An Open Letter to Darl McBride

Armed and Dangerous | 8-20-03 | Eric S. Raymond

[CJ Wolf]

I searched, but didn't find it, so I posted it. Them there is fighting words!

[George W. Bush]

There's a linux banglist. I took a stab at flagging them.

Nice letter. But I don't want SCO to back down now, as E.R. is asking.

I want to see the Linux community crush SCO and grind them to dust and IBM to then suck the life out of the corpse and walk off with whatever patents and cash they have.

I want a legal demonstration on the merits of GPL that will not be soon forgotten.

[Bush2000]

I want to see the Linux community crush SCO ...

You guys just don't seem to get it. The so-called "Linux community" has no such power. SCO's fate will be determined in the courtroom, where you will find that justice doesn't always depend upon right and wrong but upon interpretation of facts spun by lawyers.

[Salo]

Pinging the Penguin Pinger

[rdb3]

The Penguin Ping.

Wanna be Penguified? Just holla!

[Salo]

Hey, where's the graphic? :-)

[rdb3]

I dropped them. Had been receiving both compliments and complaints.

I'll let the Penguins decide. If they want them, they'll be back. Fair enough?

[Tribune7]

Bring back the Penguins!

[TechJunkYard]

Bah. Some people will complain about anything.

[N3WBI3]

Yes but before SCO can get to Linux there is an 800 lb gorilla (IBM) whos bannana they are trying to take. I dont think the Linux community (Specifically Redhat which is the strongest vendor) will do any damage to SCO. There will be no need to because I think IBM will take a long time to scrspe SCO off of its boots..

[Bush2000]

Yes but before SCO can get to Linux there is an 800 lb gorilla (IBM) whos bannana they are trying to take.

And in the courtroom, it's a level playing field. The weight of the gorilla has no bearing on the outcome.

[Dimensio]

Had been receiving both compliments and complaints.

Keep in mind that one of the complainers also complained of the "profniaty" in a tagline. The tagline in question was, in its entirety, ".".

[Calvinist_Dark_Lord]

Penguins forever!

[Wonder Warthog]

"Some people will complain about anything."

Yeah, but some things matter.

I've never complained about the "penguin" graphics, because they seem to not add much bandwidth overhead, but there are SOME folks on this forum who delight in posting into threads severely overloaded/bloated graphics---and not all of us out here have high speed connections.

I think the appropriate treatment for graphics is to LINK to them, so they don't automatically load into the thread---but those interested can still access them if they so wish. Same for sound files.

[Salo]

Go tell it to OJ Simpson.

And in the courtroom, it's a level playing field. The weight of the gorilla has no bearing on the outcome.

[Salo]

Wellll......when I had my dial-up account, the graphics were a *bit* of a pain. Still, I think they add a little something to the ping. It's your ping, so you get to do what you want, but if your counting votes, put me in the Pro-Tux tally.

[Salo]

He's the FNG who wants to do the admin moderator's job. In his defence, I have seen the (.) that came up referred to an an "asshole". Still, that's a really lame complaint - actually lower than the cries of an Internet Spellchecker. I've also seen people complain about the use of wildcards in swear words to make them clean - like "sh*t" and such. I remember when we right-wingers were the tough guys who could handle such things.

[N3WBI3]

Ummm 5 minutes ago you were saying it was who had the better lawyers..

[shadowman99]

You guys just don't seem to get it. The so-called "Linux community" has no such power.

Actually, you don't seem to get it. Do you have the slightest notion of how many IT guys are Linux users? In most decent companies these people are consulted before any new enterprise level software purchasing is done. This is where SCO will suffer - and they know it. That's why SCO is mailing the invoices.

Also the server team guys are the ones who bitch about software that needs to go. "We have SCO on this server but it sucks. RedHat Enterprise would be better."

Oh yes, us geeks do have the influence to hurt SCO bad for this. And we will.

[Bush2000]

Go tell it to OJ Simpson.

The door swings both ways. OJ had a pretty dumb jury. IBM better pray that it gets the same; otherwise, SCO will portray itself as the poor, maligned victim -- and juries are generally sympathetic to people who've been screwed over and biased against deep-pocketed defendants (ie. tobacco companies, insurance companies, etc).