OT: Cutthroat Microsoft Tactic

[Baron Munchausen]

Thermodyne writes:

You are missing the point entirely! Open source does not generate enough income to insure their products, let alone defend them in court. And if SCO wins, they will have the resources to take a very close look at Linux code along with the other Xnix systems out there. There is a lot of pure UNIX code in most Nix operating systems. To have to go back and clean it all up or face long court battles will take cash. Cash that the Open Source community does not generate. To defend them will take cash. Cash that they do not have. This action is a predatory stroke of legal genius. And at its roots are the very fundamentals of capitalism. This is capitalistic big business/wealthy people, against socialistic give it out for free small business/poor people.

Erm, um -- Thermodyne...

Does Internation Business Machines, Inc. strike you as a 'small business'? Or a 'socialistic' organization? Or lacking in money? They are probably second only to MS itself in sheer cash reserves, and have a very formidable legal department.

Also, if this 'Open Source' thing can't work, why is this archetypal corporation, the epitome of capitalism which has prided itself on being 'the most profitable corporation in the world' since early in the previous century, supporting it?

Maybe they have recognized that the Operating System is destined to be a 'public domain' resource in the future of computing? If the anti-trust suit against MS had been correctly completed they would concluded that you could not have a 'level playing field' with one of the competitors holding private control of the whole field, and would have ruled that Windows source be released to some sort of public consortium for further development in the public interest.

This is essentially what happened in the breakup of AT&T and in the current movement to break up the power generation monopolies. In both cases the infrastructure previously considered 'private' property -- the phone lines/switches and power lines/switches respectively, have been appropriated by the 'evil socialist state' and made into collective property. Now anyone who wishes to may start a phone company and the others must allow them to connect to the system of phone lines. And also in many states (and soon in many more) anyone can build power generation equipment and they must be allowed to connect to the system of power lines and sell their power.

The analogy to computer software is clear. In order for competition to be fair, the OS must be a public access system that anyone can 'connect to' and use fully. A closed source OS does not allow this, as everyone who has been following Microsoft's API trickery knows quite well. They have always had a 'secret' API just for their own programs, and they have also always changed their OS to deliberately break other companies programs, from DOS 1.0/1.1 and Lotus 123 to Windows 3.10/3.11 and DR-DOS to Windows 95/98 and Netscape Navigator.

IBM has simply recognized the truth of the need for the OS to be a 'public access' system, and is trying to foster a new model of OS management (and the OS that developed with it) that can accomodate these needs. SCO on the other hand is acting as a cat's paw for Bill Gates and literally running their company into the ground (yes, this legal confrontation will destroy them) just to throw mud on the Open Source movement and scare people away from it. It's the corporate equivalent of suicide bombing. They must destroy themselves in order to damage the infidel and will be rewarded in 'heaven' afterwards. I would bet good money that all the major players at SCO will be working for MS or one of its subsidiaries within 6-12 months after they close the doors on SCO.

[ August 10, 2003, 21:41: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]