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Not Quite Dead: SCO Linux Suit Against IBM Stirs In Utah

Posted by timothy on from the no-one-expects-the-mcbride-inquisition dept.

An anonymous reader points to a story in the Salt Lake Tribune which says that The nearly defunct Utah company SCO Group Inc. and IBM filed a joint report to the U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City saying that legal issues remain in the case, which was initiated in 2003 with SCO claiming damages of $5 billion against the technology giant, based in Armonk, N.Y. That likely means that U.S. District Judge David Nuffer, who now presides over the dispute, will start moving the lawsuit — largely dormant for about four years while a related suit against Novell Inc. was adjudicated — ahead. What kind of issues? In addition to its claims of IBM misappropriation of code, SCO alleges that IBM executives and lawyers directed the company's Linux programmers to destroy source code on their computers after SCO made its allegations. The company's other remaining claims are that IBM's actions amounted to unfair competition and interference with its contracts and business relations with other companies. IBM has remaining claims against SCO that allege the Utah company violated contracts, copied and distributed IBM code that had been placed in Linux and that SCO created a campaign of "fear, uncertainty and doubt" about IBM's products and services because of the dispute over Unix code.

2 of 170 comments (clear)

  1. Was SCO really that bad? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    When this debacle broke out several years ago, SCO was seen as the most dangerous threat to Linux. But things have changed, and in hindsight I think that the threat posted by SCO was actually quite minor.

    For example, it's of my opinion that systemd has caused far more harm to the Linux community than SCO ever managed to do, and perhaps ever could have done. Systemd has, without a doubt, split the Linux community into several camps. It has provoked animosity the likes we've never seen before, even within a community where heated debate and disagreement was common.

    Debian, once seen as the most stable and reliable Linux distribution, with one of the most cohesive communities, has suffered particularly badly since switching to systemd. It's no secret that its reliability has since dropped far below expectations (the many systemd-related bug reports and mailing list postings confirm this). This has driven many users to seek alternatives, including Slackware and even FreeBSD. The Debian community is in shambles, not only from the technical issues surrounding systemd, but also the many political squabbles that took place while choosing systemd.

    On a personal level, SCO never interfered with my desktops and servers. Yet systemd has prevented them from booting properly on numerous occasions. Systemd has done more harm to me and many others in Linux community than SCO ever did, or probably even ever could have done.

    1. Re:Was SCO really that bad? by Eravnrekaree · · Score: -1, Troll

      That is an outrageous comment. Most everyday users who would be the type that would need to move to Linux for it to actually gain real growth against Windows don't even know what systemd is. Most of the squabbling over it comes from Linux insiders, who if they wanted to could simply tailor Debian to use their own init system, so if they dont like systemd, why dont they just put in their own init program after they install debian?. As far as I know, there is no reason why the distribution should not allow the user to select another init system, other than the default systemd. You could also configure systemd to start up your own init scripts and programs and start your programs from those scripts.

      Furthermore most of the squabbling over systemd seems to be about the fact that some people do not like that systemd gives you more control and flexibility over the startup process. It seems as this group is opposed to anything that would extend or improve upon Linux's mechanisms that would allow for more options and control. They are opposed to being able to start a program on the NIC coming online, if that is what you need to do. systemd does not take away any functionality, it fully supports the full SysV init system, so its not as if systemd is taking away your ability to set up your init system like you always have. All of the functionality it adds is in addition to the existing functionality of previous init systems. What this means is that those who oppose systemd are only about taking away choice, control and flexibility from other users, they do not want other users to be able to utilize certain features. So these people basically want to keep Linux difficult to use, unconfigurable and inflexible. In fact, those who suffer and lose the most from the attacks on systemd are techie types who can most benefit from the kinds of control and customizability that systemd can provide in initialization and system control. I believe that many of those who oppose systemd are in fact agents of Microsoft trying to undermine Linux and attack anything that could actually make it better.