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"Its publication may put our customers at risk or at the very least cause customers needless confusion and apprehension"

Unfortunately, according to Apple's VP of Hardware Product Marketing, Greg Joswiak, there will not be any G5 notebooks anytime soon due to amount of heat the G5 produces (Those metals transfer the heat really well... roasted balls anyone?).

Corel shareholders fight suspicious takeover deal

Corel is being buried alive, and at breakneck speed, by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen and a former MS executive who, incidentally, also worked for the McKinsey consultancy firm which validated the post-MS investment strategic U-turn. Under the deal all Corel products would be privatized for a measly $30M. Corel shareholders - who've also pushed for Linux support long and hard - hope to canvass enough NO VOTES to scrap the deal but the raiders are tilting the rules in their favour.

It all went horribly wrong after the Linux powerhouse merger agreement between Corel and Inprise/Borland was derailed three years ago. We understand that Borland (in which MS had a shareholding stake) had valid reasons for pulling out under the agreed terms, but the combination would still have made perfect sense. Corel founder and CEO Mike Cowpland was soon ousted and CTO Derek Burney was named interim CEO. Conveniently soon afterwards Burney's half-acquintance, Microserf Tom Button, gave him a call and invited Burney for a visit at the MS campus and before we knew it, he had signed a $135M investment deal with MS, accompanied by an incredibly one-sided Alliance deal in which Corel had all the commitments and Microsoft basically none. In his debt of gratitude, Burney even promised not to sue MS over any anti-competitive tactics that MS "may" have used in their MS-Office offensives. Next Burney drew up a new strategy based on those commitments - again incidentally killing all Linux efforts and reducing emphasis on anything competing with Microsoft - and submitted his ideas for "validation" by McKinsey & Company, a consulting firm with strong culture of alumni networking.

From 2001 onwards Corel milked the increasingly-abandoned WordPerfect Office for revenue while toiling away on its dotNET descendant. Staff was getting laid off as a three-year turnaround plan was revealed to be centered on a dotNET-based enterprise system for massaging corporate data and delivering it in realtime to any type of devices through extensive use of XML and SVG graphics. Corel even bought SoftQuad and Micrografx to merge their technologies into the project codenamed Deepwhite. Great idea but with somewhat misguided execution.

In 2002 Corel managed to strike a few high-profile albeit limited OEM preload deals with the likes of Dell, HP and Sony. While Corel received little in terms of revenue from those deals, even that limited success must have come as a shock for Microsoft. "How dare those ingrate nobodies invade our holy turf!" could have been the likely reaction at Redmond. With the anti-trust spotlight under a friendly operator it was time for the final strike, and how better add insult to injury than by not just taking Corel out but actually keeping the corpse within the family!

In December 2002 the Paul Allen financed Vector Group, managed by a fo

Corel shareholders fight suspicious takeover deal

Corel is being buried alive, and at breakneck speed, by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen and a former MS executive who, incidentally, also worked for the McKinsey consultancy firm which validated the post-MS investment strategic U-turn. Under the deal all Corel products would be privatized for a measly $30M. Corel shareholders - who've also pushed for Linux support long and hard - hope to canvass enough NO VOTES to scrap the deal but the raiders are tilting the rules in their favour.

It all went horribly wrong after the Linux powerhouse merger agreement between Corel and Inprise/Borland was derailed three years ago. We understand that Borland (in which MS had a shareholding stake) had valid reasons for pulling out under the agreed terms, but the combination would still have made perfect sense. Corel founder and CEO Mike Cowpland was soon ousted and CTO Derek Burney was named interim CEO. Conveniently soon afterwards Burney's half-acquintance, Microserf Tom Button, gave him a call and invited Burney for a visit at the MS campus and before we knew it, he had signed a $135M investment deal with MS, accompanied by an incredibly one-sided Alliance deal in which Corel had all the commitments and Microsoft basically none. In his debt of gratitude, Burney even promised not to sue MS over any anti-competitive tactics that MS "may" have used in their MS-Office offensives. Next Burney drew up a new strategy based on those commitments - again incidentally killing all Linux efforts and reducing emphasis on anything competing with Microsoft - and submitted his ideas for "validation" by McKinsey & Company, a consulting firm with strong culture of alumni networking.

From 2001 onwards Corel milked the increasingly-abandoned WordPerfect Office for revenue while toiling away on its dotNET descendant. Staff was getting laid off as a three-year turnaround plan was revealed to be centered on a dotNET-based enterprise system for massaging corporate data and delivering it in realtime to any type of devices through extensive use of XML and SVG graphics. Corel even bought SoftQuad and Micrografx to merge their technologies into the project codenamed Deepwhite. Great idea but with somewhat misguided execution.

In 2002 Corel managed to strike a few high-profile albeit limited OEM preload deals with the likes of Dell, HP and Sony. While Corel received little in terms of revenue from those deals, even that limited success must have come as a shock for Microsoft. "How dare those ingrate nobodies invade our holy turf!" could have been the likely reaction at Redmond. With the anti-trust spotlight under a friendly operator it was time for the final strike, and how better add insult to injury than by not just taking Corel out but actually keeping the corpse within the family!

In December 2002 the Paul Allen financed Vector Group, managed by a fo

They are site licensing the server products, almost the entire product line. Sharepoint, SQL Server, etc etc etc ad nauseaum.

Indeed, I feel ill. What exactly does all that shit provide that free software does not? Vendor lock-in? Great.

The details aren't being disclosed because MS doesn't want their other customers getting pissed at the ball breaking that the Army gave them

Nuts. I've never heard of a non-clasified public purchase with a NDA. It's my half a billion dollars, I want the details. Only crooks who sell crap have to hide their details. You would think they would be happy to give anyone buying half a million computers a similar deal.

There's no excuse for buing into more Microshit right now. Computer hardware has been more than adequate for general purpose desktop computing for the last six years. If the software those computers came with is no longer up to the task, I suggest looking at alternate software. There are a few other good American companies that could use this kind of shot in the arm but would provide a much better product:

• Red Hat has far superior server and desktop software and support.
• Sun also has all three and a great Productivity suit for much less than M$ Office
• Debian software quality and updating sheme are hard to beat. Yes, Star Office runs just fine on their stable distro.

We can be sure that Dell, Gateway, etc would be happy to work with any of the above software firms for this contract.

The fact of the matter is that the US Army took a half a million computer order and got themseves treated like some dinky midsized company with a thousand desktops. Next thing you know, they will be on the three year upgrade cycle. They did it because they were told to do it that way or they were incompetent. Either way, it's un-fucking-forgivable. They have a whole, ummm, Army of technically qualified people!

Shortyly after iMac came out Intel showed off at some show some cases that were different. One was a red/brick colored pyramid shaped one. It actually was not a full pyramid as the tip was cut off and a platform to put the monitor was used instead.

Photo and article available from CNET.

According to various other articles on this subject (ZDNet, for instance), the deal includes both desktop and server software and unlimited upgrade privileges over the life of the deal. In addition, the Army believes that the deal will save from $50 - $100 million over what they were paying piecemeal.

News.com story.
Of course, IBM is actually selling services for the most part... when the Army's microcrap starts deteriorating, Microsoft probably won't answer the phone.

WiFi, unless it spreads everywhere really quick will be isolated to the big cities and forgotten by the rest of the country. Cellular is the way to go because of the availibility. Sure 802.11x has fast ass speeds, but I don't live anywhere close to a major city. So it's my tiny bit of bandwidth and go everywhere around here. Works for me, man.

[Suddenly the screen goes wavy and we flash back to a high-level meeting in 1993, where an MBA-type is presenting the business case for Iridium to Motorola's Board of Directors.]

Presenter: Cellular, unless it spreads everywhere really quick, will be isolated to the big cities and forgotten by the rest of the country. Satellite is the way to go because of the availibility. Sure, cellular has coverage in the major cities, but our business-case models predict it will never be profitable elsewhere.

Board: Um, okay. Pick up your sack of money on the way out.

Enough With Think Different

Sure, unless the activation servers are down.

Or, until you buy a new computer and you have to call the 800 number and waste 10 minutes of your life. Oh, and that doesn't work if the activation servers are down too.

There is no reason I should have to beg permission to be allowed to use a legally purchased product. There is no reason that the manufacturer should be able to determine, AFTER the sale, what I personally do with that product. There is no reason that the doctrine of first sale should not apply to software, other than this 'because we can get away with it' garbage.

...is if Microsoft can filter spam without being Sued.

Novell services on Caldera (1996)

A step that is seven years late. Find it hard no one remembers this.

Funny, seven years ago this was blasphemy. The Linux world was up in arms. Novell is evil! SCO rocks!! Please leave our little Linux alone!!!

Today, the present. The Linux world wishes for ALL corporations to use Linux. SCO is evil! Novell rocks! Please add to our Linux and make it your own.

From news.com's story:

The high-end model sells for $2,999 and has two 2GHz G5 chips, 512MB of memory, a 160GB hard drive and an ATI Radeon 9600 graphics card. All three machines sport a new aluminum case and come with a SuperDrive that can read and burn both DVDs and CDs.

If I wanted to build a high-end PC from parts that matched the G5 specs (give or take), here's what I'd build:

• Thunder K7X dual-proc motherboard: $289
• AMD Athlon MP 2400 CPUs: $158 x 2 = $316
• 512 MB Crucial DDR RAM: $98
• Western Digital 160GB 7200RPM 8MB buffer HDD: $146
• Radeon 9600 Pro Ultra: $182
• Sony DVD+/-RW Recorder Drive: $240
• Lian-Li Aluminum case: $75
• PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 510 ATX PSU: $189
• Operating system (including yearly upgrades): Free

(All that came from a cursory glance through pricewatch.com, with part/model numbers from memory, so there might be a little fudge factor built into those amounts and hardware choices.)

You'd have to also buy some misc parts like a keyboard/mouse, floppy (if you wanted it), IDE cables, etc. Most people who build PCs will already have all that laying around. The total cost is $1535, and that's using high-end, name brand parts. That's about half what the Apple costs, if you build it yourself.

There are actually some hidden savings in doing it yourself, too. If I were building this I'd carefully buy parts online, from vendors outside the state where I live (California). I'd have to pay taxes on the power supply (I personally won't buy anything other than PC Power & Cooling) and the RAM (I don't use anything but Crucial if I can help it) -- the rest I can get tax free. Tax on the G5 in California would bring the cost to around $3240. I figure shipping is largely a wash no matter what you get, but wouldn't cost much from the DIY persepctive. When you factor in having to pay for OS upgrades over the life of the hardware, you get even more benefits from building it yourself. The point is, just the cost of shipping along means you could get another hard drive, or double the RAM, or whatever if you built it yourself.

Now if I wanted to build a high-end PC from parts that bettered the Apple's specs, here's what I'd buy:

• Thunder K8S dual-proc motherboard: $479
• 2 AMD Opteron 242 CPUs: $707 x 2 = $1414
• 1 GB DDR PC2700 RAM: $140
• EIDE 250GB hard drive: $254
• Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB: $487
• Sony DVD+/-RW Recorder Drive: $240
• Lian-Li Aluminum case: $75
• PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 510 ATX PSU: $189
• Operating system (including yearly upgrades): Free

Total on that is $3089. That's for Opteron CPUs, twice the memory, 60% more disk space, and a top-of-the-line Radeon. For a couple dollars more than what the Apples cost. Granted, there's not many reasons why most consumers/SOHO users would want or need an Opteron system, but corporate America likes it a lot. It means in many cases that they don't have to buy Suns or HPUX boxes, and ca

The only change I'm aware of is that they are halting production of Internet Explorer for the Macintosh and Internet Explorer. There is a rumor floating around based off some guy's interview that there will be no stand-alone upgrades of IE. That isn't an official announcement though and they haven't decided how to handle future rollouts of IE. I highly doubt that Microsoft would stop producing new releases of IE for prior releases of Windows.

-Lucas

Sun Software VP Jonathan Schwartz seems to consider open standards more important than Open Source. See the CNet article from a couple of months ago.

Perhaps there's a sense that locking down more of the Java developer market is more important than keeping the intellectual property in the implementation of Java "hidden". Once you put the open source version out, you can hope yours will become the defacto standard. But why go to Red Hat to open the Java source? Couldn't you just open it up yourself?

Maybe Sun just needs a high-volume distributor to developers everywhere. Developers who might use Java more if they didn't have to download it, if it were just there. Who serves up more downloads? Red Hat when they release another version of their distro? Sun when they release another version of Solaris? If you want to reach developers and M$ doesn't want to help, wouldn't you go for the next largest crowd?

MS may be evil, but they never forced me to buy a new version of windows to get the latest web browser.

Well, not yet.

Jay (=

He got scared a little when he didn't get his usual 85% to 95% of the vote in the last election. Unfortunately, we didn't scare him enough. Someone bring in a pro-choice, anti-Big Media Republican candidate to take him out...or an electable Libertarian.

well, looks like Dell will be selling upgrades for around $30.

cnet article

aximusers.com

think I'm going to pass on this one. considering I've been kicking myself since I bought it, I think I'll save the money for a new iPaq.

Intel: Linux 32-chip server rivals Windows
posted by cdlu
on Friday June 06, 2003 - [ 03:16 PM GMT ]
Section: High Performance Computing : News
Topic: High Performance Computing
Read article at: zdnet.com.com

Intel has found that a 32-processor Itanium server running Linux is rivaling Windows and Unix servers in database performance, a major accomplishment for the comparatively young operating system.

It pinpoints to this zdnet article here.

This is simple. People are protesting your actions. What is the best way to make their protest meaningless and to make yourself look like the good-guy who is in control.?

Embrace them.
Give them drinks.
Laugh with them and join the party.

Embrace, love, and then crush your enemy.
This is business as usual for scum^H^H^H^Hpoliticians, lawyers and businessmen.

I'm willing to bet that several SCO employees were doing it out of true heart, but Darl?

This guy is suing everyone and their mother for billions. Even if his claims were valid, he's basically claiming that all UNIX IP is his.

Read this. Darl is 'hip and down with OSS' and he makes himself look like a victim. When I read it, I started to say, "Hmm, maybe this guy is the victim."

Then I remembered the damages and claims he's making and the FUD he's spreading.

Some normal SCO employees might mean well, but as for Darl and the rest, either they're insane and think they're the victims, or they're playing a masterful political game.

Are you sure it's so easy to bypass? Disney's Tarzan DVD is particularly notorious for having 5 minutes of unskippable advertisements at the beginning.

Check out http://news.com.com/2100-1002_3-1019759.html?tag=f d_top about this. Looks like there are some conflicting claims about what this trojan is.

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Google community when IDC confirmed that Google market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all web searches. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Google has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Google is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by Yahoo's failure to renew its exclusive deal with Google.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Google's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Google faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Google because Google is dying. Things are looking very bad for Google. As many of us are already aware, Google continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

Google search is the most endangered of them all, having lost most of its core affiliates. The sudden and unpleasant departures of Yahoo and AOL only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Google is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

Google.com founder Sergey Brin states that there are 7000 users of Google. How many users of Verity are there? Let's see. The number of Google versus Verity posts on USENET is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Verity users. AskJeeves posts on USENET are about half of the volume of Verity posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of Inktomi. A recent article put Teoma at about 80 percent of the search engine market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Google users. This is consistent with the number of Google USENET posts.

Due to the troubles of Google News, abysmal sales and so on, Google is going out of business and will probably be taken over by idealab! who operate another troubled search engine. Now Inktomi is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that Google has steadily declined in market share. Google is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Google is to survive at all it will be among search engine dilettante dabblers. Google continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical p

from a cnet article:"So why can't they just reuse their own products? They can't, because SCO controls the rights over further licensing of derivative products. (Only Sun Microsystems, which has paid around $100 million to the various Unix stewards over the past decade for derivative rights, fully controls the legal destiny of its products.) It's an inconvenient legalism--and one not always discussed in the lab--but it exists."

So based on what the poster was told by SCO, they have a strong case, particularly given AIX programmers were involved in writing Linux code.

Parent AC post was stolen from this Kanello artical

Why no mention of this article in original posting?

Because /. editors do not wish to salvage any credibility by presenting all sides of the issue.

Technological evangelism at its finest.

Verizon did fight, and even tried to get a delay after losing the case, seeking to force the the RIAA to first get a judge's order (which is normally required), instead of just requesting the names directly (which the DMCA allows).

Verizon had a major intrest in winning this case and really did try to fight it out. Go to this link for a quick look at it.

Well it looks like she either had a change of mind, never wanted to, or doesn't want it publicly known that it could happen.

And unfortunately, MS has stated that they have no intention of releasing a new browser for at least 2 years. Another 2 years without PNG support.

Hmm, dunno. Caldera's UNIX purchase from SCO was mostly a stock swap. Maybe the SEC should check under Darl's matress?

As you said, they have the ability to log it on a client level. Imagine a company with 500 000 machines. Are you going to collect logs from each and every one every single day?? Even if you saved the logs on a network drive, do you want 500 000 different files per day?

The difficulty is logging the traffic on a server level. The reasons are many. I think this article describes them fairly well.

Basically, IM traffic tries to hide itself, generally as HTTP traffic. Yahoo for example prepends a HTTP header to all packets, thereby being disguised as a HTTP GET request. AOL/ICQ/MSN has the ability to use HTTP Proxy servers, and AOL provides www.proxy.aol.com for free (port 80, no pass). MSN will auto-configure itself to use a proxy server if direct access is blocked.

Here's the result of logging IM traffic on a client level.

Please site a patent and claim number reading on every occurrence of use of a binary search; a bucket sort; an array in a computer program. Don't have the number on the tip of your tongue, or do you consider these not to be an "aspect of software development?" Or was that hyperbolae?

Careful study of the web site discloses not a single instance of IBM going to a company with a hold-up. Nor does it evidence "US patents on virtually every trivial aspect of software development."

grr.. ok, i'll go digging. heh

From CNet:

High-profile attorney David Boies and his firm still are handling SCO's Unix legal action, SCO said. Boeis' firm is being paid with a contingency agreement, under which lawyers typically are paid not by the hour, but with a percentage of whatever money they can win for their clients in the case.

Microsoft wouldnt be the only one to be paying for this. There are a hundred other firms working on OS projects. I mean, come on guys, lets be realistic!

And what's wrong with the situation as is? I like Linux's "underground movement" apect, it gives it more legitimacy as a labor of love, not $$$. And Red Hat is just now starting to turn a profit, if that's what you are intersted in!

IBM makes more money than Apple selling PC hardware. They allowed Dell, Compaq etc. to "distribute a cheap knockoff" of their design.

Sure - Clones entered the market where the IBM previously was alone and IBM's share did what?

I'll give you a hint - click here.

-T

It's nice to see that Linus is getting a bit more riled up about SCO now that SCO has started taking personal potshots at him. In a recent interview:

"I care deeply about IP (intellectual property) rights. I've personally got more IP rights than the average bear, and as the owner of the copyright in the collective of the Linux kernel, I shepherd even more. It's what I do, every day. I personally manage more valuable IP rights than SCO has ever held, and I take it damn seriously," Torvalds said in an e-mail interview.

One of his kids is SCO's chief lawyer.Apparently, SCO's contract with IBM gives it exclusive rights to all intellectual property that anyone will ever create, so they should be okay.

The company retained Brent O. Hatch and Mark F. James of the law firm Hatch, James & Dodge. Hatch is the son of Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, a representative for SCO confirmed Monday.

It's nice to see that Linus is getting a bit more riled up about SCO now that SCO has started taking personal potshots at him. In a recent Cnet article:

"I care deeply about IP (intellectual property) rights. I've personally got more IP rights than the average bear, and as the owner of the copyright in the collective of the Linux kernel, I shepherd even more. It's what I do, every day. I personally manage more valuable IP rights than SCO has ever held, and I take it damn seriously," Torvalds said in an e-mail interview.

First there was SCO Amends Suit, Clarifies "Violations", Triples Damages where the C|Net article mentions that his son is defending SCO. And now this...

Who needs a beowulf cluster in Soviet Russia when you can have Orrin Hatch instead!

I'd like it better with apples, by the way. First, have all apples sprayed with a deadly poison. You get the antidote when you buy the apple; if not, you die a very horrible and messy death.

that's because Senator Hatch is the BASTARD CHILD OF THE ANTI-CHRIST!!!

Proof:

SCO has made no secret in recent months that it hired high-profile attorney David Boies to spearhead its case against IBM, but the company's legal representation in Utah courts is also noteworthy. The company retained Brent O. Hatch and Mark F. James of the law firm Hatch, James & Dodge. Hatch is the son of Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, a representative for SCO confirmed Monday.

The whole family works for the devil!!!!

[/tongue in cheek]

...that hasn't already been said about Afghistan. It looks bombed out and depleted. (previous lines stolen from Dave Chappelle).

In my opinion, the following quote sums it all up:

Darl McBride, CEO SCO (Link to Article)

"The fact that Linux shows up in town and everybody gets excited about it because they get the same sort of value we had with UnixWare but they don't have to pay anything--I get why customers like that. It's the same reason everybody loved Napster--you get CDs for free."

There you go folks, it all boils down to Linux = Napster, and if you aren't paying out the ass for software you are stealing it, no matter what the 'license' says. It all belongs to SCO and no matter what Linus nor IBM nor anyone else says, 'its all the branch of the same tree'...sounds pretty compelling when you are a company going out of business and you exist in a country who's legal system is sold to the highest bidder. I still hold my position that if the code was stolen and copied out of something that SCO rightfully owns, then more power to them, I hope they get their fair compensation because it would be the correrct thing to do. But all indications I see seem to point to a situation where SCO was displaced by Linux and now they are trying to suck anything they can out of the situation before going titsup.com.

What a bunch of mark ass marks, trick ass marks, skip skak skanks and skalliwags! (Dave Chapelle again, thank god he's not licensed by SCO)

This article on C|Net offers some insight on what they are claiming (comments from Darl McBride in the article): "The System 5 source code, that is really the area that gives us incredible rights, because it includes the control rights on the derivative works that branch off from that trunk." They are claiming that because they have rights over derivative works, everything IBM wrote for AIX is under there control, so IBM can't take code IBM wrote and distributed with AIX in Linux beause it is a derivative of SCO code. That bascially is a claim that they own everything ever writte n for a Unix platform. They even mention JFS - that isn't exactly an SCO technology - but they claim it is a derivative work. "the amount of code showing up inside of Linux today that is either directly related to our Unix System 5 that we directly own or is related to one of our flavors of Unix that we have derivative works rights over--we don't necessarily own those flavors, but we have control rights over how that information gets disseminated" "They were going to take the know-how, the people, the methods they developed over the years around AIX--which is our licensed version of Unix--and they were going to transport all that in a wholesale fashion over to Linux." How dare IBM port thier code for AIX to Linux!

Has anyone, besides SCO, looked at the Linux code and tried to determine what might have come from SCO, and what might have come from a common predecessor?

So far four components of the Linux source have been implicated: SMP, RCU, NUMA, and JFS.

I have done a little digging into the NUMA code. IBM has contributed several people who have participlated in developing NUMA under linux. Some names I've run across: Martin Bligh, Matthew Dobson, Patricia Gaughen, John Stultz, Michael Hohnbaum. IBM even has a Linux NUMA news archive. It appears that IBM jumpstarted it's NUMA efforts when it purchased Sequent which was intitally intended to boost its participation in Project Monterey, which is no doubt the origin of SCO's objections.

The most obvious source file for NUMA is /usr/src/linux/mm/numa.c in the 2.4 series kernels. This file contains a comment header stating it was "Written by Kanoj Sarcar, SGI, Aug 1999". This file has been removed from later 2.5 kernels (its gone by at least 2.5.46), appearently because Linux accepted an IBM NUMA patch as reported here. This patch was announced by Martin Bligh and is likely the code in question in this lawsuit.

Has anyone, besides SCO, looked at the Linux code and tried to determine what might have come from SCO, and what might have come from a common predecessor?

So far four components of the Linux source have been implicated: SMP, RCU, NUMA, and JFS.

I have done a little digging into the NUMA code. IBM has contributed several people who have participlated in developing NUMA under linux. Some names I've run across: Martin Bligh, Matthew Dobson, Patricia Gaughen, John Stultz, Michael Hohnbaum. IBM even has a Linux NUMA news archive. It appears that IBM jumpstarted it's NUMA efforts when it purchased Sequent which was intitally intended to boost its participation in Project Monterey, which is no doubt the origin of SCO's objections.

The most obvious source file for NUMA is /usr/src/linux/mm/numa.c in the 2.4 series kernels. This file contains a comment header stating it was "Written by Kanoj Sarcar, SGI, Aug 1999". This file has been removed from later 2.5 kernels (its gone by at least 2.5.46), appearently because Linux accepted an IBM NUMA patch as reported here. This patch was announced by Martin Bligh and is likely the code in question in this lawsuit.

The more I read about this lawsuit the more I'm convinced that SCO is a Microsoft Patsyâ. It doesn't matter if SCO loses as long as it damages the Linux community in the eyes of corporate users. And Microsoft Patsy â will drag this out as long as it takes. It's a lose-lose situation for SCO, Linux, and IBM and a win-win situation for Microsoft.

OK, I could be completely wrong here. Lord knows trying to figure out what's in these people's minds is hard. But here's what I think is going on, and why they make such a claim. I preface this by saying that it was other posters here, in yesterday's SCO-related articles, that first made this point to me. First, check out this C|Net article, containing a brief interview with the CEO of SCO. In particular, note this quote:

Where people get a little confused is when they think of SCO Unix as just the Unix that runs the cash register at McDonalds. We think of this as a tree. We have the tree trunk, with Unix System 5 running right down the middle of the trunk. That is our core ownership position on Unix.

Off the tree trunk, you have a number of branches, and these are the various flavors of Unix. HP-UX, IBM's AIX, Sun Solaris, Fujitsu, NEC--there are a number of flavors out there. SCO has a couple of flavors, too, called OpenServer and UnixWare. But don't confuse the branches with the trunk. The System 5 source code, that is really the area that gives us incredible rights, because it includes the control rights on the derivative works that branch off from that trunk.

I added the boldface to that last clause for emphasis.

Similarly, Chris Sontag, SCO's Senior Vice President of the Operating Systems Division, said the following in this Byte magazine article:

We believe that UNIX System V provided the basic building blocks for all subsequent computer operating systems, and that they all tend to be derived from UNIX System V (and therefore are claimed as SCO's intellectual property).

The point is that I think they feel they have some sort of rights over the additional code and technologies that licensees add to the System V code they license from SCO in the process of creating their particular product. IBM bought Sequent, acquiring Sequent's RCU technology. IBM added that technology to AIX. Apparently, in SCO's mind, that gives SCO some degree of rights over that technology, because it's now part of AIX, and AIX is a derivative work of SCO's System V code, and SCO believes they have some amount of rights over all derivative works. And therefore, claims SCO, adding it to Linux violated SCO's rights.

This seems like what they're saying. It also seems completely nuts -- unless IBM's license for SysV code for AIX gives the rights for technologies they come up with and add to AIX back to the owner of the System V codebase. I can't imagine that being true, though.

Another read on this is that it looks even more than it did before like an attempt to re-try the Unix Systems Labs vs. BSD case.

The suit details much of the Unix and Linux chronology, but still missing from the complaint's history of Linux are discussions of SCO's involvement in Linux development under its previous names, Caldera International and Caldera Systems.