Linus to SCO: 'Please Grow Up'

brakk writes "From this article at Infoworld, Linus responds to SCO's open letter in a manner reminiscent of patting a child on the head." chrisd notes that his company is making SCO employees unhireable.

Comments

Childish screening procedures.

[grub]

Another relatively uninteresting open letter, however this part of the submission caught my eye:

chrisd notes that his company is making SCO employees unhireable.
[from that link]:
Any resumes which include the Santa Cruz Operation after May of 2003 will be immediately deleted as well.

That is truly childish. The real assholes at SCO are the suits and money-grubbing lawyers responsible for this charade. A code monkey in the trenches who needs a job to pay the bills isn't necessarily an enemy of open source.

Guilt by association is a slippery slope, remember Joe McCarthy?

Re:Childish screening procedures.

[MojoMonkey]

Hard to say, just remember that it's a tough economy right now, and getting a paycheck twice a month is hard to turn away from. Sometime getting food in your kids mouth takes priority over making a statement. They should not be punished for this.

Re:Childish screening procedures.

[Anonymous Coward]

Stay: Have a reliable (for now anyway) paycheck.
Leave: No paycheck. No sure new job. And since not fired, no unemployment benefits to speak of.

Now, if a person had a job to change to, then it'd be different. Blocking that door doesn't help the codemonky, it helps SCO.

Re:Childish screening procedures.

[cindik]

Indeed. Sarah works at SCO. Recent moves spur her to seek other employment. She's unhireable. Why? Because she didn't immeditately quit and beg for quarters on the street until she got a new job? What an insane overreaction.

Re:Childish screening procedures.

[swb]

I don't know about you, but quitting your job in a bad overall economy and a truly horseshit IT economy can seriously endanger the well-being and stability of one's home and family.

As much as I think SCO is a bad company and what they're doing is reprehensible, do you really think that someone should risk their home and family over it?

I might be inclined to do it if I was literally fighting for my community against some real threat (ie, armed invasion or military coup d'etat), but over the SCO/Linux debacle?

I think you have to have a serious lack of perspective if you think that committing economic suicide over SCO is the right thing to do.

Re:Childish screening procedures.

[Merk]

So when do you draw the line? What if your company was making dangerous chemicals and not disposing of them properly? What if they were making chemical weapons? What if they were selling chemical weapons to terrorists?

Ethics that only come into play when it's convenient to use them aren't really ethics.

chrisd's company evidently has a higher standard of ethics for its employees than you have for yourself. Most of the world would probably side with you on this one too, but if they want to miss out on potentially great talent because of this, that's the sacrifice they're making.

Re:Childish screening procedures.

[Anonymous Coward]

There comes a point when the example is less important than providing basics (roof, clothing, food) and a stable, loving environment.

I'd rather have to tell my kid someday that I had to sell out so that he wouldn't have to than tell him "sorry that you had to go to bed screaming because you were hungry when you were two, but I had a point to prove."

Hiring Policy

[MSTCrow5429]

"chrisd notes that his company is making SCO employees unhireable."

That's capricious and sick. It is not the rank and file who is responsible, it is the brass. To punish people who have done nothing wrong, guilt by association, is cruel and unfair. This would be like throwing an Enron middle-level mananger in prison simply because he/she worked for Enron. SCO isn't Nazi Germany, people!

Unhireable Ex-SCO people

[NormalVisual]

I suspect that the reason that Damage is refusing to hire ex-SCO employees is to prevent any possible legal action on SCO's part - I would not put it past SCO to sue a new employer for misappropriation of trade secrets or any number of other things, given their track record. I really don't think it's a political statement at all.

Maybe

[Andy Dodd]

Mr. Codemonkey has been submitting resumes without success?

If they're applying for a job at a Linux company, shouldn't it be painfully fucking obvious that they're TRYING TO JUMP SHIP?

Why benefit SCO by making it *HARDER* for their employees to jump ship?

Re:*sigh*

[Draxinusom]

Uh yeah, God forbid anyone should actually have an opinion on the work that they're doing. Hey Einstein, how about you just shut up and keep your opinions on the uses of atomic technology to yourself? Edward Teller, stop spouting off on your diatribes! Fire the FSF lawyers! Disband the EFF!

when someone mentions Stallman..., do you immediately think of code they've written, or an image of them jumping up and down on a soapbox?

When I think of Stallman I think of Emacs, GCC, and the FSF. Maybe you need to learn some history.

There is a place for apolitical techies like Linus and another place for visionaries and advocates like Stallman and Perens. This may be news to you, but code doesn't just float in the void; without the right legal and social environment OSS doesn't exist. It's fine for Linus to ignore SCO -- that's not his job to deal with it -- but if everyone ignored it we'd all be up shit creek when SCO walked out of some courtroom with legal rights to our code.

For a non-native English speaker:

[Morglum]

For a non-native English speaker, Linus needs to be given credit for the subtle zinger at the end: "Until then, please accept our gratitude for your submission,". Nice double meaning on that last word there!

Linus gets what ESR and Bruce don't

[Rogerborg]

That SCO is so full of bullshit that by repeating and denying any particular version of their fantasy-land claims, we only give credence to them. This is the letter than ESM and Bruce should have written. Short, to the point, and utterly dismissive.

But it could be even better. I hope that from now on, if open/free advocates decide to bite Darl's trolling, that they restrain themselves to just saying "Identify the infringing source," and not one word more. Unless it's "fuckwad".