To further muddy the waters, Novell (from whom SCO bought Unix and Unixware) claims that it still owns the copyright to the code: http://news.com.com/2100-1016-1010569.html?tag=nl Here's ESR's take on the issue: http://www.catb.org/~esr/hackerlore/sco-vs-ibm.html On Tue, 22 Jul 2003 13:59:34 -0400 Bill Smith <wsmith@chezsmith.com> wrote:
I got this as part of a mailing list for Information Week. I thought you would find it interesting.
It's worth noting that SCO is working on THEIR SAY-SO. It is my personal opinion that any company that cowers and pays SCO just because they are using Linux is foolish. IANAL. It would be very much like some company deciding they wanted to bill you for services they didn't render. Would YOU pay that bill?
If you haven't been following this story, SCO is the current owner of the Unix source code. They CLAIM that some of the System V source code made it into the Linux kernel, a claim that has not yet been substantiated. SCO has not (yet) publicly shown their "evidence". To date, the only way to see the source of their claims (no pun intended) is to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA). Many of the people that have agreed to SCO's requirements aren't technically savvy. Most of the people that WOULD know what they were looking at are either not interested in signing anything (like an NDA), or they just don't think that SCO has a leg to stand on.
SCO themselves think that most of the Linux community will laugh in their (SCO's) face. I am proud to say that I am one of the people laughing. ;)
ANYWAY, here's the teaser and the link to the article:
SCO Group Wants Its Money With Unix System V copyrights in hand, the vendor introduced a plan to charge those who've used Linux as an alternative to Unix for UnixWare licenses. http://update.informationweek.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/eMu10FEZ5Z0V20B4bt0AU
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- William Smith wsmith-at-chezsmith-dot-com Fall River, MA http://www.chezsmith.com
"And 1.1.81 is officially BugFree(tm), so if you receive any bug-reports on it, you know they are just evil lies." -- Linux Torvalds * TAG! v3.1 *