[NCLUG] Organizing against SCO?

[jbass at dmsd.com]

Sean Reifschneider <jafo at tummy.com> writes:
> Sure, I can understand that.  However, SCO is trying to get people to
> pay for these "illegal" copies before discovery phase has even
> completed.  It's way more than a little early to start threatening
> people that in several years they may be using illegal software.

Interesting frame of reference. If you watch someone steal something
that is critical to your business, is it stolen property when it leaves
your business, or is it really only stolen property when/if the thief
is finally sentenced? I believe US law generally agrees on the former,
even in copyright violations.

> What I'd like is some confirmation from someone who is *MUCH* better
> equipped to deal with it than I am, that what SCO is doing is not
> unduely hurting other Linux users while they are making their case
> against IBM.

And I'm sure that SCO employees would feel happier if there was a agreement
that the other side would play fair by US copyright laws, and spend the
proper effort to actually invent and design innovative new alogorithms
from scratch for Linux, rather than take questionable short cuts.

The open source movement in theory is supposed to foster a creative
environment and innovative solutions to advance the state of the art.
We all should be concerned and angry at the developers that take the
short cut of using anothers non-GPL design as the basis for their own
work.

The open source community can do a lot to advance the speed with which
this is over, and linux users can move on. Fighting SCO doesn't build
cooperation .... targeting rogue developers which disrespect copyright
will .... if the Linux community would police itself well, there would
certainly not be a problem. 

One suggestion would be having a responsible open source developer group
actively aid SCO in the indentification of rogue code, accellerate the
discovery process to identify the individuals and organizations involved
and act as expert witnesses to promptly complete these proceedings and
aid in fairly compensating SCO for any and all violations involved.

Or, we can continue trying to make SCO the scape goat for others actions.

John