RMS Cuts Through Some SCO FUD 877
sckienle writes "ZD-Net has a commentary by Richard Stallman about the SCO case against IBM, kind of. It does provide some history on what the GNU organization did to protect itself from such lawsuits. Favorite quote: 'Less evident is the harm it does by inciting simplistic thinking: [Intellectual Property] lumps together diverse laws--copyright law, patent law, trademark law and others--which really have little in common.'"
There's Cringely too. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Linux no longer essential (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Well that was pretty worthless (Score:5, Informative)
If RMS hadn't started done the GNU project way back when he did, we would still be working out zillions of bugs in things like ls, rm, mv, getty, etc., instead of having a full-fledged unix-like OS ready to go with the Linux kernel when it came into being.
Sure, RMS may be somewhat of a wack-job at times, and I don't agree with him all the time either, but lets give credit where it's due. It was due to his vision and hard work that Linux was ABLE to take off and start flying high right away instead of floundering around in the muck for a long time.
SCO wants to come visit (Score:5, Informative)
How do SCO want to use the discovery process> Darl said: "We get to really shake things up". I don't know what was in Darl's mind when he said that, but I assumed (I'm not a lawyer though!) that discovery was supposed to be about collecting evidence not shaking up IBM's customers. I'm also unclear (the sentence doesn't parse) what Darl means by using discovery as a "vehicle" - again I thought discovery was supposed to be about collecting evidence prior to the case, not used for some other purpose. Anybody care to comment??
There are also some more Darl (longer quotes in more context) on the same subject here [computing.co.uk].
Re:Well that was pretty worthless (Score:5, Informative)
The reason that linux took off and HURD did not, was not at all due to the incomepence of the programmers, but is an interesting study in software engineering. In all the CS classes I have had they stressed how important is was to design everything first and then code - which is what the HURD team did. Linus's approach was different. He starting with something simple, and then improved it (call this iterative programming, agile programming, whatever - it's the same thing).
It turns out that traditional software engineering doesn't scale very well, and that this iterative approach is actually more effecient. This seems strange - you would think that doing everything right from the beginning would be better then having to rewrite large portions of the code with each itteration, but that is assuming that it is actually possible to get the design correct on the first try - it isn't. Large software programs can be very complex and expecting to be able to design something as big as an OS on the first shot is like expecting Henry Ford to design a car like we have today on his first shot. He didn't, and the cars we have today are the result of decades of design iterations. We shouldn't expect software to be any different.
In addition, Linus was the first to stumble upon the benifits of distributed open source development - which go hand-in-hand with iterative programming because other programmers rarely get interested in an open source program until you have something working - which linux did and the HURD did not.
But the HURD team had no way of knowing about that, and you can't blame them for writing software using the best methods that anyone knew at the time.
P.S.
People always raise the point of the HURD being a micro kernal vs linux being a modular monolithic kernal, but I think that had little effect on slowing the development compared to these other two issues.
Re:I've never understood the GNU/Linux thing (Score:5, Informative)
Text editors, command shells, compiler, linker, debugger, C library, standard Unix tools (grep/awk/diff/etc.), gtk, desktop environment (Gnome)... short of X and the kernel, pretty much everything in a modern "Linux" distribution that I at least consider to be part of the OS comes from GNU. Check the man pages for 'printf', 'tar', and such.
Re:What if the sco case was on irc? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:There's Cringely too. (Score:5, Informative)
And in Germany, SCO promises to watch its tongue (Score:5, Informative)
Sco Group will not say again that Linux end users could be held liable for using Linux, had to fear legal consequences nor will they repeat that Linux is an unauthorized derivate of Unix.
There is a fine of 10.000 EUR if SCO fails to comply with that written confirmation.
More details (in German):
heise.de [heise.de]
Re:Linux no longer essential (Score:3, Informative)
Then came the CD distributions like Red Hat Linux, SuSE Linux and Debian Linux.
Sometime after that Stallman started his rant. Sometime after that Debian caved and called their Linux "GNU/Linux"... thus was the start of the mess.
You're arguing that the system that we all called "Linux" for years wasn't REALLY Linux, we were just confused. I submit to you that you are the benificiary of our "confusion" and that those living in Pyrex houses should not tell Dow Chemical how to name Silcates.
Re:What if the sco case was on irc? (Score:5, Informative)
And if you want to be realy "informative" quote the right source [livejournal.com].
Re:This is very interesting, (Score:3, Informative)
as SCO's legal bills get higher and higher
Minor correction:
TSG (The SCO Group, to distinguish them from the Santa Cruz Operation) doesn't have any legal bills related to this case. Boies & company have taken it on contingency.
Re:How much of Linux is actually "GNU" anyways? (Score:3, Informative)
So, most of the "basic" OS, as well as several important applications, are part of GNU. Whether you want to call such an OS GNU/Linux is up to you, but RMS is right when he says that without GNU, there would certainly not be such an operating system based on the Linux kernel available today.
Re:I've never understood the GNU/Linux thing (Score:3, Informative)
And weirdly (Score:4, Informative)
That said though, there are a lot of other technologies that make up the Linux "environment" so it's kind of silly that GNU should get top billing.
Re:This is very interesting, (Score:3, Informative)
1. The execs have been execs have been selling stock
2. Canopy could be offloading stock, I don't know.
3. SCO may have been scared of eventually getting delisted from NASDAQ before all this started.
4. If SCO need money, they may try and issue more stock. This would presumably dilutes the existing stockholders, but it might help fund SCO's legal expenses. However, if the stock price is in the toilet, a new stock issue would be much harder to do, and require much more dilution.