[Baron Munchausen]

8/8 -- IBM counter-sues SCO...

20. Although it completed an initial public offering, SCO has failed to create a successful business around Linux. ... In fact, the company as a whole did not experience a profitable quarter until after it abandoned its Linux business and undertook its present scheme to extract windfall profits from technology that SCO played no role in developing.

21. In an attempt to revive its faltering Linux business, SCO aquired Original SCO's rights to UNIX and undertook "the unification of the UNIX and Linux operating systems." To that end, SCO markets and sells a number of UNIX products. [...] Like SCO's Linux business, however, this enterprise is failing. With apparently no other prospects, SCO shifted its business model to litigation.

22. SCO devised a scheme to profit from the UNIX rights that it acquired ... though UNIX was in no way developed by SCO... SCO undertook to create fear, uncertainty and doubt in the marketplace...

23. Recognizing that there is little value in its UNIX rights, SCO did not limit its scheme to that technology. Rather, SCO devised and executed a plan to create the false perception that SCO holds rights to UNIX that permit it to control not only all UNIX technology, but also Linux -- including those aspects generated through the independent hard work and creativity of thousands of other developers and long distributed by SCO itself under the GPL.

These are just excerpts. IBM has also cited multiple patents from its own 'IP' arsenal that it claims SCO is violating, and pointed out that SCO is violating the very GPL which is supposedly the basis of its own business.

Lesson of the week: Don't piss-off IBM.

[ August 09, 2003, 23:50: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]