Mark Mitchell commented today on the gcc-announce mailing list that the recent GCC 3.3.1 release [story] includes a new file titled 'README.SCO', expressing outrage at SCO's recent legal actions against the Linux kernel. From the document:
"As all users of GCC will know, SCO has recently made claims concerning alleged copyright infringement by recent versions of the operating system kernel called Linux. SCO has made irresponsible public statements about this supposed copyright infringement without releasing any evidence of the infringement, and has demanded that users of Linux, the kernel most often used with the GNU system, pay for a license. This license is incompatible with the GPL, and in the opinion of the Free Software Foundation such a demand unquestionably violates the GNU General Public License under which the kernel is distributed."
The statement goes on to discuss the possibility of dropping GCC support for the SCO Unix platform in protests, noting however that at this time it would be more of an inconvenience to users than SCO itself, "but we cannot indefinitely continue to ignore the aggression against our community taken by a party that has long profited from the commercial distribution of our programs. We urge users of SCO Unix to make clear to SCO their disapproval of the company's aggression against the free software community." Read on for the full statement, written by Richard Stallman and Eben Moglen.
From: Mark Mitchell [email blocked] Date: 11 Aug 2003 11:10:04 -0700 To: gcc-announce Subject: SCO Litigation The FSF has asked me to call attention to the fact that the GCC 3.3.1 release contains the attached text in the file README.SCO. This file was written by Richard Stallman and Eben Moglen and reflects the views of the FSF. All questions or comments about this material should be directed to the FSF. -- Mark Mitchell CodeSourcery, LLC [email blocked]
README.SCO: As all users of GCC will know, SCO has recently made claims concerning alleged copyright infringement by recent versions of the operating system kernel called Linux. SCO has made irresponsible public statements about this supposed copyright infringement without releasing any evidence of the infringement, and has demanded that users of Linux, the kernel most often used with the GNU system, pay for a license. This license is incompatible with the GPL, and in the opinion of the Free Software Foundation such a demand unquestionably violates the GNU General Public License under which the kernel is distributed. We have been urged to drop support for SCO Unix from this release of GCC, as a protest against this irresponsible aggression against free software and GNU/Linux. However, the direct effect of this action would fall on users of GCC rather than on SCO. For the moment, we have decided not to take that action. The Free Software Foundation's overriding goal is to protect the freedom of the free software community, including developers and users, but we also want to serve users. Protecting the community from an attack sometimes requires steps that will inconvenience some in the community. Such a step is not yet necessary, in our view, but we cannot indefinitely continue to ignore the aggression against our community taken by a party that has long profited from the commercial distribution of our programs. We urge users of SCO Unix to make clear to SCO their disapproval of the company's aggression against the free software community. We will have a further announcement concerning continuing support of SCO Unix by GCC before our next release.
Don't mix code and politics
I think it is a mistake to publish such a statement as part of the release. That makes it look as if the gcc was a political tool as opposed to just a compiler. When code meets politics, the code suffers because by using a political piece of code, you not only chose the software, but also the politics associated with it, which you might not agree with and then choose not to use the code for political reasons rather than pure merit of the software itself. The same goes for possible contributers.
Pulling SCO support is just dangerous and sets a bad precedent. GCC is more or less the key into the GNU world. Pulling support for SCO for politial reasons will have a lot of poeple asking "Well, what if my OS vendor/projects offends RMS?" and perhaps choose not to go the GNU way at all (and I could understand that).
Having said that, I think saying "SCO is bad" is pretty safe in the current environment, but I object to the principle of the idea. Code is code and politics is politics. Don't mix them.
Re: Don't mix code and politics
While I totally agree with you that we should not mix code and politics but the FSF was not the one to start this. SCO was the one who started this spat and I feel that we should pressure SCO and related parties as much as we can to get this taken care of quickly, for everyone's benefit. If it takes the removal of GCC support for SCO Unix to get some people to add pressure to SCO....well then... So be it.
Thats my 2 cents... But anyway... I don't think that in the end this is going to make much of a difference...
come and get me
No, I don't think it will make much difference either. Even when the threat would be more severe, the beauty of opensource is it's global nature, and the fact it's owned by all, not to hold, but to use, improve and share. It is very hard, even close to impossible, to force people to give it up. If we all just totally ignore SCO, there is nothing they can do. Let's see them start suing all of us... And I can imagine, singling out a few, the backlash would still majorly hurt their business.
Um
What business?
"Code is code and politics is
"Code is code and politics is politics"
Think about the differences between OpenSource and Free Software.
Free Software focusses on both, while OpenSource focuses on the first.
You may not like the strong social aspect of Free Software, but many others do.
BobCat
But GCC exists as a form of p
But GCC exists as a form of political expression! RMS wrote the compiler to further his political goals -- it was explicitly created as a political tool. If he hadn't mixed code and politics the compiler wouldn't exist in the first place.
As for the folks who won't use GCC because they disagree with the FSF's politics, why should we (or RMS) give a damn about them? If they don't want to use great software for silly reasons, that's certainly not my problem.
Indeed!
Indeed, all code produced by the FSF, (and one could argue, all code released under the GPL) has an inescapable political component. The whole notion of copyleft is a provocative statement intended to challenge the current political dogma surrounding "intellectual property."
To say otherwise is to admit ignorance of the aims of Free Software.
While I personally tend to avoid getting tangled up in political debates (as I largely feel they're a waste of time in most forums), I vote with my code. All of my code is released either under the GPL or released directly to the public domain. (This does not include the code I write for work, as it is not my code--my employer owns it and determines its disposition.)
Now, as far as your second statement is concerned (paraphrased as: "Why should we care about people who avoid Free Software?"), I don't think that's the point. The point here is that RMS and/or the FSF is suggesting we may, at some point, pull support for a proprietary platform, leaving its users in the cold. We would do so in retaliation to the vendor of the platform. In the end, we would injure the users of the platform--those people WANT to use our tools and WERE using our tools. Really, nothing stops dedicated SCO users (or SCO themselves) from restoring support outside the mainline release, due to the nature of GPL. But it really would leave a bad taste in user's mouths, and really have no effect on SCO. It's behavior I'd expect from a tyrant, not from someone who purports to take the high moral ground.
You mis-paraphrased me. The
You mis-paraphrased me. The original poster claimed if we politicize GNU code then some people won't use it because the FSF's politics offend them. For example, people may quit using GCC because they disagree with the FSF's anti-SCO statement. My response is those people are silly and we shouldn't worry about them.
Re: Don't mix code and politics
First of all, GCC is not "just a compiler", it is the system compiler for almost every existing free Unix variant.
Second, this has nothing to do with offending the FSF or RMS. In fact there was a call for this from the GCC developers community.
Microsoft offends RMS and many of the die-hard Free Software fanatics, but MS is still supported. Why? Because it is a quantum leap from just being a very tough competitor to being a legal threat to a whole community.
And also note that (again, for example) MS may not like the GPL, but it does not ask its customers to ignore and/or violate it. SCO does, on the other hand.
Besides, I don't see why GCC developers at, for example, RedHat should work for a company that is basically trying to put them out of business. GCC is free software, so if it is important to SCO, then let them spend their own time on preparing their own distribution of it. I am very disappointed that GCC didn't go all the way with booting SCO.
Not support SCO? My $0.02
And what, then all 3 users of GCC on SCO would be left out in the cold?
Seriously though. I think that supporting Win32 with Free Software is much more useful. Its a better use of development time and it lets more people get familiar with the high quality of free software that otherwise wouldn't.
As for SCO. If you're actually using that brain-damaged UNIX then it probably doesn't matter anyhow. Moving to VMS, VM/CMS, Linux, WinNT, or just about any other platform with a future will probably be necessary in the coming months anyhow.
SCO is no longer a technology company and they have all but EOL'ed all of their existing products anyhow.
but...
I would agree with you in perhaps all cases, except this one, because the attack is against the code itself. Self-defense is never a matter of politics; I don't see this as an act of politics at all.
If SCO would be attacking Richard Stallman personally, would they be refused because of republican/ democratic/ communistic/ religious convictions, using child labor, start it's own private militia, whatever, then this would be political. But this is not because of any policical reason. This is not because Richard Stallman is personally offended (although I can imagine he is, in a way). They attacked the heart of the opensource movement and try to take away the code from the people. And the code defends itself from being enslaved.
I used to laugh at debian's strict guidelines, and Stallman's hard-headedness; now I start to understand how easy things can change when the money-vultures attack. Some sad, sad people won't leave a stone unturned when they smell money, and attack one of the first genuine fair, open, and truly global movements in the whole of mankind.
Re: Don't mix code and politics
"Code is code and politics is politics. Don't mix them."
No, code is law and law is made by politics. Read Lawrence Lessig!
Don't Waste Time on SCO
IMHO, this really boils down to time and manpower.
OpenServer is a piece of shit; albeit a reliable piece of shit. About the only way to make it a usable system is to immediately plop in the Skunkware CD and install as many GNU tools as possible. Few sys admins compile packages for OpenServer - it happens just obscure enough that downloading precompiled binaries is a much more pleasant experience. I've adminstered dozens of SCO boxes, I can't recall a single one that I actually enjoyed working on.
What does that have to do with time and manpower? Simply, any time that developers spend booting into OpenServer, testing with it, getting bugs out of the compiler can almost be seen as a waste of energy. There's plenty of older versions of gcc that run just fine with SCO, force people to use those. All development efforts are better focused on supporting a community that cares about the effort and benefits from it.
---
Brian Vincent
drop $co support
i never support an enemy, that means i could kill myself
As cool as FSF condems would be...
I rather think you mean "condemns". Nevertheless, I see a definite marketing opportunity: between the BSD Daemon, and Tux, I think we could make a mint selling 'em on ThinkGeek. They could also double as really cool/big water balloons.
$.02
-Ken
I hate SCO and Windows
SCO must die like Windows
I thought the dinosaurs where extinct...
Um....
Pardon me for asking but.... do people still really run SCO UNIX ????
Personally, when they tried to burn on of my clients a few years back for about $2500.00 just for sending some Xenix disks that the client already had legitimately licensed as part of a purchase, I black-balled the b4st4rds.
--
Bradley D. Thornton
Manager Network Services
http://NorthTech.US
http://LinBoard.com
http://PublicRoot.com
Could you guys look for SCO shareholders who fedup...
Could you guys look for SCO shareholders who fedup by CEO, who misled the company in law-suit drama, drowing SCO under the sea.
They may wish to sue the SCO management. Give them some ideas, how to sue the CEO, who is going to collapse the SCO.
??!!
Well said Richard and Eben.
Although it is hard to sit by and watch this attack on the heart of our beloved community, I don't think we should yet cut off support of gcc for SCO. Considering that SCO has their own distro of Linux, I believe that the courts will find that SCO, who used to be one of the good guys is being hypocritical and that their case doesn't have any merit. And I believe that Sun is the party with the most to lose and again they too used to one of the good guys too and are the main customer of SCO these days (meaning they give SCO their money for this law suit) and I suspect are the real force behind what is going on. It is a pity to watch but I have faith in humanity and the common sense of the courts and I pray we shall prevail. For GNU to go negative doesn't make much sense to me at least now or maybe ever.
Kindly
Steve Pardee