[brlug-general] OT: SCO loses to IBM (fwd)

[-ray]

Pretty interesting... i actually read the original article from 2003 the 
other day.  This guy predicted SCO would win.  Now he says ok ok, i was 
totally wrong.  Haha.

ray
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Ray DeJean  				       	 http://www.r-a-y.org
Systems Engineer                    Southeastern Louisiana University
IBM Certified Specialist  	      AIX Administration, AIX Support
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http://www.forbes.com/2007/09/19/software-linux-lawsuits-tech-oped-cx_dl_0919lyons.html?partner=technology_newsletter

> Boston -
> 
> In the print edition of Forbes there's a great (albeit sometimes painful) 
> tradition of doing "follow-through" articles where a reporter either takes a 
> victory lap for making a good call or falls on his sword for making a bad 
> one. Online publications don't typically ask for follow-throughs. But I need 
> to write one.
> 
> For four years, I've been covering a lawsuit for Forbes.com, and my early 
> predictions on this case have turned out to be so profoundly wrong that I am 
> writing this mea culpa. What can I say? I grew up Roman Catholic. The habit 
> stays with you.
> 
> The case is SCO Group (nasdaq: SCOX - news - people ) v. IBM (nyse: IBM - 
> news - people ). In March 2003, SCO sued IBM claiming that IBM took code from 
> Unix--for which SCO claimed to own copyrights--and put that code into Linux, 
> which is distributed free. Last month a judge ruled that SCO does not, in 
> fact, own the Unix copyrights. That blows SCO's case against IBM out of the 
> water. SCO, of Lindon, Utah, is seeking bankruptcy protection.
> 
> In June 2003, a few months after SCO Group sued IBM over the Linux operating 
> system, I wrote an article that bore the headline: "What SCO Wants, SCO 
> Gets." The article contained some critical stuff about SCO but also warned 
> that SCO stood a chance of winning the lawsuit. "SCO may not be very good at 
> making a profit by selling software. ... But it is very good at getting what 
> it wants from other companies," I wrote.
> 
> I wrote that because in the 1990s SCO's predecessor company, Caldera, ran a 
> similar shakedown on Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ), making claims 
> about the old DOS operating system. I was briefed by Caldera's lawyers on 
> that case, but I never took them seriously. Then they won a settlement. 
> Whoops.
> 
> This time, I figured I should at least give SCO the benefit of the doubt. I 
> flew to Utah and interviewed their managers. I attended a SCO conference in 
> Las Vegas and did more interviews. They told me all sorts of things, like 
> they'd found a "smoking gun" that proved IBM was guilty, and that they were 
> preparing to sue big Hollywood companies that use Linux server farms to make 
> movies.
> 
> I reported what they said. Turns out I was getting played. They never 
> produced a smoking gun. They never sued any Hollywood company.
> 
> Over time my SCO articles began to carry headlines like, "Dumb and Dumber," 
> "Bumbling Bully" and "SCO gets TKO'd."
> 
> But I still thought it would be foolish to predict how this lawsuit (or any 
> lawsuit) would play out. I even wrote an article called "Revenge of the 
> Nerds," which poked fun at the pack of amateur sleuths who were following the 
> case on a Web site called Groklaw and who claimed to know for sure that SCO 
> was going to lose.
> 
> Turns out those amateur sleuths were right. Now some of them are writing to 
> me asking how I'd like my crow cooked, and where I'd like it delivered.
> 
> Others in that highly partisan crowd have suggested that I wanted SCO to win, 
> and even that I was paid off by SCO or Microsoft. Of course that's not true. 
> I've told these folks it's not true. Hasn't stopped them.
> 
> The truth, as is often the case, is far less exciting than the conspiracy 
> theorists would like to believe. It is simply this: I got it wrong. The nerds 
> got it right.
> 
> SCO is road kill. Its lawsuit long ago ceased to represent any threat to 
> Linux. That operating system has become far too successful to be dislodged. 
> Someday soon the SCO lawsuits will go away, and I will never have to write 
> another article about SCO ever again. I can't wait.


-- 
Ben Kamen - O.D.T., S.P.
=============================================================================
Email: bkamen AT benjammin DOT net              Web: http://www.benjammin.net

As seen somewhere on the net: My other computer is your Windows Server.
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