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| Changes at OSI and Grokster Article on LWN |
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Saturday, February 05 2005 @ 01:05 PM EST
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I thought I'd mention that I have an article on LWN.net today, "Grokster, The Little Engine That Could Chugs Up One Last Hill." I try to describe the positions of all sides -- in this lawsuit there are more than two -- as they prepare for the oral hearings before the Supreme Court on March 29. It's currently subscriber-only content, but it's easy to get a sub. It includes information on attending the hearings, for those optimists thinking they might be interested in trying to get a seat, as well as where you will find transcripts and video eventually. You might also want to read this Andrew Orlowski article on alternative licensing models for digital music and Professor William "Terry" Fisher of Harvard's Berkman Center's book, "Promises to Keep". There is also an article on Dell's new anti-IP theft computers, a Hollywood dream come true. While you are there at LWN, you might check their Letters to the Editor page, where Leon Brooks has two excellent examples of how to write to an editor to educate him or her on the SCO case. There is also a very funny interview with the new president of OSI, Russ Nelson. Here's OSI's announcement of the expansion of the board and the legal team, who will now be, in the position of General Counsel, Mark F. Radcliffe, Esq., a partner at DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary US LLP, whose speciality is IP law and who has written about the SCO cases and the GPL, not so favorably, on his blog. OSI's Director of Legal Affairs is now Laura Majerus, Esq., a partner at Fenwick & West, LLP, one of whose clients is Sun Microsystems. I believe Mr. Radcliffe also helped to advise the company on the new CDDL. Danese Cooper of Sun is also still on the board of OSI, and the other board member is Michael Tiemann. I think it's fair to say that there is now a strong Sun presence at OSI. At least that is the impression I have formed. There is also an extremely gracious statement by Eric Raymond, which I would like to include in Groklaw's permanent archives of this historic time: "One of the natural growth passages of a successful institution is outgrowing the need for its founders to be running things," said Eric S. Raymond, founder and outgoing President. Raymond, under the title President Emeritus, will continue to do outreach and ambassadorial work for OSI. "One of the most important parts of any founder or leader's responsibility is to know when to step aside and let that growth happen." Finally, here's a funny "public service announcement" from Novell for Windows NT users who now have lost technical support and can't get patches any more unless they upgrade.
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| Authored by: Brian S. on Saturday, February 05 2005 @ 01:26 PM EST |
| Brian S. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: rm6990 on Saturday, February 05 2005 @ 01:35 PM EST |
| OT Here Please [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, February 05 2005 @ 04:25 PM EST |
It is nice to see that the new legal director (Laura Majerus) hold
qualifications in computor science. Congratulations to her.
Mr Radcliffe may genuninely be concerned about the GPL but at least some of his
blog sounds a big dodgy.
'The GPL is not clear.'
Hello? Are we both reading the same licence here?
There might be some milage in his comments on the shrink wrap cases but these
concern mostly end users and not redistributors. The GPL is principally directed
to redistributors.
He is spot on about one thing: the definition of derivative work is not clear in
the GPL. This is also true in most *contested* copyright cases. The US appeal
courts use four different standards to test for derivatives so the ambiguity
here may well be an advantage as well as a potential problem.
Finally his comments on the idea that the GPL might suffer fall out form the SCO
case sounds like wishful thinking.
Either SCO did not did not redistribute IBM's code. If they did not there is no
problem and the GPL will not be involved.
If SCO wanted to redistribute IBM's code they must have comply with the licence
it was made available to them (the GPL) or negociate a new licence with IBM
first. SCO did not negociate a new licence.
If SCO did redistribute Linux code they had to comply with the GPL. The SCO
Source licence is not compatable with the GPL. So either SCO were not
distributing Linux and the whole case is simply puffery (think Lanham Act here)
or they were and were in violation of the copyright act and the GPL.
For the GPL to be a casult of the SCO case, SCO must be shown to have been
redistributing Linux after the start date of the SCO licence. Im not sure that
IBM have shown this. They did obtain a copy of Linux off a SCO server after this
date but the legality of this action has yet to be ruled on.
IMHO this gentleman is pre judging the issue here on two grounds (1) SCO have
yet to be shown to be in violation and (2) a judgment has to be recorded against
the GPL.
Judge K has these issues before him at the minute and does not to seem to think
that the issues here are as strightforward as Mr Radcliffe seems to suggest.
--
MadScientist [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, February 05 2005 @ 04:52 PM EST |
Ok, we don't do flash.Anybody know what the Novell public service announcement
was about?
thanks
JSmith[ Reply to This | # ]
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- Flash - Authored by: cmc on Saturday, February 05 2005 @ 05:19 PM EST
- Flash - Authored by: timycc on Sunday, February 06 2005 @ 10:52 PM EST
- Flash - Authored by: webmink on Saturday, February 05 2005 @ 05:23 PM EST
- Flash - Authored by: pogson on Saturday, February 05 2005 @ 05:36 PM EST
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, February 05 2005 @ 05:31 PM EST |
I had to copy and past the text into an editor, and
globally replace every occurance of Nazgul to IBM before I
could stomach the prose.
Maybe it's the use of evil fictional characters to
describe the good guys (IBM), but every time I read that
word in an article on Groklaw, I want to (figuratively)
choke somebody.
But once the text was replaced, Marbux's explanation was
very interesting.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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- Next story I think - Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, February 05 2005 @ 06:22 PM EST
- Nazgul - Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, February 05 2005 @ 06:35 PM EST
- Competence - Authored by: PJ on Saturday, February 05 2005 @ 06:47 PM EST
- Nazgul - Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, February 05 2005 @ 09:58 PM EST
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, February 05 2005 @ 06:53 PM EST |
Well in all honesty Mr Radcliffe sounds like your typical
lawyer - full of it. I'm seriously concerned about the
OSI now - it appears that they have been hijacked, and
Open Source is now being relegated to refer to BSD and all
non GPL licenses.
It seems that the industry is trying to isolate the GPL
and encourage BSD style licences that allow the corporate
raiders to perform rape, pillage and murder on code that
they never wrote without even any forthought to returning
back to the community.
The true heard of open source lies with GPL based
software, and things like the Mozilla, BSD and Apache
licences destroy this value imho. Sorry, i'm a hardcore
RMS supporter and anything less than his vision is
unnacceptable to my eyes. The GPL has it 100% right. For
those that disagree with my comments, tough luck. They
are mine and my beliefs.
Dave [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 06 2005 @ 03:04 AM EST |
Russ Nelson, the OSI's new president, has already started attacking the FSF on
slashdot, with phrases like
"
drinking too
much of the kook-aid that RMS has been handing out
"
and belitteling the
Free Software Foundation choice of the phrase Free Softare with statement's
like
"
I love free
software because it doesn't cost anything!
"
Indeed the impression
they're starting to exude is that the OSI has totally sold out to big business;
and its new charter is to divide and conquor the F/OSS community.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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