{"id":89,"date":"2003-08-22T10:04:00","date_gmt":"2003-08-22T15:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=89"},"modified":"2003-08-22T10:04:00","modified_gmt":"2003-08-22T15:04:00","slug":"an-open-letter-to-darl-mcbride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=89","title":{"rendered":"An Open Letter To Darl McBride"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mr. McBride:<\/p>\n<p>Late yesterday. I learned that you have <a href='http:\/\/www.nwfusion.com\/news\/2003\/0825scoatta.html'>charged<\/a><br \/>\nthat your company is the victim of an insidious conspiracy<br \/>\nmasterminded by IBM.  You have urged the press and public to believe<br \/>\nthat the Open Source Initiative and the Free Software Foundation and<br \/>\nRed Hat and Novell and various Linux enthusiasts are up in arms not<br \/>\nbecause of beliefs or interests of their own, but because little gray<br \/>\nmen from Armonk have put them up to it.  <em>Bwahahaha!  Fire up the<br \/>\norbital mind-control lasers!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Very few things could possibly illustrate the brain-boggling<br \/>\ndisconnect between SCO and reality with more clarity than hearing you<br \/>\ncomplain about how persecuted your company is. You <a href='http:\/\/www.sco.com\/scosource\/complaint3.06.03.html'>opened this<br \/>\nball<\/a> on 6 March by accusing the open-source community of<br \/>\ncriminality and incompetence as a way to set up a lawsuit against IBM.<br \/>\nYou have since tried to seize control of our volunteer work for your<br \/>\ncompany&#8217;s exclusive gain, and your lawyers have <a href='http:\/\/news.zdnet.co.uk\/business\/0,39020645,39115731,00.htm'>announced<br \/>\nthe intention<\/a> to destroy not just the GPL but all the open-source<br \/>\nlicenses on which our community is built. It&#8217;s beyond me how can have<br \/>\nthe gall to talk as though we need funding or marching orders from IBM<br \/>\nto mobilize against you.  IBM couldn&#8217;t <em>stop<\/em> us from<br \/>\nmobilizing!<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not sure which possibility is more pathetic &mdash; that the<br \/>\nCEO of SCO is lying through his teeth for tactical reasons, or that<br \/>\nyou genuinely aren&#8217;t capable of recognizing honest outrage when you<br \/>\nsee it.  To a manipulator, all behaviors are manipulation.  To a<br \/>\nconspirator, all opposition is conspiracy.  Is that you?  Have you<br \/>\ntruly forgotten that people might make common cause out of integrity,<br \/>\nethical considerations, or simple self-defense?  Has the reality you<br \/>\ninhabit truly become so cramped and ugly?<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m in at least semi-regular communication with most of the people<br \/>\nand organizations who are causing you problems right now.  The only<br \/>\nconspiracy among us is the common interest in preventing the<br \/>\nopen-source community from being destroyed by SCO&#8217;s greed and<br \/>\ndesperation.  (And we think it&#8217;s a perfect sign of that desperation<br \/>\nthat at SCOforum you &lsquo;proved&rsquo; your relevance by<br \/>\nbragging about the amount of press coverage SCO generates.  Last I checked,<br \/>\ncompanies demonstrated relevance by showing <em>products<\/em>, not<br \/>\npress clippings.)<\/p>\n<p>Yes, one of the parties I talk with is, in fact, IBM.  And you know<br \/>\nwhat?  They&#8217;re smarter than you.  One of the many things they<br \/>\nunderstand that you do not is that in the kind of confrontation SCO<br \/>\nand IBM are having, independent but willing allies are far better<br \/>\nvalue than lackeys and sock puppets.  Allies, you see, have initiative<br \/>\nand flexibility.  The time it takes a lackey to check with HQ for<br \/>\norders is time an ally can spend thinking up ways to make your life<br \/>\ncomplicated that HQ would be too nervous to use.  Go on, try to<br \/>\nimagine an IBM lawyer approving <em>this<\/em> letter.<\/p>\n<p>The very best kind of ally is one who comes to one&#8217;s side for<br \/>\npowerful reasons of his or her own.  For principle.  For his or her<br \/>\nfriends and people.  For the future.  IBM has a lot of allies of that<br \/>\nkind now.  It&#8217;s an alliance <em>you<\/em> drove together with your<br \/>\narrogance, your overreaching, your insults, and your threats.<\/p>\n<p>And now you cap it all with this paranoid ranting.  It&#8217;s classic,<br \/>\ntruly classic.  Was this what you wanted out of life, to end up<br \/>\nimitating the doomed villain in a cheesy B movie?  Tell me, does that<br \/>\ndark helmet fit comfortably?  Are all the minions cringing in proper form?<br \/>\n&#8220;No, Mr. Torvalds, I expect you to <em>die!<\/em>&#8221; I&#8217;d ask if you&#8217;d<br \/>\nfound the right sort of isolated wasteland for your citadel of dread yet, but<br \/>\nthat would be a silly question; you&#8217;re in Utah, after all.<\/p>\n<p>It doesn&#8217;t have to be this way.  Sanity can still prevail.   Here&#8217;s<br \/>\nthe message that Jeff Gerhardt read at SCOforum again:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>In recent months, the company formerly known as Caldera and now<br \/>\ntrading as SCO has alleged that the 2.4 Linux kernel contains code<br \/>\nmisappropriated from it. We in the open-source community are<br \/>\nrespectful of intellectual-property rights, and take pride in our<br \/>\nability to solve our own problems with our own code.  If there is<br \/>\ninfringing code in the Linux kernel, our community wants no part of it<br \/>\nand will remove it.<\/p>\n<p>We challenge SCO to specify exactly which code it believes to be<br \/>\ninfringing, by file and line number, and on what grounds it is<br \/>\ninfringing.  Only with disclosure can we begin the process of<br \/>\nremedying any breach that may exist.  If SCO is truly concerned about<br \/>\nprotecting its property, rather than simply using the mere accusations<br \/>\nas a pretext to pump its stock price and collect payoffs from<br \/>\nMicrosoft for making trouble, then it will welcome the opportunity to<br \/>\nhave its concerns resolved as quickly and with as little disruption as<br \/>\npossible.  We are willing to cooperate with that.<\/p>\n<p>The open-source community is not, however, willing to sit idly by<br \/>\nwhile SCO asserts proprietary control, and the right to collect<br \/>\nlicense fees, over the entirety of Linux.  That is an unacceptable<br \/>\nattempt to hijack the work thousands of volunteer programmers<br \/>\ncontributed in good faith, and must end.<\/p>\n<p>If SCO is willing to take the honest, cooperative path forward, so are<br \/>\nwe.  If it is not, let the record show that we tried before resorting<br \/>\nto more confrontational means of defending our community against<br \/>\npredation.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Linus Torvalds is backing me on this, and our other chieftains and<br \/>\nphilosopher-princes will as well. Show us the overlaps.  If your code<br \/>\nhas been inserted in our work, we&#8217;ll remove it &mdash; not because<br \/>\nyou&#8217;ve threatened us but because that&#8217;s the right thing to do, whether<br \/>\nthe patches came from IBM or anywhere else.  Then you can call off<br \/>\nyour lawyers and everyone will get to go home happy.<\/p>\n<p>Take that offer while you still can, Mr. McBride.  So far your<br \/>\nso-called &lsquo;evidence&rsquo; is <a href='http:\/\/www.catb.org\/~esr\/writings\/smoking-fizzle.html'>crap<\/a>;<br \/>\nyou&#8217;d better climb down off your high horse before we shoot that<br \/>\nsucker entirely out from under you.  How you finish the contract fight<br \/>\nyou picked with IBM is your problem.  As the president of OSI,<br \/>\ndefending the community of open-source hackers against predators and<br \/>\ncarpetbaggers is mine &mdash; and if you don&#8217;t stop trying to destroy<br \/>\nLinux and everything else we&#8217;ve worked for I <em>guarantee<\/em> you<br \/>\nwon&#8217;t like what our alliance is cooking up next.<\/p>\n<p>And in case it&#8217;s not pellucidly clear by now, not one single<br \/>\nsolitary damn thing I have said or published since 6 March (or at any<br \/>\ntime previously for that matter) has been at IBM&#8217;s behest. I&#8217;m very<br \/>\nmuch afraid it&#8217;s all been me, acting to serve my people the best way I<br \/>\nknow how.  IBM doesn&#8217;t have what it would take to buy me away from<br \/>\nthat job and neither do you.  I&#8217;m not saying I don&#8217;t have a price<br \/>\n&mdash; but it ain&#8217;t counted in money, so I won&#8217;t even bother being<br \/>\ninsulted by your suggestion.<\/p>\n<p>You have a choice.  Peel off that dark helmet and deal with us like<br \/>\na reasonable human being, or continue down a path that could be bad<br \/>\ntrouble for us but <em>will<\/em> be utter ruin &mdash; quite possibly<br \/>\nincluding jail time on fraud, intellectual-property theft, barratry,<br \/>\nand stock-manipulation charges &mdash; for you and the rest of SCO&#8217;s<br \/>\ntop management. You have my email, you can have my phone if you want<br \/>\nit, and you have my word of honor that you&#8217;ll get a fair hearing for<br \/>\nany truths you have to offer.<\/p>\n<div align='right'>\n<p>Eric S. Raymond<br \/>\n<br \/>\nesr@thyrsus.com<br \/>\n<br \/>\nPresident, Open Source Initiative<br \/>\n<br \/>\nFriday, 20 August 2003\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/enetation.co.uk\/comments.php?user=esr&amp;commentid=106157186387886957\">Blogspot comments<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mr. McBride: Late yesterday. I learned that you have charged that your company is the victim of an insidious conspiracy masterminded by IBM. You have urged the press and public to believe that the Open Source Initiative and the Free Software Foundation and Red Hat and Novell and various Linux enthusiasts are up in arms&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=89\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">An Open Letter To Darl McBride<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=89"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=89"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=89"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=89"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}