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SCO vs Linux.. Continued
An anonymous reader writes "ComputerWorld has an interview with Chris Sontag, from SCO.
Now the story has a pretty face." The interview has a variety of comments worth noting like how much source code SCO thinks has slipped from unix to linux. This story continues to amaze me.
From http://perens.com/Articles/SCO/SCO_10-K.html
The Company has an arrangement with Novell, Inc. ("Novell") in which it acts as an administrative agent in the collection of royalties for customers who deploy SVRx technology. Under the agency agreement, the Company collects all customer payments and remits 95 percent of the collected funds to Novell and retains 5 percent as an administrative fee. The Company records the 5 percent administrative fee as revenue in its consolidated statements of operations. The accompanying October 31, 2002 and 2001 consolidated balance sheets reflect the amounts collected related to this agency agreement but not yet remitted to Novell of $1,428,000 and $1,894,000, respectively, as restricted cash and royalty payable to Novell. The October 31, 2001 balances were reclassified from cash and equivalents and other royalties payable to conform to the current year presentation.
This is SCO's admission that Novell owns Unix System V, all revisions - that's what they mean by "SVRx", and SCO pays Novell 95% of the royalties. SCO gets to keep 5% as administrative agent.
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...This story continues to amaze me...
What continues to amaze me is the following...
Netcraft reports that SCO's own website is running on Linux.
SCO is still apart of UnitedLinux
SCO's own phone number is 1-888-GO-LINUX
They sure have their hands in a lot of Linux for it being so "illegal".
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
You are looking at the wrong stock. SCO is not SCO/Caldera. SCO -- SCOR group, traded on NYSE (first clue that it wasn't the right symbol) -- isn't doing well, either, but that is coincidental (unless there are a bunch of stupid day traders that can't tell their symbols apart).
Caldera is SCOX (traded on NASDAQ) -- yahoo summary.
While they are down a boatload in the last couple of days, they are still not below the levels they were trading at the beginning of May (or earlier).
As it stands, it looks like this little publicity stunt has driven the stock up more than down. Given current trends, it looks like it may normalize such that the whole thing is a short term wash in terms of stock value-- whether it proves profitable over the long term remains to be seen.
It's a posix layer and standard utilities (most of the BSD based). It does include gcc, though (and the source code).
It's been available (from interix or MS) since NT4, though, and I doubt it contains any SCO code, and (as I said before), the command-line tools are mostly just recompiles, so it seems unlikely that's why they would get a Unix license (OTOH, suing microsoft is popular, and juries do stupid things sometimes).
NO
Good god, its so damn easy to get mod5 as "informative." Whatever. Anyway, the compat layer is for things that are almost completely owned by Solaris in the IP world...nfs, automounter, etc. Those are COMPLETELY Sun, and not even SCO is making claim to them. Think M$ gave money to Sun? Hell no - Sun is a linux ally. They're not trying to discredit Linux. Serves M$ no purpose.
Or, so that you can become somewhat informed on your own, go to M$ all on your own. How about checking out the MS "solution" itself, Services For Unix.
Here's what MS says about it: "Services for UNIX provides file sharing, remote access and administration, password synchronization, common directory management, a common set of utilities, and a shell."
File sharing is through a samba-like util and through nfs, password sync is through ldap-like stuff (as is the directory management), and the utilities have various "uses." Not one of these things has anything to do with SCO.
Of course, if SCO would just mention what is being infringed, that might help the clueless be less confused. Many of us know its bunk without their even bothering, though.