[SATLUG] Dell Hope

[Daniel J. Givens]

Thomas Cameron wrote:
> I wrote:
>> OH NOES! It's the end of F/OSS!
> 
> Not sure how you get to this piece of happy horseshit from what I said.

I'm just sick of all of the FUD that seems to drive this industry. There
is always an undercurrent of doom and gloom when you (the collective
you) start talking about business and F/OSS.

> It is easy today to say "oh the SCO thing was a bunch of nothing."  At
> the time, it *significantly* impacted the commercial uptake of Linux.

There were then and still are significant roadblocks besides FUD that
are affecting the commercial uptake of Linux and F/OSS as a whole. As
more people offer enterprise support ala Red Hat, Novell, and now
Ubuntu, you will see businesses becoming more interested and less afraid
in it.

There is also the fact that the talent pool of qualified folks that can
provide in-house support is relatively small. And let's face it, most
Microsoft admins don't really have much interest in learning another OS.
We are the geeks that come home at night after working on computers all
day to play on computers. I'm sure we all realize how few of us there
are in the industry and those other folks won't learn something unless
it provides some increased monetary reward or more job security.

> Even today, many many more C-level execs are familiar with Microsoft
> than with Linux.

...because they have Windows on their computers at home. Not Linux, not
*BSD, not Solaris, and most don't even have OS X. Of course there are
exceptions, but by and far, all they see and know is Windows and they
have little interest (right now) about anything else.

> It doesn't really matter.  The US or Europe, either way this kind of law
> suit is hugely damaging, win or lose.

There are more places in the world besides the US and Europe. Canonical
is based in South Africa after all. Also, I didn't think you could
patent software in most of Europe (yet).

> Let me make clear:  I don't think that this would be a winnable lawsuit,
> but this is not about winning such a suit.  It is about muddying the
> waters around Linux.

And it's going to happen no matter what anyone does. There is far too
much at stake for the traditional software and support companies if
Linux and F/OSS as a whole continues on its current path of rapid growth
and refinement. People are becoming more aware of it and as they do, the
stakes will get even higher. Expect it and begin prepping your arguments
to counter the FUD. The tone of this thread has the tone of a lot of
Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt and it sounds like we've already started to
play into it.

> IMHO, Ubuntu's decision to add code to their distro which encourages
> what the courts see as software piracy is ludicrous.  It is potentially
> very harmful to the Linux community.

That stuff has been there for a long time, just like there have been
non-free repositories for Debian for years, and third party repositories
with this stuff available all along.

> I think you just don't understand the implications.

I think I do. I am just choosing not to fall into the FUD. If, and more
likely, when it becomes an issue, then the community will have to rally
against whoever shows up as a threat with lawsuit in hand. If you really
think Canonical and the Ubuntu community have made such a major misstep,
why don't you let your concerns be known to them. Remember, this is
community built software, so we can all offer our opinion. A certain
level of evangelism is still needed and as more people find out about
F/OSS and embrace it, the false statements from the closed-source
community will have less effect.

If companies such as Canonical, Red Hat, Novell, MySQL, et al decide
they want to bring F/OSS to the business world, they had better expect a
fight from the competition, and they aren't going to be fighting fair.
If we as a community want to support it, we need to let the FUD roll off
our backs and continue to push forward. Am I idealistic? Probably, but
my glasses aren't entirely rose colored.

~Daniel