SCO Sympathiser

Sat Jan 24 13:20:56 GMT 2004 SCO Sympathiser

Sigh.. I am really getting tired of the rabid Linux types who who assault me in newsgroups and in email. Apparently few ever bother to really understand where I stand on all this, but if you aren't joining them in the "SCO must die" rants, you must be a SCO sympathiser.

I'm not.

I do NOT want SCO to win this case. The case MAY have merit or may not, but either way I think it can only harm us if they win. By "us" I mean all of us: every single person in the world who is affected directly or indirectly by computer software. That's pretty much everyone, I think. Except Microsoft: they are helped either way.

I'm not a lawyer. I have no opinions at all on the legal merits of the Gnu Public License or anything else. I suspect that the GPL isn't the bullet-proof shield that the Linux zealots think it is, but I'm happy to be wrong on that one.

I'm no expert on kernel internals. Unix source code has a long and convoluted history and I bet there are very few of the Linux camp who can claim any expertise here either. I do know that sometimes it's pretty much impossible to do something any differently, and some of that may cause some of the contention here. In other words, the Linux folk might very well have developed a chunk of code that looks just like a chunk SCO says they own.

However, the case will be settled by people with even less technical knowledge than I possess. That's scary: just look at some of the idiotic patents courts have upheld. SCO may be full of hot air and still win. Or perfectly in the right and still lose.

Winning or losing harms Unix/Linux. Winning damages Linux, and losing just helps Microsoft by damaging another competitor.

In the end, patent and copyright law are FAR more important than this case. While the Linux crowd jumps up and down cheering SCO's bumbling, Microsoft and others are quietly working away at other assaults. Beating SCO will no doubt be a great adrenalin rush for the SCO haters, but they need to be watchful of these other threats.

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