ESR/OSI's Unix/Linux-history-laden treatise on SCO vs. IBM

[Gary W. Swearingen]

I don't recall seeing the following treatise recommended on -advocacy or
-chat yet.  I've posted the URL here with my comments, since advocates
have convinced me that I don't understand the charter for -advocacy.
(Some advocate should write one.)

I found the treatise to be very interesting and generally well done.
It recounts a good deal of important Unix history, which will be
familiar to many here, but I was not bored by seeing it again, amongst
the discussion of SCO's alleged perfidy, mendacity, treachery, etc. :)

http://www.opensource.org/sco-vs-ibm.html

Entitled "OSI Position Paper on the SCO-vs.-IBM Complaint"

By Eric Raymond, President, Open Source Initiative


I'll tag on, here, a few of my own comments.

I had forgotten that:
    "In 2002, Caldera began trading under the SCO name."

It contains a few whoppers:

    "...the typical complexity of software [...] doubles every eighteen
    months..."

    a complaint that SCO slighted by saying he "introduced" Linux to the
    world, presumably instead of ESR's absurd claim the Linus "invented"
    it ("in 1991"!).

    the open-source community is "today's principal source of innovation
    in software"

    In his wrap-up, he gives us this copyleftic whopper: "We wrote our
    Unix and Linux code as a gift and an expression of art, to be
    enjoyed by our peers and used by others for all licit purposes both
    non-profit and for-profit."  (I dispute the phrase "all licit
    purposes" as regards the Linux kernel and other "GNU is not Unix"
    parts of "the Unix tradition".)

A couple of minor problems:
    He says Unix was invented in 1969, Linux in 1991 (as if they
        were invented within one year.)
    He inappropriately refers to "Ronald McDonald's restaurants".

He is biased toward Linux and away from BSDs, saying:
    "We in the open-source community (and our allies) are more than
    competent to carry forward the Unix tradition we founded so many
    years ago."
soon after saying:
    "The technical leading edge of the Unix tradition had moved
    elsewhere, notably to Linux."

I wish that he'd added to his several off-topic pot-shots, the fact that
none of the industry-making "Unix tradition" would have been happened
had courts developed their concept of software patents before the birth
of Unix.