Now We've Gotcha (more SCO Lawsuit)

Mon Jul 28 18:12:13 GMT 2003 Now We've Gotcha (more SCO Lawsuit)

Last week a few thousand people signed an on-line petition that extended an unusual invitation:

To: SCO

I am a Linux user. I feel that SCO's tactics toward an operating system of my choice are unjust, ill founded and bizarre. I am willing to be sued because I am confident that SCO's tactics toward Linux will fail. If I have published my email address as part of this petition it is so SCO representatives can email me and begin the process of serving me a court order.

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6913 reports that more than 4,000 people actually signed this silly thing.

What makes it even more silly (in my opinion, of course) is that the author has put up some access method that requires agreeing to the GPL to see the actual petition and it's signatories.

I think this has about as much chance of flying as a crowbar. First, I suspect it's more than extremely unlikely that SCO or its lawyers would even care to extract the names. But even if they did, I doubt that the wrapping of it in GPL "protection" matters any more than sticking a couple of feathers on that aforementioned crowbar would materially affect its glide ratio.

Of course, I'm no lawyer. Nor am I against the sentiment that prompted this. But feelings and opinions don't have a lot to do with law, and people who are not lawyers shouldn't think for a minute that they can play cute Perry Mason tricks to "trap" SCO.

Buncha maroons, I say. Don Quixotes of the SCO/IBM lawsuit. Well meaning, but not worth the effort.

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