SCO Includes OS Products In OpenServer 6

William Robinson writes "In a bid to be friendly with Open Source, SCO has included 7 OS products in their Unix product. Among the included packages are MySQL, PostgreSQL, Samba, Apache, Tomcat, and FireFox. SCO's position is consistent, spokesman Blake Stowell argued. 'We don't necessarily have issues with open source, we just have an issue with open-source technology that includes intellectual property it shouldn't' he said."

Re:Woah

[AKAImBatman]

SCO actually sell something? I assumed they just litigate.

FWIW, OpenServer used to be a very serious product. You see, Microsoft did the original development back in the 80's under the name "Xenix". That product was considered by Microsoft to be to DOS what NT was to 9x. Unfortunately, the market shifted to focus on early GUIs such as VisOn and the Macintosh, resulting in a decision by Microsoft to sell OpenServer to the original SCO.

SCO found themselves in the position of having the most advanced Unix ever developed for the x86 processor. (386BSD still needed work when it showed up, and the later Solaris/x86 partly gained its reputation as "Slowaris" on x86 hardware.) The result was that SCO was able to capture the early market for low end Unix boxes, below the market that even Sun targetted.

The later increase in x86 power, and the entry of Linux into the market brought more traditional Unix systems on a convergent path with SCO, thus causing their marketshare to evaporate. The original SCO moved on to greener pastures and sold OpenServer to Caldera. Caldera continued to market the product, but also inherited a large base of SCO salesmen. Guess who became the most troublesome individuals when OpenServer's sales tanked after the Linux suit? ;-)

Re:Does anybody take SCO seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anybody take SCO seriously these days? If so, who?

SCO

Not Quite

[WindBourne]

1. Under GPL rules, you must accept GPL and be willing to abide by the rules (distribute the source code, etc). to be able to distribute it.
2. A number of the developers of GPL software have requested SCO to not use their stuff iff GPL is proved invalid.
   
   So, if GPL is valid, then SCO is unwilling to accept it, then they are in violation of the contract. Likewise, assume that GPL is invalid. Then, the licensing reverts to the developers, and many have stated that they do NOT want SCO having anything to do with their stuff.
   
   SCO is clearly illegal (and immoral) no matter how you slice this.

Re: estopped[sic]

[InfiniteWisdom]

Estopped is not a spelling mistake, it's a legal term.

estop [answers.com]

Re:Does this mean

[m50d]

MySQL's policy is they only give you the non-gpl-licensed version if you pay them for it.

Re:Of course they're consistent

[eyegone]

Their position on the GPL is completely consistant. i.e. The GPL is invalid, therefore they can take and redistribute all the software they want without any reprocussions from copyright law.

It doesn't work that way. In the absence of a license, distributing material whose copyright is owned by another party is copyright infringement. So if the GPL is invalid, SCO is committing copyright violation by distributing any software that is licensed under the GPL.

Re:RTFA

[Chris Burke]

Yes, well, SCO's "The GPL is Unenforceable and even, verily, Un-Constitutional and thus Un-American, like Comminuism" theory had its day in court and died and abrupt death as was predicted. They've since dropped all claims that the GPL is invalid.

So they're almost certainly distributing Samba and MySQL in compliance with the GPL.

Re: estopped[sic]

[sjf]

There are better definitions available: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&c2 coff=1&client=safari&rls=en&biw=1151&q=define%3A+e stoppel&btnG=Search [google.com]

Amusingly enough, the gist of estoppel, is that you can't encourage or permit someone to take certain actions, and then bring suit against them on the basis that that action was illegal or in breach of contract.