From the news.com article

Posted Mar 7, 2003 19:50 UTC (Fri) by Ross (guest, #4065)
Parent article: A look at the SCO complaint

"Some claims, though, have more potential merit, Eunice said. One is that
creating Unix on Intel processors needed expertise that SCO developed but
IBM lacked, Eunice said. Another claim is that it would have been
impossible for IBM to re-create versions of SCO libraries without SCO's
actual code."

On the first of those "better" claims:
Umm... so how did FreeBSD happen? How did Solaris x86 happen? Did they "steal" SCO secrets? How is it that the original "port" of Linux was for Intel? How could IBM not have the knowledge when they created the IBM PC?

On the second:
So how did Linux implement compatability with native binaries on Alpha, SPARC, MIPS, etc.? How was WINE created? Is SCO aware of the existance of POSIX andthe relative simplicity of the Unix API?

I can't say how much this bothers me. This is one of the most frivolous lawsuits I have ever seen. If SCO is just trying to get media attention I guess it worked because this is the most discussion of SCO I have seen -- ever.

From the news.com article

Posted Mar 10, 2003 5:08 UTC (Mon) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link] (2 responses)

The even more funny part about of that claim is the part where they say IBM gained this elusive and mystical Unix-on-Intel knowledge while working with SCO on Monterey -- which was, of course, Itanium, and not really relevant to x86 Intel at all.

What Monterey actually was

Posted Mar 11, 2003 17:49 UTC (Tue) by james (subscriber, #1325) [Link] (1 responses)

The even more funny part about of that claim is the part where they say IBM gained this elusive and mystical Unix-on-Intel knowledge while working with SCO on Monterey -- which was, of course, Itanium, and not really relevant to x86 Intel at all.

Actually, Monterey was AIX with Unixware and Sequent technology, aimed at POWER / PowerPC, Itanium, and x86.

I understood that the POWER / PowerPC side of things was commercialised as AIX 5L. There was an IA64 version of AIX 5L, too: the Bull "freeware site" for quite some time had IA64 AIX binaries of some popular Open Source software. (Bull licences AIX for use on their Escala range of RS/6000 compatibles).

I never understood quite what happened to the x86 version (which was intended to be the successor to Unixware and Open Server). If we get to see an IBM riposte, we might find out.

James.

What Monterey actually was

Posted Mar 14, 2003 11:56 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

What happened to Monterey x86?

IBM sales and marketing suddenly realised that every time they talked about AIX/x86, the customers changed the subject to linux. Every time they tried to interest a customer in "possibly buying AIX/x86" the customer said "what's the point - linux is there already".

You can spend all the millions you like on advertising, but if everybody you talk to sniffs at what you're trying to sell, it's money down the drain.

Cheers,
Wol

From the news.com article

Posted Mar 14, 2003 5:37 UTC (Fri) by MLKahnt (guest, #6642) [Link]

Psst - Solaris is the Sun version of Unix arising from the work of Sun and AT&T Bell Labs that became SVR4 (which was supposed to unify BSD and SVR3 code), and led to the OSF counter-project. Ironically, iirc, at one point AIX was targetted as being some key parts of OSF o/s, partly because of design, and partly because of the significant lack of AT&T code, due to the substantively different underlying design of AIX. That difference meant that there was considerably less AT&T code that would need replacement.

SCO's role as the owner of Unix(tm) is about equivalent to that of Michael Jackson's wrt The Beatles - they may "own" the Intellectual Property rights, but they have done no creative development of that property.

The Unix(tm) API (The System V Interface Definition - SVID) is the only "standard" of Unix(tm), to my recollection, which was further formalised (and taken out of the IP realm) by POSIX.