Developers Back IBM in Unix Suit (Wired) [LWN.net]

Here's Wired's take on the SCO vs. IBM suit. "Open-source programmers are rallying behind IBM, and say SCO's lawsuit is "suicidal" and "an insult to open-source programmers.""

to post comments

UnitedLinux -> UntiedLinux (if they're smart)

Posted Mar 7, 2003 21:39 UTC (Fri) by cr (guest, #3685) [Link] (6 responses)

Considering the still-building tsunami of community revulsion over the SCO extortion attempt, the other members of UnitedLinux have little time in which to cast off from SCO/Caldera before they're dragged under along with them. How likely are businesses to buy into a distribution that could be attacked and gutted from within and rendered not just unsupported but unavailable at any time, by a member who's proven that they turn cannibal when the hunting's poor?

UnitedLinux -> UntiedLinux (if they're smart)

Posted Mar 8, 2003 1:27 UTC (Sat) by NerdlyMcGeek (guest, #8453) [Link] (4 responses)

UNITED LINUX IS A DEAD AND NOW BANKRUPT IDEA...

IT IS TIME TO FORCE ALL IN THE COMMUNITY TO STAND AND BE COUNTED...

LET NO UNITED LINUX OR SCO SUPPORTER REMAIN STANDING!!

THIS IS WAR!

UnitedLinux -> UntiedLinux (if they're smart)

Posted Mar 8, 2003 1:37 UTC (Sat) by proski (guest, #104) [Link] (3 responses)

This is not Slashdot. Please don't write in all capitals. If you can support your opinion about United Linux by arguments, please do so.

UnitedLinux -> UntiedLinux (if they're smart)

Posted Mar 8, 2003 1:42 UTC (Sat) by NerdlyMcGeek (guest, #8453) [Link] (2 responses)

The vile creature proski excreted:

This is not Slashdot. Please don't write in all capitals. If you can support your opinion about United Linux by arguments, please do so.

UP YOURS SCO-BLOWER

UnitedLinux -> UntiedLinux (if they're smart)

Posted Mar 8, 2003 6:16 UTC (Sat) by foo@share-foo.com (guest, #7940) [Link] (1 responses)

(#24861 by NerdlyMcGeek in response to UnitedLinux -> UntiedLinux (if
they're smart).)

Modded +5 Funny.

-foo

Jean Valjean

Posted Mar 10, 2003 14:07 UTC (Mon) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link]

That's an anagram of 24681! But there is no article 24681,
how come? Was that the one about ESR which was 'withdrawn'?

UnitedLinux -> UntiedLinux (if they're smart)

Posted Mar 10, 2003 9:50 UTC (Mon) by reinout (guest, #9390) [Link]

IBM has a lot of ties with SuSE, probably the biggest distribution in UnitedLinux. So
both sides of the argument are present in UnitedLinux...

I'm suspecting the other three are starting to push SCO out the door. On the other
hand, they liked SCO's business contacts and US marketing network. Perhaps
IBM could offer their network as a drop-in replacement for SCO's?

Reinout

fatal flaw in sco's argument

Posted Mar 8, 2003 1:33 UTC (Sat) by einstein (subscriber, #2052) [Link]

I remember reading a comparison between sco and slackware back in 1995 - I think it was in infoworld. Their testing showed that slackware was faster, easier to manage and more featureful than the $2600 sco unix -

Back in 1995, IBM had zero interest in linux - IBM's linux moves didn't happen until what, 1998-1999 or so?

If slackware was already considered superior to sco, the argument that only IBM's help could bring linux up to sco's level is very weak.

Developers Back IBM in Unix Suit (Wired)

Posted Mar 8, 2003 1:39 UTC (Sat) by dcoolidge (guest, #1390) [Link] (1 responses)

I hate people/companies that try to make money in court. If your product is good people will use it. I didn't like when sun was trying to get m$ to distribute sun java. Why didn't sco come out of the closet earlier? Scum of the earth Karl Marx called people who take advantage of a system for their own good. SCO of the earth is what we can call companies who do the same.

Developers Back IBM in Unix Suit (Wired)

Posted Mar 8, 2003 15:03 UTC (Sat) by haraldt (guest, #961) [Link]

If people/companies use the court system to get back at shady business practices, I have no problems with it. Microsoft isn't the only one having been dragged to court here, often with good reason.
IBM didn't get sentenced, but the case still lasted more than a decade. IBM had to adjust a lot of it's ways. I'm more concerned how SCO/Caldera is going to hold up against the biggest patent holder in industry.

And I agree, the court system being abused by the same shady business practices it's meant to protect us from, it's a serious problem.
So, while it's easy to judge by first impression here, perhaps it's time to wait with a final conclusion?. And instead focus on free software and how to handle computers the civilized way?

Dealing with SCO marketing people

Posted Mar 8, 2003 21:43 UTC (Sat) by paulsheer (guest, #3925) [Link] (3 responses)

I had a few encounters with SCO that are
amusing and probably reflect the general
cluelessness of the company. Once I posted
to a LUG mailing list that SCO was pretty
useless for just about any task that
most South African companies are currently
buying licenses for. For example, most SCO
deployments began when DOS was around; SCO
is really solid, so these deployments
(sometimes thousands of machines) worked
well, and were never replaced with cheeper
software.

The marketing guy phoned me and ranted on
that SCO was better than any other unix system
on Xeon 4-CPU machines. Of course of all the
thousands of SCO machines that I've overseen
replacement with Linux, none was performance
critical - most were entry-level PC's. So I
asked if he would still recommend SCO over
Linux for an entry level PC - got no proper
answer.

SCO also has the worst development user
interface I could ever imagine - Kind'a
takes me back to my ZX-Spectrum-48k.

SCO is emphatic that they have a full
POSIX implementation. But they forget
they have nothing *more* than a POSIX
implementation. Their X interface is
horrendous. Their C compiler is as user
friendly as ed.

I tried to explain to him what a pain
it was to develop for SCO, and what
a pleasure it was under Linux. I also
tried to explain how backward their
terminal shell's were, how they made
agony of simple administration tasks.
Most importantly, installation is a
killer on SCO when you have 500 machines
to install - of course with Linux/FreeBSD
you can just script an installation to
do repeated installations.

Why didn't SCO port KDE and Gnome and
package a proper desktop with their
machines? Yes, we KNOW there kernel
is totally amazing (sic.) so why not
create the desktop to match?

*Of course* SCO is going out of business.
It began in the Slackware <= 2.0 days.
They have *always* been doomed. However
they still have 10+ years left as a
company because there is so much effort
in switching over legacy SCO systems to
Linux (yes it *is* lots of work migrating
an infrustrature even if it is unix-like).

They should at least try and make the best
of it.

SCO is out

Posted Mar 9, 2003 4:52 UTC (Sun) by elduder12345 (guest, #10022) [Link] (2 responses)

SCO never wants to improve and change their traditional rules. Why they want to remain as a relic OS. When other linux distributors were releasing latest packages everyday SCO(Cladera) was still hanging on old XFree86 3x or 2.0,2.0 kernels!
I've never had a good experience with Cladera Linux it's so old and out of date. Support is weak.
Don;t forget Caldera was the the first distributor who licenced Linux. Now how comes they are worried about opensource community and blah blah...
They should aadmit it. They are out. They cannot survive by suing other companies with this kind of weak allegations.
Tomorrow they go to hunt Sun or HP or others.
I guess they are upset why IBM doesn't put support their distro. Because it's not as good as Suse. Once I installed SCO 8something on an IBM xseries. despite of having all the drivers from SCO itself scsi controller didn't work. we had to wait for a week to get back to us. It was such pain.

SCO is out

Posted Mar 10, 2003 15:11 UTC (Mon) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link] (1 responses)

I guess they are upset why IBM doesn't put support their distro.

They did, at least at one time. The four Linux distros that IBM initially supported were Red Hat, SuSE, Caldera, and TurboLinux. One has to assume that this list is now at least one distro shorter than it was. :-)

SCO is out

Posted Mar 10, 2003 16:12 UTC (Mon) by Crusher-1 (guest, #10046) [Link]

"In January SCO hired David Boies, the attorney who prosecuted the U.S. Justice
Department's antitrust case against Microsoft and defended Napster."

Uh..... let's see. Doesn't that make their supposedly highprofile attorney 0 for 2?
Given Boies track record of late I'd venture to guess that IBM will prevail.

P.S. Didn't he also represent Gore in Florida?