IBM being battered in court by SCO!

[Calum]

just caught up with this piece of *nix in the news:
 

quote:from 3 weeks ago:
Unix  developer The SCO Group has filed a law suit against IBM,
charging it
with  misappropriation   of  trade  secrets,  unfair  competition  and
other
illegal  actions  related  to IBM's Linux business. The suit seeks at
least
$1bn in damages.

IBM  obtained  its  Unix  licence  in  1985  from AT&T, which
developed the
operating  system.  In   1995 SCO purchased the rights and ownership
of Unix
and  became the "successor in interest" to the Unix
licences issued by AT&T
to IBM, Hewlett-Packard and others.

In  its  suit  filed  yesterday,  SCO alleged that IBM tried to
destroy the
economic  value  of  Unix,  particularly  Unix   on  Intel-based
servers, to
benefit  its  Linux services business. It charged IBM with
misappropriation
of  trade  secrets, tortious interference, unfair competition and
breach of
contract.

SCO  said  it  sent  a   letter to IBM demanding that it cease its
allegedly
anti-competitive practices. If IBM did not meet its demands within
100 days
of  receiving  the  letter, SCO said it has a right to revoke IBM's
licence
for the AIX Unix operating system.

IBM could not immediately be reached for comment yesterday.

SCO  claimed  to have been injured by IBM's actions and has asked the
court
for damages of at least $1bn, with the amount to be proven at a trial.

SCO  announced   in  January  that  it  had  hired a law firm to
investigate
possible violations of its intellectual property.

SCO  is  in the enviable position of owning the Unix operating
system, said
Darl  McBride, SCO's president and chief executive officer, adding
that SCO
believed it had "a compelling case against IBM".

SCO said a copy of its complaint would be posted on its website.

 

quote:from yesterday:
SCO to revoke IBM's AIX Unix licence

Software firm SCO has reaffirmed its commitment to revoke IBM's licence to sell AIX Unix on 13 June as part of a $1bn (

[slave]

The SCO CEO needs to be assassinated, preferably by being trampled to death by a herd of gnu's.

The lawsuit has no merit, and they know it.  They are hoping IBM will buy their dying company out.

[slave]

One thing that strikes me, if the lawsuit had any merit couldn't they just point to examples in the Linux source code and say "look, that's our stuff they put in there!"  No, because like I said, it's a bunch of crap.  They simply assume the the free software community is incompetent at making a good OS without their "trade secrets."  As for any claim that IBM lacks the technical knowhow, that's even worse.  When I think of IBM, I think of a lot of things but technical incompetence isn't one of them.

[slave]

Another thing, Linux is based on Minix, not UNIX.  Minix contains absolutely no UNIX code.  How stupid can you get?

[Calum]

it's not a copyright issue, it's a look & feel issue. they are saying that IBM have stolen their intellectual property, not their code, and that's why there's actually a possibility that they may get something out of this. remember a jury is made up of 12 people who were too stupid to get out of jury duty!    

edit: i just noticed i didn't give the url for the news article, so here:

http://www.cw360.com/articles/artic....ch=&nPage=1
http://www.linuxworld.com/2003/0306.sco.html

[ April 01, 2003: Message edited by: Calum: crusader for peace & freedom ]

[KernelPanic]

I saw this on BBC Sci/Tech a little while ago, when do the court preceedings begin?

[choasforages]

what is the term for making false claims about people, i know you can sue over it, becuase  the kernel crew/*linus, and a few others*/ should sue sco for making false claims and publicly claiming it

[Calum]

it's libel if you do it in writing and slander if you do it verbally.

one is more serious than the other (i think slander is more serious but i am not sure) and yes, you can sue over them. there's little point though, this is just SCO trying to be a player, it won't work because it has used the 20 year old tactic of being a player by being a bastard. that method is on the way out, and now you have to be a nice guy and share all your code to be a player (or at least it is going that way).