SCO lawyers have it figured out but ...

Message ID: 30490
Posted By: bill_beebe
Posted On: 2003-08-20 22:23:00
Subject: SCO lawyers have it figured out but ...

we don't. That's right, they do have it figured out. For additional ammunition all they have to do is sift through this board and read the thousands of messages, cherry picking the very "best" comments as grist for SCO's PR mill. Keep in mind that in the opening shots SCO picked some very choice quotes (out of context) to illustrate their points. If you want to uncover the truth that SCO's allegations are unfounded (and they truly are), then you're going to have to do so unemotionally and stick strictly with facts. Emotional diatribe will do nothing but shoot down both message and messenger in this fight.

Message ID: 30492
Posted By: bill_beebe
Posted On: 2003-08-20 22:39:00
Subject: This is the SCO msg board, not /.

It's a shame that these boards don't have moderation like /. so we could tone down some of the rhetoric. We're not doing anything positive when our comments are salted with many of the comments I've seen. Putting "DIE SCO, DIE!" at the end of a message might make you feel good and raise your standing in the eyes of your virtual peers, but it has absolutely no positive influence whatsoever on the people you need to reach the most. And until you figure that out you're going to scream and cry and wonder why nobody pays you any attention.

This is a critial juncture for Linux and free (as in speech) software. To help in the successful resolution of this issue in our favor we need to open a mature unemotional dialog with important non-geek people in terms they can understand based on the facts. McBride and Co. have over 3 billion reasons to pursue this to the bitter end. They have latched onto this like a pack of pit bulls, and they aren't going to turn loose until they're driven to do so by overwhelming legal force. If you want to try to help defeat SCO in the court of public opinion, then what has been published here (and in other geek forums) is not helping that cause one bit. We need to stand together as a powerful force, and we need to do so as adults.

Message ID: 31782
Posted By: bill_beebe
Posted On: 2003-08-22 21:00:00
Subject: I Believe In Paying For Linux

< rant>
I buy a new copy of SuSE ($79) every time they make a major release, and then upgrade my SuSE development and test system with it.

I pay Redhat $60/year for a modest support subscription, and download their releases. It's installed on a second development and test system.

I have a subscription with BSD Mall so I can get FreeBSD releases on CD-ROM (about $26/release, two to three times a year). I install and run it on yet another machine.

In the past I've purchased software from Ximian, Borland, Microsoft, Adobe, Sun, and others over the last few decades.

Note, however, what I pay for my software. I am quite willing to pay up to the low hundreds for my choice in software (yeah, I'm a geek). But I'm not going to pay high extortionist prices to SCO. I voted with my wallet long ago against the original SCO by first going to Microsoft because Microsoft was cheaper for what needed to be done. After a few years of MSPain, I switched to early versions of Linux (Slackware, then Redhat) and I haven't looked back.

We're not rip-off artists. We're frugal. OS development and tools are now decades old. If software were based on the same development cycle as the microprocessors we run it own, our software would cost under $10 and be rock solid. Instead we have Microsoft that continues to cost hundreds per copy, and MS tools that cost in the thousands, and all we get in return is a steady stream of virus/work alerts and patches to go with them, as well as the occasional reboot due to memory leaks or BSODs. And I'm not going to continue to pay the new digital robber barons such as Darl McBride and company for the right to have a selection of stable software. Darl and Caldera/SCO damn sure didn't write any of the code in question; they just got lucky and bought some very used stuff from old SCO (now Tarantella). They're not getting my money, nor anybody elses with any sense.
< /rant>

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