Jones describes Groklaw as ..."a place where lawyers and geeks could explain things to each other and work together, so they'd understand each other's work better. When you have an idea you hope might work, and then to implement it, tweak it, and morph it, because other people show up and have ideas that are better than yours...and then have people you care about and admire tell you that what you are doing matters -- I can't think of a more satisfying feeling."[1]
Groklaw's name derives from Robert A. Heinlein's neologism "grok", roughly meaning "to understand completely", which had previously entered geek slang.
Other topics covered, which are perceived as being important to a larger audience than just the free and open source community include software patents, DMCA, and the legally problematic actions of the RIAA against alleged illegal file sharers.
A key thread usually created by Groklaw members, under each article, provides the opportunity for minor errors to be corrected. Additionally, almost every article attracts an "Off Topic" thread, where a diverse range of topics are discussed.
Pamela Jones and some volunteer helpers moderate Groklaw retrospectively to remove posts containing, for example, inappropriate language, ad hominem attacks, and inflammatory subjects such as politics.
In January 2009, Groklaw entered a second phase of its existence, focusing on consolidation and cleanup of the legal history collected on the site.
In April 2010, Groklaw was selected by the Library of Congress for inclusion in its web archival project, in the category of Legal Blogs.[2]
On April 9, 2011, Jones announced that Groklaw would stop publishing new articles on May 16, 2011, its 8th anniversary, as Groklaw had accomplished its original mission of revealing the truth behind the SCO lawsuits.[3]
On May 16, 2011 Jones reaffirmed her desire to step down from writing daily articles for Groklaw and announced that Groklaw's new editor would be Mark Webbink. [4]
According to a 2003 interview with Pamela Jones, the blog was started to cover legal news and to explain it to the tech community. [5]
The first article was entitled The Grokster Decision - Ode To Thomas Jefferson. It was a serious article about the effect of P2P on the music industry, and the recent (at that time) court decision in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc., et al., Plaintiffs, vs. Grokster, Ltd., et al., Defendants, by Judge Steven Wilson in favor of the defendants. The article also covered the previous Napster decision, and why it was different causing the Napster system to be shut down. The article included a quote from Thomas Jefferson, and references to David Boies, who was Napster's attorney.
David Boies has agreed to represent SCO. I am trying to remind myself that our legal system is predicated on lawyers sometimes representing people they don't personally admire, and the system really does depend on someone being willing to take on unpopular clients. I know Boies doesn't use email, or at least he didn't the last time I checked. So maybe he doesn't quite get the tech ... ah, hang it all, there's no way around it: I feel bad he's chosen to represent them, especially after I posted an Ode singing his praises, and I hope he loses.
The blog soon became popular with the Free Software and Open Source communities as well as others, and attracted a community of volunteers and commenters of its own. Its popularity caused it to outgrow Radio Userland, and on November 22, 2003, the standalone Groklaw website, hosted by ibiblio and running Geeklog software, was up and running.[6]
This box:view· Caldera Systems v. IBM litigation (note that Caldera Systems changed its company name to The SCO Group during this time). Over time, other issues have been explored at Groklaw, including intellectual property and patent issues (for example, Microsoft IP claims against Linux, and the drafting of the GPL version 3). Groklaw is known for its contributors' ability to explain complex legal issues in simple terms and the research used in putting together articles. Additionally, members of the Groklaw community attend court hearings[7] and interview movers and shakers in the software/IP world.[8]
The site has become a community effort. While Groklaw's owner and primary contributor, Pamela Jones, understands law, she is not a programmer. Many of her readers are techies, however, and when technical issues arise, they are able to provide considerable and productive comments on the site. This has enabled Groklaw to solicit guest commentary on a variety of issues, such as:
Linux Kernel coding practices
C Language programming
Operating systems programming
Operating systems history
Standards Organizations
Each of these issues appeared to have some application to the SCO v. IBM case, and most have been revisited many times. Additional topics have included later lawsuits by The SCO Group against Daimler Chrysler, Autozone, and Novell, the countersuit by Red Hat, and their implications as well as Microsoft's attempt to fast track OOXML as an International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standard.
Awards
Groklaw has been cited by the attorneys for several firms in law journal articles. It has also won awards:
2010 - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) 2010 Pioneer Awards[9]
2009 - Top 200 Tech Blogs: The Datamation 2009 List "The famed Groklaw is still going strong, far past the SCO case that first brought the blog to prominence."[10]
2008 - The Award for Projects of Social Benefit - The Free Software Foundation (FSF)[11]
2007 - Knowledge Masters Award for Innovation - Knowledge Trust and the Louis Round Wilson Academy [12]
2007 - Best FUD Fighter - Google-O'Reilly Open Source Awards[13]
2005 - Best News Site - ConsortiumInfo*.org - Pamela Jones/Groklaw: Best Community Site or Blog (Non-Profit)
2005 - Best Blogger of the Year - Dana Blankenhorn, Corante[14]
2004 - Best Independent Tech Blog - TechWeb Network: Readers Choice Award
2004 - Best Nontechnical or Community Website - Linux Journal: Editors' Choice Award
2003 - Best News Site - OSDir.com: Editor's Choice Winner
Editorial stance
Groklaw is the personal creation of one person, Pamela Jones, and Groklaw publishes articles (both news and opinion) from a self-described pro-FOSS, anti-FUD perspective.[16]
“
I made a decision early on to concentrate only on the entities, ideas, and actions, not on individuals.
Jones and some volunteers retrospectively moderate the comments on Groklaw. While Groklaw articles meticulously follow SCO's litigation activities, they are accompanied by reader-submitted comments that are "overwhelmingly pro-Linux and anti-SCO."[18]
Media controversy
Jones is widely respected by journalists and people inside the Linux community. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols wrote, "Jones has made her reputation as a top legal IT reporter from her work detailing the defects with SCO's case against IBM and Linux. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that her work has contributed enormously to everyone's coverage of SCO's cases." [19]
During the first week of May 2005, Maureen O'Gara, a writer for Linux Business News, wrote an exposé claiming to unmask Pamela Jones. Two weeks before O'Gara's publication, McBride said that SCO was investigating Pamela Jones' identity.[18] The article included alleged, but unverified, personal information about Jones,[20] including a photo of Jones' supposed house and purported addresses and telephone numbers for Jones and her mother.[21] After a flood of complaints to the publisher, lobbying of the site's advertisers, and claims of a denial-of-service attack launched against the Sys-Con domain,[22][23]Linux Business News' publisher Sys-Con issued a public apology,[24] and said they dropped O'Gara and her LinuxGram column. However, despite this assertion, O'Gara remained with Sys-Con; as of 2009, she is the Virtualization News Desk editor at Sys-Con Media, where she is described as "[o]ne of the most respected technology reporters in the business" and has her work published in multiple magazines owned by Sys-Con Media.[25] G2 Computer Intelligence, a news publication company owned by O'Gara,[20] appears in bankruptcy filings as a creditor of SCO Operations, a subsidiary of The SCO Group.[26]
SCO executives Darl McBride and Blake Stowell have also denigrated Jones and claimed that she works for IBM.[27] Jones has denied this allegation,[28] as did IBM in a court filing.[29] During an SCO conference call on April 13, 2005, McBride said, "The reality is the web site is full of misinformation, including the people who are actually running it" when talking about Groklaw, adding also "What I would say is that it is not what it is purported to be".[30]
Additional projects
Anticipating further legal threats against GNU, Linux, and the free software community, Pamela Jones launched Grokline, a Unix ownership timeline project, in May, 2004.[31] One notable result of the Groklaw/Grokline effort was obtaining and publishing the 1994 settlement in USL v. BSDi, which for over a decade had been sealed by the parties.[32] The document was obtained through a California freedom of information statute (the University of California, being a publicly funded institution, is required by law to make almost all of its documents public), and the release of the settlement answered many questions as to the ownership of the Unixintellectual property.
The Linux documentation project Grokdoc wiki was started in 2004, with the stated goal "to create a useful manual on basic tasks that new users will find simple and clear and easy to follow." [33]
Groklaw has also extensively covered patent problems with software and hardware, use of the DMCA against free software ideals, Open standards, DRM, GPLv3, and published The Daemon, the GNU & the Penguin, a series of articles by Peter Salus covering the history of Unix, Linux and the GNU project.
^Daniel Lyons (2005-11-14). "Who is Pamela Jones?". Forbes., a sidebar to Lyons' "Attack of the Blogs" in the same issue.
^To Our Valued Readers, Linux Business News, posted 13 May 2005 (archived 16 May 2005 at the Internet Archive; message appears near top in box with a light yellow background)
Groklaw — Screenshot der Groklaw Website, Juni 2008 Groklaw ist eine Website und Online Magazin, die das Ziel verfolgt, die Prinzipien freier Software juristisch zu beleuchten. Das von der amerikanischen Anwaltsgehilfin Pamela Jones gestartete Projekt… … Deutsch Wikipedia
SCO v. IBM — SCO ControversySCO v. IBM is a civil lawsuit in the United States District Court of Utah. The SCO Group asserted that there are legal uncertainties regarding the use of the Linux operating system due to alleged violations of IBM s Unix licenses… … Wikipedia
SCO-Linux controversies — The SCO Linux controversies are a series of legal and public disputes between the software company SCO Group (SCO) and various Linux vendors and users. The SCO Group alleges that its license agreements with IBM means that source code that IBM… … Wikipedia
SCO Group — Infobox Company company name = The SCO Group company company type = Public (Pinksheets|SCOXQ) foundation = Santa Cruz, California (SCO, 1979) Lindon, Utah (Caldera, 1994) location = Lindon, Utah, USA key people = Ralph Yarro III, Chairman Darl… … Wikipedia
SCO Group — Логотип SCO The SCO Group американская компания, держатель прав на товарный знак Caldera Systems и занималась разработкой и внедрением своего дистрибутива GNU/Linux. В 2000 компания купила у Santa Cruz Operation права на операционные системы… … Википедия
Santa Cruz Operation — Логотип SCO The SCO Group американская компания, держатель прав на товарный знак Caldera Systems и занималась разработкой и внедрением своего дистрибутива GNU/Linux. В 2000 компания купила у Santa Cruz Operation права на операционные системы… … Википедия
The SCO Group — Логотип SCO The SCO Group американская компания, держатель прав на товарный знак Caldera Systems и занималась разработкой и внедрением своего дистрибутива GNU/Linux. В 2000 компания купила у Santa Cruz Operation права на операционные системы… … Википедия
Конфликт SCO-Linux — Логотип SCO The SCO Group американская компания, держатель прав на товарный знак Caldera Systems и занималась разработкой и внедрением своего дистрибутива GNU/Linux. В 2000 компания купила у Santa Cruz Operation права на операционные системы… … Википедия
SCO v. Novell — is a lawsuit brought by the SCO Group against Novell. After the SCO Group initiated their Linux campaign, they made several statements that they were the owners of Unix, probably meaning (though never explicitly said) that they were the owners of … Wikipedia
Pamela Jones — ] PJ s articles have appeared in Linux Journal, LWN, LinuxWorld Magazine, Linux Today, and LinuxWorld.com. She also wrote a monthly column for the UK print publication Linux User and Developer. She is one of the contributors to the book Open… … Wikipedia
