Sco Vs Ibm

Any comments on this case?

(Especially, any IntellectualProperty lawyers out there who are willing to comment on the case?)

No comments, but an interesting development today (2003-08-04) - It appears that RedHatTheCompany has jumped into the fray, and sued SCO themselves. http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5059547.html

Not a surprising development, given that SCO has done a pretty good job of attempting to make a profit solely through legal action. -- ChadThompson

The court case is not until 2005. In the meantime we have ScoVsLinux to amuse us.

What is SCO?

The SantaCruzOrganization? -- one of the smaller players in the UNIX market, having been bounced around through various owners.

Actually, the current SCO is not the original SCO. IIRC, the original Santa Cruz Operation, who sold various versions of UNIX such as UnixWare? and Xenix, and who bought the rights to the System V codebase from Novell, decided to get out of the OS business some years back. So, they sold all their Unix assets (including the name SCO, their Unix product line, and the copyrights to System V) to Caldera, who at the time was a key Linux distributor. The original SCO is now called Tarantella, and has nothing to do with the lawsuit.

Caldera intended to use the SCO product line to enhance its Linux offering, which was getting drubbed by others in the marketplace -- notably RedHat and SuSE. Part of the problem was the ex-CEO of Caldera, one Ransom Love, had a unique ability to piss off the open source community. He was eventually replaced with the current CEO, one DarlMcBride?.

Once it became clear that the Linux business was shot for them, Caldera changed its name to SCO (which it bought the rights to use), started pushing proprietary Unix, and proceeded to sue IBM.

IBM is countersuing SCO -- alleging, among other things, patent infringement. (2003-08-07)

The most up to date info can usually be found on GrokLaw (http://www.groklaw.net)