The main idea here seems to be that no one in the FOSS world should even THINK about looking at this code. We certainly don't need links to even fragments of it here.
Granted, it may be devastating for Microsoft if everybody sees their code, which was developed under the assumption that nobody else would ever see it.
It is always assumed from the beginning that anyone can view FOSS code. The awareness that what one is writing will be public has a pervasive effect on the author. There is no end of subtle bugs and vulnerabilities that can affect either style of development. However, FOSS code that is a complete turkey from stem to stern will be well known and laughed at on IRC within hours of its release.
For the kajillionth time, putting GPLed code into a proprietary codebase DOES NOT make the whole thing GPLed. If MS did put GPLed code into one of their products accidentally or otherwise and then distributed it, that is copyright violation. The GPL does not rely on contract law and therefore CANNOT specify the penalty for violating it. Since the GPL is a straight copyright license pure copyright law applies. This means MS' hypothetical penalty would be between them, a court of law and the aggreived FOSS project.
The judge is such a case is unlikely to order MS' codebase GPLed. MS would have to either put out a sanitized patch for the code in question or pay the developers for an alternative license. The exact circumstances of the case would determine what if any punitive damages MS would have to pay in addition to recompensating the developers.
MS would have the OPTION of making the entire contaminated codebase GPLed to satisfy the license but I doubt they would take that option. They could do it for the FUD value but since the aggrieved FOSS project wouldn't accept that as a settlement, MS would just have to do something else. Imagine that! A FOSS project could rule out an MS product being GPLed to PREVENT harm to a project or FOSS in general.
I'd buy the Linux product but they would have to explicitly say in writing that the GPL and other FOSS licenses on the code are valid for anything they might concievably own. If they or any successors in interest tried anything else like this, I'd staple that license document to their asses.
To be fair, any OS that is updated from network servers is vulnerable to such an attack. Look at how long Debian took to make sure the archive wasn't compromised in that kernel bug incident a month or two back. Now packages can be signed or whatnot but that measure is attackable as well.
It just another form of the "who watches the watchers?" problem.
I have to agree with you. These government regulators keep missing the point. Focusing on this software package or that is just Microsoft waving the red cape at the bull. The real monopoly action is their ability to dictate terms to OEMs and maybe even hardware manufacturers. Add to that, their virtual control of business communications which they are gearing up to maintain with a really stupid XML patent. As someone snidely pointed out earlier, no vendor has been a roaring success selling nothing but preloaded Windows boxes. However, these OEM contracts ensure nobody can sell them as a sideline either. For that matter, nobody can even sell bare boxes which is also useful to the BSD crowd.
I know I'm not going to pay for a preloaded Linux machine that still has a MS tax embedded in the price somewhere.
As part of a $1500 machine it is trivial. When a $50 OS is in a $300 machine, it becomes far more significant. Sure, typical Slashdotters won't find much to like in those $300 machines but the nastiest of them would easily outperform the K6-2 500Mhz rig I ran for four years. I've seen bargain machines as low as $269. That $50 is just the OS. That is just so the machine boots. If you want to actually do anything with the machine after it boots count on spending at least $300 for a minimal suite of productivity apps and a game or two. The bargain machine doesn't look like such a bargain at that point.
Knoppix does (you want the media in the reader before you boot it though). And from what I read Mandrake does but I had a real love/hate relationship with Mandrake when I used it. I loved that hardware was detected and Just Worked which seems to be what you want. On the other hand, Mandrake was just..flaky. I'd get media I couldn't unmount, packages I couldn't easily manage and video driver crashes.
Distros like Lindows and Lycoris also purport to have easy installation but I have no personal experience of them. You can also do a hard drive install from Knoppix which works out well because the hd install is configured according to what was autodetected when you booted it. Mepis is even better for easy desktop installs because they added the commercial video drivers and easy install wizard. There both Debian based so you get Debian package management with autodetected hardware. Not bad! The only problem is they both chuck in everything but the kitchen sink. Good for a novice user but it grates on me since I like to build up from stripped installs to exactly what I want. Different strokes and all that.......
What you want is possible. The pieces are there but it is up to the distros to implement them. I wasn't trying to claim the command line is the answer to everything but it can be the quickest way to fix something if you know what you are doing.
they can start by making it easy for Linux to autodetect a USB joystick controller!
Knoppix detected my Saitek P880 just fine. Chuck these somewhere appropriate:
modprobe hid modprobe joydev
Or just use your favorite means to load hid and joydev at startup. It isn't that hard.
While I'm at it, I'll point out that at least some mobos that support USB 2.0 also have a USB 1.1 controller crosswired to the same physical USB ports. You need to have both ehci and ohci/uhci drivers loaded for these. The ASUS P4S800 is one such board. Both ehci and ohci drivers must be loaded. The machine will use the appropriate driver depending on the usb device plugged into the port.
That is not in the least helpful. First off, your fund can be seen as obstruction of justice. Secondly, it furthers what seems to be the goal for this trojan: Defame the open source community. The OSS community should condemn the little bastard that did this, not protect him (her?).
If I knew the little punk that did this, I would cheerfully turn him in to SCO. Of course, I would fork over some of the bounty to anti-SCO legal efforts.
Please check that location for a more recent version. You may re-publish this material. You may excerpt it, reformat it and translate it as necessary for your presentation. You may not edit it to deliberately misrepresent my opinion.
You can prove the machine is at least minimally functional. It boots from the CD so that part is probably OK. There is probably some provision to install to the hard drive so you know you can boot from that. It would also provide minimum sanity checks of the system board, video, and RAM.
Personally, I think a Knoppix CD would be even better. But as someone else pointed out, there is no expectation that anyone will do much with FreeDOS or want support.
A friend of mine tried to destroy the engine in one by holding first gear with the pedal floored. The sucker wouldn't blow. Actually, he put that car through every kind of hell a teenager with sports car envy can put an econobox through.
I think the Chevettes had uneven rather than uniformly bad quality. I've seen them last for years as daily drivers on their original powertrains. I've also heard of them dying after a few years of driving.
Isn't it nice that they have to wait for a whole XP service pack to be qualified and released before they can get an update to IE so they can block pop-ups, something that most other current browsers provide and some of those for a while.
They'll throw the word "innovation" around a lot and carry on as though they invented ad-blocking. Much like "hacker" no longer means "an adept with a love of technology for it's own sake". "Innovation" doesn't mean anything either. Anymore, it's just a nervous tic MS has. About these accusations you're abusing a monopoly.... "Innovation! Yeah! Yeah! We need to innovate." Is it not true that SCO is your proxy to attack Linux and Open Source? "Um! Um! Um! Innovate! Innovate!" Try it and see. Fluster MS the least bit and a Tourette's-like flood of "Innovation!" comes pouring out of them.
Does that mean Mozilla 1.6 is capable of interacting with ASP.NET web applications typically only accessible from Internet Explorer (i.e. those using Windows Authentication)? Are they (NTLM/WA) one and the same?
The answers to your questions are maybe and no. As far as browsers are concerned, NTLM is an authentication protocol. If your browser or proxy can't speak it then you don't get in the site. Since NTLM is often used to secure IIS based web apps then it would keep older non-MS browsers out.
If the site is otherwise plain ole HTML, javascript, and plugins then this new Mozilla will indeed let you access them. However, Windows web apps can also do things like embed COM objects directly in the page. Having NTLM authentication won't help when the browser is used to execute MS APIs.
Unless I've missed something in the world of Classic MacOS nobody is maintaining browsers for it. Mac OS 9 has also seen it's last release of IE as well. Netscape 7.0.2 and IE 5.1 seem to be the proverbial it. It bums me out too. I will have to maintain OS 8.6 and 9.2.2 machines for the forseeable future. That isn't the way I wanted it but that is the way it is. I would love to have browsers newer than a year and half old for these platforms. Oh well.
Plus if this becomes common I'm sure a certain big software company will strongly suggest to desktop hardware manufacturers that booting from CD not be on by default.
That would also make it difficult to use the restore cds that come with most any new desktop machine today. It would generate more calls to OEM helpdesks. MS might suggest it (which I doubt) but the OEMs won't go for it.
Assuming that SCO own the copyrights to SysV (and not Novell) then they are AT&Ts successors in interest to the code. AT&T settled a dispute involving that code base. That settlement will travel with the code regardless of who owns it. The parent poster is correct, it isn't a legal precedent in general. It sure as hell is one as far as Novell and (maybe) SCO is concerned.
At the very least, they are distributing kernel source while trying to encumber that source with restrictions the GPL doesn't permit. Even if they stopped distributing code today, they wouldn't be off the hook for past distribution.
Slashdot Mirror
Must...resist...urge....to...make..Duke Nukem Forever post!
The main idea here seems to be that no one in the FOSS world should even THINK about looking at this code. We certainly don't need links to even fragments of it here.
Granted, it may be devastating for Microsoft if everybody sees their code, which was developed under the assumption that nobody else would ever see it.
It is always assumed from the beginning that anyone can view FOSS code. The awareness that what one is writing will be public has a pervasive effect on the author. There is no end of subtle bugs and vulnerabilities that can affect either style of development. However, FOSS code that is a complete turkey from stem to stern will be well known and laughed at on IRC within hours of its release.
For the kajillionth time, putting GPLed code into a proprietary codebase DOES NOT make the whole thing GPLed. If MS did put GPLed code into one of their products accidentally or otherwise and then distributed it, that is copyright violation. The GPL does not rely on contract law and therefore CANNOT specify the penalty for violating it. Since the GPL is a straight copyright license pure copyright law applies. This means MS' hypothetical penalty would be between them, a court of law and the aggreived FOSS project.
The judge is such a case is unlikely to order MS' codebase GPLed. MS would have to either put out a sanitized patch for the code in question or pay the developers for an alternative license. The exact circumstances of the case would determine what if any punitive damages MS would have to pay in addition to recompensating the developers.
MS would have the OPTION of making the entire contaminated codebase GPLed to satisfy the license but I doubt they would take that option. They could do it for the FUD value but since the aggrieved FOSS project wouldn't accept that as a settlement, MS would just have to do something else. Imagine that! A FOSS project could rule out an MS product being GPLed to PREVENT harm to a project or FOSS in general.
I'd buy the Linux product but they would have to explicitly say in writing that the GPL and other FOSS licenses on the code are valid for anything they might concievably own. If they or any successors in interest tried anything else like this, I'd staple that license document to their asses.
The referenced article advises you to put a Pentium IV into a K7 motherboard. With what? A hammer?
Boy he sure showed all of us propellerheads.
To be fair, any OS that is updated from network servers is vulnerable to such an attack. Look at how long Debian took to make sure the archive wasn't compromised in that kernel bug incident a month or two back. Now packages can be signed or whatnot but that measure is attackable as well.
It just another form of the "who watches the watchers?" problem.
I have to agree with you. These government regulators keep missing the point. Focusing on this software package or that is just Microsoft waving the red cape at the bull. The real monopoly action is their ability to dictate terms to OEMs and maybe even hardware manufacturers. Add to that, their virtual control of business communications which they are gearing up to maintain with a really stupid XML patent. As someone snidely pointed out earlier, no vendor has been a roaring success selling nothing but preloaded Windows boxes. However, these OEM contracts ensure nobody can sell them as a sideline either. For that matter, nobody can even sell bare boxes which is also useful to the BSD crowd.
I know I'm not going to pay for a preloaded Linux machine that still has a MS tax embedded in the price somewhere.
As part of a $1500 machine it is trivial. When a $50 OS is in a $300 machine, it becomes far more significant. Sure, typical Slashdotters won't find much to like in those $300 machines but the nastiest of them would easily outperform the K6-2 500Mhz rig I ran for four years. I've seen bargain machines as low as $269. That $50 is just the OS. That is just so the machine boots. If you want to actually do anything with the machine after it boots count on spending at least $300 for a minimal suite of productivity apps and a game or two. The bargain machine doesn't look like such a bargain at that point.
A kiss tune works great too. SCO's sorry mush is going to fubared when the courts and Linux plaintiffs get through with them.
Knoppix does (you want the media in the reader before you boot it though). And from what I read Mandrake does but I had a real love/hate relationship with Mandrake when I used it. I loved that hardware was detected and Just Worked which seems to be what you want. On the other hand, Mandrake was just..flaky. I'd get media I couldn't unmount, packages I couldn't easily manage and video driver crashes.
Distros like Lindows and Lycoris also purport to have easy installation but I have no personal experience of them. You can also do a hard drive install from Knoppix which works out well because the hd install is configured according to what was autodetected when you booted it. Mepis is even better for easy desktop installs because they added the commercial video drivers and easy install wizard. There both Debian based so you get Debian package management with autodetected hardware. Not bad! The only problem is they both chuck in everything but the kitchen sink. Good for a novice user but it grates on me since I like to build up from stripped installs to exactly what I want. Different strokes and all that.......
What you want is possible. The pieces are there but it is up to the distros to implement them. I wasn't trying to claim the command line is the answer to everything but it can be the quickest way to fix something if you know what you are doing.
they can start by making it easy for Linux to autodetect a USB joystick controller!
Knoppix detected my Saitek P880 just fine. Chuck these somewhere appropriate:
modprobe hid
modprobe joydev
Or just use your favorite means to load hid and joydev at startup. It isn't that hard.
While I'm at it, I'll point out that at least some mobos that support USB 2.0 also have a USB 1.1 controller crosswired to the same physical USB ports. You need to have both ehci and ohci/uhci drivers loaded for these. The ASUS P4S800 is one such board. Both ehci and ohci drivers must be loaded. The machine will use the appropriate driver depending on the usb device plugged into the port.
That is not in the least helpful. First off, your fund can be seen as obstruction of justice. Secondly, it furthers what seems to be the goal for this trojan: Defame the open source community. The OSS community should condemn the little bastard that did this, not protect him (her?).
If I knew the little punk that did this, I would cheerfully turn him in to SCO. Of course, I would fork over some of the bounty to anti-SCO legal efforts.
Please check that location for a more recent version. You may re-publish this material. You may excerpt it, reformat it and translate it as necessary for your presentation. You may not edit it to deliberately misrepresent my opinion.
Now I wonder why you put that in there?
You can prove the machine is at least minimally functional. It boots from the CD so that part is probably OK. There is probably some provision to install to the hard drive so you know you can boot from that. It would also provide minimum sanity checks of the system board, video, and RAM.
Personally, I think a Knoppix CD would be even better. But as someone else pointed out, there is no expectation that anyone will do much with FreeDOS or want support.
A friend of mine tried to destroy the engine in one by holding first gear with the pedal floored. The sucker wouldn't blow. Actually, he put that car through every kind of hell a teenager with sports car envy can put an econobox through.
I think the Chevettes had uneven rather than uniformly bad quality. I've seen them last for years as daily drivers on their original powertrains. I've also heard of them dying after a few years of driving.
Isn't it nice that they have to wait for a whole XP service pack to be qualified and released before they can get an update to IE so they can block pop-ups, something that most other current browsers provide and some of those for a while.
They'll throw the word "innovation" around a lot and carry on as though they invented ad-blocking. Much like "hacker" no longer means "an adept with a love of technology for it's own sake". "Innovation" doesn't mean anything either. Anymore, it's just a nervous tic MS has. About these accusations you're abusing a monopoly.... "Innovation! Yeah! Yeah! We need to innovate." Is it not true that SCO is your proxy to attack Linux and Open Source? "Um! Um! Um! Innovate! Innovate!" Try it and see. Fluster MS the least bit and a Tourette's-like flood of "Innovation!" comes pouring out of them.
Does that mean Mozilla 1.6 is capable of interacting with ASP.NET web applications typically only accessible from Internet Explorer (i.e. those using Windows Authentication)? Are they (NTLM/WA) one and the same?
The answers to your questions are maybe and no. As far as browsers are concerned, NTLM is an authentication protocol. If your browser or proxy can't speak it then you don't get in the site. Since NTLM is often used to secure IIS based web apps then it would keep older non-MS browsers out.
If the site is otherwise plain ole HTML, javascript, and plugins then this new Mozilla will indeed let you access them. However, Windows web apps can also do things like embed COM objects directly in the page. Having NTLM authentication won't help when the browser is used to execute MS APIs.
Unless I've missed something in the world of Classic MacOS nobody is maintaining browsers for it. Mac OS 9 has also seen it's last release of IE as well. Netscape 7.0.2 and IE 5.1 seem to be the proverbial it. It bums me out too. I will have to maintain OS 8.6 and 9.2.2 machines for the forseeable future. That isn't the way I wanted it but that is the way it is. I would love to have browsers newer than a year and half old for these platforms. Oh well.
kpackage
Plus if this becomes common I'm sure a certain big software company will strongly suggest to desktop hardware manufacturers that booting from CD not be on by default.
That would also make it difficult to use the restore cds that come with most any new desktop machine today. It would generate more calls to OEM helpdesks. MS might suggest it (which I doubt) but the OEMs won't go for it.
I had the right idea but the wrong codebase. That settlement still screws up most of SCO's wilder claims.
MPlayerG2 is intended to be far more modular than mplayer. G2 is intended to be usable as a framework.
Assuming that SCO own the copyrights to SysV (and not Novell) then they are AT&Ts successors in interest to the code. AT&T settled a dispute involving that code base. That settlement will travel with the code regardless of who owns it. The parent poster is correct, it isn't a legal precedent in general. It sure as hell is one as far as Novell and (maybe) SCO is concerned.
At the very least, they are distributing kernel source while trying to encumber that source with restrictions the GPL doesn't permit. Even if they stopped distributing code today, they wouldn't be off the hook for past distribution.