1x74: Google Minus

I do enjoy the reviews. The only thing I can say for @jeremy experience is that it added spice to the review. It kept my attention in listening, but, what a nightmare! In reading Jeremy’s post, I think I would have blown a vessel, especially when they were reluctant to act because of something he wrote, in his post, regarding his experience! You would think they would have wanted to be more obliging just so that he would write something positive with his experience. The only adjective that comes to mind with their attitude would not be polite to write here. Just one question, Jeremy. Did you monitor your blood pressure during your ordeal? :slight_smile:

I also lean towards Amazon, as does @jonobacon, just because of the ease in which troubles, when the do arrive, are cared for. I, too, have had bad experiences trying to deal with a retailer just to save a few bucks.

I’m just wondering, in relation to Motorola, if the bad customer service is more of a recent thing with their being sold? Anyone have experience dealing with them before their being sold off to Google, then to Lenovo?

[quote=“oldgeek, post:21, topic:10891”]
Just one question, Jeremy. Did you monitor your blood pressure during your ordeal? :slight_smile: [/quote]

Actually, I use a Withings Wireless Blood Pressure Monitor. I should probably review it on a future show :wink:

I often do as well, but in this case that didn’t help as the 30 day return window had passed.

–jeremy

I look forward to it!

If you think about it everything in G+ already exists at Google. It all has an existing parallel. It might not look as pretty and it might feel old but it’s all there. Instead of working on G+ they could put their energy into Groups and Blogger and stuff and transfer the content and then it’s good bye G+!!!

Bring back Usenet!

Groups doesn’t really do the social thing. It’s not easy to follow people you’re interested in regardless of what they’re doing, in groups; that’s more about following everything that happens in a group regardless of who does it.

I’m late to the discussion because I only just got around to listening to the show this morning. I think in discussing the Linus/Kuhn debate it wasn’t made entirely clear that the SFC did undertake extensive “backchannel” negotiations with VMware for years before they filed the lawsuit. Negotiations began in 2012 and the lawsuit wasn’t filed until 2014 when VMware informed Christoph Hellwig and the SFC, through VMware’s legal counsel, that they would not be complying.

I also think it’s worth noting that, in Germany where the case was filed, they do not have the same legal philosophies as the United States concerning precedence. Basically just because someone wins or loses a lawsuit it does not mean that’s how all similar cases subsequent to the first will be ruled.

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Regarding the GPL Compliance:

Let me tell you a short story of good friend of mine who works for a small company which is providing some services and the corresponding hardware to use with these services. They have a handful of different device types in their portfolio with 3-4 OEMs providing the hardware.

They are selling these hardware for more than 5 years and have tried to their OEM to provide the GPL Sources since the first day, but all OEMs resists to provide any GPL sources.

Not so long ago this company got a cease and desist letter from an geman attorney on behalf of P. McHardy under german law.

This lead to some discussions with the OEMs but in the end all OEMs provided the GPL sources and also the build instructions for there devices.

Without the legal force this would not happened, and while the motives of P. McHardy are really shady and not in the moral sense of the GPL, I appreciate the enforcement because only this will rise the risk assessment done by companies, and will lead to the release of the GPL sources.

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Sure thing! I certainly think that most companies, when given legal threats to continue with something that they actually are obliged to do, will give in and do it by releasing sources. The question is whether this has a chilling effect: that is, whether that company will be inclined to not use Linux in the future because of the GPL obligations, or whether if they do use it if they’ll remember their obligations and release sources without being asked next time. I don’t know whether either of those are the case or not.

Oh there’s already a chilling effect…it’s just not aimed at corporations.

From the thread being discussed (which, again, was started simply to ask if there was want for a session regarding GPL enforcement at kernel summit):

> Yes, and I know a number of people who “got in trouble” after the fact that they attended it. So we need be aware that if the kernel summit starts discussing legal issues, we open ourselves up to a much wider range of “issues” than we have ever had before.

> To clarify for everyone: the specific danger here is that if we have a discussion on legal issues, any statement you make as part of the discussion is discoverable as evidence in a court proceeding, meaning that if one side or the other thinks whatever you said can help them, they can call you to repeat it in court.

> A concern others face is the chance of being put on a sort of a persona non grata list for employers. Does such a list exist ? I don’t know, but such concerns exist. If you have kids to maintain the pressure is even harder.

It should be noted I don’t work in the tech industry so I am unfamiliar with the level of…ah…um…serfdom(?) expected but these concerns are just bizarre to me as someone employed outside of the industry.

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There is, but that’s the chilling effect of having lawyery discussions at all. It’s not GPL-specific, or free software specific, or even tech-specific. If you’re in, say, finance, and someone says “why don’t we have a discussion at FinanceConf about our requirements under the FSA regulations” a whole bunch of people will say “I will not attend such a session and I will not speak about the subject, in case I accidentally end up making a wrongful binding commitment on my employer and then get subpoenaed about it”. Same thing here. If you start from “I do not want to end up in court for any reason because it is massive hassle and possibly disastrous”, then “if a discussion starts up about legal stuff, walk away” is a good policy.

Given Karen Sandlers initial email, I don’t think the discussion would veer anywhere near a scenario like that happening:

I know that it’s somewhat late in this process, but I was encouraged by a few kernel developers here at LinuxCon to propose a discussion about enforcement at the summit. There has been a lot of news recently (Patrick McHardy’s enforcement, the Principles of Community Oriented Enforcement, VMware dismissal/appeal) resulting in quite a bit of speculation and discussion. I think a Q&A on where things stand on all of these matters would make sense and in that context also have a discussion about the GPL and enforcement generally if there’s time. It seems to me by the number of questions I’ve been getting that many more kernel devs are interested in these topics than ever before, and many who have previously preferred not to think about licensing are starting to change their minds. […]

With proper moderation, steering clear of "danger’ could be even be assured if people still had concerns. Yet, that option was never broached on the mailing list; Sadly, the conversation didn’t even get that far (thnx for continuing it here, btw :)).

What I wish to avoid is the next McHardy.

We need guidelines, best practices, etc. established. If the community can’t even give users that, aren’t even willing to admit that the GPL is a legal instrument for the use of every person, …

…then this is how irresponsible vigilantism is born.

From my understanding the McHardy thing is mostly a result from the german law. The german law allows an attorney to send a cease and desists without involving a court. If you sign the pre-formulated cease and desists declaration you have a contractual penalty for every future violation which increases every time. Also you have to pay the attorney charges.

The goal is to get the GPL violator to sign the cease and desists declaration, collect the charges and wait. After a while com back look for more GPL violations, send another cease and destists including the penalty, collect the penalty and charges, rinse and repeat… and all without involving a court (if you sign the declaration)

In the end this is a business model for attorneys and companies/people who has some intellectual property to find violators and have them pay for the violations…

A nice primer in english to the german law regarding cease and destists can be found at http://www.gewerblicherrechtsschutz.pro/fileadmin/user_upload/EBOOK_DOWNLOADS/Cease-and-desist.pdf

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Oh, yes, I’m not in the camp that thinks McHardy took actions in themselves that were destructive (when I said irresponsible vigilantism I was speaking to my own and others like myself’s character vulnerabilities ;)) I do, however, think he neglected to consider the visual his actions presented to the rest of the community/industry who mostly use North American law as their reference point (most N.American knee jerk reactions are just “C&D == DickMove”). It was not good ‘PR’. Simply "going through the motions’ for the sake of appearances would have avoided many mis-speculations. The SFCs principles of enforcement are a good start, but obviously more is needed for effective guidance in such matters (again, I do wish for a model of sorts). Just how it would be irresponsible to start a community policing initiative with zero input from that given community, saying that everything should be left to organizations like the SFC and/or corporate lawyers is just as doomed. Karen Sandler was right to enquire about holding a session, she was trying to help.

p.s. Thanks for the source, I like resources :slight_smile:

For the companies I mentioned above, I do not think that this will not lead to a avoidance of linux since all are far too below in the delivery chain to have any stakes in the used OS.

They are mostly users of the linux kernel and use the toolchain, kernel and patches from the original design manufacturer, I don’t think that they will become a active member of the kernel community.

My point is: Reminding vendors that they have Obligations if the are using GPL source is important. As long as it poses no risk to a vendor to violate the GPL, the vendor will go this route because this will cost him no money or effort or reputation …

Sure. The obvious opposite of that is: as long as it requires some effort from a vendor to comply with the GPL, some vendors will avoid Linux because of it. I think this whole discussion comes down to roughly one question:

Would you rather there were fewer Linux-using devices but they were all GPL compliant so we can properly hack on them…

Or would you rather there were more Linux-using devices which we can probably hack on but may not be able to because the source is not available?

I am not sure where I stand on that question. Obviously at least some people in this thread would rather that a vendor release an unhackable VxWorks device than a GPL-non-compliant Linux device, and that is probably good sound long-term thinking; as noted, if the GPL is toothless, what’s the point? And there are some people in this thread who would rather that devices were at least potentially hackable with Linux even if not GPL-compliant, because that means we can maybe do something even if not everything. I don’t believe there’s a clear obvious answer here.

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Here you go:

https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/ksummit-discuss/2016-August/003542.html

That’s the post that started it all (it was actually started by Karen Sandler). The thread quickly devolved into a shitshow of ridiculous hypothetical scenarios and scare tactics similar to what you would expect if a non-relation employee proposed becoming a union shop in a family business mostly employing family members. In short, we’re talking ( I don’t think anyone is really yelling :)) about cathedrals and bazaars.