Because I'm lazier than I should be, I haven't been keeping up with Linux. Like anything technological, today's knowledge is tomorrow's nostalgia.

It's high time I got around to this, actually. It's been over a year since one of the movers and shakers I'm about to praise even tried to drag Glenn Reynolds (who was already version-fatigued and just not into it) into the Linux-versus-Microsoft debate. Version fatigued or not, Glenn was nonetheless whimsical enough to link to this.

I have no quarrel with Windows; I've found it reliable, familiar, even indispensable. So, those who are expecting me to engage in Bill Gates bashing can look elsewhere.

But I have to say that I am so thrilled by my "new" Linux computer (actually it's an old clunker, though it's twice as fast running 450 Mhz as a 2100 Mhz running Windows 2000), that I feel a bit obligated to post on something a year old; the SCO lawsuit. SCO is the successor company to the bankrupted Caldera Linux distributor, which went into the Linux business fully aware of the Open Source nature of the code, which it now wants to destroy under a "derivative copyright" theory.

By far the most articulate opponent of the SCO lawsuit is Eric S. Raymond. While he's a blogger, he's also a legend in his own right -- one of the leading movers and shakers of the Open Source/Linux community.

I realize this may bore the Linux geeks who might be reading, but I'm pretty sure that a lot of readers are not Linux geeks. I am not a Linux geek, but rather a dilettante who enjoys Linux because, well, it's just a hell of a lot of fun.

And, in renewing my free license on fun as I did by installing Mepis Linux last week, I feel obligated to speak up in its defense, because if this blasted SCO lawsuit proves successful, that fun will be snuffed out permanently, with the Internet and freedom being a hell of a lot worse off.

For some serious background on the issue, Mr. Raymond has written a comprehensive Position Paper on the SCO-vs.-IBM Complaint. Excerpt:

A judgment in favor of SCO/Caldera could do serious damage to the open-source community. SCO/Caldera's implication of wider claims could turn Linux into an intellectual-property minefield, with potential users and allies perpetually wary of being mugged by previously unasserted IP claims, and ever-more-outlandish theories of entitlement being propounded by parties with only the most tenuous relationship to anyone who ever wrote actual program code.

On behalf of the community that wrote most of today's Unix code, and whose claims to have done so were tacitly recognized by the impairment of AT&T's rights under the 1993 settlement, we protest that to allow this outcome would be a very grave injustice. We wrote our Unix and Linux code as a gift and an expression of art, to be enjoyed by our peers and used by others for all licit purposes both non-profit and for-profit. We did not write it to have it appropriated by men so dishonorable that after making profit from our gift for eight years they could turn around and insult our competence.

Damage to the open-source community would matter, because we are both today's principal source of innovation in software and the guardians and maintainers of the open Internet. Our autonomy is everyone's bulwark against government and corporate control of the digital media that are increasingly central in political, commercial, and personal communications. Our creative energy is what perpetually renews and finds ever more exciting uses for computers and networks. The vigor of our culture today will translate into more possibilities for everyone tomorrow.

More here, and more from Eric Raymond here:

My reaction (based on my decades-ago legal training) is that even if SCO's position has any technical legal merit (which it should not), this longtime Linux distributor is in no position to claim harm because of the doctrine of unclean hands. (For more on unclean hands, read this.)

Of course, there's the law, and there's reality. There are millions of Linux geeks out there. To say that making their Linux operating systems illegal will generate ill will is an understatement. I think it would trigger a genuine cyber Culture War.

And I hate Culture War at least as much as I love Linux. It's fun, and it has great potential -- especially as a where-all-else-fails option. And what the hell is wrong with letting people have a choice?

I feel a bit ashamed that it has taken me this long to sound off on this outrage. Cool heads will hopefully prevail, because if this legal atrocity isn't nipped in the bud, big trouble's in store.