[TriLUG] SCO Conference Call

[Ed Hill]

On Tue, 2003-08-05 at 18:59, Gnu Man wrote:
> What safeguards are put into place?  I'm not attacking you, but merely
> asking.  I'm also not trying to start a flame war (although I never
> remove my asbestos underwear).
> 
> If the safeguards are there, and how can we defend ourselves against
> someone who claims that their code has entered our source tree, but
> won't show the offending code.  A quote from SCO, "because we require
> all of our Unix licensees to keep this code in confidence for their own
> business purposes" .
> 
> There is a legitimate issue here.  Whether SCO has any legitimate claims
> remains to be seen.  Ignoring the problem, calling it FUD or whatever,
> will not solve the problem.
> 
> We all may soon be forced to go underground (or face legal liability)
> with our love for our favorite penguin powered machines, if corrective
> measures are not put into place.
> 
> I am only trying to help, if I am not welcomed here, then so be it.
> 
> I hate to see such a great idea as open source go down the drain because
> we didn't act and put proper protections in place.


Oh, thats baloney.

Exactly what "safeguards" do you propose?

The FSF already has extensive documentation

  http://www.fsf.org/
  http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/philosophy.html
  http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/why-assign.html

and has taken great pains to explain the proper means for code
development and copyright assignment.  And to date, they have an
excellent track record with regard to GPL enforcement.  Honestly, try
googling for "GPL license enforcement" and see what you find.

So yes, there is "an issue" here.  The issue is SCOX -- a company thats
desperately trying to drag who- and what-ever they can along with them
as they hurl towards financial oblivion.

Ed

ps - And Tanner has an excellent point.  Isn't it curious that 
     you who are trying to make some (ill-defined?) point about 
     code ownership and copyright attribution fail to provide 
     an identity?


> On Tue, 2003-08-05 at 17:33, Tanner Lovelace wrote:
> > On Tue, 2003-08-05 at 17:28, Gnu Man wrote:
> > > That would be like cutting off the head to cure the headache.
> > > 
> > > The root of the problem is IP (intellectual property).  Open source
> > > needs a system to protect everyone that copyrighted code is not entered
> > > into their source trees.
> > > 
> > > I'm afraid if this problem is not fixed, Open Source Software's future
> > > does not look very good.
> > 
> > Ok, I'm calling you on this right now!  This is nothing but FUD.
> > Open Source Software's future is perfectly fine.  There are plenty
> > of safeguards for this, and if somehow something slips through
> > it gets removed as fast as it can get identified.
> > 
> > I begin to wonder why you are hiding behind the facade of a name
> > like Gnu Man.  Who are you really?  With statements like that, you're
> > no Gnu Man.  Do you work at SCO?   Go spread your FUD elsewhere.
> > 
> > Tanner
-- 
Edward H. Hill III, PhD
office:  MIT Dept. of EAPS;  Room 54-1424;  77 Massachusetts Ave.
            Cambridge, MA 02139-4307
email:   eh3 at mit.edu,  ed at eh3.com
URL:     http://web.mit.edu/eh3/
phone:   617-253-0098
fax:     617-253-4464
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