[NCLUG] SCO Open Letter to the Open Source Community

[Daniel Miles]

Why don't we agree not to pick apart the little bits of the letter for
what incidental inaccuracies they may have and instead focus on the big
picture.

We all perceive that SCO is hurting Linux and indeed, it seems to me
that hurting Linux may be the main thrust of their purpose in suing IBM,
but that in the long run it may be helpful because it may force the Open
Source movement to fix some of the problems that has businesses edging
away from adopting our work (like the lack of accountability to start
with).

The response of the vocal minority of the Linux community has been
pathetic and immature, even in the face of similar immaturity and shaky
evidence on the part of SCO. Instead of saying "We'll take care of the
problems when you show them to us," as Torvalds has done, we've risen up
to defend policies that SCO is complaining about even though they MAY
have lead to copyright infringement (the fact is that we don't have all
the information yet, we'll have to wait 'till after the suit). Instead
of doing the responsible thing, members of our beloved community have
attacked SCO on completely unrelated grounds (like a DOS attack).

What we need to do is say that we have a policy that code contributed
must be done so in a legal way, we have been checking to see that this
policy is enforced and thus far SCO has not shown that our checking has
been unsuccessful. However, if they DO manage to bring forth evidence,
we'll team up with them and:
a) See that the person who made the infringement is punished.
b) Take the offending code out of Linux and.
c) Fix whatever problem there was in the checking system that allowed
bad code through.
That would be the responsible thing to do but instead we call them names
and hack their web servers.

I think what John has been trying to say is, why don't we stand behind
Torvalds instead of DOSing SCO? It'll be good for Linux in the long run
if we do.