SCO, and the sound of history repeating itself

ziggy on 2003-05-02T16:02:19

In the early 1990s, there was a lawsuit between USL and UCBerkeley about copyright infringement in BSD Unix. Eventually, the matter was settled, and a version of 4.4BSD was produced that was completely devoid of USL code (4.4BSD Lite2, the foundation for FreeBSD).

Flash forward to 2003, and it's happening again. SCO, the now-current owners of AT&T's intellectual property are suing IBM for releasing Unix trade secrets in Linux. This suit has been going on for about six weeks now, and it'll be a few years before the courts render a final verdict in this case. The early indications are that a lot of lawyers will make out well, but by the end of the case, there will be no significant changes to Linux or SCO's Unix products.

I predict that sometime around 2013, the new corporate owners of the AT&T Unix IP will sue the Free Software Foundation, because of some perceived infraction in GNU/Hurd (a patent infringement case would be nice; haven't had one of those yet). This case will also take years to settle, enriching a lot of attorneys, but not making a fundemental dent in the overall software landscape.


short answer

inkdroid on 2003-05-02T16:32:52

"This is not about 10 lines of code, it's about 20 years of extremely valuable intellectual property we're trying to protect...Am I supposed to lie down and not say anything about it?"


Short answer, "Yes".

Short question

pdcawley on 2003-05-02T16:42:59

Why?

Re:Short answer

inkdroid on 2003-05-02T17:03:53

Because lawyers fees suck.

Re:short answer

chaoticset on 2003-05-02T19:17:00

Better:
"There's a certain point here where you stand up for what's right and let the chips fall where they will."
That's a lawyer, folks. Discussing "wrong" and "right". Insert laughter here.