A previously secret licensee of SCO Group’s Unix intellectual property has revealed its identity: UNIX leader Sun Microsystems. Sun, the No. 1 seller of UNIX servers, licenses broader rights to Unix and gets the option to buy a stake in the company that owns those rights.
Sun Expands UNIX Deal with SCO
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
all I can say is HERESY!!!
I’m sure I will never purshase sun stuff from now on…
Interesting, isn’t it? Sun was articularly silent through most of these SCO crap, and now we can sort of see why.
The article says that Sun needed something from SCO regarding Solaris X86. This isn’t necessarily bad, although we could wish they didn’t have to do business with a company like SCO. It could be as simple as Solaris X86 using some SCO components to improve device support (the one thing most people complain about).
Sun has an interest, now, in Solaris/SPARC, Solaris/x86, and Linux. It isn’t necessarily in their interest to support FUD agains Linux, although it is clearly understandable that they would want to see IBM and AIX hurt a little.
Regardless, it makes a lot more sense for a company like Sun to want to license from SCO than it does for a company like Microsoft.
Does this mean that SUN will turn around in its Linux ventures?
Well, I remember having to license Sun stuff to run on AIX and SGI, so Unix licensing or crosslicensing is something that goes on all the time in the paying Unix world. Still one wonders. Hope is nothing more than that.
I hope Sun isn’t behind this at all, but it is AWFULLY convenient for them. They are being hit hard on the low end by Linux and on the high end by IBM. There obviously isn’t enough info to draw real conclusions, but Sun has a lot more to gain through this lawsuit than MS.
Sun mention that all of their products, including Linux, are covered by the appropriate license agreements. Isn’t there some provision in the GPL about patents? (In fact, hasn’t it come up in these discussions in the past?). Either way, despite SCO belatedly halting distribution of Linux, Sun still are. If I understand everything correctly, one way or another, Linux is legal.
Sun = UNIX.
All other UNIX os are now on their last legs(AIX, HP-UX, etc…) This is the end of UNIX diversity. Windows will kill off easily the UNIXes on the Itanium platform. The PA-RISC platform is being replaced by Intel’s Itanium and everybody knows UNIX doesn’t stand a chance against lower costing Windows software. IBM is gradually phasing out AIX replacing it with Linux. The year 2000 started of REALLY bad for UNIXes with only 1 major player left(Sun). R.I.P.
Isn’t there some provision in the GPL about patents?
SCO’s suit is about trade secrets. the other legal actions they’ve talked about are copyright issues. no patent issues, since SCO doesn’t seem to own any of the original Unix patents. copyright and the GPL is clear, source must be released
If I understand everything correctly, one way or another, Linux is legal.
that’s yet to be proven. innocent until proven guilty, I suppose.
if I understand correctly, Sun has the rights to use Unix source. apparently, SCO accepts that to mean even if it’s contained in the Linux kernel. if there is infringing code.
anyway, nice to see Sun try to do something for Solaris x86.
copyright and the GPL is clear, source must be released
by the copyright holder.
…everybody knows UNIX doesn’t stand a chance against lower costing Windows software.
Thanks, that joke really saved my day.
do you think Sun is willing to go?
The gloves are off, Sunny boy, now let’s see if you can fight.
>anyway, nice to see Sun try to do something for Solaris x86.
nice? are you kidding? if sun ends up being tied to SCO some how in this mess this could be the worst thing that happend to Solaris x86 and Sun for that matter. they’ll look like idiots being put into the same catagory of SCO.
at least you know, whatever happens in the whole scheme of things, Sun will be around to stay…
whether SCO is right or not, this is a majorly Good Thing for Sun. Businesses aren’t going to go fork over their hard earned cash for something that may cause them problems that will cost them even more in the end. This is why some businesses are reevaluating to chose Linux — if SCO wins they may have to pay licensing fees — and since Sun software is “clean”, Sun software becomes a much more attractive option.
Sun, not SCO is the winner in this round…
Talk about a stab in the back. Then again Sun can’t really compete with x86 Linux based low-end servers. I guess Sun’s motto is if you can’t swim will try your hardest make everyone else around drown.
Actually they both have a lot to gain. MS gets to kill off yet another rivial in the desktop market and Sun get’s to push the life of it’s high-end servers for just a tid bit longer. That is up untill MS moves in with it’s own server line to take over what is left of the Linux market once SCO wins it’s lawsuit. Yeah way to go Sun and MS great moves in this chess game by the big boys.
they’ll look like idiots being put into the same catagory of SCO.
to who? a bunch of geeks that think a dual athlon Linux box is a super computer? for the most part, the people who’ll be offended by this move probably wouldn’t be buying much from Sun, anyway.
it’s easy. Sun’s was in a position were it didn’t want to end up in the same situation as IBM, so they did this to be sure they were square. IBM can easily survive a 3 billion $ hit, I doubt Sun could. the might have also wanted this deal for a while, and with the fate of SCO in doubt, better to secure the deal.
and, the marketing benefits of there being no doubts about the legitimacy of Sun’s licenses. if I were in Sun’s place, I would have been more aggressive in the anti-IBM marketing. they’ve been extremely cool to the Linux distributors during this whole thing.
I don’t think Sun get their money from the low-end market, you know. And as for being anti-GPL… Well, why not? GPL is somewhat anti-commercial, and Sun is a commercial business.
I guess Sun’s motto is if you can’t swim will try your hardest make everyone else around drown.
Actually I can’t find it anywhere, but I could’ve sworn it was Scott McNealy that I read saying “We don’t have to run faster than the bear, just the other campers,” when responding to questions about the “bubble burst”.
Looks like they have those legs a’pumping!
SUN execs are becoming famous for making dumb decisions. Well, this one is just another addition to that long list. You know there’s confusion in SUN land when you find them sitting in the same camp as MS.
Anyway, this will NOT save SUN. If you were going to run Linux on Intel, its a small chance that you will end up buying a sparc machine just because because, SUN claims to have special protection from SCO. You more likely will consider the BSDs.
Solaris on Intel? Yeah right, whatever. Its already too late.
Everyone is sleeping with SCO. Microsoft, Sun, HP, Novell, and even IBM until recently. The fact is that SCO holds a license where it’s cheaper to go along with their demands than to challenge it in the courts and risk losing your “ENTIRE” business. The only reason why IBM is in the courts is that SCO didn’t really give them a choice (dropping Linux when IBM gambled the entire company on it is not a choice). However, if IBM was in any other situation, they too would have gone with SCO. It isn’t SUN’s fault for going along with SCO, it is the messed up legal system that allows such illegal contracts and all the techno-idiots running the patent office that are to blame.
>> MS gets to kill off yet another rivial in the desktop market and Sun get’s to push the life of it’s high-end servers for just a tid bit longer.
>>
Well, that would be true if this was strictly a Solaris vs Linux issue. It is not, it is more like an Intel vs Sparc issue. Sun made the most money from hardware. Even if Linux were to miraculously dissappear today,
“whether SCO is right or not, this is a majorly Good Thing for Sun. Businesses aren’t going to go fork over their hard earned cash for something that may cause them problems that will cost them even more in the end. This is why some businesses are reevaluating to chose Linux — if SCO wins they may have to pay licensing fees — and since Sun software is “clean”, Sun software becomes a much more attractive option.”
FreeBSD got sued before and that just showed they were maturing. This lawsuit shows that Linux has grown up and is ready for business. If businesses are that worried about lawsuits, they would never go into IT in the first place. If there is any infringing code, the kernel hackers will just get rid of it and write their own to fill in what they had to take out, but I am sure they don’t want any SCO code anyway. When using other people’s work you have to be really careful of the liscences. That’s why I draw my own drawings and take my own photos unless its clipart (which I don’t use anymore).
“whether SCO is right or not, this is a majorly Good Thing for Sun. Businesses aren’t going to go fork over their hard earned cash for something that may cause them problems that will cost them even more in the end. This is why some businesses are reevaluating to chose Linux — if SCO wins they may have to pay licensing fees — and since Sun software is “clean”, Sun software becomes a much more attractive option.”
This will do the opposite – have them switch from closed source over fear of having to pay lawsuits. If SCO wins such a baseless lawsuit, there will be even more lawsuits to follow. Linux being sued shows its maturity and how much its worth. FreeBSD was sued before and they are definitely doing fine now. They should just switch to BSD if they are so paranoid. No one has any business in IT if they are afraid of getting sued for something that is GPL licensed and instead want to gamble with closed source. The kernel hackers can just rewrite any code that SCO wants to lie about creating.
1) Solaris x86 scales better than Linux. No, pointing to some 128 way machine running Linux doesn’t count as it uses the *BARE* minimum modules to get the so-called “speed record”. Start chucking on NFS, SMB, a data base or two and start seeing that speed record slide gradually into Windows territory.
2) SUN’s hardware is becoming a smaller and smaller contribution to their over all revenue stream. Just look at their last SEC filing. Their hardware revenue went down due to deep price cuts they introduced, however, their software side increase as well as their services wing.
3) SUN has nothing to lose from the Linux “invasion”, infact, it re-enfoces UNIX on x86. Since SUN has a geniune UNIX running on x86, why not use it? what can Linux do that Solaris can’t? What can *BSD do that Solaris can’t?
4) Solaris ISN’T slow. Having run it has a server serving various services off it all I can say is that if you set it up properly, it is faster and more stable than Linux. Also, the benefit of it is you don’t have to put up with depency hell, modules not being released for your version of the kernel vs. the previous release or worse yet, relying on a driver developed by some code working out of a toilet cubical based on some hacking information he read off the train station wall.
I’m confused
You just posted fucking useless stuff. The point here is not that solaris is better than linux, but that sun is sleeping in bed with SCO. That’s it.
I’m sure Solaris is great, but if you’re going to defend Solaris against FUD, could you please do so without unnecessarily spreading more FUD about Linux?
Solaris X86
<p>
This is obviously Sun’s Plan to overtake the *nix market for Intel processors, and SCO would certainly prefer this as well. “x86” is a new version of “solaris for intel”, a older (seperate I believe) version was previously available as far back as 99.
<p>
I hope Sun isn’t behind this at all, but it is AWFULLY convenient for them.
<p>
Sure it is, just like it would be for any other software company that has privately owned intellectual property.
<p>
Does this mean that SUN will turn around in its Linux ventures?
<p>
Sun never had a major investment in Linux to begin with. This will however position them perfectly to become a ‘legal’ Linux distributor should sco win their case against IBM and possibly even GPL/Linux.
<p>
This is the end of UNIX diversity…only 1 major player left(Sun). R.I.P…
<p>
You’re dreaming. ‘Unix’ is one of if not the greatest operating system architechtures ever. Linux is nothing more than a tribute to it by utilizing the near identical command structure. Despite the similarties, there are MANY engineering houses that will never use Linux because of it’s questionable herritage. For that reason alone, Unix and Unix variants will be around for a very very long time.
<p>
if sun ends up being tied to SCO some how in this mess this could be the worst thing that happend to Solaris x86 and Sun for that matter. they’ll look like idiots being put into the same catagory of SCO.
<p>
Idiots for trying to protect their property, and turf? Don’t forget, portions of the alleged code that Linux has obtained could also be in Solaris, so in that regard they have every right to feel slighted as well.
<p>
SUN execs are becoming famous for making dumb decisions. Well, this one is just another addition to that long list.
<p>
Somehow they’ve got 5 Billion ($5,000,000,000.00) cash money in the bank. And there’s no way orders for Solaris are shrinking right now either.
<p>
Sun, not SCO is the winner in this round…
<p>
So far, that is definitely the case. IBM has irritated customers by offering so many different O/S, and now even having the license to one of them become legally questioned. But SCO could easily add to IBM’s misery if a Utah Judge and Jury rule for the home team.
<p>
Solaris X86
This is obviously Sun’s Plan to overtake the *nix market for Intel processors, and SCO would certainly prefer this as well. “x86” is a new version of “solaris for intel”, a older (seperate I believe) version was previously available as far back as 99.
I hope Sun isn’t behind this at all, but it is AWFULLY convenient for them.
Sure it is, just like it would be for any other software company that has privately owned intellectual property.
Does this mean that SUN will turn around in its Linux ventures?
Sun never had a major investment in Linux to begin with. This will however position them perfectly to become a ‘legal’ Linux distributor should sco win their case against IBM and possibly even GPL/Linux.
This is the end of UNIX diversity…only 1 major player left(Sun). R.I.P…
You’re dreaming. ‘Unix’ is one of if not the greatest operating system architechtures ever. Linux is nothing more than a tribute to it by utilizing the near identical command structure. Despite the similarties, there are MANY engineering houses that will never use Linux because of it’s questionable herritage. For that reason alone, Unix and Unix variants will be around for a very very long time.
if sun ends up being tied to SCO some how in this mess this could be the worst thing that happend to Solaris x86 and Sun for that matter. they’ll look like idiots being put into the same catagory of SCO.
Idiots for trying to protect their property, and turf? Don’t forget, portions of the alleged code that Linux has obtained could also be in Solaris, so in that regard they have every right to feel slighted as well.
SUN execs are becoming famous for making dumb decisions. Well, this one is just another addition to that long list.
Somehow they’ve got 5 Billion ($5,000,000,000.00) cash money in the bank. And there’s no way orders for Solaris are shrinking right now either.
Sun, not SCO is the winner in this round…
So far, that is definitely the case. IBM has irritated customers by offering so many different O/S, and now even having the license to one of them become legally questioned. But SCO could easily add to IBM’s misery if a Utah Judge and Jury rule for the home team.
> If businesses are that worried about lawsuits, they would never go into IT in the first place.
No. If I told you that you could buy Product A at $99, but there’s some shady legal issues and you might have to end up paying another $149 (I think that’s the cost SCO’s saying for use of their shared libraries) per installation, or you could buy product B at a one of cost of $299 (or $99 or whatever), what would be the most smartest business choice?
> If there is any infringing code, the kernel hackers will just get rid of it and write their own to fill in what they had to take out
Great, if only SCO would tell us (not bloody likely!) what actual code is “illegal”…
> have them switch from closed source over fear of having to pay lawsuits.
You mean businesses, right? Having them running closed or open source software is immaterial. They are buying a prepackaged product from someone else, not coding up their own things. Lawsuits go after the producers of the software, not the end users. The end user has no control about the distribution of the software. However, like I mentioned before, buying a product under threat from lawsuit is a gamble. You either pay for a cheaper product and you might or you might not have to pay up later, or you just buy another product for the same or higher price and you’re guaranteed you won’t have to pay anything later, you’re going to take the safer option.
Great, if only SCO would tell us (not bloody likely!) what actual code is “illegal”…
Not bloody likely is right, except in the privacy of the court. Nor should they have to, if it is shown this is their property. Should Sco go on to win the case, they will make it almost impossible for OSS guys to repair the code themselves, simply because SCO will still be under no obligation to reveal exactly where it is. Even if Linux kernel programmers attempt to remove it, such as ALL the alleged modules in total, those programmers would become “tainted” and and possibly even enjoined by the court from working on Linux again. Innocent until proven guilty, but Sco will have Linux over the barrel just as much as Ibm if they win.
is that they could’ve brought the same sort of x86 driver in from the BSD Unix lineage – Solaris is basically BSD SVR4ified, and SVR4 is basically SVR3 made over with BSD enhancements – and SVR4 has been stagnant for over a decade.
Any one of the BSDs is more advanced than the SVRx lineage.
Scott McNealy’s tirades against Microsft and worries about Linux seem to have cut off a lot of blood to the brain. Or perhaps it is drinking stagnant water that does it to him?
It doesn’t matter, SCO let their code go. They continued to ship their Linux distro even after acknowleging the bad code. It’s been giving to the community.
they could’ve brought the same sort of x86 driver in from the BSD Unix lineage
But isn’t most of that code publicly available? There are advantages to proprietary (private) code, especially in regards to it’s security mechanisms. A large portion of Sun’s customers are extremely keen to this specific issue, if nothing else.
It doesn’t matter, SCO let their code go…It’s been giving to the community.
Not if they didn’t know it was in there. They claim IBM put it in there, not them, they just didn’t find out till later.
Any argument that everything that is released under GPL is immediately publicly accessible – whether legally put there or not – is actually in confict to the actual GPL license itself, which clearly states when privately owned code is found to reside in a GPL product, it can no longer be legally distributed.
Is everyone here GPL Zealots?
The market in general doesn’t care if Sun wants to waste Linux, if Sun wouldn’t then people should worry. Competition is important!
I’m happy to hear Sun stays legal with development
First in the article Sun claims to have made the licence contract with SCO in February this year – i.e. before SCO launched its case against IBM. So I’m prepared to give them benefit of doubt that they didn’t do it for anti Linux and IBM FUD – for the time being.
Now in general with regard to SCO they are not a threat to IBM or Linux. They have no case it is all FUD and innuendo. But more importantly IBM has more money and that is what counts in the US justice system. Even MS won’t be able to bank roll them enough to win this case.
BTW with anti Linux FUD of the type CooCooCaSCO puts out he is likely to further the idea that Sun has got into bed with SCO and with SCO’s other paymaster MS.
And it makes me glad my company has chosen AIX and RH ES to run our mission critical apps on rather than Solaris.
“Not if they didn’t know it was in there. They claim IBM put it in there, not them, they just didn’t find out till later.
Any argument that everything that is released under GPL is immediately publicly accessible – whether legally put there or not – is actually in confict to the actual GPL license itself, which clearly states when privately owned code is found to reside in a GPL product, it can no longer be legally distributed.”
The point is that SCO released it under the GPL in the Caldera Linux distibution until at least the end of May. SCO therefore released any of the code they may have any alleged claim on. To claim ignorance is firstly dubious in the light of earlier SCO/Caldera statements in the pre Daryl McLied era – but at the very least implies the lack of due diligence required to maintain a copyright claim.
Consequently if any System V code has entered the Linux codebase (and if there is any it was probably put there by SCO/Caldera employees with executive approval to further the companies earlier stated policy of merging Linux and Unix) they have most certainly GPL’ed it.
Get this the SCO case is a financial scam nothing more nothing less!
They have no case it is all FUD and innuendo…
That is apparently what you hope, and it may well be true. And if you prefer to assume that as the only possible outcome, then you are certainly entitled to that right.
But so far it appears to me that Sco has all the momentum, releasing code samples to basically anyone willing to sign the NDA (which many of the press did), and feeling emboldened enough to request an expedited injunction and increasing their damage request by three times.
Check out some of these articles on Linux, Open Source, etc:
http://zdnet.com.com/2001-1107-0.html
http://search.businessweek.com/search97cgi/s97_cgi?action=FilterSea…
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1115156,00.asp
No one knows how this will turn out, but I’d recommend keeping an open mind.
The point is that SCO released it under the GPL in the Caldera Linux distibution until at least the end of May. SCO therefore released any of the code they may have any alleged claim on. To claim ignorance is firstly dubious in the light of earlier SCO/Caldera statements in the pre Daryl McLied era – but at the very least implies the lack of due diligence required to maintain a copyright claim.
Again, if they weren’t aware it was in there, they will easily be excused for not knowing they were “GPL-ing it”. They can’t be expected to scan millions of lines of code for violation if they themselves made no direct Linux contributions, which they didn’t.
“Due Diligence” is actually going to be argued against Torvalds, who makes no checks himself before releasing new versions of Linux (a precursor event). Obviously he can’t do that, but that is a failure of their license, at least from a business/legal perspective.
I’m sure many of you agree with MSNBC that SCO will win. Good luck to you. Cuz even if they win they will still need all the luck they can get from the coming GNU systems.
And if GNU is damaged in any way then BSD will take its place and BSD already has a get out of jail free card.
You’re all so doomed.
DOOOMED!!!
The point is that SCO released it under the GPL in the Caldera Linux distibution until at least the end of May. SCO therefore released any of the code they may have any alleged claim on.
from the GPL:
“0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License.”
clearly this wasn’t the case. the GPL is not a means to cheat people out of IP, suggesting that it is isn’t in the spirit of the GPL.
if there is any it was probably put there by SCO/Caldera employees with executive approval to further the companies earlier stated policy of merging Linux and Unix
then you would think it would be fairly easy for Linus to produce documentation of this when the time comes.
could we please move on? it’s ridiculous the pains that people are going through to show that SCO has no case(s), without ever actually seeing the case(s). if there is infringing code and SCO/Caldera did not put it there, then they aren’t doing anything wrong. if that isn’t the case, it’s going to suck to be them.
There are a lot of people jumping to conclusions posting here; we don’t know what SUN is doing. Perhaps they are just covering their arse, making sure they have their licenses in order.
.valp.net is nothing more than a SCO shill and should not be allowed in here. Do your research and you will come to the same conclusions.
Once SCO get’s it’s way expect to see all the progress made in Linux’s 2.6 kernel to be for nothing. Expect to see commercial distro’s like RedHat, Mandrake, Suse go out of business and non-commercial distro will and shall be labeled as pirated software and be banned here in the U.S. Oh well Linux was fun while it lasted but now it’s time to realize that the only choice you’ll have on the desktop will be Windows. Oh and for servers you’ll just have Sun, SCO and the BSD’s. Say you goodbye everyone Linux tomb stone has already been made out and written by SCO and company.
Linux should drop POSIX compliance and IBM should write a library that replaces Java. That way Linux can finally dump it’s baggage (SCO and SUN).
@anon0 (valp)
> Torvalds, who makes no checks himself
I believe he’s the project leader and makes the decisions to admit or not all the code entering the kernel.
@anon1 (attbi)
> Linux tomb stone has already been made out and written by SCO and company.
Defeatist, aren’t we?
@anon2 (shawcable)
> Linux should drop POSIX compliance
POSIX compliance has diddly squat to do with SCO. POSIX is a standard, not software or code.
If they need stuff for their x86 version of Solaris, surely it would be better for them to develop the drivers in house instead of having to work with SCO’s antiquated crud. I don’t buy the whole ‘we need drivers for x86 Solaris’, especially given that they seem to have gotten by without needing to license any from SCO (or their predesors) in the past.
<p>Once SCO get’s it’s way expect to see all the progress made in Linux’s 2.6 kernel to be for nothing. Expect to see commercial distro’s like RedHat, Mandrake, Suse go out of business and non-commercial distro will and shall be labeled as pirated software and be banned here in the U.S. Oh well Linux was fun while it lasted but now it’s time to realize that the only choice you’ll have on the desktop will be Windows. Oh and for servers you’ll just have Sun, SCO and the BSD’s. Say you goodbye everyone Linux tomb stone has already been made out and written by SCO and company.</p>
L4m3 attempt at a troll dude.
Let’s assume for a second that SCO is right in this Linux debate.
If I was a shareholder of SCO and they didn’t sue, I’d get pretty irritated on those running my businesses. It’s so obvious they’re doing the right thing, but not so obvious that they are right!
How can it be Linux users can’t see this??? Is it because you hate commercial endevaours ? Sounds like communism to me more than being rational….
Well they paid for the license before, why not use free drivers and not having to spend double or treble than that in testing/developing drivers themselves?
Commercial-level drivers must be near flawless. If Sun can get their hands on drivers already developed as such, for money they already put down in licensing from SCO, then why not do so?
The whole point of the internet and linux is to evolve…
No matter what the out come there will still be Linux, Its just to big to stop… The USA might try and ban it for a while but China, India and any developing countries will continue using it as well all of Europe. Total population open to it 5.75 billion… total closed to it in a such a small way 250 million… *but the OS is still just a download away*…
One of the biggest factors in property OSes at least MS and Unix is to stands still as long as possible and take as much money as possible..
Microsoft say they dont want people copying their OS illegally… but the truth is this is a major factor in why they are so huge on the desktop now… If OEMs did not give the full CD away with every desktop, laptop etc then install base would of been so much smaller…(talking about 95 etc) Now they have the install base they have closed this route.. but I still see no Copy/Burn protection on any of their CDs etc……
The interesting thought running through my mind is that IBM wanted to by SUN a few months ago….. and then theres ppl saying the easyest way to stop SCO fast is to purchase….
Could it be America is just geared towards selling…. and its hard for them to understand something that is free..
just curious about those “Sun = anti-OSS” comments
what about efforts in GNOME, Grid Engine, JXTA, Jakarta, NetBeans, bla bla bla, and OpenOffice.org ??
Sun may not love GPL, as many other companies won’t.
but does GPL is everything of OSS ?
LGPL, Mozilla/BSD/Apache-style are not OSS ?
hmm..
Well guys – this thread has certainly drawn out the trolls, MS fanboys and Unix purists who haven’t come to terms with Linux, to come crawling out of the woodwork.
Listen IBM is not going to let their whole corporate strategy be stopped by a couple ambulance chasers who have taken over the worst run down deathbed case of a Unix/Linux company – full stop.
Even corporate America is taking no notice of the SCO screaming and posturing. It is busy deploying Linux both for new servers and to replace both Windows and proprietary UNIX. Linux now effectively dominates the server market in North America just by dollar sales figures for preloaded servers its percentage of the market is large but when you add in the OSless new servers sold (which are all going to be loaded with Linux or BSD) the share of the market is huge – not even counting all the old Windows servers that are being wiped and having Linux loaded. Linux now is also beginning to dominate the supercomputer market where by taking the number two position in the supercomputer league it has become the number one general purpose operating system for supercomputers. No wonder Daryl McLied wants a piece if the action.
The only areas at present that Linux does not dominate is the top end of the enterprise market (except for mainframes) where proprietary UNIX is dominant and the desktop currently held by the illegal MS monopoly.
These two areas are now also being contest by Linux. The imminent release of the 2.6 kernel and the rapid development and maturation of FOSS desktop and related software will accelerate this challenge.
IBM has a strategy to foster this as does (somewhat schizophrenically) HP. There are two major companies that have not come to terms with this MS and Sun. I hope that an unholy alliance of these two former enemies does not take place. While I hold no sympathy for MS – I hope they lose and lose hard – I do however have a lot of sympathy and respect for Sun. They made the first Unix workstations (hell the first Unix workstation I used was a Sun), they invented and open sourced NFS, they kept MS GUI VMS (sorry I mean Windows NT) out of the bulk of the enterprise market, they invented JAVA,they bought StarOffice and first gave it away free as in beer to fight MS Office and then open sourced it and gave us OpenOffice.org and they have made significant contributions to the GNOME project.
Sun has done wonderfull things which deserve our everlasting gratitude and respect. Lets hope that they develop a workable Linux strategy and manage to survive and prosper.
corporate America is taking no notice of the SCO screaming and posturing.
[Nudge] Time to wake up, get dressed and pack your lunch for school.
Check the link above to multiple stories on Business Week magazine. Here’s another, from Forbes:
http://forbes.com/2003/06/18/cz_dl_0618linux.html
“Like many religious folk, the Linux-loving crunchies in the open-source movement are a) convinced of their own righteousness, and b) sure the whole world, including judges, will agree. They should wake up.“
“Like many religious folk, the Linux-loving crunchies in the open-source movement are a) convinced of their own righteousness, and b) sure the whole world, including judges, will agree. They should wake up.”
No I don’t believe that the whole world including judges, will agree. Like many of my fellow Canadians I believe this about the US justice system:
He who has the biggest pocket wins
IBM has the biggest pocket – if it goes to court IBM will win.
The reason for going after a big company like IBM when you are so unlikely to win, is that to get rid of the nuisance the big company either pays you off in an out of court settlement, or buy you out your loser company so you get some of the big bucks.
IBM apparently has decided to do neither of these (in order not to encourage others to try similar shakedowns) and said see you in court. Where they will go and IBM will win – unless they never get there because SCO goes bankrupt first (which of course depends how much MS is prepared to bankroll them with “license” purchases). The only way left for the SCO team to make money out of this is to use it for a stock market scam and that would invite interest from the SEC.
BTW I had already read the Forbes article and evaluated it. This is realpolitik my friend not religion (if I want religion I’ll go and see Matrix Reloaded).
If Linux dropped Posix compliance in their interface, than people would not call Linux by the name of Unix anymore.
How can it be Linux users can’t see this??? Is it because you hate commercial endevaours ? Sounds like communism to me more than being rational….
So I must assume that every Linux user, including me, can’t see this? Tsk tsk. Only geeks disconnected from the reality or zealots can’t see this. You are right that SCO is doing what they should do if they are right, no need to troll (then again, you’re always trolling and spreading Linux FUD).
Here’s a quite interesting chart:
http://www.cybersource.com.au/users/conz/linux_vs_sco_matrix.html
“FreeBSD got sued before and that just showed they were maturing. This lawsuit shows that Linux has grown up and is ready for business.”
You’re neglecting a key difference between the FreeBSD and Linux suits here, my friend:
FreeBSD got sued and WON. No matter how much we think the SCO suit is FUD now, to the winner go the spoils. Besides that ‘impartial, unbiased’ matrix posted on Slashdot a few days ago, no one really knows how Linux may be affected when all is said and done.
Actually they filed the suit in March, the didn’t stop distributing their Linux distro until May. They knew quite well about the bad code in Linux and should have stopped shipping the Linux distro the day they announced their suit. However they didn’t so the code has been given to the community.
> a bunch of geeks that think a dual athlon Linux box is a super computer
The US Department of Energy seems to think so too.
http://www.suse.de/us/company/press/press_releases/archive03/cray.h…
“dual” might be a slight understatement though.
“I don’t buy the whole ‘we need drivers for x86 Solaris’, especially given that they seem to have gotten by without needing to license any from SCO (or their predesors) in the past.”
As I said in an earlier post, Sun is probably very innocent and just purchasing these rights so that they can not be sued. Even though they purchased the rights, I would be very surprised if they even use the code. The most probable case was that probably late last year or early this year, SCO sent thousands of lawsuits against different companies. Seeing how restrictive the Unix contracts these companies signed were, they had no option but to bribe SCO into not suing. This is why Microsoft purchased SCO IP. This is why Sun purchased SCO IP. The only reason why IBM couldn’t just fall in line was that SCO was asking them too much. SCO wanted IBM to drop Linux support while IBM had bet its bottom line on Linux.
AFAIK, FreeBSD was never sued. It was Berkeley System Design, Inc. and the University of California at Berkeley, the makers of 4.4BSD. Second, BSD did not win. The suit was settled outside the court because AT&T/Novell/USL were going to lose. Their claims were invalided (i.e. an injunction for blocking the distribution of BSD was denied) because they violated the BSD licence by using BSD code and removing the licence attributions and the copyright disclamers from it. In the settlement, BSD was asked to remove 3 files out of 18000 that were owned by Novell. The unencumbered version was called 4.4BSD-lite (if I remember). That’s a big difference from “won”.
What’s my point? BSD “won” against AT&T & co. in 1993. Maybe there’s some System V code that was inserted in FreeBSD after 1993. Remember that Linux wasn’t build from System V code from the start, and they’re now getting tested by the american “justice” system because SCO claim there’s System V code in it. The exact same thing could happen to FreeBSD.
Well, that’s what I understand from what I’ve read.
Be careful that you’re not barking up the wrong tree. Sun has more to gain from these recent moves of SCO than Microsoft. It’s business (Solaris-side) has been hurt by Linux. No matter how the suit turns out, it’ll hurt Linux and re-instate the legitimacy of Unix. Microsoft only gains from the collateral damage but Sun benefits directly.
“Here’s a quite interesting chart:
http://www.cybersource.com.au/users/conz/linux_vs_sco_matrix.html ”
Don’t click on the link. It is only a useless chart some Linux zealot made that means absolutely nothing. Short summary of chart, regardless of how much Linux stole from SCO, whether it was nothing or if the whole kernel was taken out of Unixware, Linux will be unaffected.
They sued BSDI and the Berkeley (UCB).
To be honest even if a court finds against Linux in SCO’s favour. It won’t be too hard to rip out the offending code and replace it. SCo are claiming JFS is offending cause it was developed for AIX and under some strange liecensing they can claim ownership of any code written by another company for Unix systems, therefore in that resoning any improvements that IBM made itself to AIX codebase became property of SCO (that’s there argument anyway) which seems fairly fecked up to me.
re: XBE going on about communism, in communism all the means of production are owned by one entity, namely the state. Regarding opensource software, well the means of production (eg. the code) is owned by anybody and everybody, that’s the beauty of it. Now if in communism the actual workers owned the means of production through a co-op type system then it may have worked but that didn’t happen and the rest is history.
That chart explains everything. Besides anyone who would support the SCO in any way are sick people.
You are right about Berkeley being the defendents (not FreeBSD) and the outcome of the the trial not being “won” in such terms. The poster to whom I was replying chose the term FreeBSD, and I didn’t think about that when I was replying. In response to the outcome though, while I agree it wasn’t a win, it did turn out quite favorably for later derivatives of the *lite system. As you said, the only downsides of the trial were that they had to remove three files, and the case was never actually decided in court. Aside from the fact that settlements do not start legal precedents, I don’t think it’s that far off from a win. Also, I was merely debunking the notion that because BSD was sued and FreeBSD came out the all stronger, that Linux would do the same.
For all I know of post-1993 FreeBSD insertions (all I know at current is: I run it, I like it, It works.
), I agree with you that the same thing could happen to *BSD if SCO prevails (or even if not, whichever way shifts the eye of doubt off of Linux). I wasn’t trying to say that FreeBSD is impervious to future lawsuits just because it’s codebase circa 1993 was free of proprietary SysV code. You are exactly right on that point, as far as I’m concerned.
The SCO lawsuit is too good to be true for M$. M$ might be in the very same closet that Sun just stepped out of. Atleast now everyone knows there _is_ a secret closet.
Hehe okay. I agree.
Personally, I wonder what would happen if the court find out that SCO employees put SysV code in Linux without being authorised by the company. Who would be liable?
>>First in the article Sun claims to have made the licence contract with SCO in February this year – i.e. before SCO launched its case against IBM. <<
Maybe *just* before the lawsuit was officially filed, but certainly not before the lawsuit was planned.
Timeline:
December: SCOX started claiming that their code was in Linux. Suggested they may start charging Linux users $99 per CPU.
January: SCOX insiders gave themselves a buttload of options for $0.001 each. SCOX begins to “aggressively” enforce their license (extort money by threatening lawsuits).
February: SUNW starts secretly supporting SCOX, and gets a buttload of warrents.
March: SCOX officially files a lawsuit against IBM.
May: MSFT starts supporting SCOX’s efforts.
June: SCO could go to court and ask for a immediate temporty injunction that would forbid IBM from selling AIX. Although this is what SCOX was threaning all along, SCOX does not do this. Instead SCOX claims that as far as they are concerned, all versions of AIX are illegal.
Let people read what they want. Don’t try to think for them. Even though you think your always right, your not. And by trying to force people not to read opposing view, you are somewhat insecure in your own.
—-
“Here’s a quite interesting chart:
http://www.cybersource.com.au/users/conz/linux_vs_sco_matrix.html ”
Don’t click on the link. It is only a useless chart some Linux zealot made that means absolutely nothing. Short summary of chart, regardless of how much Linux stole from SCO, whether it was nothing or if the whole kernel was taken out of Unixware, Linux will be unaffected.
“June: SCO could go to court and ask for a immediate temporty injunction that would forbid IBM from selling AIX. Although this is what SCOX was threaning all along, SCOX does not do this. Instead SCOX claims that as far as they are concerned, all versions of AIX are illegal.”
If SCO were to be granted said temporary injunction to stop the distribution of AIX, and IBM refuses to settle or buy SCO, and wins the suit, could they sue SCO for damages when it was determined that the injunction was not necessary?
I doubt Sun is behind all of this. Sun is a supporter of Linux and Open Source, they plan to release a Linux desktop system soon, they entered into agreements with Red Hat and SuSE. Just because Sun bought stock options and further rights to UNIX doesnt mean they are the enemy, I bought some SCO stock when it hit $3.65 a share, and I disagree 100 percent with what they are doing. Its all about the Benjamins, if you see a way to make money, make it. Thats all Sun is doing. I personally think and I have stated this before, these Linux companies need to get together, either through Linux International or OSDL, and buy out SCO, or buy the UNIX rights from them. Do not Open Source the code, keep charging the royalties and feed that money back into Linux development, finally pay some of these guys for their hard work. But as for Sun, I use Suns portal and other products and they are 100% behind Linux and Open Source.
Of course they can. They’ll countersue for that reason. In fact, if IBM wins the suit, it’ll probably countersue SCO until they fill for bankrupcy.
This is just another reason for us developers to stick with producing NATIVE CODE APPLICAIONS under linux with C, C++ and FreePascal and Forget the Mono, dotGNU, .NET, Java, “Network Computing” corperate controlled “managed software” nonsense.
I have actually supported Microsoft while it was growing as a monopoly largely because it supported the independent stand alone computer and native code applications against the “managed software” re computer centralization schemes of this same Sun Microsystems and Oracle under the name “Network Computing”.
Now that Microsoft has ababdoned their support for independent stand alone computing and native code apps for this same Sun originated re centralization nightmare with their .NET, Palladium and DRM nonsense I am moving largely over th Linux for all my actual work and only use Windows for games and when I need Internet Explorer to make web sites work right. Please keep computing truely free. DO NOT FORCE THE ADOPTION OF JAVA OR MONO ON US USERS WHO WANT OUR COMPUTERS RO REMAIN INDEPENDENT!!!
Actually, you’re a little wrong there – Sun may well be an ambulance chaser – I’ve got SCO pegged as the sort of dog that chases headlights. Similarly Microsoft.
Point taken.
>>Actually they filed the suit in March, the didn’t stop distributing their Linux distro until May. <<
Actually, I think they still distribute it. I think you can still download the source code from their site.
>>If SCO were to be granted said temporary injunction to stop the distribution of AIX, and IBM refuses to settle or buy SCO, and wins the suit, could they sue SCO for damages when it was determined that the injunction was not necessary?<<
Absolutely. It’s called barratry, a form of extorsion. If scox illegally causes measurable damages to IBM, you better believe that IBM can sue SCOX.
Problem is: is scox worth suing? Scox’s book value is only about $10 million now, and will soon be worth much less – scox has been losing money since day one.
Small wonders scox top execs recently insisted on being indemnified. Small wonder scox insiders are selling like mad.
>>I doubt Sun is behind all of this. Sun is a supporter of Linux and Open Source, they plan to release a Linux desktop system soon, they entered into agreements with Red Hat and SuSE. <<
Please. Sun only likes OSS when OSS is a stick that they can use to beat msft. When Sun getting beat by the same stick, then sunw has a different outlook.
>>Just because Sun bought stock options and further rights to UNIX doesnt mean they are the enemy<<
Sun didn’t just buy stock options. Those options were given to sunw when sunw bought drivers from scox.
And how unusual is that? In an honest purchase, how often is there a buttload of free options handed out? And why now? x86-solaris has been around for year. Now, all of the sudden, right in the middle of a major fud campaign, sunw decides they can’t live without these driviers? That makes zero sense.
And why all the secrecy? Msft didn’t mind admiting to the scox payoff – sunw insisted on their “purchase” remaining confidential. Why?