Now what I am wondering is, even if it was not legal for Sequent/IBM to add the code to Linux, how can SCO sell a license to use that code with Linux if they don't even own it?
Off the top of my head, for example, check out this fvwm95 screenshot.
That's not an official screenshot, is it? If someone configures their system to look like Windows and then publishes screenshots of that, you can't blame the fvwm developers or open source in general for that.
If a person is likely to be using a web browser in more than one language, then they'll probably want to configure all the language options all at once, so there's no sense in putting them in two separate places in the application.
But the options actually are two different things. Preferences -> Navigator -> Languages sets up what your browser sends as the Accept-Language header with HTTP requests, so sites that support content negotiation will be able to return a page in your preferred language. The other option, as far as I can tell, is for setting up which character sets Mozilla supports for displaying.
But yes, I agree, the "Character Coding" option is currently not easy to find. In fact, I didn't even know about that dialog before reading your post. Though I am also wondering what purpose it has? The only character set that I have set "active" is ISO-8859-1, but Mozilla displays Japanese characters just fine. I did set View -> Character Coding -> Auto-Detect -> Universal, so maybe that's why?
The whole character coding setup is a bit confusing. I don't really care that much, I got rid of those nasty notifications, that's enough for me. I can't read anything but latin characters anyway. But I'm wondering why Mozilla won't simply display anything you have fonts available for by default, and why auto-detection of character sets is not the default (as far as I remember, I had to activate it manually). Maybe too many servers are not configured correctly? But that doesn't even seem to matter. For example, if I go to Debian's home page, english version, Mozilla recognizes it as a page with character set ISO-8859-1, but displays all the non-latin characters in the language selection links at the bottom of the page correctly anyway.
Re:This is a lot of work - have you read the LGPL?
on
LGPL is Viral for Java
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· Score: 1
The plugin technique also works for GPL Java code. Since your app has hever heard of the GPL code until it loads the class by name at runtime, it does not fall under the GPL requirements.
That's probably true (as someone else has pointed in some other comment, basically in Java everything is a library to LGPL and GPL are almost equivalent), however if you distribute the plugin together with the application that uses it, the GPL requirements still apply, because they also apply to redistribution. So you probably cannot use this if the plugin is mandatory for your application.
What you meant for the agreement to say is beside the point unless we had some form of verbal or implied understanding at the time.
You're right, but in this case there probably is an implied understanding about the interpretation: it is very likely that for almost all Java libraries licensed under the LGPL, both the licensee's and the author's intention was that the LGPL does not have to be applied to works that simply use that library. Otherwise why would the author have chosen the LGPL instead of the GPL?
Of course you cannot be 100% sure unless you ask the author.
The most likely outcome of this whole debate is that most LGPLed Java libraries get a preamble similar to that mentioned by the original post in this thread attached to their license, or get relicensed under a different license.
It was used in ignorance, and now the folks that assumed they were OK find themselves "infected".
No, I don't think that's true. Those who published the code under the LGPL probably didn't want it to "infect" other code, and those who used it didn't want to have their code infected. So there you have a perfectly valid contract between the two parties -- of course it's not really safe, since it's not written down, and in fact differs from what was written down. So the developer of the library, if he wants, can screw you because you cannot proof what his real intentions were (unless you asked him, and have kept a copy of his reply, but even then it probably is far less safe than an appropriate license would be).
Anyway, even if you could not legally use the code, this doesn't mean your own code that uses the library now suddenly must be published under the LGPL. You simply have violated the copyright by using the library. That of course means you cannot continue to publish your software until you fixed that problem (by using a different library, or agreeing on a different license with the library's author), but it doesn't mean the library's author can now tell you what to do with your code. Of course you may also be liable for damages.
I do understand why people call the GPL viral, but it's not because it somehow restricts what you can do with your code. The "viral" aspect applies only to derivative works, i.e. your code combined with someone else's code. As soon as you remove the third-party, GPLed code, your work becomes "cured" and you can do whatever you want with that.
Oh, by the way, I agree with the previous poster who replied that the word "viral" is disliked because it has a very negative meaning. If you dislike the GPL, simply call it "restrictive" as opposed to a more "permissive" license like the modified BSD license. "Restrictive" also is a negative term, but at least it isn't associated with physically harming people.
Not quite. There is the bit about "no warranty". If the recipient doesn't understand that, the author could be in trouble.
Yes, but since the recipient doesn't have to accept the GPL, the author could be in trouble anyway.
Also the no warranty clause is quite certainly invalid in Germany anyway. But I don't think this is too much of a problem. The common legal opinion in Germany as far as I know (IANAL etc.) is that users have the responsibility to create daily backups, and that software doesn't have to be completely free of bugs. So the maximum liability that a developer could have is for the damages caused by one day's lost data.
And of course a lot depends on how you market your software. You're not liable for things you didn't promise. If you write a database next weekend and advertise it as an enterprise-ready database system, then you might get into trouble. But if you publish it as a development release of your hobby project, then if a user choses to use it anyway it's his own responsibility.
Really, I wouldn't worry too much about this. Developers of custom software have the same "problem" of not being able to disclaim all warranties (in fact the situation is even worse for them because there is almost never a vendor between them and the customer), and there is no massive amount of lawsuits against software developers in Germany.
Furthermore, given the way the software is distributed, a court could conclude that a reasonable person, in the absence of a comprehensible contract, would assume that the software was public domain.
Not really. With that argument, all web sites would also be in the public domain because they're distributed in the same way.
The second part contains what I think is the most critical claim: That the exclusion of warranty and liability in GPL sections 11 and 12 is not valid under German law.
So what? As a user, you're not required to accept the GPL anyway, see section 5: "You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works."
So, I don't see a problem here. If you just want to use the software you could simply not accept the GPL and then liability would be covered by the normal laws. Now this study says that the liability exclusion is invalid and therefore the normal laws apply. I don't see a problem here.
The paper makes an interesting point: the only official version of the GPL is in English, but contracts in Germany generally need to be in German in order to be enforceable.
Well, yes and no. Two parties can agree to a contract in whatever way they like, as long as both parties understand the contract. However if you use standard form contracts (i.e. contracts not individually negotiated by the parties) when doing business with consumers, there are some quite strict regulations, and one of them is that the contract must be understandable. Those parts of a contract that the consumer cannot be expected to understand are not valid. There are probably court decisions that have ruled that this requires standard form contracts to be written in German (which is a reasonable requirement, I think).
However, this doesn't matter. For example you don't need to agree to the GPL in order to use GPLed free software, the GPL even explicitly says that. Of course if you don't agree to the GPL you only have those rights that copyright law grants you, so you cannot modify, copy or distribute the software.
This is one of the strongest features of the GPL: it only gives you additional rights. If someone claims that the GPL is not valid because they didn't understand it, then they also have no right to copy, modify or redistribute the software because they don't have a contract granting them that right. License agreements for proprietary software are also of questionable validity in Germany for the same reasons, but the fact that the Microsoft Windows EULA I "agreed" to isn't valid doesn't mean that I may modify or redistribute Windows.
The same thing is probably (IANAL etc.) true for other free software licenses, if you don't agree to the license, e.g. because you don't understand it, you can still use the software. If you legally obtained it, copyright law allows you to use it, and the copyright holder intended it to be free anyway so he won't sue you for using it. But you don't have any of the additional rights.
First, 'a read ahead and preview' kind of capability. The way this would operate is as follows: when otherwise idle, the browser would try to anticipate future user actions and read the data in advance.
Wow, now that's kind of a dangerous feature. Think about a one-click-shopping link being "read ahead" by the browser for me. Yes, the HTTP standard says that GET requests shouldn't have any side effects, but I wouldn't trust on all web site authors knowing about this.
By the way, Mozilla does have a prefetch feature, but it doesn't try to "anticipate future user actions," it only prefetches links that are marked up in the page as prefetchable links. I think they use the HTML's LINK element (in the page header) for this, Mozilla will prefetch the rel="next" page and they also have a rel="prefetch". I think this is the right way of doing prefetching, the page author is much more likely than the browser to guess correctly where visitors will go next.
While I'm generally not all that fond if the name nitpicking either, it's actually a relavent distinction for once - SCO has been spouting off things about "whole programs copied" which tends to imply that they're talking about quite a bit more than the kernel.
Yes, it is relevant in this case.
On the other hand, I found the following part of the article quite arrogant: "This confusion, which the Free Software Foundation warned against in the past, is here shown to have the misleading consequences the Foundation has often predicted." This statement doesn't say anything but "see, we told you so!" And, in the context of this article, it also unfairly makes everyone who says "Linux" for the whole operating system indirectly responsible for parts of SCO's FUD campaign.
Instead of writing a whole paragraph about their naming conventions, the FSF could simply have written that "Linux" is the name of the kernel, but in common usage is also used to refer to the whole operating system, and that SCO's claims are confusing because they don't make clear which of the two they are talking about.
Somewhat offtopic, but you are aware of the fact that you can rename a.doc file into a.rtf file and Word will still open it just fine because it recognizes it as a Word document? I don't actually know if Word will also execute macros in those renamed documents, but if blocking MS Office attachments is part of your security policy, you probably should block all file types associated with Office applications.
And as someone else noted, how big is this rebuttal allowed to be? Is the author of the rebuttal required to pay for the bandwidth used by the rebuttal? If not, why not?
No, he's not required to pay. You said something about him that he thinks is wrong, so you have to accept the consequences and correct your mistake. (Note that I think he won't have a right of reply if you can proof that facts you presented were correct.)
Nobody seems to be indicating how the stated goal here is not already covered by existing laws. What additional protection does this offer and should it be offered?
Laws against libel only make the publication of libelous articles illegal, they can't retroactively change the fact that the article was published. A right of reply also can't change that, but at least it can make sure that the readers of the publication get to know that you think the article was wrong. If you only sue the editors they're not forced to publish that, even if you win.
I live in Germany, and we already do have such a law for newspapers etc., which seems to work quite well. It is very rare that a "forced reply" is published. Quality publications will publish rebuttals as letters to the editor anyway, so this is still the usual way.
However, while I think that basically a right of reply is a good idea, you are right: it can be difficult to decide if someone has a right of reply and if the reply doesn't contain anything you don't have to publish. Professional journalists have the necessary knowledge to answer those questions, and in the rare case where the writer of a reply actually might have a case, professional publications can always simple hire a skilled lawyer. But for individuals, the situation is somewhat different, they don't have the journalistic experience and they probably don't want to pay a lawyer, so there actually might be potential for abuse if this law is applied to personal online publications as well.
Somone only has a right of reply only if something about him has been presented as a fact (so opinions are not included), and if he thinks it's wrong. That's a pretty strong requirement. Yes, you can still safely say "I don't like you" because it's clearly an opinion.
The reply also doesn't need to be published if it "is not limited to a correction of the facts challenged," or at least national laws don't have to grant a right of reply in that case. So even if you consider "I don't like you" a fact, the only thing that the person to whom you're saying that could force you to publish is somthing like: "Dear limekiller4, on your website you have published that you don't like me. This is wrong and a misrepresentation of facts. The truth is that you do like me. Sincerely,..."
Are business covered?
Yes.
Do they have to post replies from their competitors?
I don't know.
If a company claims that their product works, is that tacit criticism of someone who says that it does not?
No.
If the company simply writes "our product works," they don't mention any other person, so there simply isn't anyone who might have a right of reply.
If on the other hand they write "XYZ said that our product doesn't work, but that's wrong, it does work," than the only thing presented about XYZ as a fact is that he said something, so if he didn't say that, he might have a right of reply where the reply might be something like "I did not say that your product does not work."
If they write something like "XYZ, who never even used our product, said that it doesn't work,..." than XYZ very likely does have a right of reply and could force the company to publish something like "I did use your product."
What if the criticism is oblique? "Other products aren't as fast as the Super Widget 2003" Who gets to reply?
For example, 8 pm eastern is 2 am in Germany. A description like "8 pm tonight" would translate to "2 am tonight," which is fine, but what if the Slashdot editors had written "thursday 8 pm" instead? That would have to translate to "friday 2 am."
There is a huge number of ways in which you can write a date. For example, the same date could have been written by the editors as "Thursday June 12, 08:00 PM." Or whatever else you come up with. How would you add markup to that?
That's a lot of markup for something as simple as localizing a date.
And will the browser be able to parse the date? Even if it is written in a different language?
Or you could write the date in an unambiguous, computer-readable format and have the text generated by the computer. Like this:
<date when="20030612T2000-0600"/>
The browser could then render this as "Thursday June 12, 08:00 PM" for readers in the US Eastern time zone, and it could render it as... oh wait. What language would you like for e.g. German readers? If my browser inserted a date in German language into an otherwise English text, as I did this Freitag um 2:00 Uhr, that would sound wrong. So you need to format the date in the same language as the sorrounding text. Hopefully the authors have added correct markup describing the language used, but even then how many languages do you want the browser to support?
Although I have never actually used goto in a program, I can concieve of a severely nested loop with an exit condition that would have to be propagated all the way out of a the loop.
Java has labeled statements, so you can put a label on the outermost loop statement and then simply write "break label;" when you have to exit all the loops.
outermost: for (...) { //lots of nested for statements here if (something) { break outermost; } }
You probably know this, but you usually don't want to return your internal list variable:
public List getStrings() { return Collections.unmodifiableList(list); }
(I haven't looked at Java's proposed generics yet, so I don't know how that would look with generics. I think that you might have to cast the result of unmodifiableList since by default it returns a List of Objects, not a List of Strings.)
The code was written in house, and thus as the copyrighted property of AOL Time Warner.
Umm, no. Nullsoft's website says: "Nullsoft is the exclusive owner of all right, title and interest in the Software. The posting of the Software on this website was not authorized by Nullsoft."
They organize a yearly Linux exhibition, called "LinuxTag" (which means "Linux day"), which according to them is Europe's biggest Linux exhibition. They're not direct competitors to SCO, however if SCO causes less people to visit the trade show or causes exhibitors to shy away from actually displaying Linux products, that will harm LinuxTag e.V., so that's why they can take legal action.
I don't know what they can do other than writing letters. In fact, I have to say that I'm quite surprised to see this move. I don't expect SCO to simply accept their demands, so unless all they wanted is some free press coverage, they'll have to sue SCO.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for that explanation.
Now what I am wondering is, even if it was not legal for Sequent/IBM to add the code to Linux, how can SCO sell a license to use that code with Linux if they don't even own it?
That's not an official screenshot, is it? If someone configures their system to look like Windows and then publishes screenshots of that, you can't blame the fvwm developers or open source in general for that.
But the options actually are two different things. Preferences -> Navigator -> Languages sets up what your browser sends as the Accept-Language header with HTTP requests, so sites that support content negotiation will be able to return a page in your preferred language. The other option, as far as I can tell, is for setting up which character sets Mozilla supports for displaying.
But yes, I agree, the "Character Coding" option is currently not easy to find. In fact, I didn't even know about that dialog before reading your post. Though I am also wondering what purpose it has? The only character set that I have set "active" is ISO-8859-1, but Mozilla displays Japanese characters just fine. I did set View -> Character Coding -> Auto-Detect -> Universal, so maybe that's why?
The whole character coding setup is a bit confusing. I don't really care that much, I got rid of those nasty notifications, that's enough for me. I can't read anything but latin characters anyway. But I'm wondering why Mozilla won't simply display anything you have fonts available for by default, and why auto-detection of character sets is not the default (as far as I remember, I had to activate it manually). Maybe too many servers are not configured correctly? But that doesn't even seem to matter. For example, if I go to Debian's home page, english version, Mozilla recognizes it as a page with character set ISO-8859-1, but displays all the non-latin characters in the language selection links at the bottom of the page correctly anyway.
That's probably true (as someone else has pointed in some other comment, basically in Java everything is a library to LGPL and GPL are almost equivalent), however if you distribute the plugin together with the application that uses it, the GPL requirements still apply, because they also apply to redistribution. So you probably cannot use this if the plugin is mandatory for your application.
You're right, but in this case there probably is an implied understanding about the interpretation: it is very likely that for almost all Java libraries licensed under the LGPL, both the licensee's and the author's intention was that the LGPL does not have to be applied to works that simply use that library. Otherwise why would the author have chosen the LGPL instead of the GPL?
Of course you cannot be 100% sure unless you ask the author.
The most likely outcome of this whole debate is that most LGPLed Java libraries get a preamble similar to that mentioned by the original post in this thread attached to their license, or get relicensed under a different license.
No, I don't think that's true. Those who published the code under the LGPL probably didn't want it to "infect" other code, and those who used it didn't want to have their code infected. So there you have a perfectly valid contract between the two parties -- of course it's not really safe, since it's not written down, and in fact differs from what was written down. So the developer of the library, if he wants, can screw you because you cannot proof what his real intentions were (unless you asked him, and have kept a copy of his reply, but even then it probably is far less safe than an appropriate license would be).
Anyway, even if you could not legally use the code, this doesn't mean your own code that uses the library now suddenly must be published under the LGPL. You simply have violated the copyright by using the library. That of course means you cannot continue to publish your software until you fixed that problem (by using a different library, or agreeing on a different license with the library's author), but it doesn't mean the library's author can now tell you what to do with your code. Of course you may also be liable for damages.
I do understand why people call the GPL viral, but it's not because it somehow restricts what you can do with your code. The "viral" aspect applies only to derivative works, i.e. your code combined with someone else's code. As soon as you remove the third-party, GPLed code, your work becomes "cured" and you can do whatever you want with that.
Oh, by the way, I agree with the previous poster who replied that the word "viral" is disliked because it has a very negative meaning. If you dislike the GPL, simply call it "restrictive" as opposed to a more "permissive" license like the modified BSD license. "Restrictive" also is a negative term, but at least it isn't associated with physically harming people.
Yes, but it's postincrement, so the result is still C without any added value ;-)
Yes, but since the recipient doesn't have to accept the GPL, the author could be in trouble anyway.
Also the no warranty clause is quite certainly invalid in Germany anyway. But I don't think this is too much of a problem. The common legal opinion in Germany as far as I know (IANAL etc.) is that users have the responsibility to create daily backups, and that software doesn't have to be completely free of bugs. So the maximum liability that a developer could have is for the damages caused by one day's lost data.
And of course a lot depends on how you market your software. You're not liable for things you didn't promise. If you write a database next weekend and advertise it as an enterprise-ready database system, then you might get into trouble. But if you publish it as a development release of your hobby project, then if a user choses to use it anyway it's his own responsibility.
Really, I wouldn't worry too much about this. Developers of custom software have the same "problem" of not being able to disclaim all warranties (in fact the situation is even worse for them because there is almost never a vendor between them and the customer), and there is no massive amount of lawsuits against software developers in Germany.
Not really. With that argument, all web sites would also be in the public domain because they're distributed in the same way.
So what? As a user, you're not required to accept the GPL anyway, see section 5: "You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works."
So, I don't see a problem here. If you just want to use the software you could simply not accept the GPL and then liability would be covered by the normal laws. Now this study says that the liability exclusion is invalid and therefore the normal laws apply. I don't see a problem here.
Well, yes and no. Two parties can agree to a contract in whatever way they like, as long as both parties understand the contract. However if you use standard form contracts (i.e. contracts not individually negotiated by the parties) when doing business with consumers, there are some quite strict regulations, and one of them is that the contract must be understandable. Those parts of a contract that the consumer cannot be expected to understand are not valid. There are probably court decisions that have ruled that this requires standard form contracts to be written in German (which is a reasonable requirement, I think).
However, this doesn't matter. For example you don't need to agree to the GPL in order to use GPLed free software, the GPL even explicitly says that. Of course if you don't agree to the GPL you only have those rights that copyright law grants you, so you cannot modify, copy or distribute the software.
This is one of the strongest features of the GPL: it only gives you additional rights. If someone claims that the GPL is not valid because they didn't understand it, then they also have no right to copy, modify or redistribute the software because they don't have a contract granting them that right. License agreements for proprietary software are also of questionable validity in Germany for the same reasons, but the fact that the Microsoft Windows EULA I "agreed" to isn't valid doesn't mean that I may modify or redistribute Windows.
The same thing is probably (IANAL etc.) true for other free software licenses, if you don't agree to the license, e.g. because you don't understand it, you can still use the software. If you legally obtained it, copyright law allows you to use it, and the copyright holder intended it to be free anyway so he won't sue you for using it. But you don't have any of the additional rights.
Wow, now that's kind of a dangerous feature. Think about a one-click-shopping link being "read ahead" by the browser for me. Yes, the HTTP standard says that GET requests shouldn't have any side effects, but I wouldn't trust on all web site authors knowing about this.
By the way, Mozilla does have a prefetch feature, but it doesn't try to "anticipate future user actions," it only prefetches links that are marked up in the page as prefetchable links. I think they use the HTML's LINK element (in the page header) for this, Mozilla will prefetch the rel="next" page and they also have a rel="prefetch". I think this is the right way of doing prefetching, the page author is much more likely than the browser to guess correctly where visitors will go next.
Yes, it is relevant in this case.
On the other hand, I found the following part of the article quite arrogant: "This confusion, which the Free Software Foundation warned against in the past, is here shown to have the misleading consequences the Foundation has often predicted." This statement doesn't say anything but "see, we told you so!" And, in the context of this article, it also unfairly makes everyone who says "Linux" for the whole operating system indirectly responsible for parts of SCO's FUD campaign.
Instead of writing a whole paragraph about their naming conventions, the FSF could simply have written that "Linux" is the name of the kernel, but in common usage is also used to refer to the whole operating system, and that SCO's claims are confusing because they don't make clear which of the two they are talking about.
Somewhat offtopic, but you are aware of the fact that you can rename a .doc file into a .rtf file and Word will still open it just fine because it recognizes it as a Word document? I don't actually know if Word will also execute macros in those renamed documents, but if blocking MS Office attachments is part of your security policy, you probably should block all file types associated with Office applications.
Sorry, I couldn't find a reference for this :-(
No, he's not required to pay. You said something about him that he thinks is wrong, so you have to accept the consequences and correct your mistake. (Note that I think he won't have a right of reply if you can proof that facts you presented were correct.)
Laws against libel only make the publication of libelous articles illegal, they can't retroactively change the fact that the article was published. A right of reply also can't change that, but at least it can make sure that the readers of the publication get to know that you think the article was wrong. If you only sue the editors they're not forced to publish that, even if you win.
I live in Germany, and we already do have such a law for newspapers etc., which seems to work quite well. It is very rare that a "forced reply" is published. Quality publications will publish rebuttals as letters to the editor anyway, so this is still the usual way.
However, while I think that basically a right of reply is a good idea, you are right: it can be difficult to decide if someone has a right of reply and if the reply doesn't contain anything you don't have to publish. Professional journalists have the necessary knowledge to answer those questions, and in the rare case where the writer of a reply actually might have a case, professional publications can always simple hire a skilled lawyer. But for individuals, the situation is somewhat different, they don't have the journalistic experience and they probably don't want to pay a lawyer, so there actually might be potential for abuse if this law is applied to personal online publications as well.
The proposed regulation refers to an earlier resolution from 1974.
Somone only has a right of reply only if something about him has been presented as a fact (so opinions are not included), and if he thinks it's wrong. That's a pretty strong requirement. Yes, you can still safely say "I don't like you" because it's clearly an opinion.
The reply also doesn't need to be published if it "is not limited to a correction of the facts challenged," or at least national laws don't have to grant a right of reply in that case. So even if you consider "I don't like you" a fact, the only thing that the person to whom you're saying that could force you to publish is somthing like: "Dear limekiller4, on your website you have published that you don't like me. This is wrong and a misrepresentation of facts. The truth is that you do like me. Sincerely, ..."
Yes.
I don't know.
No.
If the company simply writes "our product works," they don't mention any other person, so there simply isn't anyone who might have a right of reply.
If on the other hand they write "XYZ said that our product doesn't work, but that's wrong, it does work," than the only thing presented about XYZ as a fact is that he said something, so if he didn't say that, he might have a right of reply where the reply might be something like "I did not say that your product does not work."
If they write something like "XYZ, who never even used our product, said that it doesn't work, ..." than XYZ very likely does have a right of reply and could force the company to publish something like "I did use your product."
No one. No person is mentioned.
It's not that simple.
For example, 8 pm eastern is 2 am in Germany. A description like "8 pm tonight" would translate to "2 am tonight," which is fine, but what if the Slashdot editors had written "thursday 8 pm" instead? That would have to translate to "friday 2 am."
There is a huge number of ways in which you can write a date. For example, the same date could have been written by the editors as "Thursday June 12, 08:00 PM." Or whatever else you come up with. How would you add markup to that?
That's a lot of markup for something as simple as localizing a date.
And will the browser be able to parse the date? Even if it is written in a different language?
Or you could write the date in an unambiguous, computer-readable format and have the text generated by the computer. Like this:
The browser could then render this as "Thursday June 12, 08:00 PM" for readers in the US Eastern time zone, and it could render it as... oh wait. What language would you like for e.g. German readers? If my browser inserted a date in German language into an otherwise English text, as I did this Freitag um 2:00 Uhr, that would sound wrong. So you need to format the date in the same language as the sorrounding text. Hopefully the authors have added correct markup describing the language used, but even then how many languages do you want the browser to support?
That's wrong! The GPL only applies when you redistribute the software, but you're not forced to do that.
Java has labeled statements, so you can put a label on the outermost loop statement and then simply write "break label;" when you have to exit all the loops.
You probably know this, but you usually don't want to return your internal list variable:
(I haven't looked at Java's proposed generics yet, so I don't know how that would look with generics. I think that you might have to cast the result of unmodifiableList since by default it returns a List of Objects, not a List of Strings.)
Umm, no. Nullsoft's website says: "Nullsoft is the exclusive owner of all right, title and interest in the Software. The posting of the Software on this website was not authorized by Nullsoft."
The injunction is only against SCO's German subsidiary, SCO Group GmbH. It doesn't apply to the US-based SCO Group.
They don't, but we haven't seen any technical issues anyway yet, or have we? As far as I know, SCO refuses to disclose details.
They organize a yearly Linux exhibition, called "LinuxTag" (which means "Linux day"), which according to them is Europe's biggest Linux exhibition. They're not direct competitors to SCO, however if SCO causes less people to visit the trade show or causes exhibitors to shy away from actually displaying Linux products, that will harm LinuxTag e.V., so that's why they can take legal action.
I don't know what they can do other than writing letters. In fact, I have to say that I'm quite surprised to see this move. I don't expect SCO to simply accept their demands, so unless all they wanted is some free press coverage, they'll have to sue SCO.
Actually, the core of the system usually is someone else's database, most businesses run SAP on Oracle or DB2.