Each contributor to a FOSS project owns his own copyrights, unless he assigns them to the project.
When the patch has been applied to the project he is legally one of the copyright holders of the project, unless he has assigned his copyright elsewhere.
By the time they get their act together, there will likely be too much broadcast flag-free equipment out there.
This depends on the market.
If enough consumers refuse to buy equipment that implements the broadcast flag, your prediction may come out true.
But if most consumers don't care, thinking that it doesn't matter since the flag cannot be legally enforced, the manufacturers are unlikely to change the equipment they have already designed.
Nothing happened to these consultants for a good reason: This was the only error they did. They were top professional and some of the best consultants I have ever been in contact with. (And over the years I have been in contact with a lot of consultants.)
It is a bit unusual though. In my experience consultants that say "Using [insert OS name] is the only real option." are generally substandard. And this goes both for consultants recommending MS-Windows only and for consultants recommending Linux only.
Sure, no problem with that. But a consultancy with that kind of blinders on is not good for a client on the whole.
This particular problem caused the cost of the project for the customer to be raised by about 1/20,000th of the total cost of the project. And otherwise these consultants were above average (compared to what I have seen), and their advice were very helpful and caused cost savings to the project much bigger.
I see a lot of servers being purchased with MS-Windows installed, but running Linux or BSD before they are put into production.
An example I recently was involved in: I work with a company doing software. Big and mission-critical systems. One big customer wanted a really big installation of this software. We recommended that this was run on either Linux, BSD or Solaris. Our customer had hired their own consultancy company, and these consultants were very pro-Microsoft. So the customer said "We need this to run on MS-Windows", and we said "Ok, our software can run on MS-Windows, although we cannot recommend it.".
So a big server park was ordered with MS-Windows preinstalled.
Then, as the project progressed, the customer also hired an Oracle consultant. This consultant said "I would not sleep well at night if these Oracle servers are running on MS-Windows. Other systems will give you more stable operation". So all the operating systems on the Oracle servers were scrapped, and Linux was installed instead.
Then, when all the servers were sent to a hosting provider, the hosting provider said to the customer "We see that while the Oracle servers run Linux, all the application servers run MS-Windows. We will be better at supporting this system if all the servers run the same OS, and you will probably have better uptime if running linux on the application servers too. If you don't mind we will install Linux on the application servers for you free of charge.". The customer accepted.
So while this big server park was purchased with MS-Windows pre-installed, all servers were running Linux before the system was put into use.
Look at the US anti-trust case. Microsoft had completely ignored the internet. This allowed competitors to come into the market. When Microsoft discovered their mistake Netscape had over 90% of a big and growing market. Microsoft then created their (in the first versions horrible) browser. They used their big money tank to give away their browser for free to kill the competition, and leveraged their near-monopoly in operating systems to stronghand PC manufacturers into only installing the Microsoft browser and abstain from installing browsers from competitors. Netscape was effectively killed by this.
If you want a free market, you also have to protect it against companies that try to disrupt the free market for profit. Microsoft was lucky that they were not broken up in the US anti-trust case.
After Microsoft effectively killed Netscape, we saw one of the effects of lack of competition: No new versions of their internet browser for years (until Firebird came around to take a bite of the market).
In the EU anti-trust case something similar happened. Microsoft had ignored the market for streaming media viewers. This has allowed competitors into the market. Now Microsoft again tries to kill their competition by leveraging their near-monopoly in operating systems and bundling their own streaming media viewers with their operating system.
The high fines imposed on Microsoft if they do not do as the EU is telling them are not unusual. There are several other cases where the EU has imposed similar fines on companies or groups of companies trying to disrupt the free market.
I guess it all boils down to this: Do you want a free market, and are you willing to defend it against forces that want to disrupt the free market?
The sooner people realize that there is a fractional difference between the two, the sooner we can return to true competition in politics.
I am not an US citicen, but when looking from the outside I am worried by the current state of the US democracy. The US election system has been designed to effectively only allow two parties. And during the last decade it seems like these two parties have agreed not to mention several political issues that I would think are important to the US public.
No, I'm not going to give you a lecture on why Vi is better. But one editor rules them all.
Don't be too loud about it. At least I dare not mention that I use the better editor.
We are all sinners, but some sins are considered especially bad during a religious flamewar.
And personally I don't want to be expelled from The Church of Emacs just because of the editor I use, in particular not after having been blessed by St. IGNUcios
Ouch. Communist terrorists. I wonder how long it will take the current US government to make BitTorrent illegal.
Seriously, once we have won the MGM v. Grokster case in the US Supreme Court, I am sure that arguments about both communists and terrorists using p2p are going to be used in an attempt to pass laws banning p2p.
Re:Acetylene Balloon Bomb
on
PHRACK Final
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Maybe it's because of articles like this that PHRACK is dead.
This parliament decides on the cabinet (minister of state, minister of foreign affairs etc.).
This is not correct.
The democratically elected danish parliament (Folketinget) has no direct influence on the appointment of the government ministers. See article 14 in the danish constitution: "The King shall appoint and dismiss the Prime Minister and the other Ministers."
But article 15 ("A Minister shall not remain in office after the Folketing has approved a vote of no confidence in him.") means that the danish parliament can sack any minister (or the whole government) with a simple majority vote.
What happens when a danish government has to be appointed is:
The leaders of the parties in parliament go to the Queen and each tell her who they would like as Prime Minister. This is only advisory, but helps the Queen appoint a stable government that the danish parliament is unlikely to sack.
The Queen appoints the Prime Minister.
The Prime Minister appoints the other ministers in the government.
The Queen approves the other ministers appointed.
When the software patent directive was adopted by the European Council on March 7th, Denmark sent their Minister of Economics Bendt Bendsen. Bendt Bendtsen was in a tight place: One one side, the danish parliament had asked him to ensure that the directive was not adopted at the Council meeting. But on the other side, Bill Gates had threatened to kill 800 danish jobs if Denmark opposed the software patent directive. Bendt Bendtsen meakly asked that the directive should not be adopted without discussion or a vote. This request was rejected by the Council Presidency in violation of the Council rules. Instead of insisting, Bendt Bendtsen simply accepted the illegal rejection of his request.
Bendt Bendtsen could have been sacked by the danish parliament because of this, but he was lucky: One of the large parties in parliament turned around and accepted that he did not do what they asked him to do, and then the majority for sacking him was gone.
As long as there is an exception to the law meaning that I can still drive, I would have no problems with that. Nope, no problem, as long as I don't think such a law will affect me.
Most of these amendments are meant to ensure that software might be part of a patentable invention, while the software as such cannot be patented.
If I was going to write my MEP today, I would urge them to support Michel Rocards amendmends, while opposing the amendmends by Toine Manders and Malcolm Harbour (the last two being "IP" policy extremists with little support in the Parliament anyway). And I would urge them to vote on this matter, as an absolute majority is needed for the Parliament to do anything now.
Now that the European Council has passed the directive against their own rules, the opinions of the european governments no longer have any real power.
What matters now is what happens in the European Parliament. The expert hearing they recently held or the amendments proposed (pdf in english) are a lot more interesting than a UK software patent workshop.
I live i Viborg, Denmark, where the local power utility company has started laying a fibre network to all households. This project has been stopped/paused because of the aforementioned law.
I am a bit confused by your posting, as I think I know the relevant danish laws in this area and don't know of any danish laws prohibiting a local power utility company to do this, even if the local power utility company basically has a monopoly on the local power distribution.
Please let me know if you have more information on what you claim. I really would like to know more about this.
If I look at the local Danish news, I see quite a lot of experiments on providing internet access over power lines, and no mention of laws hindering this. No full-scale deployment of this technology yet, but of course this technology has problems like the cost of moving the data link signal across transformators.
I got a great laugh by reading the article.
But when looking at it again, I see that is based on facts. The Linux desktop(s) really have outdone the Microsoft desktop now. This used to be a problem for the adoption of Linux on the desktop but no longer, I think. Although I primarily use Linux and MS-Windows Home Edition only occasionally, I have to agree that (while there may still be other problems with Linux) the desktop is at least as good as the desktop produced by Microsoft.
And I don't want to start another flamewar about what the best desktop for Linux is...
Creating a high-speed fiber network has the same economical effect as creating other infrastructure, like roads and electricity grids.
Of course there is a risk that this could keep competing private enterprises out.
TFA says: "The city is offering open access to its network -- anyone who wants to sell cable TV, Internet connectivity, or other information products will be able to use it, for a fee."
So competitors are allowed access to this net. The only problem could be the size of this fee that competitors have to pay to use the net. The fee could be too high, and thus effectively blocking access for competitors.
In Denmark where I live market-dominant enterprises (private or public) have to give competitors access to their nets for fees that cannot be higher than what is determined reasonable by a government office created to ensure fair competition in the telecom sector. This seems to work well: The market-dominant enterprises earn well by giving competitors access, but cannot set the fees high enough to keep the competition out.
Slashdot Mirror
When the patch has been applied to the project he is legally one of the copyright holders of the project, unless he has assigned his copyright elsewhere.
If enough consumers refuse to buy equipment that implements the broadcast flag, your prediction may come out true.
But if most consumers don't care, thinking that it doesn't matter since the flag cannot be legally enforced, the manufacturers are unlikely to change the equipment they have already designed.
It is a bit unusual though. In my experience consultants that say "Using [insert OS name] is the only real option." are generally substandard. And this goes both for consultants recommending MS-Windows only and for consultants recommending Linux only.
They really helped our customer to express their needs for the system, and that helped us in making the project a success.
An example I recently was involved in: I work with a company doing software. Big and mission-critical systems. One big customer wanted a really big installation of this software. We recommended that this was run on either Linux, BSD or Solaris. Our customer had hired their own consultancy company, and these consultants were very pro-Microsoft. So the customer said "We need this to run on MS-Windows", and we said "Ok, our software can run on MS-Windows, although we cannot recommend it.".
So a big server park was ordered with MS-Windows preinstalled.
Then, as the project progressed, the customer also hired an Oracle consultant. This consultant said "I would not sleep well at night if these Oracle servers are running on MS-Windows. Other systems will give you more stable operation". So all the operating systems on the Oracle servers were scrapped, and Linux was installed instead.
Then, when all the servers were sent to a hosting provider, the hosting provider said to the customer "We see that while the Oracle servers run Linux, all the application servers run MS-Windows. We will be better at supporting this system if all the servers run the same OS, and you will probably have better uptime if running linux on the application servers too. If you don't mind we will install Linux on the application servers for you free of charge.". The customer accepted.
So while this big server park was purchased with MS-Windows pre-installed, all servers were running Linux before the system was put into use.
Look at the US anti-trust case. Microsoft had completely ignored the internet. This allowed competitors to come into the market. When Microsoft discovered their mistake Netscape had over 90% of a big and growing market. Microsoft then created their (in the first versions horrible) browser. They used their big money tank to give away their browser for free to kill the competition, and leveraged their near-monopoly in operating systems to stronghand PC manufacturers into only installing the Microsoft browser and abstain from installing browsers from competitors. Netscape was effectively killed by this.
If you want a free market, you also have to protect it against companies that try to disrupt the free market for profit. Microsoft was lucky that they were not broken up in the US anti-trust case.
After Microsoft effectively killed Netscape, we saw one of the effects of lack of competition: No new versions of their internet browser for years (until Firebird came around to take a bite of the market).
In the EU anti-trust case something similar happened. Microsoft had ignored the market for streaming media viewers. This has allowed competitors into the market. Now Microsoft again tries to kill their competition by leveraging their near-monopoly in operating systems and bundling their own streaming media viewers with their operating system.
The high fines imposed on Microsoft if they do not do as the EU is telling them are not unusual. There are several other cases where the EU has imposed similar fines on companies or groups of companies trying to disrupt the free market.
I guess it all boils down to this: Do you want a free market, and are you willing to defend it against forces that want to disrupt the free market?
Why should be be astonished about finding life elsewhere?
We are all sinners, but some sins are considered especially bad during a religious flamewar.
And personally I don't want to be expelled from The Church of Emacs just because of the editor I use, in particular not after having been blessed by St. IGNUcios
Seriously, once we have won the MGM v. Grokster case in the US Supreme Court, I am sure that arguments about both communists and terrorists using p2p are going to be used in an attempt to pass laws banning p2p.
It is because of articles like this that PHRACK's readers are dead ;-)
The democratically elected danish parliament (Folketinget) has no direct influence on the appointment of the government ministers. See article 14 in the danish constitution: "The King shall appoint and dismiss the Prime Minister and the other Ministers."
But article 15 ("A Minister shall not remain in office after the Folketing has approved a vote of no confidence in him.") means that the danish parliament can sack any minister (or the whole government) with a simple majority vote.
What happens when a danish government has to be appointed is:
- The leaders of the parties in parliament go to the Queen and each tell her who they would like as Prime Minister. This is only advisory, but helps the Queen appoint a stable government that the danish parliament is unlikely to sack.
- The Queen appoints the Prime Minister.
- The Prime Minister appoints the other ministers in the government.
- The Queen approves the other ministers appointed.
When the software patent directive was adopted by the European Council on March 7th, Denmark sent their Minister of Economics Bendt Bendsen. Bendt Bendtsen was in a tight place: One one side, the danish parliament had asked him to ensure that the directive was not adopted at the Council meeting. But on the other side, Bill Gates had threatened to kill 800 danish jobs if Denmark opposed the software patent directive. Bendt Bendtsen meakly asked that the directive should not be adopted without discussion or a vote. This request was rejected by the Council Presidency in violation of the Council rules. Instead of insisting, Bendt Bendtsen simply accepted the illegal rejection of his request.Bendt Bendtsen could have been sacked by the danish parliament because of this, but he was lucky: One of the large parties in parliament turned around and accepted that he did not do what they asked him to do, and then the majority for sacking him was gone.
As long as there is an exception to the law meaning that I can still drive, I would have no problems with that. Nope, no problem, as long as I don't think such a law will affect me.
Most of these amendments are meant to ensure that software might be part of a patentable invention, while the software as such cannot be patented.
If I was going to write my MEP today, I would urge them to support Michel Rocards amendmends, while opposing the amendmends by Toine Manders and Malcolm Harbour (the last two being "IP" policy extremists with little support in the Parliament anyway). And I would urge them to vote on this matter, as an absolute majority is needed for the Parliament to do anything now.
What matters now is what happens in the European Parliament. The expert hearing they recently held or the amendments proposed (pdf in english) are a lot more interesting than a UK software patent workshop.
None of you are being sarcastic. Just jook at your postings - no <SARCASM> tags.
</SARCASM>
Sorry, I couldn't help it ;-)
<SARCASM>
So people who drive too fast obviously have terrorist connections. They should be punished as terrorists.
</SARCASM>
... the US government will have a fine excuse: "The Windows server crashed, there was nothing we could do."
Please let me know if you have more information on what you claim. I really would like to know more about this.
If I look at the local Danish news, I see quite a lot of experiments on providing internet access over power lines, and no mention of laws hindering this. No full-scale deployment of this technology yet, but of course this technology has problems like the cost of moving the data link signal across transformators.
And I don't want to start another flamewar about what the best desktop for Linux is...
Of course there is a risk that this could keep competing private enterprises out.
TFA says: "The city is offering open access to its network -- anyone who wants to sell cable TV, Internet connectivity, or other information products will be able to use it, for a fee."
So competitors are allowed access to this net. The only problem could be the size of this fee that competitors have to pay to use the net. The fee could be too high, and thus effectively blocking access for competitors.
In Denmark where I live market-dominant enterprises (private or public) have to give competitors access to their nets for fees that cannot be higher than what is determined reasonable by a government office created to ensure fair competition in the telecom sector. This seems to work well: The market-dominant enterprises earn well by giving competitors access, but cannot set the fees high enough to keep the competition out.