From: Mike '/m' 



http://newsforge.com/print.pl?sid=03/08/24/1228211

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The confrontation between SCO and the open-source community has now
escalated to open war. I suppose, in retrospect, that this was inevitable
once SCO announced its intention to sue on a theory that would make all
open-source licenses invalid. And we all know who's lurking like Emperor
Palpatine behind Darl Vader, funding his lawsuit to the tune of at least
$6,000,000[1] even if not otherwise pulling his strings. Update 25 Aug,
0700 US EDT

SCO/Caldera's site is being hit by a massive denial-of-service attack
today. The timing, the scuttlebutt on Slashdot and elsewhere, and the
contents of my mailbox all suggest strongly that the DOS attack was
triggered by Darl McBride's slanderous interview[2] accusing the community
of being IBM's sock puppets, and my response[3] to it.

It appears that my response articulated what many of us have been feeling
for months as SCO's public rantings grew ever wilder and more destructive.
McBride's personal accusations against me bother me very little, but I am
nevertheless honored and humbled by the heartfelt support many of you have
emailed. A good number of you seem to want to elect me your war-leader in
this crisis -- maybe it's time for me to dust off that Obi-Wan Kenobi
costume the SVLUG people made for me to wear on the original Windows Refund
Day . I will strive to be worthy of your trust.

With whatever authority I have, I ask that the DOS attack cease
immediately. Please stand down *now*. We have better ways to win this
fight.

There are at least three reasons running a denial-of-service against SCO is
a bad idea:

First: We're the good guys. But that doesn't matter if we aren't *seen* to
be the good guys. We cannot fight our war using vandalism and trespass and
the suppression of speech, or SCO will paint us as crackers and maybe win.
Let's keep the moral high ground here.

Second: We have other tools that are more powerful. We have an
astonishingly strong set of facts on our side. SCO has been caught in
multiple lies, wholesale IP violations, and defamatory statements. The way
to destroy them is with legal weapons. We can do that.

Third: SCO is its own worst enemy. Every time its spokespeople open their
mouths, they dig their company's grave a little deeper. Consider their
statements at SCOforum and what followed. We're in an even stronger
position than we were three days ago.

We *want* them raving in public. It helps us. Everything they say is more
rope to hang them with in a courtroom, but they're too trapped in their own
propaganda-based strategy to do the smart thing and shut up. Their problem
is that the moment they stop FUDding long enough for people to get a
clear-eyed look at the facts[4] their credibility will evaporate and their
stock price will crash hard. Even all the legions of Microsoft's press
shills, captive analysts, and astroturfers won't be able to rescue them.

Stop the DOS attack. Let SCO speak out and hang itself.

Right now, the most helpful thing you can do is collect SCO's published
statements and show how they have repeatedly contradicted themselves and
lied about the facts. I've received some genuinely useful stuff by email
describing factual and legal vulnerabilities that the research team[5] here
at Alliance HQ didn't spot on its own -- papers like Greg Lehey's
analysis[6] of the code SCO revealed at SCOforum showing that they must
have stripped BSD copyrights out of their kernel tree. The reports
indicating reason to believe that there is probably GPLed code in
Unixware's Linux Personality Module were helpful too.

One of our big advantages over SCO is distributed brainpower. There are a
lot of us, and we have excellent Internet-research skills. Want to strike a
blow against SCO? Help convict them using their own public statements,
their own 10Ks and 10Qs, all the press coverage, the material that's in
their web and FTP sites. Collate. Assemble dossiers. The facts are with us,
so gather and use the facts. All cheesy Star Wars references aside, this is
info-war. Truth
-- believable and provable truth -- is the weapon.

This is why sites like the IWeThey SCOvsIBM page[7] and
WeLoveTheSCOInformationMinister[8] aren't just good clean fun; they're
valuable references to help lawyers demonstrate SCO's record of bad faith,
lies, and massive intellectual-property theft. Do more of that; in
particular. the IWeThey wiki badly needs updating and better
cross-references. These things will be used to defeat SCO -- and sooner
than you probably think....
===

 /m

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5