[Sussex] 5 years ago today and SCO

[Steve Dobson]

Paul

On Mon, Jun 27, 2005 at 11:08:02PM +0100, Paul Tansom wrote:
> On Sun, 2005-06-26 at 12:18 +0100, Steve Dobson wrote:
> > On Sun, Jun 26, 2005 at 11:52:47AM +0100, Andrew Guard wrote:
> > > Well 5 years ago SCO was about to release news about there Linux?  lol
> > > 
> > > The really fun part in this story was SCO was working with IBM. ;)
> > > 
> > > http://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/06/26/sco_straightens_its_linux_message/
> > 
> > This is oldSCO news, not newSCO news.  SCO was formally called Caldera, and
> > changed their name 23 March 2003.
> 
> Indeed, and at that time Caldera, aka newSCO, already had a Linux
> distribution!! Somewhere I have a copy of Caldera OpenLinux 1.1, which
> was part developed (from vague memory) with Lasermoon (based in Fareham)
> and was aiming to become a standards compliant Linux (i.e. Posix.1, SPG4
> X/Open and probably others). How times change!

The previous workings of Caldera, oldSCO or whomever is for little
relevance.  The litigation is clearly the brainchild of Darl McBride.
The only thing that makes any sense to me is the McBride thought that
IBM would just buy SCO to make the nuisance go away.

The problem was McBride miscalculated.  IBM didn't bite.  The only question
left for me is why?  I can remember reading (I think it was written by Eben
Morgan) that a license tested in court is stronger than one that is not.
I think that IBM saw here the perfect opportunity to test the GPL in a
US court using IBM lawyers - now that is probably worth the few million
price tag to them - remember, they are investing billions in their Linux
business each year.

Steve
-- 
Give him an evasive answer.
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