The SCO Lawsuit: Looking Back 20 Years Later (lwn.net) 105
"On March 7, 2003, a struggling company called The SCO Group filed a lawsuit against IBM," writes LWN.net, "claiming that the success of Linux was the result of a theft of SCO's technology..."
Two decades later, "It is hard to overestimate how much the community we find ourselves in now was shaped by a ridiculous lawsuit 20 years ago...." It was the claim of access to Unix code that was the most threatening allegation for the Linux community. SCO made it clear that, in its opinion, Linux was stolen property: "It is not possible for Linux to rapidly reach UNIX performance standards for complete enterprise functionality without the misappropriation of UNIX code, methods or concepts". To rectify this "misappropriation", SCO was asking for a judgment of at least $1 billion, later increased to $5 billion. As the suit dragged on, SCO also started suing Linux users as it tried to collect a tax for use of the system.
Though this has never been proven, it was widely assumed at the time that SCO's real objective was to prod IBM into acquiring the company. That would have solved SCO's ongoing business problems and IBM, for rather less than the amount demanded in court, could have made an annoying problem go away and also lay claim to the ownership of Unix — and, thus, Linux. To SCO's management, it may well have seemed like a good idea at the time. IBM, though, refused to play that game; the company had invested heavily into Linux in its early days and was uninterested in allowing any sort of intellectual-property taint to attach to that effort. So the company, instead, directed its not inconsiderable legal resources to squashing this attack. But notably, so did the development community as a whole, as did much of the rest of the technology industry.
Over the course of the following years — far too many years — SCO's case fell to pieces. The "misappropriated" technology wasn't there. Due to what must be one of the worst-written contracts in technology-industry history, it turned out that SCO didn't even own the Unix copyrights it was suing over. The level of buffoonery was high from the beginning and got worse; the company lost at every turn and eventually collapsed into bankruptcy.... Microsoft, which had not yet learned to love Linux, funded SCO and loudly bought licenses from the company. Magazines like Forbes were warning the "Linux-loving crunchies in the open-source movement" that they "should wake up". SCO was suggesting a license fee of $1,399 — per-CPU — to run Linux.... Such an effort, in less incompetent hands, could easily have damaged Linux badly.
As it went, SCO, despite its best efforts, instead succeeded in improving the position of Linux — in development, legal, and economic terms — considerably.
The article argues SCO's lawsuit ultimately proved that Linux didn't contain copyrighted code "in a far more convincing way than anybody else could have." (And the provenance of all Linux code contributions are now carefully documented.) The case also proved the need for lawyers to vigorously defend the rights of open source programmers. And most of all, it revealed the Linux community was widespread and committed.
And "Twenty years later, it is fair to say that Linux is doing a little better than The SCO Group. Its swaggering leader, who thought to make his fortune by taxing Linux, filed for personal bankruptcy in 2020."
Two decades later, "It is hard to overestimate how much the community we find ourselves in now was shaped by a ridiculous lawsuit 20 years ago...." It was the claim of access to Unix code that was the most threatening allegation for the Linux community. SCO made it clear that, in its opinion, Linux was stolen property: "It is not possible for Linux to rapidly reach UNIX performance standards for complete enterprise functionality without the misappropriation of UNIX code, methods or concepts". To rectify this "misappropriation", SCO was asking for a judgment of at least $1 billion, later increased to $5 billion. As the suit dragged on, SCO also started suing Linux users as it tried to collect a tax for use of the system.
Though this has never been proven, it was widely assumed at the time that SCO's real objective was to prod IBM into acquiring the company. That would have solved SCO's ongoing business problems and IBM, for rather less than the amount demanded in court, could have made an annoying problem go away and also lay claim to the ownership of Unix — and, thus, Linux. To SCO's management, it may well have seemed like a good idea at the time. IBM, though, refused to play that game; the company had invested heavily into Linux in its early days and was uninterested in allowing any sort of intellectual-property taint to attach to that effort. So the company, instead, directed its not inconsiderable legal resources to squashing this attack. But notably, so did the development community as a whole, as did much of the rest of the technology industry.
Over the course of the following years — far too many years — SCO's case fell to pieces. The "misappropriated" technology wasn't there. Due to what must be one of the worst-written contracts in technology-industry history, it turned out that SCO didn't even own the Unix copyrights it was suing over. The level of buffoonery was high from the beginning and got worse; the company lost at every turn and eventually collapsed into bankruptcy.... Microsoft, which had not yet learned to love Linux, funded SCO and loudly bought licenses from the company. Magazines like Forbes were warning the "Linux-loving crunchies in the open-source movement" that they "should wake up". SCO was suggesting a license fee of $1,399 — per-CPU — to run Linux.... Such an effort, in less incompetent hands, could easily have damaged Linux badly.
As it went, SCO, despite its best efforts, instead succeeded in improving the position of Linux — in development, legal, and economic terms — considerably.
The article argues SCO's lawsuit ultimately proved that Linux didn't contain copyrighted code "in a far more convincing way than anybody else could have." (And the provenance of all Linux code contributions are now carefully documented.) The case also proved the need for lawyers to vigorously defend the rights of open source programmers. And most of all, it revealed the Linux community was widespread and committed.
And "Twenty years later, it is fair to say that Linux is doing a little better than The SCO Group. Its swaggering leader, who thought to make his fortune by taxing Linux, filed for personal bankruptcy in 2020."
the issue is resolved but what I learned.... (Score:1)
Coveting thy neighbor's ox will get you blacklisted...
Darl McBride. That's his name. (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know why it is not mentioned in TFS... but his name is DARL MCBRIDE.
Never forget what this asshole tried to do to Linux.
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Look at the Chapter 13 link, he is named DARL CHARLES MCBRIDE there. My guess is that he dropped the "Darl" in an attempt to avoid the limelight.
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That's not indicative of anything--legal filings typically contain the full legal name of the individuals involved.
Not that I don't think he should eat a bag of dicks, of course. I spent a lot of time reading Groklaw during the case, and the amount of bending over backward the court did for SCO was breathtaking. They even filed for bankruptcy was solvent, and the courts let them get away with that (and allowed the estate to be dissipated be the trustees and supporting professional services).
Re:Darl McBride. That's his name. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is because SCO was propped up by Microsoft and Microsoft sock puppets at nearly every turn. Rumors of Microsoft liking Linux are inherently false, despite capitulation done. Windows is still the golden goose, and ports of things like dot-net to Linux are designed specifically as bones to their shrinking developer network-- and the reality that they've lost the server wars, except where AD still works.
Oracle and many others watched this case closely and learned how to continue their oil wells while continuing their golden eggs model.
But Darl? He was a warrior asshole. There's no kind way to put it.
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Windows only makes much money from OEMs who aren't about to switch to Linux. Nobody buys Windows separately, and since 10 you have been able to use it without a key indefinitely with only minor cosmetic restrictions. Windows is about 12% of their revenue.
The biggest source of income for Microsoft is Azure cloud services, and on there Linux is the most popular OS. After that the next biggest source of revenue is Office and related services (cloud again).
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Your data is incorrect. Please research more thoroughly and you'll find where the revenue streams are. Yes, Azure is one of them, but that's not this discussion. M365 makes them much, but services make them more.
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My data is accurate for their 2022 revenue filing. What are these non-Azure, non-Office services that make them more money?
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Search on Reportable Income in this link: https://www.microsoft.com/inve... [microsoft.com]
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Brilliant. Love a skimmer.
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Darl McBride of Frankenstein made a deal with Microsoft. That only ends up one way. He burnt everything he had in service of an empire that cares nothing for him.
If he wanted out he could have sold SCO to IBM, Oracle, or any of the others.
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No.
From the summary above:
Though this has never been proven, it was widely assumed at the time that SCO's real objective was to prod IBM into acquiring the company. That would have solved SCO's ongoing business problems and IBM, for rather less than the amount demanded in court, could have made an annoying problem go away and also lay claim to the ownership of Unix — and, thus, Linux. To SCO's management, it may well have seemed like a good idea a
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I know Microsoft helped SCO, but at the same time .. could we really have expected Microsoft not to? You can't get pissed at a fat kid when he eats a cake placed in front of him. Or, like when the cat tries to trip me by running across my path when I'm walking. Yes I know he meant to kill and probably eat me, but then that's what a cat plots all day to do.You can't get mad at 'em .. they're not guilty; by virtue of being mentally ill.
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It's a useless way of looking at things. It gives people a free pass to act on their worst impulses simply by exercising the same terrible behavior over and over again. So the one w
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Rumors of Microsoft liking Linux are inherently false, despite capitulation done. Windows is still the golden goose
Microsoft made more money from Azure services than it did selling Windows licenses, and a large portion of Azure runs on Linux infrastructure and provides Linux VM instances.
Microsoft is not competing against Linux. That is some fantasy the Year of Linux on Desktop crowd can't let go. Linux is not a threat to them, it's a profit centre. It just took them to the cloud era to realise it.
and the reality that they've lost the server wars
LOL. Weed has been leaglised in your state I take it? Microsoft makes most of it's money on server and cloud services (>4
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For a moment, abandon your snark and consider Microsoft's revenue streams, cloud included, without Windows or Office.
Let's look at the landscape:
- Something else is running on servers and desktops and tablets. They've already lost the phone battle, search battle(s), and social media battles. Yes they make revenue with LinkedIn.
- Remove M365 and Office, and all the connecting gear and apps that go with it.
If you're not shuddering so far, consider what rides on Azure across the planet. Without Azure, there is
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For a moment, abandon your snark and consider Microsoft's revenue streams, cloud included, without Windows or Office.
Why would I move a goalpost to support your narrative that Microsoft is competing against Linux and losing in the server? They are an integrated company with integrated products and services. Ignoring any part of their services to analyse others would be absolutely stupid.
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Sycophancy and being a lap dog marketing shill get you nowhere.
Get real.
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Microsoft makes money from Windows because it is the enabler for Office. Office works substandard on MacOS. Even the online version of Office is substandard to the native Windows applications. Windows in the Enterprise was and is vital to microsoft's strategy, despite them crapping all over those enterprise users. The cloud stuff is relative new (what feels like an eternity to those who've been using it), but it ultimately will be what kills Windows.
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That's right! It was all Darl's fault - it's important that people remember that.
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It wasn't 100% McBride's fault. He couldn't have done it without backing from the SCOX Board of Directors and the cooperation of a whole bunch of other people, e.g. the lawyers involved. All those people deserve their own share of the blame.
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I would hate to have been SCO's salaried in-house counsel, but if I were an outside lawyer (IANAL), I'd have salivated at the potential number of billable hours!
But yeah, SCO's board must have been on crack to go along with Darl.
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The way lawsuits work in the US, launching this kind of lawsuit might very well have been Caldera/SCOX's best chance at making money. Their Linux and legacy Unix business weren't big earners, and they weren't going to be able to take the market away from serious Linux companies like RedHat and SUSE. Launching a nuisance lawsuit in hopes of getting either a nice payout or convincing IBM to buy the company was probably smart business. It's
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It's only savvy business if there's a chance of success. Otherwise they'd make a business strategy of buying up lotto tickets. If there is clear evidence of infringement, then do what Stac did and sue (and I worked in the building next to Stac where apparently they did nothing but spend the money they got after winning their lawsuit). But there was no clear evidence of theft from SCO, it was smoke and mirrors and the contracts were too murky and their lawyers should have recognized that.
Even more, after
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Yep, I remember that name now. What a scumbag. I remember the attempts to cripple, tax, steal Linux back in The Day. I only used it once for a couple of years when I was managing the contents of SIMTEL when it was being run by Digital River. It was my first extensive time on a Linux server, and I quickly got used to it and managing an online database via Internet and that single Linux host. I had a _real_ Linux programmer to manage the server, thank the godz, but the database and web site interface wer
Darl McBride (Score:2)
He must be gainfully employed or have some sort of performing assets because he filed a chapter 13 bankruptcy. That's usually reserved for people with an income stream and allows them to create a "payment plan" with creditors to dispose of the debt within a few years.
Who would employ someone so demonstrably inept?
Re:Darl McBride (Score:5, Informative)
A quick invocation of GIYF shows he's been at the Japanese division of the patent troll VirnetX since 2021, which seems entirely fitting for someone of his dubious talents.
XINUOS DELENDA EST!!
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Oddly their governance page doesn't show him in management, despite a COO claim on his Twitter.
It looks like he's wiring a book about his failed attempts to gain control of the industry.
Thanks to PJ (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Thanks to PJ (Score:5, Interesting)
Yup.
And quite often I find myself wishing there was a groklaw equivalent for a variety of topics as they come up...
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Link to Groklaw, good reading for history buffs (Score:1)
Groklaw.net [groklaw.net] is a good place for the case's history.
Unfortunately, it ends abruptly on 8/20/2013.
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Thank you. I was racking my brains trying to remember her name.
I'm shocked to not see her mentioned in the article, tbh.
and the beat goes on... (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately, the company that bought up the SCOXQ codebase out of its bankruptcy, saying at the time they had no interest in litigation, filed their own copycat lawsuit against IBM/Red Hat in March '21 with the same sort of claims as its predecessor. Search for "Xinuos v. IBM". Appears to be going as well for them as their former owners.
You'd think after McBride's "poisoning the well" for anyone trying to continue support of SCOXQ products that they would have simply worked on helping the remaining stragglers migrate to Linux solutions and kept up a small consultancy for same.
XINUOS DELENDA EST!!
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All I can see about Xinuos is that it is privately owned, which tells us nothing about who is funding this lunacy.
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The original buyers were Stephen Norris Capital Partners (Norris formerly of The Carlyle Group) and MerchantBridge, a UK equity firm working in Middle Eastern investments. Norris supposedly also received funding from ME sources. To what end the Gulf states chose to throw money at this is unknown.
Re:and the beat goes on... (Score:5, Informative)
None of these trolls know the old jokes about IBM being a legal department that also happens to sell computers. IBM has more than a department. They have an entire building.
Re:and the beat goes on... (Score:5, Funny)
Those are the Nazgul. Once, they were human. Now, they are IBM's lawyers. They never sleep, they are ruthless and relentless when pursuing their prey, and no mortal corporation waged legal battle with them and lived to tell the tale.
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And their leader is Mr. Slant, [wikipedia.org] an ancient zombie lawyer who also never sleeps. Not only has he read every book on the law that's ever been written, he wrote a large percentage of them.
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"As a result of these activities, Xinuos has been excluded from key opportunities in the market. For example, despite Xinuos offering a FreeBSD-based operating system with substantial commercial value for enterprise users, Xinuos was unable to garner as much financial support or customer interest in OpenServer 10 as it could and should have due to the market conditions."
The operating system landscape is very different today. And this includes what we think about "licensing" ...
Linux is not the cause bu
For a law firm there's little or no cost (Score:2)
Re: For a law firm there's little or no cost (Score:2)
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The undead husk That Once Was SCOXQ finally got a $14.5MM settlement out of IBM in August of 2021 (17 years and some months); presumably most of this will end up going to lawyers and various unpaid creditors (if there's still any surviving). Interesting that the copycat suit by unXis -> Xinuos started a few months before; trying to wear down IBM by inches? :-)
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I was always wondering why IBM settled instead of letting their lawyers demolish them.
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My guess is they worked the numbers on the cost to take the case through Yet Another Trial, knocked off 10-20% and made a settlement offer to the bankruptcy trustee. After this long he's probably been digging for loose change in the sofa cushions to keep the SCOXQ side of the case afloat, and this let him get out from under the Nazguls' baleful gaze with some hope of paying off the lawyers with some crumbs left for any remaining creditors.
XINUOS DELENDA EST!!
I am sure he is doing well (Score:5, Interesting)
There has been enough time to move assets around to hide from the bankruptcy lawyers. Now he will continue to have a happy retired life in some Caribbean island teaching the new set of younger people how to get orchestrate and pay off the shills without getting caught.
Often it is the book contracts. Watch for the competing talking heads, see the one amenable and who is taking positions close to where you want them to be. Sign an outside book contract, assign a friendly editor to shape the contents of the book. You tell the editor, editor tells the shill, shill writes it in his book and promotes it on air, all iron clad, no impropriety, no ethical conflicts. The book will bomb in the stores, but by that time the shill would have parroted what is convenient to you for many hours to every TV host looking to fill hours.
I remember (Score:2)
I remember reading about this lawsuit every day. It filled my college years. Spencer Katt in eWeek was the best cartoon back then for IT comedy and they had a number of good strips on the SCO lawsuit. I'm just surprised nobody doxxed PJ yet.
Re: I remember (Score:2)
They tried. PJ documented the attemp on Groklaw
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Yep. The MOGster.
hahaha no (Score:2)
Though this has never been proven, it was widely assumed at the time that SCO's real objective was to prod IBM into acquiring the company.
Yeah, right, Microsoft bankrolled the lawsuits in order to help SCO get bought by IBM through charity, pull the other one
Re: hahaha no (Score:3)
Re: hahaha no (Score:4, Informative)
Microsoft also enjoyed the opportunity to have that cloud of legal uncertainty looming over Linux and UNIX as a whole. It was believed to help drive server sales towards Windows, which it may have in fact done to some extent. It clearly benefitted Microsoft to have the litigation ongoing, which is why they did their part to help keep SCO afloat during that time.
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There was this, and there was the FUD about Sarbanes-Oxley. I remember businesses following consultant advice and completely ripping out entire Linux installs and going all Windows, because they feared Linux would be "non SOX compliant". At least Red Hat got FIPS and Common Criteria certification which helped reverse this trend, but I saw a lot of places go MS just out of that FUD after the knee-jerk laws passed due to Enron.
Didn't contain copyrighted code (Score:5, Informative)
The summary states that the lawsuit proved that Linux didn't contain copyrighted code. This is nonsense, every bit of code in Linux is copyrighted. And if they meant that the suit proved that Linux doesn't contain any improperly used copyrighted code - well it didn't do that either (the suit never got that far). What the suit proved is that SCO did not own any of the copyrights to code it claimed it did, having sold those rights to Novell.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Didn't contain copyrighted codere (Score:2)
My honest nitpick would have been different - SCO's claim was, as the summary itself admits, "It is not possible for Linux to rapidly reach UNIX performance standards for complete enterprise functionality without the misappropriation of UNIX code, methods or concepts"
SCO either did not know about the decade of work that had been done at that point in trying to replace Unix or they were dishonest about it. Contributions to both BSD and GNU had reached the point where if there was a decent kernel, a new OS would be capable of challenging commercial Unix. Even corporations like IBM saw the value of contributing to open source projects like Linux. Considering that this work had been done in the open, I would say dishonesty was more likely.
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What the suit proved is that SCO did not own any of the copyrights to code it claimed it did, having sold those rights to Novell.
Not quite correct. Novell licensed SCO as the primary seller of their Unix software (Unixware). Novell never sold the Unix copyrights or their Unix business to SCO. This was brought up by the fact that 95% of every SCO sale of Unixware had to go back to Novell with SCO keeping only 5%. If I remember correctly in SCO vs Novell [wikipedia.org], SCO had made these Novell payments the fiscal quarter prior to them launching their suit against IBM. After the IBM suit, SCO stopped all payments. The court ruled that was a breach
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Nah the summary is perfectly correct. You just don't realise the main point of its wording is to weed out the angry pedants who care more about the meaning of words than the meaning conveyed by words.
It shows how important the courts are (Score:1)
People really have no idea just how much power did you dictionary has over your daily life.
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did you dictionary
the judiciary?
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And it should remind you to pay attention to how judges are appointed. All it would have taken is a less competent series of judges and a court packed the right way and Linux would just be dead.
I doubt it would have been this sever. Back then, and even now, Linux is a concept as well as a product. Development happens in many different jurisdictions around the world. Even if SCO would have won a judgement in California, it would have had a hard time enforcing it around the world. Eventually, any copyrighted code would have been removed and Linux would have continued.
The SCO law suit was nothing more than a money grab by a dying company. There was never a chance that it would have completel
Well (Score:1)
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The lawsuits did taint Linux.
The only people pushing this narrative was Microsoft and their FUD.
And left IBM a little gun shy with respect to Unix and Linux.
Er what? IBM still offers both to this day. IBM still contributes to Linux. The decline of IBM is more related to the decline of mainframes than anything else. But people still use mainframes and IBM is the one real solution.
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ROTFL!
You say that because you don't know shit about it. IBM rapidly came to love Linux. Try this taste of reality: would you like to have been the world's biggest, most important computer company, and have to support the following operating systems: S/36, S/38, 4100, RISC 6000, DOS/VSE/whatever other letters were added later, and you can't *imagine* the JCL (go look it up), MVS.... or would you rather offer "here's our o/s, Linux. Your company gets bigger, and needs a larger, more powerful computer? Sure,
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ROTFL!
You say that because you don't know shit about it. IBM rapidly came to love Linux. Try this taste of reality: would you like to have been the world's biggest, most important computer company, and have to support the following operating systems: S/36, S/38, 4100, RISC 6000, DOS/VSE/whatever other letters were added later, and you can't *imagine* the JCL (go look it up), MVS.... or would you rather offer "here's our o/s, Linux. Your company gets bigger, and needs a larger, more powerful computer? Sure, no problem, just recompile and MAKE NO CHAGES to your millions of lines of code, and buy our next bigger computer.
Yes, that really is how it worked.
Not exactly. You don't have to recompile.
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Right...so gun shy that they went and bought RedHat.
Who Remembers GROKLAW (Score:1)
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GROKLAW and PJ were instrumental to the dismantling of the "case against linux" and no amount of thanks can make up for the hell PJ went through personally.
My thanks forever go to those who fought against SCO, TSG, and whatever other amorphous blob names they used.
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Yeah me too.
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Re: Who Remembers GROKLAW (Score:2)
Always amazes me how many children (Score:2)
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More importantly it freed Linux (Score:3)
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I rather miss the 90s Internet. So much smaller and without all the idiots. Now it's mainstream and full of a lot of crap. Gets worse every year. I won't be surprised if in another ten years it's made into something that we can't even post on anymore and will only be for large corporations to push crap to us.
When History repeats itself...sort of. (Score:1)
This case came to mind recently with the WotC debacle and trying to remove an Open Source license after it's been in the wild for 20 plus years.
To me, the SCO case gave teeth to Open Source licenses, regardless of the field, whether it be software, rpg systems, etc...
Luciky (Score:2)
Lucky that IBM's lawyers were better than its programmers.
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Oh, let's not forget the Microsoft taint... (Score:1)
Let us not forget that the SCO boondoggle was a proxy war by Microsoft in no uncertain terms. You can slather all of the "historical perspective" you want on it but it was still the worst kind of garbage to come out of Corporate America since the Robber Barons of the late 1800s. Then again, us BSD Heads were over here going, "Yup, legally vetted in '94. We're good!" with FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD.
Forbes can kiss my (Score:2)
Count on Forbes (and Fortune) to be completely bought and paid-for by whatever malicious status-quo interest has the highest offer, and then to offer you their worthless content behind a paywell.
I'm always sure to ban these publications from very feed / alert / litter box I'm using.
2nd round (Score:2)
This actually goes back a decode more, when AT&T sued BSDi, which I've always felt gave linux a huge boost at the time.
Microsoft scum (Score:2)
Yes, good reminder that Microsoft has consistently been the scum of the industry, the wannabe and sometimes successful rent seekers of IT, convicted monopolists. The "benevolent" Microsoft of the last few years is like Russia in apparent "peace" between two revanchist wars.
That was very entertaining (Score:2)
For years, I had SCO's stock graph up on my cube wall from the day they lost the case and became a penny stock. It was a glorious day.
I think the lawsuit did one thing more: It showed that patent trolls don't always profit, and that it was possible to fight them successfully.
And the classic (Score:2)
"And don't forget to pay your $699 licensing fee you cocksmoking teabaggers"
Lessons learned (Score:2)
The story that would not die. (Score:2)
The first internet popcorn battle (Score:1)
For me, this was the first great internet battle in which you could be a spectator with the mythical bucket of popcorn, munching away.
I almost miss SCO. Almost.
SCO's Troubles Started Much Earlier (Score:1)