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My Visit to SCO

Posted by michael on from the leave-molotov-cocktails-at-home-please dept.

Ian Lance Taylor writes "I signed the SCO NDA and visited them to discuss their claims against Linux. My essay about it is on the Linux Journal web site. The short version is that SCO's claims are unproven, as indeed I expected would be the case before I went. The amount of information they were willing to show me was extremely limited, and did not by itself prove that their claims were true, nor that their claims were false." Other SCO-bits: Sun is doing their usual foot-in-mouth routine, thinking that two FUDs makes a Solaris purchase, or something like that. IBM is now joining the contact the customers bandwagon. Eric Raymond has been keeping himself busy - here's a story about him. SCO hates BSD, too, but they're not taking it lying down. And of course Cringley has his two cents.

2 of 592 comments (clear)

  1. SCO and other Software companies by teknokracy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I really have only a basic idea of what the whole SCO/IBM case is here, but in my impression SCO is at blame here. I did notice at work (Safeway) that on a terminal screen there was a login prompt then below it lines and lines of "this material is copyrighted etc etc, please call to validate" and all sorts of other warnings. When will the software industry learn that making its legal users feel like pirates isn't the way to go. Compatatively we have the whole WinXP activation fiasco, and I say that because it makes it near impossible for pirate users, but increidbly unfair and awkward for legal users, for example if you upgrade your motherboard and reinstall windows, you have to call them again and they make you feel guilty for reinstalling windows, asking you questions thinking you are trying to steal windows... seems that they concentrated on the bad people rather than the paying customers (who outweigh the bad ones).

  2. Excellent article. by the+gnat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That was one of the most informative things I've ever read on Slashdot. Thanks, Ian.

    However, there's a large discrepancy in some of SCO's claims. There are two scenarios here, which are not mutually exclusive:

    1. Linux source code incorporated original SysV code, due to formerly wide distribution of this code (e.g. in Solaris), textbook examples, or sloppiness of contributors from large vendors. This would be theft of code that SCO legally owns the copyright to.

    2. Technologies developed by other companies as add-ons to SysV were incorporated into Linux. This is not copyright infringement at all, but violates contracts signed by the original parties.

    SCO is clearly claiming (2), and if the contract holds up they may be partially correct (in the sense that IBM fucked up, but not in their wild accusations against the Linux community). I didn't get a clear impression from the article if they're seriously claiming (1) as well. They've stated as much in the past, but the only specific basis for the lawsuit that they've mentioned so far is the incorporation of novel technologies that were not developed by AT&T/SCO.