SCO loses, Novell wins finally

Ken D'Ambrosio ken at jots.org
Fri Jun 11 15:09:08 EDT 2010


On Fri, June 11, 2010 2:46 pm, mark wrote:

> IBM can still pursue their counter-claims against SCO.  Personally, I
> hope they do, and that they win, and that they ask for their compensation
> in form of company stock.  Then then can fire all the management, fold
> what software engineers are left into their own internal organizations,
> and SCO can be gone for good.

Interesting point.  That being said, I agree for two-fold reasons:
- The rationale you laid out, and
- every win against SCO helps make Linux's legal armor that much stronger.

In this post-Alex de Toqueville Institution time, it's easy to rest on our
laurels, but we can't lose sight of the fact that there are a lot of
people out there who -- for whatever reason -- have no love lost for
Linux.  AdTI president Ken Brown, who authored "Open Sores" white papers
and a (n unpublished) book -- all with inaccuracies and unsubstantiated
claims a-plenty; Maureen O'Gara, unofficial mouthpiece for SCO; and SCO,
itself, leap to mind as the most obvious entities -- but there've been
plenty others, and yet more are no doubt lurking.  Banishing SCO to the
nether regions is good; setting legal precedent is even better.  Because
it costs money to mount a legal battle -- and the people who have the
money will be more hesitant to mount such an attack if their odds of
winning seem to be relatively low.  Note, of course, that this doesn't
hold true if they get under-the-table funding from a certain company in
Redmond -- as did, in fact, happen for SCO, in the guise of a $6,000,000
licensing payment.  Ironic in the extreme, since SCO came from Xenix,
which was an MS product to begin with.

$.02,

-Ken


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