SCO Group

[Jud]

On Sun, 21 Sep 2003 10:24:04 +0930, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at FreeBSD.org> 
wrote:

> On Saturday, 20 September 2003 at 17:16:59 -0400, Timothy Luoma wrote:
>> On Sat, 20 Sep 2003 14:07:53 -0700, Kris Kennaway <kris at obsecurity.org>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On Sat, Sep 20, 2003 at 10:15:01AM -0400, Ryck wrote:
[snip]
>>>> Does Free BSD have anything to worry about regarding SCO Group and 
>>>> would
>>>> Free BSD users be harmless from SCO Group's litigation threats?
>>>
>>> Not likely.  See the mailing list archives for further discussion.
>>
>> I tried to find some information and had no luck.  I was also looking 
>> for
>> any conversation as to whether this situation with SCO was related at 
>> all
>> to the problems BSD had with... was it AT&T? .... some years back.
>
> The short answer: SCO's predecessors sued the BSDs for much the same
> issue over ten years ago.  The matter was settled out of court.  If
> you believe this view, then the BSDs have nothing more to fear.
>
> On the other hand, the way SCO is handling the current issue suggests
> that they have lost their minds.  They have presented no proof for
> their claims

While generally agreeing with the view that SCO appear to "have lost their 
minds," as a lawyer in the U.S. I did want to note that it's not customary 
to present proof at this stage of a lawsuit.

> (well, they produced some BSD code purported to be in
> Linux, and claimed that it was System V code; see
> http://www.lemis.com/grog/SCO/code-comparison.html#BPF for more
> details).  As a result, there's no reason to believe that they
> wouldn't make similar claims about the BSDs.  After all, the code in
> that example *is* in FreeBSD.

I agree with your general point that SCO hasn't given us any reason to 
suppose they'd treat the BSDs - or more specifically, BSD users - 
differently than in the case of Linux.  However, if you don't work for a 
fairly large company and don't have untold personal wealth, there seems 
little reason to suppose SCO would waste time pursuing you or your 
employer.

Jud