M$ and Unix[tm] [was: Re: mail to individuals]

[Liam Proven]

On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 3:20 AM, Siggy Brentrup <ubuntu at psycho.i21k.de> wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 01, 2009 at 19:21 -0500, Cybe R. Wizard wrote:
>> On Thu, 1 Oct 2009 23:54:54 +0200
>> Siggy Brentrup <ubuntu at psycho.i21k.de> wrote:
>>
>> > > (so far)
>> > sorry, I don't grok this
>>
>> As I understand it right now, Novell (Microsoft shill?) is trying to
>> get the ownership to UNIX, which they claim to already own, having only
>> licensed it to SCO (known Microsoft shill) to resell.  The justice
>> department so far seems to agree with Novell, but either way it looks
>> to me like Microsoft will control UNIX, no matter who is the
>> owner-of-record.
>
> In my understanding it's only the Unix[tm] trademark that is disputed
> but as always IANAL.  As far as unixoid OSes are concerned, M$ surely
> would like to control them but I doubt they'll ever succeed.
>
> Regs
>  Siggy

No no, it's not about trademarks, it's about the original AT&T kernel
source code and derivatives from it. SCO claims Linux uses stolen AT&T
code, but they can't deliver proof. When pushed, they produced
hundreds of thousands of pages of code listings, *on paper*.
Impossible to tell what's in there, really.

SCO owns (or claims to) the rights to AT&T UNIX (®™ etc.) because it
bought the Unixware business off Novell. Novell, wanting to end the
nuisance SCO lawsuit, is now saying it sold the rights but not
ownership of UNIX.

SCO went for this insane licensing program as it was losing all its
revenues to Linux which is rapidly supplanting all proprietary UNIX.
The only proprietary UNIX that is doing well is Mac OS X, which has
now outsold all other commercial UNIXes ever, put together. But it's
desktop-focussed; all the others are server-focussed, where Linux is
strong and growing.

So the question of who really owns it is getting less & less important.

The only remaining commercial UNIXes are mostly in shrinking niches:

 - Solaris from Sun - now owned by Oracle, a big Linux supporter. Sun
paid SCO for a licence anyway;
 - HP/UX from HP - which only runs on the failing Itanium platform
while HP is strongly pushing x86;
 - AIX from IBM - these days only on POWER, while IBM is also pushing
Linux hard.

All the others are basically dead.

Meanwhile, there is the BSD family, which split off from AT&T UNIX
early on but at the "real thing" in a historical sense. They are open
source and doing fine.

So as long as the threat of SCO litigation goes away, really, nobody cares.


-- 
Liam Proven • Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven
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