On Wed, 28 Jul 2004 23:10:18 GMT, Scott Burns <scott@mirrabooka.com>
wrote:

[...]

>Two years ago more than 90% of the sites I work with had at least one
>SCO machine. Tommorow I'm replacing two SCO machines which brings the
>tally down to just 67%. By this time next year we should be well under
>40%. Since the start of TSG's litigation we have upgraded one machine
>to 5.0.7 - an upgrade in place, and under way as the IBM lawsuit was
>launched. We looked at upgrading another machine to 5.0.7 with a free
>licence but eventually decided against it. Of the machines being
>replaced tomorrow, one is a Pentium I, and the other is a 486. I
>suspect some companies will keep their P3s around, so we'll be
>supporting SCO until that hardware dies in four or five years.
>
>Just what, in your opinion, have we done wrong?

Here's another analogy; you're playing the part of a drug dealer who's
claiming the high-ground because he's selling 60% less smack outside
the school gates. Personally I don't care if you're running 1% or 99%
SCO software on your servers (although if it were over 50% I'd
question your sanity). Run what you like, but don't gripe when you
can't get stuff for free, when you're paying another company to
litigate against everything they stand for.

>>I'd go further than the Xpdf guy, I'd add code to randomly write trash
>>to various files on the hard disk of a SCO system in the background
>>;-) (although since I contribute to a couple of OS projects, I know
>>I'd never get away with it...)

>This attitude has got me stumped. Do you, FyRE, have total faith that
>TSG are going to lose completely, have no leg to stand on, and IBM will
>prevail, with 100% certainty, in court?

Yes, and anyone in any doubt about this should look at the SCOX share
price history...

>If so, just what would this
>sort of thing achieve? It's pissing off people who you want to migrate
>to Linux, not get scared by the petty open source revenge and go running
>to MS.

I don't "want them to migrate". I couldn't care less if they ran
Microsoft until their ears bled cash. Working on an OS project, with
people you respect and admire, is not some crusade to gain market
share. I'm not out to overthrow the government (though I'd not care if
it happened), I'm not trying to put anyone out of business or attract
chicks. What a lot of the "old thinkers" here seem to believe; that
it's impossible for anyone to actually be interested in technology, or
altruistic enough to produce software for zero reward; is blinkering
them to the fact their feeble excuses of "I'm just doing what I need
to earn a buck" doesn't wash with a great many people. I'm sure a lot
of the SCO resellers are now "studying" for their MSCEs already - yet
another good route for someone with no interest in tech, content to
"get by", bumbling through life with the least effort possible.

>And just who is your target here? Almost everyone bought into SCO when
>they were The Santa Cruz Operation. You are saying that if I buy a
>Ford, and then years later Ford gets bought by, say, China's government,
>that I must support China's repressive regime.

Let's say you find that Ford are funding the KKK, Israeli military
operations and Martha Stewart. Would you still be proud driving that
Pinto down the street?

>I like the Samba attitude, which seems to me to be "You are a dead
>company. In a year or two you will be a footnote. We're not going to
>waste our time on you." A open source supplier, even one working for
>free, who drops support with no warning is not going to help the open
>source community in the long run.

A while back I developed some browser plugins and toolkits people
could use on their websites; for free. I was contacted by a guy who
wanted me to help him enhance some parts - I was appauled at the site;
it had pretty graphic depictions of violence against women - basically
a "shock" site by some adolescent who's probably ashamed of it by now.
I told the guy I wasn't interested, and I didn't want him using my
stuff - though I could do nothing to prevent him from doing so. You
see, sometimes it's better to just walk away from someone, even if
it'll lose you some "market share"...

--
FyRE < "War: The way Americans learn geography" >