The nice thing about open source is that they cannot take it away from us. If some company take some OS code in a direction you do not like, you fork the code. If I develop some open source code, I get the better code, and at the same time companies get better code they can use and evolve. If companies develops/evolves OS code, I can use it for my benefit, or I can choose not to, and stick with the old code. You have the freedom to choose yourself. So I dont think we'll ever see strikes and the like, since people choose themselves which code to use/evolve and what license to release under.
There will always be community developed code. Like debian on the distribution side, you will always have non-commercial code that will preserve our (consumer/little guy) interest. This will spur competition for the commercial companies and improve the overall offer.
There are two different "IP" laws that may apply to the case. One is trade secrets, which is what the coca-cola formula is covered by. This has no effect on anyone except the party privy to the code/formula. This party (in our case IBM) would be liable for any damage caused by the breach of contract. In this case IBM could be fined quite heavily.
The other law that may be applicable is copyright. This applies to the copying and distribution of copyrighted stuff. As is the case with trade secrets, probably the only party that can be faulted is the party that copied the copyrighted code. With copyright infringement the infringed-upon party has to inform what the infringement is and try help mitigating the damages. If the infringing party acted in good faith and do their best to mitigate damage, there is a very small chance there will be any damage penalty. So, yes, in this case where SCO has done nothing to inform what the infringements are and if IBM are shown to not have blatantly copied code knowingly, even if SCO (against all probability) win the case, the result will probably be removal of infringing code and not much else.
As to your assertion that nobody can work on the kernel after having seen the code, this is just ludicrous. It is just plain untrue. If what you say is the case, does that mean that anybody who ever hear any copyrighted rock music can never write music? And anybody who has read a crime novel cannot write books?
I have two really good examples of open source innovation that I use every day: Mozilla(firefox) and KDE(sorry, I dont use GNOME). These two "packages" contain lots of innovation with every update. Have you looked at all the extensions to mozilla? Theres innovation for you. And KDE 3.2 is great. The speed at which it improves is amazing. Projects usually just have to spent some time getting started and catching up. If you compare to proprietary alternatives I think OSS is evolving and innovation at a much higher pace.
Even more annoying is the statement issued by the MPAA quoted in another afteposten article, saying the decision "encourages circumvention of copyright". I cannot believe an association that is supposed to protect the rights of so many copyright-holders are that clueless.
There is NO way to circumvent copyright. Copyright is a right granted to the creator of any work. Copying the material without being granted this right by the copyright holder is an infringement upon the copyright and is illegal. The copyright is still in place and cannot be "circumvented".
Microsoft insn't innocent. They have been convicted of abusing their monopoly, and that still stands. The appeals court decided the remedy was not proper (and I think also threw out some claims), but microsoft has been convicted of breaking the law and is not innocent.
Its weird, it seems like the more the open source business accellerates, the more The proprietary business try to jump over each other into the abyss. First SCO is going totally bonkers, and now Phoenix doing this, dragging the rest along (and accellerating OS advance). It seems like if you still have a chance you should try to adapt instead of charging into certain death.
Yeah, and happy Fu**ing thanksgiving to all of them too.
If this is what Phoenix has decided I say good riddance to Them. I buy (through companies I work for) around 15 pc a year, and influence a lot more decisions. I will go to great lenghts and pay quite a bit more money to get anything other than any "trusted computing" that works. But that side of the story is just a minor one. If MS, Adobe and the rest of big companies really think they will gain anything by really restricting users, they are as delusional as the RIAA and the rest of the retarded population (no offence to retarded people). I am a paying licensee of Discreets 3dstudio max and Macromedias MX products. But without pirate copies I would never had been a customer. If they dont realize that 75% of the people out there use pirated copies to keep up their market share, too bad for them. Now Phoenix shooting themselves in the head and at the same time helping all proprietary SW companies do the same is just a dream come true. And so, I welcome our new BIOS overlords (note to you: I will support you).
I see this argument again and again, and I really dont understand it. Open source desktop environments have been catching up for a while, but they are at a point where they are starting to pass the leaders. There are lots of functionality in KDE that arent in windows or macs. But the best example is still mozilla. When you include the extensions there are tons of innovative new features. Theres nothing like that kind of innovation in proprietary sw. The problem is that the small companies that do innovate do not have the money/resources to get the innovation out, while the dominant players dont need to. In open source innovation occurs because someone thinks something is a good idea, and if other people agree it is picked up and incorporated.
So quite the opposite, I think open source innovates much more than proprietary software. It is the perfect evolutionary system. No barriers of entry, everybody influences what innovation stays, and innovation occur because of peoples strongest self interest ("I need this feature").
Hopefully this will finally make Macromedia get a clue and port their products to Linux. The only way they can beat MS is to help out the up and coming system. It would be great to get director and flash MX for Linux.
-Microsoft does not provide a satisfactory product (not enough security, too much cost, no customization etc) for many customers, most importantly for governments.
-Governments do fund development of massive software systems (defense, research, administration), in addition to roads and other infrastructure. This happens in the US too.
-Because of the nature of software (the cost of reproduction and the benefit of building on the work of others) it is in no way cost-effective to buy proprietary software in most cases.
-Microsoft is a predatory monopoly, sentenced as such by american courts. They have 85% profit margins on their main products, something which is a sign that they are not in a healthy, competitive market. This also shows that consumers are not in any way getting good value for their money.
Most of these facts alone should make a government choose an alternative. Taken together, it is puzzling why it hasnt happened before.
I am sorry, but I am getting tired of these trolls. Microsoft does NOT have any point at all here.
-Microsoft does not provide a satisfactory product (not enough security, too much cost, no customization etc) for many customers, most importantly for governments.
-Governments do fund development of massive software systems (defense, research, administration), in addition to roads and other infrastructure. This happens in the US too.
-Because of the nature of software (the cost of reproduction and the benefit of building on the work of others) it is in no way cost-effective to buy proprietary software in most cases.
-Microsoft is a predatory monopoly, sentenced as such by american courts. They have 85% profit margins on their main products, something which is a sign that they are not in a healthy, competitive market. This also shows that consumers are not in any way getting good value for their money.
So Microsoft has no reason to complain about this. It is actually puzzling why it hasnt been done before.
Fact remains that the internet is not sped up by Intel P3s. Pages are rendered faster with faster processors, be they AMD or Intel (point here is that it depends what your reference is). And whatever you say about windows software being optimised for Intel, the Athlon 1.4 beats the P4 1.8 in most performance tests. By the way, the architectures are not the same, and the Athlons have significantly better floating points operations than the P4.
As far as I can see, aside from being infantile, my arguments are all valid.
-Tharald
PS: The point about the CPU ID is not whether or not it can be disabled. Most consumers would never know about it even, much less how to turn it off. The problem is that it was a feature most people did not want (except for the software publishers), and it does not benefit the consumer.
These announcements usually turn into AMD/Intel bickering. I have lately been siding with AMD, and I figured I'd summarize the reasons for disliking Intel here:
-CPU ID
-False advertising (speed up the internet my arse)
-Forcing a proprietary memory standard on us
-Three different socket standards in the last year
-Exploiting the consumers lack of knowledge, pushing the Ghz over performance
Here in norway, the P4 1.8 costs NOK 3200, more than twice the price of the better performing Athlon 1.4 at NOK 1500.
In addition we have all the problems with the Camino chipset and the botched P3 1.13 launch
This is to me (as to most others here) extremely happy news. Infineon did the only right thing to do, and theres nothing amazing about it. But compared to the other spineless memory makers out there, they had the guts to stand up for their rights. The compensation they were awarded was cut down to merely a symbolic sum ($350k), and I think Infineon deserves better. In my mind, Infineon (and Micron & Hynix) did something really important in standing up to Rambus, and I respect them a lot for it. So I would like to ask people to keep this in mind in the future when they buy memory and other products in the markets these companies are in. I know I will.
(I know they all most likely did it for economic reasons, but without them, the world could have been held memory-hostage to Rambus, a world I would not be happy in. )
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The nice thing about open source is that they cannot take it away from us. If some company take some OS code in a direction you do not like, you fork the code. If I develop some open source code, I get the better code, and at the same time companies get better code they can use and evolve. If companies develops/evolves OS code, I can use it for my benefit, or I can choose not to, and stick with the old code. You have the freedom to choose yourself. So I dont think we'll ever see strikes and the like, since people choose themselves which code to use/evolve and what license to release under.
There will always be community developed code. Like debian on the distribution side, you will always have non-commercial code that will preserve our (consumer/little guy) interest. This will spur competition for the commercial companies and improve the overall offer.
-TN
There are two different "IP" laws that may apply to the case. One is trade secrets, which is what the coca-cola formula is covered by. This has no effect on anyone except the party privy to the code/formula. This party (in our case IBM) would be liable for any damage caused by the breach of contract. In this case IBM could be fined quite heavily.
The other law that may be applicable is copyright. This applies to the copying and distribution of copyrighted stuff. As is the case with trade secrets, probably the only party that can be faulted is the party that copied the copyrighted code. With copyright infringement the infringed-upon party has to inform what the infringement is and try help mitigating the damages. If the infringing party acted in good faith and do their best to mitigate damage, there is a very small chance there will be any damage penalty. So, yes, in this case where SCO has done nothing to inform what the infringements are and if IBM are shown to not have blatantly copied code knowingly, even if SCO (against all probability) win the case, the result will probably be removal of infringing code and not much else.
As to your assertion that nobody can work on the kernel after having seen the code, this is just ludicrous. It is just plain untrue. If what you say is the case, does that mean that anybody who ever hear any copyrighted rock music can never write music? And anybody who has read a crime novel cannot write books?
-TN
I have two really good examples of open source innovation that I use every day: Mozilla(firefox) and KDE(sorry, I dont use GNOME). These two "packages" contain lots of innovation with every update. Have you looked at all the extensions to mozilla? Theres innovation for you. And KDE 3.2 is great. The speed at which it improves is amazing. Projects usually just have to spent some time getting started and catching up. If you compare to proprietary alternatives I think OSS is evolving and innovation at a much higher pace.
-TN
Even more annoying is the statement issued by the MPAA quoted in another afteposten article, saying the decision "encourages circumvention of copyright". I cannot believe an association that is supposed to protect the rights of so many copyright-holders are that clueless.
There is NO way to circumvent copyright. Copyright is a right granted to the creator of any work. Copying the material without being granted this right by the copyright holder is an infringement upon the copyright and is illegal. The copyright is still in place and cannot be "circumvented".
Not true! We all know that the paper clip was invented by an american software-comany and first included in Office 97.
Microsoft insn't innocent. They have been convicted of abusing their monopoly, and that still stands. The appeals court decided the remedy was not proper (and I think also threw out some claims), but microsoft has been convicted of breaking the law and is not innocent.
Its weird, it seems like the more the open source business accellerates, the more The proprietary business try to jump over each other into the abyss. First SCO is going totally bonkers, and now Phoenix doing this, dragging the rest along (and accellerating OS advance). It seems like if you still have a chance you should try to adapt instead of charging into certain death.
-TN
Yeah, and happy Fu**ing thanksgiving to all of them too.
If this is what Phoenix has decided I say good riddance to Them. I buy (through companies I work for) around 15 pc a year, and influence a lot more decisions. I will go to great lenghts and pay quite a bit more money to get anything other than any "trusted computing" that works. But that side of the story is just a minor one. If MS, Adobe and the rest of big companies really think they will gain anything by really restricting users, they are as delusional as the RIAA and the rest of the retarded population (no offence to retarded people). I am a paying licensee of Discreets 3dstudio max and Macromedias MX products. But without pirate copies I would never had been a customer. If they dont realize that 75% of the people out there use pirated copies to keep up their market share, too bad for them. Now Phoenix shooting themselves in the head and at the same time helping all proprietary SW companies do the same is just a dream come true. And so, I welcome our new BIOS overlords (note to you: I will support you).
-TN
I see this argument again and again, and I really dont understand it. Open source desktop environments have been catching up for a while, but they are at a point where they are starting to pass the leaders. There are lots of functionality in KDE that arent in windows or macs. But the best example is still mozilla. When you include the extensions there are tons of innovative new features. Theres nothing like that kind of innovation in proprietary sw. The problem is that the small companies that do innovate do not have the money/resources to get the innovation out, while the dominant players dont need to. In open source innovation occurs because someone thinks something is a good idea, and if other people agree it is picked up and incorporated.
So quite the opposite, I think open source innovates much more than proprietary software. It is the perfect evolutionary system. No barriers of entry, everybody influences what innovation stays, and innovation occur because of peoples strongest self interest ("I need this feature").
-TN
Hopefully this will finally make Macromedia get a clue and port their products to Linux. The only way they can beat MS is to help out the up and coming system. It would be great to get director and flash MX for Linux.
-TN
Microsoft does NOT have any point at all here.
-Microsoft does not provide a satisfactory product (not enough security, too much cost, no customization etc) for many customers, most importantly for governments.
-Governments do fund development of massive software systems (defense, research, administration), in addition to roads and other infrastructure. This happens in the US too.
-Because of the nature of software (the cost of reproduction and the benefit of building on the work of others) it is in no way cost-effective to buy proprietary software in most cases.
-Microsoft is a predatory monopoly, sentenced as such by american courts. They have 85% profit margins on their main products, something which is a sign that they are not in a healthy, competitive market. This also shows that consumers are not in any way getting good value for their money.
Most of these facts alone should make a government choose an alternative. Taken together, it is puzzling why it hasnt happened before.
I am sorry, but I am getting tired of these trolls. Microsoft does NOT have any point at all here.
-Microsoft does not provide a satisfactory product (not enough security, too much cost, no customization etc) for many customers, most importantly for governments.
-Governments do fund development of massive software systems (defense, research, administration), in addition to roads and other infrastructure. This happens in the US too.
-Because of the nature of software (the cost of reproduction and the benefit of building on the work of others) it is in no way cost-effective to buy proprietary software in most cases.
-Microsoft is a predatory monopoly, sentenced as such by american courts. They have 85% profit margins on their main products, something which is a sign that they are not in a healthy, competitive market. This also shows that consumers are not in any way getting good value for their money.
So Microsoft has no reason to complain about this. It is actually puzzling why it hasnt been done before.
Whoa, they're infantile, eh?
Fact remains that the internet is not sped up by Intel P3s. Pages are rendered faster with faster processors, be they AMD or Intel (point here is that it depends what your reference is). And whatever you say about windows software being optimised for Intel, the Athlon 1.4 beats the P4 1.8 in most performance tests. By the way, the architectures are not the same, and the Athlons have significantly better floating points operations than the P4.
As far as I can see, aside from being infantile, my arguments are all valid.
-Tharald
PS: The point about the CPU ID is not whether or not it can be disabled. Most consumers would never know about it even, much less how to turn it off. The problem is that it was a feature most people did not want (except for the software publishers), and it does not benefit the consumer.
These announcements usually turn into AMD/Intel bickering. I have lately been siding with AMD, and I figured I'd summarize the reasons for disliking Intel here:
-CPU ID
-False advertising (speed up the internet my arse)
-Forcing a proprietary memory standard on us
-Three different socket standards in the last year
-Exploiting the consumers lack of knowledge, pushing the Ghz over performance
Here in norway, the P4 1.8 costs NOK 3200, more than twice the price of the better performing Athlon 1.4 at NOK 1500.
In addition we have all the problems with the Camino chipset and the botched P3 1.13 launch
Did I miss anything?
What reasons do we have to dislike AMD lately?
-Tharald
Yeehaw!
This is to me (as to most others here) extremely happy news. Infineon did the only right thing to do, and theres nothing amazing about it. But compared to the other spineless memory makers out there, they had the guts to stand up for their rights. The compensation they were awarded was cut down to merely a symbolic sum ($350k), and I think Infineon deserves better. In my mind, Infineon (and Micron & Hynix) did something really important in standing up to Rambus, and I respect them a lot for it. So I would like to ask people to keep this in mind in the future when they buy memory and other products in the markets these companies are in. I know I will.
(I know they all most likely did it for economic reasons, but without them, the world could have been held memory-hostage to Rambus, a world I would not be happy in. )