SCO can not win "SCO vs Linux" case. Seriously. [LWN.net]

SCO can not win "SCO vs Linux" case. Seriously.

Posted Jul 4, 2003 15:52 UTC (Fri) by tjc (guest, #137)
In reply to: SCO can not win "SCO vs Linux" case. Seriously. by beejaybee
Parent article: SCO can not win "SCO vs Linux" case. Seriously.

The obvious pre-emptive solution is to switch to Debian, which is least likely to be affected least by court action.

Debian would be adversely affected as well, albeit in an indirect way.

A majority of Linux development is done by individuals who are employeed full time by companies such as Red Hat, SuSE, IBM, etc. In a senerio where it becomes illegal to distribute Linux, the most likely outcome is IBM would cease Linux development and Red Hat and SuSE would go out of business.

I agree that Debian would be the least affected in this senario (and I wouldn't even have to switch, since I'm already using it ;-), but the pace of development would slow down significantly. And of course Linux would become a non-player in the "enterprise" market overnight, which would adversely affect it's image as a "real" OS.

On the other hand, Linux is getting close to Solaris in sophistication (and in many cases passed Solaris, if you consider simplicity to be a virtue), so there isn't that far to go anyway.

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