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Since you are my readers, and I have not been much of a traveller, I will not talk about people a thousand miles off, but come as near home as I can. As the time is short, I will leave out all the flattery, and retain all the criticism. — Henry David Thoreau

SCO makes the Halloween Documents

Friday August 29, 2003 06:57

Most open source supporters will be aware of the Halloween Documents; a series of documents relating primarily to Microsoft’s efforts to destroy Linux and the open source development model.

As one of Microsoft’s minions in the fight against open source, SCO is now featured in Halloween IX: It Ain’t Necessarily SCO. In Halloween IX, open source evangelist Eric Raymond analyses and dissects SCO’s lawsuit filings.

The amended SCO complaint against IBM filed on 16 June 2003 is, like its predecessor, a tissue of lies, deliberate distortions, and flimflam. This complaint strongly suggests that SCO has no real case, since it contains so many false and misleading statements. Instead, it appears that SCO is trying to turn worthless products into money by running up the stock price on false claims and/or trying to get bought out so the frivolous legal actions will stop.

Unlike its predecessor, this amended complaint has been brought to you by the generosity of Microsoft, who (on the evidence of SCO’s 10-Q SEC filings) dropped at least six million dollars on SCO (plus a promise of five million more over the next three quarters) to help it make trouble for Linux.

SCO, having willingly made itself a sock puppet for the boys in Redmond, therefore becomes the first company other than Microsoft to have its utterances admitted to the gallery of infamy that is the Halloween Documents.

There follows the usual point-by-point takedown. Unlike SCO’s claims, this analysis is based entirely on public information which third parties may verify by chasing links or through their local library.

More at http://opensource.org/halloween/halloween9.php.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 29th, 2003 at 6:49 and is filed under Linux, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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