Sun Rethinking Linux Strategy Over SCO Lawsuit

manyoso writes "Sun is waisting no time taking advantage of the SCO lawsuit against IBM. They are making statements trying to play up Solaris as a safe harbor for worried Linux and IBM users. John Loiacono, VP of Sun's operating platforms group, "For people looking at the issues at hand, we are a safe harbor. We have absolute rights to our technology ... We're changing our strategy around Linux (but) we're pausing because we're trying to figure out what the implications of this are going to be". So, this begs the questions... What are the short term implications for the new Linux based desktop we've been hearing about from our fair weather friends? How will the SCO lawsuit affect Sun's long term strategy with Linux and Open Source?"

Comments

Dennis Ritchie's Thoughts on the SCO/IBM Subject

[zoid.com]

I found this in the alt.folklore.computers news group.

Re:David Boies

[Get Behind the Mule]

... SCO has hired David Boies to prosecute their case. Nice choice. Lost the DOJ case against Microsoft. Lost the Gore case for the White House.

No, David Boies didn't lose the DOJ case. He worked the trial before Judge Jackson, and won decisively -- most observers said that he beat the crap out of M$'s team. Then Bush got elected, and they certainly weren't about to keep working with Boies. Instead, it was the new administration who decided to let M$ walk.

As for Bush v. Gore, I think even if God Himself had been Gore's lawyer, He wouldn't have had a chance against the Rehnquist Five.

But at any rate, I was rooting for him in both of those cases, and I'm very dismayed to see him join the wrong side now.

People are showing their cards

[fjpereira]

At least we are starting to know who are our enemies: SCO and SUN are showing their faces.

I don't think SCO has a chance:

1 - First, IBM has too many patents to counter-sue SCO.
2 - Second, I think most the stuff that IBM has been bringing to Linux, like their journaling file-system and LVM is very recent software, that was develloped by IBM staff and not derived from the ancient Sys-V.
3 - Even if we have to remove the parts developed by IBM from the current Linux kernels, we would still have sevaral alternative implementations.
4 - Evern if SCO has patents that cover some parts of the Linux kernel, they (SCO) have also been distributing Linux under the GPL. Consequently, they have offered permition for everybody use it.
5 - SCO can also be sued for using the Linux trademark: remember Linus owns the Linux trademark.

Finally, this shouldn't be a major concern to the open source community, becvause even if we couldn't use the Linux kernel, we could allways move to HURD or a BSD kernel.
For most aplications, users wouldn't see almost any change.
BSD has already had a batle in court and won.

In the end, we will be stronger than now.

Re:Tells you a lot...

[elmegil]

You seem to think that Sun is one monolithic Borgish hive mind that has one perspective on Linux. As a Sun employee, let me disabuse you of the notion. There are a wide range of opinions about Linux internally, and there are plenty of Linux "bigots" included in that range, as well as the opposite side Solaris "bigots".

It's my impression (in my personal opinion, not based on anything "proprietary" I've been told because I haven't been) that this announcement is a combination of lawyers and PR folks wanting to make it clear that Solaris is not subject to any such lawsuits from SCO and wanting to reassure our customers and shareholders that we won't get so far with our linux strategy as to get ourselves entangled on that score. "We're pausing to see what the implications are" is not "AVOID LINUX!!! IT'S DANGEROUS!!". It's smart business practice to keep from being dragged into a potential tar baby.

Just because you and I believe that the lawsuit is completely frivolous doesn't mean that a large corporation can blythely assume the outcome of litigation and proceed on a path that might lead to problems for us and our sharelholders.

Re:SCO in its death throes.

[Daniel Phillips]

Yep. I've got the impression that IBM has only recently started contributing scalability-related stuff, i.e. their work will be seen in 2.6 series of kernels.

What they did is contribute people. The Linux work done by those people is original. I know this to be true, since I've been working with them from the start (on the VM/scalability front) and we have the irc logs where the ideas were born and developed, including ideas originated by non-IBM people and developed further by IBM people. IBM also contributed the patented RCU lockless sharing algorithm and contributed a license as well, as required by the GPL. Besides that, I don't know of a single instance of IBM people contributing anything other hard work, original engineering and creativity.

Re:SCO in its death throes.

[manyoso]

If Trolltech ever discontinues licensing Qt as GPL then it automatically can be licensed under the BSD. This is the purpose of the KDE Free Qt Foundation. This has been all worked out long ago:

http://www.kde.org/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation .p hp