Why lawyers don't like Linux

By Sam Varghese
Monday, 11 August 2008 22:24

Opinion and Analysis

No lawyer would ever be paid the same rates for a third-rate article about FOSS as he/she is paid for listening to a client - hence my scepticism.

But, surprisingly, over the past three months two members of the legal profession have taken the time to pen what they, no doubt, consider to be serious objections to the use of FOSS.

In one case, I went into detail about the article and pointed out some of the areas in which it was deficient in reasoning.

This time, I didn't think it worth bothering to do so, because the article contains quite ridiculous claims - and the Groklaw website author, Pamela Jones, has shot down the credibility of the author in a much more forensic manner than I ever could.

But it is interesting to muse on something more general, which, nevertheless, is connected. Why do lawyers dislike Linux? Why do these gentlemen, who would, I'm sure, prefer to construct defences that others cannot argue against (else they would end up losing more cases than they win) bother to create straw men against the use of FOSS - and then be shown up for being illogical? Do they enjoy being made fools of in public?

We all know that lawyers dissemble but in this case, Jones has demonstrated that the writer has not been exactly forthright with the facts either.

When one looks for a motive for anything these days, it's actually fairly easy to find - in nearly every case, it will be monetary gain. Or maybe a decline in billable hours.

In recent times there have been a number of lawsuits filed by the Software Freedom Law Center - all to do with licence violations of the terms prescribed by the makers of BusyBox, which combines tiny versions of many common UNIX utilities into a single small executable (corrected). These cases have been used as the basis for allegations aplenty that using free and open source software is fraught with legal danger.

(Just as an aside, the lawyer who conducted a course on media law in Australia which I attended some years ago, began her lecture by saying that if we observed every law concerning defamation and libel to the letter, then we would never be able to write anything about anyone. But nobody bothers about the letter of the law, obviousy...)

But when the SFLC goes after companies to enforce the terms of a licence, it does not adopt a confrontational attitude. The center tries to educate the violator, settle the case on reasonable terms in the shortest time possible and allow the use of the software in question to continue.