The Power Behind the SCO Nuisance

akahige writes "Forbes has a fairly detailed story about the sordid history of The Canopy Group and all the various companies they've sued -- Microsoft (who they beat) and CA (this case is still pending), among them. Before joining Caldera, Darl McBride sued IKON Office Solutions, for whom he worked -- and won. And it also seems that a bunch of Canopy power players also sit on SCO's board of directors. The short summary is, 'these guys are professional litigious bastards -- be exceptionally wary.'" A local user's group is planning a protest for tomorrow. Reader myst564 writes: "After reading all of this SCO press I remembered that SCO once offered up all of their 'Ancient UNIX' (their words, not mine) source to the world while retaining all copyrights (i.e, no OSS license). Interestingly enough it WAS located here but isn't any longer: SCO's Ancient Unix. What's more you can read about the original release here at: Linux Today. I downloaded the source myself way back then but never did anything but delete it! Anyway, check out this comment. It's interesting that this was predicted in 2000!"

Comments

Re:So, now we know the real reason for fear...

[HBI]

The FUD stops when this gets to a judge.

Sit tight till then.

Unfortunately, they didn't release System V source

[sacolcor]

The "ancient_unix_license" release isn't likely to help fight the suit; it doesn't cover the version they're suing about.

From: http://web.archive.org/web/20000115142514/www.sco. com/offers/ancient_unix_license.txt

--
3. LICENSED SOURCE CODE PRODUCTS

The SOURCE CODE PRODUCTS to which SCO grants rights under this
Agreement are restricted to the following UNIX Operating Systems,
including SUCCESSOR OPERATING SYSTEMs, that operate on the 16-Bit
PDP-11 CPU and early versions of the 32-Bit UNIX Operating System
with specific exclusion of UNIX System V and successor operating
systems:

16-Bit UNIX Editions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
32-bit 32V
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