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Eric Raymond's Homebrew SCO Poison
What Can You Expect From A University Named "UH?" writes "Eric S. Raymond responds to Darl McBride's charge that he's drinking IBM's Kool-Aid in SCO's fight against Linux.
The main thrust: Yes, there is an alliance against SCO, but, like the Open Source movement itself, it arises from lots of folks spontaneously striving for a common goal. 'It's beyond me how [you] can have the gall to talk as though we need funding or marching orders from IBM to mobilize against you. IBM couldn't stop us from mobilizing!' "
I was truly surprised when I first encountered something like open source. It was on a mud not linux, but people were spending many hours coding and got very little appreciation for it. They still coded away. Linux is much the same way exept the code is more important. Now, if you try and take that away from them, I promise your in for a fight. You can't take someone's baby away. Dreams are better as dreams than reality.
I also have sent off a message or two to various people, trying to ensure that all the various data items that come up, each of which refutes SCO claims in some manner, get brought together when the court case starts.
For example, in response to a prior claim that the copyright law prevents the GPL from allowing users to make multiple copies, I wrote:
There is an obvious flaw in that reasoning. It focusses on the the public, and not on the copyright holder. A copyright holder decides how a work is to be released, after all, and it is perfectly legal for a copyright holder to release something to the Public Domain, in which case everyone can make unlimited copies. So, the actual relevant fact is the copyright holder has the right to decide on any degree of release between public domain and not-at-all. Therefore, when the copyright holder releases something under the GPL, the copyright holder has decided to accept the GPL's details for a release. In such case the copyright holder is giving the public the right to make unlimited copies, which fact does NOT violate the copyright law.
As a long-time fan of Eric Scott Raymond, let me tell you: just because you disagree with a company, that doesn't make you a "threat." For example, Glen Harbiller campaigned against McDonald's all through the 1970s. McDonald's, of course, tried to sue him. They didn't want him to talk about McDonald's cruel labor practices, subpar food handling practices, and overly hot coffee (!).
Similarly, rallying against anticompetitive bullies like SCO cannot be considered threatening. It is free speech. Now although all my senators and house members are owned by corporations, the justice system will find in favor of crusaders like me and Eric Scott Raymond.
I'm not Seth Finkelstein. I still speak the truth.
Umm... which is it?
FWIW *my* calendar has 23 August 2003 as being a Saturday, and 20 August 2003 being a Wednesday.
***
That detail aside, I love this letter. Thank you, Mr Raymond. That was inspired.
I'm a little concerned about the side threat "As the president of OSI, defending the community of open-source hackers against predators and carpetbaggers is mine -- and if you don't stop trying to destroy Linux and everything else we've worked for I guarantee you won't like what our alliance is cooking up next." It worries me that Raymond would phrase things this way.
I suppose there are a lot of non-violent actions that he could mean: tens of thousands of small claims actions (an idea which I love), protesting, etc. But there are some illegal ones that could be inferred from his statement: DOS, DDOS, DRDOS, etc, that would cause quite a stir; after all, aren't the ones that SCO's going after (the Open Source Community) in possession of (and the authors of) "subversive" source code (in McBride's eyes) that could be used against him on the Internet if the Community deemed it necessary?
No, no, don't flame me; I'm merely trying to put McBride's way of "thinking" (if you can call it that) onto Raymond's letter.
I am sure Raymond meant nothing of sort; however, in McBride's state of dementia and loose grip on reality, I wonder what he will think.
I hope, if it's necessary, that IBM (or more likely the EFF) will be able to send in the lawyers on Raymond's behalf. But I hope even more that it won't be needed.
"Sometimes the truth is stupid." - Lawrence, creator of Prime Intellect
I read this a couple of days ago, and found it rather refreshing.
Eric only said what is on the mind of everyone in the free software/open source movement.
SCO is hitting below the belt, playing dirty ball against free software. It is about time someone vents their outrage.
To paraphrase McBride, the GPL is null and void, and those free/open source guys need to rethink their whole world view, or pay the consequences.
How can you not get upset in the face of such meglomania?
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Right now we need strong language; we need people willing to put it on the line and kick business and government.
Someone asked if I had patched against MSBlast; I said yes, I installed Linux.
Ouch!
Although this sort of ranting is useful for getting frustration off ESR's chest, it doesn't further the cause any more than DoSing the SCO site does. Reasoned, well-thought-out responses will have a lot better effect than giving Darl more ammunition for his own tirades. I think the open-source community in general has been doing a good job of keeping its responses level-headed, and we need to keep fighting the good fight.
SCO is fighting a war not of fact, truth or honor, but one of perception. Mr. McBride seems mainly interested in raising SCOX share price regardless of method and it has been effective so far, the stock price went up $1.30 ( just shy of 10%) on Monday. Gee, press releases really are a short term substitute for R&D.
I don't really feel sorry for the people that are going to loose large with the influx of daytraders that see SCO as a good inventment and powerful force that can shake even the mighty IBM. They will have lost their money in spite of the truthful information that is easily found. But when they do start loosing large chunks of money, SCO will feel the backlash and it won't be pretty. Those people will have no real allegaance to SCOs business, ideals or Unix history, only money.
I think it is going to be a blood bath that SCO will be luck to escape, ESR has given a good accounting of motivation that the investors are likely to ignore, probably until it is too late to save their investments.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
but I'm sure SCO is going to be reading it looking for ways to sue him, not to hear his message.
News Flash: SCO wants our money, not their code removed. In the case of Linux, they have no financial incentive to show their cards - they cannot occupy a better position than they do now. As soon as problems are solved they newspapers lose interest, and SCO has to be a product producing business again. We have see how well they do on that basis, and anyway who wants to deal with them knowing how they've approached this issue? I sure don't want to deal with people like that.
This is not going to go away until they get squashed in court. They have made absolutely sure of that, by making incredible claims of ownership. The suspicion of free software from proprietary software trained CEOs plays into their hands. Those people, the ones who make the decisions, don't trust the opinions of the geek world. They listen to lawyerspeak. Hence, the SCO problem doesn't go away until it is clear in the never-never land of legal affairs that they have no teeth, however far fetched we might find their claims.
Nor would it matter even if the community took the extreme action of moving to FreeBSD or Hurd, or developed a new kernel altogether. SCO would simply make more claims that they have IP that any possible functional OS kernel would have to infringe on. As awful as it sounds, that is in fact the purpose of some IP claims - people want to occupy strong positions to be able to legally make claims like that. So it doesn't sound as bizarre to some people as it does to us. I doubt it is true, but they have nothing to lose at this point and SCO will cling to the ankles of the open source community until they are struck off by a judges gavel. Nothing else will carry any weight whatsoever.
So kudos to ESR for telling them off as they deserve, but aside from those already convinced SCO has lost it this won't do much. In corporate america lawyers are IT in matters such as this. We are going to have to batten the hatches and weather the storm, because SCO has targeted open source. This has (IMHO) been about destroying the free software world from day one, and they won't stop even if the linux kernel gets abandoned. There will still be a viable free operating system out there of some kind, and they will still have more work to do. We can't satisfy them as long as we exist.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
It's all nice and good that people are rebutting SCO's wild (and daily) claims, but why are they all filled with the same spittle-fringed invective and circus atmosphere? I could understand phrases like 'smoking crack' and 'drinking kool-aid', I could expect droll movie references, I could predict overzealous bravado from the pages of Slashdot. But why are these child-like protests included in the official "open letters" being sent to mainstream press and directly to SCO's offices?
It embarasses me when I see the "luminaries" of the Open Source (and Free Software yadda) communities begging for attention with such antics. It just entrenches the world's view that all Linux users are immature, unwashed hacker bumpkins with Luke Skywalker style gadget belts, a DeCSS t-shirt, and a security-cracking Zaurus in hand.
IBM is the role-model here, as well as the champion of our battle. IBM has successfully married pin-stripes and rack-mounts. While we're not "passing our statements through IBM" and IBM isn't "orchestrating" our feedback, they surely could teach us something about effective and professional resistance to the legal challenges brought against Linux.
[
really is this just a troll or what? probably
does more damage to the open source community
then any good.
i mean was the guy drunk or something?
It makes "Flamebait" on slashdot seem "Insightful".
What we need is for someone to force SCO to reveal the allegedly infinging code - in public, not under NDA. Cannot someone get a ruling that, since it will have to be disclosed in court, it should be disclosed now?
... oops, already done. This is all in the works, and the court will amost certainly require the alleged code be revealed publicly within a few months. End of SCO.
... they will have to do so, and failure will result in contempt of court and/or fraud charges. I.e. if they don't reveal it to red hat when so ordered, and then try to use it in another court case, Darl et. al. will be having a deep, meaningful relationship with Bubba, compliments of their own contempt of court charges. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.00.
Que Red Hat
There is almost certainly no infringing code whatsoever. But, in the extraoridinarilly unlikely event (statistically indistinguishable from 0.0, I suspect) there is infringing code, it will be removed immediately upon revelation, and $CO will be able to collect on $0.00 damages, as they have done the exact opposite that the law requires (work to mitigate the damages), trying through deception and secrecy to maximize any damages. Which does not fly, even in these dismal times. Never has, probably never will, and certainly won't for SCO. Their hands are "dirty," the code they reference has already been declared public domain by a court of law in an earlier AT&T v. BSD case IIRC, and if not, comes from so many textbooks (including at least one that places no restrictions on reuse of the code) as to be common knowledge. Their "trade secrets" case is dead in the water, and they have no copyright case.
Red Hat has filed to force them to reveal the alleged code
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Take a blue pill, Eric. Who do you think you're speaking for? What is your "alliance" cooking up next? An 10% increase in the amount of outrage on Slashdot? 15% more "IANAL, but somewun shood sew SCO!!!!" posts? Ooh, how about a "yeah, us too, they're, like, bad men" rider on IBM or Red Hat's counter-suits?
I for one would really like to know what ESR and his OSI disciples are "cooking up". We've heard enough bullshit and veiled threats from SCO over this matter. I am simply not interested in being associated with someone prepared to lower himself to their level in that respect.
Put up or shut up, Eric. And while you're at it, don't drag Linus into this. He's a big boy, he can speak for himself.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Actually I think someone should shut him up or give him some lessons on tact. Sure he's pissed of with SCO but we should be taking the high ground on this and not ranting and calling people names and having a go at a whole state just because that is where SCO are based.
Secondly his comments on this DoS attack on SCO are outragous, sure he might know who it was, but don't go bragging about it and don't associate the whole OSS movement by saying stupid things like this.
"He's one of us. He is part of the community around open source software and the Internet infrastructure and he's pretty senior," Raymond said.
Right, so what he's saying to a casual observer is that all OSS developers are vandals who resort to illegal acts when someone pisses them off just because they have the skills to do so.
You can mod me down for having a go at one of the open source figureheads, but he needs to think about the results of what he says before he says it.
Tom.
I hate to shatter your illusions, but IBM, like any profitable company, are interested in shareholder value, not karma. They are using and supporting open source because they see this approach as a good business model, not to usher in the age of aquarius. They won't provide legal support to linux users who are not their customers, because it will not increase shareholder value, either directly, or indirectly.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
There's lots of comments about how ESR "isn't speaking for me!" and shouldn't be lowering himself to the level of SCO's attacks. Frankly, I was refreshed and glad he said what he wrote for a couple of reasons.
One, it said what I've been thinking for ages -- you're screwing with the wrong community on this one. Some of you are going, "What? What community?" Maybe it's just me, but there is a large number of people, using open source, who basically have the same mindset about such things. No, we don't always agree, but that's our strength, not our weakness. Flexibility is more profitable than agreement. ESR's commentary is just playing back what a lot of us, maybe not all of us, but most of us have thought about SCO one time or another.
That being said, another reason is because in order to mobilize a community of anyone, you have to have inspiring people to "wake up" the masses and get them thinking in terms of defense, retaliation, protection. ESR's letter maybe be frank, bold, perhaps even cocky, but it gets the point across -- we're getting tired of this shit. Time to do something about it. Perhaps this won't mobilize anything and y'all will just stay reclined in your chairs sipping another Bawlz. But if it gets you on your feet asking what you can do to further the open source movement and defense, well...then the job is done.
You might not fully agree with ESR and you might think he's a pompous prick, even. But I think his point still rings true -- SCO is being a real dumbass and they're getting way annoying. Time that they put up or shut up, and if they don't, the community (for whatever that means) needs to start taking the stage to defend what we think is worth defending.
Blog,Twitter
Thanks for your comment, but you aren't "shattering my illusions". (Is there some kind of Slashdot mandate that to make a point you must actually insult whoever's comment you are addressing...?)
If you don't like the word "karma", fine, "goodwill" then. And I am quite aware IBM feels this is a good business model. That's self-evident. And it will increase shareholder value if it eliminates the impression of a cloud hanging over one of IBM's primary business initiatives.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
So SCO is perfectly entitled to make threats of legal action against people if they don't pay them money with no evidence but as soon as an OSS person makes a slightly veiled threat it is blackmail?????
We have no reason to think that this represents a threat of illegal action. He is just not showing your cards to try and get a response without anything concrete, like, oh let me think now, SCO.
I don't think there is anything in the letter that is illegal (IANAL), it is threatinging but cairfully worded. It is yet another call for SCO to play fair. It is strongly worded to try and get their attention. But then if you are on crack the only think that gets your attention is more crack.
Just because you can shout louder than everyone else doesn't make you right or a representative of the community as a whole. Linus calling McBride crazy is one thing. You making threats is just juvenile and an embarrasment to the rest of us. RMS doesn't try to pass himself off as a Linux representative, and he does a very good job of it.
What scares me most is how, suddenly, the idea that we are somehow not allowed to speak out against just such corporations is becoming more and more common to the average Joe.
When did America become this country of limp wristed wussies who were afraid to speak their minds because they might be sued by some big corporation? Yeah, they might sue, and you might have to defend a lawsuit if what you speak is not the truth. What one must do to speak out on any given subject, including this one, is to educate oneself!
If you know more than the other guy and can only speak about the truth, what is there to fear?
followed by
which could easily be a mob threat. Do you want your boss to see this in the press?
Or
We don't have official press releases or public relations departments for the Linux and open source community as a whole. I'm not saying there should be and ESR has the right, president of OSI or not, to make any comment he wishes. I just think that this type of thing does more harm than good.
If you know more than the other guy and can only speak about the truth, what is there to fear?
Well, how about:
Huge Legal Fees
Legal technicalities being used against you
The truth being inadmissable in court
Their lies being heard by the court as truth
There are many many things to fear. There is currently a man in Alabama speaking what he truly believes to be the truth. As of now his career is in jeopardy, he is being charged with breaking laws , and will likely lose his fight.
The biggest thing with the 10 commandments case in Alabama is that both sides believe they have the truth on their side. I can very easily see that McBride and co. think that the "truth" is on their side. In fact it would be required that they think this way, otherwise the label of "delusional" wouldn't be appropriate. And I belive that they truly are delusional about this case.
Very few people are. The Open Source exchange goes on around the world as much in spite of as because OSI. Any organization will ultimately be detrimental to two or more people working together WITHOUT supervision. No matter how good the intentions are, they will end up trying to impose undue influence and increase the noise-to-productivity ratio.
Whenever ANYTHING becomes popular, you'll find the organizers crawling out from the woodwork -- sometimes they were great contributers to the cause in the first place, and sometimes they weren't. Sometimes they're just besserwizzers who feel a call to "organize". However, they always tend to impose THEIR direction and add THEIR version of bureaucracy to something that doesn't need it in the first place.
I have full respect for Eric S. Raymond, but not as "President of OSI". That title, and all that goes with it, is just so much bovine faeces, and will only hurt open software in the long run. Like it does right now, when companies like SCO believes he has any mandate at all to speak for every programmer that work with open source, or has done so in the past. Let's hope that the courts don't make the same mistake.
If SCO has a beef with code I've written, I want them to come to ME. Not to OSI, not to Red Hat, not to EFF, and not to IBM. They don't speak for me. My code is between me and the people I shared it with, and these "leaders" don't rank any higher on that list than you do. Probably less, cause you may have time to use the code, and provide valuable feedback, instead of being bound up in "organizing".
If you want to be represented by Eric Raymond, John P. Barlow or anyone else, it's up to you. Just don't assume that they speak for everyone.
Get off my back, monkey -- I don't WANT to be organized or spoken for. Not by you, nor anyone else.
--
*Art
Actually, yes.
I disdain the entire concept that you should be cold and dispassionate when someone is calling you a liar and a thief. Right now, the only voice most businesses (and individuals) hear is SCO's; to change this, we have to shout louder.
SCO won't win in court and they know that, so they make a big fuss and call attention to themselves. That's fine--let's put attention on them by loudly announcing they (and not us) are the liars and thieves, that they have no case, that they are attempting this solely to pump and dump stock.
We need strong language.
Someone asked if I had patched against MSBlast; I said yes, I installed Linux.
The "Christians" as you mean it (I am assuming right wing fundies) did not "make this nation". Your founding fathers were VERY concerned about SEPERATING state and religion. Many of the people coming to the "New World" were fleeing state sponsored religious persecution in Europe. The founders of the USA were intelligent, forward thinkers, who firmly believed in religious freedom for ALL people - not just one sect of Christians. To make sure that the state did not drift into an official state religion (which invariably leads to problems) they put many safeguards into the USA constitution to keep the state and church seperate. The judge in Alabama is breaching this seperation.
Anarchists never rule