The man who did the porting posted an interesting comment on that Groklaw page:
I don't know whether to be pleased or angry at SCO's assertion that IBM must have assisted AutoZone's transition to Linux due to the "precision and efficiency with which the migration occurred". You see, I was a Sr. Technical Advisor at AutoZone, where I was an employee for over 10 years. During my tenure, I participated and led in the design, development and maintenance of many of AutoZone's store systems. More importantly, I initiated AutoZone's transition to Linux and I directed the port of their existing store software base to Linux. I personally ported all of AutoZone's internal software libraries for use under Linux. I personally developed the rules by which other AutoZone developers should make changes to their code to support both Linux and SCO's OpenServer product. I believe at one point I had as many as 35 AutoZone developers performing porting work for me, much of which was trivial, given that our code did not generally rely on SCO specific features and that the more technologically sophisticated portions of our code tended to reside in our libraries. The developers were also responsible for testing their individual applications under both SCO and Linux; I supplemented this activity by performing builds of the entire AutoZone store software base on my desktop, which I had converted to Linux.
As to the claim that SCO's shared libraries were a necessary part of the port: false. No SCO libraries were involved in the porting activity.
As to the claim that IBM induced us to transition to Linux: false. It was, in fact, SCO's activities that 'greased the skids' and allowed the business case for using Linux to be made more easily. That is a story long in the telling; perhaps I'll share it another day.
One should remember the Linux business environment that existed at the time the AutoZone transition began. Several vendors - the original Caldera Linux distribution company, Red Hat, and Linuxcare - were offering support for enterprise installations of Linux. In fact, Bryan Sparks, then CEO of Caldera, flew to Memphis and met with me during my evaluation of the various distribution and support offerings. I also met and talked briefly with Dave Sifry of Linuxcare during the 1999 Linux Expo. AutoZone settled on Red Hat chiefly because of my familiarity with their distribution and the ease with which AutoZone could negotiate a support agreement with them.
I must add that SCO was eventually made aware of AutoZone's transition to Linux. They responded by offering to assist AutoZone in the porting activity. By the time of their offer, AutoZone had already completed the initial porting activity and had already installed a Linux-based version of their store system in several stores.
Finally, I'll add that I was for a time a member of SCO's Customer Advisory Board. As such, I believe I have some useful insights as to why SCO lost AutoZone's and several other large accounts' business.
Being a KDE contributor myself, I feel the urge to correct some of your statements and agree to others.
GNOME has had the Human Interface Guidelines for over a year and a half now.
KDE has User Interface Guidelines since more than 4 years. These guidelines are a bit outdated, but they are followed by almost all applications within KDE. This is one of the reasons why KDE applications are quite consistent with each other. KDE has been dedicated towards usability since its foundation, but usability was never the only goal. KDE was never perfect, but its usability has been constantly improving every version. Compared to most other PC software, KDE has always been doing reasonably well in terms of usability.
The whole project is dedicated toward usability.
True. The GNOME project made a good decision when they introduced HIG, even if many GNOME users were very angry at the time. Removing functionality was one of the main methods of solving GNOME's early usability problems, which should only be done if there is really no other way to solve usability problems.
Most people complaining about KDE's usability are suggesting the same strategy for KDE. I don't agree with this. Solving usability issues in other ways is more difficult and takes more time, but the end result will be better if we stop telling others "I know better than you that you don't need this". But anyway, I agree that having good user interface guidelines is important.
Don't get me wrong, KDE has some inovative technologies behind it, but even 3.2 is miserably lacking in terms of usability and style. IMHO, this "Quality Team Project" looks more like an after-thought or a lame side project than a redirection of the whole project.
My impression is very different. The Quality team idea has been greeted with a lot of very positive responses among the KDE developers. There is a lot of interest in this within the KDE project.
The new license is nevertheless problematic because it requires distributors to change the end user documentation and all "other materials provided with the distribution". These changes require a lot of time, which can be spend better by improving one of the forks.
The page the parent poster linked is already slashdotted.
Fortunately, some sites have copied the screenshot:
http://www.beotop.com/ananasshow/images/warwizard. jpg
http://www.rockcitynews.com/photos3/antibushwar5/i mages/WarWizard.gif
http://www.sheffieldagainstwar.org.uk/.static/imag es/5295088006/c-warwizard.jpg
any defendants could just lift the arguments straight out of the US case and probably win if the other country's laws were similar
SCO already lost its court cases in some countries. Way back in September last year, for example,
SCO has been fined $10,800 for violating a German court order that told them to immediately stop defamation against Linux.
Rather then reporting that SCO will start treating Linux users in other countries the same as in the US, the US media should take a closer look on what's been happening in other countries to SCO.
It is also interesting to see why SCO lost in Germany: The judge told them to put up or shut up, and they went incompletely for the latter.
When I see those figures I start to wonder, what is the great benefit of the switch?
Note that the IP address (and the network owner) also changed. Either the domain was sold to a different company, or the company has switched the hosting company. Probably they don't care much about which server is used for the hosting, as long as the hosting service they pay for is OK altogether.
Re:Kolab and Kontact, I'm confused.
on
Kroupware Komplete
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· Score: 5, Informative
OK, so the KDE project started Kontact, which merges KMail, KOrganizer, KNotes, and KAddressBook.
That's right. Kontact is currently in development, and will be released as part of KDE 3.2. Kontact is the way official KDE development has chosen.
In other words, is Kontact dead?
No, not at all. Kontact will merge all Kolab functionality that has been developed by the kroupware project.
Until the KDE project has released Kontact, you can use the KMail-based Kolab client offered by the kroupware project.
The kroupware project is sponsored by the German gouvernment. Because of the requirements of the German gouvernment offices, they chose to release a KMail-based Kolab first rather than waiting for Kontact to be finished.
Has there really been a court-case in Germany which stopped SCO from unproven claims about copyright violation in Linux - on the grounds of law against unfair/untruthful marketing?
Yes. A court ordered SCO not to make these claims against Linux until they could be proven in a full court case. To avoid a public court case in Germany, SCO signed a contract saying that they will pay 250.000 Euro if they continue such claims and took their German web site off-line.
But aside from the random ranting, I haven't read very much about Linux standing up against SCO.
In Germany, SCO was already stopped by a court to continue unproven claims about copyright violation in Linux - on the grounds of law against unfair/untruthful marketing.
If the Australians are successful with their complaints, then hopefully North Americans will be at last inspired to do similarly.
What Democratic process? Laws/treaties are passed and enforced by the European Commission whose members are appointed.
All members of the commision need to be approved by both the council and the parliament.
The council consists of the ministers of all the member states, and all gouverments of the member states have veto right in matters that they consider to be important.
Since the EU is getting much bigger with many Eastern European countries joining, the veto right will be restricted to certain areas of politics like immigration laws and foreign politics. When the new constitution is approved, a majority of nations representing a majority of the population in the EU are needed to pass a law in most areas of politics. This doesn't sound undemocratical at all.
The European Parliament is the body that is elected directly by the people, but all they can do is talk and send proposals to the Commission for their consideration. If they don't like the laws the commission passes they can pound sand.
Not really. Laws can proposed by the commision and by the council. You are right that the parliament can only ask the commision to propose a law for them.
But the European Parliament can veto any law proposal, as can the commision and the gouverments of the member states (through the council).
No law can be passed against the will of parliament, commision and all member states.
While the powers of the European Parliament should really be stronger, it is still a democratic process. It was mainly Britain who vetoed any attempt to strengthen the European Parliament for fear of weakening the council, where they have always happily used their veto right.
The law can't have been passed in the EU without approval of these nations, that's right. Either they have changed their mind in the meantime, or it was part of a deal: "If you allow my law, I won't block yours", which is a very common thing in the EU.
Being an ethical person, I can only avoid patent infringement by proving that my intelligence is real and not artificial. But as politicians usually aren't real people, and don't understand the needs of real people, this patent might apply to them. A consequence might be that they are now forced to get rid of stupid patent laws.
Oh, wait - politicians aren't aren't ethical, so they are not infringing. And the patent business itself is protected from infringing through stupidness.
The name "Kroupware" was invented by some Germans who didn't know the meaning of "kroup", as the project is paid for by the German gouvernment.
There was protest in the KDE project against the name, but they had already set up the website and announced it.
The server itself is called Kolab, the applications "Kolab clients", so it shouldn't have been a problem to quickly rid of the strange name, but it seems the developers were rather caring about functionality and keeping their contract with the German gouvernment than about promotion to third parties.
Maybe next time you should RTF page you choose to link to:
xwin.org is a forum for community participation in X, not a development project.
That doesn't really look like an X fork, does it?
Re:NOBODY has mentioned SCO being shutdown in Germ
on
SCO SCO SCO!
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· Score: 1
Yes, that's true. Preliminary injunctions are always granted after a very short investigation into the issue, and they are valid until a decision has been made by the court after hearing all sides. The idea of a preliminary injunction is to quickly stop harmful, probably illegal behaviour, so the court can take time to make a proper decision. The preliminary injuction might be revoken after a full court investigation into SCO's actions.
Re:NOBODY has mentioned SCO being shutdown in Germ
on
SCO SCO SCO!
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· Score: 3, Informative
An English article about the injunction order can be found at ExtremeTech. If you wish to submit the story as well, think about linking the English site instead, as the Slashdot editors seem to refuse articles with too many links to German Heise articles and Babelfish translations.
Why has nobody mentioned that SCO lost their courtcase against LinuxTag?
Well, the court case they lost was actually not the one by LinuxTag, but another one by Univention. Uninvention only requested the German SCO branch to be ordered to stop spreading FUD (hence only the German website is offline), LinuxTag also requested SCO itself to be forced to stop spreading FUD in Germany. I haven't heard anything about this case, so it is probably still running.
I submitted this story already.
I also did so yesterday. Anyway, even if the events in Germany are less interesting for other countries than I expected, for the discussion in Germany it is really great that SCO has been ordered by a court to stop spreading FUD.
In Europe, it is usual custom to buy your car in a different country, as both car prices and taxes vary a lot. Britain and Ireland were the only countries left out, as they keep driving on the wrong side of the road.
Well, this invention might at last lead to more international car business between Britain/Ireland and continental Europe. French people will start buying their cars in London, so they don't need to move the wheel when they install an XBox afterwards.
Slashdot Mirror
That's why there will be a version without the knife, only containing the USB stick, a pen and a lamp.
The full version will be sold for 59 Euro, the non-terrorist version for 55 Euro, as the German computer magazine Golem.de reports.
That might be the reason why they start selling pocket knifes without knifes...
The man who did the porting posted an interesting comment on that Groklaw page:
KDE has User Interface Guidelines since more than 4 years. These guidelines are a bit outdated, but they are followed by almost all applications within KDE. This is one of the reasons why KDE applications are quite consistent with each other. KDE has been dedicated towards usability since its foundation, but usability was never the only goal. KDE was never perfect, but its usability has been constantly improving every version. Compared to most other PC software, KDE has always been doing reasonably well in terms of usability.
True. The GNOME project made a good decision when they introduced HIG, even if many GNOME users were very angry at the time. Removing functionality was one of the main methods of solving GNOME's early usability problems, which should only be done if there is really no other way to solve usability problems.
Most people complaining about KDE's usability are suggesting the same strategy for KDE. I don't agree with this. Solving usability issues in other ways is more difficult and takes more time, but the end result will be better if we stop telling others "I know better than you that you don't need this". But anyway, I agree that having good user interface guidelines is important.
My impression is very different. The Quality team idea has been greeted with a lot of very positive responses among the KDE developers. There is a lot of interest in this within the KDE project.
Richard Stallman regards both the new license and some of the old licenses used in the X Server as GPL incompatible but still free. Recently he successfully suggested a compromise with XFree86, which ensures that at least the the client side libraries stay GPL compatible.
The new license is nevertheless problematic because it requires distributors to change the end user documentation and all "other materials provided with the distribution". These changes require a lot of time, which can be spend better by improving one of the forks.
The link in your signature is broken. I suggest you update it to point to the address which is now used by those whom you call "Litigious Bastards".
The page the parent poster linked is already slashdotted. Fortunately, some sites have copied the screenshot.
Sorry for reposting, these are the correct links:
Mirror 1
Mirror 2
Mirror 3
The page the parent poster linked is already slashdotted. Fortunately, some sites have copied the screenshot: http://www.beotop.com/ananasshow/images/warwizard. jpg
http://www.rockcitynews.com/photos3/antibushwar5/i mages/WarWizard.gif
http://www.sheffieldagainstwar.org.uk/.static/imag es/5295088006/c-warwizard.jpg
SCO already lost its court cases in some countries. Way back in September last year, for example, SCO has been fined $10,800 for violating a German court order that told them to immediately stop defamation against Linux.
Rather then reporting that SCO will start treating Linux users in other countries the same as in the US, the US media should take a closer look on what's been happening in other countries to SCO.
It is also interesting to see why SCO lost in Germany: The judge told them to put up or shut up, and they went incompletely for the latter.
Why not simply use Greek letters? SCO has already proved that for them this is perfect encryption.
Note that the IP address (and the network owner) also changed. Either the domain was sold to a different company, or the company has switched the hosting company. Probably they don't care much about which server is used for the hosting, as long as the hosting service they pay for is OK altogether.
That's right. Kontact is currently in development, and will be released as part of KDE 3.2. Kontact is the way official KDE development has chosen.
No, not at all. Kontact will merge all Kolab functionality that has been developed by the kroupware project.
Until the KDE project has released Kontact, you can use the KMail-based Kolab client offered by the kroupware project.
The kroupware project is sponsored by the German gouvernment. Because of the requirements of the German gouvernment offices, they chose to release a KMail-based Kolab first rather than waiting for Kontact to be finished.
No, SCO chose not to show evidence and rather stop doing business in Germany.
Yes. A court ordered SCO not to make these claims against Linux until they could be proven in a full court case. To avoid a public court case in Germany, SCO signed a contract saying that they will pay 250.000 Euro if they continue such claims and took their German web site off-line.
A German article with Babelfish translation, another English article.
Several people submitted this story at the time, but somehow it got rejected.
Indeed. SCO decided to more or less stop all business in Germany rather than show evidence for their claims against Linux.
Complete translation of all site content:
The German web server of the SCO Group is currently not reachable.
To answer you questions we are pleasantly available for you at any time. Please contact us directly at:
The SCO Group GmbH
Norsk-Data-Strasse 3
61352 Bad Homburg v.d.H.
Telefon: 06172 4867-0
Fax: 06172 4867-12
E-Mail: infod@sco.com
We thank you for your understanding.
Business manager: Hans Bayer, Robert Kirby Bench, Mike Olsen * location Bad Homburg * trade register HRB 4841 * tax number: DE 114 220272
In Germany, SCO was already stopped by a court to continue unproven claims about copyright violation in Linux - on the grounds of law against unfair/untruthful marketing.
If the Australians are successful with their complaints, then hopefully North Americans will be at last inspired to do similarly.
All members of the commision need to be approved by both the council and the parliament.
The council consists of the ministers of all the member states, and all gouverments of the member states have veto right in matters that they consider to be important.
Since the EU is getting much bigger with many Eastern European countries joining, the veto right will be restricted to certain areas of politics like immigration laws and foreign politics. When the new constitution is approved, a majority of nations representing a majority of the population in the EU are needed to pass a law in most areas of politics. This doesn't sound undemocratical at all.
The European Parliament is the body that is elected directly by the people, but all they can do is talk and send proposals to the Commission for their consideration. If they don't like the laws the commission passes they can pound sand.
Not really. Laws can proposed by the commision and by the council. You are right that the parliament can only ask the commision to propose a law for them. But the European Parliament can veto any law proposal, as can the commision and the gouverments of the member states (through the council).
No law can be passed against the will of parliament, commision and all member states.
While the powers of the European Parliament should really be stronger, it is still a democratic process. It was mainly Britain who vetoed any attempt to strengthen the European Parliament for fear of weakening the council, where they have always happily used their veto right.
The law can't have been passed in the EU without approval of these nations, that's right. Either they have changed their mind in the meantime, or it was part of a deal: "If you allow my law, I won't block yours", which is a very common thing in the EU.
Oh, wait - politicians aren't aren't ethical, so they are not infringing. And the patent business itself is protected from infringing through stupidness.
Bad luck.
The name "Kroupware" was invented by some Germans who didn't know the meaning of "kroup", as the project is paid for by the German gouvernment. There was protest in the KDE project against the name, but they had already set up the website and announced it. The server itself is called Kolab, the applications "Kolab clients", so it shouldn't have been a problem to quickly rid of the strange name, but it seems the developers were rather caring about functionality and keeping their contract with the German gouvernment than about promotion to third parties.
The article says that there will be no Outlook Connector for Kolab (= Kroupware). This isn't true, as there are commercial Kolab plug-ins for Outlook.
xwin.org is not an X fork as you claim.
Maybe next time you should RTF page you choose to link to:
That doesn't really look like an X fork, does it?
Yes, that's true. Preliminary injunctions are always granted after a very short investigation into the issue, and they are valid until a decision has been made by the court after hearing all sides. The idea of a preliminary injunction is to quickly stop harmful, probably illegal behaviour, so the court can take time to make a proper decision. The preliminary injuction might be revoken after a full court investigation into SCO's actions.
An English article about the injunction order can be found at ExtremeTech. If you wish to submit the story as well, think about linking the English site instead, as the Slashdot editors seem to refuse articles with too many links to German Heise articles and Babelfish translations.
Well, the court case they lost was actually not the one by LinuxTag, but another one by Univention. Uninvention only requested the German SCO branch to be ordered to stop spreading FUD (hence only the German website is offline), LinuxTag also requested SCO itself to be forced to stop spreading FUD in Germany. I haven't heard anything about this case, so it is probably still running.
I also did so yesterday. Anyway, even if the events in Germany are less interesting for other countries than I expected, for the discussion in Germany it is really great that SCO has been ordered by a court to stop spreading FUD.
In Europe, it is usual custom to buy your car in a different country, as both car prices and taxes vary a lot. Britain and Ireland were the only countries left out, as they keep driving on the wrong side of the road.
Well, this invention might at last lead to more international car business between Britain/Ireland and continental Europe. French people will start buying their cars in London, so they don't need to move the wheel when they install an XBox afterwards.