why does it annoy you that some in tech can see their own industries problems in isolation and want to do something about it?
Nah, the vast majority of people see a bandwagon to jump on and follow it. They don't actually care about the problems, or even understand them.
A bunch of other people jumped onto the "anti" bandwagon, just because it's fun.
You can tell because of the dearth of actual scientific research in various conversations.
You didn't point it out. You presented a joke. Maybe you don't understand logic, so I will explain to you how this works:
If you are going to point out a logical fallacy, you need to do two things:
1) State the logical fallacy (which you did)
2) Show that the logical fallacy applies in this situation (which you did not)
Lies. I've seen sales, and I've seen tech. There's a difference.
You might have meant, "tech is not a special field above the average. Sales is actually below average." You are probably right, but then it's not about women in tech anymore, is it? It's about women in general.
What annoys me is that tech is not that bad for women. Sure, there are pockets of harassment, and even some really bad things happen, but that's everywhere.
If you really want to make a difference in how women are treated, look at sales. Utterly harassing towards women. Look at bankers! Look at doctors. Inappropriate advances by men having more power? It's there! While people in the tech industry complain about dongle jokes, the building/developer industry is actually groping women. Our president is!
Compared to all those communities, programmers are basically saints. The focus is in the wrong area.
Lies. RFC 3514 solved this problem long ago, but big government colluded with big business as usual to prevent it from happening. Corporations are the worst. It was so they could spy on us as a prelude to 9/11, which was in planning. Google wtf 7 learn the truth.
The argument that almost enrages me is Bruce's argument that GRsecurity's customers could be liable, and frankly that is the one that is far more interesting to me.
I don't think the customers could be liable, although I respect that there could be some unclarity there. This is my reasoning:
Suppose a Linux kernel copyright holder sues one of the customers. Following the Oracle vs Google appellate ruling, the court will apply the abstraction, filtration, comparison test to figure out what is being violated. After applying the filtration step, all that remains would be code that the copyright holder has already granted a license to.
The contrary argument is that, "GRsecurity's work is a derivative work and they lost their license therefore everyone who uses that derivative work also loses the license." But the abstraction, filtration, comparison test makes clear that the end user still has a right to use everything that was covered under the original license, because the parts of the derivative work that are owned by the original copyright owner have already been licensed.
The appellate court gave a solid ruling in Oracle vs Google. I am in awe of their knowledge, logic, and clarity of thought.
That's a good question, I just checked and the git history goes back to 2005. There are older repositories, but they are probably not authoritative since Linus was merging patches by hand. Bruce also did some good work with BusyBox, but I can't remember ever hearing him described as a kernel developer. I always thought of him as a userland developer. Google doesn't particularly help here since every search "Perens kernel" just returns a bunch of links to this story.
Personally I think that GRsecurity should amend its complaint to include a declaratory judgment count for non-infringement
I would entirely bet that Bruce would be happy with that. He wants the case to center around the GPL, because he (rightly or wrongly) believes the GPL will support him. He doesn't care particularly about GRSecurity as a company, he wants to prevent them keeping their code secret. For Bruce, the entire thing centers around the GPL.
Interestingly, if GRsecurity did include a declaratory judgement count for non-infringement, I don't know who would bring counter-claim. I don't think Bruce Perens is actually a contributor to the Linux kernel (he's done plenty of other good free software). I've never heard him described as a kernel developer, and searching through the kernel commit logs, I can't find his name or email.
What he said is "It is my strong opinion..." which I think stops what he says from being libel.
No, merely stating "this is my opinion" is not enough to stop a statement from being libel. The lawsuit pre-emptively makes an argument against that, quoting another judgement:
If a speaker says, ‘In my opinion John Jones
is a liar,’ he implies a knowledge of facts
which lead to the conclusion that Jones told an unt
ruth. Even if the speaker states the facts upon which
he bases his opinion, if those facts are
either incorrect or incomplete,
or if his assessment of them is
erroneous
, the statement may still imply a false assertion of fact.”
Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co.
497
U.S. 1, 18 (1990)
The gedit source is 50k lines, with another 40k lines of code for the plugins. That's a couple months of work if your feature set is already worked out.
These are the two quotes GRSecurity singled out as being false. If they can be trivially proven true, then GRSecurity will be thrown out of court:
Defendants, in the Posting, stated that "[Customers] should avoid the Grsecurity product
sold at grsecurity.net because it presents a contributory infringement and breach of contract risk.”
Defendants further stated that Plaintiff was in
violation of the GPLv2, and thus “[a]s a
customer,... [Plaintiff’s clients] would be subject
to both contributory infringement and breach of
contract by employing this product in conjunction with the Linux kernel under the no-redistribution
policy currently employed by Grsecurity.”
Perens actually wrote: "it's my opinion that..."
Opinion, not assertion of fact. This lawsuit will be thrown out almost immediately.
FWIW the lawsuit deals specifically with your point, by quoting another case:
“If a speaker says, ‘In my opinion John Jones
is a liar,’ he implies a knowledge of facts
which lead to the conclusion that Jones told an untruth. Even if the speaker states the facts upon which
he bases his opinion, if those facts are
either incorrect or incomplete,
or if his assessment of them is
erroneous, the statement may still imply a false assertion of fact.”
Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co.
497
U.S. 1, 18 (1990)
There are two quotes from Bruce that the lawsuit specifically states as false:
[Customers] should avoid the Grsecurity product
sold at grsecurity.net because it presents a contributory infringement and breach of contract risk.”
Defendants further stated that Plaintiff was in
violation of the GPLv2, and thus “[a]s a
customer,... [Plaintiff’s clients] would be subject
to both contributory infringement and breach of
contract by employing this product in conjunction with the Linux kernel under the no-redistribution
policy currently employed by Grsecurity.”
Your thought in this thread isn't clear here. Are you talking about the violation of the GPL by GRSecurity, or potentially by their customers who also use the source under the GPL? The person you were replying to was talking about the violation by GRSecurity, so let's continue under that premise.
But the GPLv2 does not grant a right to obtain future revisions, whether you're a paying customer or otherwise.
You have echoed GRSecurity's argument. GRSecurity's argument is clearly against the spirit of the GPL, which is "to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software." I don't think you'll disagree here.
Let's move on to the actual letter of the law. GRSecurity is specifically threatening to punish people to prevent them from distributing the code. Is this controversial? Do you disagree with that point, or is that something we can agree on? The GPL specifically states:
You may not impose any
further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of
the rights granted herein
Again, GRSecurity has threatened to terminate services to any customer who distributes the source code. That is, if you distribute the code they have already given you, they will terminate services to you. GRSecurity wants to make it about future patches, but that's a red herring. Whether that service is future patches, or support, or web hosting, or cleaning your toilet, it doesn't matter: the intent is clearly to restrict their customers from distributing the code already given to them. Why else would they add such a clause to the contract?
Of course, such services are provided voluntarily, and GRSecurity can stop providing services for almost any reason, but there are some reasons that are invalid and illegal to use a reason to stop providing services. In this case, the threat of punishment they used violates the spirit of the GPL, and also the letter of the GPL unless they can argue that it is not a restriction.
The question becomes whether grsecurity contains any GPL code to which they do not hold the copyright.
The answer is absolutely yes, it is a derivative work. It is a derivative work because there is no part of the patches that would exist without the Linux kernel: their entire purpose is to modify the kernel (and theoretically make it more secure). I would like to point out that at DEFCON last week, trixr4skids took a Point of Sale device with GRSecurity on it, and hacked it to run DOOM. The keyboard input on the device was not user friendly.
I thought Bruce Perens is a lawyer as well, but probably respects the old saying "a man who represents himself in court has a fool for a lawyer and a fool for a client"
He is not. In this situation he has consistently presented himself as an expert witness.
The problem here is that GRSecurity grants their customers patches under the GPL2, but then explicitly states that if the customers redistribute the patches to other people, then GRSecurity will punish them by not giving them any more patches in the future. This obviously contrary to the spirit of the GPL, but GRSecurity claims the exact wording of the GPL, "You may not impose any
further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of
the rights granted herein", is not contradicted by threatening to punish customers in this way.
This issue is now being brought up directly to be tested in court. I think there is absolutely nothing that could make Bruce happier in this situation. He got exactly what he wanted. The only tricky part is the jury trial, but the facts are obvious enough here, that can be circumvented with a summary judgement.
GRSecurity is demanding a jury trial, which means the emotional power of the lawyers on each side will play an important part, which means they are trying to make it as painful as possible for Bruce, even if they lose.
It's worth mentioning the proposed bill does not actually affect the H1-B program. It's a rework of the green card program, and allocates green cards to tech people with a degree instead of to cousins of people already living here.
If you ever get a chance to visit the oriental museum in the university of Chicago, I highly recommend it. They do a good job making those ancient Sumerians seem relatable, like people who could be your classmates.
Slashdot Mirror
why does it annoy you that some in tech can see their own industries problems in isolation and want to do something about it?
Nah, the vast majority of people see a bandwagon to jump on and follow it. They don't actually care about the problems, or even understand them.
A bunch of other people jumped onto the "anti" bandwagon, just because it's fun.
You can tell because of the dearth of actual scientific research in various conversations.
You didn't point it out. You presented a joke. Maybe you don't understand logic, so I will explain to you how this works:
If you are going to point out a logical fallacy, you need to do two things:
1) State the logical fallacy (which you did)
2) Show that the logical fallacy applies in this situation (which you did not)
Hopefully that helps you out.
Tech is no different from any other field.
Lies. I've seen sales, and I've seen tech. There's a difference.
You might have meant, "tech is not a special field above the average. Sales is actually below average." You are probably right, but then it's not about women in tech anymore, is it? It's about women in general.
Obviously you don't agree. Unfortunately you don't have any logical reason to disagree, so you make a joke out of it.
Sorry, if you have a rational argument, I'll discuss it with you. If you're just going to make jokes, then it's not a discussion.
What annoys me is that tech is not that bad for women. Sure, there are pockets of harassment, and even some really bad things happen, but that's everywhere.
If you really want to make a difference in how women are treated, look at sales. Utterly harassing towards women. Look at bankers! Look at doctors. Inappropriate advances by men having more power? It's there! While people in the tech industry complain about dongle jokes, the building/developer industry is actually groping women. Our president is!
Compared to all those communities, programmers are basically saints. The focus is in the wrong area.
Lies. RFC 3514 solved this problem long ago, but big government colluded with big business as usual to prevent it from happening. Corporations are the worst. It was so they could spy on us as a prelude to 9/11, which was in planning. Google wtf 7 learn the truth.
You might have to wait until the talks are available online, then listen to it.
The argument that almost enrages me is Bruce's argument that GRsecurity's customers could be liable, and frankly that is the one that is far more interesting to me.
I don't think the customers could be liable, although I respect that there could be some unclarity there. This is my reasoning:
Suppose a Linux kernel copyright holder sues one of the customers. Following the Oracle vs Google appellate ruling, the court will apply the abstraction, filtration, comparison test to figure out what is being violated. After applying the filtration step, all that remains would be code that the copyright holder has already granted a license to.
The contrary argument is that, "GRsecurity's work is a derivative work and they lost their license therefore everyone who uses that derivative work also loses the license." But the abstraction, filtration, comparison test makes clear that the end user still has a right to use everything that was covered under the original license, because the parts of the derivative work that are owned by the original copyright owner have already been licensed.
The appellate court gave a solid ruling in Oracle vs Google. I am in awe of their knowledge, logic, and clarity of thought.
That's a good question, I just checked and the git history goes back to 2005. There are older repositories, but they are probably not authoritative since Linus was merging patches by hand. Bruce also did some good work with BusyBox, but I can't remember ever hearing him described as a kernel developer. I always thought of him as a userland developer. Google doesn't particularly help here since every search "Perens kernel" just returns a bunch of links to this story.
Saturday talk by trixr4skids. He actually got the pos system to run Doom.
Personally I think that GRsecurity should amend its complaint to include a declaratory judgment count for non-infringement
I would entirely bet that Bruce would be happy with that. He wants the case to center around the GPL, because he (rightly or wrongly) believes the GPL will support him. He doesn't care particularly about GRSecurity as a company, he wants to prevent them keeping their code secret. For Bruce, the entire thing centers around the GPL.
Interestingly, if GRsecurity did include a declaratory judgement count for non-infringement, I don't know who would bring counter-claim. I don't think Bruce Perens is actually a contributor to the Linux kernel (he's done plenty of other good free software). I've never heard him described as a kernel developer, and searching through the kernel commit logs, I can't find his name or email.
What he said is "It is my strong opinion..." which I think stops what he says from being libel.
No, merely stating "this is my opinion" is not enough to stop a statement from being libel. The lawsuit pre-emptively makes an argument against that, quoting another judgement:
If a speaker says, ‘In my opinion John Jones is a liar,’ he implies a knowledge of facts which lead to the conclusion that Jones told an unt ruth. Even if the speaker states the facts upon which he bases his opinion, if those facts are either incorrect or incomplete, or if his assessment of them is erroneous , the statement may still imply a false assertion of fact.” Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co. 497 U.S. 1, 18 (1990)
The gedit source is 50k lines, with another 40k lines of code for the plugins. That's a couple months of work if your feature set is already worked out.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/Gedit_3.11.92.png
That does look unusable. I wonder where I go to print. I would have to click on random buttons hoping I eventually get it. In the old one, the functionality is fairly obvious.
At DEFCON last week, a hacker pwned a box running GRSecurity. So there's that.
Defendants, in the Posting, stated that "[Customers] should avoid the Grsecurity product sold at grsecurity.net because it presents a contributory infringement and breach of contract risk.”
Defendants further stated that Plaintiff was in violation of the GPLv2, and thus “[a]s a customer, ... [Plaintiff’s clients] would be subject
to both contributory infringement and breach of
contract by employing this product in conjunction with the Linux kernel under the no-redistribution
policy currently employed by Grsecurity.”
Perens actually wrote: "it's my opinion that..." Opinion, not assertion of fact. This lawsuit will be thrown out almost immediately.
FWIW the lawsuit deals specifically with your point, by quoting another case:
“If a speaker says, ‘In my opinion John Jones is a liar,’ he implies a knowledge of facts which lead to the conclusion that Jones told an untruth. Even if the speaker states the facts upon which he bases his opinion, if those facts are either incorrect or incomplete, or if his assessment of them is erroneous, the statement may still imply a false assertion of fact.” Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co. 497 U.S. 1, 18 (1990)
There are two quotes from Bruce that the lawsuit specifically states as false:
[Customers] should avoid the Grsecurity product sold at grsecurity.net because it presents a contributory infringement and breach of contract risk.”
Defendants further stated that Plaintiff was in violation of the GPLv2, and thus “[a]s a customer, ... [Plaintiff’s clients] would be subject
to both contributory infringement and breach of
contract by employing this product in conjunction with the Linux kernel under the no-redistribution
policy currently employed by Grsecurity.”
fyi the guy you are replying to is a lawyer of some sort, check his user name.
But the GPLv2 does not grant a right to obtain future revisions, whether you're a paying customer or otherwise.
You have echoed GRSecurity's argument. GRSecurity's argument is clearly against the spirit of the GPL, which is "to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software." I don't think you'll disagree here.
Let's move on to the actual letter of the law. GRSecurity is specifically threatening to punish people to prevent them from distributing the code. Is this controversial? Do you disagree with that point, or is that something we can agree on? The GPL specifically states:
You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein
Again, GRSecurity has threatened to terminate services to any customer who distributes the source code. That is, if you distribute the code they have already given you, they will terminate services to you. GRSecurity wants to make it about future patches, but that's a red herring. Whether that service is future patches, or support, or web hosting, or cleaning your toilet, it doesn't matter: the intent is clearly to restrict their customers from distributing the code already given to them. Why else would they add such a clause to the contract?
Of course, such services are provided voluntarily, and GRSecurity can stop providing services for almost any reason, but there are some reasons that are invalid and illegal to use a reason to stop providing services. In this case, the threat of punishment they used violates the spirit of the GPL, and also the letter of the GPL unless they can argue that it is not a restriction.
The question becomes whether grsecurity contains any GPL code to which they do not hold the copyright.
The answer is absolutely yes, it is a derivative work. It is a derivative work because there is no part of the patches that would exist without the Linux kernel: their entire purpose is to modify the kernel (and theoretically make it more secure). I would like to point out that at DEFCON last week, trixr4skids took a Point of Sale device with GRSecurity on it, and hacked it to run DOOM. The keyboard input on the device was not user friendly.
I thought Bruce Perens is a lawyer as well, but probably respects the old saying "a man who represents himself in court has a fool for a lawyer and a fool for a client"
He is not. In this situation he has consistently presented himself as an expert witness.
The problem here is that GRSecurity grants their customers patches under the GPL2, but then explicitly states that if the customers redistribute the patches to other people, then GRSecurity will punish them by not giving them any more patches in the future. This obviously contrary to the spirit of the GPL, but GRSecurity claims the exact wording of the GPL, "You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein", is not contradicted by threatening to punish customers in this way.
This issue is now being brought up directly to be tested in court. I think there is absolutely nothing that could make Bruce happier in this situation. He got exactly what he wanted. The only tricky part is the jury trial, but the facts are obvious enough here, that can be circumvented with a summary judgement.
GRSecurity is demanding a jury trial, which means the emotional power of the lawyers on each side will play an important part, which means they are trying to make it as painful as possible for Bruce, even if they lose.
It's worth mentioning the proposed bill does not actually affect the H1-B program. It's a rework of the green card program, and allocates green cards to tech people with a degree instead of to cousins of people already living here.
If you ever get a chance to visit the oriental museum in the university of Chicago, I highly recommend it. They do a good job making those ancient Sumerians seem relatable, like people who could be your classmates.
I just leave my cell phone off when I go to dinner with friends.