Sunday | 7 September, 2008
CIO
The SCO Slugfest
Scott Berinato 13 September, 2004 14:19:47

Related Stories
  • +

    Adobe launches hosted services, adds Flash to Acrobat 03 June, 2008 09:02:44

    Adobe to launch Web site offering users free hosted services for document creation, sharing and storage
    Adobe this week is set to unveil the next version of its Adobe Acrobat software, which adds support for the company's Flash multimedia technology. The company also plans to launch a new Web site offering users free hosted services for document creation, sharing and storage.
Additional Resources
Executive Guides
Whitepapers

Newsletter Subscription

Sign up for our CIO newsletters!
Weekly coverage of the issues that impact corporate and government information
RSS Feeds

Your guide to the past, present and future of the legal challenge that may change the face of the open source revolution.

It began with a simple asset inventory. In June 2002, President and CEO Darl McBride joined SCO, and, looking for ways to turn around his fizzling little Unix/Linux company, it dawned on him that SCO owned something valuable: the Unix System V source code.

At first, SCO planned to use its Unix source code to allow old Unix apps to run on the new Linux operating system. In fact, according to Chris Sontag, SCO senior vice president and general manager of the company's licensing division, SCO even briefed analysts on this strategy.

In the meantime, some Linux users had taken it upon themselves to use SCO's Unix software to run Unix apps on Linux, which was illegal for anyone but SCO to do under its Unix licence. SCO devised a plan to allow these users to do so legally through a new licence.

But before SCO started offering the new licences, IBM took the wind out of SCO's sails. At LinuxWorld in February 2003, IBM senior executive Steve Mills revealed his company's plans to use AIX, IBM's own Unix platform, to accelerate Linux development. "It sounded like they would take all of AIX and put it on Linux, basically obliterating Unix," says Sontag.

SCO was alarmed. Even so, the company continued to dig into the Linux kernel's source code, as it was still thinking about ways to allow Unix and Linux to run together. In February 2003, SCO allegedly found Unix System V code and Unix derivative code in Linux kernel version 2.4.

The implications - to SCO - were clear. If Linux contained SCO's proprietary code, then Linux (which under the General Public License mandated free distribution of the code) was violating SCO's Unix licence. Therefore, SCO could now challenge the legality of the Linux licence, thus radically affecting not only how Linux was developed and sold, but also its viability as a corporate platform. Indeed, everyone using Linux with Unix stuck into it would, in theory, owe SCO a fee. If SCO could prove its case, it was sitting on a gold mine. So SCO left the Linux business and entered the litigation business. Who's Who

In the SCO Corner

SCO President and CEO Darl McBride - The central figure in the maelstrom, McBride tries to focus on SCO's business and products. "In spite of the popular media saying we're the most hated company in technology, customers are fairly pleased with the direction of the company," he told CIO, several months before posing for the cover of Fortune wrapped in a printout of the Unix development history time line.

SCO Senior VP and General Manager of SCO's licensing division Chris Sontag - Bad cop to McBride's good cop. Sontag is focused on extracting licence fees from users that SCO claims are in violation of its licence, and he casts the lawsuits in dramatic terms: "We are not putting a lot of energy into settling. The battle lines are drawn. It's a death match. We either win or die."

Attorney David Boies - Boies accepted $US1 million in cash and 400,000 SCO shares to take on IBM. Ironically, Boies once defended IBM in its 14-year antitrust suit, and he was the US Justice Department's lead prosecutor in the Microsoft antitrust case. Now, his success prosecuting Linux and Unix users like IBM may contribute to the success of the company he wounded (Microsoft) and wound the company he helped save (IBM).

Market Place
 

2008 CIO Summit

19th August, 2008 Four Seasons Hotel, Sydney Developed in partnership with CIO Magazine, IDC, INTEP and the CIO Executive Council.

The world of the CIO is extremely complex and diverse. Multiple priorities demand attention and decisions are needed instantly. Individual teams need to be driven towards common goals, and businesses strive to become more mobile, agile and responsive. For CIOs, the challenge never ends.

Every year the CIO Summit identifies what is top of mind for CIOs across Australia and New Zealand, and offers insight for CIO benchmarking and vendor strategic planning alike.

Recent IDC research shows that over 59% of CIO's believe that 'to achieve their business strategies, technology should be used more aggressively than today.'

Join us on August 19th to discover how this is possible with the latest technologies including Virtualisation, Web 2.0, IP Surveillance and Software as a Service (Saas).

Click here for registration.

Click here for more information.

Please email Denyse_Robertson@idg.com.au for further information.

  • +

    CIO Live Podcast #79: Brent D Taylor, author of The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires Part II 05 October, 2007 06:00:00

    For his new book, The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires, social researcher Brent D Taylor spent four years of intensive research investigating the psychological make-up and backgrounds of some of the world's richest men and women, including IT luminaries Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs. Taylor discovered that, despite working in different industries and coming from different upbringings, they all have one thing in common -- they are all outsiders.
  • +

    CIO Live Podcast #78: Brent D Taylor, author of The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires 28 September, 2007 17:34:25

    For his new book, The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires, social researcher Brent D Taylor spent four years of intensive research investigating the psychological make-up and backgrounds of some of the world's richest men and women, including IT luminaries Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs. Taylor discovered that, despite working in different industries and coming from different upbringings, they all have one thing in common -- they are all outsiders.
  • +

    CIO Live Podcast #77: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part III 21 September, 2007 07:00:00

    Part three in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance.
  • +

    CIO Live Podcast #76: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part II 14 September, 2007 07:00:00

    Part two in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance.
  • +

    CIO Live Podcast #75: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part I 07 September, 2007 07:00:05

    Part one in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance.
  • +

    Information security governance: Centralized vs. distributed 05 September, 2008 10:15:00

    Should security policies, procedures and processes be managed within a central body, or distributed at an individual level? You need to find the middle ground.
    The management of information risk has become a significant topic for all organizations, small and large alike. But for the large, multi-divisional organization, it poses the additional challenge of determining how to deploy an information security governance program among what are often disparate business units. Should the policies, procedures, and processes that define the program be developed and managed within a central, corporate body? Or perhaps responsibility would be better placed at the individual unit level? Is there a workable middle-ground?
  • +

    DNS error brings Sophos antivirus updates to a halt 05 September, 2008 13:40:00

    Optus, Internode and Equinix affected among others.
    A sporadic Domain Name Server (DNS) error has blocked Sophos anti-virus updates around the world.
  • +

    Ouch! Security pros' worst mistakes 04 September, 2008 08:05:00

    We've all done regrettable things on the job, but does any valuable wisdom come of it? Four security pros candidly explain their biggest blunders and what they learned in the process
    It was a mistake so bad the person who made it asked that his name and company not be mentioned here. Let's call him Frank.
  • +

    Security ROI: Fact or Fiction? 03 September, 2008 08:32:00

    Bruce Schneier says ROI is a big deal in business, but it's a misnomer in security. Make sure your financial calculations are based on good data and sound methodologies.
    Return on investment, or ROI, is a big deal in business. Any business venture needs to demonstrate a positive return on investment, and a good one at that, in order to be viable.
  • +

    Information Security and the Importance of Context 01 September, 2008 10:00:00

    Those entrusted with information security must raise their contextual awareness
    When the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was first created, it created a sudden need for tens of thousands of screeners. Getting a job as an airport screener was a pretty easy process. It seemed as though if you had a pulse, you were in. Jump forward to 2008 and becoming a screener is a bit harder as the TSA has instituted background checks, has upped the educational requirement to include a high school diploma or GED, and added other significant requirements.
CIO Webcast Innovation #8 - What are the biggest roadblocks to IT's involvement in innovation at your company?
Watch the latest latest edition of CIO Innovation which is now available for download.
Watch the webcast
Sign up to the CIO Innovation update email


CIO Live Podcast #79: Brent D Taylor, author of The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires Part II
Listen to the latest edition of CIO Live which is now available for download.
Listen to the podcast
Sign up to the CIO Live email
Whitepaper

Revolutionising Back-up and Recovery

Rapid adoption of virtual server technology, and the challenges associated with the backup and recovery of ever-growing stores of information is causing a number of IT managers to reevaluate their data protection strategies. New backup and recovery methods which use data de-duplication technology to reduce capacity and network bandwidth requirements are being deployed to keep up with explosive data growth, shrinking backup windows, compliance initiatives and security concerns. Read on to find out more.

Sponsored Links