Re: SCO vs IBM

["Stephen J Baker" <sjbaker@link.com>]

Miguel A. Osorio wrote:

> I was just wondering. What do you think about the impact of this lawsuit
> against IBM on the OpenSource community? How about on Linux development
> itself?
> After all, there is this whole deal on the presence of proprietary code
> inserted into the Linux core.
The general consensus is that this SCO business is just bullshit. Their
case is totally without merit - which is why (despite MONTHS of blustering),
they've yet to bring any of their threats into a court of law.

They are hoping to make a pile of cash by having people settle out of court.

So long as no significant number of people cave in to these empty threats,
there won't be any problems.

The worst case scenario (which actually seems to be happening) is that
Microsoft feed funds to SCO via fiscally complex backdoor routes in order
to keep them alive and to give them a large enough war chest to allow them
to keep up the rhetoric and create Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt about Linux.

This won't matter so long as people look at the facts (which indicate that
SCO don't have a case) - and don't get panicked into paying them money for
something they don't own.

The very best thing you (or your company) can do is to completely ignore
SCO.

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