Groklaw — Don't Go Home, Go Big 230
jfruhlinger writes "You may have caught PJ's Christmas Day post on Groklaw, expressing her anger and frustration that, after she helped save Novell's Unix patents from SCO's clutches, Novell turned around and sold many of those patents to an open source-unfriendly coalition. She's feeling at a crossroads and wondering what Groklaw should become. Brian Proffitt has a suggestion: a bigger, more community-oriented site."
A patent consortium (Score:5, Interesting)
No, seriously. Groklaw should become a patent consortium run by open source software folks. It should use its resources to fund patent applications by open source projects and should hold those patents collectively so that they can be used defensively if any of the member projects are attacked by software patents.
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No, seriously. Groklaw should become a patent consortium run by open source software folks. It should use its resources to fund patent applications by open source projects and should hold those patents collectively so that they can be used defensively if any of the member projects are attacked by software patents.
There are a lot of important questions that would have to be answered in order for this idea to actually work. Off the top of my head:
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What's to stop unfriendly companies from sneaking into the coalition?
That is easy enough.
Any lawsuit over patents against any FREE software project members or users will result in removal from the coalition and said member will have 30 days to cease using any and all patents from the pool or face infringement suits.
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I'll give my thoughts on this.
Well, the idea was that the site would raise money through donations and advertising while covering legal issues that pertain to open source, and that some portion of those donations would cover that. You could also solicit open-source-friendly corporations to pledge money in the event of an actual legal defense.
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You would still want shareholders of some kind and some bylaws to keep things sane. They shareholders would have the ability to reign in the company/organization when it got out of control. The bylaws would keep other companies from buying up all the shares and changing how things operate. By having shareholders you don't have to think of every possible thing that might happen in the future. You just let the shareholders decide when major issues come up that weren't foreseen. This is how corporations actual
Re:A patent consortium (Score:5, Informative)
Isn't that what the OIN [openinventionnetwork.com] is for?
PJ wrote about that [groklaw.net] a few weeks ago as well.
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Sort of, but that seems to be a lot more narrowly focused on Linux.
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The problem is, you can't take your ball and go home. You are playing the ridiculous patent game whether you want to or not.
It seems to me that Software people and companies are against patents on software, as it effectively creates an unlevel playing field for all involved.
On the otherhand, lawyers and patent companies love them and make a huge amount of money from them.
The only reason software companies have patents is to defend against other companies that have patents. It's a defensive tactic.
eliminate software patents (Score:2, Insightful)
Patent consortium? Not a big enough idea, I think. The root of the problem is that software is still patentable in the US. If not for that, Novell could not have sold out. And SCO would not have had even a veneer of credibility, and might not have tried suing anyone. Get rid of software patents [swpat.org].
I would like to go even further, and eliminate the government enforced monopoly protections for all patents. Don't create barriers and artificial scarcities for the sake of the starving inventors, reward them
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The principle of mutually assured destruction, basically. Same reason that such a patent pool would make companies less likely to sue random open source projects that are members of the consortium.
That and it should ideally be constructed in such a way that any offensive use would require a vote by its members, and most members would probably not choose to do so except in very limited circumstances.
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Mutually assured Destruction only works if both sides actually care about living afterwards.
With patent pools it doesn't matter the companies can't die, they can sell everything off when things look bad, leave a shell corp to handle the litigation and shunt everything and everyone else to saftey under a different corporate umbrella. Or a patent troll that is nothing but a meeting room for lawyers really doesn't care if they lose that meeting room.
right now we are in the middle of the mobile patent wars. i
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True, that patent trolls aren't thwarted by mutually assured destruction. That wasn't the question. The question was what would keep this patent pool from devolving into that, and the answer is that the pool would be managed by its members, who would have no interest in losing their patents due to frivolous action against someone else.
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Actually they can only do this if a majority of the shareholders agree to it. Companies with shareholders can't do whatever they want. They legally are charged with at a bare minimum maintaining the value of the company. They can not do anything that would significantly reduce the value of the company or they risk lawsuits from the shareholders. Companies are 100% responsible to their shareholders. If a majority of shareholders decide and vote to drop a lawsuit, then the company by law must drop the lawsuit
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A sweet, legally-binding promise.
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It's easy to make that happen. Just write into the by laws of the company/organization that the company is not allowed to start/file a lawsuit with anyone or any company over the enforcement of patents that the company holds, and that this company by-law can never be changed even by a vote of the shareholders. It would be perfectly legal and perfectly binding and no one would be able to over-ride it because it is part of the unchangeable company charter. You could even add something so they could protect th
Take up another cause? (Score:2)
Sure, the SCO thing was great and interesting and ran a long time, but I think that something like groklaw for other laws or fields or items would be great.
Censorship (Score:2, Interesting)
So long as PJ continues to censor posts she doesn't like the site has limited value.
Ganty
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So long as PJ continues to censor posts she doesn't like the site has limited value.
Ganty
Er, wait a minute... it's PJ's site right? Then PJ can do what she wants with it - including editing any posts she feels she needs or wants to. PJ's entitled to that freedom because it's her site.
So much *waaaaaing* around here anymore.
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You're entitled to your own freedom. You're not entitled to the freedom to post whatever you want on someone else's site.
See how that works?
The difference is that China doesn't allow people the freedom to decide what is and isn't on their own site. The difference between censoring your own venue and censoring everyone's venue is profound.
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That's a fair, but entirely different criticism from the one I was responding to. HBI was criticizing it for being censorship at all, suggesting all censorship is inherently evil -- while also making a point about freedom.
In her defense, I'd suggest that it's entirely up to her whether it should be a "clearinghouse of rational discussion" or just her blog.
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A clearinghouse of rational discussion about the patent and copyright issues surrounding Linux
I don't recall Groklaw ever being portrayed as such by anyone involved with Groklaw.
Their purpose is to prepare legal documents for use in court in order to support FOSS and specifically Linux.
Where is there a clearing house of rational discussion about the patent and copyright issues surrounding Linux implied there? There isn't one.
It's PJ's blog and volunteer legal document preparation service, in a nutshell. No clearinghouse of anything (though lots of legal discussions certainly occur on the site, due
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Considering the amount of posts here that boil down to "we must force X to do Y, for Freedom!" I can see why you posted AC.
Re:Censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
What does PJ's rights and personal freedom have anything to do with the judgment that the "site has limited value"? Maybe some people value sites more that don't censor comments.
Re:Censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you misunderstand the argument. Yes, PJ has the legal right to censor her own blog - nobody is arguing otherwise. But, she loses a lot of credibility by doing so. You have to wonder, why can't PJ's argument hold up to opposition? Everybody has to know: when you are reading groklaw forums, you are reading a one-sided debate.
Re:Censorship (Score:4, Insightful)
You have to wonder, why can't PJ's argument hold up to opposition? Everybody has to know: when you are reading groklaw forums, you are reading a one-sided debate.
I don't think that PJ has ever tried to present herself as being an impartial observer; she openly advocates for the side she feels is in the right. Why should she provide a soapbox for her opposition, who already were rather well funded and perfectly capable of providing their own platforms? I note that PJ was never invited to offer commentary on SCO's website, and no other legal expert seemed interested in presenting his own blog covering the case from poor downtrodden SCO's side.
In any event, having watched oh-so-many basement-dwelling wannabe lawyers trot out their weighty opinions on questions of law here on Slashdot, I can certainly understand why PJ - a trained legal professional - might get tired of matching wits with the unarmed. For that matter, she may just not want to let troll/countertroll flaming and bickering distract from constructive discussions and drag down the level of conversation. The sensible hostess knows when to send the belligerent, uninvited guests home.
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I don't think you understand the purpose of Groklaw. It's not about discussion, it's about preparing legal exhibits for use in court in defense of FOSS and Linux.
How in the hell could censoring posts on her blog possibly discredit her? It has nothing to do with what she is doing! The blog is just for personal info and legal news she finds interesting/important.
I don't see how anything on there could discredit the legal exhibits Groklaw volunteers prepare.
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PJ is not just censoring pornography, spam, profanity, or anything like. She is censoring opinions that she does not want others to read. That is not a fair discussion, and everybody knows it.
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Worse, he doesn't understand what discrimination is, either.
Same problem. A nice, descriptive word has be politicized such that people are afraid to use correctly.
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Not really the same thing.
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Except for the fact that it is exactly the same thing. Posts below a certain threshold (it usually isn't even 0) generally don't get seen. Modding down is a common method used here of censoring an opinion you don't like.
Censorship by the group is still censorship.
No thanks (Score:3, Insightful)
Last I checked, there were several complaints of post deletions on groklaw, to which her response was she was not really interested in "open" debate. I agree with many of her opinions and analysis of the SCO debacle, but I wouldn't want to be part of any community she's running.
I'm sure she could be valuable as a writer on various IP issues surrounding free software.
Re:No thanks -- oh for goodness sake (Score:5, Insightful)
So on one side we have a bunch of lying cheating dastardly bastards who will do anything they can (legal or not) to destroy FOSS. On the other side we have PJ who insists on allowing people to post anonymously on her site which entails the extra burden of throwing out the trash people post that is designed to discredit Groklaw.
And for this she is criticized. Give me a break. PJ is human and like all humans she is both opinionated and imperfect. Like the rest of us, she has flaws and is not always right. I imagine that while throwing out the trash she has probably deleted some posts that may not have deserved it. But by criticizing her for protecting her reputation and the reputation of Groklaw (while at the same time allowing anonymous posts) you are aiding and abetting the enemies of FOSS.
You sir/madam are implying that PJ lacks integrity because she has been forced to delete terrible posts that make Groklaw look awful. The truth is she has more integrity than almost anyone else I know (of). It is her integrity that makes the Groklaw site shine despite the fact that it is run by imperfect human beings. IMO PJ is a true hero because she maintains her integrity even though her site is constantly bombarded by posts from people who completely lack it.
Re:No thanks -- oh for goodness sake (Score:4, Insightful)
Slashdot has managed to get by fine for more than a decade without a similar deletion policy. I would prefer the distinction between troll and serious debater be left up to the reader, and not the admin. I don't want to be a part of any site that can only deal with trolls through heavy handed moderation. I think many here feel the same way. If she's been deleting posts, where is the exact line? Are we even able to see what posts were deleted to see if they deserved deletion? I doubt it. It's this lack of transparency and seeming lack of interest in open discussion that turns me off of any community she may head.
Now, PJ is hardly alone in running her site this way. But I'm a free software supporter with strong ideals and high expectations. Slashdot, for all its flaws, manages to meet these ideals. Groklaw has fallen short.
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Preferring Slashdot over Groklaw because of its posting policy?
I don't know, but to me it sounds a bit like praising a prostitute for the ease with which she opens her legs.
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Running an open discussion site while keeping trolls at bay without deleting posts is not easy. You should try it sometime. I did, and failed.
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I don't doubt you, but I just think you think too higly of Slashdot, in the end it's nothing more than an IT-gossip site, basically. Hugely popular, of course, but that doesn't really translate into quality.
Many of my (IT) friends and co-workers never "set foot" on slashdot exactly because it's so difficult to find the informative gems among the rubbish, the rants and the flames.
So I imagine there are many who prefer a site where most posts are informative or at least well-mannered knowing all the while tha
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I find plenty of value discussion on Slashdot all the time. It would be much worse off if dissenting opinions were simply deleted, especially at the whim of a site owner.
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Slashdot has managed to get by fine for more than a decade without a similar deletion policy.
Slashdot covers lots of issues without any particular focus ("news for nerds" is about as vague as you can get, since people can be nerdy about nearly any subject) so it doesn't make enemies the way Groklaw does. There are anti-Slashdot cranks, of course, but there's no reason for major industry players to fund them.
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Slashdot has managed to get by fine for more than a decade without a similar deletion policy. I would prefer the distinction between troll and serious debater be left up to the reader, and not the admin. I don't want to be a part of any site that can only deal with trolls through heavy handed moderation. I think many here feel the same way. If she's been deleting posts, where is the exact line? Are we even able to see what posts were deleted to see if they deserved deletion? I doubt it. It's this lack of transparency and seeming lack of interest in open discussion that turns me off of any community she may head.
Now, PJ is hardly alone in running her site this way. But I'm a free software supporter with strong ideals and high expectations. Slashdot, for all its flaws, manages to meet these ideals. Groklaw has fallen short.
"Managed to get by fine"? "Managed to meet these ideals"? One must also consider what the intended purpose of each site is. If you think Slashdot is taken as seriously as Groklaw in the respective community of each, you're way off. And that's not meant as a criticism of /., btw; Taco and Hemos decided early on what the point of this place was, and there's nothing wrong with the choice that was made. But the S/N here is very, very low; and there's a place in the world for fora with more restrictive poli
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If PJ regularly featured tough challenges to her worldview and responded to them with reason and nuance, then she might be credited with merely trying to create a high S/N discussion site. The impression I get from many posters to this discussion is that she simply removes the side of the debate she doesn't agree with. I'm not capable of proving that's the case. Any evidence of that would be deleted from her site. Lacking any transparency in moderation it's difficult to just take her word that nothing she d
Re:No thanks -- oh for goodness sake (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot, for the most part, posts summaries and links to stories along with comments by readers, moderated and meta-moderated by readers. It doesn't do any investigative journalism, which is what Groklaw does day and and day out. The people who are investigated don't like it and will do anything they can to shut up or discredit Groklaw. Slashdot does not have significant content other than links and readers' comments which is why it can get by with the moderation system.
The idea that this reflects "strong ideals" is absurd in the extreme. If most people had similar "ideals" then content-less Slashdot would cease to function because there would be no content-ful sites to link to. If anything, it is PJ and Groklaw who are showing integrity and ideals by taking a stand for what is right and what is true. The irony is that it is because Groklaw takes a stand that people are actively trying to destroy it which in turn leads to the policy of deleting nasty posts.
It is also important to note that there has always been open invitations at Groklaw for Darl McBride, and other targets of investigation to post their side of things. These are rejected and instead Groklaw gets a flood of posts by people who are pretending to be members of the FOSS community who are trying to discredit Growlaw.
I'm not saying Groklaw is without flaws but I am saying that the deletion of posts that are designed to discredit the site is not one of them. This has nothing to do with a "lack of transparency" because the posts that are deleted do not reflect PJ or the Groklaw community. The deleted posts lack transparency because they are almost always anonymous and they are almost always by someone pretending to be a member of the community who is not.
As you may be aware, almost all content-ful sites have this problem. Do you also say "no thanks" to Google, Youtube, WaPo, the NYT, etc? Funny thing is that when you say "But I'm a free software supporter with strong ideals and high expectations" and then condemn Groklaw for doing what what is required of all sites that do investigative journalism then you start to sound very much like either a stupid friend of FOSS or a sly enemy.
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You sir/madam are implying that PJ lacks integrity because she has been forced to delete terrible posts that make Groklaw look awful.
If somebody posts something to make groklaw "look awful," then PJ, or somebody else on groklaw, can dispute that particular post.
When somebody starts deleting posts, just because those posts don't conform to her point of view, then onlookers can never be sure if the opposition has made a relevant point. I'm sorry, but that does put her integrity in question.
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If somebody posts something to make groklaw "look awful," then PJ, or somebody else on groklaw, can dispute that particular post.
Sure, if it just one or two posts, it is really not much of a problem. The problem is that there can be an avalanche of posts, many of them phony, people pretending to be representing the FOSS community but saying nasty things. If these are not nipped in the bud then confederates link to them and quote them on other sites as typical examples of Groklaw and FOSS supporters.
If such posts weren't deleted, Groklaw would die in weeks.
When somebody starts deleting posts, just because those posts don't conform to her point of view, then onlookers can never be sure if the opposition has made a relevant point. I'm sorry, but that does put her integrity in question.
I agree with you. Certainly it is possible to abuse the authority to dele
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Perhaps not relevant to the discussion, but I have to point out that when PJ dealt with GPL v3 (many articles on Groklaw when it was being drafted), she did not say anything about her involvement in the process(and so, potential conflict of interest) until *after* the license was approved.
PJ was targeted with a very aggressive smear campaign (O' Gara and co.) that IMO went far beyond the limits of decency, but it doesn't mean she's perfect. That point I mentioned was a maj
patently false (Score:3)
Well, that's not necessarily a good thing judging by the number of ads and crap you find on that site. In comparison, its current version is much cleaner and nicer.
Sadly it's a reality of business.... (Score:3)
Open Source Lawyering (Score:3)
How about a place where the common man can get good defensive law advice and sharing of defense related material against big corporation mega tort scare tactics, like the one SCO tried on Novell, IBM et. al.?
The Huffington Post of the tech world (Score:2)
Why not? Add authors/news on every niche. Want a news section dedicated to ICANN/Internic, stuff on that scale? Web hosting? Security? Even if you just quote/selectively guide folks back to the other generalist locations like Ars or more specific niche places like discussions on NANOG, it could be a constantly updated field of info on all manner of stuff. Most people don't give a crap what the top 10-20 news stories of the day about botnets or DNS are, perhaps, but I bet you there are a lot of people who do
The Scorpion and the Frog (Score:5, Insightful)
The scorpion needs to get across the river, but he can't swim. He asks the frog to ferry him across. The frog refuses; he tells the scorpion that the scorpion will sting him and he will drown. The scorpion tells the frog that he won't sting the frog, because if he did, they both would drown. The frog ferries the scorpion. Midriver, the scorpion stings the frog. Before they both drown, the frog asks the scorpion, Why? The frog states: It's my nature.
Expecting gratitude from Novell is like expecting gratitude from a scorpion. The scorpion will sting, and Novell will seek to maximize profit.
I don't think Novell realized the huge bad will it has generated.
Re:The Scorpion and the Frog (Score:5, Funny)
That would have worked better as an analogy if you hadn't fucked up the most relevant part.
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Maybe I was a little hasty. Now that you've explained it I'm seeing a certain similarity to Novell...
Grateful for frogs (Score:2)
Before they both drown, the frog asks the scorpion, Why? The frog states: It's my nature.
Even with the mistake, this. The scorpion's nature is to sting and the frog's is to trust. (OK maybe not in nature, but in storyland.) The scorpion is a corporation whose only requirement is making money for shareholders and executives, anything else is an externality. One of the frog's purposes is to help others have a fair life.
The relevant part is that this has been going on for 1000s of years. From kings to feudal lords to international corporations, the scorpion barely evolves and always destroys. The
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Fixed that for you.
Or did you not realize that Novell was acquired by another company a few months ago?
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To quote a former co-worker:
Business is business and fair is fair and never the twain shall meet.
Patents aren't a problem any more (Score:2)
Patents aren't much of a problem for open source any more. Most of the technology in open source is old. Anything in use by 1990 is out of patent now. (The "submarine patent" problem used to be an issue, but for applications filed after June 8, 1995, it doesn't work any more. The patent term counts from the original date of application, regardless of continuation applications.) UNIX, after all, dates from the 1970s, and by 1990, UNIX-type operating systems were a mature technology.
This is a mature in
Re:Patents aren't a problem any more (Score:5, Informative)
False. They're a HUGE problem for anything recent. Most of the concepts and technologies in open source span decades, including very new concepts as well as old ones that are covered (wrongly) by new, vague patents.
No, the goal with software patents is to make them a perpetual hazard. Vague, ill defined, and useless for actually implementing the concept in question but always useful for beating down on your enemies and keeping out potential competitors.
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Aha, so that's why we all use FAT file system on our Linux computers, none of which, of course, have multi-core CPUs, use X for anything more complicated than an xterm, fit in your pocket, or do anything more complicated on a network than talk gopher and NFS.
Wait, did you write that, or are you (mis)quoting Charles H. Duell?
The lesson is... (Score:4, Insightful)
DO NOT TRUST A CORPORATION!
Honestly, why would anyone? They are out for the profit line and nothing else. They are nothing like a real company that is ran by the guy or gal that started it and is chasing a dream... We need to stop thinking they are in any way benevolent. Walmart gives away basic medications because it PROFITS THEM. Companies donate to causes because it Gains them more profit in advertising. There is no soul to these things, they don't care about anything but profits.
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DO NOT TRUST A CORPORATION!
A corollary would be DO NOT TRUST A STRANGER!. It would be just as apt.
Honestly, why would anyone?
Because we know more about Walmart than we do about 'Bob's Used Cars'.
They are out for the profit line and nothing else.
And Bob is not?
They are nothing like a real company that is ran by the guy or gal that started it and is chasing a dream...
Bob is chasing money.
We need to stop thinking they are in any way benevolent.
It appears you already have.
Walmart gives away basic medications because it PROFITS THEM. Companies donate to causes because it Gains them more profit in advertising.
And people get free meds for ads. Like we get free web searches from Google for ads.
Same Novell, Different Year (Score:3)
Quote: "I also needed to take some time to think about the recent discovery about Novell taking money from Microsoft and contractually agreeing to show up at Open XML standards meetings and events. Yes, I'm furious. Or I was. I always tell you the truth. And the truth is I felt used and abused. How could Novell enter into such a deal? Then top it off with selling 882 patents to a Microsoft-organized consortium?"
This is the same Novell in 2006 that essentially sold itself into a pseudo-bondage/partnership arrangement with Microsoft, one of the most FOSS-hostile organizations that had ever existed. How can she possibly be surprised? Most leopards do not change their spots. Novell never was and never will be a real Linux/FOSS champion.
PJ helped save Novell's patents?! (Score:2)
Since when did Groklaw do anything to save any patents? I thought it was a news reporting site that basically explained the SCO litigation to techies.
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Moreover, the SCO litigation had nothing to do with patents! Well, IBM, in their counterclaims, cited some of their patents that they claimed SCO was infringing early on, but they dropped their patent claims (w/o prejudice, IIRC) quickly in order to simplify the litigation. But the SCO v Novell case never had anything to do with any patents by any participant. Unlike copyrights, there was no question that the Novell->OldSCO purchase agreement excluded patents. Groklaw never helped anybody save any
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That's what I thought. I mean, I didn't think you'd have to lie about PJ's work to recognize her contributions to geekdom or whatever.
I think I should fish around on /. and use my legal contacts to find some people who'd be willing to co-blog with me in a (relatively) unbiased and informative manner about IP/cyberlaw issues. Maybe Slashdot would post an article about me giving mouth-to-mouth to save the last dodo on earth a century ago.
Underground vigilante group (Score:2)
PJ should start up an underground vigilante group, administering justice wherever she see's fit. She has the followers to do it.
There's no justice like angry mob justice!
Fix your password! (Score:2)
From the slashdotted site:
Your config file is being served up. Change your password right away - better yet, revert to a backup after first changing your password.
Problem being that PJ is a basket case (Score:2)
I mean that in the nicest possible way, she's a shy nerd spazz. Lovely voice, but a total paranoid shut-in. Probably got lots of cats and a glass menagerie.
People like PJ don't readily trust other people, because they don't really know any other people. If this "Brian Proffitt" character wants a bigger Groklaw, he'd better get on with creating it himself.
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well Maureen O., long time no see, you stalker cunt, where you been?
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Problem being that PJ is a basket case.... I mean that in the nicest possible way, she's a shy nerd spazz. Lovely voice, but a total paranoid shut-in. Probably got lots of cats and a glass menagerie.... People like PJ don't readily trust other people, because they don't really know any other people.
This pop psychological pseudo-diagnosis brought to you by someone posting to Slashdot. Seriously?
I mean this in the nicest possible way, of course, but Rogerborg is a total paranoid shut-in who thinks attacking nice people he's never met makes him looker smarter and 'cooler' to his basement-dwelling nerd peers.
Even if the parent poster's insulting and appalling stereotyping is spot on, his breathtakingly casual approach to openly attacking another human being would seem to confirm every 'paranoid' sus
She missed the point (Score:3, Informative)
"You may have caught PJ's Christmas Day post on Groklaw, expressing her anger and frustration that, after she helped save Novell's Unix patents from SCO's clutches, Novell turned around and sold many of those patents to an open source-unfriendly coalition."
PJ seems to have missed that the patents belong(ed) to Novell and they are free to do whatever they wish to do without consulting or appeasing her.
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but if they want to continue to do business in the open source world? I dropped using or recommending SuSE after Novell sold out to Microsoft a few years ago
Goodbye Old Novell, meet New Novell (Score:3)
The funny thing about corporations is that they can be bought or sold by other corporations.
In this case, Attachmate bought Novell. Once it purchased Novell, it split Novell into two units, and sold off a bunch of Novell's patent assets.
It's funny how quickly PJ is to point out how Old SCO and New SCO were different companies [groklaw.net], but doesn't appear to recognize that old Novell and new Novell are different companies...
Coolidge is underrated (Score:4, Interesting)
I've never understood why Coolidge was considered a poor president. His tenure seems exceptional and he remained popular even up to his resignation. His actions on civil rights were particularly enlightened, even though thwarted by Democrats in the legislature. Perhaps people don't like him cause he was a Republican. Who knows?
Lawyers have real work to do. (Score:4, Funny)
They don't have time to be dicking around on some shitty web site.
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The whole rant reads like, well, some kind of emotional rant from an angst-ridden teenager. She's "furious", and feels "used and abused. How could Novell enter into such a deal?...Why do I bother...".
The seventh paragraph alone sounds like a 13 year old's diary entry.
Is it intentional? Or does the heart find ways to justify what people want to do because they personally benefit? I leave that part to God. I can't read hearts. I analyze behavior only. But I see results. It's depressing to find out that community members are so easy to buy off, which is how I view it.
PJ has always struck me as being disingenous at best. She seems to have lost all perspective. The mission statement includes all these lofty goals and statements about legal research, being a resource, etc., etc. But if you read her own intervi
Re:She's feeling abused? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:She's feeling abused? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have always found this a very American point of view. It always reads as if there is a big [PERIOD] behind it, meaning "to the exclusion of everything else". If that's true than it's just ridiculous. Corporations exist only to make money? If that would be true than we've gone seriously wrong somewhere in history. It should be all about *us*, people, living and breathing beings of flesh and blood. Corporations should exist for the benefit of society and society should exist for the benefit of the people that live in it. Our capitalist system might work best if corporations *focus* on making money, but definitely *not* to the exclusion of everything else. I think it's not too strange to demand that they do so within a certain moral and ethical framework, not passively following the boundries drwan by laws and regulations but actively seeking to be an asset to society and to its people.
I can almost hear you say "dream on", but I think it starts with chaning this way of thinking where nothing else is expected of a corporation than money, money and ever more money.
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In the case of the latter, how do you know you're making what people want? People tell you with money.
If you want different behavior from a for-profit company either convince other people to stop paying them or change the legal framework so that they need to do what you and the rest of your interest group want them to do. We have seatbelts, clean water, clean ai
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In my message I explicitely said "to the exclusion of everything else". Of course a company has to make money, it has to survive somehow, which is good for its employees, which is good for society.
Like you said people vote with their money and most of the time that works fine, but there are situations where it just breaks down. I doubt many people stopped fillinig their tanks at BP petrol stations for example.
Companies asking themselves "can I do this?" (or even "can I get away with this?") should maybe say
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Making money is the mean a company uses toward that goal. We live in a capitalistic society, so that means that we only consider useful endeavor the ones that will enrich some people/the society. That is an acceptable metric, but let's not confuse this imperfect metric for what it tries to measure.
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Re:She's feeling abused? (Score:4, Informative)
I have always found this a very American point of view. It always reads as if there is a big [PERIOD] behind it, meaning "to the exclusion of everything else". If that's true than it's just ridiculous. Corporations exist only to make money? If that would be true than we've gone seriously wrong somewhere in history. It should be all about *us*, people, living and breathing beings of flesh and blood. Corporations should exist for the benefit of society and society should exist for the benefit of the people that live in it. Our capitalist system might work best if corporations *focus* on making money, but definitely *not* to the exclusion of everything else. I think it's not too strange to demand that they do so within a certain moral and ethical framework, not passively following the boundries drwan by laws and regulations but actively seeking to be an asset to society and to its people.
I can almost hear you say "dream on", but I think it starts with chaning this way of thinking where nothing else is expected of a corporation than money, money and ever more money.
It's not a "way of thinking", it's a genuine structural problem with sharemarkets and corporate governance. Take Cadbury for example. The company did have motives other than profit -- it was founded with a particular emphasis on supporting its employees. Last year, Kraft wanted to buy Cadbury. The management wasn't keen on this, and fought it, until Kraft increased their offer very slightly. At this point, a problem with modern corporate governance kicked in. The chairman could not demonstrate that the share price would rise above Kraft's offer in the short term; that meant that strictly he could not recommend to shareholders that they should reject the offer -- he had to say that the offer was in shareholders' best interests. Many of the shareholders were pension funds. While some fund managers personally did not like Kraft taking Cadbury over much either, as managers in charge of other people's investments they didn't feel they could act against the recommendation of Cadbury's board, and so felt they had to accept the offer. So, even though nobody personally liked the deal, the requirements of everyone's role mean that they had to choose to approve the deal. This was compounded by a large number of funds that bought shares and immediately voted for the deal, because of their requirement to make money for their investors (in this case through the differential between the share price and the deal price).
Re:She's feeling abused? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think she fails to see the differences between people and corporations. People can be idealists, corporations exist to make money.
I am tired of hearing this argument. Corporations have a reputation to maintain and this has a real value on the balance sheet. Microsoft's bad reputation costs them everyday in the fact of other corps not wanting to do business with them and in influential consumers not recommending their products. Managers who ignore the fundamentals of serving their customers do so at their peril. We may live in cynical times, but reality will ultimately knock at the door.
Re:She's feeling abused? (Score:5, Informative)
Amazing discovery: PJ is actually human! Stop the presses!
Well, duh. Of course she had to have some motivation. Do you think people 100% coldly and rationally decide to dedicate so much of their time to a purpose they are completely disengaged from?
I don't really care about her motivation. She either provides a good service to the community or doesn't, regardless of whether she's doing it out of anger, love for the cause, or some robotic need to analyze things in a 100% logical manner.
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+1 Had I not already been compelled to post a comment, I would mod you up (and I have the points, too).
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How could Novell enter into such a deal?
"Ever since the Phoenicians invented money, there has only been one answer to that question." -- Clarence Darrow
Re:She's feeling abused? (Score:5, Insightful)
*sigh*
If she has always struck you at being disingenuous at best (really, at *best*?), then of course it would appear to you that she's lost all perspective.
As someone who earns a living writing code on Microsoft's application stack, I'm not your total idealist when it comes to open source or free software. I do understand that there are reasons that people choose to use proprietary stuff. That said, I have a personal understanding of why free software is important, and why software patents are bad, period, that's not far removed from hers.
You're saying that because she thinks free software is better than proprietary software for her stated reasons, then she's not worth listening to. If that means that you think that the legal research she has done is not fairly representing the issues at hand, then I'd ask you to point out where we can see some evidence of that. SCO making someone angry is grounds for whatever they do afterwards to be self-serving rubbish?
That's an *awful* lot of protest over a person expressing disappointment...
I get what you're going for, it just doesn't sound likely...or impartial, for that matter.
Her disillusionment has been growing for years (Score:2, Interesting)
Originally I think PJ tried and others that helped her would try to be impartial and for the most part succeeded or apologized when they realized they were slanting things. The apologies got more and more sarcastic as SCO and other associated groups got worse and worse. I know from personal experience that posts pointing out slant or proposing more reasoned interpretations would be pulled from their site. Initially it was people obviously from known IPs (or so PJ said), then I got censored a few times as
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The way I read it: MS crap stinks less than Apple, Google and Oracle crap. But crap is still crap, and I'd rather not have any kind of it.
Nonsense (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe, I dunno, she put a lot of hard work into covering the case, so she might react a bit emotional when countless hours of tireless work were almost for nothing.
Nonsense. Her purpose was to report and analyze and enlighten the FOSS community which she did. If she was intending to have Novell give everything away, she was obviously mistaken and horribly naive.
Re:Nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
Lots of congratulations and thanks PJ. You have been quoted, your advices were shared, the technical details of the law you dug for all of us helped us all fight the FUD that SCO was building with this case.
Don't be down, the battle you helped fight was won, but the struggle is ongoing.
You can continue it or leave this to others.
Whatever your decision may be, I, for one, salute you.
Yves, FOSS enthusiast from France, where a lawyer nicknamed Maitre Eolas took a position similar to yours. I don't know how we would do without him.
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Companies have loyalty, but not just anyone. They have loyalty to their shareholders and are required to try and not completely crater the company or give away the store to the detriment of the shareholders. How many of you out there own Novell shares? If you owned shares then you could tell Novell that you don't want them to do this. You could try and get other shareholders to say that they shouldn't do this. Instead people just post on message boards online, which is basically screaming in the dark. It do
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You want companies to care about what you have to say, buy stocks, and organize stockholders. Get more people who think like you to buy stocks. Then you will be able to make real changes to a company. Until then you actually don't care to be bothered since there is a method to make companies listen, but you can't be bothered to use those channels. It only takes one share and attending shareholder meetings to make your voice heard to the other shareholders. By law companies must do what the majority of the s
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PJ isn't an attorney, she's a paralegal.
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She did a better analysis than most of the SCO lawyers.