Q&A: Pamela Jones of Groklaw

The Groklaw website emerged just as SCO began its legal action against IBM and the Linux community, and quickly became a focus for Linux users, programmers and legal professionals in their mission to expose, understand and demystify the issues surrounding SCO's legal action.

IT PRO spoke to the site's founder, Pamela Jones about the impact of the site, the SCO case and the role Groklaw has played in the ongoing legal case.

The SCO Group's current fate can be neatly summarised by the title of PJ's very first article on the case, back in May 2003 - "SCO Falls Downstairs, Hitting its Head on Every Step." In the intervening years PJ and Groklaw can be credited with unearthing and exposing many of the flaws in SCO's case, most notably, obtaining and publishing the 1994 settlement in the USL vs BSDi case, which had been hidden from public view and played a significant role in undermining SCO's claims to the ownership of Unix. Earlier this year PJ memorably compared SCO's persistence in the face of the facts to the black knight in the Monty Python film who claimed "It's only a flesh wound".

Is SCO is dead yet?

I think it's more accurate to say it's going down slow, as the old blues song puts it.

When Caldera Systems was a Linux company, (before it became the SCO Group), it's IPO was valued at a billion dollars. How did they get themselves into this mess, given it seems they knew from the beginning that their claim to the ownership of the Unix copyrights was, at the very least, dubious?

The one thing I think we don't know yet, and I try not to speculate, is why they did this. It makes no sense on its face, so I assume personally that there is some missing piece. I suspect that the missing piece is that someone wanted the case blown up in the media for as long as possible, to create a fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) cloud over Linux in the market. I don't think they thought it'd ever go to trial, and if you look at current events, they don't seem to have planned for the end game very well. I gather some have made rather a lot of money as well, in salary, bonuses, stocks, etc.

What drew you towards the free software movement?

I don't view myself as part of any movement. I just like to use Mandriva and Ubuntu and Red Hat and Knoppix. When SCO attacked Linux, I noticed things were being said that I thought were outrageous, so it made me mad enough that I thought I could contribute my skills to try to contribute back by defending where I could. It really bothered me that SCO was attacking Linus. I was sure that if there was any code in Linux that shouldn't be there, he'd never do so deliberately. His character stands in the face of any such accusation. And the code is out there for the public to view 24/7, so it makes no sense to "steal" anyone's copyrighted code and put it there. Anyway, I always wanted to contribute back something for all the enjoyment I get from the operating system these guys gave the world, but it was my first chance to actually do so, not being a programmer.

Have you learnt as much from the Groklaw process as your readers, friends and volunteers, have?

I think more, in that I get to see all of it. I certainly know more about the business side of things than I did before, in that I knew nothing at all about Linux in the enterprise. And I've surely learned a lot about Unix. And the history of Linux and the development method. I've learned a lot about journalism too.