[TUHS] Re: TUHS digest, Vol 1 #159 - 12 msgs

[Ian King]

There's an old joke:
 
If the law is against you, argue the facts.  
If the facts are against you, argue the law.  
If both are against you, call the other attorney names.  
 
It's possible this is an elaborate tactic to step on IBM's feet until IBM apologizes - see "The Mouse That Roared".  It could be that the issues are so convoluted, the SCO folks are very crafty (and think they can irritate Big Blue enough that IBM will pay them to go away).  But it is indeed possible that they are really this clueless.  There are many examples of businesses that once held pre-eminent positions, layed low by bonehead business decisions.  
 
In any event, baseless lawsuits are a common business tool these days.  And in a country where you can become independently wealthy by spilling coffee in your lap, and you can lose the popular vote by a large margin but be appointed to the highest office in the land by your daddy's Supreme Court - is any legal maneuver really a surprise anymore?  
 
I printed out my "ancient UNIX" license (I got a no-charge license), I'm not erasing my RK05s yet.  :-)  -- Ian 
 
NOTE: The above is my personal ranting, and should not be construed to reflect the policies or opinions of my employer.  

________________________________

From: tuhs-admin at minnie.tuhs.org on behalf of Larry McVoy
Sent: Thu 5/29/2003 7:42 PM
To: tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org
Subject: [TUHS] Re: TUHS digest, Vol 1 #159 - 12 msgs



> SCO is blustering more and more as the open source community exposes
> them for the fruads that they have become.

In the for what it is worth department, I happen to know that this
stuff is more complex than it seems.  For instance, I am pretty sure
that ATT should have won their lawsuit over the BSD stuff and if you
doubt that I'd suggest that you go compare the UFS code against the 32v
or v7 code.  bmap() is a good place to look.  Any suggestions that that
was completely rewritten are patently false, at least in my opinion.
I'm a file system guy, I've done a lot of work in UFS, I'm intimately
familiar with the code.  In fact, I defended UFS against LFS when Kirk
wouldn't (LFS is a friggin' joke, any file system hacker knows that the
allocation policy is 90% of the file system).

I do not have knowledge of the code it is that SCO says infringes.  And I
think that SCO is about as astute as I am in terms of public relations
(we both tend to be our own worst enemies and I thought I was without
peer in that department :-)  But I suspect that there is at least some
merit to what they are claiming.  I have to believe that nobody is stupid
enough to have zero data and jump out in public like they are doing.
That's just way too far over the top.  Anything is possible I guess,
but doesn't it seem just a little unlikely that a corporation would
commit that public a suicide?  I'll probably be proved wrong but I'm
a CEO, running a small company, much smaller than SCO, and there is
no way I'd stick my neck out that far with no data to back it up.
I'd like to think I'm smarter than they are but I tend to doubt it,
they have more experience.
--
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm
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