Slashdot Mirror
SCO Gives Friday Deadline To IBM
bcisys writes "Reuters is reporting that SCO is planning to revoke IBM's license to Unix this Friday unless IBM settles SCO's claim that parts of its Unix code are being used in Linux. 'If we don't have a resolution by midnight on Friday the 13th, the AIX world will be a different place', SCO President and Chief Executive Darl McBride told Reuters News. 'We've basically mapped out what we will do. People will be running AIX without a valid license.'"
So they either have to remove code they don't know about, or pay up ... not much of a choice SCO leaves them.
It's viral: parts of SCO code in AIX make the whole AIX a subject of SCO whims.
If the license of a subcomponent is revoked the whole thing may be in trouble. What if one of M$ subcontractor get in dispute with M$? Windows user is suddenly in license violations.
IBM will guarantee its customers protection from any indemnity, and they'll keep on running AIX. Come Friday, everybody will be happily running unlicensed copies of AIX in the knowledge that IT WON'T MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE.
Sorry, SCO, you lose.
After Friday, we'll have a pretty good idea what IBM really thinks about SCO's suit. If they make no attempt to settle, it will be clear they really don't think SCO can prevail.
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there" - Will Rogers
the whole scenario seems strikingly Pythonesque. SCO (Stupid Crappy Operation) seems to have become the DPRK of tech, a seemingly isolated, insular fringe player on the scene that is in a steep decline and has resorted to a twisted form of brinkmanship to keep in play, leaving the rest of the players somewhere between arggravated and bemused.
At least that'll make everyone elses' lisences invalid just like mine.
On the plus side, now IBM will be well positioned to counter-sue SCO for breach of the 'perpetual and irrevocable' contract. Maybe this is what IBM has been waiting for.
This is the type of ridiculous stunt that only damages SCO's credibility. It is very unlikely that IBM signed an agreement with AT&T all those years ago that allowed AT&T to yank the license at a future date.
SCO should be very careful about the claims it is making.
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...and I don't mean IBM. SCO just rattled the cages of everybody that uses AIX. I work at a .gov that shall remain nameless, and without bragging, we have at least one of everything - and we run AIX in all kinds of funky places. Tell me I can't run AIX? Come and get me. But make sure the SCO flunky you send is expendable, they WILL shoot you nowadays.
But forget about the guard force using SCO interns for target practice, you just threatened almost every Fortune 500 company with a datacenter to speak of. THEIR lawyers using your ass for target practice is much more scary. Telling folks with THAT kind of power to turn off their line-of-business systems will get SCO slapped around like a red-headed stepchild.
SCO also won a license from Microsoft, which agreed to pay SCO to ensure that it would not violate intellectual property rights when developing software that works with Unix. But Microsoft's move was widely seen as an attempt to lend weight to SCO's attack on Linux, which Microsoft views as a threat to its Windows franchise.
This rather strong anti-Microsoft comment is coming off Reuters. Not Slashdot. This tells me that, despite what the Windows apologists may say, the public view of Microsoft closely mirrors some of the more cynical posts here. Such widely-held disdain spells doom for a corporation. Cash reserves and ruthless schemes will only go so far against it....
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Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
I think one of Lou's contributions to the IBM culture is act of being more tight lipped in public. He openly referred to the IT industry as a media "circus", and I think one of his large cultural biases and influences, coming from American Express, was saying nothing until something needs to be said. Particularly in cases of legal importance.
In any other segment of the economy, I suspect, this is followed more as a tenet of the industry rather than an exception. IBM's response has been, I strongly suspect, reassuring the most important audience: their customers, shareholders, management team, and employees. Rather then entering into a childish public-affairs fiasco with SCO, I believe IBM has taken the high road, and deferred judgement to the courts, where it matters.
We shall see, in any case.
It's possible that SCO wants IBM to sue them. Let's me explain this: if IBM sur SCO, it's IBM's job to prove that they didn't use Unix code in Linux. If SCO sue IBM, it's SCO's job to prove that IBM used Unix' code. The difference is small, but important! (Sorry for my bad English)
Montreal - Best city to live in!
On friday the thirteenth the unimaginable will happen! All of the AIX machines in the world will become Illegal, oh the humanity. Hundreds of previously upstanding companys will be running illeagal warz!
seriously would be interesting if IBM filed counter-suits, and as part of the discovery process requested the complete UNIX SVR4 source code and pedigries; with 10K patents in the basement I'm sure the lawyers at IBM could find a few infringements of their own.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Dont try to hack the SCO website as a revenge. Do something thar realy hurts instead. Like loss of development support. Stop porting applications to sco-unix and sco will die a paifull death. Does Apache, Bind, GCC, Mysql or Perl run om sco-unix today? Does the next verson have to? Who want to by a system without programs?