[H-GEN] More considered response.

[Andrae Muys]

[ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and     ]
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[CC'd to Robert as I have edited his quote and therefore need to check 
he's happy with the edit.]
[Ray: Naturally feel free to pick and choose, I have tried to 
incorperate the other comments thus far in this thread]

Request for Comment:
 >I've been approached by a journalist for comment about why Australian
 >Linux Groups appear silent on SCO's lawsuit against IBM. Specifically:
 ><blockquote>
 >    Why? Doesn't this concern the Linux community here? Or is everyone
 >    just not bothered enough to get up and do something?
 ></blockquote>

The events surrounding SCO's lawsuit against IBM, and the associated 
claims of IP violations in the Linux Kernel have naturally been followed 
with interest by many in the Linux community.

The linux community in general has maintained a rather muted response to 
SCO's actions.

The Open Source Institute has issued a position paper on SCO's complaint 
against IBM [http://www.opensource.org/sco-vs-ibm.html] which can be 
considered the communities response to the legal proceedings currently 
underway.  However with respect to SCO's claims against Linux, in their 
current unsubstantiated state, they are widely considered to lack 
credibility.

It is the prevailing opinion that SCO's claims are too vague to permit a 
response, and will continue to be dismissed until such a time as SCO 
decides to act in good faith.

When asked about the communities subdued response, Robert Brockway, 
HUMBUG's founding president said "We'd be shadow boxing to respond 
before SCO actually detailed the allegations.  People and organisations 
make unsubstantiated claims all the time.  If they could all be 
believed, we'd all be immensely rich having helped the hundreds of poor 
deposed Nigerian leaders in getting their money into safe western banks."

One area of increasing concern is SCO's continued use of derogatory and 
defamatory statements regarding the Linux communities relationship with 
Intellectual Property Law.

A growing resentment at SCO's attempts to portray the community as 
disrespectful of intellectual property rights may interfere with any 
future attempts by SCO to deal constructively with this situation.

It is not widely recognised, but the same community SCO CEO Darl McBride 
derides as being hostile to intellectual property have repeatably 
demonstrated a respect for IP beyond all previous experience.  The Open 
Source community, when faced the choice of infringing on copyright or 
writing their own software, chose to spend two decades doing just that.

Far from being the IP rebels casually disregarding the law for their own 
ideology, respect of intellectual property is the very foundation of the 
community.

Andrae Muys

-- 
Andrae Muys                       But can it generate *quantum* Haiku
<andrae.muys at braintree.com.au>    error messages, in Latin, where each
Engineer                          line of the error message is a
Braintree Communications          palindrome? -- Mike Vanier on perl



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