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.

[MuParadigm]

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.

Response to Paragraph 1 of your "Open Letter":

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."

For instance, your own lawsuit against IBM does not allege that "SCO's proprietary Unix code has been illegally copied into L

Re:Childish screening procedures.

[FileNotFound]

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...

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."

SCO's rebuttal

[Anonymous Coward]

Linus to SCO: "Please Grow Up"

SCO to Linus: "My OS can beat up your OS. Nyah nyah nyah!"

oh this is funny

[phunhippy]

All of our source code is out in the open, and we welcome you point to any particular piece you might disagree with.

Until then, please accept our gratitude for your submission

Haha.. thanks LINUS!! now i got dr. pepper all over my purty flat screen!!!!

If we had openings, we wouldn't hire you

[mpsmps]

chrisd notes that his company is making SCO employees unhireable.

I'd complain about how immature the policy is except that if you read the page, you see that they are not hiring, so SCO employees are ineligible for all zero of the openings they have available.

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.

Darl to Linux

[Mr. Darl McBride]

Darl here.

Alright, Linus. The gloves are off.

We'll now show the most damning evidence yet. There we have it, we've presented the basis for not hundreds, not thousands, not tens of thousands, but hundreds of thousands of derivative code in the Linux kernel.

Let's see you dig yourself out of this one, wunderkind.

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?

Today's top story

[Otter]

...but we wait with bated breath for when you will actually care to inform us about what you are blathering about.

The real shocker here, of course, is that a Linux advocate spelled "bated breath" correctly for the first time in recorded history.

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!

Re:I'd rather die hungry and die honest

[FileNotFound]

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..

Re:Linus Flame

[Mr Coffee Cup]

Makes me think of this 'classic flame' I acquired years ago (at least 8), and occasionally consult.. don't remember exactly where I ran across it, but it still ranks as about the funniest flame I've ever seen.

Because, among the people who read this newsgroup, you are granted the same respect as would be granted, say, your average root fungus. Not only are your language skills highly suspect, not only do you refuse to answer the most basic of questions about your qualifications and/or background, not only are you posting from AOL, you are annoying, your information is often wrong or unsubstantiated, and you have this air of blithe idiocy that makes people with more than eight operating neurons want to put you in a small envelope and mail you back and forth between people in Washington, D.C. until the Post Office finally sticks you in some pile of undelivered mail, where you would then remain until the weight of accumulating mail compresses you into a small lump of peat, at which point you would be ground into mulch and spread over someone's garden, thus gaining in death what you failed to obtain in life; a useful purpose on this planet.

Have a nice day. :)

Now thats a long copyright

[Garion911]

Bottom of chrisd's link:

(C) Copyright 2002-2403 Damage Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Damage Hiring Policy is good thinking

[cyberassasin]

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

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".

Re:My letter to Damage Studios

[Cid Highwind]

Ah yes, the dreaded "one slashdot member boycott". That's the tactic that brought Microsoft, the RIAA and the MPAA to their knees, ended the SCO lawsuit and the war in Iraq, made Blizzard stop abusing the DMCA, freed Dmitry, and got Half-Life 2 ported to linux! Fear the wrath of the slashdot! I think I can hear Damage Studios trembling in terror already.