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:: 8.18.2003 ::
:: FUL? ::
From Salon:
Fear, uncertainty and Linux
SCO claims IBM and Linux have ripped off its old program code. Linux advocates say that's bunk. Nothing will become clear until SCO shows its hand in court.
By Farhad Manjoo
Aug. 18, 2003 | "There is perhaps not the same level of interest in this case as in that of the O.J. Simpson trial," says Gordon Haff, a technology analyst who's been closely following the multibillion-dollar lawsuit that the SCO Group, a small Utah software firm, filed against IBM in March. Cable news networks are not clamoring to cover every development in the complex contract dispute. "I do not expect to see it on Court TV anytime soon," Haff says.
But in open-source software circles, SCO's suit has achieved trial-of-the-century status. SCO owns the copyrights to decades-old Unix code, and it has accused IBM of secretly stuffing this code into Linux, thereby making Linux "an unauthorized derivative of Unix." To fans of Linux, SCO's claims seem at once preposterous and dangerous, and the lawsuit has set the community buzzing: Rhe press (embodied by the likes of Slashdot and Linux Journal) is all over it, the pundits are in high gear, everyone believes himself an expert on the issue, and, like the best celebrity trials, the whole thing keeps getting curiouser and curiouser.
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posted by me
:: 7:49:00 PM [+] ::
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