[clug] Online protest against SCO

[Sam Couter]

Alex Satrapa <grail at goldweb.com.au> wrote:
> Can someone point me at some meat about this case?  I must admit that I 
> am very grossly underinformed!

So is everyone else. SCO is claiming continuing violation of their IP
and threatening to sue for damages (including ongoing damages from
continuing infringement, since nobody's stopped it yet), but they
haven't told anyone exactly what IP is being infringed.

I believe that in the US at least, they can't sue for ongoing damages if
they haven't done their due diligence in trying to get the infringement
stopped, for example by actually telling people which lines of code are
infringing.

> 1) a bunch of links to e-Week about the SCO CEO saying that the suit is 
> "not about Linux" (great, but what is it about?)

Grabbing at straws? Being Microsoft's weapon?

I did read an article that said that Microsoft has paid a licence fee to
SCO for Xenix. There are a few ways to interpret this:

1) Microsoft has injected a large cash payment to support litigation
against many Linux vendors for the next five to ten years in an attempt
to crush them out of existence, even if their case has no merit;

2) Microsoft's payment of licence fees gives support to SCO's case even if
it is without merit and increases the chances of SCO winning a lawsuit
against Linux vendors.

Whatever the licence fees are, they're a drop in the ocean for Microsoft,
so they would see it as a cheap way to make trouble for Linux.

> It'd be really nice to know what the case was about before I start 
> supporting any side of the argument :)

So far, there is no argument, just a lot of posturing and hand-waving.


I'm afraid I don't have any references for some of the assertions I've
made here: It's hard to prove a negative (Nobody knows what's going on).

Microsoft will pay licence fees:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/19/1055223&mode=thread&tid=109&tid=190&tid=185&tid=130&tid=187

And now Caldera/SCO is shredding documents. Suspicious? Maybe. They were
gonna do it last October:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/21/2136211&mode=thread&tid=109&tid=187
-- 
Sam "Eddie" Couter  |  mailto:sam at couter.dropbear.id.au
Debian Developer    |  mailto:eddie at debian.org
                    |  jabber:sam at teknohaus.dyndns.org
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