And one more thing, now that the OS and Browser are one, what happens to the dumb people who install Hotbar, Kazaa, BonziBuddy, Gator, NewDotNet, Xupiter and other spyware that smashes IE to bits? Now that the browser is even more tightly integrated, we will find that the computer won't boot at all. Even to back up data we need.
In effect, this is already the case. Although I have seen scumware do hideous things to Windows boxes they still booted. They didn't run for crap until I Adawared or theraputically reinstalled them but they booted. The only thing that is going to change is that IE will not be a separately downloadable package. They're only removing particular upgrade/install options from IE. This is not a fundamental change. IE is already embedded in MS oses.
if aol was smart, they would start their own linux distro, netscape linux and take advantage of this.
The AOL part of AOL Time Warner is no longer in charge. Sure some old AOL stalwarts would like to do just that but they aren't going to be permitted to make the attempt. At best, AOL will be used as a loss leader for pushing TW content or maybe even a frontend to RoadRunner. Time Warner has zero interest in competing with MS. AOL is going to be nothing more than a bad dream to them.
The only silver lining is that we'll still have the Mozilla codebase to play with. Be grateful.
I though AOL's browser on Windows just wrapped the IE dlls. Of course, MS can pull the ole undocumented API trick with this but I really don't believe that Time Warner could give a rat's ass. 3/4 of a billion is the only real positive gain they've seen on that side of the ledger. Before too long they are going to drop the "AOL" from their company name. I wouldn't be surprised anyway. AOL lives or most likely dies on it's own. Time Warner just wants to get back to being the "other Disney".
I said it was deprecated not dead. Deprecated means that Apple is not going to support new developments for OS 9. They are already producing new macs that will NOT boot OS 9. OS 9 may not be dead yet but Apple is cutting off it's oxygen regardless of the fact that it has die-hard users.
This fact has nothing to do with how great OS 9 is compared to X. This deprecation is something Apple has to do. OS 9 is a direct descendant of the original early eighties Mac OS. It's loaded to the gills with cruft and I've even heard that Apple can't build it from source anymore. It's basically an OS 8 that has the hell patched out of it during boot.
New customers will expect an OS that has modern memory management, job control, preemptive multitasking and so forth. They may not know what these things are but they have to be there for an OS to "feel" reliable and robust. They can't be added to an OS after the fact. They have to be engineered in from the start. OS 9 will never have these things.
If Apple is a slave to die-hard 9 users then they won't get any new ones. For that matter, new users will buy newer Macs that provide a better experience with X than an older iMac that's had it shoehorned in.
The fact that an OS has a command line doesn't magically make it user unfriendly. Mom and Grandma never have to touch it on X and it actually makes an OS that's friendly to us as well as Mom. Ever have to add a lot of users to an AppleShareIP machine with the stock tools? It's a major pain. An adduser script is far friendlier. This is something Mom will never do but I have to. Unfriendly to admins does not mean unfriendly to users. Lack of a command line is NOT a feature.
OS 9 is not dead yet but it will be sooner rather than later. Since new machines won't boot it that means app vendors like Quark better get their crap together.
Seen any recent builds of Mozilla for Mac OS 9 recently?
I haven't seen much of anything new for OS 9. It's a deprecated OS. However, Netscape 7.02 is availiable for OS 9 although I wouldn't be surprised if that's absolute last one. Who is going to want it bad enough to maintain the OS 9 build system after this? There hasn't been a new IE release for OS 9 in a long time either. OS 9 is on the EKG and everyone is watching that sucker and waiting for it to flatline already.
I like "pushed" better. I like "jabbed in the ass with a cattle prod" even more. The icing on the cake is the entire 'nix community chanting "jump!, jump!, jump!".
I think one of the BSDs would have been a better choice for that purpose. I had to maintain an OS X Server box for awhile. This was the somewhat flakey product Apple had out for a couple of years before 10.0.0 came out. I always thought of it as an expensive pre-beta. I came at it as a tech accustomed to Linux. My very first Samba install was on that machine...talk about a trial by fire. Anyway, I got tripped up quite a bit by the differences between BSD and GNU style userlands.
I got used to it after awhile. It was basically a case of "well it's just like Linux only different". Anyway, a (NFO)BSD user would have been right at home immediately (although they would've bitched mightily about software packaging..even now a ports-like system is a bag hung on the side of it's newer kindred oses). I had an adjustment period.
About four years ago, I had a version of PCAE that had a timing problem in Win 9x. Basically games ran at four times normal speed if executed in Windows. To my friends this was not a bug it was a feature. Our favorite game with it was Ludicrous Speed Combat. Instead of shot......shot......hit opposing tank...let's pause for the spin...shoot again. It was shot!,shot!,hit tank!..hit tank!..hit tank!. Okay now you put me through a wall so you can't play kick-the-can with me anymore! It's payback time! Uh oh, the score's flashing, I'll only have ten seconds to for payback. Repeat four or five times.
TONS of fun. Pity there wasn't a way that four people could have had a good simulated paddle. Ludicrous Speed Warlords would have been the bomb.
Around here, I don't think citing recording industry practices is a good way to make your points. That system favors a few artists in a lottery winning like way while consigning most others to bargain bindom and no way to ever work in music again. Google around some. The standard recording industry contract is the result of some 60 years of lawyers sitting around trying to design the perfect mousetrap. That system creates a few gonzo huge winners and vast multitude of losers. If you want to argue that somebody would have to be out of his mind to sign such a contract then I'll agree with that.
Anyway, that is all secondary. You're talking about greed. Basically, the hypothetical record deal you cite is all about the ability to buy the third Ferrari, a six month supply of the finest Peruvian flake, or to pay off that multimillion dollar gambling debt. It's an extremely bad example. I'm talking about survival. A large company with sufficiently obnoxious non-competes make its former employees completely unable to work in the tech field at all for anything from three months to three years. Maybe you can go without a paycheck that long. I can't.
Non-competes require me to sign away at some of the ability to freely practice my trade. I would have a extremely difficult time supporting my family with the kind of jobs many non-competes would leave me. The only mitigating factor is the scope of the employer's business. It isn't hard to avoid "competing" with small company with a limited scope of services. If you worked for a large company with wide multiple tiers of service and extra evil lawyers/management then you are done. You also seem to be talking about choice and honor. There is very little choice in this matter. For the most part, its either sign the dotted line or don't work. There is no dishonor in doing honest work to support a family. I never held a position where I could tell a competitor valuable things about my employers. I suspect this is true of most of us and tight NDAs are more appropriate when it isn't. I think the true purpose of non-competes is to make employment a one way street. They can hire and fire at will while leaving employees extremely constrained in finding another job. NDAs I can see, There is nothing honorable about what amounts to indentured servitude.
Shared Source does not permit a participant to compile it and see if it makes the same binaries his install CD's have. This is the simplest integrity check if you want to answer the question "Is the this full and correct source to the binary we are using." I also don't believe that participants have access to the dev teams that created the source in question. Its basically nothing but a huge wodge of look-but-don't-touch.
The most obnoxious Open Source licenses only allow project leaders to distribute modified code. Its not uncommon to distribute patch files which must be applied to a separately downloaded pristine source to make modified versions of things like djdns. Shared Source doesn't begin to aspire to even that level of utility. You can't patch it, verify binary identity, or reimplement it. At best, it can be used to answer specific questions about how a piece of software functions provided one believes it is the unabridged source to that software. I can't see it being useful for any sort of true code auditing and only of limited utility for code troubleshooting.
They are up to more than suing IBM. They are threatening every user of Linux and every seller of products and services based on LInux. If SCO were only talking trash about IBM then I would agree with you. At this point, they have threatened pretty much everybody and are doing damage in the process. They should either document their accusations or be made to pay in some way for the damage their trash talking is doing to Linux development and business.
If they sent me one of their cease and desist letters I would tell them to either substantiate the infringement in detail (no bullshit NDA either.. I didn't sign anything to use Linux now did I?) or go straight to hell and shut the fuck up.
All I stated was that I believe you should uphold your end of a contract.
When almost all employees require you to sign obnoxious contracts simply to survive then that ethic is bullshit. I for one am not going to work in a McDonalds simple because unavoidable non-competes leave no other option. You seem to think there is choice in this matter for techies. For the most part, there isn't. Shame on the parent poster for asserting his right to earn a living.
I think that's the first time I've ever seen Microsoft compared to Communism.
Personally, I think Communism has the same intelligent-conversation-ending abilities that Nazism does. It's the all-purpose right-wing/right-libertarian club.
I'll preface by saying that I have ambivalent feelings about RMS and the FSF. I think of the GPL and LGPL as tools which are appropriate for some goals but not others. That said, since SCO has not clearly stated what they believe infringes then this may have very little to do with the Linux kernel proper. It may well be that some of the their claims will be made against glibc or other FSF owned pieces. If in fact they do that then they will be staring down both barrels of an FSF countersuit. It's rather amusing actually. They could wind up suing each other for copyright violation. Should that happen, a little cash thrown the FSF's way would not be amiss. Not as a way of being an RMS fanboy but as a way to help slap these a-holes back to the Stone Age.
Of course, if it is about the kernel then they are open to a countersuit from members of the Linux kernel team. Sooner or later they will have to get down to brass tacks. If they do it over GPLed code they released then the owners get to smack them back. Let's make sure the good guys win.
...I remember my teacher saying "Computers do exactly what they're told, not necessarily what you want them to do."
And that is why my personal machine is always named Amelia-Bedelia. If you don't remember her, then google for it. My own theory is that Amelia must have been an early stealth project of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.
First off, SCO has footbulleted their IP seventeen different ways from sunday. This is just a rehash of the BSD legal baggage and it won't avail SCO anything against the likes of IBM. Two, they're claiming damages without revealing where in the gigs of code that make up a Linux distro where the problem is. Three, they picked on IBM which as someone else pointed out is like starting a fistfight with a train. Fourth, they've distributed this code themselves for YEARS; they just found out about this now. Fifth, what calls itself SCO was a Linux company that bought the old SCO IP from what now calls itself Tarantella....this does not look good. Sixth, Micorsoft is barred by past legal actions from touching that very codebase. There was a very loud legal debacle from their Xenix days. SCO's IP basically started out as Xenix.
SCO's baggage can easily hurt MS as much as it can help it. Such a move would be blatantly anticompetitive and they can still get in hot water for such things in Europe. SCO is like a plague ship at this point. I don't see MS getting anywhere near it. Some have surmised that MS is behind SCO's current frothing at the mouth. I don't think they're that dumb. The fallout if/when they're caught would be spectacular.
It's "Intellectual Property" that's a can of worms
on
What if SCO is Right?
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The same applies if the closed source static libraries included any code that wasn't legally kosher. What if the code weren't GPLed but instead made illegal use of a Microsoft SDK. The "can of worms" is equally nasty. The modern idea of Intellectual Property makes any development or use software a huuuuge can of worms. Weren't we all reading a couple of weeks ago that an MS database product violated some patents and that end users were likely to be held liable?
The GPL is not unique in this regard. The can of worms starts writhing the instant someone appropriates something that isn't theirs.
Re:SCO has Dirty Hands. Will not be able to collec
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SCO To Show Copied Code
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· Score: 2, Informative
This is simply false. Once you distribute your code under the GPL, you lose ALL CONTROL over that code PERMANENTLY. That is simply what the GPL is designed to do.
This is not entirely true. The original copyright holder of a GPLed work can do something no other distributor of that code can do. The owner can still fork the code under any license he chooses. He can also legally prevent anybody else from releasing derived works under anything but the GPL. This is a major basis of TrollTech's current business model. The XFree86 version of QT is GPLed but they also license it for closed programs. Granted someone could port the GPL QT to other platforms but it would still be GPL onlyTrollTech has the authority to license it otherwise.
This type of control is even used by some GPL critics to argue that it isn't "completely free". So which is it? A total permanent loss of control for anyone realeasing code under it or a fearsome utterly controlled straightjacket used to deny others freedom? I'll grant that the GPL is controversial in these parts but its critics can't have it both ways. I would say that the "utterly controlled straightjacket" has at least some arguable points going for it.
The only legal regime that your statement is true for is the Public Domain. Even the BSD Licenses (often held up as an exemplar of Total Freedom) allow legal recourse for plagiarism.
Debian runs on more arches than any other Linux distro. It takes some doing to get something as large and as complex as XFree86 running acceptably on all of them. No, "Debian should only worry about x86 because everybody uses it." is not the answer. If it wasn't for Debian, many users of alternate arches would be out in the cold.
I'll grant that KDE3 took way too long. There was much wrangling over the GCC 3 and glibc 2.3 transistions. However, I survived on unofficial ports for much of that time.
Strictly speaking a rather large flaw was found in the testing protocols. Now he is going out on a limb with: "This is enough to account for these differences, I suspect." He's bang on with: "They disabled last access time updating under windows. They didn't under Linux."
No, he can't say from that Windows and Linux have equivalent performance under those circumstances. However, neither can MS use these results to confirm Windows superiority. Disabling access time updating is known to be a large optimization for those who can do without it. If that methodology is typical of this study then it's likely that the claimed results are utterly worthless for any conclusion whatsoever.
The GPL is not some Evil Overlord's World Destroying Superweapon. GPL violation is copyright violation. Even if there is some language in the GPL concerning penalties for violation, it is up to a judge to set the penalty. The judge has more options than "make them GPL the whole thing". He could restrain distribution altogether. The violator could be made to pay for an alternative license to the code he's using. He could even be made to pay damages and to reimplement the code in question. Like any copyright violation, the Court will want to put an end to it. There's more than one way for them to do it.
Incidentally, discretely replacing such code may not necessarily work. A whistleblower could whip out a tainted code tree. Your developers might screw up and leave debugging symbols in old binaries. It would not be hard to prove in court that a sanitized code tree did not create a binary in dispute. The court may well see a code tree as business records to which the rules of evidence apply. "So Mr. Project Co-Ordinator, where is the source code that produced the exhibit in question?"
Yeah, getting the GPL stuff out your code tree would be a good idea. There's no ironclad way to prove it was never there.
Maybe Judge Wilson has a clue about BOTH the law and technical issues. Kazaa doesn't work the same way as Grokster meaning the Grokster guys had a leg to stand on and Kazaa doesn't.
Slashdot Mirror
And one more thing, now that the OS and Browser are one, what happens to the dumb people who install Hotbar, Kazaa, BonziBuddy, Gator, NewDotNet, Xupiter and other spyware that smashes IE to bits? Now that the browser is even more tightly integrated, we will find that the computer won't boot at all. Even to back up data we need.
In effect, this is already the case. Although I have seen scumware do hideous things to Windows boxes they still booted. They didn't run for crap until I Adawared or theraputically reinstalled them but they booted. The only thing that is going to change is that IE will not be a separately downloadable package. They're only removing particular upgrade/install options from IE. This is not a fundamental change. IE is already embedded in MS oses.
if aol was smart, they would start their own linux distro, netscape linux and take advantage of this.
The AOL part of AOL Time Warner is no longer in charge. Sure some old AOL stalwarts would like to do just that but they aren't going to be permitted to make the attempt. At best, AOL will be used as a loss leader for pushing TW content or maybe even a frontend to RoadRunner. Time Warner has zero interest in competing with MS. AOL is going to be nothing more than a bad dream to them.
The only silver lining is that we'll still have the Mozilla codebase to play with. Be grateful.
I though AOL's browser on Windows just wrapped the IE dlls. Of course, MS can pull the ole undocumented API trick with this but I really don't believe that Time Warner could give a rat's ass. 3/4 of a billion is the only real positive gain they've seen on that side of the ledger. Before too long they are going to drop the "AOL" from their company name. I wouldn't be surprised anyway. AOL lives or most likely dies on it's own. Time Warner just wants to get back to being the "other Disney".
I'll just start prostletyzing right now, and I should have a few more zombie zealots for you by morning.
Um....you have been and you are. That you're a Microsoftie makes no difference.
Jackass.
I said it was deprecated not dead. Deprecated means that Apple is not going to support new developments for OS 9. They are already producing new macs that will NOT boot OS 9. OS 9 may not be dead yet but Apple is cutting off it's oxygen regardless of the fact that it has die-hard users.
This fact has nothing to do with how great OS 9 is compared to X. This deprecation is something Apple has to do. OS 9 is a direct descendant of the original early eighties Mac OS. It's loaded to the gills with cruft and I've even heard that Apple can't build it from source anymore. It's basically an OS 8 that has the hell patched out of it during boot.
New customers will expect an OS that has modern memory management, job control, preemptive multitasking and so forth. They may not know what these things are but they have to be there for an OS to "feel" reliable and robust. They can't be added to an OS after the fact. They have to be engineered in from the start. OS 9 will never have these things.
If Apple is a slave to die-hard 9 users then they won't get any new ones. For that matter, new users will buy newer Macs that provide a better experience with X than an older iMac that's had it shoehorned in.
The fact that an OS has a command line doesn't magically make it user unfriendly. Mom and Grandma never have to touch it on X and it actually makes an OS that's friendly to us as well as Mom. Ever have to add a lot of users to an AppleShareIP machine with the stock tools? It's a major pain. An adduser script is far friendlier. This is something Mom will never do but I have to. Unfriendly to admins does not mean unfriendly to users. Lack of a command line is NOT a feature.
OS 9 is not dead yet but it will be sooner rather than later. Since new machines won't boot it that means app vendors like Quark better get their crap together.
Seen any recent builds of Mozilla for Mac OS 9 recently?
I haven't seen much of anything new for OS 9. It's a deprecated OS. However, Netscape 7.02 is availiable for OS 9 although I wouldn't be surprised if that's absolute last one. Who is going to want it bad enough to maintain the OS 9 build system after this? There hasn't been a new IE release for OS 9 in a long time either. OS 9 is on the EKG and everyone is watching that sucker and waiting for it to flatline already.
Or did I miss a story about AOL laying off the Netscape employees who work on Mozilla?
Give it a month or two.......
I like "pushed" better. I like "jabbed in the ass with a cattle prod" even more. The icing on the cake is the entire 'nix community chanting "jump!, jump!, jump!".
I think one of the BSDs would have been a better choice for that purpose. I had to maintain an OS X Server box for awhile. This was the somewhat flakey product Apple had out for a couple of years before 10.0.0 came out. I always thought of it as an expensive pre-beta. I came at it as a tech accustomed to Linux. My very first Samba install was on that machine...talk about a trial by fire. Anyway, I got tripped up quite a bit by the differences between BSD and GNU style userlands.
I got used to it after awhile. It was basically a case of "well it's just like Linux only different". Anyway, a (NFO)BSD user would have been right at home immediately (although they would've bitched mightily about software packaging..even now a ports-like system is a bag hung on the side of it's newer kindred oses). I had an adjustment period.
About four years ago, I had a version of PCAE that had a timing problem in Win 9x. Basically games ran at four times normal speed if executed in Windows. To my friends this was not a bug it was a feature. Our favorite game with it was Ludicrous Speed Combat. Instead of shot......shot......hit opposing tank...let's pause for the spin...shoot again. It was shot!,shot!,hit tank!..hit tank!..hit tank!. Okay now you put me through a wall so you can't play kick-the-can with me anymore! It's payback time! Uh oh, the score's flashing, I'll only have ten seconds to for payback. Repeat four or five times.
TONS of fun. Pity there wasn't a way that four people could have had a good simulated paddle. Ludicrous Speed Warlords would have been the bomb.
Around here, I don't think citing recording industry practices is a good way to make your points. That system favors a few artists in a lottery winning like way while consigning most others to bargain bindom and no way to ever work in music again. Google around some. The standard recording industry contract is the result of some 60 years of lawyers sitting around trying to design the perfect mousetrap. That system creates a few gonzo huge winners and vast multitude of losers. If you want to argue that somebody would have to be out of his mind to sign such a contract then I'll agree with that.
Anyway, that is all secondary. You're talking about greed. Basically, the hypothetical record deal you cite is all about the ability to buy the third Ferrari, a six month supply of the finest Peruvian flake, or to pay off that multimillion dollar gambling debt. It's an extremely bad example. I'm talking about survival. A large company with sufficiently obnoxious non-competes make its former employees completely unable to work in the tech field at all for anything from three months to three years. Maybe you can go without a paycheck that long. I can't.
Non-competes require me to sign away at some of the ability to freely practice my trade. I would have a extremely difficult time supporting my family with the kind of jobs many non-competes would leave me. The only mitigating factor is the scope of the employer's business. It isn't hard to avoid "competing" with small company with a limited scope of services. If you worked for a large company with wide multiple tiers of service and extra evil lawyers/management then you are done. You also seem to be talking about choice and honor. There is very little choice in this matter. For the most part, its either sign the dotted line or don't work. There is no dishonor in doing honest work to support a family. I never held a position where I could tell a competitor valuable things about my employers. I suspect this is true of most of us and tight NDAs are more appropriate when it isn't. I think the true purpose of non-competes is to make employment a one way street. They can hire and fire at will while leaving employees extremely constrained in finding another job. NDAs I can see, There is nothing honorable about what amounts to indentured servitude.
Shared Source does not permit a participant to compile it and see if it makes the same binaries his install CD's have. This is the simplest integrity check if you want to answer the question "Is the this full and correct source to the binary we are using." I also don't believe that participants have access to the dev teams that created the source in question. Its basically nothing but a huge wodge of look-but-don't-touch.
The most obnoxious Open Source licenses only allow project leaders to distribute modified code. Its not uncommon to distribute patch files which must be applied to a separately downloaded pristine source to make modified versions of things like djdns. Shared Source doesn't begin to aspire to even that level of utility. You can't patch it, verify binary identity, or reimplement it. At best, it can be used to answer specific questions about how a piece of software functions provided one believes it is the unabridged source to that software. I can't see it being useful for any sort of true code auditing and only of limited utility for code troubleshooting.
They are up to more than suing IBM. They are threatening every user of Linux and every seller of products and services based on LInux. If SCO were only talking trash about IBM then I would agree with you. At this point, they have threatened pretty much everybody and are doing damage in the process. They should either document their accusations or be made to pay in some way for the damage their trash talking is doing to Linux development and business.
If they sent me one of their cease and desist letters I would tell them to either substantiate the infringement in detail (no bullshit NDA either.. I didn't sign anything to use Linux now did I?) or go straight to hell and shut the fuck up.
All I stated was that I believe you should uphold your end of a contract.
When almost all employees require you to sign obnoxious contracts simply to survive then that ethic is bullshit. I for one am not going to work in a McDonalds simple because unavoidable non-competes leave no other option. You seem to think there is choice in this matter for techies. For the most part, there isn't. Shame on the parent poster for asserting his right to earn a living.
I think that's the first time I've ever seen Microsoft compared to Communism.
Personally, I think Communism has the same intelligent-conversation-ending abilities that Nazism does. It's the all-purpose right-wing/right-libertarian club.
I'll preface by saying that I have ambivalent feelings about RMS and the FSF. I think of the GPL and LGPL as tools which are appropriate for some goals but not others. That said, since SCO has not clearly stated what they believe infringes then this may have very little to do with the Linux kernel proper. It may well be that some of the their claims will be made against glibc or other FSF owned pieces. If in fact they do that then they will be staring down both barrels of an FSF countersuit. It's rather amusing actually. They could wind up suing each other for copyright violation. Should that happen, a little cash thrown the FSF's way would not be amiss. Not as a way of being an RMS fanboy but as a way to help slap these a-holes back to the Stone Age.
Of course, if it is about the kernel then they are open to a countersuit from members of the Linux kernel team. Sooner or later they will have to get down to brass tacks. If they do it over GPLed code they released then the owners get to smack them back. Let's make sure the good guys win.
And that is why my personal machine is always named Amelia-Bedelia. If you don't remember her, then google for it. My own theory is that Amelia must have been an early stealth project of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.
First off, SCO has footbulleted their IP seventeen different ways from sunday. This is just a rehash of the BSD legal baggage and it won't avail SCO anything against the likes of IBM. Two, they're claiming damages without revealing where in the gigs of code that make up a Linux distro where the problem is. Three, they picked on IBM which as someone else pointed out is like starting a fistfight with a train. Fourth, they've distributed this code themselves for YEARS; they just found out about this now. Fifth, what calls itself SCO was a Linux company that bought the old SCO IP from what now calls itself Tarantella....this does not look good. Sixth, Micorsoft is barred by past legal actions from touching that very codebase. There was a very loud legal debacle from their Xenix days. SCO's IP basically started out as Xenix.
SCO's baggage can easily hurt MS as much as it can help it. Such a move would be blatantly anticompetitive and they can still get in hot water for such things in Europe. SCO is like a plague ship at this point. I don't see MS getting anywhere near it. Some have surmised that MS is behind SCO's current frothing at the mouth. I don't think they're that dumb. The fallout if/when they're caught would be spectacular.
The same applies if the closed source static libraries included any code that wasn't legally kosher. What if the code weren't GPLed but instead made illegal use of a Microsoft SDK. The "can of worms" is equally nasty. The modern idea of Intellectual Property makes any development or use software a huuuuge can of worms. Weren't we all reading a couple of weeks ago that an MS database product violated some patents and that end users were likely to be held liable?
The GPL is not unique in this regard. The can of worms starts writhing the instant someone appropriates something that isn't theirs.
This is simply false. Once you distribute your code under the GPL, you lose ALL CONTROL over that code PERMANENTLY. That is simply what the GPL is designed to do.
This is not entirely true. The original copyright holder of a GPLed work can do something no other distributor of that code can do. The owner can still fork the code under any license he chooses. He can also legally prevent anybody else from releasing derived works under anything but the GPL. This is a major basis of TrollTech's current business model. The XFree86 version of QT is GPLed but they also license it for closed programs. Granted someone could port the GPL QT to other platforms but it would still be GPL only TrollTech has the authority to license it otherwise.
This type of control is even used by some GPL critics to argue that it isn't "completely free". So which is it? A total permanent loss of control for anyone realeasing code under it or a fearsome utterly controlled straightjacket used to deny others freedom? I'll grant that the GPL is controversial in these parts but its critics can't have it both ways. I would say that the "utterly controlled straightjacket" has at least some arguable points going for it.
The only legal regime that your statement is true for is the Public Domain. Even the BSD Licenses (often held up as an exemplar of Total Freedom) allow legal recourse for plagiarism.
dmaxwell@Amelia-Bedelia:~$ jstest /dev/js0 ... (interrupt to exit)
Joystick (Microsoft SideWinder GamePad) has 2 axes and 10 buttons. Driver version is 2.1.0.
Testing
Axes: 0: 0 1: 0 Buttons: 0:off 1:off 2:off 3:off 4:off 5:off 6:off 7:off 8:off 9:off
Debian runs on more arches than any other Linux distro. It takes some doing to get something as large and as complex as XFree86 running acceptably on all of them. No, "Debian should only worry about x86 because everybody uses it." is not the answer. If it wasn't for Debian, many users of alternate arches would be out in the cold.
I'll grant that KDE3 took way too long. There was much wrangling over the GCC 3 and glibc 2.3 transistions. However, I survived on unofficial ports for much of that time.
Strictly speaking a rather large flaw was found in the testing protocols. Now he is going out on a limb with: "This is enough to account for these differences, I suspect." He's bang on with: "They disabled last access time updating under windows. They didn't under Linux."
No, he can't say from that Windows and Linux have equivalent performance under those circumstances. However, neither can MS use these results to confirm Windows superiority. Disabling access time updating is known to be a large optimization for those who can do without it. If that methodology is typical of this study then it's likely that the claimed results are utterly worthless for any conclusion whatsoever.
The GPL is not some Evil Overlord's World Destroying Superweapon. GPL violation is copyright violation. Even if there is some language in the GPL concerning penalties for violation, it is up to a judge to set the penalty. The judge has more options than "make them GPL the whole thing". He could restrain distribution altogether. The violator could be made to pay for an alternative license to the code he's using. He could even be made to pay damages and to reimplement the code in question. Like any copyright violation, the Court will want to put an end to it. There's more than one way for them to do it.
Incidentally, discretely replacing such code may not necessarily work. A whistleblower could whip out a tainted code tree. Your developers might screw up and leave debugging symbols in old binaries. It would not be hard to prove in court that a sanitized code tree did not create a binary in dispute. The court may well see a code tree as business records to which the rules of evidence apply. "So Mr. Project Co-Ordinator, where is the source code that produced the exhibit in question?"
Yeah, getting the GPL stuff out your code tree would be a good idea. There's no ironclad way to prove it was never there.
Maybe Judge Wilson has a clue about BOTH the law and technical issues. Kazaa doesn't work the same way as Grokster meaning the Grokster guys had a leg to stand on and Kazaa doesn't.