sco group - Ah HA!

[Zscoundrel]

OK, now it ALL becomes much clearer. . . . .

If you look a the clip below, it shows the ownership chain of Unix and 
the original code, when you get to the bottom, just remember that 
Microsoft made a large, and really weird investment in Caldera when they 
were on the brink of bankruptcy.  I never understood why they would buy 
a large stake in what was, at the time, a mid-sized Linux applications 
provider.  Even when they dropped support for the Linux distributions, 
it was a VERY cheap way to get what they believe is control over the 
Unix code.  

It also explains all the media hype that pretty much mis-directs and 
over-simplifies the actual facts of the filing.  

*    *    *    * clip *    *    *    *   

      Corporate history

Work on Unix began at AT&T's Bell Laboratories in 1969.

SCO was founded in 1979 as a Unix porting and consulting company. The 
first SCO product offering, an Intel Unix port, was in 1983.

AT&T began developing Unix as a commercial product after the Bell 
divestiture in 1984.

AT&T spun off Unix Systems Laboratories (USL) as a joint venture with 
Novell in 1992. As part of the same deal, the Unix trademark passed to 
X/Open (later to become The Open Group).

In 1993, Novell bought AT&T's stake in USL.

In 1994, a group of Novell alumni formed Caldera Systems International 
with the backing of Novell's founder, Ray Noorda. Caldera was intended 
to be a Linux distributor, aiming at the business and enterprise market.

In 1995, Novell sold the ancestral Unix codebase to SCO.

In 1998, SCO, IBM, and Intel began cooperating on Project Monterey, a 
Unix port for the Intel Itanium,

In 2001, SCO split up. The rump of the company focused on its Tarantella 
product. The SCO brand, SCO OpenServer and the Bell Labs codebase were 
acquired by Caldera.

In 2002, Caldera began trading under the SCO name.

*    *    *    * clip *    *    *    *   

david nicol wrote:

>It contains a link to this:
>
>http://www.catb.org/~esr//writings/taoup/html/
>
>
>On Mon, 2003-05-19 at 09:51, Jason Clinton wrote:
>  
>
>>Randal wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>How does SCO's decision to stop distributing Linux and United Linux, after 
>>>the FSF informed them that if IBM was distributing infringing code that they 
>>>were also distributing the same code, with the source under the gpl, affect 
>>>this project?  Are you facing liabillity from the plaintiff who put you at 
>>>risk?  Is United Linux still available or is it suspended?
>>> 
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>This sums up the absurdity of it quite well: 
>>http://www.opensource.org/sco-vs-ibm.html
>>    
>>
>
>
>  
>