I was inspired to start this blog in large part by the treatment I received over at Groklaw. The site rose to prominence for its coverage of the seemingly interminable war SCO waged against Linux, in the form of its lawsuits against IBM, Novell, Red Hat, and others. The site, and its owner Pamela Jones, better known as PJ, tackled the monumental task of making the whole long, drawn-out saga understandable to people who knew a lot about computing and little about the law. In the process, it earned a massive amount of geek cred.
Even after reading the first grossly slanted story posted there about TurboHercules SAS, I thought that it was just a matter of PJ being misinformed about the facts. I posted a fairly long comment rebutting much of the story, and presenting the truth as I know it. PJ picked one tangential point I’d made and posted it as update 3 to the main article – and totally ignored everything else I’d written.
I should have taken that for what it proved to be: notice that PJ wasn’t interested in hearing facts that didn’t uphold her view that IBM could do no wrong, and that anyone who dared to so much as disagree with them was automatically a shill of Microsoft. I didn’t. I poured a lot of time into commenting there over the next several days, only to have my facts ignored and my motives questioned. I thought I was engaging in a dialog with people who sought the truth. What I was actually doing was trying to convince a bunch of folks who all drank the same Kool-Aid.
No more. Instead of continuing to try to teach the pig to sing, I’m going to stop annoying the pig.
I’m certain the denizens of Groklaw will take this posting to mean that they’ve beaten me into submission, and that I’m running away crying. It’s nothing of the sort. It’s simply a refusal to try any longer to convince people whose minds are made up with facts that prove inconvenient to their theories. I’ve got better things to do with my time.
PJ will, no doubt, take this as an attack on her integrity, and probably revoke my account on Groklaw. That’s her choice to make, as it’s her site, and if she no longer wishes me to have an account there, then it’s entirely proper for her to revoke it. For what it may be worth, I do not subscribe to the rabid conspiracy theories claiming PJ’s bought and paid for by IBM, much less that she doesn’t exist except as a front for a committee of IBM lawyers. I think she honestly believes IBM can do no wrong, and simply ignores anything that might shake that belief.
Whatever the cause, I do not believe Groklaw can be looked at as an impartial reporter of the facts. It is a partisan forum for those who feel IBM can do no wrong to tout their beliefs, secure in the knowledge that the site’s credibility will give their words added weight – whether or not that credibility is justified any longer.
IBM vs. Hercules: defending open source 
18 Comments
Jay,
(Just so you know, I’ve followed Groklaw from a point in time about 6 weeks after it started. I don’t agree with everything written there, but I am a strong supporter of the principles of Open Source, and the basic Freedoms it provides.)
Kudos to you for having the strength of character to participate in the Groklaw debate, and to do so under your own ID. There are many who, in your position, would not have done what you did.
I would like to ask you to re-consider one aspect of your current position on the present Turbo-Hercules/IBM devate. In fact, I would like to suggest that you consider writing an article that sets out your views, your position, and the facts as you see them. I would suggest that you email a copy to PJ, with a license (Creative Commons?) attached. Pick the right edition of the CC license and it means that your article can be reproduced and re-used by the recipient, for free, provided that it is done so without edits of any kind. This means that PJ is free to publish your article if she chooses, but it’s a yes/no decision – it means that it cannot be published “with editing”.
If PJ agrees to your suggestion, then you have an opportunity to put out a coherent and well thought-out and well reasoned statement. You know in advance that you’re going to get some stick from a few zealots, because despite PJ’s admonishments regarding strong language and fanaticism, a few do break through. But if nothing else it would get your side of the coin, in unedited form, on the Groklaw record – in a place where, as you say, a lot of commentators go for basic details on the “case de jour”.
While you mull over my suggestion, chances are you have a couple of other thoughts in your head relating to my identity and/or involvement in this. So, for the record:
1. I’m not PJ, and have no affiliations with the site other than i) I’ve been visiting and contributing since early/mod 2004 and a signed-up member since Q3, 2004; and ii) I’ve also contributed financially to the running of the site during that time. Not very much, I’m ashamed to say. I try and donate a little to all the FOSS projects I believe in.
2. I do not and have never worked for IBM, SCO, Novell, Microsoft, or agents thereof, although I have been employed by companies that have used technologies provided by all 4 institutions.
3. I have a fanatical belief in freedom. Freedom of expression. Freedom to code. Personally, I believe that well written code is more like an art form than a science. You can’t patent a portrait and thus patenting of software should not be allowed. But that’s just my opinion. You can tell I’m not a lawyer. In fact, I’m feel so strongly about this, that I’ll defend your right (anyone’s, for that matter) to have an opinion that’s different from mine, even if I don’t agree with it.
Think it over Jay, and give it a go. PJ has a head of steam on this one, and no mistake. But if you make a genuine offer and do a scholarly piece of work on an article, she’ll be more inclined to publish it. And if she refuses, you can publish it here anyway…
Thank you for your suggestion. However, given her history of ignoring facts I lay out, I strongly doubt she’d hand over effective control of her site for even one post to someone she obviously disagrees with and discounts as untruthful.
That’s why I started this blog: because I know that my words will at least get a full and fair hearing. All of them.
(Just so you know, I’ve followed Groklaw from a point in time about 6 weeks after it started. I don’t agree with everything written there, but I am a strong supporter of the principles of Open Source, and the basic Freedoms it provides.)
Well, you must realize that groklaw itself isn’t very open. It’s tightly controlled by PJ.
Kudos to you for having the strength of character to participate in the Groklaw debate, and to do so under your own ID. There are many who, in your position, would not have done what you did.
While I have no reason to doubt Jay’s strength of character, I don’t think he understood what he was getting into. In short, he was ambushed.
I would like to ask you to re-consider one aspect of your current position on the present Turbo-Hercules/IBM debate. [ … ] If PJ agrees to your suggestion, then you have an opportunity to put out a coherent and well thought-out and well reasoned statement. [ … ]
I don’t see what’s to reconsider. To anybody who was paying close attention, Jay *did* put out a coherent and well-thought-out and well-reasoned statement. Sure it was across a few posts, but you don’t have to be superhuman to follow it.
1. I’m not PJ [ … ]
That’s pretty obvious. PJ would never suggest this. It might allow the discussion to spin out of her control.
3. I have a fanatical belief in freedom. Freedom of expression. Freedom to code. Personally, I believe that well written code is more like an art form than a science. You can’t patent a portrait and thus patenting of software should not be allowed. But that’s just my opinion. You can tell I’m not a lawyer. In fact, I’m feel so strongly about this, that I’ll defend your right (anyone’s, for that matter) to have an opinion that’s different from mine, even if I don’t agree with it.
What about the freedom to alter and distort the historical record, and to show different visitors different versions of the site?
Think it over Jay, and give it a go. PJ has a head of steam on this one, and no mistake. But if you make a genuine offer and do a scholarly piece of work on an article, she’ll be more inclined to publish it. And if she refuses, you can publish it here anyway…
That’s very… naive. But sweet.
I’ve got two conceptual issues with the whole IBM vs Hercules thing :-
1) Saying that IBM has violated the patent pledge is, to my mind, really only valid if you only have patents in the 500 patents that IBM pledged. If a company says “We’re going to play ball a bit but only with these listed patents” then certainly legally they’re well within their rights to sue someone for any of their other patents. Morally they may suck just because patents suck but it’s not like it’s the big betrayal it’s being portrayed as. They were pretty clear what was freely available for open source.
2) Has IBM actually targetted anyone? The only things i’ve read were a comment from someone who is not a lawyer saying that (paraphrased) “an emulator would have to implement a proprietary instruction set which would thus infringe several patterns, of which a list follows”. As PJ points out this is not a patent threat. It’s certainly pointing out the potential of a threat. But it’s just as likely to be saying “no we’re not going to let you sell licenses of z/OS because that would harm our ability to defend our z/OS patents from other people”.
I definately agree that the tin foil hattery about TH being a shill for microsoft is just a tad too wild eyed (having said that, it’s not like it’s the first time so it doesn’t surprise me that the first port of call is “MS is doing it yet again”). Still I can understand the core of PJ’s point. On the face of it, no-one’s been served with a cease and desist (yet) and even if they were, you’re pushing the proverbial uphill claiming that the patent pledge covers hercules if their list of patent violations is accurate.
Personally i’m hoping that Anzani is wrong about what Hercules violates but until there’s a C&D it’s all a little academic really isn’t it?
It’s only academic if you’re not the one staring down the barrel of IBM’s patent cannon.
To me, it’s really pretty simple. The open source community is pretty much unanimous in seeing patents as a threat to the whole idea of open source software. IBM has waved that weapon at an open source product. Why, then, are they being defended instead of hammered?
> Saying that IBM has violated the patent pledge is, to my mind, really only valid if you only have patents in the 500 patents that IBM pledged.
Two of the pledged patents are listed in IBM’s 2nd letter (the 4th letter of the exchange). TurboHercules reminded IBM of this patent pledge in the letter immediately before that, also reminding them of the fact that they use the Hercules emulator which is under a license covered by the pledge.
I believe PJ claimed that was evidence that IBM was “baited” into violating it, to which I would reply with, “Surely, in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird;” (Proverbs 1:17).
The sword is hanging by a thread over everyone’s head, but Hercules was the only one, so far, that been received notice that it is dangling there..
As Moshe Bar put it back in 2002 in a Slashdot interview;
“If IBM truly embraces Linux as just one of the members of the OpenSource family (rather than just Linux alone because it saves them billions in proprietary OS development) than it will not go against Hercules. If it does, then we all know that IBM is not serious about OpenSource and only taking advantage of it without really behaving like a good OpenSource citizen.”
As another long-time Groklaw member, I would like for more people to be aware of how things work over there. You see, PJ has a VERY sneaky way of deleting comments. They’re tied to your IP (and possibly also your cookie & login). So when she deletes your comment, you are still able to see it provided the site can figure out who you are. But anyone else doesn’t see a comment. If you visit the exact URL of the comment from another IP, you get a blank page.
If PJ were using this only on people who post insults and don’t attempt to contribute to the discussion, I wouldn’t mention it. I’ve actually known about this technique for a year or two, and since then, I’ve seen her being to use it in a more and more questionable manner. How do I know, you ask, if I’m not one of the trolls? That’s a fair question and one that warrants explanation. You see, the thing is that she can disappear a whole *thread* and all comments in that thread are either there for you or gone for you. So that “don’t reply to trolls” rule? It’s there, at least in part, to keep average people from realizing that the comments are gone. Because if you reply to a troll, you get the chance to see the comment vanish. I did that once (I didn’t think it was much of a troll… my mistake) and yes, stumbled upon this fact.
Anyhow, right now, she pretends to give people a fair hearing, but isolates them by disappearing the comments. This is also why there are some huge threads she might like to delete, but which have too many posts in them. She can’t simply vanish those without everyone knowing how her system works. And that would make it ineffective, right? Oh, and one other thing. Unlike most sites, which put something like {SCRUBBED} into a comment they edit, PJ does this silently.
So what I’m saying here is that you can’t trust the forums over there. You think she’s giving you a fair hearing, only to find out that your arguments are disappeared because PJ thinks you took the wrong tone with her, even if the harshest word you used in the entire exchange was “mean” … I’ve personally seen both current and former members of Groklaw get threatened with banishment or loss of account if they post again without understanding the facts (i.e. agreeing with PJ).
I know this is her legal right. She can ban folks for any reason over there. But I’m also free to call these tactics dirty, rotten, sneaky and manipulative. I have taken many screenshots with detailed proof and am considering how best to publicize them. But I have no intention of contributing further to her site. I once helped give it publicity. I defended PJ from those who questioned her loyalty to IBM.
No more. I stand for what I believe is right. I hate SCO for its underhanded tactics. I hate to see Groklaw engaging in what I see as manipulative practices in the comments section. You CANNOT get a fair hearing over there as long as PJ has no oversight in what is deleted, edited and disappeared. If the criticism of PJ is that much louder, it’s because she’s driving people away. Right now, I intend to do everything in my power to expose the underhanded manipulation of comments over there. I believe that people are being made to feel isolated, so that they’ll jump on the bandwagon and agree with “everyone else” because their arguments are being “ignored” (even though their posts have been disappeared).
For the record, I swear under penalty of perjury that I have not received any financial consideration for posting this from any person or legal entity. In fact, the only money I have gotten from Microsoft was as a class member of two of the anti-trust settlements, wherein I believe I got less than $50 total.
This comment is copyrighted and may NOT be used by Pamela Jones of Groklaw in any way, or in articles on the Groklaw website. Using any part of it contrary to that would be disrespecting my rights as an author.
I can confirm the disappeared posts etc. since it just happened to me. I dared challenge PJ’s point of view in a comment she made in a newspick thread. Eventually that led to the post I’ve copied below which she has hidden to all but me. Sadly some poor member commented on how he thought PJ was out of line on the second PJ reply quoted below and that has been disappeared as well (membership revoked?). The post below was in response to this comment: http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&sid=20100511220019810&title=Novell+Responds+to+SCO%27s+Motion+for+Judgment%2FNew+Trial&type=article&order=ASC&hideanonymous=0&pid=850487#c850560 I can see my response, but you can’t. Interestingly, the parent post is mine and is still visible.
So ultimately I’d have to say without question that groklaw is biased if for no other reason than the removal of civil disagreement in the comments section thus always giving themselves the final word. The other observation that I can make is that it is OK on groklaw to be dismissive and rude so long as you are doing it to an outsider (a troll by definition to the grokloids I guess) and not PJ or one of the chosen.
——————-
Novell Responds to SCO’s Motion for Judgment/New Trial
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, May 14 2010 @ 04:15 PM EDT
Sorry for the confusion, this was supposed to be a reply to PJ back in the
newspicks section:
>Biz Linux needs Office license to run MS web apps: Unnews
>Authored by: PJ on Thursday, May 13 2010 @ 03:07 PM EDT
>No one wants to use Office on Linux. We don’t
>need it. The issue is that we don’t want to
>pay for it, since we don’t want to use it.
To summarize the context as I see it (or don’t and go review the thread in news
picks), my observation is that PJ is complaining about somebody paying for a
full version of Office which she says “can’t” be used on Linux if one
only wants to use only the web version from Linux.
Firstly the assertion that the full version can’t be used on Linux is false due
to the existence of Wine and/or crossover office (although MS could prohibit it
via license terms). Secondly MS is well within their legal rights to license
Office in this way. That is what the law *is* and even if you could argue
anti-trust trumps that, MS could point out the fallacy of the “can’t run on
Linux” argument (which really was the motivation for me to reply earlier in
the thread in the first place).
See the problem? I understood what was told to me quite well. Groklaw is about
what the law *is*. But there appears to be a double standard at work (and I’m
not the first to point it out).
PJ’s response above speaks volumes:
>I think you’ll be happier if you don’t come here,
>then. But if you do, try to develop a more
>subtle and layered way of thinking. Law
>is much more finely shadowed than you so far
>seem to comprehend. It makes it hard for you to
>follow along.
Talk about a debate chilling response. If you don’t buy into Groklaw groupthink
100% then you are deficient, deserve a condescending response, and should get
lost.
My observation over the last half-decade is that Groklaw is evolving into a
mono-culture of opinion. One where anybody without an ID is treated as an
outsider, which I suppose they are by definition, and consequently are quickly
brushed aside or labeled as a troll. I fully understand why it happened
(harassment, etc.), but that does not mean that I think it is healthy.
It’s PJ’s party and she can do as she wishes, but here is where I want to raise
caution: how does one assure that Groklaw is impartial about the facts and law
at the same time structuring and enforcing it as a mono-culture. Facts and laws
are viewed and interpreted through one’s own paradigm. There is a reason why
Juries chosen from a pool decide facts and Judges interpretations of law are
overturned on appeal.
And oddly, despite the fact that I think that TurboHercules was way off base in
the IBM patent thing, I find this post by Jay Menard and many of the comments
uncannily accurate: http://ibmvshercules.com/2010/04/13/whither-groklaw/
I think it comes down to one simple fact – a site like Groklaw needs a story like this, more than this story needs Groklaw. I think the open source community can recognize what qualifies as open source software, and what type of threat has been raised against it, either by mistake or with full intention – but either way that has implications to the community and companies around the world that have embraced Open Source Software. This is more than just a flashy headline.
Hercules has been in development for well over 10 years. I dumped an RPM hercules-2.15-1.i686.rpm from 2001 just to check the license – gee it was Q Public License version 1.0. as stated in file herlic.html. That RPM is older than Groklaw and SCO case by 2 years. Talk is cheap coding is hard.
I think you should highlight the history of the project here – a timeline of features and releases – just to let everyone the truth behind hercules what it is – how it works, the development cycle, the level of community development. Jay the work that has been done on this project has been nothing less than extraordinary – it actually exemplifies what open source is, and what it can do.
Yeah, pinzero. Even ESR has said that PJ “jumped the shark” on this one. I agree.
But I also think that, after the dastardly things Darl did attacking her, she feels persecuted. Now, I’m trying to be fair, because Darl did a few underhanded things (like offering $30,000 to anyone who could expose her; the offer appears to be dead now, so I can tell you to look up skylinecowboy on Twitter), so it’s not like she has no reason for feeling that way. But now she can’t trust most people. I mean, I seem to have a lot in common with that hardmath guy (we both know advanced math, have argued with PJ, etc.). Would he get banned just because I mention him? I honestly wonder, because I saw a comment where she told someone not to post again until they agree with her version of the “facts” … Will she close new user registrations over there again? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. If you just want to read the members only stories, you can make an account that you never comment with. She’s not especially clever when it comes to technology, but some of the others are… assuming they haven’t left already. Somehow, it doesn’t surprise me that there are so many people who comment with signed anon posts. At least one of them was because he lost his account.
Anyhow, her perspective has been completely warped and that you can’t have a fair discussion on Groklaw in the comments section. Instead of merely trying to defuse the situation, she goes looking for a conspiracy and trying to prove that TurboHercules SAS is some kind of shell company. I think that’s sad. I once did everything I could to support Groklaw. Now, I’m just disgusted with her and her use of moral credentialing to excuse her underhanded debate tactics. There’s no such thing as giving someone a fair hearing in a place where you can silently edit or simply vanish the other side’s posts and there isn’t even another moderator that people can appeal the decision to. That’s dirty, rotten and manipulative in my opinion. I should have known that nobody can be trusted with that kind of power, but I ignored it because I believed that she might be one of the few people who could use a power like that ethically and sparingly. I was wrong.
I notice that PJ has yet to come over here to comment. Perhaps it’s because she fears that Jay could to to her what she did to him? I wonder…
I do not think she will come over here. And I think the point of this blog was to get out the facts without being called a Troll – or having comments word-smithed and picked apart in the slightest of ways to justify the conclusions that were drawn by the two articles presented by PJ on this subject.
Why I Believe IBM is Free to Sue The Pants Off TurboHercules – Groklaw Thursday, April 08 2010
Has anyone actually lost their pants in a law suite? Has a precedence ever been set for this? Is this sensational? Is she a journalist or a paralegal when she writes likes this or is she just Trolling for a reaction? – does she even know at this point what Hercules is or Turbo-Hercules SAS is? Does she know what the implications are if this actually does happen to the Open Source Community? To IBM?
I think Jay’s site is meant to be used to present the facts as he knows them and to warn others that there does in fact appear to be an agenda at Groklaw.
I do not think PJ is backed by or is helping IBM intentionally, but is predicting the outcome of a case before collecting all of the facts, and presenting information that backs her legal predictions – instead of presenting just the facts.
Once that prediction comes under fire on Groklaw – all hell breaks loose. The problem is if someone is not intimately informed of the facts of a given situation – the FUD created by Groklaw carries some damaging weight and trying to correct it on Groklaw has proved impossible.
I do not think the way this story has been presented on Groklaw and what has followed in the discussions of them their – has improved Groklaw’s credibility among those that really matter – and that is the open source community.
Correction – discussions of them their – should have read discussions of them there
pinzero:
Oh, PJ won’t *comment* here, but she does read it (and if she doesn’t, someone else will go report it back to her). As for losing one’s pants, it’s a figure of speech, but I do think that there was some jerk who sued over a pair of lost pants. And he lost that case (and later his job as a judge). So, whether literally or metaphorically, I think you could count him as someone who “lost his pants.”
As for PJ, I think she can’t admit to being wrong easily. I can be like that, too, but I sure don’t try to sneakily squelch those who disagree with me, nor do I try to delegitimatize their criticism by insinuating that they’re funded by whoever (and I will swear as many times as they want that I’m not paid anything to post anything on the internet by anyone).
Anyhow, my theory is that her perspective got warped when she was hunted by Darl. Remember that health break where she was gone for a week or two? I don’t remember exact timelines, but I do remember that SCO tried to subpoena her, there was some lawsuit naming her as a party the details of which escape me, O’Gara posted that “exposé” with her alleged address in it, Darl offered $30,000 to anyone who could out PJ, etc. So I can at least understand why PJ would go the conspiracy route (and the Comes files prove that Microsoft has had their part in a few), I just think that she’s lost all perspective on this one.
As has been discussed, her reading of the pledge is absurd and provides a great backdrop to quote her own statements about parol evidence and how contracts are interpreted by looking at SCO when SCO tried to say that excluded assets weren’t excluded, just as she tried to say that OSI-approved licenses were excluded, contrary to the clear wording of the pledge. Her reading of the letters is ridiculous. How can TH have “baited” IBM by reminding it of its own pledge? I’m reasonably sure that PJ is some sort of a Christian, so I have to quote Proverbs 1:17: “Surely, in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird;” which ought to apply to anyone “baiting” IBM into asserting pledged patents against a OSI-approved OSS licensed project by reminding them of their own pledge and professed support for OSS.
But maybe that’s why PJ hasn’t put the four letters from TH on her page? She usually does PDF-to-text of everything relevant. These days, she seems to want comments containing that to vanish…
One problem, though, pinzero, is that PJ has been through this before, during the SCO days. I honestly didn’t notice it at the time, probably because there were relatively few people who supported SCO, so she couldn’t have had to delete that many comments. If people are in a large enough frenzy, they simply won’t notice some of the things she does to shape opinion by silencing contrary voices. The average person would just assume that their comment was being ignored (though vanished comments *can* be replied to by anyone who can still see them, she avoids vanishing threads with too many comments and you can only definitely see the parents of your own posts, not necessarily the replies).
So I think people will have to realize that the comments on Groklaw are being manipulated before they can find more neutral ground to discuss things and get to the truth without interference. No wonder PJ once posted about disliking Slashdot: every time Slashdot has deleted a comment, it led to a news story, and there were only maybe two of those.
It is clear that PJ, Groklaws founder, is a IBM zealot. Groklaw is only an IBM marketing tool, for IBM to get credibility from the open source movement. But Groklaw will never report about Turbohercules vs IBM. PJ would not criticize IBM in that way. PJ is probably paid by IBM to defend IBM in every way.
I don’t buy that argument, not without some form of proof. Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. PJ’s behavior can be explained by simple zealotry, without requiring that she be bought and paid for.
I agree that with your assessment, but would like to add that stupid behavior doesn’t require a stupid individual.
I don’t think PJ is at all stupid, but she does tend to take positions that indicate a them-or-us, black-and-white worldview, and then she encourages sycophantic (is that like syphilitic?) behavior via both subtle and not-so-subtle means.
You’re exactly right. If PJ were an IBM proxy, that should have been found out during discovery. And given Darl’s investigation of her (which culminated with the infamous “exposeé” by O’Gara), the only thing they found was that she allegedly lives near an IBM building. Not very impressive.
That said, I really wish PJ would give others the same credit. After being treated that way, I’m far less sympathetic when I see her doing the same thing to others. And I’m bored enough that I’ve looked back through Groklaw’s history and found that PJ has a habit of implicating random, innocent posters of being part of some conspiracy against her when they disagree with her. It’s as though she’s so completely certain that she’s right, she believes that the rest of us have to be paid by someone to disagree with her.
I am happy to swear under penalty of perjury that I haven’t been paid by anyone for posting about anything.