Sco Vs Linux

SCO wants your dollars. $699 per CPU for starters. It would be interesting to know how many people have paid a year from now.

see also: ArgumentByGibberish

After October 15, the price doubles.

Sounds like SCO doesn't want people to take a wait-and-see attitude, to see if there really is a case.

I bet they will get a few companies that pay. Some chickenshit CIO somewhere will cough up, and likely some Microsoft shill will make a big show of paying SCO money to "make his pirated Linux legal" or somesuch.

But most folks won't pay until if and when SCO wins a case; and even if SCO were to win, the offending code (if any) would be removed quickly. In cases of inadvertent copyright infringement, SCO will not be allowed to demand outrageous, retroactive licensing fees like they are trying to do.

Plus, if enough Fortune 500 companies get annoyed, I wouldn't be surprised to see legislation introduced to outlaw this sort of shakedown -- legislation declaring that in a case of inadvertent infringement, once proper notice is given (which will include specifying exactly WHAT is in infringement), the infringer can remove the infringing code (or whatever) and owe no penalty.

But again, this all assumes that SCO wins. Given what I understand of their claims, the chances of that happening are remote.

--ScottJohnson

According to Bruce Perens anybody who accepts SCO's "offer" of a license for Linux would be in violation of the GPL and can be sued by all the Linux kernel copyright holders.

see http://newsforge.com/newsforge/03/08/07/1453252.shtml?tid=19

What about SCO itself? They're charging licenses for a product they have no right to, aren't they? Can they not be charged with fraud, or sued by the leagues and leagues of Linux contributors? Provided SCO loses, of course.

Apparently if you purchase SCO's "license" part of the fine print is that you agree to be audited by SCO in the future and to pay SCO's audit costs if you are found not to be in compliance. (A page from the BusinessSoftwareAlliance playbook.) The corporate attitude at its finest.

Hope this isn't too offtopic, but I think that SCO can be a real blessing in disguise to the Open Source community. Every time they make some frivolus claim that gets squashed, they help close any possible loopholes in the GPL. That in turn removes one more bullet from the gun of Microsoft. I think there is a head on collision coming with MS ,and if opensource hasn't explored every possible vulnerability , and applied any patches needed, they are going to be road kill. Winning a few court cases will help too... Frank

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