OT: Cutthroat Microsoft Tactic

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by Dralasite:
Heres a rumor for you (of the best kind, I can't substantiate any of it ) -- SCO used to sell a unix called xenix? or maybe zenix. The rumor is that Bill Gates/MS orginally gave it to them, or at least provided heavy support. Many people consider SCO to be MS's proxy into the unix world.

The company that is called SCO today is not the company that partnered with MS to develop Xenix. The current SCO is actually Caldera Linux... Yes, a company that was founded as a Linux company. The original SCO that developed Xenix with MS sold off its Unix 'IP' to Caldera Linux and changed its name to Tarantella, going into some sort of networking/enterprise niche. Caldera-SCO then bought a bunch of licenses from Novell for various things related to Unix, because Novell had bought almost all the rights to Unix from AT&T some years ago, but the actual rights remained with Novell. All they had were licenses to develop their own stuff using Novell's code. Novell said as much in a press release on the day of SCO's Shareholders meeting. (That sure rained on the parade. Caldera-SCO lost 25 percent of it's stock value that day, while the shareholders were meeting and grilling the management! ) That's right, pseudo-SCO does not have the legal standing to make these claims and has publicly admitted it since Novell announced the real nature of the license agreement between them. Even funnier, Novell said that SCO obviously understood this because they had been pressing Novell to sell the actual copyights/patents. Novell refused, of course. And yet they still say they're gonna sue IBM (for breach of contract now rather than patent/copyright violation it seems) and have actually made noises about suing Linus personally for some sort of 'infringement' of the rights they don't own.

Meanwhile Novell is making noises about counter-suits, MS has publicy announced that it has 'licensed' SCO's 'Intellectual Property' and will be giving them lots of bucks (useful for paying the lawyers of course), and a German company is threatening to sue SCO in Germany based on German anti-trust law that bars using threats of lawsuits to get unfair competitive advantage. The exact claim that SCO thinks it has is still a secret, of course. If the programmers were told what SCO thinks it owns they could probably rip it out and rewrite a substitute in a matter of hours or days. But that's the point, and the reason for the lawsuit in Germany, this is about FUD, not business. If people are afraid that Linux might be sunk by lawsuits they won't want to use it, and MS might be able to recover the 1/3rd of server market-share that Linux has taken from them. Maybe the German lawsuit will be able to force Caldera-SCO to disclose what they think they own in the Linux source so it can be replaced. And maybe, just maybe, the legal process will uncover the slimy machinations of William H. Gates III before all is said and done.

Is your head spinning yet?

[ May 30, 2003, 00:25: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[Katchoo]

Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
Is your head spinning yet?

Yes... Yes it is

And how can anyone sue Linus Torvald? Unless he cracked existing licensed software, or stole patented information, no one can touch him seeing as how the Linux code is distributed freely. Sueing the individual companies that sell Linux in retail stores (Red Hat, Mandrake, etc) would make more sense.

Does Linus make any money from the companies that do sell Linux in retail chains?

[Loser]

Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
words, words, words

Baron you rock. That is, of course, unless you are simply living up to your name and pulling our legs.

[Dralasite]

Yeah, thanks Baron for clearing that up!

[Baron Munchausen]

Heh...

'Thanks for explaining it' might be more appropriate. It's total lack of clarity is the primary characteristic of the situation. You can follow this and other technical stories in detail on www.slashdot.org btw. This is a much better place to learn what is going on than most of the IT industry 'news' sites. Once they post a story lots of people with real knowledge and experience can comment and add to the available information, without being filtered by some corporate 'news policy' (censorship).

[Loser]

This is extremely comprehensive.

[Atrocities]

Originally posted by minipol:
As i understand, SCO is whining about code in Linux distro's that would be there intellectual property. So if this goes through that would be great for MS because Linux is gaining on MS specially in the server market.
SCO are a bunch of idiots. I hope they lose their case.

We all must remind ourselves that MS also believes that it owns Binary. Or for that matter any original idea that should ever happend to be invented, software wise, is already owned by MS. "How dare they invent something that we never thought of using a revolutionary programming language never conceived of before! We own the unconcieved ideas of all program and software developers for all time." - CEO Microsaft.

[ June 02, 2003, 21:27: Message edited by: Atrocities ]