SCO, GNU and Linux This article was first published on ZDNet.
SCO's contract dispute with IBM has been accompanied by a smear
campaign against the whole GNU/Linux system. But SCO made an
obvious mistake when it erroneously quoted me as saying that
“Linux is a copy of Unix.” Many readers immediately smelled a
rat—not only because I did not say that, and not only because
the person who said it was talking about published ideas (which
are uncopyrightable) rather than code, but because they know I
would never compare Linux with Unix. Unix is a complete
operating system, but Linux is just part of one. SCO is using
the popular confusion between Linux and the GNU/Linux system to
magnify the fear that it can spread. GNU/Linux is the GNU
operating system running with Linux as the kernel. The kernel is
the part of the system that allocates the machine's resources to
the other programs you run. That part is Linux. We developed GNU
starting in 1984 as a campaign for freedom, whose aim was to
eliminate non-free software f