OT: Question re: SCO Use

[Fairlight]

The honourable and venerable Bob Rasmussen spoke thus:
> 
> I've done much snipping, obviously. I have no bones to pick or strong
> opinions, but simply an observation. Mark, the apps you have mentioned are
> all desktop apps. My distinct impression, being at the SCO conference the
> last few years, has been that SCO is positioning Open Server as a server,
> not a desktop machine. So mentioning PhotoShop, etc., may be "OT".

Well, true.  But whenever you ask what people used SCO for, it was always
"Business Applications".  Well if that's the case...I mean, these were
applications people were pointing to five, ten years ago.  They've dried up
for the most part.

> How does it work as a server, compared to Linux?

Ohyeah, they're just brimming with the latest apache patches, php, perl,
etc. that makes a server environment really viable these days.  (That -was-
sarcasm.)  Heck, forget freeware--is there even an Oracle port?  Oracle's
web site was less than forthcoming...linux and unix, but not which flavours
of 'unix'.  To SCO's credit, they've caught up on perl, but they still
stay behind the curve.  I wouldn't use it for a network server environment
because I don't feel it stays patched current and quickly enough to be able
to risk it for anything external without someone willing to do a lot of
porting--which I surely am not.  No businessman that looks at the numbers
would be either--it's a lot simpler to install the latest Apache on *BSD,
Linux, or any of several other platforms than it is to get it running and
running correctly on SCO.  In a pure economic sense, it's the antithesis
of "drop in and run", unless you like being 3-15 patchlevels behind on
whatever it is.

> And did Linux really use SCO code? Does anybody think that's a relevant
> question? Why or why not? (Deploy shields...)

Personally, I doubt it.  I actually only think it's relevant if it helped
to further revision of software patent and copyright law, which is in
serious need of revision to come up to the modern age.

I knew a lot of kernel developers over the years.  I'm not saying they're
beyond reproach, but a lot of them actually have higher ethics in the areas
of copyright and ownership than many commercial developers do.  Unlike M$,
who trashes the GPL whenever they can and then uses the software derived
under it -anyway-, a lot of people doing GPL-covered work believe strongly
in code ownership ethics no matter who owns it or under which license it
falls.  I'd say -if- something made it from IBM into the linux kernel,
the major players (Linus, Alan Cox, et al) were not aware of it, and it
came from someone else out there, with or without peer review.  And since
the source is supposed to be proprietary, there's no way they could have
screened against such an inadvertant roll-in to begin with--especially
since SCO later offered views at the source comparisons, but anyone looking
at it could never again work on the linux kernel.  So there's no way to
screen for things if you don't know what you're looking for.  The second
you're able to know, screening becomes moot because you're no longer able
to be a part of the project.  It's a complete Catch-22.

Given -that- little piece of mundane logic alone, I'd call it an
intractable situation as far as actually holding someone responsible.  They
couldn't have known.  Ignorance of the law is no excuse.  The law (and its
application) itself making it impossible for the citizen to uphold the
law itself is a contradiction for which nobody involved can be held to
blame--assuming there's any blame to be had.  You want to blame someone,
blame the legislators that drafted sub-par copyright and patent laws and
refuse to update them -properly-.  (No, the DMCA is -not- proper
legislatin.)

The only winners are going to be the sharks--er, lawyers.

mark->
-- 
          *****   Fairlight Consulting's Software Solutions   *****
OneGate Universal CGI Gateway:                  http://onegate.fairlite.com/
FairPay PayPal Integration Kit:                 http://fairpay.fairlite.com/
RawQuery B2B HTTP[S] Client & CGI Debugger:     http://rawquery.fairlite.com/
Lightmail Mail Sending Agent:                   http://lightmail.fairlite.com/
FairView Image Viewer for Integration:          http://fairview.fairlite.com/