Read this background summary of the Timbaland plagiarism controversy.

Basically, Mosley got off on a technicality.

Kernel Records Oy v Timothy Mosley Appellate Brief

AJE does not qualify as a United States work under § 101(1)(B) because at the time of first publication in 2002, Australia's term of copyright protection (the life of the author plus 50 years) was not the same or longer than the term of protection provided in the United States (the life of the author plus 70 years).

People often conflate proprietary software with commercial software, believing software can only be sold if it's proprietary, because a proprietary license is the only thing that prevents people from using software without paying.

In fact that is not the case at all. On the one hand, proprietary software is used all the time in violation of its license, as the industry's own figures demonstrate.

So clearly proprietary licensing is no guarantee of payment, therefore the license itself is irrelevant to selling software for profit.

On the other hand, Free Software is sold all the time, such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Indeed the GPL permits this, and the author of the GPL, Richard Stallman, actively encourages it.

Having just discovered this "openrespect" thing, I have to say I find the whole idea rather sinister. It seems to me that Jono Bacon is endorsing a sort of moderation, or more bluntly, censorship of criticism, in order to silence those who oppose pragmatic concessions that undermine our ideals.

Here's the problem: he can't magically make me, or anyone, have respect for him or his ideals. In particular, I have no respect for pragmatism, or the "Open Source" ideology, especially as it edges ever-closer to "Open Core", and panders to the principles of proprietary licensing. I have no respect for it, I have no respect for those who support it, and I have no desire to ever change that view.

My Freedom is more important than diplomacy.

"the reason I don't use Linux today is simply because it doesn't serve my needs" ~ Jono Bacon, Ubuntu Community Manager, and Linux Format columnist.

According to a poster with insider information, on the Pro Tools Forums:

It's my understanding that the most recent versions of OSX have departed from the Unix kernel heritage.

I have heard from a reliable source, inside Digidesign, that they actually have Protools running on Linux, and that the port from OSX isn't that hard, but are under contract obligation to Microsoft to not release a Linux port. Otherwise Microsoft can revoke their access to the Windows SDK.

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Justice C. Bigler
House Sound Technician
Tulsa Performing Arts Center