Subj : SCO/Caldera
To   : Lawrence Garvin
From : Francois Thunus
Date : Sat Jun 14 2003 12:05 pm

Hello Lawrence.

13 Jun 03 18:25, Lawrence Garvin wrote to Francois Thunus:

 FT>> Don't forget that there is another possibility: that SCO, when it
 FT>> was still called Caldera, put it in there itself.
 LG> While I agree, it's possible, it's not likely. Caldera was formed to
 LG> create a /distribution/ of Linux. I'm skeptical that anybody at
 LG> Caldera actually did any kernel-level programming work.

well, since you wrote the mail, the news caught up with us: a leak from a 
caldera employee confirms that SCO used Linux code in its "Linux Personnality"
without respecting the GPL. If they did that, I don't see any reason they 
wouldn't do the reverse.

 FT>> If you look at the press release, the publicly avowed goal of
 FT>> Caldera when they embraced Linux was to "blend the two
 FT>> technologies together".
 LG> Blend what two technologies? When Ray Noorda left Novell, and funded
 LG> the creation of Caldera, the only "asset" that Caldera had in their
 LG> portfolio was the rights to DR-DOS, which Novell had divested
 LG> themselves of. All of the AT&T/USL Unix code went to the Santa Cruz
 LG> Operation in Santa Cruz, California, and became Unixware. Caldera,
 LG> nee SCO Group, never had any access to any AT&T Unix code, or the SCO
 LG> OpenServer code, until Caldera bought the products and the names from
 LG> the Santa Cruz Operation two years ago.
And ? that leaves them two years to do it. More than enough in computer time...

Anyway. I don't think there is a lot of merit in discussing this issue (except 
keeping the echo alive :-). This is a factual problem that will hopefully be 
dealt with by a court of law. If SCO ever shows its supposed "proof" to anybody 
honest and capable, it is quite easy to look thru the linux archives to see 
when the modification was introduced.
Or maybe it will never get to court and SCO will get what it wants (an IBM 
buy-out),
or maybe any court order won't be respected anyway (see microsoft monopoly 
cases),
ormaybe the court case will declare that by marketing linux themselves, they 
have put those parts of the code under the GPL and can't come back on it now,
or maybe the OSS will react the way the BSD community did and produce a cleaned 
up version of the kernel very quick to replace the "tainted" one (*),
or maybe we'll all switch to FreeBSD or Hurd,
or maybe ? :-)

(*) I suspect this is the most likely reason SCO doesn't want to show its 
"proof". They know that the minute they do it (**), a new version of linux will 
be produced, and the future of linux will be ensured - without them, and the 
company will be completely redundant...

Francois

(**) ok, make that an hour or two :-)

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