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Groklaw Turns One
JuliusRV writes "Today is Groklaw's one-year anniversary! As PJ writes, 'What a difference a year makes. When we started, all the headlines were saying that SCO was going to destroy Linux or at least make it cry. Now, looking around today, I see almost everyone predicting SCO's imminent doom instead. I think the truth, as usual, isn't in the headlines, and that it's somewhere in between those two extremes.' Thanks, PJ and all other Groklawyers, keep up the good work!"
Or volumes of obscene multimedia content over the web.
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
... we had GrokLaw for Watergate, Rodney King, Clinton, and OJ, the world would be a much better place. WAIT- no way to get /. "discussions" on Watergate as-it-was-happening. Pity.
I wish I could write clever and witty sigs.
I wonder what it would take to bring about the demise of SCO. I always assumed that SCO were a company who had turned to litigation because they couldn't sell products. Given that they've started to lay off staff around the world you'd think that their belts must need tightening. Does history have any examples of these things turn out?
Regardless of what you think of the business direction SCO has taken, it must be worrying for the staff who still have families to feed. ATle ast they'll still be able to afford GNU/Linux...
Cogito, ergo sig.
The remaining question for SCOX is "how low can it go"? Except for that bump in early April, when SCO tried, unsuccessfully, a stock buyback to prop up the price, the decline from 14 to 5 has been close to linear. If you just project the line out, SCOX goes to zero around late summer. It probably won't go to penny stock levels for a while, though; they have some cash left. But with no licensing revenue and a huge legal burn rate, they can't go on for all that long.
The real question at this point, and it's one the players in the Open Source industry need to think about, is, who ends up with the rights to UNIX when SCO is gone? Sun? IBM? Red Hat? Boies?
It's sad, in a way, to realize that the best thing the original UNIX can do is go away.
It seems like groklaw is not accessible from China - or perhaps it is just from my location.
Anyone else in China able to get to it?
Why would it be inaccessible, I wonder?
Some are already saying that SCO may be the tip of the iceberg as far as FOSS IP problems are concerned, even as SCO's case seems to be declining. (See the current issue of Fortune magazine, with Darl McBride on the cover, unfortunately not available online except to paid subscribers). Of course, one can argue that proprietary software should be held to same standards, but in practice FOSS is an easier target because the source code can be examined by hungry lawyers and they can always bring up the worldwide, quasi-anonymous nature of development of some projects.
I always assumed that SCO were a company who had turned to litigation because they couldn't sell products.
Well, that was only the tip of the iceberg.
The rest of it is that BayStar (and others?) delivered a truckload of cash to SCO with a prod in the ribs and a wink.
SCO is evil.
BayStar is more evil, because it funds companies to play the asshole/evil war against the big guns - encouraging companies to take up the rifles of Intellectual Property (and I don't just mean those companies being funded - I mean other companies seeing BayStar make a dollar and wanting to jump on the bandwagon).
This ENCOURAGES shitty patents. The broader the better: the more you can sue.
Linux must have looked like a fucking gold mine to BayStar.
I find the whole idea disturbing. I'm crossing my fingers that before SCO dies, BayStar breathes its last too.
Mmmm...I agree that PJ has become less objective than she was a year ago, when I considered her to be *very* scrupulously objective. She has become "part of the community", and it's hard to remain utterly cold when you're in such a position. She's also put up more "what if" conspiracy type thoughts herself. They may be perfectly valid, but I do think Groklaw is less valuable for it -- it was once somewhere that you could just aim PHB types -- even if the comments could be a bit out there, PJ's articles were strictly down-to-earth analysis. Even if ESR's Halloween memos and theories are perfectly well-founded (and some of them are almost certainly pretty accurate), they're tough to sell to someone who isn't part of the Linux world and has kind of vaguely always trusted Microsoft.
I don't see the problem you do with the "FUD insurance" (though the conflict of interest is obvious) because PJ has done an admirable job of tamping down fear of legal violations. She is clearly in an abusable position; I have not seen anything that I would call abuse, though.
I agree that Groklaw could use a bit less of the anti-SCO humor and Darl-namecalling from posters -- that's really better placed on Slashdot, with it's stronger moderation system.
I also am interested as to whether PJ will begin to wind down Groklaw (as was my original impression) as SCO sputters down, or (as I'm starting to think) she will keep it alive as a forum to discuss Linux legal issues. It is clearly valuable to her employer, as she speaks with some authority on Linux legal issues.
May we never see th