Seth Gordon has an interesting take on the recent developments of the SCO-vs-IBM lawsuit (via the fsb list):
MS attorney: We'd like you to sue IBM on the grounds that Linux is violating your intellectual property in Unix.Updates: some perspective from Tony Stanco and Phil Windley. Redmondologists everywhere believe that Microsoft's motives are less than genuine, whether they paid a token $100, or $100 Million.SCO attorney: What? That's crazy! We have no proof that they've violated anything, and we can't afford to drag them through the courts for a case we're certain to lose!
MS attorney: We'd like you to sue IBM on the grounds that Linux is violating your intellectual property in Unix, make as much noise about this lawsuit as possible to the people who purchase Linux distributions, and drag out the case and the associated negative publicity about Linux for as long as possible. We are prepared to buy a Unix license from you at a price which will more than adequately compensate your department for these efforts.
SCO attorney: Let me talk to my CEO and get back to you on that....
Re:oh my god
ziggy on 2003-05-19T18:01:05
No, this is a game known as "Legal Chess". It involves lots of huffery, puffery, harumphery and posturing.Here's Terry Lambert's take on the matter:
IBM generates more patents per year than all other applicants combined.If you don't believe that IBM can bend SCO over any time they want, you are sadly mistaken. IBM could put SCO totally out of business any time they wanted. Just like they could put everyone else in the U.S. and Japan (the only countries to honor softtware patents) out of business, any time they wanted to do so.
If IBM loses access to UNIX, so will SCO. Count on it.
Re:oh my god
inkdroid on 2003-05-19T18:11:31
Maybe MS is licensing it, because they've copied portions of it too:) Re:oh my god
ziggy on 2003-05-19T18:23:19
No, they're licensing it because they use GPL'ed code in their "Services for Unix" product, which is nothing more than a licensed and rebranded MKS toolkit.
This cries out to be investigated by the FTC/DoJ and EC. They should open up shop inside Microsoft like they did with IBM and look over every transaction. The onus should be on Microsoft to show them that there is no ulterior motive behind any of their transactions. It is far too easy for them to use their money to do sham transactions with willing companies to do indirectly what they are prohibited from doing directly.The FTC/DoJ should immediately investigate the terms of the arrangement with SCO and see if the licensing fees bear any reasonable relationship to how much UNIX product Microsoft ships. If the fees are as significant as they would need to be for Microsoft to bankroll the fight against IBM, it is a prima facie case that the transaction is a sham and it should be treated as though Microsoft itself is conducting the case, with the antitrust implications that has.
I would be surprised if the Microsoft lawyers would leave such an audit trail behind, since I have seen them be much more nuanced than that. It is more likely that they are giving SCO moral support for the case with a small fee reasonably tied to their UNIX products to show that intellectual property rights are important, so as to help establish their [false] claim that Open Source ignores IPRs. This will be the basis for a major FUD campaign to governments and big business. But I've seen Microsoft getting more and more desperate and that can cause dumb gambles.
Nonetheless the transaction deserves scrutiny by the regulators to see on which side of the line this transaction falls.
Tony Stanco
Founding Director
The Center of Open Source & Government
http://www.eGovOS.org
The irony is that SCO is the former Caldera. Caldera is the entity that inherited all of the Novell vs. Microsoft lawsuits from Novell with Noorda's aid and blessing. In fact, that's how they got ahold of SCO. Caldera has made a tidy sum over the years by suing Microsoft. That makes me more than just a little skeptical of Microsoft's motives in licensing code from SCO. This is a little company that has made a living out of suing other companies over IP. SCO vs. Linux is just the latest chapter in an ongoing saga.
