What SCO Wants, SCO Gets (Forbes) [LWN.net]

What SCO Wants, SCO Gets (Forbes)

Posted Jun 19, 2003 4:32 UTC (Thu) by error27 (subscriber, #8346)
In reply to: What SCO Wants, SCO Gets (Forbes) by skybunny
Parent article: What SCO Wants, SCO Gets (Forbes)

I do agree that we should fight SCO's FUD and if it should come to trial that we should fight them in the court room. On the other hand, it's silly to take SCO too seriously.

A judge may say: "You know, I agree with SCO's interpretation of their patents.

There are no patents involved only contracts and trade secrets. As I read the amendments to the contracts, it says that IBM owns derivative works except for the actual AT&T code. The contracts also say that IBM cannot be held liable for discussing trade secrets if the secrets have already become widely known from other sources. IBM has a number of other strong arguments that could be made.

"I'm instating an injunction right now. No selling AIX.

There are a couple reasons why this couldn't happen:
1) SCO would have to prove that an injunction is the only way it could protect itself, and that it wouldn't be enough for IBM to just pay damages.
2) SCO would have to have enough money to pay for damages the injunction would cause to IBM if SCO lost. SCO doesn't have enough money to do that.

"And if SCO wishes to bar sales and distribution of Linux, I'm open to that idea too."

That would have to be a separate lawsuit; one which SCO would certainly lose. SCO is currently distributing Linux from their website under the GPL and the GPL license cannot be revoked. Anyways, Linux is at the center of a multi billion dollar industry and a trial to put an end to it would go all the way to the Supreme Court.

SCO's behavior is bizarre and seemingly irrational. Serious companies act like IBM and do not talk about upcoming lawsuits. SCO has tried to release new press releases every day. All the interviews can be used as evidence. For example, in one interview Darl McBride was ask why he did not sue earlier. He responded that before IBM became involved there was no one with deep enough pockets to make it worth the effort. In another interview he said that they would not show the infringing kernel code because the developers would just remove it and he didn't want that. It's apparent that they are not serious about winning, so one has to wonder what their true motivation is.

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