Please, do some research on AZO. I think you'll discover that AZO shareholders are more technologically adept than you give them credit for.
The real question is, how much technological adeptness does TSG think AZ has? Given that the basis of the suit is essentially that AZ's migration to Linux 'went too well', I think it's safe to say 'not much'. Hence, the outlined strategy might very well have been what TSG followed. It's just that TSG's judgement of who actually fit the profile was way off. I think that TSG made the mistake of underestimating AZO because it's not a hard-core tech company. Does this really surprise anyone?
I'll agree. Seems to me that this is exactly what we've asked for in the past - don't ban technology like P2P, just go after individuals who use the technology to infringe copyrights. If the RIAA would support rescinding the parts of the DMCA that ban technology and the dissemination of technological knowledge, and then go ahead with the suits, I'd be behind them 100%.
Somehow my imagination has alwys veered towards a more 'La Femme Nikita'-style solution:
"I was falsely accused of a hideous crime and sentenced to life in prison. One night I was taken from my cell to a place called Section 571, the most covert anti-spammer group on the planet. Their ends are just, but their means are ruthless. If I don't play by their rules, I die......<snort> Yeah, like that's gonna happen. I'm getting to whack spammers - this is great!"
How many slashdotters would volunteer to be Section 571's Birkoff?
What you may not realise is that moving elsewhere costs US real money. Money not all of us can easily afford.
And not blocking spam costs ISPs real money, money not all of them can easily afford. For that matter, relying solely on filtering technologies costs them money, too, as the spam still takes up bandwidth and storage space, plus the CPU time to run the filtering software. DNSBL-type blocking has the advantage of actually reducing resource usage for the ISP.
Just to think, all of that MS money is going to feed hungry lawyers, all over the world!
Actually, once Novell completes a bit of an audit, it's likely that 95% of that MS money is going to go to Novell(technically, 100% goes to Novell, and then Novell sends 5% back). Seems MS (and Sun) probably qualify as 'existing SysV users', and thus the money from the licenses SCO sold to them in the past year belong to Novell (less a 5% handling fee for SCO).
Death to spammers has been the prevalent sentiment on the anti-spam message boards, including the Usenet group NANAE for some time.
You would appear to be utterly missing the degree to which said sentiments are 'spoken' tongue-in-cheek. The worst physical injury you are actually likely to get, by and large, from nanae denizens is a severe tongue-lashing. Please read up a bit on sysadmin humor (to which nanae-ite humor is closely allied). Take a look at the BOFH stories on The Register. These stories are quite popular among sysadmins, but you'd be quite ignorant to say that it implies that sysadmins regularly kill, maim, and torture their users. In the same way, you seem to have utterly missed the style of humor in nanae (though from looking at the 'SPEWS no longer anonymous' story on your web site, I'd say that it's not the only thing you've misunderstood about nanae. That article is rife with mis-statements and misunderstandings).
They're negotiating a surrender? Sounds like something I'd see on prime time USA, with a SWAT team and about fifty riflemen with guns trained on a panoramic storefront window.
Somehow I picture USA running another season of 'La Femme Nikita', wherein Nikita, having gotten Section One running to her satisfaction, is preparing to retire. Unfortunately, after having too many days when her inbox was inundated by spam (how *did* the spammers get hold of Section One emails anyhow?), she instead ends up instead forming a new Section, Section 554, dedicated to doing to spammers what Section One used to do to terrorists. Unfortunately, the dramatic tension isn't nearly the same, as no one in Section 554 has any moral qualms about what they're doing, there's no need to recruit from prison (there's a waiting list of volunteers, and the other sections use a temporary assignment to Section 554 as a reward for good work), and morale in the section is always sky-high as long as there are missions to run.
For structured code, structured design diagrams (data-flow charts, structure charts) might be useful, but that's still pretty high-level compared to the classic sense of 'flowcharting'.
Perhaps I should have expressed that differently. Are you saying you use low-level code flowcharting, or the higher-level design diagramming techniques (e.g. structure charts and data flow diagrams for the structured techniques, or the UML et al for the OO techniques)? If you're doing low-level code flowcharting (the classic sense of 'flowcharting'), then you're a rarity, my friend. I don't think even the heavy Software Engineering types (who seem to love diagrams of all sorts) low-level flowchart every line of code they write.
Please tell me you're making a terminology error. Flowcharting, per se, was discounted as nonproductive eons ago. I think you're referring to class diagramming and such as exemplified by the UML, but that is a long stretch from code flowcharting.
Yes, but I think the point was that although there may be MULTIPLE products in the closed source arena, they are all by DIFFERENT companies and compete.
I think the basic error you're making is assuming that the Open Source community should be considered comparable to a single company. It's not. It's a bunch of individuals and companies cooperating at some level (but not necessarily at all levels).
OpenSource is supposed to be a place where this shouldn't happen, everyone should work together to make one single product better.
It is? That's news to me. Where did that idea come from? It seems to me that one of Open Source's strengths is that you don't have to have bloated one-size-fits-all products (which is what 'everyone working together to make one single product better' is likely to lead to). You can, instead, have different products geared to the needs of varying parts of the community.
For that matter, the typical *nix philosophy (which many OS products are geared to) advocates the latter, rather than the former.
I almost get the impression that IBM is not making a sound for fear that too much pressure on SCO will simply cause them to fold.
Exactly. IBM's sitting there with a royal flush. SCO's holding a 2, a 4, a yellow 14, a Rook card, and a Green Dragon, and is blabbering to all and sundry about how good his hand is. Let him blabber on and he'll just keep adding to the pot.
Your points as to why management takes the approach it does are valid, but you've totally missed my motivations in making my own point. I wasn't at all belittling or dismissing BusinessThink, just trying to point out that the difference in viewpoint does exist, and that we need to take it into consideration when answering things like this. From the responses I've seen on here and on LWN, by and large, we're not doing it = we're responding strictly from the techie viewpoint, and therefore we're not replying effectively in the eyes of those Balmer is really targeting. I suspect you and I really closer in attitude on this than you realize.
"The Microsoft chief executive also contrasted the quality of software that's produced by commercial makers to that of software that's developed under the open-source model. 'Should there be a reason to believe that code that comes from a variety of people around the world would be higher-quality than from people who do it professionally? Why is its pedigree better than code done in a controlled fashion? I don't get that,' he said.
"'There is no road map for Linux, nobody who has his rear end on the line. We think it's an advantage a commercial company can bring--we provide a road map, indemnify customers. They know where to send e-mail. None of that is true in the other world. So far, I think our model works pretty well,' Ballmer said.
This part is essentially standard BusinessThink spin. It depends on a fundamental difference between how techies and management view support and services.
For the technical types who largely make up the Linux community, 'support' is largely a question of information-gathering. It's a question of 'where do I find the information necessary to fix the current problem?'. We don't particularly care where is comes from, as long as we can get it. That's why we're comfortable digging through web sites, posting to newsgroups and mailing lists - generally dealing with our peers to gather information.
For management types (and probably particularly for upper management in larger companies), the question of service and support is dealt with more in terms of business structures. The question is 'what business structure is available to take responsibility for fixing problems?'. It doesn't really matter (or doesn't really sink in) that newsgroups and mailing lists and other 'non-business' resources can often be more effective at gathering the necessary information than the 'tech support' you find in a lot of companies - the business mentality tends to focus on finding some business structure that can be assigned the responsibility. In a sense, perhaps they're more comfortable with a situation where they can deal with their peers.
Ballmer is simply trying to spin this in a way that makes Microsoft fit in better with standard BusinessThink. "We have a business structure to take responsibility for this, the Linux crowd only has an amorphous 'community', ergo (to BusinessThink) we're the ones who show responsibility". I'm not sure how we can counter that, but I think you need to understand where he's going with his spin before you can.
If SGI put SCO code into Linux, and then individuals with no connection to SGI used that code, SCO wants to be able to hold them liable for past usage, even if the code was completely expunged from the current tree.
I think the key to understanding SCO's claims is that they don't go at this from a 'what do the facts warrant?' perspective. Their question is more like 'What legal theory can we claim that will result in what we want: revenues from our vaunted Unix intellectual property?'. Once that theory is set, they then go on to twisting the facts to fit their theory. Given how popular 'perception is reality' thinking seems to be among corporate execs these days, I'm not sure I'm really surprised.
AFAIK they have allways delivered a decent service at decent price to their customers. Compared to normal bussiness practise they are just very ethical in their behavior.
There ya go, folks. Absolute proof of the existence of an alternate universe and our ability to communicate with it.
IBM may not always be the reasonable giant (they have a spotty record at best in some areas), but I would definitely rather have them behind me, than in front of me.
For some reason, this reminds me of Delenn's line in B5's "Severed Dreams":
"Only one human captain has ever survived battle with the Minbari fleet. He is behind me. You are in front of me. If you value your lives, be somewhere else."
Actually, with all of the lawsuits that SCO will have coming at it, another B5 quote is probably applicable:
"Only an idiot fights a war on two fronts. Only the heir to the throne of the kingdom of idiots would fight a war on twelve fronts."
Slashdot Mirror
The real question is, how much technological adeptness does TSG think AZ has? Given that the basis of the suit is essentially that AZ's migration to Linux 'went too well', I think it's safe to say 'not much'. Hence, the outlined strategy might very well have been what TSG followed. It's just that TSG's judgement of who actually fit the profile was way off. I think that TSG made the mistake of underestimating AZO because it's not a hard-core tech company. Does this really surprise anyone?
From the title, I was so sure that someone had come up with an asteroid defense system that involved hurling SCO executives into space!
I'll agree. Seems to me that this is exactly what we've asked for in the past - don't ban technology like P2P, just go after individuals who use the technology to infringe copyrights. If the RIAA would support rescinding the parts of the DMCA that ban technology and the dissemination of technological knowledge, and then go ahead with the suits, I'd be behind them 100%.
Any spammers who try to advertise on 20 meter cw will no doubt find themselves quickely DFed and shut down for commercial use of amateur radio.
Somehow my imagination has alwys veered towards a more 'La Femme Nikita'-style solution:
How many slashdotters would volunteer to be Section 571's Birkoff?
Now we know where the Earth-shattering kaboom went
My thoughts exactly. At work, we've just started getting into MySQL more seriously, and MySQLCC has been quite useful.
And not blocking spam costs ISPs real money, money not all of them can easily afford. For that matter, relying solely on filtering technologies costs them money, too, as the spam still takes up bandwidth and storage space, plus the CPU time to run the filtering software. DNSBL-type blocking has the advantage of actually reducing resource usage for the ISP.
Actually, once Novell completes a bit of an audit, it's likely that 95% of that MS money is going to go to Novell(technically, 100% goes to Novell, and then Novell sends 5% back). Seems MS (and Sun) probably qualify as 'existing SysV users', and thus the money from the licenses SCO sold to them in the past year belong to Novell (less a 5% handling fee for SCO).
You would appear to be utterly missing the degree to which said sentiments are 'spoken' tongue-in-cheek. The worst physical injury you are actually likely to get, by and large, from nanae denizens is a severe tongue-lashing. Please read up a bit on sysadmin humor (to which nanae-ite humor is closely allied). Take a look at the BOFH stories on The Register. These stories are quite popular among sysadmins, but you'd be quite ignorant to say that it implies that sysadmins regularly kill, maim, and torture their users. In the same way, you seem to have utterly missed the style of humor in nanae (though from looking at the 'SPEWS no longer anonymous' story on your web site, I'd say that it's not the only thing you've misunderstood about nanae. That article is rife with mis-statements and misunderstandings).
Somehow I picture USA running another season of 'La Femme Nikita', wherein Nikita, having gotten Section One running to her satisfaction, is preparing to retire. Unfortunately, after having too many days when her inbox was inundated by spam (how *did* the spammers get hold of Section One emails anyhow?), she instead ends up instead forming a new Section, Section 554, dedicated to doing to spammers what Section One used to do to terrorists. Unfortunately, the dramatic tension isn't nearly the same, as no one in Section 554 has any moral qualms about what they're doing, there's no need to recruit from prison (there's a waiting list of volunteers, and the other sections use a temporary assignment to Section 554 as a reward for good work), and morale in the section is always sky-high as long as there are missions to run.
For structured code, structured design diagrams (data-flow charts, structure charts) might be useful, but that's still pretty high-level compared to the classic sense of 'flowcharting'.
Perhaps I should have expressed that differently. Are you saying you use low-level code flowcharting, or the higher-level design diagramming techniques (e.g. structure charts and data flow diagrams for the structured techniques, or the UML et al for the OO techniques)? If you're doing low-level code flowcharting (the classic sense of 'flowcharting'), then you're a rarity, my friend. I don't think even the heavy Software Engineering types (who seem to love diagrams of all sorts) low-level flowchart every line of code they write.
Please tell me you're making a terminology error. Flowcharting, per se, was discounted as nonproductive eons ago. I think you're referring to class diagramming and such as exemplified by the UML, but that is a long stretch from code flowcharting.
I think the basic error you're making is assuming that the Open Source community should be considered comparable to a single company. It's not. It's a bunch of individuals and companies cooperating at some level (but not necessarily at all levels).
It is? That's news to me. Where did that idea come from? It seems to me that one of Open Source's strengths is that you don't have to have bloated one-size-fits-all products (which is what 'everyone working together to make one single product better' is likely to lead to). You can, instead, have different products geared to the needs of varying parts of the community.
For that matter, the typical *nix philosophy (which many OS products are geared to) advocates the latter, rather than the former.
This is news to you?
Exactly. IBM's sitting there with a royal flush. SCO's holding a 2, a 4, a yellow 14, a Rook card, and a Green Dragon, and is blabbering to all and sundry about how good his hand is. Let him blabber on and he'll just keep adding to the pot.
Your points as to why management takes the approach it does are valid, but you've totally missed my motivations in making my own point. I wasn't at all belittling or dismissing BusinessThink, just trying to point out that the difference in viewpoint does exist, and that we need to take it into consideration when answering things like this. From the responses I've seen on here and on LWN, by and large, we're not doing it = we're responding strictly from the techie viewpoint, and therefore we're not replying effectively in the eyes of those Balmer is really targeting. I suspect you and I really closer in attitude on this than you realize.
This part is essentially standard BusinessThink spin. It depends on a fundamental difference between how techies and management view support and services.
For the technical types who largely make up the Linux community, 'support' is largely a question of information-gathering. It's a question of 'where do I find the information necessary to fix the current problem?'. We don't particularly care where is comes from, as long as we can get it. That's why we're comfortable digging through web sites, posting to newsgroups and mailing lists - generally dealing with our peers to gather information.
For management types (and probably particularly for upper management in larger companies), the question of service and support is dealt with more in terms of business structures. The question is 'what business structure is available to take responsibility for fixing problems?'. It doesn't really matter (or doesn't really sink in) that newsgroups and mailing lists and other 'non-business' resources can often be more effective at gathering the necessary information than the 'tech support' you find in a lot of companies - the business mentality tends to focus on finding some business structure that can be assigned the responsibility. In a sense, perhaps they're more comfortable with a situation where they can deal with their peers.
Ballmer is simply trying to spin this in a way that makes Microsoft fit in better with standard BusinessThink. "We have a business structure to take responsibility for this, the Linux crowd only has an amorphous 'community', ergo (to BusinessThink) we're the ones who show responsibility". I'm not sure how we can counter that, but I think you need to understand where he's going with his spin before you can.
To the best of my recollection, Netscape introduced cookies to browser technology, not MS.
Are you kidding? They're probably expecting to make a mint off of sales of expensive theatre food
I think the key to understanding SCO's claims is that they don't go at this from a 'what do the facts warrant?' perspective. Their question is more like 'What legal theory can we claim that will result in what we want: revenues from our vaunted Unix intellectual property?'. Once that theory is set, they then go on to twisting the facts to fit their theory. Given how popular 'perception is reality' thinking seems to be among corporate execs these days, I'm not sure I'm really surprised.
Prophet, or Pathet?
There ya go, folks. Absolute proof of the existence of an alternate universe and our ability to communicate with it.
For some reason, this reminds me of Delenn's line in B5's "Severed Dreams":
Actually, with all of the lawsuits that SCO will have coming at it, another B5 quote is probably applicable:
Welcome to your kingdom, Darl.