According to Microsoft, the documentation is over 8500 pages."
And if I know Microsoft, it's all disorganized, incomplete, unusable crap... Anything to be able to claim that they have fulfilled the EU's request without making any real progress toward interoperability. Please Microsoft, prove me wrong!
...is to break up Microsofts monopoly into two or even three companys. Split the OS part of the business away from the software that they develop to run on it. Maybe even split the Office part into its own company.
"The other side came back with an argument that copyright law didn't apply, simply because they software was 'being given away for free.'"
From that statement I assumed that this is a Pro Se case then I went and read the article. I think the defendant needs to get another lawyer because his current one is fucking stupid.
Just because you include the source code in no way nullifies your copyright. IANAL but even I know that much. The fact that the user accepted the license testifies to the fact that he acknowledges the copyright because one can not give a license to a software product without having the copyright.
This lawyer's case is going down like a cheap whore.
he's talking about Microsoft's obvious threat, don't you?
Yeah, a lot of people have bought into the whole.Net for Linux thing and obviously that was a mistake. I am afraid Mono is dead. It'll twitch for a while but it's dead unless Novell can eliminate the patent infringement fear. Novell has lost loads of credibility because of the deal they cut with Microsoft.
The election that will put the Democrats into the majority only happened four fucking days ago and you are already blaming them for some God damn "movement away from free-enterprise." What a partisan prick. Get a grip asshole. They don't even take office until January. The Republicans have until then to continue to screw up this country.
As I said, I regret that we were put into a position where our leaving will cause massive blood shed. And make no mistake, when we leave there will be blood shed on the scale of genocide. These people really, really hate each other.
Our presents there will never mend their hatred and the violence will go on and on and on. I don't have a solution that will save Iraqi civilians and I do grieve that their hate is so great. But I'm not willing that thousands more Americans die to slow the killing process; A process that will occur if we leave now or after those many thousands lay down their lives.
I'm telling you that if we "stay the course" our children's children will be dying in Iraq.
Having typoed the word "torture" doesn't take away from the message. (And the fact that "typoed" isn't a real word doesn't take away from this message.)
He is definitely critical of all people who are not rich and still vote for the Republicans on money issues rather than moral issues. I never said that he didn't.
You keep saying "But I'm stupid" as if what was said was a direct attack on you but you yourself said:
"I tend to vote republican not because of what money I get out of it, but because the ideals that they 'say' they hold are similar to mine."
So, he wasn't talking about you or other people who voted for Republicans for the reasons that you did.
He was defiantly talking about _all_ people who were not rich but still voted for Republicans because they thought that Republicans would benefit them financially. And he pointed out a couple of Republican Presidents who ran up the national debt.
If you don't agree with his position, rather than taking it personally, why not post some examples of Republicans directly helping the middle class and the poor?
No one here has said that people who vote for a party because of moral beliefs are stupid.
I believe you should re-read the parent post without being defensive. He explicitly stated that the exit polls showed that most Republicans didn't vote because of money issues but, like you said, because the Republican party said that they believed in certain moral issues. Issues that they, through their actions, didn't embody.
He went on to say that IF a republican voted for money reasons they were either rich (because this group of Republicans has mostly helped the rich) OR they were stupid.
This was not a slam against Republicans who really believe in their base values.
What adults do in the privacy of their own bedrooms does not concern me. What does concern me is the impact that Government has on my life. Period.
Government should not be there to censor my information. Government should not be spying on me without warrants that give them the authority to do so. Without warrants it is less likely that there will be over site and without that there WILL BE ABUSE.
Now that the Democrats have taken both the Congress and the Senate they DAMN WELL BETTER FIX THIS BROKEN OUT OF CONTROL GOVERNMENT!
May I make a few suggestions?
1.Give me back my habeas corpus rights.
2.Stop the fucking torcher of fellow human beings! Changing the definition doesn't make it okay!
3.When some action is so egregious and offensive to the public that you feel you must classify it as top secret don't FUCKING DO IT!!
4.Stop telling me that the economy is so great just because you and your rich friends own stocks that are doing well! I can't afford to buy stocks, I live paycheck to paycheck and out of control heal care, gas prices, and hidden costs resulting from the tax breaks to the rich make this economy very bad for me!
5.Investigate and impeach Bush. He has no respect for our civil rights and has violated the law. He has done more damage to the American way of life than any terrorist group. This is not about revenge. This is about accountability and sending a message that if you fuck with our rights you WILL BE PUNISHED!
6.Get the hell out of Iraq. We never should have gone there. There never were WMDs. We went there as part of an evil agenda. I'm sorry that leaving will lead to massive bloodshed in Iraq but the bloodshed will be due to their own hatred of one another and we could stay the course forever and that hatred will never change. Quite frankly there is nothing in Iraq worth even one American life.
"The company claims that it has worked around the GPL provisions by providing patent licences directly to customers and not between the two vendors."
However the Microsoft/Novell pact covers software that Microsoft is alleging would infringe on Microsoft's patents. Microsoft has specifically stated that this pact is not transferable to the users of Suse.
This makes it a violation of the GPL because it adds additional Licenses to software that would restrict some users (Redhat for example) from redistributing the software.
Novell, talk to your lawyers and see if you can get out of this deal. If not then make it clear that you are NOT violating ANY of Microsoft's patents and that you will NEVER do so.
As it stands now, Suse Linux is dead. Mono is dead. Pretty much any code already merged into Linux by Novell/Suse or that will be in the future will need to go under a rigorous review to determine if it may in fact violate Microsoft's patents.
I understand that nearly four hundred million dollars is a lot of money. I hope it is worth turns out to be worth it. I honestly can't see how.
When ever an animal population grows to the extent that the critters becomes a nuisance we always put a bounty on their hides (or any body part that proves you killed one).
I say they should just pay people to kill these pests until they're down to a manageable level.
Sorry, because of the database error we can't reply in a thread so I'll just reply here.
geoffspear wrote: "Umm, if you think that someone with no resources could be successfully prosecuted for violating antitrust laws, you probably don't understand antitrust law at all. If you're too small to harm your competitors though anti-competitive activity, then by definition you can't violate antitrust law."
IANAL but I don't think your statement is entirely accurate. I don't think a monopoly has anything to do with how much money you have or earn from your product. I could be wrong and if so I hope an actual lawyer will correct me but I believe that a monopoly is based on how much of a market share you control.
It would seem intuitive that if you controlled a monopoly share you would have lots of income from that share but in the case of Open Source many companies give the software away for free and earn their income through support services/contracts etc.
In a case like this your product could hold a monopoly share but if your services were not bringing in any money you could still be dirt poor.
"According to Dvorak, it's only a matter of time before Linux is 'cracked' by Microsoft, meaning Microsoft figures out a way to run proprietary code on it."
This is a fairly ignorant statement. There is no problem running proprietary code on Linux if you follow the rules. i.e. you don't extend anything already covered by the GPL.
There are already many examples of closed source code that runs on Linux. Just look at X-Develop as one example. That's a first class IDE that is not open source.
No, I don't believe that Microsoft paid over three hundred million dollars so that they could develop closed source software for Linux. I think it's far more likely that at worse it's the first step in a plan to make Linux irrelevant in the future and at best they bought a FUD card that they plan to play over and over again for many years.
"The administration and the director of the CIA made up their minds that iraq had WMDs despite the declarations of people who know better."
You are giving the Bush Administration more credit than I. I for one don't think they believed that there were WMDs in Iraq. I think they had multiple reasons for going into Iraq; none of the reasons really being in the interest of the average citizens of the USA.
I believe that there are a few people making many, many millions or even billions off of the illegal invasion of Iraq.
I believe the Bush wanted this invasion so that he could claim to be a "war president" because "war presidents" have a much better chance of re-election. So our sons and daughters are being used in a "Blood for Votes" campaign. A campaign that worked. It got a mental midget re-elected.
What Microsoft most wants is clear. It all started with the funding of the SCO lawsuit. A lawsuit meant to scare customer's away from switching to a FOSS solution. Now that it is becoming clear that the SCO lawsuit is falling flat on its face they need to raise the ante. They want to plant a seed of doubt about Linux and cultivate it for the duration of this agreement.
Notice how Microsoft is framing the agreement. As an act of Cooperation with Novel which implies FOSS. I'm willing to bet with the EU pissed off over numerous issues with Microsoft products, licenses, abuse of power etc., they want to be able to say "See, we're playing nice." without really playing nice at all.
This is phase one. Phase two comes in five or six years when the agreement expires. Even if Linux isn't infringing on Microsoft's patents in any way there will be more than half a decade of subtly implanting that doubt in peoples minds. At that point Microsoft will have to decide if they are going to start suing.
I don't know what Novel was thinking or what pressure Microsoft may have put on them. I can only speculate. Did Microsoft make it clear to Novel that the size difference between the two companies (Microsoft brings in about 100 times as much revenue as Novel.) would make a nuisance lawsuit (Like the SCO lawsuit which was funded in part by Microsoft.) would devastate Novel?
The reason I wonder this is that I don't see how Novel could have miscalculated the backlash of ill will this is going to generate toward them and the difficulties it could cause for Novel and all Commercial Linux distributions in the future.
"In addition, Microsoft won't assert rights over patents over software technology that may be incorporated into Suse Linux"
But that's not the same as saying that they won't assert rights over patents over software technology that was originally incorporated into Suse Linux but later ported to other distributions. It would be nice if they made it clear.
Iraq didn't attack us. We illegally INVADED another country.
Yes, yes Saddam is a tyrant but there are many tyrants in the world. That doesn't give us the right to do what we did.
Allow me to tap you with a clue stick: THE ATTACK ON IRAQ IS PART OF AN AGENDA! Killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people and occupying their country isn't Christian. This is wrong, this is evil, this is Bush.
Even if Bush does leave office in 2009 it doesn't mean that many things he has done doesn't mirror Hitler. It doesn't have to be a complete match to still be true and valid.
Perhaps you should be the one admitting to being a moonbat dumbass?
Slashdot Mirror
At some point I just have a gut reaction to say "You're a moron. Piss off!"
I think this is one of those times... yep...
According to Microsoft, the documentation is over 8500 pages."
And if I know Microsoft, it's all disorganized, incomplete, unusable crap... Anything to be able to claim that they have fulfilled the EU's request without making any real progress toward interoperability. Please Microsoft, prove me wrong!
Anyone smell money to be made it the bionic bug spray market?
...is to break up Microsofts monopoly into two or even three companys. Split the OS part of the business away from the software that they develop to run on it. Maybe even split the Office part into its own company.
This should have been done a long time ago.
"The other side came back with an argument that copyright law didn't apply, simply because they software was 'being given away for free.'"
From that statement I assumed that this is a Pro Se case then I went and read the article. I think the defendant needs to get another lawyer because his current one is fucking stupid.
Just because you include the source code in no way nullifies your copyright. IANAL but even I know that much. The fact that the user accepted the license testifies to the fact that he acknowledges the copyright because one can not give a license to a software product without having the copyright.
This lawyer's case is going down like a cheap whore.
he's talking about Microsoft's obvious threat, don't you?
.Net for Linux thing and obviously that was a mistake. I am afraid Mono is dead. It'll twitch for a while but it's dead unless Novell can eliminate the patent infringement fear. Novell has lost loads of credibility because of the deal they cut with Microsoft.
Yeah, a lot of people have bought into the whole
The election that will put the Democrats into the majority only happened four fucking days ago and you are already blaming them for some God damn "movement away from free-enterprise." What a partisan prick. Get a grip asshole. They don't even take office until January. The Republicans have until then to continue to screw up this country.
"...is it time to look at the Microsoft anti-trust suit?"
This question is rhetorical, right?
As I said, I regret that we were put into a position where our leaving will cause massive blood shed. And make no mistake, when we leave there will be blood shed on the scale of genocide. These people really, really hate each other.
Our presents there will never mend their hatred and the violence will go on and on and on. I don't have a solution that will save Iraqi civilians and I do grieve that their hate is so great. But I'm not willing that thousands more Americans die to slow the killing process; A process that will occur if we leave now or after those many thousands lay down their lives.
I'm telling you that if we "stay the course" our children's children will be dying in Iraq.
Having typoed the word "torture" doesn't take away from the message. (And the fact that "typoed" isn't a real word doesn't take away from this message.)
He is definitely critical of all people who are not rich and still vote for the Republicans on money issues rather than moral issues. I never said that he didn't.
You keep saying "But I'm stupid" as if what was said was a direct attack on you but you yourself said:
"I tend to vote republican not because of what money I get out of it, but because the ideals that they 'say' they hold are similar to mine."
So, he wasn't talking about you or other people who voted for Republicans for the reasons that you did.
He was defiantly talking about _all_ people who were not rich but still voted for Republicans because they thought that Republicans would benefit them financially. And he pointed out a couple of Republican Presidents who ran up the national debt.
If you don't agree with his position, rather than taking it personally, why not post some examples of Republicans directly helping the middle class and the poor?
No one here has said that people who vote for a party because of moral beliefs are stupid.
I believe you should re-read the parent post without being defensive. He explicitly stated that the exit polls showed that most Republicans didn't vote because of money issues but, like you said, because the Republican party said that they believed in certain moral issues. Issues that they, through their actions, didn't embody.
He went on to say that IF a republican voted for money reasons they were either rich (because this group of Republicans has mostly helped the rich) OR they were stupid.
This was not a slam against Republicans who really believe in their base values.
What adults do in the privacy of their own bedrooms does not concern me. What does concern me is the impact that Government has on my life. Period.
Government should not be there to censor my information. Government should not be spying on me without warrants that give them the authority to do so. Without warrants it is less likely that there will be over site and without that there WILL BE ABUSE.
Now that the Democrats have taken both the Congress and the Senate they DAMN WELL BETTER FIX THIS BROKEN OUT OF CONTROL GOVERNMENT!
May I make a few suggestions?
1.Give me back my habeas corpus rights.
2.Stop the fucking torcher of fellow human beings! Changing the definition doesn't make it okay!
3.When some action is so egregious and offensive to the public that you feel you must classify it as top secret don't FUCKING DO IT!!
4.Stop telling me that the economy is so great just because you and your rich friends own stocks that are doing well! I can't afford to buy stocks, I live paycheck to paycheck and out of control heal care, gas prices, and hidden costs resulting from the tax breaks to the rich make this economy very bad for me!
5.Investigate and impeach Bush. He has no respect for our civil rights and has violated the law. He has done more damage to the American way of life than any terrorist group. This is not about revenge. This is about accountability and sending a message that if you fuck with our rights you WILL BE PUNISHED!
6.Get the hell out of Iraq. We never should have gone there. There never were WMDs. We went there as part of an evil agenda. I'm sorry that leaving will lead to massive bloodshed in Iraq but the bloodshed will be due to their own hatred of one another and we could stay the course forever and that hatred will never change. Quite frankly there is nothing in Iraq worth even one American life.
I also feel completely comfortable letting his seven year old child run vista on his computer without anti virus software!
From the article:
"The company claims that it has worked around the GPL provisions by providing patent licences directly to customers and not between the two vendors."
However the Microsoft/Novell pact covers software that Microsoft is alleging would infringe on Microsoft's patents. Microsoft has specifically stated that this pact is not transferable to the users of Suse.
This makes it a violation of the GPL because it adds additional Licenses to software that would restrict some users (Redhat for example) from redistributing the software.
Novell, talk to your lawyers and see if you can get out of this deal. If not then make it clear that you are NOT violating ANY of Microsoft's patents and that you will NEVER do so.
As it stands now, Suse Linux is dead. Mono is dead. Pretty much any code already merged into Linux by Novell/Suse or that will be in the future will need to go under a rigorous review to determine if it may in fact violate Microsoft's patents.
I understand that nearly four hundred million dollars is a lot of money. I hope it is worth turns out to be worth it. I honestly can't see how.
I was wondering why all the K-Y lubricant.
When ever an animal population grows to the extent that the critters becomes a nuisance we always put a bounty on their hides (or any body part that proves you killed one).
I say they should just pay people to kill these pests until they're down to a manageable level.
Sorry, because of the database error we can't reply in a thread so I'll just reply here.
geoffspear wrote: "Umm, if you think that someone with no resources could be successfully prosecuted for violating antitrust laws, you probably don't understand antitrust law at all. If you're too small to harm your competitors though anti-competitive activity, then by definition you can't violate antitrust law."
IANAL but I don't think your statement is entirely accurate. I don't think a monopoly has anything to do with how much money you have or earn from your product. I could be wrong and if so I hope an actual lawyer will correct me but I believe that a monopoly is based on how much of a market share you control.
It would seem intuitive that if you controlled a monopoly share you would have lots of income from that share but in the case of Open Source many companies give the software away for free and earn their income through support services/contracts etc.
In a case like this your product could hold a monopoly share but if your services were not bringing in any money you could still be dirt poor.
"According to Dvorak, it's only a matter of time before Linux is 'cracked' by Microsoft, meaning Microsoft figures out a way to run proprietary code on it."
This is a fairly ignorant statement. There is no problem running proprietary code on Linux if you follow the rules. i.e. you don't extend anything already covered by the GPL.
There are already many examples of closed source code that runs on Linux. Just look at X-Develop as one example. That's a first class IDE that is not open source.
No, I don't believe that Microsoft paid over three hundred million dollars so that they could develop closed source software for Linux. I think it's far more likely that at worse it's the first step in a plan to make Linux irrelevant in the future and at best they bought a FUD card that they plan to play over and over again for many years.
"The administration and the director of the CIA made up their minds that iraq had WMDs despite the declarations of people who know better."
You are giving the Bush Administration more credit than I. I for one don't think they believed that there were WMDs in Iraq. I think they had multiple reasons for going into Iraq; none of the reasons really being in the interest of the average citizens of the USA.
I believe that there are a few people making many, many millions or even billions off of the illegal invasion of Iraq.
I believe the Bush wanted this invasion so that he could claim to be a "war president" because "war presidents" have a much better chance of re-election. So our sons and daughters are being used in a "Blood for Votes" campaign. A campaign that worked. It got a mental midget re-elected.
Just how stupid do you think I think you are??
What Microsoft most wants is clear. It all started with the funding of the SCO lawsuit. A lawsuit meant to scare customer's away from switching to a FOSS solution. Now that it is becoming clear that the SCO lawsuit is falling flat on its face they need to raise the ante. They want to plant a seed of doubt about Linux and cultivate it for the duration of this agreement.
Notice how Microsoft is framing the agreement. As an act of Cooperation with Novel which implies FOSS. I'm willing to bet with the EU pissed off over numerous issues with Microsoft products, licenses, abuse of power etc., they want to be able to say "See, we're playing nice." without really playing nice at all.
This is phase one. Phase two comes in five or six years when the agreement expires. Even if Linux isn't infringing on Microsoft's patents in any way there will be more than half a decade of subtly implanting that doubt in peoples minds. At that point Microsoft will have to decide if they are going to start suing.
I don't know what Novel was thinking or what pressure Microsoft may have put on them. I can only speculate. Did Microsoft make it clear to Novel that the size difference between the two companies (Microsoft brings in about 100 times as much revenue as Novel.) would make a nuisance lawsuit (Like the SCO lawsuit which was funded in part by Microsoft.) would devastate Novel?
The reason I wonder this is that I don't see how Novel could have miscalculated the backlash of ill will this is going to generate toward them and the difficulties it could cause for Novel and all Commercial Linux distributions in the future.
"In addition, Microsoft won't assert rights over patents over software technology that may be incorporated into Suse Linux"
But that's not the same as saying that they won't assert rights over patents over software technology that was originally incorporated into Suse Linux but later ported to other distributions. It would be nice if they made it clear.
Iraq didn't attack us. We illegally INVADED another country.
Yes, yes Saddam is a tyrant but there are many tyrants in the world. That doesn't give us the right to do what we did.
Allow me to tap you with a clue stick: THE ATTACK ON IRAQ IS PART OF AN AGENDA! Killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people and occupying their country isn't Christian. This is wrong, this is evil, this is Bush.
Even if Bush does leave office in 2009 it doesn't mean that many things he has done doesn't mirror Hitler. It doesn't have to be a complete match to still be true and valid.
Perhaps you should be the one admitting to being a moonbat dumbass?