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Date:      Fri, 11 Feb 2005 18:31:06 -0800
From:      Joshua Tinnin <krinklyfig@spymac.com>
To:        Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu>
Cc:        Anthony Atkielski <atkielski.anthony@wanadoo.fr>
Subject:   Re: Please don't change Beastie to another crap logo such asNetBSD!!!
Message-ID:  <200502111831.06605.krinklyfig@spymac.com>
In-Reply-To: <p0620071fbe32fdcc36d4@[128.113.24.47]>
References:  <200502092223.01650.algould@datawok.com> <200502111456.56011.krinklyfig@spymac.com> <p0620071fbe32fdcc36d4@[128.113.24.47]>

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On Friday 11 February 2005 04:36 pm, Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu> 
wrote:
> At 2:56 PM -0800 2/11/05, Joshua Tinnin wrote:
> >On Friday 11 February 2005 02:44 pm, Anthony Atkielski
> >
> ><atkielski.anthony@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> >>  Joshua Tinnin writes:
> >  > > Hmmm, let's see, Anthony Atielski, 30 posts on this subject
> >  > > alone, on a tech help list. Makes you wonder what sort of
> >  > > priorities you have.
> >>
> >>  At the moment, I'm worried about FreeBSD.
> >
> >Listen.
> >
> >You come in here making vague accusations of legal wrongdoing,
> >not just once, but TWICE! With no foundation or background, I
> >might add. You make these accusations with close to zero actual
> >knowledge of the situations involved. Do you know what that's
> >called?  That's called a cartooney threat.
>
> Oh come on now.  Given the recent cartoony lawsuit by SCO against
> IBM over Linux, I can understand his concern.  *He* is not
> threatening anyone, he's just asking a few worthwhile questions.
>
> And the answer is that the Project is well aware that it needs
> to pay attention to these legal issues.  First off, we already
> won the earlier AT&T lawsuit against FreeBSD, and second off
> we did notice the SCO lawsuit.  We are checking in with lawyers
> more than we used to, and deciding just how far we need to go
> wrt these issues.
>
> Even if we could easily win any cartoony lawsuit, the lawsuit
> itself takes money and time-resources that we would rather not
> lose.  Certainly the AT&T lawsuit in the 1990's caused a major
> slowdown in progress for FreeBSD while it was being fought.
>
> Speaking as a programmer, it is very very annoying that we have
> to spend time on these issues, but the fact remains that we *DO*
> have to pay attention to them.

He is questioning the activities of contributors to the project who are 
not acting in any way contrary to their employers' interests, copyright 
law or the FreeBSD project, insinuating that they are destroying the 
project by doing this for the above reasons. No such thing is 
happening. He does not have the background information to be making 
such comments. Constructive comments about liability are worthwhile, 
but picking stuff out of thin air and getting hysterical over it is not 
helpful. I have yet to hear anything from Anthony Atielski that would 
give creedence to his assertions, because according to him geeks don't 
know what they're doing in regards to intellectual property. Is he an 
attorney, or is he just another geek who doesn't know what he's talking 
about, by his own standards?

Anyway, useful and constructive discussion in this area is helpful. 
Saying, "The sky is falling ... on FreeBSD RIGHT NOW!" without 
substantiation is only going to invite flames.

- jt



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