
Sorry, but I do think that they have given a huge amount already! _Everything_ they write is GPL'ed - you can download the whole RH distribution for the price of your own Internet Connection. They pay programmers to write lots of Software. They produce one of the definitive distributions, arguably with the widest reach, which encourages more people to get involved and discover what free software is about!
I don't speak for RMS, but it seems to me that FSF is not out there to [just] make a profit, its out there to promote Free Software - obviously the money helps, but RH has the right philosphy - I certainly don't care whether its FSF, RH, Debian or anyone else, so long as its free.
BTW - I suspect that the reason "Official" RH have stopped doing cheap CDs is that they've been priced out of the market! I bought the Powertools CDs when it came with every RH distrib, but now I can just get the £5 Cheapbytes CDs... So, RH concentrates on their core business which is Support - that's what your $70 is paying for (that and the physical bit of plastic/aluminium/dead tree)
So, when my new Dell PC loads Windows, can I sue them for not providing a WORKING system?
Quite frankly, a BIOS screen and an attempt to load an OS is evidence that the thing is working.
Working is a relative term.
If I order a PC without an OS, then its quite likely that I know what I'm doing - its an opt-out choice, the default is Windows, which is fine, but if I want a blank system, why should the EU or anyone tell me I can't, esp. if I'm a University, who tend to be full of techie types who can do this sorta thing.
I wish people would take more interest in what the EU does (esp. in this country - UK)
So stop moaning! Linux is a great stable server platform (at the very least) - we run Notes servers on NT currently, and they have to be rebooted every couple of weeks... (familiar story on /.) - Iris/Lotus have obviously noticed this and are providing a server platform for NT's nearest "competitor". This is a GOOD thing. In what way could it possibly be bad??? This is what we want isn't it? More commercial interest?
As far as client support goes... you can access most things thru a web browser, or mail via IMAP, SMTP and LDAP...
I'm sure as soon as GNU/Linux becomes the dominant desktop OS, there will be ports a plenty!
These types of "studies", whether accurate or not, make me as livid as the next person, however, aren't we missing the point. For years, whenever any "newbie" ( and Microsoft really is a newbie in the Linux World - they have barely contributed anything to the Gnu/Linux/OSS/Free Software/*BSD (or whatever you wish to call it )Community) said anything about a "feature" they considered "missing", or that something was "not good enough", what was the answer? "Fix it yourself!" (I paraphrase here...) Why, now, have we changed our tune? Our answer, in one voice to Microsoft, and other's like them should be: If you don't like it, then fix it!
The next time one of these comes out, then how's about Everyone who posts on Slashdot, posts "Please, Microsoft, if you don't like it, then please contribute some resources to fixing it, otherwise, shut up!" or something like that.
Microsoft are still in the Business Mould... What do we care!!!!???? [idea for a poll - how many people's income depend on the market share of Linux against NT/Solaris/Netware etc. - OK, so the likes of Redhat/Suse/Caldera etc. do, and I wish them well, but your average kernel hacker is (as Microsoft themselves pointed out) just in it for the recognition/fun etc.
Therefore, Linux will still be around, as long as people still wish to develop it, and when they don't, then it will die, and there will be no one who cares, since we will be all hacking some other OS, or project or something! When NT dies, which I'm sure it will, there will be lots of MS shareholders who do care, and will be most unhappy... Justice!
Eric the Cat