Subject: RE: SCO vs GNU/Linux
From: Jan Zumwalt (jwzumwalt@neatinfo.com)
Date: Mon May 19 2003 - 13:21:38 AKDT
This is not meant to be a flame or controversial, but I believe your legal
authority is a might bit uninformed.
MS has been successfully sued by Digital for stealing code for DOS. MS has
been successfully sued for copying certain aspects of Word Perfect. Logitech
successfully sued MS for patent infringement on it's mouse. MS was
successfully sued for copyright infringements for certain aspects of
Outlook.
If your attorneys opinion was truly universal then we would have all stopped
using MS products in 1985.
JZ
-----Original Message-----
From: aklug-bounce@aklug.org [mailto:aklug-bounce@aklug.org]On Behalf Of
Damien Hull
Sent: Monday, May 19, 2003 12:25 PM
To: Greg Madden
Cc: aklug@aklug.org
Subject: Re: SCO vs GNU/Linux
Don't know if you know this but FreeBSD is older then Linux. The reason
more people use Linux and not FreeBSD is because AT&T sued them. They
claimed that FreeBSD contained AT&T code.
>From what I've read on the story FreeBSD did have some AT&T code. In the
end the FreeBSD team took out the code and put in their own.
The reason AT&T was able to do this was because they could point to a
specific item. FreeBSD had code from the original BSD distribution that
AT&T funded. They did not however make the claim that FreeBSD could not
have been created with out the help of AT&T and the BSD operating
system.
SCO needs to point to specific items. If they can't then the lawsuit
means nothing.
On Mon, 2003-05-19 at 11:07, Greg Madden wrote:
>
> This list has been pretty quiet concerning the SCO lawsuit. It seems
> that SCO's strategy is clarifying as time passes. The following quote is
> from a small shop that supports/sell Linux boxes, and has stopped using
> Linux. It could take years to settle this lawsuit.Anyone formatting
> their Linux hard drives :)
>
>
> "No, it is not good. I may have been at least partly wrong about what
> the whole thing is about. I was just told Saturday morning that we no
> longer support linux, and not because of our own choice but because of
> possible liability issues. And even worse, according to the lawyer, we
> need to "get rid" of our previous linux customers too, to obsolve
> ourself from past liabilities in case something is found in linux that
> is either copyrighted, patented, or is proprietary property of somebody
> else. Apparently, when it is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt where
> the linux code comes from and that it is all legitimate, then it is ok
> to support and sell it again. I am not sure how companies like Redhat
> are handling the whole thing, but that is what we have done (are
> doing). For those customers that want to stay with linux servers we
> can only recommend that they seek help from online resources such as
> this list. I have much unpleasant work to do this coming week as there
> is going to be alot of questions.
> Jim"
>
> --
> Greg Madden
> Precision Air Balance, Inc.
> Phone: 907-276-0461
> email: pabi@gci.net
>
>
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-- Damien Hull Network Administrator www.digitaloverload.net--------- To unsubscribe, send email to <aklug-request@aklug.org> with 'unsubscribe' in the message body.
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