Boycott SCO

[nathan r. hruby]

On 8 Mar 2003, Dan Burcaw wrote:

> 
> This is just bizarre.  I have come to the conclusion that
> SCO (ex Caldera)'s entire purpose in life is to find ways to
> engage in potentially rewarding litigation. Remember when they sued
> Microsoft with regard to DR-DOS (which they owned the rights to, for
> some reason)?
> 

lwn.net has some addtional coverage, including a nice writeup of the filed 
papers.  One thing they say is that clearly, SCO has a very low opnion of 
the FOSS community which I agree with.  

I don't think it's odd though, we've seen a lot of IP issues over the last
several years with DMCA, UTICA, click-though licenes, Amazon's patents,
etc.. It's seemingly becaoming the case that legal claims to IP are more
important thean the code that implements it.  Or: if you can sit around
and dream up patents, then you can force people to pay you for it.  To me,
this seems like an extension (evolution?) of the move from an industiral
to an information economy.  Ideas are inforamtion and they are quickly
becoming a commodity.  This isn't helped by a less-than-perfect patent 
office when it comes to computer/it related patents.

OTOH, I think that Bruce Perens is correct in thinking that is an exit
strategy for SCO/Caldera.  The concept that they can either sue people
till they get some cash, or they they can get bought out by a larger
company for a fraction of the suit claim and everyone walks away with less
problems and money in their pocket is not unbeliveable.  Hell, I'm
suprized they didn't go after Dell first - they're younger, have lots of
cash and can't take a PR black eye as well as IBM can.

The fact that part of their suit claims that IBM stifled SCO's x86 market
by helping linux seems silly, espically when they have been working on
makign linux work on their own Power series chips as well.  Clearly, IBM
has made a commitment to linux on their entire product line (unless those
zSeries mainframes that run several hundred linux kernels at once are
really suped up x86 machines :).  The better irony here is the SCO, under
Caldera sold/sells a damn linux product (hell, I have a Linux book with a
old CD of caldera OpenLinux.. duh!), thus they're just as guilty as IBM of
undermining their own market share.

When I first started using networked computers (even AOL v2.0 DOS), every
system I ever used had a very obvious netiquitte guide when you first
logged in accessible as part of the normal operation system.  This text
was not a licese but a explination of how to not be a crappy user and what 
was expected of *you* from the community.  In the last several years these 
guides have fallen by the wayside, replaced by licenses and leagal 
disclamers.  I think that as more non-technical people (lawyers, 
busniessfolk, etc..) and newer generations of techical users start getting 
more involved int he industry, these netiquitte guides should be revived 
in order to explain what we, the people who use this stuff every day, 
expect from them, the people who think that they are the first to ever 
discover the power of a networked computer.

Ok.. that's my rant.  If it's not well articulated or spelled correctly 
I'm sorry.. I think I'm getting the flu and it's really hard to focus.

-n
-- 
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nathan hruby <nathan@drama.uga.edu>
computer services specialist
uga drama
http://www.drama.uga.edu/support/
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