If the code IBM submitted to Linux was a violation of that contract, in addition to damages IBM must pay, a court may place an injunction on shipping Linux, or force Linux users to pay damages as well,
Bah! It is to larff.
Certainly a rogue court can tell anyone to do anything. Other than that, this claim of yours doesn't hold water. If I buy stolen property in good faith, I cannot be held liable for the crime. The most I can be made to do is to return the stolen property. I hope no one is daft enough to suggest that the billions and billions of Linux users out there all colluded with IBM to do SCO out of their hard-earned intellectual "property."
In this case, the analogue of "returning the stolen property" is to rip out the offending source code (80 lines of it or whatever they claim today -- if in fact they claim there was a violation of copyright, which is not clear) from the kernel and reimplement it -- perhaps a day's work.
Since when are patents and trade secrets analogous?
Note: I'm not talking about the state of patents we see today. I mean the justification for patents in laissez-faire competition, and the "promote the useful arts" rationale in the US Constitution.
I'm not sure in what sense you mean "analogous" here. I meant it in the sense of: a company has a secret (a design for a gizmo, a formula for a fizzy drink, whatever). The decision they have to make is: should we keep it a secret (and run the risk it might get out and we lose our advantage) or should we get a patent and get seventeen years of guaranteed exclusivity followed by the idea going into the public domain?
Coca-Cola took the first approach, and it has worked for them; they got much more than seventeen years of exclusivity (regardless of whether or not Pepsi has come up with an more-or-less equivalent formula!). Bell Labs decided to get a patent on the transistor, since seventeen years of exclusivity seemed a better bet than hoping it wouldn't leak out or be independently invented.
Patents protect things that cannot be protected through trade secret.
Sorry, I don't buy this at all. Why do you feel this is so?
... we have decided as a society that we get more benefit in the long run from encouraging and protecting the entrepenuereal and creative spirit than we do from economic Darwinism.
Well, I don't know if we have really decided this. I feel that we have only decided this in name; we pay lip service to this ideal but our laws just favor the big established companies regardless. We feature feel-good anecdotes of entrepreneurs and creative geniuses on TV, but it ends there. You can come up with a super-duper revolutionary shaving device, but Gilette and Schick will steal your idea and beat you into the ground because they have the high-powered lawyers. The best you should hope for is a settlement that will probably cover your legal bills.
Patents can only work with a ruthless PTO, and probably with some reforms like the ones suggested here: make them assigned to a person only (not a company) and non-transferable. Or maybe some other reforms we haven't thougth of just yet.
They're doing a pretty good job from what I hear, and if they were idiots, it would be a shame to make the idea unavailable to someone who might make it a success.
I think that's an excellent characterization. Not that I'm a laissez-faire capitalist, but I do sympathise with that view, and I feel patents hurt the market (or society, depending on your beliefs) much more than they benefit it.
So what prevents company X from taking Open Source code and inserting into product Y without giving credit or releasing the modifications?
Nothing. But since there's no copyright law, any source that leaked out from a company is fair game to go back into free software, completely legally -- regardless of whether or not the person that did the leaking violated an NDA while doing so.
Saying "no copyright would basically turn the software world into a BSD style license" is an empty statement -- in a world with no copyright a license is meaningless.
... it is because of copyright law that things like Linux and BSD are able to be what they are.
This statement is completely false.
If there were no copyright law, any source code would leak out. Evil Corporation Inc. incorporates "our" free code into their process? No problem; sooner or later there would be employees that are either disgruntled or sympathetic to The Cause; their code would leak out and become public knowledge. Since there is no copyright law, there is no culpability for any free software hacker who uses this code, regardless of whether or not the employee violated an NDA or broke any laws while leaking the code.
The GPL plays a role in free software, but only because of the way our present copright law is written. Remove copyright and you remove the necessity for the GPL. Remember that in the "good ol' days" that RMS talks about at MIT, there effectively was no copyright; customers could get whatever source code they wanted, and would contribute any improvements back to the manufacturer and the user community. It was only because some manufacturer (of a printer?) refused to divulge the source that RMS got launched on Gnu.
Note: nowhere in this article is there any claim or statement about whether or not Gnu and/or RMS are good or evil; just some inferences and history.
Yes, I'm serious. Yes, Blockbuster and others are evil bastards who will steal your idea rather than piss in your ear if your head was on fire (paraphrasing Jim Hightower). Life really sucks if Big Company Inc. wants to squash you, and patents will be no help to you, since they'll bury you with their own massive patent portfolio.
Making patents individually held may be a solution, but my view is that (in spite of a few heart-warming anecdotes) patents hurt the little guy.
Spouting Netflix IPO numbers is meaningless -- that just means some people with money (who may or may not be idiots) were willing to drive the stock price up for some lucky sods.
Yes, in fact some ideas are only worth an "at will" job paying $50,000 p.a. These are simple ideas that competent marketers and developers are expected to come up with. In fact, that is my job: I come up with a couple of these little ideas every year, and my employer pays me well. Yes, they can fire me at any time; but I can quit any time too. (Occasionally the lawyer comes by to try and convince me to file a patent for something; I refuse politely, claiming prior art and/or the "competent practitioner" clause.) Financially, it's a much better life than an independent inventor could reasonably hope for. On my own time I can be a true hacker: come up with half-brained ideas, some of which take shape in free software, others in little doohickeys to latch canopies in radio-controlled sailplanes.
Look at NetFlix. Nobody (including them) could make a go of online rentals, until they came up with a new method.
You have very little faith in the market, apparently. Just because the entrants so far have been nincompoops doesn't mean we should help some schmoe with a feeble idea make megabucks. Ok, that's just hyperbole. What I'm getting at is: the Netflix idea is not one that's good enough to allow the "inventor" to compete with an established behemoth like Blockbuster. So? The "inventor" should go to Blockbuster and get hired, saying "look at this cool idea I had -- hire me and I'll think of more." Remember that being first to market is a huge incentive for any business. Any competitors will need months or years to tool up and start production; that's when you make a killing. Then later when all the competitors are up and running, you'll have to go back to competing with them. There's a built-in benefit; we don't need government intervention in something the market already handles.
This model does not apply to software, of course. You might say that it's because the "time to re-tool" advantage of being first to market is gone. No, in fact it's because software is just math made concrete, and math, like other "laws of nature," cannot be patented. (You can copyright your expression of the law or theorem, but not the law or theorem itself. No RSA patent, no LZW patent; no MP3 patent. No one can copy your code without your permission, but they can derive their own expressions of the law or theorem, i.e. write an MP3 encoder and a GIF reader.) Megabucks are only made by building a better widget, and/or by providing a service that other people want.
Don't forget that without strong intellectual property laws, the GPL would not exist
Ha! Without strong intellectual "property" laws, the GPL would not need to exist. Evil corporation put some of our free code into their proprietary program? No problem, there are always employees who sympathise (or can be bribed) into giving us the source. No intellectual "property" laws, remember?
Patents serve a valuable purpose to spur development through economic incentives while ensuring ultimate constributions to the public domain.
Bah! The bargain that society makes is "Hey, show us your secret ideas (trade secrets) and we will make sure no one else can use it for seventeen years." In other words, to make sure that the market gets to operate efficiently and the everyone has to compete, we will enforce this anti-capitalist monopoly for you. Now, if everyone can already see how your gadget works, why should the market hinder competition?
Think trade-secret <--> patents and the whole capitalist/laissez-faire justification for patents becomes clear. Keep in mind that the Coca-Cola formula is a trade secret that has never been revealed for a century.
Oh, come one! You say no legally guaranteed "right to profit", so why do you think you should have a legally guaranteed "right to restrict"? Anything you do in public is free and out there, you don't own it. If someone else sees you and starts doing the same thing, why do you have a right to whine? You did get the "right of first use" -- since you already have your product on the market, but competitors who see you will take time to re-tool etc.
And then, guess what? You have to compete! Because those others might make a better widget based on your widget. This is competition, boy, no time to rest on your ass for the seventeen years of a patent's life, you gotta move, move, move!!!
Now that's what I call laissez-faire capitalism. No whiny crying to the Government, "Mommy! He's imitating me!"
The total lack of patents would put the indivual inventor out of business, because he/she would never be able to compete with large corporations.
This is not true, of course. Patents are only used in portfolios as a defense/attack weapon. As my patent attorney used to say, "Patents are not a license to produce; they are a means to forbid production."
Sure, every now and then we hear these feel-good stories like that guy who invented the intermittent windshield wiper and then battled GM for decades before finally winning a big settlement. But how many individual inventors are there who have been able to sue the giant company who stole the idea? Patents are in fact a way that Giant Company Inc. can make sure that you, an upstart inventor, can never make a dime because you can hardly pick your nose without violating a patent.
As a staunch supporter of the small business and individual entrepreneur, I say patents suck and we should toss them all out.
Well, that's being charitable. This comment is indicative:
"He should turn it in to his professor, get his grade -- and then they both should burn it."
This is not some term paper; it's a PhD dissertation, i.e. original research. (The question about whether or not PhD dissertations are always original or are research is a separate discussion.) The whole point of research is to add to the store of knowledge we possess. Furthermore, the use of the word burn is a little too chillingly reminiscent of Fahrenheit 451.
Another way of looking at it is that this is yet another attempt by the government to oppress us by suppressing impression. However I have a pragmatic view: all this information needs to be public anyway. (If I want to dig a ditch, wouldn't the owners of underground fiber want me to know where it is?) We can never have absolute security if we don't want to become a police state. So instead of screaming hysterically about the sky falling, why don't we think about the underlying causes of terrorism? Why would someone go to all this effort to hurt us? These are not script kiddies.
Disclaimer: I too have one of these here PhD dissertations under my belt. And I'm sure every dissertation has at some point been called tedious and uninteresting; I know mine has!
The ASK-21 (1) sailplane shown in the sim photos is a fiberglass younger brother of the Schleicher Ka-7 (2) (proven steel tube & fabric technology).
Well, fiberglass-gelcoat is also a proven technology, we've been doing it for half a century!
The ASK-21 is larger and heavier than the Ka-7, and of course it has better performance. I have flown both -- my first glider solo was in an ASK-21, but I last flew a Ka-7 about 21 years ago so my memory may be faulty. In any case, I don't see any way to call an ASK-21 the "younger brother" of the Ka-7!
In the US (and elsewhere, I suspect), the easiest way to get into soaring is to join a club. No need to buy a glider before you know that you're actually going to like it, and before you know what kind of flying you want to do. Most people would buy a single-seat glider, because it will perform better than a two-seat glider (just about all of which are trainers). However it's hard to take your mother for a joy-ride in a single-seater!
I wouldn't sweat too much if my engine went out at 7,500 AGL (above the ground) -- you should always have a landing site picked out, and from 7,500 you have quite a large area to choose from. A glide ratio of 10:1 is a reasonable assumption for a non-sailplane, so from 7,500 you can glide 15 miles. (However there are some situations -- like losing one engine of a twin on take-off -- that can be quite exciting.)
I'd worry more about the other systems on the airplane: for example, the vacuum pump. It's quite common to fly in weather (IMC, Instrument Meteorological Conditions) with vacuum-driven AI (attitude indicator, the artificial horizon) and one engine-driven vacuum pump. If that pump fails (not uncommon) in IMC, well... it's something pilots do practice (it's called "partial panel") but practicing is one thing, actually flying a partial-panel approach in the clouds when it's dark and bumpy is another. (I hope I never have to do that.) Redundancy is what you pay for. Dual electrical systems, dual vacuum pumps (or preferably no vacuum-driven instruments), HSI instead of AI, approach-certified GPS (preferably two), and now glass cockpits and laser-ring gyros instead of the mechanical ones -- that's what runs into serious money. Avionics can cost as much (or more) than the engine or the airframe.
SCO's FUD is in fact trying to do exactly what you are trying to: tar Linux as a whole by tying it to supposed misbehaviour on IBM's part. If I'm J. Random Hacker working on the linux kernel, what do I care about whether or not IBM is or isn't guilty? My only concern is: "Person X says there's suspect code? Fine, tell me what it is and we'll remove it." No kernel hackers are being accused of anything, only IBM. In your terms, Linux did not steal a car; it may have been given a stolen car by someone. If I'm given (or buy) stolen property, I'm not liable; all I have to do is give the stolen property back.
I don't think anyone in the kernel hacker community cares a lot about whether or not SCO and/or IBM burn in hell or crush each other or enter Valhalla; it's interesting gossip and speculation, sure! But the work will go on.
The fact is,
One thing we know for certain is that there's a severe shortage of facts in this case. As long as SCO doesn't actually give us any facts, they're full of shit, regardless of whether or not the "Slashdot crowd" bury their heads in the sand. There is no "Slashdot crowd;" there are only individuals who post their opinions on Slashdot.
Just because some lines are from the "original" AT&T code doesn't mean it's suspect! Remember the BSDi/AT&T judgment: all code in BSD, including code that originated at Bell Labs, is free. She says
In my case, I saw Unix System V, version 4.1. Incidentally, this particular code is from the early 1980s, and hence predates Linus Torvalds' first Linux code.
Considering the amount of BSD code that's in SVR4, I think it unlikely there's any
problem there.
One thing I found incredibly annoying is her style -- why does she want to sould like a bimbo? Random crap about MIT and Stanford, and many!!! exclamation!!! points!!!!!!
Looks like we're rediscovering C News with NNTP... moderated newsgroups are now called "channels" and we have security/authentication built-in with perhaps standard markup like HTML. (Usenet article propagation follows a spanning tree of the entire network, which to a first order approximation is log time.)
I think it's about time! I always thought Usenet in the good old days (late 80s and early 90s) was a much better way than the web to chat/browse/build digital communities. Looks like this has the potential for the same, without the significant disk space and sysadmin resources that Usenet requires.
If Enron BS (good name!) claimed that software or a service that a customer paid for didn't have the features they claimed it did, then it's a plain case of fraud; if they make claims about nonexistent features in the software in ads, then it's deceptive advertising. In either case, it's already illegal and the FTC should deal with it.
Why should vaporware -- features that the next version will have, and which will be released "any day now" -- be more illegal than any sort of forecast? Of course it would be nice if vaporware didn't exist -- I believe vaporware is unethical -- but it would be really hard to come up with a definition of vaporware that's good enough to base a law on.
That said, the article says
"
If they succeed in convicting the Enron developers," said an executive at a major computer hardware manufacturer who was never employed by Enron but who had direct knowledge of its systems, "anyone in Silicon Valley can be sent to jail."
This is complete bullshit, nothing more than FUD. If I as a developer lie about the features of the software I wrote, that doesn't absolve the company -- unless they can prove a vast conspiracy among the developers and the testers. Similarly if my employer advertises nonexistent features, the developers can't be blamed. If a GM car doesn't actually deliver on its claimed fuel efficiency, how is Joe Engineer responsible?
Doing a google search on Laura DiDio, I found this:
Laura DiDio is an analyst covering Windows 2000 and third-party products and utilities.
Laura comes to Giga after having spent 12 years covering the networking industry as a reporter in the high-tech trade press. She was most recently at Computerworld where she was the senior editor, networking, from 1994 to 1998. Prior to that, she held similar positions at LAN Times, Network World, Internet Week (formerly Communications Week) and Digital Review. She also worked as an on-camera investigative reporter for CNN and Channel 11 News in Minneapolis, Minn. Her investigative reports have also appeared in such publications as the Minneapolis Star and Tribune and The Village Voice.
Laura earned a B.A. in communications with a minor in French at Fordham University.
I'm not sure I'd find her opinions about source code credible.
That's the gist of it. It's easier in a small company, of course -- if the hacker knows the CEO personally it's much easier to get the sign-off. You can actually make the case that it's an excellent marketing statement, and they're more likely to be able to hire the good hackers if they seem aware of hackers' sensibilities. In a large company it's a pain in the ass -- the legal dept. gets involved and they really don't like unfamiliar situations. In their view, the company gets nothing from it; why should they risk any liability, however small?
Even code you write on your own time -- you don't want the company to later be able to claim that you used their "intellectual property" -- your general knowledge of projects at work -- while writing that code. Perhaps I'm just paranoid, but I make sure to either get my free software activities acknowledged in writing before I accept a job, or not work on free projects that may be related to the stuff I do for hire.
But most important, don't do it without actual legally binding authorisation from your employer (not just your boss). It's critically important that all the free software out there really is safe for everyone to use.
Surveyors don't use "real-time" GPS like navigators do -- they save the raw data from the satellites and do lots of post-processing to get millimetre accuracy (or do I mean precision?). It's called differential GPS:
Differential correction can reduce the effects of errors that are common to both base and roving receivers. It cannot correct for multi-path or receiver error (measurement noise) because those errors are unique to the roving receiver.
...
The base and roving receivers collect GPS data at the same time from the same satellites. The base station is normally set up to track all satellites in view, insuring that it can communicate with the 4 satellites that the roving receiver uses to compute positions. With real-time differential GPS (DGPS) the corrections are transmitted from the base to the rover via radio link. With post-processed DGPS, the rover and base files are processed on computer by the differential correction software. Corrections are applied to the rover file during processing.
Incidentally, the FAA's intention for the future of air navigation is also a form of real-time signal correction -- LAAS/WAAS (Local/Wide Area Augmentation System) has a GPS receiver at the airport as the "base" and the airplane is the "rover." The base station calculates corrections for each satellite's signal and sends them to the airplane (possibly via a geostationary satellite), which applies the correction to the received signals (before solving the equations for position -- the corrections must be done before since each satellite has a different error). The accuracy of this system is good enough for "precision approaches" (weather around 100' ceiling and half-mile visibility, i.e. really crappy) an accuracy of inches.
Re:Conundrum with open source?
on
SCO SCO SCO!
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· Score: 1
Many people have been saying this is a weakness of free software:
since the programs have many contributors, it is difficult to be sure that the final product does not include unauthorized proprietary code.
So since I'm not allowed to look at (say) Microsoft's source code, how can I be sure Microsoft didn't "steal" code from someone?
Slashdot Mirror
Certainly a rogue court can tell anyone to do anything. Other than that, this claim of yours doesn't hold water. If I buy stolen property in good faith, I cannot be held liable for the crime. The most I can be made to do is to return the stolen property. I hope no one is daft enough to suggest that the billions and billions of Linux users out there all colluded with IBM to do SCO out of their hard-earned intellectual "property."
In this case, the analogue of "returning the stolen property" is to rip out the offending source code (80 lines of it or whatever they claim today -- if in fact they claim there was a violation of copyright, which is not clear) from the kernel and reimplement it -- perhaps a day's work.
I'm not sure in what sense you mean "analogous" here. I meant it in the sense of: a company has a secret (a design for a gizmo, a formula for a fizzy drink, whatever). The decision they have to make is: should we keep it a secret (and run the risk it might get out and we lose our advantage) or should we get a patent and get seventeen years of guaranteed exclusivity followed by the idea going into the public domain?
Coca-Cola took the first approach, and it has worked for them; they got much more than seventeen years of exclusivity (regardless of whether or not Pepsi has come up with an more-or-less equivalent formula!). Bell Labs decided to get a patent on the transistor, since seventeen years of exclusivity seemed a better bet than hoping it wouldn't leak out or be independently invented.
Sorry, I don't buy this at all. Why do you feel this is so? Well, I don't know if we have really decided this. I feel that we have only decided this in name; we pay lip service to this ideal but our laws just favor the big established companies regardless. We feature feel-good anecdotes of entrepreneurs and creative geniuses on TV, but it ends there. You can come up with a super-duper revolutionary shaving device, but Gilette and Schick will steal your idea and beat you into the ground because they have the high-powered lawyers. The best you should hope for is a settlement that will probably cover your legal bills.Patents can only work with a ruthless PTO, and probably with some reforms like the ones suggested here: make them assigned to a person only (not a company) and non-transferable. Or maybe some other reforms we haven't thougth of just yet.
Saying "no copyright would basically turn the software world into a BSD style license" is an empty statement -- in a world with no copyright a license is meaningless.
If there were no copyright law, any source code would leak out. Evil Corporation Inc. incorporates "our" free code into their process? No problem; sooner or later there would be employees that are either disgruntled or sympathetic to The Cause; their code would leak out and become public knowledge. Since there is no copyright law, there is no culpability for any free software hacker who uses this code, regardless of whether or not the employee violated an NDA or broke any laws while leaking the code.
The GPL plays a role in free software, but only because of the way our present copright law is written. Remove copyright and you remove the necessity for the GPL. Remember that in the "good ol' days" that RMS talks about at MIT, there effectively was no copyright; customers could get whatever source code they wanted, and would contribute any improvements back to the manufacturer and the user community. It was only because some manufacturer (of a printer?) refused to divulge the source that RMS got launched on Gnu.
Note: nowhere in this article is there any claim or statement about whether or not Gnu and/or RMS are good or evil; just some inferences and history.
Making patents individually held may be a solution, but my view is that (in spite of a few heart-warming anecdotes) patents hurt the little guy.
Spouting Netflix IPO numbers is meaningless -- that just means some people with money (who may or may not be idiots) were willing to drive the stock price up for some lucky sods.
Yes, in fact some ideas are only worth an "at will" job paying $50,000 p.a. These are simple ideas that competent marketers and developers are expected to come up with. In fact, that is my job: I come up with a couple of these little ideas every year, and my employer pays me well. Yes, they can fire me at any time; but I can quit any time too. (Occasionally the lawyer comes by to try and convince me to file a patent for something; I refuse politely, claiming prior art and/or the "competent practitioner" clause.) Financially, it's a much better life than an independent inventor could reasonably hope for. On my own time I can be a true hacker: come up with half-brained ideas, some of which take shape in free software, others in little doohickeys to latch canopies in radio-controlled sailplanes.
This model does not apply to software, of course. You might say that it's because the "time to re-tool" advantage of being first to market is gone. No, in fact it's because software is just math made concrete, and math, like other "laws of nature," cannot be patented. (You can copyright your expression of the law or theorem, but not the law or theorem itself. No RSA patent, no LZW patent; no MP3 patent. No one can copy your code without your permission, but they can derive their own expressions of the law or theorem, i.e. write an MP3 encoder and a GIF reader.) Megabucks are only made by building a better widget, and/or by providing a service that other people want.
Think trade-secret <--> patents and the whole capitalist/laissez-faire justification for patents becomes clear. Keep in mind that the Coca-Cola formula is a trade secret that has never been revealed for a century.
And then, guess what? You have to compete! Because those others might make a better widget based on your widget. This is competition, boy, no time to rest on your ass for the seventeen years of a patent's life, you gotta move, move, move!!!
Now that's what I call laissez-faire capitalism. No whiny crying to the Government, "Mommy! He's imitating me!"
Sure, every now and then we hear these feel-good stories like that guy who invented the intermittent windshield wiper and then battled GM for decades before finally winning a big settlement. But how many individual inventors are there who have been able to sue the giant company who stole the idea? Patents are in fact a way that Giant Company Inc. can make sure that you, an upstart inventor, can never make a dime because you can hardly pick your nose without violating a patent.
As a staunch supporter of the small business and individual entrepreneur, I say patents suck and we should toss them all out.
Another way of looking at it is that this is yet another attempt by the government to oppress us by suppressing impression. However I have a pragmatic view: all this information needs to be public anyway. (If I want to dig a ditch, wouldn't the owners of underground fiber want me to know where it is?) We can never have absolute security if we don't want to become a police state. So instead of screaming hysterically about the sky falling, why don't we think about the underlying causes of terrorism? Why would someone go to all this effort to hurt us? These are not script kiddies.
Disclaimer: I too have one of these here PhD dissertations under my belt. And I'm sure every dissertation has at some point been called tedious and uninteresting; I know mine has!
The ASK-21 is larger and heavier than the Ka-7, and of course it has better performance. I have flown both -- my first glider solo was in an ASK-21, but I last flew a Ka-7 about 21 years ago so my memory may be faulty. In any case, I don't see any way to call an ASK-21 the "younger brother" of the Ka-7!
In the US (and elsewhere, I suspect), the easiest way to get into soaring is to join a club. No need to buy a glider before you know that you're actually going to like it, and before you know what kind of flying you want to do. Most people would buy a single-seat glider, because it will perform better than a two-seat glider (just about all of which are trainers). However it's hard to take your mother for a joy-ride in a single-seater!
I'd worry more about the other systems on the airplane: for example, the vacuum pump. It's quite common to fly in weather (IMC, Instrument Meteorological Conditions) with vacuum-driven AI (attitude indicator, the artificial horizon) and one engine-driven vacuum pump. If that pump fails (not uncommon) in IMC, well... it's something pilots do practice (it's called "partial panel") but practicing is one thing, actually flying a partial-panel approach in the clouds when it's dark and bumpy is another. (I hope I never have to do that.) Redundancy is what you pay for. Dual electrical systems, dual vacuum pumps (or preferably no vacuum-driven instruments), HSI instead of AI, approach-certified GPS (preferably two), and now glass cockpits and laser-ring gyros instead of the mechanical ones -- that's what runs into serious money. Avionics can cost as much (or more) than the engine or the airframe.
Sheesh!
Judgment, settlement. Yes there's a difference, but why should non-lawyers care?
I don't think anyone in the kernel hacker community cares a lot about whether or not SCO and/or IBM burn in hell or crush each other or enter Valhalla; it's interesting gossip and speculation, sure! But the work will go on.
One thing we know for certain is that there's a severe shortage of facts in this case. As long as SCO doesn't actually give us any facts, they're full of shit, regardless of whether or not the "Slashdot crowd" bury their heads in the sand. There is no "Slashdot crowd;" there are only individuals who post their opinions on Slashdot.One thing I found incredibly annoying is her style -- why does she want to sould like a bimbo? Random crap about MIT and Stanford, and many!!! exclamation!!! points!!!!!!
I think it's about time! I always thought Usenet in the good old days (late 80s and early 90s) was a much better way than the web to chat/browse/build digital communities. Looks like this has the potential for the same, without the significant disk space and sysadmin resources that Usenet requires.
Why should vaporware -- features that the next version will have, and which will be released "any day now" -- be more illegal than any sort of forecast? Of course it would be nice if vaporware didn't exist -- I believe vaporware is unethical -- but it would be really hard to come up with a definition of vaporware that's good enough to base a law on.
That said, the article says
This is complete bullshit, nothing more than FUD. If I as a developer lie about the features of the software I wrote, that doesn't absolve the company -- unless they can prove a vast conspiracy among the developers and the testers. Similarly if my employer advertises nonexistent features, the developers can't be blamed. If a GM car doesn't actually deliver on its claimed fuel efficiency, how is Joe Engineer responsible?Even code you write on your own time -- you don't want the company to later be able to claim that you used their "intellectual property" -- your general knowledge of projects at work -- while writing that code. Perhaps I'm just paranoid, but I make sure to either get my free software activities acknowledged in writing before I accept a job, or not work on free projects that may be related to the stuff I do for hire.
But most important, don't do it without actual legally binding authorisation from your employer (not just your boss). It's critically important that all the free software out there really is safe for everyone to use.
In other words: bullshit.