Re: A letter for Mr. Darl McBride
On Sun, 1 Feb 2004 00:25:25 -0800 (PST)
Ivan Torres Jimenez <ivantorresjmz@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Mr. Darl McBride
> President & CEO
> The SCO Group, inc.
>
> I___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 nation___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. I___m going to
> defeat every point that you___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 it___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, aren___t you? People must
> have choices, Open Source is a very good one, and most
> important it___s made with the efforts of many
> volunteers around the world, people who wanted a
> better OS.
>
> In the book ___Business at Speed of Thought___, 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 isn___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 can___t
> do about it. If the whole world is adopting Linux, it
> is definitely, the world___s choice, my choice. A
> choice that the U.S. Constitution protects (Remember
> Microsoft___s case?), and again, also my country and
> the U.S.M. Constitution.
>
> If U.S. looses the technological lead, which I don___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, it___s a challenge,
> it___s a revolution on software industry, it___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 can___t be
> well developed if there___s blocked pieces protected
> by copyright patents, technological growth will be
> stalled if free software wouldn___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
> isn___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,
> it___s just changing it. At my work we still use
> Microsoft Tech, HP UX, Solaris and Linux. Isn___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.
>
> I___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, isn___t enough MYDOOM attacks to
> your corporate web site to realize it!
>
> Iv__n Torres
> A proudly Linux user!
Nicely said, Ivan.
I think Darl knows it already, he just doesn't want to.
But that won't stop reality.
Regards,
David.
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