SCO ANTICS

SCO vs. Linux: Evil Decides to Take on Good

"All that's necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing"
- Edmund Burke (1729-1797), British statesman, parliamentary orator

For those who are familiar with the SCO vs. IBM lawsuit [ http://www.vnunet.com/Specials/1141951 ], there is no doubt that it's turning into an outrage [ http://www.linuxworld.com/story/33976.htm ] for many. By all appearances, SCO is trying to hijack the hard work of thousands of programmers by claiming Linux is "loaded" with proprietary copyright'd code. It therefore claims it is a derivitive work and falls under the control of the Licensor (SCO). In other words, they claim to own Linux. The possible penalty for Linux users? A royalty to be paid by every Linux user, directly to SCO. Yours truly, Darl McBride, the stunningly narcissistic CEO of The SCO Group stated, "[..] We'd want a settlement and royalty [on Linux] going forward." [ http://www.internetwk.com/breakingNews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=13100619 ]

The open source community, the actual owners of Linux, are not sitting idly by. Indeed, they are rising to the challenge [ http://armedndangerous.blogspot.com/2003_08_17_armedndangerous_archive.html#106157186387886957 ]. Advocates like Greg Lehey [ http://www.lemis.com/grog/SCO/code-comparison.html ], Eric Raymond [ http://www.catb.org/~esr/ ], Bruce Perens [ http://perens.com/ ], and others [ http://radio.weblogs.com/0120124/ ] are the front lines warriors in a battle of flaming arrows. Even Linus Torvald, the creator of Linux, has had enough [ http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/09/10/HNtorvaldssco_1.html ]. There are many other prominent, intelligent people who have come to the defense of the open source community, including Eben Moglen [ http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/ ], Lawrence Lessig [ http://www.openp2p.com/lpt/a/577 ], Amy Wohl [ http://amywohl.weblogger.com/ ] and Dr. Edgar Villanueva [ http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6099 ].

We hope you enjoy our highlight on the absurdity of this trial. From the aggressive, frivilous claims to the villian personified claiming to be a victim, we will chronicle the most noteworthy items. America used to stand for honest, hard work. Businesses were rewarded by the fruits of their labor. People earned an honest living putting in a hard days work. In contrast, the past decade has revealed a level of US corporate dishonesty so grotesque and unconscionable that companies like SCO are immediately suspect when their claims seem to be associated with selfish, personal monetary gain and notoriety.

About Us

We are a handful of former programmers, consultants and managers in the SF Bay Area that have been in the software industry for a combined half-century applicable experience. Having a wide field of knowledge in design, implementation and management of software and hardware solutions, we feel qualified to inject our opinions and analysis in regards to the SCO vs. IBM lawsuit. If you want great legal analysis, go to www.groklaw.com.

Some of us freelance consult to local business of all types - legal and medical professionals, heavy industry, retail establishments and even household. We have witnessed the computing world change dramatically over the past two years, with Linux being at the forefront of the revolution.

As recently as 1 year ago, we sold Windows based systems. Now, unless absolutely required, we have chosen to abandon Windows. We now only recommend, install and support Linux systems. Linux is no longer for just the UNIX hobbyist. If a customer has legacy software, we either rewrite it, replace it with a Linux equivalent application, or we don't touch it. Our days of Windows kloodges, frustrations and security problems are over. In the entire span of consulting for most of us, Linux has dramatically simplified our consulting calls. We are actually able to go home at a reasonable hour.

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