Thanks for your comment, but you aren't "shattering my illusions". (Is there some kind of Slashdot mandate that to make a point you must actually insult whoever's comment you are addressing...?)
If you don't like the word "karma", fine, "goodwill" then. And I am quite aware IBM feels this is a good business model. That's self-evident. And it will increase shareholder value if it eliminates the impression of a cloud hanging over one of IBM's primary business initiatives.
I don't think IBM's support or possible covert actions in aiding Open Source is any kind of problem at all. This reminds me of the views of some when Red Hat originally started charging significant money for their Linux distro; there was a minor outcry that they were profiting off of Open Source, and that this was suspect.
To use a "software evangelism" analogy, look at all the various religions out there. In any given one, you'll find a bunch of factions/denominations that do not fully agree with one another, and that are of varying size and influence. Does this weaken their movement, overall? No. What it does is broaden the appeal of the religion for people of differing views, and keeps the debate alive internally which is crucial for their vitality.
Having a variety of companies out there that are on the spectrum of non-profit to small-profit to big-profit is no issue at all, as long as none of them can take over the work for the purposes of excluding everyone else.
On a related note, regarding IBM, I'm wondering why they don't take the position of offering legal counsel to (at least some of) the users currently being threatened by SCO. While it's completely understandable that they aren't going to provide complete indemnity (arbitrary claims such as SCO's times millions of deployments could theoretically come to basically infinity dollars), supporting the users who are currently being attacked by SCO would give IBM major karma points with the Open Source community, as well as giving them the opportunity to force SCO into revealing more about their alleged case. And, quite possibly, with the legal bills SCO would rack up defending a countersuit from all the users they've threatened, just implode them before the case ever gets to trial. This would be good for IBM and Open Source.
The ruby is in much the same position. The only way a "real" from a "synthetic" ruby can be differentiated is by looking for impurities specific to a mining location. It's been the same "stuff" for a century now, and manufacturing techniques have improved to the point one can't really tell the difference. Interesting in that a "real" large ruby is more valuable than an equivalent-sized diamond. The alchemists just picked the wrong precious stuff to go after, maybe.
In a similar vein, but what might be considered "prior art", the ancient Norse people had a particular type of mead which was supposed to convey wisdom regarding everything. Made of the blood of a man created by all the Norse gods to seal a peace treaty, "Kvasir", some dwarves killed him and mixed his blood with honey, making the "Mead of Poetry".
Probably not as tasty as Earl Grey, but claimed to be even more effective--after all, what's knowing everything if you can't write about it elegantly?
For me, the main question isn't whether the game is "simple", or "deep", it's how the learning curve is implemented in the game.
Going back to the original Doom, it was almost perfect in this regard. It hooked me with the first impression ("How are they *doing* this 3D perspective...?"--having messed with graphics routines in assembly *way* back, it was striking how impressive this was for the time) and kept me going with it's playability and pretty seamless introduction of the more complex aspects of the game (hidden areas, etc.). The game was fun regardless of how far you were into discovering all there was to it.
I can't really get into most games in this way. It's not that I can't learn what other games require up-front, it's that there's no real motivation for doing so when there are games like Unreal Tournament I can enjoy immediately. And games like Ultima, well... yes, you can advance your character by numerous non-adventuring methods, but it ends up being rather mundane IMHO. I may as well go to work at that point.
Personally, I think Heretic had a good feel for the right approach... there was a fair amount of depth there, but it was introduced as a natural extension of playing the game, rather than a required up-front learning curve. As an example from another game genre, Total Annihilation worked really, really well in this way too.
This is exactly the thing that can give OSS a political advantage. Few things are as much political risk as having wasted taxpayer money and not being able to provide a reason why. This is where OSS has the clear, publically-understandable attribute of "free" working for it; it's much harder to bury an uneconomical decision in this arena than one in another field where there are two approximately-equal bids with a subjective difference of quality between them.
People will probably say, "Without IP, you can't survive if you write programs etc." Well, there must be a way to set up a system that WILL allow you to make money, without invoking IP.
Off the top of my head, I'd suggest answering this by indicating that it isn't an either/or situation. As a simple example, you can both do a good job for your paycheck and do valuable charitable work. And the skills learned from each can reinforce the quality of the other.
Beyond that, there's all the activities that can bring in money without reference to IP: integration, support, training, technical advice, etc.
There's an insidious equating of the concepts of "rights" and "profits" going on both here and with SCO's arguments.
It's important to mentally note the cases when an argument says "the right to make a profit", but actually means "denying the right of someone else to choose not to". The rights of a work's creator is not limited to pursuing financial profit; one may choose to do so to benefit others, for their own edification, or any number of other reasons, which are solely theirs to determine.
If SCO can simply assert that your Linux is infringing, despite the clear refutation of their "evidence", what's preventing the Linux user from just asserting their "Linux" is non-infringing?
Like in response to a SCO letter: "Our 'Linux' is a non-infringing custom build. Goodbye."
The burden of proof lies with them, doesn't it? How would they go about proving otherwise, assuming there's even anything there to prove?
This is one of the few forms of government monitoring I'd actually be in favor of.
A large percentage of homeless people are, in fact, mentally ill. Having the government aware of their whereabouts is the least of their problems. And having some historical data available on them could be an aid to helping them; how effectively could you respond to someone off the street if you have no data or contextual indicators on their state or condition? I think the argument can also be made that if someone wants to avail themselves of free support, making note of information on them can be considered part of the bargain. Once their situation improves, the tracking stops, if the source of the data are the shelters and care centers. Dealing with mental illness is profoundly difficult even with the best information available.
(And I do have some very-near-aquaintance, personal experience with this, so factor that into my comment as you like...)
Here's a semi-readable, slightly-cleaned babelfish translation... it'd be great if somebody who can actually speak German could post a better one...
The fight for the legal standard of Linux develops more and more to the show piece: Still two weeks ago ago on the Linuxworld had itself boss Mathew Szulik as the rescuer of the free world explained and all Linux trailers to the fight against the chains of the commercial software industry called. Now geriert itself its opponent Darl McBride of SCO still more martialischer: a James bond in the struggle with dark power -- the open SOURCE movement.
SCO executive committee Darl McBride used two full hours for the prelude of the SCO forum, in order to represent the legal position of its company. With pictures and title music from James bond films the manager sought itself to join in the faithful ones of the former cult company from Santa Cruz for fight for property. The SCO Group leads a law case with IBM because of alleged copyright infringements and abuse of SCOs protected Unix program code in Linux. Star lawyer David Boies, which attained celebrity as a complaint representative of the US government against Microsoft, represents SCO IBM over 1500 Linux Grossanwender printing reminder approximately from SCO kept and was requested to pay royalties.
Supported of its vice-president Chris Sontag showed McBride of examples from the code of the Linux Kernelversionen 2,5 and 2,6, which are to prove that program sections were transferred invariably from Unix -- an example shown by SCO to code comments in the picture left ( version increased ). Identical typing errors in the comments as well as unusual ways of writing would have left traitorous traces, to stated Sontag. Around this to prove McBride a team for pattern recognition had angeheuert, around ten thousands from program lines to through forests. The few code sequences shown apart from the comments were made to a large extent illegible, alleged, in order to protect SCOs author-genuine. They would stand however representing for thousands of program lines, for stressed Sontag. From several persons or groups at different times parts were transferred illegaly to Linux and distributed sourceopen at users and developers. At the contentious software it goes besides not around simple or trivial functions, but important operating system characteristics for the fitness with fastidious tasks and in extremely safe operating conditions into enterprises. In addition belong the multi-processor mechanisms NUMA and SMP, which were to be had under Unix Lizenzbedingungen only with expensive hardware in the value of ten thousands from US dollar to.
Approximately 700 crucial code lines of the SMP technology are to have moved from Unix into the Linux releases 2,4 and 2,5. Altogether SCOs testers over 800.000 lines would have found duplicated program text -- an example of SCO shows the picture right ( version increased ). Attorney Mark Heise from the Boies boies-Kanzlei came along for the support of the SCO managers on the podium in read Vegas. It made clear that a GPL license did not protect against the requirement for authority of SCO. The Unix license, which bought SCO 1994 of the original Unix inventor RK & T, guarantees SCO property at Unix system v copyrights and all RKS & t-software and Sublizenzrechten. Originally the license agreement defined by RK & t-lawyers, which changed over by purchase to SCO, is clear in addition regarding the range and consequence of the license, stressed the lawyer. Afterwards the license grants the "right the software products to the licensee (for example IBM) to own business purposes to use internally", quoted Marks of Heise from the contract text. "modifications and derivatives of results are to be treated like the original software products", continue to be called it there. And they "cannot become used for others or by others".
"Now we know ourselves finally, like Linux in completely short time of a hobby operating system to the platform for ente
Yes, my comment was intended in no way to diminish the victims of this type of organized crime.
In terms of the U.S. situation, which I am (admittedly) oriented toward in using the term, the majority of "the Mafia"'s illegal activities are, in fact, consensual, or otherwise-legal business activities financed by illegal operations. I suggest not reading the analogy too broadly.
Hopefully these companies are seeing SCO's actions for what they are; an outright attempt to hijack the work of thousands
of developers by fallacious statements, spin, and, at best, a tiny toehold on the body of work Linux constitutes.
Despite SCO's spin to the contrary, this isn't about the GPL model versus the proprietary software model; it's about unethical
versus ethical business practices, and SCO is on the wrong side of the fence.
Would any reputable company now risk involvement with SCO on any level? Look at it this way. SCO made, in essence, a business
deal. They distributed their software under the GPL, in an attempt to receive the benefits that the GPL approach can offer,
much like Red Hat did. Now, they want to renege on the deal because they think they've got something more profitable. For them to now claim that they somehow didn't understand, or were somehow unaware of, their own business decisions is just completely disingenuous. What company would now sign any kind of business deal with them, knowing that given their history, they're likely to try to cry "do-over!"
at some point and redefine their contract, making all sorts of legal threats and spurious statements in the process, and perhaps
just decide that your IP is theirs by whatever stretch of the contract wording they can muster?
This is what's bad for business, not the GPL.
On a related note, I'd like to suggest that any companies out there contemplating paying SCO's extortion fees, even if the price
is not a concern to them, refuse to pay it on principle. One good argument for not paying the Mafia, is that if you do, they are going to get bigger, and "lean" on you even more. And... I really must apologize to the Mafia for the analogy, as most of their profits derive from "consensual-crime" activity, rather than outright attempts to steal the property of individuals, in direct
violation of the spirit and letter of the law. The Mafia has a higher percentage of legitimate business activites than SCO does.
SCO's activities are to the benefit of no one, except themselves. HP and Intel, by contrast, benefit themselves largely through developing products and services to benefit their customers, something SCO has apparently lost the capacity to do. Even the companies which have products in direct competition to Linux would have a hollow victory if SCO's legal challenge to the GPL resulted in an invalidation of the fundamental notion of copyright upon which the GPL rests, and the discretion it gives to the work's creator, for-profit, for-humanity, or both. The sooner this is recognized by everyone, as these two companies are taking the lead toward, the better.
Hmm... it looks like this could become a monster thread, but a few further comments:
I'm not sure how we get from "applying market forces" to "leaving the rural areas to build their own power plants". Other technology infrastructure types have shown that market forces result in greater availability, not less. Rural areas would not compelled to switch to a local power generation source, but if that was more efficient, the market is the only thing that's going to make it happen, and would result in cheaper prices for its residents.
Redundancy is not a waste of resources, and the only thing determining what is or is not a waste is... the market. The Slashdot example is contrived; what I would want is enough server capacity to handle the full demands *and* have a failover.
We can go with the "fair price" as defined by the utility companies, or the "fair price" as determined by competition. Option 2 is lower.
Money is a *very* special case, and I'd be happy to liberalize the printing of money if that meant the dollars would have to be backed by something, rather than paper fiat-money. I wouldn't care who stamped my coin of actual gold, I know it's of value (but that's a whole other thread...).
Illegal activity of people in a free market isn't really an argument against the concept. I think even with the Enron's of the world, it's pretty clear that government management leads to more corruption, rather than less. Government-controlled methods usually don't have effective checks or balances, as the collapse of the Soviet Union on all levels helps demonstrate.
The final paragraph seems to be arguing my case, so I'll leave that one alone...
Okay, well, if the sole source of safeguards is government regulation, that's improvable. Even when things do fail, the utility company has no real worries, they'll still be there protected by their government mandate. Market forces changes this.
"No profit motive to deploy". Exactly.
You can sell back power to your utility (singular), yes, but this doesn't create any competition for the utility.
The fact that I can invest major dollars in my own power source is a different thing; many people would not find this affordable or practical. Corporations, on the other hand, can afford to do this and make it up on profits spread across a large number of customers.
Yes, the RBOC's still have something of a monopoly, but given there's at least competition now in the long-distance space. I'd say MCI, Sprint, and all the 10-10 players would constitute "catching on".
But in the case of phone wiring or electrical wiring, I would argue that whether it gets deployed should depend on market forces, not because the local utility doesn't want it. I'd take the second set of wires if it meant my bill was going to be quite a bit lower.
Blackouts are rare, as you said, but a huge problem when they do occur. Redundant systems are just common-sense to implement nowadays, as the internet has shown. And for the testing issue, redundancy would allow exactly that testing that may be a problem now.
I'd imagine that the market forces in play here are a lot like the ones in play in the 80's for phone service. If given a monopoly, a company will fight to maintain exclusive control over its geographical domain, to the detriment of consumers.
The evolution of the internet is in stark contrast to this, where bandwidth can be bought from any one of many vendors (despite efforts of existing local telco's and cable providers to restrict the market by controlling the wiring).
The (U.S., at least) government needs to take the same steps as they took with AT open up the market for energy distribution. Let the market decide where and when it's economically feasible to lay new power lines, and this will grow much like WiFi is, starting in the most-demanded areas and spreading out from there. Along with this will come the kind of redundancies that the northeast U.S. and Canada should have had; with market forces in play a company is going to be very careful about making sure their customers don't lose power--the damage to a competing company's reputation from something like the recent blackout would be terrible for them to contemplate.
I'll look forward to the day I can have a box on the side of my house into which I can plug whatever sources of electricity I choose, and I expect that the costs of this commodity will then drop dramatically, much like telephone service did.
Gotta disagree with suggestion two here... the "SEVENTY (70)" line makes it perfectly clear to everyone what a ridiculously small fraction of Linux SCO might have some claim to.
Suggestion one, I agree, would improve the impact of the piece.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for your comment, but you aren't "shattering my illusions". (Is there some kind of Slashdot mandate that to make a point you must actually insult whoever's comment you are addressing...?)
If you don't like the word "karma", fine, "goodwill" then. And I am quite aware IBM feels this is a good business model. That's self-evident. And it will increase shareholder value if it eliminates the impression of a cloud hanging over one of IBM's primary business initiatives.
I don't think IBM's support or possible covert actions in aiding Open Source is any kind of problem at all. This reminds me of the views of some when Red Hat originally started charging significant money for their Linux distro; there was a minor outcry that they were profiting off of Open Source, and that this was suspect.
To use a "software evangelism" analogy, look at all the various religions out there. In any given one, you'll find a bunch of factions/denominations that do not fully agree with one another, and that are of varying size and influence. Does this weaken their movement, overall? No. What it does is broaden the appeal of the religion for people of differing views, and keeps the debate alive internally which is crucial for their vitality.
Having a variety of companies out there that are on the spectrum of non-profit to small-profit to big-profit is no issue at all, as long as none of them can take over the work for the purposes of excluding everyone else.
On a related note, regarding IBM, I'm wondering why they don't take the position of offering legal counsel to (at least some of) the users currently being threatened by SCO. While it's completely understandable that they aren't going to provide complete indemnity (arbitrary claims such as SCO's times millions of deployments could theoretically come to basically infinity dollars), supporting the users who are currently being attacked by SCO would give IBM major karma points with the Open Source community, as well as giving them the opportunity to force SCO into revealing more about their alleged case. And, quite possibly, with the legal bills SCO would rack up defending a countersuit from all the users they've threatened, just implode them before the case ever gets to trial. This would be good for IBM and Open Source.
The ruby is in much the same position. The only way a "real" from a "synthetic" ruby can be differentiated is by looking for impurities specific to a mining location. It's been the same "stuff" for a century now, and manufacturing techniques have improved to the point one can't really tell the difference. Interesting in that a "real" large ruby is more valuable than an equivalent-sized diamond. The alchemists just picked the wrong precious stuff to go after, maybe.
An old bookmark, written by a guy in the biz.
In a similar vein, but what might be considered "prior art", the ancient Norse people had a particular type of mead which was supposed to convey wisdom regarding everything. Made of the blood of a man created by all the Norse gods to seal a peace treaty, "Kvasir", some dwarves killed him and mixed his blood with honey, making the "Mead of Poetry".
Probably not as tasty as Earl Grey, but claimed to be even more effective--after all, what's knowing everything if you can't write about it elegantly?
More on this here.
Solar, maybe?
If they can power pocket calculators with indoor light, maybe some dispersable form could be engineered...
I want some high-tech painball loads of this stuff, so I can get a tactical advantage feeding the enemy's location into a little heads-up-display...
Okay, I'll just stick with Unreal Tournament for now. Proper exercise can be a unimplemented goal, can't it...?
For me, the main question isn't whether the game is "simple", or "deep", it's how the learning curve is implemented in the game.
Going back to the original Doom, it was almost perfect in this regard. It hooked me with the first impression ("How are they *doing* this 3D perspective...?"--having messed with graphics routines in assembly *way* back, it was striking how impressive this was for the time) and kept me going with it's playability and pretty seamless introduction of the more complex aspects of the game (hidden areas, etc.). The game was fun regardless of how far you were into discovering all there was to it.
I can't really get into most games in this way. It's not that I can't learn what other games require up-front, it's that there's no real motivation for doing so when there are games like Unreal Tournament I can enjoy immediately. And games like Ultima, well... yes, you can advance your character by numerous non-adventuring methods, but it ends up being rather mundane IMHO. I may as well go to work at that point.
Personally, I think Heretic had a good feel for the right approach... there was a fair amount of depth there, but it was introduced as a natural extension of playing the game, rather than a required up-front learning curve. As an example from another game genre, Total Annihilation worked really, really well in this way too.
Ah... but...
This is exactly the thing that can give OSS a political advantage. Few things are as much political risk as having wasted taxpayer money and not being able to provide a reason why. This is where OSS has the clear, publically-understandable attribute of "free" working for it; it's much harder to bury an uneconomical decision in this arena than one in another field where there are two approximately-equal bids with a subjective difference of quality between them.
People will probably say, "Without IP, you can't survive if you write programs etc." Well, there must be a way to set up a system that WILL allow you to make money, without invoking IP.
Off the top of my head, I'd suggest answering this by indicating that it isn't an either/or situation. As a simple example, you can both do a good job for your paycheck and do valuable charitable work. And the skills learned from each can reinforce the quality of the other.
Beyond that, there's all the activities that can bring in money without reference to IP: integration, support, training, technical advice, etc.
Agree totally.
There's an insidious equating of the concepts of "rights" and "profits" going on both here and with SCO's arguments.
It's important to mentally note the cases when an argument says "the right to make a profit", but actually means "denying the right of someone else to choose not to". The rights of a work's creator is not limited to pursuing financial profit; one may choose to do so to benefit others, for their own edification, or any number of other reasons, which are solely theirs to determine.
I've always been impressed with my Slackware distro releases, for 7 or so years now...
The latest fired right up into X and KDE with no manual configuration at all, and includes MySQL and PHP now...
If SCO can simply assert that your Linux is infringing, despite the clear refutation of their "evidence", what's preventing the Linux user from just asserting their "Linux" is non-infringing?
Like in response to a SCO letter: "Our 'Linux' is a non-infringing custom build. Goodbye."
The burden of proof lies with them, doesn't it? How would they go about proving otherwise, assuming there's even anything there to prove?
This is one of the few forms of government monitoring I'd actually be in favor of.
A large percentage of homeless people are, in fact, mentally ill. Having the government aware of their whereabouts is the least of their problems. And having some historical data available on them could be an aid to helping them; how effectively could you respond to someone off the street if you have no data or contextual indicators on their state or condition? I think the argument can also be made that if someone wants to avail themselves of free support, making note of information on them can be considered part of the bargain. Once their situation improves, the tracking stops, if the source of the data are the shelters and care centers. Dealing with mental illness is profoundly difficult even with the best information available.
(And I do have some very-near-aquaintance, personal experience with this, so factor that into my comment as you like...)
I left off babelfish's translation of the headline of this article, as it's ambiguous:
"SCO says the open SOURCE the struggle for existence on"
If nothing else, it'd really be nice to have a proper German translation of this headline.
Here's a semi-readable, slightly-cleaned babelfish translation... it'd be great if somebody who can actually speak German could post a better one...
The fight for the legal standard of Linux develops more and more to the show piece: Still two weeks ago ago on the Linuxworld had itself boss Mathew Szulik as the rescuer of the free world explained and all Linux trailers to the fight against the chains of the commercial software industry called. Now geriert itself its opponent Darl McBride of SCO still more martialischer: a James bond in the struggle with dark power -- the open SOURCE movement.
SCO executive committee Darl McBride used two full hours for the prelude of the SCO forum, in order to represent the legal position of its company. With pictures and title music from James bond films the manager sought itself to join in the faithful ones of the former cult company from Santa Cruz for fight for property. The SCO Group leads a law case with IBM because of alleged copyright infringements and abuse of SCOs protected Unix program code in Linux. Star lawyer David Boies, which attained celebrity as a complaint representative of the US government against Microsoft, represents SCO IBM over 1500 Linux Grossanwender printing reminder approximately from SCO kept and was requested to pay royalties.
Supported of its vice-president Chris Sontag showed McBride of examples from the code of the Linux Kernelversionen 2,5 and 2,6, which are to prove that program sections were transferred invariably from Unix -- an example shown by SCO to code comments in the picture left ( version increased ). Identical typing errors in the comments as well as unusual ways of writing would have left traitorous traces, to stated Sontag. Around this to prove McBride a team for pattern recognition had angeheuert, around ten thousands from program lines to through forests. The few code sequences shown apart from the comments were made to a large extent illegible, alleged, in order to protect SCOs author-genuine. They would stand however representing for thousands of program lines, for stressed Sontag. From several persons or groups at different times parts were transferred illegaly to Linux and distributed sourceopen at users and developers. At the contentious software it goes besides not around simple or trivial functions, but important operating system characteristics for the fitness with fastidious tasks and in extremely safe operating conditions into enterprises. In addition belong the multi-processor mechanisms NUMA and SMP, which were to be had under Unix Lizenzbedingungen only with expensive hardware in the value of ten thousands from US dollar to.
Approximately 700 crucial code lines of the SMP technology are to have moved from Unix into the Linux releases 2,4 and 2,5. Altogether SCOs testers over 800.000 lines would have found duplicated program text -- an example of SCO shows the picture right ( version increased ). Attorney Mark Heise from the Boies boies-Kanzlei came along for the support of the SCO managers on the podium in read Vegas. It made clear that a GPL license did not protect against the requirement for authority of SCO. The Unix license, which bought SCO 1994 of the original Unix inventor RK & T, guarantees SCO property at Unix system v copyrights and all RKS & t-software and Sublizenzrechten. Originally the license agreement defined by RK & t-lawyers, which changed over by purchase to SCO, is clear in addition regarding the range and consequence of the license, stressed the lawyer. Afterwards the license grants the "right the software products to the licensee (for example IBM) to own business purposes to use internally", quoted Marks of Heise from the contract text. "modifications and derivatives of results are to be treated like the original software products", continue to be called it there. And they "cannot become used for others or by others".
"Now we know ourselves finally, like Linux in completely short time of a hobby operating system to the platform for ente
Yes, my comment was intended in no way to diminish the victims of this type of organized crime.
In terms of the U.S. situation, which I am (admittedly) oriented toward in using the term, the majority of "the Mafia"'s illegal activities are, in fact, consensual, or otherwise-legal business activities financed by illegal operations. I suggest not reading the analogy too broadly.
Yes... but to me it sounds like she's actually singing this (slightly cooler) version...
Seeing Intel and HP walk out does my heart glad.
Hopefully these companies are seeing SCO's actions for what they are; an outright attempt to hijack the work of thousands of developers by fallacious statements, spin, and, at best, a tiny toehold on the body of work Linux constitutes.
Despite SCO's spin to the contrary, this isn't about the GPL model versus the proprietary software model; it's about unethical versus ethical business practices, and SCO is on the wrong side of the fence.
Would any reputable company now risk involvement with SCO on any level? Look at it this way. SCO made, in essence, a business deal. They distributed their software under the GPL, in an attempt to receive the benefits that the GPL approach can offer, much like Red Hat did. Now, they want to renege on the deal because they think they've got something more profitable. For them to now claim that they somehow didn't understand, or were somehow unaware of, their own business decisions is just completely disingenuous. What company would now sign any kind of business deal with them, knowing that given their history, they're likely to try to cry "do-over!" at some point and redefine their contract, making all sorts of legal threats and spurious statements in the process, and perhaps just decide that your IP is theirs by whatever stretch of the contract wording they can muster?
This is what's bad for business, not the GPL.
On a related note, I'd like to suggest that any companies out there contemplating paying SCO's extortion fees, even if the price is not a concern to them, refuse to pay it on principle. One good argument for not paying the Mafia, is that if you do, they are going to get bigger, and "lean" on you even more. And... I really must apologize to the Mafia for the analogy, as most of their profits derive from "consensual-crime" activity, rather than outright attempts to steal the property of individuals, in direct violation of the spirit and letter of the law. The Mafia has a higher percentage of legitimate business activites than SCO does.
SCO's activities are to the benefit of no one, except themselves. HP and Intel, by contrast, benefit themselves largely through developing products and services to benefit their customers, something SCO has apparently lost the capacity to do. Even the companies which have products in direct competition to Linux would have a hollow victory if SCO's legal challenge to the GPL resulted in an invalidation of the fundamental notion of copyright upon which the GPL rests, and the discretion it gives to the work's creator, for-profit, for-humanity, or both. The sooner this is recognized by everyone, as these two companies are taking the lead toward, the better.
Hmm... it looks like this could become a monster thread, but a few further comments:
I'm not sure how we get from "applying market forces" to "leaving the rural areas to build their own power plants". Other technology infrastructure types have shown that market forces result in greater availability, not less. Rural areas would not compelled to switch to a local power generation source, but if that was more efficient, the market is the only thing that's going to make it happen, and would result in cheaper prices for its residents.
Redundancy is not a waste of resources, and the only thing determining what is or is not a waste is... the market. The Slashdot example is contrived; what I would want is enough server capacity to handle the full demands *and* have a failover.
We can go with the "fair price" as defined by the utility companies, or the "fair price" as determined by competition. Option 2 is lower.
Money is a *very* special case, and I'd be happy to liberalize the printing of money if that meant the dollars would have to be backed by something, rather than paper fiat-money. I wouldn't care who stamped my coin of actual gold, I know it's of value (but that's a whole other thread...).
Illegal activity of people in a free market isn't really an argument against the concept. I think even with the Enron's of the world, it's pretty clear that government management leads to more corruption, rather than less. Government-controlled methods usually don't have effective checks or balances, as the collapse of the Soviet Union on all levels helps demonstrate.
The final paragraph seems to be arguing my case, so I'll leave that one alone...
And with that, I'm out!
Okay, well, if the sole source of safeguards is government regulation, that's improvable. Even when things do fail, the utility company has no real worries, they'll still be there protected by their government mandate. Market forces changes this.
"No profit motive to deploy". Exactly.
You can sell back power to your utility (singular), yes, but this doesn't create any competition for the utility.
The fact that I can invest major dollars in my own power source is a different thing; many people would not find this affordable or practical. Corporations, on the other hand, can afford to do this and make it up on profits spread across a large number of customers.
Well... where I'm located, there's only one vendor, by regulation.
Yes, the RBOC's still have something of a monopoly, but given there's at least competition now in the long-distance space. I'd say MCI, Sprint, and all the 10-10 players would constitute "catching on".
But in the case of phone wiring or electrical wiring, I would argue that whether it gets deployed should depend on market forces, not because the local utility doesn't want it. I'd take the second set of wires if it meant my bill was going to be quite a bit lower.
Blackouts are rare, as you said, but a huge problem when they do occur. Redundant systems are just common-sense to implement nowadays, as the internet has shown. And for the testing issue, redundancy would allow exactly that testing that may be a problem now.
Really? How so? I'd enjoy reading counterarguments.
I'd imagine that the market forces in play here are a lot like the ones in play in the 80's for phone service. If given a monopoly, a company will fight to maintain exclusive control over its geographical domain, to the detriment of consumers.
The evolution of the internet is in stark contrast to this, where bandwidth can be bought from any one of many vendors (despite efforts of existing local telco's and cable providers to restrict the market by controlling the wiring).
The (U.S., at least) government needs to take the same steps as they took with AT open up the market for energy distribution. Let the market decide where and when it's economically feasible to lay new power lines, and this will grow much like WiFi is, starting in the most-demanded areas and spreading out from there. Along with this will come the kind of redundancies that the northeast U.S. and Canada should have had; with market forces in play a company is going to be very careful about making sure their customers don't lose power--the damage to a competing company's reputation from something like the recent blackout would be terrible for them to contemplate.
I'll look forward to the day I can have a box on the side of my house into which I can plug whatever sources of electricity I choose, and I expect that the costs of this commodity will then drop dramatically, much like telephone service did.
Gotta disagree with suggestion two here... the "SEVENTY (70)" line makes it perfectly clear to everyone what a ridiculously small fraction of Linux SCO might have some claim to.
Suggestion one, I agree, would improve the impact of the piece.