Comments on the letter to Congress [LWN.net]

Comments on the letter to Congress

Posted Jan 22, 2004 21:53 UTC (Thu) by scotdb (guest, #3170)
Parent article: Report from the SCO front

1) Didn't someone else write an "open letter" (aimed at hobbyists) many
years ago ?
2) A lot of the wording (e.g. "GPL's viral nature") could have come
straight from Microsoft : did SCO get their licence holder to write the
document for them ?
3) They complain that if we Europeans use Linux then we don't buy
American products : so now SCO are asking Congress to use "protectionism"
as well as the other ills. I wonder is SuSE will have import tarriffs
slapped on their CDs, in the same way as European steel had until
recently.
4) The GPL certainly does not put software into the "public domain".
This shows a (perhaps wilful) lack of understanding of the meaning of
"free".

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Comments on the letter to Congress

Posted Jan 23, 2004 4:10 UTC (Fri) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]

> I wonder is SuSE will have import tarriffs
> slapped on their CDs, in the same way as
> European steel had until recently.

Not likely, any more than already, anyway. Remember SuSE is part of Novell,
now, and Novell is a US company.

Of course, that wouldn't necessarily stop the tariffs, but contracting with a US
CD pressing firm would. From what I've read, that's what Mandrake did,
then established a headquarters in the US as well as the one in France, in
part, to avoid such imports, and the related red tape they bring.

Duncan