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SCO's Open Letter to Open Source Community
joefish_only_1 writes "SCO CEO has posted an open letter to the open source community. There's some things Mr McBride mentions that I hadn't heard of yet, like an admission by Bruce Perens that "UNIX System V code is, in fact, in Linux, and it shouldn't be there."" A slashdot reader posted a comment recently
that breaks it down quite well.
I'm not going to believe anything ol' Darl says until I hear absoultely everything else and all opposing views.
There is something rather disgusting about this letter from SCO, and the following passage highlights it rather well:
"There is no question about the affiliation of the attacker - Open Source leader Eric Raymond was quoted as saying that he was contacted by the perpetrator and that "he's one of us." To Mr Raymond's partial credit, he asked the attacker to stop. However, he has yet to disclose the identity of the perpetrator so that justice can be done.
No one can tolerate DDoS attacks and other kinds of attacks in this Information Age economy that relies so heavily on the Internet. Mr Raymond and the entire Open Source community need to aggressively help the industry police these types of crimes. If they fail to do so it casts a shadow over the entire Open Source movement."
Now, substitute the phrases "black people", "black person", and "black community" for "Open Source"...
That the DDoS attackers were "members of the open source community" is irrelevent. It is like saying they had red hair, and therefore ALL red-haired people should bear responsibility. No. No. No. No.
You cannot generalise from a person, or even several people, to an entire community. That is wrong. Indeed, the whole letter is full of generalisations from (often inaccurate) specifics.
Down with SCO!
--- My dad's political betting
The article doesn't offer as much insight into SCO's thinking with this apparently suicidal (PR wise anyway) move, but one thing does stand out, the use of the words 'improper contribution'. Not 'improper use' or This for me shows just how empty SCO's talk is. How exactly does someone improperly contribute something? If you contribute something, you do so. If something is stolen or copied from you, it's stolen. SCO didn't even have the guts to accuse anyone of stealing, they just came up with this nonsensical phrase. Kind of telling.
This quote sounds like he's trying to "take back" the BSDs:
"Fair use" applies to educational, public service and related applications and does not justify commercial misappropriation. Books and Internet sites intended and authorized for the purpose of teaching and other non-commercial use cannot be copied for commercial use. We believe that some of the SCO software code that has ended up in the Linux operating system got there through this route. This violates our intellectual property rights.
"Men lie."
"Yeah, about sleeping with other women, but never about bioluminescent plankton."
-Dan Brown
Bruce, I know you read slashdot, did you actually say thing thingsquoted in the article?
- You may re-publish this material. You may excerpt it, reformat it and translate it as necessary for your presentation. You may not edit it to deliberately misrepresent my opinion.
Isn't Darl taking Bruce's words out of context and misrepresenting them? Copyright violation, anyone?....I'm interested in "Best Current Practices" documents that gives advice on how to best preceed in a Free Software project in order to avoid becoming vulnerable to problems with copyright or other legal issues. Of course the GNU project has some pretty good policies, but asking people to so something just because it's a GNU policy will often just make them complain about "GNU fanatics" instead of them taking the matter serious.
Therefore, it would be very helpful to have insights and policy recommendations from other sources as well.
Greetings,
Norbert.
The Open Source development method has indeed a weakness: it is open. That means any company can see if their copyrights are being infringed, and can act accordingly.
This also opens up the possibility of people maliciously including code in an open source project, hoping to beneffit from litigation at some point.
This weakness can be turned into a great strength: with some many eyes looking, some with good intentions, others only looking for personal and immediate beneffit, the process will assure that the code present in open source projects is the most clean code in the industry.
Seriously, does anybody believe that Microsoft, SCO and other propietary companies do not have *any* copyright infringment in their code base?
Rot in hell Darl.
Bruce said:
"The other SCO code snippet Perens walks through had to do with memory allocation functions in Unix System V and Linux. He says there was, in fact, "an error in the Linux developer's process," specifically a programmer at SGI, and he says while the Linux community had the legal right to this code, it didn't belong in Linux and was therefore removed."
Was twisted by SCO into:
"an admission by Open Source leader Bruce Perens that UNIX System V code (owned by SCO) is, in fact, in Linux, and it shouldn't be there. Mr Perens stated that there is "an error in the Linux developer's process" which allowed Unix System V code that "didn't belong in Linux" to end up in the Linux kernel"
So by saying it was REMOVED (we will say it slow so you can follow along Darl), Bruce Perens admitted that it ended up in the Linux kernel? Can SCO tell the truth at all, or do they all just live on Bizarro world?
Insert pithy comment here.
So if it was SGI that inserted the code, why is it, again, that they're suing IBM?
Initially, wasn't the SCO party line that IBM took AIX code and contributed it to Linux?
Quotes from Perens:
So the code can't have been legaly copied from there (it's copyright). But the license pointed to says: So the code can't have been legaly copied from there as the copyright notice has been removed.And finaly Perens argues:
But, so what? That's talking about Unix 32V, and Perens goes on to say: Which has never been released under any kind of open source license or been put in the public domain.So, yes, SGI could have copied the 32V code, but they didn't.
Or they could have copied the Unix Version 3 code, if they'd included the copyright and license notices, but they didn't.
But they had no right to copy the System V code at all.
Perens is right:
but this is just wrong: as even Perens admits the code was copied from SysV.Watch this Heartland Institute video
It's not obvious to me that there are intellectual property problems in the current Linux software development model. In particular, there are no problems that don't exist in traditional closed source development either. If anything, Linux developers have a greater incentive not to copy code, because their work is available for public scrutiny. Had Microsoft, for example, "infringed" on your copyrights, you wouldn't even know about it!
You have misquoted Perens. He certainly did not claim that "Unix System V" code was in Linux. He said there was code in Linux that is "very similar" to System V, but has a traceable open-source origin:
The code is from Unix version 3, the oldest known version of Unix that still exists in machine-readable form. The complete source for that system can be found here on the net. In 2002, Caldera released this code as Open Source, under this license. Caldera is, of course, the company that now calls itself SCO. The license very clearly permits the Linux developers to use the code in question.
It is also worthy of note that this code was removed from the kernel for technical reasons before it was shown at SCOForum, and that, as part of the ia64 port, it was never even a part of any major commercial Linux distribution.
To arrive at a number remotely close to "one million lines", you must not be referring to Unix System V code itself. This is probably why you used the phrase "Unix System V protected code". You seem to think that NUMA, RCU, and JFS--technologies copyrighted and patented by IBM--somehow now belong to SCO thanks to your contract with IBM. IBM disputes this, of course.
In any event, your contract claims give you absolutely no right to collect license fees from end-users over these technologies. IBM holds the copyrights on the code; it was IBM's to give to Linux. If doing so breached IBM's contract with you, you are within your rights to seek damages from IBM. However, the contracts between SCO and IBM simply cannot apply to end-users who are not a party to the contracts.
Bruce Perens addresses this issue here, at the end of same the article from which you misquoted him earlier in your letter.
You draw some pretty serious conclusions from this one weak example of infringement: "In fact, this issue goes to the very heart of whether Open Source can be trusted as a development model for enterprise computing software." Closed source software is not immune from the same kinds of problems. Take a look at the recent patent lawsuits against Microsoft. Can Closed Source be trusted as a development model for enterprise computing software?
You mentioned that the aforementioned code copying issue damaged the open source community's credibility, but I find it telling that you didn't mention the other code copying example given at SCOForum. This example intended to show that SCO owns the Berkely Packet Filter code (which is, of course, part of BSD), and that an implementation of the BP
You might want to research the SEA/PK thing a little. It gives unfortunate insight into what might happen to Linux. PK took the arc source and re-implemented some of it in assembly language. That made it faster, but did not make it his.
SEA was a very small company (husband and wife). This was not the David and Goliath battle we were led to believe so long ago.
Its all on the web. Google for it and learn.
'ancient unix' isn't valid for commercial purposes even though it was licensed under a BSD license.
Oops, SCO OpenUnix or whatever they call it this week just lost the X Window system, developed by MIT and released under a BSD-like license. Darn, the TCP/IP support written at Berkely and released under a BSD license isn't valid for commercial purposes either.
There seems to be more of this open source stuff around than SCO are aware of...
Every time SCO releases something, my boss somehow gets word of it and brings it in to me triumphantly like "Good thing we didn't adopt Linux, eh?"
SCO is having their intended effect...
People in power have always lied to those that they take power from. Even people without power lie to get out of trouble.
It's a story as old as humanity itself.
You can be shocked and/or appalled by this behavior, but it's quite natural to consider that systems that allow for lying and/or encourage hiding the truth for whatever reason (whether they be justified or not) have always existed and as long as they continue to exist people will continue to lie. If you want to change the behavior pattern, change the underlying system. Unfortunately noone seems to quite have worked out a flawless, utopian system involving human beings. Such systems are difficult to maintain ad infinitum.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/1997/Nov9 7/scopr.asp
REDMOND, Wash.-November 24, 1997 - Microsoft Corporation today applauded the decision of the European Commission to close the file and take no further action on a dispute between Microsoft and Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) involving a 1987 contract. The Commission's decision follows progress by Microsoft and SCO to resolve a number of commercial issues related to the contract, and upholds Microsoft's right to receive royalty payments from SCO if software code developed by Microsoft is used in SCO's UNIX products.
From what I can see, SCO did no work on UNIX. Leastwise the goddamn thing hadn't changed noticably from the first time I used it in the late '80's and the last time I used it in the late '90's. Ok, none is an exaggeration but they (And the other commercial UNIX vendors, I might add) did such an embarassing job with their "Professional Developers" and their millions of dollars in R&D funds that a bunch of amaateurs working on cast off hardware blew by them and advanced the technology to about where it should be in 5 short years.
And now those companies want to steal that work via a quirk in the legal process? It's not just SCO either. IBM's acting like Linux is their baby. Sun's acting like Mad Hatter was entirely their idea. I bet when it comes out it looks exactly like Gnome. Just like Ximan's "product." What? Evolution? X-Emacs VM's a better mail client. And let's not forget that Microsoft has also benefitted from the original open source process; I've seen a lot of BSD copyrights in things like their TCP/IP stack in days gone by, and they claimed (afterwards) to have "invented" the Internet. Them and Al Gore...
And it seems to me that if any problems are arising in our process, it's from that "professional" sector. Developers from IBM and SGI stripping copyright notices and inserting the code in the code base? What, exactly, the fuck is up with that? And the UNIX family tree is already twistier than the ones you find in Podunk, Alabama. There's been so much inbreeding now that any judge trying to sort out the copyright issues is likely to have a stroke from the complexity of it all.
So that's the Industry's dirty little secret. All that shiny technology that they like to show everyone... was either directly stolen from or was built on top the work of a bunch of "amateurs" who were largely working on home made computers they built in their garages. All those millions in R&D funds, all those "professional" programmers with their "degrees" and their "certifications"... can do great things... once the amateurs have done their work for them.
I guarantee you that if SCO wins their case and the judge grants them rights to all the code developed to date by the open source community, that code would not change noticably ever again. It'd still be Gnome, 2 decades from now, while Microsoft is busy working on their spiffy neuro-synaptic user interfaces that they stole from the MIT Wearable Computers lab.
Yeah, maybe "stole" was too strong a word too, but they take the work and say "look over there!" (more or less) while the copyright notices show. It's not like they draw attention to them, or thank the original authors. A lot of people in the community do it for the recognition, and a lot of companies try to minimize the amount of recognition they award because that would expose the Industry's dirty little secret.
That's how it seems to me.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Here is something very interesting for you SCO followers. It's interesting to note that SCO have annotated the unix family tree that I posted here.
You can see their L33t photoshop work here
Whats interesting is they claim they "own" Unics,
that UNIX TSS is the parent to OpenServer and that SCO Linux is older than original Linux!For a start i wouldnt say the levenez tree is anything near an official unix family tree, more of a best estimate in some cases. I wonder if they got permission from him to use it?
pass me the crack pipe!
At least Steve Jobs has a *product*!
:)
It's just rediculous. SCO stated in their latest SEC filing that if they don't receive any money from their lawsuits, they may end up laying people off because their revenue is down so much. Hmmphh. -snickers to himself-
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
I find it amusing (but not unexpected) that Darl uses such flawed logic and mudslinging to support his shakey arguments. He paints a picture that the OSS community as a whole has perpetrated the DDoS attacks on SCO's website. I'm surprised he didn't invoke the "T" word during his pleas for justice. He also makes a call for the OSS community to divert their attention to all the infringing code in Linux, yet SCO refuses to show the "million lines of infringing code" they claim is in Linux. Then he not so masterfully spins Bruce's words to mean something completely different thus creating the illusion [*rolls*...makes Will save to disbelieve] that Bruce actually admits to the veracity of their position.
How many points has SCO's stock gone up since that letter was posted and how many shares have SCO exec's divested themselves of?
After reading through much of what is out there I have some interesting comments to make. In some respects, SCO boy is correct. The Linux community should do some due diligence to ensure that code committed to the kernel is IP free to avoid these issues in the future.
The mountains of code which SCO speaks of as being theres however are somewhat ambiguous so outside of anything that SCO can prove as being genuinely 'SCO IP', they should be countersued by both Linux vendors and users as is appropriate and allowable under the law. I do not doubt that SCO has some evidence which supports their case - and no Linux supporter should blanketly dismiss what they have said because they haven't seen any evidence. Whether or not that evidence is as compelling as the SCO Group thinks - well that's up to the judges and justices of the judicial system.
Unfortunately Mr. SCO, some of the other things you've said are slanderous and border on libel. Unless you can prove that the person who performed a DDoS on you was an Open Source supporter that was a representative of the Open Source community - then I suggest you offer an apology to the Linux community for accusing them of something you cannot prove. In addition, even if it was someone who supports open source - your gripe is with them, not the remaining hundreds of thousands who took no action against you. You cannot argue from the specific to the general - to even suggest that is a high level of ignorance on your part.
Finally it is insulting the way you want people to respect a contract with SCO yet you want to shrug off the GPL license which you used to distribute Caldera for many years. As an owner of several copies of Caldera Linux I have clearly seen that you have distributed software under this license. If your legal counsel was stupid enough to let you attach a contractual agreement to software which you sold and distributed with your express consent - then you need to find a new legal group as you have been misled. You agreed to the terms of the GPL by attaching your software into a codebase which you clearly knew was GPL, which you sold knowing it was GPL, and which removed a great many of the rights (though not all) that you had to the IP you associated with UNIX, Linux, whatever. This is just like chess, this is a move that you cannot take back and you will have to live with it.
While I certainly understand that you want to protect your IP, the Linux community and Open Source communities have a right to protect theirs. Anything you've comitted to theirs is now open and that is the nature of the contractual agreement you accepted when you started putting Linux on the shelf. Now you have several choices - to work with the Linux community to get this resolved or take this to court at which time you may find yourself sued through your own admission of contract violation with respect to the GPL and shipping copies of Caldera.
All you have done is awaken a powerful enemy - and fill it with terrible resolve. If Microsoft fears the Linux community and Open Source and its several thousand times your size - perhaps you should reevaluate who your friends and enemies are as without a doubt even if Linux has to be totally engineered to not use anything resembling any of your IP - no self respecting user, administrator, or evaluator will consider using anything associated with your brand as you have threatened them in the past and acted in bad faith. Your brand is now dead - and 'geeks' are reknown for having long memories and vendettas.
Darl sez: The second development was an admission by Open Source leader Bruce Perens that UNIX System V code (owned by SCO) is, in fact, in Linux, and it shouldn't be there. Mr Perens stated that there is "an error in the Linux developer's process" which allowed Unix System V code that "didn't belong in Linux" to end up in the Linux kernel (source: ComputerWire, August 25, 2003). Mr Perens continued with a string of arguments to justify the "error in the Linux developer's process."
But Bruce actually said: In this case, there was an error in the Linux developer's process (at SGI), and we lucked out that it wasn't worse. It turns out that we have a legal right to use the code in question, but it doesn't belong in Linux and has been removed.
And at the top of Bruce's slide show analysis: You may re-publish this material. You may excerpt it, reformat it and translate it as necessary for your presentation. You may not edit it to deliberately misrepresent my opinion.
Get 'em Bruce!
the no
McBride's bigotry has got him here. In his little world Open Source developers are, as another poster said "pimply kids in their parents basement."
Get a clue McBride, many of us are the CTO's, chief architects, and development managers of these enterprise customers you think you speak for.
It wasn't until reading this letter that I realized that Open Source is, and always will be, more vulnerable to IP related legal abuse that closed source. Given the murky and dangerous status of IP law (at least in the US), this is a bad thing.
It should have been obvious that publically reviewable code can be proven to be infringing on a copyright or patent more easily than code which is kept secret.
On the other hand, Open Source is more secure from these lawsuits. It's very hard to extract money by suing OS creators. So most people won't bother unless they are trying to shutdown an OS project to protect their own products.
Will we see a continuous stream of these attacks on OS? I'm not worried about bogus claims, like those from SCO, so much as I'm worried about legally valid claims of infringement of software patents. Software patents may be bogus, but currently they are legally binding.
What if some judge decides to block distribution of RedHat until after all code infringing on MS's Start menu patents (putting it at bottom left, or whatever) has been removed?
plus-good, double-plus-good
Im a new user here and read thru the FAQ on moderation and this description is for a Troll
.. well then he probobly will get his way, BUT if he is speaking on his firm beleef that everything he have been getting from the lawyers is thru... Then he is just a sad charater that gets my pitty.
"Troll -- A Troll is similar to Flamebait, but slightly more refined. This is a prank comment intended to provoke indignant (or just confused) responses. A Troll might mix up vital facts or otherwise distort reality, to make other readers react with helpful "corrections." Trolling is the online equivalent of intentionally dialing wrong numbers just to waste other people's time."
And i just cant helping thinking that the SCO CEO is a Troll. Or is he just a Flamebait??
I tend to lean at he is a Troll. But on the other hand(appard from that you have other fingers) he accualy might beleave in what the was saying with the "Open Letter to Open Source Community" in that case i just feel sorry for him.
He makes alot of commets about the Open Source people and he is throwing accusations around like it was a fertilizer. It fertilized people to get angry and do stupid stuff so if that is his intention
There is a saying (and this applys to all laywers at least) "If you are not a part of the solution there is good money to be made in prolonging the problem"
Ashes of Empires and bodies of kings, these are a few of my favorite things.
I wish I had mod points left. Very insightful. Of course, this problem isn't open-source specific. It's just easier to *catch* the open source violators because you can see what they have. It probably happens in proprietary software all the time without anyone being the wiser, as no one (who would expose it) has access to the current and potentially copied source codes.
main(O){10<putchar((O--,102-((O&4)*16| (31&60>>5*(O&3)))))&&main(2+ O);}
LN2 is cool!
I'm utterly flabbergasted by this remark. Are you suggesting that Mormons typically or generally engage in sleazy lawsuits, pump-and-dump schemes, and stealing intellectual property? That they tend to fight against open source? That you don't like Mormons? Or what?
Have you ever actually met any?
How you got modded +3, Informative, is quite beyond me. Is it important for us to know his religion? Do we think perhaps that he's following standard Mormon doctrine, and that we ought to carefully watch them all for similar behavior?
Sure, the man's unscrupulous, dishonest, and somewhat less bright than average. Implying that he is so because of his religion, unless you can show a direct correlation between Mormon teachings and this sort of behavior, is pure bigotry.
Frankly, I smell blood for the first time in this epic. SCO's position is weakening and the Open Source community seems to be disproving all their arguments within hours of an SCO press release. The fact that McBride has awoken and thinks he needs to address the Open Source community for the first time says he's really getting beaten up.
Yet he still doesn't get it, and I can see more openings by which he'll be receiving the next few punches. His whole pose is based on a belief that Open Source must be basically another company that can be sucked into negotiations with lawyers and fat cats over a business table. This is most transparent right at the end of the letter:
A sustainable business model for software development can be built only on an intellectual property foundation... the SCO Group is open to ideas of working with the Open Source community to monetize software technology... It is easier for some in the Open Source community to fire off a "rant" than to sit across a negotiation table.
So what if Open Source contributors are fundamentally not interested in software business development, happy to volunteer time for free, and would prefer that communities, governments, schools, and charities have free and open tools to make themselves better?
Then, SCO's chief Darl McBride has demonstrated that he has no strategic plan whatsoever.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Be very sure you've read the source code for the GETVEC routine in BCPL before you make that claim. GETVEC is of course more sophisticated than malloc in that it can shuffle the heap, which malloc can't, so malloc is at best a copy of part of GETVEC; but a partial copy is still a copy.
Mind you I'm not saying Dennis Ritchie copied direct from GETVEC. He may have copied from someone else who copied from GETVEC, or both he and Martin Richards copied from something else I don't know about.
But just because the code in Linux looks like the code Dennis Ritchie wrote doesn't make it Dennis Ritchie's code, it only makes it another decendent of the code Dennis Ritchie was copying.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Dear Darl,
This is a open letter to the SCO Group and its CEO about your recent actions that are injurious to hundreds of individuals and companies.
The SCO Group has taken the position that Unix is a single operating system and that SCO Group is the sole owner of Unix. This is a false statement. The determination that an operating system is qualified to be called a Unix is made by The Open Group. The Open Group has certified many different operating systems as Unix. Truth: Unix is not the sole possession of the SCO Group and Unix is several different operating systems.
The SCO Group does own the Unix System V code. The Unix System V code has serious intellectual property issues that the SCO Group has overlooked:
1) Much of the code has been in the public domain, released by a license holder either through carelessness or choice. The SCO Group does not have any controlling right to that code.
2) Many universities' staff and student contributed to the early work done with Unix. Their IP has been protected by court decision. The SCO Group should recognize that publicly and not seek to rewrite history.
3) There are very details standards that apply to certain Unix functions, coding to these standards will create very similar code. Just because code within your Unix System V is similar to code in an open source does not mean it has been stolen.
4) Unix System V may have had the copyright marking from the origins of code removed by previous owners, either through error or on purpose. A diligent review of the actual source of the Unix System V source code should be done. The copyrights of contributors should be restored. The historical records are available to make the Unix System V accurate. The improper removal of copyright by the SCO Groups predecessors is the responsibility of the SCO Group, who needs to verify the origins of each portion of Unix System V source code. This is a sound copyright practice.
The suggestion to verify the source of code added to Linux is sound and is the practice of the Open Source leadership. The SCO Group has yet to provide a workable plan to identify any code that they clearly own that should be removed. The beauty of Open Source is the public access to the source. The source code of Linux is available to all. Any owner of code may that is infringing can have the code removed proving that they can prove ownership. Please show the SCO Group owned code in Linux that infringes on Unix System V, show clear ownership of that code, and it will be removed. The integrity of the Unix System V source code is called to task by those who have concerns about the Linux Kernel Personality. There have been allegations that actual Linux source code has been used to build this feature. The SCO Group should show leadership in IP matters by allowing a group of Industry leaders to examine the entire LKP source for stolen IP of Linux. The allegations are based on the SCO Groups involvement in developing Linux before, during and after the development of the LKP. SCO Group employees had complete access to Linux during the development process. The chance of IP contamination is huge. Only a thorough impartial investigation can give the SCO Group validation in this IP matter. The SCO Group must make the source available or be forever suspected of IP theft.
The definition of derivative works that the SCO Group has stated is very one sided and mis-leading. To state that a licensee gives up control of previously developed technology when it is associated with Unix System V is most likely not to stand up to legal scrutiny. Even the independently developed functions that are closely related to the core functionality of Unix System V, but remain clearly separate from the original source code are not derivative works if they do not contain Unix System V source code. It is improper to claim ownership of others IP without sound legal grounds. That the SCO Group suggests that the IP of other companies is part of the Unix System V, when the product was se
funny, Darl's letter sort of reminds me of this letter from Bill Gates:
AN OPEN LETTER TO HOBBYISTS
By William Henry Gates III
February 3, 1976
An Open Letter to Hobbyists
To me, the most critical thing in the hobby market right now is the lack of good software courses, books and software itself. Without good software and an owner who understands
programming, a hobby computer is wasted. Will quality software be written for the hobby market?
Almost a year ago, Paul Allen and myself, expecting the hobby market to expand, hired Monte Davidoff and developed Altair BASIC. Though the initial work took only two
months, the three of us have spent most of the last year documenting, improving and adding features to BASIC. Now we have 4K, 8K, EXTENDED, ROM and DISK BASIC.
The value of the computer time we have used exceeds $40,000.
The feedback we have gotten from the hundreds of people who say they are using BASIC has all been positive. Two surprising things are apparent, however, 1) Most of these
"users" never bought BASIC (less than 10% of all Altair owners have bought BASIC), and 2) The amount of royalties we have received from sales to hobbyists makes the time
spent on Altair BASIC worth less than $2 an hour.
Why is this? As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share. Who cares if the people
who worked on it get paid?
Is this fair? One thing you don't do by stealing software is get back at MITS for some problem you may have had. MITS doesn't make money selling software. The royalty paid to
us, the manual, the tape and the overhead make it a break-even operation. One thing you do do is prevent good software from being written. Who can afford to do professional
work for nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free? The fact is, no one besides us has
invested a lot of money in hobby software. We have written 6800 BASIC, and are writing 8080 APL and 6800 APL, but there is very little incentive to make this software
available to hobbyists. Most directly, the thing you do is theft.
What about the guys who re-sell Altair BASIC, aren't they making money on hobby software? Yes, but those who have been reported to us may lose in the end. They are the
ones who give hobbyists a bad name, and should be kicked out of any club meeting they show up at.
I would appreciate letters from any one who wants to pay up, or has a suggestion or comment. Just write to me at 1180 Alvarado SE, #114, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87108.
Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten programmers and deluge the hobby market with good software. Bill Gates General Partner, Micro-Soft
I'm sorry but there is a flaw in this rebuttal.
:P
:P
This is very difficult to respond to, because your analysis of the issues and of the reasons for the Open Source community's anger is, in the words of the great physicist Wolfgang Pauli, "so bad it's not even wrong."
But of course we all know Wolfgang Pauli actually said:
"This isn't right. This isn't even wrong." --Wolfgang Pauli
But other than that it seems to be ok
ps. I actually got this quote after logging in on a linux 2.6test3 machine which greets with a random fortune, just after I read the article. It's a sign... I know it