[Luni]-understanding the Linux/SCO court case

[Richard Reina]

Great Speech.  How does the average person on the list "fight this"? 
What can we do?

jean at kcco.com wrote:

>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.
>______________________________________________________________________
>Linux Users Of Northern Illinois - Technical Discussion 
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>
>
>  
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