[Luni]-understanding the Linux/SCO court case

[jean at kcco.com]

Quoting Matthew Landry <mbl at lelnet.com>:

I agree with everything you say, except one point:

 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. 

This is not true.  The types of accusations being made by $CO against GNU/Linux
(probably at the behest of, and certainly in part financed by M$), or at least
several of their ever morphing incarnations, could just as easilly be levied
against FreeBSD, or any other software project (free or proprietary).

Keep in mind they are (at times) accusing Linux of having benefitted from IBM's
violation of trade secrets.  FreeBSD could easilly have had code donated that
violated a trade secret.  Linux is being accused of having cut-and-paste code
from $CO, which a former developer for Caldera (now $CO) has thoroughly debunked
on technical grounds (however, given that $CO has a compatability layer with
Linux, it is quite possible that $CO has stolen the code and is now leveraging
their theft to accuse their victim of their own crime).  The same could happen
to FreeBSD, or any other project.

The ONLY thing FreeBSD is in the clear on is the existence of original AT&T code
in the kernel, per the previous court battle that resulted in the removal of 3
files from the original BSD code.  However, this is only one of the morphings of
the $CO FUD being bandied about ... most of the other forms it has taken could
theoretically be levied against FreeBSD as it has against Linux, with the same
legitimacy and effect (i.e., none and minor, respectively).

The worst case scenerio: Caldera's contributions are being 'taken back' by $CO,
or put another way, $CO (perhaps M$ by proxy?) hired one or more developers to
deliberately poison the Linux well, releasing their own source outside of
channels to put Linux in a bad position.  The result?  $CO likely prolongs the
fiasco as long as possible, releasing dribbles of information so that only
dribbles of code can be removed or rebutted over time, maximizing the FUD effect
of their behavior.

More likely: the code is already in the clear, either via the FreeBSD route
(which, BTW, clears Linux of the same legal hurdles since the FreeBSD license is
compatible with the GPL for purposes of inclusion of FreeBSD code into a GPLed
project), via Caldera's contributions as Caldera (which will come out in court),
via the fact that there is only one way to write '#include <stdio.h>' or some
other inanity, or via the fact that $CO stole the code from Linux and then
fraudulantly claimed copyright violations on the part of Linux when it was in
fact they who were guilty of the crime the entire time.

Either way, the vulnerability of FreeBSD to similar attack is precisely the
same, should M$ ever have FreeBSD in their sights as a competitor.  Unless we
want every promising free software project attacked in a similar manner, and
perhaps crippled or destroyed as a result (remember: KDE, transcode, etc. don't
necessarilly have a multi-billion dollar corproation fighting for them the way
Linux does), we'd better stand up and fight this one hard, to the bitter end.

Capitulation, or walking away from the fight in the naive belief that similar
tactics won't be used against other promising free software projects by the very
oligarchs who have declared our paradigm to be "unamerican" and a threat to
their supremacy will ultimately mean that every cooperative software effort will
be under similiar threat, and while such a turn of events might not kill the
free software movement entirely, it would hobble it to the point of irrelevancy.

These are the sorts of fights we must fight if we are to retain our freedom, and
living in denial of their possible outcomes if we do choose to walk away from
said fights does not behoove us in the least.

Jean.