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AT&T Kicks Linux's Tires, Gates on the Future, Sender ID, and a Red Hat Filing
Tuesday, October 05 2004 @ 11:04 AM EDT

Bloomberg reports that AT&T is considering a switch from Microsoft Windows to GNU/Linux. They say they are primarily concerned about security. A spokesman says they've had more viruses in the last six months than in the previous 10 years:

"A decision by AT&T to abandon Windows would be Microsoft's biggest loss to the 13-year-old Linux system. A surge in viruses and efforts to cut costs have driven customers to look for alternatives to Windows, which dominates the $10 billion market for PC operating systems. . . .

"The pressure from Linux comes as Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft's sales growth declines to its lowest rate ever. The company in July predicted growth of as little as 4.3 percent this year, down from an average 38 percent a year in the 1990s."

If Microsoft fixes the security issues, they may not have to switch, they say. Then there is that cost thingie. "Microsoft gets about 80 percent profit on each Windows PC sale," the article states. AT&T figures it could save 50-60% on the cost of desktop software by moving to Linux.

It could be this is just a bunch of talk. I expect a lot of companies negotiate better deals these days by dropping the L word into the conversation.

But here is the part that sticks in my mind. I ask myself this: does AT&T know a thing or two about Unix? Is it showing any fear about Linux's lineage if it is thinking of switching from Windows to Linux and telling reporters about it to boot?

Let's see: AT&T develops Unix. Then, it sells it and switches to Windows. Now it is thinking of ditching Windows for the operating system SCO claims is a ripoff of Unix. . . . It's the circle of life.

I've got it! SCO can sue its alleged predecessor-in-interest, thus suing "itself".

Perfect.

Update: As we thought, it's mostly talk, and today, Wednesday, AT&T is denying they are concerned about security and they are sure Microsoft will solve security concerns. Sure. Got it. No worries, and the worries will be successfully addressed. Illuminata analyst Gordon Haff Haff says in the article that companies that switch to Linux could realize substantial benefits: "Especially for 'transactional desktops,' that is, those being used for a small number of specific tasks as opposed to general-purpose PCs, the cost savings associated with Linux and associated software like OpenOffice can be substantial."

What, Me Worry?

Microsoft's Bill Gates says he's not worried about competition from Linux. In 10 years' time, he predicts, it will be Windows and Linux as the dominant players on the OS scene, he believes, if current trends continue.

Here's his take on why Unix is losing out, aside from the fact that Unix has many vendors and Windows has only one and one set of instructions:

"Gates also mentioned that Linux is taking over Unix, not Windows. The problem with Unix is that the OS companies involved (SGI, Sun, IBM, HP, SCO) never managed to get together and adhere to common standards and direction, he said. When a Unix brand would get a bit better than the other on a particular thing, the others would 'conspire' behind its back to bring it down. It's this fragmentation and lack of business relationships that has destroyed Unix to the rival Linux "

Spoken like a true diplomat. His plan for successfully competing with Linux, the public version of the plan, anyway, is this: to make Longhorn so easy to use, it becomes cheaper to run in business than Linux. Value, not price, is the theme. Linux requires support and capable IT administrators. His goal is to provide software that requires little in the way of support. Now, if he only meant it, that would be fabulous. Imagine that. A fair fight, based on value to the customers.

However, there is a bit more news on Sender ID that raises some questions as to his actual plan to compete with Linux. Here's some updated information on what Microsoft's comment to the FTC was like:

"The test of whether Sender ID or any other proposed solution is an open standard is not Whether it has been ratified through an open consensus- based process, but rather whether the proposal can be widely adopted - indeed many successfull industry standards are not ratified by a standard-setting organization. . . .

"Microsoft cannot, however, confirm whether it has patent rights in other [email authentication] technology nor, obviously, whether any other party has patent rights that might be needed to make use or sell implementations of other proposed authentication standards"

The letter was written by an attorney. I'm sure you could tell. Here it is, the same thought, in plain English:

"A Microsoft spokesman, Sean Sundwall, said . . . that smaller companies might hesitate without standards but larger ones won't change their plans. 'Once you get a critical mass of people adopting Sender ID, it becomes for the smaller sender critically important they adopt it as well,' he said."

I believe that means shoving it down our throats or isolating the GPL in a software ghetto. How convenient. The complete letter is here. All the comments are here. It seems Microsoft forgot to mention about the incompatibility with the GPL, so it's a good thing Larry Rosen wrote his letter to the FTC. You will have noted, if you clicked on the articles about Gates opining about the future, that he claims spam is "down from a factor of 10 from where it was a year ago", (huh?) but he admits he has to run AdAware on his home computers to get rid of spyware. And his company proposes to solve the world's email spoofing problems? Based on what track record?

Red Hat Filing

There is also a new document listed in the Red Hat case:

10/4/04 44 -- Letter to Judge Robinson from L. Polizoti re summary of status of case pending in the USDC for the District of Utah (ft)

L. Polizoti? Which side is that? Frank Sorenson did some digging, and here is what he found:

"This appears to be Leslie A. Polizoti, an attorney for Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell.

"They appear to represent SCO, since RedHat has served previous filings on that law firm - (see, for example http://sco.tuxrocks.com/Docs/RH/RH-32.pdf. "

See the last page to find the firm listed. In any case, we should have it by later today or tomorrow morning.


  


AT&T Kicks Linux's Tires, Gates on the Future, Sender ID, and a Red Hat Filing | 302 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Off Topic Posts Here
Authored by: penfold on Tuesday, October 05 2004 @ 12:11 PM EDT


---
The worth of man is determined by the battle between good and evil in the mans
subconcious.The Evil within is so strong that the way to win is to deny it
battle

[ Reply to This | # ]

Corrections Here
Authored by: penfold on Tuesday, October 05 2004 @ 12:12 PM EDT


---
The worth of man is determined by the battle between good and evil in the mans
subconcious.The Evil within is so strong that the way to win is to deny it
battle

[ Reply to This | # ]

AT&T Kicks Linux's Tires, Gates on the Future, Sender ID, and a Red Hat Filing
Authored by: archonix on Tuesday, October 05 2004 @ 12:26 PM EDT
His goal is to provide software that requires little in the way of support.


Hah! Forgive my cynicism, but how can they expect to produce such a beast when Longhorn is simply another layer of paint and wallpaper upon the many layers already slapped upon the cardboard dosbox that makes up the core of windows? I wouldn't be surprised if it fell over at least once a day.

---
disclaimer: I'm human. I make mistakes too, so if I've made one here, tell me nicely and I'll try to see it corrected in future.

[ Reply to This | # ]

AT&T Kicks Linux's Tires...
Authored by: nickieh on Tuesday, October 05 2004 @ 12:30 PM EDT
Well, if ANYONE would have immunity to a SCO lawsuit, it'd be T (after all, they really DO know where all the bodies are buried :-) )
Though I sadly suspect that, like a number of other companies and local governments, this is simply a ploy to squeeze Mr. Bill and his minions into a better deal.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Any news on SCO-IBM and SCO-Novell
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, October 05 2004 @ 12:39 PM EDT
Interested in the new Red Hat filing

But there are also 2 outstanding filings in the other cases

1. SCO's opposition to Novell's motion to dismiss (was due 1 October)

2. SCO's reply in support of supplemental memo on discovery (due 4 October).
n.b. realistically likely to be sealed, since the initial supplemental memo was
sealed, IBM opposition was sealed, ...




Quatermass
IANAL IMHO etc

[ Reply to This | # ]

Bill Gates predicts...!?!
Authored by: Groklaw Lurker on Tuesday, October 05 2004 @ 12:42 PM EDT
"...In 10 years' time, he predicts, it will be Windows and Linux as the
dominant players on the OS scene, he believes, if current trends
continue..."

This from the man who, in 1985 said, "No one will ever need more than 640K
of memory."

From the man who repeatedly expressed confusion about what the Internet was in
1989 and 1990.

From the man who threw a public tantrum when told he had to actually pay
property taxes on his 50 million dollar plus mansion and estate - yes, just like
the unwashed masses.

I have prediction for him.

In ten years time, Microsoft will be struggling to maintain a foothold in the
Desktop Operating Systems market against its dominant rival, Linux while IBM
ponders shutting down its Microsoft division and reassigning the Windows 12
development team to its Linux technology division where they "May actually
have an opportunity to work on something that someone wants to use...".

GL


[ Reply to This | # ]

does att know?
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, October 05 2004 @ 12:44 PM EDT
Asking if ATT knows a bit about unix (linux) was a joke wasnt it? and I have worked as a temp for ATT 7 years ago, and they *KNOW* about opensource, in fact I learned to love it over there.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Gates' Economic Mistakes
Authored by: Einhverfr on Tuesday, October 05 2004 @ 12:45 PM EDT
I read the Gates article a while back when it was posted on slashdot.
Interesting read and Gates completely misses the point.

Gates seems to attribute the decline in UNIX to the fragmentation of UNIX
vendors and hence the incompatibility with other software. In reality, the
POSIX standards have made it so that vendors can compile versions for different
UNIX versions with very few issues. The real cost of UNIX fragmentation is
quite different.

Because proprietary UNIX is often vertically integrated into the business models
of the vendors. This means that each vendor is essentially reinventing many
wheels in order to make UNIX work on their system-- i.e. the system becomes so
integrated with the hardware that economy of scale issues will make it
impossible to compete with commodity products when those become available for
the sorts of tasks required.

Hence as Windows and Linux become more able to encroach on the realm of big
iron, it becomes harder to make the case for running proprietary UNIX. THis is
because each UNIX vendor must absorb the entire cost of R&D for their
software and then charge high enough licensing fees to recover this cost. This
dynamic could bite Windows pretty hard too, and I predict that in 10 years,
Windows will be on its way out.

FOSS is not just a software development methodology. It is an economic model
where the cost of development is spread out "on-demand," i.e. when a
feature is demanded, the one who most needs that feature will bear the cost of
the development.

The economic model of Windows is fundmantally identical to that of proprietary
UNIX but has a greater sales volume and so is more insulated from economy of
scale issues. Hence while they are not as vulnerable as the proprietary UNIX
vendors, they are still vulnerable.

What happens if Linux gets, say, 20% of the desktop market? This means that to
recoup the costs, this means that Windows must cost 25% more in order to
maintain the same level of revenue. Since only a very small percentage of the
cost is actual production cost of the unit, this curve very closely relates to
the realities.

Microsoft's reaction would have to be the cutting of their own profits. (My
recollection was approximately 40% profit margin after R&D, marketing, etc.
was accounted for.)

But after a while, they cannot continue to cut costs. Their profit margins will
continue to decline until their only option is to cut R&D, advertising, etc.
For example, if Linux were to capture 30% of the market share and Microsoft did
not raise prices, they would essentially be removing all their profit from the
deal. So in reality, I would guess that 20% is probably closer to the point of
no return for Microsoft. So, if we can get Linux running on 20% of deskops,
then Microsoft will start to collapse inward. After the huge dividend/buyback
plan, they do not have the resources to fight this massive battle.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Gates on the Future
Authored by: mikebmw on Tuesday, October 05 2004 @ 12:46 PM EDT
"Gates also mentioned that Linux is taking over Unix, not Windows. The
problem with Unix is that the OS companies involved (SGI, Sun, IBM, HP, SCO)
never managed to get together and adhere to common standards and direction, he
said. When a Unix brand would get a bit better than the other on a particular
thing, the others would 'conspire' behind its back to bring it down. It's this
fragmentation and lack of business relationships that has destroyed Unix to the
rival Linux "

I think what killed UNIX more than any thing is that it was never priced in the
commodity range. When Windose was priced in the couple of hundred dollar range,
UNIX was in the thousands of dollar range. Even the origional SCO unix for an
Intel platform was about running over a thousand dollars for a complete X
windows system, and that was in the 80's. This confined UNIX to the work station
enviroment and off the desk top. If Linux had been developed 10 years earlier,
the desk top would have been a very different place now. Vendors not agreeing on
standards was one thing. But UNIX during the early desktop days wasn't suited
for the desktop. At prices ranging from $1000 to $30,000 for an OS alone, along
with expensive required hardware, was the biggest issue. This left a big hole in
the market place that M$ took advantage of by means of hook or crook.
just my 2 cents worth of rambling.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Market Distortion.
Authored by: Brian S. on Tuesday, October 05 2004 @ 12:53 PM EDT
"Microsoft gets about 80 percent profit on each Windows PC sale."

http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aZ2JnBlm5tOs&refer=us#

Surely in this day and age, a PC should be considered a commodity sale. What
other everyday commodity produces a profit margin of 80%.

Can you imagine 80% margin on petrol, on fridges, on TV's.
It's a good job M$ aren't farmers, most people would starve.

Brian S.

[ Reply to This | # ]

AT&T Kicks Linux's Tires, Gates on the Future, Sender ID, and a Red Hat Filing
Authored by: Adam B on Tuesday, October 05 2004 @ 12:56 PM EDT

I join with PJ in thinking this mostly the latest good way to get a deal out of MS. However, it's a good step: people, in order to make these threats, have to seriously look into things like TCO and usability and how difficult a switch would be and training, etc. Some are bound to find that despite what they originally thought that they really should switch over, and thus the process of competition starts. While before people had no choice, now they realize that they have a choice, even if they don't want to exercise it right now.

I love linux, I use it for everything except my workstation (a mac), but I think Bill is right on the money on this one. Linux will eat UNIX's lunch far before it steps up to the Windows plate, and in fact that's what the market says it's doing right now.

I do think Bill misses one key point on all of this. Yes, Linux is more a UNIX competitor right now, but that's likely to change. As this ploy is evidence of, Windows is rapidly being exposed as a client-only OS really, and they're about to have to fight for their slice of the server marked with tooth and nail.

[ Reply to This | # ]

AT&T Kicks Linux's Tires, Gates on the Future, Sender ID, and a Red Hat Filing
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, October 05 2004 @ 12:58 PM EDT
I've been thinking about this XP-lite that MS announced for emerging (i.e. high
piracy) markets. I'd bet dollars to donuts that the $36 dollar per copy is just
enough to cover the cost of extending their production activation DRM into a
foreign market. They know their gimped version will be replaced with a pirate
copy. What they want is the infrastructure.

Imagine them offering a new service in a couple years: Global User Management.
Got software, music, or movies you want to sell to the planet? Give us a cut
and we'll control what your customers can do with it.

There's a reason for a software company to launch a game console. The same
reason Windows Media Player is a free download and Steve Ballmer is bashing the
IPod as a pirating tool.

It will be a horrible flop though. Since everything hinges on prying control
away from the people who actually paid for the hardware, customers will despise
it and developers will abandon it. In the end, it will be an expensive, painful
lesson that any geek could could have explained.

Information wants to be free.

[ Reply to This | # ]

AT&T Kicks Linux's Tires, Gates on the Future, Sender ID, and a Red Hat Filing
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, October 05 2004 @ 01:09 PM EDT
It is also interesting to read Cisco's comments to the FTC on Spam:

(...)
8. Whether any of the proposed authentication standards are proprietary and/or
patented.

Cisco has at least one pending patent application relating to the Identified
Internet Mail proposal. If Identified Internet Mail is adopted as an industry
standard, Cisco is committed to making this patent available, if issued, on
terms that permit wide acceptance.
(...)

Not actually completely answering... MS's approach to Sender-Id licencing also
"permits wide acceptance", but at a cost... As far as I can
understand, Cisco is reserving itself the rights to set up a similar approach.

Tsk, tsk, tsk...

[ Reply to This | # ]

AT&T Kicks Linux's Tires, Gates on the Future, Sender ID, and a Red Hat Filing
Authored by: MattZN on Tuesday, October 05 2004 @ 01:32 PM EDT
Gates is actually right in this one case regarding why UNIX has never been able to compete with windows until Linux came about. Having worked almost exclusively on UNIX systems (primarily BSD in my case) since 1985 or so I've witnessed the infighting and not-invented-here attitude of unix vendors like SGI and SUN, and others, first-hand. The first thing I would have to do after installing a newly minted UNIX box would be to load up half a hundred GNU utilities because the UNIX vendor's own utilities were so decrepid and out of date they were virtually unusable. Their compilers were only barely ANSI. Their header files, utilities, and system calls have always been behind the times, sometimes severely behind the times (for example, the BSDs had snprintf() at least 5 years before Sun decided to add it to their libs). And without source code we were at the mercy of the vendors to fix OS bugs. And they were shipping as value-add (extra cost) features that BSD and Linux already had. That idiotic N-user license became an oxymoron as far back as 1989. We finally gave up and switched to BSD, and haven't looked back since.

But these weren't the only problems. Vendors like SGI and SUN were making their own cpu chips, and slowly losing their performance advantage to Intel (and now AMD). It got to the point where a $100,000 SGI box didn't have the suds to compete with a $10,000 FreeBSD box, and SUN wasn't in much better straights. It was actually easier for us to rip out the SGI Challenge L's we had, costing near a million dollars when we bought them, and replace them with less then $50,000 worth of rack mount PCs running FreeBSD.

Linux (and the BSDs) have advantages in modern times that vendor based UNIX boxes never had. Now days you can buy a $1000 machine which is at least as powerful as the $1 million dollar UNIX boxes in the 1995 time frame. Driver support is much better, mainly oweing to Intel's PCI bus architecture and the huge and ever-growing open-source communities reverse engineering efforts, and advanced protocols now tend to exist on OpenSource UNIXs like Linux and the BSDs long before they show up on traditional UNIX vendor's boxes. Storage is cheap, networks are faster... the UNIX vendors have never been able to adjust to the drastic reduction in hardware costs. In fact, they still barely acknowledge that it's a problem, the result being that the low-end (vendor based) UNIX market has been completely lost to Linux, the BSDs, and MS Windows. Just about the only thing a vendor like Sun has left is the hot-swap and reliability-related features of their mini computers, and sheer memory capacity, but even that is becoming marginalized by advances in clustered computing.

-Matt www.dragonflybsd.org Dillon

[ Reply to This | # ]

does AT&T know a thing or two about Unix?
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, October 05 2004 @ 01:33 PM EDT
"But here is the part that sticks in my mind. I ask myself this: does
AT&T know a thing or two about Unix?"

Answer: Mostly no.

There is no corporate memory. Maybe an individual or two in AT&T Labs, but
that has no corporate impact.

There decision process on M$ vs Linux is the same as for any other company of
that scale.

Disclaimer: I worked as a consultant for a while

[ Reply to This | # ]

Bill Gates and Spam
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, October 05 2004 @ 01:49 PM EDT
I read Gates's remark about spam to mean that he personally receives only 10% of
the spam he got a year ago, which presumably means that Microsoft's in-house
filters are improving.

[ Reply to This | # ]

AT&T Kicks Linux's Tires, Gates on the Future, Sender ID, and a Red Hat Filing
Authored by: James on Tuesday, October 05 2004 @ 01:51 PM EDT
If anything, I could see them nabbing a BSD, like Apple did and modifying that.
With the BSD license, they don't have to share.

[ Reply to This | # ]

AT&T -- Today -- and Unix
Authored by: n8ur on Tuesday, October 05 2004 @ 01:52 PM EDT
I'm not so sure today's AT&T retains any institutional insight into Unix.
Remember that Bell Labs, where Unix was born, went to Lucent during the
"trivestiture" in 1996.

The AT&T of today bears little resemblence to the technology incubator it
was even 10 years ago.

[ Reply to This | # ]

AT&T Kicks Linux's Tires, Gates on the Future, Sender ID, and a Red Hat Filing
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, October 05 2004 @ 01:59 PM EDT
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see a company as large as AT&T successfully
implement a linux distro. More likely though, they're using the threat of linux
adoption as leverage when negotiating prices with Microsoft.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Bill's Actual Comment
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, October 05 2004 @ 02:14 PM EDT
This makes me feel rather old. I recall reading Bill's comment on memory
requirements in a contemporary news report. Although I don't recall when that
was, I'm pretty certain it was well after 1982 - probably 1985-ish - and it was
reported that Bill said he did not believe that anyone would require more than
256k of memory.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Read about Adaware for "Sir" Billy Bob over at eweek
Authored by: ray08 on Tuesday, October 05 2004 @ 02:23 PM EDT
Like I commented over there, all the "Knight" has to do is dump IE and get onto Firefox, and voila!, no more malware! Yes, it really is that easy. But if he does that, I'm entitled to a percentage of the "hundreds of millions of dollars" M$ will save. Or do I have to get a patent for that idea???? Also, check out the Sun/HP that is going on now:

---
Caldera is toast! And Groklaw is the toaster! (with toast level set to BURN)

[ Reply to This | # ]

I would love to see SCO try to sue AT&T...
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, October 05 2004 @ 02:25 PM EDT
You know, this just beats all...

Instead of AutoZone, insert AT&T. I would love to see a judge and jury make
sense of that one!

SCO suing AT&T for using Linux that supposedly has code, stolen from SCO
Unix and supposedly was invented and created by AT&T in the first place.
Don't you think AT&T could snap their fingers and produce evidence instantly
that would prove the contrary to SCOs arguements?

Not only is it in the best interest of Microsoft to make a better deal with
AT&T, it would also be in SCOs best interest if Microsoft could make a
better deal with AT&T.

Otherwise, SCO will meet the grim reaper in person.

At least AT&T has somewhere to turn to if they can't make a better deal with
Microsoft.

What was printed on my McD's bag goes here too!

"I'm just lovin' it!"(R)

[ Reply to This | # ]

AT&T Kicks Mac's Tires too.
Authored by: JamesKatt on Tuesday, October 05 2004 @ 02:29 PM EDT
As Macintosh user, I'm very happy for any gains Linux may make. That is
because it is the applications, in the end, that make the biggest
differentiating factors in a user's computing experience. Any gains Linux
makes means more applications for Linux. This in turn leads to more
applications for the Macintosh since in general, it is easy to recompile Linux
applications on the Mac.

What is interesting for both Macintosh and Linux users is that since the
operating system is fairly stable, you don't have to keep buying newer
machines as frequently as Windows users. The lifespan of a Mac, for
example, may be at least 7 years for most people, rather than the 3 year life-
span for a Windows PC.

What will make it difficult for Linux to expand its marketshare, however,
outside the corporate environment, are consumer applications. This is where
Windows has a tremendous hold. Windows has games. Linux has very few.

Of course, until a viable (and current iterations of Open Office are not yet
there) alternative to Microsoft Office exist, corporate users will have
difficulty
in switching. In one company I work with, the use of Office documents is so
pervasive, I don't see how they can switch - particularly if the Linux
alternatives don't do a perfect job of formatting those documents. Microsoft
keeps updating its files also and placing encryption options - all of which
make it difficult to keep compliance with Office file structures. Thus Microsoft

will keep most of its hedgemony.

---
I ANAL

[ Reply to This | # ]

I agree with Bill about UNIX fragmentation
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, October 05 2004 @ 03:00 PM EDT
>>The problem with Unix is that the OS companies involved (SGI, Sun, IBM,
HP, SCO) never managed to get together and adhere to common standards and
direction<<

I was saying that ten years ago. Actually, I think that was part of the idea
behind Linux. Linux can't be fragmented with each company guarding it's own
"turf."

If the UNIX vendors could have pulled it together ten years ago, NT would have
got a foot-hold. But they never did, and I doubt they every will.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Open source compatible SenderID alternative...
Authored by: lachoneus on Tuesday, October 05 2004 @ 03:06 PM EDT
I haven't read much on SenderID, but I understand that it attempts to
authenticate the sender's identity. The problem is that no one wants to rely on
one company (especially MS) to provide this service because of the dependencies
it would create.

Here is a much simpler idea which would work with an open source framework and
which requires no central authority:

1) Modify e-mail programs such that each e-mail is sent with a random 8-digit
checksum (very simple).

2) When an e-mail is received, the receiving e-mail program autoreplies to the
sender asking, "Did you send this?" and including a different 8-digit
checksum (but not the one from step #1).

3) The originating server autoresponds with a message that says "yes I
did" and includes both checksums, thus establishing that the sender is who
he/she says he is, whereupon the original e-mail is delivered to the person's
inbox.

This solution could be truly automated, requires no intervention on either the
sender's or receiver's part, and requires no central administrative authority.
And although it requires every e-mail to be validated, the end result is still
less network traffic than that currently associated with the amount of spam now
sent.

[ Reply to This | # ]

First of all
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, October 05 2004 @ 05:10 PM EDT
notice that this is a website, with written content. It's not the source code
for software. Therefore it's likely to have different licensing requirements by
it's very nature. Information of a general sort, like recipes or wiki content,
may be suitable for GPL-like licensing, but commentary, which is of a more
personal nature, isn't.

Second, although the it isn't the GPL, it is an open license, one with
restrictions suitable to the needs and desires of the author. It's thus not
inconsistant with her stance on FOSS in general. PJ may strongly believe in the
GPL, but she hasn't ever claimed that the GPL is the only useful license out
there, you know.

Third and finally, this is PJ's site, and she can do whatever the heck she
pleases with her own content. Anyone who respects freedom would do best to
respect her choice concerning it. PJ has explained the reasons behind her
choice clearly, the restrictions she chose are reasonable and fair, and they are
in line with her general beliefs. That *should* be enough to end discussion on
this matter.

---
m(_ _)m

[ Reply to This | # ]

Re: AT&T Kicks Linux's Tires
Authored by: prong on Tuesday, October 05 2004 @ 10:48 PM EDT

I've worked three seprate contracts for AT&T over the years. The first was almost 15 years ago, when the company had over 400,000 employees. You could easily add on another 100,000 in direct contracts to get an idea of the true size of the corporation. My second contract was just prior to the famous tri-vestiture. The head count at that time is confusing, but I ended up on the newly formed Lucent side, which is also where Bell Labs ended up. I had an opportunity to go to work for Bell Labs at the end of my contract. I didn't take it, which is something I'm still deeply ambivalent about.

My current contract with AT&T brings me to a company that has less than 70,000 employees, has been pulled from the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and is facing the prospect of cutting one quarter of its existing employees before the end of the year. Never mind contractors (yes, I'm looking). What is called "AT&T Labs" does very little in the way of basic research. The staff is more than 60% contract,and serves primarily as a development and testing arm for other AT&T divisions. The sad thing is, in my opinion, the company is being managed like it's an order of magnitude larger than it actually is. Moral is horrible, at the immediate prospects are worse.

My point is this: whether or not AT&T CIO is serious about a switch to Linux (and I agree with PJ that this may be a play to cut costs with MS), I wouldn't consider it a "win" for the community if they did. Barring the sudden introduction of a stunningly talented executive staff, AT&T is headed for a buyout or bankruptcy. A buyout means the desktops will probably revert to Windows, bankruptcy just gives MS ammo. "Lookee what happens when you switch!". That's a FUD campaign waiting to happen.

When you pick up the phone and get dial tone, thank Ma Bell. You are amazed at what your OS can accomplish, thank Ma Bell (Windoze users, too). You think your 56 gigabit backplane switch rocks, thank Ma Bell. Just remember: Ma Bell is dead, and her namesake is on life support.

PJ, if you get paper looking for my identity, shoot me a note. I'd like to clear my desk and get a lawyer. :)

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predecessor-in-interest, thus suing "itself".
Authored by: moosie on Wednesday, October 06 2004 @ 01:44 AM EDT
I for one would love to see that lawsiut!

SCOX: You honor, the defendant is stalling on fact discovery.

SCOX (defendant): Your honor, we cannot produce the voluminous amount of source
code that plaintiff requests.

SCOX (plaintiff): Your honor, SCOX is just stalling. They can give all the code
we want by giving us ALL thier code they ever produced!

laughable.

- Moosie.

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Gates not worried
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 06 2004 @ 02:25 AM EDT
Phase: denial

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AT&T Kicks Linux's Tires, Gates on the Future, Sender ID, and a Red Hat Filing
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 07 2004 @ 02:01 AM EDT
Wel, everyone tell's everyone how they wil switch to GNU/Linux, yet no one
really swtshes. Sound kinda odd doesn't it?

I don't believe that AT&T wil switch.

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