"They do not want to profit."?
on
SCOrched Earth
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· Score: 1
They do not want to profit... They are focused on one solitary goal, and that is to destroy (or damage, to the greatest extent possible) Linux.
Everyone wants to profit. There would not be so much capital flowing into SCO lately if SCO and it's investors didn't smell a profit. SCO knows there is a profit to be derived from the UNIX market- I think that they know that charging money will not destroy linux, just as it never destroyed paid unix distributions. While SCO's legal claims are questionable, I see no reason to doubt that it is being completely upfront about its economic goals- to derive profit from a popular, indeed, indispensable system that they were hoping nobody would be able to effectively stand up for in court.
Since cases that do actually make it to trial take about two years, are we doomed to seeing everything out of McBride's mouth, everything on Groklaw, and every other passing thought about SCO for the next two years on slashdot?
It seems to me that SCO has almost outlived it's fifteen minutes of slashdot fame... It seems to me that the reason that SCO stories constantly pop up on slashdot and continue to attract comments is not because their legal actions are particularly interesting, or particularly stupid (although they are frequently both), but because they are currently the most visible poster child for the gradual erosion of the "free" (both beer and speech) internet - Google censorship is less blatant and far-reaching, the RIAA suits are harder to take the moral high ground on, and DRM efforts draw much less attention to themselves.
Strangely, SCO poses the least threat out of all of these, since their claims appear fairly baseless. I think talking about SCO is appealing to us as a form of escapism - we know that their attack on the current status quo will fail, and debating the nature of that failure is much more pleasent than seeing some of the points that come up in YRO stories about DRM and other more insidious commercial threats.
If the past few years are any indication, we will soon have something else even higher profile and further reaching than SCO to worry about... I wonder how long it's going to be before we all think of todays as part of the good old days when all we worried about was SCO...
Slashdot Mirror
Everyone wants to profit. There would not be so much capital flowing into SCO lately if SCO and it's investors didn't smell a profit. SCO knows there is a profit to be derived from the UNIX market- I think that they know that charging money will not destroy linux, just as it never destroyed paid unix distributions. While SCO's legal claims are questionable, I see no reason to doubt that it is being completely upfront about its economic goals- to derive profit from a popular, indeed, indispensable system that they were hoping nobody would be able to effectively stand up for in court.
It seems to me that SCO has almost outlived it's fifteen minutes of slashdot fame... It seems to me that the reason that SCO stories constantly pop up on slashdot and continue to attract comments is not because their legal actions are particularly interesting, or particularly stupid (although they are frequently both), but because they are currently the most visible poster child for the gradual erosion of the "free" (both beer and speech) internet - Google censorship is less blatant and far-reaching, the RIAA suits are harder to take the moral high ground on, and DRM efforts draw much less attention to themselves.
Strangely, SCO poses the least threat out of all of these, since their claims appear fairly baseless. I think talking about SCO is appealing to us as a form of escapism - we know that their attack on the current status quo will fail, and debating the nature of that failure is much more pleasent than seeing some of the points that come up in YRO stories about DRM and other more insidious commercial threats.
If the past few years are any indication, we will soon have something else even higher profile and further reaching than SCO to worry about... I wonder how long it's going to be before we all think of todays as part of the good old days when all we worried about was SCO...
[ hopefully I'm wrong... ]