There's an interesting tidbit of information lost in the noise of the SCO vs. IBM lawsuit. Lots of news gathering organizations are reporting that SCO sent a letter to 1500 of the world's largest companies alerting them that they may be liable for using Linux if SCO can prove it contains stolen property.
Why isn't anyone highlighting that 1500 of the worlds largest companies are using Linux? This isn't news today, but it would have been big news a couple of years ago, when Linux was something used under the radar, or a deep dark secret no one cared to acknowledge in public.
The free software/open source movement have been saying recently that if you're not using Linux (or Apache, or Perl or ...) your competitors surely are. Factoids like this demonstrate these heretofore unsupported assertions.
Note that InfoWorld CTO Chad Dickerson picks up on this point, as does InfoWorld Editor Kevin McKean. That so many large companies accept Linux in their enterprises is ho-hum news, even before the SCO suit. And this is a good thing.
--David
Re:Happily Ever After
ziggy on 2003-05-25T20:47:49
Thanks! I stopped reading InfoWorld many years ago, when Stewart Alsop and Bob Metcalfe were still writing for that rag. These two individuals certainly pick up the trend, if not this one specific data point.Hm, maybe I started out with the wrong pre-conception: no one picked up on this point instead of because a great number of commentators have already made the case so effectively for so long.
