[Sussex] SCO Vs IBM debacle!

[Steve Dobson]

Morning all

On 01 July 2003 at 19:23 John D. wrote:
>
>
> http://www.vnunet.com/Analysis/1141929
> 
> http://www.vnunet.com/Analysis/1141871
> 
> Sorry, I haven't really had time to read these properly,
> and hence you may or may not have read similar material.
>
> Not too sure if they actually include anything new?

To be honest I think there will be little new now in this
case until further action is taken by either IBM or SCO.

The interview with Darl McBride (first URL) I read the other
day and well.  He thinks he has a case.  Big deal.  I have
to wonder how much is just bravado.  This case is entering 
new ground if only because of the new type of license offered
by the GPL.

But then SCO's action are over misuse of trade secrets and
unfair competition.  But IBM much have already done a line
by line comparison of both code bases and therefore should
be able to provide that it is their's to give away.

As was pointed out in one article I read over the past weeks
IBM takes it's own IP very, very seriously.  In the past they
have take [ex-]employees to court of infringements.  I suspect
that IBM knows what it is doing.

Thanks for the second URL - I hadn't read that one before.
Here I think that Mr. Peeters (and possibly Mr. Murphy as a
contributor) is not seeing the change that open source will
make to the software market.  

They do appear to have missed the point when they say: "The
commissioner's ability to market the developed software will
be affected if the licence states that it must be made
available to licensees without restriction."  Doesn't this
should like the "commissioner" is some kind of software house
wishing to make money on an enhancement to a bit of software?

I see the commissioner being the software user.  The reason 
to commissioning the modification is so they can execute their
business better.  Why would a food producer what to enter the
software market?  It's way outside there core business and 
expertise domain.  Such a move would be very risky and most
businesses look for ways to reduce risk.

But I would expect the same company to be more happy to
commission a £10,000 change to the Apache WebServer if it would
save them £100,000 in the way provide data to the server.  It
doesn't matter if only one user needs that mod.  That user
has saved money and is happy.  How much would it cost to have
Microsoft make a similar change to IIS, or for Sun's to make the
change to it's WebServer.

In this new world order, where propriety software is marginalized,
IP and Software Patents will become much less of an issue.  After
all you only need IP & Patent protection if you have something to
protect.

Steve