* [TUHS] Novell, not SCO, found to own "Unix" @ 2018-03-29 20:51 Dave Horsfall 2018-03-29 21:19 ` Paul Winalski ` (2 more replies) 0 siblings, 3 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: Dave Horsfall @ 2018-03-29 20:51 UTC (permalink / raw) Time for another hand-grenade in the duck pond :-) Or as we call it down-under, "stirring the possum". On this day in 2010, it was found unanimously that Novell, not SCO, owned "Unix". SCO appealed later, and it was dismissed "with prejudice"; SCO shares plummeted as a result. 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? -- Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU) "Those who don't understand security will suffer." ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Novell, not SCO, found to own "Unix" 2018-03-29 20:51 [TUHS] Novell, not SCO, found to own "Unix" Dave Horsfall @ 2018-03-29 21:19 ` Paul Winalski 2018-03-30 1:01 ` Clem Cole 2018-03-30 23:22 ` Nemo 2018-03-31 14:56 ` Michael Parson 2 siblings, 1 reply; 8+ messages in thread From: Paul Winalski @ 2018-03-29 21:19 UTC (permalink / raw) On 3/29/18, Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote: > > On this day in 2010, it was found unanimously that Novell, not SCO, owned > "Unix". SCO appealed later, and it was dismissed "with prejudice"; SCO > shares plummeted as a result. A pox on both their houses, IMO. And apparently the SCO vs. IBM lawsuit is still alive. The situation is almost farcical. > what sort of an idiot would take on IBM? Back in the 1960s IBM was facing two antitrust lawsuits over alleged attempts to use its dominant market position to freeze the HPTC market while they attempted to complete and ship the long-delayed System/360 model 90. One lawsuit was brought by the Justice Department and famously dragged on in court for a decade. CDC also filed a civil lawsuit. CDC's lawyers built a computerized database of all the IBM internal documents that they found during the discovery phase of suit. IBM and CDC settled out of court. IBM gave its Service Bureau Corporation subsidiary to CDC and agreed to stay out of the service bureau business for 10 years. CDC agreed to destroy the database of IBM internal documents. The Justice Department tried but failed to get access to the CDC database for their own lawsuit. -Paul W. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Novell, not SCO, found to own "Unix" 2018-03-29 21:19 ` Paul Winalski @ 2018-03-30 1:01 ` Clem Cole 0 siblings, 0 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: Clem Cole @ 2018-03-30 1:01 UTC (permalink / raw) [-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --] [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1593 bytes --] On Thu, Mar 29, 2018 at 5:19 PM, Paul Winalski <paul.winalski at gmail.com> wrote: > Back in the 1960s IBM was facing two antitrust lawsuits over alleged > attempts to use its dominant market position to freeze the HPTC market > while they attempted to complete and ship the long-delayed System/360 > model 90. One lawsuit was brought by the Justice Department and > famously dragged on in court for a decade. My favorite part of that story is that, IBM instead of sending exactly what was required by the courts, *i.e*. the minimum possible, the IBM legal team filled the basement of the justice department in Washing DC with many, many tractor trailer loads of filling cabinets, mag tapes *etc*. 'Hey, here you go, you asked for it...' So IBM is being sued for anti-trust/monopoly position - what does IBM do next? They send a sales team to Justice and ask if the folks in Justice wanted to buy computer equipment to examine what they now had in their possession. Furthermore, contemporary to the IBM suit, AT&T was also being sued by the same Justice dept for belief that it was had failed to follow the 1956 consent decree and was using its legal monopoly position with prohibited actions. AT&T took a rather different approach of giving justice a exactly the information that was required and no more. Well, we all know what happened January 8, 1982 - the IBM suit was dropped and AT&T was broken up. ᐧ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20180329/3acf7cc8/attachment.html> ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Novell, not SCO, found to own "Unix" 2018-03-29 20:51 [TUHS] Novell, not SCO, found to own "Unix" Dave Horsfall 2018-03-29 21:19 ` Paul Winalski @ 2018-03-30 23:22 ` Nemo 2018-03-31 0:34 ` Theodore Y. Ts'o 2018-03-31 14:56 ` Michael Parson 2 siblings, 1 reply; 8+ messages in thread From: Nemo @ 2018-03-30 23:22 UTC (permalink / raw) On 29/03/2018, Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote: > Time for another hand-grenade in the duck pond :-) Or as we call it > down-under, "stirring the possum". > > On this day in 2010, it was found unanimously that Novell, not SCO, owned > "Unix". SCO appealed later, and it was dismissed "with prejudice"; SCO > shares plummeted as a result. > > 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. N. > > -- > Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU) "Those who don't understand security will > suffer." > ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Novell, not SCO, found to own "Unix" 2018-03-30 23:22 ` Nemo @ 2018-03-31 0:34 ` Theodore Y. Ts'o 2018-03-31 1:53 ` Wesley Parish 0 siblings, 1 reply; 8+ messages in thread From: Theodore Y. Ts'o @ 2018-03-31 0:34 UTC (permalink / raw) 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 ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Novell, not SCO, found to own "Unix" 2018-03-31 0:34 ` Theodore Y. Ts'o @ 2018-03-31 1:53 ` Wesley Parish 0 siblings, 0 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: Wesley Parish @ 2018-03-31 1:53 UTC (permalink / raw) Also one of the bigger mistakes the anti-Linux groups made. Among other things it brought a whole lot of Unix history into the light. And that was a Good Thing (TM). I doubt IBM ever did anything more than send an occasional hint Pamela's way. She did not seem the sort to follow a boss's orders that way. I did start to worry she'd bought into the Google "Do no evil" hype at the end, but then she folded it up and stopped posting articles, so that's moot. (For what it's worth, I can give an example of her depth of experience in the software development process: I found in a relatively ancient MS Windows 3.1 CDROM archive a small Microsoft Windows text editor project, with a README stating it was in the public domain. It had obviously been released to help nervous software developers kickstart their own projects by offering a free windowing framework and text editing source code. I email her and told her about it, and she replied it would not be a good idea to let Microsoft know about it or they would lock it up again. She was a legal assistant, and understood well tracking cases through the courts, not the software development process.) Wesley Parish On 3/31/18, Theodore Y. Ts'o <tytso at mit.edu> wrote: > 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 > ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Novell, not SCO, found to own "Unix" 2018-03-29 20:51 [TUHS] Novell, not SCO, found to own "Unix" Dave Horsfall 2018-03-29 21:19 ` Paul Winalski 2018-03-30 23:22 ` Nemo @ 2018-03-31 14:56 ` Michael Parson 2018-04-01 0:13 ` Dave Horsfall 2 siblings, 1 reply; 8+ messages in thread From: Michael Parson @ 2018-03-31 14:56 UTC (permalink / raw) On Fri, 30 Mar 2018, Dave Horsfall wrote: > Time for another hand-grenade in the duck pond :-) Or as we call it > down-under, "stirring the possum". > > On this day in 2010, it was found unanimously that Novell, not SCO, owned > "Unix". SCO appealed later, and it was dismissed "with prejudice"; SCO > shares plummeted as a result. > > 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? My initial thought, when I saw that SCO had filed the $1B lawsuit, was that maybe Darl McBride was hoping that the next headline people read would be "IBM acquires SCO for $(some amount below $1B)." -- Michael Parson Pflugerville, TX KF5LGQ ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* [TUHS] Novell, not SCO, found to own "Unix" 2018-03-31 14:56 ` Michael Parson @ 2018-04-01 0:13 ` Dave Horsfall 0 siblings, 0 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: Dave Horsfall @ 2018-04-01 0:13 UTC (permalink / raw) On Sat, 31 Mar 2018, Michael Parson wrote: > My initial thought, when I saw that SCO had filed the $1B lawsuit, was > that maybe Darl McBride was hoping that the next headline people read > would be "IBM acquires SCO for $(some amount below $1B)." Yeah, that was going around too; remember that SCO was practically broke at the time, and couldn't possibly afford to lose (as if anyone could). -- Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU) "Those who don't understand security will suffer." ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2018-04-01 0:13 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 8+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 2018-03-29 20:51 [TUHS] Novell, not SCO, found to own "Unix" Dave Horsfall 2018-03-29 21:19 ` Paul Winalski 2018-03-30 1:01 ` Clem Cole 2018-03-30 23:22 ` Nemo 2018-03-31 0:34 ` Theodore Y. Ts'o 2018-03-31 1:53 ` Wesley Parish 2018-03-31 14:56 ` Michael Parson 2018-04-01 0:13 ` Dave Horsfall
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