Circular reference. Brilliant.

...calling this fair use. Google your legal jargon before making an a** of yourself, chucklehead. ...the seemingly mathematically certain linux fanboy responses. These come in the form of an invariable insistence upon uprooting your entire work/play environment to switch to a different distro which will be chock full of its own warts (this is the voice of experience speaking). This being, by fanboy logic, the only reasonable solution to any problem. I wonder if anyone has submitted a proof on this yet? I've been working intimately with FOSS for almost fifteen years and this sort of 'solution' has always come across as boneheaded. Unfortunately, it always comes across, too. ...deriding a company for trying to find a way to feed their employees and their employees' families. We all know that Ubuntu has been unprofitable to date. If your only contribution to the larger discussion is to throw grenades and run then you're a very real detriment to the FOSS community. ...deriding a company for the occasional affront without acknowledging their contributions. Ubuntu has contributed significantly to the visibility of linux-based solutions through both marketing and refinement of the UI (it's not to my liking but they're trying hard, at least, to find some common ground). Silly is you.

Forced to do this? Could you expand upon that please? If they want to retain claim to the term 'scout' as part of their brand then perhaps they are 'forced'. Would the average person conclude that any 'scout' organization is affiliated with or endorsed by BSA (open-ended question)? If I'm overlooking something from Copyright Law 101, please feel free to engage in constructive dialog. Otherwise, we're all left to believe that you lack sufficient grasp of the relevant laws to convey their applicability simply and with clarity.

While the earlier post about the industry maturing and thus bring about stability is spot on, there is another factor that has caused many otherwise unnecessary controls to be put on IT departments. My job is a unique one that frequently lands me in the IT departments of all manner of businesses. I'm usually at these places off-hours helping to prepare the owner(s) for the pending dismissal of one or more key employees (often some of the IT folks themselves). What I've noticed, time and time and time again is that, unlike other corporate disciplines, IT leadership is still treated quite liberally and with undeserved reverence (remnants of dotcom v1.0). IT leaders in most small to mid business are overgrown children who are proud of the fact that they're 30+ years old and allowed to cover their office/cubicle with Star Wars paraphernalia. I can't tell you how many times I've been called in to clean up some disaster created by the in-house IT 'director' who had no functional backups, no network resiliency, no recovery plan , and no idea what I was talking about when asking him these questions. Of course, all of the office staff are quick to whisperi n your ear about how difficult Joe StarWars is to deal with (I still hear about a half-dozen unique 'Nick Burns' stories a week). If you're reading this at your desk, LOOK AROUND! Have you spent more time, in the past week, wondering how best to arrange your starship collection than wondering how well you've prepared your company for an IT-related disaster? If so, grow up! Or don't - I make my money at your peril an the stories your former coworkers will tell me of your arrogance and incompetence are so much more humorours upon the realization that you're back out in the workforce expecting to get paid the king's ransom you'd convinced your former boss you were worth. When interacting with these types and inquiring whether the basics have been done, you typically get... A. I'm always too busy fighting fires, they need to hire another employee so I can get to the important stuff B. I'm never been given any budget to do any of that stuff C. Yeah, we've got all the gear laying around, I'll implement it when I get time (see item A). The fact is, even with extremely limited resources, good admins can significantly minimize the reactive component of their job and focus on implmentation of newer technology to further stability and availability (hey challange and an opportunity for creativity). Long story short, the IT field is now drowning in a vast sea of moderate-to-highly intelligent children (despite physical age) who have developed an immature and more annoying version of the god-complex which afflicts many an M.D. The management in many companies has come to terms with this or will soon...as this happens you will see the 'bureaucracy', as you called it, increase in an effort to keep IT departmens in check. Those individuals with genuinely brilliant minds and the motivation to match will, in most cases, have little opportunity without just leaving for a startup.