Linus Torvalds, the founder and lead developer of the Linux open-source operating system, has some strong views about the legal dispute between The SCO Group and IBM, which he shared with eWEEK Senior Editor Peter Galli in an e-mail exchange last week.
Torvalds Speaks Out on SCO, Linux
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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From Linus:
” ..personally think it’s a lot easier (and thus more likely) to integrate open source code into a proprietary platform than the other way around. ..”
No kidding! It would be quite interesting to see everybody’s source code, and see how much stolen code has been hidden under the pretext of proprietaroship.
I should hope SCO will refrain from baseless personal attacks on Linus in the future.
And I am happy Linus can now concentrate on 2.6 development and release.
I don’t think so. Looking at their attitude, they will keep on distributing FUD, at least to ensure their stock price will not fall.
Is it OK legally for someone to do internal stock trading as what SCO and its director’s group of company doing? Anybody that got knowledge on share/stock business law/act here that can answer this?
“I allege that SCO is full of it” Linus Torvalds
Quite true
I believe if key SCO stock holders sell their stock now and they bought their stock right before the suit, they are probably going to be seen in court.
What I means is the content of the articles at;
http://www.forbes.com/2003/06/18/cz_dl_0618linux.html
Especially amont this paragraph;
SCO is basically owned and run by The Canopy Group, a Utah firm with investments in dozens of companies. Canopy’s chief executive, Ralph J. Yarro III, is chairman of SCO’s board of directors and engineered the suit against Microsoft in 1996. Darcy Mott, Canopy’s chief financial officer, is another SCO director, along with Thomas Raimondi, chief executive of a Canopy company called MTI Technology (nasdaq: MTIC – news – people ). In this cozy company, SCO even leases its office space from Canopy–a fact disclosed in Securities and Exchange Commission filings, along with the fact that SCO’s chief financial officer, Robert Bench, has a side job as a partner in a Utah consulting firm that last year billed SCO for $71,200.
Canopy companies sometimes share more than a common parent. They form joint ventures and buy and sell one another’s stock. Last November SCO formed a joint venture called Volution with Center 7, a Canopy company. In 2000, Caldera sold off part of its business to EBIZ Enterprises (otc: EBIZQ – news – people ), a Texas company in which Canopy holds a controlling interest and whose board boasts three Canopy execs, including Mott, according to SEC filings. Previously, Caldera bought shares in two other Canopy companies, Troll Tech and Lineo, and later wrote off the Troll Tech investment but sold the Lineo shares at a profit, according to SEC filings. In 1999, Caldera sold its own shares to MTI, then bought those shares back last year, according to SEC filings.
How is it?
As a free software user, I certainly hope this suit goes away. However, I can’t say I feel sorry for Linus. As people on this site point out every time the discussion comes up, Linus sees himself as just a programmer. By agitating proprietary companies, but not fighting for free software, I think Linus set himself up for this kind of legal problem. Frankly, I see this kind of thing as justification for why so many of us feel that Linus should get in the fight. Proprietary software certainly is in the fight.
I think this time IBM, Redhat or someone will save the day. However, if the suit were ever brought at Linus directly (no matter how frivilous), he would lose due to lack of preparation.
-b
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Maybe they will. Well, probably not redhat.
But maybe not. You know, SCO might very well have right in some of their claims. And we are dealing with american courts here, so who knows what will happen..
As a free software user, I certainly hope this suit goes away. However, I can’t say I feel sorry for Linus. As people on this site point out every time the discussion comes up, Linus sees himself as just a programmer. By agitating proprietary companies, but not fighting for free software, I think Linus set himself up for this kind of legal problem. Frankly, I see this kind of thing as justification for why so many of us feel that Linus should get in the fight. Proprietary software certainly is in the fight.
I think this time IBM, Redhat or someone will save the day. However, if the suit were ever brought at Linus directly (no matter how frivilous), he would lose due to lack of preparation.
If he was being more vocal about this he would be a bigger target…he would’ve actually been sued by now if he was “fighting for free software”
I have a lot of respect for Linus, just for this very reason, he is NOT political, he just works to make the Linux kernel the best he can make it, and this foolish lawsuit will go away somehow, IBM has put wayyy too much time, money, and energy into Linux to let it die at the hands of SCO now.
>>I believe if key SCO stock holders sell their stock now and they bought their stock right before the suit, they are probably going to be seen in court.<<
SCO said they found about aledged violations in Dec, and starting contacting companies in Jan. Also in Jan, SCO insiders gave themselves options to buy hundreds of thousands of shares for – get this – $0.001 each.
SCO insider have been excercising those options recently.
Linus does the right thing when he avoids politics. This way, he can say : “Here is what I’ve been working at. Examine it for what it’s worth, for its qualities and weaknesses, not for what you think about me.” Thus, his product gets evaluated without paying attention to PR bulls*t or false claims.
I think SCO is just begging for an investigation by the SEC. I’d like to oblige them. Does anyone know the SEC website so I can send my complaint?
Here’s your complaint form.
“…the founder and lead developer of the Linux open-source operating system…”
Not to be condesending to you Eugina (I’m sure you’ve heard this before), but please read these links and try to understand why the above statement is inherrintly flawed at many levels.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/linux-gnu-freedom.html
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/why-gnu-linux.html
Please at least in some way aknowledge the thousands of other hackers that are responisble for the GNU/Linux Operating system to exist today. Simply reducing headlines to patronage of Linus Torvalds is a nhilistic approach which excludes from the discussion of GNU/Linux the greater issue of freedom which is a very large part of the developer community, which means in warrants at least partial attention and is important for your readers to know of. This isn’t a personal attack, just a suggestion.
On another note, I don’t think Linus or anyone on the kernel </b developer list would know what you’re talking about if you asked them about their OS. Maybe if you asked about the Linux kernel they would understand what you’re talking about.
Sorry Eugina, I didn’t see that you just copied that from the article. But the fact that this is being purported in a generally mainstream publication shows how far-reaching these misunderstandings go, and how many people don’t even get to hear about how GNU/Linux gives them freedom, which is a substantial part of this OS.
“…the founder and lead developer of the Linux open-source operating system…”
This statement is fundamentally correct…Linus is the founder, and yes, he is the lead developer.
I will admit that it doesn’t acknowledge the other developers that have made Linux what it is today, however this is about what Linus said, which doesn’t involve any of the other contributors in any significant way.
there is NO DAMN WAY that SCO is honest. the canopy group companies buying each others stock, that’s gotta be worth an investigation all by itself. the fud these guys are pulling is insane and that’s just probably reflective of the way they do business in general. not only would i not be surprized if sco had sec violations but i wouldn’t be surprized to see other canopy group companies involved too.
Linus is actually the founder of the Linux operating system. There are no co-founders.
He is also the lead developer. Not a single line of code can be put to Linux without his permission. If that is not “leading” then what is leading?
The fact that there are thousands of contributors to the work he supervises, does not change any of these things.
Once again I must re-iterate that Linux is not an Operating system. It is merely a kernel, albiet a good kernel. While it’s true that Linus has final say in his kernel, because of the fact that the Linux kernel is GPL’d they’re many derivatives which Linus Torvalds does not have any say in. For example, Benjamin Herrchinsmidt maintains a port of the Linux kernel for PowerPC. Linus has no say over the development of this kernel. Many of Bens drivers do get encorporated into the official tree, but it’s a totally project.
I don’t honestly know what you mean by “Linus is actually the founder of the Linux operating system.” Yes Linus Torvalds initially wrote a kernel for 386 computers in the early 90’s, which was curiously dubbed Linux. He chose to release his work under the terms of the GNU General Public License, which I’m sure you know. He did so because he thought this would have created a system in which his kernel could become developed into a mature modern kernel. However their was much lacking from what Linus had to be considered an operating system. So he searched, and eventually settled on the tools that RMS and the FSF had created as another incomplete part of an OS, namely GNU, a clone of UNIX (Linux kernel was also a spawn of UNIX, moreso minix, but the latter built off the former).
I think it’s important that we at least partially credit GNU for some work on this OS, although that request has never been threatened or forced onto anyone. This is esspecially important when you have a mainstream article about some aspect of GNU/Linux, because it’s important to at least get the issues of free software and the political aspects of GNU/Linux into the public domain. I think some people may find these issues noteworthy, and by people I mean those who may casually glance at the technical page of the newspaper or some such thing. Not to do so is to negate the succuess of a free community of indivuals working for common goals, and functioning constructively in a system which is generally not used in society. Thats why I think it’s important that we not merely settle on “Linus did all this, nuff said” and merely skip to the pious talks of the practical benefits of “Linux”.