MozillaQuest has an exclusive mini-interview with Linus Torvalds regarding the SCO-IBM law suit.
Linus Torvalds Comments on SCO-Caldera’s Linux-Related Allegations
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I just read a linux Journal article where SGI was able to run Linux on 64 Processors…
Nuff said.
“able to run” and “able to scale to” are two very different concepts.
I forgot to mention that it scaled almost perfectly.
SCO’s just pissed because they suck!
Where they say SCO even thinks they will lose
The “100 day licence revocation” is really what this whole thing is about. They needed a good “excuse” to be able to revoke IBM’s UNIX licence, and this whole case is it. They kinda have IBM over a barrel here as IBM have to do something drastic now to get the licence back (for their AIX OS).
SCO don’t care if they win or lose the case, they just want IBM to either buy SCO out and get UNIX once and for all or pay some serious money and sign a long-term contract for the right to the UNIX technologies.
SCO couldn’t care less about Linux right now, it needs a cash injection and they pulled this entire stunt to force IBM into a corner.
The real question is wether IBM can get out of this or not? Or has SCO called checkmate against Big Blue?
SCO don’t care if they win or lose the case, they just want IBM to either buy SCO out
If that is the case all they need to do is “ask”
and if IBM rejects their offer then SCO can get into the offensive lol sooooo “you don’t want to buy us huh?? We’ll see about that! it’s gonna cost you!” hehe
The only way that SCO has IBM “cornered” is that IBM likes to support their legacy clients. AIX is on its way out (according to IBM) and the push to revoke licensing would more than likely convince IBM to either cancel their licensing (I’m not sure what the implications would be for AIX users) or just buy the whole damn company and save themselves future headaches.
SCO is basically finished as a business for anything but legacy systems. Would you base any of your product on SCO IP when they’re continually fishing for survival cash?
AIX is on its way out (according to IBM) and the push to revoke licensing would more than likely convince IBM to either cancel their licensing (I’m not sure what the implications would be for AIX users) or just buy the whole damn company and save themselves future headaches.
I think IBM buying SCO is an unlikely outcome. While it may get them off the hook with their Unix licensing issues, it would also leave them stuck with supporting OpenServer, UnixWare, and a Linux distribution. And they’ve made it pretty clear they don’t want to be in the Linux distro business themselves.
Most likely, they’ll just use their own IP to counter-sue, and force SCO to renegotiate the terms of their SYS V license.
As much as AIX system owners might disagree, I think IBM ought to just drop it completely, and SCO along with it, and defend themselves to the end in court. I hate frivilous lawsuits and I hope IBM doesn’t stand for this one!
Agreed. AIX is on its way out. IBM should just send a very high up representative to each of its AIX customers and say look. We’ll support your system to the end, but as a company we are done selling AIX. Now, if you want a good deal on a transition to Linux, we’ll cut you one.
This gives companies currently on AIX a fast way off a sinking ship and IBM can just tell SCO to hound someone else (probably Sun). In this manner SCO can go round the circle pissing off all of their biggest customers until they finally kill the company. It shouldn’t take long.
The complaint against IBM seems to target Linux for extermination, and would clear the way for continued domination by M$. Since the situation provides IBM with an opportunity to boost it’s corporate image, (by wearing the white hat) it has everything to gain, and little to lose by settling this case, thus allowing SCO to attack the other players in the Linux market space. This can be a problem when large and technically advanced firms get involved in OSS; hackers working on these projects have to be very wary of the possible motivations of contributing firms, especially when those firms apparently have the ability to develop equal or better technology themselves. Such was the case of MS-DOS vs. CP/M on the original IBM PC. I hope for the sake of the OSS community that IBM takes the moral high ground on this case, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.
I have seen several posts from many website suggesting that IBM would settle and/or buy them out. I don’t get it. Is it how the business is being conducted in this day of age? Instead of doing the right thing, companies would just settle so they don’t have to go to court just so they can avoid possibly bad publicity?
The notion of settlement usually gives me the impression that a company or individual has done something wrong, proven or not. If IBM has not done anything wrong, I would to see them expose SCO true color: a company where nobody want to do business with.
I doubt IBM will settle, they have a large team of on staff lawyers that have probably planned every move for this case since the day it was filed. This wont turn out as bad publicity for IBM since it will give them a public arena to showcase the cold hard facts that linux gained everything it gained by its own accord. Think: Free Advertisement.
This is conjecture based on the theory that SCO are using this just as a ploy to get IBM to pay up more money for their SCO license…
AIX may be on the way out, but it is unlikely that IBM had any plans in place to terminate within 100 days, in fact I would guess that many of the deals for enterprise systems may take longer than that to arrange (if you’re going to buy a few million dollars worth of hardware and software you probably don’t pick up a catalogue on Monday and phone your order through on Tuesday), so they may have a number of valuable new customers in the pipeline (or upgrades to present customers), which they could lose if SCO pull their license.
And that’s not counting the possible costs incurred through any problems supporting current customers that such a license pull might cause.
The 1 billion dollars figure is probably a red herring, SCO are apparantly on target for a revenue figure of around $25 million dollars this quarter, so lets guess at 100 million for the year… so if (pulling numbers out of the air since I don’t know the size of IBM’s AIX market) IBM felt it was worth say 10 million a year for the next five years to make the problem go away while they move their customer base off AIX then SCO have just achieved a 10% increase in revenue, with almost zero increase in costs (therefore much more than 10% increase in profits)… not a bad result for sending some legal letters!
The core Unix is SCO’s but most of the vendors have developed their own technologies which are far better than vanilla Unix. I’d venture to say most of the real work on Unix has been out side SCO in the last decade. Unix provided a convient “club” if you will for the large server vendors to share stuff, yet keep the market price of the software high. SCO is the only vendor that the FTC wouldn’t bring the hammer down on –think of the concequences of IBM, Sun, HP, etc purchasing exclusive rights to Unix–Ouch! They’re kept as the baby with the ball so the big kids don’t get in trouble for not sharing. They aren’t supposed to act up!
The Linux kernel group doesn’t accept every IBM patch. They have their own ideas of what to do and appreciate the help, but they don’t need handouts-even from IBM! The Linux kernel programmers know their stuff and what direction they are going. IBM is a big help, but no more than that.
If SCO keeps up they will loose the whole farm! I’m sure the original patents from Unix are long expired, and anything recent would be cross-licensed to them by everyone else. It wouldn’t be inconcievable for everyone to take their ball and go home because of this. HP or Sun may be interested in the leftovers just for the brownie points, but no one else will need to stick around.
I do agree with the usage of the specific SCO libraries being an issue. But, IBM doesn’t publish a linux distro, so they can’t directly pass out copyrighted code. This is more an attempt to close off IBM from using it’s own derived and engineered software by passing the tech to Linux. IBM learned & developed new things on it’s own because it used unix and SCO is trying to lock that info up in the “licensing agreement”
Sorry, but does that link of interview work or is it broken?
just couldnt connect.
Does FreeBSD still run SCO Binaries through the use of an emulation layer?
This is a snipit from a news article from 01-20-03. You decide if IBM wants to buy SCO? The articles are further down. Once IBM gets done with AIX, the will still have to support it for a few years. There is were the problem comes in, I don’t believe they need new licenses to support old Unix systems. IBM just has to decide when the want to stop AIX and go full board with Linux, I say NOW>>>>
“New York — The day is approaching when Linux will likely replace IBM’s version of Unix, the company’s top software executive said, an indication that the upstart operating system’s stature is rising within Big Blue.
While IBM doesn’t expect Linux to replace its own AIX version of Unix any time soon, Big Blue is pushing the open-source OS in the that direction, Steve Mills, senior vice-president of IBM’s Software Group, told CNET News.com at last week’s LinuxWorld Conference and Expo.”
http://rtnews.globetechnology.com/servlet/ArticleNews/tech/RTGAM/20…
http://www.rootprompt.org/article.php3?article=4982