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Author: Benjamin D. Thomas
The key to understanding this is that there are two clipboards. The first clipboard is anything that is selected, e.g. selecting some text in a web browser. The contents of that clipboard are retrieved using the middle mouse button.
Choosing Cut or Copy from an application menu places whatever item was selected into the secondary clipboard, which can be retrieved using the corresponding Paste item on the destination application.
The two clipboards do not interact.
It’s not exactly intuitive, but it is useful!”
Author: Benjamin D. Thomas
The key to understanding this is that there are two clipboards. The first clipboard is anything that is selected, e.g. selecting some text in a web browser. The contents of that clipboard are retrieved using the middle mouse button.
Choosing Cut or Copy from an application menu places whatever item was selected into the secondary clipboard, which can be retrieved using the corresponding Paste item on the destination application.
The two clipboards do not interact.
It’s not exactly intuitive, but it is useful!”
So what has happened in that time? Well, we’ve come out with a lot of software, and sold a lot of units. We’ve got supporters so ardent they would take a bullet for us, and detractors so vocal that it makes me want to give it up at times. The main source of frustration for me has typically centered on the GPL license and the common misunderstanding of it by the general masses in the Open Source world. Sure, the basic premise is clear, but it becomes a bit murkier the more detail you have to spend on it.”
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Tiemann, of course, may not entirely know what he’s talking about, if the trial transcript is accurate. Asked whether Red Hat had developed Linux from scratch, he apparently answers no, “that was Lina Torbaugh.” There you go — the Mortimer Mouse of Open Source, Linus’ evil twin Lina. This is almost as good as the one we found years ago, where Ray White of Wyse apparently claimed: “The future is always two ennunecs.” But we mustn’t make fun of the hard-pressed transcribers.
More seriously, Tiemann came under heavy fire from the Microsoft camp over Red Hat’s application development, or lack of it, culminating in the question: “Do you think that these examples suggest that one key to being a successful operating system platform vendor is developing applications that run on your own operating system?” He’d just been taken through a long litany of companies (Apple, Sun, IBM, about as long as it gets these days) who were OS vendors who also developed apps, and Microsoft attorney Stephanie Wheeler had taken some pains to establish a paucity of application development round at Red Hat.
Tiemann finally said that Red Hat’s employees involved in porting apps to the Red Hat platform was more than 10 and less than 50, and conceded that it was “most likely” many less than 50. There was also a clear difference between what he was talking about and what the questioner wanted to talk about — the app porting capabilities are virtually entirely “Red Hat-izing” existing Open Source apps, and the company neither develops applications from scratch nor ports third-party proprietary applications.
In the latter case it obviously wouldn’t, of course, but beneath the clear attempt by the defence to tar Red Hat as to all intents and purposes a distributor which puts minimal resource into development, there lurk a couple of serious points. For starters it is largely a distributor which puts minimal resources into development, at least by Microsoft’s standards. Granted, the Open Source model means that development is broadly spread, so you’re maybe comparing apples and pears when scrutinising Red Hat’s “less than 50,” but it’s possibly reasonable to observe that commercial Linux distributions in general could use a tad more polish and individualisation if they’re to play against Microsoft in business.
And if Red Hat did find itself in the position of licensing Office, what resources would it have to do anything about it? If Office were Open Sourced by the courts, then it could go into the standard development mill, but a licensee would find itself with one of those third party proprietary apps Red Hat doesn’t do to deal with.
Next, the matter of R&D spend came. Red Hat, it was pointed out, spent $18.8 million on R&D in fiscal 2001, and $12.1 million in 2000. Apple spent $430 million in 2001, Sun over $2 billion, and Microsoft $4.3 billion. You can see where this is driving, can’t you?
“Q. But as far as you know, Red Hat hasn’t devoted any effort to try and develop from scratch an Office productivity suite to run on Red Hat Linux; correct?
A. That is correct.
Q. And Red Hat has never spent any money trying to develop its own Office productivity applications suite to run on Red Hat Linux as far as you know?
A. That is correct. The money that we spend on that task is related to ISV relationships, development tools that we provide to ISVs and other efforts we make so third parties may do that job for their benefit and ours.
Q. Red Hat has never ported any office productivity applications from one platform to the Red Hat Linux platform; correct?
A. I believe it’s likely possible that some of our people have provided assistance to the Open Office project, which is an office productivity suite which can run on Red Hat Linux.
Q. Red Hat has never tried to reverse engineer Microsoft Office file formats, has it?
A. Some employees who work on things, such as ABI Word, have likely possibly looked at and attempted to reverse engineer aspects of the Microsoft Word format, for example.
Q. Likely possibly, Mr. Tiemann?
A. Uh-huh.
Q. You don’t know that for a fact, do you?
A. I don’t know.
Q. Red Hat includes in this box of Red Hat Linux 7.2 the StarOffice 5.2 Office Productivity Suite; correct?
A. That is correct.
Q. And StarOffice 5.2 is a Sun Microsystems’ product, isn’t it?
A. That is correct.”
Moving swiftly on to establishing that Tiemann didn’t know for sure whether Red Hat would bid for Office, or how much it would be prepared to pay, the defence had a pretty good run on this one.
All Content copyright 2002 The Register
In Segment One – Hot News: We will be covering the hot Linux news of the last few weeks. In particular we will talk about Michael Tiemann testifying against MICROSOFT.
In Segment Two- Introducing The Open Technology Consortium (GeekPAC) or A more aggressive step at securing our future.
Tonight we ask the listeners indulge us a bit as we introduce our New Political Action Committee The Open Technology Consortium. We will have a URL available for users to review our initial Position Statement by ShowTime. The need for such a PAC should be obvious.
It has become apparent. Regardless of the efforts the founding members of the PAC have attempted to use to influence the outcome of political events that impact the mixed communities of; the Open Source development community, the Internet and ISP communities, the Linux community and the “non-Microsoft centric” portion of the general IT community; that those efforts have failed.
It is now time to take a more aggressive, attack direct to the seat of power in Washington DC. The creation of this PAC is to effect a sense of UNITY between several technology communities, and allow a common reference to carry a diverse message.
In Segment Three- Book Corner Learning Red Hat Linux 7.2
Time permitting Jeff will review the new O’Rielly book by Bill McCarty Learning Red Hat Linux (ver 7.2). This is a fabulous introduction to linux and is framed for easy understanding by they typical Windows user (who has a basic clue).
Please join us on the show, and check our IRC Chat(irc.thelinuxshow.com
#linuxshow).
Remember tune in at 6pm pt, 7pm mt, 8pm ct, and 9pm et.
Catch the Linux show at www.thelinuxshow.com.
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