Ad Terras Per Aspera

Chip Salzenberg has been screwed by the wheels of justice (read more about it here). Chip is a well known FOSS hacker, and well respected in the Perl community; he was the release manager behind Perl 5.4, and is playing the Architect for the Parrot Virtual Machine project (which is the VM behind Perl 6).

So, basically, he was going to rat out his employer for doing horrible things (such as criminally hammering web servers), and they accused him of stealing trade secrets, and got the cops to steal all his computer equipment. Thankfully, the criminal charges against him were dropped; but his former employer decided to use the law to their own advantage and steal his computers.

Not only that, but everything on them. Personal information. Website logins, PGP keys, personal photos, unreleased code, credit card information, etc. Everything. Between that, and the surmounting legal fees, he is quite screwed.

So, the infamous Anonymous Coward rears his/her/its head on the Slashdot article about this (and I quote):

I’ve been in a very similar situation recently, and also ran into huge legal bills, from a contracting client who made outrageous claims. It was the worst experience of my adult life. I can’t go into any details, but it was terrible, and the case turned on the same kind of criminal trade secret laws. These trade secret laws are so prone to abuse because they take what are effectively civil issues (ie, business disputes) and get the criminal justice system involved. Let me tell you, all this thing about “innocent until proven guilty” is nonsense. Yes, you are “innocent until proven guilty” when you actually get to trial… but by the time you get to trial you’ve already gone through hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills. Where does the average guy come up with that kind of money? I’ll give you the answer: he sells all of his assets (house, everything) and he still doesn’t have that kind of money, so he ends up getting a public defender, and public defender = plea bargain = no trial.

Basically these trade secret laws let big guys with resources or connection punish small guys (us) without any legal process. We’re out tens of thousands of dollars just from the moment the process begins, without a court or a judge even having seen the issue.

There’s also the emotional factor. It’s terrifying. If I got a criminal trade secret conviction, I would never be able to work in the programming field again. What else could I do? My life would be ruined even if I got probation only. The fear is incapacitating. It’s like someone telling you “you have cancer.” Even if the cancer is treatable, it is terrifying.

Anyone in the programming field needs to be aware of these risks. You don’t think about it because a) these things usually do not result in convictions (in TFA’s case, if his telling is accurate, there is no evidence of any wrong-doing) and b) when they go away without a conviction, we’re all scared to talk about them (like I am posting as AC right now). But even if the case goes nowhere, running into a $40k legal bill is disastrous. That’s a down payment on a house. That’s 100% of your after-tax income for more than a year (probably). That’s your new-car and vacation fund for several years. That could cause so much financial stress as to lead to divorce, family estrangement, etc. That’s “liquidate all of your assets right now and borrow from all of your relatives” disastrous. That’s a penalty this guy is suffering without any trial or judicial overview. That’s (possibly) without even having a grand-jury rubber-stamp the police side of the story.

I’m afraid to even post this lest it have some bearing on my situation, but I’m posting because I want all of us Slashdot crowd to be aware of it.

I don’t really have a solution, but one thing that seems to help is to put up a very aggressive and determined defence from the very beginning. Let everyone involved know, “there will be no plea bargain. There will be a vigorous defence. Trying to bring a civil matter into the criminal system will not work and I’m not going to beg for mercy. If it gets to a trial, we’re fighting all the way and there will be an acquittal.”

This guy is brave to even be talking about this publicly. I’m sure his lawyer advised him not to (mine did). Most of us who are victims of this are silent victims like me.

Thats basically the situation Chip is in. Oh, yeah, hes looking for donations too, go give him some money.

John Hall, the author of Programming Linux Games, and someone who I consider a friend, was diagnosed with Stage IV Melanoma (which is very life threatening). He’s asking the public to help donate to the American Cancer Society, he’s trying to raise $1,000 for melanoma research. All money donated goes straight to the American Cancer Society.

Update 12:03am, June 25th: Wow, John has raised $925 so far, and has advanced his goal to $2,000.

Update 04:20pm, July 7th: Up to $3,100.00 out of a $4,000 goal. Rock on.

Apparently Microsoft has a bot running on the IRC-Hispano IRC Network that ‘informs’ users that Linux is inferior to Windows when they join a Unix related channel, and gives them a url that forwards to a page at Microsoft.

/join #unix
<ms_hechos> http://globals.irc-hispano.org/mshechos
<ms_hechos> Las principales empresas y analistas independientes lo confirman:
<ms_hechos> Windows tiene un coste total de propiedad inferior al de Linux y ofrece mejores resultados.
<ms_hechos> Aquí están los hechos que necesita conocer para elegir entre Windows y Linux.

What the hell, Microsoft? You can’t get enough money off of the English speaking population that don’t know any better, now you have to go after Spanish speaking people that don’t know any better? Quit spamming IRC you losers.

Ravon over at Ormgas has finally fixed the song voting script, after I spent months reminding him to do so. If you’re coming here from the news entry Ravon put up thanking me, be sure to add a comment to this blog entry to say, “Hi.”

Carrie Fisher is my hero…

At the ceremony for George Lucas’ AFI lifetime achievement award, Carrie Fisher properly thanks the director for over two decades’ worth of Star Wars nerds masturbating to an image of her in a slave-girl bikini.

… thus deserves a photoshop in her honor (see article for original photo).

Yes, I know. I have no life.