COMMENTARY--It seems like this story will never end... but why does it seem as if that's the way SCO wants it?
It was two months ago in this column that I mentioned finding it odd that SCO's claims Linux contained "hundreds of thousands of lines of code" copied from Unix could not be immediately proven or disproven.
I know this whole ridiculous story is in the news far too much already, but I just couldn't help being amazed at the report that those pesky copied lines had indeed been found--a full three months after the whole thing began.
Why it took that long to find "more than 829,000 lines of SMP code had been duplicated in Linux" is a mystery--especially since, according to Chris Sontag, head of SCO's SCOsource division, numerous comments, unusual spellings, and typographical errors had also been copied directly into Linux.
The thing is, I don't think it could have possibly taken that long--if the duplications were there, and SCO was prepared to show them, they could have done so at a much earlier stage. So why wait?
Cut to report #2: apparently SCO does have something else up its sleeve--it's going to attack the validity of the Linux General Public Licence (GPL). According to a ZDNet article, "SCO will argue that the GPL's provisions allowing unlimited copying and modification are not compatible with US copyright law, which allows software buyers to make only a single copy. (The article did not state whether or not SCO would attempt to invalidate the US Constitution should its venture with the GPL fail.)
How long can this go on? SCO says it has enough money to go on fighting, but that too is an odd statement. If they have the 829,000 lines of proof, shouldn't SCO be able to (1) trace back to the point at which the code was added? (2) using those results, have a pretty good guess how the copying was done?
SCO's got the goods (they say). So why, even if you were an organisation that had money in the bank, would you want this "case" to go on one day longer than it had to?
Suspicious, if you ask me. And when we asked you, about 99 percent of those who responded to earlier stories on SCO seemed suspicious too.
| Why, even if you were an organisation that had money in the bank, would you want this case to go on one day longer than it had to? |
Virtually everyone who wrote in also said that the SCO case would not stop them from using Linux (though a few said they would never buy another SCO product again).
Those sentiments haven't stopped SCO from launching new products--though it was interesting to see that at the recent launch the company spent so much time fielding questions about its that the company's product plans took second billing.
If these proceedings do turn out to be a farce, it would be nice to see it backfire spectacularly-- though, for the industry's sake, I hope this happens sooner rather than later.
Brian Haverty is Editorial Director of ZDNet Australia. Reach him at brian.haverty@zdnet.com.au.
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"The amended SCO complaint against IBM filed on 16 June 2003 is, like its predecessor, a tissue of lies, deliberate distortions, and flimflam. This complaint strongly suggests that SCO has no real case, since it contains so many false and misleading statements. Instead, it appears that SCO is trying to turn worthless products into money by running up the stock price on false claims and/or trying to get bought out so the frivolous legal actions will stop."