On Mon, 2006-12-11 at 21:24 -0500, ross brunson wrote: > Thought that it was finally safe to post after the last 150-odd > emails slowly dribbled to a stop. You guys got caught in my spam > filter, and I nearly lost all that valuable discussion forever!
Well, I've seen everything lately. The Linux community has grown to the size that over 97% of it is completely ignorant of intellectual property and contract law, much less the real history of projects. Even Groklaw has destroyed its credibility, as many of us have now noted. It's gone beyond political (which I started to notice during the SCO lawsuit when they omitted important detail from various rulings that didn't "line up" with their political stances, but that's was merely viewpoint and omission). They've now let some rabid lawyers post who didn't know the first thing about OpenOffice.org -- not just its license, but who the absolute copyright holder is (Sun) -- take over, and looked like utter, ignorant fools. Either they will censure those lawyers, or people like myself are going to recommend no one consider their legal advise as they post _factually_incorrect_ information. It's really a PITA when you have to council corporations when they are hearing 97% rhetoric, and that rhetoric becomes a self-fulling truth. At this point -- between the SCO lawsuit and the Novell-Microsoft agreement -- if I was a CIO that didn't know much about Linux, I would close my ears to 100% of the Linux community, because 97% of it is a bunch of screaming children (and anything but "professional"). It's kinda said but their rabid responses based on ignorance and assumption are how companies like SCO and Microsoft can push FUD, instead of forcing intelligent debate. E.g., everytime I try to explain the _written_ contract disputes SCO has with Autozone and Chrysler, there are countless "sky is falling" Linux advocates that jump in and talk about how it was the result of SCO suing over Linux IP, and how their company could get a letter next. Demonizations based on ignorance becomes assumption, speculation and is the essence of FUD, which does not have to be intentional. In fact, the "marketing" and "versus" and lust for "conflict" is at the _heart_ of what I _despised_ by the commercial software world that I see 97% of Linux advocates "drag over." In the same regard, the non-sense that OpenOffice.org is going to be forked without the rights of the copyright holder -- Sun, who has _written_ "contributor agreements" with _every_ code contributor (let alone the fact that OpenOffice.org is LPGL) -- is just beyond ignorance, but could be considered _malpractice_ if these lawyers were representing any entity (and not merely an unethical result of serving the public trust). Add in the fact that with their cross-licenses, Novell and Sun (two of the sponsors of this project) can legally produce an indemnified module regardless of what IP Microsoft claims outside of ECMA standardization (not that it's required or enforceable anyway, as IBM regularly points out), and it's just more "I'm using the IP I secure to protect Linux." Because "I'm using the IP I secure to protect Linux" is why Linux isn't raped by lawsuits. From nVidia and SGI on 3D (OpenGL, including Mesa) against Intel, Microsoft and others (don't get me started -- it's the reason why nVidia almost got its pants sued off when it *DID* release *ALL* of its source code as "open source" for the initial TNT2/GeForce drivers during XFree86 3.3.x -- long story) to various kernel concepts that IBM (finally) released as part of its 500 patent donation, IP is very much real, and merely having a "cleanroom design" doesn't protect you from it (e.g., a replacement for OpenGL would still violate countless 3D-related patents). Even Red Hat legal has been actively involved with counseling Microsoft's on its open IP policies and declarations. And what really has to end is the "guilt by association." Even IBM has broad contracts and licensing agreements with Microsoft. Why? IBM *STILL* makes most of its money consulting on Windows. ;-> -- Bryan J. Smith Professional, Technical Annoyance mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://thebs413.blogspot.com -------------------------------------------------------- Fission Power: An Inconvenient Solution _______________________________________________ lpi-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://list.lpi.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lpi-discuss
