My point is that Thiz has put a product out there that translates to horrible experience for a non-tech consumer. This is yet another problem for OSS - no quality control, at least in terms of packaging.
It sounds to me like Thiz is a second rate distro. There was a Slashdot discussion about those Fry's Thiz machines last week. It seemed to me that Fry's true intention is to sell a bare box that customers will install Windows on themselves. Thiz is just a way to make it boot up into something. They would have done better to just throw Knoppix CDs in the boxes. The customer can see that everything works and then get down to installing whatever OS. Anybody is Free to make a Linux distro; don't tar everybody with a Thiz brush.
In their own ways RedHat, Debian, SuSe, and others are deeply concerned about quality control. The Stable variant of Debian and the Enterprise variants of Suse and RedHat exemplify quality control. No, they aren't flashy but they damn well work. For that matter, I'll toss OpenBSD into that list. Those guys positively obsess over quality control.
In any case, you seem to have quality control mixed up with ease of learning. I gave up on Mandrake because even though it automagically configured and installed everything for me it was flaky as hell (7.x days). Mandrake machines made me feel like I was using Windows 98 again. Maybe they're better now but they lost me when I was willing to experiment with their stuff. I changed to Debian which wouldn't fit your criteria of "quality". To use a bad analogy, Mandrake was shinier and had more chrome but Debian had better fit and finish.
However, if MS ever devises a way to make billions using the Open Source model, you will see such a vast philosophical about-face and massive, unbearable, and inescapable ad campaign the likes of which the human race has never known.
Maybe a large multinational corporation has done just that. IBM tossed a billion with a "B" dollars into marketing and developing Linux. They claim to have "more than made it back". Perhaps it isn't the vaunted FOSS community that's led MS and Sun to create a kamikaze company. IBM makes money from sales, service, and hardware. It is almost no skin off their backs to be good Open Source citizens....if they can give Sun and especially MS a good hard screwing in the process so much the better. On the other hand, Sun and MS..especially MS...would have to completely reinvent themselves to exist in a FOSS world.
I think you've just figured out why IBM has cheerfully marketed OSS to the utter mortification of Sun and MS. The obvious next step for IBM is to quietly do some lobbying of their own.
Actually, they're attempting to meet their contractual obligations to their customers, which involves (according to their claims, for the sake of argument):
1. Distributing Linux's legally GPLed code. 2. Distributing their code which someone illegally copied into the GPLed code, but which isn't covered by ANY valid licence. 3. Conveying a licence to their customers to make getting, installing, and using that illegally copied code legal.
According to SCO, by no fault of their own someone else inserted vast amounts of their code into Linux, from which SCO (like many other companies) gained customers and revenue; if this were true, SCO shouldn't be forced to stop supporting their customers simply in order to stop someone else's infringement of their rights.
The GPL states:
7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. 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. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.
SCO cannot simultaneously meet their obligations to their customers and the other kernel developers. SCO's copyrights are NOT more important than the other copyright holders with a stake in the kernel. They cannot simultaneously attack and distribute Linux. Too bad. Period. They can try their BS theory on for size but it will not avail them against kernel contributers suing for copyright infringement when they start harrassing end-users.
As Caldera, SCO distributed Linux for years and actively contributed to its development. IBM and RedHat's lawyers will have a field day with that one. How could SCO have been so oblivious to the contents of a kernel they were actively contributing to? Basically, this makes their "we had no idea our stuff was in Linux" attack useless.
Because the waters have been muddied, the GPL won't be the supreme club to beat SCO with but it is far from useless. SCO's hands are extremely dirty and they cannot steal the copyrights of others to defend their own. As others have said, SHOW US THE CODE AND IT WILL BE REMOVED. That is, if they truly own the code in question. They only have themselves to blame for any so-called damages .
This seems to be possibly the most useful assertion SCO has made. I think there is general agreement that if a person introduces code into the GPL, but does not hold the copyright on that code, that that code is not actually covered by the GPL. Instead, it is covered by copyright law.
Strictly speaking, the included code would still be covered by the BSD license. However, the BSD license is explicitly designed to allow so licensed code to be included in works with more restrictive licenses. More to the point, if someone wanted to go to the trouble he could excerpt out all of the BSD code in Linux and distribute it in BSD compliant ways that are not GPL compliant.
However, the BSD license would not infect the GPL code anymore than the GPL can infect other code. The GPLed work as a whole can still be distributed legally and the GPL can be enforced on the work as a whole.
This what is meant by the phrase "GPL compatibility". Basically, the GPL can function as a container for code with less restrictive licenses as long as the terms of those licenses are obeyed. In the case of the SGI code, some hapless coder failed to include the original copyright notices. It is SGI who was sloppy not the kernel maintainers as a whole although it should be removed or properly attributed in the 2.4 tree asap.
They've also been saying that GPLing your code is tantamount to putting it in the public domain. I say that we put extra napalm in our flamethrowers and even more lead in our cluebats.
You and I wish. I've been following it for weeks, and it just refuse to drop. Too little volyme! None sane wants to touch this one, which makes it easy for insiders and others to manipulate it. See for instance all the tape-painting at the end of the day. Small lots someone is basically selling to himself just to push the stock up before closing, giving it a "nice" start-end value, not representative of the day as a whole.
Maybe that explains why their stock price looks a fibrillating heart EKG. The price pump is wearing out and makes a random jagged spiky trace before flatlining. Now there's an analogy I like.
beep beep beep.....
"....and in closing. The plaintiff has almost utterly failed to substantiate any of their original complaints. Furthermore, in all my years on the bench I have never heard such trite arguments.......the defendants counterclaims are deeply substantiated.........clear damage to IBM's business and standing....."
If you can find a few more people who have gotten these letters, see if you can get criminal RICO charges filed. It's my understanding that a consistant pattern of behaivor is the grounds for RICO charges. They refuse to show their evidence and are extorting money prior to the major trials that are needed to settle the issue.
The civil charges are nice but I'd like to see Darl's reaction to possible prison time.
But I would be surprised if they ever find any proof.
Agreed.
I seriously doubt there is any sort of smoking gun on paper. If MS or Sun was directly involved, then it was some board level people in a face to face meeting. The only remotely possible way I could see that coming out is if the rumored push for RICO charges got some steam or maybe an SEC probe. Basically, a weak SCO sister would be offered a deal to roll over his boardroom butt buddies or be the scapegoat who gets to go to pound-me-in-the-ass prison. I don't see that happening and I don't see any reporters digging up anything either.
One way or another those jokers are done. Nobody is going to do business with people who consider contracts weapons any longer than they have to. Assuming SCO does their job and kills Linux, Sun and MS will finish them off. SCO would just turn on them next. Do business with SCO and you'll get sued. Everybody knows it.
Agreed lots of things could happen. I don't think SCO's survival is going to be one of them.
Perhaps we as a community should stop trying to mimic existing applications and begin innovating instead.
If the development trend goes that way, then we'll start hearing "For Linux to be accepted in the home and enterprise it must be much more like Windows". There'll be whinging for innovation and there'll be whinging for re-implentation. Could it be that maybe developers will work on what they want to and ignore the pundits? P
I think SCO needs to get some new gaskets for their stock price pump. The motor on it is running faster and faster but it takes all the running they can do to stay in one place. See what I mean?
With this announcement, I think smoke is starting to come out of the motor too.
Knoppix is a "LiveCD" Linux distribution based on Debian that runs entirely from a booted CD-ROM. It has excellent hardware detection and if all goes well it will detect PCMCIA, network, sound, and video hardware then boot straight to a desktop. Many people use it for a rescue CD (I even retrieve data from horked up Windows machines with it). It is also a good Linux compatibility checker. It your case, it can help you figure out a good X configuration.
The chances are good that Knoppix (www.knoppix.de) will get the machine to a desktop. Assuming that it does, make some notes.
#lsmod
will tell you what modules loaded.
The XF86Config-4 it settled on will be in/etc/X11/XF86Config-4
There will also be any number of helpful hints in the/etc directory. You could just use Knoppix' (purposefully hidden) hard drive install feature and update to the latest Debian. If Debian isn't you're cup of tea then you will at least have some good hints on how to proceed with another distro.
Most of the SCO executives are still holding on to quite a bit of stock. They're going to have to pump it a few more times to get rid of it. Now the license announcement is causing slow recovery of the price but in real terms, the price has plateaued and more hammers are going to fall on them. SUSE has all but announced they're cooking up something nasty, Sony and other consumer electronics firms aren't going to want to pay for their bogus licenses. Last but not least, every kernel contributor is a bomb that could go off at any time. Some of them may even have money for ruinious countersuits of their own.
So what to do? They would have a hard time topping themselves in the outrageous statement department. I see at least four more pumping actions they can pull. They can loudly announce that they will "soon" be filing suit against large corporate users. When the price flattens out again, then they can actually file some of them. Then it's loud announcement time again. This time they'll bleat that individual users and small organizations are being sued. Then they can actually sue a few.
They're like a turd on the ground. Yeah, we'll be able to squash it but the smell will stick to our shoes for a loooong while.
IBM is asserting that SCO's copyright violation is causing them damage. They're separate but related. The GPL lays out how to comply with licensed code. The particular way that SCO is breaching the license is causing IBM damages (threatening their customers, extorting them for licenses the GPL says they can't sell, etc.). The GPL doesn't mandate the penalty for damages but it can open the door to claim them.
Hmm, interestiong, you can not ask licensence money for GPL software, but you can sue for irreparable damage, even for software you dont own. isnt this exactly the thing SCO is doing
Er..no. The operative phrases are: SCO has taken source code made available by IBM under the GPL and an injunction prohibiting SCO from its continuing and threatened breaches of the GPL.
IBM is doing nothing more than asserting the rights the GPL gives them. SCO is trying to claim the work of all the kernel developers under terms they didn't authorize. It's the GPL that's giving IBM the power to countersue for copyright violation. Its supposed to work this way.
And while you can't ask for license money, one can certainly sell GPLed code or at least develop it in the first place for a commission.
IBM's lawyers are not out to defend the GPL, they are out to defend IBM.
True but IBM truely are composed of litigious bastards. IBM had litigation down to a science before Daryl was even in diapers. Now these profession lawyering bastards seem to feel that GPL would make a fine clue-by-four to administer an old fashioned country ass-whipping to McBride and Sontag. I find that at least a little heartening.
I believe this would be the same if I took a GPL program, heavily modified it and improved it and sold it in a proprietary manner. They could not force me to publish my changes. They could make me pay damages so high I might decide I would rather publish, but the choice to pay or publish would remain mine.
Of particular interest in litigation would be any profit the proprietized GPLed program made. Whether the copyright owner would have made money or not isn't the issue. The issue would be that you profited from use of his property. Anybody know how gains from such use are handled by courts?
And yes, you're correct. The outcome of misappropiating GPLed software isn't necessarily that the whole work becomes GPLed. It is an option when settling with a copyright holder. That many GPL violators have taken that option doesn't make it a foregone conclusion. I think when it comes down to it, violators find it cheaper to comply with the GPL rather than writing the copyright holder(s) a large check for a different license or fighting it in court and paying their lawyer and the copyright holder.
On one hand, MS wants this to continue damaging Linux as long as possible. On the other hand their lawyers are no dummies. I'm sure some IBM execs are still hacked off about OS/2 and would like some payback. IBM's countersuit is as devastating as it gets. I doubt MS want to be anywhere near SCO when their chickens come home to roost. This could be a way for MS to feed them more money under the table to keep the lawsuit/fud machine going. Basically, MS will keep feeding them money as long as McBride and Sontag can at least keep quiet about at least one thing.
The big proprietary vendors have been leaning on governments lately to enforce copyrights. How is your small to medium sized business going to pay for those licenses when the Indian equivalent of the BSA raids you? For that matter, suppose a few of those Bombay CD vendors got chucked in the pokey or least hit with huge fines. That $1.47 situation could change in a hurry if the right politicians over there were properly motivated.
Maybe passing up the "free" Windows is a smarter choice than it looks.
At Pete's Bar and Grill, you'll pay about 10 bucks for a beer, burger and fries. At Petro's Cocktail Grille, you'll pay about a hundred bucks for a tiny glass of white wine and a plate with a single sprig of parsely in some artistically swirled sauce combination.
There are also false "grilles" which still serve beer, burgers, and fries but are cleaner and with better decor to throw you off. You'll find a lot of guys in ties in them.
What doesn't kill you can still leave you maimed and crippled. The same goes for Linux.
Therapy will include new and revised licenses that take lessons from this into account. If GPL trolls think they have something to be hacked off about then they haven't seen anything yet. Case in point, Perens in his "State of the Union" speech mentioned "mutual defense" clauses in licenses that pull usage/distribution rights to all covered free code if a project gets legally harassed.
People calling tech support lines have bought a product which is meant to do something. The fact that they can't work it out even when everything is working is the fault of a bad UI - not the users.
There is a major point you're overlooking that even the best UI will never fix. Photoshop will not make someone who can't draw an artist. Cakewalk will not make a musician out of a tin ear. CAD/CAM software won't make instant engineers and DTP software does not create instant pro magazine publishers.
Many users are basically expecting the computer to do all of the thinking for them when in reality all they can do is automate drudgery. Non-trivial tasks have skillsets and computers can't always paper that over.
There aren't enough outstanding shares for a hostile takeover. Most of the company is owned by the upper management and the Canopy Group. In fact, the low number of shares availiable to speculators helps inflate the stock price.
Slashdot Mirror
My point is that Thiz has put a product out there that translates to horrible experience for a non-tech consumer. This is yet another problem for OSS - no quality control, at least in terms of packaging.
It sounds to me like Thiz is a second rate distro. There was a Slashdot discussion about those Fry's Thiz machines last week. It seemed to me that Fry's true intention is to sell a bare box that customers will install Windows on themselves. Thiz is just a way to make it boot up into something. They would have done better to just throw Knoppix CDs in the boxes. The customer can see that everything works and then get down to installing whatever OS. Anybody is Free to make a Linux distro; don't tar everybody with a Thiz brush.
In their own ways RedHat, Debian, SuSe, and others are deeply concerned about quality control. The Stable variant of Debian and the Enterprise variants of Suse and RedHat exemplify quality control. No, they aren't flashy but they damn well work. For that matter, I'll toss OpenBSD into that list. Those guys positively obsess over quality control.
In any case, you seem to have quality control mixed up with ease of learning. I gave up on Mandrake because even though it automagically configured and installed everything for me it was flaky as hell (7.x days). Mandrake machines made me feel like I was using Windows 98 again. Maybe they're better now but they lost me when I was willing to experiment with their stuff. I changed to Debian which wouldn't fit your criteria of "quality". To use a bad analogy, Mandrake was shinier and had more chrome but Debian had better fit and finish.
However, if MS ever devises a way to make billions using the Open Source model, you will see such a vast philosophical about-face and massive, unbearable, and inescapable ad campaign the likes of which the human race has never known.
..especially MS...would have to completely reinvent themselves to exist in a FOSS world.
Maybe a large multinational corporation has done just that. IBM tossed a billion with a "B" dollars into marketing and developing Linux. They claim to have "more than made it back". Perhaps it isn't the vaunted FOSS community that's led MS and Sun to create a kamikaze company. IBM makes money from sales, service, and hardware. It is almost no skin off their backs to be good Open Source citizens....if they can give Sun and especially MS a good hard screwing in the process so much the better. On the other hand, Sun and MS
I think you've just figured out why IBM has cheerfully marketed OSS to the utter mortification of Sun and MS. The obvious next step for IBM is to quietly do some lobbying of their own.
Actually, they're attempting to meet their contractual obligations to their customers, which involves (according to their claims, for the sake of argument):
1. Distributing Linux's legally GPLed code.
2. Distributing their code which someone illegally copied into the GPLed code, but which isn't covered by ANY valid licence.
3. Conveying a licence to their customers to make getting, installing, and using that illegally copied code legal.
According to SCO, by no fault of their own someone else inserted vast amounts of their code into Linux, from which SCO (like many other companies) gained customers and revenue; if this were true, SCO shouldn't be forced to stop supporting their customers simply in order to stop someone else's infringement of their rights.
The GPL states:
7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent
infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues),
conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or
otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not
excuse you from the conditions of this License. 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. For example, if a patent
license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by
all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then
the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to
refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.
SCO cannot simultaneously meet their obligations to their customers and the other kernel developers. SCO's copyrights are NOT more important than the other copyright holders with a stake in the kernel. They cannot simultaneously attack and distribute Linux. Too bad. Period. They can try their BS theory on for size but it will not avail them against kernel contributers suing for copyright infringement when they start harrassing end-users.
As Caldera, SCO distributed Linux for years and actively contributed to its development. IBM and RedHat's lawyers will have a field day with that one. How could SCO have been so oblivious to the contents of a kernel they were actively contributing to? Basically, this makes their "we had no idea our stuff was in Linux" attack useless.
Because the waters have been muddied, the GPL won't be the supreme club to beat SCO with but it is far from useless. SCO's hands are extremely dirty and they cannot steal the copyrights of others to defend their own. As others have said, SHOW US THE CODE AND IT WILL BE REMOVED. That is, if they truly own the code in question. They only have themselves to blame for any so-called damages .
This seems to be possibly the most useful assertion SCO has made. I think there is general agreement that if a person introduces code into the GPL, but does not hold the copyright on that code, that that code is not actually covered by the GPL. Instead, it is covered by copyright law.
Strictly speaking, the included code would still be covered by the BSD license. However, the BSD license is explicitly designed to allow so licensed code to be included in works with more restrictive licenses. More to the point, if someone wanted to go to the trouble he could excerpt out all of the BSD code in Linux and distribute it in BSD compliant ways that are not GPL compliant.
However, the BSD license would not infect the GPL code anymore than the GPL can infect other code. The GPLed work as a whole can still be distributed legally and the GPL can be enforced on the work as a whole.
This what is meant by the phrase "GPL compatibility". Basically, the GPL can function as a container for code with less restrictive licenses as long as the terms of those licenses are obeyed. In the case of the SGI code, some hapless coder failed to include the original copyright notices. It is SGI who was sloppy not the kernel maintainers as a whole although it should be removed or properly attributed in the 2.4 tree asap.
They've also been saying that GPLing your code is tantamount to putting it in the public domain. I say that we put extra napalm in our flamethrowers and even more lead in our cluebats.
I proudly own a 2x4 block of hardwood, that I will donate to the cause.
Put a handle on it and it would make a pretty good cluestick for Darl.
You and I wish. I've been following it for weeks, and it just refuse to drop. Too little volyme! None sane wants to touch this one, which makes it easy for insiders and others to manipulate it. See for instance all the tape-painting at the end of the day. Small lots someone is basically selling to himself just to push the stock up before closing, giving it a "nice" start-end value, not representative of the day as a whole.
. .
Maybe that explains why their stock price looks a fibrillating heart EKG. The price pump is wearing out and makes a random jagged spiky trace before flatlining. Now there's an analogy I like.
beep beep beep.....
"....and in closing. The plaintiff has almost utterly failed to substantiate any of their original complaints. Furthermore, in all my years on the bench I have never heard such trite arguments.......the defendants counterclaims are deeply substantiated.........clear damage to IBM's business and standing....."
beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee......
If you can find a few more people who have gotten these letters, see if you can get criminal RICO charges filed. It's my understanding that a consistant pattern of behaivor is the grounds for RICO charges. They refuse to show their evidence and are extorting money prior to the major trials that are needed to settle the issue.
The civil charges are nice but I'd like to see Darl's reaction to possible prison time.
But I would be surprised if they ever find any proof.
Agreed.
I seriously doubt there is any sort of smoking gun on paper. If MS or Sun was directly involved, then it was some board level people in a face to face meeting. The only remotely possible way I could see that coming out is if the rumored push for RICO charges got some steam or maybe an SEC probe. Basically, a weak SCO sister would be offered a deal to roll over his boardroom butt buddies or be the scapegoat who gets to go to pound-me-in-the-ass prison. I don't see that happening and I don't see any reporters digging up anything either.
We all might be running Sconix by then.
One way or another those jokers are done. Nobody is going to do business with people who consider contracts weapons any longer than they have to. Assuming SCO does their job and kills Linux, Sun and MS will finish them off. SCO would just turn on them next. Do business with SCO and you'll get sued. Everybody knows it.
Agreed lots of things could happen. I don't think SCO's survival is going to be one of them.
Perhaps we as a community should stop trying to mimic existing applications and begin innovating instead.
If the development trend goes that way, then we'll start hearing "For Linux to be accepted in the home and enterprise it must be much more like Windows". There'll be whinging for innovation and there'll be whinging for re-implentation. Could it be that maybe developers will work on what they want to and ignore the pundits? P
And you'll get an ethernet card for a IIe where?
Just use a USB ethernet card............
And you'll get a USB adaptor for a IIe where?
I think SCO needs to get some new gaskets for their stock price pump. The motor on it is running faster and faster but it takes all the running they can do to stay in one place. See what I mean?
With this announcement, I think smoke is starting to come out of the motor too.
Knoppix is a "LiveCD" Linux distribution based on Debian that runs entirely from a booted CD-ROM. It has excellent hardware detection and if all goes well it will detect PCMCIA, network, sound, and video hardware then boot straight to a desktop. Many people use it for a rescue CD (I even retrieve data from horked up Windows machines with it). It is also a good Linux compatibility checker. It your case, it can help you figure out a good X configuration.
/etc/X11/XF86Config-4
/etc directory. You could just use Knoppix' (purposefully hidden) hard drive install feature and update to the latest Debian. If Debian isn't you're cup of tea then you will at least have some good hints on how to proceed with another distro.
The chances are good that Knoppix (www.knoppix.de) will get the machine to a desktop. Assuming that it does, make some notes.
#lsmod
will tell you what modules loaded.
The XF86Config-4 it settled on will be in
There will also be any number of helpful hints in the
Most of the SCO executives are still holding on to quite a bit of stock. They're going to have to pump it a few more times to get rid of it. Now the license announcement is causing slow recovery of the price but in real terms, the price has plateaued and more hammers are going to fall on them. SUSE has all but announced they're cooking up something nasty, Sony and other consumer electronics firms aren't going to want to pay for their bogus licenses. Last but not least, every kernel contributor is a bomb that could go off at any time. Some of them may even have money for ruinious countersuits of their own.
So what to do? They would have a hard time topping themselves in the outrageous statement department. I see at least four more pumping actions they can pull. They can loudly announce that they will "soon" be filing suit against large corporate users. When the price flattens out again, then they can actually file some of them. Then it's loud announcement time again. This time they'll bleat that individual users and small organizations are being sued. Then they can actually sue a few.
They're like a turd on the ground. Yeah, we'll be able to squash it but the smell will stick to our shoes for a loooong while.
IBM is asserting that SCO's copyright violation is causing them damage. They're separate but related. The GPL lays out how to comply with licensed code. The particular way that SCO is breaching the license is causing IBM damages (threatening their customers, extorting them for licenses the GPL says they can't sell, etc.). The GPL doesn't mandate the penalty for damages but it can open the door to claim them.
Hmm, interestiong, you can not ask licensence money for GPL software, but you can sue for irreparable damage, even for software you dont own. isnt this exactly the thing SCO is doing
Er..no. The operative phrases are: SCO has taken source code made available by IBM under the GPL and an injunction prohibiting SCO from its continuing and threatened breaches of the GPL.
IBM is doing nothing more than asserting the rights the GPL gives them. SCO is trying to claim the work of all the kernel developers under terms they didn't authorize. It's the GPL that's giving IBM the power to countersue for copyright violation. Its supposed to work this way.
And while you can't ask for license money, one can certainly sell GPLed code or at least develop it in the first place for a commission.
IBM's lawyers are not out to defend the GPL, they are out to defend IBM.
True but IBM truely are composed of litigious bastards. IBM had litigation down to a science before Daryl was even in diapers. Now these profession lawyering bastards seem to feel that GPL would make a fine clue-by-four to administer an old fashioned country ass-whipping to McBride and Sontag. I find that at least a little heartening.
I believe this would be the same if I took a GPL program, heavily modified it and improved it and sold it in a proprietary manner. They could not force me to publish my changes. They could make me pay damages so high I might decide I would rather publish, but the choice to pay or publish would remain mine.
Of particular interest in litigation would be any profit the proprietized GPLed program made. Whether the copyright owner would have made money or not isn't the issue. The issue would be that you profited from use of his property. Anybody know how gains from such use are handled by courts?
And yes, you're correct. The outcome of misappropiating GPLed software isn't necessarily that the whole work becomes GPLed. It is an option when settling with a copyright holder. That many GPL violators have taken that option doesn't make it a foregone conclusion. I think when it comes down to it, violators find it cheaper to comply with the GPL rather than writing the copyright holder(s) a large check for a different license or fighting it in court and paying their lawyer and the copyright holder.
On one hand, MS wants this to continue damaging Linux as long as possible. On the other hand their lawyers are no dummies. I'm sure some IBM execs are still hacked off about OS/2 and would like some payback. IBM's countersuit is as devastating as it gets. I doubt MS want to be anywhere near SCO when their chickens come home to roost. This could be a way for MS to feed them more money under the table to keep the lawsuit/fud machine going. Basically, MS will keep feeding them money as long as McBride and Sontag can at least keep quiet about at least one thing.
The big proprietary vendors have been leaning on governments lately to enforce copyrights. How is your small to medium sized business going to pay for those licenses when the Indian equivalent of the BSA raids you? For that matter, suppose a few of those Bombay CD vendors got chucked in the pokey or least hit with huge fines. That $1.47 situation could change in a hurry if the right politicians over there were properly motivated.
Maybe passing up the "free" Windows is a smarter choice than it looks.
At Pete's Bar and Grill, you'll pay about 10 bucks for a beer, burger and fries. At Petro's Cocktail Grille, you'll pay about a hundred bucks for a tiny glass of white wine and a plate with a single sprig of parsely in some artistically swirled sauce combination.
There are also false "grilles" which still serve beer, burgers, and fries but are cleaner and with better decor to throw you off. You'll find a lot of guys in ties in them.
What doesn't kill you can still leave you maimed and crippled. The same goes for Linux.
Therapy will include new and revised licenses that take lessons from this into account. If GPL trolls think they have something to be hacked off about then they haven't seen anything yet. Case in point, Perens in his "State of the Union" speech mentioned "mutual defense" clauses in licenses that pull usage/distribution rights to all covered free code if a project gets legally harassed.
People calling tech support lines have bought a product which is meant to do something. The fact that they can't work it out even when everything is working is the fault of a bad UI - not the users.
There is a major point you're overlooking that even the best UI will never fix. Photoshop will not make someone who can't draw an artist. Cakewalk will not make a musician out of a tin ear. CAD/CAM software won't make instant engineers and DTP software does not create instant pro magazine publishers.
Many users are basically expecting the computer to do all of the thinking for them when in reality all they can do is automate drudgery. Non-trivial tasks have skillsets and computers can't always paper that over.
There aren't enough outstanding shares for a hostile takeover. Most of the company is owned by the upper management and the Canopy Group. In fact, the low number of shares availiable to speculators helps inflate the stock price.