Wall Street

Man looks in the abyss, there's nothing staring back at him. At that moment, man finds his character. And that is what keeps him out of the abyss.

Free as in Maahhh, or My Chat with Darl McBride. A summary of the SCO president's talk at Harvard.

Enthymeme:

"The informal method of reasoning typical of rhetorical discourse. The enthymeme is sometimes defined as a 'truncated syllogism' since either the major or minor premise found in that more formal method of reasoning is left implied. The enthymeme typically occurs as a conclusion coupled with a reason. When several enthymemes are linked together, this becomes sorites. "

Open Source Law:

"Open source software offers several potential benefits:

* A large community works to solve a common problem
* The work is completely transparent, so you can understand the basis for all the code
* Because the community constantly works on the code, problems are found and corrected quickly
* You can extend the basic functionality and contribute your extensions back to the community.

It seems to me that these benefits could apply equally to the law itself, or at least to aspects of it, particularly transaction documents. Why should every lawyer and firm have its own "boilerplate" language. I'm not minimizing the need for customized documents. But where a lawyer is not trying to achieve anything beyond creating a standard right, obligation, or protection, why not use a standardized approach?"

From Strategic Legal Technology, February 2004

Open Source Initiative OSI - The Open Source Definition

Free and Open Source Software Interview Questions

He Hate Me™. Via Sports Law Blog

The 50 lies, exaggerations, distortions and half truths (among others) that took this country (and the UK) to war. Via Independent News

From Cato Institute's Adam Thierer, Collectivism In, Property Rights Out: "In their work, the commons crusaders often lambaste property rights, fearing that too much private control of infrastructure, wireless frequencies, or intellectual creations threatens ideas, innovation, openness, and competition in this sector, and, in a much broader sense, our very culture and democracy. "

The New Republic Online: Beyond Belief: "Edwards's events here are like watching a roomful of formerly deaf people listen to music for the first time. People walk in as skeptics and leave as believers. "

The Center for Food Safety sues the FDA to, in essence, curb the marketing and sale of "ornamental fish," ones genetically engineered to glow, for instance. Their mantra, Stop the GloFish.

SCO now denies that the IBM lawsuit concerns copyright violations? Right. SCO shows disputed code to IBM - Computerworld: "Monday's response included no examples of copyright violations, Stowell said. 'We've not introduced copyright infringement as part of our case with IBM. We've tried to make it clear that it's a contract issue.' "

Open Source Business Conference 2004 scheduled for March 16-17 at the St. Francis Hotel, SF.

From NewsFactor Network: SCO Goes Global with Linux License.

"There is some conjecture out that that because we are offering this licensing in the UK that we are also preparing to sue UK companies. I can assure you that is not the case right now," said Stowell. "The only companies in consideration of seeing a lawsuit are companies that SCO has met with and had dialogues with. SCO will give companies every opportunity to purchase a license before a lawsuit would be sent their way. We've tried to be fair about this."

In a late-December letter sent to approximately 3,000 companies, SCO issued a warning that it might pursue all possible legal options if those companies did not certify within 30 days that they had not violated source-code agreements.

From the Motley Fool:

If SCO thought threat-born licensing fees would provide a quick boost to the bottom line, it looks to have miscalculated. As fellow Fool Tom Taulli noted last month, SCO has tried to cast its lawsuits in apocalyptic terms. But with the entire computing world putting its money behind Linux, it appears that, for SCO, the apocalypse is now.

From a press release, news of Herman Miller, Inc.'s settlement of Aeron Chair Trade Dress Suit.

Sixth Circuit's opinion in lawsuit between holders of two marks, lawoffices.net and lawoffice.com. DeGidio v. West Group. White & Case represented West.

Funniest. Essay. Ever. The New Yorker: Shouts and Murmurs

Richard Stallman interview for brit site PCpro. Unrepentent.

My vision for 20 years from now is that all published software, aside from what is embedded in ROM in appliances that can't load new software or talk to any other devices, is free software. No one should ever be told, 'You can have this attractive software, but you cannot see what it does, change it, or redistribute copies to others.' The freedom to do these things is a human right that must never be denied.

Paper by Prof. Heverly, Norwich Law School, on the nature of information as property and its ownership, titled "The Information Semicommons."

Interesting discussion from Prof. Volokh on the copyrightability of athletic events and the like, raised in the context of a lawsuit between the Chicago Cubs and owners of buildings with rooftop views of the action on the field.