Well, interestingly enough, The Science Museum in London has built working versions of Babbages Difference Engine 1 and 2, both work flawlessly.
Which when you consider poor old Charles never could build versions of them to test, due to lack of precission machine tooling back in the 1840s or Babbages inability to stop tinkering, is astounding.
Difference Engines were built in the 1870s and inspired the Hollerith punch card machines that followed, but nothing comparable to the Analytical Engine was built until the Second World War. It has been recently shown that Alan Turing was familiar with Babbage and Ada's thinking on the subject.
They are at present attempting to code a virtual machine version of the Analytical Engine, which is a true computer, in the way we see them today, it had a programming language including loops and structures and would run whatever programs you designed for it.
I for one would love a copy of that virtual machine.
But I digress, the fact of the matter is, that only fear prevented the use of such machines there was no reason to believe that a well oiled machine would breakdown only FUD from the Quill manufacturers, just as today there is no reason to imagine that Linux will break down as soon as nobody is watching it.
No, PD works cannot be taken and recopyrighted just because someone happens to have a handy dollar
If the holder doesn't pay up on or before the date that the copyright is due to expire + a 6 month grace period, then the copyright expires and the work irrevocably become Public Domain.
It's a shame if Apple have resorted to this sort of thing, I thought it was bad enough that nVidia had produced drivers designed to give false results, but actually crippling your opponents hardware, to show that your product beats it, is pretty low.
Lets hope we can look at some independent tests in the coming days and see which unit is really value for money, because if Dell's benchmarks are correct their unit is 20-30% faster and only 2/3rds the price.
1. At $3K, the 2x2.0 is more than half the cost of any other 64bit UNIX workstation, and brings comparable, if not better, performance. Prepare to see a crapflood of cheap SUN ultra's, SGI Octanes, RS6000, and HPUX workstations on EBAY.
At $1800 2x AMD Opteron 64bit CPUs is almost half the cost of the comprable Apple hardware and brings comprable if not better performance, prepare to see Apple sadly not reach the heights you predict.
2. OS X has one thing that no other UNIX based operating system can claim: Microsoft Office. Look under most UNIX user's desks in the workplace, and more often then not you'll see a windows box for documentation/presentations/outlook stuff. From a PHB's perspective, that means a single $3K box can replace a $9K+ UNIX workstation plus a $1500 PC. Not to mention the associated savings in power, maintenance, real estate, KVM switches, cabling, administration...
The AMD Opteron system is compatible with MS windows in 32 bit mode and could easily be dual booted to run Windows for those MS Office needs, if you can't be bothered getting into that whole OOo thing.
3. The quality experience. This is the point hardest to grasp by the typical L1nux d00d. I'm using UNIX for WORK. If something goes wrong, I don't have the time, patience, or desire to recompile my kernel, figure out the config, or test a driver. I want to pickup a phone and pay someone to do if for me. NOW. As Apple sells the "complete widget", I expect them to quickly figure out what's wrong with the box. (The same applies to most other commercial UNIX which is why SUN and SGI are still in business)
It seems that one of the hardest thing to point out to Linux detractors is that commercial distributions offer this already.
Redhat, SuSE et al all do similar things for their customers at similar prices.
4. The codebase. Scratch OS X and it bleeds BSD. Porting most opensource apps isn't too complicated. Add the growing library of OS X cocoa/carbon apps. Windows on VirtualPC should render decent performance on the new hardware (Please MS, don't kill it!). Finish off with Java. You have a computer that may run every modern piece of software written.
Scratch Linux and you find Linux! No need to port many opensource apps as they are native to the platform, add the increasing support of big players like Oracle, Sap, IBM, Novell, Sun etc. Wine give decent performance on many Windows aps, or I could boot into my Windows partition. Finish off with Java and I have a computer than does run almost every piece of software written.
5. The interface. While this is subjective, OS X brings a lot of quality that Gnome/KDE/etc can't match, and don't get me started on how it compares against Windows... It just 'works'
I agree, it is subjective, some people prefer Windows to OSX (god knows why) other like me find KDE is not only stable but pleasing to use, but based on my counter argument I can't see why Corporate buyers would be persuaded to spend the extra on the Apple box so their users can experience the marvel that is OS X desktop. Sure Finder was nicer than Windows from the get go, but it didn't prevent the x86 setup from dominating business except in limited areas like graphic design as Apple was seen as being limited in 3rd party apps, designed for home users and largely a toy system for people with bags of cash.
You're right, now it is a capable beast, it compares very well vs older Sun and SGI tech, but just as Apples offerings have matured so has x86 Linux and combined with the newer 64bit x86 compatible CPUs I can't see Apple succeeding in the way you suggest as it doesn't have any real advantages over cheaper commodity 64bit boxes running a commercial Linux distro, and given the speed at which opensource stuff has been developed in the past few years, it wont be long before the current near parity between opensource and proprietary apps and OSes has given way to a rampant opensource lead where Linux is the defacto standard
Or maybe you could look here
for a whole list of mirrors containing the v6, v7, 2.2BSD 4BSD etc releases and sources.
All helpfully provided by the Unix Heritage Society
I was always under the impression that the British were quite happy about free trade when it benefited Britain and Britain only.
How about the fact that Britain refused during the late C19th and early C20th to put tarriffs on imports, even from countries like the USA, Australia, Canada, France, Germany etc. who did have tarrifs, and very high ones at that, against British finished goods?
Or the fact that 'Imperial Preference' The British tarriff system, did not, infact begin until the mid 1930s
You could of course be referring to 'Customs and Duties' but these apply equally to goods produced in the UK as to those imported.
Or maybe the British policy of looting goods from Imperial posessions like India, but that is Free Trade only in a satirical sense, and unrelated to external Imperial Trade.
I do understand your criticisms, but they truly only apply prior to the repealing of the Navigation Acts in 1849 which allowed non British ships to dock at British ports for the purpose of trading goods and wares, and the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, which set a precident followed by all future governments until the 1930s of removing all barriers to the import of goods.
Which is the era commonly referred to when discussing British Free Trade.
Just as a little addendum to that, I also have been stung for such VAT and Duty charges, If the items were, due to an incorrect manifest, overvalued for the purposes of calculating Duty and VAT, would the shipper who passed on the charges be justified in ignoring the amended manifest and threatening legal action unless the full and incorrect valuation was paid to them?
We had a big argument about this in the UK a few years ago when the Labour party decided to abolish VAT on domestic heating fuels, like coal and natural gas as they felt it punished the elderley.
They found out that legally, part of the amendments to the original EEC Charter, they couldn't remove VAT and that 5% was it's legal minimum level, hence VAT on domestic fuel currently rests at 5% in the UK.
I know, I know, I run a company it it could be an issue for me in the future, I is jus actin out cuz I is pissed off with anotha mofo tax increase.
But VAT is an evil tax, it tends to be added to all sorts of items and services without any real debate, and of course once it has been added it is 'illegal' to stop charging VAT, though it can be reduced to 5%
I'd say that any European nation bold enough to reduce it's VAT rate to 5% will gain in jobs and revenue in the long term, and hopefully other EU nations will copy them, resulting in an unofficial low VAT rate.
When I order goods from the USA in future, I will have to pay:
Import Duty
Import VAT
Member State VAT
In truth this sounds to me like an alternative method of adding a 15-25% Tarriff on non EU Goods and services and really should face reciprocal tarriffs from the USA etc.
Whatever happened to the British idea of Free Trade, looks like we've sold it down the sewer for a piece of the Euro pie:(
At least I won't have to charge these silly fees to my customers in other EU countries as I come under the UK Vat registration level at the moment.
I think you'll find WineX does that quite nicely, no not all games, but quite a large and growing number, and many run much stabler and faster than on MSWindows.
I enjoyed finding out that I could run some old favourites like Europa Universalis 2 and Max Payne without problems, the newest release adds many more titles.
So ok, it's a little more work to chech which games will work and sometimes special instructions have to be followed, but it is getting incrementally better all the time and I think within 2 years Linux and the assorted tools like OOo and WineX will be capable of beating Microsoft hands down.
Translation of the Heise Online interview:
on
Latest SCO News
·
· Score: 4, Informative
SCO: Cut and Paste?
Currently the arguments circulated by SCO about Linux and the code transfer from Unix read like the film script of an IT variant of Dallas. Daily, new companies and experts announce their opinions. Some, like Novell, have serious points, others like Lindows spread hot air.
Both IBM and SCO, in their billion dollar suit, have ordered their technicians to maintain strict silence, as have Novell.
There, even the lawyers involved with the SCO contract refer to a statement from their legal department prohibiting them from discussing the matter.
There is also some deeper gossip. Many developers have quietly expressed their surprise, that the code and technical information generated for the Monterey project, supplied by SCO to IBM, could be at all rewarding for Linux:
Disbelief faces the suppliers. Any real proof over the Cut & Paste allegations by SCO is missing, until the code is revealed.
Now Christoph Hellwig has unexpectedly become an in demand figure.
The German software developer worked at Caldera (the old name for SCO) as a code maintainer and was part of the team, concerned with patches and bugfixes for the Linux Kernel.
Later they developed the Linux ABI Project further, which allowed implementation of unmodified Unix programs, making it possible to run software written for UnixWare and Open Server, under Caldera's Linux. At present Hellwig is busy with SGI.
While Hellwig worked at Caldera, he commented on the relationship of SCO Unixware and Linux. Hellwig explained at that time, copying from Unix code to Linux and vice versa were impractical:
"the Internals of the Kernels are so different that one would need a big glue compatibility layer. And that will promptly, with the next kernel review, be ripped apart."
Now that Hellwig's comments are widely discussed. We have reason enough to ask about their relation to this case.
heise on-line: Do you stand by these comments?
Hellwig : Naturally.
heise on-line: SCO compared the condition of Linux with that of a bicycle, until IBM came along and then the project became a car.
Hellwig : The comparison may sound beautiful for people without any specialized knowledge, however it has purely nothing to do with reality.
Linux existed before the commitment of IBM, before the participation of large enterprises in it's development for which, in most areas of application, it was substantially more useful than UnixWare or Open Server ever were.
I see the participation of large enterprises in Linux development as a very positive move.
I do not consider it meaningful however, to place the desires of these enterprises ahead of the development of the official Linux releases.
Large enterprises tend to be inclined to be satisfied with technical solutions which are suboptimal, and to neglect areas of application which do not offer sufficient sales opportunities.
heise on-line: Will SCOs actions be successful?
Hellwig : I doubt that SCO will succeed in the legal sense with this action.
On the other hand SCO is already now successful in the sense that the share price rose and they have received other financial injections (for example the Microsoft Deal).
As long as SCO does not possess the rights to SVR4, SCO can only sue IBM for for publishing trade secrets.
Proving this will be very difficult, I don't need to say any more on that.
Something which is continuously forgotten in the debate:
Contrary to SCO, I do not refer explicitly to Unix.
Unix a registered trade mark of the OpenGroup, which any certified operating system may use, it is common use of language for any UNIX95/98 to be referred to by the term, and never, specifically to designate SCOs operating systems, Open server and Unixware. Which, as opposed to AIX, are not UNIX98 certified.
As Jefferson said, patents are 'Embarrassments to the Public' they take knowledge and methods that may be usefully employed by anybody competent to understand them, and fence them off from the many for the financial benefit of the few.
Perhaps if the patent system made RAND royalties mandatory it might begin to serve the inventors and public in the way you assume, and that without getting into the wheat and chaff issue.
Which, not to be a conspiracy theorist about, I feel the US administration is hoping that by persuading Europe to adopt the US patent model and to 'respect' existing US patents, however unrealistic, that the US economy will get an nice instant boost from all the new European license revenues.
Yes Microsoft won the Browser war, but now it faces a more nebulous foe.
Hundreds of thousands of distributed coders, many have never seen their compadres in the flesh, who day by day are building and improving on todays technology.
They don't ask for pay and they don't gripe about their share options, instead they are busy putting together the browsers of their dreams, already Moz has an enormous number of features superior to IE, as do Konqueror, Galleon ( and lynx;) ) et al.
As esr pointed out a few years back it all starts by someone wanting to scratch an itch, and with open source stuff I can scratch that itch, with Closed stuff like MS, I have to wait for them to scratch it for me and they might have other priorities.
IMHO Microsoft is sitting on top of a bell curve right now, and it will be increasingly hard for them to stay sat there.
The big problem they face is not from any single competitor, but from a completely different business model.
The big question is can Microsoft manage their decline and perhaps, like IBM following their early 90s near collapse, turn that bell curve into a poisson.
Yeah, I've been taking a look at mklinux and it seems to be ok, particularly that you can 'upgrade' it to Debian, but it's the messing around with unusual 'fdisk' type tools, like Apple's own OS8 disktools, which won't let you rename drives, or for that matter the curious failure to spin up a drive from a cold reboot thats made me^^^^^^my friend wish he hadn't bothered;)
Just dont think your clever and will install Linux on your brother-in-laws NuBus PowerPC assuming that it would be as simple as slip in the Debian boot floppy and move on from there, like *cough* my friend did:.(
Your mistaking current European law with past law, when the copyright acts were updated to give life + 75 in the early 90s they were not made retrospective so original laws in place during earlier periods still stand.
Hence Elvis' works were subject to a 50 year term from production, and are now entering the PD in Europe, this year it is his 2 very early Sun Studios recordings, next year another 15 or so will become PD etc. etc.
Incidentaly we can also pass around early Nina Simone, Maria Callas, Frank Siantra et al.
Here in Europe we can listen too and pass around Public Domain copies pre 1953 works, where the author is dead, so Elvis etc, but in the US this according to RIAA is 'Absolutely Piracy.'
So say someone in the USA downloads my copy of 'That's When Your Heartaches Begin' to complete his Sun Studios collection, he would be a law breaker, a german doing the same would be enjoying his right to peruse material in the public domain, but where would I stand?
A translation of Uninventions press release
on
Today's SCO News
·
· Score: 5, Informative
The Bremen enterprise Univention obtained a provisional court order against the SCO Group GmbH in the Bremen regional court.
The order forbids SCO from maintaining that, "that Linux operating systems illegitimately acquired and contains intellectual property of SCO Unix and/or that the end users of Linuxc can be made liable for patent infringement".
The German SCO office faces a fine of up to 250.000 euro for each offence if it continues with it's claims.
Univention had previously warned the SCO Group because of anti-competitive behavior.
The Homburger based enterprise let the period for objections elapse.
"We were therefore forced to obtain the order", said Peter H. Ganten, CEO of Univention and one of the authors of the Debian standard work "Debian GNU/LINUX".
"SCO 's unproven statements , that Linux hurts patent rights of the Unix enterprise, upsets the public and harms the image of Linux. So we have had to resist."
The provisional order against the SCO Group is, according to opinion of the enterprise, an important step in several weeks of smoldering controversy in the computer industry regarding Linux.
SCO Group had sued IBM at the beginning of March for a billion US dollars of damages, because they claim that IBM's Linux programmers availed themselves of the code of SCO Unix version. SCO has so far failed to provide any evidence to back up this statement.
Like I said, IANAL, but I would have thought a judge would allow such a suit. After all isn't one of the principle functions of the civil court to decide exactly these sort of contract disputes?
To get the judge to allow a case on patent violation they will first have to show that they own the patents in question, which means facing off vs Novell first, only then could they really threaten Linus with patent violations
Yeah, I was watching the stock price plummet, interestingly the bulk of the fall took place after this comment from McBride, which indicates that nobody takes him seriously, I imagine SCO stock is facing a hammering tomorrow.
It's a great job you, esr and the rest of the community have done over the past few weeks, thank you and I hope we can now clean Sco's clock for them:)
Slashdot Mirror
Well, interestingly enough, The Science Museum in London has built working versions of Babbages Difference Engine 1 and 2, both work flawlessly.
Which when you consider poor old Charles never could build versions of them to test, due to lack of precission machine tooling back in the 1840s or Babbages inability to stop tinkering, is astounding.
Difference Engines were built in the 1870s and inspired the Hollerith punch card machines that followed, but nothing comparable to the Analytical Engine was built until the Second World War. It has been recently shown that Alan Turing was familiar with Babbage and Ada's thinking on the subject.
They are at present attempting to code a virtual machine version of the Analytical Engine, which is a true computer, in the way we see them today, it had a programming language including loops and structures and would run whatever programs you designed for it.
I for one would love a copy of that virtual machine.
But I digress, the fact of the matter is, that only fear prevented the use of such machines there was no reason to believe that a well oiled machine would breakdown only FUD from the Quill manufacturers, just as today there is no reason to imagine that Linux will break down as soon as nobody is watching it.
In solaris frex. you simply have to say yes to enable when asked during install and hey presto your machine is instantly IPv6 aware.
No, PD works cannot be taken and recopyrighted just because someone happens to have a handy dollar
If the holder doesn't pay up on or before the date that the copyright is due to expire + a 6 month grace period, then the copyright expires and the work irrevocably become Public Domain.
Lets hope we can look at some independent tests in the coming days and see which unit is really value for money, because if Dell's benchmarks are correct their unit is 20-30% faster and only 2/3rds the price.
At $1800 2x AMD Opteron 64bit CPUs is almost half the cost of the comprable Apple hardware and brings comprable if not better performance, prepare to see Apple sadly not reach the heights you predict.
2. OS X has one thing that no other UNIX based operating system can claim: Microsoft Office. Look under most UNIX user's desks in the workplace, and more often then not you'll see a windows box for documentation/presentations/outlook stuff. From a PHB's perspective, that means a single $3K box can replace a $9K+ UNIX workstation plus a $1500 PC. Not to mention the associated savings in power, maintenance, real estate, KVM switches, cabling, administration...
The AMD Opteron system is compatible with MS windows in 32 bit mode and could easily be dual booted to run Windows for those MS Office needs, if you can't be bothered getting into that whole OOo thing.
3. The quality experience. This is the point hardest to grasp by the typical L1nux d00d. I'm using UNIX for WORK. If something goes wrong, I don't have the time, patience, or desire to recompile my kernel, figure out the config, or test a driver. I want to pickup a phone and pay someone to do if for me. NOW. As Apple sells the "complete widget", I expect them to quickly figure out what's wrong with the box. (The same applies to most other commercial UNIX which is why SUN and SGI are still in business)
It seems that one of the hardest thing to point out to Linux detractors is that commercial distributions offer this already.
Redhat, SuSE et al all do similar things for their customers at similar prices.
4. The codebase. Scratch OS X and it bleeds BSD. Porting most opensource apps isn't too complicated. Add the growing library of OS X cocoa/carbon apps. Windows on VirtualPC should render decent performance on the new hardware (Please MS, don't kill it!). Finish off with Java. You have a computer that may run every modern piece of software written.
Scratch Linux and you find Linux! No need to port many opensource apps as they are native to the platform, add the increasing support of big players like Oracle, Sap, IBM, Novell, Sun etc. Wine give decent performance on many Windows aps, or I could boot into my Windows partition. Finish off with Java and I have a computer than does run almost every piece of software written.
5. The interface. While this is subjective, OS X brings a lot of quality that Gnome/KDE/etc can't match, and don't get me started on how it compares against Windows... It just 'works'
I agree, it is subjective, some people prefer Windows to OSX (god knows why) other like me find KDE is not only stable but pleasing to use, but based on my counter argument I can't see why Corporate buyers would be persuaded to spend the extra on the Apple box so their users can experience the marvel that is OS X desktop. Sure Finder was nicer than Windows from the get go, but it didn't prevent the x86 setup from dominating business except in limited areas like graphic design as Apple was seen as being limited in 3rd party apps, designed for home users and largely a toy system for people with bags of cash.
You're right, now it is a capable beast, it compares very well vs older Sun and SGI tech, but just as Apples offerings have matured so has x86 Linux and combined with the newer 64bit x86 compatible CPUs I can't see Apple succeeding in the way you suggest as it doesn't have any real advantages over cheaper commodity 64bit boxes running a commercial Linux distro, and given the speed at which opensource stuff has been developed in the past few years, it wont be long before the current near parity between opensource and proprietary apps and OSes has given way to a rampant opensource lead where Linux is the defacto standard
Or maybe you could look here for a whole list of mirrors containing the v6, v7, 2.2BSD 4BSD etc releases and sources.
All helpfully provided by the Unix Heritage Society
lol, thats amusing :) ;)
I agree it should all be lower rate, and to throw a bone to our Swedish chums, the maximum rate should be capped at 10%
How about the fact that Britain refused during the late C19th and early C20th to put tarriffs on imports, even from countries like the USA, Australia, Canada, France, Germany etc. who did have tarrifs, and very high ones at that, against British finished goods?
Or the fact that 'Imperial Preference' The British tarriff system, did not, infact begin until the mid 1930s
You could of course be referring to 'Customs and Duties' but these apply equally to goods produced in the UK as to those imported.
Or maybe the British policy of looting goods from Imperial posessions like India, but that is Free Trade only in a satirical sense, and unrelated to external Imperial Trade.
I do understand your criticisms, but they truly only apply prior to the repealing of the Navigation Acts in 1849 which allowed non British ships to dock at British ports for the purpose of trading goods and wares, and the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, which set a precident followed by all future governments until the 1930s of removing all barriers to the import of goods.
Which is the era commonly referred to when discussing British Free Trade.
Just as a little addendum to that, I also have been stung for such VAT and Duty charges, If the items were, due to an incorrect manifest, overvalued for the purposes of calculating Duty and VAT, would the shipper who passed on the charges be justified in ignoring the amended manifest and threatening legal action unless the full and incorrect valuation was paid to them?
We had a big argument about this in the UK a few years ago when the Labour party decided to abolish VAT on domestic heating fuels, like coal and natural gas as they felt it punished the elderley.
They found out that legally, part of the amendments to the original EEC Charter, they couldn't remove VAT and that 5% was it's legal minimum level, hence VAT on domestic fuel currently rests at 5% in the UK.
But VAT is an evil tax, it tends to be added to all sorts of items and services without any real debate, and of course once it has been added it is 'illegal' to stop charging VAT, though it can be reduced to 5%
I'd say that any European nation bold enough to reduce it's VAT rate to 5% will gain in jobs and revenue in the long term, and hopefully other EU nations will copy them, resulting in an unofficial low VAT rate.
When I order goods from the USA in future, I will have to pay:
In truth this sounds to me like an alternative method of adding a 15-25% Tarriff on non EU Goods and services and really should face reciprocal tarriffs from the USA etc.
Whatever happened to the British idea of Free Trade, looks like we've sold it down the sewer for a piece of the Euro pie :(
At least I won't have to charge these silly fees to my customers in other EU countries as I come under the UK Vat registration level at the moment.
I enjoyed finding out that I could run some old favourites like Europa Universalis 2 and Max Payne without problems, the newest release adds many more titles.
So ok, it's a little more work to chech which games will work and sometimes special instructions have to be followed, but it is getting incrementally better all the time and I think within 2 years Linux and the assorted tools like OOo and WineX will be capable of beating Microsoft hands down.
Currently the arguments circulated by SCO about Linux and the code transfer from Unix read like the film script of an IT variant of Dallas.
Daily, new companies and experts announce their opinions.
Some, like Novell, have serious points, others like Lindows spread hot air.
Both IBM and SCO, in their billion dollar suit, have ordered their technicians to maintain strict silence, as have Novell.
There, even the lawyers involved with the SCO contract refer to a statement from their legal department prohibiting them from discussing the matter.
There is also some deeper gossip. Many developers have quietly expressed their surprise, that the code and technical information generated for the Monterey project, supplied by SCO to IBM, could be at all rewarding for Linux:
Disbelief faces the suppliers. Any real proof over the Cut & Paste allegations by SCO is missing, until the code is revealed.
Now Christoph Hellwig has unexpectedly become an in demand figure.
The German software developer worked at Caldera (the old name for SCO) as a code maintainer and was part of the team, concerned with patches and bugfixes for the Linux Kernel.
Later they developed the Linux ABI Project further, which allowed implementation of unmodified Unix programs, making it possible to run software written for UnixWare and Open Server, under Caldera's Linux.
At present Hellwig is busy with SGI.
While Hellwig worked at Caldera, he commented on the relationship of SCO Unixware and Linux.
Hellwig explained at that time, copying from Unix code to Linux and vice versa were impractical:
"the Internals of the Kernels are so different that one would need a big glue compatibility layer. And that will promptly, with the next kernel review, be ripped apart."
Now that Hellwig's comments are widely discussed. We have reason enough to ask about their relation to this case.heise on-line: Do you stand by these comments?
Hellwig : Naturally.
heise on-line: SCO compared the condition of Linux with that of a bicycle, until IBM came along and then the project became a car.
Hellwig : The comparison may sound beautiful for people without any specialized knowledge, however it has purely nothing to do with reality.
Linux existed before the commitment of IBM, before the participation of large enterprises in it's development for which, in most areas of application, it was substantially more useful than UnixWare or Open Server ever were.
I see the participation of large enterprises in Linux development as a very positive move.
I do not consider it meaningful however, to place the desires of these enterprises ahead of the development of the official Linux releases.
Large enterprises tend to be inclined to be satisfied with technical solutions which are suboptimal, and to neglect areas of application which do not offer sufficient sales opportunities.
heise on-line: Will SCOs actions be successful?
Hellwig : I doubt that SCO will succeed in the legal sense with this action.
On the other hand SCO is already now successful in the sense that the share price rose and they have received other financial injections (for example the Microsoft Deal).
As long as SCO does not possess the rights to SVR4, SCO can only sue IBM for for publishing trade secrets.
Proving this will be very difficult, I don't need to say any more on that.
Something which is continuously forgotten in the debate:
Contrary to SCO, I do not refer explicitly to Unix.
Unix a registered trade mark of the OpenGroup, which any certified operating system may use, it is common use of language for any UNIX95/98 to be referred to by the term, and never, specifically to designate SCOs operating systems, Open server and Unixware. Which, as opposed to AIX, are not UNIX98 certified.
Perhaps if the patent system made RAND royalties mandatory it might begin to serve the inventors and public in the way you assume, and that without getting into the wheat and chaff issue.
Which, not to be a conspiracy theorist about, I feel the US administration is hoping that by persuading Europe to adopt the US patent model and to 'respect' existing US patents, however unrealistic, that the US economy will get an nice instant boost from all the new European license revenues.
Hundreds of thousands of distributed coders, many have never seen their compadres in the flesh, who day by day are building and improving on todays technology. ;) ) et al.
They don't ask for pay and they don't gripe about their share options, instead they are busy putting together the browsers of their dreams, already Moz has an enormous number of features superior to IE, as do Konqueror, Galleon ( and lynx
As esr pointed out a few years back it all starts by someone wanting to scratch an itch, and with open source stuff I can scratch that itch, with Closed stuff like MS, I have to wait for them to scratch it for me and they might have other priorities.
IMHO Microsoft is sitting on top of a bell curve right now, and it will be increasingly hard for them to stay sat there.
The big problem they face is not from any single competitor, but from a completely different business model.
The big question is can Microsoft manage their decline and perhaps, like IBM following their early 90s near collapse, turn that bell curve into a poisson.
Still Im sure it will be worth it in the end
Just dont think your clever and will install Linux on your brother-in-laws NuBus PowerPC assuming that it would be as simple as slip in the Debian boot floppy and move on from there, like *cough* my friend did :.(
Hence Elvis' works were subject to a 50 year term from production, and are now entering the PD in Europe, this year it is his 2 very early Sun Studios recordings, next year another 15 or so will become PD etc. etc.
Incidentaly we can also pass around early Nina Simone, Maria Callas, Frank Siantra et al.
lol, yeah thats the one, I was working from memory which isn't always a good idea ;)
So say someone in the USA downloads my copy of 'That's When Your Heartaches Begin' to complete his Sun Studios collection, he would be a law breaker, a german doing the same would be enjoying his right to peruse material in the public domain, but where would I stand?
The order forbids SCO from maintaining that, "that Linux operating systems illegitimately acquired and contains intellectual property of SCO Unix and/or that the end users of Linuxc can be made liable for patent infringement".
The German SCO office faces a fine of up to 250.000 euro for each offence if it continues with it's claims.
Univention had previously warned the SCO Group because of anti-competitive behavior. The Homburger based enterprise let the period for objections elapse.
"We were therefore forced to obtain the order", said Peter H. Ganten, CEO of Univention and one of the authors of the Debian standard work "Debian GNU/LINUX".
"SCO 's unproven statements , that Linux hurts patent rights of the Unix enterprise, upsets the public and harms the image of Linux. So we have had to resist."
The provisional order against the SCO Group is, according to opinion of the enterprise, an important step in several weeks of smoldering controversy in the computer industry regarding Linux.
SCO Group had sued IBM at the beginning of March for a billion US dollars of damages, because they claim that IBM's Linux programmers availed themselves of the code of SCO Unix version. SCO has so far failed to provide any evidence to back up this statement.
Like I said, IANAL, but I would have thought a judge would allow such a suit. After all isn't one of the principle functions of the civil court to decide exactly these sort of contract disputes? To get the judge to allow a case on patent violation they will first have to show that they own the patents in question, which means facing off vs Novell first, only then could they really threaten Linus with patent violations
thanks for the correction Bruce, I didn't have time to filter through them to gain a truly accurate figure :)
It's a great job you, esr and the rest of the community have done over the past few weeks, thank you and I hope we can now clean Sco's clock for them :)