Linux

SCO, Groklaw and the Monterey mystery that never was

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Over the past two years, the influential web site Groklaw has become a focal point for open source advocates discussing The SCO Group’s litigation against Linux companies. The community of knowledgeable experts has helped with clarifying contract technicalities, dug through news archives, and filed on-the-spot reports from the Utah the courtroom, much to SCO’s discomfort.

But over the past month the site’s maintainer Pamela Jones has run a series of articles which could offer SCO some elusive ammunition to discredit the site. [We now understand this series, after some input from your reporter, has been amended.]

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Linus Torvalds in bizarre attack on open source

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Do as I say, not do as I do

Normally we expect an attack on free software to come from one of the usual suspects: payola analysts, right wing “think tanks”, or Steve Ballmer. So it’s an odd day when Linus Torvalds himself weighs in against the principles of the movement.

Torvalds launched a blast against OpenOffice.org, and defended Microsoft’s right to keep its binary Office formats proprietary. “I’m happy with somebody writing a free replacement for Microsoft Office. But I’m not fine with them writing a free replacement just by reverse engineering the proprietary formats,” said the Linux founder. “Microsoft has its own reasons for keeping them proprietary, and I can’t argue with that.”

Actually he didn’t – we just made that quote up.

But what Torvalds really did say this weekend is only slightly less bizarre. The Linux leader also encouraged a software company to take its code under a proprietary license, his friend alleges.

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