[vox] SCO suing IBM over their Linux activity

[Mike Simons]

--vv4Sf/kQfcwinyKX
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

On Thu, May 29, 2003 at 01:51:03PM +0530, karthikeyan.balasubramanian wrote:
> http://www.sco.com/scosource/letter_to_linux_customers.html
>=20
> You think this could have any Impact on Linux Development Efforts.

  No.  I imagine that this will only hurt Caldera/SCO's future.


I have skimmed over the complete Caldera/SCO complaint.

- Misappropriation of Trade Secrets

  (We have a bunch of trade secrets which are unique to our unix
  kernels and system libraries.  We gave IBM access to them, and
  they started building these secrets into Linux and publicly releasing
  them so as to destroy SCO's business).

    No details about what secrets are supposed to have been released by=20
  IBM...


- Unfair Competition

  (IBM has intentionally destroyed the value of SCO's UNIX source code
  everywhere in the world to transfer that value to IBM and Linux
  distribution partners.  By stealing trade secrets then releasing them to
  the public as part of Linux and inciting others to do the same.  Also by
  IBM dealing deceptively with SCO with respect to software development).

    Details about what secrets were released or how IBM was deceptive
  are again missing.
   =20

- Interference with Contract

  (IBM damaged our business with clients by inducing SCO's customers
  to breach their licensing agreements by reverse engineering,
  decompiling or in other ways violating their license agreements
  for SCO UNIX software).

    No specific details... just a list of customers which IBM incited:
  Sherwin Williams, Papa John?s Pizza, and Auto Zone, Hewlett-Packard,=20
  Fujitsu, NEC and Toshiba.


- Breach of Contract

  (IBM's license for SCO UNIX software does not permit them to resell=20
  or redistribute any parts of that to others).


    They appear to be referring to a number of quotes from IBM about
  how they were releasing parts of AIX to Linux (like JFS), or how
  IBM was contributing to Linux for Enterprise style projects.


  It seems to me that Caldera wants to continue suing large corporations...
the bought the rights to DR-DOS and a few months later initiated a suit
against Microsoft, which was settled out of could 4 years later (2000)...

  http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2000/02/07/schulman.html


  They must have used some of the settlement money to to buy SCO in
2001, which held the AT&T rights to Unix source code base, it=20
must have taken Caldera some time to find a company with big pockets
to sue over that IP...

  I hope this puts Caldera/SCO out of business.

--=20
GPG key: http://simons-clan.com/~msimons/gpg/msimons.asc
Fingerprint: 524D A726 77CB 62C9 4D56  8109 E10C 249F B7FA ACBE

--vv4Sf/kQfcwinyKX
Content-Type: application/pgp-signature
Content-Disposition: inline

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org

iD8DBQE+1mRT4Qwkn7f6rL4RAmxkAJ9OE0m3yfSbJKWKkZkqwj+ZACSY1QCglC1r
T9Tg02deKaNQx3P1i0n7CD0=
=K7/O
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--vv4Sf/kQfcwinyKX--