In many cases, they continue to rip it off, so they view the security and low cost of OSS as a none issue.
Yep. Most people I know never bought any software (except possibly games and the software included with their computer), they just just pirate it instead. So cost is not an issue, has never been an issue and the probability of getting caught is next to nil. They'd rather continue to pirate Windows and Windows applications than try Linux or other open source software.
And then there is the "don't trust unknown people on the internet" advice, which for them translates into "I know Microsoft, ther are well-known and I'd rather trust them than some random unknown hobby developer on the internet that don't even care to put a box of the software on store shelves". And the attitude "Gasp! It's for free? Then it must suck! Better use a pirated proprietary program, they cost money (even if I cheat them on that), so it must be good".
i sometimes wonder if the average worker goes into his local computer shop, doesn't find any software on shelves for linux and therefore concludes that there isn't any. it wouldn't occur to him/her, that you can download software which would for windows cost tens of thousands of dollars free of charge from the net for linux, because he/she just wouldn't look there for software.
It is because the average Joe knows that the only software that you download from the internet is pirated software.:)
Maybe that's why Sun itself has twisted the GPL by tacking on an extra clause essentially voiding parts of the GPL
Except, IIRC, the classpath exception was not invented by Sun, but by the GNU Classpath project. And what's wrong with it? It's just like the exception in the Linux kernel GPL license that says that userspace programs that use the normal syscall interface are not considered derivative works.
I think Linux users are overreacting in knee-jerk style. Let's all sit back and wait and see what SuSE 10.3 (or will it be SuSE 11) and onward bring us.
The "sit back and see what they bring us" is so much a Microsoft-centric community attitude. With FOSS you can help, instead of just waiting for a vendor to incorporate whatever feature you want to have.
The fact is that nearly every major COMPANY is behind this deal and looks to it to actually allow them to properly position Linux onto thousands of systems where as before they were hamstrung by possible lawsuits
Only in those parts of the world where software patents are valid.
I know in my case I'm damn happy about the move. The one thing that has been holding me back from going with Linux on the desktop and on certain servers was the lack of TRUE compatibility on several levels. We are a Novell house, we have MS servers, Red Hat, and SUSE as well. Yes, with LOTS of time and work they can work well together...but companies see time = money and so don't want their IT staff doing it when the companies (MS and Novell) can do it for them.
And Microsoft is well known for their attempts at sabotaging interoperability with other systems. What would they have to gain from it? Nothing. True interoperability would enable companies to use the system that best fits their needs, without any worry for compatibility problems with Microsoft technology. And I cannot see how this would benefit Microsoft.
Ballmer has recently stated that they are ready to start suing people who USE linux if that linux was not purchased from SUSE/Novell. This mean you could be sued by MS, I could, anybody could.
By all means, please start suing. I guess the EU may have second thoughts about software patents then. And as I live in the EU, I cannot be sued for software patent infringement, since they are not valid here (yet).
The point is that any bird that has a 30+ foot wingspan is going to weigh much much more than 50 lbs.
But pterosaurs were not birds. Their wings were only a single membrane, with the only stiff structure being the arms and extremely long little finger. Almost all weight would be in the body and head, which would probably not be taller than a man, and a lot lighter. We have a lot of solid thick bones, but pterosaurs had many hollow bones, just like today's birds. They might have weighed more than 50 lbs, but probably not a lot more.
The Shiva crater, along with the Boltysh crater and the Silverpit crater, are all dated to about the same time as the Chicxulub crater, and this brought up the multiple impact theories.
Others defended the YECs because how dare we make fun of others beleifs.
I wonder what the YECs (or YEC defenders (should I say apologists?)) thought about the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoonsarticle slightly less than one year ago. Could I suppose they attacked those as vehemently as they attack those who make fun of YECs?
I find that extremely rude and not to mention politically incorrect.
Rudeness is bad, but I hope that you are not trying to enforce a political correctness policy. I don't have many good things (if any) to say about political correctness, as it usually restricts free speech, sometimes quite severely.
And by the way, even if this is an american website, the web is international. Should non-americans have to stay updated on what is considered politically incorrect in the US this week?
I'm sorry, the US has already been pressuring the EU to adopt software patents for a while now, and it still hasn't happened. I don't think it's all that likely that the EU will adopt software patents.
There is a new directive being worked on that may legalize software patents, the Community Patent Directive. I'm rather pessimistic about this, as I believe that they will adopt it one way or the other, even if it means sneaking it though as a side issue to be rubberstamped without discussion on a meeting for the ministers of fishing and agriculture, as they tried last time.
No, what I want is freedom, but freedom without relearning every god damn thing.
I guess that you also would like Linux to do away with its file system hierarchy of/bin,/etc,/home,/var,/usr, etc, and adopt the C:, D:, etc, as well as C:\Linux, C:\Program Files, C:\Documents and Settings, etc.
Another thing that many "Linux newbies that really want Windows without the irritations" complain about is the "unituitiveness" of running programs as a non-administrative user. "I should be able to access the entire computer as my ordinary user, since I own it" is not an infrequent complaint. Most of the areas where Linux differs from Windows are frequently complained about.
The only reason Microsoft is not suing is because of the impact of such a move on the anti-monopoly suits that Microsoft is currently dealing with.
As well as the pro software patent lobbying they are doing in the EU. A software patent lawsuit against a major open source project and/or Linux distributor might cast a big shadow on their lobbying.
I guess they'll wait with the lawsuits until software patents are legalized in the EU.
Novell has not provided any useful precedent or other legal ammunition that ANYONE can use in ANY court case. We didn't acknowledge that there are any MS patents infringed by Linux.
While you haven't actually said so, this is what the management of Linux-hesitant corporations will read it as.
OSRM published a study stating that Linux infringes 283 patents, 27 from Microsoft.
No, they didn't. They said the Linux potentially infringes said patents. That small word is important, as it means that those patents are far from certain to stand in a court case.
Here is a company that sells Linux IP insurance and therefore directly benefits financially from people's fear over Linux patent FUD, so they publish these ominous statements about Linux infringing hundreds of patents! This is realy work done by real people to examine specific patents and determine whether Linux infringes them or not.
On the other hand you have Novell who make NO such statement, who directly contradict Microsoft in the press when Ballmer goes off and says things like this.
The difference is that OSRM operates as a regular insurance company, that sells insurance against IP lawsuits from third parties. Microsoft, on the contrary, operates like a protection racket, selling insurance against IP lawsuits brought by themselves.
If Microsoft have any issues, they should sue, not making vague threats. And Novell made those threats more legitimate, since they (you) entered into a patent agreement with Microsoft.
Don't take this personally though. I understand if you are compelled, as a Novell employee, to defend their actions, regardless of what you personally think of them.
This is a pretty clear statement that the letter of GPLv2 is not touched.
Not necessarily. RMS basically uses Novell's own words, and it may be that he views it that way. That does not mean that a court would view it this way, if a developer of GPL software were to sue them for breaking the license. What the court would say is simply unknown, and usually cannot be inferred in advance.
It doesn't look great for the american IT industry and there would be growing economic pressure for the US goverment to reform software patents.
The US govenment would also exert growing political and economic pressure on the EU to adopt software patents. They have already been there, done that.
We (the community) should start finding prior art on every patent Microsoft has and work to invalidate them all. Anything that Linux actually infringes on should be removed/worked around ASAP.
Except that those of us doing the real programming work are very unlikely to ever look at any patents, since that would open them up to treble (triple) damages for willful infringement if they were ever sued for patent infringement.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess they got that colour from Ubuntu.
*Ducks*
But it has to be a criminal case for IBM to be guilty of a crime, doesn't it?
Yep. Most people I know never bought any software (except possibly games and the software included with their computer), they just just pirate it instead. So cost is not an issue, has never been an issue and the probability of getting caught is next to nil. They'd rather continue to pirate Windows and Windows applications than try Linux or other open source software.
And then there is the "don't trust unknown people on the internet" advice, which for them translates into "I know Microsoft, ther are well-known and I'd rather trust them than some random unknown hobby developer on the internet that don't even care to put a box of the software on store shelves". And the attitude "Gasp! It's for free? Then it must suck! Better use a pirated proprietary program, they cost money (even if I cheat them on that), so it must be good".
It is because the average Joe knows that the only software that you download from the internet is pirated software. :)
Except, IIRC, the classpath exception was not invented by Sun, but by the GNU Classpath project. And what's wrong with it? It's just like the exception in the Linux kernel GPL license that says that userspace programs that use the normal syscall interface are not considered derivative works.
The "sit back and see what they bring us" is so much a Microsoft-centric community attitude. With FOSS you can help, instead of just waiting for a vendor to incorporate whatever feature you want to have.
Only in those parts of the world where software patents are valid.
I know in my case I'm damn happy about the move. The one thing that has been holding me back from going with Linux on the desktop and on certain servers was the lack of TRUE compatibility on several levels. We are a Novell house, we have MS servers, Red Hat, and SUSE as well. Yes, with LOTS of time and work they can work well together...but companies see time = money and so don't want their IT staff doing it when the companies (MS and Novell) can do it for them.And Microsoft is well known for their attempts at sabotaging interoperability with other systems. What would they have to gain from it? Nothing. True interoperability would enable companies to use the system that best fits their needs, without any worry for compatibility problems with Microsoft technology. And I cannot see how this would benefit Microsoft.
By all means, please start suing. I guess the EU may have second thoughts about software patents then. And as I live in the EU, I cannot be sued for software patent infringement, since they are not valid here (yet).
Documentation is provided in the form of for-pay MCSE and MCP courses and certifications. :)
But pterosaurs were not birds. Their wings were only a single membrane, with the only stiff structure being the arms and extremely long little finger. Almost all weight would be in the body and head, which would probably not be taller than a man, and a lot lighter. We have a lot of solid thick bones, but pterosaurs had many hollow bones, just like today's birds. They might have weighed more than 50 lbs, but probably not a lot more.
Oh? What about the Shiva crater?
The Shiva crater, along with the Boltysh crater and the Silverpit crater, are all dated to about the same time as the Chicxulub crater, and this brought up the multiple impact theories.
On Slashdot *AA only means RIAA and MPAA, regardless of other organizations with AA as their name or a postfix of their name. :)
I wonder what the YECs (or YEC defenders (should I say apologists?)) thought about the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons article slightly less than one year ago. Could I suppose they attacked those as vehemently as they attack those who make fun of YECs?
Rudeness is bad, but I hope that you are not trying to enforce a political correctness policy. I don't have many good things (if any) to say about political correctness, as it usually restricts free speech, sometimes quite severely.
And by the way, even if this is an american website, the web is international. Should non-americans have to stay updated on what is considered politically incorrect in the US this week?
This is because the word theory in common use by laymen means something like hunch or hypothesis, i.e. an idea without any evidence for its validity.
Then you must be disgusted all day. I find MS proponents almost everywhere. I even read one of them proclaim MS to be his god.
There is a new directive being worked on that may legalize software patents, the Community Patent Directive. I'm rather pessimistic about this, as I believe that they will adopt it one way or the other, even if it means sneaking it though as a side issue to be rubberstamped without discussion on a meeting for the ministers of fishing and agriculture, as they tried last time.
Except that Apache is not under the GPL at all. Apache is distributed under the Apache license.
I guess that you also would like Linux to do away with its file system hierarchy of /bin, /etc, /home, /var, /usr, etc, and adopt the C:, D:, etc, as well as C:\Linux, C:\Program Files, C:\Documents and Settings, etc.
Another thing that many "Linux newbies that really want Windows without the irritations" complain about is the "unituitiveness" of running programs as a non-administrative user. "I should be able to access the entire computer as my ordinary user, since I own it" is not an infrequent complaint. Most of the areas where Linux differs from Windows are frequently complained about.
How can you think that something sucks if you are not aware that it exists?
As well as the pro software patent lobbying they are doing in the EU. A software patent lawsuit against a major open source project and/or Linux distributor might cast a big shadow on their lobbying.
I guess they'll wait with the lawsuits until software patents are legalized in the EU.
While you haven't actually said so, this is what the management of Linux-hesitant corporations will read it as.
OSRM published a study stating that Linux infringes 283 patents, 27 from Microsoft.No, they didn't. They said the Linux potentially infringes said patents. That small word is important, as it means that those patents are far from certain to stand in a court case.
Here is a company that sells Linux IP insurance and therefore directly benefits financially from people's fear over Linux patent FUD, so they publish these ominous statements about Linux infringing hundreds of patents! This is realy work done by real people to examine specific patents and determine whether Linux infringes them or not.
On the other hand you have Novell who make NO such statement, who directly contradict Microsoft in the press when Ballmer goes off and says things like this.
The difference is that OSRM operates as a regular insurance company, that sells insurance against IP lawsuits from third parties. Microsoft, on the contrary, operates like a protection racket, selling insurance against IP lawsuits brought by themselves.
If Microsoft have any issues, they should sue, not making vague threats. And Novell made those threats more legitimate, since they (you) entered into a patent agreement with Microsoft.
Don't take this personally though. I understand if you are compelled, as a Novell employee, to defend their actions, regardless of what you personally think of them.
Not necessarily. RMS basically uses Novell's own words, and it may be that he views it that way. That does not mean that a court would view it this way, if a developer of GPL software were to sue them for breaking the license. What the court would say is simply unknown, and usually cannot be inferred in advance.
The US govenment would also exert growing political and economic pressure on the EU to adopt software patents. They have already been there, done that.
Except that those of us doing the real programming work are very unlikely to ever look at any patents, since that would open them up to treble (triple) damages for willful infringement if they were ever sued for patent infringement.