Microsoft funds SCO 1

[chiph]

Business Week is reporting that Microsoft has helped fund SCO's legal attacks on Linux users by funneling $50 million USD through the Baystar Capital hedge fund.

Was this an ethical move on Microsoft's part? Or is it a case of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend"?

Chip H.


If you want to get the best response to a question, please check out FAQ222-2244 first

 

[edfair]

Some will claim that you have erred by mentioning ethics and Microsoft in the same sentence.
There was no claim in the article of MS putting any money into SCO, but with the previous 25% ownership of the predecessor company, it wouldn't surprise me if it happened.

And if it is true, I'm sure they won't miss it. Supposedly LT has inspected the code that is in question and, regretting that it was sloppily written, has claimed authorship.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[sleipnir214]

Is it normal for Mi[¢]ro$oft to funnel investment money through third parties? If not, I suggest that even Mi[¢]ro$oft doesn't think the investment in SCO is ethical.

I figure, though, that Mi[¢]ro$oft is starting to become very afraid of open-source software. I recently saw a Mi[¢]ro$oft ad in Information Week, which graphically proves that Mi[¢]ro$oft's software is one-tenth the cost of Linux. By comparing the cost of setting up a two Xeon processor computer to a two z900 processor IBM mainframe. Interestingly, the z900 processor is almost exactly ten times the cost of a Xeon processor.

Want the best answers? Ask the best questions!

TANSTAAFL!!

 

[OhioBill]

Microsoft has all the ethics of a chainsaw. 'nuff said.

 

[sleipnir214]

<facetious>
To be fair to the Poulan Corporation and other manufacturers of chain saws, I think it's more correct to say that Mi[&cent;]ro$oft has the ethics of any random badguy from "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre"
</facetious>

Want the best answers? Ask the best questions!

TANSTAAFL!!

 

[SemperFiDownUnda]

Is it ethical? Well depends if it is legal in this specific case.

For the record I'm on the side of IBM and Linux on this whole case from the evidense I've seen.

In the end MS is making a gamble. They obviously thought it was a good long term gamble. You have to think that this has some bigger ramifications then just linux here. IBM's main OS are also under question and long term MS will probably start targeting some of the large computers system.

One thing you can't deny is that MS is shrude in it business dealling. This amounts to them stabbing others in the back often.

Agian I don't support MS but thankfully it isn't MS and SCO with millions to wage s legal battle agianst poor open source organisations. IBM, Novell, and other large groups will atleast make this a fair fight. Saddly the amount of money that will be put into this could be better spent else where and the best we can hope for is that MS is just out some pocket change with out any real penalty

Hope I've been helpful,
Wayne Francis

If you want to get the best response to a question, please check out FAQ222-2244 first

 

[drlex]

given the anti-trust interest in Microsoft, such an action would appear to make shrewd business sense. One could also point to the $20M-odd that MS have paid SCO for a licensing code that they appear yet to incorporate and claim the motive to be 'assistance'.

I follow the detailed coverage on this matter assiduously on

http://www.groklaw.net

and apologise if this site is well-known to posters here.

lex

[&quot;] Veni, Vidi, Velcro. [&quot;]

 

[dilettante]

Funny, I had the idea that much of Services for UNIX had been licensed from SCO.

Much of it dates from the late-NT4-to-early-Win2K period, and hunks of it are present by default in most of the NT OSs starting with 4.0 SP 3 or so. The Posix subsystem in particular, but probably the recent versions of FTP and Telnet clients bundled with Windows too for starters.

 

[sleipnir214]

As far as I understand it, yes, Microsoft's SfU does come via a SCO (or some predecessor company's) code license. But that was a separate issue from the current SCO stupidity.

This whole thing with SCO gets weirder by the day. This article is saying that Microsoft did not invest in SCO -- though it did suggest to BayStar that BayStar do so.

There is, however, the interpretation of the leaked SCO memo (mentioned in the article). The memo seems to imply that there is a pretty tight relationship between Microsoft and SCO. A lot of the legality of the relationship may depend on Microsoft's intent -- did they intend to foster the growth of a small company (ethical) or did they intend for SCO to be their attack-dog (not ethical, as SCO is a publicly-traded compay)?

Want the best answers? Ask the best questions!

TANSTAAFL!!

 

[dilettante]

So is the doomsday scenario that... things start moving in the courts, they start to look bad for IBM, IBM caves and settles for a wad of megabucks - maybe buying up SCO, and then IBM basically owns Linux?

 

[sleipnir214]

You are not the first to posit that SCO's gameplan all along was to get bought up by someone.


But no one entity owns Linux.

The trademark on the word "Linux" belongs to Linus Torvalds.

But Linux is not a monolithic-developed code base. The code in Linux is owned piecemeal by all the programmers who wrote all the pieces. Or by companies who employed programmers to advance the Linux codebase.

So the doomsday scenario is that SCO wins in court, and their non-publicly-released code is withdrawn from the Linux codebase. Then Linux kernel developers step in and replace that code with new code with similar functionality. Linus Torvalds has stated that at least some of the code SCO is complaining about has already been removed from newer versions of the Linux kernel and replaced with new code developed from scratch. This happened as a part of the continuing development of the code base.

But I just don't think SCO has anywhere near the claims Darl McBride would like us to believe. This article[link] is one of the better attempts to coherently describe this whole situation.

Want the best answers? [url=http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html]Ask the best questions!

TANSTAAFL!!

 

[chiph]

The Posix subsystem in particular, but probably the recent versions of FTP and Telnet clients bundled with Windows too for starters.

Is the Posix subsystem still in there? I thought it got dropped along with support for HPFS file systems and 16-bit OS/2 executables.

Anyway, I think they got Posix from BSD (Berkeley distribution) back before there was UnixWare, etc. Or maybe they might have got it under their AT&T license for MS-Xenix.

Chip H.


If you want to get the best response to a question, please check out FAQ222-2244 first

 

[dilettante]

Egad, mea culpa.

You're right, they are both gone as of Windows XP. Glad I stopped using them long ago myself, I hate getting burned by phase-outs of legacy support.

 

[dilettante]

I guess Interix is the "Unix solution" on Windows for now, but I have no personal experience with it.

Windows Services for UNIX 3.5 Product Overview

 

[AnanthaP]

For a history on the whole thing, you might all like to refer to the "halloween" papers. Take a look at "opensource.org/halloween". (I think).

This particular story with commentary (not comments see) by the open source organizer is Halloween 10. Read all.

I also think somewhere there is is an early open letter from bill gates(then head of Micro-Soft) to early gamers not to pirate his !?!? basic program.

End

 

[chiph]

I also think somewhere there is is an early open letter from bill gates(then head of Micro-Soft) to early gamers not to pirate his !?!? basic program.

Yes, he published it (or it got published) in one of the very early computer magazines. The product in question was the BASIC interpreter that he and Steve Ballmer were selling for the MITS Altair 8800. At the time, it was distributed on punched paper tape (this was before cassette tapes were used for software distribution, and waaaay before the 5-1/4 floppy disk). People were running the tape through their ASR-33 Teletypes and punching out copies for their friends.

Chip H.


If you want to get the best response to a question, please check out FAQ222-2244 first

 

[sleipnir214]

(this was before cassette tapes were used for software distribution, and waaaay before the 5-1/4 floppy disk).

This was waaaay before even the 8-inch floppy disk.

Gates not only published the open letter. He also appeared in person at a meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club and lectured the members about their copying that program.

Want the best answers? Ask the best questions!

TANSTAAFL!!

 

[AnanthaP]

So who invented / constructed basic? As far as i recall, some college.

You use basic, you need an interpreter.

End

 

[gbaughma]

You know, an interesting analogy came to mind. DNA.

I have some cherokee DNA in my body. Not enough to get land on a reservation, or build a casino. It's "Diluted". I'm not considered a Cherokee, because I have enough other "code" in me to make it a moot point.

I would imagine that someone can use the same analogy for Linux. Even if there *was* any SCO code in Linux, it's been diluted, patched, streamlined, **FIXED**, etc.

How much of a change does it take to something before it's considered "different" from the original?

There is code that is going to be common to practically every program. What would happen if all of the sudden, I copyrighted the code "FOR i = 1 to 10", and stated that it be removed from every program that uses it?

Just my $.02

--Greg

 

[CajunCenturion]

If you tried to copyright "for i = 1 to 10", then you'd be laughed at, and your copyright attorney would be laughing all the way to the bank.

Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein