[H-GEN] Opposition to SCO

[Ben Fowler]

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Hi all,

On Wed, 2003-09-03 at 12:23, Raymond Smith wrote:
> There is no such person. At a national level AUUG has been most
> visible to the press and the general public. Other visible players
> are Open Source Victoria (http://www.osv.org.au/) and the Society
> of Linux Professionals WA (http://www.lpwa.asn.au/). Linux Australia
> is also doing things.
> 
> The best people to contact are probably Con Zymaris <conz at cyber.com.au>
> who is involved in Open Source Victoria and AUUG, and Leon Brooks
> <leon at cyberknights.com.au> who is on the executive of Linux Australia
> and the Society of Linux Professionals WA. Greg Lehey <grog at lemis.com>,
> BSDer and AUUG President, has written some excellent material at
> http://www.lemis.com/grog/sco.html, including an analysis of the code
> presented thus far at http://www.lemis.com/grog/SCO/evidence.html

I was at the AUUG National Conference in Sydney today, and the paper I
presented finished up in time for me to catch the final ten minutes of a
panel session, 'Who Owns UNIX?', starring Greg Lehey, Con Zymaris and
the hapless Kieran O'Shaughnessy (Managing Director of SCO Australia). 
The panel session basically took the above material to a face-to-face
session, with O'Shaughnessy presenting his evidence for his case,
followed by a torrid grilling from the audience and panel members,
particularly, Greg Lehey.  O'Shaughnessy probably deserves a medal for
courage under fire, considering his steadfast performance in the face of
some very well-informed criticism.  The poor guy must've felt as popular
as a Jew in Beirut :-)

> I think the general mood here in .au is that SCO's claim is baseless
> and should be ignored. It doesn't seem to be stopping Telstra or anyone
> else from using Linux. The most direct action seen so far is that some
> people have made complaints to the ACCC.

That seems to be consistent with what I saw today.  One does have to be
wondering what's going through their heads at SCO, but it's clearly not
a strategy for surviving in the long term.

-regards.

Ben.



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