More on IBM's Project Monterey and SCO

karvind writes "Groklaw has posted another interesting article about AIX/Monterey/POWER research. The primary purpose of Project Monterey was to provide a stepping stone to Linux. IBM clearly stated this in promotional and technical materials, some of which SCO participated in publishing. It was always the plan that Project Monterey would be for POWER and SCO knew about IBM using SVR4 on POWER as far back as 2001. The article asks (and answers) some interesting questions: 'Where is the monetary damage to SCO? Where is there copyright infringement? Was SCO fully aware how quickly Linux would develop, that it would replace Unix, or did it take them by surprise?'"

Comments

Are we still maintaining the polite pretense...

[ites]

...that SCO actually launched this case on their own behalf and with some merit?

I thought it was obvious from very early on that this was a proxy attack on behalf of Microsoft against its two main enemies, IBM and Linux?

Also, clear by now that the attack failed, with heavy losses to Microsoft.

The actual contents of SCO's case seem pretty irrelevant.

Re:Are we still maintaining the polite pretense...

[ites]

This from "ihatelinux.blogspot.com"?

ROTFL.

I never said Microsoft were evil or monolithic. Try thinking about what I actually said, not what you imagine are people's criticisms of your company.

283 patents in the Linux kernel? Possibly. All complex software hits patents. The question is: are any of these patents enforceable, have they a basis that will stand up in court, and can they beat the huge patent portfolios that IBM is now making available to free software developers. Do you see what I'm saying? Each patent attack by Microsoft against Linux risks a volley of counterattacks from IBM against Windows.

Microsoft's fate is sealed for a simple reason, nothing to do with marketing or opinion. Nothing you say, nothing I say, will change this reason.

Linux repesents something. A sea change in the way software is made. A radical shift. It's not new in itself but the scale and efficiency has been rising exponentially. It was unstoppable in 1999, even long before that.

Microsoft will either adopt that way, or they will be buried under it. There is no alternative.

Think about it. Think about the stacks of CDs containing hundreds of millions of lines of high-quality, working, secure, and useful code. Think about the process that produces this software.

Now think about the pain Microsoft has to produce comparable software. Where is Longhorn? Delayed again? You think patents are going to fix this?

Microsoft is like a wealthy man dying of cancer. Money is no substitute for youth and health.

Actually, it's starting to be sad, seeing people like you "defend" Microsoft when no-one is attacking. There is no hate anymore. We're just watching the old man die, even as he spits and tries to claw at us.

The horse is nearly dead....

[Dav3K]

...but why stop beating it now? Since the conclusion is pretty obvious now, the announcement I am waiting for is the final judgement on the SCO cases.

Linux Kernel Personality (LKP for SCO UNIX)

[cyanics]

In the late 90's and early 00's, SCO was messing around with a product called LKP (Linux Kernel Personality) which was a method for allowing system calls from linux applications to the UNIX kernel.

If SCO was so anti-linux, why would they make a move to incorporate linux into its own product. That step right there discounts any claims they might have regarding linux code source.

You give SCO of '98 too much credit

[Alexander]

To the best of my ability to recall...

in 96-97, SCO and HP and Intel were all joined in happy hands developing what was going to become Itanium.

HP and SCO were going to merge their flavors of UNIX, as well - a move that fell apart (rumor has it) when SCO showed up to the table with something like 1/10th of the developers HP did.

Remember that it takes a while for Monterey-like deals to be created from a BizDev standpoint, maybe as much as 6-12 months - so it's likely that Monterey came about as a response from SCO's viewpoint as a substitute for the aborted HP collab. (A quick google for Monterey will turn up all sorts of anti-HP language circa 1998). IBM had nothing to lose, AIX was already a poor performer - heck up until 2000 or so the largest Sun reseller was IBM (one of the smartest things IBM did was embrace Linux).

And knowing SCO circa 1998 - I really doubt they thought of Linux as much more of a fad... a predominant source of income at that point being support contracts and services (NT 4 was the major threat to platform migration away from SCO at the time).

Re:Actually...

[ites]

No, not "set up". Well, maybe not.

But look... IBM are a big, old, wise, rich company. They certainly have spies deep inside Microsoft. At the very least they knew what was happening and had a strategy in place before the first public announcements from SCO.

Clearly their strategy was to sit tight, stay calm, provide all documents requested by the courts, and allow SCO to beat themselves into silly putty.

They could have done so many other things... settled, bought SCO, bribed someone. But they went through this exercise because they knew that their reputation, and that of their adopted protege, Linux, were on trial.

I'd not put it beyond IBM to have instigated the whole affair from within Microsoft. It just takes one fairly senior manager with a bright idea.

The technical term is "agent provocateur" and it's an old and effective way of getting the opposition to hurt themselves.

IBM are... brutal. Have no illusions. They were born from NCR, who's salesmen carried baseball bats to better smash the cash registers of their competitors.

Happily for us all - except the sad MS astroturfers who lurk here - IBM have decided that their future lies in selling battleships of services floating on a sea of free software.

If both IBM and Microsoft held the same viewpoint wrt to free software, the future for Linux would not be rosy today.