SCO broadens code fight - Apple possible target
Quote:
In addition, Lindon, Utah-based SCO announced that it will broaden its code copyright fight beyond IBM. In a press release, SCO stated that it is now including "copyrighted code included in the 1994 settlement between Unix Systems Laboratories, Inc. and Berkeley Software Design, Inc. in the expanded scope protection of and defense against unauthorized use and exploitation of SCO's intellectual property. SCO acquired this code and associated copyrights in 1995 from Novell."
This means that SCO is opening the gates to possibly take action against the open-source organizations behind such BSD-based operating systems as FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD. In addition, since Apple Computer Inc.'s Mac OS X is based on BSD Unix, Apple too could be targeted.
In addition, Lindon, Utah-based SCO announced that it will broaden its code copyright fight beyond IBM. In a press release, SCO stated that it is now including "copyrighted code included in the 1994 settlement between Unix Systems Laboratories, Inc. and Berkeley Software Design, Inc. in the expanded scope protection of and defense against unauthorized use and exploitation of SCO's intellectual property. SCO acquired this code and associated copyrights in 1995 from Novell."
This means that SCO is opening the gates to possibly take action against the open-source organizations behind such BSD-based operating systems as FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD. In addition, since Apple Computer Inc.'s Mac OS X is based on BSD Unix, Apple too could be targeted.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1387528,00.asp
Comments
Originally posted by bluesigns
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1387528,00.asp
They must be in desesparate need of money to do this, but they will only lose money in lawyers.
Oh well. It's a small company. Maybe Apple can buy 'em (and these supposed rights), fire everyone there and call it a day.
Originally posted by Powerdoc
They must be in desesparate need of money to do this, but they will only lose money in lawyers.
they disclosed the details of their lawyer payments today. the lawyers got a large chunk of money, but also a noticeable percentage of the company. so everytime sco does well, the lawyers benefit. and it just so happens that everytime they announce a new lawsuit, or a new legal filing (and there have been numerous suits and filings recently) their stock jumps a few points. i don't know much about law, or law-payment practices, but it seems unethical for lawyers to have a stake in the company they are protecting, particularly when every unsubstantiated claim they make increases their bottom line.
Originally posted by Amorph
It's so depressing to see SCO punk out this way. They used to be good.
Oh well. It's a small company. Maybe Apple can buy 'em (and these supposed rights), fire everyone there and call it a day.
i dont think thats a good idea. theres a great about of vitriol for sco now a days. but to buy a company then punish its employees is kind of sadistic. scox is well within apple's reach though. its market cap is about 191M.
i think a better strategy would be to ride out the suits. sco keeps making enemies, and court cases take a long time. sco's products were already unpopular, but now, with outrage from geeks at large, they'll have less and less customers; therefore less revenue, and will shortly collapse on itself. and just about every suit sco files has no merit, so they'll lose anyway.
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i just read through some bsd history (thank you google). the code that sco owns came from caldera, and before that novell. before novell, it was owned by usl, and before that at&t (furthermore, usl was a mostly owned subsidiary of at&t). anyway, usl sued a bsd distributor (bsdi) and UC-Berkeley several years ago, claiming they used code that they (usl) owned. one outcome of the suit was usl (which by the suit's end, was known as novell) agreed not to fight a separate distribution called "4.4BSD-Lite" (maintained by uc-b, it was a completely rewritten and free unix-like system; by the by, for those who don't know bsd=berkeley system distribution). the modern free bsd distros, despite predating 4.4bsd-lite, dropped a boatload of code and started using 4.4bsd-lite, to avoid any future debacles with att/usl/novell/... so, in order for sco's claim (or rather, eweek's extrapolation of a potential sco claim) against the bsds (and apple) to work, the bsds would have to have taken a completely free distribution (4.4bsd-lite), and purposely added in copyright'd code from att-usl-novell-sco after spending years and years removing it all. the whole point of these distros was to make a free unix-like system. it doesn't make sense for them to have added back in someone else's nonfree code after freeing their distros of it.
Originally posted by thuh Freak
scox is well within apple's reach though. its market cap is about 191M.
IBM could have bought them out without a second thought, but decided to fight instead on general principles. The whole reason SCO started this mess was to encourage a lucrative buy-out from IBM. Which, of course, would only embolden other companies to make their own business plans like so:
1. Hire lots of lawyers
2. Sue major company about bogus IP claims
3. Convince major company it will be cheaper to buy than fight
4. Profit!!!
That would not be a happy precedent to set in the tech world.
Originally posted by thuh Freak
i dont think thats a good idea. theres a great about of vitriol for sco now a days. but to buy a company then punish its employees is kind of sadistic. scox is well within apple's reach though. its market cap is about 191M.
i think a better strategy would be to ride out the suits. sco keeps making enemies, and court cases take a long time. sco's products were already unpopular, but now, with outrage from geeks at large, they'll have less and less customers; therefore less revenue, and will shortly collapse on itself. and just about every suit sco files has no merit, so they'll lose anyway.
The problem with that is that SCO isn't going at this alone, and they aren't only going after companies that could buy them. They went after IBM in part because they're being funded and supported in this effort by Microsoft.
That said, my solution was a bit unfair, and there was something in the back of my brain saying so that I should have listened to. Apple should instead countersue, hurting the people with financial interest in the company, and then hire away the developers.
Originally posted by Amorph
It's so depressing to see SCO punk out this way. They used to be good.
Oh well. It's a small company. Maybe Apple can buy 'em (and these supposed rights), fire everyone there and call it a day.
actually, I beleive that SCO wants someone to buy them, and thats one reason they are doing this, and I cant remember where, but if someone buys sco the lawyers get a big chunk of the sale as well beleive it or not.. in many states it is considered bad and against the bar association with what the lawyers and company are doing. basically they want to make enough problems where it would be cheaper for someone to buy them out.