[Luni]-understanding the Linux/SCO court case

[Matthew Landry]

On Thu, Jun 05, 2003 at 11:12:50AM -0500, shaun beier wrote:
> Wake up and smell the coffee. Microsoft is never going to lose any 
> significant case. Microsoft is a monopoly and it continues to get worse. 
> Now, because of how many governmental branches rely on Microsoft, everything 
> would be screwed if Microsoft got canned. This is the world in which 
> Microsoft owns and runs --- like it or not.
	Well then I guess we might as well just go out and get guns to blow
our brains out with, eh?

	Never mind that Microsoft is not a party to this lawsuit. Never
mind that this lawsuit cannot, within any reasonable (or unreasonable but
conceivable by judges) interpretation of the law, materially harm Linux
overall (as opposed to making an imperceptible dent in IBM, which would be
bad, but not catastrophic). Never mind that Linux is not (the feelings of
Linux zealots notwithstanding) the be-all and end-all of the open source
community, nor even the only viable open-source operating system in
circulation. Never mind that Linux's chief competitors for open-source
mindshare are already demonstrably clear of any of this sort of legal
entanglements, and if the totally unbelievable worst possible case scenario
happens and this kills Linux in the business community, the BSDs will still
be there, unencumbered and with a nice track record of quiet, high-quality
service on some of the most prominent sites on the internet. Never mind
that for once, the Linux side of this fight is being fought by a company
with a MASSIVE legal budget and a long history of using that budget to
crush their enemies, while the anti-Linux side is being fought by a company
whose own marketshare has shrunk so much that they're on the verge of
destitution and thus very ripe for exactly the sort of crushing in which
IBM's lawyers specialize. Never mind that although the Redmond Borg will
undoubtedly use this for FUD wherever they can, they're not really in a
position to use their money to help the case. For that matter, never mind
that their FUD position has nowhere to go but down, since pretty much every
company whose management is prone to be swayed by MS-FUD already has been.
And just to top off the FUD commentary, never mind that any manager who got
out of college before 1995 (in other words, any manager who has real money
to spend in this market) would bet on IBM in an IBM v. Microsoft FUD war,
and that IBM _*INVENTED*_ FUD for exactly that reason.

	Never mind the facts, in other words...they might get in the way of
a good panic reaction, and surely NOTHING could help the open-source OS
community more than widespread panic.

	( :) for the irony-impaired.)
-- 
Matthew Landry              mbl at lelnet.com                       O-
LEL Network Services                           Anti-Stupid Talisman
"You don't have to outrun the bear. Just outrun the slowest hiker."