4 ms·

To extend your a) a little, Stallman has every right to be suspicious of a company which has; deliberately targeted GNU/Linux in the past and said it's coming a

by drats 17y ago

To extend your a) a little, Stallman has every right to be suspicious of a company which has; deliberately targeted GNU/Linux in the past and said it's coming after it, said GNU/Linux infringes patents, is a convicted monopolist in the USA and the EU, deliberately uses its power over system-builders to shove GNU/Linux out (desktops options and netbooks), used its market power to make ACPI/power management difficult for other operating systems and much more. People seem to forget these things all the time when discussions come up. IBM used to be the big bad guy at one point too, but they now have a track record of community contributions to point to and say "we are different". There is no such thing with MS, and the top management went from Gates to Ballmer who sees rivals commercial or otherwise in a very combative way (going to "kill Google", GNU/Linux a "cancer"). When someone who was/is considered to be part of your community works with, helps and defends an entity which has tried to attack you and desires to do so in the future then "traitor" isn't a bad name for them. There's plenty of money to be made with GNU/Linux without doing any of the MS stuff he does. Miguel de Icaza never got over his incapacity to land a job at MS (it was no visa because he didn't have a degree it wasn't because he was stupid) and has always sought to emulate them and defend them from that point onwards in some weird psychological relationship. Novell is suspicious in its intentions and it seems they'd gladly see others get sued if they had a waiver. They are not a community player at all. Miguel putting "God" and "Love" in his post he doesn't clear up any of the issues while he sits there trying to evoke an open source hero mystique while working on a Microsoft platform clone... for the iPhone.

HeyLaughingBoy 17y ago
is a convicted monopolist What the hell does this mean? It's not a crime to be a monopoly!
- allenbrunson 17y ago
  no, but it is a crime to use a monopoly in one area to help squash rivals in other areas, and that's what microsoft was convicted for. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft
  - dantheman 17y ago
    Which is a bad law, that doesn't make sense and was created to cleanup the governments interference in train system. It's like saying someone who broke laws during the civil rights era, to integrate their establishments etc... being convicted of a bad law is meaningless.
    - allenbrunson 17y ago
      so you're defending microsoft's actions, then? were you in the software business circa 1992? quite a few companies who thought they were creating good businesses for themselves were in fact doing market research for microsoft, to mangle something pg said in one of his essays. microsoft's antics managed to retard software innovation for a good long while. i, for one, am glad they are no longer the unstoppable juggernaut they once were.
      - dantheman 17y ago
        I'm not defending their actions; I'm saying what they were doing should be legal. Lots of things are legal that I don't agree with, for instance I don't agree lots of ideas that are expressed in music but I by no means think they should be illegal.
  - sid0 17y ago
    No, it's not a crime, and Microsoft was not convicted. US v. Microsoft was a civil suit. Please use the correct terms to describe things.
    - pohl 17y ago
      In his Conclusions of Law, Judge Jackson showed them to be in violation of sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act by being a monopoly and engaging in tying. A 'crime' is an act in violation of law, the Sherman Act is a law, and they were in violation of it. How are these facts changed by the case being brought before the court as a civil action?
- pmjordan 17y ago
  I suspect drats meant found guilty of abusing its monopoly.
- jerf 17y ago
  Expanding on allenbrunson's point, that's why it's correct to refer to them as a convicted monopolist. The word is indeed there precisely because "monopolist" does not carry the meaning of "convicted".... to be honest I'm not actually sure what your problem with the phrase is.
  - sid0 17y ago
    Where I live, the word convicted relates to a crime. Wikipedia seems to agree with me: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conviction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conviction. By that definition, Microsoft was never convicted, since it was never accused of a crime. Microsoft was tried in civil court.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 17y ago
    My problem with the phrase is unless I'm missing something, Microsoft was not found guilty of a crime (as sid_0 pointed out, U.S. vs Microsoft was a civil matter) and therefore the word "convicted" is meaningless. Actually, it could be considered slanderous. This so far has been a community that prides itself on accuracy. If you're going to accuse someone of criminal acts, they should at least have been tried and found guilty in criminal court.
- drats 17y ago
  I am more worried about the grammatical mistakes I see in my post than your objection. Why? Well I would hope that if we were talking about something else and I said "convicted killer" you wouldn't fly into a exclamation marked rage over the fact I should have said "convicted murderer" because there are circumstances under which it is legal to kill people. I think it's pretty clear what I was saying in that post. But you are technically correct in that it's theoretically possible to have a company that is a monopoly and does not abuse that power, although I cannot think of any examples in the real world where corporations in such a situation behave. Allenbrunson has the rest in his reply to you. And before anyone else objects regarding the details of the EU case[1] it sometimes use different terms as the EU is not quite a state yet but I'd argue "convicted" captures the meaning there too. [1]http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7392949.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7392949.stm
  - sid0 17y ago
    > it sometimes use different terms as the EU is not quite a state yet but I'd argue "convicted" captures the meaning there too. It only captures it if the EU considers it to be a crime. Does it? (genuinely curious)
    - drats 17y ago
      Look you aren't "genuinely curious" you are being a total wanker. Wiktionary definition: "A specific act committed in violation of the law." Wikipedia (the sentence before you earlier nitpick quote): "Crime is the breach of one or more rules or laws for which some governing authority, via mechanisms such as police power, may ultimately prescribe a conviction." Wordnet: " an act punishable by law; usually considered an evil act" and "an evil act not necessarily punishable by law" N.B. The definitions from Wordnet, my uses passes BOTH. So it seems that if a governing body passes a law or regulation against a certain activity and then the government (through whatever process) finds someone in violation and sanctions them, you don't want to call it a crime (despite this being well within the broadest definitions), you want to have a big cry. Well sorry buddy, this isn't a court of law, this is the English language. You are the reason people hate lawyers.
Raphael_Amiard 17y ago
While i find some truth in your post , about Microsoft, it would be good to put things in perspective, and imagine for a second what the GNU/Linux landscape would be without miguel's contribution. The guy has been proven to behave like an asshole, but i find it good to judge people on what they do. The contribution of miguel , in usefulness for a regular Linux user experience today ,is certainly comparable to RMS's. And while i, like many others ,am very suspicious about the mono story, i would really like like to see this project succeed, if only because there is IMHO a desperate need for a decent multi-language VM on linux (other than java, wich is pretty unusable for desktop applications on linux). Also, the patents infrigement threat has been hanging on diverse parts of GNU/linux for a very long time, and i've yet to be convinced of the solidity of the case microsoft could have against mono, since after everything i've read i couldn't reach a clear conclusion. So yeah, RMS is true to himself. But i don't find that admirable at all. There is no balance in what he says, ever, and i don't view that as genius ... I don't want to live in his free software world, because he looks like a totalitarian. Even if his views and his works are to be valuated, i respectfully disagree with him on almost anything ideological. And i don't like people insulting others in public, for any reasons .. Like if i was watching a movie, i have real huge problems picturing miguel in the position of the ugly traitor, sorry ...

by drats 17y ago

HeyLaughingBoy 17y ago

is a convicted monopolist What the hell does this mean? It's not a crime to be a monopoly!

allenbrunson 17y ago
no, but it is a crime to use a monopoly in one area to help squash rivals in other areas, and that's what microsoft was convicted for. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft
- dantheman 17y ago
  Which is a bad law, that doesn't make sense and was created to cleanup the governments interference in train system. It's like saying someone who broke laws during the civil rights era, to integrate their establishments etc... being convicted of a bad law is meaningless.
  - allenbrunson 17y ago
    so you're defending microsoft's actions, then? were you in the software business circa 1992? quite a few companies who thought they were creating good businesses for themselves were in fact doing market research for microsoft, to mangle something pg said in one of his essays. microsoft's antics managed to retard software innovation for a good long while. i, for one, am glad they are no longer the unstoppable juggernaut they once were.
    - dantheman 17y ago
      I'm not defending their actions; I'm saying what they were doing should be legal. Lots of things are legal that I don't agree with, for instance I don't agree lots of ideas that are expressed in music but I by no means think they should be illegal.
- sid0 17y ago
  No, it's not a crime, and Microsoft was not convicted. US v. Microsoft was a civil suit. Please use the correct terms to describe things.
  - pohl 17y ago
    In his Conclusions of Law, Judge Jackson showed them to be in violation of sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act by being a monopoly and engaging in tying. A 'crime' is an act in violation of law, the Sherman Act is a law, and they were in violation of it. How are these facts changed by the case being brought before the court as a civil action?
pmjordan 17y ago
I suspect drats meant found guilty of abusing its monopoly.
jerf 17y ago
Expanding on allenbrunson's point, that's why it's correct to refer to them as a convicted monopolist. The word is indeed there precisely because "monopolist" does not carry the meaning of "convicted".... to be honest I'm not actually sure what your problem with the phrase is.
- sid0 17y ago
  Where I live, the word convicted relates to a crime. Wikipedia seems to agree with me: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conviction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conviction. By that definition, Microsoft was never convicted, since it was never accused of a crime. Microsoft was tried in civil court.
- HeyLaughingBoy 17y ago
  My problem with the phrase is unless I'm missing something, Microsoft was not found guilty of a crime (as sid_0 pointed out, U.S. vs Microsoft was a civil matter) and therefore the word "convicted" is meaningless. Actually, it could be considered slanderous. This so far has been a community that prides itself on accuracy. If you're going to accuse someone of criminal acts, they should at least have been tried and found guilty in criminal court.
drats 17y ago
I am more worried about the grammatical mistakes I see in my post than your objection. Why? Well I would hope that if we were talking about something else and I said "convicted killer" you wouldn't fly into a exclamation marked rage over the fact I should have said "convicted murderer" because there are circumstances under which it is legal to kill people. I think it's pretty clear what I was saying in that post. But you are technically correct in that it's theoretically possible to have a company that is a monopoly and does not abuse that power, although I cannot think of any examples in the real world where corporations in such a situation behave. Allenbrunson has the rest in his reply to you. And before anyone else objects regarding the details of the EU case[1] it sometimes use different terms as the EU is not quite a state yet but I'd argue "convicted" captures the meaning there too. [1]http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7392949.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7392949.stm
- sid0 17y ago
  > it sometimes use different terms as the EU is not quite a state yet but I'd argue "convicted" captures the meaning there too. It only captures it if the EU considers it to be a crime. Does it? (genuinely curious)
  - drats 17y ago
    Look you aren't "genuinely curious" you are being a total wanker. Wiktionary definition: "A specific act committed in violation of the law." Wikipedia (the sentence before you earlier nitpick quote): "Crime is the breach of one or more rules or laws for which some governing authority, via mechanisms such as police power, may ultimately prescribe a conviction." Wordnet: " an act punishable by law; usually considered an evil act" and "an evil act not necessarily punishable by law" N.B. The definitions from Wordnet, my uses passes BOTH. So it seems that if a governing body passes a law or regulation against a certain activity and then the government (through whatever process) finds someone in violation and sanctions them, you don't want to call it a crime (despite this being well within the broadest definitions), you want to have a big cry. Well sorry buddy, this isn't a court of law, this is the English language. You are the reason people hate lawyers.

Raphael_Amiard 17y ago

While i find some truth in your post , about Microsoft, it would be good to put things in perspective, and imagine for a second what the GNU/Linux landscape would be without miguel's contribution. The guy has been proven to behave like an asshole, but i find it good to judge people on what they do. The contribution of miguel , in usefulness for a regular Linux user experience today ,is certainly comparable to RMS's. And while i, like many others ,am very suspicious about the mono story, i would really like like to see this project succeed, if only because there is IMHO a desperate need for a decent multi-language VM on linux (other than java, wich is pretty unusable for desktop applications on linux). Also, the patents infrigement threat has been hanging on diverse parts of GNU/linux for a very long time, and i've yet to be convinced of the solidity of the case microsoft could have against mono, since after everything i've read i couldn't reach a clear conclusion. So yeah, RMS is true to himself. But i don't find that admirable at all. There is no balance in what he says, ever, and i don't view that as genius ... I don't want to live in his free software world, because he looks like a totalitarian. Even if his views and his works are to be valuated, i respectfully disagree with him on almost anything ideological. And i don't like people insulting others in public, for any reasons .. Like if i was watching a movie, i have real huge problems picturing miguel in the position of the ugly traitor, sorry ...