SCO is starting to look in our direction

The problem isn't the merits of any of SCO's cases, they seem to be pretty much merit-free at this point. No, the problem seems to be that SCO is filing suits left and right to justify their existence. When one looks like a dead end, they start another one.

It is almost like watching a drowning man trying to save himself by pulling others down with him.
 
I don't know how exactly how the laws work in the US, but as far as I understand there's no way SCO can have the right to charge customers who use Linux even if their claims were correct. It's the distributors' business to pay license fees like that - of course the distributor can then raise the price of their product, but that's entirely different from charging customers who are already using the software.
 
Decado: SCO stands for "Santa Cruz Operation".
However, the history of the thing is a bit complex ...
Caldera took over SCO, renamed it Tarantella, and then renamed itself "The SCO Group".
 
Krevinek said:
The problem with getting it tested in court is that someone actually has to go to court. IBM is doing that, but it will likely take a year before the precedent is set. Until then, SCO is 'free' to pump up stock value and scare the workers.
Click to expand...

Turns out that SCO execs and insiders have been dumping their shares of the company like it was a fire sale. My guess is, they know the stocks aren't going to be worth the fine 450-weight cream paper they're printed on, once their delaying tactics fail and they have to put up or shut up...

Thing is, SCO really hasn't got a product much of anyone is interested in. Anyone know of a company using SCO OpenServer? Thought not. So, they probably realize the company is at a bit of a dead end right now. Perhaps management has decided to drive the company into the ground, and take out as much Linux business as they can, kamikaze style. Because, after all, what happens to the soul (in the corporate world, the CEO and his coterie) of a suicide warrior? It goes directly to heaven, skipping the queue the rest of the schmucks have to wait in.

Even if SCO isn't openly funded by MSFT, there could easily be some fat fat Swiss bank accounts out there in the names of the top execs. Bee-line to heaven...
 
Well, obviously the employees would be dumping stock. Since the inception of the lawsuit bunk, the stock price of SCO has risen from $1.09 to almost $16. Heck, I would dump my stock for an increase like that. Analyst are predicting that if the SCO suit wins, the stock price will soar to about $130 (or something like that). Otherwise, it will go bust. It is a 'high-risk, high-payoff' stock. Good positioning. They will get a huge investment in owner's equity, which can lead to some more investment into R&D so they can come out with something innovative (perhaps) by the time the lawsuit is over. This way they would, either way, be 'back in business'. They were almost bust before the suit, and this might give them the time needed to either get a huge payoff or develop something that will bring them back to profitability.
 
racerX, that link you posted regarding violence against SCO... in the middle of that article it says SCO is not pursuing damages against personal users, only large commercial users. So only big companies have to worry about this, not us home Mac OS X users.

Still SCO can go *$%#@ (unprintable on macosx.com or else someone :rolleyes: will be deleting this post and threatening to ban my account)
 
Originally they were going after both. They recently scaled it back to corporate users (and then to sue only 1 as yet unnamed corporate user) when they realized that it was more than they could handle at this point. They have a case pending with IBM (suit and counter suit, discovery motions before a judge today) and Red Hat, and seem to only have the resources currently to take on one more high profile case.

If you believe what SCO is saying (and they haven't been truthful yet), then you have no worries. They also originally said they weren't going after Linux at all. In their letter released yesterday they said that sharing software (like how Apple does with Darwin or how BSD and Linux are shared) is unconstitutional. Apparently copy right holders and intellectual property right holders have the rights to profit from what they own, but it is illegal (in SCO's eyes) to share it for free.

SCO was dying when this started. Their stock was below a dollar, their UNIX software was most notably being used at McDonald's. Even their own Linux was being passed up by other distributions. SCO (when it was still call Caldera) actually released UNIX source code to the public (both some 16-bit versions and the 32-bit 32v version which was at the heart of the AT&T/BSD case as I recall) more than a year before all this started. Then someone there had the great idea that because both Unix and Linux seemed to be taking off in the market place, they could make a business licensing the AT&T source code they still owned.

Between the Caldera license and the AT&T/BSD settlement agreement, everyone should be safe. But SCO is supporting itself with litigation at this point so no one with money to be had is safe.
 
a dying company huh? I guess SCO is like the ultima-beast in final fantasy... even when you kill it with your final attack, just before it dies it gets to cast ultima on you. LOL
 
SCO's interest: Save their a****es.
Microsoft's interest: Weaken Linux (and all other open source progress along with it).

But now... Let's assume SCO _does_ find code that was illegally open-sourced a decade or so ago. What would the consequences actually be? Replacement of code. Linux would rewrite the offensive parts, and distributions would adopt those new parts. Same for the BSDs. And then? Who would have to pay SCO actual money?

I don't see linux going away because of this. It's here. It's open. And can change. Quickly, even.

And I don't see Apple charging more than 150$ for a single user license of Mac OS X (client version). Just won't happen. Worst case scenario: Apple would have to rewrite parts of Darwin.
 
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