Yes, but you have to be a bit cautious. One does NOT have the right to traffic in an anti-circumvention device. So it may be illegal to tell anyone else how to do it.
"On optimal system would include traditional power generation for base power and dispersed solar systems for peak demand."
Shouldn't it be the other way around? The distributed solar system runs during daylight hours, it isn't something you can turn on during peak hours. Peak hours are when people get ready for work, and when they get home from work. In winter, it will be dark during peak hours.
So solar or wind provide you with a daily baseline, and you have to fill in where it leaves off with other traditional systems that you can turn on and ramp up. A large distrubuted solar system could provide for all of the daytime electricity needs.
But none of that has changed in the last 3 years and major-label record sales have.
ICQ is a substitute for the phone or face-to-face; DVD is a substitute for VHS; the Internet as we know it is about 8 years old; Videogames have been mainstream since Atari was new. When I was a teen, videogames, the phone, comic-books, books, girls, car-models, sports, etc. all competed with listening to music just as it does today.
I don't see any convincing evidence that audio is less important than it was 3 years ago. The size of the department in the store tells me that more people are buying equipment on the internet, not that overall audio equipment sales are down.
Your assertions are based on anecdotes without data, my assertions are based on real numbers from the RIAA.
People have always been busy. But for many teens, music is part of their identity and their peer group is defined by what music they like. If you like cool music, it makes you cool. What music they like in turn influences what clothes they wear. I don't think this has changed significantly in the last 30 years. Have you seen any factual studies to support your assertion that kids are listening to music less? Are car audio sales down? Are MP3-player sales growing?
Thats why I'm sticking to the simplest reason: supply and demand, because it doesn't require any big social change, and the numbers are there to back it up.
I think the real reasons can be derived straight from the RIAAs own numbers:
1) THEY RELEASED FEWER ALBUMS
2) THEY RAISED PRICES DURING A RECESSION
and perhaps less importantly, but still a factor, 3) They stopped selling CD singles.
Music has always been crappy, so I don't think that is the big reason. Supply and demand and availability of substitutes are the fundimental forces of a marketplace.
But guess what happens when you choke supply? Someone else fills it, and independant label music sales are UP, perhaps more than RIAA sales are down, which would actually be a net gain in music sales.
You got me: I had not yet seen that contract. However your evidence supports my position: Exhibit F says Sequent can prepare derivative works "provided the resulting materials are treated hereunder as part of the original SOFTWARE PRODUCT."
Now you say that Sequent would have received a clarification letter from AT&T in the mid-late 80's granting them ownership of derivative works, and as soon as I see that I will consider the issue closed, and I will be very happy. But that letter is the kind of thing that I say we have not seen in the public yet, and like any other contracts SCO might have, it has not been submitted to the courts. I may have had a fact wrong, but my overall point is still true. SCO's claim to ownership of Sequent's derivative works has not yet been refuted with legal documents.
I will stand by my statement that IF Sequent wrote RCU, etc. under a contractual agreement that granted ownership of that work to the Licensor (AT&T->Novell->SCO) THEN Sequent can't sell it to IBM. The idea that Sequent could inherit contract rights from IBM that would retroactively take ownership away from AT&T/Novell/SCO is nonsense to me. IBM's agreement with AT&T was for code IBM wrote, not for code Sequent wrote.
1. Making and promoting an album only costs a million dollars because the industry wants it to cost a million dollars because that keeps out competition and they get to deduct all the costs from the artists' shares. P2P systems and internet radio threaten the music distribution oligopoly, which is the real reason that the RIAA has declared war. There is some evidence that during the period that the RIAA says their music sales dropped, the sales of independant music went up and that total music sales is actually up.
2. The problem I have with the US media tax is that the money goes to the RIAA members, not the artists, not smaller music labels. Even if the law were changed to that I actually bought some rights to share music when I paid my media tax, I still wouldn't like it.
So are you saying that rights Sequent did not have were transferred to IBM when Sequent was purchased? I'm not willing to concede the point that SCO only had contractual rights and not ownership, since as I said before the details of Sequent's contract are not known publicly, yet.
Until you know what that contract says, you would be foolish to dismiss this issue as moot.
I have one small, but perhaps important point to make regarding your question:
"Surely, you don't dispute that IBM owns the relevant copyrights and patents to NUMA, JFS, and RCU?
Or do you dispute Section 2 of Exhibit C on your web site, the ATT-IBM sideletter agreement, which states in part, "we (ATT) agree that modifications and derivative works prepared by or for you (IBM) are owned by you"?
The ATT-IBM sideletter agreement does not apply to code that Sequent developed. The Sequent code is goverened by whatever license agreement that Sequent had. We have not seen that agreement, so it is impossible to know for sure if IBM still owns the Sequent-written code that it contributed Linux.
Of course there is still an arguement to be made that the Sequent written code is not derivitive or addition to System V and therefore is not bound by those license conditions, but we can't rely on IBM's sideletter to resolve it.
There are two separate issues here which both affect US jobs. One is H1B visa holders taking jobs from citizens. That is a legitimate complaint, but even if the rules were enforced, that isn't going to stop the problem this article is about, which is jobs leaving for another country.
I have heard anecdotal evidence that the largest private employer in my State is doing the development for their next chip in Bangalore. For evey job they eliminate here, they create one there for half the price. In that particular case, I heard a manager who was relocating had 50 job openings for Americans who wanted to relocate to Bangalore, more or less permanently, and earn Bangalore wages.
Daniel Song doesn't even have that choice. His job is leaving and he can't follow it.
A different article I read this week said a study had concluded that most of the millions of manufacturing jobs that have been lost in the last 2 years are not going to come back when the economy recovers. Those jobs didn't just temporarily subside because of reduced demand, they moved to another country. After NAFTA was passed, many manufacturing jobs moved to Mexico. Now those jobs have left Mexico and gone to China where they are done even cheaper.
My point is that we are facing a much larger employment problem that H1B visa rules are not going to effect.
"I can create a fake news site, drum up some quotes and get quoted in the Post"
Sure you can, you just need to get as many hits every day as AICN and then you're a somebody. Because if a lot of people listen to what you have to say, then it is important, even if it isn't.
I can't cite you any laws, but I'm thinking that most judges are going to rule that putting files up on a network so that other people can copy them is distribution. Those files may be your personal resources but you do not have the right to distribute them. Isn't that precisely the point of copyright?
Oh, don't get me wrong, I hate the RIAA members as much as the next guy, and I've been boycotting CD's for at least 2 years now mostly because I feel they are ripping off the artists and abusing a distribution monopoly, but I'm pretty sure that sharing your files is a violation of copyright. I can't think of any non-infringing use for shareing copyrighted work over a P2P system without the permission of the copyright holder.
The one arguement that I would like to make, but I'm sure a judge would laugh at it too, is that when I buy blank CD-Rs, I have to pay a fee that goes to the RIAA to compensate them for losses due to infringement. If I'm paying them for infringement, shouldn't I get something for it?
Maybe you could enlighten us, why is this inviting a lawsuit? This guy bought something and is trying to see if he can sell it. He is making a good faith effort to sell something that he bought from Apple and his first choice is to have Apple transfer the ownership within their system. He has stated that if he cannot get the Apple DRM to work for the buyer, then he will refund the purchase price. Who are you saying would sue this guy? Apple? Why? He is not trying to rip Apple off. In fact, if Apple works with him on the transfer, then it may increase people's perception that they have bought something tangible when they buy from Apple. As I see it, worst case is that he gets an answer as to what exactly Apple sold him, and he may be out $.99 + the ebay listing fee if Apple denies he has the right to transfer ownership.
I understand that one can be sued for just about anything by anyone at any time, but it isn't obvious to me how this activity brings any additional risk of a lawsuit.
Re:Captured not so well.
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SCO Roundup
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"...but we agree that there is a joining history."
I didn't agree to any such thing. And furthermore, I think we disagree on what it means to be a decendant. I would probably let it go in a casual converstation, but in this case the central issue is "what is a derivative work?" and decendant implies derivitive to me. So yes, in this context I would call sportshoes "workalikes" to earlier sandals, because the only thing they have in common is their use to protect the feet. And in this context I wouldn't call a car a decendant of a horse and buggy either.
I don't think it is pedantic at all to belabor this issue, because I think it goes to the heart of what SCO is trying to argue. If you just tell the non-technical business people that Linux is a free decendant of Unix, then they might believe it when SCO says that they "own" the trunk of the tree, which they say is System V, and therefore all of the branches, including Linux, belong to them. If you stipulate that Linux is a cleanly separate group of things designed to be a free alternative to Unix, then SCO's claims of owning Linux because they bought some rights to an old Unix are going to be met with more scepticism.
Is calling Linux a Unix workalike really all that confusing?
Captured not so well.
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I can't agree that The Economist captured the issue all that well. I am glad that they were clear that SCO refuses to detail the violations because then Linux would quickly be rewritten around it because Linux people WANT to fix it. However, I found the heavy editorializing, like calling Mr. Perens an evangelist, to be clouding the issue.
I was also disappointed by this:"Roughly as apes and humans allegedly have common ancestors, several operating systems can trace their lineage to UNIX, including Linux."
That is just plain incorrect, isn't it? Linux was written cleanly, it doesn't have any parents, right? More like it sprung whole from Mr. Torvold's head, like Athena out of Zeus, if one has to have an analogy. It is a workalike to Unix, but that is a different thing.
I'm glad the economist at least covered the fact that SCO distributes Linux and in being sued for copyright violation on that account, but I still hope that the mainstream press will get it right, and not resort to generalizations or incorrect simplifications.
"I despise "shooters". I have never played a game of "Counter-Strike" in my life; I have never seen a game of it played. I do not play games or watch movies which glorify violence for its own sake or endorse abusive attitudes toward women. I do not like to compete. I like to cooperate to better myself and my companions. Are you really so different?...Do you like nothing more than to blast "L33tMuthA" against the wall and watch his blood splatter, knowing that, somewhere, somehow, you have just put a 13 year-old in his or her "place"?
I think that is sick."
Out of admitted ignorance, yer pickin' on one of the world's favorite games and I am compelled to try an educate you. You have implied that Counter-Strike glorifies violence. No, it doesn't. It glorifies fake violence against avatars. I would suggest to you that Counter-Strike is less violent than football or soccer, or any other contact sport. It is pretty much as violent as chess.
I think one of the reasons that Counter-Strike has been so popular for so long is that it is quite a bit like a sport, and it is very intense competition. Raw agression. I am going to try and rescue the hostages and you try to stop me, for example. I stopped playing it when the cheating got so bad that you couldn't do well without people slandering you, but we recently started playing once a week during lunch at work and the game has instantly hooked several people who never played before, including one woman. That elemental competition taps into something in many people that they really enjoy.
Now you say you don't like competition, and I'm sure you are not the only one. I think that you are missing the virtues of competition though. Competition pushes all the parties to excel. Now there may not be any real value to accomplishing the goal, scoring a touchdown, making a basket, rescuing the hostages, but there is value in doing something well. It raises the human spirit to excel, if you win or not, and that feeling is something that everyone can enjoy, young or old, male or female. You prefer to excel in cooperation rather than competition, and that is fine, but I think it is narrow-minded and judgemental for you to call people like me sick for enjoying beating our opponent.
You need to understand that while on the monitor it looks like I just took out the entire opposing team by myself with an AK-47, including blood-splattering headshots, and punctated it by taunting an opponent by spraying a chaulk outline around his virtual body, while one of them congratulated me with "you da man!" There wan't any violence, nobody got hurt, not even their feelings. Its just a game, and all kinds of people like games. Yer damn right I enjoyed it though, because it feels good to excel, and to accomplish something difficult.
What may not be obvious to you though is that even extremely aggressive competition does not preclude me from connecting with the other competitors and caring about their feelings while I frag them, and I go so far as to quietly handicap myself with less effective weapons or try and balance the teams because I want to make sure everyone is having fun.
But, yeah, stereotypes are bad, and women like all kinds of games.
Perhaps they meant that the leader of the investigative team went to MIT for a semester, or maybe one of them dated someone from MIT for a while. It was an honest mistake, anyone could make it.
Did Sequent have the same side letter ammendment to its Unix development license? Because some of the disputed code was written by Sequent who was bought by IBM. That code must be bound by Sequent's Unix development license, not IBM's.
I have not seen anything yet that claims that Sequent has any such ammendment. Still, even if the contract between Sequent and SCO obligates Sequent to not release any Unix derivative works, SCO will still need to convince a judge that code designed platform-independant, and then implemented on Unix, but which contains no Unix code, is a Unix derivative. I would call that an unknown, but that is just my opinion.
" They could sell their diamonds for $6 or $6,000, what do you think they'll do?"
Both of the manufacturers seem to understand that they can create new markets by lowering the price of diamonds. This gives me hope that while they might start at close to $6000, they will be driving the market down to a price where diamond can be used in semiconductors.
Diamonds have little or no resale value as it is now, but if you spent $10,000 on a diamond engagement ring, be prepared to feel foolish when synthetic diamonds remake the jewelry market and you can buy a flawless 2 karat ring for hundreds of dollars.
Why doesn't one of the hundreds of copyright holders of Linux (Linus himself would be good) just send SCO a notice of copyright infringement and a Cease and Desist letter for their continued distribution of Linux? SCO is not obeying the terms of the GPL because they are claiming proprietary/closed ownership of part of the code and claiming that people need a separate SCO license to run it. That does violate the GPL doesn't it? The GPL only grants you permission to distribute if you agree to the terms, and if you do not agree to the terms it expressly does NOT give you permission. If you don't agree to the terms of the GPL, then you can only distribute Linux if you negotiate other terms with ALL the copyright holders, right? So aren't they distributing copyrighted work without permission? Isn't it CRIMINAL to knowingly violate copyright? Wouldn't a C&D force SCO to either drop their demands for money from Linux users, or stop distributing all their Linux products?
If anyone out there can explain the flaw in my logic, I would appreciate it.
I'm still a little bit unsure as to how those copyrights get enforced. SCO has made a lot of contradictory and nonsense statements which may or may not have any legal weight, but they HAVE claimed proprietary and closed ownership of part or all of Linux while distributing said files, and claimed that you need a separate license from them to run it (included in buying their Linux products); but I still wonder if their actions of distributing GPL'd code while knowingly not complying with the terms means that they are willfully violating copyright? Or does Linus or any other copyright holder need to send SCO a notice of copyright violation and a Cease and Desist letter before the unlicensed distribution becomes a serious problem? Doesn't it become criminal at some point? Why hasn't this angle been employed? I must be missing something.
I'm reminded of a story I was told some time ago when IBM came knocking an a company-to-remain-nameless' door and claimed they were violating some patents and should license them. Coincidently, it was 4 patents they claimed infringement on. The company did their research and had a meeting the the IBM representatives and explained how none of those patents actually applied. The IBM people listened politely and replied that they do have a very large library of patents and if they didn't like those there were others...
In the end, the company decided to just license those first 4 patents and IBM left them alone.
"Vice versa, there is no way that SCO's post facto claims that the GPL is worthless can cause the GPL to be worthless to SCO. They may rail against it for years, and it will still be sufficient to grant them the right to copy and distribute binaries and source together. You can waive many sorts of right merely by saying you do, but the GPL isn't such a right. Rather, it is a grant of permission, which remains efficacious even if you deny it. No matter how much SCO says, "The GPL is worthless," they still have and hold the rights granted them under it."
I agree that simply denouncing the GPL does not mean anything. But what if SCO doesn't just claim the GPL is worthless: what if they distribute GPL'd work while also claiming proprietry ownership of part of it and claim that an additional license is needed? If they break the GPL, is their license to distribute revoked? Can they be enjoined from distributing Linux because they claim you need a SCO license to use it? And is their continued distribution of Linux not willfull copyright violation? Or does one of the hundreds of Linux copyright holders need to send them notice of copyright infringement before they are on the hook for willfull violation?
That is a lot of questions but the essence is "What happens when one breaks the GPL, unrepentantly?" If I rememember correctly, copyright violation was one of the charges that RedHat brought against SCO, so I hope that case gets to court quickly. I'd love to see SCO barred from asking for Linux licenses on the basis that they accepted the GPL's terms when they distributed Linux after they knew the disputed code was in it. Seeing them on the hook for willfull copyright violation would be almost as good.
Well, I'm burning my mod points to reply, but I think it is worth it:
"Which is really funny, because they specifically name NUMA, JFS and SMP in their lawsuit, refering to what IBM contributed to Linux. And that is funny, because SCO does not own or "control" that software at all. Most if it is copyrighted by IBM or by company that IBM bought (Sequent) or others, but NOT SCO.
SCO's entire case, based on their filed amended complaint, hinges on the court ruling that NUMA, JFS and SMP are "derivative workds" of Unix System V. But that is very highly unlikely, in my opinion."
In my opinion, you have hit on the only SCO allegation that has not been disproved, and that we are not likely to resolve outside of court, unless IBM decides to show their hand. SCO alleges that Sequent's UNIX license bound Sequent in that all additions and revisions that Sequent made to System V Unix, became part of System V Unix and could not be given to any third party. IBM's own Unix license does have this agreement, but also has an ammendment that overrides this and makes anything IBM develops unrestricted property of IBM. Until it is shown otherwise we should not rule out the possibility that that Sequent really did lose some of the rights to NUMA, JFS, and SMP because of their Unix licensing agreement. Maybe Sequent also has an ammended license contract, or maybe the courts will hold that portion of the contract to be invalid, it is impossible for us to know yet.
SCO may have no rational defense for the patent infringement IBM counter-suit, or the RedHat copyright infringement case, and they have been spewing FUD the entire time, but there just might be one little, tiny, irrelevent in the light of everything else shred of truth to their claims of breach-of-contract.
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Yes, but you have to be a bit cautious. One does NOT have the right to traffic in an anti-circumvention device. So it may be illegal to tell anyone else how to do it.
"On optimal system would include traditional power generation for base power and dispersed solar systems for peak demand."
Shouldn't it be the other way around? The distributed solar system runs during daylight hours, it isn't something you can turn on during peak hours. Peak hours are when people get ready for work, and when they get home from work. In winter, it will be dark during peak hours.
So solar or wind provide you with a daily baseline, and you have to fill in where it leaves off with other traditional systems that you can turn on and ramp up. A large distrubuted solar system could provide for all of the daytime electricity needs.
But none of that has changed in the last 3 years and major-label record sales have.
ICQ is a substitute for the phone or face-to-face; DVD is a substitute for VHS; the Internet as we know it is about 8 years old; Videogames have been mainstream since Atari was new. When I was a teen, videogames, the phone, comic-books, books, girls, car-models, sports, etc. all competed with listening to music just as it does today.
I don't see any convincing evidence that audio is less important than it was 3 years ago. The size of the department in the store tells me that more people are buying equipment on the internet, not that overall audio equipment sales are down.
Your assertions are based on anecdotes without data, my assertions are based on real numbers from the RIAA.
People have always been busy. But for many teens, music is part of their identity and their peer group is defined by what music they like. If you like cool music, it makes you cool. What music they like in turn influences what clothes they wear. I don't think this has changed significantly in the last 30 years. Have you seen any factual studies to support your assertion that kids are listening to music less? Are car audio sales down? Are MP3-player sales growing?
Thats why I'm sticking to the simplest reason: supply and demand, because it doesn't require any big social change, and the numbers are there to back it up.
I think the real reasons can be derived straight from the RIAAs own numbers:
1) THEY RELEASED FEWER ALBUMS
2) THEY RAISED PRICES DURING A RECESSION
and perhaps less importantly, but still a factor, 3) They stopped selling CD singles.
Music has always been crappy, so I don't think that is the big reason. Supply and demand and availability of substitutes are the fundimental forces of a marketplace.
But guess what happens when you choke supply? Someone else fills it, and independant label music sales are UP, perhaps more than RIAA sales are down, which would actually be a net gain in music sales.
You got me: I had not yet seen that contract. However your evidence supports my position: Exhibit F says Sequent can prepare derivative works "provided the resulting materials are treated hereunder as part of the original SOFTWARE PRODUCT."
Now you say that Sequent would have received a clarification letter from AT&T in the mid-late 80's granting them ownership of derivative works, and as soon as I see that I will consider the issue closed, and I will be very happy. But that letter is the kind of thing that I say we have not seen in the public yet, and like any other contracts SCO might have, it has not been submitted to the courts. I may have had a fact wrong, but my overall point is still true. SCO's claim to ownership of Sequent's derivative works has not yet been refuted with legal documents.
I will stand by my statement that IF Sequent wrote RCU, etc. under a contractual agreement that granted ownership of that work to the Licensor (AT&T->Novell->SCO) THEN Sequent can't sell it to IBM. The idea that Sequent could inherit contract rights from IBM that would retroactively take ownership away from AT&T/Novell/SCO is nonsense to me. IBM's agreement with AT&T was for code IBM wrote, not for code Sequent wrote.
1. Making and promoting an album only costs a million dollars because the industry wants it to cost a million dollars because that keeps out competition and they get to deduct all the costs from the artists' shares. P2P systems and internet radio threaten the music distribution oligopoly, which is the real reason that the RIAA has declared war. There is some evidence that during the period that the RIAA says their music sales dropped, the sales of independant music went up and that total music sales is actually up.
2. The problem I have with the US media tax is that the money goes to the RIAA members, not the artists, not smaller music labels. Even if the law were changed to that I actually bought some rights to share music when I paid my media tax, I still wouldn't like it.
So are you saying that rights Sequent did not have were transferred to IBM when Sequent was purchased? I'm not willing to concede the point that SCO only had contractual rights and not ownership, since as I said before the details of Sequent's contract are not known publicly, yet.
Until you know what that contract says, you would be foolish to dismiss this issue as moot.
I have one small, but perhaps important point to make regarding your question:
"Surely, you don't dispute that IBM owns the relevant copyrights and patents to NUMA, JFS, and RCU? Or do you dispute Section 2 of Exhibit C on your web site, the ATT-IBM sideletter agreement, which states in part, "we (ATT) agree that modifications and derivative works prepared by or for you (IBM) are owned by you"?
The ATT-IBM sideletter agreement does not apply to code that Sequent developed. The Sequent code is goverened by whatever license agreement that Sequent had. We have not seen that agreement, so it is impossible to know for sure if IBM still owns the Sequent-written code that it contributed Linux.
Of course there is still an arguement to be made that the Sequent written code is not derivitive or addition to System V and therefore is not bound by those license conditions, but we can't rely on IBM's sideletter to resolve it.
There are two separate issues here which both affect US jobs. One is H1B visa holders taking jobs from citizens. That is a legitimate complaint, but even if the rules were enforced, that isn't going to stop the problem this article is about, which is jobs leaving for another country.
I have heard anecdotal evidence that the largest private employer in my State is doing the development for their next chip in Bangalore. For evey job they eliminate here, they create one there for half the price. In that particular case, I heard a manager who was relocating had 50 job openings for Americans who wanted to relocate to Bangalore, more or less permanently, and earn Bangalore wages.
Daniel Song doesn't even have that choice. His job is leaving and he can't follow it.
A different article I read this week said a study had concluded that most of the millions of manufacturing jobs that have been lost in the last 2 years are not going to come back when the economy recovers. Those jobs didn't just temporarily subside because of reduced demand, they moved to another country. After NAFTA was passed, many manufacturing jobs moved to Mexico. Now those jobs have left Mexico and gone to China where they are done even cheaper.
My point is that we are facing a much larger employment problem that H1B visa rules are not going to effect.
"I can create a fake news site, drum up some quotes and get quoted in the Post"
Sure you can, you just need to get as many hits every day as AICN and then you're a somebody. Because if a lot of people listen to what you have to say, then it is important, even if it isn't.
I can't cite you any laws, but I'm thinking that most judges are going to rule that putting files up on a network so that other people can copy them is distribution. Those files may be your personal resources but you do not have the right to distribute them. Isn't that precisely the point of copyright?
Oh, don't get me wrong, I hate the RIAA members as much as the next guy, and I've been boycotting CD's for at least 2 years now mostly because I feel they are ripping off the artists and abusing a distribution monopoly, but I'm pretty sure that sharing your files is a violation of copyright. I can't think of any non-infringing use for shareing copyrighted work over a P2P system without the permission of the copyright holder.
The one arguement that I would like to make, but I'm sure a judge would laugh at it too, is that when I buy blank CD-Rs, I have to pay a fee that goes to the RIAA to compensate them for losses due to infringement. If I'm paying them for infringement, shouldn't I get something for it?
Maybe you could enlighten us, why is this inviting a lawsuit? This guy bought something and is trying to see if he can sell it. He is making a good faith effort to sell something that he bought from Apple and his first choice is to have Apple transfer the ownership within their system. He has stated that if he cannot get the Apple DRM to work for the buyer, then he will refund the purchase price. Who are you saying would sue this guy? Apple? Why? He is not trying to rip Apple off. In fact, if Apple works with him on the transfer, then it may increase people's perception that they have bought something tangible when they buy from Apple. As I see it, worst case is that he gets an answer as to what exactly Apple sold him, and he may be out $.99 + the ebay listing fee if Apple denies he has the right to transfer ownership.
I understand that one can be sued for just about anything by anyone at any time, but it isn't obvious to me how this activity brings any additional risk of a lawsuit.
"...but we agree that there is a joining history."
I didn't agree to any such thing. And furthermore, I think we disagree on what it means to be a decendant. I would probably let it go in a casual converstation, but in this case the central issue is "what is a derivative work?" and decendant implies derivitive to me. So yes, in this context I would call sportshoes "workalikes" to earlier sandals, because the only thing they have in common is their use to protect the feet. And in this context I wouldn't call a car a decendant of a horse and buggy either.
I don't think it is pedantic at all to belabor this issue, because I think it goes to the heart of what SCO is trying to argue. If you just tell the non-technical business people that Linux is a free decendant of Unix, then they might believe it when SCO says that they "own" the trunk of the tree, which they say is System V, and therefore all of the branches, including Linux, belong to them. If you stipulate that Linux is a cleanly separate group of things designed to be a free alternative to Unix, then SCO's claims of owning Linux because they bought some rights to an old Unix are going to be met with more scepticism.
Is calling Linux a Unix workalike really all that confusing?
I can't agree that The Economist captured the issue all that well. I am glad that they were clear that SCO refuses to detail the violations because then Linux would quickly be rewritten around it because Linux people WANT to fix it. However, I found the heavy editorializing, like calling Mr. Perens an evangelist, to be clouding the issue.
I was also disappointed by this:"Roughly as apes and humans allegedly have common ancestors, several operating systems can trace their lineage to UNIX, including Linux."
That is just plain incorrect, isn't it? Linux was written cleanly, it doesn't have any parents, right? More like it sprung whole from Mr. Torvold's head, like Athena out of Zeus, if one has to have an analogy. It is a workalike to Unix, but that is a different thing.
I'm glad the economist at least covered the fact that SCO distributes Linux and in being sued for copyright violation on that account, but I still hope that the mainstream press will get it right, and not resort to generalizations or incorrect simplifications.
"I despise "shooters". I have never played a game of "Counter-Strike" in my life; I have never seen a game of it played. I do not play games or watch movies which glorify violence for its own sake or endorse abusive attitudes toward women. I do not like to compete. I like to cooperate to better myself and my companions. Are you really so different?...Do you like nothing more than to blast "L33tMuthA" against the wall and watch his blood splatter, knowing that, somewhere, somehow, you have just put a 13 year-old in his or her "place"?
I think that is sick."
Out of admitted ignorance, yer pickin' on one of the world's favorite games and I am compelled to try an educate you. You have implied that Counter-Strike glorifies violence. No, it doesn't. It glorifies fake violence against avatars. I would suggest to you that Counter-Strike is less violent than football or soccer, or any other contact sport. It is pretty much as violent as chess.
I think one of the reasons that Counter-Strike has been so popular for so long is that it is quite a bit like a sport, and it is very intense competition. Raw agression. I am going to try and rescue the hostages and you try to stop me, for example. I stopped playing it when the cheating got so bad that you couldn't do well without people slandering you, but we recently started playing once a week during lunch at work and the game has instantly hooked several people who never played before, including one woman. That elemental competition taps into something in many people that they really enjoy.
Now you say you don't like competition, and I'm sure you are not the only one. I think that you are missing the virtues of competition though. Competition pushes all the parties to excel. Now there may not be any real value to accomplishing the goal, scoring a touchdown, making a basket, rescuing the hostages, but there is value in doing something well. It raises the human spirit to excel, if you win or not, and that feeling is something that everyone can enjoy, young or old, male or female. You prefer to excel in cooperation rather than competition, and that is fine, but I think it is narrow-minded and judgemental for you to call people like me sick for enjoying beating our opponent.
You need to understand that while on the monitor it looks like I just took out the entire opposing team by myself with an AK-47, including blood-splattering headshots, and punctated it by taunting an opponent by spraying a chaulk outline around his virtual body, while one of them congratulated me with "you da man!" There wan't any violence, nobody got hurt, not even their feelings. Its just a game, and all kinds of people like games. Yer damn right I enjoyed it though, because it feels good to excel, and to accomplish something difficult.
What may not be obvious to you though is that even extremely aggressive competition does not preclude me from connecting with the other competitors and caring about their feelings while I frag them, and I go so far as to quietly handicap myself with less effective weapons or try and balance the teams because I want to make sure everyone is having fun.
But, yeah, stereotypes are bad, and women like all kinds of games.
Yep. You're talking out your ass all right. :-)
Sequent can't transfer rights they don't have to IBM.
So the question remains: What rights did Sequent have in their contract?
And the other question is: Are RCU and the other modules legally considered to be derivitive works?
Perhaps they meant that the leader of the investigative team went to MIT for a semester, or maybe one of them dated someone from MIT for a while. It was an honest mistake, anyone could make it.
Did Sequent have the same side letter ammendment to its Unix development license? Because some of the disputed code was written by Sequent who was bought by IBM. That code must be bound by Sequent's Unix development license, not IBM's.
I have not seen anything yet that claims that Sequent has any such ammendment. Still, even if the contract between Sequent and SCO obligates Sequent to not release any Unix derivative works, SCO will still need to convince a judge that code designed platform-independant, and then implemented on Unix, but which contains no Unix code, is a Unix derivative. I would call that an unknown, but that is just my opinion.
" They could sell their diamonds for $6 or $6,000, what do you think they'll do?"
Both of the manufacturers seem to understand that they can create new markets by lowering the price of diamonds. This gives me hope that while they might start at close to $6000, they will be driving the market down to a price where diamond can be used in semiconductors.
Diamonds have little or no resale value as it is now, but if you spent $10,000 on a diamond engagement ring, be prepared to feel foolish when synthetic diamonds remake the jewelry market and you can buy a flawless 2 karat ring for hundreds of dollars.
Why doesn't one of the hundreds of copyright holders of Linux (Linus himself would be good) just send SCO a notice of copyright infringement and a Cease and Desist letter for their continued distribution of Linux? SCO is not obeying the terms of the GPL because they are claiming proprietary/closed ownership of part of the code and claiming that people need a separate SCO license to run it. That does violate the GPL doesn't it? The GPL only grants you permission to distribute if you agree to the terms, and if you do not agree to the terms it expressly does NOT give you permission. If you don't agree to the terms of the GPL, then you can only distribute Linux if you negotiate other terms with ALL the copyright holders, right? So aren't they distributing copyrighted work without permission? Isn't it CRIMINAL to knowingly violate copyright? Wouldn't a C&D force SCO to either drop their demands for money from Linux users, or stop distributing all their Linux products?
If anyone out there can explain the flaw in my logic, I would appreciate it.
Thank you, I found that informative.
I'm still a little bit unsure as to how those copyrights get enforced. SCO has made a lot of contradictory and nonsense statements which may or may not have any legal weight, but they HAVE claimed proprietary and closed ownership of part or all of Linux while distributing said files, and claimed that you need a separate license from them to run it (included in buying their Linux products); but I still wonder if their actions of distributing GPL'd code while knowingly not complying with the terms means that they are willfully violating copyright? Or does Linus or any other copyright holder need to send SCO a notice of copyright violation and a Cease and Desist letter before the unlicensed distribution becomes a serious problem? Doesn't it become criminal at some point? Why hasn't this angle been employed? I must be missing something.
I'm reminded of a story I was told some time ago when IBM came knocking an a company-to-remain-nameless' door and claimed they were violating some patents and should license them. Coincidently, it was 4 patents they claimed infringement on. The company did their research and had a meeting the the IBM representatives and explained how none of those patents actually applied. The IBM people listened politely and replied that they do have a very large library of patents and if they didn't like those there were others...
In the end, the company decided to just license those first 4 patents and IBM left them alone.
"Vice versa, there is no way that SCO's post facto claims that the GPL is worthless can cause the GPL to be worthless to SCO. They may rail against it for years, and it will still be sufficient to grant them the right to copy and distribute binaries and source together. You can waive many sorts of right merely by saying you do, but the GPL isn't such a right. Rather, it is a grant of permission, which remains efficacious even if you deny it. No matter how much SCO says, "The GPL is worthless," they still have and hold the rights granted them under it."
I agree that simply denouncing the GPL does not mean anything. But what if SCO doesn't just claim the GPL is worthless: what if they distribute GPL'd work while also claiming proprietry ownership of part of it and claim that an additional license is needed? If they break the GPL, is their license to distribute revoked? Can they be enjoined from distributing Linux because they claim you need a SCO license to use it? And is their continued distribution of Linux not willfull copyright violation? Or does one of the hundreds of Linux copyright holders need to send them notice of copyright infringement before they are on the hook for willfull violation?
That is a lot of questions but the essence is "What happens when one breaks the GPL, unrepentantly?" If I rememember correctly, copyright violation was one of the charges that RedHat brought against SCO, so I hope that case gets to court quickly. I'd love to see SCO barred from asking for Linux licenses on the basis that they accepted the GPL's terms when they distributed Linux after they knew the disputed code was in it. Seeing them on the hook for willfull copyright violation would be almost as good.
Well, I'm burning my mod points to reply, but I think it is worth it:
"Which is really funny, because they specifically name NUMA, JFS and SMP in their lawsuit, refering to what IBM contributed to Linux. And that is funny, because SCO does not own or "control" that software at all. Most if it is copyrighted by IBM or by company that IBM bought (Sequent) or others, but NOT SCO. SCO's entire case, based on their filed amended complaint, hinges on the court ruling that NUMA, JFS and SMP are "derivative workds" of Unix System V. But that is very highly unlikely, in my opinion."
In my opinion, you have hit on the only SCO allegation that has not been disproved, and that we are not likely to resolve outside of court, unless IBM decides to show their hand. SCO alleges that Sequent's UNIX license bound Sequent in that all additions and revisions that Sequent made to System V Unix, became part of System V Unix and could not be given to any third party. IBM's own Unix license does have this agreement, but also has an ammendment that overrides this and makes anything IBM develops unrestricted property of IBM. Until it is shown otherwise we should not rule out the possibility that that Sequent really did lose some of the rights to NUMA, JFS, and SMP because of their Unix licensing agreement. Maybe Sequent also has an ammended license contract, or maybe the courts will hold that portion of the contract to be invalid, it is impossible for us to know yet.
SCO may have no rational defense for the patent infringement IBM counter-suit, or the RedHat copyright infringement case, and they have been spewing FUD the entire time, but there just might be one little, tiny, irrelevent in the light of everything else shred of truth to their claims of breach-of-contract.