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SCO Group Hires Boies After All

Posted by timothy on from the mendacity-mendacity-mendacity dept.

pitr256 writes "So it seems the SCO Group has decided to hire infamous Anti-Microsoft lawyer David Boies after all. This comes upon reversal of the SCO Group statement according to Chief Executive Darl McBride of having not engaged Mr. Boies to take legal action against our fellow Linux vendors. Now, CNet News is reporting that not only is SCO Group investigating the Linux vendors but that it is also going to investigate Windows, Mac OS X, and the BSD derivatives. So if your technology can't win on price and performance, break out the lawyers and sue everyone. Does anyone else see this as the end of SCO (Caldera) like I do? I certainly will never use anything from them ever again."

2 of 444 comments (clear)

  1. Face it by ceswiedler · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's entirely possible that SCO's claims are accurate. If they inherited valid software patents on some of the basic designs of UNIX, then they have a government-granted right to sue any company which uses those designs.

    We all view UNIX as being freely copyable in its design, because traditionally it has been. Linux shares no code with the original UNIX, but it does share both design and interfaces such as syscalls. This is not a copyright issue, it is a patent issue. If the patents are valid, then it's possible Linux is infringing by its very existence. The BSDs are in a different camp, because of their heritage and the previous agreements between Berkely and AT&T, but possibly they're infringing as well.

    Of course, it's also possible that there is no actual patent infringement going on. But that depends on what AT&T decided to do back in the day regarding patenting UNIX. I know that IBM's standard policy is to patent *everything*.

    (cue Gary Oldman at the end of The Professional: "EVERYTHING!" )

  2. It's Like Recycling by Googol · · Score: 5, Insightful


    Think of the internet as a big dump filled with potential, er, recycling materials. A lot of it is trash but there is some good stuff there. Anyone can go out and pick up stuff and build stuff with it. Only, digital copying and transmission technology means that if someone happens to throw away a split-level ranch house we can all live in nice houses.

    So how do you keep this from happening if you are in the business of selling houses? (1) control the real estate market [hardware] so you can have a nice house but no place to put it; (2) cut off access to the dump; (3) make recycling illegal; (4) claim you own the stuff in the dump.

    So SCO wants #4 today. What else is new. They'll all be tried. They're all a problem.

    The real problem is not today's battle on thus-and-such a front. It's that there are a *lot* of people out there who have it out for recycling of *anything* that people can live in.

    =googol=