Stories by: Scott Bradner

The obvious thought came to me while writing last week's column, that about the only folk (other than the deluded and amoral management of the SCO Group) that want the SCO Group effort attacking Linux and other open source initiatives to succeed is Microsoft. So I decided to explore that side in this follow-up column, but a bit of reading led me to the conclusion that things are not as simple as they appear.

Largely due to the continued dumb statements and actions of a few apparently PR-challenged carriers, the network neutrality issue is alive and well in the United States. Since any issue like this seems to create a legislative void that must be filled, we now have at least two network neutrality related bills for Congress to consider. If one liked legislation-based solutions, merging these bills and tossing out a bit of Federal Communications Commission make-work would not be too bad, but there would still be some questions left unanswered.

Google, Yahoo and other search engine companies are in the data gathering business. The fact that they offer you and me the service of locating things on the Internet is a means to an end, and that end is data about what you and I do online. They are like the folks that hoard string - the more string they gather the better they feel even if there is little or no actual use for most of what they gather.

Earlier this year, it looked like The SCO Group was going down for the count. It had lost a key decision in its suit against Novell, declared bankruptcy and was quickly running out of money.

Last week my mother admonished me for having published two columns about the Apple iPhone before it was released, but not a word since. She, of course, is right. I should have said something, but I've been trying to figure out what bothers me so much about the product.

Sometime before March 2003 The SCO Group decided that making products that people might want to buy was passe and decided to get into the "business" of filing lawsuits instead. Their first target was IBM but they soon expanded their scope to take on the entire open source community and scores of businesses actually trying to do things that benefited society. It's been a long road since then but the end is now in site - the end of The SCO Group that is.

Fortune magazine thought the story was important enough to put above the magazine's name on the front cover of its May 28 issue: "Microsoft takes on the free world." The story makes it clear that Microsoft thinks it's again time to trot out its Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) campaign against Linux. This attempt rings as hollow as previous ones.

Google says it is going to reduce the length of time it keeps personally identifiable information about users from infinite to merely obscene. There are some positives in this announcement but it mostly emphasizes how bad things are and will continue to be. Google aired its plans in a blog entry on March 14.

One of the biggest impediments to good security is an understanding of what people can and cannot do.

A new Web site has popped up that has the potential to represent the best of the Internet -- from the point of view of concerned citizens -- and the worst of the Internet -- from the point of view of almost all governments.

At the beginning of the year I predicted that SCO Group would: 1) get its case against IBM thrown out by the judge; 2) fail to show any examples of protected code; and 3) declare (financial) bankruptcy, but not edge closer to a 2007 trial date.