Interesting and informative analysis of SCO's financial and legal position: http://www.itmanagersjournal.com/management/04/02/15/2152249.shtml (it's rather longish)
<excerpt> ... There are risks to the stock price. Litigation can be long-winded and expensive, and the financial outcomes (i.e., awards or settlements) are difficult to predict. Take, for instance, SCO Group's lawsuit against IBM, which has deep pockets and could have considerable "litigation stamina" against just about any company. The SCO versus IBM lawsuit might not go away anytime soon. As the SCO versus IBM lawsuit is currently in the discovery process -- and the view of legal colleagues of mine is that this process could continue until April 11, 2005 -- the date when the jury trial is scheduled to start. In addition, if SCO Group's various lawsuits were to result in reduced demand for Linux, from both current and potentially new large enterprise customers, then that could be negative for Linux-related stocks such as SCOX. ... SCO is making assertions to end-users of Linux that version 2.4 and above contains various copyright-protected material of SCO's. In its letter dated Dec. 19, 2003 to end-users, the company has initially identified a series of ABI "header files" that are used in compiling Linux. UNIX Systems Labs (a division of AT&T that owned the rights to UNIX at one point) spearheaded an effort to help standardize UNIX applications through an Application Binary Interface (ABI) effort. In order to make application writing easier, a series of variables were defined in header files used by programmers developing UNIX applications. SCO claims that 43 header files used in Linux are identical as UNIX but have not been contributed by the company and should not be in the Linux distribution. By itself, these header files do not, in my opinion, create an insurmountable obstacle to be replaced over time, but significant laborious effort would have to be made to work around the use of these header files. ... In return for its discovery documents, SCO has asked IBM for a huge amount of information. First, SCO has asked for the source code to all versions of the operating systems AIX and Dynix, two UNIX versions created and distributed by IBM. Second, SCO wants details of all modifications IBM has made since 1985 to the present, together with all of IBM's R&D records and notes pertaining to the development of the software. Third, SCO also wants a detailed and itemized list of all contributions IBM has ever made to Linux, irrespective of whether the contributed code ever made it into the Linux kernel. Fourth, SCO has asked for the names of more than 7,200 current and former IBM employees who did have (or who even might have had) access to code that SCO claims infringes upon its copyright protection on USV. Absent a settlement, this treasure hunt should keep the folks at IBM busy scurrying around and delay any productive or sensible resolution to the SCO suit for a long while. ... </except> -- luser GPG Key ID: 0x954CA42B Registered Linux User #311650 ________________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! India Insurance Special: Be informed on the best policies, services, tools and more. Go to: http://in.insurance.yahoo.com/licspecial/index.html _______________________________________________ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
