"Show Us the Code" Breaks Its Silence 180
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."
Of course MS won't own up (Score:2, Insightful)
MODS. (Score:2, Redundant)
Keep paying bills (Score:5, Interesting)
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~~~~
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If they were threatening him for that, sure. But that's not what the article said.
The company was upset because, in their eyes, he used their name in a way that made it look like they supported him. They just threatened him with termination over misuse of the company name. The problem is, even
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Re:Keep paying bills (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Should have known about Dan Lyons. (Score:3, Funny)
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I think that this would not be viewed by the courts as a firing for political reasons, since "Microsoft needs to explain what patents Linux infringes upon" is not a political goal.
Instead, here's what I (as someone who spent a semester researching employee firings) think about this:
There is a common law tradition of allowing an employer to fire an employee for
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Sig (Score:2)
Quite typical (Score:2)
How has this influenced MS and more importantly Ballmer
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This guy seems to have been crushed under the weight of being a marginal Linux celebrity. It gives you some sympathy for Paris Hilton the way he's flipping out after 248 Slashdot comments and a Forbes reporter not following through with an interview.
Maybe not the code but... (Score:5, Funny)
What gets me.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
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Again, given the possibility of legal repercussions that
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True, but the patent holder also has a responsibility to defend the patent. If they push this to trial, I'd imagine the first question the defense will be asking is, "So, if you knew there were 200+ patent violations in 2003, why did you wait 5 years to send out cease and desist notices or start any legal proceedings against the offenders?"
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Patents are completely capriciously enforceable. If MS wanted to, they could pursue a suit against you and only you for the linux patent violations, and that would be perfectly legal. (assuming you're a linux user, and the patent claims are valid).
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There's nothing to "get" - it's the law. (Score:2)
Because patent law says so.
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I beg to differ:
They have EVERYTHING to gain - open source coders will alter their code so that it no longer violates MS patents.
They have NOTHING to lose - releasing a list won't cost them anything - presumably they already HAVE it.
Oh oh I SEE WHAT YOU MEAN - you mean they will lose potential "damages" from a "lawsuit"? Right I forgot for a second, it's about MONEY
Of course (Score:3, Insightful)
Patents have always been about money. What did you think they were for - bragging rights?
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But now enter the Jackpot Justice legal system. Why should I go through all the bother (and risk!) of trying to manufacture someth
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Yes, but it's how you use it that matters.
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Re:What gets me.. (Score:5, Informative)
Please mod informative (Score:2)
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And it really is so apropos on this day of forgiving acts against
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It remains equal to the claim of more than sixteen thousand weapons of mass destruction sites until an example is given. This behaviour is a very bad trend and I'm sure we will see a lot more of it.
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Let's say the argument is that they made up the patent allegations as a means to defraud/con people into these vendor agreements. Under those terms, I can see a court order demanding they produce such a list to ensure Microsoft wasn't defrauding Novell.
Re:What gets me.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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: Here's the link to the USPTO Mr. Torvalds. Do your homework BEFORE writing your code.
There, fixed that for you.
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Judge: Well, in that case...
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However she finally switched, and we used Kubuntu instead. I'm not 100% happy with Kubuntu, but I wouldn't use a Novell product anymore.
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And then I can demand royalties from anyone else who attempts to follow a similar line of work, or a lack thereof.
I call this soon-t
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)
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 f
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Sure, they're not blocking him from speaking out in a strict sense, but he explains pretty clearly why they're making it highly impractical to continue.
At the end of the day, are we content to define "free speech" as simply "You won't get thrown in prison or killed over saying this!", or do we want to strive for truly being able to speak out without harassment, loss of employment, or other repercussions?
I thi
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1. You do not have freedom of speech in a theater. You have freedom of shutting the hell up. Theaters can remove you for talking, and they don't even have to give you a refund.
2. You do not have the right to keep and bear arms in many businesses. Try exercising your 2nd Amendment in a bank sometime, see how that works out for you.
3. Ok, this one is narrowly defined enough not t
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The employer ALSO has a right to freedom of expression, and if he chooses to fire someone to express his opinion, he's the boss.
Really, it's a minor version of what Hollywood actors are complaining about - that studios don't want to put them in their movies after they've "exercised their free speech." The Dixie Chicks whined thei
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Sorry, but are you really saying that you are happy with people being fired because of their reasonable and legal political beliefs? I
Work is slippery (Score:2)
In my case, the corporate communications department was "concerned" that someone might interpret a future action to be offensive. Since the up side to my activities would benefit the department I work for, and the potential down side might n
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Also, the companies he mentions probably (read definitely) have patent cross license deals with MS. Sun does for sure (a result of the whole java settlement), and MS owns something like 15% of Apple, bailed them out in the 90s. I'm sure they both hav
Re: De Minimis Fringe Benefits being ignored? (Score:3, Insightful)
In my one business law class, I seem to recall a series of cases describing something called a "De Minimis Fringe", whereupon an exployee uses a company resource, but the pure cost of that usage is so small that it results in laughable fianncial effect.
"Ten Minutes of time plus whatever CPU power plus electricity" is right in that category. (Some of the original cases dealt with machines like copiers & faxes.)
Everyone take a crisp look at yo
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.
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ON top of that, I'd like to say that it really sucks, that people have to choose between staying employed, and speaking their mind.
Monopoly power and fascism come to mind. And I think this trend is going to get worse before it gets better. Companies should be more afraid of these tactics -- and if enough of us call their bluff, maybe they will. After all, there are more of us, than there is of them.
But it has to be FUD (Score:4, Interesting)
Dan Lyons (Score:5, Interesting)
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I would not say that's a fair description. His most famous article is the prescient 1999 Red Hat [forbes.com] article in which he states that Red Hat is a great business venture and M$ is on the slow, declining power curve.
Forbes is a great magazine and usually tends to think outside the box about things. That's not always good, but in this case, it certainly was. 1999 was not the smartest year to call M$ a loser.
Where is his employer mentioned? (Score:3, Interesting)
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I didn't. With one command I found out his name, e-mail address, street address, and phone number. I don't know what contact info he had listed before, but if he used his company's street address, phone number, or e-mail address, I could see a potential for a problem.
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Standing up makes you easier to hit. Laying in dirt is safer.
Who snitched (Score:4, Interesting)
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...
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So it's purely co-incidence that they day after DigDuality gives Dan Lyons his contact details, a routine log trawl at his employers highlights 2 ten second uploads to a blogspot IP hosting a s
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.
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Re:This Behavior is Dirt-Common (Score:4, Insightful)
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...
Don't violate the rules. (Score:2)
No no no. Rules are rules (except for the last one, which is really stupid and can only be considered a financial punishment for the employee).
However, there's certainly no rule about bringing some fresh fruit to work, and mentioning it when talking to coworkers, and how beneficial they are for your health, and
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I've worked for various companies as a Microsoft Partner for over 10 years, and this just doesn't ring true. I think many MS haters like to believe this type of fiction. Every MS Partner company I've been a part of or even visited has had Macs. Hell, I've been to various Microsoft facilities in the US, including the Redmond campus, and outside of the US and seen Macs. Microsoft doesn't care about unimportant things like this, they realize that MS Partne
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I can't believe this situation even arose.
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Considering what the rest of the conditions are, they're going to fuck you over; unless the cost is negotiated ahead of time don't be surprised if costs you 5 to 20K for this, and the system is hosed when you get it back.
"Show Us Your Code!!" (Score:5, Funny)
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://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)
Honestly, this is an opportunity for Linux... (Score:2)
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
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Re:Failure Point (Score:4, Insightful)
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Keep work at work and everything else out of work.
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)
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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.
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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
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You cannot take him seriously because he misjudged something completely unrelated to the thing you actually want to support him for? Why? It's not as if he asks you to accept him as your Personal Company Politics Savior.
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How many web servers use linux "open source shit"?
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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.
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North or South. Or did you mean the United States of America?
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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
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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: