Re: A letter for Mr. Darl McBride
On Sun, Feb 01, 2004 at 12:25:25AM -0800, Ivan Torres Jimenez wrote:
> Mr. Darl McBride
> President & CEO
> The SCO Group, inc.
A Parable:
Once there was a year called 1993 and there was a brick-and-mortar store
called Egghead. Software was sold on floppies inside shrink-wrapped
boxes with stickers to tell if the seal was broken. Wordperfect 5.1 was
$395. Peachtree Accounting was $695. As employees of the store, we
were allowed to "check out" one piece of software per day, and return it
in the morning. A hairdryer was used to gently separate the sticker
without breaking it and retaining its glue-iness. We had a shrink-wrap
machine in the back. No one would know we'd made a copy for ourselves.
My older friend took it upon himself to possess all software. He bought
boxes of blank floppies, and over the course of a year had one of
everything. There was no intellectual property we could not have. We
were a small community, and as the witches say The Whole Of The Law Be
An Ye Harm None, Do As Thou Wilt.
Then we used to trade MP3s on UseNet in 1997. I used to suck down 1 Gig
per day and burn 2 CDs. My goal was to have 1000 CDs. No one cared.
Then Napster came along and ruined it for everybody but letting their 12
year old brother abuse the same power. Power is a real thing. It
should not be taken lightly. Do not tempt the wrath of "the public
perception." Stay in the shadows, and there is nothing you cannot have.
Stand in the light and be smited and lose.
I guess my point is we are a smart bunch of people and if we stay quiet
we can have all we want and no one will bother us. That's all. I've
seen bigger movements than this go down.
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