SCO Turns Up the Heat on Linux Users (eWeek) [LWN.net]

SCO Turns Up the Heat on Linux Users (eWeek)

Posted Aug 19, 2003 14:45 UTC (Tue) by dkite (guest, #4577)
Parent article: SCO Turns Up the Heat on Linux Users (eWeek)

When this thing started I figured that it would never get to trial. The whole
ownership of Unix is too uncertain at best, and anyone would be a fool to start
stirring that pot. I wonder if Novell is talking to counsel about releasing all the
documentation from the BSD case from the early 90's. Especially the parts
showing how much of the Unix codebase comes from BSD.

It is in my tendancy to give people the benefit of the doubt. I thought that
maybe SCO has a bit of a case here. Then they show some lines of code that
were contributed by SGI with clear BSD origins. Then they annouce they are
including Samba in their own product. Have they no fear?

Don't they know how vulnerable they are? They WANT to get before a judge?
They want developers, old and respectable, to explain to a jury when and
why they wrote the sections that were incorporated into Unix, under what
license terms, and why they haven't made a fuss about their copyright until
now? They want a jury to hear from the same how it is no problem for Linux to
use their code?

Do they want some respectable, well spoken developer like Linus tell a jury
about how enjoyable it is to work with his peers, and make something useful?
Juries have read about or seen community based construction projects.
Complicated large structures erected in days. Anyone in construction knows
that these projects are impossible. I know that they are impossible, even after
having worked on two or three. But they happen. Complicated operating
systems have come about by community effort. The whole thing is impossible,
yet it exists. A jury will get to understand these things.

Darl and crew are truly stupid. I really can come to no other conclusion.

Derek

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SCO Turns Up the Heat on Linux Users (eWeek)

Posted Aug 20, 2003 22:59 UTC (Wed) by jdthood (guest, #4157) [Link]

They aren't so stupid.

First of all, they're getting richer at the expense of the fools who are buying SCO stock these days. Perhaps the manager of your mutual funds is one of the fools?

Second, they have rather intelligently figured out that the growing body of GPL software is a threat to the entire proprietary software industry and quite predictably they have declared war against it. They are using all the weapons at their disposal: lawsuits, FUD, ideological rants, sob stories about stolen property. Their campaign hasn't worked too well so far, but it is far too early to tell whether or not it will work in the end. If SCO keeps this up long enough then I fear that a lot of corporate users will decide that Linux isn't safe to use. There is also the phenomenon, brought to our attention by a famous leader of the twentieth century who shall remain nameless, of the bigger falsehood being more credible than the smaller one. The mere fact that SCO is willing to make such bold claims will lead the clue-impaired to think "They wouldn't say that if they didn't have something to back it up!"

This story just gets more and more interesting every day. In the beginning I thought it was a petty attempt to extort some money from IBM but it is escalating into a battle royale between two competing systems of software production. And it is clear that this is just part of larger war between the right and the left over the domain of the intellect. In case you hadn't noticed, the right is winning, so it is unwise to be complacent.