Even in the likely event that SCO is trampled into obliteration, something important has changed, and changed for the worse.
I agree with the author's assessment that this is just the first of many attacks. We will be forever defending Linux and Open Source from the individuals and corporations who want to own and control everything.
It will probably become more difficult for Joe Coder to just submit a patch to fix a bug. At worst, a lengthy background check will become required to verify that he hasn't worked on something similar for a corporation. At best, he'll have to complete some paperwork before he gains committer status.
These kinds of steps will help tone down the endless parade of future lawsuits that await us, but they will have an impact on the culture of open source, if you can call it that. We can't be innocent volunteers trying to help out anymore; open source processes will have to evolve to more closely match their corporate counterparts. Expect accountability and responsibilty to become new buzzwords, and expect the sort of back-stabbing politics that come with that kind of corporate climate.
There will be an impact on the meritocracy so often praised -- your work may be rejected for reasons having nothing to do with its merit. Or from another point of view, part of the measurement of your work's merit will be your ability to prove that it's original. "My patch doesn't fix the bug as elegantly, but you used to work for Company X, who developed a similar system five years ago, so we really can't accept your work."
I'm probably too much of a pessimist. But it seems that regardless of the outcome of the whole SCO mess, something will be lost. Maybe nothing terribly vital, but something.
Unless the series was changed for overseas and the governments reversed, I thought they were up against the UK, which GM depicted as infiltrated by some transdimensional evil which I never did quite understand.
Well, not that I'm a complete comic book geek or anything, but there were three volumes of the series. The first volume took place in the UK, the second volume took place in the States, and the grand conclusion was world-wide.
And I don't think anyone ever grokked the transdimensional evil thing, Grant sure does like his drugs.:)
And wasn't there a Invisibles TV show, albeit in England?
I hope not, I don't have money for DVDs right now.:)
I dunno. There is certainly stuff in comic books these days that's politically incorrect. The Invisibles by Grand Morrison is about a terrorist cell that goes on offensives against the United States government; the terrorists are portrayed as the heroes, the US military as mindless zombies who can't think for themselves.
I think there are two reasons that comics seem to always be under attack. (Wasn't there a whole big thing in the 50's about censoring comics?) The first of course is that children read a lot of them. Parents are probably suprised when The Invisibles in no way resembles Superman.
The second reason is that comics tend to touch on subjects that more maintstream mediums won't. You will never see a TV version of The Invisibles on CBS. I think that's the reason there's a market for adult comic books, it's really one of few places you can go to see unconventional stories.
Should Grant Morisson be thrown in jail for writing stories about attacking the US government? IMO, no. Should he be surprised when someone wants to throw him in jail? Not really. Alas, in this day and age, if you are in the public eye at all, you need a good attorney. Probably why Mr. Morisson chose invisibility as his theme.
It really does seem like they want to piss the world off. My boyfriend, who would simply roll his eyes when I went on a rant about the evils of SCO and the threat to Linux, is now completely outraged and wanting to give money to lawyers. If I only I had realized sooner that "Linux=Tivo" would convince nongeeks of the severity of SCO's unethical behavior...
I kept saying to myself, "There MUST be a way to legally fight back against SCO, what is everyone waiting for?"
They were waiting for Linux World. Duh...
The legal fund is an excellent idea, money in the bank to immediately summon lawyers and lay the groundwork for a proactive defense the next time this happens.
...The problem with introducing technology into the underdeveloped countries is not the technology itself, but the way it's applied...
I think we're in violent agreement here. I never meant to imply that all technology is evil or whatever. I just wanted to say that technology, in and of itself, won't solve the world's problems. It needs support: Financial support, education support, legal support. I'm mostly cynical about humanity's ability to provide all that as well as the right technology, in a way that actually makes sense and helps people.
And I suppose that really is a convenient philosophy, but I don't use it as an excuse to not try to make the world better. I work for a nonprofit that provides assistance to the terminally ill and I donate monthly to other organizations I think are making a positive difference. I guess I just have nonprofit burn-out, no matter how many people you help, there's thousands more you haven't.
How sad is it that when I see a story like this, I immediately assume that it's just a load of PR bullshit from some marketing department? "Our technology is saving the world!!! Invest."
I wish I could be less of a cynic. This certainly seems like a good idea, but people used to think television would save the world too, by making it possible to educate the masses about critical political or social things.
I can easily envision this technology getting used for entertainment. "No drinking water? No problem! Just tune in at a kiosk and forget your troubles for a half hour!" Then available bandwidth starts getting eaten up by mindless drivel instead of important information (like the doctor or agriculture specialist mentioned in the article), and some bright person realizes they can charge people for advertisements to consumers who can't afford anything...
Noble intentions perhaps, but many of the world's problems have nothing to do with technology, so it seems wierd to me to try to use technology to solve them.
I have this fantasy where I walk into work and everyone's installed Linux on their own and I don't have to image another NT workstation ever again, and I realize I've died and gone to heaven where the bad men can no longer hurt me.
Am I the only one who misses compilers? It would be nice to be able to write a native app that required no more overhead than the operating system libraries. An application that I could distribute without informing people that they need to install an elaborate execution engine first. (And anyway, there are so many good interpreted languages these days that I don't think we need another).
Also, minimize the feature set provided by the language; provide a small set of flexible features, like macros (the ability to alter the parse trees manually at compile-time). I don't like C because I have to keep track of a thousand different concepts to understand its code.
Also, a strong standard library for things like strings and sorting, so I don't have eight million choices.
I don't think that telling students that you're watching their every single move is the way to build their trust. Teen angst can easily tranform the noblest intention into an invasion of privacy.
I can see the dialogue going like this:
Teacher: Our extensive data indictates you may be thinking of dropping out--
Seriously, wouldn't terrorists just use the system to place false alarms? Log in and bet that something's gonna happen tomorrow in Japan when really it's happening tonight in San Francisco?
Well, yes, there's that.:) Although I guess I should add to my prior post that I do spend a lot of time adding features to our in-house systems (so that, for instance, you can submit Expense Payment Requests via the web intranet thingy and they get imported into the vendor's accounting system).
So it seems to me that adding features to, say, Open Office would be part of my job too, were we only using it. The process would be something like, "Oh shoot, you can't paste tab-delimited text into Calc, I wonder if anyone's working on this...oh look, someone is...I wonder if I can help..."
Still, I suppose that there would need to be organizations such as Apache, Mozilla etc that support initial development efforts. But surely these could be nonprofits like they are now?
Well, my job right now is basically to support my organization's systems. If the accounting system goes wonky, I call the vendor to address it. If our in-house web intranet thingy goes wonky, I fix it. If a WinNT4.0 desktop goes wonky, I explain that we are all powerless to do anything, let's go have a drink.
My point is that in an all-open-source world, I would still have a job: I'd be answering user's requests and fixing bugs for them. I just wouldn't have to call vendors anymore, and I could actually fix a desktop too.
I was thinking the exact same thing. It has been suggested that Linux contributors now have a legal case against SCO, or will if they ever make their "licensing" scheme real. Ie, if SCO licenses GPL'd code, they are violating the other author's copyright.
I don't know if it's true or not, or if they really have a solid legal case against SCO. IANAL. And I can't afford the legal fees to ask one. But wouldn't it be great if an organization we all trusted set up a fund to explore these issues and hopefully find some ammunition to use against SCO? So we could proactively end this bullshit instead of enduring eight years of FUD?
It's for tennis. I'm going to program it to keep score/stats for me. After every point, I'll indicate whether I won or lost and why (eg, double-fault, forced error, unforced error, service winner, ace...)
Then it can sync with my computer and over time I'll have in-depth statistics on my match, so I can compare myself to Agassi and see the precise scientific extent to which I suck.
I'm assuming, of course, that I can actually program the thing. And that it's water resistant. Hm.
Is there a preferrably GPL'd open-source Java-like language out there? I mean, I know Java is modified via the JCP and all, but I'd much rather use a language that isn't owned by someone. Since Java and C# are apparently quite popular, doesn't it make sense to invent an open source language/runtime environment for cross-platformish, imperative, garbage collected, object-oriented yet C-like programming?
Hm, I just finished installing RedHat 9.0 on my home desktop, and even my Mac friends had to admit that BlueCurve is rather nice-looking. In fact fresh from an install, I could show BlueCurve to my organization's management as proof that Linux offers what Windows does...it's intuitive enough, in other words, to impress a suit, which is I think the critical threshold.
I haven't used Photoshop for seven years, but GIMP really impressed me with its feature set. It's probably not as intuitive as the Mac counterpart, but I do think that it's intuitive enough, especially for the only person in our organization who'd ever use it -- the Webmaster.
Open Office, on the other hand, seems completely featured to me, though I agree with the general sentiment that more Microsoft Office compatibility would hasten its adoption. But for internal use its power and UI seem just right.
I think many organizations would settle for a less whiz-bang user experience due to cost concerns.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with the author's assessment that this is just the first of many attacks. We will be forever defending Linux and Open Source from the individuals and corporations who want to own and control everything.
It will probably become more difficult for Joe Coder to just submit a patch to fix a bug. At worst, a lengthy background check will become required to verify that he hasn't worked on something similar for a corporation. At best, he'll have to complete some paperwork before he gains committer status.
These kinds of steps will help tone down the endless parade of future lawsuits that await us, but they will have an impact on the culture of open source, if you can call it that. We can't be innocent volunteers trying to help out anymore; open source processes will have to evolve to more closely match their corporate counterparts. Expect accountability and responsibilty to become new buzzwords, and expect the sort of back-stabbing politics that come with that kind of corporate climate.
There will be an impact on the meritocracy so often praised -- your work may be rejected for reasons having nothing to do with its merit. Or from another point of view, part of the measurement of your work's merit will be your ability to prove that it's original. "My patch doesn't fix the bug as elegantly, but you used to work for Company X, who developed a similar system five years ago, so we really can't accept your work."
I'm probably too much of a pessimist. But it seems that regardless of the outcome of the whole SCO mess, something will be lost. Maybe nothing terribly vital, but something.
Well, not that I'm a complete comic book geek or anything, but there were three volumes of the series. The first volume took place in the UK, the second volume took place in the States, and the grand conclusion was world-wide.
And I don't think anyone ever grokked the transdimensional evil thing, Grant sure does like his drugs. :)
And wasn't there a Invisibles TV show, albeit in England?
I hope not, I don't have money for DVDs right now. :)
According to GROKLAW, SCO's contract with IBM was a three-party contract -- and Novell was the third party!
I think there are two reasons that comics seem to always be under attack. (Wasn't there a whole big thing in the 50's about censoring comics?) The first of course is that children read a lot of them. Parents are probably suprised when The Invisibles in no way resembles Superman.
The second reason is that comics tend to touch on subjects that more maintstream mediums won't. You will never see a TV version of The Invisibles on CBS. I think that's the reason there's a market for adult comic books, it's really one of few places you can go to see unconventional stories.
Should Grant Morisson be thrown in jail for writing stories about attacking the US government? IMO, no. Should he be surprised when someone wants to throw him in jail? Not really. Alas, in this day and age, if you are in the public eye at all, you need a good attorney. Probably why Mr. Morisson chose invisibility as his theme.
God, what a great week.
Actually I didn't know that. I'd rather deploy Mozilla mind you, but what's the URL for the outlook filter?
I know, I know, I should think before I post. :(
Er. I really didn't realize the trouble that would cause, apologies. Me? Gay. I just had to say it before slashdot turned into a show on Bravo.
I do know several nice girls at Cal Tech though!
It really does seem like they want to piss the world off. My boyfriend, who would simply roll his eyes when I went on a rant about the evils of SCO and the threat to Linux, is now completely outraged and wanting to give money to lawyers. If I only I had realized sooner that "Linux=Tivo" would convince nongeeks of the severity of SCO's unethical behavior...
They were waiting for Linux World. Duh...
The legal fund is an excellent idea, money in the bank to immediately summon lawyers and lay the groundwork for a proactive defense the next time this happens.
What a great day!
I think we're in violent agreement here. I never meant to imply that all technology is evil or whatever. I just wanted to say that technology, in and of itself, won't solve the world's problems. It needs support: Financial support, education support, legal support. I'm mostly cynical about humanity's ability to provide all that as well as the right technology, in a way that actually makes sense and helps people.
And I suppose that really is a convenient philosophy, but I don't use it as an excuse to not try to make the world better. I work for a nonprofit that provides assistance to the terminally ill and I donate monthly to other organizations I think are making a positive difference. I guess I just have nonprofit burn-out, no matter how many people you help, there's thousands more you haven't.
And now I'm off-topic. :)
I wish I could be less of a cynic. This certainly seems like a good idea, but people used to think television would save the world too, by making it possible to educate the masses about critical political or social things.
I can easily envision this technology getting used for entertainment. "No drinking water? No problem! Just tune in at a kiosk and forget your troubles for a half hour!" Then available bandwidth starts getting eaten up by mindless drivel instead of important information (like the doctor or agriculture specialist mentioned in the article), and some bright person realizes they can charge people for advertisements to consumers who can't afford anything...
Noble intentions perhaps, but many of the world's problems have nothing to do with technology, so it seems wierd to me to try to use technology to solve them.
Is the sysadmin sure he wasn't dreaming?
Also, minimize the feature set provided by the language; provide a small set of flexible features, like macros (the ability to alter the parse trees manually at compile-time). I don't like C because I have to keep track of a thousand different concepts to understand its code.
Also, a strong standard library for things like strings and sorting, so I don't have eight million choices.
I can see the dialogue going like this:
Teacher: Our extensive data indictates you may be thinking of dropping out--
Student: FUCK YOU, BIG BROTHER! I'M OUTTA HERE!
Was there a constitutional right to profit that I missed?
Seriously, wouldn't terrorists just use the system to place false alarms? Log in and bet that something's gonna happen tomorrow in Japan when really it's happening tonight in San Francisco?
So it seems to me that adding features to, say, Open Office would be part of my job too, were we only using it. The process would be something like, "Oh shoot, you can't paste tab-delimited text into Calc, I wonder if anyone's working on this...oh look, someone is...I wonder if I can help..."
Still, I suppose that there would need to be organizations such as Apache, Mozilla etc that support initial development efforts. But surely these could be nonprofits like they are now?
My point is that in an all-open-source world, I would still have a job: I'd be answering user's requests and fixing bugs for them. I just wouldn't have to call vendors anymore, and I could actually fix a desktop too.
I don't know if it's true or not, or if they really have a solid legal case against SCO. IANAL. And I can't afford the legal fees to ask one. But wouldn't it be great if an organization we all trusted set up a fund to explore these issues and hopefully find some ammunition to use against SCO? So we could proactively end this bullshit instead of enduring eight years of FUD?
It's for tennis. I'm going to program it to keep score/stats for me. After every point, I'll indicate whether I won or lost and why (eg, double-fault, forced error, unforced error, service winner, ace...) Then it can sync with my computer and over time I'll have in-depth statistics on my match, so I can compare myself to Agassi and see the precise scientific extent to which I suck. I'm assuming, of course, that I can actually program the thing. And that it's water resistant. Hm.
Or does such a beast already exist?
I haven't used Photoshop for seven years, but GIMP really impressed me with its feature set. It's probably not as intuitive as the Mac counterpart, but I do think that it's intuitive enough, especially for the only person in our organization who'd ever use it -- the Webmaster.
Open Office, on the other hand, seems completely featured to me, though I agree with the general sentiment that more Microsoft Office compatibility would hasten its adoption. But for internal use its power and UI seem just right.
I think many organizations would settle for a less whiz-bang user experience due to cost concerns.
1 HealthSouth Corp $38,255
2 Pfizer Inc $34,000
3 Qwest Communications $29,000
4 Metabolife $27,250
5 AT&T $25,499
6 Torchmark Corp $25,000
7 AOL Time Warner $24,000
8 GlaxoSmithKline $21,000
9 Novell Inc $20,500
10 SmithKline Beecham $20,499
11 Oracle Corp $19,750
12 Global Crossing $19,500
12 Verizon Communications $19,500
14 Pharmaceutical Rsrch & Mfrs of America $18,775
15 Viacom Inc $18,750
16 Schering-Plough Corp $18,000
17 Bear Stearns $17,750
18 SBC Communications $17,500
19 Merck & Co $17,440
20 Rexall Sundown Inc $17,000
20 Walt Disney Co $17,000