FSF Statement on SCO vs. IBM

tomdp writes "Eben Moglen, Law professor and general counsel for the Free Software Foundation, has written a statement about SCO's lawsuit against IBM."

Comments

Re:Thank you FSF

[j7953]

While I'm generally not all that fond if the name nitpicking either, it's actually a relavent distinction for once - SCO has been spouting off things about "whole programs copied" which tends to imply that they're talking about quite a bit more than the kernel.

Yes, it is relevant in this case.

On the other hand, I found the following part of the article quite arrogant: "This confusion, which the Free Software Foundation warned against in the past, is here shown to have the misleading consequences the Foundation has often predicted." This statement doesn't say anything but "see, we told you so!" And, in the context of this article, it also unfairly makes everyone who says "Linux" for the whole operating system indirectly responsible for parts of SCO's FUD campaign.

Instead of writing a whole paragraph about their naming conventions, the FSF could simply have written that "Linux" is the name of the kernel, but in common usage is also used to refer to the whole operating system, and that SCO's claims are confusing because they don't make clear which of the two they are talking about.