Groklaw: Is There a Curse on UNIX or Something?

“Sometimes I think there must be a curse on UNIX, like there
supposedly was on the tombs of some of the pharaohs of Egypt. If
you stole any of the contents of the tombs, even though you might
be tempted by the possibility of easy wealth, you ended up horribly
dead or worse. Or like the curse on the city of Babylon, where
anyone trying to rebuild the city would be doomed to failure.

“I think owning UNIX must be like that. Maybe it was supposed to
stay free, and when AT&T decided to take everyone’s freely
donated work and ‘monetize’ it, the curse began. Now it looks like
it’s on SCO.

“The invoice thing didn’t work out well. The license program is
on a slow boat to nowhere. The IBM trial is not helping, and Red
Hat is breathing down their neck too. And now they have announced
they want to collect money because of some missing copyright
attributions on some really old BSD code. I see trouble
ahead…”

Complete
Story