Let's not get draconian yet, it could be correcting a wrong with another wrong. Maybe an apology is what is necessary, and perhaps that would teach a better lesson to all involved. But I can't say what is necessary until I see full data. All I have tonight are news reports.
I just woke up my boss and am in email correspondence with various other people. Obviously, a lot of the people involved are going to be unavailable until tomorrow morning.
My terms of employment with HP allow me to publicly criticise the company when necessary. I'd rather help them fix the problem so that the criticism is all in the past tense, but the criticism will come if necessary. All I have to go on tonight is news reports.
By the way, my phone is 510-526-1165, if you feel the need to talk about this. I leave that line off the hook when I don't want calls, but it's available most of the day.
I don't know, but I am not happy to hear this at all. And if it's true, I'll take them to task for it. This is the first I've heard of the whole thing.
We actually only had 45 minutes for the talk, and after Martin's preamble to my speech, it was more like 30. So, I did the talk, quickly, without additional attempts to demonstrate. There will be other opportunities for that. My demonstration was intended to show how the common person could be a DMCA-violator, not how a room-full of geeks and nerds could do it deliberately. We'll figure out another way to make that point.
I will live to fight again, as you say, but will make sure that HP and HP's Linux program (even more important) are not hurt by future activities, as they might have been by this one.
Well, if they are in for a knocking, it really should come from me. But I don't think their point was incorrect - they felt that I'd be pulling HP and their Linux program in with me. I'll live to fight another day.
No. Consulting HP would have involved them. I still think that their best response would have simply have been to disavow the action, as they disavow opinions that I clearly identify as my own and not theirs all of the time. But they felt that they could not decouple the potential for HP to be harmed from my actions. Harming their Linux program would have resulted in a net negative effect, not the positive one I desired. What we got instead was an effective demonstration of DMCA's chilling effect. I'll continue to attack it.
There were no blacklist threats. I became convinced that I'd hurt HP's Linux program if I went ahead. My boss was very considerate, he even flew out to give a preamble to my talk explaining HP's position.
Yuk yuk. HP felt that it would not be possible to decouple the company from my actions - and that damage to their Linux program would likely take place if I went ahead with my efforts. That program does nice things for Samba, Debian, LSB, etc. So, I had to prioritize. I made my point against DMCA, as what went down with HP was a pretty good demonstration of its chilling effect on free speech. A better demonstration, indeed, than if I had done my trivial DMCA violation and got away with it. I'll continue to work on this. It would be nice if you would, too.
I do have to leave some time for my talk, so I will probably limit the number of demos. But maybe I'll try the Celine Dion and a black marker thing. So far, I can't get either of my DVD-equipped laptops to work with DeCSS. Maybe someone else should bring one.
The answer from Real's president was rather confusing. It sounds as if they have reverse engineered Microsoft's transport and not their codec. I'll follow up.
Well, this release does not include any DRM, so it is likely that in the future (or even now) thare will be some DRM-protected RealMedia that the mostly-Open-Source player won't play.
I too would prefer the equality of the straight GPL. When you don't have that, you have to consider very carefully what you are investing into the "partnership", simply because of what the other partner could do.
Yes. And that was the case with the original Netscape Public License, too. So, consider that before you invest your effort. Some people will. Some people like the BSD license, which lets people go private with your work as well. I'm more in the GPL camp.
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Bruce
My terms of employment with HP allow me to publicly criticise the company when necessary. I'd rather help them fix the problem so that the criticism is all in the past tense, but the criticism will come if necessary. All I have to go on tonight is news reports.
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If nothing else, they could be getting into the patent battle, but it may be that they and MS are cross-licensed.
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