But that's just it "in your opinion". As well I already have an mp3 player that suits just fine for running/workouts. I don't need or want 1000 or 10000 poor quality songs on a disk. MP3 sucks. It's only slightly better than AM(yeah a bit of an exageration, but MP3's are no where near CD quality). The first player that comes with an 80GB harddrive and plays flac files I'll look at buying. But than it must be able to plug in to my home stereo and my car stereo and not be an overpriced branded device.
As for your iMac, well I'm glad you like it. I have nothing personally against Apple trust me, but it's overpriced and there is absolutely nothing on the Mac that I would want to use or find better than on my Linux box. I'm not going to get in to a pissing match either, the G5 chips may be better but there's debate on that, especially now with Athlon 64's out thus they aren't "significantly" better.
Fancy case designs and overpriced/proprietary hardware doesn't float my boat. When I say it has to be significant it's got to be like night to day. Not like an orange and a tangerine.
Let's get this straight, "significantly better" is so self-evident that everyone would agree. If it's a matter of opinion(and I'm not saying your opinion isn't valid) than it isn't "significantly better" by (my)definition.
Dell is in fact thriving because the PC was a commodity product. But just how long can the iPod sustain incredible profits for Apple when you start having 6 or more other makers in the same field? I'm not saying that the iPod couldn't continue to make Apple profits but not nearly as much as it does now. It will become "just another device".
Dell's profit margins right now on their PC hardware are slim,slim,slim...they just sell absolute gobs of it and they have no brick-and-mortar costs to weigh them down.
If iPod like mp3 players become as ubiquitous as a radio they will become as cheap to buy as well.
By the way, comparing iPods to Windows & Office is not valid, Windows & Office aren't commodity products they are a monopoly product. If I could replace Windows&Office as easily as I can replace an iPod, Microsoft's glory days would be gone.
If Linux ever starts making significant inroads on the desktop you will see Microsoft's profits slump like a man shot through the head. Microsoft knows this too, which is why they are making deals with anybody who has 2 pennies to rub together and threatens to move to Linux.
Actually, reread the excerpts. They don't imply that Apple made $120 million, they imply that Apple made $69 million and almost all that $69 million was from interest. There is some overlap in the numbers but that's probably due to rounding. So they made $1 million in profits due to operations and $69 million in profits on interest. The first $69 million in the excerpts says "total profit", thus the reason I say there was probably rounding done.
In other words Apple could stop producing any product and just invest they're cash. They would save themselves alot of trouble. I can't see how that is a favorable situation for a technology company, a money market company maybe, but not a technology company.
Note that I have nothing against Apple, I don't particularly want them to live or die, it really doesn't matter to me, I've never bought their products and until they sell something worth having I never will. "Worth" here implies either significantly better than what I have or significantly cheaper than they currently price their overpriced commodity products.
Whether or no Apple is dieing I can't say, but "controlling most of the mp3 market" really isn't good. The johnny-come-Dell's are just starting to ramp up their production of "iPod killers" or "iPod clones" as the case may be. An mp3 player is a commodity product as easy to replace as ketchup. If the iPod is the only thing holding Apple up than they really are in trouble. As for iTunes, well, it's breaking even and that's the best thing that can be said about it. On-line music stores are starting to pop-up all over the place, none of them make money for the people who run them. I don't see that situation lasting long, so either prices will go up and people will leave or...(I don't know what the alternative is).
At any rate, a single use device that is way too over-priced and easily duplicated can't possibly be a saviour of a company used to Billion dollar profits.
But the whole point is that the markets aren't free. There is no such thing as an absolutely free market economy anywhere on earth, at least not for tangible goods(I don't do MMPORG so I don't know about the virtual world). There are all kinds of regulations both "pro" and "anti" free enterprise, subsidies up the wuzzu and all kinds of other meddling. So for anyone to argue that they shouldn't enforce one part of those regulations because they don't want to meddle in the "free market" they must tear down all other laws regarding that market, including all copyright and patent protection laws.
Note that I'm not arguing that this would or should be done. Although I'm a libertarian at heart and try to be in thought and deed I'm also old enough to realize that an ideal free market economy will never exist.
The point of anti-trust law is to remove incentive for companies to abuse a position that either circumstance or government sponsored regulation has some how given them. For the approximation of the free market that we have to correctly work than anti-trust laws must be enforced. Bush and his cronies are simply out in left field on this one. In fact anyone who argues that regulation on companies is a bad thing must be prepared to go all the way and take away the "pro" as well as the "anti". Thus the reason I'm a libertarian, I don't believe regulation is a good thing, I think a true free market economy would punish the bad companies appropriately and reward the good ones, but like I said that reality won't ever come about.
Hey, if you don't have a thick skin around here then a person shouldn't post. Besides, I did "attack" first.
Thanks for the pointers and while I didn't have a clear grasp of the history of patents I didn't believe they just started in America.
By the way here's an interesting link that seems apropo to our current times if not this particular discussion,
http://www.myoutbox.net/posa69n.htm
Extreme paraphrasing but it comes down to "the lawyers screwed it up".
As well in browsing the history of patents it seems that they are destined to be the province of the privileged. They started as grants by the privileged and are continually corrupted for the benefit of the privileged as they had in 1893 in Britain and as they are now.
As I said in a different post, I'm not stupid enough to just dump the patent system right out but there is little evidence that any system will not be corrupted by those in power for their benefit.
The only thing I was "making fun of" was that people automatically assume that their statements are true without evidence. There is absolutely no evidence that patent protection encourages innovation. You can't point to the status quo because there's nothing to compare against.
We could as easily be at the same place,better off or worse off without patent protection but unless things change drastically we will never know.
I personally have an affinity to the "future" I wrote about but I'm not stupid enough to try to just thrust that situation on the world. First patents and copyrights need to be severely restricted. Put things back to where they were in the 1700's. Once people realize that the sky isn't falling than you start reducing it further.
Lastly, I want to note that even if not having patent protection reduced innovation that this would not aprior be a bad thing. We assume it is because we have all this stuff, we're geeks, we love this sort of thing. But would the world itself be worse off? Innovation may be reduced but it would never quit, humans simply can't help themselves. Some generation would have all this "stuff" but maybe they would be more prepared for it. Maybe we'd have more cooperation rather than so much antagonism. As well with designer babies right around the corner I'm not sure that humans are ready for it.
I have no answers to my last suppositions, just pointing out that many people automatically label something that is completely different as "bad" without contemplating the idea that it would simply be different.
Actually I'd hazard to guess that there are very few "eureka" moments compared to just pure, plodding research. Science in general is a constant progression with only a few "eureka" ideas that at best have shown a different way at looking at something rather than a complete break with the past.
Alot of "innovation" is simply being the first one to make an idea actually work rather than a completely different idea that noone would have thought of trying. Than there's the "innovation" of just throwing shit together and see what happens. That is no more "innovative" than discovering gold. I'm sure both were hard work but hardly truely innovative.
I could equally say that without "protection" companies would be forced to innovate faster in order to stay ahead. It's as equally plausible because it's as equally untestable.
Hey, this is fun. I can make up a future that doesn't exist as well. Consider that without protection. Innovation may actually occur not only faster but in a more logical and less disruptive manner. Each change may be small compared to previous ideas but they would occur at an ever faster pace. As well small companies would be able to make up ground faster and add their own innovations that a "bigger" less agile company either refuses to try to market or doesn't see a return large enough for their coffers.
By the way, somebody had to "innovate" the candle too at some point. I'm pretty sure they didn't have patent protection.
Companies, large or small, will always innovate because that's what they have to do to stay competitive. If all it took were a few patents to keep a company on top innovation would actually grind to a halt.
Lastly, in my brave new world, companies would not only innovate with technology but maybe they would actually spend time innovating in customer service because that's what would really count.
The judge forbid them from asking for further code "without reason". In other words SCO must provide some reason/evidence that further code from IBM is required. They can't just say "the stuff they gave us didn't show anything so we want more", or even "we have reason to believe further disclosure will show what we alledge to be true", they must identify that "reason" and it won't be "because we say so".
Furthermore, SCO must provide the lines of code from Linux which they say are under dispute AND they must provide all lines of code which SCO themselves distributed to others.
SCO isn't quite screwed yet but clearly the judge is tired of this dance and wants SCO to put up or shut up.
I'm pretty sure the US legal system allows the judge to award court costs/legal fees to the winner. In fact I'm quite sure it happens all the time. Maybe it's not written in as mandatory but nothing stops it from happening. It's probably easier to lobby judges to make this more widespread than it is to get a bunch of lawyers to pass a law that cuts their own throats.
I'm not really happy with the idea of Joint and several liability. I had a big argument on the newsgroup misc.legal many years ago about this and I could never see the point. But lets not put Joint and several liability to rest until AFTER someone gets the bright idea to sue Microsoft using this idea for all the DoS attacks and spam I get as a Linux user due to bugs in MS software. I dont' understand why it hasn't happened yet.
I don't disagree at all. I don't think SUN could ever catch back up to IBM in mind share but they could easily stop from drowning, but they have to stop just pissing around.
Oh come on. Give it a rest. I'm as much of a proponent as the next guy for the "open source model" but it's only been with corporate backing through the likes of Red Hat, Suse, IBM, HP and a whole slew of others that big projects like Linux & Apache have really caught fire.
Sun can easily survive if they would just start to diversify. Look at IBM they aren't going full force OS but it wouldn't surprise me in the least if in 20 or 30 years they no longer wrote proprietary software. There might be some segments where the demand isn't great enough to have open source enchroachment but they will be few and far between. Sun needs to take a page from IBM, stop looking at them as some big bad enemy and just start following, once they catch up than they can start to lead. Services,services,services, that's where IBM is already and they are making tonnes O' money from it. Yes, yes I know they sell hardware and still have proprietary software but those are just there so they aren't beholding to others for the complete solution.
Anyway, that's enough, Sun can survive, they just need to get their heads out of their butts, read the writing on the wall...yadda,yadda,yadda...
Look this is real easy. Let's say SCO is correct and the GPL is unconstitutional. Than SCO(and everybody else distributing GPL'd software) is committing copyright infringement since nothing else gives you the right to modify or distribute the code, nothing! In the case of SCO it is worse because they supposedly actually believe their arguement so in their case they are knowningly committing copyright infringement(at least in their distorted world) and thus they should be held to the strictest rulings of the law.
So if SCO actually believes their own arguement(I highly doubt they do, their slimy but not that dumb) than what makes me believe they must let the Nmap author tell them what to do is copyright law. Absence any modifications by contract that's the only law that holds. Disavowing the GPL says there is no other contract in force, ipso-facto copyright law applies and bingo the Nmap author gets to say "piss off, further distribution of my copyrighted work by you is a clear copyright violation and you WILL be sued."
Don't be so scared, the thought police aren't out in full force yet.
IANAL but...
1) I'm quite positive that clauses that are harsh, or otherwise onerous are unenforceable. 2) In most cases you can't be forced to sign away your rights(there may be some you can but I'm not sure). E.g. no contract can force you to be a slave. Such a clause is unconstitutonal. It's also likely that you can't be forced to keep quiet, e.g. you have free speech rights and nothing can take these away. 3) A judge can always rule any clause of a contract to be invalid but they have to have good reason or they will be overturned. In general the harshness of a clause would go a long way, as well as the applicability of the clause to the actual point of the contract. In your example, if I'm just using the MS software than the clause is both harsh and doesn't apply to my actual use of the software and so would be invalid. If I was reviewing the software, in other words the license was for me to publically talk about it, your example would be harsh but applicable since it's about your right to discuss it. However, it being harsh it would still be invalid.
Now back to the GPL. The GPL is in no way subtle and that's what is so amazing about it, and why I believe people have such a misunderstanding with it. They really can't believe it could be so obvious. Either you agree to it and therefore have the right to distribute the code, or you don't agree to it and so have no rights to distribute the code. As an example, I can write a program and post both the binary and source code on a website. But unless I have put up a statement that indicates the software is placed in the public domain than the only right you have is to be able to download it, use it, read it and modify it but only for your own use. If you distribute it than you are in violation of copyright it doesn't matter that the whole world can already get at it directly from my website. This would apply equally to any modified version as I don't give up my rights to those parts you didn't modify. So the only thing the GPL does is modify this situation so that you can legally distribute the code but again only if you agree to its terms.
The only tricky parts of the GPL are "what constitutes a derived work?" and "how can it force me to release my changes under the GPL?" Both of these questions are usually only asked by people who want to get around the provisions of the GPL. Thinking about it for more than a minute from the point of view that only the originally author own's the original code, which they still do even when released under the GPL, will usually provide the insight.
Nice try, you could almost be an SCO lawyer(sorry, I know that's a major insult around here, it's a joke)
First off, SCO's position that the GPL doesn't apply to the Linux kernel because whoever applied the license didn't have the rights to do so is a red herring. If the maintainers of the Linux kernel don't have the rights to the code the license they use to illegally distribute that code doesn't matter. If they do have the rights than SCO can either accept the license or not. This applies to parts of the code as well as the whole, e.g. if parts of the code belong to SCO than only those parts are illegally distributed and the license doesn't apply no matter what it is.
As for the second part, you can certainly "accept" a license that you believe is not legally enforcable. I do it all the time with click-throug licenses. However, more specifically with regards to the GPL. Unless you agree it is enforceable nothing else gives you the right to distribute the code owned by someone else. So if you agree its enforceable you have the rights to distribute the code, if you don't agree it's enforceable than you have to negotiate a different contract with the owner to distribute the code. In fact SCO better damn well hope the license is enforceable, otherwise they are automatically in violation of copyright infringement for distributing code not owned by them(as is everyone else distributing GPL code).
However, the question is really "can you accept that a license is valid in one case when the authorship of the code isn't in question but not another case when the authorship isn't in question?"
To this I believe the answer must be no. You don't have to agree to abide by the license in the second case but than you have to renegotiate the license. Saying I don't want to abide by the license is totally different than saying I believe it to be invalid.
Judge: "So you believe the license to be unconstitutional and therefore without legal standing? SCO: "Yes." Judge: "But not in this case?" SCO: "Yes." Judge: "So your willing to give it legal standing?" SCO: "Yes" Judge: "Than you agree the license is constitutional and has legal standing?" SCO: "No" Judge: "God you guys are duffuses. We're still going to be here a long time..."
I'm not picking on you but I needed to interject somewhere.
Far too many people are getting this wrong. SCO is hooped,
They have explicitly, in public, disavowed the validity of the GPL. Thus they have explicitly not agreed to the GPL. No matter what they say afterwards can save them. You can't pick and choose. You can't decide that the GPL doesn't apply for the linux kernel but it does for Nmap. So no matter if SCO has violated any other aspect of the GPL, they have violated the most fundamental property, they explicitly do not accept it!
Thus they have none,notta,0,zilch rights to distribute Nmap, they can use it in-house but they can't distribute it(the GPL is about distribution not use). Hell, SCO is automatically in violation of copyright law if they distribute ANY GPL'd software. Public statements disavowing the very license that gave them rights to distribute the software are a clear indication they don't agree to the license and thus they have no right to distribute other people's copywritten works.
Furthermore, the copyright holder of the work has explicitly disavowed a specific individual the "right" to distribute. Any further distribution of the work is a copyright violation no ifs,ands or buts about it. This is especially ironic for SCO since it's the GPL alone that would have given them the right to redistribute but since they don't agree to the GPL they have no other rights. I would just love to see this go to court.
Judge: "So you don't agree with the license?" SCO: "No." Judge: "What are you? Idiots? Summary finding for Plaintif!"
I agree, "society" doesn't exist. Thus I'm free to ignore the copyright laws that individuals have created and individual law enforcement personnel are empowered by other individuals to uphold since there isn't any "society" for me to answer to.
In other words for you to argue that society doesn't provide "creators" the tools by which they create you would also have to argue that society doesn't provide the laws or the enforcement of contracts necessary for you to be able to reap the rewards from your creation.
"If I have seen further than you, it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants." - Sir Isaac Newton
Quite possibly the greatest single "invention" in the history of the modern world was the Calculus. Something for which Newton could never have received a patent and at best could have received a copyright for the presentation only, which would have been useless 5 minutes after publishing Principia Mathematica.
Lastly anyone who truely believes they can't make money from being the original creator of a work of art or invention without copyright & patent protection isn't very imaginitive and I wouldn't want their product anyway.
Whooho there gringo. Microsoft invented ActiveX and marketed it as usable for the web. The fact that it is purely MS based means that they are trying to use their OS to monopolize a different environment(the Internet). Pulling up IE which is the only "ActiveX" compliant browser isn't doing the user any favours it's doing Microsoft the favors.
If they pulled up the users default browser and the user discovered that the site required ActiveX than the user has two choices 1) use IE or 2) don't frequent the site. Either way it's the users choice and if the user chooses 2) it's quite possible we all win and MS loses in that maybe,just maybe if it happens enough sites that use only ActiveX will cease to exist.
MS pulling up IE because the site "requires" ActiveX removes all choice from the user.
Just a second. Let me understand this. You are not going to buy a PDA today which you may need because your going to wait 2 years to buy a "smart phone". With that kind of thinking you bet PDAs are dead. Hell if the PDA hasn't paid for itself in that time than you really don't need one.
Unlike a lot of people I went and read the court decision linked to in the article which invalidated the Preliminary Injunction against BN.
One thing that jumped out at me was that they relied on a Compuserve system that wasn't "on the internet" and pointed out that the District Court incorrectly ingnored that prior art because it "wasn't on the internet" when in fact the "1-Click" patent doesn't say anything about the internet and even goes so far as to say it could be anywhere.
The other thing that was harped on was the definition of a "single action" which initiated the purchase or transaction. I can say without doubt that prior art exists in an entirely separate domain. I do a lot of my banking by phone. At some point in the transaction I am given the details of the transaction/payment and asked to push "1" if this is correct. Since the whole point of the "1-click" patent is that all other information about the person is stored it only takes 1 button click to initiate the transaction. This is exactly the same as my bill payment over the phone being initiated without me having to enter all the information about myself, my credit card number, address etc. to pay the bill. Clear prior art and it has nothing to do with "clicking"(neither does the 1-click patent by the way) or with the web.
Sure it's in our genes but I'm also a crotchity 40 year old. So I don't use the words on a public forum just the abbreviations. That way I keep politeness but give in to being crotchity.
I'm a libertarian at heart and I would prefer to deal with issues of software without writing laws. But the story specifically refers to passing a law to make the users of a faulty product responsible for their use of a faulty product. This makes absolutely no sense.
If laws must be passed to fix this problem at least make it make some sense. Passing laws making anyone who SELLS a product fully libel for their product at least is consistant with current practice in the "other" world(e.g. everything but software). This means opensource vendors as well.
Now if someone offers you a product for free and you use it, your the one who should be libel for everything but gross negligence. If Redhat wants to sell product than they should be responsible for the contents of that product. If you download their ISO and use it for free(as in beer) than you've taken the responsibility. If this means Microsoft has to give away Window's than so be it. If it means Redhat has to take responsibility for code I write and they incorporate in their product and sell it to you than that's what has to happen.
The fact is if you get something for free(as in beer) you have no one to bitch to for any problems. If you paid money for it than you should have a warranty. I simply don't see how that's a problem.
Never heard of a warranty? You don't pay cash for a product don't expect a warranty. You pay cash than you get to recoup losses from the manufacturer. Simple no?
Is this guy kidding? How about fining the freakin' company whose software has caused most of this mess we're in. Look if they want to pass laws let them make the manufacturer's stand up for their product first. This has got to be the single most stupid thing I've heard.
Hey I know let's fine the people who keep driving on recalled Firestone tires but not Firestone, no we wouldn't want a corporation to actually have to pay for their mistake. That's it, that will fix the problem.
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But that's just it "in your opinion". As well I already have an mp3 player that suits just fine for running/workouts. I don't need or want 1000 or 10000 poor quality songs on a disk. MP3 sucks. It's only slightly better than AM(yeah a bit of an exageration, but MP3's are no where near CD quality). The first player that comes with an 80GB harddrive and plays flac files I'll look at buying. But than it must be able to plug in to my home stereo and my car stereo and not be an overpriced branded device.
As for your iMac, well I'm glad you like it. I have nothing personally against Apple trust me, but it's overpriced and there is absolutely nothing on the Mac that I would want to use or find better than on my Linux box. I'm not going to get in to a pissing match either, the G5 chips may be better but there's debate on that, especially now with Athlon 64's out thus they aren't "significantly" better.
Fancy case designs and overpriced/proprietary hardware doesn't float my boat. When I say it has to be significant it's got to be like night to day. Not like an orange and a tangerine.
Let's get this straight, "significantly better" is so self-evident that everyone would agree. If it's a matter of opinion(and I'm not saying your opinion isn't valid) than it isn't "significantly better" by (my)definition.
Dell is in fact thriving because the PC was a commodity product. But just how long can the iPod sustain incredible profits for Apple when you start having 6 or more other makers in the same field? I'm not saying that the iPod couldn't continue to make Apple profits but not nearly as much as it does now. It will become "just another device".
Dell's profit margins right now on their PC hardware are slim,slim,slim...they just sell absolute gobs of it and they have no brick-and-mortar costs to weigh them down.
If iPod like mp3 players become as ubiquitous as a radio they will become as cheap to buy as well.
By the way, comparing iPods to Windows & Office is not valid, Windows & Office aren't commodity products they are a monopoly product. If I could replace Windows&Office as easily as I can replace an iPod, Microsoft's glory days would be gone.
If Linux ever starts making significant inroads on the desktop you will see Microsoft's profits slump like a man shot through the head. Microsoft knows this too, which is why they are making deals with anybody who has 2 pennies to rub together and threatens to move to Linux.
Actually, reread the excerpts. They don't imply that Apple made $120 million, they imply that Apple made $69 million and almost all that $69 million was from interest. There is some overlap in the numbers but that's probably due to rounding. So they made $1 million in profits due to operations and $69 million in profits on interest. The first $69 million in the excerpts says "total profit", thus the reason I say there was probably rounding done.
In other words Apple could stop producing any product and just invest they're cash. They would save themselves alot of trouble. I can't see how that is a favorable situation for a technology company, a money market company maybe, but not a technology company.
Note that I have nothing against Apple, I don't particularly want them to live or die, it really doesn't matter to me, I've never bought their products and until they sell something worth having I never will. "Worth" here implies either significantly better than what I have or significantly cheaper than they currently price their overpriced commodity products.
Whether or no Apple is dieing I can't say, but "controlling most of the mp3 market" really isn't good. The johnny-come-Dell's are just starting to ramp up their production of "iPod killers" or "iPod clones" as the case may be. An mp3 player is a commodity product as easy to replace as ketchup. If the iPod is the only thing holding Apple up than they really are in trouble. As for iTunes, well, it's breaking even and that's the best thing that can be said about it. On-line music stores are starting to pop-up all over the place, none of them make money for the people who run them. I don't see that situation lasting long, so either prices will go up and people will leave or...(I don't know what the alternative is).
At any rate, a single use device that is way too over-priced and easily duplicated can't possibly be a saviour of a company used to Billion dollar profits.
But the whole point is that the markets aren't free. There is no such thing as an absolutely free market economy anywhere on earth, at least not for tangible goods(I don't do MMPORG so I don't know about the virtual world). There are all kinds of regulations both "pro" and "anti" free enterprise, subsidies up the wuzzu and all kinds of other meddling. So for anyone to argue that they shouldn't enforce one part of those regulations because they don't want to meddle in the "free market" they must tear down all other laws regarding that market, including all copyright and patent protection laws.
Note that I'm not arguing that this would or should be done. Although I'm a libertarian at heart and try to be in thought and deed I'm also old enough to realize that an ideal free market economy will never exist.
The point of anti-trust law is to remove incentive for companies to abuse a position that either circumstance or government sponsored regulation has some how given them. For the approximation of the free market that we have to correctly work than anti-trust laws must be enforced. Bush and his cronies are simply out in left field on this one. In fact anyone who argues that regulation on companies is a bad thing must be prepared to go all the way and take away the "pro" as well as the "anti". Thus the reason I'm a libertarian, I don't believe regulation is a good thing, I think a true free market economy would punish the bad companies appropriately and reward the good ones, but like I said that reality won't ever come about.
Hey, if you don't have a thick skin around here then a person shouldn't post. Besides, I did "attack" first.
Thanks for the pointers and while I didn't have a clear grasp of the history of patents I didn't believe they just started in America.
By the way here's an interesting link that seems apropo to our current times if not this particular discussion,
http://www.myoutbox.net/posa69n.htm
Extreme paraphrasing but it comes down to "the lawyers screwed it up".
As well in browsing the history of patents it seems that they are destined to be the province of the privileged. They started as grants by the privileged and are continually corrupted for the benefit of the privileged as they had in 1893 in Britain and as they are now.
As I said in a different post, I'm not stupid enough to just dump the patent system right out but there is little evidence that any system will not be corrupted by those in power for their benefit.
The only thing I was "making fun of" was that people automatically assume that their statements are true without evidence. There is absolutely no evidence that patent protection encourages innovation. You can't point to the status quo because there's nothing to compare against.
We could as easily be at the same place,better off or worse off without patent protection but unless things change drastically we will never know.
I personally have an affinity to the "future" I wrote about but I'm not stupid enough to try to just thrust that situation on the world. First patents and copyrights need to be severely restricted. Put things back to where they were in the 1700's. Once people realize that the sky isn't falling than you start reducing it further.
Lastly, I want to note that even if not having patent protection reduced innovation that this would not aprior be a bad thing. We assume it is because we have all this stuff, we're geeks, we love this sort of thing. But would the world itself be worse off? Innovation may be reduced but it would never quit, humans simply can't help themselves. Some generation would have all this "stuff" but maybe they would be more prepared for it. Maybe we'd have more cooperation rather than so much antagonism. As well with designer babies right around the corner I'm not sure that humans are ready for it.
I have no answers to my last suppositions, just pointing out that many people automatically label something that is completely different as "bad" without contemplating the idea that it would simply be different.
Actually I'd hazard to guess that there are very few "eureka" moments compared to just pure, plodding research. Science in general is a constant progression with only a few "eureka" ideas that at best have shown a different way at looking at something rather than a complete break with the past.
Alot of "innovation" is simply being the first one to make an idea actually work rather than a completely different idea that noone would have thought of trying. Than there's the "innovation" of just throwing shit together and see what happens. That is no more "innovative" than discovering gold. I'm sure both were hard work but hardly truely innovative.
Well this is totally unsubstantiated.
I could equally say that without "protection" companies would be forced to innovate faster in order to stay ahead. It's as equally plausible because it's as equally untestable.
Hey, this is fun. I can make up a future that doesn't exist as well. Consider that without protection. Innovation may actually occur not only faster but in a more logical and less disruptive manner. Each change may be small compared to previous ideas but they would occur at an ever faster pace. As well small companies would be able to make up ground faster and add their own innovations that a "bigger" less agile company either refuses to try to market or doesn't see a return large enough for their coffers.
By the way, somebody had to "innovate" the candle too at some point. I'm pretty sure they didn't have patent protection.
Companies, large or small, will always innovate because that's what they have to do to stay competitive. If all it took were a few patents to keep a company on top innovation would actually grind to a halt.
Lastly, in my brave new world, companies would not only innovate with technology but maybe they would actually spend time innovating in customer service because that's what would really count.
Gee that was fun. Thanks for playing.
The judge forbid them from asking for further code "without reason". In other words SCO must provide some reason/evidence that further code from IBM is required. They can't just say "the stuff they gave us didn't show anything so we want more", or even "we have reason to believe further disclosure will show what we alledge to be true", they must identify that "reason" and it won't be "because we say so".
Furthermore, SCO must provide the lines of code from Linux which they say are under dispute AND they must provide all lines of code which SCO themselves distributed to others.
SCO isn't quite screwed yet but clearly the judge is tired of this dance and wants SCO to put up or shut up.
I'm pretty sure the US legal system allows the judge to award court costs/legal fees to the winner. In fact I'm quite sure it happens all the time. Maybe it's not written in as mandatory but nothing stops it from happening. It's probably easier to lobby judges to make this more widespread than it is to get a bunch of lawyers to pass a law that cuts their own throats.
I'm not really happy with the idea of Joint and several liability. I had a big argument on the newsgroup misc.legal many years ago about this and I could never see the point. But lets not put Joint and several liability to rest until AFTER someone gets the bright idea to sue Microsoft using this idea for all the DoS attacks and spam I get as a Linux user due to bugs in MS software. I dont' understand why it hasn't happened yet.
I don't disagree at all. I don't think SUN could ever catch back up to IBM in mind share but they could easily stop from drowning, but they have to stop just pissing around.
Oh come on. Give it a rest. I'm as much of a proponent as the next guy for the "open source model" but it's only been with corporate backing through the likes of Red Hat, Suse, IBM, HP and a whole slew of others that big projects like Linux & Apache have really caught fire.
Sun can easily survive if they would just start to diversify. Look at IBM they aren't going full force OS but it wouldn't surprise me in the least if in 20 or 30 years they no longer wrote proprietary software. There might be some segments where the demand isn't great enough to have open source enchroachment but they will be few and far between. Sun needs to take a page from IBM, stop looking at them as some big bad enemy and just start following, once they catch up than they can start to lead. Services,services,services, that's where IBM is already and they are making tonnes O' money from it. Yes, yes I know they sell hardware and still have proprietary software but those are just there so they aren't beholding to others for the complete solution.
Anyway, that's enough, Sun can survive, they just need to get their heads out of their butts, read the writing on the wall...yadda,yadda,yadda...
NO!
Look this is real easy. Let's say SCO is correct and the GPL is unconstitutional. Than SCO(and everybody else distributing GPL'd software) is committing copyright infringement since nothing else gives you the right to modify or distribute the code, nothing! In the case of SCO it is worse because they supposedly actually believe their arguement so in their case they are knowningly committing copyright infringement(at least in their distorted world) and thus they should be held to the strictest rulings of the law.
So if SCO actually believes their own arguement(I highly doubt they do, their slimy but not that dumb) than what makes me believe they must let the Nmap author tell them what to do is copyright law. Absence any modifications by contract that's the only law that holds. Disavowing the GPL says there is no other contract in force, ipso-facto copyright law applies and bingo the Nmap author gets to say "piss off, further distribution of my copyrighted work by you is a clear copyright violation and you WILL be sued."
Don't be so scared, the thought police aren't out in full force yet.
IANAL but...
1) I'm quite positive that clauses that are harsh, or otherwise onerous are unenforceable.
2) In most cases you can't be forced to sign away your rights(there may be some you can but I'm not sure). E.g. no contract can force you to be a slave. Such a clause is unconstitutonal. It's also likely that you can't be forced to keep quiet, e.g. you have free speech rights and nothing can take these away.
3) A judge can always rule any clause of a contract to be invalid but they have to have good reason or they will be overturned. In general the harshness of a clause would go a long way, as well as the applicability of the clause to the actual point of the contract. In your example, if I'm just using the MS software than the clause is both harsh and doesn't apply to my actual use of the software and so would be invalid. If I was reviewing the software, in other words the license was for me to publically talk about it, your example would be harsh but applicable since it's about your right to discuss it. However, it being harsh it would still be invalid.
Now back to the GPL. The GPL is in no way subtle and that's what is so amazing about it, and why I believe people have such a misunderstanding with it. They really can't believe it could be so obvious. Either you agree to it and therefore have the right to distribute the code, or you don't agree to it and so have no rights to distribute the code. As an example, I can write a program and post both the binary and source code on a website. But unless I have put up a statement that indicates the software is placed in the public domain than the only right you have is to be able to download it, use it, read it and modify it but only for your own use. If you distribute it than you are in violation of copyright it doesn't matter that the whole world can already get at it directly from my website. This would apply equally to any modified version as I don't give up my rights to those parts you didn't modify. So the only thing the GPL does is modify this situation so that you can legally distribute the code but again only if you agree to its terms.
The only tricky parts of the GPL are "what constitutes a derived work?" and "how can it force me to release my changes under the GPL?" Both of these questions are usually only asked by people who want to get around the provisions of the GPL. Thinking about it for more than a minute from the point of view that only the originally author own's the original code, which they still do even when released under the GPL, will usually provide the insight.
Nice try, you could almost be an SCO lawyer(sorry, I know that's a major insult around here, it's a joke)
First off, SCO's position that the GPL doesn't apply to the Linux kernel because whoever applied the license didn't have the rights to do so is a red herring. If the maintainers of the Linux kernel don't have the rights to the code the license they use to illegally distribute that code doesn't matter. If they do have the rights than SCO can either accept the license or not. This applies to parts of the code as well as the whole, e.g. if parts of the code belong to SCO than only those parts are illegally distributed and the license doesn't apply no matter what it is.
As for the second part, you can certainly "accept" a license that you believe is not legally enforcable. I do it all the time with click-throug licenses. However, more specifically with regards to the GPL. Unless you agree it is enforceable nothing else gives you the right to distribute the code owned by someone else. So if you agree its enforceable you have the rights to distribute the code, if you don't agree it's enforceable than you have to negotiate a different contract with the owner to distribute the code. In fact SCO better damn well hope the license is enforceable, otherwise they are automatically in violation of copyright infringement for distributing code not owned by them(as is everyone else distributing GPL code).
However, the question is really "can you accept that a license is valid in one case when the authorship of the code isn't in question but not another case when the authorship isn't in question?"
To this I believe the answer must be no. You don't have to agree to abide by the license in the second case but than you have to renegotiate the license. Saying I don't want to abide by the license is totally different than saying I believe it to be invalid.
Judge: "So you believe the license to be unconstitutional and therefore without legal standing?
SCO: "Yes."
Judge: "But not in this case?"
SCO: "Yes."
Judge: "So your willing to give it legal standing?"
SCO: "Yes"
Judge: "Than you agree the license is constitutional and has legal standing?"
SCO: "No"
Judge: "God you guys are duffuses. We're still going to be here a long time..."
I'm not picking on you but I needed to interject somewhere.
Far too many people are getting this wrong. SCO is hooped,
They have explicitly, in public, disavowed the validity of the GPL. Thus they have explicitly not agreed to the GPL. No matter what they say afterwards can save them. You can't pick and choose. You can't decide that the GPL doesn't apply for the linux kernel but it does for Nmap. So no matter if SCO has violated any other aspect of the GPL, they have violated the most fundamental property, they explicitly do not accept it!
Thus they have none,notta,0,zilch rights to distribute Nmap, they can use it in-house but they can't distribute it(the GPL is about distribution not use). Hell, SCO is automatically in violation of copyright law if they distribute ANY GPL'd software. Public statements disavowing the very license that gave them rights to distribute the software are a clear indication they don't agree to the license and thus they have no right to distribute other people's copywritten works.
Furthermore, the copyright holder of the work has explicitly disavowed a specific individual the "right" to distribute. Any further distribution of the work is a copyright violation no ifs,ands or buts about it. This is especially ironic for SCO since it's the GPL alone that would have given them the right to redistribute but since they don't agree to the GPL they have no other rights. I would just love to see this go to court.
Judge: "So you don't agree with the license?"
SCO: "No."
Judge: "What are you? Idiots? Summary finding
for Plaintif!"
I agree, "society" doesn't exist. Thus I'm free to ignore the copyright laws that individuals have created and individual law enforcement personnel are empowered by other individuals to uphold since there isn't any "society" for me to answer to.
In other words for you to argue that society doesn't provide "creators" the tools by which they create you would also have to argue that society doesn't provide the laws or the enforcement of contracts necessary for you to be able to reap the rewards from your creation.
"If I have seen further than you, it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants." - Sir Isaac Newton
Quite possibly the greatest single "invention" in the history of the modern world was the Calculus. Something for which Newton could never have received a patent and at best could have received a copyright for the presentation only, which would have been useless 5 minutes after publishing Principia Mathematica.
Lastly anyone who truely believes they can't make money from being the original creator of a work of art or invention without copyright & patent protection isn't very imaginitive and I wouldn't want their product anyway.
Whooho there gringo. Microsoft invented ActiveX and marketed it as usable for the web. The fact that it is purely MS based means that they are trying to use their OS to monopolize a different environment(the Internet). Pulling up IE which is the only "ActiveX" compliant browser isn't doing the user any favours it's doing Microsoft the favors.
If they pulled up the users default browser and the user discovered that the site required ActiveX than the user has two choices 1) use IE or 2) don't frequent the site. Either way it's the users choice and if the user chooses 2) it's quite possible we all win and MS loses in that maybe,just maybe if it happens enough sites that use only ActiveX will cease to exist.
MS pulling up IE because the site "requires" ActiveX removes all choice from the user.
Just a second. Let me understand this. You are not going to buy a PDA today which you may need because your going to wait 2 years to buy a "smart phone". With that kind of thinking you bet PDAs are dead. Hell if the PDA hasn't paid for itself in that time than you really don't need one.
Unlike a lot of people I went and read the court decision linked to in the article which invalidated the Preliminary Injunction against BN.
One thing that jumped out at me was that they relied on a Compuserve system that wasn't "on the internet" and pointed out that the District Court incorrectly ingnored that prior art because it "wasn't on the internet" when in fact the "1-Click" patent doesn't say anything about the internet and even goes so far as to say it could be anywhere.
The other thing that was harped on was the definition of a "single action" which initiated the purchase or transaction. I can say without doubt that prior art exists in an entirely separate domain. I do a lot of my banking by phone. At some point in the transaction I am given the details of the transaction/payment and asked to push "1" if this is correct. Since the whole point of the "1-click" patent is that all other information about the person is stored it only takes 1 button click to initiate the transaction. This is exactly the same as my bill payment over the phone being initiated without me having to enter all the information about myself, my credit card number, address etc. to pay the bill. Clear prior art and it has nothing to do with "clicking"(neither does the 1-click patent by the way) or with the web.
Yes,Yes that was it entirely.
Sure it's in our genes but I'm also a crotchity 40 year old. So I don't use the words on a public forum just the abbreviations. That way I keep politeness but give in to being crotchity.
Excuse me but...
I'm a libertarian at heart and I would prefer to deal with issues of software without writing laws. But the story specifically refers to passing a law to make the users of a faulty product responsible for their use of a faulty product. This makes absolutely no sense.
If laws must be passed to fix this problem at least make it make some sense. Passing laws making anyone who SELLS a product fully libel for their product at least is consistant with current practice in the "other" world(e.g. everything but software). This means opensource vendors as well.
Now if someone offers you a product for free and you use it, your the one who should be libel for everything but gross negligence. If Redhat wants to sell product than they should be responsible for the contents of that product. If you download their ISO and use it for free(as in beer) than you've taken the responsibility. If this means Microsoft has to give away Window's than so be it. If it means Redhat has to take responsibility for code I write and they incorporate in their product and sell it to you than that's what has to happen.
The fact is if you get something for free(as in beer) you have no one to bitch to for any problems. If you paid money for it than you should have a warranty. I simply don't see how that's a problem.
Are people today just freakin' stupid?
Never heard of a warranty? You don't pay cash for a product don't expect a warranty. You pay cash than you get to recoup losses from the manufacturer. Simple no?
Is this guy kidding? How about fining the freakin' company whose software has caused most of this mess we're in. Look if they want to pass laws let them make the manufacturer's stand up for their product first. This has got to be the single most stupid thing I've heard.
Hey I know let's fine the people who keep driving on recalled Firestone tires but not Firestone, no we wouldn't want a corporation to actually have to pay for their mistake. That's it, that will fix the problem.