Whether you call it "karma" or discipline, or wisdom the point is well made. The worth of a thing is often reflected in what it costs. The cost for excellence is rarely as expensive as the loss for the problems caused by "good enough".
The xfree86 folks did change their licensing more than a year ago and irked the bulk of the open source community. I haven't heard that they changed their minds, but I also can't confirm that they haven't had a change of heart.
I don't blame the license. For non-commercial use or development I don't think it's a problem. Commercial developers need to double-check the licensing so that anything they write is in the clear legally if the use or distribute xfree86.
This will put a crimp in xfree86 usage in Linux distributions because they create their distributions for commercial users as well as non-commercial folks. Organizations like Novell and Red Hat pretty much have their hands tied, or they have to be willing to pay the licensing fees for their commercial distributions.
I make $150K? Cool! Thanks for the raise. No, I'm not a manager and I do not have my own office. But I have seen one very promising career destroyed and another person have to change companies because of stupid accusations. Not even a chance for an appeal. Thank the lawyers and congressmen for this one. I think this came to bloom during the Clinton era - I wonder what the motivation for that legislation could have been?
It's not a democracy because the companies don't want to be sued for allowing an employee do something that is, in fact, illegal. Companies are usually in business to make money, not lose it in lawsuits. When you believe this is happening is irrelevent. It is happening now, The fact that you choose to attack me instead of dealing with the facts show me that you feel that your opinion trumps reality. Very cheeky indeed!
And, you are actually correct in your last point. The last time I checked, an office environment was not a democracy. But if you'll give me $150K and my own office, we can probably at least talk.
The violation is that the content contains what some people will feel is sexually objectionable material. If one of these people walks up behind you with this on your screen, said offeneded person can go to HR and complain. Many companies have a zero tollerance policy for sexual material - and, that leaves the company mangement no slack in responding. The innocent slob who clicked on the link not knowing, no matter how wonderful an employee he or she is, will be fired, or at the very least, have a letter posted to their personel file that will live there for a long time or forever. They will be on probation and anything that is out of line can cause them to be terminated. I have seen people, good people, lose their jobs over "sexual harrasment" claims that were less founded than the content of this site.
M$ is doing exactly what HP feared. They have applied for and received patents for a number of things including the HTTP protocol and the mouse double-click. They may not stand up in court (Lord please I hope not), but they hold the patents for now. When things start to get ugly, the laywers will be waving the paperwork like battle flags. In the courts today, it is not always about right and wrong. It can be about who has the best laywers. Very sad, but true.
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Whether you call it "karma" or discipline, or wisdom the point is well made. The worth of a thing is often reflected in what it costs. The cost for excellence is rarely as expensive as the loss for the problems caused by "good enough".
The xfree86 folks did change their licensing more than a year ago and irked the bulk of the open source community. I haven't heard that they changed their minds, but I also can't confirm that they haven't had a change of heart. I don't blame the license. For non-commercial use or development I don't think it's a problem. Commercial developers need to double-check the licensing so that anything they write is in the clear legally if the use or distribute xfree86. This will put a crimp in xfree86 usage in Linux distributions because they create their distributions for commercial users as well as non-commercial folks. Organizations like Novell and Red Hat pretty much have their hands tied, or they have to be willing to pay the licensing fees for their commercial distributions.
I make $150K? Cool! Thanks for the raise. No, I'm not a manager and I do not have my own office. But I have seen one very promising career destroyed and another person have to change companies because of stupid accusations. Not even a chance for an appeal. Thank the lawyers and congressmen for this one. I think this came to bloom during the Clinton era - I wonder what the motivation for that legislation could have been? It's not a democracy because the companies don't want to be sued for allowing an employee do something that is, in fact, illegal. Companies are usually in business to make money, not lose it in lawsuits. When you believe this is happening is irrelevent. It is happening now, The fact that you choose to attack me instead of dealing with the facts show me that you feel that your opinion trumps reality. Very cheeky indeed! And, you are actually correct in your last point. The last time I checked, an office environment was not a democracy. But if you'll give me $150K and my own office, we can probably at least talk.
The violation is that the content contains what some people will feel is sexually objectionable material. If one of these people walks up behind you with this on your screen, said offeneded person can go to HR and complain. Many companies have a zero tollerance policy for sexual material - and, that leaves the company mangement no slack in responding. The innocent slob who clicked on the link not knowing, no matter how wonderful an employee he or she is, will be fired, or at the very least, have a letter posted to their personel file that will live there for a long time or forever. They will be on probation and anything that is out of line can cause them to be terminated. I have seen people, good people, lose their jobs over "sexual harrasment" claims that were less founded than the content of this site.
M$ is doing exactly what HP feared. They have applied for and received patents for a number of things including the HTTP protocol and the mouse double-click. They may not stand up in court (Lord please I hope not), but they hold the patents for now. When things start to get ugly, the laywers will be waving the paperwork like battle flags. In the courts today, it is not always about right and wrong. It can be about who has the best laywers. Very sad, but true.