"Why SCO Cant Win"

The legal battle between SCO and the Linux community simply boils down to a larger firms attempt to take away the property rights of a smaller company in order to cover up an obvious error in judgment on the part of IBM.

IBM made a serious mistake in introducing Unix code into Linux without proper notification to—or approval from—SCO, which is the current, documented owner of Unix. The issue should have been fully vetted before Linux was compromised. The end result is a complex, no-holds-barred war against a much smaller company in an attempt to cover up and mitigate this mistake. In the process, the Linux community, in support of IBM, has been duped into using illegal means to attack SCO in the nastiest release of viruses the world has ever seen. The rest of us are used as cannon fodder in this virus plague.

Efforts to position this as a war between SCO and open source—or as having anything to do with Microsoft—are simply misdirection.

In a period when executives who misuse their authority are punished to extremes, the more likely cause of this problem is the apparent attempt to cover up an ill-advised decision by an IBM executive that unnecessarily exposed IBM and Linux.

Ask yourself these questions:



Have you ever seen IBM in similar litigation?



When is a $40 million company ever a real threat to a $90 billion company?



Can you recall an instance where IBM has aligned itself with a non-government organization that allowed, let alone promoted, violent response?



What would IBMs response be if a partner, or ex-partner, tried to release Lotus Notes or Tivoli, both technologies acquired by IBM, into the open-source community without permission?



If SCO has no evidence and is in the wrong, why is the company being so viciously attacked?

What follows are not only answers to these questions but also evidence that SCO has rights to Unix, that IBMs error in releasing Unix (AIX) code into Linux violated those rights, that IBM used the Linux community in an attempt to cover up that mistake, and that the favorable outcome of this case is of critical importance to all of us.

After assessing the following, you can only conclude that SCO should prevail. To take it further, Id say that, for our common good, SCO must prevail.