That's a press release. What did you think it was?
(Note that it being a press release doesn't make it benign. If SCO can cause problems with claimed intellectual property and press releases, I shudder to think what MS could do even without using a single lawyer when they think they've got a patent on putting anything useful in an XML doc.)
$250? That's not even thirty pieces of silver!
on
Get Paid To Crack?
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· Score: 1
Isn't this kind of like a deer volunteering to let hunters watch it run around so they can learn how to track them better?
you know there's a reason we're seeing an SCO story every day--it's because we care. This is the first major test of the GPL, and that's a really big deal! Remember when two planes crashed into a couple buildings in New York and the news just wouldn't shut up about it for months and months and we had to hear about it every single day of our lives? We couldn't even watch our favorite shows because everyone just wanted to blab about terrorists? Well, this SCO case is to geeks as that business with NY, Afganistan, and Iraq was to the rest of the world. I, for one, thought terrorism made bigger headlines than it deserved, but that didn't change the fact that the news was hell-bent on giving people the stories they wanted to hear. Nomatter how tired of it you get, Slashdot is going to keep on telling geeks about every SCO development there is. And I just happen to be on the edge of my seat about it, so if you're sick of these stories, stop looking for them and go do something productive. Slasdot isn't going to hunt you down and force you to hear about SCO.
So how about somebody write a little script to do a line-by-line comparison of two other OS'es. Compare Linux with FreeBSD or BSD with OSX or some pirated copy of Windows source, and see how many lines of
#include
and
{
and
else
you can find in common. Then when SCO tells some judge there are N lines of code in common between Linux and SCOnix, IBM can tell the judge there are M lines of code in common between these other two random operating systems. Make sure the script finds every remotely similar line of code and ignores whitespace. I'm guessing you'll come up with about, oh let's pick a number at random here, a million lines of code.
Thanks for the history lesson. You're right that
without laws that give information value, those who make a living by selling information would all starve. But preserving a dying business model is not the best way to ensure innovation. Here's a math lesson:
Let W0 be the amount of work that will happen if
innovation pays money.
Let P0 be the number of people who are willing to pay money to benefit from their work.
The benefit the universe will gain from the old model is therefore W0 x P0. Now...
Let W1 be the amount of work that people will do for free (hobbyists, altruists, etc.)
Let P1 be the number of people who are willing to pay $0 to benefit from their work.
The benefit the universe will gain from the new model
is therefore W1 x p1. So which is bigger? W0 x P0, or W1 x P1?
Well, certainly W0 is bigger than W1. (But it's
not so much bigger that open source fails to
compete. Just because you don't understand why open source developers innovate for free doesn't make them cease to exist.) On the other hand, P1 is way way WAY WAY WAY bigger than P0. Almost everyone is willing to take a free lunch. The world will therefore be better off and gain more benefit from innovation when it does away with the silly concept of intellectual property.
If you cling to the old model just because it puts
bread on your table, get a new job! Imagine a doctor who tries to prevent someone from curing world diseases because it would ruin his business model! Is it any less hypocritical when a professional innovator tries to hold the world to a less effective model of progress just so he can feed his family?
copyright law, patent law, trademark law and others--which really have little in common.
They have lots in common. All three were designed to force the properties of materials on information so it could be owned and exchanged in a capitalistic society just like other goods. All three attempt to drive a square peg through a round hole, and all three are ultimately impossible to enforce because information just won't accept the awkward attributes that governments attempt to assign to them.
It seems to me that if the courts throw out enough EULA's, the whole concept of EULA's will be weakened or even rejected altogether. So ridiculous as it may seem, if we put insane clauses in the EULA's for our software (firstborn child, etc.), it will eventually help get rid of the whole stupid concept. Am I right? What do you guys (or gals if there are any) think?
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, what's this
That's a press release. What did you think it was?
(Note that it being a press release doesn't make it benign. If SCO can cause problems with claimed intellectual property and press releases, I shudder to think what MS could do even without using a single lawyer when they think they've got a patent on putting anything useful in an XML doc.)
Isn't this kind of like a deer volunteering to let hunters watch it run around so they can learn how to track them better?
you know there's a reason we're seeing an SCO story every day--it's because we care. This is the first major test of the GPL, and that's a really big deal! Remember when two planes crashed into a couple buildings in New York and the news just wouldn't shut up about it for months and months and we had to hear about it every single day of our lives? We couldn't even watch our favorite shows because everyone just wanted to blab about terrorists? Well, this SCO case is to geeks as that business with NY, Afganistan, and Iraq was to the rest of the world. I, for one, thought terrorism made bigger headlines than it deserved, but that didn't change the fact that the news was hell-bent on giving people the stories they wanted to hear. Nomatter how tired of it you get, Slashdot is going to keep on telling geeks about every SCO development there is. And I just happen to be on the edge of my seat about it, so if you're sick of these stories, stop looking for them and go do something productive. Slasdot isn't going to hunt you down and force you to hear about SCO.
So how about somebody write a little script to do a line-by-line comparison of two other OS'es. Compare Linux with FreeBSD or BSD with OSX or some pirated copy of Windows source, and see how many lines of #include and { and else you can find in common. Then when SCO tells some judge there are N lines of code in common between Linux and SCOnix, IBM can tell the judge there are M lines of code in common between these other two random operating systems. Make sure the script finds every remotely similar line of code and ignores whitespace. I'm guessing you'll come up with about, oh let's pick a number at random here, a million lines of code.
Thanks for the history lesson. You're right that without laws that give information value, those who make a living by selling information would all starve. But preserving a dying business model is not the best way to ensure innovation. Here's a math lesson: Let W0 be the amount of work that will happen if innovation pays money. Let P0 be the number of people who are willing to pay money to benefit from their work. The benefit the universe will gain from the old model is therefore W0 x P0. Now... Let W1 be the amount of work that people will do for free (hobbyists, altruists, etc.) Let P1 be the number of people who are willing to pay $0 to benefit from their work. The benefit the universe will gain from the new model is therefore W1 x p1. So which is bigger? W0 x P0, or W1 x P1? Well, certainly W0 is bigger than W1. (But it's not so much bigger that open source fails to compete. Just because you don't understand why open source developers innovate for free doesn't make them cease to exist.) On the other hand, P1 is way way WAY WAY WAY bigger than P0. Almost everyone is willing to take a free lunch. The world will therefore be better off and gain more benefit from innovation when it does away with the silly concept of intellectual property. If you cling to the old model just because it puts bread on your table, get a new job! Imagine a doctor who tries to prevent someone from curing world diseases because it would ruin his business model! Is it any less hypocritical when a professional innovator tries to hold the world to a less effective model of progress just so he can feed his family?
copyright law, patent law, trademark law and others--which really have little in common.
They have lots in common. All three were designed to force the properties of materials on information so it could be owned and exchanged in a capitalistic society just like other goods. All three attempt to drive a square peg through a round hole, and all three are ultimately impossible to enforce because information just won't accept the awkward attributes that governments attempt to assign to them.
It seems to me that if the courts throw out enough EULA's, the whole concept of EULA's will be weakened or even rejected altogether. So ridiculous as it may seem, if we put insane clauses in the EULA's for our software (firstborn child, etc.), it will eventually help get rid of the whole stupid concept. Am I right? What do you guys (or gals if there are any) think?