If something has been adjudicated as being in violation of a patent then the distribution has to stop too. Now it is up to the patent holder to track down and prosecute the individual distributors so that makes it relatively impossible.
Your scenario of MS releasing the code is something completely different. In that case a judge could very easily assign a high dollar amount to the "damages" done to the patent holder by such an action. Additionally, since this would be after they lost a court decision there would probably be additional contempt of court and/or criminal negligence charges too.
I'm not assuming anything. I'm only basing my statements on what has been directly addressed in SGI's press release. In that case they do specifically mention ate_utils.c and we have a rather in-depth set of analysees about that file and its origins.
Based on the facts present SGI has identified "suspect" code and has decided that the easiest thing to do is simply remove it rather than leaving it in doubt.
It's a hell of a long leap from that to "this says that there is direct Sys V copying in Linux". In fact, not even SCO is willing to say that anymore about ate_utils.c.
I'm not going by SCO's press release. Press releases have to be carefully vetted by legal departments and thus are usually quite timid in any pronouncements of this sort.
I would recommend that you turn your attention here: http://perens.com/SCO/SCOSlideShow.html and we can review the source of the ate_utils.c code and more. More in-depth information can be found here: http://www.lemis.com/grog/SCO/code-comparison.html
So, by looking at this rather detailed analysis we see that the code in question preceeds Sys V, has been placed into the public domain multiple times, and certainly would be difficult for SCO to maintain any claim over.
The most interesting part of the second link is towards the summary part: On 3 September 2003, during the AUUG 2003 conference, I participated in a panel discussion with Kieran O'Shaughnessy, the General Manager of SCO Australia, and Con Zymaris, an Australian open source activist. I asked Kieran this question ("How could you miss the BSD license?"), and he replied that this was not supposed to be evidence of real System V code in Linux, just a demonstration of the techniques involved. At first I thought he was just trying to worm his way out of the issue, but it seems to be the party line; I'll chase down other references when I have time.
So, the best that SCO can say is that the examples shown weren't in fact evidence of copying.
Instead of whining about getting down-modded look at what you posted:
Now SGI is ADMITTING that they put SYSV code in the Linux codebase. Whether or not it has been removed is IMMATERIAL for purposes of this case.
SGI admitted no such thing. SGI said that they looked at the code in question and saw some similarities with Sys V code as well. The fact that the code in question existed long BEFORE Sys V and was also available under public domain means that the reason for the similarity is quite strongly in doubt. Additionally, SCO themselves backed off their claim when it was challenged after the slide show presentation.
If anything this further shoots down SCO's complaints about complete disregard for IP as we have code being removed merely because it MIGHT have copyright issues. This is being done without any information, legal actions, or threats from SCO.
Remember, so far the ONLY company being legally accused of copyright infringement in this whole ongoing tragedy is SCO.
...for about six months? I want to see those statistics nose dive.
Then, at the end of the six months we'll take a nice long look at the sales figures from the RIAA member companies. If they still continue to suck then we should send a big letter to Congress saying "WTF?!?!?"
First off, patent issues are the sole responsibility of the person holding the patent. They have to identify and chose to prosecute infringers.
On the copyright side it's even worse. How would a third-party identify copyright infringement? You would need access to protected source code in order to perform comparisons in the first place. This again is why the holder of the copyright is responsible for IDENTIFYING the alleged infringements.
While SCO has alleged infringement, they have yet to offer any proof or file any copyright lawsuits.
I would imagine that there are some geeks who lost loved ones in 9-11 who would, similar to my original point, prefer that it was harder to kill people so that you'd only do it when you really had to.
The one thing that 9/11 taught us that there are some people who are willing to go to ANY length to kill other people. They took technically trained people (flying a commercial airliner and hitting a building with it isn't at all easy) and had them sacrifice their lives in order to kill people.
Do you really understand what that means? They want to kill other people so badly that they're willing to die in order to accomplish it.
To make matters worse, these people love to hide among civilian populations and use them as shields.
So, you want it to be more difficult to kill people? What exactly will that accomplish? (Do you wish to ban airplanes to avoid future incidents like 9/11? Any thoughts on how to put the nuclear genie back in the bottle?)
If you look at history, anytime one side was able to kill the other without having to really risk themselves, the shitty side of history results -- genocide, oppression, etc. Just because it's your side that happens to have the better guns, tech, germs or whatever doesn't mean it's a Good Thing.
Well, now that's strange. How many mass graves have we dug up in Iraq? It seems that genocide and oppression is the hallmark of a dictatorship.
The point is that Iraq launched a war and lost. They surrendered and never lived up to the terms of their surrender. The fact that they were known to have used WMD's in the past and were still playing cat and mouse with the inspectors 11 years after agreeing to disarm shows that we couldn't take them at their word.
Beyond that, what do you recommend we should have done with Iraq instead?
1. Think more like Geisha than prostitute and it'll make more sense. I think the previews and shorts used the word prostitute to try and make it more edgy than it was. 2. Look at the spaceships we fly today. You can't get a good interplanetary and atmospheric craft in one with the tech they used. Building up to a fully industrialized level on a bare planet will take a long time. (If you couldn't carry it with you you had to build it when you got there.) 3. I'll agree on that one.
That was quite entertaining (in a moribund manner). You now have come up with the right-baiting bumper sticker to match the ol': Nuke a gay whale for Jesus!
Analog only. Fair use doesn't cover digital as far as I can tell.
Notice that it wasn't called the Analog Audio Home Recording Act. You can also look at the huge battle that they had over DAT's and the Serial Copying functionality that they put in it. (You were allowed to only make copies from the original.) That would suggest that the act covered digital as well.
The NET Act is a complete travesty. First, it incorrectly tries to shove the word THEFT back into the debate. Second, it completely redefines the criminal laws. (The fact that the NET Act was lobbied for also would go towards showing that the AHRA covers digital since they needed this additional law and language.)
There's no real length for excerpting things. This is why Fair Use is an affirmative defense that is interpreted by the courts. It may be necessary to excerpt almost all of a song as part of a critical review of it while you may only need to point to the quick lick that a rapper lifted for another review.
Most of the copyright restrictions talk about commercial copying/distribution. Under the Fair Use extensions of the Audio Home Recording Act it is actually legal to give a copy of a CD that you own to a friend. It is also legal to create compilation tapes for these people. The first line that you can't cross is charging for it. The second line is the one that was never really defined - who qualifies as a "friend".
Now Fair Use is actually a set of affirmative defenses rather than absolute rights so they would have to be adjudged, but so far things like course books (copying sections of other text books and creating a compilation) have cleared that hurdle. Additionally, in those cases the copying company was able to charge for the expenses related to making the copies.
Now, if I ripped a song from a CD and you ripped the same song from your CD wouldn't they be the same? It's not like we'd be looking at analog differences in how the recording was set up. Instead we have the same algorithm being performed on the same file on two different computers. Unless there was some date-specific info then what would be different?
Set up a web site that contains your current work load and project list with estimated times. Allow people to see just how loaded you are and have a priority ranking system for all new work.
So, someone comes to you with a new assignment/request/demand. Review it with them and discuss the priority assignment. When they agree on the priority then you put it into the queue and give them a start date and an estimated end date. If you can do a good job of keeping to those dates then you'll have mostly happy customers.
The biggest problem/challenge in the support world is when things seem to "disappear into the black hole" and nothing happens. Sometimes it's because you forgot the request (someone stopped you in the hall to request something and you're busy on something else...) or just simply haven't been able to get to it yet. You'll also want to have a way to publicize emergency work (like patching for MS Blast and what not).
You may want to invest in some help desk software for tracking and scheduling as well. (This can also be used to build up FAQ's for your customers to do some self-help.)
So, using this logic, IBM should say, "Linux doesn't have your code, stop being so mean to the open source community," and promptly sue them for being dorks.
From the movie: Everything was going fine until Dickless here turned off the grid. Is that true? Yes, your honor, this man has no dick.
Please, be careful as you're blending a number of ideas/legal constructs together under one banner when they shouldn't be.
"Protecting artists" falls under copyright. (Though there's that "work for hire" editing theft that happened late one night in DC.)
GPL also falls under copyright.
"Encouraging inventions" falls under patent. Looking at the history of patents hasn't shown a good track record for encouraging inventions. Rather we've seen stagnation in most areas until the government or a company broke the log jam.
Public access/disclosure of patented information is of little (and now even less benefit) as most people cannot levarage this information. Now that you have process patents there isn't really anything to disclose.
So, I think I'll join in a slightly different chant: Patents go home! Copyrights go back to the creators!
It used to be that you had to submit a working model in order to get a patent for something. Now you have companies that don't produce anything trying to "think up the next big idea" simply so they can patent it. Not develop it. Just patent it and then start suing^Wlicensing.
The patent system has been broken for a long time. Patents stagnated the development of US airplanes until the government stepped in to break the log jam.
Most of your examples were copyrights and not patents. This is important as you can copyright your implementation of a software idea. The problem is when you patent the very concept of the implementation so it doesn't matter if someone else comes to the same solution independently.
The lawyer wasn't making any good statements. He was giving useless analogies and ignoring huge festering holes in SCO's case.
Example: What if, during the course of discovery or another time, you find that the code was originally under the GPL? Using that hypothetical, if Caldera (International) put something into the GPL, with copyright attribution, the whole nine yards, they can't make the claim about what that thing is that they put in there. But that doesn't mean that--well, let's use an example. Let's say you have a hundred files, and you put one of your hundred files under the GPL. That doesn't mean you've lost the rights to your other 99 files. So I don't think it's going to have an impact.
First he tries to lamely categorize this as "hypothetical" then he puts forth the well maybe it's only 1 out of 100 files defense. This completely ignored the question being placed to him and also refuses to acknowlege the fact that what SCO was claiming as "evidence of copied code" in a public forum was shown to be anything but.
Plus we can look at their whole Chewbacca^WCopyright defense: The Free Software Foundation apparently disagrees. If you look at the terms of the GPL and the terms of copyright law, copyright law governs. It is the exclusive authority regarding the use, distribution, etc., of copyrighted material. In the GPL, (there is a section that) specifically says it applies only to the use and distribution. In other words, the exact same topics that are covered exclusively by the Copyright Act are covered by the GPL. Section 301 of the Copyright Act says the Copyright Act pre-empts any claims that are governed regarding use, distribution and copying. We believe that although the GPL is being tossed into the fray, it is pre-empted by federal copyright law.
This is completely illogical. Copyright exists to restrict ALL rights to a creative work. LICENSES are what allow people to distribute copyrighted works. The GPL is a license, nothing more, nothing less. If SCO's theory were to hold true than ANY site-wide license would be invalid.
Even worse, SP 2 installed over a network failed. Failed badly. It did something horrible to the ntfs.sys file IIRC. This meant that the box would blue screen on boot and be irrecoverable if you had an NTFS partition.
Slashdot Mirror
Eolas now has a PROVEN, QUARANTEED profit generator, they will HAVE to run it against all comers - or face shareholder lawsuits.
Eolas is privately owned. No shareholders.
If something has been adjudicated as being in violation of a patent then the distribution has to stop too. Now it is up to the patent holder to track down and prosecute the individual distributors so that makes it relatively impossible.
Your scenario of MS releasing the code is something completely different. In that case a judge could very easily assign a high dollar amount to the "damages" done to the patent holder by such an action. Additionally, since this would be after they lost a court decision there would probably be additional contempt of court and/or criminal negligence charges too.
I'm not assuming anything. I'm only basing my statements on what has been directly addressed in SGI's press release. In that case they do specifically mention ate_utils.c and we have a rather in-depth set of analysees about that file and its origins.
Based on the facts present SGI has identified "suspect" code and has decided that the easiest thing to do is simply remove it rather than leaving it in doubt.
It's a hell of a long leap from that to "this says that there is direct Sys V copying in Linux". In fact, not even SCO is willing to say that anymore about ate_utils.c.
I'm not going by SCO's press release. Press releases have to be carefully vetted by legal departments and thus are usually quite timid in any pronouncements of this sort.
l
I would recommend that you turn your attention here: http://perens.com/SCO/SCOSlideShow.html and we can review the source of the ate_utils.c code and more. More in-depth information can be found here: http://www.lemis.com/grog/SCO/code-comparison.htm
So, by looking at this rather detailed analysis we see that the code in question preceeds Sys V, has been placed into the public domain multiple times, and certainly would be difficult for SCO to maintain any claim over.
The most interesting part of the second link is towards the summary part:
On 3 September 2003, during the AUUG 2003 conference, I participated in a panel discussion with Kieran O'Shaughnessy, the General Manager of SCO Australia, and Con Zymaris, an Australian open source activist. I asked Kieran this question ("How could you miss the BSD license?"), and he replied that this was not supposed to be evidence of real System V code in Linux, just a demonstration of the techniques involved. At first I thought he was just trying to worm his way out of the issue, but it seems to be the party line; I'll chase down other references when I have time.
So, the best that SCO can say is that the examples shown weren't in fact evidence of copying.
Instead of whining about getting down-modded look at what you posted:
Now SGI is ADMITTING that they put SYSV code in the Linux codebase. Whether or not it has been removed is IMMATERIAL for purposes of this case.
SGI admitted no such thing. SGI said that they looked at the code in question and saw some similarities with Sys V code as well. The fact that the code in question existed long BEFORE Sys V and was also available under public domain means that the reason for the similarity is quite strongly in doubt. Additionally, SCO themselves backed off their claim when it was challenged after the slide show presentation.
If anything this further shoots down SCO's complaints about complete disregard for IP as we have code being removed merely because it MIGHT have copyright issues. This is being done without any information, legal actions, or threats from SCO.
Remember, so far the ONLY company being legally accused of copyright infringement in this whole ongoing tragedy is SCO.
You need the Hydrogen BOMB powered Jeep Orion. :-D
...for about six months? I want to see those statistics nose dive.
Then, at the end of the six months we'll take a nice long look at the sales figures from the RIAA member companies. If they still continue to suck then we should send a big letter to Congress saying "WTF?!?!?"
First off, patent issues are the sole responsibility of the person holding the patent. They have to identify and chose to prosecute infringers.
On the copyright side it's even worse. How would a third-party identify copyright infringement? You would need access to protected source code in order to perform comparisons in the first place. This again is why the holder of the copyright is responsible for IDENTIFYING the alleged infringements.
While SCO has alleged infringement, they have yet to offer any proof or file any copyright lawsuits.
I would imagine that there are some geeks who lost loved ones in 9-11 who would, similar to my original point, prefer that it was harder to kill people so that you'd only do it when you really had to.
The one thing that 9/11 taught us that there are some people who are willing to go to ANY length to kill other people. They took technically trained people (flying a commercial airliner and hitting a building with it isn't at all easy) and had them sacrifice their lives in order to kill people.
Do you really understand what that means? They want to kill other people so badly that they're willing to die in order to accomplish it.
To make matters worse, these people love to hide among civilian populations and use them as shields.
So, you want it to be more difficult to kill people? What exactly will that accomplish? (Do you wish to ban airplanes to avoid future incidents like 9/11? Any thoughts on how to put the nuclear genie back in the bottle?)
If you look at history, anytime one side was able to kill the other without having to really risk themselves, the shitty side of history results -- genocide, oppression, etc. Just because it's your side that happens to have the better guns, tech, germs or whatever doesn't mean it's a Good Thing.
Well, now that's strange. How many mass graves have we dug up in Iraq? It seems that genocide and oppression is the hallmark of a dictatorship.
The point is that Iraq launched a war and lost. They surrendered and never lived up to the terms of their surrender. The fact that they were known to have used WMD's in the past and were still playing cat and mouse with the inspectors 11 years after agreeing to disarm shows that we couldn't take them at their word.
Beyond that, what do you recommend we should have done with Iraq instead?
Hack the teacher's AIBO, have it eat ALL the homework. :-D
When you tell everyone that you go to Ctrl+Alt+Del HS. :-}
1. Think more like Geisha than prostitute and it'll make more sense. I think the previews and shorts used the word prostitute to try and make it more edgy than it was.
2. Look at the spaceships we fly today. You can't get a good interplanetary and atmospheric craft in one with the tech they used. Building up to a fully industrialized level on a bare planet will take a long time. (If you couldn't carry it with you you had to build it when you got there.)
3. I'll agree on that one.
That was quite entertaining (in a moribund manner). You now have come up with the right-baiting bumper sticker to match the ol':
Nuke a gay whale for Jesus!
Analog only. Fair use doesn't cover digital as far as I can tell.
Notice that it wasn't called the Analog Audio Home Recording Act. You can also look at the huge battle that they had over DAT's and the Serial Copying functionality that they put in it. (You were allowed to only make copies from the original.) That would suggest that the act covered digital as well.
The NET Act is a complete travesty. First, it incorrectly tries to shove the word THEFT back into the debate. Second, it completely redefines the criminal laws. (The fact that the NET Act was lobbied for also would go towards showing that the AHRA covers digital since they needed this additional law and language.)
There's no real length for excerpting things. This is why Fair Use is an affirmative defense that is interpreted by the courts. It may be necessary to excerpt almost all of a song as part of a critical review of it while you may only need to point to the quick lick that a rapper lifted for another review.
Most of the copyright restrictions talk about commercial copying/distribution. Under the Fair Use extensions of the Audio Home Recording Act it is actually legal to give a copy of a CD that you own to a friend. It is also legal to create compilation tapes for these people. The first line that you can't cross is charging for it. The second line is the one that was never really defined - who qualifies as a "friend".
Now Fair Use is actually a set of affirmative defenses rather than absolute rights so they would have to be adjudged, but so far things like course books (copying sections of other text books and creating a compilation) have cleared that hurdle. Additionally, in those cases the copying company was able to charge for the expenses related to making the copies.
Now, if I ripped a song from a CD and you ripped the same song from your CD wouldn't they be the same? It's not like we'd be looking at analog differences in how the recording was set up. Instead we have the same algorithm being performed on the same file on two different computers. Unless there was some date-specific info then what would be different?
Set up a web site that contains your current work load and project list with estimated times. Allow people to see just how loaded you are and have a priority ranking system for all new work.
So, someone comes to you with a new assignment/request/demand. Review it with them and discuss the priority assignment. When they agree on the priority then you put it into the queue and give them a start date and an estimated end date. If you can do a good job of keeping to those dates then you'll have mostly happy customers.
The biggest problem/challenge in the support world is when things seem to "disappear into the black hole" and nothing happens. Sometimes it's because you forgot the request (someone stopped you in the hall to request something and you're busy on something else...) or just simply haven't been able to get to it yet. You'll also want to have a way to publicize emergency work (like patching for MS Blast and what not).
You may want to invest in some help desk software for tracking and scheduling as well. (This can also be used to build up FAQ's for your customers to do some self-help.)
So, using this logic, IBM should say, "Linux doesn't have your code, stop being so mean to the open source community," and promptly sue them for being dorks.
From the movie:
Everything was going fine until Dickless here turned off the grid.
Is that true?
Yes, your honor, this man has no dick.
Please, be careful as you're blending a number of ideas/legal constructs together under one banner when they shouldn't be.
"Protecting artists" falls under copyright. (Though there's that "work for hire" editing theft that happened late one night in DC.)
GPL also falls under copyright.
"Encouraging inventions" falls under patent. Looking at the history of patents hasn't shown a good track record for encouraging inventions. Rather we've seen stagnation in most areas until the government or a company broke the log jam.
Public access/disclosure of patented information is of little (and now even less benefit) as most people cannot levarage this information. Now that you have process patents there isn't really anything to disclose.
So, I think I'll join in a slightly different chant:
Patents go home! Copyrights go back to the creators!
It used to be that you had to submit a working model in order to get a patent for something. Now you have companies that don't produce anything trying to "think up the next big idea" simply so they can patent it. Not develop it. Just patent it and then start suing^Wlicensing.
The patent system has been broken for a long time. Patents stagnated the development of US airplanes until the government stepped in to break the log jam.
Most of your examples were copyrights and not patents. This is important as you can copyright your implementation of a software idea. The problem is when you patent the very concept of the implementation so it doesn't matter if someone else comes to the same solution independently.
The lawyer wasn't making any good statements. He was giving useless analogies and ignoring huge festering holes in SCO's case.
Example:
What if, during the course of discovery or another time, you find that the code was originally under the GPL?
Using that hypothetical, if Caldera (International) put something into the GPL, with copyright attribution, the whole nine yards, they can't make the claim about what that thing is that they put in there. But that doesn't mean that--well, let's use an example. Let's say you have a hundred files, and you put one of your hundred files under the GPL. That doesn't mean you've lost the rights to your other 99 files. So I don't think it's going to have an impact.
First he tries to lamely categorize this as "hypothetical" then he puts forth the well maybe it's only 1 out of 100 files defense. This completely ignored the question being placed to him and also refuses to acknowlege the fact that what SCO was claiming as "evidence of copied code" in a public forum was shown to be anything but.
Plus we can look at their whole Chewbacca^WCopyright defense:
The Free Software Foundation apparently disagrees. If you look at the terms of the GPL and the terms of copyright law, copyright law governs. It is the exclusive authority regarding the use, distribution, etc., of copyrighted material. In the GPL, (there is a section that) specifically says it applies only to the use and distribution. In other words, the exact same topics that are covered exclusively by the Copyright Act are covered by the GPL. Section 301 of the Copyright Act says the Copyright Act pre-empts any claims that are governed regarding use, distribution and copying. We believe that although the GPL is being tossed into the fray, it is pre-empted by federal copyright law.
This is completely illogical. Copyright exists to restrict ALL rights to a creative work. LICENSES are what allow people to distribute copyrighted works. The GPL is a license, nothing more, nothing less. If SCO's theory were to hold true than ANY site-wide license would be invalid.
...they ARE the congressmen. :-}
Thank you. That was very well done.
SP 6 broke Lotus Notes servers thus 6a came out.
Even worse, SP 2 installed over a network failed. Failed badly. It did something horrible to the ntfs.sys file IIRC. This meant that the box would blue screen on boot and be irrecoverable if you had an NTFS partition.