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The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

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Re: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

#51

Post by simonh »

AlbertCory wrote: post #10
mikece wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there anything about Unix -- then or now -- which is unquestionably better than Linux? And if yes, are the Linux versions of the features or capabilities a significant enough constraint to warrant using Unix instead? It seems that certain networking and NAS applications are measurably better on Unix (Netflix is still a big using of FreeBSD caching servers iirc) but can't Linux close the gap?

interesting but not what I asked

It’s a heady picture because there were many Unixes. Most were me-to and fairly generic for the most part, but some had novel capabilities in specific areas. IRIX for graphics, Solaris for Zones and ZFS, but none of them had everything. Often what was special was down to proprietary hardware.

Re: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

#52

Post by justin66 »

mikece wrote: post #3

How different would the history of Linux have been had FreeBSD (and its forks) not been encumbered by lawsuits in the 1990s? Would Linux have gained the mind and market share it did or would the BSDs have won?

BSDI was legally in the clear in January 1994 and FreeBSD had an unencumbered version out by the end of 1994. Linux distros were still toys at that point. I think it's fair to say that the lawsuits didn't help BSD, but the lawsuits don't seem like they should have been a decisive reason for Linux overtaking them in mindshare and marketshare.

Re: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

#53

Post by dboreham »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #6
mikece wrote: post #3

How different would the history of Linux have been had FreeBSD (and its forks) not been encumbered by lawsuits in the 1990s? Would Linux have gained the mind and market share it did or would the BSDs have won?

> Would Linux have gained the mind and market share it did or would the BSDs have won? From the horse's mouth: > Linus: Actually, I have never even checked 386BSD out; when I started on Linux it wast available (although Bill Jolitz series on it in Dr. Dobbs Journal had started and were interesting), and when 386BSD finally came out, Linux was already in a state where it was so usable that I never really thought about…

That's what I was thinking too: when Linux was released there was no viable Unix-like OS for the current day PC machines.

Edit: actually there was SCO, but it was costly. So above really I mean "no viable free Unix-like OS for...PCs".

Re: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

#54

Post by hinkley »

elromulous wrote: post #45
hinkley wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows ran half the planet, where are you getting this from?

These statements are not mutually exclusive. Math checks out :)

Only if MS and RH were the only thing that existed 20 years ago, which we know is false. Sun Microsystems, for one. Debian for another.

And the thing is I was being conservative about MS running half the planet. They had their grubby hooks in everything.

Re: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

#55

Post by biorach »

ajross wrote: post #44
jedberg wrote: post #15

I had to deal with fallout from this. At the time I worked at eBay, and were not allowed to use any OS except Windows or RedHat Linux. The reason we had to use RedHat? Because we had a paid license from them that included them absorbing all liability from IP claims regarding Linux. But if anyone was around then, you'd probably remember that RedHat was one of the worse distros of linux at the time. So we were forced t…

> But if anyone was around then, you'd probably remember that RedHat was one of the worse distros of linux at the time. There's no better microcosm of the early Linux world than this. "Yeah, that giant market-driving lawsuit was bad, I was there too and suffered along with the rest of you. But that's not the important thing: let me tell you about how bad RPM is compared to DPKG! Did you know the underlying archive fo…

> me tell you about how bad RPM is compared to DPKG!

I'm pretty sure the person you're replying to was taking about the distro as a whole, not the package file format

Re: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

#56

Post by ghaff »

ajross wrote: post #49
tiffanyh wrote: post #32

BSD BSD's were the worst hurt from all of this. Too many companies scared to use it due to lawsuit. Really unfortunate in hindsight, and Linux forever benefitted.

That causality seems backwards. Linux "benefitted" because it was the target of the lawsuit in the first place, which wouldn't have been aimed at Linux had Linux not already been the market winner. It was the USL v. BSDI lawsuit of a decade earlier (which to be clear absolutely did involve copied Unix code) that effectively killed BSD in the market by holding it back as Linux left the launchpad.

The Linux and BSD cases actually turned out to be pretty similar. There were a handful of cases of literal copying but not to anything close to the degree claimed and pretty much trivial. (And SCO also made all sorts of claims around Linux taking knowledge, including negative know-how, and techniques from Unix that were completely ridiculous.)

Re: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

#57

Post by criddell »

I wonder if anybody here can correct my memory.

When Microsoft sold Xenix to SCO, I seem to recall that part of the deal was Microsoft agreeing to not compete in the Unix market. Today, Microsoft is embracing Linux with their WSL stuff and that certainly impacts the Unix market.

Maybe the 1997 agreement between the two companies ended Microsoft's exile from Unix-land or maybe when Caldera bought SCO's Unix business the Microsoft agreement didn't transfer?

And I realize that, unlike macOS, Linux isn't Unix but it does compete in that market.

Re: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

#58

Post by kjs3 »

morelisp wrote: post #39
gemstones wrote: post #12

I hadn't heard of Darl McBride (CEO of SCO) and I looked at his LinkedIn; this is his side of the story from his time at SCO, as he puts in in his work experience section. I found it super interesting. All of my work experience before and after SCO was of the startup/entrepreneurial variety. Fun stuff, new, exciting and positive. Then some former colleagues on the board of SCO (previously Caldera) convinced me to com…

IDK, if I was put in charge of a company losing money like crazy and was genuinely trying to turn it around, my first thought would not be "oh, let's hire David Boies".

As I recall, Microsoft put up a ton of money to fund the SCO lawsuit. They didn't hire Boies out of Unix profits.

Re: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

#59

Post by quags »

vondur wrote: post #36
cheekibreeki2 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rh 4.2 ran half the planet, where are you getting this from?

This was pre DNF/YUM days. RedHat could be a pain installing stuff from RPM’s that had crazy dependencies back in the day.

Dependency hell was a thing for sure. I had at the time made a script to easily install rpm's at with a shell script that was searching the mirrors. It didn't handle dependencies but would show what was missing. But so many years later now looking back, a big issue was really just a lack of understanding of rpms with all the other os's with rpms, different arcs and versions. yum was a welcome changed especially since apt had for so long solved dependency issues.

Re: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

#60

Post by elromulous »

hinkley wrote: post #54
elromulous wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These statements are not mutually exclusive. Math checks out :)

Only if MS and RH were the only thing that existed 20 years ago, which we know is false. Sun Microsystems, for one. Debian for another. And the thing is I was being conservative about MS running half the planet. They had their grubby hooks in everything.

For sure. My comment was in jest.
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