Asymmetrical Information

I'm suprised I haven't seen "Jane, you ignorant slut," on here.

That's what is hilarious- the defensiveness in the linux crowd. "But your honor, how can SCO have any legal case? I mean, pfft, come ON! Their product supremely sucks!"

And why do I think that if Linux ever became the Common Platform for Everyone®, the Lone Gunmen of the world would proclaim it's suckiness and move on to some other OS. Geekix, perhaps. "Oh Gawd, text based? How last century! Sheesh!"

[by that I don't mean to stifle development, I'm meaning to say that linux is a private club for self-styled tech-gods, and they like lording it over the rabble who don't care to code their own sound card drivers]

If you want to raise issues about the economic pros and cons of the open source model, fine. But your techcentralstation article didn't do that - excepting a glib put-down or two in the first paragraph. (BTW, "Jane",I don't believe you're on my side when you talk of the "fairy-tale world" that I allegedly live in; and wring your hands about the loss of "multi-billion dollar revenue streams" from the "software business." Here's a clue - many of us fairy-tale folks don't care about the software business - we care about software and its users.)

At any rate, your techcentralstation article wasn't about the economics of the software industry - it was about the SCO case. And it was a lousy article. What little "factual" content there is in the article is frequently wrong - SCO hasn't sued anyone for copyright infringement, IBM's response goes to the heart of SCO's case (IBM is alleging copyright infringement against SCO, not the other way around), and certain high-profile backers of Linux have been very much focused on legal and social issues from the beginning (ever heard of RMS and the FSF? Hello?) On top of your thin gruel of suspect facts you throw a bunch of speculations that indicate your entire knowledge of the case comes from a mix of SCO press releases and lightweight trade press articles. You complain about Linux supporters insulting those who "only want to help" but your article itself is insulting. Comparing open source software to file sharing networks, as you and McBride do, is insulting. You have no evidence, so what you are doing is slander. Following up by alluding to "legal experts" and "analysts" who agree with SCO is insulting. Many legal experts and analysts have written detailed , thoughtful refutations of SCO's claims, but to you the trade press soundbites of a couple of washed-up M$-flunkies (Didio? Enderle?) carry the day. That's insulting.

Bottom line, "Jane", is I don't think you're on my side at all, and if the abuse you're getting isn't any worse than what I've seen on these comments (and elsewhere - they've got your number at www.groklaw.com) then it's well-deserved abuse. The software development world isn't a tea party. If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen.

Doug,

You're an ass. Jane has said over and over again that she is not commenting on the merits, if any, of the lawsuit, but only commenting on how the mere fact of the lawsuit has implications for the open source business model. I certainly hope you program with more attention to detail than you've shown in your posts.

What I think your missing somewhat in your analysis of the situation is that part of the dynamics in the OSS/FS phenomenon is that it does not matter one bit in the long run if SCO wins or loses, or if someone else comes along and tries to sue some part of the OSS/FS community. That community and what drives them is not going to go away. This is going to be a problem for many of the commercial, for profit, software companies. There is no magic bullet to stop OSS/FS. Companies that wish to compete will have to do so by fair competition. Not by litigation, lock-in, or embrace-extend-extinguish.

"Linux competes well against against low-scale, fragmented markets such as those for Unix servers, but I'm skeptical that it can muster either the market power or the developer numbers necessary to take over the desktop."

And that's the heart of why people are screaming at you: open source software isn't trying to take over anything! There is no Linux business plan: there are thousands of business plans that use Linux as a tool to accomplish other goals. (Not to mention the tens of thousands of people making software for the sheer love of the thing.)

And most of those businesses (and people) don't care where the software comes from. It is a means to an end, a tool to get the job done. When they customize software, it is to improve the margin of their core business. But entering the software-selling business has huge risk and NRE, so there's rarely any point in trying to sell the improvements.

And then there are the cost and risk of custom software: keeping backup copies, maintaining change logs for auditing and debugging purposes, keeping personnel or contractors who can recompile it and fix the little things that inevitably break. Those costs can be vastly reduced by pushing your improvements back to an open source project, along with a modest cash donation to keep the project going. If enough people do that, a successful project materializes out of thin air, and everybody wins.

"But that doesn't mean I want to see Linux fail; I'd be very happy to see it succeed."

It has already succeeded! In less than 15 years it's gone from yet another useless student project to infrastructure the average Joe uses without even knowing it (DSL routers, Blogspot, personal video recorders, web hosts, servers at the office, etc).

"If someone had pitched Linux to you before it was started, you'd say they were crazy. Now it's got Microsoft looking scared."

Which is why you're getting such vicious complaints. People have been saying "open source software simply can't do X" ever since I started paying attention. Their conceptual model seems to be that, since achieving X would take N man-hours, and no business could justify paying for N man-hours, it was impossible. The same argument can be used to "prove" that the Amish will never have barns, because the NRE is too high amortized over too long, given the income and technological sophistication of the typical operating unit.

Open source projects look an awful lot like a barn raising. Thing is, if IBM and Oracle and Sun and ten thousand ISPs and a hundred thousand programmers decide the milk market is languishing, you get one hell of a barn.

"And I wish that open source advocates would spend less time telling me that I'm an idiot who's just too stupid to get the new paradigm, and more time telling me how they're going to fully fund development out of what are, essentially, already fully budgeted consulting revenues."

From the capitalist perspective, for-profit software has perverse incentives. It's easy to a achieve a quality level of "good enough", but customers have to be incentivised to continually repurchase the product. The standard approach is to break backwards compatibility: a fraction of the market buys the new product, and everybody else has to upgrade to interoperate with the early upgraders. For every dollar of total cost of ownership spent on proprietary software, an appalling fraction is spent breaking compatibility and cleaning up the collateral damage. (The best example is Windows networking protocols: not even Microsoft really knows how they work. The best documentation in existence comes from the open source people who are reverse engineering them.)

With open source software, the objectives of the producers are aligned much more closely with the consumers. Achievements accumulate over time. Bad software is improved or replaced.

"The level of anger that I generated by merely saying that a lawsuit brought by someone else, which I certainly didn't applaud, might mean trouble, is worrisome."

The computer community has no more ass-clowns than any other community. They just all know how to use email.

You state:

"If you've got a good explanation . . . give it to me."

Beauty of such explanations is in the eyes of the beholder. Send me an e-mail and I will try.

Henry

"Rex:"

I know perfectly well what "Jane" has been saying over and over again - that she has no opinion on the merits of the SCO case, and she's only trying to speculate on what it means for open source adoption. The thing is, I think she's lying - or in the most charitable interpretation, she's letting her biases cloud her (superficial) understanding of the situation. Comments like "The analysts who saw bigger chunks (after signing an NDA) said there seems to be a case." betray a willingness to give SCO's claims far more weight than the 86% of IT managers who recently said that the suit would have no impact on their Linux adoption. And the questions of whether the suit has merit and whether it will impact Linux adoption ARE inextricably linked, and I'm pretty sure "Jane" knows that, even if "Rex" doesn't. As SCO's claims are debunked, and former cheerleaders like Laura Didio clam up, IT managers nervousness level retreats, and the all-imprtant price and performance isues come back to the fore where they belong.

Finally, "Rex", yeah, I am an ass. A big hairy ass. (And you, from your post, appear to be a dweeb and a priss.) But I do pay attention to detail. And I can sniff out propaganda masquerading as reasoned argument. Apparently I'm not the only one either.

My real question is this; why is this any more of a problem for Open Source than for anything else? Commercial software, by and large, does not offer indemnity, and no-one cares. A spurious lawsuit would be at least as dangerous to a small commercial vendor.

What does this case have to do with Open Source? (Other than perhaps that Jane thinks it's the moral equivalent of Napster.)

With only six comments so far, and none on the TCS site, I would say you are getting off pretty easy. I will attemtp to keep my comments concise and not personally derogatory. Thankfully, some of the commenters here have already shared much of what I would have offered.

First, the Open Source 'thingy' is a very ambiguous target to throw such wild generalizations at. If you view everything in life with the hat of an economist you are likely to make such mistakes. As someone else mentioned, there is no business plan for OSS; but many business plans utilize tools from it. To a high degree the relationship of OSS to the business world is a lot like that between academic research and technology companies. And just as in the latter case the OSS finds itself in a perpetual battle of intellectual property rights with technologists who want to claim something for nothing. In fact, there is a new scientific movement underway to "Open Source" scientific articles in order to prevent technology squatters from doing such things. For them it isn't an economic issue it is a knowledge issue. But I digress.

You really should be a little more forthcoming about the philosophic and economic values you hold. Many might not see the otherwise obvious link your article has to Objectivist goals and the way those are frequently employed by Microsoft to mislead the general public about any of it's critics. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if there were only one or two degress of separation between your piece and a Microsoft backed PR firm. But some of that criticism belongs to TCS more then you personally.

If you receive many criticisms to your article which attack your knowledge of the SCO vs. Linux issue then don't take them too personally but do research the subject more. Just as in the bloggosphere there are millions of highly educated eyes who have been following the story and can quickly discover whatever faults your story may have. Hmmm, come to think of it, that is an oft touted virtue of the Open Source Development model, too.

Although I am not an Objectivist I think one will find that the Open Source movement is not necessarily antithetical to it. You will find, however, some strong, central characters who would be antithetical to it. But even among the uber geeks and evangelist of "free software" these characters often cause dissension.

cheers :)

Hmmmm. As a sometime Mozilla developer, Open Source user and enthusiast, etc., let me weigh in.

Jane, I think you're correct that regardless of the merits of SCO's case, it could have a chilling effect on people's adoption of Linux, at least in the short term. I'm not as convinced this will be the case in the long term. Already, there have been corporate expressions of confidence in the Linux side of the case; HP has agreed to indemnify customers who bought Linux from it and haven't modified the kernel source. Ultimately, I think IBM is going to wind up picking SCO's bones over this. And as companies get over the prejudice that open source is just a bunch of long-hairs throwing together programs in their spare time, I think they'll be more likely to provide at least some token form of indemnification for the people they're reselling it to. (I say "token" because I think that's all you're likely to get from open- OR closed-source software. Look at the Timeline Inc. case, which exposed SQL Server users to liability for patent infringment, at least if you take the MS license seriously. As usual with software and legal issues, it's more a question of how you make the user feel rather than actual protection offered.)

Touching on the other points:

Open Source UI generally sucks, which I agree to be a big sticking point. Programmers are a dime a dozen, good interface designers...aren't. I think it's a prefectly soluble problem for projects that really do have a strong hired-labor component, though: hire a few good people to put together a good user interface, implement it, and keep everyone else's cotton-picking hands off. (n.b. While people outside the community often think of open-source development as highly anarchic and egalitarian, this is not the case. In my experience, at least, there is alway a core group of technocrats who have the final say over what does and doesn't go into the source tree. If the UI people you hire really are good, they'll become part of that group, and the rest of the group will back them up when they shoot down someone's ridiculously contorted UI for adjusting unnecessary settings.) Unfortunately, a lot of software corporations don't really appreciate the importance of the user interface, either. OTOH, the Gnome project has supposedly been working on removing the more heinous "frob 20,000 obscure settings" user interface from their programs, so maybe even the hobbyists are slowly catching on.

The fact that Open Source is operating on a very limited revenue stream is also a concern, although I'm not sure the example you've picked is the best one. When Microsoft took over the browser market, for instance, the amount of development energy they put into Internet Explorer seems to have plummeted (at least to judge from the visible rate of improvement). Open Source might even have a slight edge, because even if corporate-funded development is running at a complacent maintenance-mode level, you'll probably still have a few hobbyists working on their extensions and tweaks, one of which might be the Next Big Thing.

I class accountability with the legal issues I discussed earlier; the odds of my getting actual accountability from, say, Microsoft are pretty much zero anyway, so it's really a question of whether OS projects can present a convincing facade of accountability. This is a somewhat simpler problem.

Final thought: installed-base competition. Microsoft's revenue stream depends on people regularly updating Windows and Office. Can Microsoft in fact continue adding value to their products at a rate that justifies continued regular updates?

I'm a developer/engineer/DBA for a big company (you've all heard of us), and while we're all Linux fans in my group (even using it for a few low-priority projects), we're essentially a Sun shop with a few Windows deployments. The trust level generated by the mental image of a large corporation standing behind the code of their operating systems promotes buy-in from our customers (and their customers), despite the fact that the implied guarantee may be a mirage, as pointed out in previous posts. No one really has been afraid of Linux falling over for a long time now (certainly not us; we've had some initial set up problems, but Linux has run like a dream once it's gotten going), but they have seemed to fear, well, I didn't know what they were fearing, but I guess I do now. The existence of this sort of contoversy (any contoversy with potential bottom line impact would suffice) validates their fear in the short term.

I've got hope for Linux, given the quality of the minds working on it. However, Jane is right to posit that there's a limit to the level of enterprise (read "high financial risk") adoption technical considerations alone can manage. Linux proponents can't just sit back and wait for IT decision-makers to "get it", because by the time they do, Sun or Microsoft may have already wowed them with the next next big thing. Come on, smart folks! Yelling (or being otherwise snarky) at doubters will not mitigate their fear, and their fear is Linux's major problem in the realm of enterprise adoption.

If I can speculate psychologically, I'm guessing that not having universal acknowledgement of Linux's appropriateness for the enterprise stings those whose work on it (or in advocacy of it) has been a labor of love, more so than if it was paid work, and makes them defensive and condescending, If so, that's totally human (dude). But being defensive is in this case actually exacerbates the problem -- it betrays a lack of understanding of the trust issue involved, precisely because the doubter's doubts are left unaddressed. However baseless you may feel their concerns to be, they are, in a metaphorical sense, your customers, and you aren't giving them what they want. I bet if the (to abuse a phrase) Linux Community puts the requisite effort into solving the trust/indemnity issue, they just might find a novel solution that will surprise us all and provide a model that will allow community development efforts to proceed unencumbered by others' fear.

Okay, that said, I'm willing to guess that the difference between sneaky-masquerading-propaganda-style reasoned argument and no-hidden-agenda reasoned argument is whether Doug Lay agrees with the argument's conclusion. No, Doug, I bet you're not the only one either. But I do dig the way you drop the bomb on your foes with the "...if that IS you're real name..." scare quotes. Let me try: Listen here, "Mullah Omar", you can't hide forever. Yeah, I like it!

The most important point I got out of the article was this:

The SCO suit, whether it has merit or not, has opened people's eyes to the potential added cost of future liability, or the cost of defense from said suits even if they are without merit.

This may force people who consider deploying Open Source to factor in a "gotcha cost" to their comparison between deployment lifetime Open Source and Commercial solution total cost.

Doing so takes away some part of the Open Source price advantage; perhaps all of it. Especially if you consider the unquantifiable psychic cost of worry over what could happen.

She could have made that point without even mentioning that there are people who believe SCO has a real case. Bogus or real, it has awoken a new consideration for companies that might adopt Linux.

Is she right? Is she wrong? Is she overstating the impact, but partially right? I don't know. It's food for thought. There's room for arguments any of those ways.

<switcheroo>
The Timeline suit, whether it has merit or not, has opened people's eyes to the potential added cost of future liability, or the cost of defense from said suits even if they are without merit.

This may force people who consider deploying Microsoft software to factor in a "gotcha cost" to their comparison between deployment lifetime Microsoft software and solution total cost.

Doing so takes away some part of the Microsoft price advantage; perhaps all of it. Especially if you consider the unquantifiable psychic cost of worry over what could happen.
</switcheroo>

The fact is, users are being held liable for the infringements of software developers, no matter whether the software is open source or closed. I think indemnity is an issue, but I think people such as the lovely Jane are fooling themselves if they think it is a problem unique to open source.

I'm on your side, guys. I'm not urging others to make you fail; I'm trying to help you succeed.

What side is that then Jane ? What do you mean by success ? Why do you think that we think success means 'monetising Linux' ?

I'm sorry, you haven't a clue.

I would assume that success means wider adoption of open source, encouraging further development on the Linux platform.

Jane -

What's irritating is the implication that open source is more susceptable to liability issues than any other software. No one has presented any plausible legal or business argument for that. There is the psychological argument you present - liability is an issue for Linux because it's a percieved issue for Linux. But that argument is circular (if not, strictly, invalid), and the people pushing it all seem to be pushing the near-slanderous Open-Source-Is-IP-Theft meme as well.

Mike, I compare open source to file sharing only in the sense that it is a decentralized network with little authoritarian control, not because I think that open source developers are stealing. But I think that the decentralized control could allow a few angry developers to steal from their employer, polluting the common pool. That's not ht esame thing as thinging that open source developers are committing IP theft.

Jane, do you really think that centralized organizations are better at preventing that than organizations that work in public? Why, exactly?

Note that so far all of SCO's theft allegations against Linux were committed by large corporations with explicit approval of their lawyers, and that AT&T was forced to settle the original UNIX lawsuit after it was found that they had misappropriated large amounts of public BSD-licensed code into the 'secret' SYSV base.

I'd bet $20 that when this is done, not only will there be no significant infringement of SCO code in the Linux kernel, but that SCO will be found to have violated the rights of Linux kernel developers with (eg) their "Linux Kernel Personality".

Dear Jane,

You've officially dug a hole you'll never get out of because open source proponents just turn off their minds reading your views on this. Check out:

http://www.corante.com/openmind/archives/000368.html

Pull quote: "One wonders if McArdle is actually ignorant of these issues, or if she's deliberately misinforming her readers."

You've got the cheerleaders' panties in a bunch. Great work!! If it hasn't happened already, you'll get slash-dotted and blacklisted from dating card carrying members of the open source movement. Even if your intention was just to provide a rational analysis of the possibilities.

-Brad

Jane,

Whether or not a case like SCO's would slow (or stop) Linux adoption, and to what extent it would slow it, are legitimate issues to comment about. However, the article in question had problems with how it tried to examine the issue.

First of all, the case with IBM is not a copyright case. SCO is not suing IBM over misappropriation of SCO copyrighted materials. The case is a contract case. SCO claims that their contract (the contract they inherited) with IBM prevents IBM from contributing their own copyrighted materials to Linux. Since the material in question is copyrighted by IBM, not SCO (which SCO spokesmen admit when questioned about it), the code is legally placed in Linux regardless of whether SCO has a legitimate case with IBM. For the code involved in the IBM case to be copyright infringement, SCO would have to show that it is really copyrighted by them. This is something that they have not even claimed in court, much less tried to prove. So far, SCO's claims of infringement have been only in the press, not the courtroom. They try to make it seem as though the claims are related to the IBM case, but they know they are not. This is merely a PR move to generate confusion about the case. SCO has not brought a single case involving copyright infringement, and appears unlikely to do so. This would seem to be because they know that there is no foundation for such a case.

End users are not liable for copyright infringement contained in software that they purchased. I went into this issue in a post I made a short time ago in reply to your last post on the main page about this article.

Also the idea that open source software is a greater legal risk than closed source software is a red herring sent out by SCO. Don't be fooled by it. There is no more reason to believe that open source software will contain infringement than there is with closed source. In fact, the transparency of open source development is a reason to believe that it will contain less infringement rather than more. The only argument in favor of closed source software in this area is that infringement is less likely to be discovered. I believe that the reduced likelihood of it existing in open source software at least balances this point out (not to mention that I have a problem with "It's OK as long as they're not caught" thinking).

There is no foundation laid in the article to conclude that Internet auto sales are relevant to Internet software distribution. In fact there are several reasons that the dynamics of the two things are entirely different. Probably the most obvious of these is that a vitual product, such as software, has much more chance of being successfully distributed in a virtual marketplace, the Internet, than physical products, autos, do. Perhaps that is not what you were trying to get at, but, as I said before, no foundation was laid for relevance.

Finally, you don't seem to understand the relationship of Free Software to business. Free Software is not about making the software business profitable or successful. Free Software is about a software development method that offers more benefit to the users of software, not the sellers of it. All of the people that develop software also use it, only a small percentage of them sell it. Most people who develop software for a living work for a company that does something else rather than sell software. Free software offers benefits to the companies that these developers work for, not the few big proprietary software vendors. Software development is not all about software sales, far from it.

Jody: That was a nice polite way of accusing Jane of being a Microsoft stooge. You're using an old cheap tactic favored by wingnuts who can't possibly imagine somebody disagreeing with them unless they've been bought and paid for. As an Objectivist I find the notion that Microsoft is pushing Objectivist goals on OSS is laughable. For one thing, there aren't any. The company isn't even using the Objectivist position on anti-trust. And while Jane can speak for herself, I seriously doubt she's an Objectivist though she's probably sympathetic to some of our ideas. Personally, I'm uncomfortable with the GPL and much prefer the BSD style license. But I'm open to argument on the subject.

C. Whitman writes: "End users are not liable for copyright infringement contained in software that they purchased."

And perhaps end-users of file sharing software are not liable for copyright infringement, er, sharing music they deeply care about, on the file sharing networks. But guess what? Some of the end users are going to have their asses dragged through the wringer to settle the question.

SCO thinks its IP was misappropriated. Its opportunity for redress is in court, where lawyers will argue the facts and the law of the case. And if the judge/jury side with SCO, then chances are likely that many businesses and individuals who went to Linux to save money will be liable for at least what they saved and perhaps more if it's proven that they dismissed opportunities to legitimately license SCO's IP.

The problem with many vocal cheerleaders in the open source community is that they're self-deluded into believing that they can do no wrong (and if they do, the rest of us just have a mistaken definition of what wrong is). The greater future consequence to "open source" will come from not taking a moment to figure out what's wrong, redress the grievance, and move forward than from the original wrongdoing. I think some users of open source are going to have to start hedging on the possibility that SCO might have a legitimate beef and/or might win.

-Brad

"Doug Lay": It's not normally good form to "quote" someone else's name, unless they're done something to deserve it, like, oh, pretending to be someone else, or chosen a particularly noxious joke-name.

"Jane", as you call her, IS Jane here, and putting quotes around her name every time you mention it just make you look like, well, a jackass.

On another note, these threads bring up an observation that should be obvious to many by now... that for some people, "Open Source" in general, or Linux in particular, are religious subjects - and that disagreement about Dogma is not taken lightly.

To those that object "Linux/OSS isn't about _____" (where _____ is, especially, "making money", or "getting converts"), well, it's not inherently about that, no. Unfortunately (for their case, not for OSS or Linux, as such) there are an awful lot of other people who think, act, or are making it "about that".

(Disclosure: I've run linux for years. I've run OBSD on and off. I run Windows at home and at work, too. I like Macs, and have for ages. I have no religious positions on any of them, except "use what works".)

"The level of anger that I generated by merely saying that a lawsuit brought by someone else, which I certainly didn't applaud, might mean trouble, is worrisome."

I think that it was easy to read a bit of "silly geeks, this is the real world" condescension into the original article, which certainly didn't help. Open source advocates are used to being told that they Just Don't Get It, and it doesn't get easier with time. And tend, I think, to find it even when it is not intended.

I have some sympathy for Darl McBride, because I can well imagine how desperate I'd be if I were sitting on top of a failing company....

This also doesn't help, since many in the Linux community seem to believe that McBride had this or some similar scheme in mind when he accepted his position. Any expression of sympathy for him is going to predispose linux types to hostility.

Brad Hutchings:

"And perhaps end-users of file sharing software are not liable for copyright infringement, er, sharing music they deeply care about, on the file sharing networks. But guess what? Some of the end users are going to have their asses dragged through the wringer to settle the question.

As noted before, the RIAA is suing people for knowingly downloading copyrighted material, and making it available for distribution. This is by no means the same as receiving something that you have every right to believe is free of restriction. It is possible that after the SCO suit, should SCO win, licensing for linux would be required. But at this point there is no reason to believe that there is any intellectual property belonging to SCO in the linux kernel, and the more due diligence that is done, the less reason there is to believe it. I am not a lawyer, so I go by what is written on the case by lawyers. None of them have opined in favor of SCO so far as I know.

Jane is correct in saying that this suit may harm the wider acceptance of open source, or at least of linux. But that is not because SCO has a legitimate beef, nor because end users are going to be found liable. It is because after decades of watching the US legal system return insane rulings and award ludicrous damages, nobody wants to bet on the intelligence and common sense of the courts.

It is my opinion that this case will not get to court, and that should it get there, the ruling would actually be helpful to open source. This is because I think that the court would find that the open source model, in which the code is available for everyone to see, allows any party that suspects infringement to make its claim clearly and to take action against the infringing party. Thus due diligence is observed, and the receivers of the code have every right to assume that it is clean. Remember, all you ever have is the word of the person from whom you receive the code (indemnification is a non-issue, because it is offered by noone). This is no different in the open source case.

But as Jane suggests, who knows what the next lawsuit will be?

"Dear Jane ... you'll get ... blacklisted from dating card carrying members of the open source movement."

Card-carrying members of the open source movement go on dates?

Woah, that joke practically wrote itself. ;-)

Brad Hutchings,

You obviously did not read my other post that I referred to here about copyright infringement. If you were not going to take the time to do that, you should not have bothered to reply (unless you had previously researched copyright law in some depth, which you clearly haven't done). The cases about music sharing on the Internet that you refer to are against people who posted music on the Internet for distribution. They effectively became distributors when they posted this music, not end users (the music is at issue, not the P2P software). This has nothing to do with whether end users of Linux would be liable for infringement. They simply would not be. If you go and buy a copy of a music CD, a movie, or a copy of Microsoft Word that happens to be pirated, are you guilty of infringement? No. This is in the case of buying willfully pirated products. How much less so would you be guilty of infringement if you bought a book published by a reputable publisher that happened to have a plagiarized chapter from another book contained within? The author and/or the publisher would be guilty of infringement, not you. The only liability for copyright infringement that Linux users could have, if there were infringement in the kernel, would be for copies that they made beyond those that they purchased for use on multiple machines.

For a company that thinks that its IP was misappropriated, SCO is certainly acting strangely by not bringing a single case against anyone for this misappropriation. They are making a lot of noise in the press about copyright infringment, but they have yet to make a single claim of infringement in court, so apparently lawyers never will argue the facts and law of the case.

Sigivald,

I am uncertain whether you were including me in your remarks since I did mention that "Free Software is not about making the software business profitable or successful." I just wanted to make it clear that I would hardly characterize my reasons for liking Linux "religious" ones. My remarks were about the practical benefits of Free Software to the developers and users of it, even to the point of it being good for business. I was saying that, when looking at the practical business benefits of Free Software, if you define business as "selling software" and software only as a "product sold," then your scope is too narrow. Most programmers do not work for shops that sell software.

"I am uncertain whether you were including me in your remarks since I did mention that "Free Software is not about making the software business profitable or successful." I just wanted to make it clear that I would hardly characterize my reasons for liking Linux "religious" ones. My remarks were about the practical benefits of Free Software to the developers and users of it, even to the point of it being good for business."

Give it up. These people aren't worth speaking to. As I commented earlier, there is clear resentment and hatred against Linux users and developers on this blog. Why else would there be comments such as Linux users never go on dates, are religious fundamentalists, are living in a fantasy world, don't understand "real" business, are no better than thieves, have been "stealing" from SCO for years, are the same as Kazaa users, are about to get their comeuppance, will soon realise that their free OS isn't really free, and haven't been trying to resolve IP problems.

None of these insulting and demeaning attacks are true. I can't even imagine that anybody would have the gall to say such things face-to-face, without the safety offered by an anonymous blog. But reasonable arguments with them won't change their mind. These people are set in their ways. Anything you say will be more fodder for their insults: "see, the cheerleader is getting his panties in a bunch by daring to defend himself".

The condescending attitude is incredible. I see this quite often and it baffles me. A group of people who literally hate Linux and will assault it at every turn. Why? No idea. Though there is a common theme. The jeering harpies are often professionals or students with a business background. I can only imagine that FLOSS is so alien to their way of thinking that they believe there must be something wrong with it. Take note of Enderle and Megan as the most recent examples of this. Is it any surprise that FLOSS developers are quite often academics and scientists, or professionals with a scientific background? It doesn't surprise me.

Mr. Hand writes:

"The condescending attitude is incredible. I see this quite often and it baffles me. A group of people who literally hate Linux and will assault it at every turn. Why? No idea."

For the record, I find the religious, fanatical cheerleaders a bit out of touch with the real world, and consequently annoying as they preach to us from their moral high horses. And also for the record, *I* did not say nor did I even suggest that open sourcers could not get dates or lacked social desirability or anything like that. I simply suggested that Jane was going to have to settle for a rich investment banker after making comments critical of the open source movement rather than trolling Slashdot. Why so defensive?

-Brad

Whitman wrote:

"If you go and buy a copy of a music CD, a movie, or a copy of Microsoft Word that happens to be pirated, are you guilty of infringement? No. This is in the case of buying willfully pirated products."

Dude, believe me... If you get caught buying pirated DVDs for $5 from some small distributor, the cops and the prosecutor are not going to be happy with you. Knowingly buying stolen or pirated goods is a crime.

You may think that the SCO letters to Fortune 500 companies were a baseless stunt. However, if/when SCO gets a judgement that says its IP was misappropriated, and if it has already informed users of its belief in the matter and those users ignore the claim, those users have then willfully ignored a legitimate claim. And those users' troubles deepen. They probably would not be dealt with criminally, but they would result in large civil judgements.

Which, to make a long story short, is why despite the merits of this SCO thing, the longer it continues, the more dangerous it becomes to choose Linux. Which is Jane's point...

-Brad

Nathan: Are we reading the same blog? Several of the people you are tarring with "hating Linux" use it and like it. Jane says she's on your side. I don't hate the software, I just despise you and the rest of the fanatics that come out of the woodwork with every seeming slight on all that is holy. Whatever happens in the SCO case, OSS doesn't need your brand of advocacy.

Chris wrote, "I just despise you".

The fact that you can despise somebody you have never met really says everything that needs to be said.

Brad replied to me, "And also for the record, *I* did not say nor did I even suggest that open sourcers could not get dates or lacked social desirability or anything like that."

I never said that you did. I never even mentioned your name. Why did you think I was talking about you? Why so defensive?

Hutchings,

Knowingly buying stolen goods is a crime in the U.S., but these statutes (Title 18, Part I, Chapter 112, Section 2315 and Chapter 81, Section 1660) do not cover copyright infringing goods. I know of no U.S. statute (oddly enough) that makes receipt of infringing material a crime (although the importation of it is a crime, mostly because of the likelihood of redistribution). However, even if such a statute exists, I wrote "happened to be pirated." This was an indication that it would be unknown to the recipient.

Again, it will be difficult for SCO to get a judgement that Linux infringes its copyright without them ever bringing a case that claims this. Regardless of this, however, the letters were meaningless to end users for two reasons. First, end users are not liable for infringement in any case. Second, the letters contained no proof that infringement existed, just a baseless claim that it existed. This was not sufficient cause to believe that infringement existed without any further substantiation. These companies certainly could not be dealt with criminally. The criminal statutes regarding copyright infringement deal only with (legally) willful infringement.

Jane's point is not that it actually becomes more dangerous to choose Linux, but that perceived legal risk could slow or stop its adoption. There is actually some merit to this point, especially since it is apparent that many people are quite ignorant of copyright law. Of course, the idea that open source software carries a greater legal risk than proprietary software is merely a conjuration of the people responsible for SCO press releases, so that perception could evaporate if people become more informed, or even simply ask themselves why proprietary software would be different than open source software in this regard.

Just one thing: I wanted to make a correction to my last post. Technically, importation of copyright infringing materials is not a crime, but rather a civil offense. There is no criminal penalty for this. The person has to be sued over it.

Nathan: I despise a lot of people that I've never met, so do you if you thought about it for a moment. But you neatly skipped the part where you tarred everyone here with the broad brush. That rates contempt methinks.

Chris says, "But you neatly skipped the part where you tarred everyone here with the broad brush."

I did no such thing. I even re-read what I wrote to check and you are inventing fantasies to justify your comment.

Jane, so why did you write that piece? I think there is a disingenuous aspect to your comment: "I'm on your side, guys. I'm not urging others to make you fail; I'm trying to help you succeed." Maybe you don't feel you're being insincere, but I'll explain why I'm getting that message.

First, your opinion was titled, "Why open source may be doomed." Maybe the title was the work of Tech Central Station, rather than your original title. In any case, you never came up with a scenario of doom. Even if you had, how would that be helping open source succeed?

Second, you state that "I was never much of a believer in open source." Again, this is hard to square with your claim of being in favor of open source.

Third, you refer sarcastically to the motivation and results of open source projects. I know it's hard for you to believe, but Linux is better than Windows in many ways, though perhaps not every way, yet.

Fourth, you opine that it is "ever more likely" that Linux will be brought down by SCO's lawsuit. You do this without carefully considering the available evidence (though incomplete). Specifically, you ignore SCO's statements that the code at issue is not "stolen," but is being used in alleged violation of the terms of contracts. By this I mean that the code at issue is legally owned by, for example IBM or Sequent, but SCO claims that the code may not be released because it is a derivative work of Unix, under terms of contracts that the developers negotiated with AT&T. IBM and many others maintain that SCO's concept of a derivative work is legally unsupported.

Fifth, you characterize IBM's countersuit as mostly about "side issues." You seem to brush aside IBM's contention that SCO has granted rights to Linux users by distributing its own version under the General Public License.

Sixth, you exaggerate the impact of the lawsuit, despite considerable evidence that it is having limited effect on Linux deployment decisions.

Overall, I would characterize your piece as a one-sided argument in favor of SCO's position, not a balanced view of the dispute. To me, it is a rather transparent example of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) and your protestations to the contrary are insincere.

One premise of Jane's article is that the SCO suit can be viewed as a harbinger of never-ending legal strife surrounding open source software, and that this risk is one that IT managers will increasingly decide is not worth the benefits.

Aside from the issue that this premise is an Item of Propaganda, or a "talking point" of the Microsoft Corporation -- a fact which accounts for much of the venom directed Jane's way, (i.e. by parroting known Microsoft talking points she appears to be playing the role of a shill, a characterization not ameliorated by the fact that this article appears to have been a work for hire published by a web site that is funded by the Microsoft Corporation) -- we are still left with whether it is true, that is, whether IT managers in fact have to worry about this, instead of dismissing it as a noise that Microsoft pays its salesmen (and others) to make.

The premise ignores the business reality of the importance of open source software to the strategies of the IBM Corporation, which is a big company. IBM apparently understands this risk and has therefore undertaken to render the current perpetrator a bankrupt, smoking ruin... presumably as a message to future recipients of Microsoft funding that they should never try this again. It is also a message to IBM's customers that there is more than one way to indemnify them. Instead of waiting for the Microsoft-funded entity to attack them, IBM can turn its own formidable intellectual property cannons on the would-be plaintiff, putting them out of business before they can cause too much trouble.

Many observers of these events fail to notice that IBM is not defending itself here so much as it is counter-attacking with overwhelming force, with clear intent to kill. That is easy to miss, because IBM is choosing to conduct these activities in the courts instead of in the press. Meanwhile we are bombarded daily with various Microsoft-funded reminders that SCO is out there and making lots of noise.

It will therefore come as a surprise to many when SCO declares Chapter 7 bankruptcy in order to escape having to turn the UNIX properties over to IBM, or to Red Hat, whichever wins the damage award first. It is doubtful whether that will end the matter, since IBM is aggressively moving on the Canopy Group (SCO's owner and largest creditor) as well. Both companies are also using the discovery process to compel SCO to divulge its relationships with Microsoft and with Sun; if in fact there was trade libel here, as alleged by both in their complaints, it might be more lucrative for the victims if someone with deeper pockets than the SCO Group were to be found to have planned and funded it.

There is a huge story going on here, but only one side is announcing their moves in the press. Business analyses of the situation that rely on the press noise, without factoring in what has quietly been going on in the courts, are likely to be specious. As I think Jane's was. The real story here is that Microsoft's hegemony over the computer business is being broken. This SCO thing will turn out to have been a misguided but minor marketing move... a badly conceived stalling tactic that in the end hastened the adoption of linux by publicizing it to the extent that it has, and by linking it forever in people's minds with the support of big companies like IBM.

This story on groklaw is a reply to your infamous article and it makes some really good points. I couldn't have said it better.

Why Microsoft's FUD May Be Doomed

Personally, I'm not at all suprised that you got the response you did. Regardless of your intentions the article read like a poorly informed and poorly researched opionion piece. I respectfully submit that it was indeed that.

I'm not going to go over ground that has been gone over by others with respect to what the dispute is or comment on the possiblilty that SCO will keep on trotting off to court because it can't sell it's Unix software to anyone, Linux or no Linux. Let's face facts...the property that SCO has as a product is next to worthless.

As for the alleged unscaleability of open source I'd point to paid programmers at IBM and other large corportations who are contributing to it. This doesn't even take into account university students and grads who are being taught on Linux or FreeBSD. So, at least for the forseeable future, which isn't long in this buisness I admit, I see no problem there.

You are equally spending time wondering how to fund a development model. The reality is that you don't do that directly, any more than Microsoft funds it's development model directly. That is the purpose of a buisness model which is to generate the funds necessary to support the development model. Both Red Hat and IBM have chosen the service route as the most likely. Mandrake nearly went under because it chose the wrong model but is slowly recovering by adopting a somewhat modified form of the service for fee model. Microsoft relies on profits from both sales and service of Windows and Office to support all its other development efforts none of which, incidentally, turn a profit.

It's that last point that I think should worry an analyst. Microsoft relies too heavily on it's bread and butter products to fund an array of money losing projects. There's a wish on the part of Microsoft to lock in, via contracts, that revenue stream. There's an equal desire on the part of Microsoft's customers not to be locked in.

The software industry is at a crossroads. At some point in any business there comes a time when products of a given business become a commodity. What Open Source really displays is that the time has come for operating systems and, indeed, office packages. This is the real threat to Microsoft's monopoly. And if Linux falls then something else will pick that up. Most likely Free or Open or Net BSD. The essential threat will remain.

Finally, one of the most common criticisms thrown at Open Source is that it is software writen by geeks for geeks. And to some extent this is true. At the same time there are pushes inside the Open Source world to take care of the things that will make an "idiot box" possible. Though perhaps not there yet Mandrake and SuSE are getting very close. The question is now much of an idiot box do you want? While one could, with justification, go on at length about the security issues with Microsoft products at some point that becomes self defeating. The real problem with idiot boxes is that there are "idiots" in front of them. But human idiots can be educated to do such things as harden a system and so on. There is a very fine line between reasonable ease of use and the kind of damn the torpedos easy of use so popular to Microsoft apologists.

As for the user space and user interface with people like IBM on board how long will it be before the UI on Linux is at least as good as OSX or Windows? Not long because it is already mostly there.

The SCO suit would have slowed adoption of Linux if it appeared to have any merit at all. While we won't know till it goes to court, if it ever does, the current betting seems to be that it is without merit. And the market seems to have agreed. How else do you explain the City of Hamburg?

You're being "yelled" at because you shot your wordprocessor off without doing the appropriate legwork. You ascribe to open source a special set of "problems" that we need to "deal with" and ignore the reality that any software product is equally capable of having IP legality issues. You've been taken to task because intentionally or unintentionally, you helped the SCObies propigate FUD. In short, you didn't do the basic research expected of a journalist, and people called you on it.

Some may have been uncivil about it, but refusing to acknowledge the issue isn't going to help. The column in question was a disaster of misinformation. Period.

Why did you write that piece? Probably because TechCentralStation's owners get paid by Microsoft to generate fake anti-OSS/pro-MS support.

If you were any kind of true libertarian you would be ashamed.

Why did you write that piece? Probably because TechCentralStation's owners get paid by Microsoft to generate fake anti-OSS/pro-MS support.

If you were any kind of true libertarian you would be ashamed.

Why did you write that piece? Probably because TechCentralStation's owners get paid by Microsoft to generate fake anti-OSS/pro-MS support.

If you were any kind of true libertarian you would be ashamed.

Why did you write that piece? Probably because TechCentralStation's owners get paid by Microsoft to generate fake anti-OSS/pro-MS support.

If you were any kind of true libertarian you would be ashamed.

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