McBride's volley of folly

McBride's volley of folly

Posted Aug 20, 2003 8:43 UTC (Wed) by rjamestaylor (guest, #339)
In reply to: Why SCO won't show the code by gups
Parent article: Why SCO won't show the code

He won't care about these revelations. Instead of trying to come up with more direct copying, he'll attack in three directions:

1) Eternal derivatives
Using the answer that since UNIX was taught in university Comp-Sci of course commonly known code and methods will show up in Linux, he'll argue that all the knowledge required to create a modern OS came from UNIX (it didn't) and therefore the eternal derivatives clause of the AT&T license prevails. This will be difficult to prove, but it must be preferable to him than just selling the office furniture and calling it quits.

2) GPL/BSD license nullification: targeting Caldera
He isn't trying to nullify the GPL to screw Linus, Alan, et al, but rather to screw Caldera, that is, to nullify Caldera's previous management's action of releasing Unix 1-7 to the public under the BSD-style and GPL-style licenses. Once he revokes that he'll use his Eternal derivatives theory to claim the entire Linux-base has his own. (This is also why they have no trouble dissing the GPL in the morning and announcing SVR6 with major features provided under GPL, MPL, APL, BSD, et al, licensing -- since it builds on UNIX, it's theirs, thanks for the free work now give-it-to-ME!).

3) Contractual breaches with UNIX licensees
They're going to nail SGI. We gave them that little nibblet through our research. But they will continue to hammer away on the contractual issues, which I don't believe but I have to admit not understanding the intracacies of contract law.

I'm not on McBride's side (in fact I'm TheOneToWhomMyRefers on Yahoo! Finance [Hi, Walter]). I don't think he will prevail. I also don't think he'll be working in technology once this is over -- IOWs, he's burnt the bridges, put up the walls, and peed in the pool. This is larger than SCOX vs IBM. This is the battle for the legitimacy of Open and Free software but also proprietary software built using common techniques and learned practices. If SCOX prevails then the most innovative technologies will belong to a company that gave up innovation for litigation to stave off corporate death. I expect even Microsoft to come around and oppose SCOX, at least on point #1.

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