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发信人: cycker (I hate F very much), 信区: Linux
标题: SCO, GNU and Linux
发信站: 荔园晨风BBS站 (Tue Aug 26 12:27:42 2003), 站内信件

This article was first published on ZDNet.

SCO's contract dispute with IBM has been accompanied by a smear campaign
against the whole GNU/Linux system. But SCO made an obvious mistake
when it erroneously quoted me as saying that "Linux is a copy of Unix.
" Many readers immediately smelled a rat--not only because I did not say
that, and not only because the person who said it was talking about
published ideas (which are uncopyrightable) rather than code, but
because they know I would never compare Linux with Unix.

Unix is a complete operating system, but Linux is just part of one.
SCO is using the popular confusion between Linux and the GNU/Linux
system to magnify the fear that it can spread. GNU/Linux is the GNU
operating system running with Linux as the kernel. The kernel is the
part of the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other
programs you run. That part is Linux.

We developed GNU starting in 1984 as a campaign for freedom, whose aim
was to eliminate non-free software from our lives. GNU is free software,
meaning that users are free to run it, study it and change it (or pay
programmers to do this for them), redistribute it (gratis or for a fee),
and publish modified versions. (See an overview of the GNU project.)

In 1991, GNU was mostly finished, lacking only a kernel. In 1992,
Linus Torvalds made his kernel, Linux, free software. Others combined
GNU and Linux to produce the first complete free operating system,
GNU/Linux. (See our GNU/Linux FAQ.) GNU/Linux is also free software, and
SCO made use of this freedom by selling their version of it. Today, GNU
runs with various kernels including Linux, the GNU Hurd (our kernel),
and the NetBSD kernel. It is basically the same system whichever
kernel you use.

Those who combined Linux with GNU didn't recognize that's what they were
doing, and they spoke of the combination as "Linux". The confusion
spread; many users and journalists call the whole system "Linux".
Since they also properly call the kernel "Linux", the result is even
more confusion: when a statement says "Linux", you can only guess what
software it refers to. SCO's irresponsible statements are shot through
with ambiguous references to "Linux". It is impossible to attribute
any coherent meaning to them overall, but they appear to accuse the
entire GNU/Linux system of being copied from Unix.

The name GNU stands for "GNU's Not Unix". The whole point of
developing the GNU system is that it is not Unix. Unix is and always was
non-free software, meaning that it denies its users the freedom to
cooperate and to control their computers. To use computers in freedom as
a community, we needed a free software operating system. We did not
have the money to buy and liberate an existing system, but we did have
the skill to write a new one. Writing GNU was a monumental job. We did
it for our freedom, and your freedom.

To copy Unix source code would not be ethically wrong, but it is
illegal; our work would fail to give users lawful freedom to cooperate
if it were not done lawfully. To make sure we would not copy Unix source
code or write anything similar, we told GNU contributors not even to
look at Unix source code while developing code for GNU. We also
suggested design approaches that differ from typical Unix design
approaches, to ensure our code would not resemble Unix code. We did
our best to avoid ever copying Unix code, despite our basic premise that
to prohibit copying of software is morally wrong.

Another SCO tool of obfuscation is the term "intellectual property".
This fashionable but foolish term carries an evident bias: that the
right way to treat works, ideas, and names is as a kind of property.
Less evident is the harm it does by inciting simplistic thinking: it
lumps together diverse laws--copyright law, patent law, trademark law
and others--which really have little in common. This leads people to
suppose those laws are one single issue, the "intellectual property
issue", and think about "it"--which means, to think at such a broad
abstract level that the specific social issues raised by these various
laws are not even visible. Any "opinion about intellectual property"
is thus bound to be foolish. (See our list of words to avoid.)

In the hands of a propagandist for increased copyright or patent powers,
the term is a way to prevent clear thinking. In the hands of someone
making threats, the term is a tool for obfuscation: "We claim we can sue
you over something, but we won't say what it is."

In an actual lawsuit, such ambiguity would make their case fail, or even
prevent it from getting off the ground. If, however, SCO's aim is to
shake the tree and see if any money falls down, or simply to spread
fear, they may regard vagueness and mystery as advantageous.

I cannot prognosticate about the SCO vs IBM lawsuit itself: I don't know
what was in their contract, I don't know what IBM did, and I am not a
lawyer. The Free Software Foundation's lawyer, Professor Moglen,
believes that SCO gave permission for the community's use of the code
that they distributed under the GNU GPL and other free software licenses
in their version of GNU/Linux.

However, I can address the broader issue of such situations. In a
community of over half a million developers, we can hardly expect that
there will never be plagiarism. But it is no disaster; we discard that
material and move on. If there is material in Linux that was contributed
without legal authorization, the Linux developers will learn what it is
and replace it. SCO cannot use its copyrights, or its contracts with
specific parties, to suppress the lawful contributions of thousands of
others. Linux itself is no longer essential: the GNU system became
popular in conjunction with Linux, but today it also runs with two BSD
kernels and the GNU kernel. Our community cannot be defeated by this.

url: http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/sco/sco-gnu-linux.html
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