OSX is not Unix. It's not even a BSD, really. It's OpenStep, which is cocoa, mach, etc. etc. The BSD subsystem runs in the same address space as mach for performance reasons, but OSX is not running a BSD kernel. Get a mac, install NetBSD or OpenBSD (or even Linux), run dmesg, and compare it to the dmesg output of Darwin, and you'll see the difference.
Don't get me wrong, I love OSX. But calling it Unix is a bit misleading.
You and your brother OpenServer shan't be missed very much.
I disagree with his sentiment, however. It's just a matter of what runs best on what platform. Irix will still be best on SGI hardware, and Solaris will still be best on Sun hardware. And who knows....maybe Sun will bring it up to snuff when they start shipping AMD64 machines. People will run software that best fits their needs and the machine they're using. RedHat on commodity PC hardware might do most of it now, but it certainly won't do all of it.
It would require big changes to the PC architecture. That brand spankin' new AMD64 will boot DOS3.3 from a floppy, no problem. How many 10 year-old unix machines had to worry about booting a 16-bit real-mode OS that expected the serial ports to be on IRQ 3 and 4?
I always get a chuckle when people talk about Apple using Intel or AMD x86 chips. If Apple ever switched to x86 (and I hope they don't PPC is a great platform...using one *right now*), the resulting machine would be nothing like the eMachines POS you pick up at Wal-Mart. In fact, I'd venture to say that you wouldn't be able to boot Windows on it, or OSXx86 on a standard PC, without some serious voodoo.
From my local rag. But I agree with later comments -- It won't be right until Bill coughs up a hairball. Bill the Cat, of course, is the most creative comic character ever. Most animals are portrayed as heroic or clever (Garfield, Heathcliff, Grimm). Bill is the dud of a pet many of us have had at some point -- a lobotomized eunich who has embarassing things in his past, and messes the carpet.
It's not so much a question of having something to hide....rather, it's a question of them being spiteful to make you travel to Utah to testify about something that ends up being rather inconsequential. I understand that you and he feel like you've got important things to add to the discussion, but chances are, Boise, et. al. aren't interested in any of that. They'd ask you a few rather meaningless questions, and that'd be it.
The thing is....the runup on the SCO stock is clearly because of hype and its scarcity in the market. As they mention in the article, Canopy is the biggest shareholder, and they're not doing alot of buying and selling. Their other big shareholders are Wall Street stars like the Whitney Holding Group (Russ Whitney....you've probably seen his "You can get rich buying and selling real estate!" infomercials late at night). Put another way, there are alot of people who'd love to sell the stock short, but there's not enough of it out there to do that.
And ESR on the stand isn't going to do anyone any favors -- remember, a hostile subpeonead witness, the plaintiff's attorney can ask leading questions requiring only "yes" and "no" answers. The witness can't expound more during cross, because cross is limited to what was discussed during direct.
As I tried to imply above, IBM is going to try to pin SCO in a lie, and use whatever they disclosed to these "neutral" observers against them. This is especially true if they subpeona exact line numbers and files (as they've done in the interrogatories) and show that this PR campaign was done using, say, ancient BSD code, which would be in both the Linux kernel and the SysV kernel.
Even better, the confidentiality agreement between the people who've seen the code and SCO can be breeched in court. I'm sure DiDio never envisioned being called to the stand when she went on her publicity tour.
But this knife cuts both ways -- OSS trolls like ESR could receive subpeonas from SCO in retailation.
It does have an effect -- people who are opposed to whatever whacko statement they're making at the moment simply decide not to use their software.
On my s-list at the moment: - GNUPG people for their antiwar stuff - GNU/Darwin for several of their stances - OpenBSD (well, Theo, mostly) for being upset when the hand that feeds them stops when they bit it.
The political crap doesn't further your cause, it only turns off users. For me, with GNU/Darwin, it's easy. I don't use it, because there are betterunix-like platforms available for PPC. And there's no contest on x86.
Most states you cannot take a corporation to "small court." If you want to file a lawsuit against a foreign corporation (which would take into account all the US kernel developers who do not live in Utah), you have to serve papers on their registered agent in your state, unless you want to sue them in Utah (and why on earth would you want to do that?).
He offers legislation to allow the MPAA and RIAA to do DDoS attacks on filesharing computers, and that Republican Bastard(tm) Tauzin gets the nice high-paying gig.
I've managed to compile and successfully run GNUMach and GNU/Hurd from CVS. I know my way around building code. But mplayer is still a pain in the ass. Seriously. And when I read the forums, I didn't dare ask a question. The developers' attitudes represent one of the most valid criticisms of the Free Software world -- support is fleeting.
As for using the software, it works pretty well, and has steadily improved. But I don't build it anymore -- I use the unofficial debian packages, and they work pretty much flawlessly.
Yeah, like KHTML in Safari, or the toolchain to build Darwin/OSX (standard gcc....).
I could stop there, but I won't, seeing a reply to your post which extolls the virtues of the BSD license. Today, with the exception of the ability to *not* disclose the source, there is no fundamental difference between the 2nd BSD license (under which FreeBSD is licensed) and the GPL. The FSF even considers the later BSD licenses as free software licenses.
SCO's arguments against the GPL could easily be applied to the BSD license. Including the argument, which seems to be their main argument, that the GPL is incompatible with US Copyright law. If the GPL is illegal under US Copyright law, so it goes with BSD.
I dig network transparancy. I was just getting the typical anti-X trolling out of the way.:-p The fanboys who think that everything should work exactly like Windows, but be free (as in beer). If you need to, you buy a KVM, etc. etc.
But some compression for low-powered devices could, once again, make old hardware useful, in addition to having the use on the mobile devices.
Network transparancy is one of the shortcomings of X11 -- I mean, who would ever use this? They ought to figure out some directfb stuff for the cell phone or something./typical x-hater statement
This is cool -- and one of the reasons why X is cool. While it's aimed at mobile devices, it'll breathe new life into old hardware, too. Like my SS10, for instance -- it's too slow to run much anything other than NetBSD and an X server. But it runs remote apps fine. It could even make my old Mac Quadra useful as a basic X console.
I live in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, which is home to the world's largest Naval Base, along with installations from the other services (Army, Air Force, and Coast Guard). While much of the work is outsourced to contractors, there is a large active-duty staff that helps maintain things. As you would expect, quite a bit of it is your standard Microsoft fare, but there are some intersting Unix installs, too. There are a couple of active-duty folks in our local Unix Users Group. The big project seems to be NMCI, which strives to unify the Navy's computing systems. I have a couple of acquaintances who work there -- but it doesn't seem to work very well.
By far, however, the biggest thing you can get while you're in the military is a security clearance, which opens you up to the IT contracting jobs after you get out. It seems like two-thirds of the IT jobs around here require a clearance before you can even be considered (and I don't have one...:-/).
SCO thought that exact code alignment could be used to sway the general public into accepting thier argument. It's backfiring, like so many of their tactics.
But the real crux of their argument is that *every* modern OS violates their "Intellectual Property" (bad phrase) rights stemming from SysV Unix.
That includes the BSD's. That includes Windows.
Every OS that does basically what you could with SysV Unix is in violation, whether there's code sharing or not. It's a very disturbing concept, and the implications are chilling. It is absolutely imperitive that SCO lose this case.
Read the article. The Eastern District of Virginia is a federal court. In the Federal court system, District courts are the trial courts; many states have more than one, so the state is subdivided. The court in question is based a scant few blocks from where I'm typing.
As far as Virginia's computer laws, yes, UTICA was a bit of legislative overzealousness. But Maryland also passed it. It'll probably be changed now that UTICA is pretty much dead elsewhere. For what it's worth, Virginia has the toughest anti-spam law in the country, with long-arm provisions to enforce the law on Internet traffic routed through the Commonwealth (a goodly portion of *all* Internet traffic).
Put down the bong for a moment -- this case has little to do with "tort reform." This is a contract case between a very small company against a very large company. The very small company's existence relies upon winning the case. If they lose the case, the very large company becomes another creditor in the Chapter 7 filing.
When politicians speak of "tort reform," it is referring to things like product liability, and, especially, medical malpractice.
As a general rule, an end to long, expensive litigation would make business happier and more profitible, but it's not going to happen anytime soon.
As for your suggestion, this already happens. Standard procedure suggests that the respondant's attorney move for summary judgment at the initial court appearance, and again following discovery. It's rarely granted because it's not like a pre-trial hearing in a criminal proceeding -- the burden of proof is different.
It'd be nice to live until I can see it again. Of course, if I get some dread disease, I'll just truck to Aricebo and take a look through the glass....
Still doesn't cover the "getting hit by a truck" possiblity. Damn.
Except that the appeals court did not overturn *any* of his findings. The only thing that was overturned was his sentence.
But yes, Boies is a lousy attorney. He's your run-of-the-mill ambulance chaser with annoying TV ads, except that he's nationally-known. I submitted a story about how he's about to be barred from practicing in Florida, but it was rejected. As for his performance with Al Gore's recount fiasco, if he'd called for a uniform state-wide recount, that would have happened. And Bush would have still won (read the NY Times and AP investigations afterwards). The call for a selective recount was the fatal flaw there.
What about material things?
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OSX is not Unix. It's not even a BSD, really. It's OpenStep, which is cocoa, mach, etc. etc. The BSD subsystem runs in the same address space as mach for performance reasons, but OSX is not running a BSD kernel. Get a mac, install NetBSD or OpenBSD (or even Linux), run dmesg, and compare it to the dmesg output of Darwin, and you'll see the difference.
Don't get me wrong, I love OSX. But calling it Unix is a bit misleading.
You and your brother OpenServer shan't be missed very much.
I disagree with his sentiment, however. It's just a matter of what runs best on what platform. Irix will still be best on SGI hardware, and Solaris will still be best on Sun hardware. And who knows....maybe Sun will bring it up to snuff when they start shipping AMD64 machines. People will run software that best fits their needs and the machine they're using. RedHat on commodity PC hardware might do most of it now, but it certainly won't do all of it.
It would require big changes to the PC architecture. That brand spankin' new AMD64 will boot DOS3.3 from a floppy, no problem. How many 10 year-old unix machines had to worry about booting a 16-bit real-mode OS that expected the serial ports to be on IRQ 3 and 4?
I always get a chuckle when people talk about Apple using Intel or AMD x86 chips. If Apple ever switched to x86 (and I hope they don't PPC is a great platform...using one *right now*), the resulting machine would be nothing like the eMachines POS you pick up at Wal-Mart. In fact, I'd venture to say that you wouldn't be able to boot Windows on it, or OSXx86 on a standard PC, without some serious voodoo.
From my local rag. But I agree with later comments -- It won't be right until Bill coughs up a hairball. Bill the Cat, of course, is the most creative comic character ever. Most animals are portrayed as heroic or clever (Garfield, Heathcliff, Grimm). Bill is the dud of a pet many of us have had at some point -- a lobotomized eunich who has embarassing things in his past, and messes the carpet.
Ahem, she did.
It's not so much a question of having something to hide....rather, it's a question of them being spiteful to make you travel to Utah to testify about something that ends up being rather inconsequential. I understand that you and he feel like you've got important things to add to the discussion, but chances are, Boise, et. al. aren't interested in any of that. They'd ask you a few rather meaningless questions, and that'd be it.
The thing is....the runup on the SCO stock is clearly because of hype and its scarcity in the market. As they mention in the article, Canopy is the biggest shareholder, and they're not doing alot of buying and selling. Their other big shareholders are Wall Street stars like the Whitney Holding Group (Russ Whitney....you've probably seen his "You can get rich buying and selling real estate!" infomercials late at night). Put another way, there are alot of people who'd love to sell the stock short, but there's not enough of it out there to do that.
And ESR on the stand isn't going to do anyone any favors -- remember, a hostile subpeonead witness, the plaintiff's attorney can ask leading questions requiring only "yes" and "no" answers. The witness can't expound more during cross, because cross is limited to what was discussed during direct.
As I tried to imply above, IBM is going to try to pin SCO in a lie, and use whatever they disclosed to these "neutral" observers against them. This is especially true if they subpeona exact line numbers and files (as they've done in the interrogatories) and show that this PR campaign was done using, say, ancient BSD code, which would be in both the Linux kernel and the SysV kernel.
Even better, the confidentiality agreement between the people who've seen the code and SCO can be breeched in court. I'm sure DiDio never envisioned being called to the stand when she went on her publicity tour.
But this knife cuts both ways -- OSS trolls like ESR could receive subpeonas from SCO in retailation.
It does have an effect -- people who are opposed to whatever whacko statement they're making at the moment simply decide not to use their software.
On my s-list at the moment:
- GNUPG people for their antiwar stuff
- GNU/Darwin for several of their stances
- OpenBSD (well, Theo, mostly) for being upset when the hand that feeds them stops when they bit it.
The political crap doesn't further your cause, it only turns off users. For me, with GNU/Darwin, it's easy. I don't use it, because there are better unix-like platforms available for PPC. And there's no contest on x86.
Most states you cannot take a corporation to "small court." If you want to file a lawsuit against a foreign corporation (which would take into account all the US kernel developers who do not live in Utah), you have to serve papers on their registered agent in your state, unless you want to sue them in Utah (and why on earth would you want to do that?).
He offers legislation to allow the MPAA and RIAA to do DDoS attacks on filesharing computers, and that Republican Bastard(tm) Tauzin gets the nice high-paying gig.
New faces, same crap as before. Next?
I've managed to compile and successfully run GNUMach and GNU/Hurd from CVS. I know my way around building code. But mplayer is still a pain in the ass. Seriously. And when I read the forums, I didn't dare ask a question. The developers' attitudes represent one of the most valid criticisms of the Free Software world -- support is fleeting.
As for using the software, it works pretty well, and has steadily improved. But I don't build it anymore -- I use the unofficial debian packages, and they work pretty much flawlessly.
Yeah, like KHTML in Safari, or the toolchain to build Darwin/OSX (standard gcc....).
I could stop there, but I won't, seeing a reply to your post which extolls the virtues of the BSD license. Today, with the exception of the ability to *not* disclose the source, there is no fundamental difference between the 2nd BSD license (under which FreeBSD is licensed) and the GPL. The FSF even considers the later BSD licenses as free software licenses.
SCO's arguments against the GPL could easily be applied to the BSD license. Including the argument, which seems to be their main argument, that the GPL is incompatible with US Copyright law. If the GPL is illegal under US Copyright law, so it goes with BSD.
I dig network transparancy. I was just getting the typical anti-X trolling out of the way. :-p The fanboys who think that everything should work exactly like Windows, but be free (as in beer). If you need to, you buy a KVM, etc. etc.
But some compression for low-powered devices could, once again, make old hardware useful, in addition to having the use on the mobile devices.
Network transparancy is one of the shortcomings of X11 -- I mean, who would ever use this? They ought to figure out some directfb stuff for the cell phone or something. /typical x-hater statement
This is cool -- and one of the reasons why X is cool. While it's aimed at mobile devices, it'll breathe new life into old hardware, too. Like my SS10, for instance -- it's too slow to run much anything other than NetBSD and an X server. But it runs remote apps fine. It could even make my old Mac Quadra useful as a basic X console.
I live in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, which is home to the world's largest Naval Base, along with installations from the other services (Army, Air Force, and Coast Guard). While much of the work is outsourced to contractors, there is a large active-duty staff that helps maintain things. As you would expect, quite a bit of it is your standard Microsoft fare, but there are some intersting Unix installs, too. There are a couple of active-duty folks in our local Unix Users Group. The big project seems to be NMCI, which strives to unify the Navy's computing systems. I have a couple of acquaintances who work there -- but it doesn't seem to work very well.
:-/).
By far, however, the biggest thing you can get while you're in the military is a security clearance, which opens you up to the IT contracting jobs after you get out. It seems like two-thirds of the IT jobs around here require a clearance before you can even be considered (and I don't have one...
SCO thought that exact code alignment could be used to sway the general public into accepting thier argument. It's backfiring, like so many of their tactics.
But the real crux of their argument is that *every* modern OS violates their "Intellectual Property" (bad phrase) rights stemming from SysV Unix.
That includes the BSD's.
That includes Windows.
Every OS that does basically what you could with SysV Unix is in violation, whether there's code sharing or not. It's a very disturbing concept, and the implications are chilling. It is absolutely imperitive that SCO lose this case.
Might be feeding a troll here, but...
Read the article. The Eastern District of Virginia is a federal court. In the Federal court system, District courts are the trial courts; many states have more than one, so the state is subdivided. The court in question is based a scant few blocks from where I'm typing.
As far as Virginia's computer laws, yes, UTICA was a bit of legislative overzealousness. But Maryland also passed it. It'll probably be changed now that UTICA is pretty much dead elsewhere. For what it's worth, Virginia has the toughest anti-spam law in the country, with long-arm provisions to enforce the law on Internet traffic routed through the Commonwealth (a goodly portion of *all* Internet traffic).
Put down the bong for a moment -- this case has little to do with "tort reform." This is a contract case between a very small company against a very large company. The very small company's existence relies upon winning the case. If they lose the case, the very large company becomes another creditor in the Chapter 7 filing.
When politicians speak of "tort reform," it is referring to things like product liability, and, especially, medical malpractice.
As a general rule, an end to long, expensive litigation would make business happier and more profitible, but it's not going to happen anytime soon.
As for your suggestion, this already happens. Standard procedure suggests that the respondant's attorney move for summary judgment at the initial court appearance, and again following discovery. It's rarely granted because it's not like a pre-trial hearing in a criminal proceeding -- the burden of proof is different.
Erm, check your calendar there. Discovery cuttoff is 10/22/04, and the trial is 4/11/05. So, that's more like ninteen months.
And no, I won't be paying any SCO invoices in the meantime.
Hrmmph. Paranal It's 4am and I'm at work. It happens.
It'd be nice to live until I can see it again. Of course, if I get some dread disease, I'll just truck to Aricebo and take a look through the glass....
Still doesn't cover the "getting hit by a truck" possiblity. Damn.
The ereet kiddies in their dorm rooms who run Gentoo wouldn't drink scotch.
Gentoo is Old Milwaukee. It really is lousy beer. But if you drink enough of it, you can convince yourself it's great.
Except that the appeals court did not overturn *any* of his findings. The only thing that was overturned was his sentence.
But yes, Boies is a lousy attorney. He's your run-of-the-mill ambulance chaser with annoying TV ads, except that he's nationally-known. I submitted a story about how he's about to be barred from practicing in Florida, but it was rejected. As for his performance with Al Gore's recount fiasco, if he'd called for a uniform state-wide recount, that would have happened. And Bush would have still won (read the NY Times and AP investigations afterwards). The call for a selective recount was the fatal flaw there.
Aeron Chairs. 'Nuff said.