[TUHS] Novell, not SCO, found to own "Unix"

[tytso@mit.edu (Theodore Y. Ts'o)]

On Fri, Mar 30, 2018 at 07:22:57PM -0400, Nemo wrote:
> > As an aside, this was the first and only time that I was on IBM's side,
> > and I still wonder whether M$ was bankrolling SCO in an effort to wipe
> > Linux off the map; what sort of an idiot would take on IBM?
> 
> Methinks a mention of the wonderful record at Groklaw
> (http://www.groklaw.net) is in order.

The idiots were at SCO.  In terms of Microsoft, if that theory is
true, it makes sense if you think in a fairly amoral way ("fiduciary
responsibility to shareholders excuses all business tactics" aka the
sociopathic theory of corporations) and consider it a fairly cheap PR
campaign to spread FUD about Linux.  So it you could actually consider
it a fairly cunning tactics; it was probably cheaper than, say, the
national TV advertising spots IBM had been running to support Linux.

Of course, whether SCO was actually colluding with Microsoft, or just
a "useful idiot" that was manipulated into taking on IBM, who knows?
And short of having a special prosecutor look into it, I doubt we'll
ever know for sure.

Speaking of PR exercises, there were rumors that Pamela at Groklaw was
secretly being funded by IBM as a counter PR campaign.  Even as an IBM
employee, I never saw any hard evidence of this, and everything Pamela
posted was backed by hard legal analysis and the actual court filings,
but I know people who were quite familiar with the players (including
those who knew, or at least claimed, that Pamela lived in Westchester
County in upstate NY) who were quite certain of this theory.
Certainly if it were not true, the person or people running Groklaw
must have donated huge amounts of their free time to keep the site
running and post the very rich amount of content available at Groklaw.

						- Ted