legal suit threatens Linux :(

[Fat Tone]

http://www.itweek.co.uk/News/1140995

[Jammrock]

It won't hold in court. Even if it does, SCO will piss off so many IT manager and admins they'll shot themselves in the foot.

Jammrock

[Topha]

There are so many reasons this wont work, it is just embarassing. especially when you consider that microsoft probably is involved in that.

[az]

IBM isn't scared, and I guess they would be if this was valid.

AZ

[Dr Mordrid]

The problem is that SCO has been involved with the development of Linux under the GPL.

As RAMBUS found out you can't have it both ways and still be credible in either court or the public arena.

Dr. Mordrid

[isochar]

With backing from Microsoft, I'm sure SCO will be able to cause some damage.

http://rss.com.com/2100-1016_3-1007528.html?type=pt&part=rss&tag=feed&subj=news

[The PIT]

Heard some rumours that parts of Unix were ported directly into Lunix.

[Technoid]

hehe, it is like if a wolf would have acused a tasmanian wolf of "stealing" part of his DNA code

Originally posted by The PIT
Heard some rumours that parts of Unix were ported directly into Lunix.

the keyword here is rumours

Besides:
Apple tried basicly the same thing against MS a while ago

[treilanin]

I think at the core of the lawsuit, SCO is claiming that IBM took code from AIX and SCO's Monteroy(Itanium port) project for inclusion into Linux. And based on SCO finding code that was similar that it was obvious that code was copied. There are a few very interesting things about such an insinuation...

1) Unix System V internals are well documented in University OS books. In fact a majority of courses used to teach the courses using Unix based source code.

2) The belief that it is impossible that Linux could have improved so fast is pretty ludicrous. There are a number of hardware vendors that do their proof of concept on Linux because the source is both openly available and can be modified. The Itanium port was spearheaded by HP and Intel developers and not IBM ones.

3) The fact that SCO aka Caldera has it's own Linux distribution where it contributed code on it's own just screams similarities to RAMBUS.

4) Their was apparently a precedent made between University of California and AT&T way back with BSD. It was allegded that BSD was doing some of the same things that Linux is doing. The lawsuit was resolved by the UofC voluntarily modify a few source files only because they did not want to waste the effort of taking it to court.

In all honesty at the very worst the Linux Kernel team will have to modify a function or two in a few files. My opinion on all of this is I believe that there is no real proof behind the allegations. If there was SCO could easily publish a case or two to back up it's case. The assertion that doing so would undermine it's case is total hogwash since the history of Linux Kernel Revisions are archived on the net and on the many CDs that have distributed Linux. In the end SCO should really consider why no one wants their intel based Unix.... perhaps they should spend the time improving it then threatening and suing people on near baseless claims?

[James_D]

http://www.opensource.org/sco-vs-ibm.html

for those who are interested, its a looooooong read..

But very interesting.


James.

[Technoid]

Originally posted by James_D
http://www.opensource.org/sco-vs-ibm.html


for those who are interested, its a looooooong read..

But very interesting.


James.

hehe, SCO sounds like in the whole wide world only THEY can code

[The PIT]

Originally posted by Technoid
hehe, SCO sounds like in the whole wide world only THEY can code

I think old Bill would disagree. Surely thats the mighty microshaft.

[Taz]

Why use money to improve your product when you can spend it on litigation to stop others producing theirs

[TnT]

I've been following this whole ordeal for some time, so didn't read any articles you guys linked to , so maybe some overlap.

The fact that SCO has been distributing Linux means that they have agreed to the terms of the GPL, thus the code in question is already under the GPL. That so far is the biggest gotcha, but from what I've read it won't take down the case.

MS has licensed the code from SCO for some reason, I'm not sure.

Here's Torvalds current input:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6879

[James_D]

A new twist.

Well it looks like SCO managed to piss of Novell. Check out this new development

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=9724

This just looks better and better..

James.