LWN.net Logo

Interview: SCO's Darl McBride and Chris Sontag (CRN)

Interview: SCO's Darl McBride and Chris Sontag (CRN)

Posted Nov 19, 2003 3:57 UTC (Wed) by ccchips (guest, #3222)
Parent article: Interview: SCO's Darl McBride and Chris Sontag (CRN)

Did you read that bit about Samba?

What did SCO contribute to anything, under these jackals?


(Log in to post comments)

Interview: SCO's Darl McBride and Chris Sontag (CRN)

Posted Nov 19, 2003 4:31 UTC (Wed) by havoc (guest, #2261) [Link]

The part I like about this whole thing is that IF SCO can actually pull this off and start getting a fee each time Linux is sold, Linux is instantly dead. The BSD folks may not welcome us, but most of us will shed Linux like a pair of sweaty gym socks and embrace BSD. I'm sure most of Madrake, SUSE, Red Hat and company will make the transition fast enough to not go out of business.

For once in my life, I can't lose!

... and it's refreshing to know that SCO can't win.

Interview: SCO's Darl McBride and Chris Sontag (CRN)

Posted Nov 19, 2003 5:00 UTC (Wed) by mattdm (guest, #18) [Link]

Did you see the cute bit in eweek where SCO says they're going to go after BSD too?

Interview: SCO's Darl McBride and Chris Sontag (CRN)

Posted Nov 19, 2003 6:35 UTC (Wed) by emkey (guest, #144) [Link]

Right. That court case was already fought and lost a decade ago. Not that reality seems to faze these guys any.

Interview: SCO's Darl McBride and Chris Sontag (CRN)

Posted Nov 19, 2003 6:40 UTC (Wed) by emkey (guest, #144) [Link]

And if SCO can reopen that case then so can Berkeley. And Berkely/UC had AT&T dead to rights. And since SCO is essentially AT&T for the purposes of such a case...

Interview: SCO's Darl McBride and Chris Sontag (CRN)

Posted Nov 19, 2003 9:01 UTC (Wed) by rankincj (subscriber, #4865) [Link]

Are they though? It sounded to me like they were claiming to have found BSD code in Linux that didn't have the correct BSD headers. Which would be trivial to fix, mind...

Would I be correct in thinking that people checked this possibility out months ago?

Switching to BSD

Posted Nov 19, 2003 5:01 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

I agree that SCO's proposed Linux tax would kill the system outright. But don't forget that SCO has made menacing noises toward BSD before, and the new talk of revisiting the USL/BSDI settlement has brought that issue up again. I don't believe for a second that, should SCO somehow manage to kill Linux, it would leave BSD alone.

Interview: SCO's Darl McBride and Chris Sontag (CRN)

Posted Nov 19, 2003 8:40 UTC (Wed) by janpla (guest, #11093) [Link]

"IF SCO can actually pull this off and start getting a fee each time Linux is sold, Linux is instantly dead"

Hmm, don't be absurd. I can't judge whether it is possible for SCO to win this sort obviously fraudulent case in the absurd and corrupt American court system, but so what?

For one thing, most of the important parts of UNIX are not part of whatever SCO try to convince they believe is their property: Samba, X, the filesystems and indeed most of the tools. What they would be left with is a bare bones bits-and pieces-system with no practical use; well I suppose they could try to sell it with the things they actually own in the SCO UNIX. But how about all the third party SW producers like Oracle, IBM, ... SCO have made themselves hugely unpopular with everybody, so is it reasonable to expect that SCO will have an easy time attracting applications to their system?

Another thing - will people in the rest of the world not just shrug their shoulders and get on with life? Will China, Brazil, Russia, europe etc etc hang their heads and say: 'Wow, a corrupt American court has rules that SCO own Linux, so now we have to pay huge amounts of money to them'? Who will force them?

The only result would be that Linux would continue being developed elsewhere. As for OSS - it doesn't depend on UNIX, really; it runs equally well on a number of other systems.

Interview: SCO's Darl McBride and Chris Sontag (CRN)

Posted Nov 19, 2003 16:46 UTC (Wed) by mwilck (guest, #1966) [Link]

Don't underestimate the threat. However absurd and corrupt you think the American court system is, people in the world respect it because it is dangerous not to do so. Most people want to be able to visit the U.S. without being arrested, for example. Let alone companies - you'll find but a few who will openly violate U.S. court decisions, because most businessmen want to do business with U.S. companies/customers.

This fight is important.

Posted Nov 19, 2003 20:07 UTC (Wed) by jre (guest, #2807) [Link]

It is intellectually lazy to say that SCO may win in the "absurd and corrupt American court system, but so what?"
Does it make a difference whether or not SCO has a valid legal argument, and whether or not SCO's case will be tried fairly in the US courts? You bet it does!
We rely on the fundamental integrity of the courts for our protection. That is why Richard Stallman created the GPL in the first place, and why the FSF spends so much time defending it. If we just cynically say "Oh, well, the American courts are absurd and corrupt, so it doesn't make any difference what happens there" we throw away any hope of creating something enduring.

If the American courts are truly absurd and corrupt, then what are the consequences?
a) It does not matter whether SCO is right or wrong.
b) Eben Moglen's reasoned defense of the GPL was an empty exercise, and
c) The folks at Groklaw are wasting their time.

I, for one, do not believe any of the above are true.

Interview: SCO's Darl McBride and Chris Sontag (CRN)

Posted Nov 19, 2003 10:43 UTC (Wed) by davidl (guest, #12156) [Link]

The BSD v AT & T case is a precedent that will be referred to in any legal action. So far, all SCO has come up with is some very old code that has long since been released under a BSD license, and is perfectly legal to use, and some flimsy claim to stuff like JFS which they never had anything to do with. On this basis there is no chance. Come on, when is the legal action going to start?!

Interview: SCO's Darl McBride and Chris Sontag (CRN)

Posted Nov 19, 2003 10:57 UTC (Wed) by djabsolut (guest, #12799) [Link]

CRN: [...] It's clear the open source crowd needs no encouragement to tell their side of the story.
 
What amazes is that the "media" are continuing to be so willing to listen to SCO and publish their "views" (read: drivel). The above comment from CRN notwithstanding, the ratio of "open source crowd" to SCO centered news pieces is ridiculously low. It would be nice to see OSDL, OSI or even IBM do a counter-attack in the media space - at the very least this will cause the so called journalists, next time they do a piece of SCO, to ask the necessarily pointed questions that SCO is always shying/worming away from. The more often SCO evades the questions, the more the media folks are going to see that SCO is using them.

Interview: SCO's Darl McBride and Chris Sontag (CRN)

Posted Nov 19, 2003 16:30 UTC (Wed) by sandy_pond (guest, #9734) [Link]

Simple ... just follow the money

Interview: SCO's Darl McBride and Chris Sontag (CRN)

Posted Nov 19, 2003 16:35 UTC (Wed) by sandy_pond (guest, #9734) [Link]

Sorry to reply to my own post but remember CRN was a "Gold Sponsor" of "SCO Forum 2003". I no longer read their sites.

Interview: SCO's Darl McBride and Chris Sontag (CRN)

Posted Nov 19, 2003 16:38 UTC (Wed) by djabsolut (guest, #12799) [Link]

An interesting comment on Groklaw about the current state of journalism

Copyright © 2013, Eklektix, Inc.
Comments and public postings are copyrighted by their creators.
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds