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.

Comments

Upside

[skroz]

Interesting thing... if/when this resolves itself, and it's shown that SCO's allegations are false, and Linux DID scale to those performance levels in such a short period of time, this will weigh extremely favorably on the side of the effectiveness of the open source model.

I asked this before, answer this time

[stratjakt]

What if SCO ends up being right in court?

Why would they poke the T-Rex that is IBM with a stick, unless they think they can bring it down?

We can sit around laughing or bitching or whining or moaning, but what will happen if there turns out to be code in Linux that we dont have the rights to, either by way of trade secrets or patents?

Can all the SysV and other SCO stuff be removed without killing Linux? Would a setback be weeks, months, years, or would it be the end?

Re:I asked this before, answer this time

[SquadBoy]

Simple answer (Stolen from someone much smarter than me)

This is suicide by cop[1].

Or it's something similarly twisted. SCO is simply dead. The back
story may be interesting though.

The news.com story notes that SCO may be pissed over the failure of
Project Monterey, which was aimed at reimplementing GNU/Linux as a
proprietary Unix for the Itanic (that's just so wrong so many ways I
won't even start).

Just a few off-the-cuff observations.

- You don't launch a land war in Asia.

- You don't launch a billion-dollar patent battle with IBM, if your
strategy is in fact to win that battle.

- Corrolary of the above is that you're either trying to lose, you're
not calling the shots, or you're aiming to win another battle.
These are not mutually exclusive, though options 2 & 3 are the most
likely pairing.

- Aside: IBM generates over $1b (approaching 1.5b IIRC) annually in
patent licensing revenues. Their patent portfolio numbers over
22,000. IBM is the single largest holder and recipient of US patent
grants.

- Theory: somebody's trying to sow patent problems for IBM, and/or
tie up IBM legal in a suit, while somebody else pulls a fast one.

- Theory: Caldera wants to prod IBM into reviving the DR-DOS suit (or
something similar) against Microsoft (or other parties). I find
this unlikely, but mention it for completeness.

- Theory: Caldera's management is trying to avoid breach-of-
fiduciary-interest or other similar charges, while disposing of the
company while putatively pursuing a fiduciary interest of the
company.

- Theory: This is Wang v. Netscape again. In that case, Microsoft
bought a significant interest in the dying Wang corporation, and
Wang pursued patent suits against Netscape. The patent was
eventually invalidated, but such battles are costly.

- Theory: (left field variety) LFP or similar[2] have corraled
Caldera into making a blatent demonstration of just how broken the
patent system is by going after its (the patent system's) largest
beneficiary.

Watch this space, things got interesting.

Peace.

--------------------
Notes:

1. If you're not familiar with the term: a perp assaults a police
officer, in such a way that the cop has to use deadly force. This
being the apparently desired outcome of the perp.

2. LPF: League for Programming Freedom, an anti-patent group associated
with Richard M. Stallman.

Credit to Karsten on this one. This is good enough that it needs to be posted here.

What about Solaris?

[MrTilney]

From the complaint:

Except for SCO, none of the primary UNIX vendors ever developed a UNIX "flavor" to operate on an Intel-based processor chip set. This is because the earlier Intel processors were considered to have inadequate processing power for use in the more demanding enterprise market applications.

What about the x86 version of Solaris?

Re:Ha ha! You beat me to it!

[supremebob]

SCO might have written their own death warrant by suing Big Blue. IBM has more software patents than Microsoft and Oracle combined, and probably has enough legal firepower in their patent portfolio to countersue SCO out of existance.

I doubt that anyone will miss them once IBM is finished mopping the floor with them.