We identify things by both their characteristics and their context.

For example, if something looks like a duck we are tempted to say that it's a duck, and without regard to context that's the most likely explanation.

But then consider the context: If the context doesn't match, we change our assessment accordingly. If it's on top of a mountain, we think it's a rock that resembles a duck. In a store window, we think it's a stuffed-doll resembling a duck. If it's in the MIT swimming pool, we think it's a robot resembling a duck.

Absent any context, Sweden's request for extradition is innocent and benign - how could he possibly refuse such a simple legal request?

But the context surrounding the extradition does not match. There's a number of contextual inconsistencies with the situation, all of which indicate that this is not an extradition, it's something different.

It is abundantly clear that we're not seeing an actual duck. You can argue the probability in various ways, but it's not 100%.

You might next consider "so what?" What's so bad about being extradited to the US?

Consider the risk/reward equation. Julian probably carries around in his head contact information for informants and associates which the US does not know about, and activities of various people which the US would consider evidence of espionage. Once on US soil, it would be nigh impossible to keep this information from the US authorities. He would be forced(*) to give up not only his own freedom, but the freedom of people who put their trust in him. (Not to mention the chilling effect this would have on future whistle-blowers.)

It's likely that the value of this information is so high that even a tiny risk of extradition multiplied by the value potentially lost results in a negative payout. Taking the chance is too risky, it's not a good bet.

See previous link, or google for yourself. Plenty of evidence, you are stating an untruth.

(*)Ref: Bradley Manning's treatment

Your memory of IBM differs from my own.

I can't say I've had that much to do with them. HP, on the other hand, I could rant about for a while...

In theory, I think you are right (IANAL). In practice, however, the mere existence of MariaDB means that it would be close to impossible to prove any actual harm. Oracle can always claim that you are free to switch to MariaDB, and you will have a hard time proving that is difficult to do.

Shachar

If they own the copyright, they are free to relicense a piece of data

Sorry to be pedantic, but replace "a piece of data" with "a work of authorship". If there isn't the creative work of a human being involved, it's not copyrightable. And then we get to this:

17 CFR 102(b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.

And that means that even when the hand of man is involved, a lot of things are still not copyrightable.

I just wish Snowden would clarify what the hell he's saying. I've read Q & A with him and I still can't work out exactly what people are looking at, how they're getting it, whether the looking has to be actively initiated or is passive, or anything else. We need more damned details, not more hyperbole. I'm by no means diminishing the value of his bringing PRISM to light, even if it turns out to be a much lesser problem than he seems to believe, but I don't really give a shit whether he believes it's the greatest assault on privacy in history, I want to know exactly what's been happening so I can decide whether I believe that it is or not. For a man whose goal was supposedly the open discussion of this thing, he's doing a pretty piss poor job of initiating one.

Let's look at what Oracle is doing. I'll start the list of moves that appear to be intended to alienate the community around the very software they're promoting and cause the Open Source community to create viable forks that end up absconding with the product and its market. You guys contribute additional examples...

• Oracle v. Google regarding Java and the premise that APIs are copyrightable.
• Apache OpenOffice v. LibreOffice (which has a full-time negative publicity generator in Rob Weir).
• MySQL v. MariaDB.

IBM isn't known for dumb moves, but partnering with Oracle on this sure is one.

Bruce

This is an example of a "natural monopoly", where a limited community resource is owned as property by a corporation. In this case it's the easements and permission needed to run the phone lines, and the RF spectrum for cell-phone service.

If you treat the resource as property, you get the situation we have now: high fees for access and discouraged use. Phone service has high monthly fees (access) as well as data caps, fixed monthly "minutes", and roaming charges (discouraged use). Similarly for internet: high monthly fees (access), data caps, throttling, kicking off high-usage users, and so on (discouraged use).

As an alternative, take the revenues from the carriers and divide by the total minutes of service. I don't know what that figure actually is, but for purposes of discussion let's say it's 5 cents a minute. A similar calculation can be done per gigabyte of internet data.

Suppose the government mandated that carriers could only charge that amount or less, with no other restrictions. Any phone could be used with any carrier, and you choose a carrier at call time by scanning the available carriers like we scan wireless access points. (You wouldn't explicitly scan for each call. Most likely you choose one carrier as default, like we now do with wireless access points.)

Now instead of making money by getting people to sign up and not use the service, carriers make money the more people use the service. They have to encourage more people to use it, and for longer periods. They have an interest in putting unused capacity to work, and promoting innovative new uses. If a channel is overallocated, they have an interest in building out more capacity.

The reasoning can be applied to cable TV, internet, and phone service. If the cable company can only charge 15 cents per hour of viewing/downloading (whatever the fee structure works out as), then they will encourage more usage rather than throttling.

If this change is made, the existing players will make the same profit as now: initially the profits are the same, and no workers need be laid off. Their bottom line doesn't change, only their focus of service.

It's game theory: change the rules so that the outcome is more desirable.