SCO Sues IBM for Sharing Secrets with Unix and Linux

bstadil writes "The information is still sparse but the expected lawsuits from SCO over Unix/Linux patent infringements has been filed." SCO is asking for a billion dollars. News.com and Forbes are also covering the story.

All IP is conflict of interest

conflict of interest?

I think this is the biggest problem. All too often I encounter this false faith that concepts like "intellectual property" can happily co-exist with concepts like "free as in freedom". I don't think it can, and this article touches on a fundamental reason why it can't. From the very beginning SCO, and now Sun thought they were better because they were covered in the flag of "intellectual property" and free markets. But this is a fraud, "intellectual property" is not a free market property right. It is so dishonest, and so many people fall for it, that it makes me cringe to see it.

The last time in US history where people were so disillusioned was over slavery. Why in the world couldn't people just pull their head out and see that slavery wasn't a property right? Why? The plantation masters were so well educated, and so wealthy, and such intellegent executive business men, so Why? Why did they ignore the forces of the industrial revolution that were going to force them to change? Why did they push it to the point that millions(?) ended up dead?

The fact that the forces of the industrial revolution caused all hell to break out then, and now we are suffering conflict directly related to our society moving into the information age really bothers me. How far are they going to push it this time? What will they be willing to do when push comes to shove and there's trillions at stake?

Re:All IP is conflict of interest

But this is a fraud, "intellectual property" is not a free market property right.

You might have had a point in the day when the cost of manufacturing a product vastly outweighed the cost of designing it. In the beginning, car designs were very simple, but it didn't matter, because no-one without vast amounts of capital could afford to build a factory, so the design was safe.

Nowadays, the cost of designing a product - be it a piece of software or a new drug - vastly outweights the cost of manufacturing it. Software in particular can be duplicated very cheaply. Therefore we need a structure that makes it possible to obtain a return on investment - and note that I said "possible" not "certain" - in development of a new product. That's what the patent system was designed to do.

But there is an attitude among free software people that can be summarized as "I freely choose to make no money from my software work, therefore everyone else must be denied the right to make money from software". That's the thinking behind the GPL. It might work from the ivory tower of a MacArthur Foundation grant at MIT, but it isn't viable in the real world.

Remember, IBM makes it's money on hardware. It doesn't care about Linux on ideological grounds, it merely wants to cut the cost of shipping hardware.

Re:All IP is conflict of interest

In the begining cars designs were not very simple, but their construction was fairly crude, and venture capitalists were coming out of the woodwork to pour money into "the next big thing," and thus literally hundreds of car manufacturers sprang up virtually overnight and IP wars ravaged the land and stunted development for years because whatever one of these hundreds of manufacturers made the other could duplicate in matter of days.

You are falling into the false premise that the way things are today is the way things were back then, when cars weren't made in factories but by a few skilled men in barns. Kind of like Apple was in the early days.

For the most part things take millions to develop and thousands of man hours these days not because it actually takes that, but because the men and dollars are available, so they get spent. If these men and dollars were *not* available pretty much the same work would get done. The main difference is that it would get done faster and cheaper by a few skilled men instead of the hundreds of mediocre ones, and the attendent layer upon layer of middle managment sucking out most of the dollars of any project.

Eli Whitney's cotton gin was "stolen" and in production by copycat companies before Eli had even gotten it out of the demo phase.

Eli never patented anything again in his life, believing that some ideas were simply "to valuable to be owned."

He was right.

KFG

Re:All IP is conflict of interest

If most (or all) software were Free, then redundant development would occur more rarely, and only when the programmer thought he could do a better job, not just an equivalent one.

Do you work with many programmers? All of them think they can do a better job, and all of them will try to reinvent the wheel from scratch on every project, if you let them. I remember we once left a programmer alone for too long, he invented a whole new language to script his bit of the application! Now he could have embedded TCL (which is what TCL was designed for), he could have exposed a COM interface and used VBA, he could've reused something else, but he didn't.

IN OTHER NEWS...

... Dr. Evil hired as president of SCO.

First post when posting is disabled?

Re:Where are the filings?

Dear Bruce; B [sco.com]

the complaint [sco.com] and some exhibits ( A [sco.com] B [sco.com] C [sco.com] D [sco.com] E [sco.com] can be found on SCO web site

There is a press release on the same page, in case you wondered who writes the ZDNet articles :-)

billion dollars?

Yeah, and I am asking SCO for a unix that actually runs reliably, but it ain't gonna happen, buddy.

No, really. SCO should worry less about suing over linux and unix and secrets, and more about putting out a product that doesn't suck so badly.

Re:billion dollars?

I'd be happy if they'd upgrade *anything* to make it not look like it did in freakin' 1989! They have to face it: Nobody (with a brand name and a company to feed) does Unix like Linux. Even *BSD, a company (depending on which one you're talking about) makes VAST strides over SCO. Sure, SCO's got uptime and a vast application library...but it's a BEAR when it comes back up, and the apps are all vertical and expensive.

I mean....here we are in 2003, and you STILL have to make sure your host hardware is compatible with SCO. How could they let this get so bad? Now they blame everyone else.

Yet, it's still better at what it does, than Windows: it doesn't stake a claim to your grandchildren's choice of operating system....and your cash...and theirs.

I started on a "Fortune" brand Unix box, but took up SCO for about a decade...I'm tellin' ya: it sucks. The management team is to blame. They charged for the Development System (cc and friends to you and me) and they even charged to ship their 'skunkware' disk, containing a lot of public domain stuff that worked FAR better than their own stuff.

I told them that charging $1100 for their source of programs and future was insane. And "They looked at me, uncomprehendingly, like cows at a passing train..."

Nobody listens when there's still time to dodge the oncoming semi.

SCO Exit Strategy

If there is a real chance for SCO to win that lawsuit, or at least settle in the region of a billion dollars, then SCO is worth that billion dollars. If the shareholders think that's the case they simply shouldn't sell their shares for less than what they are worth. If enough shareholders think that way the price of the shares will go up until it reflects the value of SCO including any money from the lawsuit (or at least what the majority of people think what the value is).

I suspect in fact that this lawsuit is SCO's exit strategy. They know aren't going to make it much longer as an independent company. If their current market value is 100 million (say), they sue IBM for 1 billion, then get bought by IBM for 400 million, they will have successfully shut down their firm and gotten the best possible deal for their stockholders. Management will probably get a sweet payoff out of the deal too of course.

sPh

Re:billion dollars?

This is a phenominally bad move for SCO to make.

I'm sure a psudeo-capitalist troll will spout off with "they're doing what a good business should, they're doing this for thier stock holders, we should applaud them"

Really? Destroying the last vestige of goodwill that the company has is a good move? In one fell stroke annihillating any chance that SCO will ever be respected by the Linux community, on the off chance they can successfully sue IBM for some cash?

My company dropped support for SCO last year. Their hardware support is so horrible just putting a test machine together is more of a pain in the ass than its worth. The number of sales we would theoretically get doesn't justify the development and testing resources necessary. We would sell more copies of an _OS/2_ package than we would SCO (and we dropped OS/2 support around the same time).

We will NEVER support SCO again after this little move.

(my company == one of the top 5 software publishers)

They lowered the boom

When they hired Boies, you knew they meant business. But they are sueing someone with very deep pockets. I wonderhow deep SCO's are?

SCO, this is stupid.

1. You have just picked a fight with an 800lb gorilla; you are not going to win. IBM will trot out a few thousand patents that you infringe upon, game over.
2. You want a business plan? Here you go:
   1. RedHat has eaten your lunch, but they are starting to make mistakes. Offer to take over free up2date support. Reimplement up2date using a p2p engine so it doesn't cost you bandwidth. Make sure that you can advertise over this support channel, and make your products an obvious upgrade path out of RedHat.
   2. Put out a stripped-down, free UnitedLinux version that is completely open-source, and maintain a subscription version. Don't mess with the free version (a la RedHat).
   3. Sun has a free UNIX license in perpetuity. Offer the same to HP, in exchange for AdvFS and whatever other technology is good. Implement these components in the commercial server product. All of HP's UNIX products are dying, and they are ripe for the plucking.
   4. If you somehow obtain AdvFS, you can take Oracle away from RedHat. You should start working on making your platform a preferred place for RAC right away. This goal is potentially worth giving AdvFS away under GPL.
   5. Stop suing IBM and start making sure that you will have a place on the new Power blade servers they are planning to produce. Get cozier with the Power crowd; you bring a lot to the table.

Re:This should do wonders for United Linux sales..

If you can't beat 'em, sue 'em. What a wonderful philosophy.

Yeah, Amazon is planning to file suit against SCO for violating its patent covering the process of suing someone for patent violations.

Re:secrets

If I had to guess, I'd say part of that number is based on IBM's famous commitment to spend $1B on Linux last year (which has been upped for this year I believe). If IBM can afford $1B for Linux marketing, R&D, etc then I suppose SCO feels like IBM can afford the same amount to cover what they are claiming are infringements.

Personally, I wouldn't be too surprised if some IBM engineers did use some knowledge they gained from Unix development when working on Linux.

However, first of all I see that as inevitable as it's pretty damned hard to unlearn technics. Secondly, I take big issue with the idea that the improvements that have happened in Linux are so amazing that SCO can't imagine them being done without this contaminated knowledge.

Maybe kernel 2.6 would take longer to come out, but most of what's happening would still be happening even without IBM. They're spending more money porting their middleware than they are on making Linux as a whole better (as they should to make their shareholders happy).

My earlier plea for sanity

During the previous article I made a call for peace. I suggested that it was too early to condemn SCO for they had done nothing vicious, and we had no way to tell precisely what was planned.

Clearly I was a fucking retard. They're fucking evil. Ban them. Send them emails which politely, yet firmly state that they smell like a llama's anus. Sick the Channel 7 ProblemSolvers on them.

Seriously, there's just no excuse. As a nation, we must rise up against this evil, and destroy it once and for all.

Re:My earlier plea for sanity

"During the previous article I made a call for peace. I suggested that it was too early to condemn SCO for they had done nothing vicious, and we had no way to tell precisely what was planned."

We need to give the inspectors more time. War is wrong. Bush just wants the oil.

Oh... sorry. Wrong cause.

Caldera/SCO's major product

No doubt this will be modded flamebait but I have to speak my mind on this one--

Caldera/SCO is one of those companies which I have absolutely no good will towards. Sure, someone had to sue Microsoft over the antocompetitive actions against DR DOS, but Caldera didn't even really pretend that the product was a real addition to their product line. They only bought it to sue Microsoft and after they settled, they sold it to Lineo.

Then they bought SCO and became the SCO Group. BTW, this was after they were sued by their shareholders for inflating profits before Enron broke.

Since they dislike the GPL, and can't find a good way to pretend that Linux is proprietary, their business model seems to be:
1: Buy dying products
2: Sue other companies
3: Win or settle
4: Profit
5; Sell dying product line to other companies
6: Profit again

If they were ethical, I would support them.... but I can find no ethics, or any other virtues....

Lets hope this is dismissed soon..

in other sco related news..

today sco also announced they are moving their centre of operations to a hollowed out volcano, and branching out to the lucrative area of 'fricken sharks with fricken laser beams on their fricken heads'

*pinky finger to mouth*

Best quote ever, same old from SCO

"It's a fairly end-of-life move for the stockholders and managers of that company," said Jonathan Eunice, an Illuminata analyst. "Really what beat SCO is not any problem with what IBM did; it's what the market decided. This is a way of salvaging value out of the SCO franchise they can't get by winning in the marketplace." - Best and most accurate quote on SCO/Caldera ever imo.

Seriously tho, IBM says nothing for linux to fear but FUD itself (literally). Caldera/SCO dropped every single ball they've EVER been thrown, so much so that every thread ever started or ended here is basically a litanny of their mistakes. Sun makes UNIX, they're still alive, IBM still makes AIX, they're certainly alive, poor SCO is dead in the water so they sue.

My guess is the next thing they'll do is sell all their IP to microsoft, and microsoft will use it as a giant club against other vendors. So it's in our best interests to see them stay afloat, otherwise some other patent-abusing, money hungry group of corporate bastards with more money will have all of their "intellectual property" and will actually have the cash to use it. IBM has the cash to hold things up in court long enough to A> Have the costs of the settlement (if ever reached) be deferred by inflation and B> Have the underlying patents they're being sued for actually expire.

Plus, IBM is the former evil empire, they have no qualms whatsoever using their vast horde of defensive patents to counter sue someone into the ground.

The Lawsuit

(kind of ontopic) In addition to the groups organized to freely redistribute systems built around the Networking Release 2 tape, a company, Berkeley Software Design, Incorporated (BSDI), was formed to develop and distribute a commercially supported version of the code. (More information about BSDI can be found at http://www.bsdi.com.) Like the other groups, they started by adding the six missing files that Bill Jolitz had written for his 386/BSD release. BSDI began selling their system including both source and binaries in January 1992 for $995. They began running advertisements touting their 99% discount over the price charged for System V source plus binary systems. Interested readers were told to call 1-800-ITS-Unix. Shortly after BSDI began their sales campaign, they received a letter from Unix System Laboratories (USL) (a mostly-owned subsidiary of AT&T spun off to develop and sell Unix). The letter demanded that they stop promoting their product as Unix and in particular that they stop using the deceptive phone number. Although the phone number was promptly dropped and the advertisements changed to explain that the product was not Unix, USL was still unhappy and filed suit to enjoin BSDI from selling their product. The suit alleged that the BSDI product contained proprietary USL code and trade secrets. USL sought to get an injunction to halt BSDI's sales until the lawsuit was resolved, claiming that they would suffer irreparable harm from the loss of their trade secrets if the BSDI distributions continued. At the preliminary hearing for the injunction, BSDI contended that they were simply using the sources being freely distributed by the University of California plus six additional files. They were willing to discuss the content of any of the six added files, but did not believe that they should be held responsible for the files being distributed by the University of California. The judge agreed with BSDI's argument and told USL that they would have to restate their complaint based solely on the six files or he would dismiss it. Recognizing that they would have a hard time making a case from just the six files, USL decided to refile the suit against both BSDI and the University of California. As before, USL requested an injunction on the shipping of Networking Release 2 from the University and on the BSDI products. With the impending injunction hearing just a few short weeks away, preparation began in earnest. All the members of the CSRG were deposed as were nearly everyone employed at BSDI. Briefs, counter-briefs, and counter-counter-briefs flew back and forth between the lawyers. Keith Bostic and I personally had to write several hundred pages of material that found its way into various briefs. In December 1992, Dickinson R. Debevoise, a United States District Judge in New Jersey, heard the arguments for the injunction. Although judges usually rule on injunction requests immediately, he decided to take it under advisement. On a Friday about six weeks later, he issued a forty-page opinion in which he denied the injunction and threw out all but two of the complaints. The remaining two complaints were narrowed to recent copyrights and the possibility of the loss of trade secrets. He also suggested that the matter should be heard in a state court system before being heard in the federal court system. The University of California took the hint and rushed into California state court the following Monday morning with a counter-suit against USL. By filing first in California, the University had established the locale of any further state court action. Constitutional law requires all state filing to be done in a single state to prevent a litigant with deep pockets from bleeding an opponent dry by filing fifty cases against them in every state. The result was that if USL wanted to take any action against the University in state courts, they would be forced to do so in California rather than in their home state of New Jersey. The University's suit claimed that USL had failed in their obligation to provide due credit to the University for the use of BSD code in System V as required by the license that they had signed with the University. If the claim were found to be valid, the University asked that USL be forced to reprint all their documentation with the appropriate due credit added, to notify all their licensees of their oversight, and to run full-page advertisements in major publications such as The Wall Street Journal and Fortune magazine notifying the business world of their inadvertent oversight. Soon after the filing in state court, USL was bought from AT&T by Novell. The CEO of Novell, Ray Noorda, stated publicly that he would rather compete in the marketplace than in court. By the summer of 1993, settlement talks had started. Unfortunately, the two sides had dug in so deep that the talks proceed slowly. With some further prodding by Ray Noorda on the USL side, many of the sticking points were removed and a settlement was finally reached in January 1994. The result was that three files were removed from the 18,000 that made up Networking Release 2, and a number of minor changes were made to other files. In addition, the University agreed to add USL copyrights to about 70 files, although those files continued to be freely redistributed. 4.4BSD The newly blessed release was called 4.4BSD-Lite and was released in June 1994 under terms identical to those used for the Networking releases. Specifically, the terms allow free redistribution in source and binary form subject only to the constraint that the University copyrights remain intact and that the University receive credit when others use the code. Simultaneously, the complete system was released as 4.4BSD-Encumbered, which still required recipients to have a USL source license. The lawsuit settlement also stipulated that USL would not sue any organization using 4.4BSD-Lite as the base for their system. So, all the BSD groups that were doing releases at that time, BSDI, NetBSD, and FreeBSD, had to restart their code base with the 4.4BSD-Lite sources into which they then merged their enhancements and improvements. While this reintegration caused a short-term delay in the development of the various BSD systems, it was a blessing in disguise since it forced all the divergent groups to resynchronize with the three years of development that had occurred at the CSRG since the release of Networking Release 2.

Re:The Lawsuit

For all the whiners who don't know how to do "view source" to see the paragraph breaks, here it is with html paragraph breaks inserted.

(kind of ontopic)

In addition to the groups organized to freely redistribute systems built around the Networking Release 2 tape, a company, Berkeley Software Design, Incorporated (BSDI), was formed to develop and distribute a commercially supported version of the code. (More information about BSDI can be found at http://www.bsdi.com.) Like the other groups, they started by adding the six missing files that Bill Jolitz had written for his 386/BSD release. BSDI began selling their system including both source and binaries in January 1992 for $995. They began running advertisements touting their 99% discount over the price charged for System V source plus binary systems. Interested readers were told to call 1-800-ITS-Unix.

Shortly after BSDI began their sales campaign, they received a letter from Unix System Laboratories (USL) (a mostly-owned subsidiary of AT&T spun off to develop and sell Unix). The letter demanded that they stop promoting their product as Unix and in particular that they stop using the deceptive phone number. Although the phone number was promptly dropped and the advertisements changed to explain that the product was not Unix, USL was still unhappy and filed suit to enjoin BSDI from selling their product. The suit alleged that the BSDI product contained proprietary USL code and trade secrets. USL sought to get an injunction to halt BSDI's sales until the lawsuit was resolved, claiming that they would suffer irreparable harm from the loss of their trade secrets if the BSDI distributions continued.

At the preliminary hearing for the injunction, BSDI contended that they were simply using the sources being freely distributed by the University of California plus six additional files. They were willing to discuss the content of any of the six added files, but did not believe that they should be held responsible for the files being distributed by the University of California. The judge agreed with BSDI's argument and told USL that they would have to restate their complaint based solely on the six files or he would dismiss it. Recognizing that they would have a hard time making a case from just the six files, USL decided to refile the suit against both BSDI and the University of California. As before, USL requested an injunction on the shipping of Networking Release 2 from the University and on the BSDI products.

With the impending injunction hearing just a few short weeks away, preparation began in earnest. All the members of the CSRG were deposed as were nearly everyone employed at BSDI. Briefs, counter-briefs, and counter-counter-briefs flew back and forth between the lawyers. Keith Bostic and I personally had to write several hundred pages of material that found its way into various briefs.

In December 1992, Dickinson R. Debevoise, a United States District Judge in New Jersey, heard the arguments for the injunction. Although judges usually rule on injunction requests immediately, he decided to take it under advisement. On a Friday about six weeks later, he issued a forty-page opinion in which he denied the injunction and threw out all but two of the complaints. The remaining two complaints were narrowed to recent copyrights and the possibility of the loss of trade secrets. He also suggested that the matter should be heard in a state court system before being heard in the federal court system.

The University of California took the hint and rushed into California state court the following Monday morning with a counter-suit against USL. By filing first in California, the University had established the locale of any further state court action. Constitutional law requires all state filing to be done in a single state to prevent a litigant with deep pockets from bleeding an opponent dry by filing fifty cases against them in every state. The result was that if USL wanted to take any action against the University in state courts, they would be forced to do so in California rather than in their home state of New Jersey.

The University's suit claimed that USL had failed in their obligation to provide due credit to the University for the use of BSD code in System V as required by the license that they had signed with the University. If the claim were found to be valid, the University asked that USL be forced to reprint all their documentation with the appropriate due credit added, to notify all their licensees of their oversight, and to run full-page advertisements in major publications such as The Wall Street Journal and Fortune magazine notifying the business world of their inadvertent oversight.

Soon after the filing in state court, USL was bought from AT&T by Novell. The CEO of Novell, Ray Noorda, stated publicly that he would rather compete in the marketplace than in court. By the summer of 1993, settlement talks had started. Unfortunately, the two sides had dug in so deep that the talks proceed slowly. With some further prodding by Ray Noorda on the USL side, many of the sticking points were removed and a settlement was finally reached in January 1994. The result was that three files were removed from the 18,000 that made up Networking Release 2, and a number of minor changes were made to other files. In addition, the University agreed to add USL copyrights to about 70 files, although those files continued to be freely redistributed. 4.4BSD

The newly blessed release was called 4.4BSD-Lite and was released in June 1994 under terms identical to those used for the Networking releases. Specifically, the terms allow free redistribution in source and binary form subject only to the constraint that the University copyrights remain intact and that the University receive credit when others use the code. Simultaneously, the complete system was released as 4.4BSD-Encumbered, which still required recipients to have a USL source license.

The lawsuit settlement also stipulated that USL would not sue any organization using 4.4BSD-Lite as the base for their system. So, all the BSD groups that were doing releases at that time, BSDI, NetBSD, and FreeBSD, had to restart their code base with the 4.4BSD-Lite sources into which they then merged their enhancements and improvements. While this reintegration caused a short-term delay in the development of the various BSD systems, it was a blessing in disguise since it forced all the divergent groups to resynchronize with the three years of development that had occurred at the CSRG since the release of Networking Release 2.

IBM

IBM probably has more technology patents than any other company on Earth (and possibly other planets, too early to tell). I'm willing to bet they can find hundreds of violations in SCO's product lines and bury them.

Either way though, you just know this is going to become a bullet point on Microsoft's next Linux FUD page ("see, use linux and you can get sued).

Finkployd

Re:IBM -- cross-license or die

That was my 2nd thought "what are they thinking? the counter suit could bury them"

My first thougth was "what idiot suit at SCO thinks they can make a case for AIX being SYSV-derived?"

The logic(sic) they are asserting seems to be: AIX is based on SYSV that SCO acquired from AT&T, and that IBM's moved those ideas into Linux.

Nice fantasy. AIX is based on the Mach microkernel from CMU, which in turn is BSD-derived. Even at that it is very much re-implemented, using such intersting magic as an O-O system configuration database, and the first widely available journalling filesystem for a *nix.

People think of AIX as being SYSV because it implements a SYSV *interface*. IBM is all about standards and AIX achieved System-V (and later versions) standard compliance *and* BSD compliance wherever that did not conflict.

So no, SCO hasn't got a leg to stand on on this aspect. I wish them luck they are toing to need it.

hmm...

on the second page [eweek.com] of the eweek [eweek.com] article [eweek.com], it seems that SCO may have pretended to be a market-research company that called around and asked how would the companies feel if SCO had sued them on intellectual property rights. including SONY and Ford, which also runs linux on... stuff.

my immediate question is, Ford runs linux? on what?

and second question is, isn't SCO like... Caldera?

aaaanyway; I guess linux is taking away the marked share of UNIX boxes a lot more than it's headway into the desktop (windows) arena. fighting the wrong crowd, I'd say...

maybe microsoft will file a suit that says "we want damages because linux makes our business model un-profitable."

Way to go, SCO!

SCO/Caldera sells Linux, this lawsuit is may have a chilling effect on Linux sales...why is SCO shooting itself in the foot?

If they had an idea about things, they would donate said IP to Linux/GNU, and reap many billions of Dollars of good will and karma, and I would go out and buy their distro to support them if that is what they had did.

When companies litigate instead of innovate, you know they are probably not long for this world.

ttyl
Farrell

Re:Way to go, SCO!

You're talking about a company that is on it's death throes. Sure, they might be able to get a chunk of goodwill, but without a viable product to sell, they can't convert that goodwill into cash.

The edict of running a public company is to make money. The executives are dutybound to squeeze every last dollar out of what they can before they go under, and rest assured, go under they will.

Unfortuantely, what will happen is that in the liquidation, the IP will be sold off to another company and they, too, will see what sort of money they can squeeze out of it. I bet it's PanIP that buys the IP... any takers?

Biting off more than they can chew

Of course, just as I post my story submission to slashdot on this, no sooner than I reload the page after submitting it when the story appears from someone else. Doh!

Seriously, though, I think I'll repeat a comment that I made in my story submission. Does anyone else think that SCO has bitten off more than they can chew? I knew that they were going to make a move, but I thought for sure they were going to pick an "easy" target, like some small Linux distributor. About as big a company as I suspected they would hit was Red Hat.

Suing IBM was a huge mistake. Or more accurately: suing IBM first was a big mistake. They should have done what other companies have, which is take on the little fish in the pond hoping some will roll over and pony up the dough, before attempting to harpoon the whale.

Not that I'm unhappy about this turn of events, mind you. IBM, which has had more experience in dealing with IP rights and patents in the little finger of one of their lawyers than SCO has in their entire company, will pound them into the dirt. The sound you are now hearing is that of the death dirge for SCO.

Re:Biting off more than they can chew

Suing Red Hat may have been the one way to get Slashdot geeks off their ass and actually physically protesting somewhere. A giant PR disaster is not a good way to cash out on a dying company. Suing a megacorp in hopes of winning a modest settlement is. A company like IBM has money, but suing them for 1 billion is really throwing down the gauntlet. They could've settled for a couple of million, but IBM will make an example of Caldera for this insolence.

Takeover

Can IBM take over (buy) SCO, effectively cutting this lawsuit off?

Allege!

"We are alleging they have contaminated their Linux work with inappropriate knowledge from Unix," said Chris Sontag, senior vice president of operating systems at SCO

From dictionary.com:

allege: To assert without or before proof

So they're alleging, they're not actually accusing because they have no idea! Just trying to see if they can make a quick buck.

Illuminata Analyst should be ashamed

"Some claims, though, have more potential merit, Eunice said. One is that creating Unix on Intel processors needed expertise that SCO developed but IBM lacked, Eunice said."
(this was from the news.com article)

If IBM lacked it, which I doubt, I guess we can all be thankful that Linus had the expertise needed to create a Unix on Intel processors. What an idiot.

If Caldera is using their Patents in their GPL OS

If Caldera is using their Patents in their GPL OS, then they have to give open use of all patents to everyone, or they cannot distribute their code under the GPL. If they are making modifications to their Linux OS with concepts under the patent, then they cannot distribute their Linux OS. Correct? Since they are precluding usage of their patented code by anyone else, then they are adding additional restrictions to the GPL which makes it no longer "free".

7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.

Good one Caldera.

They're not suing over closed code...

They're suing over breaches of NDA and License to Unix code that SCO claims IBM had with them. Patented stuff- in the Linux kernel (Otherwise why would they be harping about SMP systems?).

And, they have the unmitigated GALL to say that Linux systems purchased from them have no issues because they have the license bundled in with their distribution licenses. That is a GPL violation, pure and simple. Either there ISN'T a patent issue or there is- if there is, then the patented stuff has to go bye-bye or have a GPL compatible license. SCO's not claiming to have licensed the alleged tech that way in their press releases.

No, this is SCO commiting corporate suicide in the most public, painful way possible. Picking an IP fight with IBM is not one of the wiser things to do- and to set the stakes so that IBM HAS to do something about it rather than settle simply and easily is downright insane. IBM is all about IP and is pretty much anal about IP handling- with theirs and their partners'. If they don't countersue with their own infringement suit (thus getting the whole mess dropped- SCO can't afford a legal battle on two fronts...) they'll prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that there's nothing to SCO's claims. And that's just the lawsuit part of this whole mess- the bad blood they just earned with the community just torpedoed themselves, UnitedLinux, and anyone that associates themselves too closely with SCO.

Wearing my tin foil hat...

MS are happy campers. Mucho "IP hassles when chosing Linux" fodder for the Sales bots and white paper writers. If I was a paranoid, X-Files watching geek I'd wonder how much extra MS paid SCO (Caldera) to pull this crap when they settled thier civil anti-trust lawsuit?

Back in reality I think this is SCO's attempt at getting bought at a premium. Lets face facts, IBM can probably bitch slap them with their own IP, but I bet SCO thinks that buying out SCO is cheaper/easier than the time and effort (not to mention the FUD damage to IBM's linux/AIX biz) IBM would have defending this.

The solution is very very simple.

SCO has a market cap of $25.68 Million [forbes.com]. IBM could buy them for $100Million and save %90. Or RedHat maybe.

Actually, someone with a clue should buy them now before, ummm, someone with an interest in seeing Free Software set significantly back figures out that the UNIX IP is pretty much a sitting duck...

Soko

Re:The solution is very very simple.

Nah, I'd rather see SCO get crushed in court. If people find out IBM basically paid-off SCO by buying them out, you'll see all kinds of nutcase lawsuits coming out of the woodwork claiming "patent infringment" by people hoping to get money thrown at them to go away.

The line needs to be drawn.

Freaking me out.

"IBM is affirmatively taking steps to destroy all value of Unix by improperly extracting and using the confidential and proprietary information it acquired from Unix and dumping that information into the open source community," the suit said. "IBM's tortious conduct was also intentionally and maliciously designed to destroy plaintiff's business livelihood and all opportunities of plaintiff to derive value from the Unix software code in the marketplace." - hopefully IBM wins this one and shuts SCO the hell up.

Linux's rapid maturity--for example, growing up to work on large multiprocessor servers--is evidence of the presence of Unix intellectual property, the SCO suit said. "It is not possible for Linux to rapidly reach Unix performance standards for complete enterprise functionality without the misappropriation of Unix code, methods or concepts to achieve such performance, and coordination by a larger developer, such as IBM," the suit said.
- cool. I guess these allegations have only to do with what IBM has been adding to the GNU/Linux code. Will it be possible to prove that there was no contamination, especially if the former AIX team was working on Linux software? I remember, maybe a year and a half ago, there was an interview on /. with AIX team working on GNU/Linux, does anyone else remember? This is going to be a tough battle, I hope Caldera loses it.

I love their claims

From News.com:

- "creating Unix on Intel processors needed expertise that SCO developed but IBM lacked"
- "It is not possible for Linux to rapidly reach Unix performance standards for complete enterprise functionality without the misappropriation of Unix code"

Apparently they didn't notice that IBM owns Sequent, which has been shipping 32-processor Intel boxes since the mid-90s... (e.g. http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/sp 82597b.HTM) [intel.com]

Only a moron brings a patent suit against IBM

IBM has tens of thousands of patents. Suing IBM over patent infringement is almost 100% guaranteed to be a terribly bad idea, because IBM will just turn around and recite the litany of IBM patents SCO is infringing. Stupid stupid stupid.

Cohones or stupidity?

They don't start with a couple of smaller fish, but instead go for the biggest whale in the sea. They should file for Chapter 7 tomorrow. Even the analysts think this is lame.

The best quote in the CNET story is from the suit itself which says and I quote, "It is not possible for Linux to rapidly reach Unix performance standards for complete enterprise functionality without the misappropriation of Unix code, methods or concepts to achieve such performance, and coordination by a larger developer, such as IBM," So all that hard work all the developers and Linux did for the last 10 years were for nothing.

And there you have it. SCO is dead. How can SCO sell a Linux product anymore when they themselves are saying, "Hey, we don't know how Linux could have gotten so good. It must have been from misappropoation of our trade secrets."

Who in their right mind would buy anything from these losers?

Monterey was about Itanium

Given that project Monterey was about developing a commercial UNIX for Itanium, and given that IBM abandoned SCO and produced AIX5L for Itanium and discontinued it shortly thereafter, I really do not know what SCO's beef is.

Project Monterey had nothing to do with x86. So what if IBM is pushing Linux on x86.

Now if IBM produced its own Linux distribution for Itanium, and SCO saw some of its Monterey source in the distro, SCO might have a claim.

SCO's claims don't pass the sniff test

At least some of the claims just don't pass the sniff test.

When AIX came out in 1990 or so, it was so different from SVR4 that competitors cried "AIX isn't UNIX". IBM really did a huge amount of kernel work and had all sorts of administrative features borrowed conceptually from the mainframe that were lacking in UNIX at the time. Journalling filesystems, logical volume management, etc. just for starters. The toolset for managing AIX was (and still is, to some extent) quite different from other UNIXes. I think IBM kept the SVR3/4 APIs but re-wrote
most of the code below it back in the late 80s.

You know you have a weak argument when you start seeing claims like this:
Added Sontag [SCO SVP], "When they (IBM) started utilizing the same engineers that worked on the Unix System V source code and the ultimate derivative of it in the form of AIX, they have
effectively been applying our methods and concepts, even if there isn't a single explicit line of code" that shows up in Linux.

Believe me, there are a lot of methods and concepts that UNIX (System V/VII,SVR4) stole from predecessors, and continues to steal! Where's the suit from the MULTICS guys against AT&T? Citing executive's handwavings generalizations about leveraging UNIX expertise makes for a pretty weak legal case (and PR case imho). Monterey always had too much hand-waving for me to get enthusiastic about.

However, the issue of IBM allegedly re-creating versions of SCO libraries using SCO's actual code sounds interesting. SCO binary compatibility is actually something somewhat valuable that SCO should fully defend if it was unlawfully infringed upon via trade secret leakage rather than cleanroom reverse engineering. Still, if I remember correctly, most of the SCO/Linux binary compatibility stuff was done by some guy at SCO (Avi Tevananian or something like that? I'm butchering his name, sorry.) SCO was working on Linux binary compatibility before IBM even knew Linux existed. So to speak.

As far as infringing on how to run Linux on Intel, clearly Linus managed that without anyone's help. Now running Linux on IA-64, or perhaps some particular acceleration technique used by SCO might be grounds for a decent case depending on the particular evidences involved. I guess we'll see.

With revenues less than Red Hat, and a business model going nowhere, a legal approach makes sense for SCO. IBM can afford the lawsuit and probably route around it better than, say, Intel could route around Clipper chip infringements in existing products. If it lays clearer guidelines for Linux IP, so much the better. I guess that's what I'm hoping for. As a betting man though, I wouldn't bet on SCO for this case. Unless there are more rabbits in that hat.

--LP

This is the end of SCO, for sure.

SCO is the thief who puts a gun to his own head and says give me your money or I'll shoot.

I haven't read the filings yet, but it sounds as if SCO's main claim is that IBM (and perhaps others) violated their non-disclosure agreements by allowing employees who had seen the Unix source code to work on Linux. However, Linux was developed first on the Intel i386 processor family, way back in 1991, at least five years before IBM took an interest in it. Linux follows MINIX, an even earlier published-source-code system that very clearly isn't derived from Unix - its architecture was very different.

SCO claims that Linux could not have become ready for the enterprise so quickly without use of art originating in Unix. They seem to ignore the fact that hundreds of thousands of people have been educated in operating systems programming, and that very healthy communities of scientific research exist for systems design, and that most of the enterprise-ready features originated in research operating systems and only later were ported to Unix.

They claim that the Linux libraries could not have been produced without input from Unix. But these libraries are written to a printed specification called POSIX, published by the U.S. government and available to the general public. The GNU C library, and many other Linux libraries, existed long before IBM's involvement. We also had printed "man pages" for Unix available in bookstores without restrictions on implementation of the documented facilities, and shelves of published documentation on Unix in every technical bookstore.

So, I think the claims I've heard are specious, and not enforcible in court. Why, then, is SCO doing this? They want to be purchased. This is the exit strategy for their investors, Canopy Group. IBM can buy them just to shut them up. Or Microsoft can buy them to use them to FUD Linux. And Canopy Group management figures they'll play the two against each other to drive up the price. But IBM management is smart enough to poison this particular well, by bringing counter-claims against SCO.

SCO is also party to the GPL, which invalidates their patent portfolio for any of their patents that happen to have been used in a Linux system that they distributed. Under the GPL terms, if you distribute your patented practice in GPL software, you must grant a license to everyone to make use of that patent in any GPL software, for any field of use. This is why SCO's initial claim seems to be focusing on an NDA rather than patents. And of course, the fundamental patents that apply to Unix would have expired some 15 years ago.

SCO can't claim that IBM (or anyone else) was hiding the Linux development from them, since Linux source is available and is part of SCO's own Linux product. They have been distributing the source code that they claim violates their own NDA as Caldera's main product for years. So, they are going to have a very small chance of making this case work.

We in the Free Software developer community must make it clear that we will not tolerate specious intellectual property claims on our software, even if those claims are directed to a user or industrial partner rather than an individual developer. The obvious first step that would occurr to any of us would be to shun SCO - not to do business with them, not to recommend them in our jobs, etc. SCO must have known that they'd be shunned for these shenanigans, and they went ahead with them anyway. This means they're writing off their entire software and operating systems business. SCO is owned by Canopy Group, I guess those folks are writing off their other software businesses, too.

I look forward to getting a look at the court papers, and being a witness for the defense or amicus curae in these cases. I'm sure I'll be joined by a lot of you. In addition, we may have our own infringement claims to make, if the SCO filing violates the GPL terms. I doubt there will be much left of SCO at the end of this.

These folks could have been good partners. Other people in industry were, and beat Caldera and SCO in the market. Canopy Group, their venture firm, were the real managers of SCO and Caldera. Front-men like Ransom Love were not the ones making real decisions. Their business failed, and others flourished, because Canopy Group never understood how to be our partners. They've chosen to screw us one last time on the way out the door. Let's do our best to turn it back on them.

Bruce

Unix and colleges

On the NDA issue: ATT licensed the source code of Unix to colleges from the early 1970's through the late 1980's, and I think this practice has been continued until the present. The source was available for perusal by software researchers at universities, and to very many students.

Bruce

Re:Family History

But we have already had the ATT vs. University of California court case, back in the early 90's, and thus we know this claim doesn't apply to the BSD code base as of the end of that trial.

Bruce

Re:This is the end of SCO, for sure.

What's really surprising is that it appears SCO believes IBM is run by a pack of idiots. Granted, they have made some rather major strategic mistakes in the past, but I can't think of a time when they ran afoul with intellectual property. As has been amply noted in earlier, IBM is one, if not the leader, of computer technology intellectual property. They have been for decades.

Taking that as a fact, who at IBM, and in the right mind, would allow someone to openly walk out of the corporate front doors with IP and give it away to a bunch of libertarian code monkeys? I work for a company whose second line of business is IP, and I can tell you that I would not have been able to publicly disseminate corporate business secrets without repercussions. My rogue initiative would have lasted maybe two or three weeks until the company got wind of what I was doing and then I would have been shut down, fired, and sued into oblivion.

Why would IBM's IP lawyers let their engineers disclose anyone's secrets, let alone their own, without getting the forms filled out correctly? That behavior just doesn't make sense for a company so steeped in a bureaucratic corporate culture.

Re:This is the end of SCO, for sure.

And they think the free software community's run by even bigger idiots, too. It took IBM looking at Unix to help us make Linux run on the i386?

When I created the Open Source Definition and the Debian Social Contract that it came from, one of the explicit purposes of that work was to make guidelines that kept the IP that SCO is talking about out of our systems. Red Hat and Debian have followed those guidelines. SCO seems to believe we've never thought about this stuff.

Bruce

Re:This is the end of SCO, for sure.

I worked at IBM in the hardware area, not software, but I the attitude was the same. I had to have training on how to use the GNU stuff, how I had to be careful mixing in the software, etc. And that was just if you wanted to run a Linux box! If you were doing software the rules were even more strict and you often required heavy duty review if you'd even been "exposed" to GPL source. So I can say with pretty good certainty that IBM *management* was very, very careful not to allow violations of NDA, the GPL, or any other agreement we had to make. There may be instances where something occured, but IBM certainly went to every length to keep anything like that from happening, had policies in place to prevent it, and actively discouraged the possibility of events as described happening.

From my experience, I can say that we were *very* *very* careful not to cross Chinese firewalls and to respect very clearly IP boundaries. We had folks working on the same technology with different customers that I was *never* allowed to talk to even in the cafeteria. We had patent reviews to make sure that we weren't stomping on other folks' patents when we shipped products. And the only time someone tried to come after us for hitting their patent we found prior art for their patent, then they wound up paying a nice hefty sum because the IBM lawyers came to attention to their products -- do you have any clue how much money IBM makes off patents? It's awesome!

Re:This is the end of SCO, for sure.

The obvious first step that would occurr to any of us would be to shun SCO - not to do business with them, not to recommend them in our jobs, etc.

Dang, since I thought SCO went out of business YEARS ago I was already doing this.

Re:This is the end of SCO, for sure.

Too true. But when you suggest not using SCO products or Canopy Group companies products, does this include KDE because it uses TrollTech QT? Trolltech is a Canopy Group portfolio company according to the Canopy website [canopy.com]. not to mention

Re:This is the end of SCO, for sure.

We should give Troll some very strong feedback that Canopy Group is not a desirable partner. Imagine if Canopy was able to make them pull this same sort of guff against GNOME, claiming that it duplicates Qt art. The poor Troll folks have gotten enough pain from us on other issues - and responded to them fully in time. They are unfortunately caught in the middle again. Maybe they will tell us about the size of the investment, and whether they can divest Canopy Group.

Bruce

Re:This is the end of SCO, for sure.

According to http://www.trolltech.com/newsroom/investors.html
TrollTech is 5.8% owned by Canopy Group

You're being unreasonable

Look, Canopy Group is an investor in several technology companies. One of those companies is out of control, and should be penalized. However, going after ANYONE that has an investor in common with SCO is out of control.

Trolltech is a privately held company, but they likely took this investment prior to SCO's decision.

As a previous poster mentioned, Canopy owns 5.8% of Trolltech. You're going to attack the other 94.2% of Trolltech shareholders because of an unrelated business's actions happens to have as an investor someone that owns 5.8% of their company?

I have a lot of respect for you as one of the leading intellectuals in this movement. However, as a small business owner, I'm terrified of what you are saying.

My company has small holdings in several of our clients. They OFTEN take courses of actions that I don't like. If you were to attack another of my clients because of what one of them did, because I was a shareholder in both? I don't think that you are being at ALL fair.

If you believe that the Canopy Group is behind this behavior, than I would suggest an announcement that ANY privately held company that takes investment capital from them (from this point, not retroactively), will be shunned. However, Trolltech did NOTHING wrong, other than take an investment from a company whose other investment did something that you don't like.

I have a third party with an ownership stake in my company. The relationship had been rocky, but quite frankly, I couldn't afford to buy them out, even if they were willing to sell. If you organized a boycott of me because of something they did, I'd be floored.

Unless you are prepared to coordinate the fundraising to buy the Canopy Group out of Trolltech (and any other company that you are prepared to boycott in your crusade against this venture capital firm), back off. You're being extremely unfair to Trolltech, who has done nothing but provide amazing software to their commercial clients (of which we are one, albeit for only one developer) and FREE software to the open source community.

Your imagination about Canopy attacking GNOME is fascinating, but they are a MINORITY shareholder. They cannot cooerce Trolltech management. Deal with Trolltech based upon Trolltech's actions, not the actions of a third party.

Imagine if you were being held personally accountable for the actions of a second cousin through marriage? I don't imagine you'd like that. Same for Trolltech and SCO.

Alex

Re:You're being unreasonable

Now that we know that Canopy holds less than 6% of Troll, I agree that Troll isn't a target. I still think that Canopy is the real force behind this suit. They have a "distributed management" policy, in which they act as management for the companies they invest in.

Bruce

Re:This is the end of SCO, for sure.

Thanks Bruce, you have given us direction for our, umm, intense dislike. Canopy Group.

Ah, so friend Google, who are the the Canopy Group? Aha. Ray Noorda. http://www.canopy.com

Ok, so here is some "blah" from their web site....

Canopy Group Overview :: Canopy Group has been categorized as a technology accelerator and a dynamic operating company. Funding and influencing emerging technologies and then providing

shareable management resources across its portfolio of companies is what Canopy Group does best. Originally founded in 1995, Canopy Group continues to operate by founder Ray Noorda's vision of "co-opetition," where synergies across the portfolio are optimized at the same time that each company develops independent market success.

ie. Hit any in the Canopy Group and you hit'em all. ie. If SCO makes a sucess of this, the rest will share the "management resource".

So who is in the Canopy Group?

• Altiris--Intuitive Manageability. A complete line of web-enabled IT solutions used in managing the corporate IT resource lifecycle. [altiris.com]
• AvenueMe--Personal Desktop Shopping. Select and deliver special offers and gift ideas tailored to your interests and gift-giving needs with Desktop Personal Shopper. [avenueme.com]
• Axiom Press--CultureGrams and More. CultureGrams and other publications focused on serving the needs of elementary, secondary, and collegiate educators and their students. [axiompress.com]
• Center 7--Host, Manage, Succeed. Managed hosting solutions and painless enterprise management with rapid-deployment solutions. [center7.com]
• Cerberian--Powering Internet-Enabled Products and Services. Internet management solutions that help businesses improve productivity, free up bandwidth, and control Internet access. [cerberian.com]
• ClearstoneHealth--Improving Healthcare. Technologies to improve healthcare through e-training. [clearstonehealth.com]
• Cogito--Harness the Power of Your Knowledge. Making knowledge management the essential productivity tool in organizations with complex information systems. [cogitoinc.com]
• Communitect--Intelligent Mobile Messaging. Meeting the needs of an increasingly mobile population with simple-yet-powerful mobile management that delivers personal enterprise data to any mobile device [communitect.com]
• DataCyrstal--Rapid Indexing of Video Content. Providing flexible solutions for advanced video analysis. [datacrystal.com]
• DeviceLogics--Providing DOS-based solutions. [devicelogics.com]
• Digital Harbor--Correlate, Collaborate, Cross Boundaries. Business front office integration that puts the focus on people, not infrastructure. [digitalharbor.com]
• DirectPointe--Managing Your Technology. Enabling businesses to leverage technology by making it simple, manageable, and affordable and allowing you to focus on managing your business. [directpointe.com]
• EBIZ--We're About Solutions. Providing multi-faceted computing solutions to customers nationwide. [ebizshareholder.com]
• FatPipe--Low Cost, Highly Redundant Internet Access. Leading-edge technology that provides highly redundant, reliable, and high-speed Internet access for deploying mission critical applications over wide area networks. [fatpipeinc.com]
• Geolux Communications-Enlightening The World. Geolux provides both enriching content and the learning platform to deliver it. [geolux.com]
• Global Mechanical Monitoring [gmmi.net]
• Helius--Satellite Powered IP Networks.Efficient, secure, and reliable delivery of broadband IP over satellites and local area networks. [helius.com]
• HomePipeline [homepipeline.com]
• iArchives--A New Page in Information Retrieval. The software application that makes finding the valuable details in your data almost effortless. [iarchives.com]
• Industrial Training Zone--Interactive Industrial Training. Content designed specifically for apprentices and technicians who lack the specialized training required to troubleshoot complex systems utilizing motion control devices. [industrial...ngzone.com]
• JanusLogix--Elevate, Integrate, Generate. Generating a new game by building a web services nanosystem that allows any application service to integrate, elevate, or generate application functionality. [januslogix.com]
• Linux Networx--Powerful Cluster Technology. Simplied cluster computing, with an end-to-end approach that makes cluster technology more powerful and easy to use for commercial and scientific high performance computing [linuxnetworx.com]
• Luxul--The Wireless Wave. Patented solutions for indoor, outdoor, fixed, and mobile wireless computing. [luxul.net]
• MaxStream--Smart, Wireless Connections. Wireless OEM modules and stand-alone radio modems that provide long range, low power, and advanced networking capabilities [maxstream.net]
• Mixerz, First Thursday is a national network of member entreprenuers, executives and investors. The organization provides a regular forum for the exchange of ideas, the formation of strategic partnerships, and the fostering of business relationships. [mixerz.com]
• Mi-Co--Handwritten forms for Mobile Professionals. Innovative end-to-end solutions enabling the wireless capture, storage, communication, and use of forms-based and free-form handwritten data. [mi-corporation.com]
• MTI--Innovations in Enterprise Storage. Reliable, integrated, enterprise-wide online storage and backup solutions for customers requiring mission-critical, high-performance storage. [mti.com]
• MyFamily.com--Connecting Families and Generations. The leading network and largest of its kind for connecting families and generations on the Web. [myfamily.com]
• North Face Learning--We provide students with a high aptitude for computer science a better, faster, and cheaper way to earn a degree. [northfacelearning.com]
• Perimeter Labs--Secure Data Solutions. Inventing and bringing to market information security technologies [perimeterlabs.com]
• Planet Earth Tools--Compact, Versatile, and Powerful. Award-winning, patented handheld tool technologies. [planetearthtools.com]
• Power Innovations--The Standard for Perfect, Dependable Power. Committed to total power independence with alternative means of generation, energy storage, conversion, and management of perfect power [power-innovations.com]
• SCO--Smarter. Better. Faster. Providing software solutions for small- to medium-sized businesses and replicated branch offices [caldera.com]
• Smart Chip Technologies--Loyalty Program Management. Patent protected loyalty application for use in the smart card and wireless environment. [smartchipt...logies.com]
• SurfChina--Enabling eBusiness. Developing business solutions that help Chinese companies participate in global eBusiness. [surfchina.com]
• TrollTech--Software that Makes Sense. Enabling professional, efficient, portable and maintainable GUI applications quickly and easily. [trolltech.com]
• Tuglet--Marketing Powertools. Providing useful web-based communication tools for corporate marketing professionals and home based or small business people. [tuglet.com]
• Vultus--The Look of Web Services. Delivering web apps that are feature-rich, cost effective and platform independent [vultus.com]
• WrenchHead--Automotive Operations Solutions. Providing innovative technology and services to the Automotive Market to further lower operating costs, enhance profitability, and accelerate growth [wrenchhead.com]

Oooh looky looky, Trolltech! So when are they going to be forced to sue for $1bn?

Providing multi-faceted computing solutions...

Did they get their Buzzword Bingo set in the bargain bin? Those descriptions are just pathetic. Then again, wasn't Ray Noorda the guy who ran Novell into the ground?

WHO IS RAY NOORDA? I'll tell you...

WHO IS RAY NOORDA? I'll tell you...

Ray Noorda was the primary driving force behind the initial success of Novell. Novell was founded in 1979 as NDSI - Novell Data Systems, Inc.. It had a Motorola 68000 based network server box for MP/M and CP/M client machines, and sold everything as a high priced package.

In 1983, the VC forced a reincoporation as just "Novell", and forced Ray Noorda on the founders as "adult supervision" (the VC in question was Safeguard Scientifics).

Ray Noorda changed the business model, and the product line, targeting the newly created IBM PC as both server and client hardware.

Ray Noorda was almost singularly responsible for the success of Novell.

Ray Noorda personally intervened, after the purchase of USL, to get the USL/UCB lawsuit settled. I spent a lot of time talking to him and Mike DeFazio, then VP of the UNIX Systems Group, a legacy executive from AT&T who came with the USL purchase.

Ray Noorda encouraged an executive to move on, after he issued a statement that he didn't like, when that executive stated that Novell/USG was "de-emphasizing UNIX on the desktop". I asked "If not UnixWare, what _Novell_ Operating System will computer users be running on their desktops?" His answer was "None. They will run Windows.". Ray Noorda stormed from the room.

Ray Noorda was to Novell what Thomas Watson was to IBM. He was its strong leader, who forged a stunningly successful company from ashes and raw clay.

Novell was incredibly successful under Noorda. It's stock split 4 times from 1987 to 1992, reaching a high of almost $60 a share before the last split. The closest it's come to that after Noorda was almost $50, in the .COM run-up to the peak of January/February of 2000.

The one really big mistake he made was the purchase of Word Perfect; he did it because he believed that Microsoft was the enemy, and he needed to match product lines against them.

The mistake was in letting the Word Perfect founders know how he valued companies, when they were looking for an exit strategy after the incredible mistake of trying to turn technical support into a profit center. To maximize their "valuation", which Noorda based on PPE - Profit Per Employee - they threw all people not essential to the operation of their base business overboard. All the R&D people working on pen computing, all the human factors and other people who were working on ensuring the product was competitive with Microsoft Word, all of the people who worked on the VMS and UNIX versions of the product. How do you raise PPE? Increase "P" or reduce the number of "E"'s. And that's what they did.

What about funding Caldera? Caldera was funded by Canopy, a VC group answerable to The Noorda Family Trust, *AFTER* Noorda left Novell, *AFTER* Caldera was a going concern, *AFTER* some of the Novell/USG engineers, so fed up with the NIH of the USL side of things, started a "skunk works" project using Linux, and Mike DeFazio, VP of Novell/USG, and dyed-in-the-wool USL, got it shut down because it risked cannibalizing the UnixWare market. Rather than let the idea die, they left Novell and formed Caldera, funded out of the pockets of the two founders: Brian Sparks, to my knowledge, sold 50 acres of family land to fund it. Noorda came in after that, with additional funding from the NFT's Canopy venture fund.

Ray Noorda would not have approved of the cancellation of the Linux project inside Novell (while it was in house, we jokingly called it "LinuxWare").

Ray Noorda had a philosophy which Novell pays lip service to today, but which they no longer really follow: coopetition.

Coopetition is a word coined by Noorda as a combination of "cooperation" and "competition". It was realized in Novell by having 2 or 3 groups working on solving the same problem, and then letting the one that produced the best solution "win", and taking that product to market.

Having a "LinuxWare" project compete with UnixWare, and may the best product win, was the *very essence* of coopetition. Ray Noorda would have approved of it greatly.

When Noorda left as president, remaining on the Board, Novell ran on for a time on inertia, with an "office of the president". But the three people who were chosen for this task lacked sufficient vision, and couldn't carry off the duties of that office in keeping with the same philosophy and corporate culture. They were bean counters, which isn't bad in itself, but they didn't know the heart and soul of Novell.

Blame Caldera, if you must; I don't think that's exactly fair: they started with a good vision, and they got an incredibly bad rap when they initially didn't release source code for some things that they *couldn't* release source code on, because they were licensed from third parties. Yeah, this stuck to them, but I believe it stuck unfairly. I don't believe the people I knew who started the company would do this.

Blame SCO, if you must; I don't think that's exactly fair, either: my first job out of college was developing and porting communications software to around 140 different UNIX platforms, DOS, Windows, Mac, VMS, CP/M, etc., etc., and by far, SCO was always easy to work with, both as an OS, and as a company, and as people. I've had a number of very long talks with Doug Michaels, over the years; some one-on-one, some with one or two people, like Esther Dyson, present, and I hold him in *very* high regard. I don't believe the people I know at SCO would do this.

Blame USL, if you must: personally, that's my chief suspect. But SCO also has Microsoft investment, Microsoft code in their OS, and Microsoft board members. There are plenty of real villains to go around, and plenty of pseudo-villains who are likely just fighting for their jobs and their investments of money, time, and self.

But don't blame Ray Noorda.

PS: Novell, if you are reading this, you can have your soul back any time you want; it was never sold, only pawned.

PPS: IBM, if you are reading this, realize that, unrelated to this case, your soul is sitting on the pawn shop shelf next to Novell's; you can reclaim it any time you want, too, by internalizing your customer-facing philosophy.

-- Terry

Re:This is the end of SCO, for sure.

OK, fine, this means the end of SCO. Nevertheless, I am worried by this.

I'm not worried that IBM will lose this lawsuit. I'm not worried that any other lawsuits (against Red Hat, or SuSE, or anyone else) have much chance of success. I'm worried that the press attention this lawsuit (and any future ones) will receive, the stunning dollar figure sought, etc., will provide MS with a nice piece of FUD weaponry to deploy with potential enterprise Linux adoptees.

I can see the MS sales reps now, telling their (current and potential) customers stuff like "You're considering Linux? Well, I certainly wouldn't consider that wise, given that it looks like Linux is going to implode from within in a haze of IP lawsuits. The future existence of Linux, and corporate Linux support, is looking pretty doubtful. I'd recommend sticking with us. Windows isn't going anywhere." Crap like that is what has me worried.

Re:This is the end of SCO, for sure.

We in the Free Software developer community must make it clear that we will

not tolerate specious intellectual property claims on our software, even if those claims are directed to a user or industrial partner rather than an individual developer. The obvious first step that would occurr to any of us would be to shun SCO - not to do business with them, not to recommend them in our jobs, etc.

We're one step ahead of you, Bruce :)

We at PCLinuxOnline [pclinuxonline.com] decided to boycott SCO as soon as we heard this news. We have a big banner proclaiming this on our front page [pclinuxonline.com], and we are trying to get other Web sites, individuals and groups to join us. This needs to be a unified, community-wide effort if it is to be noticed.

innacuracies possibly purjury

The case is worse than you think. There are all sorts of factual innaccurecies in the filling.

For example they make a great deal out of the fact that Linux = Linux + Unix; to show that the intent was to steal Unix intellectual property. As a side note Linux is a pun on Linix which was an abreviation for Linus' Minix and SCO owns no Minix intellectual property.

They refer to Stallman as a former MIT professor.

Where it is not just factually untrue they often are highly misleading. For example they talk about SCO intellectual property as part of the Monterey project and then have quotes from IBM indicating the version of JFS in Linux is from Monterey project. The clear intent is to leave the reader with the impression that JFS came from SCO and was stolen by IBM.

Unlike the other two mistakes (which might just show negligance is preparing a court filing) this one is clearly an attempt to mislead the court.

Similarly they have multiple sections outlining the fact that the probability of someone randomly creating libraries compatable with the SCO OpenServer Shared Libraries are close to 0; which hints but never states that Linux is compatable with the SCO OpenServer Shared Libraries.

I think a very good case can be made for summary dismissal. As for IBM winning in court there won't be a problem. If this is the best claim Caldera has they really are in deep trouble.

An Open Letter to IBM

Dear IBM:

I don't care if you "settle" with SCO or fight, but please, do this one thing:

Buy UNIX.

If you don't, someone with lots of money from Redmond will. Mr. Gates owning UNIX will end it all.

Sincerely,

Tom

Re:This is the end of SCO, for sure.

Microsoft can buy them to use them to FUD Linux.

Actually, I'm pretty sure they can't, because of the terms of the settlement between SCO and Microsoft several years ago. The lawsuit was regarding Microsoft's alleged interference in SCO's business, which was manifesting itself by Microsoft as a partial owner of the company forcing SCO to include an out of date version of Merge (windows compatibility software) in their Unix, or something bizarre like that.

I don't remember all the terms and I don't have any links regarding the whole thing (hopefully someone else does) but there were certainly a number of "Microsoft must leave SCO alone now" measures dictated, IIRC. Among other things, I believe MS had to give up most or all of their stock in the company as well as agree not to compete in the Unix market.

Re:This is the end of SCO, for sure.

The obvious first step that would occurr to any of us would be to shun SCO - not to do business with them, not to recommend them in our jobs, etc.

Gee, I dunno, Bruce, that's a tough one.

About the lawyer

"Caldera and SCO Group are being represented by David Boies's law firm Boies, Schiller & Flexner."

This is a supposedly "heavy" guy, who prosecuted Microsoft, defended Napster against RIAA and defended Gore in his vote-counting-trial.

Question: Didn't he lose all of these?!

dizzl
--
Be the change that you want to see in the world -- Gandhi

Nuclear weapons, software patents, terrorists.

Software patents are like nuclear weapons. Given that the patent office is handing them out like Mardi Gras beads, there are now only essentially two reasons why you might want to have either, assuming you're a rational actor:

1) If you're a nation, you want nuclear weapons because they act as a deterrent against other nations using nuclear weapons against you. In
other words, you acquire them so that you never have to use them.

2) If you're a terrorist, then you want nuclear weapons because you want to use them on nations, or as blackmail. You have no nation yourself, and therefore are not vulnerable to nuclear retaliation.

Similarly, the two reasons for acquiring software patents are:

1) If you're a software manufacturer. You want some broad software patents that your competitors infringe on, so that your competitors won't able to sue you for infringing on their patents. This allows you to form treaty alliances called cross-licensing agreements.

2) If you don't manufacture software. Because you are in no risk of being sued for patent infringement yourself, you can sue other software companies without fear of reprisal. Hence the invention of the "IP Holding Legal Company", whose sole purpose is to purchase overbroad software patents and sue the rest of the industry.

There's an apocryphal story about the Microsoft lawyer who contacted the IBM lawyer, notifying him that one of IBM's products infringed on a Microsoft patent. The IBM lawyer agreed to meet with the Microsoft lawyer to discuss the situation. The IBM lawyer arrived, carrying a huge stack of papers, which he dropped on the desk with a bang. The pile of papers, he told the Microsoft lawyer, were the IBM patents that Windows infringed on, and the meeting was over.

In this case, IBM, Sun, etc are the legitimate actors. They are all software manufacturers with an interest in continuing to manufacture software.

SCO, on the other hand, has just in effect announced its intent to cease manufacturing Unix software, and reinvented themselves as a legal organization. They are sure to be overwhelmed with a massive IBM patent countersuit that destroys their ability to offer Unix, so all they will have as a revenue source is their ability to sue legitimate Unix vendors.

IBM is going to drive them into the ground, and I won't feel a drop of pity for them.

Open request to IBM

Dear IBM,

Please spend the $US25.68 million it would require to buy out SCO, and then fire every single member of their management and legal department.

Thank you,

A Linux user.

Dr SCO!

61 INT. DR. SCO'S VOLCANO LAIR - MAIN ROOM Dr. SCO at his table with Frau, Scott, and Number Two.

DR. SCO Get me the President of the IBM.

The PRESIDENT appears on Dr. SCO's video screen with his BOARD MEMBERS behind him.

62 INT. OVAL OFFICE (SPLIT SCREEN)

PRESIDENT Dr. SCO, what do you want?

DR. SCO Not what I want Mr. President, but I will receive. In 12 hours I will destroy your industry with a giant patent.

Dr. SCO reveals a giant patent. Minix-me is humping it like a dog.

DR. SCO OK, Minix-me, why don't you and the patent get a frickin' room. Honestly. [ to President ] I will destroy another major distribution every hour- that is, unless you pay me- [ SNAP ZOOM ] One hundred billion dollars!

The President and his advisors LAUGH.

PRESIDENT Dr. SCO that's more than the entire US economy for 2002.

DR. SCO Don't play games with me. Your UNIX will disappear if I don't receive [ SNAP ZOOM ] One hundred billion dollars!

His advisors LAUGH.

PRESIDENT That much money simply doesn't exist. I don't think 100 billion is even a number. It's like saying I want a kajillion bajillion dollars. [ His advisors LAUGH. ]

DR. SCO Come on, Mr. President... [ SNAP ZOOM ] "Show me the money!"

Dr. SCO looks around smugly. No one laughs.

PRESIDENT What?

[ SNAP ZOOM ]

DR. SCO "Show me the money!"

He looks around again, expectantly.

PRESIDENT I'm sorry, I don't understand.

DR. SCO You know, kwan? Show me the money? No? Nothing?

SCOTT It's 2003. That movie stopped being a cultural buzzword 30 years ago, ass. They don't know what you're talking about.

DR. SCO Right. OK, see if you understand this: give me the money or I'm going to blow you to frickin' bits, OK?

The President and his advisors MURMUR.

PRESIDENT But-

DR. SCO [ making 'stop' gesture ] Talk to the hand!

Dr. SCO signs off.

with thanks to whoever posted this script [ntlworld.com], and with great annoyance at whoever decided that Slashdot posts with low average line lengths are a bad thing, and so need to be offset by pointless filler like this to bring up the average -- apologies while I pad this just a little more, and please feel free to disregard this last paragraph so that the average line count goes above, apparently, 30. Two things you can apparently never include in this news for nerds sites: program code (you can talk about open source, but you can't share it here!) and, apparently, movie scripts. Go figure.... Anyway, this should be enough padding, pretend this whole last paragraph is wrapped in a <!-- sorry --> block :-)

Sue IBM for patent infringement?

This is going to be fun to watch:

Single Camouflaged Operative vs International Battle Marines.

Do a search on the USPTO for International Business Machines as assignee, and file as title, and you get 300+ hits. This is out of their 32000+ patents.

Illuminati???

"It's a fairly end-of-life move for the stockholders and managers of that company," said Jonathan Eunice, an Illuminata analyst.

I thought it was the illuminati???

Not a big shock on second thought

IBM makes a pretty good first target when you think about it:
They have very heavy ties to both UNIX (via AIX) and Linux. It wouldn't be a big shock to learn that they've moved some top engineers between the two OSs. They've also got big pockets, and a large customer base which means -- if they lose -- you can dig deep into those big pockets.

IBM is also, arguably, among the least sympathetic of the big Linux players. They have a history of being a mega-corp who (in their own time) defined the acronym FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt). Perhaps SCO is hoping that the Linux community will be less whole-hearted in jumping to the defence of the once - anything - but - open - source megalith.

If IBM loses big, the size of the settlement/charge could shell-shock smaller linux companies into looking for a cheap out.

Running against SCO, however, is the fact that Unix is ancient.. Ancient enough that patents on it's basic design technology -- if they were patentable back then -- are going to be expired by now. This means that most of the violations are likely to be copyright violations -- and most of Linux's code base is not from IBM.

Happily, IBM is far from an early booster for Linux. By the time IBM jumped on the bandwagon, Linux already had a long and happy history of exponentional growth and improvement. SCO's claim that Linux couldn't have grown that fast without stealing code is going to have to swim against that tide.

Yo prove IBM liable for copyright violation, SCO is going to have to point to specific code that IBM stole from UNIX, and show that it was IBM that installed that code in Linux and not somebody else. That's going to be a difficult feat == especially given Linux's history and idea pool (the whole world).

IBM is well versed in litigation by attrition. Much like Microsoft, they took on the DOJ in the '70s -- arguably with more success.

SCO has a formidable opponent, and the possibility of massive profits if it wins big. Needless to say, I do not wish them luck.

SCO has always blown

I had a friend (yeah, that's it) that used to work for SCO when they were still in Santa Cruz, CA.

The executive team would get up in front of the employees at quarterly meetings and talk about how Linux was not a threat and that SCO UNIX on Intel was superior. Who's SCO's daddy now?

Also, this umm, friend of mine also reported rumors of the former SCO CEO being offered more money than SCO was worth back in 1999 from SUN for the company. SCO's CEO supposedly had harsh words for Mr. McNeely.

So, then Caldera buys SCO.
Don't forget that SCO spun off Tarantella at the same time-another failing company.

Then Caldera changes name to SCO Group. Now they sue IBM.

What a bunch of losers!

I hope that I get another call from SCO's "partner" program people about developing software for their platform. It will be a lovely discussion.

I wonder if The SCO Groups head Lawyer is still the same one from SCO (pre-caldera). He was an ex-SUN lawyer.

SCO's Microsoft Past

We used SCO's Unix in 1990 or so to teach Unix students for a while, but after noticing that we'd had to plug in GNU software for almost everything to make it work, we finally switched to SunOS, and later to Linux. But that's not the interesting part. What is, is that Iremember the SCO's original Unix booting with the horrifying sight of Microsoft's copyrights on the Unix flavor underneath.

You might say, "What? Microsoft did Unix in the 80s? No! That's insane!".

Apparently Microsoft had been working on Unix in some respect for a while, until Bill had decided it had no future (or perhaps, just not a proprietary enough one), and (or so I infer) sold it or licensed it to the Santa Cruz Operation.

This would make for much irony if SCO won their little suit, but then Microsoft bought them to try to reassert control over what Bill once thought was irrelevant, and now clearly -is- the future.

The comments in the suit about IBMs AIX and its claimed collision with the Unix patents is pretty funny, since apparently one of the miseries of doing AIX design was going before a little review board that would judge the odds of your perfectly good code intersecting known non-IBM patents, and then making you break it until it didn't - or so goes one unfortunate's tale.

All of this is, of course, hearsay, so if you were there, just tell us what really happened, yes? :-)

Re:SCO's Microsoft Past

YOu dont seem to get it. After doing the interpeter stuff for Apple, Microsoft created an 8086 Unix clone called Xenix. They decided to split IP into 2 seperate companies. Xenix mangaers went to create Santa Cruz Operations (SCO). SCO WAS a part of MS, and for a while, they owned 11% of the company. They might even now..

mouse-that-roared move by SCO/Boies...

(a) sue the Linux company with the deepest pockets. Those Red Hat guys are barely making any money, let's go after Big Blue with their $1B Linux budget.

(b) IBM unchains the Lawyer Horde, buckles on their Patent Shield (c) and proceeds to lay the legal smackdown on SCO

(c) then buys up the smoking ruins of SCO for even less than they're worth now

WHICH IS STILL A BETTER DEAL FOR THE SCO PEOPLE THAN RIDING THEIR PITIFUL IP HOLDINGS INTO OBLIVION

Boycott SCO...

...oh, wait, we already are. Nevermind.

Dear Darl McBride – President, CEO of SCO

What is it going to feel like having your ass handed to you on a cracker by the x86 *nix community??

Signed,
Slashdotters

No biggie for the BSD's

As part of the actions Novell did when they bought UNIX from AT&T was to settle the BSD IP lawsuit.

So the BSD's have a clean bill of health.

So to avoid the lawyers on this one, you can run BSD. BSDi had bought a UNIX licence at one time, if you like paying $995 for your UNIX. *wink*

IBM could buy SCO

...and thus shut them up.

Let's see, SCO's revenue is ~$20million/quarter and isn't the rule something like 4x revenue, so for $80million IBM could buy SCO thus killing the lawsuit and put SCO out of it's misery (and spare the rest of us all the FUD SCO is spreading). ...a small price to pay for IBM.

Suicide

One SCO executive said suing a fellow Linux vendor would be suicide. IBM isn't exactly a Linux vendor but it is still suicide. I hope they succeed die quickly.

Also I want to apologize to Maureen O'Gara. She was more accurate than she knew.

Actually some good might come off this...

If nothing else, the Unix community will see that SCO has the right to revoke the license to use Unix, such as AIX. I guess that acts more as FUD against Unix, not Linux. Law-saffy companies will benefit from going the Linux way, since Unix is a bitch of SCO. Of course this might motivate people to go for windows also...

But of course I agree with millions of other people that SCO should be bitchslapped hard, and repeatedly until they die. I would assume that UnitedLinux doesn't want to be associated with SCO anymore, how realistic is it to kick them out?

In other news.......

Onlookers were stunned today when it was found that the headquarters of the company SCO had been replaced by a giant smoking crater, which completly obliterated any trace of the company's phsyical prescence. The only clue to this occurence was a large amount of paper floating around the area, all of which seemed to be a copy of an IBM patent.

In other news, the world's largest catapult has recently been constructed on the rooftop of IBM's world headquarters. What it is being used for no one knows, but it now seems to be pointed at Redmond, with a sign on the front which says "Try that shit again, foolios, and see what happens."

Anyone here considered that SCO might be right?

I haven't yet read all 300+ comments here, but so far I haven't seen *any* supporting SCO. Do any of you really know what's going on here? It is quite possible that IBM did rip them off. If SCO shared proprietary code with IBM under contractual restrictions, and IBM went ahead and violated those restrictions by putting that code in other products, then IBM is in the wrong. It doesn't even matter if the code is covered by patents or not, all that matters is what the two companies agreed to on paper.

I for one hope that whoever is truly at fault gets nailed, be it IBM or SCO. I believe that agreements should be honored. That's something that corporate America cares little about, especially if a buck can be made by ignoring an agreement. If IBM truly blew off a legitimate agreement, then they should fry. If IBM really believes SCO has no rightful claim to the intellectual property in question, then they should not have signed an agreement with SCO. It could well be that SCO is lying/embellishing/hallucinating, but maybe they're not.

On an aside, back in the 80's and early 90's, I worked on a port of SCO Unix to a proprietary platform. What people have been saying here about SCO's "quality" is true. Their OS was crap. I can't count how many bugs in the kernel we had to fix. We even had to completely rearchitect whole subsystems. When we were done with it, it was fairly passable, but it took man years. The most appalling thing about their code was the third party SMP implementation they bought from some other company. It was truly horrendous. I believe it did improve over the years as the product matured, but obviously not enough to keep them alive.

SCO - first major victim of Linux

SCO was a popular platform for Unix on Intel. It was a private company, microsoft had a 20% shareholding, but it wasn't quoted on the stockmarket. It had been like that for years.

Suddenly (about 1995): they announced that they wanted to float on the stock market, all sorts of reasons given but one side effect was that it meant that the major shareholders (the directors) would be able to 'cash in' on their shareholding by selling to Joe Shareholder. Quite unfortunately for the new share holders, Linux started to bite into SCO profits soon after float and it never really recovered.

I have no doubt that the SCO directors had no idea that this ''new phenomenon called Linux'' would have any effect on the SCO sales & thus share price; they were only involved in that sector of the market and so would never have heard of Linux, and even if they had they would not have been able to predict the future effect on the SCO share price; it is quite coincidental that they sold their shares to the general public just before the value started to crumble.

Darl McBride is an ass.

From the eWeek article: [eweek.com]

"SCO is in the enviable position of owning the UNIX operating system," said Darl McBride, president and CEO of SCO, before accidentally knocking over the podium with his enormous ego.

Okay, so it didn't say all of that. But it could have.

Tell them what you think.

They have an anonymous web survey at:

http://websurveyor.net/wsb.dll/9929/websatisfact io n20021210.htm

That's what SCO is doing instead of system support

We have some legacy Unixware 7.1.1 boxen that we wanted to update during the latest round of sendmail patching. The latest vunerability was handled pretty well - vendors had private lead time and when the problem was made public all the patches were developed and available. This was Monday.

Except for SCO/Caldera. Here's the current (3/7) from their website:

http://www.sco.com/support/security/

"Security

We are aware of the CERT CA-2003-07 sendmail issue, and are currently working on fixes for our supported distributions. We will announce the fixes via our normal channels:"

So now we know where their energies have been spent lately. Hopefully when they win and own UN*X outright we can expect the same great service.

Well we've been looking for an excuse to flush UW7 anyway. I'll sign this AC as I prefer not to get sued for quoting from their copyrighted, state of the art, "target us now", security support announcement system.

Linux is GPL, not public domain

According to the article: Linux is a variant of Unix and isn't copyrighted.

This is, as we all know, utterly false. Linux is most certainly copyrighted--that's what prevents you from stealing Linux code to use in your proprietary system. Linux may be GPLed Free Software, but it is certainly copyrighted.

This is more about AIX than Linux...

SCO (using its former name "Caldera") alleges that IBM took its IP and applied that to AIX and then took that and applied it to Linux. What they will have to prove in court is that there really is SCO/Unix IP in AIX that could possibly be applied to Linux. And then they will have to prove that the advances in Linux (which they claim to be as a result of IBM's "tortious" misappropriation of their IP) were not as a result of Caldera's involvement with Linux and specifically with UnitedLinux.

If IBM was responsible for the advances, what possible use was Caldera in the UnitedLinux camp? Their only contribution could have been IP since they had no viable distro and no marketing and, frankly, not much credibility.

If Caldera was contributing to SMP, journalling, etc. then they have a difficult case to win. If they weren't, then why were they involved with UL in the first place?

This shouldn't be difficult to show given that IBM's contributions are open source. What will be interesting is discovering how much of SCO's IP might have been directly borrowed from the GPL.

Re:Who's Next?

The question I would like to ask is who's next? Apple? Sun? HP-UX?

If they can still afford it after losing this round.