If you like Star Wars, check out the "bit of fun" that the author linked in the article's comments: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20120415121413.111a7461@lwn.net...
The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later
211–220 of 259 posts
Re: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I was a CS major in 1999-2003, the big names I remember people using were RedHat, SUSE, Debian, and Mandrake was gaining market share for desktop use. The installfests I went to were all RedHat. There seem to be a lot of complaints here about RedHat after that era, but my memory is that RedHat was the main linux distro circa 2003.
Mandrake! What a blast from the past. I also remember Gentoo and Slackware from around the same time, though apparently the latter predates the former by a decade or so.
I also remember Gentoo, mostly from here:
https://www.shlomifish.org/humour/by-others/funroll-loops/Ge...
https://web.archive.org/web/20170602132852/https://fun.irq.d...
Re: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later
#213I was actually the "author" of one of the pieces of code that SCO claimed had been stolen from them - SCO's implementation of the Berkeley Packet Filter.
SCO had a collaboration with IBM called Project Monterey, in which SCO and IBM were merging their operating systems in order to be better positioned for IA64 (which at that point people still thought would be good).
One minor detail of the Monterey deal was that SCO got the right to port IBM's superior networking stack into SCO's operating systems. One part of IBM's networking stack was their implementation of the Berkeley Packet Filter, and that was one of the parts I ported over (I'm pretty sure the file still had a BSD copyright notice on it).
That was back in the days when SCO was a cool UNIX vendor that thought of itself as an extension of UC Santa Cruz. Back then employees couldn't really imagine it turning evil, and it made me wary of what my subsequent employers (Google and Facebook) could turn into.
Re: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I waded into this thread to point that out.
Some people are mystified by why so many long time free software people don't think microsoft is suddenly a good actor these days.
Re: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later
#215I was actually the "author" of one of the pieces of code that SCO claimed had been stolen from them - SCO's implementation of the Berkeley Packet Filter. SCO had a collaboration with IBM called Project Monterey, in which SCO and IBM were merging their operating systems in order to be better positioned for IA64 (which at that point people still thought would be good). One minor detail of the Monterey deal was that SCO…
SCO the "cool UNIX vendor" was not the company that sued. In 2001, the cool UNIX vendor was struggling and sold its UNIX business to Caldera. Caldera renamed itself "the SCO Group" and filed the lawsuit. [1]
Re: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's-his-name, the Sun CEO, hated both Microsoft and Open Source. Even when they open sourced Solaris, after he left, they did it as a half-measure with an anti-GPL license and then I think Oracle pulled the plug and doomed Solaris to the dustbin of history.
McNealy was "just" chairman of the board when OpenSolaris was released. Also, I'm not sure it's fair to describe CDDL as anti-GPL unless you think the Mozilla Public License is as well. That said, it is reasonable to ask whether Solaris should have simply been placed under the GPL or a permissive license.
Ok, to rephrase that. They licensed Open Solaris in a certain way to make it explicitly incompatible with Linux' GPL2, or at least to sow enough doubt that the licenses are incompatible.
That didn't scream confidence in their ability to migrate to Open Source or their overall technical superiority, despite some very nice features.
Re: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later
#217Thanks, now I feel old.
Re: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later
#218I was actually the "author" of one of the pieces of code that SCO claimed had been stolen from them - SCO's implementation of the Berkeley Packet Filter. SCO had a collaboration with IBM called Project Monterey, in which SCO and IBM were merging their operating systems in order to be better positioned for IA64 (which at that point people still thought would be good). One minor detail of the Monterey deal was that SCO…
SCO the "cool UNIX vendor" was not the company that sued. In 2001, the cool UNIX vendor was struggling and sold its UNIX business to Caldera. Caldera renamed itself "the SCO Group" and filed the lawsuit. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Cruz_Operation
I remember seeing original SCO unix in our server room in 1998 - they were a legitimate player then but I also remember seeing all new orders going for SunOS (and later for Sun Solaris).
Re: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later
#219I was actually the "author" of one of the pieces of code that SCO claimed had been stolen from them - SCO's implementation of the Berkeley Packet Filter. SCO had a collaboration with IBM called Project Monterey, in which SCO and IBM were merging their operating systems in order to be better positioned for IA64 (which at that point people still thought would be good). One minor detail of the Monterey deal was that SCO…
SCO the "cool UNIX vendor" was not the company that sued. In 2001, the cool UNIX vendor was struggling and sold its UNIX business to Caldera. Caldera renamed itself "the SCO Group" and filed the lawsuit. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Cruz_Operation
In my mind, I associate Caldera with that Linux distribution that was pretty OK, but nothing to write home about.
Re: The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Linux wasn't a toy in '94: I had a full X11 with emacs, g++, and all the other goodies and easily ported scientific software from the grown-up UNIX in the lab, using it to write my undergraduate thesis. This was using Slackware from 4 floppies. At the time I was offered two pills: Slackware or BSD. I picked linux since it sounded "newer and hotter". It was a toy in '92-93 and they still didn't have good dynamic linki…
'94 it was definitely not a toy, but certainly needing a lot of work from the user. But to me (at the time), that's also what made it so much fun. Recompiling the kernel every single weekend. Big part of my childhood.