In a few projects I've worked for, we delivered code *as* specs. I.e. an implementation of some library together with documentation.
The client took the working code and the documentation, and then re-coded the entire library to their standards from scratch, using the implementation as benchmark. At least that's what they'd said they'd done... I believe they took the code lock, stock and barrel and wrote a tiny interface layer on top, but I don't want to know this.
They can show up late and buy their competitor like you said, as long as the competitor is still small.
Last time it mattered was with Netscape, which was an absolute tiny player with hardly any cash and no income to survive on. Famously Microsoft was able to "cut off their air supply" and win.
Now their competitor is Google and it is flush with money, doesn't have any legacy to worry about, has its own revenue stream that Microsoft cannot do much about, and can continue to be the innovating party for a long time. Maybe you've noticed that Microsoft *is* trying to play catch up, but who is using MSN search or MS Virtual Earth? Nobody, that's who.
Basically this time it's not working, because what Google is doing is not dependent on the goodwill of Microsoft. They can't bundle a magic application with Windows that will make Google irrelevant, like they did with Netscape with IE.
Hey mister elitist/. user who think only Google engineers can program, take a look at this and tell me this is the work of imbecile teenagers.
BTW the tech behind all this is AJAX. AFAIK none of AJAX's components are the work of Google.
Google can be credited with a lot, but people use their AJAX applications not so much because they are better than the others, but because they have better visibility thanks to Google's name.
Some time ago Microsoft was *very* interested in the server market, that's why they developed NT in the first place (in the early 90s!), because they thought that this was where the growth was.
Unfortunately Linux and BSD put an end to that (so far). They are cheaper than any version of Windows, they work just as well, and people working in server rooms appreciate something they can control completely and is more flexible. Windows on blade servers is not exactly an excellent choice for instance. What do you do if you have no video hardware?
Now Linux isn't competing with Windows on the desktop for most individuals, however companies can now wave the Linux+OpenOffice flag in front of the Microsoft bull and negociate very steep discounts. Linux only has to be credible to be a competitor, because Linux never loses sales, and Microsoft is stuck.
At the same time MSFT share price has been stagnant at $25 for the last 4 years or so, despite lots of effort by Microsoft to invest in new markets. Meanwhile the rest of the world hasn't stayed stagnant like this. I bet Microsoft sees this as a problem.
Personnally I don't belive that Linux is the answer to Microsoft's problems, but I do see their Windows + Office tied up franchise to be an annoyance in the mid- to long term, especially if they don't find relatively quickly another cash cow to rely on.
I understand their utter reluctance to change anything about their only true cash cow (at the level Microsoft is), but the fact that they only have that one is pretty much the crux of the matter.
Maybe not individuals, but Linux installs are everywhere now: companies, universities, etc. They would *definitely* pay for office.
BTW I know of absolutely NOBODY who individually has purchased office in the last 10 years or so. They all get a licence from work or school (legal!), or they got a bundle with their PC purchase.
The situation is almost exactly the same in the Windows world.
There's plenty of true innovation in MacOS/X compared to most OSes and GUIs, but most of it dates back from the NeXT days They had distributed objects and an object-oriented kernel in a production O/S way before everyone else (in 1992 or so).
Before the iPods there existed mp3 players but they were niche items with very little memory. The music industry saw them like little piracy items (where could you get mp3?). Apple made them cool with large capacities and they became popular. With the iTMS they became big business items for the industry too.
Google actually has a nice *innovative* search engine that works and is free. When they came upon the scene it was far from empty (remember AltaVista?) but they stomped on everyone else because they were nice, unobtrusive, free and it worked better than the others.
Google is now a company with lots of cash they don't exactly know what to do with, so they do the standard thing, they try all sorts of strange & weird ideas, hoping one of them will be the next big thing. Nothing wrong with that.
Or they may have a strategy behind the various Google iniatives, but really I doubt it.
Now Microsoft. Back when they were writing BASIC interpreters for all the personal computers of the late 70s era they were quite cool. They can be credited with an amazing amount of business acumen at the time of the first IBM PC, but no one in their right mind would admit MS-DOS was a good thing technically. It got absolutely no better after version 2.0 for almost 10 years, when Microsoft did a bait-and-switch with OS/2 on IBM. By then Microsoft had a dominant position the industry and used it to push Windows. It looked better than DOS so everyone lapped it up. Underneath it was still the same old crap.
Trusting their NIH syndrome instincts they felt the need to rewrite a new kernel from scratch, that to this day still isn't truly multi-user (which Unix was in the 70s), and NT 3.0 was born. It was OK but it took many version (3.51, 4.0, 2000, and now XP) to become acceptable. 2000 was probably their best version ever, before Microsoft started to shoot themselves in the foot with obnoxious registration procedures, and soon obtrusive DRM.
Now Office, is it so great? They didn't invent the concept, they bought Word in the mid-80s, they had an incredible hard time to get Excel going (in the late 80s it was a kludge that shipped with a scaled-down version of Windows 3.0 to run under straight DOS), and the rest is not that great (access? powerpoint? yuk). Developed with a tiny amount of the resources Microsoft can bring to bear, OpenOffice is almost as good and is multiplatform.
Now why is Mac OS/X reckonned to be miles ahead of WinXP, when Microsoft for the last 15 years probably had 10 times the number of developers working on their OS? Because of the drivers & the larger variety of hardware on the PC side? Bollocks, look at what a small band of unpaid independent developers have been able to do with Linux.
It is because Microsoft does not foster a culture of innovation. They hire (or used to) fresh graduates, mould them into their very strong corporate culture, and get them to work on existing projects. Very few novel things started at Microsoft. What innovation they needed, they bought (even their first web browser!).
Moreover Microsoft is very rich, very powerful and very arrogant. Perhaps they are not evil, but people would like them scaled down to size, because their products are not that great, and you are forced to used them, directly or indirectly. If you have a job pretty much anywhere in the Western World today, pretty much doing anything, chances are your inbox is full of various Microsoft Format documents. Whether or not you use actual Microsoft products to read them (the vast majority) you must usually find a way to read them and abide by debatable Microsoft choices made long ago.
Google and Apple, on the other hand, are certainly rich and powerful in their niche, but if you don't like them you can lead your life without any impedimenent whatsoever (use Yahoo and buy a PC!). If you think they are evil, good for you, don't use their product! You can, and most people don't in fact.
Prior art still matters even if the rule becomes "first to file", on the contrary. What it means is that if one publishes something novel in whatever format then it become unpatentable, unless the publication is a patent.
107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use Release date: 2005-08-01
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include-- (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.
Points (1) above seems to me to rule out commercial endeavours, and point (3) seems to rule out copying whole works. Are there counterexamples?
Now, since Google Print links to places where you can buy the books you are searching into, does this constitute "indirect commercial purposes" in your opinion? Presumably book vendors pay Google to be listed in the Google Print "Where to buy this book" list.
Also, if Google were to put adds alongside book queries, like they do for web searches at the moment (but don't do yet with Google Print AFAIK), then would that also constitue "indirect commercial purpose" ?
Ah well, but the law is the law, you see. If as you correctly write Google is found to be infringing copyright, i.e. Google Print falls outside of fair use, then the AG will simply have a field day.
The AG can argue further that Google is in that case a big rich bully and ask for damages.
They'll have full rights to demand that Google remove their author's work from the searchable database, making it suddently less valuable, or they can negociate for a piece of Google Print's earning.
I don't see why this would be reason to rejoice.
If on the other hand Google Print is found to be fair use, then this will be a landmark decision with far reaching consequences, I'm not so sure that judges will lean that way.
You seem to be knowledgeable so can you explain to me why this is relevant:
> So google would have to make sure that any research that was done with its > engine was not-for-profit and for educational purpose
Why would the byproduct of what Google has done, i.e. scanning a whole lot of books, be of matter? Isn't the issue that Google has done the scanning in the first place, without permission, and they have done it for commercial purposes?
BTW Google must still have the pristine digital copy in their possession, since they dynamically extract parts of it on demand. How can this present possession without permission be allowed?
Why would they be out of the running after the lawsuit? If win and they are clever the AG will ask for a reasonable cut from of what Google will make out of the service that they provide. If they negociate well they might even get it.
Doesn't matter for this suit. That they are not disclosing the full content of what they have scanned is of no importance. What is important is that Google itself has scanned the books without permission, and still has the data.
The Google defense ("but we are not showing the whole books!") doesn't cut much mustard. It is as if *you* scanned a whole lot of books at the library and thought you could get away scott free because you don't plan to share what you've scanned with anybody.
Slashdot Mirror
Whoosh. 'nuf said.
Well, if a panel can display a truly black pixel next to a moderately bright one, doesn't it mean that its contrast ratio is infinite?
How useful is this measure, really?
Maybe Linus has never seen a useful spec, it doesn't mean that they don't exist.
Code *as* specs
In a few projects I've worked for, we delivered code *as* specs. I.e. an implementation of some library together with documentation.
The client took the working code and the documentation, and then re-coded the entire library to their standards from scratch, using the implementation as benchmark. At least that's what they'd said they'd done... I believe they took the code lock, stock and barrel and wrote a tiny interface layer on top, but I don't want to know this.
Cue to "4 weddings and a funeral" and the priest doing his first wedding. The Holy Goat and all that... That's him.
About WD & NS:
No, they're just resting...
This is an ex-star
This star has ceased to be
This star has run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible, etc.
Thanks, that was very well put.
They can show up late and buy their competitor like you said, as long as the competitor is still small.
Last time it mattered was with Netscape, which was an absolute tiny player with hardly any cash and no income to survive on. Famously Microsoft was able to "cut off their air supply" and win.
Now their competitor is Google and it is flush with money, doesn't have any legacy to worry about, has its own revenue stream that Microsoft cannot do much about, and can continue to be the innovating party for a long time. Maybe you've noticed that Microsoft *is* trying to play catch up, but who is using MSN search or MS Virtual Earth? Nobody, that's who.
Basically this time it's not working, because what Google is doing is not dependent on the goodwill of Microsoft. They can't bundle a magic application with Windows that will make Google irrelevant, like they did with Netscape with IE.
Good luck to them.
Not in 10 years, that's happening right now.
Hey mister elitist /. user who think only Google engineers can program, take a look at this and tell me this is the work of imbecile teenagers.
BTW the tech behind all this is AJAX. AFAIK none of AJAX's components are the work of Google.
Google can be credited with a lot, but people use their AJAX applications not so much because they are better than the others, but because they have better visibility thanks to Google's name.
All the best.
Some time ago Microsoft was *very* interested in the server market, that's why they developed NT in the first place (in the early 90s!), because they thought that this was where the growth was.
Unfortunately Linux and BSD put an end to that (so far). They are cheaper than any version of Windows, they work just as well, and people working in server rooms appreciate something they can control completely and is more flexible. Windows on blade servers is not exactly an excellent choice for instance. What do you do if you have no video hardware?
Now Linux isn't competing with Windows on the desktop for most individuals, however companies can now wave the Linux+OpenOffice flag in front of the Microsoft bull and negociate very steep discounts. Linux only has to be credible to be a competitor, because Linux never loses sales, and Microsoft is stuck.
Is that good for Microsoft's bottom line ? No.
At the same time MSFT share price has been stagnant at $25 for the last 4 years or so, despite lots of effort by Microsoft to invest in new markets. Meanwhile the rest of the world hasn't stayed stagnant like this. I bet Microsoft sees this as a problem.
Personnally I don't belive that Linux is the answer to Microsoft's problems, but I do see their Windows + Office tied up franchise to be an annoyance in the mid- to long term, especially if they don't find relatively quickly another cash cow to rely on.
I understand their utter reluctance to change anything about their only true cash cow (at the level Microsoft is), but the fact that they only have that one is pretty much the crux of the matter.
Re: Linux hackers not willing to pay for office.
Maybe not individuals, but Linux installs are everywhere now: companies, universities, etc. They would *definitely* pay for office.
BTW I know of absolutely NOBODY who individually has purchased office in the last 10 years or so. They all get a licence from work or school (legal!), or they got a bundle with their PC purchase.
The situation is almost exactly the same in the Windows world.
Thanks, very insightful, but Microsoft can still do it. It is not too late.
Hello, regarding Apple,
It's all a matter of degrees.
There's plenty of true innovation in MacOS/X compared to most OSes and GUIs, but most of it dates back from the NeXT days They had distributed objects and an object-oriented kernel in a production O/S way before everyone else (in 1992 or so).
Before the iPods there existed mp3 players but they were niche items with very little memory. The music industry saw them like little piracy items (where could you get mp3?). Apple made them cool with large capacities and they became popular. With the iTMS they became big business items for the industry too.
Google actually has a nice *innovative* search engine that works and is free. When they came upon the scene it was far from empty (remember AltaVista?) but they stomped on everyone else because they were nice, unobtrusive, free and it worked better than the others.
Google is now a company with lots of cash they don't exactly know what to do with, so they do the standard thing, they try all sorts of strange & weird ideas, hoping one of them will be the next big thing. Nothing wrong with that.
Or they may have a strategy behind the various Google iniatives, but really I doubt it.
Now Microsoft. Back when they were writing BASIC interpreters for all the personal computers of the late 70s era they were quite cool. They can be credited with an amazing amount of business acumen at the time of the first IBM PC, but no one in their right mind would admit MS-DOS was a good thing technically. It got absolutely no better after version 2.0 for almost 10 years, when Microsoft did a bait-and-switch with OS/2 on IBM. By then Microsoft had a dominant position the industry and used it to push Windows. It looked better than DOS so everyone lapped it up. Underneath it was still the same old crap.
Trusting their NIH syndrome instincts they felt the need to rewrite a new kernel from scratch, that to this day still isn't truly multi-user (which Unix was in the 70s), and NT 3.0 was born. It was OK but it took many version (3.51, 4.0, 2000, and now XP) to become acceptable. 2000 was probably their best version ever, before Microsoft started to shoot themselves in the foot with obnoxious registration procedures, and soon obtrusive DRM.
Now Office, is it so great? They didn't invent the concept, they bought Word in the mid-80s, they had an incredible hard time to get Excel going (in the late 80s it was a kludge that shipped with a scaled-down version of Windows 3.0 to run under straight DOS), and the rest is not that great (access? powerpoint? yuk). Developed with a tiny amount of the resources Microsoft can bring to bear, OpenOffice is almost as good and is multiplatform.
Now why is Mac OS/X reckonned to be miles ahead of WinXP, when Microsoft for the last 15 years probably had 10 times the number of developers working on their OS? Because of the drivers & the larger variety of hardware on the PC side? Bollocks, look at what a small band of unpaid independent developers have been able to do with Linux.
It is because Microsoft does not foster a culture of innovation. They hire (or used to) fresh graduates, mould them into their very strong corporate culture, and get them to work on existing projects. Very few novel things started at Microsoft. What innovation they needed, they bought (even their first web browser!).
Moreover Microsoft is very rich, very powerful and very arrogant. Perhaps they are not evil, but people would like them scaled down to size, because their products are not that great, and you are forced to used them, directly or indirectly. If you have a job pretty much anywhere in the Western World today, pretty much doing anything, chances are your inbox is full of various Microsoft Format documents. Whether or not you use actual Microsoft products to read them (the vast majority) you must usually find a way to read them and abide by debatable Microsoft choices made long ago.
Google and Apple, on the other hand, are certainly rich and powerful in their niche, but if you don't like them you can lead your life without any impedimenent whatsoever (use Yahoo and buy a PC!). If you think they are evil, good for you, don't use their product! You can, and most people don't in fact.
Prior art still matters even if the rule becomes "first to file", on the contrary. What it means is that if one publishes something novel in whatever format then it become unpatentable, unless the publication is a patent.
Yep, we agree. Sorry about the confusion, but your reply showed up as a reply to one of my posts in my list for some reason.
Best!
This must be why I'm not a lawyer, when I read
107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use
Release date: 2005-08-01
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include--
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.
Points (1) above seems to me to rule out commercial endeavours, and point (3) seems to rule out copying whole works. Are there counterexamples?
Thanks.
Thanks, this is a pretty clear answer.
Now, since Google Print links to places where you can buy the books you are searching into, does this constitute "indirect commercial purposes" in your opinion? Presumably book vendors pay Google to be listed in the Google Print "Where to buy this book" list.
Also, if Google were to put adds alongside book queries, like they do for web searches at the moment (but don't do yet with Google Print AFAIK), then would that also constitue "indirect commercial purpose" ?
I think we agree, don't we? Or am I confused (it's late here).
Ah well, but the law is the law, you see. If as you correctly write Google is found to be infringing copyright, i.e. Google Print falls outside of fair use, then the AG will simply have a field day.
The AG can argue further that Google is in that case a big rich bully and ask for damages.
They'll have full rights to demand that Google remove their author's work from the searchable database, making it suddently less valuable, or they can negociate for a piece of Google Print's earning.
I don't see why this would be reason to rejoice.
If on the other hand Google Print is found to be fair use, then this will be a landmark decision with far reaching consequences, I'm not so sure that judges will lean that way.
Thanks,
You seem to be knowledgeable so can you explain to me why this is relevant:
> So google would have to make sure that any research that was done with its
> engine was not-for-profit and for educational purpose
Why would the byproduct of what Google has done, i.e. scanning a whole lot of books, be of matter? Isn't the issue that Google has done the scanning in the first place, without permission, and they have done it for commercial purposes?
BTW Google must still have the pristine digital copy in their possession, since they dynamically extract parts of it on demand. How can this present possession without permission be allowed?
Why would they be out of the running after the lawsuit? If win and they are clever the AG will ask for a reasonable cut from of what Google will make out of the service that they provide. If they negociate well they might even get it.
Really?
Search on various P2Ps for "bookz". You'll be surprised. Lots of computer books & SF.
Doesn't matter for this suit. That they are not disclosing the full content of what they have scanned is of no importance. What is important is that Google itself has scanned the books without permission, and still has the data.
The Google defense ("but we are not showing the whole books!") doesn't cut much mustard. It is as if *you* scanned a whole lot of books at the library and thought you could get away scott free because you don't plan to share what you've scanned with anybody.