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The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

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Re: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

#171

Post by jedberg »

dekhn wrote: post #134
CraigRo wrote: post #107

I would love to get a signed picture of Darl McBride for my bathroom. Because he paid for it. I heard about this lawsuit, called up a couple of IP lawyers, talked to a bunch of programmers, and read everything on groklaw. I called both analysts who covered the stock -- one had a price target of $5, while the other had a price target of $45 (stock was about 20 at the time). Then I shorted it with most of the money I h…

OK, that beats my "I made $25,000 on the VA Linux IPO simply because I was an early sourceforge user and got invited to the friends and family program".

I had a buddy in college who made $25K on the VA Linux IPO for the same reason. He used it to pay for a used car and a couple year's tuition. Good times.

Re: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

#172

Post by rascul »

bitwize wrote: post #66
surfingdino wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, we remember... https://www.junauza.com/2011/07/microsoft-fud-campaigns-agai...

Interesting choice of Ballmer as Dr. Evil... I always felt that Bill Gates's speaking voice resembled that of Evil.

Ballmer did crusade against Linux for a number of years.

Re: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

#173

Post by AlbertCory »

ok_dad wrote: post #124
AlbertCory wrote: post #2

Here's a choice for you all: (1) copyright as the IP protection for software, with cleaned up laws and procedures about "insignificant changes" and "derivative works" -- or -- (2) the current patent aystem, post CLS Bank , which has eliminated a lot of business method patents and some, but not all, software patents.

Whatever choice "zero patents for software" is. Already, no one shares their code, which would be in the spirit of the patent system. The patent system is designed to keep the design details open and public, but gives a legal monopoly to the holder of the patent. Currently, companies can write software implementations that are completely closed and secret, but still hold a patent for whatever the "thing" that algorit…

This is actually the topic of the first of (planned) four posts on software. For you lawyers, it's section 112.

Re: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

#174

Post by flextheruler »

mmcgaha wrote: post #159
hackmiester wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[flagged]

Are you stating that someone’s identity is an excuse for them being disagreeable

Re: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

#175

Post by grahamm »

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…

Yes the days of SCOC were great but the days of SCOX were dark. I left just before the Caldera take over.

Re: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

#176

Post by taftster »

ghaff wrote: post #115
taftster wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but honest question, do you really think that if IBM had purchased SCO (and maybe throw Novell in there too) that Linux would have still had any chance? I don't know what the outcome, but I just think there's too many possibilities at that point for Linux to just stay hobbyist without corporate adoption (fearing now IBM licensing/lawyering at that point).

At the time of the SCO lawsuit, IBM had already made a huge bet on Linux. [1] Basically, that's why SCO sued them. And they had their own Unix (AIX) which they could have ported to x86 if they had wanted to--but they didn't. Here's what the person who headed IBM's Linux initiative told me a couple of years back: And I still remember very well in December of ‘99, I called Sam Palmisano, the head of IBM Systems Group.…

Thank you for taking time to reply. It's awesome to see the insider's view a bit here.

Re: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

#178

Post by naves »

realitychex wrote: post #103
jacobr1 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the arguments of that era always seemed to revolve around minutiae like the package manager, or default filesysem, or choice of default desktop.

You're being dismissive of issues that were far bigger than you make them look. >like the package manager It wasn't about, for example, dpkg vs rpm, but apt-get versus.. nothing, because Red Hat had nothing to solve dependencies. Installing software on Red Hat was a truly hellish experience. >default filesysem I have never in my life seen people dismiss a distro because of a default filesystem. I question whether you…

+1 to this. I remember installing software in 1998 on Red Hat and it was absolute hell. It was a hit or miss endeavor and when it failed, it failed badly. All those broken dependencies took ages to resolve.

Then I switched to Debian Potato and never turned back. It was such a clean and sane experience.

Unfortunately, I could not scape rpm hell at work as Fermi Linux, and then CERN Linux, were both based on Red Hat.

Re: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

#179

Post by dekhn »

jedberg wrote: post #171
dekhn wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, that beats my "I made $25,000 on the VA Linux IPO simply because I was an early sourceforge user and got invited to the friends and family program".

I had a buddy in college who made $25K on the VA Linux IPO for the same reason. He used it to pay for a used car and a couple year's tuition. Good times.

ours paid for part of a new car. I later ended up working with the people who set all this up- VA Linux employees- and they got nothiung because the stock crashed after that.

Re: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later

#180

Post by talkingtab »

Personally, the most interesting thing about that event was groklaw. (http://www.groklaw.net/index.php) It is hard now to reconstruct the experience of having a website dedicated to something I cared passionately about. Groklaw is an example, in my opinion, of what the internet could be, should be and isn't. A website that provided a community for people with a common cause.

I don't mean to diminish the importance of Linux at all.

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