IBM/Linux/Mac OS X under attack

jante99jante99
Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
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>;

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 7
    amorphamorph Posts: 7,112member
    <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />



    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>
  • Reply 2 of 7
    aslan^aslan^ Posts: 599member
    There may be some truth to Microsoft acting by proxy. It seems to me that IBM and Apple are attacking Microsoft where they invested so much time and effort over the past few years. By Apple releasing their own browser they are once again threatening Microsofts Applications barrier to entry which Microsoft spent so much effort protecting. Not to mention Apple ships their servers with an unlimited client licence something which adds up to a lot of dollars when considering a robust server solution. IBM as well with their open acceptance and promotion of Linux is attacking Microsoft where it hurts. Every server with Linux or OS X sold means a lot less money to Microsoft (IMHO). Hopefully Apple and IBM will pull Sony on board, Wired magazine recently mentioned something about IBM and Sony partnering up for a project in the future involving streaming media on wireless devices. The future is now. I hope Apple IBM and Sony win.
  • Reply 3 of 7
    alcimedesalcimedes Posts: 5,486member
    best part is that this will just give Linux and OSX free press, and present them as a viable alternative to the Windows OS.



    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.
  • Reply 4 of 7
    snofsnof Posts: 98member
    [quote]Originally posted by alcimedes:

    <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.
  • Reply 5 of 7
    ludwigvanludwigvan Posts: 458member
    [quote]Originally posted by Snof:

    <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.
  • Reply 6 of 7
    alcimedesalcimedes Posts: 5,486member
    no no, this was about 5-7 years ago. they had one model (around the time the pentium couldn't add numbers), anyway, IIRC i think this one actually started on fire for a number of people.



    dunno about recent ones.







    [ 03-11-2003: Message edited by: alcimedes ]</p>
  • Reply 7 of 7
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    It was the PB5300, and there were two batteries that leaked and caught fire... one in a testing lab within Apple, and one pre-production unit that was sent to a university (Dartmouth?) for evaluation.



    The batteries were bad, not the laptops, and it was the initial manufacturing run only. Was caught before it ever hit the market.
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