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SCO SCO SCO!
Still more links on SCO's assorted allegations of copyright infringement. They say they're going to sue Novell. Software analysts refuse to be part of the hoax - also some good quotes from Linus here. SCO and UNIX: a Comedy of Errors. Salon has a story on SCO too, but sadly it's not available to read freely. And Wired has an old story which I think sums up the SCO claims pretty well.
I'm suprised some of the SCO shareholders haven't sued the directors for essentially making SCO stock worthless. It may have seen a temporary increase when this mess started, but its been on the downslide lately, and announcing ignorant lawsuits isn't going to help.
However, your point is valid. There's no point in a NDA when the disputed code is already on dozens of mirrors worldwide and on CDs pressed by many distros over the last N years.
Let's face it -- SCO probably wants the NDA to keep the reviewers from announcing that they found stolen Linux and/or *BSD code in SCO's source tree. ;^)
"You've crossed my Line of Death!" "What? No! Where is it?" "Here in the fine print...."
From the second link:
Overly said a review of the code by anyone other than a judge "means absolutely, positively nothing" in determining the merit of SCO's claims.
Is it just me, or is there something scary about a judge, who may or may not use his/her computer for anything other than e-mail and word processing, trying to interpret two snippets of source code to determine if one uses the other in an illegal way?
I found the meaning of life the other day, but I had write-only access.
Caldera (now SCO) will not exist two years from now when the lawsuit with IBM comes to trial unless something can be done to stop the onslaught of Linux on their proprietary UNIX marketshare. In short, SCO has very little to lose.
In fact, SCO's current scheme is sheer genius. They field lie after lie and watch their stock price shoot through the roof. Even after the colossal smackdown that Novell put on SCO SCOX stock is still priced at over $6.00 a share. That's basically a five-fold increase over where the stock was before they declared the lawsuit against IBM. Even better SCO management has managed to keep their story in the spotlight with their wide array of wacky allegations. This not only helps keep their stock price high, but it probably is even helping their commercial UNIX business. I would bet that several SCO customers that were looking at a migration to Linux will now choose to stay pat with UnixWare or OpenServer.
Don't be fooled. SCO isn't trying to win a court case. If they were, they would be using the same tactics that IBM is currently using. Their legal counsel is pretty sharp. He undoubtedly has told the SCO management team that their responses to the press are evidence. If SCO really thought that they had a chance at winning their court case they wouldn't be giving press conferences every five minutes.
SCO's management almost certainly plans to hype the stock to the moon, and then quietly sell their stake in SCOX. Since they have several years before their case goes to court, they have plenty of time to slowly get rid of their holdings.
By the same token, say you're doing some programming for IBM. YOu go reading through the sources for AIX, you understand it, you learn how it works. Now you're put on another project, say the volume manager for Linux. Sure things are a lot different, but because you've been playing around with AIX for a while, you got some really neat tricks to add scalability and stability. You change a routine here, add a better algorithm there, and you got that sucker screaming.
Now whose ideas did you use, and more importantly, who cares? Sure stealing is wrong, it says so in our lawbooks. But what exactly have you stolen? Does AIX not have a LVM because you used some ideas from it in Linux? Should a Ford not have Antilock brakes because GM put them on their cars before Ford?
We have broken the system to the point where it is illegal to learn anything, because somebody learned it before us. We are not stealing somebody's hard work. We are expanding on it, and with Linux, they can do the same thing back to their own product. Has there been a lawsuit because Microsoft has taken on some of the same projects that Linux has? Used ideas from one and placed them into the other? No, and by rights there shouldn't be. If Linus had compiled SCO and called it Linux, then there would be a case. If Linus used the knowledge he learned in university that the original Unix guys learned, should he be crucified? No.
and oh yeah, fuck SCO. You can sue me too you worthless piles of festering pestilence.
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
Is it stretching the imagination too much to suppose that SCO are simply pissing people off in order to get themselves bought out in a settlement?
Well, for someone who has no idea how business works, you have a great idea. The only unfortunate part is that this would reward the people who did this.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis