Microsoft Won't Sue Linux Users, Company Exec Says (InformationWeek) [LWN.net]

Microsoft Won't Sue Linux Users, Company Exec Says (InformationWeek)

Posted May 16, 2007 5:42 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333)
In reply to: Microsoft Won't Sue Linux Users, Company Exec Says (InformationWeek) by bk
Parent article: Microsoft Won't Sue Linux Users, Company Exec Says (InformationWeek)

I don't think so.

SCO got completely screwed over by IBM for something only tangentially related to Linux.

SCO, IBM, and some other players (Intel, Sequent, etc) got together and decided that Unix was to fractured. So their solution was to standardize Unix around two operating systems.. AIX for high-end POWER systems and SCO's Unix for x86 stuff. They would take huge pains to make sure that applications were going to be completely portable between both systems.

This was called 'Project Montery', and it was started in 1998.

As you can imagine this took significant resources out of SCO. As a result they never had a chance to modernize their Unix variant until many many years later.

Meanwhile you have project Trillian in 1999. Which was a effort to port Linux to the IA-64 platform and make it suitable for more higher end stuff. Trillian delivered working code in 2001 and is what lead to the 2.6 kernel. With 2.4 kernel you could maybe scale to 8 proccessors, and get some performance improvement. Anything beyond that and you'd loose performance. With 2.6 they eliminated the major bottlenecks and now Linux scales easily to 256 or so proccessors and then to thousands of proccessors with relatively minor effort.

Needless to say with Linux around Montery was pointless. IBM abandoned it after selling only 32 licenses.

IBM would have to pay royalties to SCO for Montery. IBM doesn't have to pay royalties for Linux.

From SCO's perspective IBM basicly anniliated them. So this stuff was a pitifull attempt to try to get IBM back and maybe get them to start paying royalties or at least get some money or be bought out so they can retire rich.

Eventually it morphed into Linux-Unix 'IP' issues when SCO figured it didn't have a leg to stand on. It was a bit of a fishing trip.

I think that Microsoft through some money at SCO simply for the amusement of it. Maybe make Unix/Linux look all litigious and stupid and make it easier for them to convince users to stay with Windows.

But I don't think it was a serious attempt to 'kill linux' or anything like that.

Neither is this. It's just Microsoft trying to create the illusion that Linux isn't Free.

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Microsoft Won't Sue Linux Users, Company Exec Says (InformationWeek)

Posted May 16, 2007 5:59 UTC (Wed) by Brotherred (guest, #45141) [Link] (1 responses)

Well I am not upset like I normally am over stuff like this. Clear at least to me is the SCO deal has taught me some thing. I'll just be blunt. I actually would like to see a patent war between IBM the biggest patent holder in the world teamed up with all of the other FOSS companies (Minus Novel?) against Microsoft.

SCO episode III. I keep saying it and I just can't wait to see it.

Yes, but...

Posted May 16, 2007 7:52 UTC (Wed) by pr1268 (guest, #24648) [Link]

Looking at this scenario from an overall bigger perspective, a patent war fought in the courtroom would spell disaster for all the participants. It would drain considerable resources from all parties, leaving companies little (if any) to pursue research & development and marketing new products. Computer-using consumers would be the losers.

I do feel that Microsoft created an ugly situation by making the patent violation claim the other day, and they only exacerbated the whole thing by "promising" not to sue various Linux-using companies (to assuage various fears that they actually could sue).

If Microsoft wants to strike licensing deals (as the InformationWeek article mentions), then how come they didn't do so years ago? Some of these "infringed" patents must certainly date back to at least 1998 or so. I know that question borders on rhetorical, but how come just now Microsoft wants to cry foul? Seems to me they're a day late and a dollar short.

Microsoft Won't Sue Linux Users, Company Exec Says (InformationWeek)

Posted May 16, 2007 8:33 UTC (Wed) by dark (guest, #8483) [Link]

Hmm, but why would Caldera feel any resentment over what happened to SCO?
Remember, the company called "The SCO Group" today is not the company
called SCO (Santa Cruz Operation) that was involved in Project Monterey.

Microsoft Won't Sue Linux Users, Company Exec Says (InformationWeek)

Posted May 16, 2007 13:51 UTC (Wed) by mingo (subscriber, #31122) [Link]

With 2.4 kernel you could maybe scale to 8 proccessors, and get some performance improvement. Anything beyond that and you'd loose performance.

Ugh, that statement is quite wrong and i've got to correct it. Linux 2.0 (the first SMP capable Linux kernel, released 11 years ago in 1996) was successfully booted on a 36-CPU system back then. Scalability sucked but it got improved gradually in 2.2, 2.4 and 2.6.

With Linux 2.4 you could scale to well over 8 processors with user-space load - and with specific areas of bottlenecks for kernel-bound workloads. Note that most stuff users run is _user-space code_. So the 2.4 Linux kernel, for all practical purposes, was quite useful up to 64 CPUs or so. If you threw kernel-intense benchmarks at it you'd see bottlenecks, but if you used it to do things like calculations then it would scale quite linearly.

And also note that what matters is the hardware that is commonly available. Linux gradually evolved its SMP code in the x86 space, and as x86 grew larger and larger, so did Linux follow it. The largest Linux systems right now run 4096 CPUs (in the same system image - i.e. not clusters), and such systems simply were not mainstream-available 5 or 10 years ago.

Microsoft Won't Sue Linux Users, Company Exec Says (InformationWeek)

Posted May 16, 2007 14:50 UTC (Wed) by AJWM (guest, #15888) [Link]

You're confusing SCO-Santa Cruz with SCO-Caldera. Easily done, that's one reason that the McBride Caldera changed their name to SCO ("The SCO Group") after purchasing Santa Cruz's Unix business (and the Santa Cruz Operation renamed themselves to Tarantella).

The current SCO (SCOG nee Caldera) had NOTHING to do with the Monterey project, they are merely a successor-in-interest to that part of Santa Cruz's Unix business that they bought. To that degree, it was "damaged goods" when they bought it and Caldera knew or should have known that. They've got no legitimate beef with IBM over that.