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Interview: SCO's Darl McBride and Chris Sontag (CRN)Interview: SCO's Darl McBride and Chris Sontag (CRN)Posted Nov 19, 2003 8:40 UTC (Wed) by janpla (guest, #11093)In reply to: Interview: SCO's Darl McBride and Chris Sontag (CRN) by havoc Parent article: Interview: SCO's Darl McBride and Chris Sontag (CRN) "IF SCO can actually pull this off and start getting a fee each time Linux is sold, Linux is instantly dead" Hmm, don't be absurd. I can't judge whether it is possible for SCO to win this sort obviously fraudulent case in the absurd and corrupt American court system, but so what? For one thing, most of the important parts of UNIX are not part of whatever SCO try to convince they believe is their property: Samba, X, the filesystems and indeed most of the tools. What they would be left with is a bare bones bits-and pieces-system with no practical use; well I suppose they could try to sell it with the things they actually own in the SCO UNIX. But how about all the third party SW producers like Oracle, IBM, ... SCO have made themselves hugely unpopular with everybody, so is it reasonable to expect that SCO will have an easy time attracting applications to their system? Another thing - will people in the rest of the world not just shrug their shoulders and get on with life? Will China, Brazil, Russia, europe etc etc hang their heads and say: 'Wow, a corrupt American court has rules that SCO own Linux, so now we have to pay huge amounts of money to them'? Who will force them? The only result would be that Linux would continue being developed elsewhere. As for OSS - it doesn't depend on UNIX, really; it runs equally well on a number of other systems.
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Interview: SCO's Darl McBride and Chris Sontag (CRN) Posted Nov 19, 2003 16:46 UTC (Wed) by mwilck (guest, #1966) [Link] Don't underestimate the threat. However absurd and corrupt you think the American court system is, people in the world respect it because it is dangerous not to do so. Most people want to be able to visit the U.S. without being arrested, for example. Let alone companies - you'll find but a few who will openly violate U.S. court decisions, because most businessmen want to do business with U.S. companies/customers.
This fight is important. Posted Nov 19, 2003 20:07 UTC (Wed) by jre (guest, #2807) [Link] It is intellectually lazy to say that SCO may win in the "absurd and corrupt American court system, but so what?"Does it make a difference whether or not SCO has a valid legal argument, and whether or not SCO's case will be tried fairly in the US courts? You bet it does! We rely on the fundamental integrity of the courts for our protection. That is why Richard Stallman created the GPL in the first place, and why the FSF spends so much time defending it. If we just cynically say "Oh, well, the American courts are absurd and corrupt, so it doesn't make any difference what happens there" we throw away any hope of creating something enduring. If the American courts are truly absurd and corrupt, then what are the consequences? a) It does not matter whether SCO is right or wrong. b) Eben Moglen's reasoned defense of the GPL was an empty exercise, and c) The folks at Groklaw are wasting their time. I, for one, do not believe any of the above are true.
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