I think it would have been acceptable if she had something like http://www.lucasnurserysucks.com but she didn't have the right to take the domain name that was the name of the company. Where are they supposed to have their website then? Not everyone necessarily agrees that Lucas Nursery and Landscaping Inc. sucks.
It's hardly new for Windows to drop backwards compatibility in areas. Many applications which are partly 16-bit and partly 32-bit won't run on Windows XP, but do run on Windows 95/98/ME for example
Windows XP has application compatibility features which allow you to set the OS version to previous releases and provide compatibility with older registry layouts, for example. That kind of compatibility feature is unlikely to help with stricter security controls of course (unlesss there's an option simply to turn off the new security features).
If they get Linux they'll use that as precedent for *BSD, OS-X and anything else they can get a hold of.
Successfully suing IBM or others re Linux is not a precedent for suing any 4.4BSD derivative. However, a successful lawsuit against a company using a 4.4BSD derivative might be a precedent for a successful Linux lawsuit where BSD code has been used in Linux.
Of course that's not really what the issue is at all. SCO is unlikely to sue a BSD user or a company selling a BSD derivative. They may try and claim that some of the proprietary code in BSD which was removed in the AT&T settlement made its way into Linux, or that copyright notices on BSD code were removed. You should have a look at this article which cleared the matter up for me.
Well SCO has hinted at looking at the BSD settlement, so if the worst case scenario happens, even BSD isn't safe. But SCO will be gone long before that.
It's pretty shocking that they have the audacity to say that. After all, in the SCO vs IBM case IBM had access to the UNIX source code. However, the developers of FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD have not had access to the UNIX source code, since BSD ceased to be based in the University of California, Berkeley and became a web-based project at the time of the settlement with AT&T.
My guess is that SCO have just about zero chance of winning a case against BSD given the previous lawsuit, and that to attempt to dig it up again would be plain folly. At least in the IBM case they have breach of contract, access to SCO source code and the (possible) sympathy vote of big company ripping off little company.
chance of arbitrary user successfully installing FreeBSD on an arbitrary x86 box? (Including getting X server up and running, etc.) About %10.
Linux is better supported by vendors who make desktop products e.g. SuSE and Red Hat. However, Linux is used mainly for servers, so if we compare a popular Linux distribution to FreeBSD in that context there's not much in it. Do you think an "arbitrary user" could set up X on Debian any more than they could on FreeBSD? Of course not.
Moreover, if there were a switch from Linux to FreeBSD, then obviously it would also become better supported on the desktop.
... there's still FreeBSD. In the worst case scenario where SCO actually wins its legal battles making it difficult for people to use Linux any longer, FreeBSD could help lessen the sting. FreeBSD already
has Linux binary compatibility and Debian is working on porting its tools for use with a FreeBSD kernel.
It's hardly desirable that SCO does succeed, but at least there are open source alternatives (and AT&T already resolved the issue of proprietary UNIX code in BSD with University of California years ago).
I agree, Mozilla is a bit bloated. However, Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird are meant to tackle problems like that.
The design of Mozilla has been to make it easily embeddable so other developers can use its rendering technology and make their own interface and use a different widget set. Many projects already do, e.g. Galeon in GNOME and K-Meleon (using MFC) for Windows.
That's the idea behind Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird, cut down stand alone products using the Mozilla/Gecko technology that do their job well.
It's likely that these will be promoted more in the future as they use up less system resources and are more user friendly.
I think this is exactly what open source needs. It's one thing for programmers, sysadmins and advanced users to contribute to open source projects, but there's often no easy way for the average user to help out.
With ideas like KDE Quality Team, the developers get to hear from the users and integrate features that they would like to see, as well as providing a means by which the average user can contribute. That's why Wikipedia works so well - it is possible for anybody to contribute. It's great to see the "anybody can contribute" idea extend to open source where up till now it's really only the advanced users who can contribute easily.
Yahoo uses FreeBSD not Linux AFAIK, so SCO couldn't sue them even if they wanted too. Google, on the otherhand, does use Linux. Have Google been sent threatening letters from SCO does anyone know?
Isn't media attention what they've been looking for all along? They make some ridiculous claims about their IP in Linux and everyone realizes they exist all of a sudden, and up goes their stock value.
SCO would barely have been noticed at all if it weren't for all the trouble they've been causing. Now they feature in a news article every couple of hours.
Slashdot Mirror
...I'm going to have to patch the kernels on the Debian servers and reboot again?
That'll be the third time in as many months.
The WIPO think otherwise see - here.
I think it would have been acceptable if she had something like http://www.lucasnurserysucks.com but she didn't have the right to take the domain name that was the name of the company. Where are they supposed to have their website then? Not everyone necessarily agrees that Lucas Nursery and Landscaping Inc. sucks.
It's hardly new for Windows to drop backwards compatibility in areas. Many applications which are partly 16-bit and partly 32-bit won't run on Windows XP, but do run on Windows 95/98/ME for example
Windows XP has application compatibility features which allow you to set the OS version to previous releases and provide compatibility with older registry layouts, for example. That kind of compatibility feature is unlikely to help with stricter security controls of course (unlesss there's an option simply to turn off the new security features).
If they get Linux they'll use that as precedent for *BSD, OS-X and anything else they can get a hold of.
Successfully suing IBM or others re Linux is not a precedent for suing any 4.4BSD derivative. However, a successful lawsuit against a company using a 4.4BSD derivative might be a precedent for a successful Linux lawsuit where BSD code has been used in Linux.
Of course that's not really what the issue is at all. SCO is unlikely to sue a BSD user or a company selling a BSD derivative. They may try and claim that some of the proprietary code in BSD which was removed in the AT&T settlement made its way into Linux, or that copyright notices on BSD code were removed. You should have a look at this article which cleared the matter up for me.
Well SCO has hinted at looking at the BSD settlement, so if the worst case scenario happens, even BSD isn't safe. But SCO will be gone long before that.
It's pretty shocking that they have the audacity to say that. After all, in the SCO vs IBM case IBM had access to the UNIX source code. However, the developers of FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD have not had access to the UNIX source code, since BSD ceased to be based in the University of California, Berkeley and became a web-based project at the time of the settlement with AT&T.
My guess is that SCO have just about zero chance of winning a case against BSD given the previous lawsuit, and that to attempt to dig it up again would be plain folly. At least in the IBM case they have breach of contract, access to SCO source code and the (possible) sympathy vote of big company ripping off little company.
chance of arbitrary user successfully installing FreeBSD on an arbitrary x86 box? (Including getting X server up and running, etc.) About %10.
Linux is better supported by vendors who make desktop products e.g. SuSE and Red Hat. However, Linux is used mainly for servers, so if we compare a popular Linux distribution to FreeBSD in that context there's not much in it. Do you think an "arbitrary user" could set up X on Debian any more than they could on FreeBSD? Of course not.
Moreover, if there were a switch from Linux to FreeBSD, then obviously it would also become better supported on the desktop.
... there's still FreeBSD. In the worst case scenario where SCO actually wins its legal battles making it difficult for people to use Linux any longer, FreeBSD could help lessen the sting. FreeBSD already has Linux binary compatibility and Debian is working on porting its tools for use with a FreeBSD kernel.
It's hardly desirable that SCO does succeed, but at least there are open source alternatives (and AT&T already resolved the issue of proprietary UNIX code in BSD with University of California years ago).
Maybe the attitude of companies to P2P will change when they see the commercial advantages like Lindows have
I agree, Mozilla is a bit bloated. However, Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird are meant to tackle problems like that.
The design of Mozilla has been to make it easily embeddable so other developers can use its rendering technology and make their own interface and use a different widget set. Many projects already do, e.g. Galeon in GNOME and K-Meleon (using MFC) for Windows.
That's the idea behind Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird, cut down stand alone products using the Mozilla/Gecko technology that do their job well.
It's likely that these will be promoted more in the future as they use up less system resources and are more user friendly.
I think this is exactly what open source needs. It's one thing for programmers, sysadmins and advanced users to contribute to open source projects, but there's often no easy way for the average user to help out.
With ideas like KDE Quality Team, the developers get to hear from the users and integrate features that they would like to see, as well as providing a means by which the average user can contribute. That's why Wikipedia works so well - it is possible for anybody to contribute. It's great to see the "anybody can contribute" idea extend to open source where up till now it's really only the advanced users who can contribute easily.
Yahoo uses FreeBSD not Linux AFAIK, so SCO couldn't sue them even if they wanted too. Google, on the otherhand, does use Linux. Have Google been sent threatening letters from SCO does anyone know?
Isn't media attention what they've been looking for all along? They make some ridiculous claims about their IP in Linux and everyone realizes they exist all of a sudden, and up goes their stock value.
SCO would barely have been noticed at all if it weren't for all the trouble they've been causing. Now they feature in a news article every couple of hours.