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Unsealed SCO Email Reveals Linux Code is Clean
rm69990 writes "In a recently unsealed email in the SCO vs. IBM case, it appears that an outside consultant, hired by SCO in 2002, failed to find copyright violations in the Linux Kernel. This was right around the time Darl McBride, who has before been hired by litigious companies as CEO, was hired. It appears that before SCO even began its investigation, they were hoping to find a smoking gun, not believing that Linux could possibly not contain Unix code. Apparently, they ignored the advice of this consultant."
As SCO continues to desintigrate, it is import to keep an eye those responsible who worked there as they try to find their way back into the respectable computing world.
No one should be able to participate in a sickeningly slezy shakedown like SCO tried to pull off and just wash their hands and pretend it never happended.
Of course not everyone associated with SCO is guilty of sleaze but keeping an eye out for key SCO people and either making sure they don't get hired or at least making it known to companies that would think of hiring the scumbags it isn't worth the bad press/karma.
I talked at length with that guy from the Toqueville institute. I tried and tried to explain that Linux is just a kernel, only a small part of an OS, and that anyone with a decent CS education is taught everything they need to know to develop a kernel as simple as the first Linux kernel that Linus wrote. I explained that Linux is a social phenomenon more than a technical achievement, because, conceptually, kernels just aren't such a big deal (although debugging them is a hassle, well handled by the 'many eyes' of the community).
No matter what I said, he was not able to grasp it. He just could not believe that one guy could write an OS kernel. But he really didn't understand what a kernel is either, so that was a bit of a barrier also. The fact that various CS professors had come out and said the same thing didn't faze him.
Darl McBride is just another non-technical businessman who thinks that operating systems are black magic that only huge teams of people can write. His reasoning leads him to believe that if "one guy" did it, but one guy really couldn't have done it, then he must have copied it. Pure, simple, logical, but unsound in that it completely doesn't account for just how simple or complex a kernel is.
Just like how some people can't possibly understand how a piston engine works, some people aren't cut out to grok OS kernels. Darl just doesn't have the brains for it. (Plus, his primary motivation is to make money, not actually UNDERSTAND anything.)