Well, It seems Ben and others aren't the only ones that interpret SCOs latest statements as a outright threat to Linux and anyone that is using or develepiing it - and according to this report have suspended operations with U.L. "NETFLASH: BREAKING NEWS FROM NETWORK WORLD FUSION The SCO Group yesterday declared war on the Linux community,........." http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2003/0515scodrops.html
Okay, so now that individual end users have been threatened with legal action by SCO, I'm wondering what SuSE is going to do.
They have? Well, that's me worried...! No, seriously, where did you read this?
I thought that's what you might have been refering to, but I can't see any threat of legal action to end users. I did notice some headline writers interpretted it that way.
"As a consequence of Linux’s unrestricted authoring process, it is not surprising that Linux distributors do not warrant the legal integrity of the Linux code provided to customers. Therefore legal liability that may arise from the Linux development process may also rest with the end user."
"and even commercial Linux users. The company went a giant step beyond its lawsuit against IBM, in essence warning users that if they don't keep their dirty little hands off the operating system, SCO will come after them for intellectual-property violations."
The second sentence is the important one, and it contains the word "may" twice. It's obviously bullshit - end users aren't responsible for the development process, at least not in any sane legal system. Possibly in the US, though. ;o)
The real puzzle for me is what SCO are actually trying to achieve with all this noise. Are they trying to crush the Linux market? If so, why? Surely they can't believe that we're all going to dump our Linux boxen and rush off and buy large numbers of Openserver licences?
"Naturally, SCO also stopped all of its Linux development and "suspended" activities with the UnitedLinux group - presumably so it could focus on suing people. Read the story, then tell us what you think in our forum."
If it's not that, what is it? Once we know that, we might be able to have a go at answering the question in the subject.
Whatever the F*%$ they're doing is, one thing is sure.... They're going to be downright nasty about. "The SCO Group Wednesday announced it was abandoning its Linux business and warned commercial Linux users they may be liable for intellectual property violations that, it alleges, exist in the Linux source code." AH HA!!!! Dell, HP, and IBM were all developing 64 bit 'Nix offerings IIRC and then all of the switched to Linux for the Itanic proccess development which left SCO out of the picture... Could this be big time sour grapes and I find it ironic that now that SCO is out of the 64bit devel picture with the big OEMs/vendors that they cry foul.... Could it have been that when they thought that they were going to be the 64bit kids they let these guys know/use (at least tacitly) the stuff they're now complaining about... read on! "The move follows SCO's March 7 lawsuit against IBM, in which it charged that IBM misappropriated code it had acquired during an ill-fated effort to create a common Unix for the 64-bit Itanium chip architecture. SCO and IBM were involved in that effort." And talk about double speak. They state they are suspending operations with UL and then turn around and state.... "SCO is moving development, sales and marketing personnel off SCO Linux projects, effective immediately, and "suspending any activities" it had with the UnitedLinux consortium, said Sontag. The Linux staff will now work on SCO's proprietary Unix products, he said." "UnitedLinux is an effort to develop and market a standard Linux distribution, run by SCO and Linux vendors Conectiva SA, SuSE Linux AG and Turbolinux." ""Suspending any activities," however, does not mean that SCO is abandoning UnitedLinux. "We are not pulling out of UnitedLinux," because company lawyers advised against it, Sontag said." Screw these guys to hell! "Over the next few weeks, SCO will begin to present this evidence, under nondisclosure agreement, to a select group of industry analysts, Sontag said." We need a big leak here, anyone know any good industrial spies? So, Is this about Linux in general, of is this about 64 bit Linux. If it revolves around 64 bit kernel work then I'm positive that Linus will be more than happy to remove it. Linus has stated openly is general dislike of the 64 bit coding and would probably have no hesitation about taking it out or rewriting it. Well, if this is accurate then there's a little more insist. Sounds like SCO is pissed because the major OEMs that SCO that they had in their corner for 64 bit nix have opted do focus on Linux for this market and now SCO is looking for it's pound of flesh for being cut out of this market sector for Itanium and opteron devel. Cheers, Curtis.