M$ and Unix[tm] [was: Re: mail to individuals]

[Samuel Thurston, III]

On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 9:20 PM, Siggy Brentrup <ubuntu at psycho.i21k.de> wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 01, 2009 at 19:21 -0500, Cybe R. Wizard wrote:
>> On Thu, 1 Oct 2009 23:54:54 +0200
>> Siggy Brentrup <ubuntu at psycho.i21k.de> wrote:
>>
>> > > (so far)
>> > sorry, I don't grok this
>>
>> As I understand it right now, Novell (Microsoft shill?) is trying to
>> get the ownership to UNIX, which they claim to already own, having only
>> licensed it to SCO (known Microsoft shill) to resell.  The justice
>> department so far seems to agree with Novell, but either way it looks
>> to me like Microsoft will control UNIX, no matter who is the
>> owner-of-record.
>
> In my understanding it's only the Unix[tm] trademark that is disputed
> but as always IANAL.  As far as unixoid OSes are concerned, M$ surely
> would like to control them but I doubt they'll ever succeed.
>

The Unix(TM) trademark belongs to The Open Group and has for some
time.  AFAIK nobody disputes this.

The Novell / SCO dispute is about copyright of a specific
implementation of System V that was in fact licensed to SCO, and
Novell has a pretty solid case on review of the contract language.

Novell is hardly a Microsoft shill, any more than any other company
that wants to be a player.  Novell tries to play nice with the biggest
kid on the block.  They bought SuSE, 4th on the distrowatch charts.
Novell is the second largest commercial linux vendor, and the second
biggest commercial contributor to the kernel.

Now how can you call a company that is an even bigger contributor to
_MS's greatest threat_ than IBM is, a "Microsoft Shill?"