Linux Users Reject SCO Offer

eWeek.com ^ | July 28, 2003 | Peter Galli

[amigatec]

Many Linux customers have no intention of paying The SCO Group for a UnixWare license that would indemnify them from legal liability for using the open-source operating system.

SCO, which is suing IBM over Unix for more than $1 billion and which claims that Linux is an illegal derivative of Unix, last week said Linux users are also violating SCO's Unix copyrights, particularly now that SCO has registered a U.S. copyright for its Unix System V source code.

[dr_who_2]

It's a "protection" racket, only if you don't pay up, they don't blow up your place of business or kill your family. They sue you for everything you're worth until your net worth is zero.

[FastCoyote]

Are any of you guys programmers? All I know is that whenever I write code, I must be reinventing the wheel at lest a dozen times, so I must be violating a patent somewhere, either through coincidence or because I've looked at sample code stripped of everything. That's why I think SCO will go nowhere in the end, otherwise the whole system blows up.

[Nick Danger]

I must be violating a patent somewhere, either through coincidence or because I've looked at sample code stripped of everything.

My spies tell me that Charles Petzold is preparing a giant lawsuit in which he will charge that every single Windows app out there contains code that was "copied line for line from my book."

Simonyi, meanwhile, want 5 cents for every copy of every program sold that contains the variable names hWnd, hBrush, or hdc. And a dime if they use lpszBuffer.

We are sooo screwed.

[eccl1212]

I guarantee you... on some level, they have.

What they are meaning is that based on what they know they don't "see" or "understand" where the psychos are basing their claim.

This is nothing but a secretly funded GATES initiative to try and undermine the 'open source' unixes, regardless of the flavor. His doggie is dying, so he is trying to kill his neighbor's, sort of thing.

Dig deep, and dollars to donuts... gates operatives are working this HARD.... to preserve the concept of licensing for profit, at the expense of opensource...

too late. the cat is outta the bag.

[eccl1212]

I am about to sue all english speakers and writers over my copyright ownership of the lower case, letter a, in all of it's manifestation, that are sans-serif types. I am also working to copyright the word sans-serif... and will sue whoever is left, for specifying in their software that they do NOT want to use 'sans-serif' fonts in their applications, seeing that by using the word, to exclude it from their os... they are STILL using it... and dammit they owe me.

[steve-b]

Based on the reports of the SCO NDA, it sounds like Red Hat is doing the right thing. Why should they tie their hands in order to see the limited examples SCO is providing? All they have to do is wait for the case to reach a judge with a clue, who will order SCO's executives to show up the next morning with either 1)a list of the allegedly infringing bits of code, or 2)their toothbrushes and (optionally) a supply of Vaseline.