The problem is that if you think of a robot, you might think of a few things. One image of a robot is the Sci-fi portrayal. A autonomous walking or rolling machine that can function on its own accomplishing either a wide variety of tasks or limited to very specific tasks. These types of robots are not currently available so discussing them is a moot point. Another image of a robot is that of the industrial robot. These typically do one specific task with high precision and are either stationary, such as an industrial robotic arm or limited in range, like the Amazon warehouse robots. The industrial robotic arms have been around for decades and are just a natural development of industrial automation that has happened for the past couple of centuries. So what about self-driving vehicles? Here again, this is a natural progression. Airplanes have had auto-pilot for decades and planes can even land on auto-pilot. In mass transit, there have been automated trains for decades and they are arguably safer than human driven trains. At least they will not fall asleep or ignore speed limits. How about the automated ordering ordering systems at Wendy's? The Sheetz chain of gas station/convenience stores have been doing this for over a decade and it makes for an easier and more accurate ordering experience. So what I am trying to say is that while there has been an acceleration of in certain areas or automation, automation or ways or doing more work with less effort has been with us forever. Where would you draw the line of where to apply a tax. As a software engineer, my job is often to automate processes on the back end. If I write a piece of software that automatically move data from one system to another, so that someone does not need to re-enter the data, have I just created a robot, because I certainly have just eliminated a job that was done by a human? And I have done this kind of thing many times in my career.

So if I can replace the operating system on my computer, table, or phone with a open source operating system, could we go along those lines. If a new operating system was developed to completely replace the operating system on the tractor, would it be legal to put it on the tractor? You would not be tampering with any of the copyright protected software, since it would just be erased and replaced with the open source software. I understand that this would not be easy and the the hardware specification are probably closely guarded. Also getting an example tractor to dig into and possibly render unworkable at least temporarily is an expense proposition. Just an idea. I am not an embedded programmer, so this is not really in my realm of expertise, but open source could revolutionize the farming industry for the farmers. The tractors would become commodities just like PCs.

Of course SCO is not going to go after Linux companies. Most Linux companies can afford a decent defense. SCO would rather threaten and scare the individual users that cannot afford a good legal defense. They get quick money out of the users, or turn them away from linux, which hurts the Linux companies indirectly. SCO may not know how to write good software anymore, but they really know how to move the stock price, which is the primary business concern.