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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?
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!
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.
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?
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
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.
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.
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