At the risk of starting a flame war,
it's open source and I've contributed to it many times with no
enumeration. It wasn't only Red Hat personnel whose code is on
their CDs.
The betrayal I feel is one of having committed to a company that I
believed was going to remain a leader in the open source
community. Instead, they've gone off and made the distribution
non redistributable by bundling proprietary software.
As for the financial aspect, I've bought many a CD from them as well as
getting support contracts, so I'm
not looking for something for nothing. I was expecting a company
whose roots are in open source to remain true to the open source
community.
I don't understand Red Hat.
A few friends and I brought Linux into the respective companies we
worked for. We went with Red Hat because they supported us
hobbyists, as well as offer professional support. Now they're
dropping support on all of the hobbyist level releases faster than
Microsoft dropped support on MS-DOS.
Good work, Red Hat. I'm going
to go elsewhere, like Suse. I need to research this stuff before
I load it on production machines, and playing with new releases while
sitting at home is where that happens. And the faster you drop
support, the faster I'm switching. See ya!
'There is no job that is America's God-given
right anymore,' Carly Fiorina, chief executive for Hewlett-Packard Co.,
said Wednesday.
It's true, there isn't, and that includes Carly's job. I
guess she'll have made enough money to retire once HP looses
enough grounds to foreign competition to cause HP to drastically
cut back or go out of business. Reality is it is.
When enough R&D, management and manufacturing are sitting overseas,
there'll be no need for the US company. Bye bye, HP.
This is an election year. Organize and threaten to vote Bush out
unless he does something real to improve the situation here at
home. For example, the US allows Indians to come into the US and
work with H1B and L1 visas, but a US citizen can't go to India to get a
job. Here's an idea, don't give visas to countries that do not
reciprocate. Part of what we're seeing is a natural globalization
that will continue throughout the 21st century, but let's make sure
that US labor is competing on equal grounds. I'm not looking for
a free meal, just an equal opportunity.
By the way, eventually, prices will rise overseas and labor will get
expensive there as well. Human nature is what it is, and people
will charge more for goods and housing, workers will want more
amenities and conveniences, etc. Labor costs will go up overseas
as well. This is a temporary situation, although I'm sure that
the used car salesman who used to be a senior analyst doesn't find this
comforting.
Out of curiosity, how many companies does this really affect? The
copyright infringement on code used in the Linux kernel can only be
source code, as the copyrighted code could not possibly used in binary
form for inclusion in the Linux kernel. So, how many companies
have source licenses? IBM, HP, Sun, Motorola, and the US
government? Who else? This sems to be directed at a very
small number of companies, not 6000.
I guess what I'm really driving at is that this is an obvious FUD
attempt. I'm sure the vast majority of licensees are binary
licensees. Also, they specifically mention the ABI, which
was a specification published by AT&T, in publicly available books
sold by Prentice-Hall, prior to SCO owning the copyright. If I
write code to meet this published ABI specification, there will be
similarities just because there is only a finite number of ways to
implement it for any given platform. The SCO claim is so weak as
to almost be non existent.
As I've said many times before, I would not rush to sign any
agreements, especially this one. There are certain statements
that would severely limit your rights.
One final note. How about an interesting mind game. If I
manufacture hardware, and distribute SysV and/or Linux with it, and SCO
yanks my distribution license, doesn't it hurt SCO? After all, I
can still sell Linux boxes, stop paying SCO royalties, sue SCO for pro
rated refund of license fees already paid, and switch my SysV code to
something else such as OSF/1 or *BSD. With the exception of the
pain of the last step, i.e., inability to ship to unix customers for
many, many months, I don't suffer a great deal. Isn't SCO
shooting themselves in the foot?
I am not a lawyer, and this is only
my opinion. Please seek legal counsel prior to making any
decisions related to this topic.
I agree with you wholeheartedly (see Those
who fail to learn from the past). The problem is that there
is no overall planning, just a mad rush to throw code overseas and rush
people out the door.
Thanks to capitalism, each company is allowed to rush into
outsourcing. Worse yet, they're encouraged by investors, because
all that counts is "the bottom line (tm)" for each quarter. In a
sense, these corporations are lemmings rushing for the nearest
cliff. There is no long term planning. Research into areas
as space travel, nanotechnology, etc., certainly falls under that
heading, and no one will spend a penny on it without some sort of
promise of Return On Investment (ROI).
If corporations such as Microsoft or IBM were different, they would be
thinking long term and planning more than the next software or hardware
release. If the government were different, they would
sponsor programs similar to the ARPAnet research which the internet is
based on. Unfortunately, reality is what it is and the CEOs are
rolling in salaries that are in the millions of dollars per annum while
killing research and cutting jobs, and the government is just a buffet
table of politicians, ready to be picked by whatever CEO happens to
walk by.
---
Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone
Those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.
I'll readily admit it. I'm old. I've been in this business for nearly thirty years. I've seen a lot of changes, but I don't want to concentrate on IT history. Instead, I want to talk televisions.
Back in the day before most slashdotters were alive, there were American companies that designed and manufactured televisions. First, manufacturing went overseas, and it was managed from the US. Next, middle management was moved because it made more sense to manage the plants using local talent than trying to do it from the US. After all, time differences, cultural difference and just plain cost was enough to justify it. What this did was educate new competitors, and mentor them so that they didn't have to suffer the pain of starting low on the learning curve. Guess what, companies like Admiral and Motorola, who were leaders in home televisions are either gone, as in the case of Admiral, or dropped the product entirely, as is the case with Motorola.
This was not necessarily a bad thing, as it ended up benefiting the consumer, and helped spread wealth overseas. However, there is no one capable of designing a TV that could compete with the imports in the US today, except for those individuals working on HDTV, which was mandated by law.
My point is that the US lost not only its ability to compete in these areas, but companies themselves. If history does repeat itself, companies like Oracle will disappear altogether, similar to Admiral, and companies like HP and Dell will change their product concentration in order to survive, similar to Motorola. The consumer will probably benefit, as computers manufactured in India or China will be cheaper, thanks to cheaper local software available for these systems. But is this technology that propelled one of the greatest economic growths ever, something we want to loose?
... from someone who says "Come back
in 365 more days and see how I did" meaning come back in one year and be wrong? 2004 is a leap year.
Seriously, there are a few predictions there that are simply ludicrous, and others are nothing more than simple set up for saying nothing. The linux prediction that everyone here is most interested in is a hollow, say nothing prediction.
It is best summed up by the last sentence "Linux has to grow or die, and the direction it takes will be determined in 2004." Talk about hollow predications. Linux is an active project, so it must do something. At any moment in time, and with every decision, Linux
will take a positive or negative direction simply because it is active. Since Cringely's prediction contains both outcomes, he can come back next year and claim success. That is, of course, unless Linux stagnates, which isn't about to happen.
Shoddy journalism. No more or less. Ignore the article and save time, unless you believe in that sort of thing. If you do,
send me all your money and I'll sell you this great bridge connecting Brooklyn and Manhattan...
I guess this is the "you can't unring a bell" argument. Once the copies are out there, there's nothing that the owner can do to recall the illegal copies.
You own the expression of the idea,
in this case the written code.
There is no implied
monopoly granted by anyone, but protection of the effort you put into
the creation of that idea, or code as in the case of Linux.
Theoretically, you can extract every algorithm in Linux, write new code
and publish it under any term you want. Copyright does not stand
in your way. Even the license clause regarding derivative work
does not protect you in this case. You can do the same for
Unixware, as long as you steer clear of code protected by patent,
and you did not sign a contract stating you would not do this.
You're argument pertains to software patents, and patents in
general. It's been many, many years since the patent office
required a working model in order to grant a patent. You
can have an idea, write it down, apply for a patent and get legal
protection for your idea. That's because when you get a patent,
you are getting protection under the law to the rights of the
invention, which may be an idea under current legislation, and may be a
process which includes software algorithms. Arguably, this is a
statement of ownership of the idea, which I personally disagree with.
Taking it out of the software realm, a doctor may patent a procedure to
save your life, and license it to every practitioner on the planet for a
fee. If your doctor refuses to pay the fee, does not use the
procedure and you die, too bad. You should have gotten a doctor
who was willing to charge you more in order to pay the fee. This
is the heinous nature of patent law which, in my opinion, is far worse
than one click shopping or your right to use a novel new sort.
Again, I am not a lawyer, just someone who has had to deal with them in
these matters. This is just my opinion. Contact a lawyer
for legal advice.
Copyright is a statement of
ownership - The fact that code that is copyright SCO is in Linux
means nothing. They own that source code which is copyrighted by
SCO, and it has nothing to do with whether or not it is linked into
Linux, and SCO's rights to control Linux.
License is a statement of
permission to use - It is nothing more than permission given to
you by the copyright owner, and the ways you can use the code.
Contract is an agreement -
A contract is an agreement with enumeration. From what I remember
from business related courses, you must have some form of payment in
order to to make a contract binding.
If copyrighted SCO code was contributed to Linux by SCO employees, and
SCO management did not approve, then SCO was damaged by those
employees, not Linux users. SCO can request that the code be
removed and users running that code may be requested to stop running
that code, but this must be done in a reasonable manner. They
cannot go back and seek damages from the users, because they are
innocent third parties. Damages would be limited to the guilty
parties, presumably the SCO employees. If it was IBM instead of
SCO employees, and IBM has a license that says the source code cannot
be used in whole, or that anything derived from that code cannot be
used, then SCO has a case against IBM, not the end user.
Licenses that come with commercial software are embodied in a contract,
and this is where the confusion usually comes in. You pay, you
agree to the terms contained within the contract by some action, such
as clicking on button in a dialog or ripping clear plastic off the
media, and the contract then grants you a license. What is
generally termed a license is really a contract, and this ends up
confusing the general public.
There is significant controversy in the media over whether or not GPL
is valid, and what it means, but in reality this is simple. GPL
is permission
given by the licensor, presumably the copyright owner, to the licensee
to use the code, how to use it and under what conditions it is
permitted. The only problematic area is the redistribution clause
in GPL limits how much you can charge for redistributing the
code. It mentions money, and therefore tends to pollute the
license, so now its terms are no longer black and white, but it is
still a license. Presumably, SCO was aware of the license when
their code made it into Linux. Since they were distributing the
code, including code they owned, in the form of a distribution under
their trademark, it is difficult for SCO to argue their case.
Most likely, they were aware of the situation, and knowingly
distributed the code under the same GPL license. They accepted
it, and to now claiming ignorance is questionable, at best. I
doubt veracity of recent statements because of this.
If you are an end user and get one of their letters, do nothing, as any
action you take may work against you. If you are part of the
media, ignore it as it is just another attempt by SCO to manipulate you
and have Linux tried in the court of public opinion.
Again, I am not a lawyer, just someone who has had to deal with them in
this respect. This is only my opinion. Contact a lawyer for
legal advice.
It stinks when a company uses the legal system to its own dishonest ends!
Seems that SCO continues to use the legal system as a way of spreading FUD. If this had been a "normal" case, the court's ruling acts to protect SCO in the event that it proves itself correct. Should SCO publicly reveal their intellectual property, and win their case against IBM, then they lose the their intellectual property because it becomes a matter of public record. This destroys their business model, and in turn, SCO itself. At the risk of bad karma, this would be unfair to SCO.
What SCO is actually doing is leverage the courts in an attempt to destroy Linux by getting the courts to protect them from attacks resulting from claims made in the media. They make claims of IP theft publicly against Linux, and use IBM to get maximum appeal in all the trade media. This gets them more bang for the buck for every press release. The choice also makes sense financially, as IBM has very deep pockets. Had they picked on Red Hat, for example, they ran the risk of Red Hat running out of money in the middle of the FUD campaign. However, for IBM, this barely shows up on their bottom line.
So, they attack Linux publicly, but only sue IBM. Next, they get the court to protect their intellectual property. Hence, the only company that they reveal their source to is IBM, which already has a source license. Publicly, they bring down Linux by revealing its case against IBM, and get the court to protect them from settling with the Linux community. This limits the Linux community from making repairs if there actually are pieces of SCO source in the kernel. So, if they are lucky enough to win against IBM, they have no obstacles preventing them from suing and shutting down all commercial Linux companies. If they can convince the court to nullify all of the Linux license and rights of the copyright owners, they walk away with the kernel and sell their new Unixware to all those Linux customers now left out in the cold. This is strategy that would make Snidely Whiplash or Bill Gates proud!
My opinion in all this is that Torvalds should take the offensive. He should sue SCO for defamation. All the public statements imply that he willingly let others put code illegally into a product that he is largely responsible for. This could be damaging to his ability to gain employment in the future. At that point, he can request to see the offending code, and have the chance to remove it. This is a reasonable request, and one a court is likely to rule in his favor. It would be in this way, by also leveraging the legal system, that this could be resolved.
They did offer up a FAT32 standard for EFI, used in IA64 boot partitions. The did this, guaranteeing your safety through a mutual "no sue" clause. In effect, they actively misrepresented their intentions by luring people to use the standard, then turn around and use strong arm tactics on the semiconductor folks.
Go to their page at http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/hwdev/hardware/fatge n.mspx
and read the agreement. It specifically says you can use their file system in any operating system that will make use of EFI, the IA64
booting standard.
What this means is:
That operating systems such as linux can incorporate FAT32 as
long as it runs on an Itanium platform.
Only the semiconductor folks are screwed due to 1(b) of the
agreement, because it is possible to show that a flash device is a
microprocessor circuit and excluded from "Necessary Claims."
I am not a lawyer, but this is what I think I read in the agreement.
The solution is to get to the machines slated to be junked before the company starts tracking them.
Find out who in your company is responsible for those boxes, then see if you can negotiate some way for you to recycle them. I've done it here at a large Fortune 500 company and made a couple of old junkers useful machines again. You might even be able to write off the time spent fixing them if you then donate those boxes to a charitable organization (check with a tax professional before doing so).
RedHat guarantees a sane release schedules (about once in two years),
Can't happen. The kernel changes much too rapidly for this. They'll call it a sane release schedule of once every two years, but then will issue a patch every few weeks. This is exactly the Microsoft model that is causing problems everywhere.
Nothing stops them from supplying support contracts, guaranteeing release schedules, and long term support for enterprise and home versions of the operating system. So, I disagree, this can't be their value add. What I'm getting is their "value add" is removing the ISO from their sites and charging for it. Nothing wrong with this, but not enough value to make it worthwhile.
I think they're screwing up big time. What got Red Hat into the enterprise were the many evangelists who had used the distribution to learn on at home, and then recommended it to their employers. Now, the individual needs to spend a lot of money in order to become proficient in their (Red Hat) version of the OS.
Guess what. This works for a monopoly like Microsoft because the direction is from management to employee when the platform decision is made. Management forces the employee to learn the Microsft platform, or face losing his or her job.
When the tables are turned and the employee has to prove to management that Red Hat is a good idea, but has no experience with which to fall back on, any such proposal will seem weak and won't fly in the enterprise. The evangelist employee will eventually give up and go the path of least resistance: Microsoft. Red Hat will loose.
I can see Red Hat's point of view. In their business model, they compete with themselves. Why buy the OS if I can download it and buy support if and when I need it. What's missing from the model is a solid, value add that sets Red Hat aside in the OS distribution, and that's where they don't have a story. Unfortunately, Red Hat chose to try to pull back their open source community ties, which will cause them to loose their initial momentum. Very bad choice, indeed!
You have some very valid points, copyright is still yours, regardless of whether or not the license was broken. If anything, breaking the license then places the copyright owner in the driver's seat. The copyright owner can then file an injunction preventing further use of his/her intellectual property.
I guess my point is that SCO contends theft of intellectual property. This was then included by some party and included in the collection commonly known as linux. Everything that has happened since this original claim only serves to confuse the issue. Refusal of disclosure in order to allow for examination and correction of the problem, attacking the license terms when the original issue is copyright and intellectual property ownership, etc., seems to be smoke meant to cloud the issue and generate fear.
GPL is a license. It is a contract between the consumer/user of the software and the copyright owner, explaining the rights of the user as permitted by the copyright owner. Regardless of the license, if you wrote the code, you own the copyright. It's yours, and neither SCO, IBM, FSF or anyone else can take away that ownership. Period.
... that the intro says that "solar cells" are a fuel source, but calls them "photovoltaic cells" later in the article and they're not a fuel source? Wow, by calling the cells a different name, it changes their role in powering the aircraft.
Non relevent NASA spin. Just another example of a claim to having a perpetual motion machine.
Simple reason for not using it. If I want a roll of 25 from the U.S. Mint, I have to pay $35.50 or $10.50 above face value. Banks don't want them, retailers too, because they have to change their cash drawers. So, if the only way I can get it is to devaluate my money by 70.4%, you can shove the coins.
Make them accessible to the public; that's when the banks and retailers will change their drawers. Charge me for the privilege of passing the coin, and you can watch this one go nowhere just as fast as the Susan B. Anthony coin.
I agree. They need to fix the numbers to continually justify their existence.
The problem, as I see it, is that this sort of self serving mode of operation is misunderstood by non professionals. This is especially true of studies such as this, that are read by management and politicians. They end up scaring them into not pirating software (not a bad thing), and then convince these same folks to pay for the studies.
My main objection is that the numbers are bogus, and we really can't figure out what's happening. Given my previous argument, my main concern is that it will spawn more legislation like DRM that will further take away the rights of everybody. This sort of irresponsible, self serving activity hurts us all. While I was extremely sarcastic in my initial reply, this report does upset me.
How wonderful they are. BSA does a study, says piracy is down and congratulates themselves for doing such a great job. To top it all off, it's down 1%, down in the statistical noise
Relevance of this study? Where did I put that grain of salt...
It is possible that SCO copied the Linux code, stuck it into their product and then cried wolf.
How is SCO going to prove that the code was stolen from their product, and not the other way around? Think of it. Linux is out there in the open, for everyone to see, but the SCO IP was hidden away, and anyone can copy it and slap a copyright date on it.
FUD, FUD and more FUD, with Microsoft benefitting from it. Curioser and curioser.
Slashdot Mirror
At the risk of starting a flame war, it's open source and I've contributed to it many times with no enumeration. It wasn't only Red Hat personnel whose code is on their CDs.
The betrayal I feel is one of having committed to a company that I believed was going to remain a leader in the open source community. Instead, they've gone off and made the distribution non redistributable by bundling proprietary software.
As for the financial aspect, I've bought many a CD from them as well as getting support contracts, so I'm not looking for something for nothing. I was expecting a company whose roots are in open source to remain true to the open source community.
I don't understand Red Hat. A few friends and I brought Linux into the respective companies we worked for. We went with Red Hat because they supported us hobbyists, as well as offer professional support. Now they're dropping support on all of the hobbyist level releases faster than Microsoft dropped support on MS-DOS.
Good work, Red Hat. I'm going to go elsewhere, like Suse. I need to research this stuff before I load it on production machines, and playing with new releases while sitting at home is where that happens. And the faster you drop support, the faster I'm switching. See ya!
'There is no job that is America's God-given right anymore,' Carly Fiorina, chief executive for Hewlett-Packard Co., said Wednesday.
It's true, there isn't, and that includes Carly's job. I guess she'll have made enough money to retire once HP looses enough grounds to foreign competition to cause HP to drastically cut back or go out of business. Reality is it is. When enough R&D, management and manufacturing are sitting overseas, there'll be no need for the US company. Bye bye, HP.
This is an election year. Organize and threaten to vote Bush out unless he does something real to improve the situation here at home. For example, the US allows Indians to come into the US and work with H1B and L1 visas, but a US citizen can't go to India to get a job. Here's an idea, don't give visas to countries that do not reciprocate. Part of what we're seeing is a natural globalization that will continue throughout the 21st century, but let's make sure that US labor is competing on equal grounds. I'm not looking for a free meal, just an equal opportunity.
By the way, eventually, prices will rise overseas and labor will get expensive there as well. Human nature is what it is, and people will charge more for goods and housing, workers will want more amenities and conveniences, etc. Labor costs will go up overseas as well. This is a temporary situation, although I'm sure that the used car salesman who used to be a senior analyst doesn't find this comforting.
Out of curiosity, how many companies does this really affect? The copyright infringement on code used in the Linux kernel can only be source code, as the copyrighted code could not possibly used in binary form for inclusion in the Linux kernel. So, how many companies have source licenses? IBM, HP, Sun, Motorola, and the US government? Who else? This sems to be directed at a very small number of companies, not 6000.
I guess what I'm really driving at is that this is an obvious FUD attempt. I'm sure the vast majority of licensees are binary licensees. Also, they specifically mention the ABI, which was a specification published by AT&T, in publicly available books sold by Prentice-Hall, prior to SCO owning the copyright. If I write code to meet this published ABI specification, there will be similarities just because there is only a finite number of ways to implement it for any given platform. The SCO claim is so weak as to almost be non existent.
As I've said many times before, I would not rush to sign any agreements, especially this one. There are certain statements that would severely limit your rights.
One final note. How about an interesting mind game. If I manufacture hardware, and distribute SysV and/or Linux with it, and SCO yanks my distribution license, doesn't it hurt SCO? After all, I can still sell Linux boxes, stop paying SCO royalties, sue SCO for pro rated refund of license fees already paid, and switch my SysV code to something else such as OSF/1 or *BSD. With the exception of the pain of the last step, i.e., inability to ship to unix customers for many, many months, I don't suffer a great deal. Isn't SCO shooting themselves in the foot?
I am not a lawyer, and this is only my opinion. Please seek legal counsel prior to making any decisions related to this topic.
I agree with you wholeheartedly (see Those who fail to learn from the past). The problem is that there is no overall planning, just a mad rush to throw code overseas and rush people out the door.
Thanks to capitalism, each company is allowed to rush into outsourcing. Worse yet, they're encouraged by investors, because all that counts is "the bottom line (tm)" for each quarter. In a sense, these corporations are lemmings rushing for the nearest cliff. There is no long term planning. Research into areas as space travel, nanotechnology, etc., certainly falls under that heading, and no one will spend a penny on it without some sort of promise of Return On Investment (ROI).
If corporations such as Microsoft or IBM were different, they would be thinking long term and planning more than the next software or hardware release. If the government were different, they would sponsor programs similar to the ARPAnet research which the internet is based on. Unfortunately, reality is what it is and the CEOs are rolling in salaries that are in the millions of dollars per annum while killing research and cutting jobs, and the government is just a buffet table of politicians, ready to be picked by whatever CEO happens to walk by.
---
Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone
John Maynard Keynes (1883 - 1946)
Those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.
I'll readily admit it. I'm old. I've been in this business for nearly thirty years. I've seen a lot of changes, but I don't want to concentrate on IT history. Instead, I want to talk televisions.
Back in the day before most slashdotters were alive, there were American companies that designed and manufactured televisions. First, manufacturing went overseas, and it was managed from the US. Next, middle management was moved because it made more sense to manage the plants using local talent than trying to do it from the US. After all, time differences, cultural difference and just plain cost was enough to justify it. What this did was educate new competitors, and mentor them so that they didn't have to suffer the pain of starting low on the learning curve. Guess what, companies like Admiral and Motorola, who were leaders in home televisions are either gone, as in the case of Admiral, or dropped the product entirely, as is the case with Motorola.
This was not necessarily a bad thing, as it ended up benefiting the consumer, and helped spread wealth overseas. However, there is no one capable of designing a TV that could compete with the imports in the US today, except for those individuals working on HDTV, which was mandated by law.
My point is that the US lost not only its ability to compete in these areas, but companies themselves. If history does repeat itself, companies like Oracle will disappear altogether, similar to Admiral, and companies like HP and Dell will change their product concentration in order to survive, similar to Motorola. The consumer will probably benefit, as computers manufactured in India or China will be cheaper, thanks to cheaper local software available for these systems. But is this technology that propelled one of the greatest economic growths ever, something we want to loose?
... from someone who says "Come back in 365 more days and see how I did" meaning come back in one year and be wrong? 2004 is a leap year.
...
Seriously, there are a few predictions there that are simply ludicrous, and others are nothing more than simple set up for saying nothing. The linux prediction that everyone here is most interested in is a hollow, say nothing prediction.
It is best summed up by the last sentence "Linux has to grow or die, and the direction it takes will be determined in 2004." Talk about hollow predications. Linux is an active project, so it must do something. At any moment in time, and with every decision, Linux will take a positive or negative direction simply because it is active. Since Cringely's prediction contains both outcomes, he can come back next year and claim success. That is, of course, unless Linux stagnates, which isn't about to happen.
Shoddy journalism. No more or less. Ignore the article and save time, unless you believe in that sort of thing. If you do, send me all your money and I'll sell you this great bridge connecting Brooklyn and Manhattan
I guess this is the "you can't unring a bell" argument. Once the copies are out there, there's nothing that the owner can do to recall the illegal copies.
Makes sense to me, and I stand corrected.
Uhm... yeah. Guess I need to look closer at what the spell checker comes up with. Sorry.
You own the expression of the idea, in this case the written code.
There is no implied monopoly granted by anyone, but protection of the effort you put into the creation of that idea, or code as in the case of Linux. Theoretically, you can extract every algorithm in Linux, write new code and publish it under any term you want. Copyright does not stand in your way. Even the license clause regarding derivative work does not protect you in this case. You can do the same for Unixware, as long as you steer clear of code protected by patent, and you did not sign a contract stating you would not do this.
You're argument pertains to software patents, and patents in general. It's been many, many years since the patent office required a working model in order to grant a patent. You can have an idea, write it down, apply for a patent and get legal protection for your idea. That's because when you get a patent, you are getting protection under the law to the rights of the invention, which may be an idea under current legislation, and may be a process which includes software algorithms. Arguably, this is a statement of ownership of the idea, which I personally disagree with.
Taking it out of the software realm, a doctor may patent a procedure to save your life, and license it to every practitioner on the planet for a fee. If your doctor refuses to pay the fee, does not use the procedure and you die, too bad. You should have gotten a doctor who was willing to charge you more in order to pay the fee. This is the heinous nature of patent law which, in my opinion, is far worse than one click shopping or your right to use a novel new sort.
Again, I am not a lawyer, just someone who has had to deal with them in these matters. This is just my opinion. Contact a lawyer for legal advice.
- Copyright is a statement of
ownership - The fact that code that is copyright SCO is in Linux
means nothing. They own that source code which is copyrighted by
SCO, and it has nothing to do with whether or not it is linked into
Linux, and SCO's rights to control Linux.
- License is a statement of
permission to use - It is nothing more than permission given to
you by the copyright owner, and the ways you can use the code.
- Contract is an agreement -
A contract is an agreement with enumeration. From what I remember
from business related courses, you must have some form of payment in
order to to make a contract binding.
If copyrighted SCO code was contributed to Linux by SCO employees, and SCO management did not approve, then SCO was damaged by those employees, not Linux users. SCO can request that the code be removed and users running that code may be requested to stop running that code, but this must be done in a reasonable manner. They cannot go back and seek damages from the users, because they are innocent third parties. Damages would be limited to the guilty parties, presumably the SCO employees. If it was IBM instead of SCO employees, and IBM has a license that says the source code cannot be used in whole, or that anything derived from that code cannot be used, then SCO has a case against IBM, not the end user.Licenses that come with commercial software are embodied in a contract, and this is where the confusion usually comes in. You pay, you agree to the terms contained within the contract by some action, such as clicking on button in a dialog or ripping clear plastic off the media, and the contract then grants you a license. What is generally termed a license is really a contract, and this ends up confusing the general public.
There is significant controversy in the media over whether or not GPL is valid, and what it means, but in reality this is simple. GPL is permission given by the licensor, presumably the copyright owner, to the licensee to use the code, how to use it and under what conditions it is permitted. The only problematic area is the redistribution clause in GPL limits how much you can charge for redistributing the code. It mentions money, and therefore tends to pollute the license, so now its terms are no longer black and white, but it is still a license. Presumably, SCO was aware of the license when their code made it into Linux. Since they were distributing the code, including code they owned, in the form of a distribution under their trademark, it is difficult for SCO to argue their case. Most likely, they were aware of the situation, and knowingly distributed the code under the same GPL license. They accepted it, and to now claiming ignorance is questionable, at best. I doubt veracity of recent statements because of this.
If you are an end user and get one of their letters, do nothing, as any action you take may work against you. If you are part of the media, ignore it as it is just another attempt by SCO to manipulate you and have Linux tried in the court of public opinion.
Again, I am not a lawyer, just someone who has had to deal with them in this respect. This is only my opinion. Contact a lawyer for legal advice.
It stinks when a company uses the
legal system to its own dishonest ends!
Seems that SCO continues to use the legal system as a way of
spreading FUD. If this had been a "normal" case, the court's
ruling acts to protect SCO in the event that it proves itself
correct. Should SCO publicly reveal their intellectual property,
and win their case against IBM, then they lose the their intellectual
property because it becomes a matter of public record. This
destroys their business model, and in turn, SCO itself. At the
risk of bad karma, this would be unfair to SCO.
What SCO is actually doing is leverage the courts in an attempt to
destroy Linux by getting the courts to protect them from attacks
resulting from claims made in the media. They make claims of IP
theft publicly against Linux, and use IBM to get maximum appeal in all
the trade media. This gets them more bang for the buck for every
press release. The choice also makes sense financially, as IBM
has very deep pockets. Had they picked on Red Hat, for example,
they ran the risk of Red Hat running out of money in the middle of the
FUD campaign. However, for IBM, this barely shows up on their
bottom line.
So, they attack Linux publicly, but only sue IBM. Next, they get
the court to protect their intellectual property. Hence, the only
company that they reveal their source to is IBM, which already has a
source license. Publicly, they bring down Linux by revealing its
case against IBM, and get the court to protect them from settling with
the Linux community. This limits the Linux community from making
repairs if there actually are pieces of SCO source in the kernel. So,
if they are lucky enough to win against IBM, they have no obstacles
preventing them from suing and shutting down all commercial Linux
companies. If they can convince the court to nullify all of the
Linux license and rights of the copyright owners, they walk away with
the kernel and sell their new Unixware to all those Linux customers now
left out in the cold. This is strategy that would make Snidely
Whiplash or Bill Gates proud!
My opinion in all this is that Torvalds should take the
offensive. He should sue SCO for defamation. All the public
statements imply that he willingly let others put code illegally into a
product that he is largely responsible for. This could be
damaging to his ability to gain employment in the future. At that
point, he can request to see the offending code, and have the chance to
remove it. This is a reasonable request, and one a court is
likely to rule in his favor. It would be in this way, by also
leveraging the legal system, that this could be resolved.
They did offer up a FAT32 standard for EFI, used in IA64 boot partitions. The did this, guaranteeing your safety through a mutual "no sue" clause. In effect, they actively misrepresented their intentions by luring people to use the standard, then turn around and use strong arm tactics on the semiconductor folks.
Go to their page at http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/hwdev/hardware/fatg
What this means is:
- That operating systems such as linux can incorporate FAT32 as
long as it runs on an Itanium platform.
- Only the semiconductor folks are screwed due to 1(b) of the
agreement, because it is possible to show that a flash device is a
microprocessor circuit and excluded from "Necessary Claims."
I am not a lawyer, but this is what I think I read in the agreement.The solution is to get to the machines slated to be junked before the company starts tracking them.
Find out who in your company is responsible for those boxes, then see if you can negotiate some way for you to recycle them. I've done it here at a large Fortune 500 company and made a couple of old junkers useful machines again. You might even be able to write off the time spent fixing them if you then donate those boxes to a charitable organization (check with a tax professional before doing so).
No one cares about morale, and a company taking over an employee's work, even if it wasn't done with a shred of that company's resources, is the norm.
My wife is always amazed at this. She feels that it is intellectual slavery. I agree with her, but, unfortunately, this is reality.
Can't happen. The kernel changes much too rapidly for this. They'll call it a sane release schedule of once every two years, but then will issue a patch every few weeks. This is exactly the Microsoft model that is causing problems everywhere.
Nothing stops them from supplying support contracts, guaranteeing release schedules, and long term support for enterprise and home versions of the operating system. So, I disagree, this can't be their value add. What I'm getting is their "value add" is removing the ISO from their sites and charging for it. Nothing wrong with this, but not enough value to make it worthwhile.
I think they're screwing up big time. What got Red Hat into the enterprise were the many evangelists who had used the distribution to learn on at home, and then recommended it to their employers. Now, the individual needs to spend a lot of money in order to become proficient in their (Red Hat) version of the OS.
Guess what. This works for a monopoly like Microsoft because the direction is from management to employee when the platform decision is made. Management forces the employee to learn the Microsft platform, or face losing his or her job.
When the tables are turned and the employee has to prove to management that Red Hat is a good idea, but has no experience with which to fall back on, any such proposal will seem weak and won't fly in the enterprise. The evangelist employee will eventually give up and go the path of least resistance: Microsoft. Red Hat will loose.
I can see Red Hat's point of view. In their business model, they compete with themselves. Why buy the OS if I can download it and buy support if and when I need it. What's missing from the model is a solid, value add that sets Red Hat aside in the OS distribution, and that's where they don't have a story. Unfortunately, Red Hat chose to try to pull back their open source community ties, which will cause them to loose their initial momentum. Very bad choice, indeed!
You have some very valid points, copyright is still yours, regardless of whether or not the license was broken. If anything, breaking the license then places the copyright owner in the driver's seat. The copyright owner can then file an injunction preventing further use of his/her intellectual property.
I guess my point is that SCO contends theft of intellectual property. This was then included by some party and included in the collection commonly known as linux. Everything that has happened since this original claim only serves to confuse the issue. Refusal of disclosure in order to allow for examination and correction of the problem, attacking the license terms when the original issue is copyright and intellectual property ownership, etc., seems to be smoke meant to cloud the issue and generate fear.
GPL is a license. It is a contract between the consumer/user of the software and the copyright owner, explaining the rights of the user as permitted by the copyright owner. Regardless of the license, if you wrote the code, you own the copyright. It's yours, and neither SCO, IBM, FSF or anyone else can take away that ownership. Period.
This is yet more FUD.
... that the intro says that "solar cells" are a fuel source, but calls them "photovoltaic cells" later in the article and they're not a fuel source? Wow, by calling the cells a different name, it changes their role in powering the aircraft.
Non relevent NASA spin. Just another example of a claim to having a perpetual motion machine.
Whoa! That is a surprise. Thanks!
Simple reason for not using it. If I want a roll of 25 from the U.S. Mint, I have to pay $35.50 or $10.50 above face value. Banks don't want them, retailers too, because they have to change their cash drawers. So, if the only way I can get it is to devaluate my money by 70.4%, you can shove the coins.
Make them accessible to the public; that's when the banks and retailers will change their drawers. Charge me for the privilege of passing the coin, and you can watch this one go nowhere just as fast as the Susan B. Anthony coin.
I agree. They need to fix the numbers to continually justify their existence.
The problem, as I see it, is that this sort of self serving mode of operation is misunderstood by non professionals. This is especially true of studies such as this, that are read by management and politicians. They end up scaring them into not pirating software (not a bad thing), and then convince these same folks to pay for the studies.
My main objection is that the numbers are bogus, and we really can't figure out what's happening. Given my previous argument, my main concern is that it will spawn more legislation like DRM that will further take away the rights of everybody. This sort of irresponsible, self serving activity hurts us all. While I was extremely sarcastic in my initial reply, this report does upset me.
How wonderful they are. BSA does a study, says piracy is down and congratulates themselves for doing such a great job. To top it all off, it's down 1%, down in the statistical noise
...
Relevance of this study? Where did I put that grain of salt
It is possible that SCO copied the Linux code, stuck it into their product and then cried wolf.
How is SCO going to prove that the code was stolen from their product, and not the other way around? Think of it. Linux is out there in the open, for everyone to see, but the SCO IP was hidden away, and anyone can copy it and slap a copyright date on it.
FUD, FUD and more FUD, with Microsoft benefitting from it. Curioser and curioser.