[Linux-aus] Re: [osv-list] SCO & it's 10-Q form.

[Con Zymaris]

On Tue, Jun 17, 2003 at 10:58:25AM +1000, Chris Samuel wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> 
> LWN have an article on their website about the fact that SCO have filed their 
> 10-Q form to the US SEC.  I've not read it (not being a paid subscriber yet) 
> but I went and read the 10-Q form and pulled out some interesting titbits 
> that came to my attention from it.
> 
> I've written an article on my website about it at:
> 
> http://csamuel.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=12&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
> 
> (I wish PostNuke would sort out their short link idea!)
> 
> Here's a couple of quick points..
> 
> - - SCO believes that the legal action may damage their business in the long 
> run. 
> - - Apart from MS there has been only one other (unnamed) SCOSource licensee. 
> - - These two licensees contributed over $8 million to SCO's revenue. 
> - - The unnamed SCOSource licensee has also been offered up to 210,000 shares of 
> SCO at $1.83 a share. SCO is currently trading around $10! 
> - - MS has been offered the option to extend its license at a future date.
> - - SCO describes the SCOSource UNIX license as "perpetual".

nice pick-up Chris.

It turns out that the only company to give money to SCO for licencing the
IP in recent times is Microsoft. This other un-named firm (why would the
name one, but not the other?) seems to have had un-natural inducements to
licence the code. In fact, it seems that they were _paid_ by SCO to
licence the code. 

So much for those who suggested that Microsoft really was just in on this
because they are stalwarts of the proper licencing of intellectual
property. If that was they case, then why would they not have acquired a
licence for any Unix IP which they ship on Microsoft Windows Services for
Unix(tm) product a year ago?

Surely it's a bad legal move to ship a product which includes someone
else's IP without acquiring rights to that IP from the outset. My guess is
that that Microsoft's Services for Unix (www.microsoft.com/windows/sfu)
probably has no material which needs SCO licencing at all. What it does
have, in fact, is copious amount of GPL material. I don't see Microsoft
trumpeting this fact publicly to any extent, unlike their support for SCO
'IP'.

The following seems to be very obvious; the core reason that "the only
major IT company in the world which loathes Unix" (namely Microsoft), gave
money to SCO for putative Unix IP rights, was just to bolster SCO's
anti-Linux slush fund, without looking like they was doing so.

con

-- 
_____________________________________________________________________________
Con Zymaris <conz at cyber.com.au> Level 4, 10 Queen St, Melbourne 03 9621 2377 
Cybersource: Unix/Linux, TCP/IP and Web App. Development  www.cyber.com.au