GPL to the test

While SCO’s doom is still pending, last week Oracle announced that it will the support Red Hat linux distribution half the price Red Hat does. This week Microsoft and Novell made a deal and sent a joint letter to the Open Source Community. The community, however remains suspicious.

Basically the agreement says that MS will recommend SuSE linux and not sue it’s users or developers, or non-professional linux developers. In other words, MS threatens to sue anyone professionally developing Open Source Software if it turns out they are violating Microsofts software patents. Also this brings more heat to the software patents issue: Novell along with MS wants to have them in Europe.

Another thing they agreed was developing “Open” Office XML support to the OpenOffice.org office suite. How “open” the Open XML “standard” is is another question. OpenDocument standard is more favoured in the community.

To me the interesting thing here is the question what will happen, if Microsoft decides to sue someone using GPLd Non-SuSE software – especially, if SuSE distributes the same software to it’s clients… That would finally bring the GPL the courtroom test. By now MS has offered other linux distributors change to make similar deal, that is. pay MS royalties for selling Linux. This might be a GPL violation, depending on undisclosed details. So far at least Red Hat has turned the offer down. See you in court?

It seems that MS has learned something from SCO – what not to do – and is now trying to find another way. If you cannot win your enemy, join him. What will follow from this move – or will anything – remains to be seen.

The Oceans Are Running Out of Fish

Just some brief remarks based on this article (and others):

• The world’s aggregate fishing catch has been in decline since late eighties. (This is despite tech improvements, like satellite tracking)
• It seems that 90% of the world’s large predator fishes are gone. (Too bad for tuna lovers.)
• If this overfishing trend goes on, the ocean ecosystems will collapse in few decades and oceans will be virtually void of fish by 2050

It’s not that I like fish. But we are going to face bad food problems even without this.

Winds of Change

James Randerson wrote in Guardian about a study reporting that the Gulf Stream had come to temprary halt for 10 days in November 2004. No one knows why. Here’s some speculation

I wonder if this has something to do with the exceptionally large number of hurricane landfalls in US that year. There weren’t exceptionally many hurricanes, just landfalls. This means that the athmospheric conditions were such that they directed the hurracanes to make landfalls. See article by Brian H. Bossak. I don’t think the athmospheric conditions could cause major current to halt – however, they might be a symptom of process that lead to that. Or maybe it was just a coincidence. (As a related note, a weak to moderate El Niño is about to begin.)

On the other hand, we could speculate that the current came to halt because the polar cap wasn’t freezing quickly enough. Freezing makes seawater saltier (as salt does not freeze) and therefore more dence and causes it to sink. No freezing, the water does not displace itself downward and the thermohaline pump comes to halt. This would result in less heat being transferred to the pole, which would ease freezing and restart the pump. Just speculation.

The problem here is, that ACIA predicts that the caps will melt totally in decades. I wonder how this possible feedback is accounted for.