IP Cops to target Linux end-users?

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SCO holds the rights to the UNIX operating system software originally licensed by AT&T to approximately 6,000 companies and institutions worldwide (the “UNIX Licenses”). The vast majority of UNIX software used in enterprise applications today is a derivative work of the software originally distributed under our UNIX Licenses. Like you, we have an obligation to our shareholders to protect our intellectual property and other valuable rights.

In recent years, a UNIX-like operating system has emerged and has been distributed in the enterprise marketplace by various software vendors. This system is called Linux. We believe that Linux is, in material part, an unauthorized derivative of UNIX.

As you may know, the development process for Linux has differed substantially from the development process for other enterprise operating systems. Commercial software is built by carefully selected and screened teams of programmers working to build proprietary, secure software. This process is designed to monitor the security and ownership of intellectual property rights associated with the code.

By contrast, much of Linux has been built from contributions by numerous unrelated and unknown software developers, each contributing a small section of code. There is no mechanism inherent in the Linux development process to assure that intellectual property rights, confidentiality or security are protected. The Linux process does not prevent inclusion of code that has been stolen outright, or developed by improper use of proprietary methods and concepts.

Many Linux contributors were originally UNIX developers who had access to UNIX source code distributed by AT&T and were subject to confidentiality agreements, including confidentiality of the methods and concepts involved in software design. We have evidence that portions of UNIX System V software code have been copied into Linux and that additional other portions of UNIX System V software code have been modified and copied into Linux, seemingly for the purposes of obfuscating their original source.

As a consequence of Linux’s unrestricted authoring process, it is not surprising that Linux distributors do not warrant the legal integrity of the Linux code provided to customers. Therefore legal liability that may arise from the Linux development process may also rest with the end user.

We believe that Linux infringes on our UNIX intellectual property and other rights. We intend to aggressively protect and enforce these rights. Consistent with this effort, on March 7, we initiated legal action against IBM for alleged unfair competition and breach of contract with respect to our UNIX rights. This case is pending in Utah Federal District Court. As you are aware, this case has been widely reported and commented upon in the press. If you would like additional information, a copy of the complaint and response may be viewed at our web site at www.sco.com/scosource.

For the reasons explained above, we have also announced the suspension of our own Linux-related activities until the issues surrounding Linux intellectual property and the attendant risks are better understood and properly resolved.

Similar to analogous efforts underway in the music industry, we are prepared to take all actions necessary to stop the ongoing violation of our intellectual property or other rights.

SCO’s actions may prove unpopular with those who wish to advance or otherwise benefit from Linux as a free software system for use in enterprise applications. However, our property and contract rights are important and valuable; not only to us, but to every individual and every company whose livelihood depends on the continued viability of intellectual and intangible property rights in a digital age.

I bought Lycoris Desktop/LX (developer version) for $40. You can get the consumer version for $30 (if you want support), or you could download it for free.

OpenOffice.org: FREE
Mozilla: FREE
CodeWeavers Crossover Office: $50. buy it ONLY if you NEED MS Office or certain Windows apps.

It depends on what you want the computer for. From experience, Lycoris is good enough that my father could probably use it with only an hour's worth of handholding or so.

Windows XP is great.

Sure if you don't mind random reboots, security holes, sluggish performance, Big Brother monitoring, enriching a monopoly, poor backward compatibility, fussy hardware requirements and vanishing user controls.

I have fully patched XP Service Pack 1 on about 20 machines at work. None have crashed yet, not once. I know it when a computer crashes because it holds up production. This is in a manufacturing environment with 24/7 up time and no reboots because operators work 8-10 hours and leave. Some of these machines may get rebooted once every couple of months mostly becuase we patched them.

About the monitoring. Get this tool:

XPAntispy

Not sure about backward compat, but then again, I'm only using stuff written for 95 or later. Printer drivers and such are an issue, that's true. Fussy hardware? 128mbs of ram, but otherwise, I've put it on some PII-233s and it works first time.

Not sure what you mean about the controls, but there are two things you need to do when you sit down to a fresh install of XP.

Set the theme to "windows classic" and set the start menu to "Classic Start Menu". At that point it's almost virtually identical to 2000.

It's not sluggish and I use both 2000 and XP every day. I write code on my XP machine and install the EXE on 98, 2000, and other XP machines. No fuss no muss.

One thing it does best is East Asian Language support. The IME in 2000 is close but it's perfected in XP. Since my machines have to support Japanese Shift JIS data natively, I had to go to English XP because running Japanese NT/2000/XP is a nightmare when you don't speak a word of it and you get error messages. This was a major headache for me to support. XP made the problem go away!

Front of the house, XP all the way. Back of the house, I wouldn't support it for a second. Your favorite Linux/Unix varient is much better suited to the tasks and can handle massive loads without crashing. Our 2000 servers don't crash, but they tend to get rebooted and patched frequently. Our Suns tend run months on end with nary a tech sitting down at it to do something short of backups.

I sorta despise the draconian muscle Gates brings to bear, but XP is a nice OS for end users.

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