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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.
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They must really believe this. Soon we'll hear zillion infinities lines plus their dads being bigger than our dads. It's *spelled* S C O, but it's pronouned "ass hats". Lawyers have pulses? This Comment was generated with the Comment-O-Matic for SCO Stories.
How about Mr/Ms codemonkey couldn't afford being unemployed ?
It hasn't been easy getting new jobs over the past few months, so I understand people holding on to whatever jobs they've got.
Now with the economy on it's rise it might be a different story.
I find it wrong to judge people in this manner, the actual coders at SCO probably have NOTHING to do with the "crusade" against Linux.
What they didn't do was use it to make good products or a functional business. "Squander" implies they ever intended to try to do either of these.
By the way, am I the only one who always thinks about Resident Evil's Umbrella Corporation every time he hears the name Canopy?
Well, now that there's a new item for Open Letters, here's the extensively revised version of the one I posted a couple days ago. You can also see it on my journal page.
A Linux User's Open Response to Darl McBride's Open Letter to the Open Source Community
By John Gabriel, NYC, 9/11/03
"What comes of litigation? Poverty and degradation to any community that will encourage it. Will it build cities, open farms, build railroads, erect telegraph lines and improve a country? It will not; but it will bring any community to ruin." -- Brigham Young, JD 11:259.
"Contracts are what you use against those with whom you have relationships." -- Darl McBride
Dear Mr. McBride,
First, let me introduce myself. My name is John Gabriel. I have been working in the technical field for 15 years, as a Network Administrator, Applications Manager, Network Manager, Sr. Networking Engineer, and now, Freelance Consultant. And, yes, I'm an MCSE.
My first experiences with Unix occurred in the late 1970's, during school field trips to local colleges. I also did Unix technical support for students while taking a class in Pascal in the late 1980's. My first experience with Linux dates to 1994, when I downloaded whatever Linux kernel was available at that time.
While I did install it successfully, on a Compaq Deskpro 386/25, I quickly abandoned it as the Deskpro didn't have enough memory to support the X Windows System. Several years later, in 1998, I became a Caldera customer, with a purchase of Caldera OpenLinux Base ver. 1.22, with Linux kernel 2.0.33. I ran into similar problems once more.
About a year ago, I again became interested in Linux, and now run Linux on my home workstation in a dual-boot configuration with Windows XP.
About 4-5 months ago, I began following the SCO v. IBM story. I was at first inclined to be open-minded towards SCO's claims. It wouldn't be the first time a small company has had its copyrights violated by a larger vendor, though the violator is usually, in my experience, Microsoft, as exemplified by Caldera's history with DR-DOS.
However, the more I researched the story and SCO's claims, the more convinced I became that SCO's claims were, well, baseless. Being the type that usually likes to "root for the underdog", I was surprised by my conclusions.
Anyway, that's enough introduction. What follows is an Open Response to your Open Letter to the Open Source Community. I grant everyone, including you, permission to re-publish it, or quote from it, without restriction, except that my comments be properly attributed to myself. Consider it under a "BSD-style" license if you like.
Open Letter to the Open Source Community
By Darl McBride, CEO, The SCO Group
1) The most controversial issue in the information technology industry today is the ongoing battle over software copyrights and intellectual property. This battle is being fought largely between vendors who create and sell proprietary software, and the Open Source community. My company, the SCO Group, became a focus of this controversy when we filed a lawsuit against IBM alleging that SCO's proprietary Unix code has been illegally copied into the free Linux operating system. In doing this we angered some in the Open Source community by pointing out obvious intellectual property problems that exist in the current Linux software development model.
I believe this could be considered discrimination, and companies are required to keep all resumes they receive on file.
Companies are only required to keep resumes on file that meet their submission guidelines. If you clearly state, "This is the only way you can send a resume" than you only need to store those that come in that way.
Any EOE experts to give some clarification?
I'm not an expert, but I pretend on Slashdot. This is just speculation, so treat it as such.
From Damage Studio's Point of View they are filtering their applicants based upon previous documented work ethics. You can filter applicants based on past history, without it being discrimination. For example, would the SEC hire someone from the financial department at Enron? Probably not, as they have a history of supporting false claims.
Same thing. SCO employees are supporting false claims, as well as bogus lawsuits. This is something Damage doesn't want to get involved with, so they are opting to not hire people who have worked for a company who is very well known for doing that.
Discrimination usually means things you can't help, too. Nobody is forcing anybody to work at SCO.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
I am fairly sure that this is legal. Past employment record is something that "shows your ability to perform the job".
If you were an employee of a company that had conflicting values then it's reasonable to reject you based on that fact. It is already common for companies to not hire employees from their competitors fearling IP leaks and the lawsuits that follow.
Under that logic it is a perfectly valid concern that a SCO employee might "inevitably" bring some SCO IP into the company and result in SCO filing a lawsuit.
Does that make it ok to not hire someone just because they worked for SCO? I think it's moraly wrong, baseless and absolutley retarded. But I doubt that it's illegal. But of course IMNAL...
In Soviet Russia, the television watches YOU!
I find it interesting that the mainstream news outlets seem to pick and choose what stories to run.
for example, yahoo news on SCOX
in the latest there is the comment " Leading Linux experts or advocates were not immediately available for comment."
w-w-wha-WHAT?? The open source commuinity has been doing nothing *but* commenting- take the latest extremely well written open leter from Bruce Perens, for example.
Meanwhile SCOX stock price continues to inexplicably rise.. All the harder to fall.
It takes a special kind of genius to be able to tell someone to go to hell in such a way as they end up thinking you wished them a pleasant journey. Linus has done well to keep his cool while all this has been going down. I wonder what pills he's been taking?
As for Damage Studios' policy, I think it is mostly just for show. But they have got every right to refuse ex-SCO employees, and I don't think there is anything wrong with that. There are things I, personally, would far rather be on the dole than do. As long as you have a head on your shoulders, a hand on each arm {and, absit omen you should ever have to use it, a hole in your arse}, there is no reason why you should be going short.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
More to the point, the company isn't even hiring to begin with. Restated, the page amounts to:
"We're going to throw away all resumes, but especially those from SCO."
BTW, note that submitter chrisd is listed on the exec team of damagestudios, along with other former VA/Andover/Sourceforge folks. Basically this is a just a tacky PR ploy, and I guess I fell for it. Looks like they're trying to get some free hits on their site more than anything else. They should just pay for their ads like everybody else.
Welcome to the US.
In half the places I applied for a job, if the company was very concerned about thier IP and considred itself in a highly competitive enviroment not only did I have to sign an NDA just to enter the building but I also had to fill out an extensive form detailing where I worked, what I did and if the company was a competitor. I also had to sign a paper saying that none of my family members work for any company that they consider a competitor. Better yet, having worked for eBay I had to sign a paper saying that I will not work for any retalier of used goods over the internet for the next 3 years...
In Soviet Russia, the television watches YOU!
Ughu...
Yes and can you look at yourself in the mirror and be SURE that you "did the right thing" when you have responsibilities to your family?
Oh sure 'I' don't mind a bit of pain to make my stand, but am I willing to hurt other to make my stand? I think not.
You have NO idea how happy I am to be working. I know people who are graduating IST/CS right now and have NOTHING but 50k-70k in loans. I can tell you right now that even the most moral of them will BEG for a job at SCO, right wrong be damned. You wouldn't be so sure about "doing the right thing" when your car got repoed and you filed for bancrupcy..
In Soviet Russia, the television watches YOU!
If you can't look at yourself in the mirror and say "i did the right thing" you have to live with guilt. This hurts more than hunger. Never compromise. You slowly kill yourself and a part of you dies with every inch you give.
Admirable though this sentiment is, I can't help but wonder if it is being opined by someone who has never felt real hunger.
Me? Given the choice between dying honest and living in guilt, I'd choose to live in guilt. There are very, very few things in this world worth dying for.
Wow, that must really concern management at SCO, that they don't have to wory about employees leaving and going somewhere else because no one will hire them. Even is this were true, it actually would be great news for top management. Between that and Linus's response being a lame "grow up" while they watch company stock go through the roof and some chumps actually paying them and they must really be having a good day today.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I believe this practice may be illegal.
Employees of SCO are not a protected class under any iteration of federal or state civil rights legislation of which I am aware. Discrimination in hiring is not illegal. In fact, it is encouraged. Generally, you want to discriminate against the stupid, lazy, and dishonest. Discriminating against members of protected classes while hiring is illegal, however.
Typically impermissible grounds for making hiring decisions include:
-sex
-race
-religion
-age
Sexual orientation is a close fifth behind those four biggies. Previous status as an employee of a certain organization may not be impermissible, unless it is seen as a covert method of excluding members of a particular group.
For instance, stating that you will not hire someone who is a member of the NAACP would probably be impermissible because it smells like subterfuge for keeping out blacks, even though you need not be black to be in the NAACP. Stating that you won't hire members of the NRA, or less policitally, members of Mensa, would probably be ok, although it might seem bizarre.
In this case, stating that you won't hire SCO employees is probably quite defensible, and perhaps the company in question thinks that it will make them distinguishable from other companies in the market for labor (more "street cred" with GNU/Linux geeks, I guess).
IMHO, most GNU/Linux geeks recognize that the problem isn't the guys in the cubes -- it's the guys at the top, so not much street cred is to be had here, in all likelihood. It just looks sort of juvenile. Besides, don't we want to encourage any and all talent to leave SCO?
In any case, it got their "help wanted" site some free pub, which was probably the idea in the first place.
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
The policy of not hiring SCO employees is actually somewhat inteligent, and I would be surprised if other companies did not follow suit....
Bear with me for a moment....
By hiring a SCO employee, and knowing SCO's current mindset (sue for money), I would not be surprised if you got a knock on the door six months down the road from SCO counsel asking for a code audit, thinking that the former employee must have given your company some IP knowledge due to past experience at SCO....
So by not hiring an ex-SCOer, you would be keeping yourself from being exposed to such risks.... not at all unfair.... and good thinking
Who is the master of foxhounds, and who says the hunt has begun? -Pink Floyd
> Who would WANT to work for a company where the person who is interviewing you is
> mainly concerned with nothing to do with your job?
Your totally missing the point.
If they are hiring a programmer, working for SCO means you _can't_ do your job.
You can no longer program for any company in the US (Atleast until SCO is removed from the face of the planet)
If any company hired a SCO worker, _especially_ an 'average coder', that worker will taint your code the instant he speaks to any of your corders about anything what so ever related to programming, and SCO can(Will) sue for it.
The SCO execs fucked their workers over big time by doing this. No one else.
SCO has all but said outright "If you use any code that may be ours, we will sue."
I say it would be a firable offence to the interviewer if he/she knowingly and willingly hired someone from a company that stated they plan to sue anyone that uses that workers code or knowledge.
Its fucked up of SCO to do this to all of their workers, but atleast point the blame where it belongs... Not at the companys that simply dont want garenteed lawsuits pressed aginst them, but at SCO for ruining all of their workers futures by doing this.
You're retarded. Do you even have a job?
I'm not the original poster, but I'm kind of amused, because you've pretty much described me, except that the other "professional field" I jumped into for five years (three, so far) is stay-at-home motherhood. That cut the household income in half.
I expect to jump back in at the point where I left off, partly because I'm spending these five years working on free/open source projects and other stuff like that (okay, and reading Slashdot, too... I keep up on the industry).
If you look at it right, it's really not that much different from quitting an unethical company, other than that I'm *guaranteed* to be staying out of the IT field, where the hypothetical ex-SCO employee isn't.
Slashdot's token middle-aged housewife
Not that I want to defend lawyers, but American (US) lawyers are indeed a separate species from at least German ones. That might have something to do with different ecosystems. Over here, Lawers are reasonably regulated. Among other things, the following rules apply:
- No advertising
- Minimum fees are fixed, depending on the value of the lawsuit (and that will be set by the judge). The lawyer typically gets paid the same for winning and for loosing. He can't work for just a percentage of the damages awarded.
- Looser pays the winners reasonable legal fees.
All in all, it makes for a lot less ligitious society. It also means that damages are reasonable to low (as opposed to much to high to insane in the US).Stephan
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.
That's why they said "any resumes which include the SCO Group after September of 2003 will be immediately deleted" - they're specifically giving SCO employees until the end of the month to quit if they want to be eligible for employment at Damage Studios. That seems fair to me - anyone who is still working at SCO in a month is clearly part of the problem. They've known about SCO's actions for nine months - if they haven't been looking for a new job and preparing to quit, then clearly their ethics do not agree with mine and I don't want to work with them.