Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on May 20, 2003 02:26 AM
"...But there is no exclusivity here, at least none mentioned..."
The exclusivity is the exclusion of anybody who hasn't paid money from examination of the SCO Unix source code. If it somehow becomes GPLed, or even public domain, there's not much left to the expensive proprietary operating business model.
Now, a company like IBM, that is staking much of its Unix future on Linux, might not care whether or not the SCO owned code was released to the world under the GPL, and I can see where they might decide to buy the full rights to and ownership of the code from SCO, just to shut them up. If they did that, then I'd expect to see them do something similar to what Sun did with the StarOffice code, or maybe even release the whole thing under the GPL.
But if Microsoft can prop up SCO by paying for a license they don't actually want or need, the SCO can continue to pursue a strategy of harassment as Microsoft's surrogate.
Just because Microsoft didn't need the license for OS development doesn't mean they can't gain an advantage by paying for that license. It's a poison pill to prevent IBM from buying the Unix code and releasing it.
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Re:The plot thickens.................
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on May 20, 2003 02:26 AMThe exclusivity is the exclusion of anybody who hasn't paid money from examination of the SCO Unix source code. If it somehow becomes GPLed, or even public domain, there's not much left to the expensive proprietary operating business model.
Now, a company like IBM, that is staking much of its Unix future on Linux, might not care whether or not the SCO owned code was released to the world under the GPL, and I can see where they might decide to buy the full rights to and ownership of the code from SCO, just to shut them up. If they did that, then I'd expect to see them do something similar to what Sun did with the StarOffice code, or maybe even release the whole thing under the GPL.
But if Microsoft can prop up SCO by paying for a license they don't actually want or need, the SCO can continue to pursue a strategy of harassment as Microsoft's surrogate.
Just because Microsoft didn't need the license for OS development doesn't mean they can't gain an advantage by paying for that license. It's a poison pill to prevent IBM from buying the Unix code and releasing it.
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