The State of the Open Source Union, 2004 211
Legal
The biggest non-story of the year was SCO's legal efforts. So far SCO has not been able to make substantial headway with a single one of its legal claims, and indeed has suffered a number of significant setbacks in court.
This is certainly good news for Linux and open source. Going back five or six years, clearly one of the major obstacles to widespread adoption of open source software was the uncertain legal status of both the software and the licenses. While this aspect of open source is still an unfinished saga -- more on that shortly -- the inability of SCO, through either legal or PR channels, to undermine Linux gives reason for confidence about the future.
The real story about SCO in 2004 has in fact been the telling of that story. While mainstream media coverage of SCO has varied widely -- sometimes accurate, sometimes resembling coverage of the OJ Simpson trial -- Groklaw has emerged as a steady voice of reason and objectivity adeptly defusing all attempts at "FUD" PR around the case.
2004 has been, especially as an election year, a controversial year for the phenomenon of blogging. Whether blogging will provide a sustainable alternate voice in journalism is very much an open question. A few blog sites, however, have shown what a handful of dedicated individuals can do in the face of much larger, and better funded PR machines. Groklaw is an outstanding example of the positive journalism effect that blogging can have.
The legal front brought other good news for the open source community. Norway's Supreme Court acquitted Jon Johansen, and the Norwegian Economic Crime Unit opted not to appeal the decision. In the United States the Digital Millenium Copyright Act still remains the law of the land, but the Recording Industry Association of America has made little progress in forcing ISPs to disclose the identities of alleged file swappers.
A more troubling legal trend is the shift in debate about the intellectual property status of open source software. The principles behind the "copyleft" approach have gained continued acceptance, and have even been leveraged as an integral part of some business models. The debate now, however, centers more around patents that copyright.
IBM has been out in front of the patent issue. Their open source license was the first to explicitly address patent licensing as an issue above and beyond copyright, and they've taken steps, even recent steps, to see that open source development is unencumbered by patent concerns. IBM is not the only company putting patents in the open source domain. Sun Microsystems recently announced they will make patents available under their recently approved Common Development and Distribution open source license (CDDL).
All of this would seem to be good news for the open source community, especially given that Poland's objections have put a temporary halt to the Europan Union software patent initiative. Appearances can be deceiving, however. IBM is a supporter of software patents. Sun's gesture is in fact intended to create a competitive advantage for OpenSolaris over Linux, since the patent protection Sun offers applies only to work licensed under the CDDL -- in other words, not Linux. In a recent News.com commentary, Bruce Parens said, "So while claiming to make the patents available to open-source developers, Sun can sue folks who work on Linux rather than Solaris."
The biggest patent concern comes from Microsoft. In a speech in Australia, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer claimed that Linux violated more than 200 patents. While this may be more hype -- or hope -- than fact, it does tip Microsoft's hand in terms of what tactics they are willing to use to meet the Linux competitive threat.
Policy
All other things being equal, customers prefer an open system to a closed one, and vendor choice over vendor lock-in. In the IT world in general, and between Windows and Linux in particular, all other things are not equal, which makes platform choice complicated. More and more, however, organizations are seeing Linux as a viable platform choice that
- Lowers up-front licensing fees
- Has the support and backing of significant technology vendors, whether small, medium (Red Hat), or large (IBM, Novell)
- Avoids vendor lock-in at both the platform and application level
These claims are independent of the more controversial claims about improving security and lowering total cost of ownership. 2004 has added an interesting additional element to the mix: the desire of government organizations outside the United States to not be dependent on a large, American technology company whose revenues exceed the gross national product of most nations.
This software declaration of independence has taken several forms. Sometimes it seems simply to be a negotiating tactic to force Microsoft to lower prices. India may be an example.
Sometimes, however, price is not the issue. Munich, for example, committed to making the switch to Linux despite direct lobbying efforts by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. In the case of a high tech country like Germany, this decision is probably influenced by the reluctance to be dependent on an American company guilty of monopoly practices.
The situation in the developing world is somewhat different. Unshackled by significant requirements of backward compatibility, emerging economies like Venezuela's have a chance to make a clean start and avoid what they perceive as the pitfalls and inefficiencies in older IT infrastructures.
The policy approach in China is even more alarming to traditional technology vendors. China clearly does not want to build an economy dependent on outside production or services, whether it's factories or satellite launches. In the software world China has made it clear that it can and will build its own platform and application stack leveraging open source components, if that is what it has to do to maintain control of its software destiny.
Business
The North American market for computer technology has, in many ways, reached the saturation point. A Pentium 4, to say nothing of a 64-bit processor, is already overkill for most office desktop applications. Older versions of the Microsoft Office suite, and older versions of Microsoft Windows, are often quite adequate for business productivity needs. The problem for traditional technology vendors is aggravated by the fact that Linux, Open Office, and other open source software may now be good enough.
On the one hand this accounts for why policy issues and the international technology market have become so important: this is where technology vendors see the biggest opportunity to grow new business. On the other hand, open source is forcing some significant changes in the software market domestically.
The most visible effect of open source has been the commoditization effect. Microsoft, as we've seen, has been forced to acknowledge the competitive impact Linux is having, and to cut prices overseas in response to this competition. Yet even companies like BEA acknowledge that open source will have an increasing commoditizing effect, meaning that they will cede lower levels of the application stack to freely available open source software and seek to add value further up the stack.
The most dramatic concession to commoditization in 2004 has been the announcement that Sun is open sourcing Solaris. Said one Sun executive who asked to remain anonymous, "Do you think we'd be open sourcing Solaris if we had any other way to compete with Linux on price? Of course not."
If anything, the opening of Solaris reinforces that Sun has been unable to find a business model built around Linux. Given that competitors like IBM and HP have, with varying degrees of success, been able to integrate Linux into their business models, one suspects that there are deeper problems at Sun than the opening of Solaris can solve.
The bottom line is that Sun is still trying to compete with, rather than embrace Linux. The CDDL doesn't extend patent protection to anyone working under a different open source License, and the CDDL is incompatible with the GPL, meaning none of the Solaris code can be used to benefit Linux.
This move, of using a license as a competitive tool, is one of the more subtle but more important business trends to emerge from open source in 2004.
The most common approach is a dual-licensing scheme, utilized by Trolltech (for Qt), Sleepycat (for Berkeley DB), MySQL, and newcomer db4objects, among others.
In each case the company makes its core product available under the GPL, or else under a similar viral-type license. Since each of these software products is intended to be embedded within or combined with other software to create a derivative product, companies are forced to make their own product available as open source, or to approach the originating company about separate licensing under proprietary terms.
The result is a very low-cost distribution mechanism for the open source companies, as well as a cheap in-bound sales channel of pre-qualified leads.
Of course, to be able to dual-license, you must have created all the code in question, or have full rights granted to you for all the code in question. Thus this very successful open source business model is incompatible with the open source development model; each of the companies using the dual-license approach does all, or nearly all of their software development in-house.
Technology
What then of the open source development model? Has it enjoyed the growth and widespread acceptance that open source business models have?
Certainly 2004 saw a number of significant releases for open source projects. GIMP 2.0 was finally released, as was Gnome 2.6. Large companies as well as individual projects made strides. IBM announced the release of its Java database, Cloudscape, as open source. Novell released SUSE Enterprise Server 9.
The year's most significant releases were the 2.6 series of Linux kernels, and the 1.0 release of Mono. With 2.6, Linux now has many of the features needed to compete as an enterprise-class server: better multiprocessor support, failover and hot-swap support, better journaling file system support.
Mono is absolutely critical if the open source community is to compete in the application development market. C# and .Net will be important application building blocks for the forseeable future, and Linux and open source need to be viable approaches.
The Debian Project has undergone an interesting evolution in the last year. Long-time Debian users have often complained about the slow pace at which Debian moves, favoring security and stability over feature growth. The result is a very solid server system, but one that, for the end user, often lacks support for advanced hardware.
The solution, which seems so obvious now, is independent distributions that leverage Debian as a base but target the end user with ease-of-use features and hardware-support features that have yet to make it into Debian. Two successful projects heading down this path are Ubuntu, which follows the Gnome approach to usability, and Mepis, which follows the KDE approach to usability. Either distribution will give you an easy install, access to Debian packages and apt-based network updates, but with more advanced hardware support and an improved UI over stock Debian.
By far the biggest development story of the year, however, has been Firefox, the browser component of the Mozilla project.
Timing is everything. Security, privacy, and spyware have become major concerns in 2004. Microsoft has refused to significantly update Internet Explorer (IE) until Longhorn is released, which could be in 2006 (as in "Santa Claus could be real"). The Mozilla Foundation capitalized on this opportunity with a major fundraising blitz for the foundation and PR blitz around Firefox; this included a full-page New York Times ad.
In November, Firefox 1.0 was released, and to date downloads exceed 10 million. Mozilla has raised over $250,000 in its fundraising campaign. While IE's market share still hovers around 90%, Firefox has rapidly grown to 5% market share, and put a dent in IE's market share for the first time in years. Industry analyst Gartner Group has looked at the results of 2004 and declared the browser war open again.
Looking ahead to 2005, it's interesting to ponder the tech sector's differing response to open source business and open source development models. The business models are reasonably well understood and generally accepted now. Not everyone is leveraging open source as a business play, but everyone understands it is one viable strategy to pursue.
On the development side, however, the results of open source continue to confound the establishment. Why did no one see the Firefox phenomenon coming? Equally important, why isn't anyone (AOL) attempting to leverage Firefox's market success and technology advantages?
With Solaris, it's interesting to note that even supporters of OpenSolaris admit it sees no real development savings to opening Solaris; the benefits are all on the marketing side. Ben Rockwood blogs "It's going to take Sun more work to maintain it open source than it will to just leave it closed."
Yes, open source has become mainstream. But that mainstream presence needs to be more than a commodity benefit to companies willing to leverage the results of open source. Will mainstream technology companies figure out how to anticipate and collaborate with open source development as a deep part of their technology strategy? That's a big question that 2005 may answer.
Mark Stone is an open source consultant and freelance writer living in the Sierra Nevada region of Northern California. He can be reached at mark.stone@gmail.com.
OSS for voting ! (Score:4, Insightful)
From the article: (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly, how do you take such a claim seriously??? If M$ wasn't such a financial juggernaut, this would be hilarious. As it stands, it's depressingly sobering...M$ has the financial clout to do a lot of damage in court, event if the cases are ultimately thrown out.
Firefox is good (Score:1, Insightful)
WTF? (Score:2, Insightful)
CmdrTaco, guys, nice try, but you need to quit stroking your egos now.
This is probably the worst article ever.
Why shouldn't Microsoft pursue a patent strategy? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why then shouldn't they go ahead and pursue a patent attack strategy in order to crush what they see as the competition? They are bound only to act within the confines of the law. There is no legal reason why they should play nice.
I'm not saying this because I like the possibility, but rather because if Linux supporters can come up with a cogent response to the question and present it to Microsoft in a manner likely to be received without substantial hostility (i.e. something different from "Don't use patents you m!@#$!@# a$$hatz"), then perhaps Microsoft would avoid this approach.
Groklaw (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Political, rather then merit-based alignment (Score:2, Insightful)
You have no idea what's going on in Venezuela, do you?. I'm surprised Fox News even covered Venezuela long enough for you to pick up this snippet of right-wing fear mongering.
WHAT? (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, this follows with the stereotypical
-DMZ
His brush is too wide (Score:3, Insightful)
I realize that to many people, OSS and Free Software are synonymous. To those who fall squarely within either camp, the differences are meaningful enough to warrant the existence of two separate groups. This guy seems to fall into the OSS camp, which is fine and well, but one can't have their cake and eat someone else's.
There are fundamental differences.
Re:Why shouldn't Microsoft pursue a patent strateg (Score:3, Insightful)
I think they would be afraid of the fall out that could possibly occur. Linux has gained enough support that an all out attack on it would very possibly bring about an all out attack on software patents and copyright law, as well as more antitrust suits. Their empire would slowly crumble if either of these two things were pushed very hard.
Re:State of the American union. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Political, rather then merit-based alignment (Score:4, Insightful)
Um, actually, yes, I do pay attention to actual facts and everything! I'm more impressed by your completely vague (and cowardly anonymous) implication that my take on things is wrong without actually saying in what way it's wrong.
When I refer to self inflicted wounds in that country, I'm talking about the long term strikers, the thuggish election tactics, the pretension that they (unlike the foolish rest of the world that just can't quite get it right) have discovered a brand new, properly-tuned form of Socialism that will magically bring prosperity to the people there. Please. Running a nationalized semi-economy that tries to sell things to the rest of the world for hard currency while simultaneously condemning the very economic mechanisms that allow international trade to happen in the first place... its all so... Cuban. Of course, we know what a paradise that is. Imagine Cuba with huge oil reserves, and you'll know where Chavez (out of expediency, not love of freedom) is headed. He's trapped in a 40-year old view of the world, and has enough control over what happens in that country to make a lot of his people think that's simply the way it has to be.
In the meantime, he's borrowing money from China to build housing and win local popularity contests. China, of course, will take the money back in the form of cheap oil.
Re:From the article: (Score:3, Insightful)
.. thankfully not here in the EU - given that software patents are generally considered destructive right up to a parliamentary level. we'll see what the new swpatent draft looks like however. see http://nosoftwarepatents.com/ [nosoftwarepatents.com]
also consider that the new GPL is looking closely at patents toward the end of greater resilience in court. meanwhile IBM, Redhat and Novell now provide indemnity to their enterprise linux customers where swpats are concerned, the market battlefield on which M$ would fight first.
as it stands it isn't quite as depressing as it was this time last year. anyway, it's not the court cases i worry about, it's the fact that the mere existance of software patents discourages innovation amongst many small development houses (where it all happens first).
GPL et al are not viral (Score:5, Insightful)
What's viral is copyright law. Mixing anyone's code with yours "infects" your code because it creates a derivative work. The only way you can legally do that with any copyrighted material is if you have permission from the owner (or fall into a Fair Use category).
Some open source licenses grant a blanket permission to do that without any strings attached. Many (like the GPL) do not. Few commercial licenses provide that permission, and many of those that do require some sort of royalty payments.
The GPL isn't viral, it just doesn't allow you to ignore the viral nature of copyright.
Re:Mono is dead until theres a usable IDE (Score:3, Insightful)
And, if that's the case, why bother with a "Mono IDE"?
Honestly curious here -- I am more in the Java camp - develop on Linux, Windows, or Solaris, and deploy J2ME on Cell Phones.
Also, develop on Linux, and deploy on Windows.
I have been thinking about the whole C# and Mono thing; and am almost ready to give it a whirl.
Ratboy.
Re:Why shouldn't Microsoft pursue a patent strateg (Score:2, Insightful)
They'd also go down in history as being Very Bad People and attract even more ill-will, from regular computer users in above organisations.
Before they ever attempt a patent attack, they have to win over the hearts and minds of the public to their view of software patents. I guess Gates' stabs at 'Communism' among the OSS movement were an early step in this direction.
Re:Political, rather then merit-based alignment (Score:5, Insightful)
the long term strikers
You mean the ones that opposed Chavez and supported Carmona - the replacement for Chavez after the coup whose first act was to dissolve the judiciary?
the thuggish election tactics
Please elaborate - this should be good.
the pretension
Please quote Chavez talking about such a thing. He supports socialism - but, heck, even Spain is under a socialist government. What's the big deal?
He won 58% of the votes in a recall election monitored by *international monitors* (both the OAS and the Carter Center, both widely respected as election monitors in central and south America - both of which said the election was clean) despite the fact that the opposition owned essentially all media (apart from the Venezuelan equivalent of "PBS") and were viscious about using it against him, as well as attempting to sabotage the country's economy (in order to get him kicked out) via strikes.
Fox should really get over it. For better or worse, his "bricks and milk" plan - basically a modern day Robin Hood style appeal - has captured the hearts and minds of much of the urban and rural poor who historically have had little voice in the country. It's exactly the result of what you'd expect from his policies: high taxes on the wealthy that fund food kitchens and urban reconstruction. Seizure of unused land from wealthy landowners to give to the poor who were squatting on it. Etc.
It's kind of funny.... I read this one article of a reporter covering a protest around the time of the election. A huge crowd - tens of thousands of mostly blonde, light-skin anti-Chavez protestors clashed with roughly twice as many brown-haired dark-skinned pro-Chavez protestors, almost like some bizarre overbudget shampoo commercial. The smaller numbers of those with more Spanish ancestry have historically been the middle and upper classes and have typically held power, while the people with more native blood have typically been the poor and unempowered.
Save your "Socialism doesn't work, I told you so"s for when/if Venezuela's economy falters. Until then, it's not our responsibility - if we want to support democracy, we need to accept that Venezuela's poor are sticking up for this guy. That's one thing that seems hard for many people to accept: Democracy != Pro America. Democracy != Capitalism. Democracy != American ideals. Etc. Democracy equals the will of the people, for better or worse.
Re:WHAT? (Score:5, Insightful)
Groklaw was objective about SCO?
Absolutely.
You're joking, right?
Not in the slightest.
First, keep in mind that although contemporary journalism seems to have forgotten it, "objective" doesn't mean "balanced", it means "fact-based". "Balance" is the lazy reporter's poor substitute for research.
PJ and most of the folks that post at Groklaw have a clear bias, but that doesn't change the fact that what they do is to acquire, publish and analyze objectively the facts of the cases. While there's no doubt which side the Groklawers want to win, they work hard at punching holes in both sides' arguments. They shoot down SCO's arguments because they want SCO to lose, and they poke holes in SCO's opponents' arguments because they want to strengthen them. But they definitely look hard at both sides, and no one can fault the quality or depth of their research. Court documents show that both SCO and its opponents follow Groklaw, and for good reason -- very little goes unnoticed there.
Objectivity doesn't really have anything to do with lack of bias, because if a complete lack of bias were necessary, objectivity would be impossible. Objectivity is about looking past your biases to base your conclusions squarely on the facts available.
Groklaw does a stellar job at objective reporting and analysis. If it seems that they demolish nearly all of SCO's arguments and claims while doing no more than knocking the rough edges off of SCO's opponents' arguments and claims, that's because SCO's arguments are weak and its attorneys poor (in skill -- they're doing fine financially).
PJ does editorialize a bit, and that part of Groklaw is decidedly not objective, but that just keeps the site entertaining. Some Groklawers occasionally ask her to tone it down specifically to reduce these charges of non-objectivity, but anyone who seriously reads her articles can see the clear distinctions between fact, analysis, speculation and whimsy.
Re:Political, rather then merit-based alignment (Score:1, Insightful)
The Iron Fist of Hugo Chavez [foxnews.com]
First off, from its very title, as well as continuous similar references in the article ("moving toward totalitarian rule", "prepared to do terrible things", "the path to dictatorship", etc), it tries to present him as some sort of brutal, authoritarian dictator, and reads like Pravda with it's extreme one-sidedness.
The concept is laughable. Can you imagine a case where the United States was *overthrown* by a group of conspirators, the US government regained control, and the very *leader* of the conspirator's punishment was merely house arrest in his mansion? He was elected through democracy, was *overthrown by a coup* whose first action was to *dissolve the judiciary*, and came back and gave them little more than a slap on the wrist. Then, in an election supervized by both the OAS and the Carter Center, both of which certified it as clean, *democratically* won 58% of the vote despite the opposition's media monopoly working full time against him and organizing strikes to try and destroy their own country's economy.
Re:Groklaw (Score:4, Insightful)
a) lied
b) misled
c) refused to reveal uncomfortable facts for IBM (like when a ruling goes against it).
I guess if objectivity is defined as complete neutrality with no concern for truth at all then Groklaw has failed. I, along with most other people, was shocked when this case started at how weak SCO's case was. As time has gone on its gotten even weaker. The judge himself indicated that SCO has not managed in this time to create a single disputed fact; how can Groklaw be detailed and still take SCO seriously?
Re:Why shouldn't Microsoft pursue a patent strateg (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps they should. However, a common theme on slashdot is how broken the patent system is. Trivial things are patented every day that demonstrate the system not working the way it was intended. Sometimes companies fight over silly patents and it can be fun to watch one big company screw with another one (which might have done the same if it could) and comment on the system. Free software (and OSS too) are usually not corporate developments, a full Linux distribution is the product of thousands of people working for over a decade to develop. FLOSS represents a lot of different things to a lot of people, so to see it crushed by MS utilizing the broken patent system would be a travesty on a global scale.
My guess is that's one reason MS hasn't tried to actually play the patent card against linux. It wouldn't be money attacking money, it would be very big money attacking the people (really bad PR). This would be unprecedented, so there is great uncertainty with it. Also, with governments and business around the world considering OSS, this kind of attack would make legislators question the very patent system such an attack would rely upon. Imagine using patents to go after Linux, with the result that the rules change - or get repealed - so that you can't use them against other companies either. No one knows what would happen if MS attacked Linux with patents, but all effects other than defeating Linux would likely be negative.
Either that, or they are waiting for legalization of software patents in Europe...
Stumping for non-free software to lower costs. (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a real shame because it means that they have genuinely taken in the watered-down message the open source movement promotes--that we should weigh software issues not on ethics or freedom, but on cost of development, distribution, and even (ironically) settle for proprietary software when it is technically more functional than an "open source" competitor. The open source movement pitches this message because they're chiefly speaking to businesses and they believe any freedom talk will interfere with conveying their development methodology message to businesses.
As such, if the US Government is doing what you describe, they're probably just using that talk to get Microsoft to drop its price on the software it licenses to the US Government. Other countries and US states have done this before, and it will be done again. Lowering the cost of Microsoft software is probably the reason why Massachusetts allowed Microsoft's proprietary Office formats to be included as an "open format". There's no part of the open source movement's message a proprietor can't cater to, so proprietors love to frame the issues at hand as the open source movement discusses them.
Better [gnu.org] to focus on software freedom [gnu.org], which the free software movement has been pitching for over a decade longer than the open source movement has been touting their message. Those who want software freedom for its own sake never have to settle for stumping for non-free software because the free software message doesn't focus on a development methodology to make development cheaper, faster, and produce less buggy software. The free software movement centers on giving computer users the freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify computer software. The open source movement's goals are fine as far as they go, but they don't go far enough. They say nothing about the most important question we can ask: how should we treat other people? This is an ethical question which demands an ethical response.
Re:GPL et al are not viral (Score:3, Insightful)
Most commercial software that is designed to be linked to other software has very generous terms for the derived works.
There are lots of development tools and libraries whose licenses do provide very generous terms for derived works, but there are lots that do not, as well, particularly libraries for niche applications. I've seen libraries that require you to pay the company you're licensing them from a percentage of any revenue you make off of anything you do with their product, for example, and some that even require you to clear any use with them to make sure that you're not going to be competing with them.
And even though many commercial libraries don't place a lot of restrictions on what you can do with the derivative works, nearly all of them place some fairly severe constraints on how you can create those derivative works -- specifically, that you must purchase one license for each and every developer who will use it. The GPL is very liberal about that side of it.
The GPL's rules are unusual strict for software.
Most GPL software is not "designed to be linked to other software". Most GPL software is application software, intended to run on its own. Within that space, applications, OS kernels, etc., the GPL is extremely generous compared to commercial offerings (most of whom not only don't give you permission to create derived works, but don't give you the source and require you to agree not to reverse engineer it!).
Many (maybe most) open source libraries are not GPL, but LGPL or another less-restrictive variant.
I suppose that among GUI toolkits, Qt is probably fairly unique in its use of a derivative-restricting license (GPL). Clearly, Trolltech has good reasons for choosing that path.
Re:Groklaw -- Get the facts anywhere? (Score:2, Insightful)
I agree with another poster. Objective, and Balanced, and Neutral are not always the same thing. When it comes to facts, I think Groklaw is objective. They present what is there. This is NOT true of most media, especially mainstream media.
When it comes to opinion, they are honest; they disclose their biases up front. This is also not true of most media, especially mainstream media.
Re:Political, rather then merit-based alignment (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll note that you dodged and completely refused to compare it to other Carribean countries under the American sphere of influence without an embargo, such as Haiti, or to address it's average lifespan, or anything of the sort. And if you think that Cuba is out of the ordinary in terms of political repression, you've clearly never read a human rights report on half of the countries in Africa, Asia, Oceana, and about a quarter of South and Central America.
[the pretension
Please quote Chavez talking about such a thing. He supports socialism - but, heck, even Spain is under a socialist government. What's the big deal?
You then go on to quote lots of stuff about Chavez endorsing socialism (something that I already mentioned that he supports, and something a good portion of Europe supports as well), but quoted not a thing about him claiming that old concepts of socialism is broken and that he's going to do some sort of New Socialism. Again, another dodge.
But we (and every open, democratic, non-corrupt culture) have a very, very strong interest in this. They're the #5 oil exporter in the world, they're striking deals with China, Iran, etc., and that truly matters if you care about the nature of totalitarian regimes and those that make money off of them.
Then pick pro-American over democratic. But in the case of Venezuela, Democratic and Pro-American are conflicting concepts. Carmona, the pro-American leader, was about as undemocratic as they get. Chavez, the anti-American leader, got elected through two clean elections despite a media monopoly and economic-sabotage against him, and hardly even punished the conspirators for it. You can't have both of them.
BTW - the US sells more to China than Venezuela could ever hope to. I hate this sort of hypocrisy. Sort of like when we condemned the French for doing business with Iraq when we were the world's largest purchaser of Iraqi oil. China needs to get their oil from somewhere; God forbid that an oil producer sell to where there is demand for oil. I thought you liked free trade?
Biased agains Sun (Score:4, Insightful)
The article above is clearly biased against Sun. Sun has said openly they are not out to sue anyone, and that their intents with the CDDL and patent grant is to actually prevent lawsuits. Slashdot really needs to cool off over this.
Also, Bruce Perens has numerous conflicts of interest in the matter, so his opinions should be read in context. For example, he works for OSRM, which is an insurance company who stands to make money from inflating the perceived risk regarding patents. He will say otherwise, but the timing and veracity of his comments surrounding the announcement of OpenSolaris are quite a coincidence. He also has vested interests in two or more Linux distributions, so of course he sides with the Linux fanboys on issues beyond patents.
Groklaw has been more balanced, in that they at least posted articles following up their initial set of questions about the CDDL. Of course, people commenting on the articles at Groklaw generally sound like JFK conspiracy theorists, so don't take them too seriously, either.
Let Sun prove themselves in their actions over the next year. OpenSolaris should be out around June or July, so they need a good year for people to get a feel for how all that will work. If Jonathan Schwartz were to ever pull off a mask revealing a big green patent ogre, then you can say I was wrong. But the likelihood of that is nil.