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Few Companies Change Linux Plans Despite SCO Suit
gaurab writes "A survey on Internetweek says 'SCO's Linux lawsuit and threats seem to be having little affect on IT managers except to make them angry. Fully 91 percent of people responding to an InternetWeek Reader Question said they will not change their Linux deployment plans as a result of SCO's actions.' The article is also available at Yahoo!"
What are the other 9% thinking? Does anyone out there believe that SCO's and IBM's contractual dispute can do anything to make Linux liable in any way?
(Event SCO itself said that Linux users are not going to be liable in any case).
Its sad that some people are actually buying into this Microsoft-backed FUD.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
I'd be more interested in the 9% of people who said the suit *is* affecting their decisions. What are the reasons behind that response?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I guess that goes to show you - 56.2% of all statistics are untrue.
That survey is of course meaningless unless we can link it to peoples pre-existant deployment plans. If they weren't planning to deploy linux anyway, it doesn't mean much.
Just an obvious point - it's still better than a lot of people saying that they plan to stop using it.
If a Fortune 500 company is using Linux and SCO prevails, you don't think that's going to prompt the PHBs to dictate a change in OS? Yeah, the geeks in the trenches don't care, but tell that to the company's law department.
BTW, yeah, yeah; If SCO wins, there will be an appeal. However, the damage is already done. What business is going to wait and rely on a higher court overturning the ruling?
To the attention span and the attention to detail :)
that the kind of manager that would implement an
open source solution for a problem would possess.
It's obvious that when you are dealing with a
company already smart enough to pursue a GNU/Linux
solution for a problem, they are going to be smart
enough to see through SCO's obvious bullshit.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
91% will not change their plans.
That means that 9% WILL.
It's probable, based on the nature of the case, that they will not be changing their plans in favor of linux.
Also, of the remaining 91%, how many of them planned to not use Linux at all? If only 9% of IT managers planned to use Linux in the first place, and now 9% of them are changing their minds, then that would indicate that Linux is about to get wiped out. That can't be the case either, but it's one possible interpretation of the figures.
Bottom line: Statistics can be used to make convincing lies. Most surveys are unscientific in the extreme. And SCOX is still a bunch of bastards.
... that CEOs and Presidents will read this article and see that (despite what the /. crowd thinks of statistics) an overwhelming majority isn't changing their plans in responce to this. Keep the CEOs interested and the IT department can play whatever cards it chooses.
Expanding on Jeremy Gross' point, are there any domains in which a purchaser/user of a product which has (allegedly) incorporated others' IP can be held personally liable?
If I buy a CD recorded by a musician who has "sampled" another's song and incorporated in his track, surely I cannot be held liable for this, or even required to return the CD.
If my copy of the New York Times includes and article which the author has plaigarized from another source, I doubt any legal authority is going to "recall" my newspaper, or prosecute me for my quarter investment.
These seem more directly pertinent than the Mazda-Ford analogy, as a Linux distro seems more like a publication than a physical product, though the same principle, I would think, applies.
Perhaps the issue grows slightly murkier in the case of a downloaded copy of Linux; in this case conceivably the argument could be made that the user has personally copied a copyrighted chunk of code. Maybe for thorough self-protection, Linux sysadmins would be best advised to buy an off-the-shelf distro of Linux, to point at if the lawyers ever show up.
If this threat/argument from SCO ends up being found baseless and/or absurd, aren't they in the position of having interfered with the business of several thousand companies via their letters, baselessly and in pursuit of money, i.e. "extortion"?
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Note: I'm flaming, but not at you personally.
These are people responding to an internet poll. It doesn't matter what sort of business decisions the respondents control. Polls taken over the Internet have zero scientific validity. They can be rigged. They can be stuffed with ballots. People who vote will forward the poll to people who see the issue the way they do.
Above all, they aren't taking a random sample of the relevant population. People self-select. Even barring all the other problems, this one alone destroys the validity of the poll.
If you're trying to use this poll to figure out how SCO is doing in the court of public opinion, you may as well fall back on tea leaves.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!