Slashdot Mirror
McBride Speaks, In Person And In Print
Phil Windley writes "Darl McBride gave the keynote at CDXPO this evening and held a press conference afterwards. I've posted my summary of his talk and the press conference on my weblog. In his talk, Darl seemed to be saying "Don't hate me. I'm only doing what I had to do."" On the other hand, in this interesting interview with CRN, McBride comes one whisker from likening Linux users to drug users, renews threats to sue end users, and says "all the big guys" are out to get SCO.
I've always wondered about people like Darl McBride. Obviously, they are paid a great deal of money to put a certain spin on things, and they try very hard to do it. What I've never understood about the psychology of it is this: do they actually believe themselves? Do they start out knowing they are lying, then convince themselves about it along the way? Or does the notion of truth not even cross their minds, as they are busy trying to define the reality they want?
I'm posting anonymously from a coffee shop so I don't end up getting a subpoena. A looong time ago, I used to work for SCO. When I started, I didn't think it was a bad company, but my opinion changed gradually. It's hard to put my finger on any one thing, but it seemed like the corporate culture was a little...strange. I had never worked at a tech company before, but I found it odd that upper management would get defensive when they read a bad review on SCO Unix. It seemed to me that they should have been taking the criticism to be constructive, so they could improve their product. But they took a "we know what's best for you, because we're smarter than you" kind of attitude. Not everyone agreed with them, as I found out at many an exit interview. It makes me wonder if this attitude blossomed and overtook the company.
Well, first off, Darl McBride shows that he *completely* misses the distinction of free-as-in-speech Free Software and reduces the GPL to Free Beer. Sad. Granted, it is kinda hard to sell GPL software, but he doesn't seem to understand that a lot of what people love about Linux has less to do with price and more to do with freedom. The ability to get access to the source code at no additional charge. The ability to create 'derivative works' from GPL software as you please (well except that it too has to be GPL'ed of course), and the ability to distribute those changes. To fork projects when necessary.
And, most importantly, not having one central company or organization claiming total control over the OS. One of the things I love about Free Software, especially for the Operating System is that I think it is *crucial* for there to be a viable, widely used Free-as-in-speech OS Platform for everyone in the world to be able to use without it being leveraged to one company's or government's or whatever advantage. A true 'level playing field.'
So, SCO doesn't get it. Darl wants everyone to stop 'crucifying' him and SCO for doing what they "have to" in order to survive and leverage the investment they made in Unix. Everyone is picking on him, especially IBM who are big bullies (note this isn't my opinion - I'm just summarizing McBride). Oh, also SCO likes Open Source and Linux - we aren't out to destroy Linux and Open Source - we just want $700 dollars for every CPU that runs Linux commercially. Don't hate us, we want to co-exist peacefully with Open Source.
Oh, and the best part - the GPL is dead - Open Source isn't dead, just the GPL because it isn't friendly enough to business according to Darl. And, Free (as in beer) linux is dead (nevermind Debian and other non-commercial distros).
Lastly, in the world of Darl McBride, the BSD's don't exist. He didn't mention them ONCE in the presentation. And there were a couple times (Unix History discussion, as well as a few other places) where it would have probably been quite appropriate to mention them. Along those lines, SCO == UNIX, and we own the copyright to ALL UNIX (again what about the BSD's?).
Oh he did clarify that AIX, HP/UX, et al are 'owned' by the respective companies, but that SCO 'controls' all of them as the root of the unix tree.
I dunno. I really at this point just wish SCO would put up or shut up. Show definitely that there is wide-spread infringement instead of just throwing out "We have STRONG IP claims" (Take our word for it). Basically, this issue needs to go to court and be resolved.
Speaking of which, here's the SCO lawsuit scheme: IBM is not a copyright infringment case - it's breach of contract. But if people who use Linux don't buy Unix Licenses, we will sue them for copyright infringement. (Which is basically what they've been saying all along - no surprise there).
So what I hear, when I hear McBride make that statement is IBM probably has the resources and expertise to discredit our copyright infringment claims - so we are going to go after small fish who (we hope) can't reasonably defend against the infringement claims, and gradually build precedent one case at a time and then go after the big companies when we have a few cases behind us that gave us favorable findings.
"Samba isn't your IP. What gives you the right to sell the copyrighted work of others?"
What can SCO possibly answer, while maintaining that the GPL is illegitimate?
It's the cost of "playing the game" of business...sitting around board tables, jet setting to last-minute meetings--it's a drug of "power".
Guys like him start out "at the bottom" in the old boys network. They typically go from newbie to boss in a short time...he's probably never actually researched ANYTHING to do with copyright or patent on his OWN...delegating doesn't count. Guys like him deal in what they WANT...not what's REAL. I find executives as a class get a surprising amount of info from word-of-mouth, Forbes [& such], and CNN...far more often than say..googling for a copy of the LAW, or court cases/common practice to support their claims.
I find they're like the kids in school that don't know the game really well, but can argue the rules 'till everyone is bored and gives up.
I've never purchased a mainstream commercial distribution. Other than dabbling with demonstrative releases of RedHat and SuSE for about a total of six months, I've used Slackware or Debian since I started using Linux back in 1996. I think that once I ordered a Cheapbytes CD of Slackware for 8.0 or something like that, but it was less than the cost of a large coke at a fast food restaurant.
So, Darl, faced with a product that is very often free to hobbyists or companies willing to support themselves internally is going to gain revenue from this how? If I never touch anything to do with Caldera Systems, the only way that they're going to even know that I have my copies of Linux would be to stage a BSA-style raid on my home or business, count the machines, audit the software, and the like.
This does scare me. Not in the sense that I think that Darl and his other brother Darl will win, but that if they were to somehow squeak by with a court victory, establish precedent, and continue winning court victories that somehow gave them rights to that which they shouldn't otherwise, what's to stop them from being even more asinine?
I have no love for the company whose operating system has the most market share, but at various times, when working for computer companies that sold product, if something were amiss, an actually friendly representative would come in and identify himself as a rep, tell us how the product distribution for the product (usually the OS) worked (like, minimum pricing put into the wholesale distribution), cite our ad if the price were lower than the initial wholesale price, and if something were amiss, he'd inspect the product. A couple of times we had forged copies, which was noticeable on the booklets on further inspection, and he traded us all of the faulty software for good copies, all that he wanted to know was where we got them. No fuss, no muss, no lawyers talking, even for software that would be fairly easy to prove as illegitimate if it came down to it.
Compare this to Caldera in their approach. They're huffing and puffing about $600+ licencing fees for the OS. Everone who bends and pays encourages them to seek out everyone else that has "product", regardless of origin. They'll be querying webservers, looking at NAT and Masquerade data that they find, and making a big pain out of themselves. They'll call the FBI to attempt to root out the "piracy" of what they "own" in BSA-style raids. They'll make a mockery of the criminal justice system the same as they have the civil system.
Yes, I'm being extremely paranoid, but a little paranoia now is better than a terrible situation later, especially if ways to combat this can be found.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.