Exactly. But still, it would be nice if they could be internally consistent. I liked Minority Report, but one internal inconsistency did bother me -- it didn't even matter if there were a minority report or not; there would still be a question as to the accuracy of the predictions.
I wasn't suggesting that we give up all our "toys". I was more suggesting that perhaps we'll reach a point where we all have enough toys that we've got enough "wealth" left over to do other things. On the other hand, maybe we'll end up spending all our wealth on medical care or something else.
I think the people *do* get to choose what the government spends our money on. In a democratic society, that's generally the way it works, although sometimes it's more implicit by not complaining about or overthrowing the government.
> Buying useless crap is one of the clearest expressions of liberty in a capitalistic society.
I may need to put that in my quotes file!
Interesting stuff about the efficiency of various sectors and the resulting expensiveness. Thanks for the info.
Consider the amount of money that the very poor people in the US make, and the amount of money that it takes for them to have the survival basics: food, clean water, shelter, clothing, medical care. Don't forget to discount the price from what most of us pay -- you don't really need to pay $6.00 for a meal at McDonalds, or $30 for a pair of pants. You definitely don't need a TV, or cable, or a fancy stereo. It's reasonable to believe that a 3-person family could live on $12-$15K in some parts of the US. I know I've seen some instances where people chose to live on the cheap, and I think it was in that range.
So a large portion of the "profit" generated in the US goes to non-essentials. How we choose to use the rest of our resources is up to us, because they are "wants", not "needs". We could make sure we all have nice clothes and big TVs, or we could decide that we want to build a moonbase.
Of course, I suppose that people will always want stuff for themselves more than they want to create a better world for everyone.
As for eliminating poverty and homelessness in the US, it's NOT a money issue. There's plenty of money in the US. We could work to do more to distribute it "fairly" so that poor people could meet their needs. But really, there aren't a whole lot of people going without food and shelter. And a lot of those could be taken care of if they asked for assistance, and if they spent the little money they had more wisely.
A few other points regarding our current econmic system. The price of medical care is growing exponentially. At what point will it cost us so much that the rest of the economy to collapse? If there were a way to save everyone's life (or extend it 50 years), but it cost too much for everyone to get done, how would you decide who gets it? (Probably money!)
The medical consensus seems to be "probably". Like most Ask Slashdot questions that don't pertain directly to geek topics, a nice thorough answer can be found at Straight Dope.
Well, I think you're reaching the limits of our current economic system here. Instead of thinking in dollars, think in terms of raw material resources and human labor available. Is it possible to build a moon-base given our current technology, available materials, and expendable labor. I.e. can we support those people's needs without them having to work to provide food, shelter, etc.?
I think the answer is "yes", we could build a moon-base. But probably not given our current economic system. Mainly because we've abstracted the the resources I listed above too much. We'd look at the cost in dollar terms instead of resource availability and say it's too expensive.
Incidentally, I think the answer to eliminating poverty is "no". It's not an issue of resource availability, but of distribution of those resources. But I guess you could say that about a lot of things.
I'd recommend DocBook/XML. It gives you flexibility -- you can translate to HTML, PDF, etc. Yes, dealing with translating to other formats can be a pain. But it's been done before. There are lots of projects using it, and they all have templates, scripts, and stylesheets: TLDP, KDE, GNOME, FreeBSD.
For WYSIWYG editing, I recommend Morphon, which is now free (as in beer). You'll need to have a working Java VM.
For PDF output, there's FOP. Again, you'll need a JVM.
For structured graphics, I recommend SVG. However, I'm not sure what tools are good for generating it. And I'm not sure if FOP can handle it. I do highly recommend the O'Reilly book on SVG. Their DocBook book is somewhat out of date, but they've got some good articles on Oreillynet.com.
Yes, I just read that in this excellent hard drive reference. There's a chart showing that 10K drives are 3.0" and 15K drives are 2.5". It also explains why smaller platters are better.
Sorry, but you've been misled. Communism is about everyone giving to society as they can, and taking as they need. It's an economic system. A central controlling government is totalitarianism -- it has nothing to do with the economic system. In fact, if you read Marx's Communist Manifesto, the idea was supposed to be that the government leaders (borgoise) would disappear, leaving the people (proletariat) to run the country for themselves. (Of course, it was doomed to fail due to natural human desire for power.)
But you've obviously been brain-washed by an American propoganda to believe that totalitarianism and Communism are one in the same. Which is equivalent to saying that Democracy and Capitalism are one and the same. I see no reason why a truly Communist government could not be a Democracy. They both are centered around giving power to the common man.
In the strict sense of the word, Free Software has a lot in common with Communism. But it has little to do with the bastardized common usage of the word.
I agree, for the most part. Just this past week, a guy was showing me a program that would say whatever he typed. I think it was an Open Source program on Linux, so I suppose it wasn't exactly state-of-the-art. It wasn't very good at English-to-phonemes.
So I grabbed and compiled a copy of VICE, the Commodore 64 emulator. Then I grabbed an abandon-ware copy of SAM, the Software Automatic Mouth. Its text-to-speech was about equivalent to the modern program. Plus, it had the option to type things in phonetically, including syllable emphasis. And it added the SAY command to the C64 built-in BASIC. All this in less than 32K is just incredible.
To be fair, I have heard some of the more modern TTS programs, and they do a pretty good job. So do some of the newer voice recognition programs, especially the ones now used on automated phone systems.
Almost all Linux code gets modified over time. All Linux versions are publicly available. You could compare the various Linux versions with the SCO version(s). This would give you a good idea when the transfer happened. Assuming SCO has a record of their versions (it would be hard to believe they don't have any revision control system) you could do it both ways.
I'm betting that SCO would not be smart enough to take the original Linux version, but would take a newish Linux version. Showing that Linux had older (less "good") versions and SCO did not would be evidence that SCO had taken the code from Linux, not vice-versa.
So assuming that the code base(s) change(s) significantly over time, determining the provenance of version-controlled code is not all that difficult. Think of it in biological terms -- we can identify the lineage of various species/specimens by comparing their DNA and their ancestors' DNA.
Agreed. While Miguel was in some ways right, I don't think CORBA/Bonobo (or KParts for that matter) really solves the problem. It's too heavy an API. A better solution would be to provide an API to every (large/GUI) application that could be used by any scripting language to control the program. In other words, a universal scripting API to any language.
You could script things inside or outside of the application. So you could write a script something like this:
aw = start AbiWord aw.load("file1.abw") aw.selectAll() aw. setStyle("large print") aw.save()
ARexx on the Amiga was a powerful example. Unfortunately, the Amiga platform died soon after ARexx started to gain ground. VBA (Visual BASIC for Application) in Microsoft Office is another good example. TrollTech has introduced QtScript, which should work well, but it's limited to Qt (or KDE) apps and JavaScript. I'd like to see something that can be applied to all applications and can use any scripting language (JavaScript, Perl, Python, and Ruby at the least).
The real "SCO" no longer exists. They became the Tarantella Group.
What is currently called "SCO" is really the Canopy Group.
Sorry, but Caldera bought a portion of SCO and the rights to the SCO name. They also recently filed an official change of name. I realize that you don't like the new SCO reflecting poorly on the old company, but legally they are SCO.
But SCO is working under the assumption that their code was not added under the GPL. They did not agree to the GPL (so they claim) so they can't be required to follow its terms. Adding that clause doesn't help at all.
It would be good for you too, since then they would have little proof that you've stolen their code.
I'm a little curious about the "value" of the code though. You could make an argument that it's not worth anything, except as a base for adding to. I mean, this was a software company -- the creditors really can't claim that they didn't know the company owned the copyrights to its software.
The GPL explicitly states that agreeing to the GPL license is not required to use the software. It is only required to modify or distribute the code (in binary or source). The SCO license only applies to running the software, not distributing or modifying it. So the 2 licenses are for completely separate things -- they can't conflict. From section 0 of the GPL:
Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not
covered by this License; they are outside its scope.
Of course, there are a few problems with SCO's attempt to steer clear of a conflict with the GPL. Section 6 of the GPL states:
You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.
and section 7 says:
If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all.
The question is whether "The act of running the Program is not restricted" in section 0 is considered to be one of "the rights granted herein". Technically, it is not, since the right to use a software program is not one of the rights granted to a copyright holder. The GPL relies on the fact that the right to run a program is not restricted by Copyright law. But if somehow that turns out not to be the case, SCO may have found a loophole in the GPL.
SCO is not distributing any Linux code (source or binary) with this license. They are assuming you've already purchased "infringing" software. So they're not distributing anything. Of course, they've already modified and distributed the Linux code, so they've already agreed to the GPL on that code.
Since the right to use a software program is not specified as a restriction in the Copyright Act, there's really no reason you need to buy a license from SCO to use the Linux code in question. And I'd suspect that their license will put restrictions on your modification and distribution of Linux. Which of course would conflict with the GPL. And they'd probably turn around and sue you for breaching their license. Sounds more risky to accept their license offer than to risk being sued for violating their copyright, for which their case is very weak.
But there is some logic in what SCO is doing, trying to weave their way around the GPL.
SCO has a FAQ on their website. There are also several other pages on the Linux licensing.
There are a lot of weird answers in the FAQ. One is a statement about not offering the license to Linux distro vendors, because that would conflict with the GPL. Also of note is that Caldera/SCO Linux users need to register for a license. It doesn't say if it's free for them or not. Embedded devices can be registered for $32, but it never says what constitutes and embedded device.
I think the reason they say 2.4 is that that's when IBM submitted the code from AIX. While IBM owns the copyrights on that code, IBM's agreement with SCO (nee AT&T) says that the code they add to UNIX becomes "a part of" UNIX. What that means is unclear. But even if IBM violated that contract, they still owned the code and the right to publish it elsewhere. For one thing, because they already had published it in OS/2.
You'll note that SCO still doesn't say that you need to buy the license for copyright reasons. They just say that they have procured the copyright registration, and let you make (an invalid) assumption that the "intellectual property rights" they are asserting mean copyright. "Intellectual Property" is a vague term with no legal meaning.
SCO is being coy with their language, because they know that they do not have a valid copyright infringement case.
It's also possible that they are trying not to piss people off *too* much, because this would only apply to future commercial distros, not current Linux distros. (Although their FAQ says that SCO/Caldera Linux users require a license, and I don't think they distribute 2.4.)
I have a few questions though. The jukeboxes in bars -- they're obviously a public performance. Do they have to pay extra, or is there some exception that allows it?
Moving back to software, I see that there is nothing speaking to its use. So the FSF is correct when they say that you don't need a license to use software -- only to modify it and copy it. So if I don't agree to the license, I can use the software any way I want, correct? So if I never install a piece of software that I've bought, I can reverse engineer it. Or if I somehow install it (without modifying it) without agreeing to the license.
It seems to me that these 6 rights really boil down to 3:
1. The right to distribute copies. 2. The right to perform the work publicly. 3. The right to create derivative works.
I'm not so sure the 3rd one is even correct, although that seems to be the letter of the law. For example, I obviously can write notes in the margins of a copy of a book I buy. Or create a "mix CD" of songs from various CDs. It seems that the intent is really "the right to distribute derivative works", which falls into #1. Given that, it seems (again, if you don't agree to the shrink-wrap license) that you are free to modify a piece of software for your own use, as long as you don't distribute the derivative works.
So exactly what rights is the shrink-wrap EULA giving me? The only rights I don't have are to distribute copies or perform the work publicly. The EULA doesn't grant me either of those, so it doesn't give me anything I don't already have. And a contract (which is what a license is) is only valid if there is an exchange of value.
You would not have these devices without Visual Studio.NET 2003
Not necessarily. I suspect Microsoft merely used the list of MSDN subscribers to get to developers. Microsoft wants to make developers happy and to think of Microsoft when they are speccing out new software. I don't think Microsoft was really intending to award people just for buying the MSDN subscription.
You are mostly correct. The whole SCO vs. IBM case is based on a contract dispute, not on any copyright or patent rights. SCO's CEO, Darl McBride,
said in a teleconference that "we don't
have any issues with copyright or patent with respect to any claims that
we have made" regarding the IBM suit.
And in this article he mentions "contract" 12 times, but only mentions copyright once, and that's only in regard to removing copyright statements. It's almost as if he is being coy -- making it sound as if there is copyright infringement without ever directly saying it. In other interviews, he also avoids the word, choosing instead words such as "infringing" and "Intellectual Property".
The SCOvsIBM page makes a similar observation:
Uncertainty is sown by much discussion of the case in terms of vague or broad terms such as "intellectual property" or "all rights", rather than addressing specific contractual, copyright, patent, or trademark claims. On specific grounds, Caldera/SCO's complaint seems quite limited.
An important thing to remember is that you cannot be sued over the contract that SCO has with IBM. Third parties cannot be held liable for contracts that they did not agree to. So if you have no contract with SCO, they can only sue you on the basis of copyright infringement. And you can only be sued for copyright infringement if you have copied or distributed something.
Do you really want to give SCO a new avenue by which to sue you? Given that SCO has not shown any evidence that anyone has infringed their copyrights, I don't see why you'd want to do that. SCO hasn't been exactly acting in good faith recently; I don't know if I'd trust any contracts they write up. Here's what Darl McBride says about SCO's use of contracts against their partners and customers:
Contracts are what you use against parties you have relationships with. From a legal standpoint, contracts end up being far stronger than anything you could do with copyrights.
If I were you, I wouldn't even let them know that you use Linux. Why give them any evidence to use against you later? Try to stay off their radar.
Ouch, you're right. And claiming that they can't protect it with the DMCA doesn't work. Because you're still going to jail, and they're still just paying a small penalty for violating the GPL.
They do have the right to speak in public, but if they follow me around yelling at me after I've told them not to, then it goes beyond protected speech. I think that'd be a better analogy. We are *requesting* that they stop, and they still want to continue. And they're not broadcasting or speaking from a public place.
You might even go so far as to make the analogy that they're following us onto our own property, when we've asked them not to. Consider a salesman coming to my door when I have a "No Soliciting" sign out front. I don't think the salesman could use a First Amendment argument.
I like your observations on the phone being public/private (sort of like my door-step) and the government having to regulate politeness.
They think they should have the right to call people who don't want to be called? What exactly is their reason that they think they deserve this right? Who does it benefit? If the people are expressing that they don't want to be called, it probably means they don't want to be called! It doesn't matter if they're on the list or not -- they don't want to be called. I know people don't have a right not to be offended, but there's also no guranteed right to annoy people.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. But still, it would be nice if they could be internally consistent. I liked Minority Report, but one internal inconsistency did bother me -- it didn't even matter if there were a minority report or not; there would still be a question as to the accuracy of the predictions.
I wasn't suggesting that we give up all our "toys". I was more suggesting that perhaps we'll reach a point where we all have enough toys that we've got enough "wealth" left over to do other things. On the other hand, maybe we'll end up spending all our wealth on medical care or something else.
I think the people *do* get to choose what the government spends our money on. In a democratic society, that's generally the way it works, although sometimes it's more implicit by not complaining about or overthrowing the government.
> Buying useless crap is one of the clearest expressions of liberty in a capitalistic society.
I may need to put that in my quotes file!
Interesting stuff about the efficiency of various sectors and the resulting expensiveness. Thanks for the info.
But profit could easily become a useless concept.
Consider the amount of money that the very poor people in the US make, and the amount of money that it takes for them to have the survival basics: food, clean water, shelter, clothing, medical care. Don't forget to discount the price from what most of us pay -- you don't really need to pay $6.00 for a meal at McDonalds, or $30 for a pair of pants. You definitely don't need a TV, or cable, or a fancy stereo. It's reasonable to believe that a 3-person family could live on $12-$15K in some parts of the US. I know I've seen some instances where people chose to live on the cheap, and I think it was in that range.
So a large portion of the "profit" generated in the US goes to non-essentials. How we choose to use the rest of our resources is up to us, because they are "wants", not "needs". We could make sure we all have nice clothes and big TVs, or we could decide that we want to build a moonbase.
Of course, I suppose that people will always want stuff for themselves more than they want to create a better world for everyone.
As for eliminating poverty and homelessness in the US, it's NOT a money issue. There's plenty of money in the US. We could work to do more to distribute it "fairly" so that poor people could meet their needs. But really, there aren't a whole lot of people going without food and shelter. And a lot of those could be taken care of if they asked for assistance, and if they spent the little money they had more wisely.
A few other points regarding our current econmic system. The price of medical care is growing exponentially. At what point will it cost us so much that the rest of the economy to collapse? If there were a way to save everyone's life (or extend it 50 years), but it cost too much for everyone to get done, how would you decide who gets it? (Probably money!)
The medical consensus seems to be "probably". Like most Ask Slashdot questions that don't pertain directly to geek topics, a nice thorough answer can be found at Straight Dope.
Well, I think you're reaching the limits of our current economic system here. Instead of thinking in dollars, think in terms of raw material resources and human labor available. Is it possible to build a moon-base given our current technology, available materials, and expendable labor. I.e. can we support those people's needs without them having to work to provide food, shelter, etc.?
I think the answer is "yes", we could build a moon-base. But probably not given our current economic system. Mainly because we've abstracted the the resources I listed above too much. We'd look at the cost in dollar terms instead of resource availability and say it's too expensive.
Incidentally, I think the answer to eliminating poverty is "no". It's not an issue of resource availability, but of distribution of those resources. But I guess you could say that about a lot of things.
I'd recommend DocBook/XML. It gives you flexibility -- you can translate to HTML, PDF, etc. Yes, dealing with translating to other formats can be a pain. But it's been done before. There are lots of projects using it, and they all have templates, scripts, and stylesheets: TLDP, KDE, GNOME, FreeBSD.
For WYSIWYG editing, I recommend Morphon, which is now free (as in beer). You'll need to have a working Java VM.
For PDF output, there's FOP. Again, you'll need a JVM.
For structured graphics, I recommend SVG. However, I'm not sure what tools are good for generating it. And I'm not sure if FOP can handle it. I do highly recommend the O'Reilly book on SVG. Their DocBook book is somewhat out of date, but they've got some good articles on Oreillynet.com.
Yes, I just read that in this excellent hard drive reference. There's a chart showing that 10K drives are 3.0" and 15K drives are 2.5". It also explains why smaller platters are better.
Sorry, but you've been misled. Communism is about everyone giving to society as they can, and taking as they need. It's an economic system. A central controlling government is totalitarianism -- it has nothing to do with the economic system. In fact, if you read Marx's Communist Manifesto, the idea was supposed to be that the government leaders (borgoise) would disappear, leaving the people (proletariat) to run the country for themselves. (Of course, it was doomed to fail due to natural human desire for power.)
But you've obviously been brain-washed by an American propoganda to believe that totalitarianism and Communism are one in the same. Which is equivalent to saying that Democracy and Capitalism are one and the same. I see no reason why a truly Communist government could not be a Democracy. They both are centered around giving power to the common man.
In the strict sense of the word, Free Software has a lot in common with Communism. But it has little to do with the bastardized common usage of the word.
So I grabbed and compiled a copy of VICE, the Commodore 64 emulator. Then I grabbed an abandon-ware copy of SAM, the Software Automatic Mouth. Its text-to-speech was about equivalent to the modern program. Plus, it had the option to type things in phonetically, including syllable emphasis. And it added the SAY command to the C64 built-in BASIC. All this in less than 32K is just incredible.
To be fair, I have heard some of the more modern TTS programs, and they do a pretty good job. So do some of the newer voice recognition programs, especially the ones now used on automated phone systems.
Almost all Linux code gets modified over time. All Linux versions are publicly available. You could compare the various Linux versions with the SCO version(s). This would give you a good idea when the transfer happened. Assuming SCO has a record of their versions (it would be hard to believe they don't have any revision control system) you could do it both ways.
I'm betting that SCO would not be smart enough to take the original Linux version, but would take a newish Linux version. Showing that Linux had older (less "good") versions and SCO did not would be evidence that SCO had taken the code from Linux, not vice-versa.
So assuming that the code base(s) change(s) significantly over time, determining the provenance of version-controlled code is not all that difficult. Think of it in biological terms -- we can identify the lineage of various species/specimens by comparing their DNA and their ancestors' DNA.
Agreed. While Miguel was in some ways right, I don't think CORBA/Bonobo (or KParts for that matter) really solves the problem. It's too heavy an API. A better solution would be to provide an API to every (large/GUI) application that could be used by any scripting language to control the program. In other words, a universal scripting API to any language.
. setStyle("large print")
You could script things inside or outside of the application. So you could write a script something like this:
aw = start AbiWord
aw.load("file1.abw")
aw.selectAll()
aw
aw.save()
ARexx on the Amiga was a powerful example. Unfortunately, the Amiga platform died soon after ARexx started to gain ground. VBA (Visual BASIC for Application) in Microsoft Office is another good example. TrollTech has introduced QtScript, which should work well, but it's limited to Qt (or KDE) apps and JavaScript. I'd like to see something that can be applied to all applications and can use any scripting language (JavaScript, Perl, Python, and Ruby at the least).
But SCO is working under the assumption that their code was not added under the GPL. They did not agree to the GPL (so they claim) so they can't be required to follow its terms. Adding that clause doesn't help at all.
I'm a little curious about the "value" of the code though. You could make an argument that it's not worth anything, except as a base for adding to. I mean, this was a software company -- the creditors really can't claim that they didn't know the company owned the copyrights to its software.
SCO is not distributing any Linux code (source or binary) with this license. They are assuming you've already purchased "infringing" software. So they're not distributing anything. Of course, they've already modified and distributed the Linux code, so they've already agreed to the GPL on that code.
Since the right to use a software program is not specified as a restriction in the Copyright Act, there's really no reason you need to buy a license from SCO to use the Linux code in question. And I'd suspect that their license will put restrictions on your modification and distribution of Linux. Which of course would conflict with the GPL. And they'd probably turn around and sue you for breaching their license. Sounds more risky to accept their license offer than to risk being sued for violating their copyright, for which their case is very weak.
But there is some logic in what SCO is doing, trying to weave their way around the GPL.
There are a lot of weird answers in the FAQ. One is a statement about not offering the license to Linux distro vendors, because that would conflict with the GPL. Also of note is that Caldera/SCO Linux users need to register for a license. It doesn't say if it's free for them or not. Embedded devices can be registered for $32, but it never says what constitutes and embedded device.
I think the reason they say 2.4 is that that's when IBM submitted the code from AIX. While IBM owns the copyrights on that code, IBM's agreement with SCO (nee AT&T) says that the code they add to UNIX becomes "a part of" UNIX. What that means is unclear. But even if IBM violated that contract, they still owned the code and the right to publish it elsewhere. For one thing, because they already had published it in OS/2.
You'll note that SCO still doesn't say that you need to buy the license for copyright reasons. They just say that they have procured the copyright registration, and let you make (an invalid) assumption that the "intellectual property rights" they are asserting mean copyright. "Intellectual Property" is a vague term with no legal meaning.
SCO is being coy with their language, because they know that they do not have a valid copyright infringement case.
It's also possible that they are trying not to piss people off *too* much, because this would only apply to future commercial distros, not current Linux distros. (Although their FAQ says that SCO/Caldera Linux users require a license, and I don't think they distribute 2.4.)
Excellent explanation!
I have a few questions though. The jukeboxes in bars -- they're obviously a public performance. Do they have to pay extra, or is there some exception that allows it?
Moving back to software, I see that there is nothing speaking to its use. So the FSF is correct when they say that you don't need a license to use software -- only to modify it and copy it. So if I don't agree to the license, I can use the software any way I want, correct? So if I never install a piece of software that I've bought, I can reverse engineer it. Or if I somehow install it (without modifying it) without agreeing to the license.
It seems to me that these 6 rights really boil down to 3:
1. The right to distribute copies.
2. The right to perform the work publicly.
3. The right to create derivative works.
I'm not so sure the 3rd one is even correct, although that seems to be the letter of the law. For example, I obviously can write notes in the margins of a copy of a book I buy. Or create a "mix CD" of songs from various CDs. It seems that the intent is really "the right to distribute derivative works", which falls into #1. Given that, it seems (again, if you don't agree to the shrink-wrap license) that you are free to modify a piece of software for your own use, as long as you don't distribute the derivative works.
So exactly what rights is the shrink-wrap EULA giving me? The only rights I don't have are to distribute copies or perform the work publicly. The EULA doesn't grant me either of those, so it doesn't give me anything I don't already have. And a contract (which is what a license is) is only valid if there is an exchange of value.
So shrink-wrap EULAs are not enforceable. QED.
And in this article he mentions "contract" 12 times, but only mentions copyright once, and that's only in regard to removing copyright statements. It's almost as if he is being coy -- making it sound as if there is copyright infringement without ever directly saying it. In other interviews, he also avoids the word, choosing instead words such as "infringing" and "Intellectual Property". The SCOvsIBM page makes a similar observation:
An important thing to remember is that you cannot be sued over the contract that SCO has with IBM. Third parties cannot be held liable for contracts that they did not agree to. So if you have no contract with SCO, they can only sue you on the basis of copyright infringement. And you can only be sued for copyright infringement if you have copied or distributed something.Do you really want to give SCO a new avenue by which to sue you? Given that SCO has not shown any evidence that anyone has infringed their copyrights, I don't see why you'd want to do that. SCO hasn't been exactly acting in good faith recently; I don't know if I'd trust any contracts they write up. Here's what Darl McBride says about SCO's use of contracts against their partners and customers:
If I were you, I wouldn't even let them know that you use Linux. Why give them any evidence to use against you later? Try to stay off their radar.Ouch, you're right. And claiming that they can't protect it with the DMCA doesn't work. Because you're still going to jail, and they're still just paying a small penalty for violating the GPL.
They do have the right to speak in public, but if they follow me around yelling at me after I've told them not to, then it goes beyond protected speech. I think that'd be a better analogy. We are *requesting* that they stop, and they still want to continue. And they're not broadcasting or speaking from a public place.
You might even go so far as to make the analogy that they're following us onto our own property, when we've asked them not to. Consider a salesman coming to my door when I have a "No Soliciting" sign out front. I don't think the salesman could use a First Amendment argument.
I like your observations on the phone being public/private (sort of like my door-step) and the government having to regulate politeness.
They think they should have the right to call people who don't want to be called? What exactly is their reason that they think they deserve this right? Who does it benefit? If the people are expressing that they don't want to be called, it probably means they don't want to be called! It doesn't matter if they're on the list or not -- they don't want to be called. I know people don't have a right not to be offended, but there's also no guranteed right to annoy people.