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Forbes Examines SCO Subpoenas

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the what-does-it-all-mean dept.

z4ce writes "It seems that Daniel Lyons of Forbes just wrote yet another article on the IBM vs. SCO law suit. Now, Daniel seems to seeing SCO for the liars they are. One of the choice quotes include, "What's the point of hassling people who make chips and set-top boxes? Don't ask SCO's top execs. They don't know anything about this stuff, remember?""

6 of 416 comments (clear)

  1. Confusion ... by bigjocker · · Score: 4, Informative

    Stallman says the Boston-based Free Software Foundation, which he founded in 1985, has nothing to do with SCO's lawsuit. "SCO is suing IBM for violating a contract. We don't even know what the contract said. In terms of the resolution of that lawsuit, the Free Software Foundation is entirely uninvolved," he says.

    Stallman's GNU/Linux operating system is not the target of SCO's suit. Linux, the program SCO is targeting, is not an operating system, but only the kernel of the GNU/Linux operating system, which could run using a different kernel.

    This sums it up. SCO is suing IBM for breach of contract, nothing more, nothing less. What dows Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman et al have to do with this contract? did they sign it?

    Even that Forbes reporter could (kind of) tell the difference between GNU/Linux the OS and Linux the kernel ... how come Caldera, a former distributor, can't?

    --
    Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.
    1. Re:Confusion ... by Cheeko · · Score: 4, Informative

      Well Linus could make sense in that context. As mentioned in the article, as the one overseeing much of the direction Linux takes, he is in a unique position to provide information with regard to IBM's Linux submissions. This could directly impact the lawsuit claiming IBM breached its contract. The rest though, seem like the result of an angry child flailing about for being put in its place.

  2. No whining by Alizarin+Erythrosin · · Score: 4, Informative
    I've seen a few posts already about "stop beating the dead horse" (to quote one post).

    If you'll kindly notice, everything SCO has been posted under the "Caldera" icon. So here's how to turn that off, for those that don't want to see any SCO stories anymore.
    1. Go to http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=edithome
    2. Where it says "Exclude stories from the homepage", middle column ("Topics"), and check Caldera
    3. Scroll down to the bottom of the page (or press ctrl+end, or just end) and click the Save button

    You're done! Now shut the hell up.
    --
    There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
  3. Re:Argh! by bahamat · · Score: 5, Informative

    How about we just hear about it once a day until either its settled

    I must have missed it, and it's not showing up in the search either. Could you please post a link to today's previous SCO story? No? How about the two from yesterday then? The two from the previous day? Any stories from the 3 days before that? In fact, there have only been 7 stories in the past 14 days. That would be (averaged) one every two days. Are you proposing more SCO stories?

    Have you never looked at your preferences Mr. FortKnox? Do you see that big section entitled "Exclude Stories from the Homepage"? Click Caldera and you'll never have to bother with it again. That's what that feature is for: so you don't have to hear about subjects you don't want and we don't have to hear you complain.

  4. Re:SCO by MuParadigm · · Score: 4, Informative


    Nope, they're going after Andrew Morton, assigned maintainer of the 2.6 kernel and former(?) Digeo employee.

    He's with OSDL now. I'm actually not sure about the "former" part of that statement, as he may be on sabbatical from Digeo.

    Notice how they're not going after Alan Cox or Red Hat in the subpoenas? Looks like Red Hat's suit has given them some protection from SCO predation.

  5. "The GNU stuff" by crucini · · Score: 4, Informative
    The problem is in the label GNU. It makes people assume that Stallman either wrote or played a major role in creating the software. However today's GCC is really Cygnus's EGCS - the original GCC development could not keep up. EGCS embraced a more open, Linux-like development model and thereby outpaced GCC, eventually replacing it. So the name GCC is now a bit of a misnomer - GNU didn't make it, but rather hindered it.

    Read this statement by Ulrich Drepper, glibc maintainer. Among other things, he says:
    I find this completely unacceptable and can assure everybody that I consider none of the code I contributed to glibc (which is quite a lot) to be as part of the GNU project and so a major part of what Stallman claims credit for is simply going away.

    So the bottom line is that GNU, like Microsoft, takes credit for a lot of people's work, sometimes with their complete approval, sometimes against their will. In reality, most of the energy in free software came from Linux and people's desire to get Unixy things working on Linux.

    Oh, and log in so more people see your posts.