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More on SCO Code Snippets
anoopsinha writes "A story in linuxworld reports that SCO itself has no idea what the history of a particular snippet of code might be - even a high profile snippet like the one SCO highlighted at SCO Forum. Having no idea if its claims have merit has not stopped SCO so far, so we can expect more from SCO along the lines of big claims with no merit."
It's clear that SCO has filed its suit against IBM with absolutely no chance of winning (much like the fox news vs al franken "fair and balanced" suit). Not only has SCO filed a frivilous suit (a civil cause of action to do so) but has made baseless threats causing undue emotional distress to many users of Linux. Once SCO's suit is dismissed, look for some really nice lawsuits right back at 'em from many different parties. Should make for good popcorn munching entertainment. If it were me, I would sue Darly McB individually, in his personal capacity, as well as SCO.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
Hmm... I wonder if a modification of BLAST would work. It looks for DNA (or protein) sequence homology of a given sample vs. the genome of an organism or many organisms.
It would be interesting to do something like take all the whitespace out from the source tree and tar all the files together and use it as a "genome" to BLAST snippits of (likewise "compressed") code snippits.
Normal (DNA) BLAST results return with a similarity ratio and go on to show where they are/aren't homologous. I'm not sure how it would deal with expanding the relatively small nucleotide "alphabet" to that of source code.
Hmmm..
-- I'd say your post was about 3 monkeys, 18 minutes.
I have been watching the SCO stock price for the last couple of months. When the SCO forum code was debunked, I looked expecting to see the stock price fall off a cliff. That's how it works isn't it? company suffers major bad news, stock price falls.
But no. The stock price went up, up and away, on blocks of very small shares.
It's clearly being heavily manipulated. But why? The best theory I've seen is that amateur investors are encouraged to sell this stock short, on the assumption that it's going to zero one way or another. Good assumption, but naive investment strategy. What happens then is that the price is manipulated way up. Eventually the short sellers are forced to buy at the higher market price to stop their losses. Who do they buy from? Why, the insiders and stock manipulators, who then laugh all the way to the bank.
Go and have a look on the Yahoo finance forums. The scam is so obvious, it's unbelievable that the mainstream media aren't picking up on it.
The Q&A with McBride in Computer world contains one of the first clear (re)statements of SCO's (current) intent. In the interview, McBride's tone towards Linux is carefully conciliatory, conveying an attitude of "We accept that Linux will be around for a while, so let's find a way to work things out."
The 'problem' with Linux that needs to be resolved, he says, is the GPL. Or, as McBride puts it:
"If we're going into a new business environment around Linux, well, let's ask the question right upfront: Does the free business model work? Everything we've looked at, whether it's free Internet, free telecom, free music, all of these things tend to, for one reason or another, not work over an extended period of time. Clearly, the free model just about killed our company, and I would argue that it's going to kill a lot of other software companies if the GPL [General Public License] is able to gain a foothold and run rampant throughout the industry."
This statement first trots out the old "free software means free as in beer" misinformation and then proceeds with the explicit mud slinging about how the GPL will "kill" alot of companies if it is permitted to "gain a foothold" and "run rampant." Yikes! Scary stuff, if it were true. This bit of FUD is well formulated to push the fear buttons of your friendly neighborhood PHB.
And it raises many more questions. Like:
(1) Will the mainstream media eventually bite this SCO spin and spread the slander against the GPL?
(2) Will a significant portion of the open source community one day buy into this characterization of the problem, and allow the thin edge of the wedge that McBride has presented to fracture the community?
(3) Is Microsoft behind this FUD campaign against the GPL, which, at minimum, they must find exceptionally agreeable?
(4) Even if Microsoft and SCO aren't coordinating their attacks against the GPL and the open source community, do the similarities in their attacks indicate a fundamental hostility that we can expect capitalists to hold against the free software model?