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is linux in trouble?
i dunno how many people have been looking in on the SCO attack on linux lately, but it's pretty interesting. sounds a lot like acacia. basically they are saying that they created several systems that an OS depends on, including SMP. it's theirs, and they want their money. the way they are playing it is basically going after end-users more than companies, although they have stated that IBM owes them $3 billion for their technology.
they also state that the only operating system that is not out of their intellectual property is sun, and did not comment (altough insinuated) that microsoft and apple are not out of their sights, either. they also have their eyes on FreeBSD.
might be interesting. with the rough time that unix already has competing in the market, you'd think that people wouldn't want to really do this. i mean, if they are successful it's only going to further damage *nix. people will stop using it, because they don't want to have to pay, or pay extra to use it. they're marketing themselves on this much like acacia is, going after the easy-to-get licensing first. although admittedly IBM isn't going to give up $3billion too easily.
it seems though they have misjudged their law, and have a lot of loopholes, especially overseas. they've had a few injunctions filed against them in europe that were withheld. so, it looks as if they may be starting to get damaged enough that they can't go through, especially since they are now trying to enforce something that they have done nothing about for 20 years.
interesting to see how this plays out, i hope they get their asses kicked back to where they came from. we don't need more things beating down the *nix community and benefitting microsoft.
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