Zombie 'Who Owns Unix?' Lawsuit Comes Alive Again (theregister.com) 109
The long-running SCO/IBM Unix and Linux ownership dispute has resurfaced yet again, this time through SCO successor Xinuos, which is trying to pursue old license and copyright claims tied to Project Monterey. "The core issue seems to be whether Xinuos even has the right to litigate the matter, or if some ancient legalese in the original agreements means the window for legal argument has long since expired," reports The Register. From the report: [T]he roots of the case are the 1998 alliance between IBM and a company called the Santa Cruz Operation which sold a version of UNIX for x86 CPUs. Those two companies, plus Intel and Sequent, created "Project Monterey" -- an effort to create a unified version of UNIX that could run on multiple processors. By 2001, Project Monterey was close to delivering a unified UNIX, an achievement made possible by blending code from IBM and SCO.
By then, a little project called "Linux" already ran on multiple processors. Big Blue decided Linux was the future and bailed from Project Monterey -- then allegedly contributed some Monterey code to the open-source project and to its own AIX and Z operating systems. SCO felt it owned some of that code, so sued IBM.
SCO and its successors struggled to survive, but interested parties kept the lawsuit alive because the chance to emerge as owner of parts of the Linux codebase, and IBM's code, had the potential to turn into a colossal payday. The case and its successors ended in 2021, with a settlement that saw litigants agree to end the matter without IBM admitting fault. But by then, SCO had sold its software to a biz called Xinuos that decided to fight on.
The Xinuos case has burbled along quietly since, and on June 22nd reached the milestone of a hearing. The matter has become a little more modern, if only because this hearing was held online and the presiding judge appeared to unwittingly be on mute at one point. But the arguments otherwise seemed to revisit Project Monterey, debated the relevance of past litigation, contested who owned what, when they owned it, and how they could prove it. Xinuos argued IBM never had a license for SCO code. Big Blue argued that it did nothing wrong.
By then, a little project called "Linux" already ran on multiple processors. Big Blue decided Linux was the future and bailed from Project Monterey -- then allegedly contributed some Monterey code to the open-source project and to its own AIX and Z operating systems. SCO felt it owned some of that code, so sued IBM.
SCO and its successors struggled to survive, but interested parties kept the lawsuit alive because the chance to emerge as owner of parts of the Linux codebase, and IBM's code, had the potential to turn into a colossal payday. The case and its successors ended in 2021, with a settlement that saw litigants agree to end the matter without IBM admitting fault. But by then, SCO had sold its software to a biz called Xinuos that decided to fight on.
The Xinuos case has burbled along quietly since, and on June 22nd reached the milestone of a hearing. The matter has become a little more modern, if only because this hearing was held online and the presiding judge appeared to unwittingly be on mute at one point. But the arguments otherwise seemed to revisit Project Monterey, debated the relevance of past litigation, contested who owned what, when they owned it, and how they could prove it. Xinuos argued IBM never had a license for SCO code. Big Blue argued that it did nothing wrong.
SCO and IBM (Score:3)
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And someone still has decided to beat a dead horse.
Respecting copyright is an important part of FOSS (Score:5, Informative)
they both suck.
True. But copyright law has nothing to do with who sucks. IF Linux has "Project Monterey" code in it, remove it and replace it with non infringing code. Just like a commercial company like IBM that had GPL code in it would be expected to do.
It's not about good / bad. It's about respecting / not respecting copyright. Respecting copyright is a very important part of FOSS.
Re:Respecting copyright is an important part of FO (Score:5)
They can't find it after 30 years.
Re:Respecting copyright is an important part of FO (Score:5, Funny)
IF Linux has "Project Monterey" code in it
They can't find it after 30 years.
They only recently applied AI coding agents to the task. ;-)
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Darl McBride used to refer to the "spiffy agent technology" that was going to find the allegedly infringing code, so that particular grift is nothing new.
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Re: Respecting copyright is an important part of F (Score:2)
I never understood why that Unix version was supposedly alien.
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Good point!
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IF Linux has "Project Monterey" code in it
They can't find it after 30 years.
And they are starting to lose confidence. They only work for Vizzini to pay the bills, not a lot of money or revenge.
Re: Respecting copyright is an important part of F (Score:3, Interesting)
My recollection from the old Groklaw days is that the heart of the disagreement turned out to not even be code, but API definitions. SCO claimed to own the definitions of some APIs, but (when finally pushed to be very specific) not their implementations.
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My recollection from the old Groklaw days is that the heart of the disagreement turned out to not even be code, but API definitions. SCO claimed to own the definitions of some APIs, but (when finally pushed to be very specific) not their implementations.
Fuzzy recollections here too, maybe code in the sense of header files that define the API. Implementations being in other files.
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Yeah, it went down to whether headers are copyrightable.
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IF Linux has "Project Monterey" code in it, remove it and replace it with non infringing code
Problem is no infringing code was ever disclosed. The closest was code that SCOG claimed was encrypted BUT was actually just a word document with the font changed to the WingDings font. Once the code was typed into a new Word document and switched from WingDings to a normal text font it was revealed to be BSD code and legally included in Linux. Code that SCOG had no rights to.
Just like all the supposed Microsoft patent violations by Linux. Microsoft would never specify the "infringing" code or the "in
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AFAIK Microsoft did collect (and probably still does so) collect bucketloads of money on these patents from Android vendors. It is just not "public" because of course that would be not in their interest and would hurt their recent image of "open source friendly company".
Re:Respecting copyright is an important part of FO (Score:4, Interesting)
The offending code was apparently a single file with some enums in it, that was a published part of the old AT&T C ccode that had long since passed into public domain. SCO never had a single line of code that it could point to and claim it owned.
Especially since the actual unix code SCO did have the rights to *actually* belonged to Novel and Novel where NOT happy with SCO running off and breaking its licensing agreement with Novel by launching unauthorized lawsuits.
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" hat was a published part of the old AT&T C ccode that had long since passed into public domain." ???
Is code subject to different copyright law than books etc?
Current copyright in the US is life of the author(s?) plus 70 years.
Pretty sure Unix isn't THAT old.
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The whole process that split AT&T's System V and BSD should bear some weight here, at some point there was an agreement that, once BSD rewrote the few offending portions, AT&T had no claim anymore.
Frankly I'm surprised that the settlement between SCO and IBM didn't include verbiage that this was a done deal with no right for any successor-entity to bring this up again.
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I don't know the answer in this case, but a lot of things published before the copyright changes in the 1970s expired under the old rules unless the company made timely filings to claim the rights under the new rules. At the time a lot of people didn't imagine that code itself would be copyrightable, because they were all math majors who understood it was just formulas! So nobody registered those claims.
Also a lot of it was government funded under terms that made it public once the military released any sec
Re:Respecting copyright is an important part of FO (Score:5, Interesting)
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They also claimed to have a team of "MIT deep divers" who provided evidence. For some reason the "team" was never revealed. Also the "report"/"evidence" of these deep divers was never revealed. Funny thing is when they started the case with IBM they claimed to have a "mountain" of evidence and that they were ready to go direct to trial without discovery BUT then dragged out discover for YEARS.
IBM was required to turn over mountains of evidence which SCOG then claimed they couldn't access so IBM provide
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IBM provided them with a server with all the required information WITH detailed instructions on how to setup the server (down to how to plug it in) and access the data. No evidence was used from this server, no reason to believe that SCOG ever set it up.
Now that would be an epic retro-unboxing video, LGR should get right on that.
Re: Respecting copyright is an important part of F (Score:2)
Wasn't that after they had first claimed the include files were copyrighted?
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Happens I know both SCO's Expert and IBM's Expert. They both independently analyzed the codebases, each developing a similar set of analysis tools (think of a modified version of grep which searches for similarities in code patterns that remain after changing variable names and re-factoring equations to do the same math in more or fewer lines.)
Both researchers reached the same conclusion - the code which was the same in both systems was free to use - open source and MIT licensed (primarily code that was ta
SCO tried 30 years ago (Score:1)
Couldn't find jack shit. Normally a lawsuit just has some lawyers and technical experts who blow smoke up the judge's ass for two years, then he comes down with a decision that may not bear any semblance to reality. In the SCO case, the entire universe of nerddom was on IBM's side and ran the facts absolutely to the fucking ground. SCO had no hope of winning a lawsuit where they couldn't spin doubt out of thin air even with the best lawyers in the world.
Xenix was astonishingly primitive, and buggy as hell -
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And what if that code was authored by IBM and lawfully contributed to Linux?
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And what if that code was authored by IBM and lawfully contributed to Linux?
Then someone should send a memo to the lawyers by FAX that documents this. :-)
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And what if that code was authored by IBM and lawfully contributed to Linux?
Since SCOG wouldn't reveal the code that they claimed to be in violation how code IBM do that?
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IF Linux has "Project Monterey" code in it
THEN it would have included the basic commands that allowed full control of init and systemd would not be a thing. Since we're on the subject of dead horses.
These guys seem like parasites and I hope they just fuck off.
Re: Respecting copyright is an important part of F (Score:2)
The issue would be damages from every entity that used the code, which red hat comes to mind as having the requisite deep pockets.
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Project Monterey was a joint effort between Santa Cruz Operation & IBM to port UNIX to Intel's Itanium chip (aka Itanic...), which went nowhere. When Caldera (a Novell spinoff) bought out Santa Cruz & rebranded themselves as SCO, IBM invoked the change-of-ownership option in the contract (since there'd been no warning from the other side..), took their copy of the jointly developed code and walked. They added that and some code from the recently-acquired Sequent to Linux (recall the $1B investment
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"Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time"
Yawn... (Score:2)
Still trying to extort money from IBM after all this time. Nothing like a business model made up entirely of rent seeking.
Re: Yawn... (Score:3)
Wait, are you talking about IBM or SCO?
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Wait, are you talking about IBM or SCO?
IBM actually creates things. SCO created a few things, but most of them were weird. Like SCO Open Desktop, which was slightly after CDE, and had no real reason to exist since everyone was going to CDE at the time. Or SCO UUCP, of which I have no real complaint, but why write another one with so few changes? OTOH SCO UNIX was really solid before any other x86 UNIX (or Unixlike) was. You could count on it.
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To be fair, IBM has jumped on the rent seeking train with both feet as well.
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To be fair, IBM has jumped on the rent seeking train with both feet as well.
But does IBM claim rent on things that they refuse to prove they own? That was what SCOG did.
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Having a service model instead of a sales model is inherently a rent-seeking business, but that's not bad.
When people use "rent seeking" in the pejorative, it means something different; that you're seeking perpetual rent after you've finished providing the service.
IBM doesn't do that. Whenever they provide code to their customers to utilize their services they give it under Apache 2 or similar BSD-style, business-friendly licenses. And then they only charge "rent" for services that are currently being used.
Wayback Time! (Score:5, Informative)
I remember this being covered extensively on Slashdot and Groklaw (Groklaw is gone, and replaced with some crypto scam site). Pamela Jones was the writer (probably a pseudonym) giving insights into the trials for years. Eventually burning out on it as she tried to remain relevant after the case went away. I'm shocked it is back... but I probably shouldn't be.
Fun times.
Re:Wayback Time! (Score:4, Interesting)
PJ ran Groklaw for a decade, shuttering it in 2013.
in 2010 she received a Pioneer award from the EFF for blogging about legal issues.
In 2005 someone tried to track her down and reportedly found her mother in CT but not PJ herself.
Re:Wayback Time! (Score:4, Interesting)
That "someone" was Maureen O'Gara. She was trying to find PJ's identity, probably to discredit her.
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That "someone" was Maureen O'Gara. She was trying to find PJ's identity, probably to discredit her.
As I recall O'Gara claimed not to be connected with SCOG but DID claim to be a creditor that SCOG owed money to.
Re:Wayback Time! (Score:4, Informative)
Here it is, from the wayback machine itself!!
Groklaw [archive.org]
Re: Wayback Time! (Score:4, Funny)
Now we can just ask Grok about law.
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Yeah I'm sure Grok will give a fact-based response to a question about law.
Re: Wayback Time! (Score:2)
My recollection is that PJ finally ended Groklaw over privacy / anonymity concerns about email. But Iâ(TM)m sure she must have also felt burned out by that point.
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Fun times.
At the time it felt like the skies came crashing down... Perspective gained :).
Not this shit again (Score:2)
As above, not this shit again.
AKA "The Stupid Lawsuit That Will Not Die", funded by imbeciles and greedy scumbags.
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But if they can get it to the current SCOTUS with appropriate "incentives" to the YOB (Yuge Orange Buffoon), then this time the trick might work. "That trick never works" might have a limit after all.
Yes, they'll fail upward in the courts until it gets to the Supremes and they'll rule that SCO/Xinuos is right, with the effect of making all Linux installs everywhere "illegal" and "infringing".
No, I'm not joking. Having every install of every Linux derivative suddenly owe money/royalties is a vulture capitalist's wet dream.
Meanwhile, back at the World Cup,
The what cup??
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Yes, they'll fail upward in the courts until it gets to the Supremes and they'll rule that SCO/Xinuos is right, with the effect of making all Linux installs everywhere "illegal" and "infringing".
No, I'm not joking. Having every install of every Linux derivative suddenly owe money/royalties is a vulture capitalist's wet dream.
Only in the U.S.. The rest of the world would still have Linux.
Re: Not this shit again (Score:1)
Only in the U.S.. The rest of the world would still have Linux.
That's not how copyright laws work - pretty sure something found to violate copyright in U.S. courts would be found to also violate copyright laws in, for example, the EU.
(It won't happen, but your 'legal analysis' is flawed...)
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What the international treaties such as the Berne Convention do is give you automatic copyright in the other signatory countries.
They also unified copyright law among those signatory countries to a significant extent, so at least your suit is likely to succeed in any of them.
Re:Not this shit again (Score:5, Informative)
as an adolescent i was taught that someone who'll do anything for money is a prostitute.
it was more than a decade before i realized that lawyers are a better fit for that description
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It's called the world's second oldest profession for a reason.
Have you done it with two layers at the same time? (Score:3)
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holy ****, is that Bill Nye??
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As above, not this shit again.
... funded by imbeciles and greedy scumbags.
My prediction is that this chapter will end rather quickly with the judge fining the lawyers who attempted it.
broken legal system (Score:2)
This legal system is a shit joke.
It's designed to fail under the weight of its own bullshit.
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Yep. That collapse cannot come soon enough. Time for the world to move on.
Re: broken legal system (Score:2)
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Just like the guy who wanted to buy a landfill to recover his lost bitcoin wallet, whenever there is just a hint of getting rich people will respond with absurd actions.
Actually he was trying for a partnership with the landfill owners where they would get a share of the value of the bitcoin IF it were found. They declined.
In the words of an immortal Slashdot troll (Score:2, Funny)
"Don't forget to pay your $699 licensing fee you cocksmoking teabaggers"
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"Don't forget to pay your $699 licensing fee you cocksmoking teabaggers"
Per core.
Correction (Score:2, Informative)
You misspelled "Microsoft."
Speaking of which: Is Micros~1 still shaking down companies using Linux for royalties over unspecified patents they allegedly hold?
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You misspelled "Microsoft."
You misspelled "Microslop"
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I believe microsoft stopped enforcing those FAT patents a while back and actually donated them to the OIN mutual defence patent pool (Its a pool of patents designed to protect linux.)
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No, now Microsoft is mostly a normal, legit business, and they even publish a linux distro.
It's been that way for many many years now. But windoze still sucks.
Dickens would eat this up... (Score:2)
THAT should be settled by an MMA match.... (Score:2)
In that case, it's as fair as any court hearing. No one knows who owned what and when.
If you have a arbitrary outcome anyway, you can at least have some fun.
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Holy thread resurrection, Batman! (Score:5, Funny)
While we're at it, why don't we pour hot grits on a Beowulf cluster while Natalie Portman confirms that BSD is dying?
Re: Holy thread resurrection, Batman! (Score:2)
I'll take all that, and a frothy mug of piss! Throw in a first post too
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Desperate (Score:2)
bid for money. Xinuos is failing and their only remaining products suck.
Anti-Zombie protocols in effect (Score:2)
Slow it down with salt buckshot rounds, behead the sucker, and before re-interring, sew those lips shut.
If this seems insufficiently paranoid, ash it and launch the ashes into the sun.
SCO didn't own it either! (Score:2)
Xinuos argued IBM never had a license for SCO code.
But that doesn't matter, because it turned that that SCO didn't own the Unix code! The license agreement with Novell just meant that SCO could market SCO Unix. No ownership rights were transferred.
This was already decided way back when (Score:5, Informative)
This was already decided during the original trial. Two things will prevent Xinuos from succeeding:
1. SCO never had a license to the code they claim to own. They had a license to distribute it, but Novell owned the copyrights (such as they were).
2. The code SCO claimed was copied from Project Monterey wasn't in fact copied from there. It was original code IBM wrote and contributed to Monterey (while retaining the copyrights) and then subsequently contributed to Linux (which they had every right to do because the license granted to Monterey wasn't exclusive).
The only reason the lawsuit ended with a settlement was that SCO had lost on every argument and gone bankrupt, so there was no money to pay any judgement against them. I suspect some of the terms of that settlement are going to come back to bite Xinuos, because SCO had managed what everyone had considered impossible: they'd not only angered IBM enough they were out for blood, they'd managed to get IBM's law firm (Cravath, Swaine and Moore, who are a big name) personally angry at them too. I'm fairly sure there's terms in that settlement expressly to make sure that dead horse stays dead and buried. Given that Xinuos isn't bankrupt, and some of the figures behind SCO and the original lawsuit were involved with them last I heard, I expect IBM's attorneys to make great white sharks look cute and cuddly by comparison.
The definition... (Score:2)
of insanity.
The lack of previous resolution left IBM exposed (Score:3)
"But if we thought that infringement claims accrue at the time of copying, it might be that if IBM then uses the code again at a later time, there's a new infringement claim."
Even though exactly what was initially copied by IBM that was uniquely SCO content was never really made clear by SCO despite years of legal maneuvering.
This is just old fashioned gray mail. The only reason Xinuos exists is to extort money from IBM, so that is what they are going to do.
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Even though exactly what was initially copied by IBM that was uniquely SCO content was never really made clear by SCO despite years of legal maneuvering.
One of the things they accused IBM of putting into Linux was NEVER IN LINUX. It was rejected by the Linux maintainers AND it was SCOG that tried to put it in Linux not IBM.
SCOG also claimed that IBM converted a list of SCOG customers to Linux. Unfortunately IBM had all the press releases from SCOG BOASTING about how they had converted those customers to Linux.
Even though IBM is evil (Score:2)
In this case I don't see that it did anything wrong.
But IBM is still evil. SCO just sucks.
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IBM is still evil. SCO just sucks.
What's left of SCO exists solely for the purpose of attacking Linux for the benefit of Microsoft's shareholders and at the expense of everyone else, so that's still pretty evil.
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True, but not as evil as running the programs and compute for the Nazis, or South Africa under aparthied.
Clueless non-technical idiots and lawsuits (Score:3)
Linux by itself, is the kernel, nothing more, nothing less. You definitely have some drivers in there for hardware support, but the bulk of what people think of as Linux was primarily from GNU(GNU is Not UNIX). Things can shift, add packages, add this or that, but claiming what, the syntax used by the different shells, nope, they can't claim ownership of that. They can't claim ownership of anything other than SOMETHING that relates to individual packages, and they won't even be able to do that at this point due to the code itself having evolved over the past 30 years, so there is a huge question about if anything that would apply to copyright is still in there after all this time.
This lawsuit is entirely by non-technical people who just want to steal money that they did nothing to actually earn.
Jarndyce and Jarndyce (Score:2)
How very Dickensian
GrokLaw.net RIP (Score:2)
Aug 20 2013 GrokLaw.net went silent and is now replaced by a crypto scam site. GrokLaw was supposed to be indoctrinated into the Library Of Congress but appears not to be available anywhere at the loc.gov, just a mention at https://www.loc.gov/item/lcwaN... [loc.gov].
Fortunately the Wayback Machine has a capture of the final state of that site for prosperity purposes. PJ, wherever you are, thanks for all your hard work. You are greatly missed!
GroakLaw - Why this latsuite should never have seen the light of day.
The real answer to “Who Owns Unix” (Score:1)
AT&T.
Bell Labs (subsidiary of AT&T) wrote, invented, produced, protected, distributed UNIX(TM). Everyone else re-engineered/embellished the UNIX concepts. In the olden days software was not patentable (just copyrightable). The question of “Who Owns UNIX” has only one answer - AT&T.
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Then in 1993 the AT&T UNIX rights were transferred to “The Open Group”. Not IBM, not Oracle, and not SCO (ever).
Jeebus, not again. (Score:1)
Let us all take a moment to reflect that this was a thinly-veiled proxy war on Linux started by Microsoft back in the day, and it went on for entirely too long. Let us also remember that FreeBSD was vetted against AT&T waaaaaaay back in 1994 and that, as they say, was that. No insanely long-tailed legal maneuvering. I can only hope that they keep Hell hot for the new round of greedy morons pushing this effort. Or, at the very least, they also get to endure two decades of value destruction in their o
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And that something is putting a bullet through the head(s) of whomever is bringing this back to life. This shit has gone on far too long already.
I wonder who that would be? Couldn't be that once again there is a lot of talk of people abandoning Windows for Linux due to Microsoft annoying their customers? Who would see that as a big enough problem to throw money at for FUD lawsuit AGAIN?
Re: Somebody needs to do this (Score:1)
So you think this lawsuit, this zombie lawsuit from last century, is the 'shot across the bow' heralding the start of The Year of the Linux Desktop? Really?
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So you think this lawsuit, this zombie lawsuit from last century, is the 'shot across the bow' heralding the start of The Year of the Linux Desktop? Really?
There's no start of the year of the linux desktop because that started ages ago and will continue gaining ground gradually until either a new thing comes along or Windows dies in fire and it becomes the de facto choice for people who don't want to buy Macs.
On the other hand, it is quite logical to believe that SCO is being reanimated again for the benefit of Microsoft, because there has never been more interest in replacing Windows with Linux.