It'd be nice if people RESEARCHED IT before slagging people off.
Hey, I guess you missed the quotes, or you're too lazy to click on the links to them, so I won't bother linking - I'll just reitterate the one that caused the big stir
- "obviously linux infringes hundreds of patents".
So, lets see what was wrong with that (again going over stuff that was said back on March 1st):
If its so obvious, why not give even 1 instance? As a lawyer, he should know that making unsubstantiated allegations
Its been 6 months since his March 1st "infringes hundreds of patents" claim, and he still hasn't backed it up with a single instance, even though lots of people have called bullshit on it;
It's not about protecting the trademark. Filing the paperwork, etc, was about protecting it. Blabbering about how people may have to pay up to 5k to use it, even though it won't even be granted for another month, is just stiffing up shit;
Sending letters out, even though the trademark hasn't even been granted yet (and people are free to oppose the grant) smacks of the same tactics another enemy of open source used - SCO. Remember how they sent out 1500 letters demanding license fees for an "intellectual IP license?"
A grant in the future doesn't automatically remove the rights of people whose use of the term has been tolerated to date - they may, in fact, have a better claim, as they can show they've been using it;
A grant in the future doesn't necessarily invalidate the rights of current users in other respects as well;
Sending out the letters was not just premature - it comes across as an attempt to get people to agree to something by threats because you don't have a leg to stand on (and since the mark hasn't been granted yet, he doesn't). Asking that people acknowledge that they are using the term under license, when the mark hasn't been granted, is BS. So I have no hesitation slagging the hack.
The whole thing doesn't pass the smell test. Linux Mark made a mistake using this guy. Whether they picked him, or he approached them, it still stinks, and the end result is going to be people doing the same thing as IBM did using the term AIX instead of Unix.
If you have a sublicensed trademark and discover that someone else is using the same or a confusingly similar mark, please
contact the other party and their trademark attorneys, not us
...
we will not get involved in any dispute between licensees.
If the patent is expired, then the application isn't infringing:-)
YOu can't infringe an expired patent, just like you can't infringe copyright on an expired copyright.
Also, after reading the patent, its' trivial to come up with a scheme that doesn't use the setuid bit, but achieves the same effect. Too bad the patent wasn't still valid - I could then patent an alternate method (except that I'm against software patents).
All right - lawyer and whore jokes time:-) Thank you for the inspiration...
Q. What's the difference between a whore and a lawyer?
A. A whore will stop fucking you once you're dead.
Q. Why is a whore more honest than a lawyer?
A. At least a whore's up front about who's getting fucked up the ass.
10 reasons why a whore better than a lawyer (or so I've heard:-)?
You know how much its' gonna cost up front;
It ain't gonna hurt - unless you're into that sort of stuff;
15 minutes with a lawyer will put a terrible load on your mind - 15 minutes with a whore will let you blow your load and relieve your mind;
After being with a whore, a quick shower will remove that sleezy feeling;
Your friends will look at you strangely if you tell them you paid a lawyer for sex;
If you're really, really desperate, you can always take a whore home to meet the parents...
Nobody ever fantasizes about doing it with 5 lawyers at once
You can always explain the incident with the whore to your friends by saying "well, she had big tits";
Its not as dangerous to catch your spouse cheating on you with a whore;
Lawyers don't swallow even when they're sucking you dry.
I have no problem with either the GPL or BSD licenses. Part of "freedom", from my point of view, is the freedom to choose the licensing scheme you're most comfortable with.
At the same time, I don't think linux would have been anywhere near as successful under a BSD license, and I like the way RMS sticks to his guns.
As for proprietary code - we won't know how good it is, because we can't see it. Open source has one advantage (I'm not being original here, I just don't know who to attribute the thought to) - you know other people are going to look at it, so you tend to make it look better.
There's a lot of my old code that I wouldn't want anyone to see, because, with the benefit of experience, it now looks sloppy, spaghetti-ish, or stupid, at least to me. Sure, it works, and it made me money. But the discipline imposed by knowing that others will see it would have had an effect.
Cherokee License - Where is it? Why did the attempt by Merkey to purchase the linux kernel for a laughable $50K and license it under some vapor Cherokee license not ever come to fruition? I mean come on, $50K? Merkey claims to donate over $100K at a whack to other charitable organizations. Why did the site that was under a Cherokee nation owned domain name disappear after people started questioning the authenticity of this endeavor? Why did the new Cherokee laws concerning copyrights and a Cherokee license never show up on the tribal agenda through official channels? Was this entire project ever anything other than a fantastical idea from the mind of one man?
Could it have been all the peyote he's admitted (then denied, sort of...) using? Who cares? Just another Merkey brainfart.
I notice your dates (2000, 2001). Since then, he's adopted the same FUD tactics as other enemies of open source (particularly SCO), in making his foolish, inadvised, and to now unsupported statements about linux http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/linuxunix/0,39020 390,39189591,00.htm
According to Malcolm, who admits to being against software patents, said there is 'no question' that Linux already violates a number of patents, which could lead to further litigation.
Nice piece of fud. The enemies of open source pounced on it back in March, and said "Look, even
lawyers in favour of linux say its infringing."
He provided a lot of fuel for the fire, without giving a single one of the "obvious" examples.
With friends like that, you don't need enemies.
Or to pick a more apropos thought - "useful fool." After all, people like him, who have to join mensa to try to make people think they're smart, must think we're all stupider than he is (fact - more than 99.9% of all geniuses world-wide are smart enough to avoid the mensa scam, whereas lots of non-geniuses with enough time and practice testing - you can buy the practice tests from the person who wrote the mensa test - can get in).
One case? Come off it - the guy is in internet kook.
The Linux Mark Institute made a mistake. And I HAVE read some of the crap he wrote at the url you point to - which includes his statement about Linux violating patents, without giving a single example.
Anti-vilification? Hey, unless he's willing to give any examples of those purported patent violations, I'm justified in saying he's full of shit, in spades.
And he's far from being an advocate of free speech. He is always threatening people with SLAP suits. The onlyu interests he looks out for are his and his own kind - just like every other scientologist huckster/kook/idiot (or is Tom Cruise now regarded as main-stream)?
There's a difference between filing a service mark on behalf of someone else to prevent abuse, and then going around making noises about future licensing for a mark that the original owner wants people to use freely in association with his work: this "licensing scheme" is more than a little fucked up.
So, lets see those hundreds of linux patent violations he was bullshitting everyone about.... or stfu.
I would LOVE the opportunity to sit and listen to him. However, I don't think that people like Malcolm, Merkey, or McBride would - they don't hold to the principle of 2 ears and 1 mouth (so you should listen twice as much as you talk, etc).
Registrant ROID: C0874417-AR Registrant Contact Name: Mr Jeremy Mark Malcolm Registrant Email: jeremy@malcolm.wattle.id.au
Tech ID: C1203670-AR Tech Name: Jeremy Malcolm Tech Email: jeremy@malcolm.wattle.id.au
Name Server: ns.terminus.net.au Name Server IP: 203.25.143.1 Name Server: twobluedots.com.au Name Server IP: 203.59.228.114
You'd think that people posting on slashdot would know how to do a whois...
ilaw is another one of his scams to try to make money off other peoples work:
You can ask a question on any topic related to Australian law, and for only $50 a qualified iLaw consultant in your locality will contact you with the answer. Try it now!
He's the same idiot that was quoted saying that "Linux might infringe hudnreds of patents." Notice the weasle words. We've dealt with this a few times before on slashdot (zdnet australia isn't too bright, methinks) http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/01/ 1845258&from=rss
The "expert" in "computer and internet law" isn't. Just one of many stupid quyotes:
According to Malcolm, who admits to being against software patents, said there is 'no question' that Linux already violates a number of patents, which could lead to further litigation.
Of course, he didn't provide any concrete examples. It's all fud, trying to generate business and "name recognition." He's a fucking leach.
Guess there are a few scientologists who monitor slashdot... (which we already knew, since they've tried to get posts that point out how cracked they are removed in the past).
Attorney Demands Removal of "Lawyer From Hell" Sites
Dear Sirs
DMCA Complaint
I write to complain about infringements of copyrights held by me (which are also defamatory of me, but I realise defamation is outside of thee ambit of this complaint procedure). The search query which brings up each of the pages below is "[private]".
snippet: ---&<---&<--- cientology have a well deserved reputation of being a very aggressive organisation, accepting no criticism of their organisation or of their dead creator, L Ron Hubbard. They are legendary on the Internet with their attacks on freedom of speech, with legal action on almost every cotenant to force critics to take down web sites.
Well, my humble offering is no exception. Scientology in Perth, Western Australia has started legal action to force me to remove this site. When it became obvious that I was not going to do so, they threatened my ISP with legal action, asking him to remove my site. They even went so far as to offer him immunity from the upcoming lawsuit.
This page will be updated as the situation progresses. The Players. Jeremy Malcolm The lawyer for Scientology is a local man called Jeremy Malcolm. JM used to be on the board of an organisation called Electronic Fronters Australia . EFA is "is a non-profit national organisation formed to protect and promote the civil liberties of users and operators of computer based communications systems."
From his position of fighting for freedom of speech, he is now fighting to stifle it. But that's life. I suppose a man has to do what a man feels he has to do. You can visit Jeremy Malcolm's web sites at the following locations. ---&<---&<---
There's lots more. This guy is a self-promoter, and now he's trying to do a SCO.
In fact, the in joke among poker players is that it's not gambling.
The rule is very simple - it's not gambling if there's a pigeon ripe for the plucking. Sit down at the table, and look around. If you don't see the sucker, then you're probably "it."
So that's 275,000 developers who cannot now work on either open source or proprietary programs w/o having the people they work with wonder if they've been contaminated by the viral nature of Microsofts' "shared source" program.
Want to crusade against something that actually is a problem for most of its participants? Go visit the local bar sometime.
... where you'll find people hooked on VLTs. Talk to the owner of a bar, and he or she will tell you that its a double-edged sword. They need the VLTs there, because they bring in business. No VLT, fewer customers. But at the same time. the VLTs are draining money from those same customers, and that a lot of the "players" share the same characteristics (ie - they are dependent on the government for their income, even when they win, they end up giving it back, etc.)
I lived in one of the most nanny-state provinces in Canada, and even they admit that problem gambling is less than a single digit percentage of gamblers.
But these single-digit "problem gamblers" provide an inordinate proportion of their revenue.
KEVIN DOUGHERTY The Gazette Saturday, June 25, 2005
Economic Development Minister Claude Bechard says there will be no automatic green light for the $1.2-billion project to build a new casino, a permanent Montreal home for the Cirque du Soleil and a luxury hotel near the hard-pressed Point St. Charles district.
-----8<-----8<-----8<-----
Organiz ations working with problem gamblers point out that when Loto-Quebec got into the casino business, its stated aim was to attract tourists to Montreal.
In fact, most of the existing casino's customers are lower-income Montrealers.
So its nice to know the Casino is recycling those welfare and unemployment and old-age security bucks... after all, we don't want them wasting it on luxuries like food or clothing.
They're old, retired people. This (having their 7am beer) is going to be their existence, day in, day out, until they croak. I'd rather be dead than be one of them.
Maybe it'll be just what's needed for a huge evacuation from the MS dependency...
My "threat meter" isn't even plugged in - but then again, I'm not running Windows.
What are the chances of Microsoft making a secure anti-virus or a secure anything? Remember their last "security push?" 1 month of "emphasis on security" isn't a magic wand to fix 20 years of code; nor will it change the underlying corporate culture. It was all for the media. And they ate it up, being too lazy (or too addicted to free meals - see the story on groklaw about that) to bother telling the truth.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200508121 9304040 or, for those too lazy to click, Microsoft is offering free pizza:
Speaking of FUD, I have a copy of the email Microsoft sent out to journalists inviting them to lunch.
Here's a snip:
Why spend 10 bucks on a burger at Moscone when you can have a slice on Microsoft? Come join the Microsoft Embedded group at Moscone Pizza (across the street from the Moscone Center) on Tuesday, August 9 from 1pm - 4pm for lunch and discussion on the Windows Embedded operating systems. Product managers Mike Hall and Dan Javnozon will be available to provide demos of Windows Embedded developer tools and answer questions about Microsoft's strengths in the embedded space.
For instance, did you know....
- Microsoft embraces shared source, and makes more than 2.5 million lines of source code broadly available to customers, partners, developers, governments, academicians and other interested individuals. In fact, more than 275,000 developers have downloaded Windows CE Shared Source
- Microsoft offers a shared success model that translates to low up-front investments for device makers, in addition to faster time-to-market. The Windowsembedded motto? "We don't make money until you do."
- Windows Embedded designs, on average, get to market 43% faster, on average, than embedded Linux designs - 14.3 months with embedded Linux vs.. 8.1 months with embedded Windows; 14.2 engineers with embedded Linux vs.. 7.9 engineers with embedded Windows (Embedded Market Forecasters, November 2003)
- Windows Embedded designs, on average, cost 75% less to bring to market than embedded Linux designs. (Embedded Market Forecasters, November 2003)
I'll be in touch to gauge your interest in setting up a one-on-one briefing with Mike or Dan during the lunch.
A little nauseating, don't you think (love the carrot -- a one-on-one -- which is hard for journalists to turn down), to set up camp across the street and trash talk Linux at LinuxWorld?
Burns also mentions that the Microsoft Linux Lab session was well attended. I believe that falls into the category of keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. If I had been there, I'd have attended that session too, even though I would prefer that Microsoft never be given a platform at any FOSS conference, personally. Shared source is not Open Source even, and it for sure isn't Free Software, and don't ever kid yourself about it. It's Brand X, and there is no reason to settle for so little.
Anyone guillible enough to believe there really is such a thing as a free lunch deserves what they get.
Slashdot Mirror
Malcolm is a self-promoter. This was all hashed out here back on March 1st. Nothing's changed since.
So, lets see what was wrong with that (again going over stuff that was said back on March 1st):
- If its so obvious, why not give even 1 instance? As a lawyer, he should know that making unsubstantiated allegations
- Its been 6 months since his March 1st "infringes hundreds of patents" claim, and he still hasn't backed it up with a single instance, even though lots of people have called bullshit on it;
- It's not about protecting the trademark. Filing the paperwork, etc, was about protecting it. Blabbering about how people may have to pay up to 5k to use it, even though it won't even be granted for another month, is just stiffing up shit;
- Sending letters out, even though the trademark hasn't even been granted yet (and people are free to oppose the grant) smacks of the same tactics another enemy of open source used - SCO. Remember how they sent out 1500 letters demanding license fees for an "intellectual IP license?"
- A grant in the future doesn't automatically remove the rights of people whose use of the term has been tolerated to date - they may, in fact, have a better claim, as they can show they've been using it;
- A grant in the future doesn't necessarily invalidate the rights of current users in other respects as well;
Sending out the letters was not just premature - it comes across as an attempt to get people to agree to something by threats because you don't have a leg to stand on (and since the mark hasn't been granted yet, he doesn't). Asking that people acknowledge that they are using the term under license, when the mark hasn't been granted, is BS. So I have no hesitation slagging the hack.The whole thing doesn't pass the smell test. Linux Mark made a mistake using this guy. Whether they picked him, or he approached them, it still stinks, and the end result is going to be people doing the same thing as IBM did using the term AIX instead of Unix.
Dude,. he does all he can to avoid actually having to show his face IN COURT!
http://www.linuxmark.org/what_if.html
(emphasis added)"we will not get involved" != "defending it" ...
After all, when you ban all wifi, then only criminals will have wifi.
So then you can just arrest everyone who uses wifi, just like in Florida.
After all, it worked with the war on drugs, didn't it?
--
This post sponsored by "SpaceBalls 3 - The Fellowship of the Ring Around The Collar."[tt]
YOu can't infringe an expired patent, just like you can't infringe copyright on an expired copyright.
Also, after reading the patent, its' trivial to come up with a scheme that doesn't use the setuid bit, but achieves the same effect. Too bad the patent wasn't still valid - I could then patent an alternate method (except that I'm against software patents).
At the same time, I don't think linux would have been anywhere near as successful under a BSD license, and I like the way RMS sticks to his guns.
As for proprietary code - we won't know how good it is, because we can't see it. Open source has one advantage (I'm not being original here, I just don't know who to attribute the thought to) - you know other people are going to look at it, so you tend to make it look better.
There's a lot of my old code that I wouldn't want anyone to see, because, with the benefit of experience, it now looks sloppy, spaghetti-ish, or stupid, at least to me. Sure, it works, and it made me money. But the discipline imposed by knowing that others will see it would have had an effect.
What Merkey wanted to do was a scam. Here are some interesting posts from todays' yahoo scox message board vis. Herky-Jerky Murky Merkey: http://finance.messages.yahoo.com/bbs?.mm=FN&actio n=m&board=1600684464&tid=cald&sid=1600684464&mid=2 91615
http://finance.messages.yahoo.com/bbs?.mm=FN&actio n=m&board=1600684464&tid=cald&sid=1600684464&mid=2 91617
http://finance.messages.yahoo.com/bbs?.mm=FN&actio n=m&board=1600684464&tid=cald&sid=1600684464&mid=2 91618
Here's the relevant section of one of them:
Could it have been all the peyote he's admitted (then denied, sort ofHe provided a lot of fuel for the fire, without giving a single one of the "obvious" examples.
With friends like that, you don't need enemies.
Or to pick a more apropos thought - "useful fool." After all, people like him, who have to join mensa to try to make people think they're smart, must think we're all stupider than he is (fact - more than 99.9% of all geniuses world-wide are smart enough to avoid the mensa scam, whereas lots of non-geniuses with enough time and practice testing - you can buy the practice tests from the person who wrote the mensa test - can get in).
agggh! my eyes! my eyes!
The Linux Mark Institute made a mistake. And I HAVE read some of the crap he wrote at the url you point to - which includes his statement about Linux violating patents, without giving a single example.
Anti-vilification? Hey, unless he's willing to give any examples of those purported patent violations, I'm justified in saying he's full of shit, in spades.
And he's far from being an advocate of free speech. He is always threatening people with SLAP suits. The onlyu interests he looks out for are his and his own kind - just like every other scientologist huckster/kook/idiot (or is Tom Cruise now regarded as main-stream)?
There's a difference between filing a service mark on behalf of someone else to prevent abuse, and then going around making noises about future licensing for a mark that the original owner wants people to use freely in association with his work: this "licensing scheme" is more than a little fucked up.
So, lets see those hundreds of linux patent violations he was bullshitting everyone about. ... or stfu.
I would LOVE the opportunity to sit and listen to him. However, I don't think that people like Malcolm, Merkey, or McBride would - they don't hold to the principle of 2 ears and 1 mouth (so you should listen twice as much as you talk, etc).
- Darl "Linux contains code stoen from us" McBride and Co.
- Jeff "I want to buy the linux kernel for $50,000.00" Merkey
- Jeremy "the Linux kernel already infringes various software patents" Malcolm (the quack lawyer pushing this scheme)
Any other candidates?ilaw is another one of his scams to try to make money off other peoples work:
Of course, when I tried to post this questionfor some reason, it didn't go throughHe's the same idiot that was quoted saying that "Linux might infringe hudnreds of patents." Notice the weasle words. We've dealt with this a few times before on slashdot (zdnet australia isn't too bright, methinks) http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/01/ 1845258&from=rss
The "expert" in "computer and internet law" isn't. Just one of many stupid quyotes:
Of course, he didn't provide any concrete examples. It's all fud, trying to generate business and "name recognition." He's a fucking leach.
Linkies: http://www.holysmoke.org/cos/lawer-from-hell.htm
or http://www.sweenytod.com/cos/legal/ There's lots more. This guy is a self-promoter, and now he's trying to do a SCO.Jere4my Malcom isn't a practicing lawyer. He's a whore for the Church of Scientology.
Just do a google for "Jeremy Malcolm Scientology". All he does is write letters, which you can safely ignore, since he never follows through.
He's just another crackpot trying to hustle a few buck.
He's a crackpot scientologist.
First hit: http://www.holysmoke.org/cos/lawer-from-hell.htm is really interesting.
Cute. Real cute.
... that would have gotten all the "free as in beer" types :-)
I notice you don't say anything about the other 2 times ...
Also, most of the customers at the Casino de Montreal are lower-income http://www.vivaconsulting.com/newsflash.html
So its nice to know the Casino is recycling those welfare and unemployment and old-age security bucksThey're old, retired people. This (having their 7am beer) is going to be their existence, day in, day out, until they croak. I'd rather be dead than be one of them.
What are the chances of Microsoft making a secure anti-virus or a secure anything? Remember their last "security push?" 1 month of "emphasis on security" isn't a magic wand to fix 20 years of code; nor will it change the underlying corporate culture. It was all for the media. And they ate it up, being too lazy (or too addicted to free meals - see the story on groklaw about that) to bother telling the truth. http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200508121 9304040 or, for those too lazy to click, Microsoft is offering free pizza:
Anyone guillible enough to believe there really is such a thing as a free lunch deserves what they get.