It’s quite amusing to watch the litigious actions of SCO Group and its CEO, Darl McBride. On June 16th, SCO made good on its threat to revoke IBM’s license to sell Unix (AIX). According to SCO, every AIX customer is now supposedly breaking the law.
The root of this problem lies in a convoluted history of share trades, mergers, acquisitions, and questionable business practices that ultimately left SCO holding the rights to Unix. Since Unix System 5 usage was declining and not worth much, SCO sought a way to profit from it.
However, SCO’s approach to taking on IBM may either propel them to the top of OS vendors or lead to their downfall. Every time Darl McBride speaks, either a corporation gets sued, or law-abiding computer users get upset. The question is whether SCO’s bully boy tactics will work against the 1,500 Linux-using CEOs they’ve targeted as lawbreakers.
MacBride’s history in the courts includes lawsuits against almost everyone he’s dealt with, including previous employers. SCO should be cautious in case MacBride decides to leave the company.
SCO’s main premise is that Linux is great, particularly the advancements made in the 2.4 kernel. They claim that IBM and other vendors illegally used source code under NDA and inserted it into the Linux codebase. SCO is not happy about this, but they face a challenge. They can’t reveal the problematic code because the open-source community would simply rewrite it, leaving SCO without a case against Linux, but potentially with a case against IBM.
SCO has a $1 billion lawsuit against IBM, but they won’t specify the exact problem with Linux publicly. They claim it involves “hundreds of thousands of lines of code,” but even experts they’ve consulted haven’t looked at code chunks larger than 80 lines. This lack of transparency and clarity is intriguing.
Adding to the intrigue, SCO sells a version of Linux called OpenLinux, which contains compatibility libraries for running Unix V5 code on the Linux platform. Talk about covering all bases!
Now, approximately 100 days after SCO’s letter to IBM, they’ve revoked IBM’s Unix license, affecting AIX sales. The best course of action TurboTas sees is for the open-source community to review IBM’s contributions to the codebase in CVS and rewrite them.
For those who prefer direct action, they can approach SCO’s customers who openly support the company’s bullying tactics. Some companies, like McDonald’s and BMW, are SCO customers, and engaging with them could raise awareness of SCO’s actions.
TurboTas is even considering creating a list of SCO customers on their website. They invite readers to use the voting form to share their thoughts on this matter.