Submitted by Should I be sad or relieved? Groklaw, the website that played a central role in the SCO vs. sanity case, has just announced it will close up shop on May 16 of this year. Groklaw’s place in history has been secured, surely, but in recent years, the site became more and more like a relic from the past, clearly stuck in the everyone vs. Microsoft mindset of the late ’90s and early 2000s. Even in today’s announcement post, Groklaw shows that its time has indeed come.
I’ve never been an unequivocal fan of Groklaw, for the simple reason that its author, PJ, pretty much saw Microsoft’s hand in everything. However, this does not negate the fact that Groklaw has played a crucial role in the SCO case; PJ uncovered several pieces of important evidence in the case, which even lead to SCO targeting her on a more personal level.
Despite these accomplishments, the site started losing its edge the past few years – in my eyes, at least. PJ is still entirely hung up on Microsoft, even in today’s announcement post. She goes on and on about how Microsoft is tying to destroy Android, and keeps on talking about the mobile space as if it’s Microsoft vs. Linux, stating that Groklaw isn’t needed because Android has beaten Microsoft. This makes no sense – Microsoft was already beaten long before Android came onto the market. Android is beating iOS and BlackBerry, not Microsoft.
Still, credit where credit is due. “No matter what happens next, I know that we changed the course of history. How many people get to say that? I never expected it, frankly, and I am grinning just thinking about how much fun we’ve had doing it,” PJ writes, “Our work will be available for historians permanently, so the impact we had isn’t over today, and someday we’ll tell our grandkids that we were part of this, part of Groklaw. We are in the history books. Our work will continue as long as anyone cares about this unique time period in the history of computer software, a history that we are a part of forever. And that is a long, long time.”
Thank you, PJ, for your work, and good luck with any future endeavours.
Groklaw is not a relic of the past.
Software Patents & Copyright are very much in the here & now.
Think of all the MAD cases going on amongst the Mobile Phone makers?
Think of the Oracle vs Google Header Copyrights?
I’ve contributed to Groklaw for most of its existance. As someone who has been involved with computers for 40+ years I (and I’m not alone here) have a lot of experience that did prove useful in a few Patent cases.
As for the future, there are more and more lawsuits being filed everyday. (All those Law School grads have to do someting don’t they?) Us Techies/Geeks really do have to know about this stuff.
Ok, I’m probably biased as I had (in the dim an distant past,circa 1980) three patents related to Video Signal Decoding. These were all related to the use of FPGA and are really obsolete these days. I never got a dime from them but that was never the point.
These days, there are so many bogus/obvious patents that have been approved by the USPTO that if I dared file my applications now I’d probably be in breach of 20+ patents.
Then there is the analysis of the legal schennagins in the court rooms. This is not going to go away anytime soon. This has really taught me a lot.
So what do you propose should take it’s place?
With a relic I meant that Groklaw is still firmly entrenched in this idea that Microsoft – and Microsoft alone – is the big bad wolf in computer-land. This is no longer the case. Microsoft is but one of many wolves in computer land. I mean, PJ claimed – time and time again – that the Psystar case was a Microsoft ploy to destroy the GPL, meanwhile advocating for the entirely closed and controlling Apple!
PJ should’ve either gone with the times, or quit a few years ago. Now, while I will remember the good things she’s done, I’ll also never forget the whackier stuff she came up with later on.
Once upon a time they were ‘ok’ as far as Groklaw went. Since their take over of Sun they have done a lot of things that IMHO, put them firmly into the same mould as Microsoft.
However we shall probably never know who finds a lot of these cases or even journalists/activists. The well funded and smoothly operating US Lobby System makes it pretty easy to channel untraceable money into all sorts of places for all sorts of objectives.
What PJ has done is look for who has most to gain from the slagging off of Linux & FOSS in general.
So she talks about Microsoft? Well they do seem to be at times the most likely suspect. After all didn’t Mr Balmer call Linux evil amongst other things? How many of their Patents does Microsoft claim that Linux infringes?
Of couse she might be wrong but AFAIK, the evidence seems to point towards Redmond. Look at their latest antic. They want to make companies liable for an possible software license violation of any company in their supply chain. They are trying to get this through on a state by state basis starting with Washington Naturally. This means that say a supplier in Japan of components to GM who in turn gets ‘stuff’ from a supplier in S Korea who in turn gets ‘stuff’ from China would have to pay MS money if the supplier in China uses a ‘free/hacked’ copy of Windows. Now how just is that? Would your politicians enact that sort of legislation just to protect say Phillips?
There is a need for a rational debate on all this anti FOSS, anti business legislation. There is a need to inform us lay people of the implications of being sued.
That is why Groklaw has been and is so useful.
It’s true that the biggest IP issue in this industry is now all the litigation over patents that allegedly read on smartphone technologies, with Android being under attack to a greater extent now than any other platform in history (by a combination of major strategic patent holders and trolls).
Groklaw didn’t do much work in that context although several dozen smartphone patent suits were filed since last year.
Groklaw was always more interested in copyright than patent stuff, and in often pretty irrelevant procedural detail instead of the broader picture and strategic battlelines. By contrast, I have produced and continue to update material such as the visualizations, infographics and reference maps found in this Scribd folder: http://www.scribd.com/my_document_collections/2770688
“Microsoft was already beaten long before Android came onto the market. Android is beating iOS and BlackBerry, not Microsoft.”
Gartner forecasts Android’s direct competitor will soon solely be Microsoft.
This is pathetic. Clearly you are just as blindly Anti-Microsoft as is PJ.
I’m sure if Gartner was paid enough they’d say the second coming of Jesus would be him on two fire breathing polar bears using tie fighters as shoes.
I stopped paying attention to Gartner about three years ago.
And believing Gartner forecasts isn’t pathetic?
And Microsoft is after Android. Direct competitor.
This was one of those sites I would check back on every few months to see things from a different perspective to my own.
I might not have seen eye to eye on many (most?) of the opinion pieces, but if you only read sites where everyone agrees with you, its no fun! Maybe thats why I check here out daily
I read Groklaw a bit during the SCO stuff. I’ll miss the day when there was one bad guy and one good guy, guess I’m getting old doesn’t seem like my world anymore
Thom,
You act like you have never been wrong. So maybe PJ was wrong about Psystar. She is not infallible. What she is though is a great researcher and archivist. Opinion aside, Groklaw holds a vast amount of knowledge about the law and technology in general. She has also worked very hard to make that info available to the world for no cost. As a fellow web site operator, you should at least have some respect for the content she provides. Would anyone use OSAlert as a resource after it closed its doors?
As for Microsoft, well they still act like the big bad wolf. True they are not alone. But they are still the biggest threat to free technology in the world. Other wise we wouldn’t still be seeing stories like Microsoft suing Barnes and Noble. We are also finding out just recently that Microsoft was actually collaborating with SCO through Baystar.(according to recently available testimony from one of Baystar’s execs). The war is still in full swing.
With text analysis tools such as Gender Guesser, one can see that there’s a mountain of statistic evidence that Groklaw’s articles weren’t written by just one “PJ” person but instead by different people, some of whom are identified by such tools as “definitely male” while other authors are identified as “definitely female”.
It’s one of the most massive absurdities ever that the open source community would accept Groklaw’s non-openness. While everyone has a right to privacy, there must always be a reasonable balance between privacy and public activism. It’s just like you wouldn’t want a “PJ” avatar to run for Congress or for President.
Why? Because liking open-source means absolutely everything must be open, including your personal details?
Hardly. Groklaw is just a site for discussion about legal situations, it doesn’t even try to have any other effect than provide more insight to them for interested parties. A congressman or a president doesn’t provide any insight whatsoever, they don’t educate people, and they try indeed to have much bigger effect on the society, for the good or the bad.
In fact, it is like wanting a group of people under ‘PJ’ name discussing legal things on a website. Oh, shoot, that’s what they’re doing already.
Edited 2011-04-11 06:51 UTC
Gender Guesser?? WTF??
I write fiction in my spare time. One of the pseudonyms I use is female although I’m a man.
I ran a few of my short stories through it last year.
Guess what… The Stuff I wrote under my male name came out as ‘Male’ whereas the stories I wrote using my female pseduonym were “Weak Female”
All of us have both male and female traits. Mood also has a bearing upon the writing style used.
So FM, please go to jail and do not pass go to collect whatever you are being paid to slag PJ off all over the internet.
I just tried two different gender guessers myself out of curiosity. One of them claims I’m female, while the other one claims I’m male. My breasts disagree with the latter.
That said using a gender guesser tool to try to guess someone’s gender is really ignorant, if not even downright stupid. Especially if you’re using that guessed gender as an argument somewhere in trying to prove their discredibility!
Basically, the more formal and the less imaginative the wording is the harder it becomes to try to guess someone’s gender, and then again the opposite is also quite true: if you are very creative and have a really large vocabulary you’re also equally difficult to classify properly. Well, Groklaw clearly matches the first case.
I’m not going to speak for anything online but a professor did come up with some software a while back that was over 80% accurate at guessing gender by analyzing grammar and word choice.
This type of software is highly sought after in the law enforcement community.
Sounds nothing more than hearsay and exaggeration.
No I’m pretty sure I read it.
Computer program detects author gender
http://www.nature.com/news/1998/030714/full/news030714-13.html
It is actually more likely that there are no such things as male or female traits, but rather us/society putting gender labels on things we’d like to encourage for one gender and probably also discourage for others.
I.e. labelling something as female results in being less desirable to persue for men and vice versa.
lol yea I’m sure nature has nothing to do with it.
I bet you also believe that girls only play with dolls because they are programmed to do so by society or tv.
Try reading The Blank Slate by psychologists Professor Steven Pinker. eg Experiments show that little girls who are given toy trucks to play with often pretend the trucks are dolls and have “mummy” and “baby” trucks.
There are no gender differences when kids are under 1 year old. After that they are entangled in culture. Girls play with cars and trains if people they pick as role models do so.
Virginia Woolf wrote that great writers need to be androgynous.
Er, ffwhat?
First of all, I have to wonder if you took into account that major parts of many articles on Groklaw are simply transcribed legal documents?
But no, I wouldn’t really care even if you were right that PJ is not a single person. The work done there was very real.
And non-open? Are we even talking about the same site? At the base of it, Groklaw is mainly a bunch of transcribed legal documents with the occasional commentary from someone who does her research, and seems to know quite a lot about how the US legal system works.
What does openness really mean in that context.
Anyone and their dog could comment on the articles, I might add.
And the transcriptions were very much a community work. I may have even helped getting a few of the necessary informal procedures into place for distributing the work back in the starting days. Not sure exactly how they work today, but I would imagine it’s still distributed community-work.
Any power PJ may have had, came from the respect she gained by starting, organizing and running the entire thing. And from the many insightful comments she could offer on the documents.
Come back out of the woodwork when we actually _have_ an avatar that’s trying to run for a political position of power. You’re right, I wouldn’t accept that. But PJ wasn’t a politician. She (or it?) didn’t wield any power of office.
Thom is so naive today…
Microsoft is notorious. And yes they have been worse than many other companies. Gates is terrified of what happend to IBM, so the Microsoft ploys have often been unethical. Companies like Google, Sun and SGI have been much more likable (though with their own bad habits). Heck, even Commodore and Apple have acted better. Much better.
The reason Microsoft has not been going for mobile phones until now is that cellphones used to be gadgets, not computers. Microsoft are threatend now that mobile phones are computers and extending into tablets and therefore touching laptops. Big corps like Microsoft are slow movers, but when they move they want total domination. The iOS model, which Apple now are directing towards OS-X by having an appstore for Mac and certain API moves, has awakened the giant from rest. MS is uneasy about this development and how Linux in the shape of Android can undercut them.
Hence Windows-8 might turn out to be a multi-device operating system tied in with downscaled versions of their most crucial app: Office… MS is all about the Office package. That ecosystem is what gives them the ability to lock their customers to their platform.
I sincerely hope that companies will move to the cloud using HTML5-based apps for their business in the future. Maybe in 5-10 years. In that timespan MS has to move fast to keep their lock-in strategy in place. This is a never-ending battle, and serious sites like Groklaw are needed. Not for nerds, but for educating lawyers about how the computer tech and market works.
Edited 2011-04-11 07:25 UTC
You’re the one that is naive. Million line C++ codebases are not going to be converted over to Javascript. Very few seem to understand how much work it takes to build software like Autocad or Vegas.
Microsoft would have more competition on the desktop if the FOSS world didn’t have a lock-out proprietary companies strategy. The hostile attitude towards proprietary companies has held back Linux at no cost to Microsoft.
The FOSS movement is like PETA trying to take on the meat industry by shaming people for eating meat. Instead of steak, just eat hummus. Our alternative isn’t good enough for you? Well then go eat your juicy steak then ya bastard! Go eat it with a nice cold beer! That will teach you!
I am not naive, I’m just way ahead of you…
Get off your high horse: I said competitors to Office, not AutoCAD. Actually, the HTML5 engine does a lot of the GUI-work for most apps. As ECMAScript gets closer to strict typing the JIT will do better work, and you can write your apps in a language close to C++/D that compiles down to typed javascript. Look at Google’s Closure for a start.
And yes, I am proficient in both ASM, C++, ECMAScript and a slew of other languages… Most imperative languages are rather similar, which of course is why they can use the same compiler backend. Compilers can get a long way by static analysis on programs that stay away from dynamic features. You just have to know how the compiler works and write with that in mind.
Actually, online web-apps provide easy access from any HTML5 capable browser. So online-office is easier than moving your files and apps with you.
As for computational power. ActionScript3 is based on a dialect of ECMAScript and provides strict typing. Flash10 PixelEngine (used to be called Hydra) provides very fast SIMD operations on arrays. It’s only a matter of time before a descendant of OpenCL is be available in browsers. Give it 5-10 years. If Apple, Opera and Firefox cooperate then HTML5 can become av very real office application platform. Webkit is very close, already.
Edit: And yes… you could run AutoCAD as a client-server app with the AutoCAD codebase running on the server and having a webGL streaming display engine in the browser-client. No problem if you have a speedy connection to the server.
Edited 2011-04-11 17:28 UTC
Let’s say that MS even takes it a step further and brings HTML5/ECMAScript to Visual Studio and allows the use of C#. For most software that still isn’t enough incentive to convert existing code.
By the time that even happens there will be alternative web frameworks that provide better performance. HTML5 is general purpose and development moves too slowly.
You didn’t specify office applications. There will be a variety of online office applications eventually since it is commonly used software. But most business software is going to stay local.
That isn’t an HTML5 application, that’s just streaming and there is already existing tech like Citrix. The major downside to streaming is a company like Autodesk has to provide a massive amount of bandwidth and cpu processing in addition to the software. Or they could keep making money by selling localized versions. A tough choice.
There are already compilers that target javascript for all kinds of languages: java, python, C#, even C/C++/LLVM (emscript)… If the XXX2javascript compiler-writer knows the internals of the browser JIT then javascript effectively becomes an intermediate representation. So I am not so sure that you need all that much conversion eventually, provided that you can emulate the libraries efficiently. Of course, this assumes that people are willing to put the effort into it.
I think this depends on how Adobe and Apple behave. If Adobe keeps improving Flash11/AIR with app development in mind and Apple keeps improving webkit with killing Flash in mind then HTML5 could become powerful enough to support typical apps. A lot of the animated GUIstuff in iOS can be done in webkit already.
Is Javascript a horrible IR? Yes, but unfortunately critical mass means a lot when it comes to market penetration.
On the level of COBOL, yes. On the level of end-user-frontends, no?
A real possibility is that you have local computing centres tied to ISPs where your app-provider rent CPU time and that you purchase services that stream content to your, say HTML6 app. That bypass GPL by the way, because you don’t have to share your code unless you distribute binaries to end users. And it prevents piracy. Not so suitable for Autodesk perhaps, but attractive for some other areas. Though, a cultural change is needed and will take time. Cultural changes are hard to predict though.
I don’t think this is anti-proprietary at all. In fact this is how proprietary vendors can extend free software without contributing. Over time that might become more and more attractive (as free software foundations become more and more powerful and building from scratch becomes more and more expensive). Not sure what FSF will do with the GPL when or if that scenario comes through.
Edited 2011-04-12 11:39 UTC
Ok but why does any of that have to involve HTML? I have no doubt that streaming will gain popularity in the future but if anything it will use a proprietary plug-in from a company like Citrix.
I have a feeling HTML5 is going to be like OpenGL where it is always one step behind.
Well, yes, but OpenGL is more stable than Direct-X. Games have a short life cycle, so API stability is less critical for game devs. For other applications API stability matters, and not being locked to a single vendor that follow their own whims matters too. Web browsers will always have to maintain backwardscompatibility for several years, so the platform cannot change under your feet. And management can sack the IT department if they can do with a browser that is upgraded with OS auto-updates… No installs to be maintained.
Edited 2011-04-12 20:22 UTC
Apple is at least as big a threat as Microsoft is; in many ways their practices are worse. Imagine what life would have been like if all programs running on Windows had to be approved by Microsoft, and Microsoft demanded (and got) 30% of all revenues. But this is exactly what Apple is doing with the iPhone and iPad.
Another anti-Symbian quote from the OSAlert. I know you don’t like Symbian Thom, but please…
It’s not about iOS or BlackBerry. Symbian beat Microsoft before Android existed. Now Android is fighting a battle vs Symbian. iOS and BlackBerry are small players. SE and LG switched from Symbian to Android. Android got the market from Symbian, not from iOS or BlackBerry. Even if you hate Symbian, you can not deny it.
I can understand that kind of ignorance from the US media, but OSAlert is not a US media.
Edited 2011-04-11 13:20 UTC
Yes. We are anti-Symbian. It is our mission to destroy Symbian. It is our goal to never mention Symbian because we’re in cahoots with a secret society consisting of Google, Apple, and Microsoft. When I wake up, all I think about is “how can I make the life of the honest-to-god Symbian user spiderman more miserable today?”. I get off on it.
We actually are. SLC, Utah.
Edited 2011-04-11 13:28 UTC
OK, sorry I wasn’t aware about this. That explains everything. For your information, while Symbian is almost unheard of in the US, it is the dominant mobile OS in the rest or the world. The US is a very special market when it comes to mobile phones, because of CDMA and some other factors. The US market is actually still a very small market, although it has been catching up to the rest of the world recently, it is still lagging behind. Microsoft has been trying to enter the mobile market for almost a decade (long before the video game market) and failed, long before Android or iOS even existed.
The US is the largest smartphone market. I’m not sure how you would view it as “very small” in any context.
Since when does having a small market share equate failure?
Not by a long shot.
Do you just make stuff up and assume everyone does the same?
Indeed, the US market – which grew an impressive 41% year on year – is currently the largest smartphone market in the world, with 14.7 million units accounting for 23% of total global shipments in Q2 2010.
http://www.tgdaily.com/mobility-features/50907-android-smartphone-s…
Q2 2010 is actually one year ago, not exactly “currently”. It was news worthy because it shown that the US is indeed catching up. The smartphone global market is usually classified by region and not by country because it makes more sense. Europe was leading the market in 2010 (34% of the shipments), closely followed by Asia-Pacific. Asia Pacific is expected to become the largest market. The US might be the single biggest country, but the US is about 90% of North America. You can’t compare it with the Belgian or Finnish market. That is why we usually talk about regional markets. Europe is usually considered as a single market.
Edited 2011-04-12 08:21 UTC
Depends on how you define your markets. For example, while individual countries in Europe (or Asia) may not constitute bigger markets the region as whole may do.
Depends on what argument you’re trying to make. A common argument seems to be that Linux on the desktop is a failure due to small market share.
23% of the global market negates his statement by any definition.
It failed at mainstream success. It’s always had success as a hobbyist system.
Redefine success if you have failed. Seriously?
Yes that is what Linux fans have done. We heard for years about how it was going to be a success on the desktop but now the goals have been changed.
Linux has failed on the desktop. That’s really the honest conclusion.
Well, windows mobile certainly was not a success on the scale of the iphone, android,blackberry, or symbian. I can’t imagine Microsoft’s goal with their smart-phones was to be bad enough to be dropped when presented with a choice of a phone with any other operating system. So, yeah I’d consider it to be a failure.
It would be interesting to see some inside numbers on the profitability of the phone OS from 2002 to today. I can’t imagine it was very profitable. It also didn’t appear to give them any kind of head start in the smart phone market. It really does look like a wasted effort.
If you define Dominant as “wildy unpopular, with a large quickly declining legacy marketshare.” Then yes, you are correct. Symbian is not going to compete with Ios/Android/Blackberry/HPalm/. Nokia is going ahead with MS, not symbian as their flagship Mobile Operating System.
Also, Win Mobile 7, IOS, Android were created out of the United states. The market still sucks for carriers, but the phones are top notch and are influencing the international market share dramatically.
Um……no.
http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/android-grows-while-rim-groans-…
That is US stats.
Groklaw stayed way beyond its 15 minutes.
Is the SCO case Really even over yet… The constant appealing, reopening finally over?
This is how those people win. The case has been drawn out so long even thecourts can’t know all the rulings. Then they get “settled” under the table in a manner that essentially doesn’t resolve any legal issues and is kept secret from the Linux and OSS users that were harmed by all the lies.