It is similar to Bugzilla, except it's not software bug oriented so much as "Stuff To Do" oriented. It has a simple email gateway, it keeps track of absolutely everything, it allows you to add custom fields quite easily, it changes priorities of your events over time, and it allows you to keep track of how much time you've spent on various projects. Around my office, it's pretty key.
"His box, an 600 MHz 128MB RAM system, ran Windows XP happily, but with Mandrake it was considerably slower. Not only did it take longer to boot up, it crawled when running several major apps (Mozilla, OpenOffice.org and Evolution on top of KDE)..."
Well @!$#ing duh! How many object frameworks was he running? Let's see: 1) Mozilla/XPCOM, 2) OpenOffice.org/UNO, 3) KDE/DCOP, 4) Evolution/CORBA/Bonobo. Of course it's going to run slow!
I run GNOME2.6 and pretty much only GNOME2.6 on a 500MHz P3 with 256MB of RAM. And it's WAY snappier than my 500MHz P3 with 512MB of RAM that I have sitting next to it. I run Evolution, AbiWord, Gnumeric, and Galeon. All using GNOME libraries, all using CORBA, etc. Nothing has ever seemed faster.
Choose your application set wisely and you'll get the speed you want and you won't need so much hardware.
My girlfriend has a Windows computer. We'll be sitting in her room, reading, talking, whatever, and her hard drive will be endlessly cruching something. The hard disk light will show incredible activity, and as soon as you touch the mouse, the hard disk seeking stops.
I want to know why the hell it's doing that? What is it doing? What is it looking for on the hard disk? And who told it to anything anyways for that matter?
With Linux, I know what every little bit of the software on the machine is because I put it there. If something's crunching the hard disk or pegging the CPU, I know what it is. I can tell who is on my machine and what they're doing. I can go under the hood and figure out why something isn't working.
Linux works 95% of the time. Windows works about 98% of the time. There are lots of aggravating polish things on Linux that I wish they'd fix and fix faster, stuff that Windows has done right for years. But I'm willing to put up with a little frustration in order to be able to feel like the computer belongs to me, not to Redmond.
I know. I'll patent "A method of annoying Slashdot readers by publishing articles about the same exact event twice." That way, it will be illegal to have dupes!
"BayStar Capital looks to invest in growth-oriented firms with strong management, substantial market opportunity and solid, comprehensive business plans, and we believe that all of those fundamentals are in place for SCO to succeed," said Lawrence Goldfarb, General Partner, BayStar Capital. "SCO owns the most predominant UNIX software assets in the I.T. industry, has a 20 year history of providing trusted software solutions to end users around the globe, and an aggressive and seasoned management team focused on generating profitable growth."
Are you fscking kidding me? How does SCO continually manage to BS rich investment firms into believing it is more than just a frivolously-litigating, artificial-stock-inflating joke? Are investment firms really that dumb? Can I sue IBM and just get $50 million by pretending to be a player in industry?
You say : I realize that now I am "allowed" to have these MP3s, and to do with them whatever I please...
But this is incorrect.
Because of the decision in UMG vs. mp3.com, it has been determined that fair use is not applicable to the distribution of fair use copies to other users who may have fair use.
Therefore, you having mp3's of tracks from cd's that you legally own but those mp3's not coming from the actual cd's you own is illegal and not fair use.
The secondary element to this whole clusterfuck is that SCO is threatening to sue individual businesses and individual distributors of Linux unless they pay SCO licensing fees. If Linux is covered under the GPL, then SCO cannot legally force anybody to pay them license fees. It's against the GPL.
However, if the GPL is a legally invalid license, then SCO is released from that restraint. They can go to whomever and invalidate a potential license-purchaser's argument of protection under the GPL and have a stronger legal threat to extort^H^H^H^H^H^Hcollect license fees.
Of course, Rosen is absolutely correct that the courts would be exceptionally unlikely to allow SCO to claim damages from individual users of Linux *and* from IBM.
First off, great idea. I'd love to see this happen. I'm skeptical given how tight state and local budgets are these days, but whatever.
I think there are two things you ignore though.
First, this has been happening for a long time, except these "paid programmers" are professors at universities. Universities crank out **TONS** of free software and contribute to the development of free software and they get paid by the government, maybe not specifically to develop free software, but it happens none the less.
Second, the difference between libraries or roads or whatever existing public goods there are is that there were never commercial competition for said public goods. There are not commercial libraries. There are not commercial highways. There are not commercial police units. But there are commercial software development houses. And the state competing with corporations is not going to happen on any real scale.
For example, in the town I live in, Durango, CO, the town build a community recreation center. And it has turned out to be a huge public good. It's a wonderful facility with modern equipment and a natural meeting place for the community to interact. However, it competes directly with other local exercise facilities. And those facilities fought vigorously against the creation of the rec center. Many citizens argued that the government should not be filling functions designed for the public sector. In the end, the idea of building stronger community ties made the rec center a reality, but still, do you think MS or Sun or whomever would lay down if the U.S. started funding open-source development? That directly competes with their products? Unlikely.
Most universities have well published an Acceptable Use Policy. Before making any disclosures, become intimately familiar with this document. As long as you've done nothing to compromise this document, you should be on safe ground.
What would be their concern in punishing you? To dissuade every wanna-be cracker on campus from poking around the innards of the computer network. Though we all know security through obscurity does not work, your school does not want everybody trying to eliminate that obscurity.
When you compose your statement of disclosure, include a statement which argues for your concern and your compliance with the AUP. Cite it, quote it, and argue for your concern for staying within the published regulations of the University. So long as you have not used this exploit to your advantage and so long as you show concern for the things they are concerned about, you should be fine.
Actually, I think Red Hat made the right move. By suing first, they got to pick the venue. If they waited until SCO filed suit, then that choice would go to SCO. I've seen discussions on other boards that indicate the Deleware Federal Court is less likely to put up with BS and wants to move things along quickly than other Federal courts. (Ever notice how many corporations are incorporated in Deleware?)</quote>
Actually the main reason why so many corporations are incorporated in Delaware is that Delaware has favorable laws for the creation of limited liability corporations: corporations that if they are sued the trustees' personal wealth cannot be used to cover corporate liabilities.
About the courts being quick to move their docket along, I couldn't say.
But the reason Red Hat chose Delaware was likely the laws in Delaware regarding unfair competitive action, which probably allow the lowest barriers to larger damage compensation. Since Red Hat and SCO both do business in Delaware, it is a viable venue.
IANAL, but I think Gartner is obligated to give cautionary advice toward Linux. If Gartner simply stated that the SCO claims are false and their legal threats are FUD, a company paid for and followed their advice, and strangely SCO won the suit or sued Gartner's customer, then Gartner would be held legally liable for their legal advice. They could be sued for dismissing SCO's claims as absurd, regardless of how absurd they actually are.
As much as we all know SCO's full of shit, if there's a suit filed, there's always a chance they'll win. Gartner can't afford to ignore that.
-jag
Why not ask some good questions in the interview?
on
Darl McBride Interview
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
If I were doing an interview with the cheese at SCO, I'd want to ask stuff like, "Even if there is violating code, didn't your distribution of Linux under the GPL including that violating code mean that you obliterated its status as a trade secret?" or "Why won't you put your cards on the table and give some real experts some real freedom to examine the alleged violating code without the burden of an overly-binding NDA?" or "How do you claim to own all of these copyrights and all of this intellectual property when even in your own SEC filings your company claims it is merely a steward for Novell?"
Why ask all of these questions where we know we're just going to get pre-manufactured FUD?
Maybe if they stop this horseshit for AOL I will think about it. Until then I will stick with IE on my Windows machine.
What like Microsoft does do that horseshit? Ever look at a fresh install of Windows? IE's on your desktop and it's not even a link to IE... Same for Outlook, and you can't remove that either... Outlook Express is in your quicklaunch by default, so is IE... MSN icons are all over your desktop... MSN Messenger is in your quick launch toolbar...
Everybody does it on Windows... Real is probably the worst of them all... but this isn't a reason not to use RealPlayer any more than it's a reason not to use AIM or Netscape...
It's kinda strange... OSS with it's release-early-release-often idea almost makes it seem like improvements come so slowly, because they flow in a discrete trickle rather than the major leaps that come much further apart (emphasis on "seem")... Ximian's been working behind a black curtain for so long, it makes XD2 seem like such a gargantuan improvement...
Though significantly delayed, XD2 was released when Ximian got everything right... and they have... finally I have a desktop environment that I can proud to show to my consulting customers as a viable option...
So part of the claim in the emarketersamerica suit is that the defendents are clearly disguising their identities through providing false information to their domain registrar (which the spamhaus people deny)...
Evil is evil, bottom line. The DMCA is not evil, because it is merely a law. It permits a lot of evil things to be legal, but not everything it permits is evil. Your case is in fact one of the intended non-evil uses of the law.
You are a philanthropist (derives from the greek meaning lover of people) who was benevolent enough to bestow your creative and intellectual talents upon the world asking only in return that people continue to share your ideas and give you credit for them. All in all, pretty fair terms. This person is abusing your philanthropy and he should be made to stop. Using the DMCA to make him stop isn't evil, because you're trying to ensure the continued incentive to authors to use copyleft licenses.
Just because some people and companies use the DMCA for evil ends doesn't mean it's wrong to invoke it for just ends.
Songs are intellectual property and sensory experience. Both can be infinitely replicated with near-perfect fidelity at *zero* cost. Thus the cost of duplicating a song (either by digitally copying it or by playing it for somebody else to hear) is zero or at the least negligible.
Rentals cars are not intellectual property. It costs money to buy each and every one they rent to you. It costs money to insure them. It costs money to maintain them. Thus the cost in using the car is *not* even close to zero. Apples require labor and resources to grow, harvest, distribute, etc. Their production and reproduction cost is also not zero.
-jag
I actually submitted this idea...
on
Fishing for Ideas
·
· Score: 4, Funny
I submitted this idea... unfortunately it has to get past screeners before it goes public, but I thought I'd circumvent the process and post it here...
Idea #7141
Title - Exploting Creative Talent Keywords - exploitation evil empire conniving deceitful Essay - I propose to set up a contest to exploit the ideas of America's most creative college students by setting up a contest that seems to be supporting creativity and innovation. I will offer these students a sum of money that may be sizable to them but in the real world is chump change. I will get them to submit their ideas and in doing so yield all intellectual property rights to me. Then I can use their ideas to make myself multiple millions of dollars. And I'll make sure to bury this fact in contest rules so that it's not inherently obvious. It's a great idea because it saves me the expenses of actual research and development, despite its deceitful and conniving nature. It is the beginning of my evil empire.
It seems like this law tries to regulate interstate commerce. If the child porn site is in Nevada (nothing against Nevada, mind you) and Pennsylvania wants to block its citizens from accessing it, the transaction has to occur across state lines. Interstate commerce is the domain of Congress, not Pennsylvania. It would seem to me the only Constitutionally valid law Pennsylvania could pass would bar Pennsylvania citizens from accessing Pennsylvania child porn.
"'local area Napster networks,'... like Napster, they hurt artists, musicians, songwriters... The people who run these Napster networks know full well what they are doing..."
I want to go out and buy the Napster trademark. That way, whenever the RIAA starts blurting out Napster-this and Napster-that in a disparaging manner, I can sue them for libel for defaming and devaluing my trademark.
Please don't start comparing RedHat to Microsoft... There are some truths that can clear up a lot of these misconceptions...
1) RedHat releasing this as a major version number is consistent with their numbering schemes in the past and is likely not a marketing plot. RedHat does major number versioning when binary compatibility is broken between versions. The Native POSIX Thread Libraries used in the latest beta Phoebe broke binary compatibility with a lot of applications. Thus, a new major number is warranted.
2) RedHat has an interesting challenge in that it must balance the "release early, release often" philosophy to satisfy those of us who like having cutting edge distros with the need for corporations to have some longevity in their releases. RedHat has found a good balance here. These consumer releases are going to continue to be released every six months to satisfy those who want its raw power. They will continue to be free, and RHN update services will continue to be free (though recently they've asked for about ten seconds of your time to complete a five question marketing survey). These six-month releases will continue to have same QA process as always. RedHat is willing to continue to invest so much into these freely downloadable versions because the feedback they get from them helps them work on the slower release versions. Redhat has said this morethanonce during a recent thread on the phoebe list.
Please don't start villifying RedHat. They do a lot of good for the whole Linux community, pay many of the best developers of our favorite projects, and give Linux a wider acceptance in the RealWorld (tm) which helps all of us.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm a big fan of the web-based software RequestTracker, affectionately known as RT.
HomepageIt is similar to Bugzilla, except it's not software bug oriented so much as "Stuff To Do" oriented. It has a simple email gateway, it keeps track of absolutely everything, it allows you to add custom fields quite easily, it changes priorities of your events over time, and it allows you to keep track of how much time you've spent on various projects. Around my office, it's pretty key.
-jag
"His box, an 600 MHz 128MB RAM system, ran Windows XP happily, but with Mandrake it was considerably slower. Not only did it take longer to boot up, it crawled when running several major apps (Mozilla, OpenOffice.org and Evolution on top of KDE)..."
Well @!$#ing duh! How many object frameworks was he running? Let's see: 1) Mozilla/XPCOM, 2) OpenOffice.org/UNO, 3) KDE/DCOP, 4) Evolution/CORBA/Bonobo. Of course it's going to run slow!
I run GNOME2.6 and pretty much only GNOME2.6 on a 500MHz P3 with 256MB of RAM. And it's WAY snappier than my 500MHz P3 with 512MB of RAM that I have sitting next to it. I run Evolution, AbiWord, Gnumeric, and Galeon. All using GNOME libraries, all using CORBA, etc. Nothing has ever seemed faster.
Choose your application set wisely and you'll get the speed you want and you won't need so much hardware.
-jag
My girlfriend has a Windows computer. We'll be sitting in her room, reading, talking, whatever, and her hard drive will be endlessly cruching something. The hard disk light will show incredible activity, and as soon as you touch the mouse, the hard disk seeking stops.
I want to know why the hell it's doing that? What is it doing? What is it looking for on the hard disk? And who told it to anything anyways for that matter?
With Linux, I know what every little bit of the software on the machine is because I put it there. If something's crunching the hard disk or pegging the CPU, I know what it is. I can tell who is on my machine and what they're doing. I can go under the hood and figure out why something isn't working.
Linux works 95% of the time. Windows works about 98% of the time. There are lots of aggravating polish things on Linux that I wish they'd fix and fix faster, stuff that Windows has done right for years. But I'm willing to put up with a little frustration in order to be able to feel like the computer belongs to me, not to Redmond.
-jag
I know. I'll patent "A method of annoying Slashdot readers by publishing articles about the same exact event twice." That way, it will be illegal to have dupes!
-jag
From the article:
"BayStar Capital looks to invest in growth-oriented firms with strong management, substantial market opportunity and solid, comprehensive business plans, and we believe that all of those fundamentals are in place for SCO to succeed," said Lawrence Goldfarb, General Partner, BayStar Capital. "SCO owns the most predominant UNIX software assets in the I.T. industry, has a 20 year history of providing trusted software solutions to end users around the globe, and an aggressive and seasoned management team focused on generating profitable growth."
Are you fscking kidding me? How does SCO continually manage to BS rich investment firms into believing it is more than just a frivolously-litigating, artificial-stock-inflating joke? Are investment firms really that dumb? Can I sue IBM and just get $50 million by pretending to be a player in industry?
-jag
If they did end up sending invoices to all of these people, wouldn't that be considered mail fraud? Check out this which seems to suggest it would be.
18 USC 1341 defines the statute.
Maybe SCO's lawyers aren't so dumb after all...
-jag
You say : I realize that now I am "allowed" to have these MP3s, and to do with them whatever I please...
But this is incorrect.
Because of the decision in UMG vs. mp3.com, it has been determined that fair use is not applicable to the distribution of fair use copies to other users who may have fair use.
Therefore, you having mp3's of tracks from cd's that you legally own but those mp3's not coming from the actual cd's you own is illegal and not fair use.
Sorry.
-jag
Quite simple.
The secondary element to this whole clusterfuck is that SCO is threatening to sue individual businesses and individual distributors of Linux unless they pay SCO licensing fees. If Linux is covered under the GPL, then SCO cannot legally force anybody to pay them license fees. It's against the GPL.
However, if the GPL is a legally invalid license, then SCO is released from that restraint. They can go to whomever and invalidate a potential license-purchaser's argument of protection under the GPL and have a stronger legal threat to extort^H^H^H^H^H^Hcollect license fees.
Of course, Rosen is absolutely correct that the courts would be exceptionally unlikely to allow SCO to claim damages from individual users of Linux *and* from IBM.
Disclaimer: IANAL
-jag
First off, great idea. I'd love to see this happen. I'm skeptical given how tight state and local budgets are these days, but whatever.
I think there are two things you ignore though.
First, this has been happening for a long time, except these "paid programmers" are professors at universities. Universities crank out **TONS** of free software and contribute to the development of free software and they get paid by the government, maybe not specifically to develop free software, but it happens none the less.
Second, the difference between libraries or roads or whatever existing public goods there are is that there were never commercial competition for said public goods. There are not commercial libraries. There are not commercial highways. There are not commercial police units. But there are commercial software development houses. And the state competing with corporations is not going to happen on any real scale.
For example, in the town I live in, Durango, CO, the town build a community recreation center. And it has turned out to be a huge public good. It's a wonderful facility with modern equipment and a natural meeting place for the community to interact. However, it competes directly with other local exercise facilities. And those facilities fought vigorously against the creation of the rec center. Many citizens argued that the government should not be filling functions designed for the public sector. In the end, the idea of building stronger community ties made the rec center a reality, but still, do you think MS or Sun or whomever would lay down if the U.S. started funding open-source development? That directly competes with their products? Unlikely.
-jag
Most universities have well published an Acceptable Use Policy. Before making any disclosures, become intimately familiar with this document. As long as you've done nothing to compromise this document, you should be on safe ground.
What would be their concern in punishing you? To dissuade every wanna-be cracker on campus from poking around the innards of the computer network. Though we all know security through obscurity does not work, your school does not want everybody trying to eliminate that obscurity.
When you compose your statement of disclosure, include a statement which argues for your concern and your compliance with the AUP. Cite it, quote it, and argue for your concern for staying within the published regulations of the University. So long as you have not used this exploit to your advantage and so long as you show concern for the things they are concerned about, you should be fine.
-jag
Actually the main reason why so many corporations are incorporated in Delaware is that Delaware has favorable laws for the creation of limited liability corporations: corporations that if they are sued the trustees' personal wealth cannot be used to cover corporate liabilities.
About the courts being quick to move their docket along, I couldn't say.
But the reason Red Hat chose Delaware was likely the laws in Delaware regarding unfair competitive action, which probably allow the lowest barriers to larger damage compensation. Since Red Hat and SCO both do business in Delaware, it is a viable venue.
-jag
IANAL, but I think Gartner is obligated to give cautionary advice toward Linux. If Gartner simply stated that the SCO claims are false and their legal threats are FUD, a company paid for and followed their advice, and strangely SCO won the suit or sued Gartner's customer, then Gartner would be held legally liable for their legal advice. They could be sued for dismissing SCO's claims as absurd, regardless of how absurd they actually are.
As much as we all know SCO's full of shit, if there's a suit filed, there's always a chance they'll win. Gartner can't afford to ignore that.
-jag
If I were doing an interview with the cheese at SCO, I'd want to ask stuff like, "Even if there is violating code, didn't your distribution of Linux under the GPL including that violating code mean that you obliterated its status as a trade secret?" or "Why won't you put your cards on the table and give some real experts some real freedom to examine the alleged violating code without the burden of an overly-binding NDA?" or "How do you claim to own all of these copyrights and all of this intellectual property when even in your own SEC filings your company claims it is merely a steward for Novell?"
Why ask all of these questions where we know we're just going to get pre-manufactured FUD?
Maybe if they stop this horseshit for AOL I will think about it. Until then I will stick with IE on my Windows machine.
What like Microsoft does do that horseshit? Ever look at a fresh install of Windows? IE's on your desktop and it's not even a link to IE... Same for Outlook, and you can't remove that either... Outlook Express is in your quicklaunch by default, so is IE... MSN icons are all over your desktop... MSN Messenger is in your quick launch toolbar...
Everybody does it on Windows... Real is probably the worst of them all... but this isn't a reason not to use RealPlayer any more than it's a reason not to use AIM or Netscape...
-jag
It's kinda strange... OSS with it's release-early-release-often idea almost makes it seem like improvements come so slowly, because they flow in a discrete trickle rather than the major leaps that come much further apart (emphasis on "seem")... Ximian's been working behind a black curtain for so long, it makes XD2 seem like such a gargantuan improvement...
Though significantly delayed, XD2 was released when Ximian got everything right... and they have... finally I have a desktop environment that I can proud to show to my consulting customers as a viable option...
-jag
So part of the claim in the emarketersamerica suit is that the defendents are clearly disguising their identities through providing false information to their domain registrar (which the spamhaus people deny)...
:
Yet do a little whois on emarketersamerica.org
Registrant ID:71-C
Registrant Name:SEE SPONSORING REGISTRAR
Registrant Street1:Whois Server:whois.register.com
Registrant Street2:Referral URL:www.register.com
Registrant City:N/A
Registrant Postal Code:N/A
Registrant Country:CA
Registrant Email:not@available.org
Admin ID:71-C
Admin Name:SEE SPONSORING REGISTRAR
Admin Street1:Whois Server:whois.register.com
Admin Street2:Referral URL:www.register.com
Admin City:N/A
Admin Postal Code:N/A
Admin Country:CA
Admin Email:not@available.org
Billing ID:71-C
Billing Name:SEE SPONSORING REGISTRAR
Billing Street1:Whois Server:whois.register.com
Billing Street2:Referral URL:www.register.com
Billing City:N/A
Billing Postal Code:N/A
Billing Country:CA
Billing Email:not@available.org
Tech ID:71-C
Tech Name:SEE SPONSORING REGISTRAR
Tech Street1:Whois Server:whois.register.com
Tech Street2:Referral URL:www.register.com
Tech City:N/A
Tech Postal Code:N/A
Tech Country:CA
Tech Email:not@available.org
-jag
I agree that the system is rife with possible problems. It would truly be a shame to lose Lessig over this.
-jag
Evil is evil, bottom line. The DMCA is not evil, because it is merely a law. It permits a lot of evil things to be legal, but not everything it permits is evil. Your case is in fact one of the intended non-evil uses of the law.
You are a philanthropist (derives from the greek meaning lover of people) who was benevolent enough to bestow your creative and intellectual talents upon the world asking only in return that people continue to share your ideas and give you credit for them. All in all, pretty fair terms. This person is abusing your philanthropy and he should be made to stop. Using the DMCA to make him stop isn't evil, because you're trying to ensure the continued incentive to authors to use copyleft licenses.
Just because some people and companies use the DMCA for evil ends doesn't mean it's wrong to invoke it for just ends.
-jag
here
This might be interesting once more people sign up. But there's millions of AIM users and only about 10,000 have registered with the site.
-jag
You ought to check your logic again.
Songs are intellectual property and sensory experience. Both can be infinitely replicated with near-perfect fidelity at *zero* cost. Thus the cost of duplicating a song (either by digitally copying it or by playing it for somebody else to hear) is zero or at the least negligible.
Rentals cars are not intellectual property. It costs money to buy each and every one they rent to you. It costs money to insure them. It costs money to maintain them. Thus the cost in using the car is *not* even close to zero. Apples require labor and resources to grow, harvest, distribute, etc. Their production and reproduction cost is also not zero.
-jag
I submitted this idea... unfortunately it has to get past screeners before it goes public, but I thought I'd circumvent the process and post it here...
Idea #7141
Title - Exploting Creative Talent
Keywords - exploitation evil empire conniving deceitful
Essay - I propose to set up a contest to exploit the ideas of America's most creative college students by setting up a contest that seems to be supporting creativity and innovation. I will offer these students a sum of money that may be sizable to them but in the real world is chump change. I will get them to submit their ideas and in doing so yield all intellectual property rights to me. Then I can use their ideas to make myself multiple millions of dollars. And I'll make sure to bury this fact in contest rules so that it's not inherently obvious. It's a great idea because it saves me the expenses of actual research and development, despite its deceitful and conniving nature. It is the beginning of my evil empire.
What do you think. Do I deserve to win $25 g's?
-jag
It seems like this law tries to regulate interstate commerce. If the child porn site is in Nevada (nothing against Nevada, mind you) and Pennsylvania wants to block its citizens from accessing it, the transaction has to occur across state lines. Interstate commerce is the domain of Congress, not Pennsylvania. It would seem to me the only Constitutionally valid law Pennsylvania could pass would bar Pennsylvania citizens from accessing Pennsylvania child porn.
-jag
I want to go out and buy the Napster trademark. That way, whenever the RIAA starts blurting out Napster-this and Napster-that in a disparaging manner, I can sue them for libel for defaming and devaluing my trademark.
-jagPlease don't start comparing RedHat to Microsoft... There are some truths that can clear up a lot of these misconceptions...
1) RedHat releasing this as a major version number is consistent with their numbering schemes in the past and is likely not a marketing plot. RedHat does major number versioning when binary compatibility is broken between versions. The Native POSIX Thread Libraries used in the latest beta Phoebe broke binary compatibility with a lot of applications. Thus, a new major number is warranted.
2) RedHat has an interesting challenge in that it must balance the "release early, release often" philosophy to satisfy those of us who like having cutting edge distros with the need for corporations to have some longevity in their releases. RedHat has found a good balance here. These consumer releases are going to continue to be released every six months to satisfy those who want its raw power. They will continue to be free, and RHN update services will continue to be free (though recently they've asked for about ten seconds of your time to complete a five question marketing survey). These six-month releases will continue to have same QA process as always. RedHat is willing to continue to invest so much into these freely downloadable versions because the feedback they get from them helps them work on the slower release versions. Redhat has said this more than once during a recent thread on the phoebe list.
Please don't start villifying RedHat. They do a lot of good for the whole Linux community, pay many of the best developers of our favorite projects, and give Linux a wider acceptance in the RealWorld (tm) which helps all of us.
-jag