Sco Dead

[a_unique_person]

First, a little history. SCO launched its remarkable attack on the rest of the industry in 2003. In separate lawsuits, it claimed that Novell had sold it the rights to Unix, that IBM stole bits of SCO Unix to put it in its AIX Unix, and therefore the popular open-source Linux operating system uses bits of Unix that SCO owns.
Most of the industry didn't really know what to make of it all, and stopped paying SCO much attention some time ago. Its stock price declined from $US17 ($A19.70) in 2003, when it launched its actions, to about $US1 last month, to just 37 cents before filing for bankruptcy. Last year, it brought in just $US29 million in revenues (down 20 per cent from the previous year), and lost nearly $US17 million. SCO is gone.
There are a few chapters to be played out yet. Novell and IBM have made counterclaims that look like being successful. Novell's claims alone exceed SCO's assets. Good riddance.
What has driven SCO's quixotic quest? It seems to have been religious fervour. SCO boss Darl McBride, a conservative Mormon, believes the GPL (general public licence), under which Linux and much other open-source software is distributed, violates the US constitution. He goes so far as to say that open source is "communistic".





Commies??

[geni]

Yeah it is Daniel Wallace's old argument. Short version is that the GLP is illegal price fixing (that is that it fixes the price to zero).


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Wallace_%28plaintiff%29

[danielk]

Ha ha, I can assure you that Open Source is definitely not communistic. I'm a developer of Open Source software myself and wouldn't convert to communism at gunpoint. :D

Seriously, the Open Source world has many traits of a market economy. It's even in the title of the famous book "The Cathedral and the Bazaar". Not to mention that the GPL doesn't prevent you from making money with Open Source software. How the GPL could possibly violate the US constitution is beyond me. In the end it's all just copyright law, and nobody is forcing anyone to use GPL software in their products.

SCO is just a scam. Groklaw (http://www.groklaw.net/) has all the details, for people who like discussing this sort of stuff.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

It's price fixing? Yow, imagine what is going to happen to all the free medical clinics.

~~ Paul

[Ian Osborne]

Blimey, Darl McBride came out of nowhere and rocketed into his current position as 'most hated person in the computer industry', ahead of Bill Gates, Melissa writer David L. Smith and the unfairly-maligned Thom Henderson. What he did at SCO beggars belief. He was like a drunk lieutenant leading a suicide charge. He won't be missed, but I do feel sorry for SCO's employees and investors, who did nothing to deserve their fate.

[NoAstronomer]

Yeah it is Daniel Wallace's old argument. Short version is that the GPL is illegal price fixing (that is that it fixes the price to zero).


Which is bogus because of course GLP doesn't *fix* the price at zero, it's just kinda hard to beat zero.

[geni]

Which is bogus because of course GLP doesn't *fix* the price at zero, it's just kinda hard to beat zero.

Adobe would beg to differ. As would the people who own the patents on mp3.

[chulbert]

Ding, dong!

[Kilgore Trout]

I worked for a place that installed SCO Openserver exclusively for servers it sold. A customer once asked me why that and not Linux. I told them it was because of support issues and we could always count on SCO for providing solutions and we couldn't do that with Linux. The fact of the matter was that if we did have a problem like that, we'd go to backups or just reinstall. The real reason we used SCO was because we could charge the customer out the wazoo, marking up the already high initial cost 1.5x and make an insane profit (there was little to no competition for this company). Capitalism at its finest, I suppose.

[Orangutan]

I worked for a place that installed SCO Openserver exclusively for servers it sold. A customer once asked me why that and not Linux. I told them it was because of support issues and we could always count on SCO for providing solutions and we couldn't do that with Linux. The fact of the matter was that if we did have a problem like that, we'd go to backups or just reinstall. The real reason we used SCO was because we could charge the customer out the wazoo, marking up the already high initial cost 1.5x and make an insane profit (there was little to no competition for this company). Capitalism at its finest, I suppose.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:
"Each man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes* when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well - he has changed his market-cart into a chariot of the sun."

*That day just seems a long time coming...
:)