I'll repeat what some others have said here before: We need a GPL test case, and since SCO is so unsympathetic as an antagonist, it's funny to watch. It keeps the lawyers busy, judges employed, PR agencies flooded, geeks changing OS's and all-in-all could be a part of the reason the GDP jumped the way it did.
My Points:
Linux won't go away, even if SCO wins. We can change the code in the kernel much faster than their lawyers can read it.
Even if Linux is driven from the commercial space, people will look for an alternative. Read: BSD and derivatives. I know Linux people don't like hearing this, but they're not the only open-source system out there.
SCO can't sue every home user out there - the script kiddie kids of some big co executive would get sued, and suddenly the glass tower in big co. says "We have changed corporate policy to prohibit the use of any and all SCO products." This action may work for DirectTV, but not SCO.
Now for my conspiracy theory:
As it turns out there is a contract between IBM and SCO to do this. Why? Because IBM needs a test case for GPL to cover its butt. It can't wait for a real competitor to show up, because that involves risk. If SCO wins, IBM buys 'em. Heck, it's likely a condition of being bought by IBM, win or lose.
As far as Microsoft's and Sun's involvement, I think it's just incidental. Sun did it to get a look under the kimono of SCO, have a laugh, and keep doing their own thing. Microsoft did it because it actually thought that SCO was on its side (duh - at whose expense in the UNIX market has NT gained market share?), with the end effect that it just sweetened the pot for IBM and SCO.
There are a couple of reasons why I think this:
IBM does not seem too worried by the suit.
It would have been tactically smart to enter discovery and get a preliminary injunction in the case that there actually was evidence that could stand scrutiny.
Nobody would hide behind the NDA-to-see-the-evidence scam - any lawyer would tell you this is the stupidest thing to do because in a civil trial, credibility is everything.
A simple cease-and-desist to the Linux community (or a white paper) describing the problem would solve this issue much more effectively - the market impact on SCO as a crusher of innovation in the UNIX market is not likely to be forgotten soon, and I would bet 90% of its customers also have Linux running in their data centers.
I think the former Iraqi minister of information can come up with better public arguments than the current PR team of SCO, and I really, really doubt that they could really be so stupid - they know this is a farce, and are having a laugh while they negotiate their transition contracts to IBM.
I would love to see the phone conversation transcripts between the SCO and IBM execs as they dream this stuff up.
I think the point everyone here is forgetting that it takes massive, massive whips to motivate people to try to move the massive stones used to build the pyramids over logs or friction-reducing sand-clay ramps or whatever.
For the record, I know they were officially recorded in the work site records (which are likely better than some cheap-ass contractors around here) as "volunteers" and even allowed to strike when their chewing gum made of gum-arabic, beeswax and honey was not delivered on time.
I am so tired of people claiming Sony as the only innovator on the market. Sharp has been making small systems for some time, I have had an older one, works fine with windows and linux, all-metal cases on some models, and the screens are orders of magnitude better than anything I have ever seen on a Sony. No, they don't do big volumes in the States. Did I mention they are substantially cheaper?
No integrated cdrw - buy an aftermarket one if you need one for the road
Yeah, outdated Pentium 3 technology. Read the reviews - it beats some of the castrated P4 notebooks you see (ok but not the P4M a.k.a. Centrino minus the wifi)
1 Ghz Transmeta chip (go rooting for the underdog)
Nifty sync-up thingy for another pc if this is not your main one
All the wifi goodies
$1500 or so
Probably runs Linux too
No, I don't work for sharp, and at times I think their service sucks (mainly the beef is with aftermarket parts for an older model), but at least I have confirmed that there is existent service, both warranty and non-warranty.
The Medellin Cartel in Colombia used an AS/400 bought through a US shell company to analyze phone records and identify moles in their organization. Since they are now officially "terrorist" (hm, bombing people in their own country did not count before according to the US' high moral standards), we need to ban the sales of all computers. Period. Terrorists can use them. And phones. And since trucks and horse-drawn carts can carry bombs not authorized by the US government, those are banned too. And TV's and Radios... hey... now we're Afghanistan!
The only people being hurt by the kind of rhetoric spewed by the neocons like Ashcroft and his cronies is the US people, the US economy, and US freedoms. Writing an OS is a pain in the a**, but it's not that hard, and people are kidding themselves when banning OSS in the US is going to make the world safer for them.
While having a solid development team (in terms of people that know and trust each other) is important, nothing, at least in my experience, derails a team faster than poor communications. Not just internal (which one would assume is good given the team is "built"), but external communications as well.
The foundations of this:
Clear expecations:
Expectations management
Captured (i.e. written) expectations
Checkpointing those expectations
Prioritizing the expectations - some are more important than others
Bi-directional, effective communications to and from the team
Status reports, both individual and summary
Short meetings, with agendas, and action items at the end
Avoiding unneccessary people at meetings
As far as possible a time horizon
It's so important for a development team to understand the general direction of what they are working on. That direction is outlined in the higher level project documentation, which comes from outside the team (with input from the architect, senior whatever, or someone else with a good idea of what is possible).
Change Management
Whether the policy is to control, embrace, or prevent change, it's coming. Get used to it.
The team (and better yet, the process) needs to have clearly stated what happens when a change needs to be accomodated.
When badly done, it affects team morale, no matter how good the team really is, and exacerbates the communications problems in general.
Now I know this sounds like a tirade on development processes and stuff (and I know many readers are thinking "I am not going to work like a civil servant"), the point is that a certain amount of process can bring certainty into a team. What takes certainty away is lack of communications - management overreacts to lack of visibility, with astounding detrimental effect;-)
UCITA is a civil law, not criminal, and it certainly doesn't define any new felonies as far as I know.
Duh. You're absolutely right. Now that I have a paper bag over my head, can someone explain how it's interpreted in the courts when a civil law is broken in pursuit of evidence in a criminal case? Is that evidence still admissible (as in, lying in a click-through)?
If I'm not mistaken in those two things, isn't all patch documentation illegal under the DMCA?
The Patch documentation is not so much, the patch actually documents the hole. One of the key issues here is that the fix in the patch exposes the original problem, and thus makes "circumvention of digital security" (haven't read it in a while, so going by memory here) possible. It's a question of whether all you need is to communicate the problem, or to document it. In the case of a source patch and docs, both are done, and it's lose-lose for the author, distributor, or whatever.
On another note - UCITA makes click-through license agreements legally binding in the US. So if law-enforcement cracked down on these people, they would have committed a felony as well. Court case should be interesting...
You're either "FOR copyright facism" or "AGAINST censorship." I think I'll choose against censorship.
I'm sorry - so you feel obligated to purchase that company's censored products then? How?
I don't see the need/obligation to be their customer. It's just nice to see someone standing for end-user rights, whoever they are, who cares what they do with it. You, as the end user, would have the right not to buy their product.
C'mon - this is not an issue. I will happily take the side of someone arguing for end-user rights. Full stop.
Just because a company who is willing to defend this right decides to sanitize films for overprotective parents does not make them less worthy of it. Further, the fact they make those sanitized films puts me under no obligation at all to be their customer.
We should be supporting them if we agree with the goal of making copyright law more sane, and protecting the right to use products that we purchased, not questioning what they do with that right.
The problem with this is that you still need a functioning computer (complete with functioning desktop environment) to connect with, and the network traffic VNC (or X, or Terminal Server) generate is rather hefty.
Also, 2 people connecting to the same VNC session compete with each other over screen control if the VNC host were a windows box.
On a Linux/UN*X box, user still need individual sessions to run on that, in addition to the client. I.e. now you have two environments per user to manage. Not so ideal I think;-)
One thing I thought about, it's not so hard. Most Internet Cafes I see these days make their machines reboot after you log off. Some of the better ones running windows just wipe the registry and everything associated with that guest account.
In the case of Linux, all you need to do at the base level is configure a desktop, and then save those settings somewhere. There are a couple of places to hook in a logout script that would wipe the users home directory, and re-apply the original settings. The win here is that you give your users what is essentially a fully functional system, and just wipe their changes later. No problem. If they really mess it up, Crtl-alt-backspace logs them out and restarts X. Done.
Login accounting (if you bill for time) can also be handled this way - somewhere in PAM you hook in and measure login and logout times, and send the results on logout. Just block the power buttons;-)
I saw some other people mentioning the Gnome vs. KDE religion, and saying stuff about using cheaper machines here or there. That's not so important, firstly, as long as you can make the system look reasonably welcoming. Heck, let the users themselves choose language and user interface at login time. Secondly, both the latest KDE and Gnome are approaching the memory footprint of Windows 2K and relatives, so running everything in 64 megs is not likely to provide anyone with an experience they will want to pay for.
In all honesty, this depends on what you're writing, and how you present the idea to the client.
Your client could be convinced to open-source something if:
What you're writing is not crucial to their business, i.e. a utility or something like that
The software is generic, and does not contain business logic or other domain expertise of your client
If this is useful enough to others (not direct competitors) that they would invest some time in improving what you wrote.
On the last point, they might agree if you can show the client that what you will be writing will indeed be picked up by some other people/companies. These other people would be interested in what you wrote because they would also need what you wrote, and the improvements made by others can provide a direct benefit to your client.
I realize that the logic is somewhat circular here. You have to prove it's good enough for everybody, and then everybody else would do something that's good enough for your client. Presumably then they would also need the technical expertise to actually use what you did.
The other problem is convincing the client that there is nothing proprietary to them in the software. If they hired you, it usually means they don't have enough in-house expertise to decide this, and their decision will be no.
If this gets open sourced, your name would be on it, and that means you would be on the hook to _everybody_. It does not absolve you of the responsibility of maintaining the software and defending your design decisions. In fact, it makes you more responsible.
I have worked with companies who thought about this long and hard, and typically did not do it. The exception was software that was end-of-life, with maintenance being cut, and the costs amortized. At that point, unless one of the points above applies, it can make sense because open-sourcing internal software is a hedge for maintenance provided several others start using it and work on it.
On the IP-side, the work you are doing is considered "work for hire." This means your client owns the IP, all of it. It's like being an architect: you draw plans, and if the client goes ahead with building the building they have full rights. Yes, your name is on it, yes, you have liability exposure, but they own the work, because they bought it from you. The only way to get around it is if the agreement between you and the company states clearly that you are giving them a license as opposed to performing work for hire. If you want to be really clear about what you're giving away, get a lawyer - your client likely has one too.
In all honesty, I don't think this tactic will prove to be useful for your company in the end. Here is why:
Obfuscation of source code is useless in the end. All one needs to do is run it though a source-code formatter, and there are lots.
The energy expended in developing the source code obfuscator (presumably this needs to be done in-house to be entirely effective) will need debugging not only of the obfuscator itself, but also the code it generates.
You can achieve the same effect simply by compiling the offending GPL code as a dll and using what you need, no legal problems, and less headache. Just publish the wrappers for it under the GPL, and you're effectively done. This is the design of the GPL anyways. Just don't make the dll export the functions you're overriding, and re-implement them in your own code. The result: less work, better code.
I can think of a few other, better ways, to use GPL code in commercial projects without pressing everyone's ethics button so hard. Better engineering, better PR, less work. Is that so hard? Sounds to me like the lawyer wants to have a few years steady work, and your CEO is too preoccupied with being evil.
Well, what did Linus do to trademark "Linux"? Presumably he faced the same issues.
Somenone else trademarked Linux and started sending out cease-and-desist letters to Linux companies. Some even paid, but I think Linus, and the EFF got together a challenge. That was pretty harsh though.
This just backs up the fact that Linux isn't innovative in any way.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flatery.
Think of Linux as the Japanese car of operating systems. What the Germans pioneered (ok, you may think differently, but they added a LOT to automotive designs in the last century), the Americans mass-produced, the Japanese took and reworked until their cars were perfect. Fine, they made sacrifices in durability (not a big three strong suit either) to sustain their markets, but few vehicles sold by the US big three compare in overall quality, fit, and finish.
The Germans were flattered by the Japanese, and the US auto industry dealt a black eye in its arrogance.
Anyone handling Linux developers with arrogance also incurs their wrath, or at least competetive spirit. Thanks for telling us what you want improved.
There is no exaggeration here. I have many friends that have travelled to countries abroad (especially Europe) and the best advice they gave me is to keep a Canadian flag visible at all times. The amount of contempt for Americans in Europe is beyond belief in some countries.
And here I was thinking "does every Canadian other than me talk with a twang while in Europe?" No wonder they didn't get my Newfie jokes.
Except that there is some overlap between cell antennas - if you have three and can gauge range by signal strength you can triangulate a position quite easily.
That's about as easy as it gets. Back in the CB days we used this find the bastards with the 200W transmitters who kept talking over the people who actually had something to say.
That's not necessarily correct. I recall some studies having been done that indicate that the way people pay attention is different when talking on the phone as opposed to talking personally. The study tracked how much time cell phone users spent looking at the road ahead of them.
Presumably this depends on the individual. The study also suggests that having a hands-free device does not really help this problem. I am all for banning cell phone use by drivers while a vehicle is in motion.
Yeah. I know - should have the url for that, but I don't:-)
Slashdot Mirror
I couldn't resist that ...
My Points:
Now for my conspiracy theory:
As it turns out there is a contract between IBM and SCO to do this. Why? Because IBM needs a test case for GPL to cover its butt. It can't wait for a real competitor to show up, because that involves risk. If SCO wins, IBM buys 'em. Heck, it's likely a condition of being bought by IBM, win or lose.
As far as Microsoft's and Sun's involvement, I think it's just incidental. Sun did it to get a look under the kimono of SCO, have a laugh, and keep doing their own thing. Microsoft did it because it actually thought that SCO was on its side (duh - at whose expense in the UNIX market has NT gained market share?), with the end effect that it just sweetened the pot for IBM and SCO.
There are a couple of reasons why I think this:
I would love to see the phone conversation transcripts between the SCO and IBM execs as they dream this stuff up.
I think the point everyone here is forgetting that it takes massive, massive whips to motivate people to try to move the massive stones used to build the pyramids over logs or friction-reducing sand-clay ramps or whatever.
For the record, I know they were officially recorded in the work site records (which are likely better than some cheap-ass contractors around here) as "volunteers" and even allowed to strike when their chewing gum made of gum-arabic, beeswax and honey was not delivered on time.
Ok, so you need gum, and whips.
Try these, just to compare:
Sharp UM Series
(runs Linux, http://www.people.virginia.edu/~hz5p/laptop.html)
If you need lighter, try the MM10
No, I don't work for sharp, and at times I think their service sucks (mainly the beef is with aftermarket parts for an older model), but at least I have confirmed that there is existent service, both warranty and non-warranty.
Bah, Sony.
The Medellin Cartel in Colombia used an AS/400 bought through a US shell company to analyze phone records and identify moles in their organization. Since they are now officially "terrorist" (hm, bombing people in their own country did not count before according to the US' high moral standards), we need to ban the sales of all computers. Period. Terrorists can use them. And phones. And since trucks and horse-drawn carts can carry bombs not authorized by the US government, those are banned too. ... hey ... now we're Afghanistan!
And TV's and Radios
The only people being hurt by the kind of rhetoric spewed by the neocons like Ashcroft and his cronies is the US people, the US economy, and US freedoms. Writing an OS is a pain in the a**, but it's not that hard, and people are kidding themselves when banning OSS in the US is going to make the world safer for them.
The foundations of this:
It's so important for a development team to understand the general direction of what they are working on. That direction is outlined in the higher level project documentation, which comes from outside the team (with input from the architect, senior whatever, or someone else with a good idea of what is possible).
Now I know this sounds like a tirade on development processes and stuff (and I know many readers are thinking "I am not going to work like a civil servant"), the point is that a certain amount of process can bring certainty into a team. What takes certainty away is lack of communications - management overreacts to lack of visibility, with astounding detrimental effect
UCITA is a civil law, not criminal, and it certainly doesn't define any new felonies as far as I know.
Duh. You're absolutely right. Now that I have a paper bag over my head, can someone explain how it's interpreted in the courts when a civil law is broken in pursuit of evidence in a criminal case? Is that evidence still admissible (as in, lying in a click-through)?
If I'm not mistaken in those two things, isn't all patch documentation illegal under the DMCA?
...
The Patch documentation is not so much, the patch actually documents the hole. One of the key issues here is that the fix in the patch exposes the original problem, and thus makes "circumvention of digital security" (haven't read it in a while, so going by memory here) possible. It's a question of whether all you need is to communicate the problem, or to document it. In the case of a source patch and docs, both are done, and it's lose-lose for the author, distributor, or whatever.
On another note - UCITA makes click-through license agreements legally binding in the US. So if law-enforcement cracked down on these people, they would have committed a felony as well. Court case should be interesting
You're either "FOR copyright facism" or "AGAINST censorship." I think I'll choose against censorship.
I'm sorry - so you feel obligated to purchase that company's censored products then? How?
I don't see the need/obligation to be their customer. It's just nice to see someone standing for end-user rights, whoever they are, who cares what they do with it. You, as the end user, would have the right not to buy their product.
Anyway, I fail to see how profanity/sex is an art form in films.
I fail to see how most hollywood films are an art form.
C'mon - this is not an issue. I will happily take the side of someone arguing for end-user rights. Full stop.
Just because a company who is willing to defend this right decides to sanitize films for overprotective parents does not make them less worthy of it. Further, the fact they make those sanitized films puts me under no obligation at all to be their customer.
We should be supporting them if we agree with the goal of making copyright law more sane, and protecting the right to use products that we purchased, not questioning what they do with that right.
The problem with this is that you still need a functioning computer (complete with functioning desktop environment) to connect with, and the network traffic VNC (or X, or Terminal Server) generate is rather hefty.
;-)
Also, 2 people connecting to the same VNC session compete with each other over screen control if the VNC host were a windows box.
On a Linux/UN*X box, user still need individual sessions to run on that, in addition to the client. I.e. now you have two environments per user to manage. Not so ideal I think
One thing I thought about, it's not so hard. Most Internet Cafes I see these days make their machines reboot after you log off. Some of the better ones running windows just wipe the registry and everything associated with that guest account.
;-)
In the case of Linux, all you need to do at the base level is configure a desktop, and then save those settings somewhere. There are a couple of places to hook in a logout script that would wipe the users home directory, and re-apply the original settings. The win here is that you give your users what is essentially a fully functional system, and just wipe their changes later. No problem. If they really mess it up, Crtl-alt-backspace logs them out and restarts X. Done.
Login accounting (if you bill for time) can also be handled this way - somewhere in PAM you hook in and measure login and logout times, and send the results on logout. Just block the power buttons
I saw some other people mentioning the Gnome vs. KDE religion, and saying stuff about using cheaper machines here or there. That's not so important, firstly, as long as you can make the system look reasonably welcoming. Heck, let the users themselves choose language and user interface at login time. Secondly, both the latest KDE and Gnome are approaching the memory footprint of Windows 2K and relatives, so running everything in 64 megs is not likely to provide anyone with an experience they will want to pay for.
Yeah, that'll do.
Your client could be convinced to open-source something if:
On the last point, they might agree if you can show the client that what you will be writing will indeed be picked up by some other people/companies. These other people would be interested in what you wrote because they would also need what you wrote, and the improvements made by others can provide a direct benefit to your client.
I realize that the logic is somewhat circular here. You have to prove it's good enough for everybody, and then everybody else would do something that's good enough for your client. Presumably then they would also need the technical expertise to actually use what you did.
The other problem is convincing the client that there is nothing proprietary to them in the software. If they hired you, it usually means they don't have enough in-house expertise to decide this, and their decision will be no.
If this gets open sourced, your name would be on it, and that means you would be on the hook to _everybody_. It does not absolve you of the responsibility of maintaining the software and defending your design decisions. In fact, it makes you more responsible.
I have worked with companies who thought about this long and hard, and typically did not do it. The exception was software that was end-of-life, with maintenance being cut, and the costs amortized. At that point, unless one of the points above applies, it can make sense because open-sourcing internal software is a hedge for maintenance provided several others start using it and work on it.
On the IP-side, the work you are doing is considered "work for hire." This means your client owns the IP, all of it. It's like being an architect: you draw plans, and if the client goes ahead with building the building they have full rights. Yes, your name is on it, yes, you have liability exposure, but they own the work, because they bought it from you. The only way to get around it is if the agreement between you and the company states clearly that you are giving them a license as opposed to performing work for hire. If you want to be really clear about what you're giving away, get a lawyer - your client likely has one too.
just my half-cent.
I can think of a few other, better ways, to use GPL code in commercial projects without pressing everyone's ethics button so hard. Better engineering, better PR, less work. Is that so hard? Sounds to me like the lawyer wants to have a few years steady work, and your CEO is too preoccupied with being evil.
Well, what did Linus do to trademark "Linux"? Presumably he faced the same issues.
Somenone else trademarked Linux and started sending out cease-and-desist letters to Linux companies. Some even paid, but I think Linus, and the EFF got together a challenge. That was pretty harsh though.
This just backs up the fact that Linux isn't innovative in any way.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flatery.
Think of Linux as the Japanese car of operating systems. What the Germans pioneered (ok, you may think differently, but they added a LOT to automotive designs in the last century), the Americans mass-produced, the Japanese took and reworked until their cars were perfect. Fine, they made sacrifices in durability (not a big three strong suit either) to sustain their markets, but few vehicles sold by the US big three compare in overall quality, fit, and finish.
The Germans were flattered by the Japanese, and the US auto industry dealt a black eye in its arrogance.
Anyone handling Linux developers with arrogance also incurs their wrath, or at least competetive spirit. Thanks for telling us what you want improved.
There is no exaggeration here. I have many friends that have travelled to countries abroad (especially Europe) and the best advice they gave me is to keep a Canadian flag visible at all times. The amount of contempt for Americans in Europe is beyond belief in some countries.
And here I was thinking "does every Canadian other than me talk with a twang while in Europe?" No wonder they didn't get my Newfie jokes.
Except that there is some overlap between cell antennas - if you have three and can gauge range by signal strength you can triangulate a position quite easily.
That's about as easy as it gets. Back in the CB days we used this find the bastards with the 200W transmitters who kept talking over the people who actually had something to say.
Hol.
That's not necessarily correct. I recall some studies having been done that indicate that the way people pay attention is different when talking on the phone as opposed to talking personally. The study tracked how much time cell phone users spent looking at the road ahead of them.
Presumably this depends on the individual. The study also suggests that having a hands-free device does not really help this problem. I am all for banning cell phone use by drivers while a vehicle is in motion.
Yeah. I know - should have the url for that, but I don't :-)
Kinda like those kinetic watches, and probably won't help you if you're dead...