Well, there will be variations in translation. Besides, Pauli liked it so much that he used the comparison frequently. It's very possible that both variations are correct, but from different contexts.
Depends on the publication. The Village Voice, for one example, has never had any qualms about printing letters to the editor with the word "fuck" in it. As for business correspondence, yes, you're right. But this isn't business correspondence, it's a *heartfelt* response to Mr. McBride's open letter. The words "complete" and "fucking" as adjectivial modifications to the noun "idiot" were the strongest way to drive the point home.
I'm sorry, people, but I'm from *Manhattan*. *New York City*.
Obscenities, including the adjective "fucking", are quite common here, and exception is rarely taken. Furthermore, as an adjective, the word "fucking" can hardly be considered slanderous. The literal meaning would at least imply that he's getting laid once in while. It's not like I called him a "eunuch".
BTW, is there anyone who would be interested in forwarding this to Linus or posting it on the LKML? I'd love to know what they think of this response, but I'm, uh, too shy - believe it or not - to intrude on their territory without an introduction.
Yes, it should be. However, I wrote this in a caffeine fueled rush from 10 pm last night till 7:00 am this morning. Inevitably, some typo's escaped my notice when proofreading the first draft.
But thanks. I'm actually quiet, well, *honored* that people are giving this enough attention to notice even the grammar typo's.
I think someone else will have to take care of that. I don't think my ISP gives me a default web page and in any case, I'm sure they wouldn't appreciate getting slashdotted.
Funds are also a little tight right now, so registering a domain name and purchasing hosting space elsewhere would be inconvenient. Impossible, actually.
As for alterations, my e-mail is provided in the body of the response. If anyone wishes to make any alterations, including alterations of format, please get my ok via e-mail first.
No, "unreasonable" is the correct word, however you're right in that the meaning of the sentence would be clearer if the phrase "unreasonable licensing obligations" were changed to "unreasonable proprietary licensing obligations".
Feel free to make this change if you forward/post it anywhere else.
I posted this in the previous SCO thread, but am reposting it here where it is more appropriate. Most of the typo's have been cleaned up too. You can also see the full text in my journal.
An Open Response to Darl McBride's Open Letter to the Open Source Community (First Draft)
Dear Mr. McBride,
First, let me introduce myself. My name is John Gabriel. I have been working in the technical field for 15 years, as a Network Administrator, Applications Manager, Network Manager, Sr. Networking Engineer, and now, Freelance Consultant. And, yes, I'm an MCSE.
My first experiences with Unix occurred in the late 1970's, during school field trips to local colleges. I also did Unix technical support for students while taking a class in Pascal in the late 1980's. My first experience with Linux dates to 1994, when I downloaded whatever Linux kernel was available at that time.
While I did install it successfully, on a Compaq Deskpro 386/25, I quickly abandoned it as the system didn't have enough memory to support X Windows. Several years later, in 1998, I became a Caldera customer, with a purchase of Caldera OpenLinux Base ver. 1.22, with Linux kernel 2.0.33. I ran into similar problems again.
About a year ago, I became interested again Linux, and now run Linux on my home workstation in a dual-boot configuration with Windows XP.
About 4-5 months ago, I began following the SCO v. IBM story. I was at first inclined to be open-minded towards SCO's claims. It wouldn't be the first time a small company has had its copyrights violated by a larger vendor, though the violator is usually, in my experience, Microsoft, as exemplified by Caldera's history with DR-DOS.
However, the more I researched the story and SCO's claims, the more convinced I became that SCO's claims were, well, baseless. Being the type that usually likes to "root for the underdog", I was surprised by my conclusions.
Anyway, that's enough introduction. What follows is an Open Response to your Open Letter to the Open Source Community. I grant everyone, including you, permission to re-publish it, or quote from it, without restriction, except that my comments be properly attributed to myself. Consider it under a "BSD-style" license if you like.
1) The most controversial issue in the information technology industry today is the ongoing battle over software copyrights and intellectual property. This battle is being fought largely between vendors who create and sell proprietary software, and the Open Source community. My company, the SCO Group, became a focus of this controversy when we filed a lawsuit against IBM alleging that SCO's proprietary Unix code has been illegally copied into the free Linux operating system. In doing this we angered some in the Open Source community by pointing out obvious intellectual property problems that exist in the current Linux software development model.
Mr. McBride,
Response to Paragraph 1 of your "Open Letter":
This is very difficult to respond to, because your analysis of the issues and of the reasons for the Open Source community's anger is, in the words of the great physicist Wolfgang Pauli, "so bad it's not even wrong."
For instance, your own lawsuit against IBM does not allege that "SCO's proprietary Unix code has been illegally copied into Linux" -- it alleges that code *owned* by IBM but under contractual "control" rights to SCO has been copied into Linux. Surely, you don't dispute that IBM owns the relevant copyrights and patents to NUMA, JFS, and RCU?
Or do you dispute Section 2 of Exhibit C on your web site, the ATT-IBM sideletter agreement, which states in part, "we (ATT) agree that modifications and derivative works prepared by or for you (IBM) are owned by you"?
The truth is there are many reasons the Open source community is angered with you and the actions of The SCO Group and The Canopy Group, none of which have to do with "intellectual
An Open Response to Darl McBride's Open Letter to the Open Source Community (First Draft)
Dear Mr. McBride,
First, let me introduce myself. My name is John Gabriel. I have been working in the technical field for 15 years, as a Network Administrator, Applications Manager, Network Manager, Sr. Networking Engineer, and now, Freelance Consultant. And, yes, I'm an MCSE.
My first experiences with Unix occurred in the late 1970's, during school field trips to local colleges. I also did Unix technical support for students while taking a class in Pascal in the late 1980's. My first experience with Linux dates to 1994, when I downloaded whatever Linux kernel was available at that time.
While I did install it successfully, on a Compaq Deskpro 386/25, I quickly abandoned it as the system didn't have enough memory to support X Windows. Several years later, in 1998, I became a Caldera customer, with a purchase of Caldera OpenLinux Base ver. 1.22, with Linux kernel 2.0.33. I ran into similar problems again.
About a year ago, I became interested again Linux, and now run Linux on my home workstation in a dual-boot configuration with Windows XP.
About 4-5 months ago, I began following the SCO v. IBM story. I was at first inclined to be open-minded towards SCO's claims. It wouldn't be the first time a small company has had its copyrights violated by a larger vendor, though the violator is usually, in my experience, Microsoft, as exemplified by Caldera's history with DR-DOS.
However, the more I researched the story and SCO's claims, the more convinced I became that SCO's claims were, well, baseless. Being the type that usually likes to "root for the underdog", I was surprised by my conclusions.
Anyway, that's enough introduction. What follows is an Open Response to your Open Letter to the Open Source Community. I grant everyone, including you, permission to re-publish it, or quote from it, without restriction, except that my comments be properly attributed to myself. Consider it under a "BSD-style" license if you like.
1) The most controversial issue in the information technology industry today is the ongoing battle over software copyrights and intellectual property. This battle is being fought largely between vendors who create and sell proprietary software, and the Open Source community. My company, the SCO Group, became a focus of this controversy when we filed a lawsuit against IBM alleging that SCO's proprietary Unix code has been illegally copied into the free Linux operating system. In doing this we angered some in the Open Source community by pointing out obvious intellectual property problems that exist in the current Linux software development model.
Mr. McBride,
Response to Paragraph 1 of your "Open Letter":
This is very difficult to respond to, because your analysis of the issues and of the reasons for the Open Source community's anger is, in the words of the great physicist Wolfgang Pauli, "so bad it's not even wrong."
For instance, your own lawsuit against IBM does not allege that "SCO's proprietary Unix code has been illegally copied into Linux" -- it alleges that code *owned* by IBM but under contractual "control" rights to SCO has been copied into Linux. Surely, you don't dispute that IBM owns the relevant copyrights and patents to NUMA, JFS, and RCU?
Or do you dispute Section 2 of Exhibit C on your web site, the ATT-IBM sideletter agreement, which states in part, "we (ATT) agree that modifications and derivative works prepared by or for you (IBM) are owned by you"?
The truth is there are many reasons the Open source community is angered with you and the actions of The SCO Group and The Canopy Group, none of which have too do with "intellectual property problems that exist in the current Linux software development model." We don't believe such problems exist. We do believe that The SCO Groups legal theories of what constitutes "derivative works" have no basis in copyright, patent, or tradem
"I've seen no credible theory that would get SCO any money out of their claims..."
To be fair to SCO, not that there's any reason to be, their very first claims that the SCO Openserver and Unixware *libraries* should be licensed and paid for by end-users had some merit. If they had left it at that and charged a fair price - say $100 give or take $25 - to license those libraries, then most of us would not have had any issues with them.
BTW, I know and you know that those libraries kinda suck, but they're a niche product for corporate deployments that need that support, so the relatively high price I'm suggesting for them is probably a fair value to the clients who would actually need them.
Other than that, I agree; none of their other legal theories have any credibility whatsoever.
"So what's to stop (MS) them from buying other governments as well? They might have problems in China, but I doubt most of Europe would be a problem. I hope France continues to think independently..."
Suspicion. Operating systems are too infrastructurally important to governments to allow a different, stronger, country to dictate their OS needs. Any government is better off supporting a global open source alternative OS than using one developed within a single competing country.
Furthermore, open source is better in line with a governments responsibility to provide open documentation (easily and cheaply accessible) than using a proprietary system.
It depends on the country. Japan and S. Korea are probably interested in both providing an alternative to MS, and moving goverment operations to an open source standard.
China will probably be a little less flexible in its definition of "alternative".
It's actually perfectly fair for a government to assist in creating a market for a product they need (or want), especially if existing products don't meet its needs.
No, I think this is more of an attempt to get State's attention and let them know that MS expects them to come to their aid, via the US Trade Representative.
The problem for State in this situation would be that they can't tell other governments to "let the markets" decide which software to use without also making it look like the US Gov't may be colluding with MS to provide software that can be infiltrated through back doors. Remember the "NSA_Key" fiasco? Lots of governments do too. And many of them did not buy MS's explanation.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, there will be variations in translation. Besides, Pauli liked it so much that he used the comparison frequently. It's very possible that both variations are correct, but from different contexts.
Whoa. They are fucking insane.
It must be the crack.
Man, I am going to crash so bad when this caffeine wears off. In the meantime, don't apogize; I wouldn't have been able to resist either.
Thanks.
Depends on the publication. The Village Voice, for one example, has never had any qualms about printing letters to the editor with the word "fuck" in it. As for business correspondence, yes, you're right. But this isn't business correspondence, it's a *heartfelt* response to Mr. McBride's open letter. The words "complete" and "fucking" as adjectivial modifications to the noun "idiot" were the strongest way to drive the point home.
And it was *heartfelt*.
I'm sorry, people, but I'm from *Manhattan*. *New York City*.
Obscenities, including the adjective "fucking", are quite common here, and exception is rarely taken. Furthermore, as an adjective, the word "fucking" can hardly be considered slanderous. The literal meaning would at least imply that he's getting laid once in while. It's not like I called him a "eunuch".
BTW, is there anyone who would be interested in forwarding this to Linus or posting it on the LKML? I'd love to know what they think of this response, but I'm, uh, too shy - believe it or not - to intrude on their territory without an introduction.
Yes, it should be. However, I wrote this in a caffeine fueled rush from 10 pm last night till 7:00 am this morning. Inevitably, some typo's escaped my notice when proofreading the first draft.
But thanks. I'm actually quiet, well, *honored* that people are giving this enough attention to notice even the grammar typo's.
I think someone else will have to take care of that. I don't think my ISP gives me a default web page and in any case, I'm sure they wouldn't appreciate getting slashdotted.
Funds are also a little tight right now, so registering a domain name and purchasing hosting space elsewhere would be inconvenient. Impossible, actually.
As for alterations, my e-mail is provided in the body of the response. If anyone wishes to make any alterations, including alterations of format, please get my ok via e-mail first.
And thanks, all, for the praise and suggestions.
No, "unreasonable" is the correct word, however you're right in that the meaning of the sentence would be clearer if the phrase "unreasonable licensing obligations" were changed to "unreasonable proprietary licensing obligations".
Feel free to make this change if you forward/post it anywhere else.
I posted this in the previous SCO thread, but am reposting it here where it is more appropriate. Most of the typo's have been cleaned up too. You can also see the full text in my journal.
An Open Response to Darl McBride's Open Letter to the Open Source Community
(First Draft)
Dear Mr. McBride,
First, let me introduce myself. My name is John Gabriel. I have been working in the technical field for 15 years, as a Network Administrator, Applications Manager, Network Manager, Sr. Networking Engineer, and now, Freelance Consultant. And, yes, I'm an MCSE.
My first experiences with Unix occurred in the late 1970's, during school field trips to local colleges. I also did Unix technical support for students while taking a class in Pascal in the late 1980's. My first experience with Linux dates to 1994, when I downloaded whatever Linux kernel was available at that time.
While I did install it successfully, on a Compaq Deskpro 386/25, I quickly abandoned it as the system didn't have enough memory to support X Windows. Several years later, in 1998, I became a Caldera customer, with a purchase of Caldera OpenLinux Base ver. 1.22, with Linux kernel 2.0.33. I ran into similar problems again.
About a year ago, I became interested again Linux, and now run Linux on my home workstation in a dual-boot configuration with Windows XP.
About 4-5 months ago, I began following the SCO v. IBM story. I was at first inclined to be open-minded towards SCO's claims. It wouldn't be the first time a small company has had its copyrights violated by a larger vendor, though the violator is usually, in my experience, Microsoft, as exemplified by Caldera's history with DR-DOS.
However, the more I researched the story and SCO's claims, the more convinced I became that SCO's claims were, well, baseless. Being the type that usually likes to "root for the underdog", I was surprised by my conclusions.
Anyway, that's enough introduction. What follows is an Open Response to your Open Letter to the Open Source Community. I grant everyone, including you, permission to re-publish it, or quote from it, without restriction, except that my comments be properly attributed to myself. Consider it under a "BSD-style" license if you like.
1) The most controversial issue in the information technology industry today is the ongoing battle over software copyrights and intellectual property. This battle is being fought largely between vendors who create and sell proprietary software, and the Open Source community. My company, the SCO Group, became a focus of this controversy when we filed a lawsuit against IBM alleging that SCO's proprietary Unix code has been illegally copied into the free Linux operating system. In doing this we angered some in the Open Source community by pointing out obvious intellectual property problems that exist in the current Linux software development model.
Mr. McBride,
Response to Paragraph 1 of your "Open Letter":
This is very difficult to respond to, because your analysis of the issues and of the reasons for the Open Source community's anger is, in the words of the great physicist Wolfgang Pauli, "so bad it's not even wrong."
For instance, your own lawsuit against IBM does not allege that "SCO's proprietary Unix code has been illegally copied into Linux" -- it alleges that code *owned* by IBM but under contractual "control" rights to SCO has been copied into Linux. Surely, you don't dispute that IBM owns the relevant copyrights and patents to NUMA, JFS, and RCU?
Or do you dispute Section 2 of Exhibit C on your web site, the ATT-IBM sideletter agreement, which states in part, "we (ATT) agree that modifications and derivative works prepared by or for you (IBM) are owned by you"?
The truth is there are many reasons the Open source community is angered with you and the actions of The SCO Group and The Canopy Group, none of which have to do with "intellectual
An Open Response to Darl McBride's Open Letter to the Open Source Community
(First Draft)
Dear Mr. McBride,
First, let me introduce myself. My name is John Gabriel. I have been working in the technical field for 15 years, as a Network Administrator, Applications Manager, Network Manager, Sr. Networking Engineer, and now, Freelance Consultant. And, yes, I'm an MCSE.
My first experiences with Unix occurred in the late 1970's, during school field trips to local colleges. I also did Unix technical support for students while taking a class in Pascal in the late 1980's. My first experience with Linux dates to 1994, when I downloaded whatever Linux kernel was available at that time.
While I did install it successfully, on a Compaq Deskpro 386/25, I quickly abandoned it as the system didn't have enough memory to support X Windows. Several years later, in 1998, I became a Caldera customer, with a purchase of Caldera OpenLinux Base ver. 1.22, with Linux kernel 2.0.33. I ran into similar problems again.
About a year ago, I became interested again Linux, and now run Linux on my home workstation in a dual-boot configuration with Windows XP.
About 4-5 months ago, I began following the SCO v. IBM story. I was at first inclined to be open-minded towards SCO's claims. It wouldn't be the first time a small company has had its copyrights violated by a larger vendor, though the violator is usually, in my experience, Microsoft, as exemplified by Caldera's history with DR-DOS.
However, the more I researched the story and SCO's claims, the more convinced I became that SCO's claims were, well, baseless. Being the type that usually likes to "root for the underdog", I was surprised by my conclusions.
Anyway, that's enough introduction. What follows is an Open Response to your Open Letter to the Open Source Community. I grant everyone, including you, permission to re-publish it, or quote from it, without restriction, except that my comments be properly attributed to myself. Consider it under a "BSD-style" license if you like.
1) The most controversial issue in the information technology industry today is the ongoing battle over software copyrights and intellectual property. This battle is being fought largely between vendors who create and sell proprietary software, and the Open Source community. My company, the SCO Group, became a focus of this controversy when we filed a lawsuit against IBM alleging that SCO's proprietary Unix code has been illegally copied into the free Linux operating system. In doing this we angered some in the Open Source community by pointing out obvious intellectual property problems that exist in the current Linux software development model.
Mr. McBride,
Response to Paragraph 1 of your "Open Letter":
This is very difficult to respond to, because your analysis of the issues and of the reasons for the Open Source community's anger is, in the words of the great physicist Wolfgang Pauli, "so bad it's not even wrong."
For instance, your own lawsuit against IBM does not allege that "SCO's proprietary Unix code has been illegally copied into Linux" -- it alleges that code *owned* by IBM but under contractual "control" rights to SCO has been copied into Linux. Surely, you don't dispute that IBM owns the relevant copyrights and patents to NUMA, JFS, and RCU?
Or do you dispute Section 2 of Exhibit C on your web site, the ATT-IBM sideletter agreement, which states in part, "we (ATT) agree that modifications and derivative works prepared by or for you (IBM) are owned by you"?
The truth is there are many reasons the Open source community is angered with you and the actions of The SCO Group and The Canopy Group, none of which have too do with "intellectual property problems that exist in the current Linux software development model." We don't believe such problems exist. We do believe that The SCO Groups legal theories of what constitutes "derivative works" have no basis in copyright, patent, or tradem
"I've seen no credible theory that would get SCO any money out of their claims..."
To be fair to SCO, not that there's any reason to be, their very first claims that the SCO Openserver and Unixware *libraries* should be licensed and paid for by end-users had some merit. If they had left it at that and charged a fair price - say $100 give or take $25 - to license those libraries, then most of us would not have had any issues with them.
BTW, I know and you know that those libraries kinda suck, but they're a niche product for corporate deployments that need that support, so the relatively high price I'm suggesting for them is probably a fair value to the clients who would actually need them.
Other than that, I agree; none of their other legal theories have any credibility whatsoever.
Expectations have a way of becoming hopes when they aren't fulfilled as quickly as you expected.
Make it rare, and ridden with E. Coli.
Whether it's a CD-R or CD-RW, I really think sufficient microwaving can "erase" it.
No one actually said anything about being able to re-use it.
This is not as much fun as flamethrower.
Um, it's kinda hard to declare much of a capital gains loss on options that you purchased for 1/10 of a cent.
Nah, I'm just assuming it's harder to do in Europe and Japan, than it is in the U.S. and other third world governments.
Er, I mean, "most" third world countries not "other".
Um, I think that's what I meant. Actually, I'm not real sure which statement is more accurate.
Ok. Never mind. You win.
"So what's to stop (MS) them from buying other governments as well? They might have problems in China, but I doubt most of Europe would be a problem. I hope France continues to think independently..."
Suspicion. Operating systems are too infrastructurally important to governments to allow a different, stronger, country to dictate their OS needs. Any government is better off supporting a global open source alternative OS than using one developed within a single competing country.
Furthermore, open source is better in line with a governments responsibility to provide open documentation (easily and cheaply accessible) than using a proprietary system.
Here's another from Bruce Schneier at Counterpane.
Weird. That link doesn't seem to be working from Slashdot, but works fine from Google.
Anyway, try this one instead: Microsoft Stonewalls NSA_Key Questions
Sure. Here.
It depends on the country. Japan and S. Korea are probably interested in both providing an alternative to MS, and moving goverment operations to an open source standard.
China will probably be a little less flexible in its definition of "alternative".
It's actually perfectly fair for a government to assist in creating a market for a product they need (or want), especially if existing products don't meet its needs.
No, I think this is more of an attempt to get State's attention and let them know that MS expects them to come to their aid, via the US Trade Representative.
The problem for State in this situation would be that they can't tell other governments to "let the markets" decide which software to use without also making it look like the US Gov't may be colluding with MS to provide software that can be infiltrated through back doors. Remember the "NSA_Key" fiasco? Lots of governments do too. And many of them did not buy MS's explanation.