Microsoft Not Underwriting SCO's Legal Fees? 239
An anonymous reader wrote in to say "Linux Business Week carries this morning a claim that Microsoft only bought a Unix license from SCO Group because there's been a prior development project underway at Redmond that warranted it. "The license was not seen as a way to underwrite SCO's legal fees," says a source within the company. "The idea of getting a SCO license had been under consideration prior to the IBM lawsuit." "
So? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not ? (Score:2, Insightful)
Shucks, and the conspiracy theory looks so good in print.
Anybody buying this?
That's possible, why not ? after all, I doubt Microsoft developed Passport to run on top of Windows, since it's mission-critical.
The sad part. (Score:5, Insightful)
There's still something to be learned from all of this - namely Microsoft's problem with people not trusting them is very real.
In short, Microsoft is not a company that a lot of people would give the benefit of a doubt.
After so much FUD, how can we trust them?
Double speak, or PC speak, call it what you will (Score:5, Insightful)
What bothers me is not the lie, but the pervasiveness of this sort of attitude. They don't want to admit their true motives, so they lie and the mass media doesn't call them on it.
My question is simple: why are they bothering? They have financial interest in seeing Linux, and MacOS, failing. If Linux's market share expands, theirs contracts. Nothing difficult to understand here.
Unfortunately, that their pathetic lie being allowed to go un-challenged means that otheres will keep right on lying in ever more pathetic manners. Let's have some artistry here, if someone wants to lie to me I expect it to be plausable, not rediculous.
Its rather like the political "doner's" lie: "Oh, no, I'd never bribe a politician. This particular politician just wants to give me special favors because its part of his political philosophy, I'm just giving him money to express my support of that philosophy."
Since that excuse works so well in politics why not everywhere else: "Oh no officer, I wasn't paying that woman for sex, she simply has a philosophy of giving oral sex to strangers, I'm merely expressing my support for that philosophy."
Really, MS, politicians, their lies are just too transparent to be amusing. We need a better class of lies damnit. Either that or some honesty, that would be original too...
Yeah, yeah, yeah... (Score:4, Insightful)
[*sarcasm*]I'm sure everyone believes that. But even if it isn't true, Microsoft could be "licensing" SCO to uphold their own position on intellectual property, which is that you must obtain a license and pay for everything. It fits in perfectly with their business model, and should hardly come as a surprise: we always knew where they stood. That this could be a little "down payment" on what they hope to get out of the litigation against IBM is a bonus.
Re:Wait and see (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically, Services for Unix runs on Windows and is designed to replace UNIX servers by offering some similiar services such has NFS and NIS. The idea here is for companies to gracefully migrate their servers away from UNIX and lock them into a MS products.
I just don't understand why Microsoft didn't purchase this license years ago when the Services for UNIX was first started.
I don't think so (Score:4, Insightful)
1. They can take (F,N,O)BSD code and get a perfect UNIX(ish) layer.
2. If they want to pay somebody, they can go to http://www.windriver.com/products/bsd_os/index.ht
Just tell me what is the benefit of SCO code from the MS point. I'll tel you - they know SCO was going to do something and now they are covering their traces with smoke.
CYA Situation (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean they've been sued once by SCO already and lost because of DRDOS and SCO is now suing IBM Over Unix. Guess who's next in line that has a big pile of money sitting in a corner of a room that has Unix IP. Most likely Microsoft Lawyer XP(TM) is advising Bill that paying the Royalities is cheaper than going through yet another reputation damaging lawsuit over Unix.
MS is taking the bullseye off of it's back to allow them to work on their Unix Stuff without worry and forces SCO to go after other companies such as Sun.
Re:speaking of OSX (Score:3, Insightful)
The whole thing is just SO full of crap of course that no sane person believes anything SCO says anymore.
Re:Double speak, or PC speak, call it what you wil (Score:3, Insightful)
The newspeak accusation works both ways. The best way to disarm your enemies when you're actually doing something nefarious is to accuse them of lying about *you*, putting them on the defensive instead.
So who do you trust, baby? Microsoft or the "Linux Community"? Who has a reputation for openness, and who for secrecy? Who has been caught in lie after lie, scheme after scheme, extinguishment after extension?
It makes Microsoft look like a bunch of petulant three year olds. I actually think the only reason anyone tolerates them is that their behavior is so unbelievably bad that no one actually thinks it could possibly all be true.
Also for financial reasons... (Score:3, Insightful)
They probably got a license on the cheap. Should SCO beat IBM, the license fees would go up. I'm pretty certain that the bean counters made this decision.
If we pay now, we pay X. If we don't pay now, there is an 80% chance that we pay 0 in royalties, but pay between
I don't think that it was the lawyers, I think that it was the accountants. Besides, accountants HATE uncertainties. This way they get off the hook and can focus on their business, instead of another legal case.
Alex
Re:Wait and see (Score:4, Insightful)
It makes sense to me.
For the purposes of their "Services for UNIX" effort, there is no need for a license whatsoever. They could just install linux and *BSD on a flock of development machines, with no license required. Software that runs on all these is going to be highly POSIX compliant, so porting it to other unix-like systems should be easy. Buying a few Solaris, HP-UX, OSX, AIX, etc. unix test machines would suffice for the rest of the market. They could even buy a few Caldera/SCO boxes to add to the test lab.
Unless they really want to muck around in the innards of SCO's commercial offerings, there's no need of a license at all. The only reason to do this is to supply non-portable apps that run only on SCO.
So what remains is the only reasonable explanation for their licensing SCO's stuff: They want to give SCO a big chunk of money for some purpose other than developing software for the unix market. One guess what this reason might be
elaboration (Score:3, Insightful)
So, SCO is parroting everything M$ wants. That's what a whore is good for. If there's a technical basis for the suit, SCO has yet to present it. All they've said is stupid and untrue stuff about the accountability of free software and innovation being a corporate exclusive. Sounds like the same old M$ bullshit people never believed in the first place, but now they can think badly of SCO instead of M$. Woops, statements like this remind us how's in charge.
What more could M$ want? About a year of FUD to delay free software deployment until Paladium is in place. It's not working.
They also said:
But if we didn't have any actual use for the license, it absolutely would not have happened.
I'd like to know what use that was, beyond the admitted desired statement. How long have they been using Services for Unix? Uh-hun, and now they think they need a license from someone else? Yeah right.
Microsoft, you suck.
Yeah Sure (Score:2, Insightful)
When I buy a license for a product that I'll be using for a project, I don't put out a press release. I can only assume that Microsoft doesn't either. What are the chances that the MS PR department even knows that there is a SCO project underway, and if they did, why would they think it worthy of telling the world?
The only thing I can conclude is that at the very least, MS is trying give the SCO claim some validity (due to the timing). At worst, they are actively funding this effort.
This is simpler than it appears (Score:2, Insightful)
Microsoft recently came the realization that one of their products "Services for Unix" wasn't licensed according to their new aggressive IP stance - ie, anything that is Open Source exposes you to liability and needs to be avoided.
Purportedly, the product derives code from BSD. Rewriting the code would remove the copyright issues, but not the underlying IP issues that Microsoft is sowing FUD about.
So the only solution is to push their liability onto someone else - ie, SCO. SCO now claims ownership for Unix's IP and gives Microsoft cover. Microsoft can now use IP issues to attack mainframe *Nix -> Linux/BSD migration and pose Windows Server as a fully IP safe alternative. The SCO lawsuit is just icing on the cake.
Re:The sad part. (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft has the money to buy whatever publicity it wants (as well it would seem as other things that one would think should not be for sale). So as much as we'd like to think that the rest of the world distrusts MS as we do, I think we're deluding ourselves on that point.
Re:I don't think so (Score:3, Insightful)
- Wind River executives said last week that fear of legal action caused them to abandon their own Linux program, which was quietly moving into high gear three years ago. After investing more than a year in Wind River Linux, they said they decided against releasing it because Linux is subject to the laws of the general public license, which allows users to demand access to an OEM's source code. "We decided we didn't want to expose our customers to those kinds of issues," said Fraser of Wind River. "This like going after the tobacco companies. If it's successful, it will tear down the precepts that support Linux, and it could affect the concept of all software."
Linux is like the Tobacco companies?! Smokin'! Why not ask BMW to critique Jaguar...Sco = Rambus (Score:4, Insightful)
This time hopefully SCO will not survive the bad publicity. Just don't buy any of their products and they will shut up or shut down. Leaving Microsoft to do their own dirty work.
Re:elaboration (Score:3, Insightful)
And has the SCO-UNIX codebase been updated in living memory, at least to where it is interoperable with current M$ OSs?? Does it actually have any technical advantages over BSD??