ZDNet: The Patent Nuclear Weapon

“IT News goes in cycles, and those cycles seem to be defined by
major legal conflicts. A year ago, the big news was the Microsoft
antitrust case. You couldn’t visit ZDNet without having one or more
articles about the case, and hell hath no fury like Talkbackers
fighting over Microsoft. Today, that case is old news, displaced by
legal turbulence surrounding SCO’s attempt to lay proprietary claim
to parts of Linux. Hell hath something new to talk about.

“After months of activity on SCO’s part, during which time they
threatened not only IBM, but customers of Linux, and even Linus
Torvalds, business proponents of open source have managed a
counterattack. Red Hat has filed suit against SCO, and IBM, the
original target of SCO’s case, has responded with a countersuit of
its own.

“IBM is certainly justified in responding to SCO’s challenge,
given the threat that SCO poses to IBM’s Unix business as well as
the open source product upon which IBM is building its future.
However, the fact that IBM is fully justified in defending itself
doesn’t change the fact that software developers should feel a bit
queasy about the tactics it has chosen to use…”

Complete
Story