[ale] GROKLAW- SCO Drops Linux Claims

[Chris Ricker]

On Tue, 10 Feb 2004, Robert Heaven wrote:

> The SCO lawyer seems to be claiming the "all" of AIX is a derivitive
> work of SysV unix therefore, SCO owns AIX... huh???

SCO's major claim has always essentially been that any concept developed on
a Unix derivative is a derivative of Unix, and therefore a violation of
their Unix licenses to the developer. That's the "logic" they use to claim
ownership of RCU, JFS, and AIO, even though none of the three are part of
SysV Unix, contain SysV Unix code, or even appear in anything SCO ships.  
That's why I've never been too concerned about the suit -- it hinges on a
far broader definition of derivative work than US courts have ever upheld
before. If the courts actually do buy SCO's argument, we'll have far bigger
issues to worry about, because the whole computer software industry will
come crashing down in lawsuits for the next 20 years (Unix contains ideas 
developed elsewhere originally, as does Windows, and Mac OS, and everything 
else).

later,
chris