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SCO May Countersue Red Hat, SuSE Joins The Fray
uninet writes "The SCO Group, Inc. today released a statement concerning the lawsuit filed against it yesterday by Red Hat, Inc. The release quotes Darl McBride, SCO's President and CEO, as being 'disappointed' with Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik for not being 'forthcoming' about Red Hat's intentions in a previous discussion."
Reader psykocrime adds "According to this SuSE press release, SuSE has publically announced their support for RedHat's actions against SCO. Quoting from the press release: 'SCO has already been halted in Germany and we applaud Red Hat's actions to help end their activities in the US -- and beyond. We applaud their efforts to restrict the rhetoric of the SCO group -- and the FUD they are trying to instill -- and will determine quickly what actions SuSE can take to support Red Hat in their efforts.'" Read on for a few more links.
Vladimir writes "What no one has really touched upon is that the SCO vs. IBM court date is in April 2005, which could mean that the resolution of this case could be somewhere in 2006-2007, by which time Linux or any other OS may be irrelevant. People please keep your wallets in your pocket. Also, this lawyer has a long analysis of SCO extortion attempts and debunks a lot of their FUD."
Besides which, Omega writes "VNUnet has a story on how the economic analysis firm The Butler Group predicts that even if SCO can demonstrate there is offending code in the Linux kernel, it could easily be replaced."
It's standard business practice to countersue when someone sues your company. The merits of the case have very little to do with it.
Nothing to see here, move along...
I contacted SCO Germany and tried to get an offer for a desktop licence. On the phone a SCO employee said I should stop "babbling" (yes, she used that word). I should sent an email instead. Others have tried that weeks ago and got no reaction up to now. The company doing the press releases for SCO Germany informed me that they are not allowed to comment on the licence in any way, too.
It looks like there is absolutly no chance to buy the SCO licence for Linux in Germany at the moment.
according to this eweek story, sun believes it SCO can screw off:
In the early 1990's, Schwartz said, Sun chief executive Scott McNealy agreed to spend several million dollars to take a broad license with AT&T, essentially granting Sun legal rights equivalent to ownership of Unix code.
"As a result of that decision in 1993, we can do whatever we want (to the code)," Schwartz said. "We can drive forward and indemnify our customers too," a basic responsibility of any intellectual property provider, he said.
Looking back at recent history, I found this list compiled from various technology news reports...
January 2000 Rambus files patent infringement lawsuit against Hitachi
June 2000 Rambus settles lawsuit against Hitachi
August 2000 Rambus files patent infringement lawsuit against Infineon
August 2000 Micron files patent infringement lawsuit against Rambus
August 2000 Hyundai files patent infringement lawsuit against Rambus
Sept. 2000 Rambus files patent infringement lawsuit against Micron and Hyundai (Hynix)
May 2001 Rambus lawsuit against Infineon dismissed, fined US $3.5 million
August 2001 Rambus faces class-action lawsuit for fraud