There was a time when daggers were drawn on Linux and its demise was plotted in dark detail. At that hour stepped out a shieldmaiden with a blog, and that blog was Groklaw. Eight years later, we hear the news that Groklaw will cease new postings after May 16th. My sadness in hearing this news is more than equaled by my gratitude to PJ and her community of researchers and commentators, for their enormous effort and unparalleled achievement over these years. The world is a better place because of PJ. Who can hope to say better?
As a retrospective of a different kind, I’ve taken the titles from every Groklaw article since its start and created a “word cloud” from them, using Wordle. This shows, at a glance, the issues that have dominated the attention of Groklaw over the years.
Wayne Borean says
Nifty. Wish I’d thought to do that.
Wayne
pj says
This is charming. Thank you.
Can I please put it on Groklaw?
And I have some happy news for you. I’ve found someone to take on the
mantle of Groklaw and do Groklaw 2.0. I’ll announce on Monday, assuming
we get everything in place by then.
Tom McLernon says
I have been following the Groklaw postings, with all the twists and turns, since 2003. There is a feeling of sadness that a little part of my life is coming to an end. PJ (the imaginary person) has performed a very valuable public service.
Thank you for that PJ.
Jeff Gerhardt says
I remember going to a Caldera dog and pony show way back in the day. The last day of the conference I asked Daryl if he and the rest of Caldera/SCO were seriously going to claim ownership of the Linux CODE. He got really mad and walked out of the interview. A couple days later I said on the Linux Show that Caldera/SCO were “In My Opinion” going to lay siege to LINUX and the GPL, by suing all the major users. In hind sight I should have waited to say this until I had spoken to others in the community.
As we ran the Linux Show (TLS to the fans), it became clearer and clearer that freedom of the press was only as good as the financial depth and girth of your bank account. Legal shit was expensive.
There were a number of people that carried the baggage during the battle over who owned the Linux. Kevin and I got our fair share of help from people in the community. Obviously, PJ at Groklaw carried her part in that time with skill and professionalism. We owe a great deal of the success we had at the time to Groklaw. The entity was the single best source of factual information.
Alan says
Lovely, just lovely – the picture and the word pictures. What are the flowers?
Rob says
@Alan, the flowers are what I had in the garden that were closest to the logo colors in the coffee mug, so a double tulip and grape hyacinth (muscari armeniacum). I set this on a backdrop I fashioned from two pieces of white foam board. Light was from a window above.