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The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

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Re: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

#151

Post by AnimalMuppet »

ghaff wrote: post #85
taftster wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what's interesting, if the SCO lawsuit had gone any other way, Windows NT would probably have ended up completely dominating. Linux wouldn't be here and probably neither would SCO Linux either. What a dire state that would be.

I'm pretty sure that even if SCO had all the rights to Unix that it thought it did [0], IBM would have found some way to make the problem go away even if involved buying SCO or effectively paying it protection money. Though from what I've seen of SCO's claims (I co-wrote one of the expert witness reports), it's hard for me to imagine they had much of a chance, Boies or no Boies. [0] Which remains one of the most inex…

No, Novell didn't pull a fast one. SCO didn't have the money to buy everything they wanted to buy, so the deal was deliberately structured so that they bought less. At the time, both sides knew it. And then most everybody who knew it left Caldera...

And, mind telling us which expert witness report?

Re: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

#152

Post by bitcharmer »

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…

His personal website contains gems like this one:

> "Darl McBride will be remembered as one who fought for the rights of the individual against tyranny, for freedom against slavery, for intellectual liberty against herd mentality. In short, he is a Howard Roark (Ayn Rand's protagonist in 'The Fountainhead') for our age."

> Francis Erdman, Blog Kinetic

And other heavily narcissistic quotes. Not surprising that he saw nothing wrong in appropriating other people's voluntary work and calling them long haired stinkies at the same time.

What a fellow :)

Re: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

#153

Post by AnimalMuppet »

kanzenryu2 wrote: post #133

Anybody know anything about the part where SCO actually won? I'm referring to the final event years later where IBM made a settlement payment to them. I assume it didn't make up for the years of effort, but I'd love to know what it was based on.

I think it was based on claims from the Project Monterrey contract. In fact, I think it kind of had to be - there weren't any other claims that were still active in the case, IIRC.

Re: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

#154

Post by sgc »

kkielhofner wrote: post #145
bitcharmer wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are almost always inaccurate. What they always are is expensive

As CTO I generally tracked software and applicable use license(s) across the entire codebase. My internal sheet more or less lined up with their results - with the notable exception being my project I referenced. FWIR it was something like 400 entries and I’d put it at roughly 95% accurate on this anecdotal rough estimate.

That is surprisingly bad. I would expect it to be some sigma level of accuracy for the money they charge. Perhaps I misunderstand the problem.

Re: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

#156

Post by rwmj »

dekhn wrote: post #141
rwmj wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FreeBSD didn't support shared libraries while Linux did, and that made a huge difference trying to run X11 on the 386 systems of the time, specifically because of hard disk space required.

linux's shared libraries were pretty limited in '94- I forget the technical reason but it had to do with runtime linker not being able to compute unique addresses for each .so, and so they sort of had to be assigned "ranges" that a particular .so owned ( https://www.linux.co.cr/free-unix-os/review/1994/0914-a.html ). Probably a.out vs. ELF.

Yup, that was the limitation of the old a.out format. ELF was a breath of fresh air, but it didn't arrive until after Linux 1.2.

Re: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

#157

Post by ghaff »

jasoneckert wrote: post #128

One thing that the author of this article left out is that SCO was not SCO during this dark period of litigation. SCO (Santa Cruz Operation) was an x86 UNIX vendor that wasn't great, but enjoyed a lot of market share. I'd estimate they were #2 to SUN in installations because it ran on commodity x86 hardware. But by the late 1990s, they knew their time was up given the pressure from Linux. When the company was sold to…

>But by the late 1990s, they knew their time was up given the pressure from Linux.

They were savaged by Windows NT before Linux became an appreciable factor. Which was one of the main arguments against Linux causing faux-SCO (as an industry colleague of mine liked to refer to them as) economic harm even if their claims were true--which they weren't.

But also, yeah, charting the corporate identities through that period was hard to keep straight. There was also a branch of Santa Cruz desktop products that ended up with Sun.

Re: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

#158

Post by burnte »

snowwrestler wrote: post #144

One of the weird side stories from the SCO saga was that of Dan Lyons, who at the time was a reporter with a little cottage industry in stories praising the work of SCO and predicting IBM’s imminent loss and comeuppance for all the Linux neck beards. It later turned out he was also behind the briefly-popular “Fake Steve Jobs” blog, and on the strength of that reputation he left journalism to go into tech company mark…

He DID admit he was completely wrong with his predictions, so it's not like he was a blind cheerleader.

Re: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

#159

Post by mmcgaha »

hackmiester wrote: post #138
Postosuchus wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong. Two reasons actually: 1. RHEL was the first distro directed at enterprise deployment (meaning, strong preference of rock solid stability and predictability over constant churn). Which made it the only distro Dells and HPs of the world recognized and agreed to support. 2. RHEL was created on legacy of RedHat Linux, which was the best distro for non-hobbyist environments (from reproducible deployments to the bre…

I don't think "Wrong" is a very interesting, helpful, or productive response to someone's lived experience.

[flagged]

Re: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

#160

Post by ghaff »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #151
ghaff wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure that even if SCO had all the rights to Unix that it thought it did [0], IBM would have found some way to make the problem go away even if involved buying SCO or effectively paying it protection money. Though from what I've seen of SCO's claims (I co-wrote one of the expert witness reports), it's hard for me to imagine they had much of a chance, Boies or no Boies. [0] Which remains one of the most inex…

No, Novell didn't pull a fast one. SCO didn't have the money to buy everything they wanted to buy, so the deal was deliberately structured so that they bought less. At the time, both sides knew it. And then most everybody who knew it left Caldera... And, mind telling us which expert witness report?

I know that the deal was structured in the way it was because SCO didn't have enough money but I still find it bizarre that they entered a high-profile lawsuit with a fundamental misunderstanding of the cards they held. Did they really think that Cravath Swaine wouldn't notice?

They don't have titles as far as I can see. But basically around Unix history, whether it was reasonable that Linux caused SCO's distress (relative to Windows NT), supposed economic damages, credibility of various claims that weren't thrown out because of actual Unix ownership, Project Monterey, etc. My boss's name is on it so don't want to say more than that.

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