[Linux-aus] Re: Statement on SCO

[Leon Brooks]

On Wed, 21 May 2003 11:45, Leon Brooks wrote:
> Something along the lines of the GPL and the kernel patch submission
> process providing extreme screening protection against exactly the
> kind of apparently baseless complaints that SCO is raising, deploring
> SCO's sustained ignorance of Linux's importance and capabilities
> (maybe mention SGI's Altix and the Beowulf system en passant),
> deploring the capital Microsoft is making of an unfortunate situation
> by sticking their oar in (note that the GPL depends on intellectual
> property laws for its operation and that what MS and SCO are seeking
> to protect is the "right" to play dog-in-the-manger, not the right to
> intellectual property), and assuring the business community that
> using Linux is not only safe but pretty much inevitable.

OK... take 1:

BEGIN SPIEL

Linux Australia (LA) and the Society of Linux Professionals Western 
Australia (SLPWA) have come under increasing pressure to respond to the 
Santa Cruz Operation's (SCO) accusations of wholesale code plagiarism 
in the Linux kernel.

SCO continue to disparage the quality control systems involved in 
assembling the Linux kernel, but those systems have driven Linux 
development to capabilities only dreamed of by SCO's own UNIX product, 
and at a much higher pace. Linux now runs on SGI's 64-to-512-processor 
Altix 3000 systems, and powers thousand-processor Beowulf 
supercomputing clusters.

The same Linux quality control systems would have seen the modification 
or almost certainly rejection of any code from SCO UNIX, no matter how 
well disguised. The internals of the two systems are arranged in a very 
different manner, so it would make little sense to graft code from one 
kernel into the other.

The legal complaint filed by SCO against IBM contains many substantial 
errors of fact like this, which leads LA and SLPWA to the conclusion 
that SCO have made a serious mistake in their evaluation of the 
situation, and that they should withdraw their suit.

SCO have freely published the source code in question themselves for 
some considerable time after filing the complaint under the terms of 
the GNU General Public Licence (GPL) which protects the Linux kernel 
from subversion, so even if the complaint once had any merit, it no 
longer does.

It is quite safe to continue using Linux. This is true in terms of virus 
immunity and general reliability as well as in the legal sense. Many 
important industry commentators are concluding that widespread Linux 
adoption is not just safe but inevitable.

We also note that Microsoft have now bought a licence to use UNIX code 
from SCO despite having no real purpose for it. That act appears to be 
designed to sustain the confusion raised by SCO's mistake.

We openly appeal to SCO to admit their mistake, apologise and withdraw 
their charge.

We openly appeal to Microsoft to play nicely with the Internet community 
instead of working to sow confusion. We realise that Microsoft is 
running out of growth areas, and will die if they do not grow, and 
assert that unless they are prepared to become consistently 
trustworthy, fair players they will not easily be able to enter the new 
markets they will inevitably need.

END SPIEL

Cheers; Leon

-- 
http://cyberknights.com.au/     Modern tools; traditional dedication
http://plug.linux.org.au/       Committee Member, Perth Linux User Group
http://slpwa.asn.au/            Committee Member, Linux Professionals WA
http://linux.org.au/            Committee Member, Linux Australia