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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."
Some of the best SCO research I have ever seen. Wow!! It's nice to have the whole story out there.
The economic viability of a business, the skills and ambitions of its workers, and the fickle desires of a market are all uncertainties that cannot be judged a priori. Even some of the most absurd business plans have generated windfalls. Every business has a chance--every business has a possibility of success. But SCO is the exception to this rule, even more than BRE-X that people keep mentioning here. The facts are already in, enough of them anyways. Even if there IS inappropriate code in Linux from UNIX, it is impossible that end users are liable. The law on these matters is clear. If SCO had patents, then there may be end-user liability. But by their own admission, SCO owns neither patents, copyrights, trademarks on any of the code that they claim ownership to. They claim trade secrets but their justification for this flies in the face of many years of case law. The only logical way I can see SCO winning any significant amount of cash is by ratifying new amendments to the constitution. Everyone they are charging with illicit activity has acted in good faith, and SCO cannot refute this. Furthermore, SCO was a willing participant to the very activity they are charging others with, that is until McBride came on. It's hard to charge someone with vandalism if you helped them spray-paint your house. SCO has a greater chance of being successful sticking to their core business than they do in litigation. And even if their winnings in litigation are substantial, there is no way that the money they would collect would be recurring. The very idea of Linux is antithetical to everything SCO is doing. So if there is infringement, SCO will eventually have to show it, and it will be removed. And no significant number of people will chose to continue paying SCO for their kernel rather than migrating to the newly minted liability free kernel that is sure to come out days after any successful judgements from SCO. In short, every which way SCO can turn is set by obstacles. The motion to dismiss against RHAT is the latest example. They can dispute RHAT's claims, or claim that there was no dispute. Either way, RHAT's knight has SCO's queen and rook forked, and SCO just had to give up a valuable chess piece.