IBM/Linux/Mac OS X under attack
The SCO Group a company that "owns" Unix is suing IBM for reducing the value of Unix through its efforts to support Linux and the open source community,
Wired news reports that
[quote] In January SCO hired David Boies, the attorney who prosecuted the U.S. Justice Department's antitrust case against Microsoft and defended Napster, to investigate whether Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and versions of Berkley Systems Distribution (an open-source Unix-based operating system) might infringe on SCO's intellectual property, according to a statement released in January by SCO chief dxecutive Darl McBride.
At the time McBride said SCO was concerned that programmers who had signed agreements to see proprietary SCO source code had moved on to other projects and might be incorporating his company's proprietary code into other projects. <hr></blockquote>
This suit is pretty absurd. Unix is probably more valuable now that Linux and Mac OS X is around.
<a href="http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,57955,00.html" target="_blank">http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,57955,00.html</a>
Wired news reports that
[quote] In January SCO hired David Boies, the attorney who prosecuted the U.S. Justice Department's antitrust case against Microsoft and defended Napster, to investigate whether Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and versions of Berkley Systems Distribution (an open-source Unix-based operating system) might infringe on SCO's intellectual property, according to a statement released in January by SCO chief dxecutive Darl McBride.
At the time McBride said SCO was concerned that programmers who had signed agreements to see proprietary SCO source code had moved on to other projects and might be incorporating his company's proprietary code into other projects. <hr></blockquote>
This suit is pretty absurd. Unix is probably more valuable now that Linux and Mac OS X is around.
<a href="http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,57955,00.html" target="_blank">http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,57955,00.html</a>
Comments
This is the second time this suit's come up. The first time, AT&T had a point: There was a bit of SVR4 UNIX code in BSD at the time, and AT&T sued because they knew that.
This is just wild guessing from a company that's about to get completely eclipsed. Not that Linux wouldn't improve with a healthy injection of real UNIX code, but what are the odds.
Gee... engineers who worked on SCO's code moving on to other projects... no! Using what they learned... heaven forfend! If it's not cutting and pasting, SCO has no case whatsoever. IBM is trying to make their Linux look and act more or less like AIX as far as general use and support, but that's a far cry from copying and pasting code.
The original complaint against BSD got Sun and DEC and others to move to SVR4 for their distributions, and it also gave Linux an initial boost. This complaint might get SVR4 kicked out of the same companies, and IBM besides. It's always rankled the various owners of the SVR4 codebase that a) the source code to UNIX was published in a book in the 1970s, launching the open source movement, and b) when Sun and DEC and others chose a UNIX absent legal considerations, they all chose Berkeley's. It would be sad to see AIX go, but it would certainly make a statement if IBM shrugged and quickened their move to Linux. It would really hurt if they picked up FreeBSD, too. Or, say, Darwin.
I note in passing that SCO was closely allied with Microsoft for a while. This might be Gates acting through a proxy. If so, it's a sad manipulation of a company with some great engineers to an absurd end.
[ 03-08-2003: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>
no press is bad press. well, except maybe for all the press the pentium first got when it calcuated numbers wrong.....
or that apple laptop that burned you, i guess that was bad too.
oh NM.
<strong>
or that apple laptop that burned you, i guess that was bad too.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Wasn't that a Dell, or was there an apple one too. Remember reading about some guys whose dell laptop burned his penis.
<strong>
Wasn't that a Dell, or was there an apple one too. Remember reading about some guys whose dell laptop burned his penis.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I think he's referring to the PowerBook that went up in flames. Another poster I'm sure can give the details on which PowerBook it was.
dunno about recent ones.
[ 03-11-2003: Message edited by: alcimedes ]</p>
The batteries were bad, not the laptops, and it was the initial manufacturing run only. Was caught before it ever hit the market.