I see no difference between the $$$ MS earned illegally than $$$ obtained through back robbery - both involving an unfair transfer from some victims to some criminals.
Microsoft probbaly have more in common with gangsters and terrorists than they do bank robbers when it comes to the way they do business.
If you steal 25K, and you are proven to have stolen 25K, the government will take the 25K back. But they will not take away your house, your car, your children's college funds or your 401K.
What if it could be proven that you used the stolen money in some way to gain these other assets? Typically you would face a putitive fine as well as having to return what you stole. If this house, car, etc was actually paid for using any kind of credit the credit issuers might have something to say about things too.
So, from all those billion dollars they have made since that old version of BASIC, how much would you say is directly linked to the crime?
If the accused was a mobster, drug dealer or terrorist the government probably wouldn't ask the question... Some of Microsoft's business tactics arn't that different from these entities.
Still, the previous poster seems to forget that Microsoft has already been convicted and sentenced and this is the appeals stage of their case.
Problem is that even though they have been found guilty no sentence has actually been carried out. They are appealing what amounts to a suspended sentence.
We should just throw criminals in jail and skip all this shitty expensive "trial" business.
People accused of a crime might well be held in a jail until their trial. The process is called "being remanded in custody". Alternativly they may be subject to want they can do, have to report to some official or other at certain times, surrender documents such as passports or give over some kind of deposit. Some or all of these processes are refered to as "bail". At this time the accused is considered by the law to not be guilty. The idea of a speedy trial is to ensure that innocent people are subjected to any of these for as short a time as possible. If someone is found guilty they can be held in a jail whilst the judge considers the most appropriate sentence.
The real problems come if the US decides to give the technology to some 3rd party. We might want to give them Mark-3 smart bombs, but we might not want to give them the ability to develop their own Mark-4 smart bombs. Therefore, DO NOT include GPL'd code in a product if you can foresee that we might want to give binary-only versions of it to another country.
If they have the skills to develop Mk4 from the Mk3 code it probably makes little difference if they have the source or not. Also they might be reluctant to buy if they don't get the source and can have their own people check for lack of bugs.
With military systems, it's common to sell systems of varying degree of capability to various entities so as to maintain various strategic aims.
For example, we might keep tier 1 functionality for ourselves, offer tier 2 to the say, the Israelis, and tier 3 to other Mideast countries.
If this practice of sharing systems with various capability levels extends to software systems... Well, if you ship someone a device with binaries burned into the ROMs, don't you also have to provide the source? Could they then examine the source and add back in capabilities you've disabled? Don't you have to provide the same source to all who might have the binaries?
There is a simple solution. Either only load the ROMS with the software modules you want to supply or completly obliterate the software you don't want to supply before you ship the stuff. Then the only source you need to supply is that for the software you have actually shipped. Even with no GPL issues you really don't want to ship the code you don't want shipped in a trivially disabled form...
As far as I've experienced, this means that you have to pay them the basic asking price on the free (i.e non-classified) market, and they don't get to say "no, you can't use it". For GPL/BSD/Open Source licenses, the asking price is Free, so well, they've been "compensated" as they've normally would.
Actually the asking price for GPL code isn't "free" it's that you must distribute derived works under the same licence. But it dosn't oblige you to distribute in the first place or override restrictions on distribution. So in theory you could have software as "classified" and "GPL". Meaning it's only possible to distribute it under certain conditions, but anyone who it is distributed to must be able to get the source code. Note however the "classified" bit only applies within your own country though. So if the software ends up being distributed elsewhere, including in faulty munitions fired in anger, only the GPL should apply.
Whatever the excact definition it's hard to see how it could not apply to a nation's military.
Does an employer need to give the source to an employee (if they ask for it) for the internally modified GPL programs they use on their workstation?
Not necessarily, since the origanisation can choose how information is stored internally. In just the same way that not every cell in someone's body "knows" everything that they, as a person, knows...
Although, if the binary is in a bomb, you may also need to distribute the source to the poor sod that you drop it on.
Except that the GPL only requires that you make available the source on request. A note on the bomb casing would do the trick, since the requirement would only apply if you dropped a bomb which didn't go off.
I remember a few years back someone french talking about how they used Win32/MFC in the code in french nuclear submarines
Running any part of your military using software from a foreign corporation (even if they are based in a country you are allied with) is rather stupid IMHO. For the obvious reasons of "national security".
At least with GNU/submarine when you sell the sub onto the taiwanese later they get the source to maintain it.
It might help for the French to be able to maintain their warships before they even think about selling them to someon else too.
So, even though Microsoft might not win the preliminary injunction, it is likely to win the case. After all, if Apple and Amazon were both held up as trademarks in court, it's likely that the ubiquitous "Windows" will be as well.
The thing is that "Apple" and "Amazon" are generic words used completly outside their usual context. Which puts them just below completly madeup words on the tradmark protection scale, making them strong trademarks. "Windows" is more of a generic description. Since "Window" as meaning part of a computer GUI predates Microsoft's product. Generic terms used in context or as simple descriptions of a product tend to be considered weak trademarks.
McDonalds took Yu Kwan Yuen, a chinese retaurant owner to court for naming his restaurant "McChina". The judge was quite correct in ruling that McDonalds could not monopolise the prefix "Mc". It means "son of" in scottish, and Yuen had been living in scotland for some time and adopted "McChina" to indicate "Son of China".
Quite a few previous rulings against "McDonalds" in the UK, especially in Scotland. The Scots don't take too kindly to a US fast food company using the name of this highland clan.
The part of the article that is odd is that the court appears to think that the email between the husband-owner and the buyer was sufficient to bind the wife-owner because she is referred to.
How is this odd? Marriage laws frequently consider a married couple to be legally equivalent to any other kind of legal partnership... If this was the argument used no longer they lost the case.
But then I remembered that a "written" contract just means that it was reduced to "tangible" form. This usually means something written on paper,
It certainly need not be paper. One way in which people have been known to make a protest about paying something is the like of carving a cheque onto a paving slab. Perfectly legal but a big hassle for someone to take to the bank.
According to the UCC, a "signature" is any tangible mark indicating consent. Nowhere does it say it has to be a cursive representation of your own name in your own hand. It could be printed, it could be completely illegible. It could be a mechanical reproduction applied by your secretary with a "signing machine."
It could be a stamp or seal. A lot of corporate headed paper has a disclaimer to the effect of "by default this isn't a contract". Because otherwise this could be considered a signed document.
There are quite a number of retail outlets (Sears, Home Depot, etc.) that are now using the little electronic gadgets that collect your signature as a graphic and keep it in case they need it.
Effectivly this is simply a "rubber stamp". This is hardly a new idea, indeed at one time the norm to authorise a document was by use of a seal or in China by use of a stamp known as a "chop".
It is, of course, not terribly difficult to forge email.
But how easy is it to forge email and have it not stand out amongst genuine emails between the same parties.
Please name one innovative, creative, "bar raising" product from Microsoft. Show me such a program and I'll show you a program that was developed by anoter company at least one year earlier.
About the only actual Microsoft innovations appear to be along the lines of "egomaniac" naming conventions, e.g. "My Computer" and cartoon style "help". Hardly "bar raising" or even especially worthwhile.
Often quoted example of Gandhi and his non-violent revolution is completely misleading for this guy faced British democracy and not brutal dictatorship.
Just because a nation is supposedly democratic does not prevent them being brutal with colonial subjects. Who are typically outside their democratic process anyway. Gandhi had no ability to vote for or against British MPs let alone stand as a candidate in Westminster. The only way in which being a democracy can prevent a nation acting brutally towards another is if sufficent of that nation's own citizens know what is happening. In the case specifcally of the US two things tend to count against this, activites being covert rather than overt and a large proportion of the US people not even knowing that the rest of the world exists.
Then we as the US could bar the sale of all goods here from Redmondia.:-)
As could the rest of the world. Alternativly any nation could ignore Redmondian patents and copyrights on the basis they had no treaty obligation to take any notice of them. Effectivly Microsoft would immediatly go from being under the protection of the most powerful nation to one of the weakest. Probably get invaded by a military history society or something:)
The part that so many people miss when talking about political contributions is that for every politician you can influence with your money there are two or three of his opponents that now see you as a potential enemy. That's why most companies that give money give to both sides.
This is relativly easy in the US where politics at just about every level appears to be a "two horse race". Does the US even have political parties specific to certain regions, states or cities? Any which stand much chance of getting any candidates elected to either state bodies or Congress? In other countries it can be more difficult because there can be more sides and different political parties may be effective at different levels. So bribing 3 or 4 parties might give you control of national government, but you'd need to bribe 20-30 parties (and independants) to get all government.
Then how do companies such as HP/Compaq/Gateway et al preinstall operating systems for the users who wouldn't have a clue how to install an operating system?
Most end users, including quite a number of home users, rely on either their company IT people, relatives, friends, neighbours, computer shop, etc to set up and maintain their computers. There are probably very few people who actually rely on OEM installs.
Perhaps not a bad idea in the abstract, it just doesn't work in the real world.
Actually having a demarcation between people who use technology and those who maintain & install the same technology works absolutly fine in the "real world". Indeed I can't think of any other example where end users are expected to perform anything other than the most trivial of maintance tasks with any piece of technology invented in the last few thousand years. If people have no problems with professional plumbers, builders, TV engineers, car mechanics, etc. Then why should computers be treated any differently? If Joe Public can understand the idea that if their car needs fixing they take it to a mechanic (they could have a mechanic come to them, but that would cost more money) to get it fixed or they learn to be their own mechanic, etc. Then why should computers be treated any differently? No-one carps on about how cars or televisions should be easily servicable by the unskilled end user, but many people appear to think that a far more complex machine should have this kind of attribute.
By prohibiting MS selling OS's to OEMs you denying consumers what they want.
Except that consumers don't want the same thing. One size most definitly does not fit all. Some want the current status quo, some want to be able to buy a computer and an OS licence from the same source and do their own install some want to source their hardware and software (which may or may not be software the hardware supplier could supply anyway) from different sources. IMHO the problem here isn't MS selling to OEMs so much as having "OEM" and "retail" licences. Rather than having a situation where there is only one entity called a "Windows (version XYZ) Licence" and where Microsoft is able to make discounts based around any criteria other than number of units (per period of time). Preventing direct sale to OEMs is a possible way to rectify this situation.
code written for Win95 runs on WinXP without modification.
Considering some code written for some revisions of 95 won't even run on all versions of 95 this is suspect. There is also plenty of code which requires such bodges as making the executable read/write or giving the user elevated privileges in order to even work at all on NT/XP. Whilst this might not require modifying the application it does require tossing away some of the major advantages NT/XP have over 9X.
Wrong, forked Windows is bad for consumers. It is an indenfisble position to suggest that forked Windows will benefit users in any way whatsoever.
You have to go back quite a long way to find a situation when Windows wasn't forked. Indeed the current version, XP, is quite deleberatly forked 4 or 5 ways by Microsoft.
However, you fail understand WHY OEMs sell Windows with the PC - it adds value to the consumer.
It may add value to one specific group of customers. That is the home user who only ever buys computers one at a time, occasionally. (Even then these arn't a homogeneous group of people, so the "one size fits all" logic of the OEM install is suspect.) However for the corporate customer, who either regularly buys computers or buys them by the tens or hundreds and requires interoperation with existing software and networks, OEM preinstalls can at best be a complete and utter waste of time. Even if they have supposedly the "right" version of Windows (assuming they even use Windows) and application software preloaded it's probably completly wrongly configured. Either they can have someone spend hours reconfiguring it or simply reinstall/drive image from scratch. These customers want machines to a standard, but it's their standard... Guess which kind of customer buys the most computers.
Slashdot Mirror
I see no difference between the $$$ MS earned illegally than $$$ obtained through back robbery - both involving an unfair transfer from some victims to some criminals.
Microsoft probbaly have more in common with gangsters and terrorists than they do bank robbers when it comes to the way they do business.
If you steal 25K, and you are proven to have stolen 25K, the government will take the 25K back. But they will not take away your house, your car, your children's college funds or your 401K.
What if it could be proven that you used the stolen money in some way to gain these other assets? Typically you would face a putitive fine as well as having to return what you stole. If this house, car, etc was actually paid for using any kind of credit the credit issuers might have something to say about things too.
So, from all those billion dollars they have made since that old version of BASIC, how much would you say is directly linked to the crime?
If the accused was a mobster, drug dealer or terrorist the government probably wouldn't ask the question... Some of Microsoft's business tactics arn't that different from these entities.
Still, the previous poster seems to forget that Microsoft has already been convicted and sentenced and this is the appeals stage of their case.
Problem is that even though they have been found guilty no sentence has actually been carried out. They are appealing what amounts to a suspended sentence.
We should just throw criminals in jail and skip all this shitty expensive "trial" business.
People accused of a crime might well be held in a jail until their trial. The process is called "being remanded in custody". Alternativly they may be subject to want they can do, have to report to some official or other at certain times, surrender documents such as passports or give over some kind of deposit. Some or all of these processes are refered to as "bail". At this time the accused is considered by the law to not be guilty.
The idea of a speedy trial is to ensure that innocent people are subjected to any of these for as short a time as possible.
If someone is found guilty they can be held in a jail whilst the judge considers the most appropriate sentence.
The real problems come if the US decides to give the technology to some 3rd party. We might want to give them Mark-3 smart bombs, but we might not want to give them the ability to develop their own Mark-4 smart bombs. Therefore, DO NOT include GPL'd code in a product if you can foresee that we might want to give binary-only versions of it to another country.
If they have the skills to develop Mk4 from the Mk3 code it probably makes little difference if they have the source or not. Also they might be reluctant to buy if they don't get the source and can have their own people check for lack of bugs.
With military systems, it's common to sell systems of varying degree of capability to various entities so as to maintain various strategic aims.
For example, we might keep tier 1 functionality for ourselves, offer tier 2 to the say, the Israelis, and tier 3 to other Mideast countries.
If this practice of sharing systems with various capability levels extends to software systems... Well, if you ship someone a device with binaries burned into the ROMs, don't you also have to provide the source? Could they then examine the source and add back in capabilities you've disabled? Don't you have to provide the same source to all who might have the binaries?
There is a simple solution. Either only load the ROMS with the software modules you want to supply or completly obliterate the software you don't want to supply before you ship the stuff. Then the only source you need to supply is that for the software you have actually shipped. Even with no GPL issues you really don't want to ship the code you don't want shipped in a trivially disabled form...
As far as I've experienced, this means that you have to pay them the basic asking price on the free (i.e non-classified) market, and they don't get to say "no, you can't use it". For GPL/BSD/Open Source licenses, the asking price is Free, so well, they've been "compensated" as they've normally would.
Actually the asking price for GPL code isn't "free" it's that you must distribute derived works under the same licence. But it dosn't oblige you to distribute in the first place or override restrictions on distribution.
So in theory you could have software as "classified" and "GPL". Meaning it's only possible to distribute it under certain conditions, but anyone who it is distributed to must be able to get the source code.
Note however the "classified" bit only applies within your own country though. So if the software ends up being distributed elsewhere, including in faulty munitions fired in anger, only the GPL should apply.
I wonder how they define "organization".
Whatever the excact definition it's hard to see how it could not apply to a nation's military.
Does an employer need to give the source to an employee (if they ask for it) for the internally modified GPL programs they use on their workstation?
Not necessarily, since the origanisation can choose how information is stored internally. In just the same way that not every cell in someone's body "knows" everything that they, as a person, knows...
Although, if the binary is in a bomb, you may also need to distribute the source to the poor sod that you drop it on.
Except that the GPL only requires that you make available the source on request. A note on the bomb casing would do the trick, since the requirement would only apply if you dropped a bomb which didn't go off.
I remember a few years back someone french talking about how they used Win32/MFC in the code in french nuclear submarines
Running any part of your military using software from a foreign corporation (even if they are based in a country you are allied with) is rather stupid IMHO. For the obvious reasons of "national security".
At least with GNU/submarine when you sell the sub onto the taiwanese later they get the source to maintain it.
It might help for the French to be able to maintain their warships before they even think about selling them to someon else too.
So, even though Microsoft might not win the preliminary injunction, it is likely to win the case. After all, if Apple and Amazon were both held up as trademarks in court, it's likely that the ubiquitous "Windows" will be as well.
The thing is that "Apple" and "Amazon" are generic words used completly outside their usual context. Which puts them just below completly madeup words on the tradmark protection scale, making them strong trademarks. "Windows" is more of a generic description. Since "Window" as meaning part of a computer GUI predates Microsoft's product. Generic terms used in context or as simple descriptions of a product tend to be considered weak trademarks.
McDonalds took Yu Kwan Yuen, a chinese retaurant owner to court for naming his restaurant "McChina". The judge was quite correct in ruling that McDonalds could not monopolise the prefix "Mc". It means "son of" in scottish, and Yuen had been living in scotland for some time and adopted "McChina" to indicate "Son of China".
Quite a few previous rulings against "McDonalds" in the UK, especially in Scotland. The Scots don't take too kindly to a US fast food company using the name of this highland clan.
The part of the article that is odd is that the court appears to think that the email between the husband-owner and the buyer was sufficient to bind the wife-owner because she is referred to.
How is this odd? Marriage laws frequently consider a married couple to be legally equivalent to any other kind of legal partnership... If this was the argument used no longer they lost the case.
Most agreements, but not all. Real estate contracts generally are required by law to be in writing.
The legal definition of "in writing" (indeed "signature") is rather wider than common useage, however...
But then I remembered that a "written" contract just means that it was reduced to "tangible" form. This usually means something written on paper,
It certainly need not be paper. One way in which people have been known to make a protest about paying something is the like of carving a cheque onto a paving slab. Perfectly legal but a big hassle for someone to take to the bank.
According to the UCC, a "signature" is any tangible mark indicating consent. Nowhere does it say it has to be a cursive representation of your own name in your own hand. It could be printed, it could be completely illegible. It could be a mechanical reproduction applied by your secretary with a "signing machine."
It could be a stamp or seal. A lot of corporate headed paper has a disclaimer to the effect of "by default this isn't a contract". Because otherwise this could be considered a signed document.
There are quite a number of retail outlets (Sears, Home Depot, etc.) that are now using the little electronic gadgets that collect your signature as a graphic and keep it in case they need it.
Effectivly this is simply a "rubber stamp". This is hardly a new idea, indeed at one time the norm to authorise a document was by use of a seal or in China by use of a stamp known as a "chop".
It is, of course, not terribly difficult to forge email.
But how easy is it to forge email and have it not stand out amongst genuine emails between the same parties.
Please name one innovative, creative, "bar raising" product from Microsoft. Show me such a program and I'll show you a program that was developed by anoter company at least one year earlier.
About the only actual Microsoft innovations appear to be along the lines of "egomaniac" naming conventions, e.g. "My Computer" and cartoon style "help". Hardly "bar raising" or even especially worthwhile.
Often quoted example of Gandhi and his non-violent revolution is completely misleading for this guy faced British democracy and not brutal dictatorship.
Just because a nation is supposedly democratic does not prevent them being brutal with colonial subjects. Who are typically outside their democratic process anyway. Gandhi had no ability to vote for or against British MPs let alone stand as a candidate in Westminster.
The only way in which being a democracy can prevent a nation acting brutally towards another is if sufficent of that nation's own citizens know what is happening. In the case specifcally of the US two things tend to count against this, activites being covert rather than overt and a large proportion of the US people not even knowing that the rest of the world exists.
Then we as the US could bar the sale of all goods here from Redmondia. :-)
:)
As could the rest of the world. Alternativly any nation could ignore Redmondian patents and copyrights on the basis they had no treaty obligation to take any notice of them.
Effectivly Microsoft would immediatly go from being under the protection of the most powerful nation to one of the weakest. Probably get invaded by a military history society or something
The part that so many people miss when talking about political contributions is that for every politician you can influence with your money there are two or three of his opponents that now see you as a potential enemy. That's why most companies that give money give to both sides.
This is relativly easy in the US where politics at just about every level appears to be a "two horse race". Does the US even have political parties specific to certain regions, states or cities? Any which stand much chance of getting any candidates elected to either state bodies or Congress?
In other countries it can be more difficult because there can be more sides and different political parties may be effective at different levels. So bribing 3 or 4 parties might give you control of national government, but you'd need to bribe 20-30 parties (and independants) to get all government.
Then how do companies such as HP/Compaq/Gateway et al preinstall operating systems for the users who wouldn't have a clue how to install an operating system?
Most end users, including quite a number of home users, rely on either their company IT people, relatives, friends, neighbours, computer shop, etc to set up and maintain their computers. There are probably very few people who actually rely on OEM installs.
Perhaps not a bad idea in the abstract, it just doesn't work in the real world.
Actually having a demarcation between people who use technology and those who maintain & install the same technology works absolutly fine in the "real world". Indeed I can't think of any other example where end users are expected to perform anything other than the most trivial of maintance tasks with any piece of technology invented in the last few thousand years. If people have no problems with professional plumbers, builders, TV engineers, car mechanics, etc. Then why should computers be treated any differently? If Joe Public can understand the idea that if their car needs fixing they take it to a mechanic (they could have a mechanic come to them, but that would cost more money) to get it fixed or they learn to be their own mechanic, etc. Then why should computers be treated any differently? No-one carps on about how cars or televisions should be easily servicable by the unskilled end user, but many people appear to think that a far more complex machine should have this kind of attribute.
By prohibiting MS selling OS's to OEMs you denying consumers what they want.
Except that consumers don't want the same thing. One size most definitly does not fit all.
Some want the current status quo, some want to be able to buy a computer and an OS licence from the same source and do their own install some want to source their hardware and software (which may or may not be software the hardware supplier could supply anyway) from different sources.
IMHO the problem here isn't MS selling to OEMs so much as having "OEM" and "retail" licences. Rather than having a situation where there is only one entity called a "Windows (version XYZ) Licence" and where Microsoft is able to make discounts based around any criteria other than number of units (per period of time).
Preventing direct sale to OEMs is a possible way to rectify this situation.
code written for Win95 runs on WinXP without modification.
Considering some code written for some revisions of 95 won't even run on all versions of 95 this is suspect. There is also plenty of code which requires such bodges as making the executable read/write or giving the user elevated privileges in order to even work at all on NT/XP. Whilst this might not require modifying the application it does require tossing away some of the major advantages NT/XP have over 9X.
Wrong, forked Windows is bad for consumers. It is an indenfisble position to suggest that forked Windows will benefit users in any way whatsoever.
You have to go back quite a long way to find a situation when Windows wasn't forked. Indeed the current version, XP, is quite deleberatly forked 4 or 5 ways by Microsoft.
However, you fail understand WHY OEMs sell Windows with the PC - it adds value to the consumer.
It may add value to one specific group of customers. That is the home user who only ever buys computers one at a time, occasionally. (Even then these arn't a homogeneous group of people, so the "one size fits all" logic of the OEM install is suspect.)
However for the corporate customer, who either regularly buys computers or buys them by the tens or hundreds and requires interoperation with existing software and networks, OEM preinstalls can at best be a complete and utter waste of time. Even if they have supposedly the "right" version of Windows (assuming they even use Windows) and application software preloaded it's probably completly wrongly configured. Either they can have someone spend hours reconfiguring it or simply reinstall/drive image from scratch. These customers want machines to a standard, but it's their standard...
Guess which kind of customer buys the most computers.