Godfread Law Firm - Intellectual Property and Business Law » software

A Victory for Open Source Software

Paul — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 18:56:47 +0000

Novell recently won a 7 year battle against the SCO Group over the copyright to UNIX source code. A jury in Utah found that Novell was the owner of the copyrights in question. Its a victory for open source software generally, because it was probably the most serious legal threat to development of Linux, an open source UNIX-like operating system. SCO had alleged that Linux infringed copyrights it held in UNIX. Though Novell’s offerings have changed over the years, currently it offers SUSE Linux and related software and services.

The blog Groklaw has been following this case in great detail over the years. There is an unbelievable amount of information there which illustrates how much work can go into litigating a case of this scale.

They Don’t Make Computer Manuals Like This Anymore

Paul — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 22:03:27 +0000

Actually, I don’t think they even make computer manuals any more. At least not ones that come with your computer. Either way, this manual from a Franklin Ace 1000 is seems so foreign, so unlike any documentation you might get today that its almost amusing. Its part rant, part manifesto and it breaks up the world into “THEM”, “US” and “YOU.” From the manual:

“Program manufacturers are natural paranoids. In their zeal to “copy protect” their programs, they tend to regard all customers as potential thieves”

Interestingly enough, Franklin made Apple computer clones and was successfully sued by Apple for copyright infringement of Apple’s operating system. Natural paranoids indeed.

Full article at Ironic Sans. HT to BoingBoing