Slashdot Mirror
SGI's Letter to the Linux Community
_Upsilon_ writes "SGI has released a letter to the Linux community in response to SCO's recent threat to revoke the UNIX licence for Irix. The letter mentions that they inadvertently did submit some System V code into the Linux kernel, that has since been removed (and some more in the process of being removed). The article points out that the code fragments in question had already been released into the public domain as well."
If SCO goes after SGI and continues to go after their own customers, they will eventually obliterate their own customer base. This is just more proof of Mr. McBride's roadmap for SCO (which mysteriously resembles a downward spiral).
I'm just waiting for the SEC to wake up and realize that all of this was done so that the execs @ SCO could line their pockets.
SCO: You copied our Intellectual Property!!
[Company X]: No we didn't... that code's from the BSD codebase.
SCO: Oh... ok... well we're going to sue you anyways and revoke your UNIX license.
[Company X]: Whatever... go away or I'll replace you with a small shell script.
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
At the same time, it's hard for SCO to claim damages in this case as the amount was not only small, but redundant, and easily replaced. If SCO saw one cent of loss from those 200 lines, I'll be damned. They more likely see loss from idiotic legal strategies build upon half-truths and blatent disregard for their own customer base. (RIAA, anyone?)
#define DRM chmod 000
SGI finding code that they had to remove actually will add doubts.
What other compnaies "incorrectly" added code?
Why wasn't this caught before?
Even if there is a "clean sweep" of the code, what prevents this from occuring again?
SGI admiting that code was added and shouldn't have been is NOT a good thing towards removing doubt.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.