TechCentralStation: Why Open Source May Be Doomed
Oct 06, 2003, 23:30 (87 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Megan McArdle)
[ Thanks to Jason
Greenwood for this link. ]
"I have to admit that I was never much of a believer in open
source. Maybe my business school coursework rendered me blind to
the glorious vision of a 'gift culture' in which people contribute
their work to a decentralized development project like Linux for
honor instead of money. Or possibly I'm just too thick to
understand how cutting off a multi-billion dollar revenue stream
from software sales, without putting anything else in its place,
could be good for the software business. Whatever the problem, I
never quite believed in the fairy tale world they promised in which
we'd all get an operating system that was better than Windows in
every way, for absolutely no money--not even when IBM started
retailing Linux PC's and the juggernaut of fabulous free operating
systems seemed unstoppable. But I confess that in all my skeptical
musings, I did not imagine that Linux might be brought down by
something even more prosaic than a lack of funds: a lawsuit.
"Yet that's looking ever more likely. SCO, which makes a
proprietary version of Unix that Linux competes with, has filed a
suit against the manufacturers of Linux boxes for copyright
infringement. IBM, which has been promoting Linux relentlessly, is
now announcing a countersuit, but it centers mostly on side issues,
rather than the key question: did one of Linux's thousands of
volunteer developers illegally stick code stolen from SCO into
Linux? Though those who have seen the code in contention say that
SCO probably has a case, it doesn't seem to be much of a case: the
stolen bits seem to be fairly trivial and easily replaced. But of
course, the object of this lawsuit is not to stop Linux from using
the code; it's to stop Linux from eating SCO Unix's lunch. And it
seems to me that it's very likely to succeed..."
Complete
Story
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