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New Caldera Promised

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the people-you-love-to-hate dept.

An anonymous reader writes "SCO has announced their plans to release a new version of Caldera Linux by the end of the year. From the announcement: 'To provide extensive reliability and performance features, the Linux Kernel 2.5 codebase has been merged with recently developed additions to SCO's world leading UNIX core operating system. Already contained code owned by SCO is still included benefiting the stability and overall experience opposed to recent Linux kernel releases.' The question is, is anyone listening?"

6 of 291 comments (clear)

  1. Really? by gbulmash · · Score: 4, Insightful
    The GPL is a license, not a surrender of copyright, so if SCO does not accept the GPL, isn't all the GPL'ed code they're using in this distro is being used illegally? Is EFF prepping a lawsuit?

    OTOH, why would SCO even do this? Any belief that it will give them some cash flow or some other position that benefits them is irrational.

    This must be the hallucination that precedes death.

    - G

    --
    Start a happiness pandemic
    1. Re:Really? by Vlad_the_Inhaler · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No way would I sue them, even if I had good grounds.
      When their IBM lawsuit is finally over, they will be bust bust bust. Move along there, no money left to grab. Anyone who sues them now will be left sitting on their own lawyers' bills.

      --
      Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
  2. That's quite silly by mcc · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In some alternate universe where SCO had a case, they perhaps might wind up with copyright ownership of some small part of the linux kernel. But that wouldn't mean they own linux. SCO would own part of the Linux kernel, and all the other parts of the Linux kernel would be owned by a wide variety of other persons who wrote those parts of the kernel. SCO could wind up with ownership of part of the kernel, and say "all you other people, you don't have the right to distribute what we own". But then this raises the question of why SCO has the right to distribute Linux-- they don't, except under the terms of the GPL. And the GPL says that if you can't allow free relicensing and free use of a piece of GPLed software, you aren't allowed to distribtue it at all.

    In other words if SCO had valid claims to copyright over part of the Linux kernel, and denied anyone the right to distribute that part of the Linux kernel except under propreitary terms, it would be illegal for ANYONE, INCLUDING SCO, to distribute Linux. But if SCO distributed even one copy of Linux anyway, then they'd lose the ability to deny anyone the rights to distribute Linux, because the GPL says that anyone SCO distributes to automatically has the right to redistribute the copy of Linux they got from SCO...

    I wonder if SCO, when they distribute these new copies of Linux, is including and adhering to the requirements of the GPL. If not they're opening a floodgate of lawsuits from all the people who own copyrights to parts of Linux and have only granted ability to use them under the GPL. Either way just this press release might open up for some nasty slander of title lawsuits or at least extensions of the Lanham Act cases already filed against them by Redhat etc...

    This is interesting, SCO has made a major misstep here. The only way they can keep this latest action from destroying them is if they know that they'll be bankrupt by the time anyone has the time to respond to it...

    --
    Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
    1. Re:That's quite silly by mcc · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Huh. Then how could that make SCO, as this press release claims, the "only" allowed distributor of Linux, if anyone could just distribute Linux by going back to 2.4 or 2.5 and distributing that?

      Or is the idea that they took 2.5 and stripped out the parts SCO alleges copyright to, and nobody else can do that since nobody knows what SCO's secret allegations are except SCO?

      And how could SCO take out the parts they claim copyright on? They've claimed copyright on nearly the whole thing at one point or another. At one time they were claiming ownership of 2.4, and just a couple weeks ago it came out that even now one of their export reports SCO is claiming ownership of the ELF magic number. Did they just take out ELF support or what?

      The whole thing defies logic at every level.

      --
      Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
  3. Re:Linux Kernel 2.5 codebase by ArbitraryConstant · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You say that like 2.6 isn't a development branch as well.

    --
    I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
  4. Re:Is it a parody? by Novus · · Score: 3, Insightful
    As far as I can tell, what has happened is this: