Open Season on Open Source

[david at thekramers.net (David Kramer)]

On Wednesday 18 June 2003 08:50 am, R Ransbottom wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 17, 2003 at 02:10:19PM +0000, John Chambers wrote:
> 
> > words first.  For SCO to keep the alleged infringement  secret  means
> > that they aren't trying to win the infringement case; they are merely
> > after publicity.
> 
> There is no reason SCO should want to release this information 
> except as required by the court.  What gain they if Linux code 

I've heard this argument before, and it does not make sense.  Source code is 
checked into a globally available CVS server.  That means that if I change 
things today in the code, it is easy to prove that the code was put in today, 
and not three years ago.

If you are saying you think the open source community will modify the CVS tree 
in such a way that it shows recent code changes as if they happened years 
ago, then that does not hold water either, as there are all those distros out 
there with source code that can be downloaded from all over the place as 
proof.  It's much more likely, in fact, that SCO would do that, since it 
would be easier for the one company to cover its tracks than a whole 
community.

> is cleaned before hearings are done?  Why would they not want
> to win this case?  (Most businesses are after publicity.)

...because you can't win a case claiming theft of code without showing what 
code was stolen, and showing how the code flowed from your system to theirs 
and not the reverse, and you have to show that the accused was the one who 
did it, not someone else.  Otherwise it's akin for picking a man off the 
street and arresting him for killing someone without saying who he killed and 
how and why.