Slashdot Mirror
More on SCO vs. IBM Lawsuit
Colin Stanners writes "SCO has held a TeleConference and put up a page with information on their lawsuit against IBM. The key phrase (from their complaint) is: 'It is not possible for Linux to rapidly reach UNIX performance standards for complete enterprise functionality without the misappropriation of UNIX code, methods or concepts to achieve such performance, and coordination by a larger developer, such as IBM.' Their page also includes a Q&A, presentation, and exhibits, although these are mostly licensing agreements and not code." Bruce Perens had an interesting comment on the situation, more than one group is trying to organize a boycott, and Newsforge has a story based on SCO's press conference this morning. Newsforge and Slashdot are both part of OSDN.
Why would they poke the T-Rex that is IBM with a stick, unless they think they can bring it down?
Because, as Mr. Perens points out, they don't want to bring it down. They want to be bought out. Again.
You'd have an amazingly hard time proving infringement in court by IBM -- the bits that are most worrisome (such as SysV IPC) were in place long before IBM touched Linux or viewed SCO source. They were implemented because they were widely documented in Unix manuals, books, and taught in schools.
SCO's legal brief has quite a few sections that are laughable:
82. Linux started as a hobby project of a 19-year old student. Linux has evolved through bits and pieces of various contributions by numerous software developers using single processor computers. Virtually none of these software developers and hobbyists had access to enterprise-scale equipment and testing facilities for Linux development. Without access to such equipment, facilities, sophisticated methods, concepts and coordinated know-how, it would be difficult or impossible for the Linux development community to create a grade of Linux adequate for enterprise use.
84. Prior to IBM's involvement, Linux was the software equivalent of a bicycle. UNIX was the software equivalent of a luxury car. To make Linux of necessary quality for use by enterprise customers, it must be re-designed so that Linux also becomes the software equivalent of a luxury car. This re-design is not technologically feasible or even possible at the enterprise level without (1) a high degree of design coordination, (2) access to expensive and sophisticated design and testing equipment; (3) access to UNIX code, methods and concepts; (4) UNIX architectural experience; and (5) a very significant financial investment.
Section 82 is humorous. Section 84 is downright absurd. Point by point:
1) It's called a mailing list and revision control. The very same methods that are used in a vast amount of corporate development.
2) What expensive design and test equipment? Earlier in the brief SCO admitted that x86 hardware was vastly less expensive. The design and test equipment is these very same inexpensive boxes.
SMP wasn't that absurdly uncommon in the early 90s, and lots of people had access to large scale equipment, especially at a university. I know people who had unfettered access to early 90s supercomputers (Crays, etc), as well as SP-2s. Or built a cluster of SMP boxes running on Linux for PhD projects -- all of this in the early to mid 90s.
3) Code? No need. Methods and concepts? Sure. They're documented in man pages, thousands of books, and taught as part of most university CS curriculums. They're not difficult concepts really, and re-implementing them may not be trivial, but it's not impossible either.
4) Yes, because nobody knows the UNIX architecture except SCO. Uh huh. It's not in the very same books and courses mentioned previously.
5) There is a large financial investment - look at Redhat, Slackware, FSF, or just start counting man-hours donated to the kernel. If volunteer efforts were incapable of accomplishing anything then Habitat for Humanity would've gone belly up over a decade ago.
To top it all off there's a good bit of questioning with regards to Caldera Linux, the GPL, and SCO. If SCO knew that there were IP violations in the Linux kernel then it willfully violated the GPL in distributing them in Caldera Linux. That doesn't mean that those IP rights suddenly get lost, but it does mean that their legal case becomes a whole lot more hairy.