[TriLUG] SCO Conference Call

[Tanner Lovelace]

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).

How about the fact that all development is done in the open and that
anyone who contributes "stolen" (for want of a better word) code is
very likely to be immediately shunned.  Never underestimate the
power of peer pressure.

> 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" .

First off, IMNSHO, SCO is full of sh*t.  That aside, paying someone
something based on something you *might* have done or *might* happen
has a name.  It's called extortion and it's illegal.  It's no different
from paying someone so there won't be any "accidents" at your store.
If SCO had a claim, they would show it to a judge.  Instead, they seem
to want to try this in the court of public opinion.   Coincidence?
I think not.  Red Hat, btw, has the right strategy.  By asking for a
declaratory judgement SCO will *have* to show a judge the evidence
sooner rather than later or else risk having a default judgement
entered against them.

> 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.

I wasn't calling the SCO problem FUD.  I was specifically referring to
your statement "Open Source Software's future does not look very good."

> 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.

More FUD.  Back up your claims.  There is no chance we may be
forced to go underground at all.  If, by some long stretch of the
imagination some small amount of SCO code shows up in the Linux
kernel it will be quickly removed and rewritten *AS SOON AS SCO
IDENTIFIES IT*!  SCO realizes this which is why they haven't shown
the code to anyone without an NDA.

> I am only trying to help, if I am not welcomed here, then so be it.

I can only speak for myself, but personally I judge people by
what the contribute to the discussion.  People who contribute
FUD, to me, don't contribute that much.

> 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.

Once again I find myself wanting to know your background.  If
I knew that, perhaps I might give you the benefit of the doubt.
Your comment as written seems extremely naive.  The fact that
free and open source software is developed out in the open is more
than enough protection against things like this.  To turn your
statement on its head, what protections does closed source
software offer?  The only one I can think of is that it's harder
to catch people at it.  That doesn't seem very secure to me.
Perhaps you should be more worried about closed source software.

Tanner
--
Tanner Lovelace | lovelace at wayfarer.org | http://wtl.wayfarer.org/
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  This would be a very good time to hang out with the Open Source
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