Judge slams SCO's lack of evidence against IBM

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If it were true

>>>Would that NOT be huge if IBM\Linux ended up
owning what MS way paying for? And since
MS has already established that she does not
own the IP to whatever she was paying SCO to
use then would that not put MS in a very tricky
position?<<<

I know of no one that actually believes MS licensed code to use. It was all a thinly veiled contribution to newSCO's war chest. Remember, at the time MS had promised their new 'longhorn' complete with all the bells and whistles in three years. MS did this, along with the other dirty trick in an effort to keep enough stirred-up that companies would be afraid of Linux.

Now, here we are, almost two years later. MS is still no closer to their 'longhorn' than they were when this started. This is another example of how MS does business. 1) brochureware, 2) FUD 3) supply the money to keep the FUD machine rolling.

Of course, the case was never about copyrights. It is a breach of contract. The only copyright infringement allegations have been leveled by IBM against newSCO. The only copyright infringement allegations against Linux were the statements McBride made publicly. Now, when this is over, maybe Linus will be the new owner of newSCO. newSCO's press releases definitely rise to the level of libel. They were malicious and disparaging. Now, we all discover 'officially' that none of it is true. We already knew it was false. Maybe Linus will decide to take Darl & company to task for their public accusations. That would be comedy. It is already hilarious because it has backfired on MS. Just as every effort they have made against Linux has. Instead of making companies afraid of Linux, MS has contributed to exonerating Linux. I'll bet Mr. Gates is steaming over it.

The humorous part is that it has done nothing to slow the uptake of Linux and 'longhorn' still is not on the radar. Oh, MS will release yet another version of their win 2k with a new theme for their GUI and the menus moved around a bit and call it 'longhorn'. It will definitely not have all the bells and whistles MS promised. All that will come later, in stages, at normal MS prices for every increment. MS has discovered that there is a significant portion of their customers that will always buy anything they push out the door. This way, MS gets to charge those loyal customers 3 or 4 times for their latest offerings. Does it not seem wonderful to be a loyal MS customer?

The bottom line is MS did not license any code to use. If memory serves correctly, the code MS uses for their services for Unix was released under an open source license. Maybe BSD. MS did not need to license that. MS has always used it for free. MS just wanted to keep the FUD rolling. MS loves open source. The best parts of windows is open source. (TCP/IP, Active Directory) MS just hates the GPL because they are not able to take the code and call it their own.

Too bad for MS the guillable generation is just about to retire and the generation that grew up on *nix* is going to take the helm. Ominous days loom ahead for MS unless they can start producing something that can compete on merit instead of lock-in.

Posted by: AmusedAtItAll   Posted on: 02/10/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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