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SCO = Wankers!

SCO (Santa Cruz Operation) is a UNIX company running out of Lindon, Utah. Recently acquired by Caldera Systems. Caldera now trade as SCO to reflect that the market where most of their business is done is the UNIX market.

On March 7th SCO filed a suit in Utah claiming that IBM have (in the words of SCO Senior Vice President, Chris Sontag) "contaminated their Linux work with inappropriate knowledge from UNIX". This suit was filed not too long after IBM ended a joint development project to build a new 64-bit UNIX-based operating system for Intel platforms.

According to SCO, IBM are apparently attempting to destroy the value of UNIX by "improperly extracting and using the confidential and proprietary information" and releasing this information into the open source community. SCO also claim that this is an intentional malicious move by IBM to destroy SCO's livelihood.

SCO is threatening to revoke the licence for IBM to release AIX, IBM's own UNIX. Interesting, isn't it? SCO are claiming that IBM have released SCO's intellectual property in IBM's Linux distribution and are attempting to stop IBM from distributing its own UNIX! This is just business as usual, when SCO cant make it in the market they just sue the deepest pockets they can find and the arguments don't have to hold a lot of water for SCO either.

SCO are full members of the UnitedLinux project and until very recently SCO produced SCO Linux. Both of these products are covered under the GPL open source licence. This will prove to be SCO's major problem, how can IBM be guilty of something that SCO may already have done?

SCO are suing on the basis that they believe "It is not possible for Linux to rapidly reach UNIX performance standards for complete enterprise functionality without the misappropriation of UNIX code, methods or concepts to achieve such performance". There have been repeated calls from the industry for SCO to reveal the code it claims has been stolen, SCO has not been forthcoming with information.

Here I wish to quote an article by Mitch Wagner, a senior editor at InternetWeek. It points out the possible fuckup by SCO.

There is one intriguing scenario, suggested by Perens, where SCO might have a case but might have already lost it due to their own legal incompetence. Assume, as we have been, that there is proprietary Unix source code included in Linux. Assume that Linux vendors have been distributing this source code. Well, SCO is a Linux vendor too -- they announced on Wednesday that they are suspending distribution of Linux, but for years they did distribute Linux, under the same General Public License used for all Linux distributions. Since all the Linux vendors share source code, it's entirely possible that SCO was inadvertently distributing its own proprietary Unix code in its version of Linux. In that case, SCO would've already released its Unix source code into open source. SCO says, "Whoops!" the Linux community says, "Hooray!" and the English language has a replacement for the phrase, "Hoist by his own petard."

Does it bother anyone else that SCO own the intellectual property rights to UNIX? This bunch of morons are destroying the UNIX and Linux markets by attempting to stop IBM with AIX and threatening commercial Linux users across the board!

Am I the only one who thinks this way? No. Just ask anyone who has conducted DOS attack on SCO's website. I don't condone such action, but it is easy to see just how angered people are with SCO.

Maybe SCO is going to sue the FreeBSD project for being a free UNIX? It wouldn't surprise me if this were the case even though when offered SCO IP several years ago the FreeBSD team were not interested. (BSD largely comes from 6th and 7th Edition of UNIX which is pre-System V / SCO)

In an interview posted on Business Week Online McBride was asked about the future of SCO in the Linux Community. He replied stating: "We would be happy to sit down and get a resolution on this so we can all live together peacefully." Bullfuck! SCO would rather crush Linux out of the way and increase their marketshare of UNIX.

The whole bloody situation with this suit is total crap. SCO is pissed at IBM for cancelling the 64bit UNIX / Intel platform project. SCO is pissed at Linux because Linux is taking some of SCO's market and also because SCO can't make much money from it. The dickheads are grasping at straws because they can't come up with a way to compete and aren't willing enough to compete. Don't tell em you can't make money from Linux. If that were true Red Hat and SuSE wouldn't exist. SCO would rather have the whole market wrapped around their little finger without having to do too much to acquire it, they want the whole bloody server market dumped on their lap!

If you were so search a dictionary the following would be returned.

2 entries found for SCO.
Santa Cruz Operation
1 n. A supplier of Unix systems for x86 microprocessors.
2 n. A bunch of arse-licking, bum-loving, monkey-spanking, wankers!

I suggest the SCO change their name to one of the following:
Shonky Crap Organisation
Stupid Cranky Orang-utans
Stinky Crud Organ
Stuff Cock up Orifice
Suing Creates Onmipotence

Basically I am trying to say that SCO are a group of dick-licking, moronic, arse-spanking, cock-rockets who should wake the hell up!

You have just been reading another Brain Fart from Grant
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