Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Wed 12th Mar 2003 20:31 UTC
SCO's lawsuit filed in Utah last week claims that IBM integrated computer code belonging to another company into the Linux operating system, touching off speculation that the lawsuit could hurt other Linux companies, including Red Hat, the country's largest distributor of the software. Red Hat isn't involved in the dispute, but some analysts say that the Raleigh-based company won't be able to escape the fallout. "It's kind of irrelevant who wins the lawsuit," said Victor Raisys, analyst with Soundview Technology Group in San Francisco. "You can't take back the fact that someone has tried to claim intellectual property on Linux. The genie is out of the bottle."
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My concern is this. When I was at the SCO site reading and listening to their claims and grievances, what struck me is "Oh god, if they win and IBM has to make restitutions, just think of how long the Linux kernel could potentially be on hold" . See, if SCO has their way, IBM not only has to pay $$, they have to go about the process of removing all the proprietary AIX/UNIX source from Linux. Fruther, if the courts do rule that IBM has to make this particular restitution, they could also say that no further linux kernel developement can take place on the existing source untill IBM has completed it's restitution. That's what was on SCO's site.(not verbatum)
With the courts deciding to let M$ keep a virtual monopoly, I can't say I have much hope in our legal system in regards to IP or IT in general. SCO sucks, I remember how excited I was about United Linux, thinking how ingenuitive it would be, only to find it a reworked gui on Suse. Well, by and large anyway.
I think RedHat should follow Suse's lead in "reevaluating their relationship with SCO".
SCO doesn't want to better the software/IT community, they just want $$.