Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason. ","collapsible":{"enabled":true,"maxHeight":250,"readMoreText":"Read more","readLessText":"Read less"}}), "https://slice.vanilla.futurecdn.net/13-4-25/js/authorBio.js"); } else { console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); } Mark Tyson Social Links Navigation News Editor Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.
Darkhands Can't wait for this SCO crap to finally be over. I'm an old guy in his mid-40s and this has been going on for half my life. We need a universal fix for bad-faith lawsuits like this… Patent trolls, SCO, those scammers that go around suing 30 small-business restaurants at a time for minor ADA violations to squeeze settlements out of a percentage of them, it's all abuse of the legal system for profit. Reply
jabliese So many things the timeline missed. Check out the SCO lawsuit wikipedia page to get to the Groklaw internet archive, for more information than you ever wanted to know. Personally loved the "Who owns Linux?" side trip with Novell. bit_user, don't forget MS at the time was running Linux servers, just like everyone else. Reply
bit_user Darkhands said: We need a universal fix for bad-faith lawsuits like this… Patent trolls, SCO, those scammers that go around suing 30 small-business restaurants at a time for minor ADA violations to squeeze settlements out of a percentage of them, it's all abuse of the legal system for profit. The ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) thing is a completely different animal than patent law. It's like waaay out in left field. I mean, you might as well be talking about every other way that lawyers try to make money. Not to say there aren't potentially legitimate issues that could be discussed, but it's a completely different subject from IP law. Regarding IP law, most of the abuses fall in the domain of patent trolls. The SCO/Xinuos litigation differs in that it focuses on copyright violations. While those might seem very similar, patent and copyright are distinct fields of IP law and I have it on pretty good authority that lawyers usually specialize in one or the other. Reply
bit_user jabliese said: bit_user, don't forget MS at the time was running Linux servers, just like everyone else. Source? I know that they inherited some FreeBSD servers, when they bought Hotmail. Reply
King_V bit_user said: Source? I know that they inherited some FreeBSD servers, when they bought Hotmail. This sounds vaguely familiar. I also have a recollection of some story where MS tried to switch Hotmail to running on Windows servers, and it went badly, so were forced to switch back. Reply
Kicapan07 2021. The SCO heir settled with IBM for $14.25 million. That’s a far smaller sum than it asked for in 2003, which kind of reflects SCO’s failure to produce convincing legal evidence. I should note that above a certain of damages threhold (I think above $10,000 or something), you can can basically state whatever amount and it has very little bearing in what you ultimately get (judge/jury might even give you more in some cases though extremely rare). So usually plaintiffs asks for a extraordinary large number just to generate headlines. What I'm saying is, we don't really know what their real initial target number is which would be internal. I do find it likely that the article is correct that it's likely much smaller than what they initially hoped mainly due to how the other company did lose, but I'm just saying because the seeked damages is immaterial in US lawsuits, we can't use that as the benchmark of how far or how close they got to it in the settlement. Reply
bit_user Kicapan07 said: So usually plaintiffs asks for a extraordinary large number just to generate headlines. I can't speak to this case, since it might indeed have been intended partly (or primarily?) as a way to scare away companies from using Linux. However, big damages claims aren't always about PR. Sometimes, it's really just about the money. I'm certain Zenimax vs. Facebook was about the money. Kicapan07 said: I do find it likely that the article is correct that it's likely much smaller than what they initially hoped mainly due to how the other company did lose, I'm sure $14.5M wouldn't cover the legal costs SCO and Xinuos incurred, over the lifetime of the case. Reply
bit_user MobileJAD said: I am rather curios now just how different the world of Linux would be if SCO Unix did end up legally owning Linux way back then. No, copyright only applies to the specific works (i.e. source code files) to which they had ownership claims, which was just a small minority of the kernel source code. I'm not sure whether SCO actually disclosed precisely which parts they were claiming, because I think early on they did not say. However, people who studied the matter figured it was just part of the network stack (or something like that – I'm foggy on the details). So, the outcome wouldn't have been SCO owning Linux. It would've been IBM & others owing SCO for the unauthorized use of their IP and then replacing that IP with clean room implementations. I think the clean reimplementations did happen anyway, just to avoid any future claims. I also seem to recall that Linux put in place a more strict IP policy, to minimize the chances of a similar incident happening again. Reply
Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
- Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows
Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/decades-long-linux-ownership-dispute-effectively-dead-after-xinuos-appeal-rejected-us-court-of-appeals-halts-the-legal-wrangling-over-ibms-and-red-hats-use-of-project-monterey-unix-code#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com/membership
- Crucial SSD owner offered $200 refund for 4TB drive now selling for over $500 — company finally caves to warranty demands after protracted back-and-forth
- Enthusiast turns a Lenovo Yoga laptop, an M.2 slot, and AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT into 'the world's stupidest' desktop for local AI chatbots — M.2 franken-rig cripp
- Hands-on with Hyte’s Y50 RGB case: Premium looks at an affordable price
- Commodore unveils striking Cyberpunk 2077 version of its C64U made in partnership with CD Projekt Red — Commodore 77 special edition uses more powerful AMD Arti
- OpenAI’s 700W Jalapeño ASIC outpaces 1,400W Nvidia flagship GPU — claims up to 1.9x throughput per kilowatt and 3.6x lower latency, co-developed with Broadcom
Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.