SCO Drops Linux, Says Current Vendors May Be Liable

Hank Scorpio writes "Well, SCO is at it again. I just received an email from their Developer Partner Program stating that not only are they suspending all future sales of their own Linux product (due to the alleged intellectual property violations), but they are also beginning to send out this letter to all existing commercial users of Linux, informing them that they may be liable for using Linux, a supposed infringing product. They mentioned that they will begin using tactics like those of the RIAA in taking action against end-users of Linux. This seems like it will be about as successful as the whole GIF ordeal a few years back. Where is UNISYS today? Is SCO litigating itself into irrelevance?"

Comments

I smell ....

[(54)T-Dub]

... a BSD vs Linux war brewing

Re:Mirror for the letter

[Anonymous Coward]

Important information.

SCO/Caldera is part of a company called The Canopy Group. This company owns substantial chunks of other companies... that is its function. One of the companies it owns a large part of is TrollTech (as you can see from the canopy web page), whose QT toolkit is at the heart of the KDE desktop.

Now, KDE zealots and rabid TrollTech defenders have continually claimed that QT is GPLed -- at least the X version is, but TrollTech routinely violate the GPL by including extra restrictions. They furthermore claim that this protects them from any shennanigans on the part of TrollTech. As you can see from this action on SCO's part... this is not true. SCO/Canopy/Caldera own and control the very heart of the KDE desktop... they decide who can and cannot write commerical closed-source applications for the KDE desktop (to write a KDE app you *must* link with QT, and are therefore subject to the GPL unless you purchase a $3000 license from SCO/Canopy/TrollTech).

Check these facts out for yourself, and do not allow these people to stealth control the Linux desktop. Do not use KDE.

Time to switch to FreeBSD (or other BSD's)

[dokebi]

Ok, I'm not trolling. Hear me out:
SCO is claming Linux contains AT&T code. GNU/linux always claimed that they never had AT&T code, and thus not liable. But it has to go through the courts to be proved (taking time and money), which is what SCO is counting on. Meanwhile, FreeBSD has already gone through this process in the early ninety's, the outcome of which is that *all* AT&T code was removed from BSD (resulting in BSD-lite), and that noone could sue anyone using this code. Long live free software.

From the recent OSnews interview http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3415&page= 8
In any event, those files with USL copyrights on them have specific permission to be distributed by the Regents of the University of California to settle thse lawsuits, with an additional agreement that Novel (and its successors) would not sue anybody using systems on 4.4lite.

Re:Boils down to....

[Knackered]

I too, smell a Microsoft rat in this one. It is so similar to Microsoft other vague FUD campaigns of recent years, that it would not in the least surprise me to hear about it. If it ever turns out that MS is funding and aiding this, the fallout would be bigger than the MS antitrust case, as IBM can and does have the financial and legal resources to sue MS for illegal attempts to damage IBM's business, and IBM doesn't come cheap.

If I had any points at the moment, this would be getting modded "troll". Not everything that goes wrong is Microsoft's fault. I personally don't like most of their products or tactics, but won't blame all of the stupidity in the world on them. Learn to appreciate and criticise on merits, not biases.