Re: Boycott SCO?

[Lewis Collard]

Reinhard Mueller <reinhard.mueller@bytewise.at> sed:
> Am Die, 2003-07-22 um 23.04 schrieb Michael Elizabeth Chastain:
> > The SCO Group has launched a legal and PR attack on Linux in particular
> > and free software in general.
> > 
> > I would like the FSF to boycott The SCO Group.  Specifically, I would
> > like to propose that the FSF drop support for SCO operating systems from
> > all GNU products.
> 
> I don't think this would be right. It would contradict the basic freedom
> number 0: the freedom to use the software for any purpose (and certainly
> on any system you want).

No, since nobody is proposing a change in GNU licensing to legally
restrict what operating systems their software is allowed to run on.
It's simply removing support (or not adding it) for certain
(obsolete) operating systems. Nobody is trying to stop somebody trying
to compile/run it under SCO, or just adding the support again. Are
GNU violating freedom 0 because some of their software does not run
on micros~1 operating systems?

I personally don't think a boycott of this kind would be a good idea,
if only because nobody with any sense uses SCO products these days,
and removing support for SCO operating systems would take time better
spent elsewhere. I'm all for letting the world know what a bunch of
dishonest money-grabbing scumbags SCO are by any other means, though.
I also think that if there was a time to remove support for their
systems, for the purposes of making the GNU codebase cleaner, it may
as well be now.

> Apart from that, a measure like that would punish SCO's user, not SCO.

Well, it would punish *both* SCO, to some extent, and all six of
their customers. I'm tempted to suggest that anyone who still uses
SCO deserves to lose.

> Reinhard

lewis
-- 
Lewis Collard                           <lewis@zquack.net>