Quoting Orlando Andico ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): > http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1115156,00.asp > He does make several very good points. Disturbing.
As always, a few. But not the core allegations: Dvorak has founded much of his career from trolling successive generations of users with alarmist pronouncements on the topics of the day. It garnishes readers. Dvorak: The Linux community seems to have put its collective head in the sand. Reality: The community has done extensive analysis of both the few attested legal filings and on the surrounding barrage of goofy and contradictory pronouncements to the press. Dvorak: Nobody seems to realize that Linux and the entire open-source movement are at grave risk. Reality: Rubbish. Even in the most pessimistic and least realistic scenarios, we'd just shrug and recompile to run on a BSD kernel. The Linux kernel is not even a significant _fraction_ of open source. Dvorak: And what happens if there is an out-of-court settlement and IBM does some under-the-table deal and suddenly emerges as the top Linux vendor with the only legal license to use certain aspects of the kernel? Reality: The moment those "aspects" are identified, all code that might be encumbered gets discarded and rewritten from scratch. Dvorak: And let's look at the interesting nature of open source. Nobody in that community has paid any attention to the risks of community programming.... Reality: Rubbish. Open source projects in general have been well aware of encumbrance problems. Besides, this is equally a problem for proprietary projects. Dvorak: Companies who do not publish source code, such as Microsoft, have a much easier time burying "borrowed" algorithms.... Reality: Algorithms are not subject to trade-secret protection, which, along with unfair competition, is what Caldera/SCO are litigating over. Nor are they subject to copyright. Besides, proprietary-software firms always face the problem of disgruntled employees disclosing misappropriation of open-source code, which tort would be compounded by its furtive nature. Dvorak: From the company's SEC filings alone, seeing how Novell could possibly have ownership of the copyrights to the latest versions of Unix is hard, when it constantly harps on collecting license fees for "older versions of Unix." Reality: Non-sequitur. Dvorak: If Novell owns the copyrights then how is SCO collecting fees and selling to the likes of Microsoft? Reality: Non-sequitur. Dvorak: VERSION A: SCO does own the Unix code. IBM took out a license for AIX. The court finds that IBM violated the license and IBM loses its case. SCO then asserts its intellectual property rights and goes after all Linux companies and users of Linux for fees. Reality: Non-sequitur: A judicial finding that IBM violated an contract with SCO doesn't imply that SCO would magically gain ownership of code copyright (a matter _not_ at issue in the suit), nor that it could void that code's extant GPL licensing, given that Caldera/SCO has shipped that code itself under GPL terms. Dvorak: SCO pays no attention to code ownership and concentrates on contract violations with IBM. SCO wins, and uses the victory as a precedent to go after the tainted code used by others. Reality: Non-sequitur. Same reason. Dvorak: IBM decides to stall the proceedings. It's using David Boies' old law firm. As the battle drags on, the Linux movement loses momentum, then dies. Reality: Non-sequitur. Realistically, everyone with half a brain already knows that the case will take 1-5 years to hear, unless disposed of out of court. In the meantime, people have to decide for themselves whether the case is all Utah smoke or not. Relevant to that, only a few attorneys have commented, but they seem skeptical: http://news.com.com/2100-1016-1013229.html http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=514_0_3_0_C Note that numerous people take Dvorak's arguments apart further in the feedback forums. However, I feel a bit of a chump for having read the first 50-60 of those, since I was inflating PC Magazine's page-hit count, exactly the way readers are intended to respond to Dvorak's trolling exercises. -- Cheers, Ever wonder why the _same people_ Rick Moen make up _all_ the conspiracy theories? [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [EMAIL PROTECTED] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Official Website: http://plug.linux.org.ph Searchable Archives: http://marc.free.net.ph . To leave, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/plug . Are you a Linux newbie? To join the newbie list, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/ph-linux-newbie
