Re: SCO Extortion

My $.02.

I've been following the SCO case very closely since the beginning (I
live about 10 miles from SCO headquarters, used to work for Novell, and
am a big user of Linux and other OSS). My advice would be to wait
before making any moves, here's why:

1) SCO has yet to prove anything.
2) SCO has also threatened to go after BSD, so if SCO wins (and that's
a real big IF), BSD is no safe harbor.
3) SCO and Novell are currently in dispute over ownership of the
copyrights in question in the letter you received (SCO sued Novell over
just that issue yesterday). They cannot sue anyone until that lawsuit
is finished, which could take years (okay, they COULD sue, but most
likely, it would be postponed until the ownership of the copyrights is
cleared up).
4) Even if they do win, the infringing code can be removed, and they
can't really sue anyone for running code prior to them telling you what
it is (contrary to their public statements). And do you really think
those 5 header files constitutes $699 in damages per processor?
5) Your company is only one of 1000 that received that letter. There
must be more lucrative companies for them to go after first (companies
with HUGE linux deployments, such as Google). Not to mention that
there threatening many more companies outside that 1000 overseas.
6) Even if you are sued, there are over $4 million of legal defense
funds currently in existence to help fight such a battle. If you did
happen to be first sued, then the Linux community (including Novell,
Red Hat, and IBM) and all that money would rally to your side to make
an example of SCO.

Certainly look into all of your options, I mean, after all, you may
research and want to go to BSD on its own merits! IANAL, so take my
statements as such, but I wouldn't spend too much time on it at LEAST
until the Novell lawsuit gets moving and you know more where the chips
will fall.

Adam Ruth

On Jan 21, 2004, at 11:28 AM, Gavin M. Roy wrote:

> My problem is the threat from SCO is not from the bleachers so to
> speak, but direct in writing :(
> http://www.gavinroy.com/~gavinr/sco_threat.gif
>
> Gavin
>
> Harald Fuchs wrote:
>
>> In article <20040121005127(dot)T930(at)ganymede(dot)hub(dot)org>,
>> "Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy(at)postgresql(dot)org> writes:
>>
>>
>>> On Tue, 20 Jan 2004, Gavin M. Roy wrote:
>>>
>>>> Thanks for the feedback thus far. I should also mention I use
>>>> freebsd
>>>> for other stuff, but I am mainly asking in peoples experience,
>>>> which is
>>>> the best for PostgreSQL to live on specifically. In terms of a
>>>> nice smp
>>>> high end scsi system. Sorry for the lack of specifics on that
>>>> before.
>>>>
>>
>>
>>> Again, its pretty much a personal opinion ... we use FreeBSD for all
>>> our
>>> PgSQL work, and have several clients that are doing so also, and have
>>> been most happy with it ..
>>>
>>
>>
>>> Again, you have to consider that with the code-sharing that happens,
>>> drivers and such tend to be very similar, if not identical ...
>>>
>>
>> Moreover, what should prevent the SCO scumbags from molesting *BSD
>> users if they would succeed in destroying Linux?
>>
>> There might be technical reasons to move from Linux to *BSD, but the
>> SCO amok run should not be a reason to do so.
>>
>>
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