Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

SCO's Plan Examined

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the something-to-think-about dept.

kevin@ank.com writes "In the best expose I've read since the original Halloween documents, Groklaw has links and analysis of Renaissance Ventures' rationale for investing in The SCO Group. Among other misrepresentations, SCO convinced Ren that SCO owned the root of the entire UNIX tree, and that Linux was just one branch of that tree. Linux gets a SCO tax... forever; or worst case, if Linux gets killed in the process, then so be it. Renaissance also estimated that IBM would have settled with SCO last April under the strength of SCO's claims, and the threat of terminating their UNIX license. Oops."

5 of 580 comments (clear)

  1. The view from a large enterprise by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    We have a vested interest to ensure that SCO does not win in its attempts of litigation. We have created a shadow company that hosts our Linux servers. So if someone gets sued by SCO it will be the newly-formed company which will simply fold and we as the customer will be able to get to our data and purchase UNIX or Windows servers to continue the work.

    Which is nice.

  2. So perhaps... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...when the SCO buble finally "bursts" and angry investors go back to institutions like Ren, Ren can say "we were deceived", and maybe we will yet get the fraud trial that the executives of SCO deserve to live through.

  3. Re:Wonder if they used this? by Irishman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    OK, I am confused. This chart seems to indicate that there is a direct link from Unix to Xenix to Minix to Linux. Now, based on Linus Torvalds own writing, the original codebase had no Minix in it. The only relation to Unix was in its look and feel. He wrote Linux because he thought Minix sucked. I am trying to figure out how they rationalized this one out! BTW, a history of Linux can be found here.

  4. Re:Wonder if they used this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I see two lines running from Linux to Unixware, but none in the other direction.

  5. Re:New light to shed on Bill Gates, Microsoft and by Ricin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Assuming this anecdote is true:

    -- It will expose them for what they are and it's going to end in a PR disaster.

    -- They won't be able to use apache or sendmail and such in SCO's Unix which would make it worthless. So it would imply an MS only environment. If anything, it would be the ultimate argument to go fully non MS instead.

    So I'd say, good, let 'em bring it on.