... why SCO can even sue Linux users at this point? I mean, don't they have to actually WAIT for the court decision vs. IBM to come through before suing the users?
Because they are trying to get money out of people before the case with IBM.
They're basically saying "following the court decision in our favor in the case of SCO vs IBM that went to court in 2005, you owe us money".
If SCO lose then there is no way you will get any money back off them:)
Do they have a time travel section in addition to their litigation one?
If they had a time travel section they wouldn't need to mess around with lawsuits.
Until SCO gets squashed, they'll be working so many actions at once, they'll hire any lawyer with a pulse. They'll be lucky if the IBM suit isn't argued by paralegals.
Assuming they havn't bankrupted themselves on lawyer fees before then.
Of course, this will be implemented in such a way that implantinga fake RR for windowsupdate.microsoft.com into a local name serverallows Windows to download and run any file with a certian file name. This should make it far eaiser to fool Windows Update into installing Linux.
Or alternativly a malware writer will come up with some way to fool this automatic update system into distributing their spyware, virus, worm or what-have-you.
copyright is the only thing in the constitution that is explicitly allowed to trump freedom of the press (i.e. freedom of speech).
An example of the US Constitution being read backwards since copyright is permitted by the original version of the document. Freedom of "the press" is an ammendment, yet there is no later ammendment stating that copyright trumps press freedom.
Copyright was also extended numerous times in duration, now reaching life+70 years for individuals and 90 years for works-for-hire, with no end in sight now that the supreme court has ruled that retroactive extentions are now "constitutional", despite the obvious conflict that entails with the constitutions own requirement that terms be of limited length.
Given the supposed reasoining form copyright in the US Constitution it's hard to make any case for retroactive extensions of copyright terms in the first place.
So they are saying that communication is the reason for movie's failure? They should get rid of free speech.
Effectivly they are moaning that their customers are giving their products bad reviews. Could it be that they arn't doing a good job of producing movies people want to watch. After all people can just as easily text their friends that something is a "must see".
It was the original BSD license, though. The one with the GPL-incompatible obnoxious advertising clause. The copyright notice has been changed as well. So there is copyright violation here, though it's doubtful SCO can claim monetary damages from it.
Very doubtful, given that if it is BSD (or SGI) code then SCO are unlikely to be the copyright holder in the first place. Maybe SCO will find themselves sued by the University of California:)
Anyone ever given serious thought that perhaps the SCO code was lifted from the Linux source?
Or maybe both came from a third party. Especially considering that the Linux version of the code is marked "Copyright (C) 1992 - 1997, 2000-2002 Silicon Graphics, Inc."
If SCO's logic were true, and it was not possible to grant someone permission to make copies, then you wouldn't be able to authorize a publisher to make copies of your work! So basically if you own a book by an author who retains the copyright to their book, then both you and the publisher are violating copyright law!
No... Wait... That's completely stupid, too. The whole reason we have copyright is so that the author can grant the right to copy to others, and request compensation in return. Unless we required all authors to self-publish, or transfer their copyright. Which I suppose SCO thinks is the case!
Publishers must generally be able to licence or sublicence anyway. Since they don't always own their own printing presses, CD/DVD stampers. Then you have situations where multiple sublicencing is needed at the same time. e.g. a wide circulation newspaper printed at several locations or cable television.
Yes, but if their case is as strong and undisputable as they say it is, then why would they even need to attack the validity of the GPL?
Is the aim to win the case or is the aim more to overinflate SCO's stock then "asset strip" the company? The way things are looking right now is that SCO will be sued into oblivion regardless of if they win or lose this case.
If the GPL is invalid because it allows multiple redistributions, doesn't that make all of SCO's UNIX licenses invalid?
The reasoning SCO are using would render render all distribution licencing (and sub licencing) invalid. Which is a lot bigger than just software. Effectivly what they have done is interpreted a right granted by statute, to the owner of a copy, as being a limitation on the copyright holder's ability to control distribution. It's the latter which backs the GPL in the first place. Anyway since SCO have distributed GPL software they are effectivly saying "we are software pirates" very loudly:)
Maybe. As far as I understand the stories, IBM has written NUMA and RCU code for their System V based Unix (AIX)
IBM's System V license seems to state that when they add code to their SysV (==AIX) that code has to be treated as the rest of the SCO owned SysV code. So IBM wrote some code, included it in SysV/AIX, and now they can't include the exact same code in Linux, because of their SysV contracts with SCO...
And certain people moan about the GPL being viral... About the only was this could work is if SCO are claiming that their System V licence includes assigning copyright to SCO. Otherwise IBM's rights as copyright holders trump any agreement they may have made with SCO.
The big difference in the comparision you made above is that the author and owner of the copyright for the book have made an explicit contract signed in ink with the publisher. The GPL is an implicit contract. Anybody who happens along and acquires a copy of the GPL'd code is supposedly bound by this 'contract.'
What binds them is statute law, specifically copyright. This says that you need permission from the copyright holder in order to distribute a copy (modified or not) of a copyrighted work to a third party. Copyright law, as it now exists, grants copyright holders the ability to create a licence for the distribution of their works. The GPL is simply a form of licence which goes "Permission is granted subject to the following conditions...".
It's a heck of a lot like an EULA in that regard, and nobody here takes binding EULA's seriously.
An EULA is a completly different entity. It perports to cover use of a piece of software, not its redistribution.
And that's the problem -- the GPL's handling of software dependancies is entirely based on the concept of "derived works" under copyright law. And what exactly is a derived work is a complete gray area for software -- unlike music recordings or books where there are industry standards for using other people's work.
Thus what needs testing is copyright law. In the final analysis the relevent standard is that given in statute or case law. Rather than some "industry standards". Compilation recordings and anthologies have been around a lot longer than software.
Furthermore, the FSF's stance on linking is out of step with the rest of the software industry (who happily links to MS Windows libraries without copyright worries)
The FSF and Microsoft do not comprise the entire "software industry". It is also not hard to find situations where Windows software requires specific Microsoft DLLs to be present but only distributes some kind of Microsoft patch or service pack. Even where this includes lots of things not needed by the application.
Has anybody pondered how IBM might benefit if the GPL fails in court? It isn't a clearcut truth that they would be hurt one way or the other, however the GPL is defined in court. IBM isn't a party using the Linux kernal in a way that they couldn't afford to make royalty payments if necessary.
Assuming all the copyright holders would accept whatever IBM offered.
The GPL could end up nullified in such a way that the Linux kernal became sort of a free-for-all public domain piece of code.
Plenty of people would be very upset were anything to be placed in the public domain by court order. Especially those who have spent lots of money buying longer and more draconian copyright laws. If a court can simply strip copyrights from their holder(s) then all this lobbying and bribary has been for nothing.
The problem is that a positive court decision for SCO will railroad other international governments and legal systems to adopt the 'US' way of doing things.
Invalidating the GPL would hardly be "positive" for SCO since it would mean that they could easily be sued into oblivion for copyright violations.
The problem here predates the DMCA just that whereas before we just had machines finding "smut" where no human would look we now have machines just as bogusly finding "copyright violations".
Companies that have made invalid claims such as this one should be punished. At least they should be held liable for any damages if an ISP removes contents that they claim are infringing.
Supposedly these kind of things should contain boiler plate that they are sent on penalty of purjury. Thing is that this requires a human to be lying, it dosn't cover a machine generating bogus hits.
I'm not sure what you mean here. Not to get offtopic, but what makes driving on the left side of the road make any more sense than the right side?
It makes a lot of sense if there is a distinct posibility of someone coming the other way waving a sword or a pistol. Given that the majority of people are right handed. There are still parts of the world where "highway men" are a serious problem.
Please, please, please. It was HENRY VIII who broke with Rome and founded the Anglican church, because the Pope wouldn't give him a divorce. Between him and James I there were three other monarchs (Edward VI, Mary, Elizabeth I), four if you count Lady Jane Gray's brief "rule".
Out of these only Mary Tudor attempted to reestablish links with the Vatican.
I presume that the reason you think James I was responsible for Anglicanism is the King James Bible - though this was solidly plagiarised from Wycliff's much earlier work.
Or possibly the failed attempt to assasinate James I.
Not in my Canada. Centre is a place and Center is a geometric property. The Medical Centre is in the center of the city. I think it makes more sense this way--the spelling of the word untangles the meaning. It's kind of like metre: Metre is a unit of length and Meter is a device for measuring something.
Apparently Webster didn't like homophones (words which are spelt differently but sound the same) thus meaning that understanding context can be very important with US English.
(Though I normally spell Metre as Meter, since I work in an industry that is dominated by the U.S.)
As opposed to 3 feet, 3 inches and whatever proper fraction equates to 0.370079.:)
Isn't odd to be named "Catherine Zeta Jones" How can you be named after a greek letter? What kind of a name is that?
What the hell is that "Zeta" short for? And if it is short for something, then why can't we call you "Catherine Zee Jones"?
It's an invented middle name. Though up be either Catherine, or her agent, because there was already someone called "Catherine Jones" involved in acting.
In the UK, licence is the noun, and license is the verb. Just like Canada. I think it may also be the same in Australia. I'd be surprised if the US is any different.
The US is different from the rest of the "English" speaking world. One of Webster's aims was to "simplify" spelling. Which as a side effect tended to remove homophones from the language. Which renders US English more context sensitive in certain circumstances. e.g. "The BBC has deployed a new program to help in archiving it's programs". vs "The BBC has deployed a new program to hely in archiving it's programmes."
Unfortunately, sir, you are incorrect. Up here in Canada, as you put it, centre is always spelled -re unless one is referring to an object in the United States.
This was the spelling in the US before Webster got his dictionary published. For some reason he thought that he knew better how words should be spelt, dispite having no linguistic qualifications.
the Kennedy Space Center is spelled in the American fashion.
The KSC is physically located in the US and "Kennedy Space Center" is as much a proper noun as the name of a settlement. Convention being to avoid translating proper nouns as much as posible.
I realize and agree that linux, in the long run, can save tremendous amounts of money for a corporation, but there has to be a huge upfront fee to overhaul and implement an entirely new OS and set of apps.
If they were to "stick" with Microsoft they'd be more or less forced to "upgrade" every few years. Where in practice the difference between an "upgrade" and "overhaul & install an entirely new system" isn't really that great.
but the timing seems odd, given that the airlines are all hemmoraging money right now...
So probably a good time to see what can be done to stop so much money flowing out of the company. Getting rid of Microsoft's expensive, both in terms of initial expenditure and administartion, licencing model. Is one way to do this.
While that argument is suitable for a corporation I think Governments have a higher purpose. They should not only consider TCO they should also consider their security, the job creation potential for their citizens, boosting the economy of their own country and more.
Commercial entities also have security considerations e.g. avoiding buying proprietary software from a direct competitor might well be a good idea. To a government job creation and boosting they own economy tends very much to affect their TCO.
For example a government should choose products from corporations based in their own country even if the TCO is a bit higher. If the award of a contract employs your won citizens then it should be preferred.
the TCO is most likely to be lower, even though the initial spend might be higher. Since governments receive taxation from corporate profits, earnings and consumer spending.
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... why SCO can even sue Linux users at this point? I mean, don't they have to actually WAIT for the court decision vs. IBM to come through before suing the users?
:)
Because they are trying to get money out of people before the case with IBM.
They're basically saying "following the court decision in our favor in the case of SCO vs IBM that went to court in 2005, you owe us money".
If SCO lose then there is no way you will get any money back off them
Do they have a time travel section in addition to their litigation one?
If they had a time travel section they wouldn't need to mess around with lawsuits.
Until SCO gets squashed, they'll be working so many actions at once, they'll hire any lawyer with a pulse. They'll be lucky if the IBM suit isn't argued by paralegals.
Assuming they havn't bankrupted themselves on lawyer fees before then.
Of course, this will be implemented in such a way that implantinga fake RR for windowsupdate.microsoft.com into a local name serverallows Windows to download and run any file with a certian file name. This should make it far eaiser to fool Windows Update into installing Linux.
Or alternativly a malware writer will come up with some way to fool this automatic update system into distributing their spyware, virus, worm or what-have-you.
copyright is the only thing in the constitution that is explicitly allowed to trump freedom of the press (i.e. freedom of speech).
An example of the US Constitution being read backwards since copyright is permitted by the original version of the document. Freedom of "the press" is an ammendment, yet there is no later ammendment stating that copyright trumps press freedom.
Copyright was also extended numerous times in duration, now reaching life+70 years for individuals and 90 years for works-for-hire, with no end in sight now that the supreme court has ruled that retroactive extentions are now "constitutional", despite the obvious conflict that entails with the constitutions own requirement that terms be of limited length.
Given the supposed reasoining form copyright in the US Constitution it's hard to make any case for retroactive extensions of copyright terms in the first place.
So they are saying that communication is the reason for movie's failure? They should get rid of free speech.
Effectivly they are moaning that their customers are giving their products bad reviews. Could it be that they arn't doing a good job of producing movies people want to watch. After all people can just as easily text their friends that something is a "must see".
It was the original BSD license, though. The one with the GPL-incompatible obnoxious advertising clause. The copyright notice has been changed as well. So there is copyright violation here, though it's doubtful SCO can claim monetary damages from it.
:)
Very doubtful, given that if it is BSD (or SGI) code then SCO are unlikely to be the copyright holder in the first place. Maybe SCO will find themselves sued by the University of California
Anyone ever given serious thought that perhaps the SCO code was lifted from the Linux source?
Or maybe both came from a third party. Especially considering that the Linux version of the code is marked "Copyright (C) 1992 - 1997, 2000-2002 Silicon Graphics, Inc."
If SCO's logic were true, and it was not possible to grant someone permission to make copies, then you wouldn't be able to authorize a publisher to make copies of your work! So basically if you own a book by an author who retains the copyright to their book, then both you and the publisher are violating copyright law!
No... Wait... That's completely stupid, too. The whole reason we have copyright is so that the author can grant the right to copy to others, and request compensation in return. Unless we required all authors to self-publish, or transfer their copyright. Which I suppose SCO thinks is the case!
Publishers must generally be able to licence or sublicence anyway. Since they don't always own their own printing presses, CD/DVD stampers. Then you have situations where multiple sublicencing is needed at the same time. e.g. a wide circulation newspaper printed at several locations or cable television.
Yes, but if their case is as strong and undisputable as they say it is, then why would they even need to attack the validity of the GPL?
Is the aim to win the case or is the aim more to overinflate SCO's stock then "asset strip" the company? The way things are looking right now is that SCO will be sued into oblivion regardless of if they win or lose this case.
If the GPL is invalid because it allows multiple redistributions, doesn't that make all of SCO's UNIX licenses invalid?
:)
The reasoning SCO are using would render render all distribution licencing (and sub licencing) invalid. Which is a lot bigger than just software. Effectivly what they have done is interpreted a right granted by statute, to the owner of a copy, as being a limitation on the copyright holder's ability to control distribution. It's the latter which backs the GPL in the first place.
Anyway since SCO have distributed GPL software they are effectivly saying "we are software pirates" very loudly
Maybe. As far as I understand the stories, IBM has written NUMA and RCU code for their System V based Unix (AIX) IBM's System V license seems to state that when they add code to their SysV (==AIX) that code has to be treated as the rest of the SCO owned SysV code. So IBM wrote some code, included it in SysV/AIX, and now they can't include the exact same code in Linux, because of their SysV contracts with SCO...
And certain people moan about the GPL being viral... About the only was this could work is if SCO are claiming that their System V licence includes assigning copyright to SCO. Otherwise IBM's rights as copyright holders trump any agreement they may have made with SCO.
The big difference in the comparision you made above is that the author and owner of the copyright for the book have made an explicit contract signed in ink with the publisher. The GPL is an implicit contract. Anybody who happens along and acquires a copy of the GPL'd code is supposedly bound by this 'contract.'
What binds them is statute law, specifically copyright. This says that you need permission from the copyright holder in order to distribute a copy (modified or not) of a copyrighted work to a third party. Copyright law, as it now exists, grants copyright holders the ability to create a licence for the distribution of their works. The GPL is simply a form of licence which goes "Permission is granted subject to the following conditions...".
It's a heck of a lot like an EULA in that regard, and nobody here takes binding EULA's seriously.
An EULA is a completly different entity. It perports to cover use of a piece of software, not its redistribution.
And that's the problem -- the GPL's handling of software dependancies is entirely based on the concept of "derived works" under copyright law. And what exactly is a derived work is a complete gray area for software -- unlike music recordings or books where there are industry standards for using other people's work.
Thus what needs testing is copyright law. In the final analysis the relevent standard is that given in statute or case law. Rather than some "industry standards". Compilation recordings and anthologies have been around a lot longer than software.
Furthermore, the FSF's stance on linking is out of step with the rest of the software industry (who happily links to MS Windows libraries without copyright worries)
The FSF and Microsoft do not comprise the entire "software industry". It is also not hard to find situations where Windows software requires specific Microsoft DLLs to be present but only distributes some kind of Microsoft patch or service pack. Even where this includes lots of things not needed by the application.
Has anybody pondered how IBM might benefit if the GPL fails in court? It isn't a clearcut truth that they would be hurt one way or the other, however the GPL is defined in court. IBM isn't a party using the Linux kernal in a way that they couldn't afford to make royalty payments if necessary.
Assuming all the copyright holders would accept whatever IBM offered.
The GPL could end up nullified in such a way that the Linux kernal became sort of a free-for-all public domain piece of code.
Plenty of people would be very upset were anything to be placed in the public domain by court order. Especially those who have spent lots of money buying longer and more draconian copyright laws. If a court can simply strip copyrights from their holder(s) then all this lobbying and bribary has been for nothing.
The problem is that a positive court decision for SCO will railroad other international governments and legal systems to adopt the 'US' way of doing things.
Invalidating the GPL would hardly be "positive" for SCO since it would mean that they could easily be sued into oblivion for copyright violations.
This is one of the major problems with the DMCA.
The problem here predates the DMCA just that whereas before we just had machines finding "smut" where no human would look we now have machines just as bogusly finding "copyright violations".
Companies that have made invalid claims such as this one should be punished. At least they should be held liable for any damages if an ISP removes contents that they claim are infringing.
Supposedly these kind of things should contain boiler plate that they are sent on penalty of purjury. Thing is that this requires a human to be lying, it dosn't cover a machine generating bogus hits.
I'm not sure what you mean here. Not to get offtopic, but what makes driving on the left side of the road make any more sense than the right side?
It makes a lot of sense if there is a distinct posibility of someone coming the other way waving a sword or a pistol. Given that the majority of people are right handed. There are still parts of the world where "highway men" are a serious problem.
Please, please, please. It was HENRY VIII who broke with Rome and founded the Anglican church, because the Pope wouldn't give him a divorce. Between him and James I there were three other monarchs (Edward VI, Mary, Elizabeth I), four if you count Lady Jane Gray's brief "rule".
Out of these only Mary Tudor attempted to reestablish links with the Vatican.
I presume that the reason you think James I was responsible for Anglicanism is the King James Bible - though this was solidly plagiarised from Wycliff's much earlier work.
Or possibly the failed attempt to assasinate James I.
Same WORD, Originally French, hence Centre in English,
Starting from the late 11th century at a wild guess.
Changed to center in US only for godknowsonlywhat reasons.
Specifically a man called Webster... Who was rather obsessed with religion and claiming that the US was founded as a "Christain Country", BTW.
Not in my Canada. Centre is a place and Center is a geometric property. The Medical Centre is in the center of the city. I think it makes more sense this way--the spelling of the word untangles the meaning. It's kind of like metre: Metre is a unit of length and Meter is a device for measuring something.
:)
Apparently Webster didn't like homophones (words which are spelt differently but sound the same) thus meaning that understanding context can be very important with US English.
(Though I normally spell Metre as Meter, since I work in an industry that is dominated by the U.S.)
As opposed to 3 feet, 3 inches and whatever proper fraction equates to 0.370079.
Isn't odd to be named "Catherine Zeta Jones"
How can you be named after a greek letter? What kind of a name is that?
What the hell is that "Zeta" short for? And if it is short for something, then why can't we call you "Catherine Zee Jones"?
It's an invented middle name. Though up be either Catherine, or her agent, because there was already someone called "Catherine Jones" involved in acting.
In the UK, licence is the noun, and license is the verb. Just like Canada. I think it may also be the same in Australia. I'd be surprised if the US is any different.
The US is different from the rest of the "English" speaking world. One of Webster's aims was to "simplify" spelling. Which as a side effect tended to remove homophones from the language. Which renders US English more context sensitive in certain circumstances. e.g. "The BBC has deployed a new program to help in archiving it's programs". vs "The BBC has deployed a new program to hely in archiving it's programmes."
Unfortunately, sir, you are incorrect. Up here in Canada, as you put it, centre is always spelled -re unless one is referring to an object in the United States.
This was the spelling in the US before Webster got his dictionary published. For some reason he thought that he knew better how words should be spelt, dispite having no linguistic qualifications.
the Kennedy Space Center is spelled in the American fashion.
The KSC is physically located in the US and "Kennedy Space Center" is as much a proper noun as the name of a settlement. Convention being to avoid translating proper nouns as much as posible.
I realize and agree that linux, in the long run, can save tremendous amounts of money for a corporation, but there has to be a huge upfront fee to overhaul and implement an entirely new OS and set of apps.
If they were to "stick" with Microsoft they'd be more or less forced to "upgrade" every few years. Where in practice the difference between an "upgrade" and "overhaul & install an entirely new system" isn't really that great.
but the timing seems odd, given that the airlines are all hemmoraging money right now...
So probably a good time to see what can be done to stop so much money flowing out of the company. Getting rid of Microsoft's expensive, both in terms of initial expenditure and administartion, licencing model. Is one way to do this.
While that argument is suitable for a corporation I think Governments have a higher purpose. They should not only consider TCO they should also consider their security, the job creation potential for their citizens, boosting the economy of their own country and more.
Commercial entities also have security considerations e.g. avoiding buying proprietary software from a direct competitor might well be a good idea.
To a government job creation and boosting they own economy tends very much to affect their TCO.
For example a government should choose products from corporations based in their own country even if the TCO is a bit higher. If the award of a contract employs your won citizens then it should be preferred.
the TCO is most likely to be lower, even though the initial spend might be higher. Since governments receive taxation from corporate profits, earnings and consumer spending.