The OSI License-Discuss mailing list has been ablaze for the past few days since Microsoft submitted its Permissive License to the OSI for official open source license approval. Jon Rosenberg, source program director for Microsoft, posted, "Microsoft believes that this license provides unique value to the open source community by delivering simplicity, brevity, and permissive terms combined with intellectual property protection."
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Member since:2005-06-29
Member since:2006-07-04
"The "informal" definition (New Oxford) of the adjective criminal:
"informal (of an action or situation) deplorable and shocking : he may never fulfill his potential, and that would be a criminal waste."
He's plenty close enough, regardless of the legalese."
I wouldn't call bundling a browser with an OS "deplorable" or "shocking".
Anyway, he's not anywhere near close. He wasn't speaking "informally". He talked of "criminal conviction".
Here's one huge difference:
In order to be convicted of a criminal matter, one must be found unanimously guilty by a jury "beyond a reasonable doubt".
In order to be found liable of civil infraction, one must only be found liable based on "preponderance of evidence" (i.e. 50% of the evidence plus one), a much lower burden of proof than "beyond reasonable doubt". And such can be declared by a single judge, rather than a jury, who may or may not be a moron.
Here's another difference. Microsoft was found liable for actions taken *before* it was ruled that they had a monopoly in a particular market. And then they were punished for those actions in a retroactive fashion. Such is not possible under criminal law. (This is one of the flaws I find in antitrust law; due to its retroactive nature, you have to second-guess every action you take at a given time for fear that some judge *might* declare at some point in the future that you had a monopoly at some time in the past. It's BS.)
And no, this isn't simply an academic debate.
The reason that antitrust law is civil law and not criminal law is that antitrust law has nothing to do with good or evil. It's not inherently evil to do anything that Microsoft did. It was only that since they had a dominant position in a particular market, that those actions were deemed harmful for the marketplace. Not "evil", just harmful. Using words like "criminal" carries the "evil/deplorable" baggage, which is inappropriate for this case.
Anyway, it's not relevant to the OSI submission process, despite DiBona's wishes to the contrary.
Edited 2007-08-19 16:10
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it."I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)"."The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane.
"MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm: "Well, I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight.""And so it is with Dell's Alienware X51 R2, a small form factor gaming PC in console digs. It's shaped similar to Microsoft's Xbox 360 Slim, and though it's slightly larger than either a 360 or PlayStation 3, the X51 R2 would be right at home in a living room setting nestled next to a large screen TV. Indeed, it's adept at running Steam's Big Picture mode, and if your primary objective is to play games in the living room, go ahead and consider the X51 R2 a hybrid game console." This is obviously not the only machine like this - still, these are very valid console alternatives even for those that don't like being hunched over with a cramped WASD-claw. Also, PC gamers among us: could you get away with the $699 model for gaming?
From Bloomberg: "Microsoft, the world's largest software company, provides intelligence agencies with information about bugs in its popular software before it publicly releases a fix, according to two people familiar with the process. That information can be used to protect government computers and to access the computers of terrorists or military foes." The lid has officially been blown off.
Member since:
2006-07-04
"Convicted of being a Monopoly is an admission the company is criminal."
You might want to research the difference between "criminal" law and "civil" law before speaking on this topic again, lest you continue to look uneducated.
Oh, and "convicted of being a monopoly" is a meaningless phrase.
Edited 2007-08-19 04:54