I have created a new account and have already begun the process of karma whoring. Very soon he will achieve "excellent" karma and decimate you all. AND THERE'S NOT A THING YOU CAN DO TO STOP ME!
Willful infringement for the purpose of commercial/finanical gain.
Felony charges. Minimum 3 years in prison.
Generally, I believe that the amount of prison time is proportional to the distribution. In SCO's case, it is going to be pretty damn big.
And, you know, depending on why the GPL is declared invalid (not that I think it will be, infact, I'm pretty damn sure it won't) one of two things may occur: a)GPL won't actually be found invalid, instead, SCO's crazy ass-ed interpretation of the GPL will force them into some kind of bind where they will be inviolation of it, and loose the right to distribute under it b)It will be found invalid in some tiny and specific way, and only the current revision of the GPL. GPL v4 will come out quickly, fix whatever error existed, and the opensource world will have a hell of a time moving everyting over to it. Or even better, it will only be found inapplicable to the linux kernel for some crazy reason, in which GPL v3.x for linux will be released, fixing the problem.
If either of these occur, or the GPL is just plain busted, SCO execs will go to jail and owe huge fines.
Not that it is much consolation--->It would really suck if the GPL was crushed. But it would feel good that the people who did it were screwed in the end anyways.
As a contributer to the Linux kernel and other GPL'd software, I have decided to start a new licensing program. Your company will be required to pay a fee of $5,000 USD per cpu on all installations of Linux you use or sell which include my code. Regrettably, I cannot tell you which lines these are, as doing so would my trade secrets to the world.
Also, I have identified numerous cases in which lines of my code were copied into the source for your Unixware product. The same licensing terms I have descibed above will therefore apply to Unixware.
I have sent letters to all 5 of your customers informing them of this new policy. I understand Sun has also been in touch with them.
I will be contacting you soon to discuss payment options.
SCO cannot get away with this bull. SCO will not get away with this bull.
The question of code history is one I asked a *long* time ago; probably the first I heard of this SCO bs. I believe they wrote a little C program that crawls the source tree and looks for similar lines of code. Hell, I could write a program like that, make it compare two source trees that make up 10,000 lines of code, and have it print out that 1,000,000 of those 10,000 lines are identical. Just like the ad for PC-Lint in the programming magazines.
Darl McBride's silly little company is acting just like the idiot who was sitting in a cafe one day. When the waitress came to take his order, the man asked her to sign and date some official documents certifying that he had been in that cafe at that time and date, with records of what he ordered, how long he stayed, etc. The waitress was confused about this, but the man claimed that he was very paranoid of someday being framed of a crime, and therefore wanted a written alibi for every waking moment of his life. He shows the waitress a calendar book with exact notations of every step he had ever taken. Suddenly, the police storms into the establishment and asks the gentleman if he goes by such and such a name. He answers affirmatively. They asked him if he had been involved in a jewelry store robbery which took place at 1221 East West Street several nights prior, at 12:31 AM. As he had proof of everything he had ever done, he opened his book, flipped to the day and hour in question, and read aloud from his book, "Jewelry store robbery at 1221 East West Street, 12:31 AM." Before he realized what a stupid error he had made, the police snatched him and he was off to jail.
With that in mind, here is an open letter to SCO CEO Darl McBride:
Dear Darl,
I do not believe any of your company's claims. In fact, I believe quite the opposite: I believe that SCO's software is composed 100% of code your company deliberately stole from other companies. Because your company stole code from the Linux kernel, you later found that code and wrongly believe that the theft occured in the other direction. Further, I strongly believe that with your company's shoddy record keeping, you cannot prove the origin of your code, so it is therefore impossible to prove your false claims of its being misappropriated into Linux. I further believe that even if your company could produce such proof, the effects of doing so would be adverse for you, as the records would clearly indicate the thefts that SCO deliberately performed.
Oh yeah, and one other thing: In your poorly written, grammatically incorrect, misspelled "open letter" to the free software community, you deliberately took some quotes out of context. This was silly because the misquoted documents are readily available for all to see your blatent and stupid attempt. To demonstrate the effect of misquoting, I offer the following text, quoted directly from your letter:
My company, the SCO Group... illegally copied... the free Linux operating system. In doing this we... adversely affect the... credibility of... SCO. SCO... violates... Linux... intellectual property rights. This is improper. SCO... has forfeited its rights to this code. SCO... copyright ownership... is null and void. SCO... needs a business model that is sustainable, if it is to grow beyond a part-time avocation into an enterprise-trusted development model. Rather than fight for the right for free software... I invite the Open Source community to... fire off a "rant"... across a negotiation table. [R]espect for intellectual property is not [an option]...
Personally, I thought NWN was a great game, and Hordes of the Underdark looks like a worthy expansion. I'll certainly be getting it - I loved the original, and it is one of the only recent games to provide a native Linux version (I run Gentoo, so it's either Winex or native Linux for me) I'm happy and proud to support Bioware provided they keep producing Linux versions of their games. I know they were a little late with NWN, but at least they were true to their word, and if we show them there is a demand for Linux games they will surely take notice and improve their linux support even further!
Even so, their track record is still better than most proprietary software vendors. With OSS, at least no one is attempting a coverup - you know exactly how good or bad the software is. With proprietary software, you have to take their word for it. Not only that, but they often take months to patch known vulnerabilities; sometimes they've even threatned people who attempted to disclose these flaws to customers with fines or even jail.
I'd really like to take this opportunity to congratulate both the Gentoo devs and the rsync devs on a job well done. This is one of the many reasons why I continue to use and recommend Open Source to my friends, my boss, and my colleagues. The community simply does a first rate job of identifying and patching problems in their software. Most commercial software vendors wish they had a track record as good as most of the important open source projects out there.
Keep up the great work, guys! I'm definitely donating to the Gentoo project this Xmas;) It has put the fun back in computing for me.
Most of these assumptions about future computing technology (AI aside of course) were underestimating rather than overestimating. Let that be a lesson - computers may yet surprise us in the near future with what they can do. Never say never.
When I go to vote, will the voting machine make cheesy bloops and bleeps, and when I pull the lever down will three lemons with George Bush's face slide down, causing alarms go off?
Could we be on the road to a post-scarcity society in the future where nobody is without the basic human necessities and most work is done for recreation or hobby purposes only? Could be, yet for some reason I think our nation's current Corporatocracy wouldn't look kindly on such blatant "communism."
If, in the future, copying physical objects is nearly as easy as copying information on a computer, will corporations lobby to pass laws that make it illegal to do so? In other words, will I be arrested one day for making a copy of my friend's Ferrari?
* GUI everything: If it's not a system crash, the desktop PC should be able to handle everything in GUI. Perhaps console programs that have a GUI counterpart (you run guiFdisk and you get a pretty "partition magic" type interface, but the real work is done by fdisk). Both parts would probably need to be written together for this to work seemlessly.
* Look to Windows. I hate to use them as a Linux standard, but seriously! If Microsofts 'Distribution' can do it, UserLinux needs to at least take note of it. Where Microsoft is criticized, Linux in general needs to be careful. I'm not just talking about critisism FROM the Linux comunity, but major distributions need to keep tabs on what excites/displeases regular win23 users.
* I don't know enough to comment on how the system should keep tabs on packages, but it would be nice to be able to make sense of dependancies. This isn't a specific recomendation, just a general thought: remember the "device manager" tree in Windows, something like that with at least two tabs. One would have at the top level only packages that have no dependancies. The next level would be packages that directly rely on them, and then the packeges that rely on them, and so on. The other tab would work the opposite direction, starting with a list of all packages and branching into the packages that they rely on. Perhaps the user would even be able to click on a package and get more detail. Something of this nature would allow users to get a sense of 'whos who' among their packages.
* Shoot for the next generation Linux, but do it while aiming at a more distant target. It would be very nice if 20 years from now UserLinux was not a hack upon a hack to keep it up to date (not suggesting that anyone else is).
* Don't lose track of all the user input. This is probably reduntant for me to say, but I'll say it anyway. Michael Collins who rode Apollo 11 wrote in his book "Carrying the Fire" that he kept a notebook and everytime something ocurred to him about the mission he would write it down. If he was in a resturaunt, he would write it down on a napkin, take it home, and copy it into his notebook. He refuse to launch until every concern in his notebook was checked off. Keep track of all good user input in one place.
You might be more interested in using Fedora than paying 25 bucks a month for RHEW. It's what I use and it seems just as stable as any of those other linux distros out there (debian, slackware, etc.) Not to mention it is more on the bleeding edge than Red Hat's enterprise products, making it ideal for desktop use. Sure, a new version comes out every 6 months, but the upgrade is free!
RHEL is only for servers and workstations that perform *mission critical* tasks and have specialized requirements.
Though todays announcement shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who's followed Red Hat over the last year, I think it was a very poor move.
Yes, I do understand producing their "Red Hat Linux" product was expensive, and hurt their bottom line. They should have never split their product in two to begin with. Maintaining both RHL and Enterprise Linux was too much of a burden on the company. It reeks of bad management, much like the Mozilla project does (They are trying to develop no less than three different browsers at the moment, possibly more depending on how you count--and Netscape just cut them lose, so they're severely understaffed... you'd think they'd make consolidation efforts--but this is another tirade).
What they should have done is modularize their base product, and sell add-ons. They retain all of their users, all of their mind share, only have to develop one product, AND it can act as a stepping stone into your Enterprise-level services. Hell! They even had the infrastructure to do a single core product all laid out with Red Hat Network. Sell an Enterprise Web Server channel add-on to Red Hat Linux 10 for Enterprise-level prices, and so on. It would have been beautiful. Really.
It would have also provided their Enterprise customers with ten-times the amount of testing of the core OS. This is not to be underestimated. Much as Linus renames a kernel from e.g. 2.5.79 to 2.6.0-test1 when he wants (free!) wider testing, Red Hat now has a user base one-tenth the size to "test" their releases on. And problems that aren't caught in relase QA (many just can't be) will now HAVE to affect (high-)paying customers. There's no free users to take 90% of the falls.
Red Hat produced the de facto Linux distribution in the United States AND they were in the black. There was nothing to stop them. They provided a free, high quality alternative OS. People were switching to Linux, and switching to Red Hat. It was working. But apparently not fast enough for them.
Windows users have no highly visible, high quality alternative now. (No, it's NOT necessary to chime in with your favorite distribution.) What's good for Linux was good for Red Hat, and this is unquestionably bad for Linux, medium-term, at least.
Fedora does NO ONE any good. It's pseudo-managed by Red Hat, but with no guarantees, no support, no Red Hat Network, no Enterprise add-ons, and regular Joe-Schmoe developers fucking it up (cf. Debian). And the mix of open development and corporate bureaucracy, neither with any vision, is sure to pull and tug at it in no general direction, making it nothing more than a poor Debian clone. I wonder how long until Red Hat cut's it lose completely.
http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/numbport.ht ml
Background: What is Telephone Number Portability
Telephone number portability is a service that provides residential and business telephone customers with the ability to retain, at the same location, their existing local telephone numbers when switching from one local telephone service provider to another.
In 1996 Congress reexamined and changed the Telecommunications Act to promote competition and reduce regulation in all telecommunications markets. Before that time, a major barrier to competition was the inability of customers to switch from one telephone company to another while retaining the same telephone number. Congress directed local telephone companies to offer "telephone number portability."
In order to provide the kind of telephone number portability envisioned by Congress, telephone companies had to invest in upgrades to their networks. In 1998 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) evaluated the cost involved in local number portability and determined that existing local telephone companies were allowed, but not required, to recover the costs of implementing and providing telephone number portability through two kinds of charges: (1) charges paid by other telephone companies that use a telephone company's number portability facilities to process their own calls; and (2) a small, fixed monthly charge assessed on telephone customers or "end users."
What is the Long-Term Telephone Number Portability End-Use Charge?
The long-term number portability end-user charge is a fixed, monthly charge through which local telephone companies may recover certain costs of providing long-term number portability service. Recoverable costs include those for creating new facilities, physically upgrading or improving the existing public switched telephone network, and performing the ongoing functions associated with providing long-term number portability. FCC rules state that incumbent local telephone companies may, but are not required to, recover certain costs of providing number portability by charging their customer a monthly fee.
Am I Required to Pay the Long-Term Portability Charge if I Am a Lifeline Assistance Program Customer?
Carriers can not impose the monthly long-term number portability charge on customers of the Lifeline Assistance Program.
Does Long-Term Telephone Number Portability Mean That I Can Keep the Same Telephone Number if I Move Across Town or to Another State?
The type of telephone number portability that local telephone companies must provide is called "service provider portability." Service provider portability allows a customer to keep his telephone number when changing local telephone companies. It does not allow customers to take their telephone numbers with them when they move.
Can I Keep the Same Wireline Telephone Number if I Switch My Local Telephone Service to a Cellular or Personal Communications Service (PCS) Telephone Service Provider or Vice-Versa?
Cellular and other wireless carriers are not required to provide telephone number portability at this time. For this reason, customers cannot retain the same local telephone number if they change their local service from a wireline local telephone company to a wireless carrier, like a cellular or PCS service provider. Likewise, customers cannot switch from a cellular or PCS service provider to a local wireline service provider and keep the same cellular or PCS telephone number.
Will All Telephone Customers Be Charged for Telephone Number Portability?
Local telephone companies can only charge customers in areas where local telephone number portability is available to all consumers. Telephone number portability may not be available in all service areas.
Does the FCC Require Local Telephone Companies to Bill Consumers for Long-term Telephone Number Portability?
The FCC allows, but does not require, local telephone c
Slashdot Mirror
That's the funnniest thing I've seen all day!
Who modded this down offtopic?
I have created a new account and have already begun the process of karma whoring. Very soon he will achieve "excellent" karma and decimate you all. AND THERE'S NOT A THING YOU CAN DO TO STOP ME!
BWA HA HA HA.
Steve 'Rim' Jobs
I need IP for my bunghole!
Than I suspect Darl and Co will get jail-time.
Someone should have warned them about this.
GPL=void.
Samba=no longer able to be distributed.
SCO sells Samba as part of Unixware.
Willful infringement for the purpose of commercial/finanical gain.
Felony charges. Minimum 3 years in prison.
Generally, I believe that the amount of prison time is proportional to the distribution. In SCO's case, it is going to be pretty damn big.
And, you know, depending on why the GPL is declared invalid (not that I think it will be, infact, I'm pretty damn sure it won't) one of two things may occur:
a)GPL won't actually be found invalid, instead, SCO's crazy ass-ed interpretation of the GPL will force them into some kind of bind where they will be inviolation of it, and loose the right to distribute under it
b)It will be found invalid in some tiny and specific way, and only the current revision of the GPL. GPL v4 will come out quickly, fix whatever error existed, and the opensource world will have a hell of a time moving everyting over to it. Or even better, it will only be found inapplicable to the linux kernel for some crazy reason, in which GPL v3.x for linux will be released, fixing the problem.
If either of these occur, or the GPL is just plain busted, SCO execs will go to jail and owe huge fines.
Not that it is much consolation--->It would really suck if the GPL was crushed. But it would feel good that the people who did it were screwed in the end anyways.
As a contributer to the Linux kernel and other GPL'd software, I have decided to start a new licensing program. Your company will be required to pay a fee of $5,000 USD per cpu on all installations of Linux you use or sell which include my code. Regrettably, I cannot tell you which lines these are, as doing so would my trade secrets to the world.
Also, I have identified numerous cases in which lines of my code were copied into the source for your Unixware product. The same licensing terms I have descibed above will therefore apply to Unixware.
I have sent letters to all 5 of your customers informing them of this new policy. I understand Sun has also been in touch with them.
I will be contacting you soon to discuss payment options.
Thank you.
SCO cannot get away with this bull. SCO will not get away with this bull.
... illegally copied ... the free Linux operating system. In doing this we ... adversely affect the ... credibility of ... SCO. SCO ... violates ... Linux ... intellectual property rights. This is improper. SCO ... has forfeited its rights to this code. SCO ... copyright ownership ... is null and void. SCO ... needs a business model that is sustainable, if it is to grow beyond a part-time avocation into an enterprise-trusted development model. Rather than fight for the right for free software ... I invite the Open Source community to ... fire off a "rant" ... across a negotiation table. [R]espect for intellectual property is not [an option]...
The question of code history is one I asked a *long* time ago; probably the first I heard of this SCO bs. I believe they wrote a little C program that crawls the source tree and looks for similar lines of code. Hell, I could write a program like that, make it compare two source trees that make up 10,000 lines of code, and have it print out that 1,000,000 of those 10,000 lines are identical. Just like the ad for PC-Lint in the programming magazines.
Darl McBride's silly little company is acting just like the idiot who was sitting in a cafe one day. When the waitress came to take his order, the man asked her to sign and date some official documents certifying that he had been in that cafe at that time and date, with records of what he ordered, how long he stayed, etc. The waitress was confused about this, but the man claimed that he was very paranoid of someday being framed of a crime, and therefore wanted a written alibi for every waking moment of his life. He shows the waitress a calendar book with exact notations of every step he had ever taken. Suddenly, the police storms into the establishment and asks the gentleman if he goes by such and such a name. He answers affirmatively. They asked him if he had been involved in a jewelry store robbery which took place at 1221 East West Street several nights prior, at 12:31 AM. As he had proof of everything he had ever done, he opened his book, flipped to the day and hour in question, and read aloud from his book, "Jewelry store robbery at 1221 East West Street, 12:31 AM." Before he realized what a stupid error he had made, the police snatched him and he was off to jail.
With that in mind, here is an open letter to SCO CEO Darl McBride:
Dear Darl,
I do not believe any of your company's claims. In fact, I believe quite the opposite: I believe that SCO's software is composed 100% of code your company deliberately stole from other companies. Because your company stole code from the Linux kernel, you later found that code and wrongly believe that the theft occured in the other direction. Further, I strongly believe that with your company's shoddy record keeping, you cannot prove the origin of your code, so it is therefore impossible to prove your false claims of its being misappropriated into Linux. I further believe that even if your company could produce such proof, the effects of doing so would be adverse for you, as the records would clearly indicate the thefts that SCO deliberately performed.
Oh yeah, and one other thing: In your poorly written, grammatically incorrect, misspelled "open letter" to the free software community, you deliberately took some quotes out of context. This was silly because the misquoted documents are readily available for all to see your blatent and stupid attempt. To demonstrate the effect of misquoting, I offer the following text, quoted directly from your letter:
My company, the SCO Group
Best regards to all,
Darl McBride
CEO
The SCO Group
How does that feel, Darl?
.. for 20 bucks, hell yeah. That's almost enough to buy the NWN expansion!
Personally, I thought NWN was a great game, and Hordes of the Underdark looks like a worthy expansion. I'll certainly be getting it - I loved the original, and it is one of the only recent games to provide a native Linux version (I run Gentoo, so it's either Winex or native Linux for me) I'm happy and proud to support Bioware provided they keep producing Linux versions of their games. I know they were a little late with NWN, but at least they were true to their word, and if we show them there is a demand for Linux games they will surely take notice and improve their linux support even further!
Even so, their track record is still better than most proprietary software vendors. With OSS, at least no one is attempting a coverup - you know exactly how good or bad the software is. With proprietary software, you have to take their word for it. Not only that, but they often take months to patch known vulnerabilities; sometimes they've even threatned people who attempted to disclose these flaws to customers with fines or even jail.
I'd really like to take this opportunity to congratulate both the Gentoo devs and the rsync devs on a job well done. This is one of the many reasons why I continue to use and recommend Open Source to my friends, my boss, and my colleagues. The community simply does a first rate job of identifying and patching problems in their software. Most commercial software vendors wish they had a track record as good as most of the important open source projects out there.
;) It has put the fun back in computing for me.
Keep up the great work, guys! I'm definitely donating to the Gentoo project this Xmas
Most of these assumptions about future computing technology (AI aside of course) were underestimating rather than overestimating. Let that be a lesson - computers may yet surprise us in the near future with what they can do. Never say never.
Gambling... The voting system in the US...
They have a lot in common.
When I go to vote, will the voting machine make cheesy bloops and bleeps, and when I pull the lever down will three lemons with George Bush's face slide down, causing alarms go off?
And will I have to pay three quarters to vote?
Check out the Battlestar Galactica Original costume and Prop Museum.
Hey, if the /. editors can make dupes and get away with it then so can I! ;)
Yes, but in such a world would we really have a need for money anymore?
Could we be on the road to a post-scarcity society in the future where nobody is without the basic human necessities and most work is done for recreation or hobby purposes only? Could be, yet for some reason I think our nation's current Corporatocracy wouldn't look kindly on such blatant "communism."
If, in the future, copying physical objects is nearly as easy as copying information on a computer, will corporations lobby to pass laws that make it illegal to do so? In other words, will I be arrested one day for making a copy of my friend's Ferrari?
HPShopping.com CEO Peter Appl
Coincidence? I don't think so.
* GUI everything: If it's not a system crash, the desktop PC should be able to handle everything in GUI. Perhaps console programs that have a GUI counterpart (you run guiFdisk and you get a pretty "partition magic" type interface, but the real work is done by fdisk). Both parts would probably need to be written together for this to work seemlessly.
* Look to Windows. I hate to use them as a Linux standard, but seriously! If Microsofts 'Distribution' can do it, UserLinux needs to at least take note of it. Where Microsoft is criticized, Linux in general needs to be careful. I'm not just talking about critisism FROM the Linux comunity, but major distributions need to keep tabs on what excites/displeases regular win23 users.
* I don't know enough to comment on how the system should keep tabs on packages, but it would be nice to be able to make sense of dependancies. This isn't a specific recomendation, just a general thought: remember the "device manager" tree in Windows, something like that with at least two tabs. One would have at the top level only packages that have no dependancies. The next level would be packages that directly rely on them, and then the packeges that rely on them, and so on. The other tab would work the opposite direction, starting with a list of all packages and branching into the packages that they rely on. Perhaps the user would even be able to click on a package and get more detail. Something of this nature would allow users to get a sense of 'whos who' among their packages.
* Shoot for the next generation Linux, but do it while aiming at a more distant target. It would be very nice if 20 years from now UserLinux was not a hack upon a hack to keep it up to date (not suggesting that anyone else is).
* Don't lose track of all the user input. This is probably reduntant for me to say, but I'll say it anyway. Michael Collins who rode Apollo 11 wrote in his book "Carrying the Fire" that he kept a notebook and everytime something ocurred to him about the mission he would write it down. If he was in a resturaunt, he would write it down on a napkin, take it home, and copy it into his notebook. He refuse to launch until every concern in his notebook was checked off. Keep track of all good user input in one place.
Finally,
GOOD LUCK!!!
("You're going to need it.")
Which one is more likely to grow the most mindshare in the future? I'd be interested to hear some opinions.
Personally I think UserLinux or something like it will prevail in the end. Red Hat exercizes too much control over Fedora IMHO.
You might be more interested in using Fedora than paying 25 bucks a month for RHEW. It's what I use and it seems just as stable as any of those other linux distros out there (debian, slackware, etc.) Not to mention it is more on the bleeding edge than Red Hat's enterprise products, making it ideal for desktop use. Sure, a new version comes out every 6 months, but the upgrade is free!
RHEL is only for servers and workstations that perform *mission critical* tasks and have specialized requirements.
Where I live (Louisiana State) you can legally get Windows XP from the University for 10 bucks.
Though todays announcement shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who's followed Red Hat over the last year, I think it was a very poor move.
Yes, I do understand producing their "Red Hat Linux" product was expensive, and hurt their bottom line. They should have never split their product in two to begin with. Maintaining both RHL and Enterprise Linux was too much of a burden on the company. It reeks of bad management, much like the Mozilla project does (They are trying to develop no less than three different browsers at the moment, possibly more depending on how you count--and Netscape just cut them lose, so they're severely understaffed... you'd think they'd make consolidation efforts--but this is another tirade).
What they should have done is modularize their base product, and sell add-ons. They retain all of their users, all of their mind share, only have to develop one product, AND it can act as a stepping stone into your Enterprise-level services. Hell! They even had the infrastructure to do a single core product all laid out with Red Hat Network. Sell an Enterprise Web Server channel add-on to Red Hat Linux 10 for Enterprise-level prices, and so on. It would have been beautiful. Really.
It would have also provided their Enterprise customers with ten-times the amount of testing of the core OS. This is not to be underestimated. Much as Linus renames a kernel from e.g. 2.5.79 to 2.6.0-test1 when he wants (free!) wider testing, Red Hat now has a user base one-tenth the size to "test" their releases on. And problems that aren't caught in relase QA (many just can't be) will now HAVE to affect (high-)paying customers. There's no free users to take 90% of the falls.
Red Hat produced the de facto Linux distribution in the United States AND they were in the black. There was nothing to stop them. They provided a free, high quality alternative OS. People were switching to Linux, and switching to Red Hat. It was working. But apparently not fast enough for them.
Windows users have no highly visible, high quality alternative now. (No, it's NOT necessary to chime in with your favorite distribution.) What's good for Linux was good for Red Hat, and this is unquestionably bad for Linux, medium-term, at least.
Fedora does NO ONE any good. It's pseudo-managed by Red Hat, but with no guarantees, no support, no Red Hat Network, no Enterprise add-ons, and regular Joe-Schmoe developers fucking it up (cf. Debian). And the mix of open development and corporate bureaucracy, neither with any vision, is sure to pull and tug at it in no general direction, making it nothing more than a poor Debian clone. I wonder how long until Red Hat cut's it lose completely.
The fcc has plenty of info:
http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/numbport.ht ml
Background: What is Telephone Number Portability
Telephone number portability is a service that provides residential and business telephone customers with the ability to retain, at the same location, their existing local telephone numbers when switching from one local telephone service provider to another.
In 1996 Congress reexamined and changed the Telecommunications Act to promote competition and reduce regulation in all telecommunications markets. Before that time, a major barrier to competition was the inability of customers to switch from one telephone company to another while retaining the same telephone number. Congress directed local telephone companies to offer "telephone number portability."
In order to provide the kind of telephone number portability envisioned by Congress, telephone companies had to invest in upgrades to their networks. In 1998 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) evaluated the cost involved in local number portability and determined that existing local telephone companies were allowed, but not required, to recover the costs of implementing and providing telephone number portability through two kinds of charges: (1) charges paid by other telephone companies that use a telephone company's number portability facilities to process their own calls; and (2) a small, fixed monthly charge assessed on telephone customers or "end users."
What is the Long-Term Telephone Number Portability End-Use Charge?
The long-term number portability end-user charge is a fixed, monthly charge through which local telephone companies may recover certain costs of providing long-term number portability service. Recoverable costs include those for creating new facilities, physically upgrading or improving the existing public switched telephone network, and performing the ongoing functions associated with providing long-term number portability. FCC rules state that incumbent local telephone companies may, but are not required to, recover certain costs of providing number portability by charging their customer a monthly fee.
Am I Required to Pay the Long-Term Portability Charge if I Am a Lifeline Assistance Program Customer?
Carriers can not impose the monthly long-term number portability charge on customers of the Lifeline Assistance Program.
Does Long-Term Telephone Number Portability Mean That I Can Keep the Same Telephone Number if I Move Across Town or to Another State?
The type of telephone number portability that local telephone companies must provide is called "service provider portability." Service provider portability allows a customer to keep his telephone number when changing local telephone companies. It does not allow customers to take their telephone numbers with them when they move.
Can I Keep the Same Wireline Telephone Number if I Switch My Local Telephone Service to a Cellular or Personal Communications Service (PCS) Telephone Service Provider or Vice-Versa?
Cellular and other wireless carriers are not required to provide telephone number portability at this time. For this reason, customers cannot retain the same local telephone number if they change their local service from a wireline local telephone company to a wireless carrier, like a cellular or PCS service provider. Likewise, customers cannot switch from a cellular or PCS service provider to a local wireline service provider and keep the same cellular or PCS telephone number.
Will All Telephone Customers Be Charged for Telephone Number Portability?
Local telephone companies can only charge customers in areas where local telephone number portability is available to all consumers. Telephone number portability may not be available in all service areas.
Does the FCC Require Local Telephone Companies to Bill Consumers for Long-term Telephone Number Portability?
The FCC allows, but does not require, local telephone c