[olug] SCO Suspends Linux Activities (fwd)

Mike Peterson mpeterson at mail.charlesfurniture.com
Wed May 14 20:41:53 UTC 2003


Does this mean watch your back or just don't buy any new releases at the
current time?
Does anyone know how this effect the other Linux distributions?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Matthew G. Marsh" <mgm at midwestlinux.com>
To: <olug at olug.org>
Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2003 3:45 PM
Subject: [olug] SCO Suspends Linux Activities (fwd)


>
> FWIW - We were the first Caldera Authorized Partners in the Midwest region
> back in 1995 or so... sigh. I even had the full Netware Server running on
> COL 1.3.
>
> I have personal friends who mostly had made the wrenching transition
> through the Caldera purchase of SCO. I feel bad for them. Personally I
> stopped caring last summer when Caldera went towards a closed distribution
> model and reneged on their talk of enhancing the Linux kernel. Oh well -
> so much for them.
>
> --------------------------------------------------
> Matthew G. Marsh,  President
> Paktronix Systems LLC
> 1506 North 59th Street
> Omaha  NE  68104
> Phone: (402) 553-2288
> Email: mgm at midwestlinux.com
> WWW:  http://www.midwestlinux.com
> --------------------------------------------------
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Wed, 14 May 2003 13:15:20 -0700
> From: TeamSCO Partner Program <TeamSCO at sco.rsc01.com>
> Reply-To: TeamSCO Partner Program <partners at sco.com>
> To: sales at paktronix.com
> Subject: SCO Suspends Linux Activities
>
> Dear SCO Partner:
>
> As a SCO Partner, we thank you for your support and continued business.
> Because you are a valued partner, it is important that we make you aware
> of important SCO business decisions and announcements as soon as possible.
> As such, we wanted to make you aware of an important announcement made
> today.
>
> This communication is about recent efforts SCO has made to license and
> protect our patents, copyrights and intellectual property pertaining to
> the UNIX(r) operating system.  As you know, on March 7, 2003 SCO announced
> that it filed legal action against IBM in the State Court of Utah, for
> misappropriation of trade secrets, tortuous interference, unfair
> competition and breach of contract. The complaint alleged that IBM made
> concentrated efforts to improperly destroy the economic value of UNIX,
> particularly UNIX on Intel, to benefit IBM's new Linux services business.
>
> As we have progressed in our discovery related to this action, SCO has
> found compelling evidence that the Linux operating system contains
> unauthorized SCO UNIX intellectual property (IP).  Due to this discovery,
> we are taking three immediate courses of action.
>
> 1 - The first is to send a letter alerting commercial users to the fact
> that legal liability for the use of Linux by businesses may extend to end
> users. Customers should start receiving this letter today. For your
> information, a copy of this letter may be found at:
> http://www.sco.com/scosource/letter_to_linux_customers.html
>
> 2 - The second action we are taking is to suspend all future sales of the
> Linux operating system from SCO until the attendant risks with Linux are
> better understood and properly resolved.
>
> 3 - Finally, although this action affects future development and sales of
> SCO's Linux offerings, SCO will continue to support our SCO Linux and
> OpenLinux customers and partners who have previously implemented those
> products and we will hold them harmless from any SCO intellectual property
> issues regarding Linux. SCO will continue to honor all contractual
> obligations with existing customers including product updates, service,
> and support.
>
> As many of you are already aware, SCO UNIX systems continue to sell well -
> including an increase in OpenServer sales over the previous quarter. Our
> UNIX products continue to support many of the world's largest businesses.
> In addition, new customer sales indicate that there is still no better
> option for rock-solid, dependable technology for their core businesses
> than our SCO UNIX solutions.
>
> We are excited to be building on our SCO UNIX history as we roll out our
> next generation UNIX operating system and SCOx framework this fall. SCOx
> will allow small and medium business customers and branch offices to plug
> their existing applications into a Web services environment. Details of
> this strategy will be unveiled at SCO Forum in Las Vegas, Nevada, August
> 17-19. (For more details, see: http://www.sco.com/2003forum ).
>
> SCO remains committed to building new business opportunities for our
> partners such as you. We recognize that you have depended on us to provide
> reliable, solid technologies for your customers for over twenty years. We
> look forward to helping you and your customers meet your business needs
> for the next twenty years.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Darl McBride
> President and CEO
> The SCO Group
>
> ______________________________________________________________________
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>
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