Putting the Open Source Community to Work on MyDoom

Recently, the MyDoom virus affected the sites of two of the biggest oppo­nents to the Open Source com­mu­nity: SCO and Microsoft. While Vig­i­lante action is plain wrong (a mes­sage that few in the open source com­mu­nity seem to be send­ing out), there are oppor­tu­ni­ties for the open source com­mu­nity to shine. Here’s how.

As many peo­ple in the net com­mu­nity know by now, SCO has posted a reward of $250,000 for infor­ma­tion lead­ing to the arrest of the MyDoom author. In par­al­lel, Microsoft has posted a reward of $250,000 to peo­ple that will help find the cre­ator of MyDoom.B That’s a total of half a mil­lion dollars.

Ear­lier this year, the OSDL cre­ated a Linux Legal Defense Fund to fight SCO’s claims.

Let’s imag­ine for a sec­ond that the open source com­mu­nity use its effort to find the per­son respon­si­ble for the MyDoom virus and its vari­ant. What if the com­mu­nity then picked up the purse from SCO and Microsoft? What if it then gave that money to OSDL as part of the fight against SCO? Wouldn’t that be the sweet­est irony?

I think it’s a good idea and that’s why I’m issu­ing a call to the com­mu­nity to fight against vig­i­lante behav­ior by find­ing the guilty party. That’s also why I’m ask­ing who­ever finds the guilty party to send the money to OSDL.

The open source com­mu­nity can do great things when it comes to devel­op­ing soft­ware. How about using the open source approach to track­ing down the guilty party and then using Microsoft and SCO’s money to help defend Linux?