Dvorak Predicts Death of Linux

[Jason Stephenson]

I'll sing along with the chorus of voices saying that Dvorak doesn't 
know what he's talking about. About ten years ago, I used to think he 
had something valid to say, but over the years, I've come to realize 
that he really doesn't have a clue what he's talking about half the time.

As for Linux dying, that's ridiculous, for all the various reasons cited 
by others, and besides, if Linux does get hamstrung by some ignorant 
judge, there's always BSD which has a very nice legal precedent that 
will make pursuing legal action against the BSD crowd a very difficult task.

What's dying is the industrial age. The industrial model of software 
production never really worked, and the open model that resembles a 
collaborative effort among cottage craftsmen is proving itself to 
produce higher value software at a lower cost and thereby undercutting 
the industrial producers. They absolutely cannot stand this because they 
are adherents of the myth of industry and progress. IBM seems to 
actually "get it" and they seem willing to adapt their business to 
changing market conditions, something remarkable for a company of their 
size and age.

I remember reading a rather telling quote from Darl McBride in a recent 
article (a couple weeks old). He basically said that he has to protect 
the shareholder value of his company (i.e. the stock price), and in 
order to do so, he has to protect their intellectual property. In other 
words, he's saying that he knows that they can't make money doing their 
core business of selling software, so he's got to find a way to generate 
income, or at the very least to jack the stock price up. Well, he 
apparently has succeeded at the latter, though how long will the stock 
price remain buoyed by their allegations and lawsuits?

I think it's a mildly clever short term tactic, but he'd better have an 
exit strategy that doesn't involve being bought out. That is his 
ultimate goal here. It's pretty transparent, really. This is why he's 
suing IBM, one of the richest companies on the planet, and threatening 
legal action against Novell, another company rich enough to buy SCO 
outright.

I read the other day that Steve Ballmer sold about $102 million worth of 
his stock. (He still has about $10 billion in stock, don't worry he's 
not going broke any time soon. ;-) I know what I would do if I had that 
kind of dough: I'd buy SCO and release all of their "intellectual 
property" into the public domain. SCO probaly doesn't think $10 billion 
is enough to buy the company, but just wait 6 months to a year, their 
stock price will be back down to $.60.