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Keep Linux Open and Free–We Can’t Afford Not To

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Re: Keep Linux Open and Free–We Can’t Afford Not To

#91

Post by aewens »

zeroxfe wrote: post #56

The timing of this is hilarious: https://twitter.com/chatsidhartha/status/1649484240952721408 Oracle just sent a legal threat to "Rust for Javascript" to remove "Javascript" from their name. (Oracle owns the "Javascript" trademark.)

To play the devil's advocate:

IANAL, but if I recall correctly part of having a trademark is having a legal obligation to enforce it, and if I'm reading the tweet correctly this is a name of a company and typically one cannot use a trademark in their company name.

Re: Keep Linux Open and Free–We Can’t Afford Not To

#92

Post by slimsag »

aewens wrote: post #91
zeroxfe wrote: post #56

The timing of this is hilarious: https://twitter.com/chatsidhartha/status/1649484240952721408 Oracle just sent a legal threat to "Rust for Javascript" to remove "Javascript" from their name. (Oracle owns the "Javascript" trademark.)

To play the devil's advocate: IANAL, but if I recall correctly part of having a trademark is having a legal obligation to enforce it, and if I'm reading the tweet correctly this is a name of a company and typically one cannot use a trademark in their company name.

(I am not a lawyer, I am speculating)

Oracle can grant others the use of their trademark legally, right? There's no reason Oracle couldn't say this?

> JavaScript is our trademark, you must either stop using it immediately OR to enter into an agreement with us that grants you the ability to use it, for as long as you please, no strings attached, no payment required.

Re: Keep Linux Open and Free–We Can’t Afford Not To

#93

Post by JohnFen »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #90
JohnFen wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but doing the right thing for the wrong reasons doesn't mean that the company should be praised for it.

This. It's more like a happy accident. If Oracle had a stated principle which was virtuous, and did something to specifically to uphold that principle when anyone else might have done something else, that would be something you thank them for. And this is not that. However there is also another idea that I think is valid, which is "reward the behavior you want to see". Whyever they did it, if it's good, you let them…

> However there is also another idea that I think is valid, which is "reward the behavior you want to see"

Yes, I agree with this as well. It's all complicated.

Oracle only cares about one thing: profits. So any meaningful way of rewarding their behavior would have to come in the form of giving them more money. Every dollar you spend is, after all, a vote telling the entity you gave the dollar to to keep on doing whatever it is they're doing.

This one fairly self-serving press release isn't enough for me to give Oracle any money, though. I don't think they'd take the right lesson from it. Especially because I'm not the sort of big spender that Oracle really cares about.

Re: Keep Linux Open and Free–We Can’t Afford Not To

#94

Post by JohnFen »

throwaway_62022 wrote: post #67
chasil wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oracle does care about open source, to the extent that they have been the top Linux kernel contributor several times. https://blogs.oracle.com/linux/post/oracle-is-the-1-contribu... Oracle actually does not undercut the least expensive Red Hat support offerings. Oracle Linux support is $499/year for basic, and $1,399/year for premier. Both tiers allow 24x7 access to file service requests (SRs). https://www.oracle.com…

> Oracle does care about open source, to the extent that they have been the top Linux kernel contributor several times. Linux kernel is not entirety of Linux. Given that there is Oracle cloud and various hardware Oracle has to support, it will be almost unthinkable if Oracle did not contribute to Linux kernel. But - I will be interested in Oracle's support for broader Linux ecosystem. How about contributions to GCC,…

> Linux kernel is not entirety of Linux.

Technically, yes, it is. "Linux" refers to the kernel, not to all of the other stuff you need on top of the kernel for a fully-formed OS. Although "Linux" is not used in that sense in the world at large anymore.

But this distinction is why you see some people mentioning that you should say "Gnu/Linux" and the like when referring to the OS as whole.

Re: Keep Linux Open and Free–We Can’t Afford Not To

#95

Post by JohnFen »

Rechtsstaat wrote: post #62
n6h6 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's up with the way you write the letter s? Is it a catch-all for apostrophes? I haven't seen anyone do that before, just curious.

On some keyboard layouts, pressing the quote mark starts a modifyer and then depending on the layout the following character is combined with the quote mark. Most English layouts don't include ś in this, but some Eastern European (?) languages use that character more often and so include them in this modifyer shortcut.

I honestly didn't expect the explanation of that to be as interesting as it is! I had no idea...

Re: Keep Linux Open and Free–We Can’t Afford Not To

#97

Post by JohnFen »

slimsag wrote: post #92
aewens wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To play the devil's advocate: IANAL, but if I recall correctly part of having a trademark is having a legal obligation to enforce it, and if I'm reading the tweet correctly this is a name of a company and typically one cannot use a trademark in their company name.

(I am not a lawyer, I am speculating) Oracle can grant others the use of their trademark legally, right? There's no reason Oracle couldn't say this? > JavaScript is our trademark, you must either stop using it immediately OR to enter into an agreement with us that grants you the ability to use it, for as long as you please, no strings attached, no payment required.

> Oracle can grant others the use of their trademark legally, right? There's no reason Oracle couldn't say this?

Correct, with certain limitation[1]. This fact is why saying "but we have to do this or lose our trademark" is a bit disingenuous. You do have to actively defend your trademark or lose it (because a trademark is not intended to benefit the company holding it, it's intended as a consumer protection measure). But "defending your trademark" doesn't mean you have to engage in a lawsuit.

[1] The limitations are around the purpose of trademark as consumer protection measure. The idea is that consumers can rely on the trademark as a guarantee that a product or service is coming from who they think it's coming from. It's possible to be so liberal in licensing the use of your trademark out that it gets diluted enough to risk losing the registration.

Re: Keep Linux Open and Free–We Can’t Afford Not To

#99

Post by mighmi »

n6h6 wrote: post #52
mighmi wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes people a long time to readjust preconceptions. Microsoft was the big bad for most of my life, but it took ~8 years after Ballmerś retirement for people to start noticing Microsoftś prestigious opensourcing, interesting cloud offerings etc. where itś now a commonplace that they've improved. Fascinating really. Oracleś got quite the history, but they have been supporting Linux and Java well and killing Solaris…

What's up with the way you write the letter s? Is it a catch-all for apostrophes? I haven't seen anyone do that before, just curious.

Long story short: I decided to start using a separate laptop for work/tech stuff. Setting it up has been a bit of a pain: https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxmint/comments/14vzvex/on_hp_la...

To answer your question specifically, I'm used to "English (intl, with AltGr dead keys)" but in Linux Mint there are like 20 options. I was trying "US, intl, AltGr Unicode combining" or perhaps "US, intl, with dead keys" or such. (I've tried about a dozen in the last 2 days.) Instead of an apostrophe, they were generating what could become an accent mark, a stress mark or diacritic depending on the next letter. On "with AltGr dead keys" you must use right alt+apostrophe for that effect. (The quotation marks would do the same thing.)

Anyway, the keyboard lets me type things like þðßáœßðfhëü´6´^¨¼²³¤` with 2 buttons like shift to make a capital! This is good for German, Spanish and French, but Hungarian and Romanian require 3 buttons, then a 4th which is more tedious. left alt shift 5 = ş ţ romanian left alt shift 3 = ā lines for latin left alt shift 2 = ű ő - hungarian long umlaut

If you really want to learn about ways to enter writing systems, this is a wild ride: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_input_methods_for_comp...

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