Someone commented on Groklaw not too long ago that Canopy's stake in Trolltech was pretty small (<10%) and opined as how it would be really cool if Trolltech could buy that stake back as sort of an "up yours" to Canopy.
No, I don't know how much that is in real money.
If you really, truly think SCO is more evil than whatever they put in buttered popcorn to give it that addictive smell, you'll probably eschew Trolltech and Qt anyway. But I think the extent of Canopy's participation in Trolltech is a non-issue.
Just FYI, I preordered mine when I first heard about it (August or so) and it arrived on Monday. So it hasn't been out all that long.
It would be nice to see more Firefly, but difficult. The sets have already been struck, and the cast are out on new contracts. However, if the demand is there and the cast could be reassembled, the sets would magically reappear, I'm sure.
First, if I as a kernel hacker sign an NDA with SCO, the odds are good that I will have to quit the project. Having seen SCO's code, I could open myself up to a lawsuit if my name came up attached to something they claimed was theirs.
Second, if I as anyone sign an NDA, I wouldn't be able to tell exactly what was infringing. I'd just be able to say, "Yep, it looks like SCO is right" or "Nope, SCO is full of it" but not have any basis for my claims that I could reveal to anyone. So what's the point?
Better this should come out in discovery where it will eventually be part of the court record.
IBM has asked that SCO state, with specificity, all of the portions of the Linux code they lay claim to and the basis behind their claims. The purpose of this is precisely so SCO can't perform a tactic such as you describe. They will have to lay out the alleged infringing code so IBM can mount a defense. Thereafter SCO can't come back and say "Oh wait, we just discovered this 500,000-line chunk of infringing code."
By January 12 IBM at least should know either that SCO was spitting into the wind, or what portions of Linux SCO is laying claim to. At that time they should be able to either prove that SCO was lying^H^H^H^H^Hincorrectly laying claim to the code (by proving it was public domain, previously published, etc.) or to have a basis to create a non-infringing version of Linux.
Yes, but why does the antenna on top of the mountain beat out the antenna on the valley floor? Because it's HIGHER.
As for high gain, well that's a matter of design, and a tradeoff. A rhombic (multiple wavelengths) will in general beat out a 3-element yagi (1/2 wavelength), and they might both get beat out by a Beverage (again, multiple wavelengths).
Coax is an important design factor, of course, but it's much less critical at HF than it is at VHF or UHF. RG-8/X has a loss of about 1 dB per 100 feet at 10 MHz (30 meter band), very acceptable even for QRP work. At 440 MHz the value approaches 8 dB/100 feet, meaning you are cutting your signal strength by almost 8x for every 100 feet of coax.
To answer your final question, why would this gigantic interference maker ever see the light of day? The simple answer, of course, is money. There is a small but persistent industry group trying to get this pushed through the FCC because they see money to be made in it, never mind how harmful the interference to other services is going to be.
I agree with you about QRP -- I keep thinking I'm going to find time to get a QRP rig put together one of these days, although the block there is the antenna (the lower your power, the more efficient your antenna needs to be). I also want to try PSK31, which from what I understand is usable at QRP levels and below.
As for SWL, though, that's a tough one. Many countries have found that they just don't have the resources to broadcast to a United States which is in general indifferent to their international services' existence and have moved over to systems like Realaudio. That's not to say that this couldn't turn into a listening disaster in Europe, where shortwave is still very much in use, or in places like rural Africa or South America where stations could be made unlistenable by a BPL version of a DDoS attack.
The US needs to keep in mind that, even though we're big, we're not the only country out there, and there are some decisions we make that have repercussions in the rest of the world.
Keep in mind also that hams routinely make contacts with less than 1 watt of power output. I don't know how much raidation a BPL system would throw out, but the Amateur's Antenna Rule is that the higher the antenna and the more wire you put into it, the better it is. A BPL system would be a fairly high antenna and possibly miles long. The ionosphere would propagate BPL noise as well as it would propagate any other ham radio signal of comparable power output and antenna characteristics.
It's quite usual, for instance, to have the net control for a hurricane network far away from the path of the hurricane. (In fact it's a pretty good idea for obvious reasons.) A ham in Corpus Christi in the middle of a hurricane might be able to get a signal just fine, assuming the atmospheric noise would let him and his antenna stays up, but net control in Florida might not be able to hear him -- or anyone else on the net -- due to the BPL interference.
The ARRL (national amateur radio organization) is very opposed to BPL, because it would most likely cause severe interference to radio hams. See the ARRL's BPL web page for the hams' version of the story.
Well, as I said in my reply to the other reply to the grandparent post, I haven't promised to do anything, but if I do anything and don't do it under the terms of the license, I'm breaking copyright law, not a contract. It's like watching a movie on tape. There's a license at the very beginning of the movie that says it's licensed for home viewing only. I haven't agreed to this license -- in fact there's no way for me to agree to it, since there's no "agree" button on the remote to my VCR. However, if I decide to take my tape to the local multiplex and show it to paying customers, the MPAA can come down on me like a ton of bricks for violating the terms of the license.
Yeah, not that it matters, and it's probably a lot like arguing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. If the courts were to rule that the GPL is an enforceable contract, that'd be OK with me as long as it's enforceable.
That's not a promise on my side. That's the terms under which you grant the license. As the GPL itself says, I don't have to agree to anything, because I haven't signed anything. However, if I do decide to modify the code, adhering to the terms of the license is the only way in which I am legally permitted to do so.
What you're saying is roughly the equivalent of saying "If the government grants you a driver's license you promise to obey the rules of the road." No, you don't promise any such thing, but part of the grant of license is that if you break those rules, there are penalties involved (fines, jail time, whatever). Perhaps you are considering that there is an implicit promise that you will obey the law, but then we could say that many areas of life which are not contracts, in fact are.
PJ, if you're reading this, perhaps you could poll Professor Nimmer to find out what his reasoning is behind this point of view. A debate between Professor Nimmer and Professor Moglen might be very interesting.
Where's the promise on my side? The GPL grants me rights I wouldn't have otherwise, e.g. to modify and distribute modifications to the code, provided that I adhere to the terms of the license, e.g. distribute the modifications under the GPL. There's no expectation on my part that I will modify the code, or distribute it, or even look at or run it. I haven't promised to do anything, in fact, so I still don't see how it can be a contract.
More than half of the time lawyers argue a case, they are wrong. Think about that one.
I'm trying to, but for some reason it sounds too much like "Know how dumb the average American is? Well, by definition half of them are dumber than that."
At any rate, if there are legal scholars (not people who play them on Slashdot) who would care to present a case that the GPL is both a license and a contract, I'm sure PJ would like to have them present their case at Groklaw. Until then, I'm OK with going with Professor Moglen's interpretation.
Yeah, I just noticed that. His curriculum vitae bears that observation out. Among other things, he's worked in some kind of programming job with IBM (1979-84, IBM Corporation, San Jose, California, Programmer/Analyst, Programming Language Research & Development; in 1983 he also served as corporate counsel with IBM).
I expected an ancient greybeard but the guy appears to be younger than I am (mid-40s, I'd guess).
Nope. A contract implies a two-way promise. I contract with you to sell me two tons of sugar for five cents a pound. You promise to do something (produce the sugar) and I promise to do something (buy it from you). If either of us defaults on the contract, there are penalties involved.
A license simply allows you to do something you couldn't otherwise do. There's no contract because you don't have to perform any obligations. Simply because you have a driver's license doesn't mean you have to drive a car. (You do have to follow traffic rules but that is a condition of the grant of license, it's not a contractual obligation.)
PJ is not a lawyer, but she knows plenty of lawyers, and is meeting more as time goes on. If she says that the General Public License is a LICENSE, not a contract, she has the opinion of experts to back it up with. Those experts include Eben Moglen, the author of the GPL and a professor of law and legal history at Columbia University. What do you have?
Remember that it was written by an OSS hippy, not a lawyer.
Bzzzzzt! Wrong. It was written by Eben Moglen, professor of law and legal history at Columbia University. I have no idea whether he is a hippy (although I would tend to doubt it), but I have little doubt that he's a lawyer.
It only grants rights, it doesn't take them away
Well, no.
Well, yes. Read the GPL. It grants you rights to do things that otherwise you could not do under copyright law. If you can't do things with the software, it's because copyright law won't let you do them, not because the license itself won't.
Groklaw is run by a paralegal and its focus is certainly on law. But its primary focus at the moment is on the SCO case, and it occasionally touches on other areas that have some bearing on the case.
SCO is claiming to be the victim of a DDoS attack, and hinting strongly that the Open Source community is behind it all. The fact that there are some doubts as to SCO's version of the story, backed up by the opinion of experts in the field, and that SCO could try to use this both as a way to smear the FOSS community and an excuse to not produce evidence that by court order it needs to come up with in less than 30 days, makes this story relevant to the SCO case.
Not 100% true. I upgraded the hard disk and memory in my wife's eMachine that I bought in an apparent moment of drug-induced frenzy. (Musta been good drugs, since they induced me to buy the eMachine and I don't remember even taking them, but it's the only way I can account for my action.)
This is, however, 90% true, and I really wish I'd have just followed my first instinct and built a machine from parts like I usually do.
Well, considering it's you who's writing it, it'll probably be better than the Scott McNeally emulator I never got around to writing, which would basically output stuff like "Blah blah blah blah Sun blah blah blah Microsoft blah blah blah-dee-blah blah Java blah blah blah blah sheep in high heels" until you shut it off.
This is a two-way case. The original SCO vs. IBM claim will most likely be history by Valentine's Day. The counterclaim, which you can think of as IBM vs. SCO, will continue on and will involve something painful and messy for SCO. Preferably with gerbils involved.
That certainly appears to be the case here. Magistrate Judge Wells stated that, while she left the door open in the matter of rescheduling the next hearing (set for January 25 or thereabouts), she did NOT give SCO any extension of the 30 days they have to come up with a case.
So basically SCO has two viable choices: come up with some kind of evidence that IBM contributed SCO's IP to the Linux kernel, which IBM will then tear to shreds; or, say they don't have the evidence they've been claiming to have for the last six months, and have their case dismissed for lack of substance. Oh yeah, and the IBM counterclaim will continue either way.
This hearing is before Magistrate Judge Wells, who does not have dispositive authority in the case (i.e., she can't throw it out of court). She can, however, make recommendations to Judge Kimball. She also does have the power to compel either side to produce evidence requested by the other.
I'm not sure whether she could issue a contempt citation on her own authority, but I don't know of any reason why she couldn't. If a contempt citation is in order and she can't issue it herself, she could certainly recommend that Judge Kimball do so.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone that insists that there is only one way, and that is their way, is probably wrong.
Or named Guido.
(Don't shoot me! Don't shoot me! I use Python too!)
Someone commented on Groklaw not too long ago that Canopy's stake in Trolltech was pretty small (<10%) and opined as how it would be really cool if Trolltech could buy that stake back as sort of an "up yours" to Canopy.
No, I don't know how much that is in real money.
If you really, truly think SCO is more evil than whatever they put in buttered popcorn to give it that addictive smell, you'll probably eschew Trolltech and Qt anyway. But I think the extent of Canopy's participation in Trolltech is a non-issue.
Just FYI, I preordered mine when I first heard about it (August or so) and it arrived on Monday. So it hasn't been out all that long.
It would be nice to see more Firefly, but difficult. The sets have already been struck, and the cast are out on new contracts. However, if the demand is there and the cast could be reassembled, the sets would magically reappear, I'm sure.
Linux is anti-American, unconstitutional, hippie-dippie, probably communistic, causes cancer in laboratory animals . . .
and now Microsoft wants to be more like Linux. Got it.
There are two "big deals" involved.
First, if I as a kernel hacker sign an NDA with SCO, the odds are good that I will have to quit the project. Having seen SCO's code, I could open myself up to a lawsuit if my name came up attached to something they claimed was theirs.
Second, if I as anyone sign an NDA, I wouldn't be able to tell exactly what was infringing. I'd just be able to say, "Yep, it looks like SCO is right" or "Nope, SCO is full of it" but not have any basis for my claims that I could reveal to anyone. So what's the point?
Better this should come out in discovery where it will eventually be part of the court record.
IBM has asked that SCO state, with specificity, all of the portions of the Linux code they lay claim to and the basis behind their claims. The purpose of this is precisely so SCO can't perform a tactic such as you describe. They will have to lay out the alleged infringing code so IBM can mount a defense. Thereafter SCO can't come back and say "Oh wait, we just discovered this 500,000-line chunk of infringing code."
By January 12 IBM at least should know either that SCO was spitting into the wind, or what portions of Linux SCO is laying claim to. At that time they should be able to either prove that SCO was lying^H^H^H^H^Hincorrectly laying claim to the code (by proving it was public domain, previously published, etc.) or to have a basis to create a non-infringing version of Linux.
Yes, but why does the antenna on top of the mountain beat out the antenna on the valley floor? Because it's HIGHER.
As for high gain, well that's a matter of design, and a tradeoff. A rhombic (multiple wavelengths) will in general beat out a 3-element yagi (1/2 wavelength), and they might both get beat out by a Beverage (again, multiple wavelengths).
Coax is an important design factor, of course, but it's much less critical at HF than it is at VHF or UHF. RG-8/X has a loss of about 1 dB per 100 feet at 10 MHz (30 meter band), very acceptable even for QRP work. At 440 MHz the value approaches 8 dB/100 feet, meaning you are cutting your signal strength by almost 8x for every 100 feet of coax.
To answer your final question, why would this gigantic interference maker ever see the light of day? The simple answer, of course, is money. There is a small but persistent industry group trying to get this pushed through the FCC because they see money to be made in it, never mind how harmful the interference to other services is going to be.
I agree with you about QRP -- I keep thinking I'm going to find time to get a QRP rig put together one of these days, although the block there is the antenna (the lower your power, the more efficient your antenna needs to be). I also want to try PSK31, which from what I understand is usable at QRP levels and below.
As for SWL, though, that's a tough one. Many countries have found that they just don't have the resources to broadcast to a United States which is in general indifferent to their international services' existence and have moved over to systems like Realaudio. That's not to say that this couldn't turn into a listening disaster in Europe, where shortwave is still very much in use, or in places like rural Africa or South America where stations could be made unlistenable by a BPL version of a DDoS attack.
The US needs to keep in mind that, even though we're big, we're not the only country out there, and there are some decisions we make that have repercussions in the rest of the world.
Keep in mind also that hams routinely make contacts with less than 1 watt of power output. I don't know how much raidation a BPL system would throw out, but the Amateur's Antenna Rule is that the higher the antenna and the more wire you put into it, the better it is. A BPL system would be a fairly high antenna and possibly miles long. The ionosphere would propagate BPL noise as well as it would propagate any other ham radio signal of comparable power output and antenna characteristics.
It's quite usual, for instance, to have the net control for a hurricane network far away from the path of the hurricane. (In fact it's a pretty good idea for obvious reasons.) A ham in Corpus Christi in the middle of a hurricane might be able to get a signal just fine, assuming the atmospheric noise would let him and his antenna stays up, but net control in Florida might not be able to hear him -- or anyone else on the net -- due to the BPL interference.
The ARRL (national amateur radio organization) is very opposed to BPL, because it would most likely cause severe interference to radio hams. See the ARRL's BPL web page for the hams' version of the story.
Well, as I said in my reply to the other reply to the grandparent post, I haven't promised to do anything, but if I do anything and don't do it under the terms of the license, I'm breaking copyright law, not a contract. It's like watching a movie on tape. There's a license at the very beginning of the movie that says it's licensed for home viewing only. I haven't agreed to this license -- in fact there's no way for me to agree to it, since there's no "agree" button on the remote to my VCR. However, if I decide to take my tape to the local multiplex and show it to paying customers, the MPAA can come down on me like a ton of bricks for violating the terms of the license.
Yeah, not that it matters, and it's probably a lot like arguing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. If the courts were to rule that the GPL is an enforceable contract, that'd be OK with me as long as it's enforceable.
That's not a promise on my side. That's the terms under which you grant the license. As the GPL itself says, I don't have to agree to anything, because I haven't signed anything. However, if I do decide to modify the code, adhering to the terms of the license is the only way in which I am legally permitted to do so.
What you're saying is roughly the equivalent of saying "If the government grants you a driver's license you promise to obey the rules of the road." No, you don't promise any such thing, but part of the grant of license is that if you break those rules, there are penalties involved (fines, jail time, whatever). Perhaps you are considering that there is an implicit promise that you will obey the law, but then we could say that many areas of life which are not contracts, in fact are.
PJ, if you're reading this, perhaps you could poll Professor Nimmer to find out what his reasoning is behind this point of view. A debate between Professor Nimmer and Professor Moglen might be very interesting.
And so does the GPL
Where's the promise on my side? The GPL grants me rights I wouldn't have otherwise, e.g. to modify and distribute modifications to the code, provided that I adhere to the terms of the license, e.g. distribute the modifications under the GPL. There's no expectation on my part that I will modify the code, or distribute it, or even look at or run it. I haven't promised to do anything, in fact, so I still don't see how it can be a contract.
More than half of the time lawyers argue a case, they are wrong. Think about that one.
I'm trying to, but for some reason it sounds too much like "Know how dumb the average American is? Well, by definition half of them are dumber than that."
At any rate, if there are legal scholars (not people who play them on Slashdot) who would care to present a case that the GPL is both a license and a contract, I'm sure PJ would like to have them present their case at Groklaw. Until then, I'm OK with going with Professor Moglen's interpretation.
Yeah, I just noticed that. His curriculum vitae bears that observation out. Among other things, he's worked in some kind of programming job with IBM (1979-84, IBM Corporation, San Jose, California, Programmer/Analyst, Programming Language Research & Development; in 1983 he also served as corporate counsel with IBM).
I expected an ancient greybeard but the guy appears to be younger than I am (mid-40s, I'd guess).
To quote Samuel Goldwyn, "Verbal contracts aren't worth the paper they're written on."
Nope. A contract implies a two-way promise. I contract with you to sell me two tons of sugar for five cents a pound. You promise to do something (produce the sugar) and I promise to do something (buy it from you). If either of us defaults on the contract, there are penalties involved.
A license simply allows you to do something you couldn't otherwise do. There's no contract because you don't have to perform any obligations. Simply because you have a driver's license doesn't mean you have to drive a car. (You do have to follow traffic rules but that is a condition of the grant of license, it's not a contractual obligation.)
PJ is not a lawyer, but she knows plenty of lawyers, and is meeting more as time goes on. If she says that the General Public License is a LICENSE, not a contract, she has the opinion of experts to back it up with. Those experts include Eben Moglen, the author of the GPL and a professor of law and legal history at Columbia University. What do you have?
Remember that it was written by an OSS hippy, not a lawyer.
Bzzzzzt! Wrong. It was written by Eben Moglen, professor of law and legal history at Columbia University. I have no idea whether he is a hippy (although I would tend to doubt it), but I have little doubt that he's a lawyer.
It only grants rights, it doesn't take them away
Well, no.
Well, yes. Read the GPL. It grants you rights to do things that otherwise you could not do under copyright law. If you can't do things with the software, it's because copyright law won't let you do them, not because the license itself won't.
Groklaw is run by a paralegal and its focus is certainly on law. But its primary focus at the moment is on the SCO case, and it occasionally touches on other areas that have some bearing on the case.
SCO is claiming to be the victim of a DDoS attack, and hinting strongly that the Open Source community is behind it all. The fact that there are some doubts as to SCO's version of the story, backed up by the opinion of experts in the field, and that SCO could try to use this both as a way to smear the FOSS community and an excuse to not produce evidence that by court order it needs to come up with in less than 30 days, makes this story relevant to the SCO case.
Not 100% true. I upgraded the hard disk and memory in my wife's eMachine that I bought in an apparent moment of drug-induced frenzy. (Musta been good drugs, since they induced me to buy the eMachine and I don't remember even taking them, but it's the only way I can account for my action.)
This is, however, 90% true, and I really wish I'd have just followed my first instinct and built a machine from parts like I usually do.
I don't know, but lately I've been hearing them referred to as "The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives."
Maybe they're going squirrel hunting on that particular trip. "Look! A North Bitterroot Bushytail! Get the C4!"
Well, duh. You wouldn't have to pay Taco for that. All you have to do is put up a link to their server, and we'll take care of the rest.
No need to thank us, really.
Well, considering it's you who's writing it, it'll probably be better than the Scott McNeally emulator I never got around to writing, which would basically output stuff like "Blah blah blah blah Sun blah blah blah Microsoft blah blah blah-dee-blah blah Java blah blah blah blah sheep in high heels" until you shut it off.
This is a two-way case. The original SCO vs. IBM claim will most likely be history by Valentine's Day. The counterclaim, which you can think of as IBM vs. SCO, will continue on and will involve something painful and messy for SCO. Preferably with gerbils involved.
That certainly appears to be the case here. Magistrate Judge Wells stated that, while she left the door open in the matter of rescheduling the next hearing (set for January 25 or thereabouts), she did NOT give SCO any extension of the 30 days they have to come up with a case.
So basically SCO has two viable choices: come up with some kind of evidence that IBM contributed SCO's IP to the Linux kernel, which IBM will then tear to shreds; or, say they don't have the evidence they've been claiming to have for the last six months, and have their case dismissed for lack of substance. Oh yeah, and the IBM counterclaim will continue either way.
Sucks to be SCO right now.
This hearing is before Magistrate Judge Wells, who does not have dispositive authority in the case (i.e., she can't throw it out of court). She can, however, make recommendations to Judge Kimball. She also does have the power to compel either side to produce evidence requested by the other.
I'm not sure whether she could issue a contempt citation on her own authority, but I don't know of any reason why she couldn't. If a contempt citation is in order and she can't issue it herself, she could certainly recommend that Judge Kimball do so.