>> And SCO may be in for a rude awakening if they don't provide some basis
>> to their claims quickly.
>> Can you say "counter-suit" and "class action"?
> Can you direct me to the best news summary of the situation so far. I
> have been reading here that SCO recently relinquished claims to the Linux
> kernel and narrowed its litigants to IBM, Suse and Redhat.
> So what IP are they protecting at this point?
The open software foundation site has a lot of material on it. A "google"
search of the last week will produce more than you might care to read.
Basically, I think the bottom line for SCO is "money." For quite a long
time they were working with IBM toward something, and IBM reasonably
decided that working with SCO's products and technologies wasn't getting
them where they wanted to go. So they ended the project and moved on with
Linux. And SCO, finding itself with very little in the way of a business
model anyhow, most likely brought this lawsuit in an effort to force IBM to
buy them out.
But, as many columnists much more gifted of tongue than I have pointed out,
SCO might have opened a Pandora's Box against themselves. By making such
outrageous claims, they point out to everyone just how little they've
actually accomplished and how much /has/ been done, and done better, by
Linux. By claiming that they should somehow "own" Linux and "license" it,
they illustrate just how absurd those claims are.
"Narrowing its litigantsto IBM, SUSE, and Red Hat" hammers the coffin-nail
home in my book. They're only interested in the companies they believe
have money. Or, they're only interested in knocking the companies that
could actually provide competition to Microsoft. Any /legitimate/
intellectual property claim is expressly _prohibited_ from "picking your
targets" like that. (You are required to move promptly against all
infringement and without prejudice.)
[And, ooh, stupidboy, /don't/ sue ... IBM ...]
I sincerely hope that SCO gets every bit of what is coming to it. Starting
with a very harsh rebuke from the courts. Tax dollars should not be wasted
on the likes of this.