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03/03/2004 Archived Entry: "SCO sues SCO customer"

My turn to contribute some humor. If you've ever had difficulty getting help from IT support staff, The Register's Bastard Operator From Hell may give you some insight. (I think some of these guys work for our local ISP.)

SCO update: today, only two weeks late, SCO has finally sued... a SCO customer. Well, a SCO customer that switched to Linux, and who SCO -- apparently on no evidence whatsoever -- claims has copied some of their old SCO code to their new Linux system. If this is true -- and the guy who did the work says it isn't -- then still it amounts to nothing more than a SCO customer violating a SCO license agreement (and possibly some copyrights). Arguably, it acts against SCO's other claims, since they say the end user copied the code, so it clearly wasn't in their Linux distribution. Regardless, expect the media to trumpet "SCO sues Linux user for copyright violation" or some such technically-correct but completely misleading headline.

As many predicted, SCO has no grounds to sue Linux users, so they're going after their own customers. (At this point only a masochist would voluntarily become a SCO customer.) It does, however, distract the media from today's disappointing quarterly report (a $2.25 million loss). Timing is everything.

Update: SCO is also suing DaimlerChrysler. Not for anything they've done, but because they "failed to respond" to SCO's request that they certify compliance with their SCO license agreement. (I don't know if such a certification is required by the agreement, or not.) According to TheStreet.com, "SCO does not, in fact, know whether Daimler's use of Linux is violating its Unix software agreement with SCO." In other words, they're fishing.

brad