If those top managers are being paid in stock instead of in dollars, then clearly they are stockholders and hence their interests are one and the same as the stockholders. Which is the entire idea behind such compensation schemes.
Well, sometimes. In this particular case, the Golden Parachute was constructed purportedly to make a hostile take-over unattractive. Otherwise, perhaps Carl Ichan might have owned Sun before now. But it is not at all in the stockholders interest at this point.
We also have cases in which the managers receive different classes of stock from others. This seems to have been the case, for example, in the recent acquisition of Monta Vista, a former embedded Linux companies. The employees are said to have gotten $0 for employee stock, but some tiers of preferred stock took real money out of the company, as did the managers.
Beige boxes with tiny margins ate Sun's lunch, once they could run any reasonable operating system, or even an unreasonable one. Remember when so many people thought the future would be Windows and that Unix was dying? That was so depressing that we had to fix it by ourselves. But the beige boxes would have taken over either way.
There are a few top managers, and they run the company for their own interests.
If they have stockholders, they have to make some pretense that they are
working for the stockholders, but look how much stock _they_ are getting out
of the company. Sometimes they collect a $1/year salary to look good, while
they get many Millions of dollars in stock per year.
Rarely do people at this level work for anyone but themselves.
Then there are a number of second-tier managers, whose goal is to make the most
out of the company that they can, or to make it to that top level so that they
can run the company for their own interest. Sometimes people at this level
have other motivations.
Then there are lots of other people. Often these people haven't even thought
very deeply about what their motivations are. They are essentially treated as
work-units which keep the company operating, but they are as expendible as a
server in a rack. Fortunately, companies do need their talents, at least for
now.
Then there are the small stockholders. They cross their fingers and hope the
managers will do a good job for them, but they really do not have any power
to influence the company.
Then there is the government. The government's job is to protect little guys
with no power (the general population)
from big guys with lots of power. But unfortunately the big guys essentially own the government,
because of the fact that they pay for political campaigns and in other ways
influence politicians, and because they are gate-keepers on jobs for voters.
All of this motivated self-interest is supposed to result in a good working
system for the general population. It doesn't work terribly well. However,
there are many other systems that work even worse, so people are reluctant
to change it. Also, the average person can not be bothered to concern himself
enough so that in the aggregate with other people that person can effect change.
Thank you very much, you explained it well and I understand more now.
Wouldn't a quench have a huge back-EMF associated with it as the field collapses? I don't see any alternative but for much of that energy to go through the coil-bar circuit and heat the coil up more.
Pardon me for my ignorance. What I don't understand is: do none of these problems show up when a short segment of the ring is built and operated at somewhat above its target power? I get the impression that the failures are in magnetic focusing components rather than the beam. Is that not correct?
Curiousity would get to Mars in late 2012 if they keep on schedule. It doesn't have the solar panel problem and the freeze death problem as it's powered by radioisotope thermal which will hold up for a decade. The legs have additional articulation and the whole thing is much bigger (and way more complicated anyway), so the sand problems will be different. I do wish the arm was better.
The rovers need a better arm. They should be capable of pushing themselves out of the dust or out of a rolled-over state with one arm. Some of the lunar rover designs have featured wheeled legs, each of which can articulate and also work as an arm (with the wheel twisted aside). If you had 6 articulated legs in a rover, the failure of 2 of them might be tolerable.
In the U.S. the license is the choice of the copyright holder. There are many on Linux. And thus to change the license on Linux, you have to ask all of those copyright holders, as best as you are able to reach them, including through public notices. Then, you have to remove the work of those who object. And then you can relicense.
This is so painful that there would have to be a very good reason. Like GPL2 becoming seriously less enforcible.
Well, I was entirely snookered by it for a while. But every lawyer I've ever discussed it with doesn't buy it. And as I've looked into it, it seems less likely. IMO we all got fooled.
The situation with BSD UNIX could not recur today. The key factor was that they had not put the proper copyright notice on their code, and at that time they had to do that or they didn't have a copyright. Today the law is different and you have a copyright the moment you set pen to paper. There was also the issue that USG had been caught with dirty hands infringing upon BSD code.
If customers were that interested in it, MySQL would have it by now. Perhaps sometimes a group builds a standard that, in the end, customers do not ask for.
Your ignoring the issue of derivative works. The current Busybox is not a clean-room re-engineering. It's an unbroken progression from my original code base. Thus, it's derivative.
I don't know what the damages are because the case settled under seal, and thus it's not published, and the parties won't or can't (under the terms of the seal) tell me.
You don't believe I've never communicated with these folks, do you? I did. And learned very quickly that it was the wrong approach where Mr. Landley was involved.
I am not sure that these suits even ask for damages other than for the time spent on prosecuting the infringement. But one of the issues is that since I am not party to the suits, I can't see that.
I also don't agree that my copyright interest has been removed from the program. Although one of the developers once said so, I don't think he knew what he was talking about.
I'd only give a waiver in specific cases. I would do this to 1) reassure my present and potential consulting customers and 2) offer assistance to companies that want to come into compliance, because that's what Free Software folks really want.
I want to be properly represented as a person with a copyright interest in the program, and I want the folks who assert lawsuit on others to comply in regard to my rights as they would have others comply with theirs. I doubt that legal action will be necessary to effect this change.
There is no monetary loss or other damage to the original developers.
This is presently being tried in another case, Jacobsen v. Katzer. It looks as if there will be significant damages that the Open Source developer can collect. The judge seems to think so in that he granted a motion for summary judgement (after at first rejecting it).
Yes. Surely the producer of an embedded product has no excuse to fail to deliver the source code. And if it's Best Buy with a house product, it's their obligation.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, sometimes. In this particular case, the Golden Parachute was constructed purportedly to make a hostile take-over unattractive. Otherwise, perhaps Carl Ichan might have owned Sun before now. But it is not at all in the stockholders interest at this point.
We also have cases in which the managers receive different classes of stock from others. This seems to have been the case, for example, in the recent acquisition of Monta Vista, a former embedded Linux companies. The employees are said to have gotten $0 for employee stock, but some tiers of preferred stock took real money out of the company, as did the managers.
Beige boxes with tiny margins ate Sun's lunch, once they could run any reasonable operating system, or even an unreasonable one. Remember when so many people thought the future would be Windows and that Unix was dying? That was so depressing that we had to fix it by ourselves. But the beige boxes would have taken over either way.
How Companies Work
There are a few top managers, and they run the company for their own interests. If they have stockholders, they have to make some pretense that they are working for the stockholders, but look how much stock _they_ are getting out of the company. Sometimes they collect a $1/year salary to look good, while they get many Millions of dollars in stock per year. Rarely do people at this level work for anyone but themselves.
Then there are a number of second-tier managers, whose goal is to make the most out of the company that they can, or to make it to that top level so that they can run the company for their own interest. Sometimes people at this level have other motivations.
Then there are lots of other people. Often these people haven't even thought very deeply about what their motivations are. They are essentially treated as work-units which keep the company operating, but they are as expendible as a server in a rack. Fortunately, companies do need their talents, at least for now.
Then there are the small stockholders. They cross their fingers and hope the managers will do a good job for them, but they really do not have any power to influence the company.
Then there is the government. The government's job is to protect little guys with no power (the general population) from big guys with lots of power. But unfortunately the big guys essentially own the government, because of the fact that they pay for political campaigns and in other ways influence politicians, and because they are gate-keepers on jobs for voters.
All of this motivated self-interest is supposed to result in a good working system for the general population. It doesn't work terribly well. However, there are many other systems that work even worse, so people are reluctant to change it. Also, the average person can not be bothered to concern himself enough so that in the aggregate with other people that person can effect change.
Thank you very much, you explained it well and I understand more now.
Wouldn't a quench have a huge back-EMF associated with it as the field collapses? I don't see any alternative but for much of that energy to go through the coil-bar circuit and heat the coil up more.
Pardon me for my ignorance. What I don't understand is: do none of these problems show up when a short segment of the ring is built and operated at somewhat above its target power? I get the impression that the failures are in magnetic focusing components rather than the beam. Is that not correct?
Good to see you back on the Internet - please send your current email. - Thanks! - Bruce
Curiousity would get to Mars in late 2012 if they keep on schedule. It doesn't have the solar panel problem and the freeze death problem as it's powered by radioisotope thermal which will hold up for a decade. The legs have additional articulation and the whole thing is much bigger (and way more complicated anyway), so the sand problems will be different. I do wish the arm was better.
The rovers need a better arm. They should be capable of pushing themselves out of the dust or out of a rolled-over state with one arm. Some of the lunar rover designs have featured wheeled legs, each of which can articulate and also work as an arm (with the wheel twisted aside). If you had 6 articulated legs in a rover, the failure of 2 of them might be tolerable.
Sugar works fine on other platforms. At least we have that.
In the U.S. the license is the choice of the copyright holder. There are many on Linux. And thus to change the license on Linux, you have to ask all of those copyright holders, as best as you are able to reach them, including through public notices. Then, you have to remove the work of those who object. And then you can relicense.
This is so painful that there would have to be a very good reason. Like GPL2 becoming seriously less enforcible.
Well, I was entirely snookered by it for a while. But every lawyer I've ever discussed it with doesn't buy it. And as I've looked into it, it seems less likely. IMO we all got fooled.
The situation with BSD UNIX could not recur today. The key factor was that they had not put the proper copyright notice on their code, and at that time they had to do that or they didn't have a copyright. Today the law is different and you have a copyright the moment you set pen to paper. There was also the issue that USG had been caught with dirty hands infringing upon BSD code.
I'm not saying it's the way I want things to be.
If customers were that interested in it, MySQL would have it by now. Perhaps sometimes a group builds a standard that, in the end, customers do not ask for.
Your ignoring the issue of derivative works. The current Busybox is not a clean-room re-engineering. It's an unbroken progression from my original code base. Thus, it's derivative.
No problem.
Unget updandered.
I don't know what the damages are because the case settled under seal, and thus it's not published, and the parties won't or can't (under the terms of the seal) tell me.
You don't believe I've never communicated with these folks, do you? I did. And learned very quickly that it was the wrong approach where Mr. Landley was involved.
One responds to publicity with publicity. SFLC made a point of publicizing the suit.
You might find Jacobsen v. Katzer educational. Jacobsen was using the Artistic License 1.0, and this did not protect him from Katzer.
No, they probably did contact the now-defendants. That's their usual process.
I am not sure that these suits even ask for damages other than for the time spent on prosecuting the infringement. But one of the issues is that since I am not party to the suits, I can't see that.
I also don't agree that my copyright interest has been removed from the program. Although one of the developers once said so, I don't think he knew what he was talking about.
I'd only give a waiver in specific cases. I would do this to 1) reassure my present and potential consulting customers and 2) offer assistance to companies that want to come into compliance, because that's what Free Software folks really want.
I want to be properly represented as a person with a copyright interest in the program, and I want the folks who assert lawsuit on others to comply in regard to my rights as they would have others comply with theirs. I doubt that legal action will be necessary to effect this change.
This is presently being tried in another case, Jacobsen v. Katzer. It looks as if there will be significant damages that the Open Source developer can collect. The judge seems to think so in that he granted a motion for summary judgement (after at first rejecting it).
Yes. Surely the producer of an embedded product has no excuse to fail to deliver the source code. And if it's Best Buy with a house product, it's their obligation.
favicon.ico is a zero-length file. So, you get the default I guess.