Samba needs 25 million for compatibility testing, tight integration with OpenLDAP, a nice hand-holding GUI install, slick GUI to manage users, groups, printers, etc like Win2K networks, and Active Directory replacement (hence the OpenLDAP integration request).
Agreed that 500-600 million is nothing for Microsoft, but what IF they took the money and used it to fund FLOSS. Assume the govts weasel 50% off the top! That leaves 250-300 million for FLOSS.
This is where the real damage to MS could occur, if the penalty cash is dished out to the right FLOSS projects that threatens MS directly.
Proposed split based on what I think would help FLOSS and hurt MS:
50million for the Linux Kernel to get their security certifications finished for govt usage, driver improvements to the kernel, SE-Linux integration, whatever else Linus wants
50million for Apache Webserver, Tomcat, and other Apache-based projects that really eat into IIS market share
25million for OpenOffice with a focus on compatibility with MS Office.
25million for GNOME & KDE, split evenly on whatever they want, but with a preference on creating a Win2k-style desktop emulator so the riff-raff can change their screensavers like before
10million for plug-ins/features into Eclipse IDE that help emulate the best features of Visual Studio, and better integration of non-Java languages like Perl, PHP, C#/Mono, etc
10million on Bitkeeper replacement and/or Subversion to get great source code control mgmt, tied into Eclipse IDE enhancements above
10million on modeling tools for code or databases like SQL Navigator, or Rational Rose
10million for PHP on whatever they think they need
10million for Wine to get us closer to running lots of apps on non-MS Operating systems
10Million for ***BSD Flavors [Just because they have created so much with so little:) ]
10million for RMS and GNU with the promise he wont complain about everyone else's cash allotment
AND 25million for an investment fund that donates 50% of the yearly profits as grants to future promising FLOSS projects
You might want to check out multi-sync: http://multisync.sourceforge.net/
MultiSync is a GPL's modular program to synchronize calendars, addressbooks and other PIM data between programs on your computer and other computers, mobile devices, PDAs or cell phones. MultiSync works on any Gnome platform, such as Linux.
Its a universal gateway with plug-ins so that you can go from any individual plug-in to one of the other plug-ins, such as: Ximian(Novell) Evolution SyncML (http://www.openmobilealliance.org/syncml/introduc tion.html) LDAP Palm Windows CE/Pocket PC Opie Zaurus
It seems to be actively maintained (unlike 100s of other PDA sync initiatives and apps).
Consider looking at at www.dyndns.org's Mailhop package where they are the MX server of record (with port 25 open) for all your mail and then they redirect all your email traffic to your non-standard port, say 2525.
Then use a NAT/IP-Masquerading/firewall setup on your box (iptables) to redirect port 2525 to port 25 for any incoming smtp traffic.
This method has the benefit of having two available ports for smtp. Port 25 for everyone behind the NAT/IP-Masquerading/firewall box and Port 2525 for all those on the outside. This way ALL other services and clients (behind the firewall) use the std port 25 for their smtp settings and you dont have to change any Postfix configurations.
By adding these two lines to my/etc/rc.d/rc.firewall-2.4 iptables script, it creates the port redirection.
echo " Creating SMTP(Mail) Port Redirect from port 2525 to port 25" iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 2525 -j DNAT --to 192.168.0.1:25
Also be advised that Postfix/RH9 comes with the config file locked down to receive only smtp traffic from localhost. You need to change the following settings to something a little less restrictive,but hopefully not too permissive as to become an open relay.
Config File:/etc/postfix/main.cf inet_interfaces = all mynetworks_style = subnet ----
After I set the redirect up, I ordered DynDNS.org's mailhop package. Well a half-hour later after requesting/paying for it, I was receiving email on port 2525.
To be fair, I already started pointing my purchased-elsewhere-domain at their DNS servers a few days previously, and DNS properly propagated in that time frame. So perhaps its much simpler if you let them manage both domain and mailer-relay.
Total Cost = $60 (25/Custom DNS + 40/Mailhop Package - 5/Discount for both packages)
Money well-spent in my opinion! Its been about two-three months with NO hiccups or lost mail that I have known about.
Simple Announcement on the page is: On January 15th, 2004, Speak Freely will be discontinued and removed from this Web site. Existing users may continue to use the program as long as they wish, but no further releases will be forthcoming. For details and the reasons why Speak Freely is being discontinued, please see the full end of life announcement.
Full annoucement at: http://www.fourmilab.ch/speakfree/eol/
From what I recollect, its an object oriented language that works with Lego motors. Create your own robot...then show them how to program whichever part you want to move. Then let them modify the objects and the order in which they operate.
When the kids go too far and the robot "crashes" off the desk, teach them about testing, and re-testing.
I'd skip the requisite "project/use case proposal to clueless mgmt" lesson until they become teenagers and are already jaded.:)
Not usually into dragging people into court at the first sign of trouble, but since the RIAA/DMCA people sue at the drop of a hat, why not us?
First off, I am sure there is a spamming charge somewhere in there, since it was unsolicited communications, a commercial messgage, etc, etc.
Secondly, they are sending legal threats WITHOUT even looking at it for more than 5 secs, they are wasting your time, AND you could argue that you had to discuss it with your lawyer the next time you were talking to him.
Fairly minor individual damages, AGREED, but with the right kind of class action lawyer (who'd say cap his fees at X dollars and give the rest to one of the free/open software foundations), we can make some real money for FOSS.
I wasnt in the exact same situation, but I did have the same feelings of being vastly underpaid, lots of seniority, since I started there fresh out of school and stayed far longer than any of my school friends stayed in their first jobs.
I did ask for a big bump in a polite letter, explaining my many reasons and gave them two months to "find the cash" at my next scheduled review period. The whole letter was fairly well-received with no hard feelings and they liked how I did it.
That being said...two months later THEY FORGOT and gave me the pro-forma 2% raise w/o an explanation!!!!! When I flipped out, they couldnt complain "since they had their chance", and I was able to legitamitely threaten to walk w/o problems, since they completely forgot to address my request or didnt take it seriously.
I gave them enough rope to hang themselves with and even upper mgmt agreed I had a right to feel angry. When they realized I tried to work with them, and they completely ignored me, they knew they had better come up with a better # FAST.
I didnt get the 30% bump I was hoping for....but 20% was a nice consolation prize. Also HAD I tried to walk, there wouldnt have been any hard feelings about "squeezing them" for a counter-offer, since I gave them their shot early.
I cant believe with all the other current mandates the FBI/Federal Law Enforcement has, that this ranks anywhere near a top priority. I can think of 10 more important ones right off the top of my head.
International Terrorism (a la Bin Laden) Domestic Terrorism (Tim McVey) Black Hat Hacking Intl Corporate Espionage Border Security Drugs (you can argue for legalization, but until then drugs is a major violent crime issue) Organized Crime (of all intl & domestic ethnicities) Corporate Malfeasance (Enron, Tyco, etc) Political Campaign Monitoring Catholic Church Criminal Indictments for Pedophilia and subsequent coverups(not happening at a federal level yet, but any other organization that large would have been targeted)
Check out this google cache of CNN: http://216.239.37.100/search?q=cache:Lo238_0 fIlkJ: www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/Movies/04/15/knight.rider.ap/+cnn+knight+rider+movie&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
I bought a micro-ATX Book PC and had to replace the power supply 3 times. They are notorious for putting in cheap@ss power supplies that simply burn out for a couple different reasons.
The 3rd time I simply extracted the motherboard and everything else to another full size case with a power supply with 2-3 times the capacity.
Check out http://groups.msn.com/BOOKPC/powersupply.msnw for more info.
My company is just about to implement a full UTF8 i18n web development environment, so I have fought a lot of the wars!!
1. Do a hard-line review on every underlying application layer and/or middleware for UTF8 compatibility. We discovered the dB was UTF8 compliant, but the local client dB drivers had issues sometimes. Do individual tests with all types of UTF8 data. 2. Always test with some multi-byte charsets, like Chinese or Japanese, whichever one you might support soonest. Using multi-byte Japanese helped flush out some problems that might have killed us later. It also helps flush out applications that say they are UTF8, but wind up doing some UTF8->ISO8859->UTF8 conversions. You may never implement Japanese/Chinese/etc, but you will definitely be UTF8 compliant. 3. Arial Unicode MS is a great UTF8 font which has all sorts of languages. Other Unicode fonts may only have European languages. Warning: approx 22MB in size. Yes, it is MS Windows centric, but if you are going to pass around "please translate this" documents, everyone using Arial Unicode MS will pay major dividends later. You wont get translations in other random charsets to convert (or discover during testing) 4. If you can, try to store translations in a database and retrieve them as needed. If all translations are in a database, its easily transferable to your next development environment, without having to parse through gobs and gobs of dictionary/translation files. If you are worried about performance of hitting the dB all the time, do a nightly "pre-processing" of "static" content and partially generate each languages content pages in html. 4a. As for translation documents, I have built Excel spreadsheets with columns for language name and translation. Using Excel, you can create SQL scripts that will insert the data into your dB. 5. Forget what I said about translation documents, and try to build interfaces into your code to update text on the web application for different languages. It will eliminate the document passing around, and someone can see the results of their translation pretty quickly. 6. If you HAVE to store data in another charset, always display as much UTF8 to the user, and only convert at the backend. We used a charset converter helper application (Chilkat Charset.Net) to devolve our UTF8 text to ISO8859 for one recalcitrant CRM 7. Be wary of the "Byte Order Mark" for UTF8 text files, "ï". Its a character triplet at the beginning of SOME UTF8 files. UTF8 compliant versions of Notepad save it, but dont display it. You can see it VI, but it may not look like it. Use of it is inconsistent, but you will run into it every so often. In our testing, we noticed IE liked to see it at the beginning of the HTML file for use when you have Auto-Select for Encoding in your IE client. (Even if you explicitly set charset to UTF8 in your meta tags)
Em@il me at ckmehta +at+ hotmail DOT com, if you have any embarrasing questions, you dont want to post.
Is FSF ever going to go for Damages? (& how mu
on
FSF Threatens GPL Lawsuit
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
For all the GPL violations that the FSF has ever gone to court/threaten to goto court, I have yet to see any damages.
Granted maybe its a good thing that when lawyer actually see what the GPL states, they fold like cheap suits.
BUT there should be costs to violate the GPL, if only as a deterrent. Otherwise people will try to get away with it and only come clean when FSF gets huffy and puffy and simply distribute the source code in question. Its like bank robbers stealing from a bank, getting caught, and only have to give back the money w/o penalties.
If the RIAA can get major damages out of college students for "sharing" mp3s with no business intent, then someone abusing GPL code should also be taken to the proverbial woodshed financially.
For those who worry that we will get "mercenary" lawsuits, offer to distribute all cash (minus reasonable expenses) to some worthy charity (other than the FSF).
All that being said...IF there are damage awards, how much do you ask for violating a free product's license. Your avg jury probably will simply say "The offending parties should post their code, but the original person didnt lose sales" and probably give squat.
I dont even presume to know a way to properly calculate damages, but I do think it shouldnt be discriminatory amongst popular projects like Linux kernel vs. little projects of the week. Hence the lil guys are even more likely to be screwed over. Maybe the % of GPL source code in the overall body of product source can be a factor, but also relevant functionality overall too.
I think RH, UnitedLinux(minus SCO, of course), any other commercialized distro, and Linus should sue SCO when they make claims that Linux source code is contaminated with their intellectual property.
This is a blatant attempt to scare potential customers of the distros, and/or impugns the reputations of the distros and Linus.
Even if SCO decides to settle with IBM (i.e. get bought out or bribed), they have opened themselves up to a case of libel, unless they can back it up with examples and proof. Their CEO alluded to exact code duplication and semi-obfuscted replicas of code.
Ok, np, show the code in question, and then we'll check some verifiable (repeat VERIFIABLE) code submittal logs of Linux and SCO. If by some miracle their logs, show an earlier submission...then the lkml community would probably yank the code immediately, and probably improve on it just to make a point.
Second of all, by not coughing up the examples, there might be a case for "failure to mitigate damages". Basic speak for "You cant say I did something to hurt you, wait forever, then tell me what I did wrong to wrack up increased "economic damages", when you could have told me sooner, and I would have cleaned up the issue and reduced your potential losses further.
Agreed on "Get a Financial Life" choice. Its especially writen for the young and financially uneducated. But even someone who atleast can claim some "financial acumen" like myself:), learnt a lot from it as well.
Its written without a lot of jargon and gives real world examples and general steps to start good discussions from which advisors you may talk to.
I felt so strongly about this book, that I was actually gonna post this as a separate comment upon reading the question, but I figured someone else might have mentioned it...hence the "amen" post.
Agreed, flash memory should be another line item. But with the programming & override capabilities, backups should also be included cuz you never know when you might need to restore to a "good" configuration after you program something which lets you fast forward thro pr0n, but also opens your automatic curtains:)
Maybe if we told people what we want, they might give it to us.
1. Fits in one hand 2. Real Physical Buttons (no touch screen) 3. Filled with codes for lots of units 4. USB connection to download new codes using USB Hard Drive spec (like Archos MP3 player) for Windows/Linux Compatibility 5. Learning/recording features from your collection of old/new remotes 6. Tivo/DVD friendly jog/shuttle buttons 7. Intuitive Layout (Yes..Holy Grail kinda request) 8. Macro Recording/Programming of button presses 9. Handles multiple sources (TV, Cable/Satellite, DVD/VCR, Tivo, Stereo/CD) 10. Config files to backup remote setup (thru USB interface) 11. Override/Reprogrammable Buttons 12. Battery door that DOESNT BREAK! 13. Sony-style of multi-function buttons (Sony used to have a grid of 12 buttons that could be changed by using a slider on the side that showed which device/function you were using for the twelve buttons. The slider would pull up/down a cheatsheet underneath the buttons that would would display the commands available in a viewable plastic window)
Is Sun going to Opteron a backdoor linux strategy in case hell freezes over and Sun decides to drop their Solaris all-together or straddle Solaris/Linux (again).
With Linus saying he really likes 64-bit strategy of Opteron vs. Itanic, perhaps they want to keep their options open. See these articles: http://slashdot.org/articles/03/02/25/0 11217.shtml ?tid=142 http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=7966
Slashdot Mirror
Can't believe I forgot Samba.
Samba needs 25 million for compatibility testing, tight integration with OpenLDAP, a nice hand-holding GUI install, slick GUI to manage users, groups, printers, etc like Win2K networks, and Active Directory replacement (hence the OpenLDAP integration request).
Agreed that 500-600 million is nothing for Microsoft, but what IF they took the money and used it to fund FLOSS. Assume the govts weasel 50% off the top! That leaves 250-300 million for FLOSS.
:) ]
This is where the real damage to MS could occur, if the penalty cash is dished out to the right FLOSS projects that threatens MS directly.
Proposed split based on what I think would help FLOSS and hurt MS:
50million for the Linux Kernel to get their security certifications finished for govt usage, driver improvements to the kernel, SE-Linux integration, whatever else Linus wants
50million for Apache Webserver, Tomcat, and other Apache-based projects that really eat into IIS market share
25million for OpenOffice with a focus on compatibility with MS Office.
25million for GNOME & KDE, split evenly on whatever they want, but with a preference on creating a Win2k-style desktop emulator so the riff-raff can change their screensavers like before
10million for plug-ins/features into Eclipse IDE that help emulate the best features of Visual Studio, and better integration of non-Java languages like Perl, PHP, C#/Mono, etc
10million on Bitkeeper replacement and/or Subversion to get great source code control mgmt, tied into Eclipse IDE enhancements above
10million on modeling tools for code or databases like SQL Navigator, or Rational Rose
10million for PHP on whatever they think they need
10million for Wine to get us closer to running lots of apps on non-MS Operating systems
10Million for ***BSD Flavors [Just because they have created so much with so little
10million for RMS and GNU with the promise he wont complain about everyone else's cash allotment
AND
25million for an investment fund that donates 50% of the yearly profits as grants to future promising FLOSS projects
You might want to check out multi-sync:
c tion.html)
http://multisync.sourceforge.net/
MultiSync is a GPL's modular program to synchronize calendars, addressbooks and other PIM data between programs on your computer and other computers, mobile devices, PDAs or cell phones. MultiSync works on any Gnome platform, such as Linux.
Its a universal gateway with plug-ins so that you can go from any individual plug-in to one of the other plug-ins, such as:
Ximian(Novell) Evolution
SyncML (http://www.openmobilealliance.org/syncml/introdu
LDAP
Palm
Windows CE/Pocket PC
Opie
Zaurus
It seems to be actively maintained (unlike 100s of other PDA sync initiatives and apps).
If we are gonna reference history...lets reference it right.
a nson.html
Its John Hanson, not Matthew Henson.
Checkout:
http://www.marshallhall.org/h
Secondly, this says he was the 3rd Pres of the U.S In Congress Assembled:
http://virtualology.com/uspresidents/
Consider looking at at www.dyndns.org's Mailhop package where they are the MX server of record (with port 25 open) for all your mail and then they redirect all your email traffic to your non-standard port, say 2525.
/etc/rc.d/rc.firewall-2.4 iptables script, it creates the port redirection.
/etc/postfix/main.cf
Then use a NAT/IP-Masquerading/firewall setup on your box (iptables) to redirect port 2525 to port 25 for any incoming smtp traffic.
This method has the benefit of having two available ports for smtp. Port 25 for everyone behind the NAT/IP-Masquerading/firewall box and Port 2525 for all those on the outside. This way ALL other services and clients (behind the firewall) use the std port 25 for their smtp settings and you dont have to change any Postfix configurations.
By adding these two lines to my
echo " Creating SMTP(Mail) Port Redirect from port 2525 to port 25"
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 2525 -j DNAT --to 192.168.0.1:25
Also be advised that Postfix/RH9 comes with the config file locked down to receive only smtp traffic from localhost. You need to change the following settings to something a little less restrictive,but hopefully not too permissive as to become an open relay.
Config File:
inet_interfaces = all
mynetworks_style = subnet
----
After I set the redirect up, I ordered DynDNS.org's mailhop package. Well a half-hour later after requesting/paying for it, I was receiving email on port 2525.
To be fair, I already started pointing my purchased-elsewhere-domain at their DNS servers a few days previously, and DNS properly propagated in that time frame. So perhaps its much simpler if you let them manage both domain and mailer-relay.
Total Cost = $60 (25/Custom DNS + 40/Mailhop Package - 5/Discount for both packages)
Money well-spent in my opinion! Its been about two-three months with NO hiccups or lost mail that I have known about.
These two services seem further ahead than HotPOP3 for downloading Hotmail Emails.
I personally use Hotwayd on my home linux box. Installation instructions were excellent and run w/o problems every since
Hotwayd: http://hotwayd.sourceforge.net/
Gotmail: http://www.nongnu.org/gotmail/
Simple Announcement on the page is:
On January 15th, 2004, Speak Freely will be discontinued and removed from this Web site. Existing users may continue to use the program as long as they wish, but no further releases will be forthcoming. For details and the reasons why Speak Freely is being discontinued, please see the full end of life announcement.
Full annoucement at:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/speakfree/eol/
From what I recollect, its an object oriented language that works with Lego motors. Create your own robot...then show them how to program whichever part you want to move. Then let them modify the objects and the order in which they operate.
:)
When the kids go too far and the robot "crashes" off the desk, teach them about testing, and re-testing.
I'd skip the requisite "project/use case proposal to clueless mgmt" lesson until they become teenagers and are already jaded.
Not usually into dragging people into court at the first sign of trouble, but since the RIAA/DMCA people sue at the drop of a hat, why not us?
First off, I am sure there is a spamming charge somewhere in there, since it was unsolicited communications, a commercial messgage, etc, etc.
Secondly, they are sending legal threats WITHOUT even looking at it for more than 5 secs, they are wasting your time, AND you could argue that you had to discuss it with your lawyer the next time you were talking to him.
Fairly minor individual damages, AGREED, but with the right kind of class action lawyer (who'd say cap his fees at X dollars and give the rest to one of the free/open software foundations), we can make some real money for FOSS.
I wasnt in the exact same situation, but I did have the same feelings of being vastly underpaid, lots of seniority, since I started there fresh out of school and stayed far longer than any of my school friends stayed in their first jobs.
I did ask for a big bump in a polite letter, explaining my many reasons and gave them two months to "find the cash" at my next scheduled review period. The whole letter was fairly well-received with no hard feelings and they liked how I did it.
That being said...two months later THEY FORGOT and gave me the pro-forma 2% raise w/o an explanation!!!!! When I flipped out, they couldnt complain "since they had their chance", and I was able to legitamitely threaten to walk w/o problems, since they completely forgot to address my request or didnt take it seriously.
I gave them enough rope to hang themselves with and even upper mgmt agreed I had a right to feel angry. When they realized I tried to work with them, and they completely ignored me, they knew they had better come up with a better # FAST.
I didnt get the 30% bump I was hoping for....but 20% was a nice consolation prize. Also HAD I tried to walk, there wouldnt have been any hard feelings about "squeezing them" for a counter-offer, since I gave them their shot early.
I cant believe with all the other current mandates the FBI/Federal Law Enforcement has, that this ranks anywhere near a top priority. I can think of 10 more important ones right off the top of my head.
International Terrorism (a la Bin Laden)
Domestic Terrorism (Tim McVey)
Black Hat Hacking
Intl Corporate Espionage
Border Security
Drugs (you can argue for legalization, but until then drugs is a major violent crime issue)
Organized Crime (of all intl & domestic ethnicities)
Corporate Malfeasance (Enron, Tyco, etc)
Political Campaign Monitoring
Catholic Church Criminal Indictments for Pedophilia and subsequent coverups(not happening at a federal level yet, but any other organization that large would have been targeted)
Check out this google cache of CNN:0 fIlkJ: www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/Movies/04/15/knight.rider .ap/+cnn+knight+rider+movie&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
http://216.239.37.100/search?q=cache:Lo238_
I bought a micro-ATX Book PC and had to replace the power supply 3 times. They are notorious for putting in cheap@ss power supplies that simply burn out for a couple different reasons.
The 3rd time I simply extracted the motherboard and everything else to another full size case with a power supply with 2-3 times the capacity.
Check out http://groups.msn.com/BOOKPC/powersupply.msnw for more info.
My company is just about to implement a full UTF8 i18n web development environment, so I have fought a lot of the wars!!
1. Do a hard-line review on every underlying application layer and/or middleware for UTF8 compatibility. We discovered the dB was UTF8 compliant, but the local client dB drivers had issues sometimes. Do individual tests with all types of UTF8 data.
2. Always test with some multi-byte charsets, like Chinese or Japanese, whichever one you might support soonest. Using multi-byte Japanese helped flush out some problems that might have killed us later. It also helps flush out applications that say they are UTF8, but wind up doing some UTF8->ISO8859->UTF8 conversions. You may never implement Japanese/Chinese/etc, but you will definitely be UTF8 compliant.
3. Arial Unicode MS is a great UTF8 font which has all sorts of languages. Other Unicode fonts may only have European languages. Warning: approx 22MB in size. Yes, it is MS Windows centric, but if you are going to pass around "please translate this" documents, everyone using Arial Unicode MS will pay major dividends later. You wont get translations in other random charsets to convert (or discover during testing)
4. If you can, try to store translations in a database and retrieve them as needed. If all translations are in a database, its easily transferable to your next development environment, without having to parse through gobs and gobs of dictionary/translation files. If you are worried about performance of hitting the dB all the time, do a nightly "pre-processing" of "static" content and partially generate each languages content pages in html.
4a. As for translation documents, I have built Excel spreadsheets with columns for language name and translation. Using Excel, you can create SQL scripts that will insert the data into your dB.
5. Forget what I said about translation documents, and try to build interfaces into your code to update text on the web application for different languages. It will eliminate the document passing around, and someone can see the results of their translation pretty quickly.
6. If you HAVE to store data in another charset, always display as much UTF8 to the user, and only convert at the backend. We used a charset converter helper application (Chilkat Charset.Net) to devolve our UTF8 text to ISO8859 for one recalcitrant CRM
7. Be wary of the "Byte Order Mark" for UTF8 text files, "ï". Its a character triplet at the beginning of SOME UTF8 files. UTF8 compliant versions of Notepad save it, but dont display it. You can see it VI, but it may not look like it. Use of it is inconsistent, but you will run into it every so often. In our testing, we noticed IE liked to see it at the beginning of the HTML file for use when you have Auto-Select for Encoding in your IE client. (Even if you explicitly set charset to UTF8 in your meta tags)
Em@il me at ckmehta +at+ hotmail DOT com, if you have any embarrasing questions, you dont want to post.
For all the GPL violations that the FSF has ever gone to court/threaten to goto court, I have yet to see any damages.
Granted maybe its a good thing that when lawyer actually see what the GPL states, they fold like cheap suits.
BUT there should be costs to violate the GPL, if only as a deterrent. Otherwise people will try to get away with it and only come clean when FSF gets huffy and puffy and simply distribute the source code in question. Its like bank robbers stealing from a bank, getting caught, and only have to give back the money w/o penalties.
If the RIAA can get major damages out of college students for "sharing" mp3s with no business intent, then someone abusing GPL code should also be taken to the proverbial woodshed financially.
For those who worry that we will get "mercenary" lawsuits, offer to distribute all cash (minus reasonable expenses) to some worthy charity (other than the FSF).
All that being said...IF there are damage awards, how much do you ask for violating a free product's license. Your avg jury probably will simply say "The offending parties should post their code, but the original person didnt lose sales" and probably give squat.
I dont even presume to know a way to properly calculate damages, but I do think it shouldnt be discriminatory amongst popular projects like Linux kernel vs. little projects of the week. Hence the lil guys are even more likely to be screwed over. Maybe the % of GPL source code in the overall body of product source can be a factor, but also relevant functionality overall too.
Are the Navy and NSA working on the same kinda things? Or do we have more govt waste with duplication efforts?
And just to get more tweaky...is it also similar to the aborted Dept. of Defense changes that Theo de Raadt was gonna do on BSD?
NSA page: http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/
I think RH, UnitedLinux(minus SCO, of course), any other commercialized distro, and Linus should sue SCO when they make claims that Linux source code is contaminated with their intellectual property.
This is a blatant attempt to scare potential customers of the distros, and/or impugns the reputations of the distros and Linus.
Even if SCO decides to settle with IBM (i.e. get bought out or bribed), they have opened themselves up to a case of libel, unless they can back it up with examples and proof. Their CEO alluded to exact code duplication and semi-obfuscted replicas of code.
Ok, np, show the code in question, and then we'll check some verifiable (repeat VERIFIABLE) code submittal logs of Linux and SCO. If by some miracle their logs, show an earlier submission...then the lkml community would probably yank the code immediately, and probably improve on it just to make a point.
Second of all, by not coughing up the examples, there might be a case for "failure to mitigate damages". Basic speak for "You cant say I did something to hurt you, wait forever, then tell me what I did wrong to wrack up increased "economic damages", when you could have told me sooner, and I would have cleaned up the issue and reduced your potential losses further.
(IANAL^2)
TRS-80s were coded in "Microsoft Basic"
/me sees everyone start taking back their "OH I loved it" statements
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80
...remembering these and doing a "first post" on a Friday Nite totally qualify me for "Nerd of the Month" championships?
Agreed on "Get a Financial Life" choice. Its especially writen for the young and financially uneducated. But even someone who atleast can claim some "financial acumen" like myself :), learnt a lot from it as well.
Its written without a lot of jargon and gives real world examples and general steps to start good discussions from which advisors you may talk to.
I felt so strongly about this book, that I was actually gonna post this as a separate comment upon reading the question, but I figured someone else might have mentioned it...hence the "amen" post.
Agreed, flash memory should be another line item. But with the programming & override capabilities, backups should also be included cuz you never know when you might need to restore to a "good" configuration after you program something which lets you fast forward thro pr0n, but also opens your automatic curtains :)
Maybe if we told people what we want, they might give it to us.
1. Fits in one hand
2. Real Physical Buttons (no touch screen)
3. Filled with codes for lots of units
4. USB connection to download new codes using USB Hard Drive spec (like Archos MP3 player) for Windows/Linux Compatibility
5. Learning/recording features from your collection of old/new remotes
6. Tivo/DVD friendly jog/shuttle buttons
7. Intuitive Layout (Yes..Holy Grail kinda request)
8. Macro Recording/Programming of button presses
9. Handles multiple sources (TV, Cable/Satellite, DVD/VCR, Tivo, Stereo/CD)
10. Config files to backup remote setup (thru USB interface)
11. Override/Reprogrammable Buttons
12. Battery door that DOESNT BREAK!
13. Sony-style of multi-function buttons (Sony used to have a grid of 12 buttons that could be changed by using a slider on the side that showed which device/function you were using for the twelve buttons. The slider would pull up/down a cheatsheet underneath the buttons that would would display the commands available in a viewable plastic window)
Optional:
* Embedded Linux
Is Sun going to Opteron a backdoor linux strategy in case hell freezes over and Sun decides to drop their Solaris all-together or straddle Solaris/Linux (again).
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With Linus saying he really likes 64-bit strategy of Opteron vs. Itanic, perhaps they want to keep their options open. See these articles:
http://slashdot.org/articles/03/02/25/
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=796
Yeah..imagine where two months salary lasts for a lifetime of getting bitch slapped for being so stupid
Hopefully they dont screw over their customer base who installs this like they did when they dropped Interchange w/o much of an EOL policy
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See
http://www.icdevgroup.org/i/dev/forum/disp