[Wylug-discuss] New Business venture !!!

[Rik Wade]

On Wed, 18 Jun 2003, Dave Fisher wrote:

> You obviously haven't seen the piece that came out on Monday in which
> the leading SCO director in the case, said quite explicitly that they
> were reviewing BSD code and the BSD vs AT&T settlement with a view to
> 'maximising their IP value' in that area.

Yep, I must have missed that one. However, I do read some of the BSD
lists and people like Theo De Raadt (OpenBSD) do spend a lot of time examining
the origin of code that is used in the operating system. I understand
that the grey area of intellectual property is also mixed in somewhere along
the line in this case.

> Plus:
>
> 1. None of the BSDs are as consumer friendly as Linux

It depends on your definition of "consumer friendly" but there are plently
of companies doing commercial support packages for *BSD as well as Linux.
Just because BSD doesn't tend to have Mandrake-like variations it is much
more organised and well specified as far as operating systems go. This
should appeal more to the business user.

> 2. This is a Linux users group

And the volume of BSD chat compared with MS Windows chat is very small.

> 3. Whatever the outcome of the SCO case there's bugger all chance that it
>    will stop Linux.

I agree. I doubt the SCO case will have much long-term effect on Linux,
BSD, or any other Open Source efforts.
--
rik