Like someone else said, if the class members get $12 coupons, the lawyers should get a big pile of $4 coupons.
Think about your statement. A law firm "invests" probably ten million dollars in out of pocket costs to bring a suit of this magnitude. That money can't be recovered if they lose. They win the suit, and they should only expect coupons?
Would anyone run any business on those economics?
Any attorney who works on contingency is engaging in speculation. They won't undertake the risk unless the size of the reward in combination with the likelihood of winning outweighs the investment.
In your world, there would have been no attorney to take the case, so nobody would have received $12 vouchers, and MS would not have been punished at all.
Don't forget the other factors that alter voting - the vote swap.
Say your a congressman and you have two bills coming up to a vote. One is a highway bill that will create jobs in your district, and your contituents want it passed. The other is an education bill that will reduce funding to public schools in your district, and your constituents want it to fail.
Another congresman approaches you and says that his constituents want the education bill passed, but don't want the highway bill.
You weigh the relative value of each bill to your constituents, then agree with your colleague that both of you will vote yes on both bills.
It appears that you didn't work for your constituents, but really you did the best you could.
On the other hand, their willful refusal to let the greater Linux community know which code they're claiming (much less asking us to remove it from current distributions), indicates an implicit acceptance of it's continued distribution.
Anything that is still in there is explicitly licensed. They can't now claim that they didn't know about it.
As time goes on it is more clear that, although SCO may or may not have a valid contract claim against IBM, they have nothing on Linux.
Has anyone checked that they are continuing to distribute the entire source tree?
There is no requirement that a Linux distribution include everything that Linus blesses. It is possible that SCO removed the SMP/RCU/yada-yada modules from their source tree (maybe replacing them with non-infringing versions from an earlier release) and distributes that code. The code that they removed wouldn't then be covered underthe GPL.
There is an interesting question: If SCO didn't know that there was infringing code when they first published a distribution containing the claimed infringing code, is that code covered under the GPL?
The answer in not knowable right now, since it will probably be new law. A major factor that the judge will consider is "Did SCO deviate from industry practice by not examining the code for potential infringement?" If RedHat and Mandrake and SuSe regularly examine code for IP issues and SCO didn't, the GPL will likely apply. If none of the distribution publishers bother to check code for IP, however, then SCO may be able to get away with "We didn't intend to GPL that code, and we rectified it as soon as it came to our attention."
there are 60 million Americans out there ending the old media cartels one download at a time...
The EFF is a very good organization, and they're doing a lot of good work on our behalf. But they're more like the ACLU of cyberspace than, say, the Sierra Club or NRA.
Don't forget the AARP. The "Gray Panthers" are by far the most powerful lobby group in the USA.
People very infrequently vote on a single issue. Voters tend to look at a handful of important issues and decide that they agree or diagree with each candidates position. For instance - my list might look like this...
National Security/Defense
Trust (admittedly fuzzy)
Economic Policy
Taxes
I'm going to base my vote on these issues, even though I may care about others. Other people may have issues like Education, Universal Healthcare, Minority advancement, etc.
While many people are concerned about the RIAA, few will weigh those kinds of issues as heavily as these?
Since these issues won't swing votes, the lobbyists have the upper hand.
Anyone else think these two are unreasonable? They deal no harm to huge corporations of the kind that now own our culture, but they would be a major obstacle to people who just want to make stuff. If I had to go fill out forms and spend money every time I wrote an article or composed a song, I would do much less of those things.
It depends alot on how difficult it is to register your work. If it was a simple and free web form/ftp to the library of congress, probably not big deal (to us - there would need to be methods for the non-computer literate as well).
If you needed to spend $10, you probably wouldn't bother with some things.
If you needed to spend $1000, well, that would really suck and would stifle creativity.
As a major side benefit, all the works would automatically be freely available from a set of libraries as soon as the copyrights expired.
>>No copyright protection at all for any software whose source code is not deposited.
This struck me as reasonable. Either I trust the government to keep my stuff safe, or I try to keep it safe myself. It's when I try to keep it safe myself, yet task the government with going after anyone I say is using my stuff, that things get sticky... I could use the government to try to stop competition.
I agree as well, although the 10 years might be a little steep for software. Patents should probably be thrown into the mix as well, with a graduated expiration based on the area of knowledge. Business Process patents would be very short - 3 years. Software patents would run about 7, perhaps. Things like pharmacueticals, with tremendous R&D costs, would still get protection for about 20 years.
The other issue with copyright I'd like to see addressed is "continuous use". My idea is that certain types of copyrighted work would continue to be protected provided that it was in continual use. For instance, since Disney continues to use the Mickey Mouse character on an ongoing basis, Mickey Mouse works continue to be covered by copyright. Ian Flemming's James Bond character also would be covered since every few years a new movie is released. Once a work is "abandoned" - not used for perhaps 5 years, however, a clock starts ticking for a copyright expiration in, say, 15 years rather than 75.
Taking a traditional Locke property view of copyrights: As long as a farmer is continuing to till his soil every season, there is no reson to take the farm away from him. Once he abandons his farm, perhaps because he can't till it profitably, others should have a chance to give it a try.
not only would they have to release their code (IP), but create detailed documents about build environments, in-house tools, etc, etc... Why not just close up shop?
The point of the GPL is that others should be able to modify and extend the code published under GPL. Using odd patches or undocumented tools to obscure the build process defeats this purpose.
GPLers throw around that phrase a lot, "end users". The assumption is that an end user even knows what a compiler is. Most of them do not. For a true end user the GPL doesn't do or mean shit.
I used "end user" to mean the receiver of the software distribution. These are the people that the GPL is supposed to empower. I agree that end users usually are not developers who have the capability and/or interest to hack at this. The terminology is poor. Never the less, that is the party whose rights are protected by the GPL. Effectively, the GPL is written for developers, who happen to be the receivers (end users) of code published by someone else.
Give me a BSD or Apache license any day... licenses should not, in my opinion, have an almost religious ideology behind them.
I agree on this 100%. RMS/FSF have an ideological belief that all software should be free. They have a right to that belief, but I personnally disagree with them.
I prefer licenses that stake out a middle ground between proprietary and GPL: If I, as a member of a community, contribute code freely to that community I would like derivative code to also be freely available. However, I would prefer that the linking of open and proprietary code was allowed.
An advantage of this would be that hardware vendors would be in a better position to support Linux with drivers, but not have to surrender their IP rights to the contents of those drivers.
More hardware support is good for the community overall. The vendors would make their own choices as to open or closed, depending on their evaluation of the loss of IP versus the cost of maintaining their own drivers.
Typically, business DSL service includes a Service Level Agreement that guaruntees uptime, bandwidth, repair turnaround time. Consumer DSL typically does not support the same SLA.
Business DSL also frequently grants oyu the right to run a server, where-as consumer typically does not.
They are not the same products, and for some users a guarantee that the service will be up 99.99% of the time and that repair technicians will be available in 4 hours is worth the extra 55-155 CDN a month.
This is a perfect example of one of the weaknesses of the GPL.
The GPL requires that anyone who publishes or distributes a GPL binary also make available (in a machine readable format normally used to exchange source code files) the source.
The intent is that the receiver of the GPL binary should be able to regenerate it from source, modify it, and generate enhanced versions.
By using a tool not generally available to build the source, the distributor has made it difficult for end users to enhance the software.
Hopefully the FSF will modify future versions of the GPL to require the following:
The source code be supplied with clear documentation detailing the tools and their versions used to execute the build.
Any "in-house" proprietary tools and proprietary patches of tools that materially affect the ability of others to replicate the build process must also be disclosed under a free and open license.
If commercial proprietary software is used as a tool in said build, the distributor must not enter into any sort of contract, agreement, or other understanding with the tool vendor that prevents the user from acquiring those tools and using them to enhance the software.
I think this will generally cover the bases. Linux can be compiled with a proprietary compiler - usually one supplied for use with a specific chip set - but the distributor must enable their customers to replicate the builds.
The important observation here is that broadband providers feel the need to cater to their customers.
Broadband has finally penetrated to the point where many (maybe not most, but enough) people have two or more real choices in broadband: DSL, Cable Modem, and Satelite. Wireless is beginning to penetrate as well. Broadband providers need to cater to their customers sufficiently that they don't jump to another provider.
instead of stealing just your hard drive, they have to steal the whole computer?
If you go to the ABIT site you'll see that the decrytpion key is not stored in the BIOS. It is a physical device that you need to plug in during boot. The physical "key" appears to be one of those USB flash drives that fit on a keychain.
One would suspect that the decryption key is in the data stored on that device. As long as you hold that device, no-one can read your hard drive, even if they have the motherboard.
Microsoft didn't bring computing to the masses, nor did it hinder it, the HARDWARE platform it was lucky enough to be attached to brought computing to the masses.
I don't agree, but on a very fine point. Inexpensive hardware was available to the masses before MS. CP/M and its hardware was widely available, had lots of apps, and didn't cost too much. Remember Osbourne, Kaypro, TRS-80?
Adding the three letters IBM to a slightly scaled up CP/M clone, however, had the effect of pushing the whole package to broader acceptance. IBM's label made the PC a tool for medium ande large businesses that were already running mini and mainframe computers. Once IBM created that (huge) market, the Compaqs and other clone makers drove the prices down, creating the commodity prices we have today.
I've seen these too. The handle winds a coil spring, which then turns a small generator through a clockwork mechanism to charge the batteries.
They were originally developed, IIRC, with the intention of distributing them throughout third world countries, so that people would have access to news broadcasts.
I keep looking for one that has a weatherband radio integrated into it, which I like to have while camping.
the missing concept behind solar power is that it doens't have to be distributed.
Exactly. Rather than concentrating on building mammoth plants of any sort, we'd all be better off with a locally produced power.
Ideally, homes and businesses would have enough photovoltaic to cover themselves 9-5, particularly during the peak early afternoon. Extra power would be sold back to the grid, to even out generation and usage. Pricing structures would encourage the use of power hungry appliances (the washing machine and dryer) during early morning or late evening hours. Wind would contribute whenever possible. Hydroelectric and nuclear would provide the overnight power, as well as part of the cloudy day power. Neighborhood located small turbines, fueled by oil and/or natural gas, would be available to supplement peak loads and cloudy days.
This kind of system would be friendly both to the consumer and to the environment. It exploits the best technology in each area, mitigating their weaknesses.
The US isn't hoarding IP addresses. We have 70% of the assigned addresses because we've asked for them. Blocks are handed out as they are requested. The whole world will run out at the same time.
Don't forget the 'dollar' factor. Once there is a benefit to being right and a cost to being wrong, intelligent people will tend to ruthlessly focus on fact and informed opinion, discarding wish and desire.
Few will purchase a future on whether or not the King of Jordan is overthrown because they like or dislike the King, but Many will purchase the future based on ruthless evaluation of the King's abilities to remain in power.
Don't confuse legal claims with PR. McBride and Co. can run at the mouth in interviews, news conferences, and press releases all they want. What Boies puts in a court document is another story.
SCO has yet to make a legal claim other than breach of contract with IBM.
Slashdot Mirror
Think about your statement. A law firm "invests" probably ten million dollars in out of pocket costs to bring a suit of this magnitude. That money can't be recovered if they lose. They win the suit, and they should only expect coupons?
Would anyone run any business on those economics?
Any attorney who works on contingency is engaging in speculation. They won't undertake the risk unless the size of the reward in combination with the likelihood of winning outweighs the investment.
In your world, there would have been no attorney to take the case, so nobody would have received $12 vouchers, and MS would not have been punished at all.
Say your a congressman and you have two bills coming up to a vote. One is a highway bill that will create jobs in your district, and your contituents want it passed. The other is an education bill that will reduce funding to public schools in your district, and your constituents want it to fail.
Another congresman approaches you and says that his constituents want the education bill passed, but don't want the highway bill.
You weigh the relative value of each bill to your constituents, then agree with your colleague that both of you will vote yes on both bills.
It appears that you didn't work for your constituents, but really you did the best you could.
Anything that is still in there is explicitly licensed. They can't now claim that they didn't know about it.
As time goes on it is more clear that, although SCO may or may not have a valid contract claim against IBM, they have nothing on Linux.
There is no requirement that a Linux distribution include everything that Linus blesses. It is possible that SCO removed the SMP/RCU/yada-yada modules from their source tree (maybe replacing them with non-infringing versions from an earlier release) and distributes that code. The code that they removed wouldn't then be covered underthe GPL.
There is an interesting question: If SCO didn't know that there was infringing code when they first published a distribution containing the claimed infringing code, is that code covered under the GPL?
The answer in not knowable right now, since it will probably be new law. A major factor that the judge will consider is "Did SCO deviate from industry practice by not examining the code for potential infringement?" If RedHat and Mandrake and SuSe regularly examine code for IP issues and SCO didn't, the GPL will likely apply. If none of the distribution publishers bother to check code for IP, however, then SCO may be able to get away with "We didn't intend to GPL that code, and we rectified it as soon as it came to our attention."
The EFF is a very good organization, and they're doing a lot of good work on our behalf. But they're more like the ACLU of cyberspace than, say, the Sierra Club or NRA.
Don't forget the AARP. The "Gray Panthers" are by far the most powerful lobby group in the USA.
People very infrequently vote on a single issue. Voters tend to look at a handful of important issues and decide that they agree or diagree with each candidates position. For instance - my list might look like this...
- National Security/Defense
- Trust (admittedly fuzzy)
- Economic Policy
- Taxes
I'm going to base my vote on these issues, even though I may care about others. Other people may have issues like Education, Universal Healthcare, Minority advancement, etc.While many people are concerned about the RIAA, few will weigh those kinds of issues as heavily as these?
Since these issues won't swing votes, the lobbyists have the upper hand.
>>Registration requirement.
Anyone else think these two are unreasonable? They deal no harm to huge corporations of the kind that now own our culture, but they would be a major obstacle to people who just want to make stuff. If I had to go fill out forms and spend money every time I wrote an article or composed a song, I would do much less of those things.
It depends alot on how difficult it is to register your work. If it was a simple and free web form/ftp to the library of congress, probably not big deal (to us - there would need to be methods for the non-computer literate as well).
If you needed to spend $10, you probably wouldn't bother with some things.
If you needed to spend $1000, well, that would really suck and would stifle creativity.
As a major side benefit, all the works would automatically be freely available from a set of libraries as soon as the copyrights expired.
This struck me as reasonable. Either I trust the government to keep my stuff safe, or I try to keep it safe myself. It's when I try to keep it safe myself, yet task the government with going after anyone I say is using my stuff, that things get sticky... I could use the government to try to stop competition.
I agree as well, although the 10 years might be a little steep for software. Patents should probably be thrown into the mix as well, with a graduated expiration based on the area of knowledge. Business Process patents would be very short - 3 years. Software patents would run about 7, perhaps. Things like pharmacueticals, with tremendous R&D costs, would still get protection for about 20 years.
The other issue with copyright I'd like to see addressed is "continuous use". My idea is that certain types of copyrighted work would continue to be protected provided that it was in continual use. For instance, since Disney continues to use the Mickey Mouse character on an ongoing basis, Mickey Mouse works continue to be covered by copyright. Ian Flemming's James Bond character also would be covered since every few years a new movie is released. Once a work is "abandoned" - not used for perhaps 5 years, however, a clock starts ticking for a copyright expiration in, say, 15 years rather than 75.
Taking a traditional Locke property view of copyrights: As long as a farmer is continuing to till his soil every season, there is no reson to take the farm away from him. Once he abandons his farm, perhaps because he can't till it profitably, others should have a chance to give it a try.
The point of the GPL is that others should be able to modify and extend the code published under GPL. Using odd patches or undocumented tools to obscure the build process defeats this purpose.
GPLers throw around that phrase a lot, "end users". The assumption is that an end user even knows what a compiler is. Most of them do not. For a true end user the GPL doesn't do or mean shit.
I used "end user" to mean the receiver of the software distribution. These are the people that the GPL is supposed to empower. I agree that end users usually are not developers who have the capability and/or interest to hack at this. The terminology is poor. Never the less, that is the party whose rights are protected by the GPL. Effectively, the GPL is written for developers, who happen to be the receivers (end users) of code published by someone else.
Give me a BSD or Apache license any day... licenses should not, in my opinion, have an almost religious ideology behind them.
I agree on this 100%. RMS/FSF have an ideological belief that all software should be free. They have a right to that belief, but I personnally disagree with them.
I prefer licenses that stake out a middle ground between proprietary and GPL: If I, as a member of a community, contribute code freely to that community I would like derivative code to also be freely available. However, I would prefer that the linking of open and proprietary code was allowed.
An advantage of this would be that hardware vendors would be in a better position to support Linux with drivers, but not have to surrender their IP rights to the contents of those drivers. More hardware support is good for the community overall. The vendors would make their own choices as to open or closed, depending on their evaluation of the loss of IP versus the cost of maintaining their own drivers.
Typically, business DSL service includes a Service Level Agreement that guaruntees uptime, bandwidth, repair turnaround time. Consumer DSL typically does not support the same SLA.
Business DSL also frequently grants oyu the right to run a server, where-as consumer typically does not.
They are not the same products, and for some users a guarantee that the service will be up 99.99% of the time and that repair technicians will be available in 4 hours is worth the extra 55-155 CDN a month.
The GPL requires that anyone who publishes or distributes a GPL binary also make available (in a machine readable format normally used to exchange source code files) the source.
The intent is that the receiver of the GPL binary should be able to regenerate it from source, modify it, and generate enhanced versions.
By using a tool not generally available to build the source, the distributor has made it difficult for end users to enhance the software.
Hopefully the FSF will modify future versions of the GPL to require the following:
- The source code be supplied with clear documentation detailing the tools and their versions used to execute the build.
- Any "in-house" proprietary tools and proprietary patches of tools that materially affect the ability of others to replicate the build process must also be disclosed under a free and open license.
- If commercial proprietary software is used as a tool in said build, the distributor must not enter into any sort of contract, agreement, or other understanding with the tool vendor that prevents the user from acquiring those tools and using them to enhance the software.
I think this will generally cover the bases. Linux can be compiled with a proprietary compiler - usually one supplied for use with a specific chip set - but the distributor must enable their customers to replicate the builds.Broadband has finally penetrated to the point where many (maybe not most, but enough) people have two or more real choices in broadband: DSL, Cable Modem, and Satelite. Wireless is beginning to penetrate as well. Broadband providers need to cater to their customers sufficiently that they don't jump to another provider.
If you go to the ABIT site you'll see that the decrytpion key is not stored in the BIOS. It is a physical device that you need to plug in during boot. The physical "key" appears to be one of those USB flash drives that fit on a keychain.
One would suspect that the decryption key is in the data stored on that device. As long as you hold that device, no-one can read your hard drive, even if they have the motherboard.
I don't agree, but on a very fine point. Inexpensive hardware was available to the masses before MS. CP/M and its hardware was widely available, had lots of apps, and didn't cost too much. Remember Osbourne, Kaypro, TRS-80?
Adding the three letters IBM to a slightly scaled up CP/M clone, however, had the effect of pushing the whole package to broader acceptance. IBM's label made the PC a tool for medium ande large businesses that were already running mini and mainframe computers. Once IBM created that (huge) market, the Compaqs and other clone makers drove the prices down, creating the commodity prices we have today.
Like the Leading Edge Model D! It even runs Flight Simulator!
Hmm, if it was done over packet switch radio...
On the other hand, it is free of the IP that SCO claims IBM stole and contributed.
In this way Chinese programmers can spend more time coding instead of cursing McBride.
They were originally developed, IIRC, with the intention of distributing them throughout third world countries, so that people would have access to news broadcasts.
I keep looking for one that has a weatherband radio integrated into it, which I like to have while camping.
Here is one example.
Exactly. Rather than concentrating on building mammoth plants of any sort, we'd all be better off with a locally produced power.
Ideally, homes and businesses would have enough photovoltaic to cover themselves 9-5, particularly during the peak early afternoon. Extra power would be sold back to the grid, to even out generation and usage. Pricing structures would encourage the use of power hungry appliances (the washing machine and dryer) during early morning or late evening hours. Wind would contribute whenever possible. Hydroelectric and nuclear would provide the overnight power, as well as part of the cloudy day power. Neighborhood located small turbines, fueled by oil and/or natural gas, would be available to supplement peak loads and cloudy days.
This kind of system would be friendly both to the consumer and to the environment. It exploits the best technology in each area, mitigating their weaknesses.
No shortage of IP addresses: IP registry head
Few will purchase a future on whether or not the King of Jordan is overthrown because they like or dislike the King, but Many will purchase the future based on ruthless evaluation of the King's abilities to remain in power.
SCO has yet to make a legal claim other than breach of contract with IBM.
When Win3.1 came out, it seemed so sexy.