Screw Sun

Screw Sun

Posted Aug 2, 2003 19:58 UTC (Sat) by fx (guest, #12077)
In reply to: Screw Sun by walterbyrd
Parent article: Sun Sees Road To Prosperity Paved With Its Own Products (TechWeb)

So SUN has got SCO options. That's pretty smart thinking from McNealy. Apparently SCO owns a significant amount of UNIX copyrights. SCO can use these rights as a lever to make everybody's life miserable: SUN, IBM, HP, SGI and others all depend on SCO for these licenses. By becoming a (potential) SCO shareholder SCO's relative power over SUN decreases and SUN's power over the others increases. You could describe that as SUN and SCO being in bed. So what? Anything wrong with that? IMHO SUN was probably first to realise SCO was starting to capitalize on it's UNIX copyrights and was the first company to make the right move.
As UNIX is SUN's core business they want to keep as many options open as possible, so when SCO introduced a new UNIX licensing scheme earlier this year, SUN simply paid. Anything wrong with that?
When SCO went after IBM, McNealy obviously had a laugh. He moved quickly to take advantage of the situation by announcing SUN had all the appropriate licenses. That's not very nice, but hey, you don't survive two decades in IT just by being a nice guy.
Try to look at it this way. Right now there are two kinds of companies considering Linux: those who don't care about the SCO mess, and those who do care and might refrain from using Linux because of legal issues (no matter how ridiculous SCO's claims are). For those who don't care, nothing changes. Those who do have some concerns can now buy Linux systems from SUN and they don't need to worry about anything. So, looking at it this way, SUN is actually doing the Linux community another favour.
I'm not denying McNealy doesn't like Linux. Apparently the man has a decapitated penguin in his office. On the other hand market forces can't be ignored forever and SUN is slowly moving towards Linux.

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