SCO Roundup

Time to clear out the bin of the taint of SCO, hopefully we haven't posted these already... The Economist has a piece titled Face Value -- Of Monkeys and Penguins. The EFF is pushing an email campaign about SCO. An anonymous reader submits this completely unverified claim that SCO needs to change the password on their mail server: sco.txt. And another reader presents a theory about SCO's stock performance.

Comments

sco.txt

[Jailbrekr]

If you feel like lowering yourself to their level, keep that sco.txt link there.

I thought the whole point was to take the high road?

Re:sco.txt

[miknight]

I agree, we all know that we can beat them using ethical and legal means - we shouldn't give them (more?) anti-linux-community firepower.

Adapt and Succeeed

[Farley Mullet]

I never thought I would see IBM on the right side of IT, but there we have it.

IBM is crafty, eh? The most charitable way of putting it is to say that they know how to adapt to changing business environments (although it might be more accurate to say that they have an almost supernatural sense which way the wind is blowing). Think about it: old alliances, like IBM-MS, are a thing of the past, with IBM being perhaps linux's greatest corporate benefactor, while old oppositions, like IBM-Apple, have evaporated, starting with the old AIM partnership, and now with IBM-made CPU's in the latest Macintoshes.

Who cares???

[Mrs. Grundy]

"We're absolutely not going away, and they're not giving up, so we got a big problem," says Mr McBride.

I imagine he is using 'we' in the royal sense meaning 'he.' It's a little shocking to me that so many people are devoting so much time to this. Wouldn't we be better off to just ignore him and let IBM squash him and his claim unnoticed as a something as unsubstantiated as his is should be.

Instead we spend an awful lot of time and energy talking and reading...and making SCO a household word. And worse, making people nervous about linux and open source software in general for (so far) no reason at all. This seems to be a guy who likes to make his money suing people and is getting some free publicity at everyone's expense. Until they are willing to pony up with some real evidence let them slither back to the obscurity more fitting companies that have nothing good to offer.

Free Lunch!

[phauxfinnish]

At a more general level ... he found the entire free-software trend "communistic", he says: "We don't get the whole free-lunch thing."

It's not about "free-lunch" and he knows it! This more appropriately equates to "We don't get the whole free-speech thing." This happens to fit with a quote in this story:

Darl McBride, current CEO, says the last straw for SCO was at Linux World this year. "An IBM executive stood up and basically announced, 'We're moving our AIX (Unix) expertise into Linux, and we're going to destroy the value of Unix,' " says McBride, who contends that the statement alone was a violation of IBM's AIX contract. (emphasis added)

He wants a closed system, where any advancements made are the sole property of a central organization who can there-by control the market, and we're the communists? Alright, maybe in a classical sense of communism, the Open Source movement does share some traits. However, in the derogatory fashion he implies, SCOs recent actions much closer resemble the totalitarian regimes of applied communism.

Dear Comrade McBride....

[mormop]

At a more general level (and surprisingly for a Linux distributor), he (McBride) found the entire free-software trend "communistic", he says: "We don't get the whole free-lunch thing."

I still don't get the constant references from Gates, McBride et al about Linux being communist.

In Soviet Russia which was communist in name if not nature, the provision of all goods an services was centralised in the hands of a few, huge agencies. These agencies excercised a vast amount of power over those it "served" and generally with property being theft and all that no-one could truly be said to own their their property, e.g. house, car etc. This basically constitutes the large organisations licencing the use of "their" property to the members of the society and as many dissedents found, these licences could be revoked along with the issue of a new one way licence to Siberia.

The free enterprise west on the other hand, benefitted from competition between many decentralised comapanies, organisations and individuals that in some cases formed alliances and co-operated when it would benefit.

If anything, the behaviour of the vast corporations bears more resemblance to the overpowering Soviet interpretation of communism than Open Source. On the other hand, open source follows the free market evolutionary pattern with projects popping into existence all the time with the weaker pointless ones falling by the wayside and the stronger useful ones maturing.

The open source system negates the need for money as developers receive the kudos of a job well done ,a notch on their CV for them to earn bread with and the support of users who pay their way by submitting feedback, bug reports etc.

In the meantime, please stop giving us this shit about open source and communism. The one thing it offers is freedom of choice and action. I don't remember the Russian people having much of that before the wall came down and I don't see that in any EULA from Microsoft, SCO or any other proprietry software company for that matter.