As smart as IBM is acting these days... [LWN.net]

As smart as IBM is acting these days...

Posted Jun 13, 2003 1:59 UTC (Fri) by cr (guest, #3685)
In reply to: Buying SCO by hamjudo
Parent article: Did SCO open Unix source code? (ZDNet)

They'll probably wait, and buy just the IP at a Chapter-7 yard sale.

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As smart as IBM is acting these days...

Posted Jun 13, 2003 22:34 UTC (Fri) by vksgeneric (guest, #11932) [Link]

Chapter7 would be a real bummer in terms of IP transfer. If a small company gets it, they can try the same stunt as SCO when times get tough. If a large company gets it (IBM, M$, whoever), they can easily sue smaller companies that compete with them and do other stupid things that hurt free software in general and Linux in particular.

Auctioning off IP is like auctioning off a nuke or a set of keys to a bank. You can't expect anything good to come out of it unless the buying party is super-honest and has best interests of humanity in mind, forever.