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"Show Us the Code" Breaks Its Silence
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon Jul 02, 2007 09:31 PM
from the getting-out-of-the-kitchen dept.
from the getting-out-of-the-kitchen dept.
DigDuality writes with an explanation of the silence of the Show Us the Code initiative. The push he began — to gather influential sponsors demanding that Steve Ballmer reveal what Linux code he believed to be infringing Microsoft patents — was discussed here last February. "Show Us the Code has been silent since March 23. May came and went — the deadline allotted for calling Ballmer's bluff — but the site gave no update. I now explain the silence. After a scheduled interview with Forbes columnist Dan Lyons didn't happen, and my place of employment falsely accused me of representing that they endorsed my own political goals, I decided it was best to shut my mouth so I would be able to keep paying my bills. I'm glad to see Linus now publicly echoing the sentiments that this site espoused. Maybe someone already accustomed to the limelight will have better luck in challenging Microsoft's FUD machine."
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Mr. Ballmer, Show Us the Code 462 comments
DigDuality writes "A new campaign, Showusthecode.com, requests every leader in the Linux world, and companies invested in Linux, to stand up and demand that Steve Ballmer show the world where Linux violates Microsoft's intellectual property. He has been making these claims since the Novell-Microsoft deal. If Microsoft answers this challenge — by May 1st — then Linux developers will be able to modify the code so that it remains 'free' software. If such infringing code doesn't exist, we will have called Microsoft's bluff. And if the campaign garners enough attention and if Steve Ballmer maintains silence, then the community and companies behind Linux can take the silence for the admission that it is."
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Of course MS won't own up (Score:2, Insightful)
Keep paying bills (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Saturday November 10, @04:40AM)
In the real world, though, that sort of thing is nearly impossible to document fully and, even if it is well documented, one must still retain the services of an attorney ($$$) willing to stake their reputation against what could be a multimillion dollar company, and their respective insurers and financiers, with more than enough legal backing of their own.
Not that I would know anything about how that sort of situation plays out. It would most certainly be indicative of an "OMG teh evil conspiracy!" if I were to suggest that I've been on the worse end of a similar situation.
All that said: sell-out. =P~~~~
Re:Keep paying bills (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.bcpdd.com/ | Last Journal: Saturday February 24 2007, @06:21PM)
As for those that'll accuse me of advertising and attempting to get attention. Find me one advertisement on that site. That site cost me money and i didn't advertise a damned thing.
As to my job versus what I enjoy software wise, lets get real here. This is the real world. I'm not 30. I don't write for the linux kernel. I'm not management. I'm also not a kid. I have real world bills, i live in an area where finding a job in open source is next to impossible and i go where the money goes. If i happen across a position that aligns with my passions (which i actively strive for) then all the better. But until then there's rent and car payment and electric bills, and insurance, and gas and pets to feed and a relationship i value. I put things in perspective and i'm not such a strong idealist that i'm going to destroy me life. I'm not a member of PETA and i have a bit of common sense in this regard.
Re:Keep paying bills (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Keep paying bills (Score:5, Insightful)
Never mind the people who complain about what you didn't do.
They don't do much of anything. You did something and that's commendable.
Quite typical (Score:2)
(http://127.0.0.1/)
How has this influenced MS and more importantly Ballmer's diarrhea of the mouth? Not much as far as I can tell.
Maybe not the code but... (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Sunday September 09, @06:20PM)
What gets me.. (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.enderandrew.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday July 03, @11:44PM)
If they know exactly how many were allegedly violated, then they have already done their research.
Here is the funny thing. If M$ released that list, immediately people would score the code of the Linux/GNU system to verify the claims. In the possibility that M$ has a legitimate claim, people would write new workaround-code and destroy M$'s case. If the claims are shown to be less than legitimate, it detroys M$'s case.
M$ has nothing to gain by releasing this information, and everything to lose. This is a huge scare tactic, that may work to scare large businesses away from considering what may turn out to be illegal software. And why migrate if you may be forced to migrate back?
This is a rotten tactic, but a very effective and insidious one. Luckily, I don't think this will destroy Linux, as Linus pointed out, many of the basic patents of a GUI that M$ may be referring to are likely pretty much public domain at this point. If anything, there is prior art from vast numbers of previous GUIs that M$ copied, so it is absurd to think they invented everything, let alone own exclusive rights to it.
When companies like Novell were first approached by M$, they should have gone to the Linux Foundation, or EFF. Instead they took a payday that inherently casts a doubt of suspision upon the entire Linux community. And while I was a fan of SuSe and many of the things they did, I will never again advocate the use of any Novell products, nor any major distro/vendor that strikes such a deal.
Re:What gets me.. (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://ptth.net/squish/ | Last Journal: Monday October 01, @11:26AM)
Re:What gets me.. (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.tzs.net/)
Re:What gets me.. (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://mibus.cgcommunity.com/)
I can imagine it now...
MSFT Lawyer: We have this list of patents you're violating. All your base are belong to us...
Linus: I asked for the list when you made it five years ago. You wouldn't give it to me. How am I supposed to proceed?
Judge: MSFT, F*ck off.
Voting Machines? (Score:3, Insightful)
Until then, what's the point of holding elections?
MS does have no honor. (Score:2)
Freedom of speech... (Score:2)
(http://free-usa.blogspot.com/)
I sympathize with the guy, I really do, but in no way, shape, or form, was his freedom of speech violated, nor could they have violated even if they wanted to, even if they threatened (and followed through) with firing him. I'm getting a little sick and tired of people claiming to be the victim in what they consider "freedom of speech" issues. This is nothing of the kind.
[blockquote]Twice, for a brief 10 minute period I used a work machine to upload some files i had on a USB key to the site via FTP. Hardly enough to draw attention in a computer network littered with thousands upon thousands of computers.[/blockquote]
In other words, he used his employers computers to maintain his personal blog.
He then later says "I'm not making any accusations..."
Look, I agree with the guy, I sympathize with him, but even mentioning free speech issues and trying to brush off the fact that he used his company computers for maintaining his blog (I do it to!) is pretty annoying... that whole blog could have been 100% substance in two paragraphs.
On the important subject, I completely agree... MS is singling out Linux in this case, and if they actually put up, they'll have to explain why they're not enforcing their patents elsewhere. I know it works with trademarks - if you don't enforce it, you're liable to lose it. I don't know how it works with patents (if you're allowed to selectively enforce them).
Thanks for that (Score:5, Insightful)
Thank you for trying to help the community.
Thank you for putting your ass on the line and going as far as you could before you were silenced.
I'm sorry you were put in such a position.
Keep up the good work, and keep your chin up.
It was brave to explain what happened, and it was the right choice you made.
The open source community is important, but keeping a roof over your head should always be your top priority.
But it has to be FUD (Score:4, Interesting)
Dan Lyons (Score:5, Interesting)
Where is his employer mentioned? (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://coderz4life.wordpress.com/)
Who snitched (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://mangahowto.dnsdojo.org/howto/)
Which leads me to some advice. Aligning your profession with personal ideals is generally a good idea. But if you are planning on being any kind of activist at all, it's imperative. You can pretend all you want that it shouldn't matter what you do in your spare time. But when push comes to shove, your livelihood is a powerful piece of leverage in a political spat.
After 20 years in the proprietary software industry I'm finally waking up and smelling the coffee. As of Friday I'm retiring and going to work on something unrelated to computers. This will leave me unfettered to do the things I believe in in my spare time. It's funny, I've always valued freedom, but I've spent the majority of my career voluntarily chained to something I fundamentally disagree with. Life is strange...
And what about the FSF's FUD machine? (Score:1, Insightful)
Are they going to be held accountable for their coy accusations? Or are the FSF to be allowed to shamelessly impugn the underpinnings of other peoples' popular new products, for the sake of free publicity, without being told to "put up or shut up"?
This Behavior is Dirt-Common (Score:5, Interesting)
The next day I was called into a surprise meeting with the CIO and the head of sales, and I was told to bring the Mac with me. We had a discussion revolving around my "unfortunate" choice of vendor. Someone had mentioned the machine to someone who told someone and so on until somehow our contact at Microsoft was involved. By the time it got to MS they were told the company had bought the machine for me, and several other employees, and wanted to buy an unspecified "apple server". Understandably he was concerned. He called our sales head and asked that the "situation" be "taken care of".
We determined that nothing of the sort had happened, that I had paid for the machine with my own money, that I was taking it with me at such time that my employment ended. All well and good. Then a few more conditions on my use of the machine came up:
1) I am to call it a laptop or PC. I cannot use the words "Apple", "Mac", or "Macintosh", not even with other employees.
2) When entering or leaving the building, or where customers might see it, I am to hold the logo side of the case against me so the logo cannot be seen.
3) If our area is being exhibited to customers/press or pictures are being taken, the computer is not allowed on the premises.
4) When on company property I must be running Windows. I cannot boot OS X unless absolutely necessary. (A fullscreen Parallels session, however, was deemed acceptable.) The OS X interface cannot be displayed.
5) When I leave the company, I have to submit the entire computer to a third-party security consultant who will check the machine to ensure I am not leaving with any company intellectual property. I must reimburse the company for the costs involved in this.
The company was TERRIFIED that Microsoft might somehow take some offense to ONE EMPLOYEE out of hundreds having a competing product, and was scared to the extent of considering disciplinary action against a senior employee.
THAT is power, kids.
Re:This Behavior is Dirt-Common (Score:4, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Tuesday November 02 2004, @06:32PM)
ROFLMAO!
Do they ask you to submit the computer to a third party security consultant every day you leave the office? Or just that last time when you've already sanitised the machine by loading Mac OS X onto it fresh? And conveniently hidden your 2GB thumb drive with the Death Star plans in the crevice of some robot's carapace?
You will, of course, be taking steps to blatantly and flagrantly violate these stupid rules, won't you? If it was a company laptop they wouldn't have all these nasty Microsoft bogeymen terrifying them in their sleep...
"Show Us Your Code!!" (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Wednesday June 20, @12:01PM)
T-Shirts? (Score:3, Insightful)
One fellow they interviewed had a shirt which read, "Talk is cheap. Show me the code."
They didn't get it.
1489 "brave" souls have challenged MSFT publicly (Score:3, Informative)
(http://www.digitaltippingpoint.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday October 09, @09:25PM)
http://digitaltippingpoint.com/wiki/index.php?tit
Included on that list is none other than Eric S. Raymond, who has this to say: And this from someone who is supplying the Aussie Defence Forces with "patent infringing" software:
Land of the free (Score:2)
(http://pcbookreview.com/)
Absence of evidence IS evidence of absence. (Score:1)
this means that it is less likely that there is such code.
It also means that if there is patented code, there is likely less of it.
Here is a proof that absence of evidence is evidence of absence:
http://oyhus.no/AbsenceOfEvidence.html [oyhus.no]
Kim0
Honestly, this is an opportunity for Linux... (Score:2)
(http://threeseas.net/ | Last Journal: Friday January 18 2002, @01:44PM)
And it should be put in something like the NY Times...
So... what does that take? Money.
We just need someone or party of reputation to take it on.
Open Source Patent Searching (Score:2, Insightful)
Can anyone tell me why the open source community can't search Microsoft's patent portfolio to find these supposed infringements? I realize that there are a lot of MS patents, and thus it would require a lot of work to perform a complete search. But surely if the community can co-operate enough to develop high-quality software, then we can co-operate enough to perform a patent search. We've all heard "many eyes make all bugs shallow" - perhaps "many eyes make all patents shallow" is just as true.
Of course, to catch all of the possibilities, we might have to put on MS-tinted glasses and twist our thinking to see the way in which Linux (or some other software) actually infringes. That, and we might need a gargantuan suspension of disbelief with regards to the enforceability of the patents. Still, if it is possible for Microsoft to do such an analysis, why can't we do the same thing?
Re:Failure Point (Score:2, Funny)
(Last Journal: Saturday November 10, @04:40AM)
Re:Face it, you open sores people are screwed. (Score:3, Funny)
(Last Journal: Monday October 23 2006, @03:10AM)
Re:Pussy.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Seems to me you are a fully qualified cretin. MS shill?
The site does not have any advertisements. He did get his hits.
Re:Open Source Has Jumped The Shark (Score:3, Insightful)
How many web servers use linux "open source shit"?
Re:Open Source Has Jumped The Shark (Score:3, Funny)
Compose a paragraph, consisting of two or more sentences which does not contain an obscure (or any) television reference, or a "catch phrase" of any sort.
Re:Pussy.... (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/51ebe/ | Last Journal: Monday August 20, @09:15PM)
Now his employer's behavior may not be fair or right or legal, but it most certainly can be expected.
It is particularly disappointing because I, like the majority on this forum, agree with his goals. I'd like to take him seriously and support him, but it is difficult to do so when he seems completely clueless about how people are going to respond.
Re:Face it, you open sores people are screwed. (Score:1)
fixed it up for you
Re:Failure Point (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Failure Point (Score:5, Insightful)
You must be a student.
No, you might not have been in a position to start 'bucking your employment over a political cause' but it sure sounds like you were a victim of political oppression
I'm as anti-Microsoft as anybody (well, as most people). However, being anti-Microsoft is not a political affiliation. For some, it's personal. For some, it's business. For some, it's religious. For some, it's >= 2 of those. Some people are so pro-Microsoft they bleed blue when they cut themselves. But no matter where you fall on that spectrum, Microsoft is not a political party. It's a company. A big, anti-competitive company with a big patent portfolio, but a company nonetheless (the market leader with a big patent portfolio is always anti-competitive, though; some people here are doubtless familiar with the refrain "I BM, You BM, we all BM for IBM" and the word to the wise that "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM." When IBM was the undisputed heavyweight champion of the computer business, they were at least as anti-competitive as Microsoft, and they invented FUD).
Now, if he were put under pressure for being a Republican, Democrat, Green, Libertarian, Communist, Nazi, or whatever, that would be political, and he might have a case (IANAL). However, the situation was that his employer was a direct partner of Microsoft and they felt that his running an anti-MS site cast them in a bad light with Microsoft. Did MS put pressure on them, that his site was problematic and it could have financial repercussions if he kept at it? We'll never know, but I'd be very surprised if they didn't. Does that suck? Yes. Is it fair? Maybe. Maybe not. If we look at things from management's point of view, they have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to make money, and are answerable to the board if they fail. If an employee's anti-MS site is going to make them fail to make money, or at least as much money, they are going to request that he make a choice between running the site or working there. They pretty much have to.
Now, I could probably run an anti-MS site and even if my employer were to become aware of it, I doubt that would be a problem. However, you never know how a site might snowball out of control and become a lightning rod, or where you might want to work in the future where it might be an issue. I have a family to support, and my obligation to my wife and kids outweighs any obligation that I may or may not have (just for the record, I have none), to publicly oppose Microsoft. But, I do other things. I have a Mac. I have an iPod, not a Zune. I run Linux and FreeBSD on several machines. My kids' computers are Linux boxes. I work for a Microsoft competitor. I subscribe to a couple of Linux magazines. If people ask me for computer advice, I steer them toward Mac or Linux, whichever I think might be best for them. And not just to be anti-MS, but because I consider the Mac platform to be better than Windows at pretty much everything, and the better Linux distros to be better than Windows at most things (and gaining ground all the time; it took about five years to grind out Vista; if they take five years to grind out the successor to Vista, will anyone still want it? Apple on one side and Linux on the other will eat their desktop lunch in those five years.
So, I think you should cut the showusthecode.com guy some slack. You're not walking in his shoes and don't have his obligations. Or if you do have his obligations and would put hatred of Microsoft ahead of your family, I think now would be a good time to reassess your priorities. He did what he could, which was to call attention to the issue, and later he voted with his feet and left that employer. If he's still not in a position to run that site and others have to pick up the torch now, I have nothing to criticize him for. He's done more than me, and I'd be very, very surprised if he hasn't done more than you. You sound like you're nothing but a mouth, without even the guts to post logged in.
Re:Failure Point (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Put your money where your mouth is... (Score:2, Interesting)
(http://www.andr0meda.com/ | Last Journal: Monday September 10, @06:29AM)
Instead of bashing someone with a great idea but short on resources (planning, execution, time, luck,.. ) is there no one here who wants to stick out his neck and continue the bet?
I mean come on! Here's a brilliant opportunity and what do you all do? You dump on the guy that brings it along.
Come on kids, let's throw in some weight here..
Re:stolen code not suprised (Score:2, Insightful)
I doubt the problem is actual copied code. If that were the case, this would be a copyright issue, and not a patent issue.
As far as what projects Microsoft is threatening, it is more than just the kernel. It also includes the GUIs, openoffice.org, email, and others. This quote, from CNN Money [cnn.com], has a breakdown:
Re:Face it, you open sores people are screwed. (Score:1)
(Last Journal: Friday November 09, @01:36AM)
All right! $100 discount! I'll take two. Sorry, only one per customer