I don't know how many of you started out watching the SCO saga and sort of tuned out 5 years later?

Well, on Friday Judge Kimball announced his decision on various summary judgement items.

SCO lost big time.

The biggest nail in their coffin was his decision that the copyrights to Unix were NOT transferred to them by Novell.

See Groklaw for full details.

The whole suit seemed more like a death rattle than a good business plan.

I worked for a shop for 7 years and we used the producs (Unix on PCs for those catching up)  worked great, IMHO.

I'm working for a Daimler company the past 8 and we DaimlerChrysler were named in the original suit.  DCX built a massive unix cluster using SCO Linux to do crash test simulations.  

Fuck 'em, I say.  Get out there and compete in the marketplace of ideas - not the court room (liberals)  

Thanks for the update - lost track of this one.
Dt

Thanks Philip, I missed that ruling.  I worked with quite a few people at Sequent/IBM who were called to provide dispositions based on our involvement with project Monterrey(and IBM's Linux initiative later on), and like most of us, I realized this lawsuit was without merit from the beginning.  

Does this mean that all of Linus's employers can finally destroy the millions of backup tapes of his netscape cache!?

I was never tuned in.  Kind of interesting.  I have a question about Groklaw.  What does that site cover.  It looks as if it is focussed on IT issues?  It looks rather informative.

Quoted: I was never tuned in.  Kind of interesting.  I have a question about Groklaw.  What does that site cover.  It looks as if it is focussed on IT issues?  It looks rather informative.

It started out just focusing on the SCO fiasco. Basically as a personal blog of Pamela Jones, a paralegal, who chose it as an example to try to educate people about the legal process in the US.

She became hooked, and it turned into a full time job for her.

She also became hooked on Free/Open software in general, and during the long dry periods when not much was happening on the SCO case(s), she would write about other open source issues.

She has become pretty convinced that the SCO fiasco was just a Microsoft plot to try to destroy Linux, and open source in general (I think she is probably right on this).

It *is* a very informative site. There is TONS of good information there. Its the work of not only Pamela, but many other very bright minds.

Quoted: She has become pretty convinced that the SCO fiasco was just a Microsoft plot to try to destroy Linux, and open source in general (I think she is probably right on this).

Is there any credible proof that Microsoft is involved?  Don't get me wrong, I want to believe but I just haven't seen the ties.

It's too late to kill Linux now. It's finally usable as a home or work desktop. I know the Linux community has been claiming that since the late '90's when it fact it was not much more than a DOS command desktop in use. But now it's mostly menu and mouse clicks and usable for average people.  In fact I see little use for MS Windows unless you have programs that require it like I still do. And I see no reason at all for the Apple OS other than as a pretty desktop.

The really weird thing about Microsoft is they are killing their own OS and burning the bridges here in the US and Europe. Every little office security update requires I go dig out the original disk for that computer. Choose a disk for another computer and it won't work. That and all the nags and system lockouts they are infamous for.

Microsoft says it's because of pirate users that they do all this. Most pirates though are in places like China, where even government computers were running pirated Windows. Microsoft response to this is now they are giving away MS Windows in China. That's right it's a free operating system there now.

We have to pay for Windows while they are giving it away for free to the Chinese. Improving the Chinese economy is not on my list of priorities so I am not buying anymore MS products unless I am forced to because there are no other alternatives. Hopefully in a few years I won't have too.

Quoted: Quoted: She has become pretty convinced that the SCO fiasco was just a Microsoft plot to try to destroy Linux, and open source in general (I think she is probably right on this). Is there any credible proof that Microsoft is involved?  Don't get me wrong, I want to believe but I just haven't seen the ties.

I forget all the dirty details, but there was a considerable chunk of Microsoft money ended up in SCO to finance the lawsuits. It was recorded as a licensing deal of the source and patents owned by SCO.

Given Microsoft's well know legal team, its a bit surprising that they never checked that SCO really owned the IP they paid a small fortune to license.

There were other chunks of money from apparently independent sources, which a bit of exploration found had strong links to Microsoft.

Nothing like memorandum signed by Bill Gates saying "Here is a chunk of money, go out and sue everyone in the world who uses Linux" though.

For anyone needing/wanting to catch up on the whole sad story, this is a very good condensed version: Link