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Groklaw Sends A Dear Darl Letter
Ralph Yarro writes "The Inquirer is carrying the text of an open letter sent to Darl McBride from members of the open source community at Groklaw. This is a lengthy and detailed response to the open letter Darl sent a while back."
Everyone who is concerned about this issue should read this letter, they're really giving the GPL some shark's teeth.
On a more serious note, maybe this is what it takes to get some real "street cred" for Free SW/Open Source among Corporate Amerika. It's just a bummer for me that things have to go *that* far in the 1st place.
C|N>K
Your company's website does almost nothing to explain what it is your company does. Did you use some sort of automatic business phrase generation program to create it?
"A dynamic operating company"
What the hell does that mean?
I like how slashdot will post any and all stories that are anti-SCO, but never post any stories that might actually show SCO to be right.
They posted the open letter from Darl McBride. If his own words, complete and in context, are anti-SCO or don't show SCO to be right then I doubt there's much more Slashdot can do.
The real Ralph Yarro posts as Anonymous Coward. Anyone else is an impostor.
really a very good one. My respect to the people at Groklaw for writing such a well written, well researched letter to our dear friend Mr. McBride. I, for one, welcome our newfound brotherhood and companionship, even though it is at the expense of our friends at SCO.
Veni, Vidi, Velcro!
In the last sections about "Who Makes Up the Open Source Community Today?", I feel ILM (Industrial Lights+Magic) should be included for their work on www.openexr.org, which is an open-source High Dynamic Range image file format which is useful for CG in films. Knowing how expensive CG work is in film-making, such a contribution at this low-level is indeed commendable.
www.rexguo.com - Technologist + Designer
this gets in Computer World, eWeek, or even mabe a link to this from the SCOX page on finance.yahoo.
$1 says we don't see this attributed anywhere in the "major IT media".
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
My real curiosity is how people's attitudes or feelings would change (or not change) if it turns out SCO is right (however unlikely that is).
Why should anyone's attitude toward SCO change? It has been pointed out repeatedly that if IBM did a no-no, then SCO will get damages (be paid for their IP, ha ha), and the offending code would be removed from the kernel because it violates the GPL (not because we would have to).
SCO has no right to claim ownership of Linux in any case, nor to charge Linux users license fees. What they are doing is thinly veiled extortion. Why on earth would I change my opinion of them?
Even if they were right, I would still feel contempt for the way that they have mannered themselves. If they are right, and they have known for a year that Linux had offending code, they still did nothing to mitigate the damages done to their company. I feel the company is obviously damaged anyways; anyone who read their 10Q knows it to be true. If there were offending code in Linux, it is being made a scapegoat for the failing business that is SCO.
Is SCO right? Only time will tell. When they begin to attempt the extortion of Linux users and companies next month, the backlash will start a series of actions that will have some finality to this matter. And from that point forward, Linux will either repair, remove, and move on, or Linux users of the world will laugh SCO right out of the stock market and the IT world.
For me, I don't care which happens as long as this is over. Neither outcome will affect me personally. Worst case scenario, my kernel is illegal and I fix it myself or download a patched kernel. Could I continue using a bad kernel without getting caught?
Probably. But I won't. I, like most other Linux users, take pride in OSS.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Read about Jonathan Cohen and then read MSN's objective financial quotations from him!
fair and objective media financial advice?
My attitudes, opinions, and feelings are a part of me. They can be changed, but only under direction of my morals. Nothing can ever change my attitude, opinion, or feeling otherwise.
I feel SCO, Microsoft, government, etc. are representative of institution gone wrong. It is my opinion that such entities are a drain on humanity, and have no good will toward humankind, and exist only to increase their own power over others.
My attitude is they can all go die, and the world may be a better place.
If they want me to change my opinions, attitudes or feelings, they would have to completely change. No more hoarding of billions of dollars for a select few, but truly give back to humanity, stop invasions of not only other countries, but the rights of all humans, and put people, all people, as priority over profit, power, and promotion.
This is the greatest thing about the Open source/Free Software movement. I hear people rant about how, instead of 115 text editors available to open source, they'd rather see one good groupware suite. Well, the beauty of Open Source is, there were at least 115 people/groups who thought, gee, I see where the things I want from a text editor are lacking, so I think I'll build my own. Accordingly, people who say, gee I really need a groupware suite, have the choice of sitting down and either writing one of their own, or paying someone else to build it.
I can see, just by looking at this, that people involved with open source don't, at this time, see the need for a good groupware suite, as no one has built one yet. When the need gets big enough, someone or some group will build it. Look at Sun and IBM. They must see a need for it, as they are currently working on one (separately.)
I guarantee an Open Source groupware suite will become better much quicker than a proprietary one, as anyone, anywhere can contribute to it.
If SCO turns out to have a valid claim, fine. Linux will remove the code and I will still feel complete naked hatred toward SCO, and ALL institutions such as they who see humanity as a pool of consumers to be culled for money or power, as opposed to a customer base who likes their products.
For those who describe their systems as 'boxen', do you order multiple 'boxen' of corn flakes also?
Wouldn't it have been better to release this letter on a Monday morning for maximum news exposure? Who is going to read it on a Saturday? By the time the work week comes around, it could be easily missed.
W
On that note-- it would be cool to set up a fund to get Linux position statements like this in the NYT or other news publications. Does anyone know about a Linux Publicity Fund or something similar?
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
The stock has a very low float (number of shares publically available) and some fund holding large blocks.
If you watch the trades during trading hours you can see lots of strange behavior and what appears to be obvious trading designed to keep the stock above certain amounts.
It is especially obvious during the last hour of the day when then stock rises no matter how it had been trading the rest of the day.
Here is an example from Friday
I've been following the stock price for SCOX since the start of this stupid debacle.
It's up on very small volume, little trades of 100 shares here, 100 shares there. Any time that someone sells a block larger than 5k other than in after-hours trading, the price takes a $0.25-1.00 nosedive pretty much on the spot.
It's up on gross speculation and market maker playing around with the valuation- it's nothing more than a bubble like Enron or WorldCom, and it's going to implode just like them soon enough.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Suppose the SCO issue were true (Once upon a time, in a land far, far away...)....
The Linux kernel comes to me as source code. So suppose I vi in there and remove the bad code. Then I compile and run. SCO can look anytime they like and see that I'm running Linux with a 2.4 kernel but they can pucker up and kiss my ass.
Right?
Or am I missing something here? It just seems to me that even if the courts did find some truth to their story there is still an easy way around them.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
1. Repost your comment.
2. ???
3. Karma!
So, given that hypothetical, what would people here think? Would you forgive SCO?
Absolutely not! If, indeed any SCO code is in the kernel, all they would have had to do (as has been made very clear to them) is point out the offending lines with reasonable evidence, and they'd have been long outta there by now with all due apologies.
So even if there is actual SCO code improperly in the kernel, that doesn't change the fact that they are actively seeking to steal the work of many thousands all over the world in order to prop up their failing business (since their own lackluster products can't manage it).
Given the 'examples' thay have held up so far, I would have to guess that even SCO isn't convinced. They're desperatly clutching at straws here.
So, to summarize, the former producers of the world's least popular Linux distro and the least popular Unix implementation now claim that none of it could exist without their 'advanced technology'.
I suppose the summary is that rather than thinking SCO is composed of liars, cheats, and thieves, I'd revise my opinion to SCO is composed of thieves, cheats, and fools.
Thanks for the ROTFLOL thing.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Even at $19, SCOX is trading at a market cap of only $250 million. Even if we assume that the only thing of value is the company's possible billion dollar bonanza from IBM, this would hint that the market is pricing in only a 25% possibility of winning.
The thing is, its not a matter of whose really right or wrong here, because its entirely possible the court system could 'get it wrong'. Even if we all agree that SCO is 100% in the wrong here and has no possible evidence at all, I wouldn't want to bet that a jury would find the same way.
and explains things rather well, and should be required reading for any company concerned about Linux or the GPL.
However, since SCO is essentially an extortion racket, it's irrelevant to them.
This is like writing John Giotti a letter saying that crime doesn't pay. Or writing Saddam Hussein a letter saying a country runs better under a democracy (does it? Looking around, I'm beginning to wonder...)
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Given that hypothetical, I would not forgive SCO. As you say, I would concede SCO's point, and think that SCO defended their rights in a very poor manner.
Specifically, there's legal precedent about what to do if you find someone distributing your copyrighted work without permission. You send a cease & desist, with specific notice about what the infringing work is. See the DMCA sections on takedown notices (those don't rely apply, but they are related). See A&M versus Napster, where the Ninth Circuit held that A&M had to provide specific notice to Napster of infringing works, which A&M duly provided.
SCO hasn't done that. SCO actively refuses to do that.
SCO can change that any time they want, by sending a proper cease & desist to people who distribute code that SCO claims is theirs. But they won't do that. In fact, Darl McBride stated, in one of the conference calls, that SCO would not inform Red Hat of the specific infringing code "because then Red Hat would just take it out".
A great letter. However, if these messages are to percolate widely throughout the media, the general public, and (perhaps most importantly of all) the investment community, somebody in a position of authority/respect needs to come along and make these points using far fewer words. It's a simple fact of life that most of the people we want to reach with this message are not going to invest the time to read a dissertation of this length. Many will be automatically prejudiced against it, for fear that it will turn out to be an open source zealot's rant.
The well-reasoned thinking, the comprehensive argument, the lack of smug sarcasm all work in this letter's favor. But I just can't see your average C-level executive taking the time to read it.
Breakfast served all day!
Thank you for writing a coherent, polite and clear response to SCO. I believe that your methods will get us faster and better results than the usual loose cannons.
-- $G
While all this bluster is entertaining to read about, several things will occur. The first is that ibm is "the tip of the spear". The contract dispute will go to trial and will last many years, unless ibm buys sco including inflated stock price. Whatever "evidence" sco has will be made public. Given what has already been shown, (they must be saving the best for the trial) and given the long convoluted history of unix source code only code contributed by ibm will need to be compared to sco code. As far as ibm's contract obligations go. So it comes down to whether such code is "derived" enough to give copyright jurisdiction to sco. If Redhat can force discovery of such "alleged" code the whole process may only take a few years instead of several years. We are also about to see the GPL get dragged into court. This will be the first serious test of the GPL and like bad tasting medicine it is hard to swallow but it makes us healthy. It's worth asking why m$ hasn't already bought the sco farm. Like a banker that holds the mortgage on the farm it will be so much cheaper to reposes when it goes belly up.