False attribution to Richard Stallman? [LWN.net]

False attribution to Richard Stallman?

Posted May 15, 2003 9:16 UTC (Thu) by stuart_hc (subscriber, #9737)
Parent article: SCO suspends, Gartner warns

Following your link to the page of quotations from "Linux leaders"
http://www.sco.com/scosource/quotes_from_leaders.html
I saw that SCO had attributed the quote
"Linux is a copy of UNIX. There is very little new stuff in Linux."
to Richard Stallman.

A quick look through the Linux-kernel mailing list archive reveals that Larry McVoy made this statement on 4th Jan 2003. Perhaps the mistake SCO made was to interpret Richard Stallman's reply to Larry McVoy, in which McVoy's statement is quoted, as the source of the quotation.

How many other simple mistakes has SCO made...

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False attribution to Richard Stallman?

Posted May 15, 2003 15:56 UTC (Thu) by jdthood (guest, #4157) [Link]

I am unable to find the McVoy posting you mention, but I took a closer look at SCO's quotation and noticed that this one is different from the others in not naming Stallman on the line following the quotation. It seems that this is a quotation randomly lifted from linux-kernel (... as it happens, from a severe critic of Stallman ...) for its useful sound bite qualities.

The other quotations are very misleading when presented out of context. Stallman does not in the least condone illegal copying, but the purpose of the second quotation seems to be to give the impression that he does. The third quotation is equally misleading. To the general public, 'hack' means 'crack', but we know that this is not what Stallman means when he uses the word.

SCO is engaging in anti-Linux propaganda. Disgusting.

For your reference, I append how the "Richard Stallman" section appears on SCO's webiste at 15:44 UTC on 15 May 2003.

Richard Stallman

"Linux is a copy of UNIX. There is very little new stuff in Linux."
Linux kernel forum

"I consider the law prohibiting the sharing of copies with your friend the moral equivalent of Jim Crow. It does not deserve respect."
Richard Stallman, Free as in Freedom, Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software: O'Reilly (2002) at p. 72

"The whole GNU project is really one big hack. It's one big act of subversive playful cleverness..."
Richard Stallman, Revolution OS (DVD)

False attribution to Richard Stallman?

Posted May 15, 2003 16:00 UTC (Thu) by dbreakey (guest, #1381) [Link]

Somehow, I think that SCO knows perfectly well that it's an incorrect attribution and simply doesn't care. Those pages have absolutely no legal weight, so the only purpose to them is to try and carry public opinion over to their side.

Pathetic, if you ask me…

False attribution to Richard Stallman?

Posted May 15, 2003 18:52 UTC (Thu) by lyda (guest, #7429) [Link]

therefore richard stallman should sue them for libel. while sco can afford a huge lawsuit, the free software community can affod a lot of small lawsuits.

False attribution to Richard Stallman?

Posted May 15, 2003 21:42 UTC (Thu) by dododge (subscriber, #2870) [Link]

Here's the original by Larry McVoy, and the followup by RMS. RMS just has horrible quoting style (or lack thereof) so without seeing his message in thread context it's not very clear that he isn't making this statement himself. The lack of a "GNU/" is at least an indicator to experienced RMS-readers that something is up :-)