MonopolyNews's Journal: Why sa-3.14is a Fellow Traveller and Not an Enemy Combatant

It's because sa-3.14 and I have a categorical interest in common. Even if he's usually wrong though, he passes the test for enthusiasm, and so do I.

I said (autoparaphrased): "sa-3.14, IBM moved the SCO case to Federal Court" [btw: that's (IBM 1 SCO 0)-ed].

Yes. I stand corrected. I hadn't been following this case till your outburst (ie., those idiots at SCO) prompted me to research the issue, I figured anything that could ruffle your feathers was worth looking into.

Which goes to show how counterproductive a forum/weblog/newsgroup is as a vehicle to advance one's own so called "side" in a controversial issue. One merely provokes and informs the opposition, but bear with me because I'm not saying that's a bad thing. (in general I am perfectly happy to describe points that are an advantage to your own position... I mean, that's still just as interesting. Interest is what it's all about, more than position. People that are all position don't last long. Those with interest and no position, grow a position over time and might lose interest.

You can't make your side look good, per se, only bad. As marketing goes, that's pretty much all risk, no reward, isn't it?

Which begs the question of the real purpose of a forum such as nytimes forum. Well obviously I think it's informational. The links people provide are the closest thing to value if one's interested.

But insofar as sides do exist as patterns of agreement/disagreement, you also get to array the arguments of your "position" in as fair a light as possible. This is of interest to people that enjoy constructing either descriptions of positions or advocacies for them.

This is why I say to people that are contradictory to themselves, who may take positions that are not consistent in order to obtain momentary rhetorical "victories": YOU HAVE FAILED IT!

You indirectly imply that your position is contradictory.

Consider the mostly long gone stevestoddard, libertarian of noticeable Anyrandian tendencies, although he denied direct influence (never heard of her before we told him, see, case in point). I believe it. Why not? People converge at these positions from all directions. At least he was consistent. The errors in his thinking are in his assumptions and in the incompleteness of the libertarian theory used, not in the application of a consistent framework. Of use to another unborn Randian (shudder).

In my case, I may be biased as a linux-windows-solaris-palmos user, I don't know, but if that bias comes out it's just in the form of doubt that SCO is sincere or that their code was taken. If it comes out that it was taken then they deserve legal remedy.

I don't think it's my bias because it seems to me SCO has sold Linux for quite a while... I mean, this isn't SCO... this is Caldera, they were selling offending code belonging to SCO before they bought them, yes? in that case they bought SCO and not only does that indemnify them but they can sue others that did what they were doing? oh wait, not exactly like, nearly no one wanted theirs.. And as for the combined CalderaSCO, they may have violated the GPL because you are not allowed to distribute GPLed code with your Patented IP, unless that IP is available for free unrestricted use, in perpetuity. The SCO IP in question is not available under that sort of licence.

No doubt it would have been a better marketing move not to bring it up at all and thus avoid giving early warning to an enemy combatant such as you, sa-3.14, weeks before you might have otherwise learned. That's weeks of damage you can cause now with your linking and your good spelling.

To that I say, go forth and lay chaos on the newslogosphere, you can thank me later! You might recruit someone else that thinks the soap opera of the computing businesses is worth following. I do. It all happened mostly in my lifetime so we've seen it go from nothing to gigantic. I mean, more than 30 years ago is like prehistoric dinasaur times. It's the interesting part of the physics before the steady state sets in. Is that even in sight?

Of course, you would have heard about this SCO thing over the next few months anyway, it's shaped up to be the biggest legal moment for Linux yet. BSD has already been through this test of fire, of course.