Bryan J. Smith wrote: > Even Groklaw has destroyed its credibility, as many of us have now noted. Actually, I hadn't -- I'm not a regular reader.
> 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. > I'm surprised that anyone would _ever_ have recommended Groklaw as anything more than a mildly entertaining, biased but reasonably objective, blow-by-blow account of SCO's legal battles. Who would take its commentary as advice on anything? > 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. > Ah, but that's why you get paid, to serve as the garbage filter... > 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"). True. There are still people in my local user group who wanted to stage a demonstration, in front of a local computer store, when Vista was released. Thankfully the kinds of people who get these sort of ideas tend not to have much skill at logistics. > 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. > I agree, but this simply means that the open source hoardes have become moderately skilled at creating their own kind of FUD. Unfortunately, enough of the conspiracy theories regarding Microsoft come true to encourage the open source FUD-mongers. > 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." > Ah, but if you call it 'advocacy' instead of 'marketing', it's OK -- isn't it? ;-) > 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) It is legal to fork many open source works without the owners' permission, and precedents do exist. The GCC compiler was forked into egcs which was eventually merged back. The kind of fork threatened over OpenOffice happened not too long ago with the Mambo/Joomla split. A much bigger impediment to the possibility of a fork is the sheer size and complexity of the project, IMO. It takes a lot of people to develop, test and document something as big as OOo -- the level of human infrastructure big enough to support a fork is possible, but it would be massive and probably impossible without a corporate sponsor such as Sun. > 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. > Don't forget that many of these patents (and patent types) are only valid in the US. Trying to enforce software patents elsewhere, even in friendly regimes, could be problematic. Countries such as China and Brazil, that see Linux as a necessary strategic tool to reduce IT dependence on foreigners, would never tolerate the (mis)use of IP to destroy that tool, and WIPO can't ram this one down their throats. (Keeping things ever-so-midly on-topic, it should be recalled that one of the reasons LPI was deliberately incorporated in Canada was because of the different attitudes here regarding frivolous litigation.) A worst-case scenario might be that certain components of open source software are alleged to violate patents and trade secrets in the US but nowhere else. (The allegation might be made in court and unproven, but would take many years to settle.) It would be a broader version of the current situation wrt getting DeCSS for your open source DVD player. In such a scenario, Red Hat and Novell might have problems but Red Flag and Ubuntu would be laughing. - Evan _______________________________________________ lpi-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://list.lpi.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lpi-discuss
