SCO vs. IBM :: Businesses Microsoft Essays

SCO vs. IBM AbstractOn March 6, 2003, The SCO Group filed a $1 cardinal causal agent 1 against IBM. The lawsuit alleges, among other things, that IBM has violated contractual obligations it has with SCO by incorporating part of AIX (IBMs UNIX derived operate system) into Linux the open opening version of UNIX. The lawsuit has not gone to court and, when it finally does, may take upwardly of a year to settle. Nevertheless, a preliminary look is worthwhile. Since the time of the initial filing, the rhetoric has escalated and it has become clear that the ramifications of the suit are much broader than barely IBM vs. SCO. SCOs claims, should they be proven, would not only have a study impact on Linux, but could also claim other casualties foreland among them the free-spoken Source movement. After some introductory material, this paper examines the dominance effects and provides an ethical evaluation. If one assumes that SCOs claims are valid, Linux is in hard trou ble, and a black-eye will be placed on the face of the Open Source community that will not quickly heal. But, even if SCO prevails, its far from clear that theyve done the right thingIntroductionOn March 6, 2003, The SCO Group filed a $1 billion lawsuit against IBM. fundamental to the lawsuit is the claim that IBM has violated contractual obligations it has with SCO by releasing into the humankind domain AIX consultation code as part of enhancements the order has made to the Linux operating system. Why does SCO care? Because SCO claims to hold the copyright to the UNIX operating system 2. AIX is a derivative of UNIX not only is UNIX source code used as the basis for AIX but IBM (and a host of other UNIX vendors) readily admits this and pays licensing feeds to SCO. Linux, on the other hand, is open source. Its source code is freely available for usage, viewing and modification. SCOs claim is elemental IBM is illegally distributing its intellectual property by placing i t into Linux and thereby diluting the value of UNIX. all over the last few months, there have been a number of come upon developments that are beyond SCO and IBMs current spat. Of particular interestSCO stop releasing its Linux distribution asserting that the Linux is derived from code that is copyrighted by SCO 3.