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.

How can the law allow these guys to sit on alleged patents for 10 years and then come back and claim everyone owes them money.

It's bullshit.

in this case it's 20 years. they didn't make the stuff either, they bought the stuff from at&t. it sucks ass, especially when they're basically saying "everyone except sun owes us money". the worst part is they are going after _end users_. i think what will ultimately happen is the *nix world will rewrite everything to exclude their code, basically. but SCO is saying that some of their code is obfuscated. which, if you've seen some obfuscated code, that's going to be damn near impossible for them to _prove_. so, who knows.

most of the stuff they are claiming isn't even theirs... though they claim that in a contract they own all unix ip and all derivatives... which is where it becomes interesting with stuff that ibm (can't remember the name of the technology) created for their version of unix (infact it was developed a long time ago), sco are basically saying it's theirs.

until sco show the sourcecode (or at least some proof) publicly it's all just a load of crap (same as acacia).

search www.slashdot.org for a hell of a lot more info about the shitfight.

Those in the legal system profit so much from it the way it is ?

freebsd is the solution anyway.

everything is based on bsd anyway. and they built it on that.

fucking penguins.

The patent would probably cover bsd too. BSD has gotten its ass handed to it by some of the linux distros over the last year anyway. The only people that still use BSD are the ones who have had the same server for over a year and those that haven't realized that BSD is now inferior to linux.

Lawyers writing patents, lawyers purchasing patents, lawyers registering patents and lawyers suing over patent infrigement...

Get rid of the lawyers ...

SCO says that the SMP code is their.
Well, the linux part of the SMP code was highly contributed by IBM. If you remove the SMP code from linux kernel, you get a 2.2 linux kernel with support for the current hardware and an enhanced virtual machine.
Of course, I do not understand how can SCO claim that the linux SMP code is their if they developed it 20 years ago. If I don't mistake, 20 years ago they did not even dare to dream with that kind of SMP support.

My guess is that SCO is going down down down, so they are trying to get money from everything they can try.
Also if finally SCO wins in the courts and starts fucking with the linux comunity, the final result will be... no sendmail for SCO, no bind for SCO, no apache for SCO, no php for SCO, no openoffice for SCO, no mozilla code for SCO, no any GNU, BSD , Mozilla, Apache or any other OSI approved license stuff for SCO. From one day to another, the SCO team will need to implement all that stuff for their systems from ground, and their quality will become similar to Microsoft products.

If you have tried SCO Unix on any box, you can see that the only difference between Win 95 and dhe SCO is that the SCO does not have Internet Exploiter. You can expect the same hangs, similar crashes and strange system behavior.

BSD is inferior to Linux? What about FreeBSD? I would eat shit rather than having to use Linux for a server OS.

This is like saying that hammers are better than screw drivers. Sure they're very similar in that they're both tools for attaching objects together but neither is better or worse overall. You just have to pick the right tool for the job.

Dunno about anybody else here, but I'm going to sell SCOX short just before a verdict is rendered. Their stock is going to drop like a 100lb sack of shit. These idiots are still distributing so-called infringing copies of Linux on their FTP site. How can they claim that Linux contains infringing code while distributing said code under the GPL? Sorry SCO, IBM is going to stomp you like the bug that you are.

And now Red Hat has sued SCO and SuSE has backed them. If you're an investor, go long on RHAT and IBM and short on SCOX.

Just my .02

To each his own I suppose. I used to use freebsd and dumped it in favor of linux and haven't regretted it for a minute.

I think it's safe to assume I was talking about web servers. For that particular application I believe Linux is superior. Again though, to each his own. Some of the die hard BSD fans out there will disagree and that's cool with me. Some folks like Ford others like Chevrolet.

it's interesting, i was just actually reading a few articles about this on eweek. it seems that there is an attack on SCO because it's very possible that SCO violated the GPL, and actually copied some of the linux code for it's linux compatibility code. kindof an interesting turn. SCO is still being very secretive about stuff, and is requiring anyone that looks at the code to prove things to sign an NDA... basically meaning they can't talk about it if they've seen it anyways.

there's also an interview with Mister T (torvaldis), they ask him about all this, and basically (almost verbatim) says SCO is full of shit, their claims are bogus.

there are also claims about how SCO is going about thier actual lawsuits. they are attacking end users essentially, and not distributors. basically, the end-users aren't violating anything, the only people that would be actually violating the copyright are the people modifying it and distributing it (ie. red hat). but, they're not going after red hat :)

apparently as well microsoft has settled with them, not sure how that is, but basically microsoft is trying to make the GPL look bad, that's why they're in bed with them.

anyways, head over to eweek if you want some interesting reading on the situation.

and FreeBSD is not exempt, SCO already said that.

have you guys heard the prices on the SCO license tho? they've already had the audacity to release pricing, and haven't even proven anything. but, about $700 for single-cpu servers, and $1400 for dual-cpu. on something they won't even show proof they own :)

heh.. i disagree, i love my FreeBSD. but, i'll admit, it's preference. i've just always preferred the 'feel' of FreeBSD. that, and it's out-of-the-box security is pretty top-notch.

I have to agree, on a personal level I run slack.. but for a web server it's FreeBSD

:winkwink:

Just FUD and nothing more. IBM will eventually just crush SCO .. and it's not just IBM .. Motorola, Cisco, Google
there are dozens of companies in the position to crush sco that have HUGE investments in linux based on putting it in products they sell, or using it for a great deal of their production servers..

IBM and cisco both have something like 30x sco's entire market cap, in cash reserves..

Sure there will be a bit of FUD, but after it's all over, it'll just strengthen Linux's place in the server industry in the minds of CTOS and it managers.

I think problems like this are working towards a complete break down of the way IP patents are handled in america.. ithe pile just needs to get big enough for politicians to take notice.. Our patent system is a JOKE.


Besides, SCO doesn't have exclusive rights to Unix, they have non-exclusive rigths, it kills their case..

That's a highly flammable statement. You should probably state why.

IMHO the BSDs still have a slightly more efficient networking structure. What sucks (or did last time I looked) is the SMP and threading support in *BSD. Then again the scheduler in Linux (until recently) died under load really easily. It really depends on what you're doing, but with the more rapid Linux development it's probably a better bet. The new 2.6 kernel looks to be very nice when it's declared stable.

BTW Redhat (probably SUSE too) and IBM just countersued SCO. If you want to see SCO's real motives in this, check out the last 3 months of their stock price.

Then check out the last 2 weeks of selling activities.. with the huge stock increase, executives have been selling off left and right.. This has insider trading and artificial price inflation investigations by the SEC left and right ..

One way or another , tihs IS the death march for SCO