[ Thanks to Joe
Barr for this link. ]
“Call it collateral damage if you like, but Linux stands to be
harmed by the suit as well. Even if SCO’s claims are not upheld, as
long the possibility remains it could have a chilling effect on
contributions made to Linux development from IBM and other Unix
vendors, such as HP and Sun. The suit also dovetails nicely with
Microsoft’s plans for IP-based attacks on Linux; it might slow
adoption of Linux and the development of new applications to run on
Linux, as well.“In the complaint, SCO manages to make it sound as if Unix had
been developed in a cleanroom, then delivered in a pristine
proprietary format to commercial users without the source code ever
having been viewed, shared or modified by its community of users.
Quoting from the complaint: ‘After successful in-house use of the
UNIX software, AT&T began to license UNIX as a commercial
product for use in enterprise applications by other large
companies.’“Peter Salus, Chief Knowledge Officer at Matrix NetSystems,
author of two books about the Internet and widely recognized as the
unofficial historian of Unix, begs to differ with that tale. He
cited the development of Unix text-editors as a prime example of
the back-and-forth of open-source development in Unix from the very
start…”