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

[Harold Sawyer]

> 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.
>
The deal was, as I remember, that MS tried to use SCO to block the use
of Linux by serious businesses.  IBM had allowed, according to SCO
lawyers, programmers for its open source linux to work together with
the System V coders, who were working under strict licensing from SCO.
 Along with that was the pissing contest between Novell and SCO as to
what they had "sold" to SCO.  Was that "Unix" or the rights to use and
develop "Unix"?  (I was a little confused concerning this, as probably
most people were at the time.)  If SCO had won, then they would have
been able to sue every company that used Linux (what they were aiming
for).

MS was only rumored to be part of the situation due to them
"licensing" something from SCO and giving them a ton of money during
the time of the court battle.

This is my recollection of events.

HS

-- 
Harold Sawyer
www.centralconnecticutwcg.org
www.free-inside.com