Penguin
Annotated edit history of SCO version 12, including all changes. View license author blame.
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10 AristotlePagaltzis 1 An [Acronym] for __S__anta __C__ruz __O__peration
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12 AristotlePagaltzis 3 Originally a company that distributed a version of [Unix] for the [Intel] [x86] architecture called [Xenix], bought from MicrosoftCorporation. Later they made another [Unix] version [SCO] [UNIX] System V/386. Their main market appears to have been relatively lightweight client PCs connecting to larger servers running a different flavour of [UNIX]. Their expensive software never became very popular, but their pricing structure fitted well with many consultants. In 1995 they bought ~UnixWare from [Novell], which [Novell] had bought directly from [AT&T], the original creators of [UNIX]. Their profits were being eaten alive by the growing popularity of [Linux] soon after however, and they made a few desperate moves to try this OpenSource thingamajic with little success.
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5 In 2001, they were bought by [Caldera], a [Linux] distributor that had repeatedly made big plans to establish their LinuxDistribution as part of the business world and had repeatedly failed. [Caldera]'s hope was to benefit from the well established distribution channels [SCO] had built in over ten years of work. Well, chalk another one up for [Caldera]; the attempt failed. Desperate to make profits, they turned to the [SCO] products bought in with the acquisition, renaming themselves to __The SCO Group__. One more failure.
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12 AristotlePagaltzis 7 At this point, someone rememebered that they owned ~UnixWare, which meant ownership of the IntellectualProperty of the original [AT&T] [UNIX]. A plan was hatched to construe [Linux] as having been impossible to create without theft of IntellectualProperty from [UNIX]. The first one to get sued was [IBM], who had paid licenses to use that IntellectualProperty for their AIX clone of [UNIX], and later also invested (quite heavily) in [Linux]. The lawsuit is based on lateral interpretation of old legal documents. As if this wasn't ludicruous enough, they're also demanding money from ''users'' of [Linux], which is completely devoid of any legal basis. (If someone plagiarises your song, you don't sue the people who bought his CD, do you.)
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9 Let's hope this lawsuit is their ultimate failure.
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11 There are __heaps__ of resources on the web about this lawsuit. The one you don't want to miss is [IWeThey:PiratesOfPenguinance].
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13 But see also:
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15 * GrokLaw
16 * [IWeThey:SCOvsIBM]
17 * [Salt Lake City Weekly Editorial | http://www.slweekly.com/editorial/2004/feat_2004-01-22.cfm] (slightly long but very readable background to their dubious legal claims)
18 * [A company history of SCO | http://williambader.com/museum/dell/xenixhistory.html]
19 * [Cannot find Stolen SCO Code in Linux | http://www.linuxstolescocode.com/], a Page Not Found parody; also facts about the case and forums.
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12 AristotlePagaltzis 23 There's a [Google] bombing campaign to associate them with the search term [litigious bastards | http://www.sco.com/?sco=litigious+bastards]. At the time of writing they're the number #1 hit for [that query | Google:litigious bastards]. The MyDoom [DDoS] attack prompted [DNS] changes which caused <tt>www.sco.com</tt> to not resolve, but it is now back.
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