SCO's Next Target: SGI? 338
FatRatBastard writes "ZDNet News is speculating that SCO's next target in its legal actions against Linux may be SGI. According to the article its legal strategy will be to claim that XFS is a Unix derivative and therefore under SCO control, much like they claim JFS is in their suit with IBM. One fact not mentioned in the article that would support SGI being the next target is the malloc code they claimed was infringing at this years SCOForum was copyrighted SGI."
I suppose it would be too much to hope (Score:5, Interesting)
*sigh* A man can dream...
SCO's Business Model (tm) (Score:3, Interesting)
Travis
SGI had their eyes open... (Score:5, Interesting)
"Currently, SGI is clearing the source code of any legal restrictions; it expects to be able to make the code openly available by the end of the summer. "
Ensuring they were free-and-clear to donate XFS under an open source license was *not* an afterthought for SGI. There was concern among all the major UNIX vendors of IP entanglement with Linux, and SGI was the first to openly pledge to donate a chunk of their core UNIX technology. (IBM donated some non-core stuff earlier, and core stuff like JFS later.)
SCO's claim that XFS or JFS are derivative works of SVR4/5 remains, to me, highly dubious.
Too bad for SGI, the last thing they need these days is lawsuits. SCO can't hope for a lot of money, but maybe they're hoping for weaker resistance?
--LP
Not to be excessively paranoid.. (Score:5, Interesting)
They, unlike IBM, don't have buckets of cash in the bank to throw at a legal defense. If SCO can force SGI to do their bidding and potentially spit out some documentation that makes IBM's case look bad, they will be at a better position to take on IBM.
Re:Must be the drugs (Score:5, Interesting)
This almost makes me think MS is behind all this. (Score:5, Interesting)
SGI is a company that MS has every reason in the world to want to crush. They have traditionally been a major Unix vendor, they produce high-end graphics workstations that compete directly with popular Wintel solutions, and at one point they spurned Microsoft by dropping an ill-fated line of x86 workstations. And, making matters even worse (for SGI; better for MS), SGI is already suffering financially. This would be a great time for MS to crush them under their heel.
It is entirely possible that MS is pulling some strings here. SGI's target market and SCO's are wholly different, and I really don't see any reason why they (as opposed to HP/Digital/Compaq or any other Unix vendor) would be a real target. It just seems odd. SGI builds graphics workstations, and SCO provides general-purpose workhorse Unix OSes to businesses. Unless MS were involved, why would SCO pick on SGI in particular?
BSD Settlement ultimate target (Score:5, Interesting)
The only counter argument to this is that SCO has already "blessed" much of the BSD-derived code by stating that the 2.2 kernel series are clean.
Apparently they keep an eye on /. (Score:5, Interesting)
Used to have the awesome IT guy with the Red Hat, which was since photoshopped out, which has since been replaced with a photo of a woman. B-)
Re:Not to be excessively paranoid.. (Score:3, Interesting)
RICO and SCO Group (Score:3, Interesting)
Is this OPneSource's next legal strategy?
Re:Must be the drugs (Score:3, Interesting)
But SGI can't afford SCO (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Further confirmation SGI had IP concerns re: XF (Score:2, Interesting)
I think that we need to start doing some proactive type action against this.
Re:Apparently they keep an eye on /. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:RICO and SCO Group (Score:2, Interesting)
I contacted scoinfo@scosales.com asking (nicely) about the licenses and proof of infringement. All I got was a link to SCO's lie-ridden March 6 press release and a threat to be BILLED for asking so many questions. They also wanted to know if I wanted to buy SCO Unix. They answered NO questions about Linux licenses.
It's not MS targetting SGI, it really *is* SCO (Score:5, Interesting)
MS has obtained a cross-license to all SGI's graphics patents, and OpenGL is no longer a threat. A mild concern perhaps. MS buried their joint "Farenheit" high-level graphics API effort with SGI, killing it. MS has announced dropping support of OpenGL on future OSes. Development of OpenGL 2.0 is really the baby of 3Dlabs (or whoever bought them out; I forget), not SGI, which shows you how behind the curve SGI is on pushing OpenGL these days. OpenGL's survival depends more on John Carmack pushing IHVs to keep using it than SGI, and other than OpenGL, SGI has not presented MS with a platform threat.
MS may want to crush Linux and/or IBM, but SGI? Not even in the same ballpark.
The reason SCO is picking on SGI is because of NUMA.
SGI has been dumping their NUMA scalability crown jewels into Linux (unlike all other conventional Unix vendors who are keeping that stuff in their high-end proprietary OS+hardware combos) and this is a significant impediment to selling UnixWare as "the premier scalable x86 Unix". Off the shelf UnixWare supports up to 8 processors today and SCO made a stab at doing NUMA stuff once upon a time, but SGI's NUMA-Linux has tons more R&D behind it and is going 64-way.
Three or four years ago, UnixWare was actually functionally superior to Linux (I know, I know, hard to believe but it's true.) But any margin of superiority then has greatly diminished or been overtaken. This is a real problem if SCO can't keep up with the R&D dumped into Linux by the open source community plus IBM plus SGI, etc. So SCO has gone legal. It's a rational move for them. Their vacillating arguments and tenuously-novel notion of derivative works don't bode well for their long term success however.
--LP
Re:What a useful article (Score:2, Interesting)
Well they are not stupid enough to start sending out invoices, they know that it would invite criminal charges and that this could wreck their sophisticated (e.g. Vultus purchase) pump and dump scheme with a lot of FUD production paid for by the MS "license" millions.
What they will need is a new big news press release item to keep the momentum when they don't actually send out any invoices. The answer sue SGI it will pump the stock and keep the FUD production line going. It's perfectly legal even if the case is pretty much fabricated, so is the one against IBM anyway.
How much longer they can keep up this pump and FUD untill they dump and go away (probably to somewhere in the Caribbean)? I don't know.
Re:This almost makes me think MS is behind all thi (Score:1, Interesting)
at least 12 times in 3 years.
They were the standard in high end graphics, before
they wanted to build; killer database servers, high end
web servers, NT desktops, Linux desktops and
Supercomputers.
They pose no threat to MS, or anyone else.
In fact ignoring the SCO suit, they will most likely collapse
in 18 months anyway.
Re:They're going right to the source after that... (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, that brings up a question about one of SCO's strategies: they have suggested that owning the copyright to some old Unix code automatically confers ownership of improved new code, as a "derivative work." I think that's BS, but let's pretend they win it: is there something out there that would make SCOs crufty old code a "derivative" work? In other words, if they establish as case-law that new code is owned by some old copyright holder, then can we lay claim to their old code with something even older? It'd be fun to use their own ruling against them.
Of course, they'll never get that ruling, this is just a "what if?"
From Wired Sept 2003 (Score:5, Interesting)
(Drool)
Ok... anyway
Wired: Sept 2003 page 80 bottom half artical title "Will This Man Kill Linux"
Darl McBride says (while anwering a question)
"It's really interesting to see what happends when people see the code, when they see how blatant the copying is."
What is intresting is that so far only McBrides experts appear to be able to find this code. Well that and people who can't actually read source code seam able to find them.
I find it intresting that the experts can't be located. I find it intresting that much of the code in question can be found elsewhere. I find it intresting that the features in question are property of other companys.
To date:
The features in question make Linux an enterprise class system, Came from IBM, are primaraly for SGI hardware & Have something to do with 20 to 30 year old public domain code.
To me it appears blairingly obveous SCO is just suing anyone they have balls enough to sue.
Hay good thing they aren't suing the little guys becouse I really like Lunix [sourceforge.net].
Re:Biting off more than you can chew? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why don't they go after the FSF and Apple? (Score:2, Interesting)
Even through they are not derived from Unix Sys V sources, there were certainly "inspired" from Unix and use "Unix concepts and methods.". Mind you, SCO has no patents on any these methods. But why limit themselves to traditional Unix when you have all the other 'nixs out there.
Has SCO even thought of the fact that the Unix interfaces themselves were codified into the POSIX standard? An open, approved standard that anyone can implement. Are they going to claim they own the POSIX standards body now?
Maybe McBride ought to pick a copy of "Just For Fun" by Linus Torvalds and read about how Linux came about. Man, if a filesystem implementation that ties into a Unix kernel a "derivative work", then the ext2, ext3, ReiserFS and every other filesystem builder out there is pretty much screwed.
Come on McBride, invoice me for a license! I even use the SMP code on my dual processor Sun boxes running SuSe. Got Red Hat and Debian too. As long as its on good quality bond, it will make excellent liner for my litter box.
malloc ?? xfs ?? (Score:2, Interesting)
Murderer, Assassin, or Hero? (Score:3, Interesting)
When someone finally snaps and takes that sniper shot at McBride or turns the SCO headquarters into a fireball, will they be considered a murderer, an assassin, or a hero?
Or will the world just shrug and be glad someone finally hired an exterminator?
After all, between SCO and the wrist-slaps Microsoft has been given, it's clear the US legal system is nothing but a toothless sham for sale to the highest bidder. Given SCO's real value, the bid isn't even that high.
SGI systems these days (Score:3, Interesting)
Ehh, depends on which market segment you're talking about. For the typical modeler or CAD person, a PC will have just as much power for a lower cost. SGI does still sell a lot of very high end gfx machines (dozens of graphical pipelines [pipe in sgi world means "gfx card", not a texel path within a gpu]) and machines with gobs of i/o for multiple streams of uncompressed HD. But SGI sells far more non-graphical supercomputers (Origin and Altix) than they do gfx systems.
SGI's Onyx2/Onyx3 InfiniteReality4 graphics have 11 GB of gfx ram to work with, great for vis-sim applications and massive texture roaming. Raw polygon performance isn't that impressive, but the rest of the abilities more than make up for it. The new Onyx4 UltimateVision is based on ATI FireGL. Both IR and UV can handle multiple gfx pipes in the same machine to drive multiple synced displays from the same machine without performance loss. Great for setups needing a dozen projectors and screens requiring software/hardware distortion correction (curved screens, hemisphere screens, etc) and edge blending. In the case of UV, mutliple GPUs can work together in several different ways for greater performance. But for a single-monitor, single GPU user, a PC will give you just as much power for a fraction of the cost.
But as a general purpose UNIX, it's pretty much dirty pants.
For a desktop OS, yeah, the GUI is pretty oldschool but does still have some neat goodies (www.nekochan.net). IRIX itself as a flavor of UNIX is pretty decent. Recent versions of IRIX 6.5.x have the security holes fixed and much newer versions of various components since the iniital release of 6.5.0. There are lots of awesome builtin features for performance and activity monitoring, the OS is made for app turning. Guaranteed rate I/O, realtime features, native XFS, native OpenGL... the OS is pretty smooth.
SCO, SGI, BSD (Score:3, Interesting)
The longer this has gone on, the more SCO seems to reach out to Unix vendors, the gladder I am that Bill Joy created the core of the Unix I use, BSD.
I do wonder, muse really, sometimes. Is SCO working for Apple? Linux, though IBM, and SGI's Unix OS are being threatened and it seems that the one real winner, at least a bit in the Unix arena, is Apple whose Unix OS is based on BSD and is according to Bill Joy immune from SCO's actions. Personally, I doubt SCO has a case. But this is exactly the sort of stuff that companies and their proxies do to throw the competition off balance and create market growth opportunity.
Like most OS X users, I can afford to just sit back and watch the fun as those companies wanting "free" Linux distributions now have to content with the risk (and that isn't a joke) of an SCO victory that would cost the free Linux community money. Meanwhile, Apple advances its OS X strategy by readying Panther with not a whisper of a threat from SCO.
Is Jobs behind this?
Yes, I'm joking. But the stakes are very high. At worst, Linux is no longer free which ruins its business model. With companies looking for alternatives to MS, and with Linux no longer free, and with other Unix OS's falling to SCO, wouldn't Apple be the real winner?
This is way over the line. (Score:2, Interesting)
In no way does this failing $70 million company deserve the continuing coverage and respect that it is getting from the trade press. When this all started it was perhaps possible to believe that SCO actually had a case. But they have long since transformed into the biggest press relations hoax since the Raelian "clone" episode.
We have been presented with months of empty threats, bogus proof, frivolous legal theories, and behavior indistinguishable from fraud, extortion, and racketeering. Yet the press treats this as something IT professionals need to know about and should pay attention to.
Nonsense. It is a charade. It is either a stock-manipulation scheme, as Computerworld uncovered, or it is the behavior of crazy people who do not care who they hurt with their ever-wilder accusations and threats.
But with this article, we have reached a new low. Now we are presented with the "SCO threat" article bereft of any actual behavior by SCO. The principles have been quiet lately, so to take up the slack, the trade press is actually making up threats that SCO never made, and waving them around as the latest scare stories.
Whjat does an article like this do to SGI's business? What justification can there be for ZDNet and C|Net and Business Week to put this kind of cloud over SGI without even a single direct quote from SCO backing up this claim?
This is way over the line. The dishonsty and desire to mislead apparent in what the trade press is doing here will not be forgotten. If they wish to toss their credibility on SCO's altar for no apparent gain, no one can stop them. But they will suffer for it in the long run. I will never again believe half of what I read in these rags. This whole episode has been very eye-opening for me.