A look at the SCO complaint
The first half of the complaint is dedicated to establishing SCO's claim to the Unix tradmark and source code. There is also some talk of the licensing agreements for that source, and SCO's wisdom in building a version of Unix for Intel processors. Unix, they say, is a great thing:
Paragraph 74 turns the topic to Linux. Here's what SCO thinks of the operating system it sells:
SCO, back when it was Caldera, used to think that Linux was good for a bit more than that. Note also the claim that Linux is "derived from and based on Unix."
The core of SCO's claim seems to be that Linux could not possibly have gotten to where it is now without some sort of divine assistance. Consider points 82 and 83:
As long as the Linux development process remained uncoordinated and random, it posed little or no threat to SCO, or to other UNIX vendors...
This is an interesting claim. According to SCO, something came along which radically changed the nature of Linux development. Given the highly public nature of the Linux development process, it should be possible to put a finger on the point where that process was no longer "uncoordinated and random." SCO, of course, does not mark that point in this complaint.
Of course, development of many of the "enterprise-quality" features of Linux, including its top-of-the-line network stack and SMP support, happened during the "uncoordinated and random" period before IBM set us all straight.
Just to drive SCO's point home:
Let's look at all of these points. Regarding the first one: people watching the Linux kernel development process should be forgiven if they have a hard time finding the "high degree of design coordination" claimed here. Remember how Linus sees this process:
It's "directed mutation" on a microscopic level, but there is very little macroscopic direction. There are lots of individuals with some generic feeling about where they want to take the system (and I'm obviously one of them), but in the end we're all a bunch of people with not very good vision.
And that is GOOD.
Point (2) alleges access to fancy equipment. The first four-processor Linux demonstration was put together by the company then known as VA Research. IBM has since provided some nice boxes to its developers (leading to fun things like 7.5 second kernel compiles). But one might well ask when it became a crime to give your developers access to high-end hardware.
The third point claims that Linux could not have gotten to where it is without access to the Unix source, along with "methods and concepts." The methods and concepts have been well documented in the open literature for decades. Access to the source remains an unproven claim; SCO has not pointed out a single line of code which, it claims, is derived from the Unix source. One would assume that will change during the trial phase, if this case gets that far.
Point (4) claims that Unix architectural experience would be required. Again, this point has not been proved, but it is worth mentioning that the architecture of Unix has, once again, been well documented for decades. The availability of free versions of Unix (i.e. the BSD variants) could also be a legitimate source of Unix architectural experience.
Point (5) claims a "significant financial investment." That investment has certainly been made - by countless hackers who have donated their time, by many companies hoping to make a business with Linux, and by a substantial number of dotcom investors who, perhaps, don't feel quite so good about the whole thing at this point. And, yes, also IBM. But IBM's investment, massive though it is, is still a small piece of the total resources that have gone into the development of a free operating system over almost two decades.
Paragraph 86 summarizes SCO's position:
The compaint then turns to how SCO has suffered by IBM's actions. From paragraph 111:
In other words, had IBM not wandered into Linux, SCO's products would still be doing fine in the marketplace. Right.
The claims seem to be saying that SCO was somehow entitled to the right to exploit the market offered by increasingly powerful commodity computers. Thus SCO complains:
An alternative point of view, of course, is that SCO was never entitled to this market, and was well on its way toward losing it before IBM discovered Linux.
Another thing that IBM has done:
IBM is thus responsible for the Great Papa John's Pizza Caper. It's worth noting the reference to "its Linux distribution partners." These are listed as being Red Hat, SuSE, and others earlier in the document. It could be that this suit will expand beyond IBM at some point.
Here's what SCO wants:
The $1 billion figure, thus, is a minimum amount; they really would like to get more.
There's a lot more to be said about this suit, of course. The speculation that SCO's real goal is to be acquired may have a certain amount of merit. The legal implications of the fact that SCO, itself, has distributed the code in question under the GPL could prove to be most interesting. All of this will become clearer over time.
But there is something here that the Linux development community should not
miss: SCO has shown the extent of its contempt for you. Without IBM as
fairy godmother, says SCO, you could never have achieved what you have
achieved with Linux. That is an insult of the highest order - the
worldwide free software development community has been slandered in a big
way. Whatever happens with this case, we should not forget what this
company thinks of us.
Posted Mar 7, 2003 19:08 UTC (Fri)
by jonth (guest, #4008)
[Link] (6 responses)
Jonth
Posted Mar 7, 2003 19:13 UTC (Fri)
by corbet (editor, #1)
[Link]
Posted Mar 7, 2003 19:35 UTC (Fri)
by torsten (guest, #4137)
[Link] (2 responses)
Try not to be so self-centered. Torsten
Posted Mar 8, 2003 14:49 UTC (Sat)
by jonth (guest, #4008)
[Link] (1 responses)
I just feel that LWN short-changed itself. This was a really interesting article, just the sort of high quality comment I have come to expect from the LWN front page. However, it wasn't earth-shatteringly important that everybody read it right now, and as such, should have been restricted to those who pay for LWN. If they had, then perhaps those people who don't pay would have read it in a week's time and thought, "hey, that would be worth the money" and subscribed to LWN.
cheers,
Jonth
Posted Mar 10, 2003 22:55 UTC (Mon)
by Odinson (guest, #1402)
[Link]
The world does need this kind of anaylsis to not dismiss Linux at a cheap IP rip off scheme, yesterday. There is already malcontent among the Linux .com GPL ignorant/unfortunate.
Posted Mar 8, 2003 5:56 UTC (Sat)
by komarek (guest, #7295)
[Link]
Note that we can't allow Mr. Corbet to actually live comfortably from our subscription money. If that happened, he might lose his artistic edge. -Paul
Posted Mar 8, 2003 16:32 UTC (Sat)
by jzb (editor, #7867)
[Link]
I'm sure that the remainder of the material for next week will continue to justify the subscription fee. Granted, I'm sure Jon's piece will be the most widely-read piece for next week's LWN (unless SCO does something even MORE bone-headed, if that's possible) but it isn't as if this is the only piece that will be in the weekly edition. Further, it shows that Jon respects the LWN readers enough to share this with everyone rather than holding it back in the hopes that it will drive a few more subscriptions. Instead, maybe it will remind the non-paying folks exactly what they're waiting to see on a regular basis and incite a few more people to subscribe.
Posted Mar 7, 2003 19:31 UTC (Fri)
by jlnance (guest, #4081)
[Link] (2 responses)
Without access to such equipment, facilities, sophisticated methods, concepts and coordinated know-how, it would be difficult or impossible for the Linux development community to create a grade of Linux adequate for enterprise use. Alan Cox wrote the first SMP version of Linux. Do you know who bought
Posted Mar 7, 2003 19:54 UTC (Fri)
by Ross (guest, #4065)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Mar 7, 2003 22:19 UTC (Fri)
by dank (guest, #1865)
[Link]
Posted Mar 7, 2003 19:33 UTC (Fri)
by stevenj (guest, #421)
[Link] (3 responses)
SCO: IBM, however, was not and is not in a position legally to open source any part of AIX that the Linux community considers valuable. Rather, IBM is obligated not to open source AIX because it contains SCOs confidential and proprietary UNIX operating system and, more importantly, the code that is essential for running mission critical applications (e.g., wire transfers) for large businesses.
So, it sounds like they are obliquely citing IBM's JFS and Omniprint (or any part of AIX that they open) as infringing code. I have no idea whether this claim has any merit, but it is nice to know that this is one possible angle of their attack.
Posted Mar 7, 2003 20:27 UTC (Fri)
by cpeterso (guest, #305)
[Link]
I thought that IBM's JFS port was taken from the OS/2 JFS, not the AIX JFS. So in that case, Linux JFS would be based on OS/2, not UNIX(TM). And is officially AIX consdiered UNIX(TM)?
Here is the answer from IBM's JFS FAQ: http://oss.software.ibm.com/developer/opensource/jfs/project/pub/faq.txt
Q1. What is the history of the source based use for the port of JFS for Linux.
A1. IBM introduced its UNIX file system as the Journaled File System (JFS)
with the initial release of AIX Version 3.1. This file system, now
called JFS1 on AIX, has been the premier file system for AIX over the
last 10 years and has been installed in millions of customer's AIX
systems. In 1995, work began to enhance the file system to be more
scalable and to support machines that had more than one
processor. Another goal was to have a more portable file system,
capable of running on multiple operating systems.
Historically, the JFS1 file system is very closely tied to the memory
manager of AIX. This design is typical of a closed-source operating
system, or a file system supporting only one operating system.
The new Journaled File System, on which the Linux port was based, was
first shipped in OS/2 Warp Server for eBusiness in April, 1999, after
several years of designing, coding, and testing. It also shipped with
OS/2 Warp Client in October, 2000. In parallel to this effort, some
of the JFS development team returned to the AIX Operating System
Development Group in 1997 and started to move this new JFS source base
to the AIX operating system. In May, 2001, a second journaled file
system, Enhanced Journaled File System (JFS2), was made available for
AIX 5L. In December of 1999, a snapshot of the original OS/2 JFS
source was taken and work was begun to port JFS to Linux.
Posted Mar 7, 2003 21:10 UTC (Fri)
by mosborne (guest, #10001)
[Link]
SCO cannot hold a propriety claim over *every* aspect of AIX anyway. That notion is completely absurd. AIX is a very different animal than any version of SCO that I have used and I started with SCO Xenix on 286's.
Posted Mar 9, 2003 2:43 UTC (Sun)
by davecb (subscriber, #1574)
[Link]
SCO: IBM, however, was not and is not in a position legally to "open source any part of AIX that the Linux community considers valuable."
Rather, IBM is obligated not to open source AIX because it contains SCO's confidential and proprietary UNIX operating system. To make this arguement work, SCO must prove that AIX, which
I understand was substantially derived from Mach and the BSDs,
included
SCO's Unix source code, and that it was not developed by CMU (the
initial Machians) or IBM.
Posted Mar 7, 2003 19:36 UTC (Fri)
by rknop (guest, #66)
[Link] (1 responses)
With vendors like these, who needs competitors? Sheesh. One of the most extreme cases of mass rectal defilade I've ever seen. -Rob
Posted May 21, 2003 4:24 UTC (Wed)
by amusedmis (guest, #11332)
[Link]
PC
Posted Mar 7, 2003 19:50 UTC (Fri)
by Ross (guest, #4065)
[Link] (4 responses)
On the first of those "better" claims: On the second: I can't say how much this bothers me. This is one of the most frivolous lawsuits I have ever seen. If SCO is just trying to get media attention I guess it worked because this is the most discussion of SCO I have seen -- ever.
Posted Mar 10, 2003 5:08 UTC (Mon)
by mattdm (subscriber, #18)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Mar 11, 2003 17:49 UTC (Tue)
by james (subscriber, #1325)
[Link] (1 responses)
Actually, Monterey was AIX with Unixware and Sequent technology, aimed at POWER / PowerPC, Itanium, and x86.
I understood that the POWER / PowerPC side of things was commercialised as AIX 5L. There was an IA64 version of AIX 5L, too: the Bull "freeware site" for quite some time had IA64 AIX binaries of some popular Open Source software. (Bull licences AIX for use on their Escala range of RS/6000 compatibles).
I never understood quite what happened to the x86 version (which was intended to be the successor to Unixware and Open Server). If we get to see an IBM riposte, we might find out.
James.
Posted Mar 14, 2003 11:56 UTC (Fri)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
IBM sales and marketing suddenly realised that every time they talked about AIX/x86, the customers changed the subject to linux. Every time they tried to interest a customer in "possibly buying AIX/x86" the customer said "what's the point - linux is there already". You can spend all the millions you like on advertising, but if everybody you talk to sniffs at what you're trying to sell, it's money down the drain. Cheers,
Posted Mar 14, 2003 5:37 UTC (Fri)
by MLKahnt (guest, #6642)
[Link]
SCO's role as the owner of Unix(tm) is about equivalent to that of Michael Jackson's wrt The Beatles - they may "own" the Intellectual Property rights, but they have done no creative development of that property. The Unix(tm) API (The System V Interface Definition - SVID) is the only "standard" of Unix(tm), to my recollection, which was further formalised (and taken out of the IP realm) by POSIX.
Posted Mar 7, 2003 19:52 UTC (Fri)
by deatrich (guest, #25)
[Link] (1 responses)
This case is extremely important, and I'm glad that LWN.net opened this article for all to read. It will be very interesting to hear the responses of major Linux kernel authors -- I'm sure that we won't have to wait long for them. I imagine that most Linux distros, and major commercial *nix vendors will be holding pow-wows. We will probably hear from them too.
There is some irony in examining SCO's web site over at netcraft:
what's that site running?
enjoy.
Posted Mar 7, 2003 22:58 UTC (Fri)
by sjohnston (guest, #10002)
[Link]
IBM and AIX makes some sense for SCO as compared to Solaris, HP-UX, Irix, etc because of past partnerships SCO has had wih IBM, Project Monterey being an example. Is there merit behind the case? Don't know. I can see that there is good cause to believe that SCO may have merit too their suit though.
Posted Mar 7, 2003 20:26 UTC (Fri)
by ctg (guest, #3459)
[Link]
Posted Mar 7, 2003 20:39 UTC (Fri)
by ber (subscriber, #2142)
[Link]
Again this shows that it is very important to have the FSF Europe
and the FSF who envisoned legal battles like this years before
and tried to build up some ways to resist.
The FSF always tried to maintain a legal maintainability like
through copyright assignments. In this light the new
Fiducary License
agreement worked out by the FSF Europe
seems to be more important than ever.
Disclosure: I'm a member of the FSF Europe's coreteam.
Posted Mar 7, 2003 22:40 UTC (Fri)
by alonzo (guest, #2770)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jun 6, 2003 2:32 UTC (Fri)
by ConradM (guest, #11669)
[Link]
By the way the RT PC had little in common with an Intel PC: just that
Posted Mar 7, 2003 23:12 UTC (Fri)
by dthurston (guest, #4603)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Mar 12, 2003 8:06 UTC (Wed)
by ekj (guest, #1524)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Mar 12, 2003 20:22 UTC (Wed)
by Peter (guest, #1127)
[Link]
Yeah - I would be one of those new fans except that I was already one. They've got the best pizza in my town, at least. Granted, this ain't Chicago or New York, but Papa John's kicks the crap out of Pizza Hut and Domino's. I didn't know about the SCO / Linux angle until now.
Posted Mar 8, 2003 1:17 UTC (Sat)
by mmarq (guest, #2332)
[Link]
Was and still is IBM indespensable for Linux growth and fitness?? The answer only has to be NO. As a user i personaly thank IBM for any contributition that have maid my life easyer, but i also have to thank all the other individuals and entreprises ( including eventualy SCO/Caldera) because i think none deserves more respect or has more merits than others. " The idea that IBM or HP... are going to save Linux from M$, is bad from any angle you watch... it got to stand up by itself or no one is going to make it run" I hope that after this ordeal that < It's "directed mutation" on a microscopic level> got just a little more global vision.
Posted Mar 8, 2003 6:03 UTC (Sat)
by komarek (guest, #7295)
[Link] (4 responses)
*) IBM looks good saving the community from SCO's specious claims -Paul Komarek
Posted Mar 9, 2003 6:32 UTC (Sun)
by garsun (guest, #10023)
[Link]
Wouldn't SCO/Caldera stand to profit by that?
Posted Mar 10, 2003 12:29 UTC (Mon)
by fnesper (guest, #10042)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Mar 10, 2003 13:56 UTC (Mon)
by mrlee (guest, #6760)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Mar 11, 2003 9:25 UTC (Tue)
by fnesper (guest, #10042)
[Link]
Posted Mar 9, 2003 16:33 UTC (Sun)
by pointwood (guest, #2814)
[Link]
Well, although I really don't like SCO and this complaint of theirs, IBM is certainly not at nice company either! Here is a quote: The quote is from this site. As all sane persons know, Linux and software patents aren't exactly the best combination. Basically, I don't feel that sorry for IBM as long as their are pro software patents. If they wanted to, they could probably do exactly the same thing today as SCO has done and their claims would probably also have a much better chance of victory in a court than SCO's claims.
Posted Mar 10, 2003 20:19 UTC (Mon)
by denials (subscriber, #3413)
[Link] (1 responses)
Stephenson, Neal. In the Beginning was the Command Line. http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html. 1999. Clearly, however, by not citing Neal Stephenson's original intellectual property on the operating-system-as-vehicle analogy in their case against IBM, SCO has placed themselves in a precarious legal position.
Posted Mar 11, 2003 9:39 UTC (Tue)
by fnesper (guest, #10042)
[Link]
I gues it would be trucks. Made to hurl large workloads across the road, nobody but companies use them, sure there are a few people that own their own trucks, but these are mostly antiques. The different truck manufactures parts does not fit together, some does but you have to take the part totally apart and puts it together again on the other manufactures truck. The trailors that the trucks pull, are normally many many times more expensive than the trucks. The trucks are expensive, but if you buy a piece of road, you usually get the a truck for free.
Posted Mar 13, 2003 20:37 UTC (Thu)
by Boot (guest, #10124)
[Link]
If the case gets fought and SCO win, Linux is dead as far as being an M$ competitor. Whatever happens, the seed has been implanted that says that, after all the posturing, Linux isn't *really* as open source as its proponents claim, and, oh!, the news starts to bite just as Win2003 (or whatever) starts being real.
Nice article, but I'm not very happy that "This article has been released without the usual subscription delay." Guys, what's the point of me paying you money for a premium service on the grounds that I get the important stuff now, only for the _really_ important stuff to be given out early anyway?A complaint about the look at the SCO complaint
We've been running with subscriptions for almost six months now, and this is the first article we have released in this way over that time. I expect it will be a while before we do it again. I'm sorry you didn't like it, rest assured that it doesn't indicate a change in strategy on our part.
A complaint about the look at the SCO complaint
If you don't find value in what you have paid for, don't pay, or reduce your subscription level. Personally, I find this article of tremendous value. That the information may benefit a thousand other people, only multiplies my $10 monthly investment by a factor of 1000. I'd say that is a better return on investment than most.A complaint about the look at the SCO complaint
Sorry, I am not being self centred. Did I say I was unhappy about paying for the content? No. I said that I was unhappy that it was sent out to all the people who don't support LWN.
A complaint about the look at the SCO complaint
You have been looking at the unfounded Linux bashing on the Microsoft stock boards then. A complaint about the look at the SCO complaint
Personally, I view my subscription as a way to keep Mr. Corbet alive long enough to write articles. I don't care much who as access to these articles, so long as I'm included and so long as they keep coming.A complaint about the look at the SCO complaint
I think Jon did the right thing. This was too important to a) hold until next Wednesday for subscribers and b) hold until the following week for non-subscribers. A complaint about the look at the SCO complaint
I Love this:A look at the SCO complaint
Alan the hardware? It was Caldera :-)
I thought it was David Miller and that the first SMP Linux was on SPARC. Am I remembering incorrectly?
A look at the SCO complaint
This is delicious.
A message posted on Nov 2, 1995 backs this up, saying:
"See http://www.linux.org.uk/SMP/title.html for details on this project.
Caldera simply bought Alan some SMP hardware to help get the project off
the ground."
First Linux SMP work was sponsored by Caldera
You write:
A look at the SCO complaint
SCO has not pointed out a single line of code which, it claims, is derived from the Unix source. One would assume that will change during the trial phase, if this case gets that far.
That's not entirely the case. Their filing specifically cites IBM's statement:
IBM: Were willing to open source any part of AIX that the Linux community considers valuable. We have open-sourced the journal filesystem, print driver for the Omniprint. AIX is 1.5 million lines of code. If we dump that on the open source community then are people going to understand it? Youre better off taking bits and pieces and the expertise that we bring along with it. We have made a conscious decision to keep contributing.
it sounds like they are obliquely citing IBM's JFS and Omniprint (or any part of AIX that they open) as infringing code.
A look at the SCO complaint
Omniprint came from OS/2, not AIX. Also, the jfs in linux also was ported from the OS/2 jfs codebase, not the AIX codebase. The jfs in AIX 5.x is the same codebase that is now in Linux. So, I don't think the SCO claims hold any water here. A look at the SCO complaint
AIX is derived from Mach
Who needs Microsoft when you have SCO?FUD
This feels a lot like when Microsoft had Netscape bought by AOL.....FUD
I love a good conspiracy theory.
"Some claims, though, have more potential merit, Eunice said. One is thatFrom the news.com article
creating Unix on Intel processors needed expertise that SCO developed but
IBM lacked, Eunice said. Another claim is that it would have been
impossible for IBM to re-create versions of SCO libraries without SCO's
actual code."
Umm... so how did FreeBSD happen? How did Solaris x86 happen? Did they "steal" SCO secrets? How is it that the original "port" of Linux was for Intel? How could IBM not have the knowledge when they created the IBM PC?
So how did Linux implement compatability with native binaries on Alpha, SPARC, MIPS, etc.? How was WINE created? Is SCO aware of the existance of POSIX andthe relative simplicity of the Unix API?
The even more funny part about of that claim is the part where they say IBM gained this elusive and mystical Unix-on-Intel knowledge while working with SCO on Monterey -- which was, of course, Itanium, and not really relevant to x86 Intel at all.
From the news.com article
What Monterey actually was
The even more funny part about of that claim is the part where they say IBM gained this elusive and mystical Unix-on-Intel knowledge while working with SCO on Monterey -- which was, of course, Itanium, and not really relevant to x86 Intel at all.
What happened to Monterey x86?What Monterey actually was
Wol
Psst - Solaris is the Sun version of Unix arising from the work of Sun and AT&T Bell Labs that became SVR4 (which was supposed to unify BSD and SVR3 code), and led to the OSF counter-project. Ironically, iirc, at one point AIX was targetted as being some key parts of OSF o/s, partly because of design, and partly because of the significant lack of AT&T code, due to the substantively different underlying design of AIX. That difference meant that there was considerably less AT&T code that would need replacement.From the news.com article
Thanks for the analysis and summary. This is one of those moments the community has been waiting for (not in a happy sense) -- a court challenge of some kind that drags Linux into the muck of licensing, trademark, and proprietary software disputes.
A look at the SCO complaint
Its really not ironic. The SCO Group is Caldera renamed... Of course they're running linux servers. If you check out some of their other pages you'll also see UnixWare and OpenServer running different areas.A look at the SCO complaint
You missed the slur on the GNU project aswell...
A look at the SCO complaint
The primary purpose of the GNU organization is to create free software
based on valuable commercial software.
.
For the point of the article I think that the distinction between
a "full operating" system and a kernel should be made.
Actually the GNU/Linux operating system are much more than
the kernel. SCO seems to mostly complain about the kernel.
(I'm not completely sure.)
Is it about the kernel or the full operating system?
Who's next? HP, SGI, Sun? They've all benefitted/contributed to/A look at the SCO complaint
from Linux. SCO'll be claiming next that
OpenOffice was derived from 'ed'!! Heck, There's probably
some Linux code in OpenServer and UnixWare! This could
get very circuitous. I wonder if M$ paid off SCO
for UNIX services for WinXX? Anyway, I thought that AIX was derived
from Mach (OSF) and that Mach was derived from BSD.
(it's been too long... I've forgotten all that stuff now.(
although, what I remember of early AIX is that it was
very ATT system V, Release III like (my mind is going...
got to get (my body)out of here!)))
Just say NO to SCO!!
There are (or were) more than one "AIX" source bases... In 84-86 I AIX genesis
worked at IBM on the first one. It was an IBM-enhanced port by
Interactive Systems Corporation of ATT System V to a virtual machine
(VRM) on the RT PC. That would be the original System V,
sometimes referred to as release zero, back when the man pages
were a still a single volume - Jan 1983 is the date on mine. SVR2
stuff got pulled in later.
there was an 80286 coprocessor option, and it had PC compatible 8
and 16 bit I/O slots... beyond that it was simply the first RISC ala IBM
architecture out the door - a single chip big endian commercialization
of IBM Research's "801".
Sorry, what is the Great Papa John's Pizza Caper?Papa John's Pizza caper?
Dunno what that is. But if they a) Make pizzas in some art or form, and b) pissoff SCO, it seems to me they just earned themselves a rough million new fans. (I'm assuming only a small part of Linux users know/care about these things.)
Papa John's Pizza caper?
Papa John's Pizza caper?
Dunno what that is. But if they a) Make pizzas in some art or form, and b) pissoff SCO, it seems to me they just earned themselves a rough million new fans.
I wish IBM well in this one!...A look at the SCO complaint
But even if IBM gets guilty in some form, the big question is?
SCO as shown a total lack of consideration for open-source developers, but it also is about to demonstrate that Linux has to stay away, as far as possible, from any possible "to much" corporate influence and control.
Maybe this is some kind of reverse-psychology trick. Perhaps IBM paid SCO a lot of money to commit suicide this way, so that (pick your favorites)A look at the SCO complaint
*) Evidence useful in future defence of GNU/Linux and/or Linux is recorded in a court case
*) A public relations exercise to finally educate the press about where Linux and GNU/Linux came from
Perhaps the whole thing is a brilliant maneuver to establish, in the public eye, linux's parity with the enterprise quality Unix's...A look at the SCO complaint
...and also establish SCO/Caldera's legitimacy in the evolution of Unix...
Public controversy is often very cost effective marketing.
Well, the scary part for BIG Blue is the 'revoke license of AIX in 100 days'A look at the SCO complaint
part. Not so much the risk of it happening, but the fact that customers might
chose not to buy IBM hardware due to that risk. Just to get that threat out
of the way, would be worth the 30M$ that SCO costs.
They could chose Linux instead of AIX on IBM hardware ;-)
A look at the SCO complaint
He he, been hearing that a couple of times lately.A look at the SCO complaint
But the software to run on Linux on pSeries hardware isn't there yet.
And to be honest, neither is Linux, the highend Unix hardware offers
a lot of things, that just aren't there on IA32 or most IA64 boxes. And Linux doesn't have the code to use these things, like AIX does. I believe it _will_ come over the next years, but there are lot of things like bootlist manipulation, dynamic cpu deallocation, first failure data capture, diagnostics, workload manger, dynamic and static logical partitioning etc etc.
Re: A look at the SCO complaint
IBM's patent department is actively lobbying Europe to legalise software patents. They have invested millions in fighting example cases to leading European lawcourts such as the EPO's Technical Boards of Appeal and the German Federal Court in order to soften and eventually remove European restrictions on patenting software. They have also threatened European politicians that IBM might close down local facilities if software patents are not legalised in Europe. IBM has also prevented the US government from conducting studies on the value of software patents for the national economy. In the wake of the Opensource hype, IBM's rhetoric has become relatively moderate, but nonetheless it is supported by real pressure. IBM has acquired approximately 1000 European software patents whose legal status is currently unclear. Given the great number of software patents in IBM's hands, IBM is one of the few software companies who may have a genuine interest in software patentability. Once software patents become assertable in Europe, an IBM tax of several hundered million EUR may be levied on European software companies.
If SCO is going to use an analogy of Linux as a bicycle and UNIX as a luxury car, they had better tread carefully: In 1999 Neal Stephenson developed a similar analogy in In the Beginning was the Command Line, a brief book available for free online that describes the differences in the product philosophies of operating system developers:
Bicycles, luxury cars... and tanks!
Oddly enough, UNIX isn't even mentioned; I suppose Neal was talking about consumer-oriented operatin systems.
These are not old-fashioned, cast-iron Soviet tanks; these are more like the M1 tanks of the U.S. Army, made of space-age materials and jammed with sophisticated technology from one end to the other. But they are better than Army tanks. They've been modified in such a way that they never, ever break down, are light and maneuverable enough to use on ordinary streets, and use no more fuel than a subcompact car. These tanks are being cranked out, on the spot, at a terrific pace, and a vast number of them are lined up along the edge of the road with keys in the ignition. Anyone who wants can simply climb into one and drive it away for free.
Hmm.. UNIX.Bicycles, luxury cars... and tanks!
Am I just being paranoid seeing the hidden M$ agenda in this?Hidden hand?
If SCO gets bought out by IBM, the UL consortium is seen as compromised.
If IBM wins a quarter of UL is dead.