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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>>>>Organizations that are well into the process of evaluating OSS and seeing how it will integrate with thier current infrastructure will probably be unfazed. Organizations that are just starting to look at GNU/Linux might have some hesitation, maybe not. I am confident IBM will destroy SCO Group into nothing, but the fact remains that no matter how ridiculous this suit may be, the world is watching carefully how this whole thing is going to pan out, and there are some concerns.
You are still not taking the big picture. Sure this SCO lawsuit is ridiculous, but it is only ridiculous because IBM thoughtfully insulated itself from the obvious IP infringement risks, so SCO had to file a lawsuit by way of a contractual breach of NDA, a much harder case to prove.
But for those who are currently evaluating linux, they should not be thinking about SCO at all. They should be thinking about what IBM was thinking about YEARS AGO, quote from the interview:
>>>"What is wrong about this distribution, is basically the millions of lines of code that we never have seen. We don't know if there are any patent infringments [in this code] with somebody we don't know."
The big risk is not SCO --- the real big risk is still hidden among millions of lines of codes, the "yet-to-be-discovered" patent infringement. That's the big picture and IBM thought that through years ago.