Friday, May 16, 2003

Maybe its in the water

Wired reports that the Open-Source Crowd Irked by SCO and its suit to protect its intellectual property (IP). Linux programmers and distributors are supposedly fuming about recent threats of legal action aimed at open-source developers.

In particular, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" author Eric Raymond is quoted as saying that SCO's charges are "stupid lies, easily falsified by facts in the public record." (How does one "falsify" a lie?). Not that Eric is someone who's opinion I'd trust on a matter of copyright and IP.

Rumors abound that the suit is SCO CEO Darl MacBride's last ditch effort to sell the company. Interesting strategy, isn't it? "Hey, IBM! We'll sue you, so you buy us then you can settle the suit with yourself." I've run into MacBride off-and-on over the years since he was a fledgling at Novell in the late 80's - subtlety has never been his strong suit.

SCO's marketing campaign to large enterprises ("We may sue you too, if you use Linux") is simply bizarre.

Maybe, just maybe, Novell's Jack Messman got his bizarre idea to launch "NetWare on Linux" from the "never-amounted-to-much-at-Novell" group who now run SCO. Its a small world on the Wasatch front.


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