|
|
| Relaxing with Linus in Australia |
 |
|
Monday, January 19 2004 @ 06:43 AM EST
|
There is a charming interview with Linus on Australian IT. They spoke with him while he was attending Linux.conf.au in Adelaide. He says it is one of only two conferences he likes to attend, and he tells why. Of course they asked him about SCO, and he says they make him angry sometimes. He is finding the experience of seeing a lawsuit up close interesting, but it's not something he'd ever like to do again. (Amen.) And he talks about the new kernel and what is next for him, including some funny bits about user reports. Linus has written a tool to index his email, thanks to SCO's subpoena, which I hope he releases to the rest of us eventually, because I surely would like to have it as a memento when SCO is dead and buried. The pearl in the oyster from the SCO irritation. Besides, if the US gets any more litigious, soon we'll all need an application to help us to efficiently turn over our email in discovery when we get subpoenaed.
Linus would like a Linux phone but he can't get one. So far you have to be in Asia to get one. Here's Samsung's Linux phone that you can get in China, which is voice activated ("Open Browser" -- it's bilingual, actually, and "understands" both English and Chinese). I find it personally comical that they view it as a selling point that you can get a Linux phone that can sync with Outlook and interoperate with Word, but, hey, whatever. Samsung is Samsung. That just wouldn't be a plus in selling *me* a Linux phone. But I do get that Linux is the underpinning, not the sales point, and it's hitting the big time in mobile phones, which means a much wider audience than just little old me. Anyway, I really would like a Linux phone where I can "dial the phone, launch applications, and look up contacts without using the stylus or touch screen." I wouldn't care what else it did. Motorola makes Linux phones too, so far for the Asian market, but they say most of their handsets in the future will be Linux phones with MontaVista Linux. You remember MontaVista, I'm sure, from the OSDL Legal Defense Fund announcement and their strong stand against SCO. Here's what else MontaVista has been up to, according to this press release from last March: "Hundreds of products are already in development using MontaVista Linux, including mobile phones, PDAs, advanced remote controls, high definition televisions, HDTV, PVRs, set-top boxes, digital receivers, automotive telematics, musical instruments, gaming machines and karaoke systems. Recently, Sony and NEC released new consumer products built on MontaVista Linux. Several leading manufacturers are also currently building next generation mobile phones based on MontaVista Linux." Linus knows about those two phones, but rumor has it, according to Maureen O'Gara, who is usually right, that there is another Linux phone in the works from DoCoMo, Japan's number one mobile carrier, for release in the second half of 2004, so Linus may just get his wish someday: "The company, which expects its 3G phones to hit 25 million units by 2006, is supposed to have given suppliers like NEC a Linux spec to work with to cut development and manufacturing costs.
"Japanese reports are positioning the move as a way to checkmate Microsoft’s ambitions. It said DoCoMo wants to establish a standard ahead of Microsoft. It’s supposed to have worldwide ramifications." Some of you may remember that SCO's Darl McBride made a trip to Japan last July reportedly to try to talk Japanese companies out of using Linux. If you want to take a funny trip down memory lane, with two of our favorite analysts, you can read about it in this article in EETimes from last summer. Of course, one reason companies are doing this is because it's cheaper. That's an aspect some economists don't seem to factor in when looking at the impact of open source software on the economy. If companies can make a phone cheaper because it runs Linux, and they can, then they can either make more profit or sell the phone cheaper, and that means either way somebody is bound to have some money to spend on other things. You'd think economists would grasp that more money in your pocket is good.
So let's relax a bit with Linus. Here are the snips about SCO, but you'll enjoy the entire interview. You might want to grab it and view it locally, because there's a whole lot of flash going on. It takes forever to load and I kept losing the contents of the page if I tried to stay on the page too long. It's nevertheless worth it.
**********************************************
"Linus: I would like to get a Linux phone. I think there's two that are being sold, one's being sold in China and one's in Taiwan, Asia somewhere - so I can't actually get one.
"Q: Do you think that's good, seeing Linux being used in little devices, Xboxes and all sorts of places it wasn't meant to be?
"Linus: One of the must fun things was I bought my wife one of those electronic picture frames... I didn't even know it - I just decided I wanted to buy it because we'd just bought a better camera, and we had some good pictures of the kids. So I went out and bought it, and only when I was uploading my pictures, the night before Mother's Day, I was uploading them and looked at the technical specifications and found out it ran Linux!
"That's much more fun than big machines. . . .
"Q: Okay, here's the difficult question. What do you think about this SCO business right now?
"Linus: Right now I'm actually fairly calm, because they haven't made any huge outrageous claims in the past 12 days or so, so they've been quiet for a while. It hasn't been that bothersome, but every once in a while, when they make some new claim, it really riles me - I mean they've literally claimed copyright on files I can prove I wrote personally, and that's very irritating.
"But at the same time, the fact that their claims, when you step back, are so clearly bogus and not worth worrying about, is - that makes me worry a lot less. They're clearly scraping the barrel and coming up empty handed.
"So it's irritating but I can live with it. I'm just hoping it's going to finally come to a head soon, because it's just dragging on - it's been dragging on for something like eight months, and it's getting pretty tiresome.
"Q: It doesn't seem to be having much negative impact though on the use of Linux - that must be encouraging?
"Linus: I don't see any customers anyway, but apparently... customers aren't reacting very much, especially not much any more. But it has for example forced me to - they've subpoenaed me for a lot of emails, and I spent literally a week writing a tool to index all my emails, so that when they give a better criteria for me, what they really want, I can actually produce it.
"So it's led to some wasted time, but it's been interesting to some degree. I've never seen a lawsuit up this close and personal before - and I don't want to see one again - but at the same time, I think the most interesting part has been learning and realizing just how personally you take these things. And just thinking of how angry I become at some of the claims - it's kind of interesting looking at how you react, yourself.
"Q: It's understandable, something that you've put so much into over the years.
"Linus: Yes, but what you start realizing is this is something that must be pretty common in the business world. From a Linux standpoint this is something very new and the first big lawsuit, but at the same time apparently this goes on all the time, and in that sense getting a feel for what any lawsuit will do to the people involved is interesting."
|
|
|
|
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, January 19 2004 @ 07:11 AM EST |
I really like Linus's view of the cirsumstances, I expecialy appretiate his
view in retrospect of himself . I believe we may all have done this by now at
some point in the mess.
Wolvenar[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: fstanchina on Monday, January 19 2004 @ 07:53 AM EST |
Besides, if the US gets any more litigious, soon we'll all need an
application to help us to efficiently turn over our email
[...]
...or a one-way ticket to somewhere else. For some of your
politicians, maybe.
(not that most of the other "developed" countries
are doing much better, anyway) [ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: brenda banks on Monday, January 19 2004 @ 08:10 AM EST |
interesting point to note is that it has made him mad also.i have heard numerous
comments that he doesnt get riled and this really makes me look again at some of
my own reactions.i wonder why none of us non lawyers noticed before just how
litigous the USA has become.things to think about
---
br3n[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, January 19 2004 @ 08:15 AM EST |
Read "Bleak House" by Dickens.
There is an underlying theme here when the lawyers are hovering over something
that is either dead or alive.
They can only think of their own bellies... it's who they are!
Some have said that there should be no lawyers in the governements that have
separation of powers in 3 branches.
Legislative, Executive, and Judicial. The reasoning is that lawyers are part of
the Judicial and thus can have only a too powerful affect when they act... in
their own interest on behalf of their own while acting as memebers of the
Legislative and Executive branches.[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: freeio on Monday, January 19 2004 @ 08:42 AM EST |
"If companies can make a phone cheaper because it runs Linux, and they
can, then they can either make more profit or sell the phone cheaper, and that
means either way somebody is bound to have some money to spend on other things.
You'd think economists would grasp that more money in your pocket is
good."
Many economists still seem to think that natural disasters and other calamities
are good for the economy, in that they cause money to be spent to overcome the
destruction. This is a fallacy, of course, in that money spent to replace
broken windows (etc.) is not available to invest/spend in more positive things.
The parallel to proprietary software is striking. Many economists seem to
actually believe that having to buy the same functionality over and over (i.e.
operating systems, office software, etc.) even when only to overcome the
unnatural disasters (software bugs, exploits, etc.) is good because the seller
profits from selling it again. That money could have been spent elsewhere for
other things, and is a net loss to the economy, and not a net gain, since it
resulted in no real gain to the buyer, other than correcting the errors that she
herself did not cause. I.e. there is no real economic gain for the buyer, or
for society as a whole, when additional money is spent to replace something
which failed to properly do its job the first time.
The Keynsian economists are not just wrong it this regard, they actually would
seem to be supporting thievery by deception.
---
QRL? DE W4TI[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: flame on Monday, January 19 2004 @ 08:56 AM EST |
> Linus would like a Linux phone but he can't get one.
I found this rather ironic, and felt the need to bring it to the attention of
Motorola.
I have sent them an email pointing this out and linking to the article, let's
see if they remedy the situation.
--
flame[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: moonbroth on Monday, January 19 2004 @ 09:35 AM EST |
I thought this bit from Montavista's SCO
backgrounder was worth copying to the comments:
Is Linux
Safe?
Open Source methods have been producing quality code for over
thirty (30) years. Linux source code has been in circulation since 1991. In all
that time no lawsuit has really ever challenged the validitiy of Open Source.
Conversely, in the last decade alone, proprietary interests have lauched
thousands of lawsuits involving tens of thousands of claims over copyright,
patents, trade secrets and contractual business arrangements. Proprietary
embedded software has seen its substantial share of this litigation. In fact,
with proprietary embedded software, litigation is almost a certainty. By
contrast embedded Open Source is both less prone to litigation and highly
transparent. To investigate the origins of Open Source IP you need only inspect
the source. With proprietary code bases, you must rely on the vendor-supplied
assurances of a clean IP trail.
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: NZheretic on Monday, January 19 2004 @ 10:31 AM EST |
Just a reminder:
Free Software
Foundation Press ReleaseSetting the Record Straight: The
Free Software Foundation, the General Public License and SCO versus
IBMBoston, MA, USA - Wednesday, January 14,
2003 -
On Wednesday, January 21, 2004, the Free Software Foundation (FSF)
will
hold a press conference at Columbia University to discuss the strengths
and
successes of the GNU General Public License (GPL) and to refute the
claims made
by the The SCO Group, Ltd. (SCO) and their counsel in their
ongoing lawsuit
against International Business Machines Corp (IBM).
In the last few
months, SCO has been sowing confusion and misinformation
regarding the validity
of the GNU GPL as part of their strategy to extort
money from users of the
kernel named Linux, which is licensed under FSF's
GPL. FSF, the umpire of Free
Software disputes, will respond to SCO's
lawsuit and will explain how SCO seeks
to inappropriately increase its own
market value at the expense of the
legitimate activity of the Free
Software community's developers, distributors
and users.
This press conference is valuable to anyone interested in the
state of
Free Software, its licensing issues, the SCO v. IBM lawsuit, and
the
integrity of the GNU GPL. FSF maintains that the SCO lawsuit is not
only
without merit, but that SCO have themselves benefited from distribution
the
kernel named Linux under GPL, even as they question that license's
validity.
Indeed, Professor Eben Moglen, FSF Board Member and General
Counsel, has pointed
out that SCO has distributed Linux under GPL, even
after filing their lawsuit.
SCO has therefore published its supposed
trade secrets and copyrighted material
under a license that gives everyone
permission to copy, modify, and redistribute
that software.
Professor Moglen will head the press conference and will
discuss both the
strengths and successes of the GPL -- the most popular and
widely used
Free Software copyright license. As the lawyer behind most
successful
enforcement efforts of GPL, and a nationally recognized authority
on
alternatives to contemporary copyright and patent law, Professor Moglen is
in
an unique position to discuss the history of the GPL, the FSF's
continued
success in obtaining compliance with the GPL, and why SCO's
attack on the users
of the kernel named Linux and the GPL is both
unprecedented and without
merit.
This press conference offers an excellent opportunity to understand
the
history and intent of the GPL, its importance in the IT community and
the
weakness of SCO's current lawsuit against IBM. Professor Moglen will
be
available to answer questions both during and after the press
conference.
About Free Software Foundation:
The Free Software
Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to promoting
computer users' right to
use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute
computer programs. The FSF promotes
the development and use of Free (as in
freedom) Software - particularly the GNU
operating system and its
GNU/Linux variants - and Free Documentation for Free
Software. The FSF
also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and political
issues of
freedom in the use of software. Their web site, located
at
http://www.fsf.org, is an important source of information about
GNU/Linux.
They are headquartered in Boston, MA, USA.
About Eben Moglen:
Eben Moglen is Professor of Law and Legal History at the Columbia
Law
School, where he has taught since 1987. He clerked for Judge Edward
Weinfeld
of the United State District Court for the Southern District of
New York and for
Justice Thurgood Marshall of the United States Supreme
Court. Before and during
law school he was a designer and implementer of
advanced computer programming
languages at IBM's Santa Teresa Laboratory
and Thomas J. Watson Research Center.
His principal areas of interest are
Anglo American legal history, constitutional
law, computers, free
expression, and copyrights, patents and trademarks. Since
1993, he has served as pro
bono General Counsel for the Foundation and has
served on its board since
July 2000.
Copyright © 2004 Free Software
Foundation, Inc.,
59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA
02111, USA
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is
permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.
Updated:
$Date: 2004/01/19 03:46:54 $ $Author: mpresley $
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, January 19 2004 @ 10:55 AM EST |
The Real Story Behind the SCO Story
(Idontdowindows posting, forgot password):
<http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2004-01-13-patentscover_x.htm>
Briefly: it pays to sue in the current USA. Nevermind jobs are being lost to
overseas firms. But when Beechcraft started moving its airplane manuf. facility
to Canada because of liability claims in the USA, Congress passed a ceiling on
liability and the firm stayed.
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Mikie on Monday, January 19 2004 @ 11:07 AM EST |
| Good article on SCO's evidence falling apart. [ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: bruce_s on Monday, January 19 2004 @ 11:28 AM EST |
There's a new article pointed to by LinuxToday in the
Finincial Times" about
SCO's assaults on new
fronts
" BP, Siemens and Fujitsu are
among a large number of
big companies whose use of the operating system has
come
under scrutiny, said Darl McBride, chief executive of SCO, the
small US company that has mounted the challenge.
He said
the company had not yet decided whether to sue. But he
added: "That clearly
is an option we are looking into very
closely."
I'm
reminded of the lines from Londo in "Babylon 5"
something like:
"...Reports from the front lines, Notice the plural, lines" and
"Only an
idiot would fight a war on two fronts, only the Heir to the
King of Idiots
would fight on more"
Bruce S.
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
- SCO only bluffs - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, January 19 2004 @ 11:44 AM EST
| |
| Authored by: Stephen on Monday, January 19 2004 @ 12:11 PM EST |
[T]hey've subpoenaed me for a lot of emails, and I spent
literally a week writing a tool to index all my emails, so that when they give a
better criteria for me, what they really want, I can actually produce
it.
In other words, it sounds like those highly-publicized
SCOG subpeonas were also a fishing trip. Linus and OSDL have wisely been quiet
about the contents of the subpeona, but this interview drops two
hints:
- They want e-mail. (Not a huge surprise, but still a fact
worth noting.)
- Their request was insufficiently specific for Linus to
provide a reasonable response.
I'd love to know what SCOG asked for
and how Linux replied, of course, but we'll have to wait to find out, if we find
out anything about it at all.
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, January 19 2004 @ 01:20 PM EST |
While those 2 or 3 Linux phones are only marketed in Asia, Linus can still get a
decent (I consider it better) alternative.
You can basically use a Linux pocket PDA, like Zaurus or Yopy, and stick a
GPRS/GSM card into them.
I often browse Grocklaw on my Zaurus C750, using a GPRS card, with the speed
around that of a dial up modem.
These may be better suited to Linus, as they have full keyboards, and shell
access, where you dial from the command directly, if you don't like the
GUI/Stylus combination.
Any way, there's a small community working on this open source project, at
OpenZaurus.org and various smaller projects for the Linux PDA. [ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, January 19 2004 @ 01:42 PM EST |
here is more relaxing with Linus.
He gets dunked in the tank.
http://www.everythinglinux.com.au/linus-splash.html
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 20 2004 @ 09:04 PM EST |
the fun thing about the conf was everyone was so approachable, including linus -
he is an incredibly nice guy, even with us awestruck fans and our constant
'please sign <insert item>' and endless photo requests.. he sat in the
laptop/chill tent with a laptop with everyone else...wandering past, it was
noted one morning he was catching up with groklaw....way to go linus:)[ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
|
|
|
