Re: [Fsfe-uk] BBC Article about Linux SCO and Copyrights - BBC calls for statements (fwd)

[Robert (Jamie) Munro]

MJ Ray wrote:

>  From address@hidden, a pointer to 
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3191281.stm
> "The Linux community needs to accept that this could be a real problem, 
> and put
> processes in place to make sure it cannot happen instead of simply 
> dismissing
> all criticism as unfounded. "
>
> They can't tell the difference between the Linux kernel and the GNU 
> tools, when it suits them.  Very confused article.  Maybe the BBC is 
> trying to drive traffic through their edited comments by trolling or 
> maybe they really need help understanding?  Bill Thompson set up the 
> Guardian's "New Media Lab" but I'm not aware of him knowing about free 
> software.

I'm going to say something really controversial on this forum:

I think the article is quite good.

Certainly better than not having an article about the situation. Yes,
there are a couple of mistakes confusing the kernel with a distribution:
"There are over 30 million lines of program source in a Linux
distribution, if you include all the programming tools and utilities.",
and he doesn't make it clear how little of Linux is affected (things
added since 2.2 by staff at IBM related to making linux "enteprise
ready"), but apart from that it's an article that is much more
informative that misinformative to people who don't know anything about
the SCO situation.

The writer should be congratulated, with a p.s. correcting the mistakes.

Robert Munro