Trilight Zone

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Article by Tony Lawrence
Source: http://aplawrence.com/

This Groklaw article reports a translation of an "eyewitness" who had an "informal" conversation with a Gregory Blepp, who is a "consultant" for SCO.


According to this eyewitness, Mr. Blepp informally said something to the effect of:


Pesonally, this outcome of the case is almost irrelevant to him
since SCO won't continue with UNIX (The company name/reputation is
ruined, money was dumped in the case). Nowadays, the court cases
are the real business of SCO. If SCO wins, they will introduce a
Linux-license, (ca. 2-20$ per server). There is no solution to free
distributions like Debian - no solution yet.


Now remember, this is a translation of someone who had an informal conversation. In other words, it is just hearsay, and it is hearsay of a consultant to boot. Yet the Groklaw crowd is treating this as though Darl McBride made this statement on NBC last night!

To be fair, I haven't read EVERY comment, so it's possible that someone there is smart enough to realize how silly this all is. Who knows what this person really said, what he really meant, or what authority he says it with? It may be that Gregory Blepp said something like this. Or he may have said something else, or he may have just been expressing his own opinion. Or he may have been misunderstood, heard out of context, or whatever. That's the problem with hearsay of a casual conversation: we have no real idea WHAT was really said.

If SCO really felt its Unix products to be totally damaged goods (and they most definitely are NOT), why wouldn't they just close up shop now and pursue the lawsuit? No, SCO Unix still makes money and probably will continue to do so whether they win or lose these law suits. SCO does have its problems, and they aren't helping themselves or anyone but Microsoft with their recent actions, but they aren't dead yet. I do think that SCO users need to be prepared for the worst, but there is still plenty of time. Who knows what the IT landscape will look like in five years anyway? Things change in this business, and they change very quickly.

I understand why Linux folk want to discredit SCO. But as I have said again and again, Linux needs to take the high ground. Jumping all over this kind of nonsense as though it really meant something is foolish and counter-productive.

Personally, I hope SCO loses. I don't know if they have legitimate complaints against IBM or not, but I don't really care: winning this suit will only harm Unix-like operating systems long term. However, my desires don't necessarily translate into reality, and I'm not going to con myself into thinking there is more hope here because somebody claims that so and so said such and such. That's just silly.