Linux community told to 'get real'

[KennyR]

Ok, we're all fed up of the SCO thing. But interestingly, now the non-IT media are picking up the story in more detail.

In this article, a writer for the BBC scolds the Linux community for attacking SCO for defending its own copyright, regardless of Linux's moral superiority. Note that this hasn't necessarily got to do with SCO's claims being true or false.

Those wishing to comment can even send their comments to the BBC.

[dammy]

Why even bothering to reply to the BBC.  They have their own agenda, regardless of the truth of the matter.  Is the BBC corporation still financially supported by British tax dollars, btw?

Dammy

[KennyR]

Experience shows the BBC have no agenda - and that's because they're supported by the taxpayer. They have no reason to lie because no lie would be profitable anyway, unlike private owned news agencies like Fox and CNN.

And attacking the BBC isn't going to get Linux users off the hook. What they are saying is quite valid - that the Linux community howl in anger even at the very mention of copyright.

[mikeymike]

Hmm, the author of the article seems to be missing the point.  The Linux community (the non-zealot part of it anyway) doesn't like SCO because it, largely directed by MS, is trying to destroy MS's main competition.

[mikeymike]

Experience shows the BBC have no agenda

Perhaps not an agenda, but they have definitely been seriously biassed on some issues.  Their coverage of the second Iraq war being one example, and their pro ID cards stance.

And anyway, the BBC is still a corporation, and I doubt their only income is from the taxpayer.

[KennyR]

mikeymike wrote:
Hmm, the author of the article seems to be missing the point. The Linux community (the non-zealot part of it anyway) doesn't like SCO because it, largely directed by MS, is trying to destroy MS's main competition.

And rightly so. But this wasn't the point of the article. ;-)

Look at this quote:

Unfortunately, the typical response of a Linux user to SCO's claims has been to dismiss them. They criticise SCO for even hinting that Linux could be anything other than perfectly legal and clean, and support actions such as the recent denial of service attack on the SCO website.

 Since the GPL relies on copyright law for its legal strength, it seems unwise for the Linux world to argue - as some have - that SCO should be destroyed for daring to protect its own copyright.

Instead, the developers and the team in charge of the Linux kernel should think about how they ensure that they really are respecting other people's copyrights when they accept contributions.

[KennyR]

The BBC were not biased on the Iraq war. There was a point where only the BBC and Al-Jazeera were sites you could go to to avoid US government spin. Al-Jazeera were biased the other way of course, but the BBC were impartial as ever. Their criticism of Blair for the lies he told the British people is just a reflection of our own anger towards Blair for those lies.

[dammy]

by KennyR on 2003/8/29 14:09:17

Experience shows the BBC have no agenda - and that's because they're supported by the taxpayer. They have no reason to lie because no lie would be profitable anyway, unlike private owned news agencies like Fox and CNN.

It's quiet evident that the BBC has agendas, else they would not have been kicked off atleast one HMS ship during Operation Iraqi Freedom because of their bias reporting that annoyed that ship's crew.  Wasn't the BBC the ones who orginally said that the now dead WMD expert wasn't their only source but in fact, was?

As for tax supported corporations not having agendas, I will point to the US' PBS as a prime example on how bias a tax funded organization can be.  Check out Media Research Center for their watch on PBS and other left tilted networks.  The dirty little secret with publically funded media corporations is that they back the political isle that will increase spending on those tax payier funded corporations.

As far as their coverage of Linux vs SCO, who cares?  This is not a battle of public opinion but a court battle between different corporations.  SCO wants IBM to buy them out, IBM has other ideas on the situation.  

And speaking of SCO, latest /. article is here

Dammy

[amigamad]

Is the BBC corporation still financially supported by British tax dollars, btw?

yes it is and it is a load of rubbish they are very biased . :-)

[KennyR]

It's quiet evident that the BBC has agendas, else they would not have been kicked off atleast one HMS ship during Operation Iraqi Freedom because of their bias reporting that annoyed that ship's crew.

Not biased enough, more like. Not enough flag waving.

As far as their coverage of Linux vs SCO, who cares? This is not a battle of public opinion but a court battle between different corporations. SCO wants IBM to buy them out, IBM has other ideas on the situation.

Correct, but Linux has a talent for making itself powerful corporate enemies thanks to its contempt of copyright. And as you and I both know, the dollar rules the US corporate courts. Microsoft's untouchability is testament to that. Even with a seemingly watertight case against SCO, Linux may still find itself up creek.c without a makefile.

[amigamad]

The BBC were not biased on the Iraq war.

You got to be jokinfg they were very biased . :-?

[Piru]

Generally I don't fully agree with the article, even though it has a point. But, they make the common mistake of mixing GNU and Linux:

"The worrying thing is, there is nothing inherently implausible about this claim. There are over 30 million lines of program source in a Linux distribution, if you include all the programming tools and utilities."

GNU is separate from the kernel. What is now commonly known as "Linux" is in fact GNU + Linux kernel. More details

In fact, SCO themselves use and rely on several GNU tools, for example GCC and Samba. They use these tools even today.

This is why I consider SCO god damn hippocrats for attacking GPL and free software in general.

[KennyR]

The BBC were not biased on the Iraq war.

You got to be jokinfg they were very biased :-?

Example please.

[Wain]

I find this interesting...

"Novell sold it to the Santa Cruz Operation in 1995, which passed it to Caldera in 2002. At that point, Caldera changed its name to SCO and stopped selling its own version of Linux."

I mainly find it interesting because the president of Novell has stated that THEY own the patents and Copyrights to AT&T Unix system V, and never transferred the ownership to Caldera with the assets sale.  The president went on to say that SCO is well aware of this because over the past few months, SCO has been repeatedly contacting Novell, requesting that such IP ownership be transferred in order to give their claims some legitimacy.  A request which Novell has repeatedly denied.

http://www.novell.com/news/press/archive/2003/05/pr03033.html

[mikeymike]

The BBC were not biased on the Iraq war.

This is an email I sent to some friends just before the war started:
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On the news, they were just showing some statistics of public polls about going to war with Iraq.

Regardless of the statistics being over or under 50% (give or take 20%), whenever a statistic was anti-war, they would say "a whole x% were against" or "a massive x% were against", and then "only x% were for"... I mean, can they at least try not to sound so blatantly biased, it's totally pathetic.  After that, they were coming up with statistics that obviously proved that the questions put to the people who voted were also biased, as they came out with things like:

"a whole 45% were against war with iraq, while only 49% were pro war, and even then 40% of those said after another backing UN resolution, and only 3% said regardless of another UN resolution", which means they had to have asked questions that were trying to water down the pro-voters' opinions.
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