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Open Season on Open Source?



>From: "Rich Braun" <richb at pioneer.ci.net>
>
>"Hungry Profiteer" <b40xcvq1 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > Hiawatha Bray has an article on the opening page of the Business
> > section in today's Boston Globe, entitled "Open Season on Open
> > Source".
> >
> > In addition, the article has no information ...
>
>Perhaps you could pause your message right there with that last phrase.  
>(It's
>only slightly an exaggeration, but the point is that the article has no 
>*new*
>information that hasn't been rehashed a hundred times by other media.) I 
>hope
>Hiawatha is on this mailing list and is reading this thread.
>
>One obvious point that I think should be made ...

... is that's it's rude to quote out of context and to assume that only 
obvious points need to be made.

>... by journalists covering the
>issue:  there have been many cases of intellectual-property rights being
>asserted in the freeware community (one famous case that I recall had to do
>with file compression utilities about 10 years ago), and the freeware
>community has its own not-so-secret weapon that has always worked against 
>the
>profiteers.
>
>Code around it, under it, through it, or over it.
>
>The lawyers simply cannot grab hold of this jello; it'll slip through their
>fingers as fast as Torvalds and his 10,000 volunteers can code up a 
>workaround
>to whatever alleged pirated code is rooted out and identified by the SCO 
>legal
>beagles.  If 998 of the Fortune 1000 are found to be running pirated code,
>they'll be running a patched un-pirated version by this time next Sunday.

If 998 of the Fortune 1000 are considering open source, Microsoft has just 
frozen the market. Again. They don't need to announce a new release, just to 
spread FUD about the risks of switching to the competition.

Please don't inply that Mr. Bray doesn't have an obligation to give the 
background information his readers need to make an informed decision about 
(A) SCO's motives, (B) the likelihood of getting a dunning letter 
themselves, or (C) Linux's viability in a corporation, both short term and 
long.

It doesn't matter if Linus Torvalds can code around it, nor how many 
volunteers he has to help. The only things the average purchasing manager 
will remember from Mr. Bray's article are "Linux" and "Lawsuit".

It does you no good to think "That won't happen". *YOU* are already a 
convert. *YOU* are already educated. *YOU* are an experienced user.

*THEY* will only remember "Linux" and "Lawsuit".

That's how the newspaper business works: if it's not in the first 3 grafs, 
it's not in the reader's head. If Hiawatha Bray doesn't know that, Ghod help 
the New York Times Corporation: I'd hope that in light of recent changes at 
the parent corporation, Mr. Bray would strive for a more balanced view.

The only imperative in big companies, especially in these times, is "Don't 
make waves", and nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft. It's not enough 
to defend Linus Torvalds against knives in the back: unless we want Linux to 
slide back to "hobbyist" status, we have to defend it, and Linus Torvalds, 
from being eaten alive by butterflies.

>Rock, paper, scissors.  Rock!

Let's cut to the chase -

Rock, Hard Place, Mountain of Paper: all they'll remember is "Linux" and 
"Lawsuit".

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