Slashdot Mirror
SCO's Next Target: SGI?
FatRatBastard writes "ZDNet News is speculating that SCO's next target in its legal actions against Linux may be SGI. According to the article its legal strategy will be to claim that XFS is a Unix derivative and therefore under SCO control, much like they claim JFS is in their suit with IBM. One fact not mentioned in the article that would support SGI being the next target is the malloc code they claimed was infringing at this years SCOForum was copyrighted SGI."
that we'd see RICO (racketeer influenced corrupt organisation) charges brought against SCO (some corrupt organisation).
*sigh* A man can dream...
I wrote a paper on the subject of SGI donating XFS after interviewing someone there at the time they made their announcement (~May 20, 1999). I just looked up the paper and found the following quote:
"Currently, SGI is clearing the source code of any legal restrictions; it expects to be able to make the code openly available by the end of the summer. "
Ensuring they were free-and-clear to donate XFS under an open source license was *not* an afterthought for SGI. There was concern among all the major UNIX vendors of IP entanglement with Linux, and SGI was the first to openly pledge to donate a chunk of their core UNIX technology. (IBM donated some non-core stuff earlier, and core stuff like JFS later.)
SCO's claim that XFS or JFS are derivative works of SVR4/5 remains, to me, highly dubious.
Too bad for SGI, the last thing they need these days is lawsuits. SCO can't hope for a lot of money, but maybe they're hoping for weaker resistance?
--LP
Not to be excessively paranoid, but SGI makes a great strategic choice for SCO to sue.
They, unlike IBM, don't have buckets of cash in the bank to throw at a legal defense. If SCO can force SGI to do their bidding and potentially spit out some documentation that makes IBM's case look bad, they will be at a better position to take on IBM.
Gentoo Sucks
Well - as one person already stated - RICO sounds like a good way to respond. If you DO get one of these little lovelies - turn it over to your state attorney general and ask for SCO to be investigated for RICO violations! They are threatening people under color of authority they haven't proved they have in court. IANAL - but that sounds like extortion to me.
Have you compiled your kernel today??
I have always been somewhat suspicious that there is a significant SCO-Microsoft connection, but the possibility that SGI is next on their hit-list just increases my worry.
SGI is a company that MS has every reason in the world to want to crush. They have traditionally been a major Unix vendor, they produce high-end graphics workstations that compete directly with popular Wintel solutions, and at one point they spurned Microsoft by dropping an ill-fated line of x86 workstations. And, making matters even worse (for SGI; better for MS), SGI is already suffering financially. This would be a great time for MS to crush them under their heel.
It is entirely possible that MS is pulling some strings here. SGI's target market and SCO's are wholly different, and I really don't see any reason why they (as opposed to HP/Digital/Compaq or any other Unix vendor) would be a real target. It just seems odd. SGI builds graphics workstations, and SCO provides general-purpose workhorse Unix OSes to businesses. Unless MS were involved, why would SCO pick on SGI in particular?
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
If SCO can invalidate the BSD settlement, then SCO can potentially claim ownership of much of the BSD-derived code in the kernel. Now that would present problems!
The only counter argument to this is that SCO has already "blessed" much of the BSD-derived code by stating that the 2.2 kernel series are clean.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
http://www.sco.com/products/authentication/
Used to have the awesome IT guy with the Red Hat, which was since photoshopped out, which has since been replaced with a photo of a woman. B-)
I have 3656.9 Bogomips. How many Bogomips do you have?
You are right, but MS has already crushed SGI.
MS has obtained a cross-license to all SGI's graphics patents, and OpenGL is no longer a threat. A mild concern perhaps. MS buried their joint "Farenheit" high-level graphics API effort with SGI, killing it. MS has announced dropping support of OpenGL on future OSes. Development of OpenGL 2.0 is really the baby of 3Dlabs (or whoever bought them out; I forget), not SGI, which shows you how behind the curve SGI is on pushing OpenGL these days. OpenGL's survival depends more on John Carmack pushing IHVs to keep using it than SGI, and other than OpenGL, SGI has not presented MS with a platform threat.
MS may want to crush Linux and/or IBM, but SGI? Not even in the same ballpark.
The reason SCO is picking on SGI is because of NUMA.
SGI has been dumping their NUMA scalability crown jewels into Linux (unlike all other conventional Unix vendors who are keeping that stuff in their high-end proprietary OS+hardware combos) and this is a significant impediment to selling UnixWare as "the premier scalable x86 Unix". Off the shelf UnixWare supports up to 8 processors today and SCO made a stab at doing NUMA stuff once upon a time, but SGI's NUMA-Linux has tons more R&D behind it and is going 64-way.
Three or four years ago, UnixWare was actually functionally superior to Linux (I know, I know, hard to believe but it's true.) But any margin of superiority then has greatly diminished or been overtaken. This is a real problem if SCO can't keep up with the R&D dumped into Linux by the open source community plus IBM plus SGI, etc. So SCO has gone legal. It's a rational move for them. Their vacillating arguments and tenuously-novel notion of derivative works don't bode well for their long term success however.
--LP
First I admit keeping this copy in my backpack becouse of the really ummm cool artwork on the front with the lady clad in diamonds.
(Drool)
Ok... anyway
Wired: Sept 2003 page 80 bottom half artical title "Will This Man Kill Linux"
Darl McBride says (while anwering a question)
"It's really interesting to see what happends when people see the code, when they see how blatant the copying is."
What is intresting is that so far only McBrides experts appear to be able to find this code. Well that and people who can't actually read source code seam able to find them.
I find it intresting that the experts can't be located. I find it intresting that much of the code in question can be found elsewhere. I find it intresting that the features in question are property of other companys.
To date:
The features in question make Linux an enterprise class system, Came from IBM, are primaraly for SGI hardware & Have something to do with 20 to 30 year old public domain code.
To me it appears blairingly obveous SCO is just suing anyone they have balls enough to sue.
Hay good thing they aren't suing the little guys becouse I really like Lunix.
I don't actually exist.