A letter for Mr. Darl McBride
Mr. Darl McBride
President & CEO
The SCO Group, inc.
Iâ??m new to the Open Source movement and I have a
word to you and the world.
You are proposing that the U.S. Government take legal
actions against the Open Source Community and the GPL
(General Public License) based software, a very
serious proposal.
You say that this movement has serious implications
like: Your nationâ??s economy may be affected, the
ability to lead the world in technological innovation
is disappearing, the international competitive
position of your country in the global software
industry is compromised, and even worst, you presume
that it is a national security issue. Iâ??m going to
defeat every point that youâ??ve addressed in the
letter that you send to the Honorable on January 8 of
2004.
First of all your country, and mine too, is held on
capitalism and itâ??s true that Linux is making a
revolution in the software industry and it represents
a threat for companies based on copyright model like
yours. One of the biggest believes of capitalism is
that people must have choices, monopoly is against it
(like you actually do), and it seems that you are
proposing a kind of one, arenâ??t you? People must
have choices, Open Source is a very good one, and most
important itâ??s made with the efforts of many
volunteers around the world, people who wanted a
better OS.
In the book â??Business at Speed of Thoughtâ??, Bill
Gates remarks that companies must on providing value
added services (Alvin Toffler said that too in the
Third Wave, and Michael Dell), those that do not stick
to it will die in the in the middle of the way.
Companies must focus on deliver services rather than
products and your company isnâ??t doing it well as I
can tell. You must face that UNIX age has come to its
end, like DOS, and there is nothing that you canâ??t
do about it. If the whole world is adopting Linux, it
is definitely, the worldâ??s choice, my choice. A
choice that the U.S. Constitution protects (Remember
Microsoftâ??s case?), and again, also my country and
the U.S.M. Constitution.
If U.S. looses the technological lead, which I donâ??t
see it coming, other countries are in his own right to
take that lead. U.S. is not the only country that
matters; you are not alone in here, we all live here
on planet Earth (Yes, the pretty blue one, have seen
it?). It is time that U.S. stop trying to protect
their industry at all costs, usually in an unilateral
way. Linux is not a real threat, itâ??s a challenge,
itâ??s a revolution on software industry, itâ??s the
consolidation of the services era whether it affects
you or not.
Because software is knowledge that digital society
needs. The software is accumulative and it canâ??t be
well developed if thereâ??s blocked pieces protected
by copyright patents, technological growth will be
stalled if free software wouldnâ??t exists. Let me
give you some examples of this: Informix came from a
free object relational database system named
POSTGRESQL; Macintosh also came from another UNIX like
OS, the Free BSD; the most powerful and used web
server is Apache which is used by the biggest search
engine Google (Which also is based in FreeBSD). So, it
isnâ??t true that software industry will collapse with
Open Source but to let people like me develop better
and free software.
Linux is not a threat for the software industry,
itâ??s just changing it. At my work we still use
Microsoft Tech, HP UX, Solaris and Linux. Isnâ??t this
a message to you and your company that you must change
the way of doing business? HP has made a fast move
providing Linux solutions, IBM, Red Hat is another
one, Novell is taking that way too and they are taking
the lead, all them American companies (and now against
you). So it is not true that your country may lose the
industry lead. They are not out of business but you.
Iâ??m not an expert in this matters, but the use of my
common sense tells me that Linux is a smart move for
many companies, specially for countries in ways of
development. SCO Group should change the way to see
things; this is not the way of winning new customers
(forcing and threat them to not use Linux) but to aid
with new enemies, isnâ??t enough MYDOOM attacks to
your corporate web site to realize it!
Iván Torres
A proudly Linux user!
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