[H-GEN] RFC: SCO

[Sarah Walters]

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Heya Andrae et al

This is mostly a "me too" response, but I'll try to provide some
interesting tidbits.

On 17 Jun 2003 Andrae Muys <andrae.muys at braintree.com.au> wrote:
> One area that has yet to show visibly is the growing resentment at SCO's 
> attempts to portray the community as disrespectful of intellectual 
> property rights.  It might be worth pointing out that in the past 2 
> decades software copyright infringment (you may need to use the word 
> piracy here :( has become common-place throughout our society.  In a 
> time when people faced with the choice of infringing on copyright and 
> "writing your own" have almost universally chosen to infringe copyright, 
> the Open Source Community has chosen the latter.  Far from being the IP 
> law rebels casually disregarding the law for their own ideology, the 
> Open Source Community has repeatably demonstrated the highest respect 
> for IP law and copyright!

Exactly, that was very well worded. I for one am sick of the M$ upgrade
cycle. My husband and I recently took the first step to remove our
reliance on Windows - we bought a gaming console. Unfortunately, I don't
know of any decent (hell, any) video editing software on Linux/FreeBSD
and hence still need Windows. We also use MS Money to track our
accounts, and require its full functionality. Last time I checked,
GNUCash wasn't there yet. Is it time for another look anyone? I'm going
to start dual-booting my system next time I do a reinstall, and expect
that 99% of the time I will be in Linux. FreeBSD is my preference for
a home server, but I probably need something Linuxy on my desktop. I
hope that in a year I will not be running Microsoft products for
anything other than gaming, and perhaps not even then if Diablo II and
WarCraft 3 run under emulation (Neverwinter being my only other game on 
PC; All Praise BioWare for porting it :)). If I do not have video
editing on Linux by then, I'm getting Mac OSX.

SCO's case is like Microsoft suing most of the western world's 
population to get people to actually pay for Windows - pointless, silly
and really bad publicity. Most UNIX admins that I know are pro Open
Source, most IT directors buy their UNIX products on the recommendation
of their UNIX admins ... um, duh? If nothing else, Sun must be sitting
back having a good laugh, since they are the only UNIX guaranteed to be
out of the firing line, and as such hesitant customers are going to be
looking in that direction.

> Of course the fact that IBM is one of the IT worlds largest companies, 
> and the largest patent holder in the world, who has invested over 
> $1billion in linux in the past couple of years, gives us some confidence 
> in the outcome.

Go IBM! :)

> As a legit business SCO is dead, it's only realistic avenue for surivial 
> is litigation, and it chose as its first targets IBM and a non-legal 
> entity!?  We wait with bemusment what further insanity will come from SCO.

*laugh*

SCO Doom countdown: 3 months to go ... 
-- 
Mrs Sarah Walters
Systems Group
Information Technology Services
University of Wollongong
Phone: +61 2 4221 3775


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