> First of all, I did some digging, and discovered a charming utility called "gnome-open". It does the same thing as "start".
> I just tried gnome-open on one of my.ogg music files, and it's playing now in the default.ogg player.
The KDE version is "kfmclient exec <file>"
For most of the other stuff you can use KDialog.
See this
KDialog tutorial for details.
By the time the courts have debunked SCO's frivolous claims, SCO will be bankrupt with all money siphoned away to Boies / Canopy. So it is very unlikely that there is anyone left that you can sue by then.
I think the guy is in the market for some new fire-extinguishers as well. If his server-room was to burn down that would be mightily inconvenient for him and his customers. It would be a smart business decision to buy a few extra fire-extinguishers instead of running the risk of having an accidental fire burning the place down.
IANAL But what this case seems to point out is that it is important to stress that information is obtained by proper reverse engineering. If you can show a court that you had reasonable grounds to believe that the information in question has not reached you via illegal means but was legally obtained through reverse engineering you are under no obligation to keep it secret.
Maybe a statement along the lines of "This information is believed to have been legally obtained by means of reverse engineering." could take away much of the uncertainty in future cases.
Combined with rapid internet wide distribution, this seems a solid way to publish information obtained through reverse engineering in the public domain.
In particular, if a person under oath makes two different statements which can not be reconciled with each other (or in other words: when only one of the two statements can be true) then that can be considered perjury.
In practice however it is unlikely that SCO will say in court that "the GPL is invalid", they are more likely to say something along the lines that the other party should somehow not be allowed to enforce the GPL. E.g. in the IBM case SCO is claiming that IBM wasn't allowed to license its own code under the GPL in the first place.
> Then SCO has not violated the GPL, because > there is non-GPL'ed code in the kernel.
If there is non-GPL'ed code in the kernel then SCO may not distribute such kernel. The GPL'ed parts of the kernel forbid such kernel to be distributed. See clause 7 of the GPL:
"If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all."
Since SCO (and SCO alone) claims to be aware of such non-GPL code and still continues to distribute this kernel they are willfully violating the terms of the GPL and as a result willfully engaging in violations of the copyright of those parts of the kernel that are under the GPL. In fact they are engaging in these illegal activities both willfully and for commercial gain, which makes it a criminal offense under US federal law.
There is consideration. If a licensee of a GPL'ed work creates a derivative work under the terms of the GPL the original copyright holder will receive in return a license to the derivative work. Copyright law explicitly considers the receipt or the prospect of receipt of a copyrighted work "financial gain":
"The term 'financial gain' includes receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works." (Title 17 USC 101) http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/101.ht ml
> How about Stallman writing the GPL with the > Express Purpose of spreading out software with > source code, so that anyone that copy it, > install it, and make derivitive works of it?
That is a) not a matter of legislation, precedent, or case law and b) the opinions of Stallman are irrelevant because, unless Stallman is the copyright owner, Stallman is not a party to the case.
> The express wishes of the copyright holder, > and the reasonable consequences of the law, > are what matters.
The express wishes of the copyright holder can be read in clause 5 and clause 7 of the GPL.
For example, from clause 5: "You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License."
And from clause 7: "If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all."
and "it is up to the author/donor to decide if he or she is willing to distribute software through any other system and a licensee cannot impose that choice."
But even better, since the copyright holder is most likely in the courtroom in front of the judge, the judge can just ask the copyright holder what he wants.
> When Fyodor licensed nmap under the GPL, he > gave up certain rights, among those the right > to choose who uses the software.
I disagree. By licensing under the GPL Fyodor has merily granted rights under specific conditions to others. It is probably barred from arbitrarily revoking these rights by means of estoppel but other than that it still retains all rights that copyright law has granted Fyodor as copyright holder of the work. As such it can create a derivative work (e.g. a new version) and license that new version to whoever it pleases, exclude whoever it pleases and do so under whatever license terms it pleases.
The GPL restrictions only come into play if Fyodor is using the copyrighted works of others as part of such new derivative work and Fyodor relies on the GPL as permission to use such copyrighted works. Then, and only then, it needs to comply with the GPL. (IANAL though)
The GPL has certain conditions in which the license is automatically revoked. It probably helps your legal position if you inform the other party when you believe such automatic revocation has taken place.
Apart from that, Fyodor is well within its rights to refuse to license new versions of its software to SCO.
I don't think it is possible to arbitrarily revoke a license for a specific work, if such license has previously been granted for that work and the license doesn't specifically allow for such revocation. I assume that one would normally be barred from revoking a license by the doctrine of estoppel. (IANAL though)
Fyodor can, without stated reason, explicitly refuse to license the software to SCO. That might be a violation of the GPL on the part of Fyodor if they have included copyrighted works of others in nmap that where licensed to them exclusively under the GPL. That, however, would be a dispute between Fyodor and such third party copyright holder and would be immaterial for the legal position of SCO. (Unless SCO is such third party copyright holder itself).
Note that Fyodor states in its COPYING file that
"By sending these changes to Fyodor or one the Insecure.Org development mailing lists, it is assumed that you are offering Fyodor and Insecure.Com LLC the unlimited, non-exclusive
right to reuse, modify, and relicense the code."
So Fyodor may very well be of the opinion that any copyrighted code from third party contributors has been licensed to them under the above terms in which case they are not bound by the terms of the GPL themselves.
Note that everyone other than the copyright holder itself needs a license to obtain any rights, while the copyright holder has been granted these, and other, rights by copyright law already. So Fyodor itself is not bound by the restrictions that its license (such as the GPL) imposes on others.
> A trademark is infringed if and only if it can be shown that the name would cause a consumer
> to confuse the two products.
In the US, yes. In a lot of European countries the rules are a bit different and courts tend to frown on names that exploit the brand recognition of existing trademarks. That and the fact that for most European countries "Windows" is a foreign word, makes the position of the Lindows name in Europe much more difficult.
"Use of an identical or similar mark for goods or services which are not similar to those for which the mark is protected, if the mark has a reputation and if the use made of it takes unfair advantage of or is detrimental to the reputation or the distinctive character of the mark; Art. 9.1 c) CTMR; Art. 5.2 Dir."
So you mean that this single company is going to support _TWO_ different desktop environments? Insanity!! Imagine what a work load that must be. I mean, it is clearly too much work for UserLinux as a whole to support _TWO_ different desktop environments, as Bruce pointed out, so how on earth is a single small company going to accomplish this huge task??
> out of the many he has
Does he? Are those real customers or fictional customers like SCO has?
Initially Bruce was talking about mysterious "Fortune 500" companies that wanted to invest "millions", I wonder what happened with those.
"The Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), [...], today announced that Trolltech has joined
OSDL and will participate in the Lab's new Desktop Linux Working Group."
Slashdot Mirror
Is your company leaving its business critical data at the mercy of a single vendor? Maybe it's time to switch to a sensible alternative.
I wonder if this non-moslim white cornell CS Professor will also get 25 years for over-staying his visa?
> I just tried gnome-open on one of my
The KDE version is "kfmclient exec <file>"
For most of the other stuff you can use KDialog. See this KDialog tutorial for details.
Boy, you seem really upset by this.
By the time the courts have debunked SCO's frivolous claims, SCO will be bankrupt with all money siphoned away to Boies / Canopy. So it is very unlikely that there is anyone left that you can sue by then.
> They started off donig linux servers so how do
> you know how long they took to deploy linux?
Because they wrote so in their Microsoft advertorial. It first took them 45 minutes but with Microsoft it now only takes 18 minutes!
> Not being rude or anything but those claims do
> not make any real sense.
Maybe their tech-department just isn't very bright.
I think the guy is in the market for some new fire-extinguishers as well. If his server-room was to burn down that would be mightily inconvenient for him and his customers. It would be a smart business decision to buy a few extra fire-extinguishers instead of running the risk of having an accidental fire burning the place down.
Maybe a statement along the lines of "This information is believed to have been legally obtained by means of reverse engineering." could take away much of the uncertainty in future cases.
Combined with rapid internet wide distribution, this seems a solid way to publish information obtained through reverse engineering in the public domain.
Yes, there is, perjury and estoppel
In particular, if a person under oath makes two different statements which can not be reconciled with each other (or in other words: when only one of the two statements can be true) then that can be considered perjury.
In practice however it is unlikely that SCO will say in court that "the GPL is invalid", they are more likely to say something along the lines that the other party should somehow not be allowed to enforce the GPL. E.g. in the IBM case SCO is claiming that IBM wasn't allowed to license its own code under the GPL in the first place.
IANAL
> Then SCO has not violated the GPL, because
> there is non-GPL'ed code in the kernel.
If there is non-GPL'ed code in the kernel then SCO may not distribute such kernel. The GPL'ed parts of the kernel forbid such kernel to be distributed. See clause 7 of the GPL:
"If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all."
Since SCO (and SCO alone) claims to be aware of such non-GPL code and still continues to distribute this kernel they are willfully violating the terms of the GPL and as a result willfully engaging in violations of the copyright of those parts of the kernel that are under the GPL. In fact they are engaging in these illegal activities both willfully and for commercial gain, which makes it a criminal offense under US federal law.
There is consideration. If a licensee of a GPL'ed work creates a derivative work under the terms of the GPL the original copyright holder will receive in return a license to the derivative work. Copyright law explicitly considers the receipt or the prospect of receipt of a copyrighted work "financial gain":
t ml
"The term 'financial gain' includes receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works." (Title 17 USC 101)
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/101.h
> How about Stallman writing the GPL with the
> Express Purpose of spreading out software with
> source code, so that anyone that copy it,
> install it, and make derivitive works of it?
That is
a) not a matter of legislation, precedent, or case law and
b) the opinions of Stallman are irrelevant because, unless Stallman is the copyright owner, Stallman is not a party to the case.
> The express wishes of the copyright holder,
> and the reasonable consequences of the law,
> are what matters.
The express wishes of the copyright holder can be read in clause 5 and clause 7 of the GPL.
For example, from clause 5:
"You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License."
And from clause 7:
"If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this
License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all."
and
"it is up to the author/donor to decide if he or she is willing to distribute software through any other system and a licensee cannot impose that choice."
But even better, since the copyright holder is most likely in the courtroom in front of the judge, the judge can just ask the copyright holder what he wants.
> When Fyodor licensed nmap under the GPL, he
> gave up certain rights, among those the right
> to choose who uses the software.
I disagree. By licensing under the GPL Fyodor has merily granted rights under specific conditions to others. It is probably barred from arbitrarily revoking these rights by means of estoppel but other than that it still retains all rights that copyright law has granted Fyodor as copyright holder of the work. As such it can create a derivative work (e.g. a new version) and license that new version to whoever it pleases, exclude whoever it pleases and do so under whatever license terms it pleases.
The GPL restrictions only come into play if Fyodor is using the copyrighted works of others as part of such new derivative work and Fyodor relies on the GPL as permission to use such copyrighted works. Then, and only then, it needs to comply with the GPL. (IANAL though)
Apart from that, Fyodor is well within its rights to refuse to license new versions of its software to SCO.
I don't think it is possible to arbitrarily revoke a license for a specific work, if such license has previously been granted for that work and the license doesn't specifically allow for such revocation. I assume that one would normally be barred from revoking a license by the doctrine of estoppel. (IANAL though)
Note that Fyodor states in its COPYING file that "By sending these changes to Fyodor or one the Insecure.Org development mailing lists, it is assumed that you are offering Fyodor and Insecure.Com LLC the unlimited, non-exclusive right to reuse, modify, and relicense the code."
So Fyodor may very well be of the opinion that any copyrighted code from third party contributors has been licensed to them under the above terms in which case they are not bound by the terms of the GPL themselves.
Note that everyone other than the copyright holder itself needs a license to obtain any rights, while the copyright holder has been granted these, and other, rights by copyright law already. So Fyodor itself is not bound by the restrictions that its license (such as the GPL) imposes on others.
I am not aware that the GPL grants the right to sublicense. In fact, clause 4 of the GPL explicitly forbids sublicensing.
That's a surprise, an open source friendly license! Maybe we should refer to this as the Microsoft-GPL-patent-license.
No, it was used. The lyrics were used and the lyrics constitute a work of art under copyright law.
> I am not here to defend Apple but to deride artists with frivolous lawsuits.
Eminem has a rather clear and strong case here, so I think it is anything but frivolous. Plenty of case law that supports his position.
Steve, warm up the Taurus! We are going back!
> to confuse the two products.
In the US, yes. In a lot of European countries the rules are a bit different and courts tend to frown on names that exploit the brand recognition of existing trademarks. That and the fact that for most European countries "Windows" is a foreign word, makes the position of the Lindows name in Europe much more difficult.
See for example http://www.juridicum.su.se/english/master/ipl/read ing Material/A Kur european_trademark_la.htm
:
"Use of an identical or similar mark for goods or services which are not similar to those for which the mark is protected, if the mark has a reputation and if the use made of it takes unfair advantage of or is detrimental to the reputation or the distinctive character of the mark; Art. 9.1 c) CTMR; Art. 5.2 Dir."
So you mean that this single company is going to support _TWO_ different desktop environments? Insanity!! Imagine what a work load that must be. I mean, it is clearly too much work for UserLinux as a whole to support _TWO_ different desktop environments, as Bruce pointed out, so how on earth is a single small company going to accomplish this huge task??
> out of the many he has Does he? Are those real customers or fictional customers like SCO has? Initially Bruce was talking about mysterious "Fortune 500" companies that wanted to invest "millions", I wonder what happened with those.
It's planned for KOffice 1.4 David Faure is part of the OASIS TC for the OO standard format.
"The Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), [...], today announced that Trolltech has joined OSDL and will participate in the Lab's new Desktop Linux Working Group."
They use bulldozers these days to destroy houses.