A.P. Lawrence

SCO is hypocritical

Fri Sep 5 06:55:05 GMT 2003 SCO is hypocritical

I missed the blurb about SCO and Samba that was put at http://www.sambar.org on August 19th. To save them the bandwidth, I'll reproduce it here:

(19th Aug, 2003) SCO use of Samba code under the GPL

Over the past few months, the SCO Group (formerly Caldera International, Inc. a Linux distribution vendor) has been complaining about violations of its Copyright works by the Linux kernel code.

Recently, Darl McBride, the Chief Executive Officer of SCO has been making pejorative statements regarding the license used by the Linux kernel, the GNU GPL. In a keynote speech he recently said:

"At the end of the day, the GPL is not about making software free; it's about destroying value."

In light of this it is the depths of hypocrisy that at the same event SCO also announced the incorporation of the Samba3 release into their latest OpenServer product. Samba is an Open Source/Free Software project that allows Linux and UNIX servers to interoperate with Microsoft Windows clients. The reason for this is clear; Samba3 allows Linux and UNIX servers to replace Microsoft Windows NT Domain Controllers and will add great value to any Operating System which includes it. However, Samba is also developed and distributed under the GNU GPL license, in exactly the same manner as the Linux kernel code that SCO has been criticizing for its lack of care in ownership attribution.

We observe that SCO is both attacking the GPL on the one hand and benefiting from the GPL on the other hand. SCO can't have it both ways. SCO has a clear choice: either pledge not to use any Open Source/Free Software in any of their products, or actively participate in the Open Source/Free Software movement and reap the benefits. For SCO to continue to use Open Source/Free Software while attacking others for using it is the epitome of hypocrisy.

The strength of Open Source/Free Software is that it is available to all without restrictions on fields of endeavor, as the Samba Team believes the ability to freely use, modify and learn from software code is one of the grounding principles of computer science, and a basic freedom for all.

Because of this, we believe that the Samba Team must remain true to our principles and our code must be freely available to use even in ways we personally disapprove of.

Even when used by rank hypocrites like SCO.

Jeremy Allison, Marc Kaplan, Andrew Bartlett, Christopher R. Hertel, Jerry Carter, Jean Francois Micouleau, Paul Green, Rafal Szczesniak, Jelmer Vernooij, Volker Lendecke. Simo Sorce

Samba Team.

They are absolutely, 100% correct here. SCO used to use Visionfs, which is (in my opinion) an inferior product, but prior to the sale to Caldera, it was THEIR product, so of course there were no licensing fees. After the sale, the Vision product was owned by Tarantella so they couldn't use it freely any more. I'm sure it was that, and not technical considerations, that caused the switch to Samba in the current SCO products.

You can't eat the cake and complain that free cake is bad for bakers.