In return SCO gave Microsoft a license and shares...
Nope, try again.
The first of these licenses was with a long-time licensee of the UNIX source code which is a major participant in the UNIX industry...
In connection with the execution of the first license agreement, we granted a warrant to the licensee to purchase up to 210,000 shares of our common stock...
The shares weren't for Microsoft. They're for the first licensee: Sun.
No, JFS was released by IBM, proper. It was released as GPL so as to be compatible with the rest of the kernel.
You're right that IBM doesn't, by choice, use the GPL. It uses licenses that allow for proprietary derivative works (not just by IBM, but by others; remember that if IBM is the copyright holder, they could always dual-license like TrollTech). The Common Public License, under which Eclipse is licensed, is an example.
So, you're right that it would most likely be a BSD-like license.
Quite the pretty pickle, since refusing to show the code would of course also cancel out any claim they had (or, at least, thought they had) to licensing revenues for further kernel builds.
The bottom line: if someone is doing something bad to you, and they want to stop, you can't force them to keep doing it so that you can collect.
It seems that this whole "we'll show you the proof if you'll sign our NDA" situation was designed by SCO to ensure that only unqualified people actually see it. And so, we'll get a constant trickle of damaging-sounding opinions like this one until this thing finally gets to trial.
But, I can think of one place where we might be able to find a programmer with UNIX and Linux expertise to do a real analysis: IBM.
I'm sure IBM has got a brilliant UNIX and/or Linux hacker in its employ who is approaching the end of his career and would be happy to leave Big Blue with a nice wad of cash to ensure that he'll be fine in life, even if a certain NDA forbids him from ever using his skills again.
It seems like a really simple solution to this problem.
Notice in all of their messaging, they talk about "UNIX" everywhere, rather than any of their actual product names. This is because their products have become completely irrelevant in the market, so they try to latch onto this general UNIX concept.. Effectively confusing the market into thinking they are a player.
Actually, Darl seemed quite comfortable openly admitting as much in this interview...
SCO saw its revenue go from $200 million in 1999 to $60 million this year "due primarily to the onslaught of Linux in the marketplace"...
"Since January, though, SCO has realized that its real long-term value comes from its Unix heritage, history and holdings," he said.
The Namespaces recommendation that I linked to before says:
"The namespace name, to serve its intended purpose, should have the characteristics of uniqueness and persistence. It is not a goal that it be directly usable for retrieval of a schema (if any exists)."
It then uses a fictional, non-resolving http-scheme hierarchical URI in all of its examples. I don't know if this is cause, effect or neither, but it is very common to see namespace URIs of this form that don't refer to accessible documents in the real world, as well. And it is certainly not a violation of any standard.
I didn't mean to suggest that it was unreasonable to try the URI in the first place, I was just trying to warn the original poster not to hold his breath.
Those aren't necessarily supposed to be URLs where you can find the schemas. They are namespace URIs. They are just a unique namespace identifier for the elements and attributes used in the document. Those xmlns attributes of the wordDocument element associate the namespace URIs with namespace prefixes which are used throughout the document to refer to them.
The convention is to use http-scheme URIs to identify namespaces, but in reality they can be any unique URI. Some folks, like the W3C, also publish the schema that define the elements and attributes that belong to a namespace at the namespace's URI. But there's no reason to expect that Microsoft would do the same.
For more information, check out the W3C recommendation for Namespaces in XML.
Re:Why not the FSF/Emacs/GCC/GDB month?
on
RMS Turns 50
·
· Score: 3, Informative
RMS has made more contributions to the whole Open Source movement...
Actually, I rather suspect that RMS would say his contributions were made to the Free Software movement.
I agree with your sentiment: that we all owe RMS a great deal of respect. But part of that respect could include having a basic understanding of his movement and philosophies, even if we prefer competing, though related, ones.
My laptop is an IBM that has one fatal flaw (no touchpad!!!! damn the eraser!)
The comfortable keyboards and beautiful displays don't hurt, but it's that little piece of red rubber lodged between the "g", "h", and "b" keys that will probably keep me on ThinkPads forever.
By the way, these days, the top-end ThinkPads (R40 and T30 models) offer a touch pad along with TrackPoint.
Actually, it was the "Canadian Conservative Reform Alliance Party," not that the extra "C" in "CCRAP" makes it much better.
Of course, they could have suggested "CRCAP" ("sircap"?), but, given that the whole alliance movement was being driven by the old Reform party, they wanted to make Conservatives feel welcome by giving them top billing.
As it turned out, the Conservatives decided it would be better to go at it alone, and they will remain irrelevant, or eventually die, as a result.
And, just in case any of our American friends are ever looking for some political support for consumers in the future, I should point out that "Future Shop stores are a division of Burnaby-based Best Buy Canada Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Best Buy Co., Inc."
Actually, iirc, it's not legal to makes copies of CDs for friends. It is legal, however, to lend CDs to friends so that they can make copies for themselves. Yikes!
I also don't think there's anything explicit in the legislation about putting copies online, since it wasn't an issue at the time.
Back when Napster was the big controversy, I remember hearing various legal commentators speculating that the law should be interpreted such that use of Napster would be legal in Canada.
We have to be careful about any laws restricting what we can buy or sell. Obviously, some have merrit -- in matters of health, for example -- but, in general, they're not a good thing.
A specific law about VCRs isn't nearly as frightening as one that covers such a broad category of goods as the CBDTPA ("digital media devices," defined to include all hardware and software that reproduce, play, or transfer copyrighted works in digital form). The CBDTPA would certainly be a a barrier to innovation in all digital hardware and software.
I don't expect the electronics industry to act benevolently on our behalf, but I do think their instrests are more alligned with ours.
I believe that companies like Sony are genuiunely conflicted. Remember that they're big organizations composed of other organizations that have spent a good many years making a good deal of money in very different ways. I'm sure they suffer from the same internal conflicts as all large organizations. For example, look at the ads they're currently running for their non-DRM'ed minidisc hardware.
I do agree with you 100% on your last comment. This announcement is not the good news that the article made it out to be. They really glossed and skipped over the damagining concessions regarding the use of hacking by copyright holders and the protection of Fair Use, though I didn't realize that until I read the articles linked to in some other comments.
You might very well be right that we're worse off as a result of this.
(I still think the RIAA poses a greater threat than the software or electronics industries, though.)
Well, I'll let you receive your letters from the BSA, and I'll continue to exercise my freedom of choice to select software that doesn't require me to enter into an unreasonable agreement in order to use it. Fortunately, Microsoft and friends may only act against you according to existing copyright laws and/or terms you agreed to in order to use their wares.
The RIAA was supporting legislation that would haved stripped us of our freedom to make choices about what we buy and under what terms. And, as has been discussed here many times, it would likely have had the same impact on the software world, too.
It was the RIAA (and MPAA) position that was far less acceptable to me; that the RIAA has dropped this support is a very good thing for consumers of music, electronics, and software alike.
It seemed pretty clear to me that this strategy was about how to switch away from OS/2, not why to switch to it: "customers should exploit OS/2 e-business enhancements and deploy new e-business technology applications concurrently with existing OS/2 applications until platform neutrality has been achieved, and then change the operating system."
This is very consistent with the central message in IBM's software strategy: target our middleware and you can deploy anywhere.
Have you used Windows XP lately? Not to be a troll, but it really is faster and doesn't crash anymore... I installed it 10 days ago, and it's been up and running since, under heavy usage too, I might add...
I have, I have! I was using it last night. Apparently, I tried to run too many programs at the same time. It warned me that it was increasing the size of my paging file, and then it started thrashing. I started closing applications, but it seemed painfully unable to reclaim memory from them.
I spent half an hour trying to properly close the 6-odd applications I was running, before giving up and killing them.
I can only wonder how it performs under your "heavy usage," when six desktop apps do this to it. I agree that great progress has been made since Windows 9X, but in my book, it still has a ways to go.
VisualAge for Java is done. The upgrade path is Websphere Studio Application Developer, which is a proprietary product built on Eclipse. As a simple Java IDE, Eclipse and WSAD are the same, but WSAD adds tools for working with EJBs, JSPs, XML and Web Services, along with branding and support, of course.
Eclipse is not "somewhat" open/free. It IS open source -- the CPL is an OSI-approved license. It IS free software -- the FSF describes the CPL as a free software license (though GPL-incompatible).
I know this isn't the point that the submitter chose to focus on, but I have to point out the anti-IBM spin that the OSNews author let through or inserted:
OSNews was also told that Sun will not commit Solaris code to the Linux kernel (Solaris is known to have one of the best, if not the best, SMP scalability in the industry with the only real competition coming from HP-UX and IRIX).
The omission of AIX on POWER4 is completely bogus. IBM is Sun's only real competition right now, and Big Blue's offerings outperform Solaris on Sparc at a fraction of the cost.
Sun might write some drivers if needed and do some bug fixes, but will not be directly involved in the process of steering the Linux kernel. "Linus Torvalds and the community are doing a fine job on it. Sun will not attempt to hijack the open nature of the Linux kernel in any proprietary direction," said Moffitt. Distinguishing Sun's Linux policy with IBM's, is important to Moffitt.
I'm sorry, but who really thinks that it's a bad thing that IBM is paying a large number of developers to contribute GPL'ed code to the Linux kernel? IBM's work has had a lot to do with the high-end progress that we've seen in 2.4 and will see in 2.6. They're not steering the kernel and they're not subverting the process, they're just submitting their patches like anyone else could. They're adding their efforts to the efforts of others in the community, and everyone is benefiting from the results.
Sun, on the other hand, is willing to make the massive contribution of writing some drivers, if no one else will do it form them. Otherwise, they're satisfied to offer Linux, only as a low-end player, and do their darndest to make sure it stays that way.
It's false that IBM is "not evolving AIX" anymore -- their last release was less than 2 months ago. But their actions clearly show that they want to help Linux grow into the role that AIX currently fills (to be clear, that would be running on pSeries machines to outperform Solaris on Sparc). Obviously, Sun has a problem with that, but why should anybody else?
Are we supposed to believe that Phoenix (the BIOS company) is worried about the value of their brand among people who have "absolutely no idea what a BIOS is"?
Really? You must be using a different Office XP from the one I've been battling with lately. I *thought* that the simplicity of the UI (relative to the size of the feature set, of course) and its consistency across versions (since the Word 6 era, at least) had been Office's greatest recommendation.
Then I met XP. Why does the interface look completely different...and feel as sluggish as Mozilla M18? Why are things that used to be dialog boxes now in these weird Window-embedded pallette things that cause the view of my document to resize? Speaking of that, what's with the window automaticlaly resizing to do battle with the help window, anyway? Does that actually work for anyone else (I frequently get a mostly blank help window with the left-most 15 pixels or so of what's supposed to be its content peeking in on the right side).
The old, simple, clean feeling is gone. Now there's all kinds of freaky interface features that obviously "seemed like a good idea at the time."
I'm not sure how much difficulty all of the changes would cause the mystical "typical user." For the people who accomplish a task by repeating a series of memorized mouse clicks/key strokes, these changes would be trouble.
Slashdot Mirror
In return SCO gave Microsoft a license and shares...
Nope, try again.
The shares weren't for Microsoft. They're for the first licensee: Sun.
No, JFS was released by IBM, proper. It was released as GPL so as to be compatible with the rest of the kernel.
You're right that IBM doesn't, by choice, use the GPL. It uses licenses that allow for proprietary derivative works (not just by IBM, but by others; remember that if IBM is the copyright holder, they could always dual-license like TrollTech). The Common Public License, under which Eclipse is licensed, is an example.
So, you're right that it would most likely be a BSD-like license.
Quite the pretty pickle, since refusing to show the code would of course also cancel out any claim they had (or, at least, thought they had) to licensing revenues for further kernel builds.
The bottom line: if someone is doing something bad to you, and they want to stop, you can't force them to keep doing it so that you can collect.
It seems that this whole "we'll show you the proof if you'll sign our NDA" situation was designed by SCO to ensure that only unqualified people actually see it. And so, we'll get a constant trickle of damaging-sounding opinions like this one until this thing finally gets to trial.
But, I can think of one place where we might be able to find a programmer with UNIX and Linux expertise to do a real analysis: IBM.
I'm sure IBM has got a brilliant UNIX and/or Linux hacker in its employ who is approaching the end of his career and would be happy to leave Big Blue with a nice wad of cash to ensure that he'll be fine in life, even if a certain NDA forbids him from ever using his skills again.
It seems like a really simple solution to this problem.
Notice in all of their messaging, they talk about "UNIX" everywhere, rather than any of their actual product names. This is because their products have become completely irrelevant in the market, so they try to latch onto this general UNIX concept.. Effectively confusing the market into thinking they are a player.
Actually, Darl seemed quite comfortable openly admitting as much in this interview...
The Namespaces recommendation that I linked to before says:
"The namespace name, to serve its intended purpose, should have the characteristics of uniqueness and persistence. It is not a goal that it be directly usable for retrieval of a schema (if any exists)."
It then uses a fictional, non-resolving http-scheme hierarchical URI in all of its examples. I don't know if this is cause, effect or neither, but it is very common to see namespace URIs of this form that don't refer to accessible documents in the real world, as well. And it is certainly not a violation of any standard.
I didn't mean to suggest that it was unreasonable to try the URI in the first place, I was just trying to warn the original poster not to hold his breath.
Those aren't necessarily supposed to be URLs where you can find the schemas. They are namespace URIs. They are just a unique namespace identifier for the elements and attributes used in the document. Those xmlns attributes of the wordDocument element associate the namespace URIs with namespace prefixes which are used throughout the document to refer to them.
The convention is to use http-scheme URIs to identify namespaces, but in reality they can be any unique URI. Some folks, like the W3C, also publish the schema that define the elements and attributes that belong to a namespace at the namespace's URI. But there's no reason to expect that Microsoft would do the same.
For more information, check out the W3C recommendation for Namespaces in XML.
RMS has made more contributions to the whole Open Source movement...
Actually, I rather suspect that RMS would say his contributions were made to the Free Software movement.
I agree with your sentiment: that we all owe RMS a great deal of respect. But part of that respect could include having a basic understanding of his movement and philosophies, even if we prefer competing, though related, ones.
Hmm...
Sounds like the new "Axis of Evil" to me.
My laptop is an IBM that has one fatal flaw (no touchpad!!!! damn the eraser!)
The comfortable keyboards and beautiful displays don't hurt, but it's that little piece of red rubber lodged between the "g", "h", and "b" keys that will probably keep me on ThinkPads forever.
By the way, these days, the top-end ThinkPads (R40 and T30 models) offer a touch pad along with TrackPoint.
You missed Steve Ballmer.
Just last night he was on KaZaA looking for stuff by Miami Sound Machine.
Actually, it was the "Canadian Conservative Reform Alliance Party," not that the extra "C" in "CCRAP" makes it much better.
Of course, they could have suggested "CRCAP" ("sircap"?), but, given that the whole alliance movement was being driven by the old Reform party, they wanted to make Conservatives feel welcome by giving them top billing.
As it turned out, the Conservatives decided it would be better to go at it alone, and they will remain irrelevant, or eventually die, as a result.
And the Liberals will rule forever.
Future Shop, too.
And, just in case any of our American friends are ever looking for some political support for consumers in the future, I should point out that "Future Shop stores are a division of Burnaby-based Best Buy Canada Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Best Buy Co., Inc."
Actually, iirc, it's not legal to makes copies of CDs for friends. It is legal, however, to lend CDs to friends so that they can make copies for themselves. Yikes!
I also don't think there's anything explicit in the legislation about putting copies online, since it wasn't an issue at the time.
Back when Napster was the big controversy, I remember hearing various legal commentators speculating that the law should be interpreted such that use of Napster would be legal in Canada.
We have to be careful about any laws restricting what we can buy or sell. Obviously, some have merrit -- in matters of health, for example -- but, in general, they're not a good thing.
A specific law about VCRs isn't nearly as frightening as one that covers such a broad category of goods as the CBDTPA ("digital media devices," defined to include all hardware and software that reproduce, play, or transfer copyrighted works in digital form). The CBDTPA would certainly be a a barrier to innovation in all digital hardware and software.
I don't expect the electronics industry to act benevolently on our behalf, but I do think their instrests are more alligned with ours.
I believe that companies like Sony are genuiunely conflicted. Remember that they're big organizations composed of other organizations that have spent a good many years making a good deal of money in very different ways. I'm sure they suffer from the same internal conflicts as all large organizations. For example, look at the ads they're currently running for their non-DRM'ed minidisc hardware.
I do agree with you 100% on your last comment. This announcement is not the good news that the article made it out to be. They really glossed and skipped over the damagining concessions regarding the use of hacking by copyright holders and the protection of Fair Use, though I didn't realize that until I read the articles linked to in some other comments.
You might very well be right that we're worse off as a result of this.
(I still think the RIAA poses a greater threat than the software or electronics industries, though.)
Treasure Fucking Planet.
How hypocritical can you get?
Well, I'll let you receive your letters from the BSA, and I'll continue to exercise my freedom of choice to select software that doesn't require me to enter into an unreasonable agreement in order to use it. Fortunately, Microsoft and friends may only act against you according to existing copyright laws and/or terms you agreed to in order to use their wares.
The RIAA was supporting legislation that would haved stripped us of our freedom to make choices about what we buy and under what terms. And, as has been discussed here many times, it would likely have had the same impact on the software world, too.
It was the RIAA (and MPAA) position that was far less acceptable to me; that the RIAA has dropped this support is a very good thing for consumers of music, electronics, and software alike.
You sure you read it?
It seemed pretty clear to me that this strategy was about how to switch away from OS/2, not why to switch to it: "customers should exploit OS/2 e-business enhancements and deploy new e-business technology applications concurrently with existing OS/2 applications until platform neutrality has been achieved, and then change the operating system."
This is very consistent with the central message in IBM's software strategy: target our middleware and you can deploy anywhere.
Have you used Windows XP lately? Not to be a troll, but it really is faster and doesn't crash anymore... I installed it 10 days ago, and it's been up and running since, under heavy usage too, I might add...
I have, I have! I was using it last night. Apparently, I tried to run too many programs at the same time. It warned me that it was increasing the size of my paging file, and then it started thrashing. I started closing applications, but it seemed painfully unable to reclaim memory from them.
I spent half an hour trying to properly close the 6-odd applications I was running, before giving up and killing them.
I can only wonder how it performs under your "heavy usage," when six desktop apps do this to it. I agree that great progress has been made since Windows 9X, but in my book, it still has a ways to go.
VisualAge for Java is done. The upgrade path is Websphere Studio Application Developer, which is a proprietary product built on Eclipse. As a simple Java IDE, Eclipse and WSAD are the same, but WSAD adds tools for working with EJBs, JSPs, XML and Web Services, along with branding and support, of course.
Eclipse is not "somewhat" open/free. It IS open source -- the CPL is an OSI-approved license. It IS free software -- the FSF describes the CPL as a free software license (though GPL-incompatible).
I know this isn't the point that the submitter chose to focus on, but I have to point out the anti-IBM spin that the OSNews author let through or inserted:
The omission of AIX on POWER4 is completely bogus. IBM is Sun's only real competition right now, and Big Blue's offerings outperform Solaris on Sparc at a fraction of the cost.
I'm sorry, but who really thinks that it's a bad thing that IBM is paying a large number of developers to contribute GPL'ed code to the Linux kernel? IBM's work has had a lot to do with the high-end progress that we've seen in 2.4 and will see in 2.6. They're not steering the kernel and they're not subverting the process, they're just submitting their patches like anyone else could. They're adding their efforts to the efforts of others in the community, and everyone is benefiting from the results.
Sun, on the other hand, is willing to make the massive contribution of writing some drivers, if no one else will do it form them. Otherwise, they're satisfied to offer Linux, only as a low-end player, and do their darndest to make sure it stays that way.
It's false that IBM is "not evolving AIX" anymore -- their last release was less than 2 months ago. But their actions clearly show that they want to help Linux grow into the role that AIX currently fills (to be clear, that would be running on pSeries machines to outperform Solaris on Sparc). Obviously, Sun has a problem with that, but why should anybody else?
WTF?
Are we supposed to believe that Phoenix (the BIOS company) is worried about the value of their brand among people who have "absolutely no idea what a BIOS is"?
AMD is quoted as saying Opteron has been above 50% yield months ago.
Pardon my ignorance, but what does that mean?
Really? You must be using a different Office XP from the one I've been battling with lately. I *thought* that the simplicity of the UI (relative to the size of the feature set, of course) and its consistency across versions (since the Word 6 era, at least) had been Office's greatest recommendation.
Then I met XP. Why does the interface look completely different...and feel as sluggish as Mozilla M18? Why are things that used to be dialog boxes now in these weird Window-embedded pallette things that cause the view of my document to resize? Speaking of that, what's with the window automaticlaly resizing to do battle with the help window, anyway? Does that actually work for anyone else (I frequently get a mostly blank help window with the left-most 15 pixels or so of what's supposed to be its content peeking in on the right side).
The old, simple, clean feeling is gone. Now there's all kinds of freaky interface features that obviously "seemed like a good idea at the time."
I'm not sure how much difficulty all of the changes would cause the mystical "typical user." For the people who accomplish a task by repeating a series of memorized mouse clicks/key strokes, these changes would be trouble.
Erm...you did read the article, didn't you?
"The poor ranking of the United States (17th) is mainly because of the number of journalists arrested or imprisoned there."