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sco copyrights

From: bv@wjv.comREMOVE (Bill Vermillion)
Subject: Re: SCO gets $50 million investment
References: <Xns9416F36203CF1billbftld@130.133.1.4>
<EaLjb.486060$2x.201274@rwcrnsc52.ops.asp.att.net>
<bmosu8$23q$3@pcls4.std.com>
<20031017170813.GB42310@alexis.mi.celestial.com> 
Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2003 18:35:04 GMT

In article <20031017170813.GB42310@alexis.mi.celestial.com>,
Bill Campbell  <bill@celestial.com> wrote:
>On Fri, Oct 17, 2003, tony@aplawrence.com wrote:
>>Joe Dunning <joe@blahblah.invalid> wrote:

>>>Now wy would SCO have to pay "licensing costs"? Surely they   
>>>RECEIVE licensing fees? Or are they thinking about what SCO   
>>>will have to pay to IBM and others for copyright and patent   
>>>infringement?                                                 

>>Now you are being clueless.  Do you think SCO develops everything 
>>in house?  Try typing "copyrights" at any old SCO box you see 
>>lying around.

>SCO never was a major Unix developer, but more of an integrator of other
>people's packages into boring, but commercially stable systems.  They
>probably did more original work than Microsoft (name one thing M$ wrote
>from scratch that was successful -- Bob?).

MS Basic?  Or did they rip that off.  I had it on an old CP/M
machine of about 1977 vintage.  But they weren't Mircrosoft at
that time.  They were Micro-Soft - in Alberquerque NM.

> Xenix was originally a Microsoft port.

And all Unix derivations had to have their own name unless you
compiled the distribution unchanged on a Vax as I recall.

That's why the "names of Unix" thread was popular in the '80s.
I recall a list that had aleast 80 variants in it.

>SCO Unix was quite a bit behind various other Unix flavours,
>and didn't even have long file names or symbolic links until
>3.2v4 came out in 1992 (it did have some ``interesting''
>security features that could render a system unusable even by
>root :-).

They were about the last vendor on SysV.2 to move to V3.
I'm sure many recall here the DellEvangelist Larry Snyder touting
the Dell Unix V.3 [he moved from that after a few months to
something else - but that was Larry "The Grass Is Always Greener"
Synder for you.  

He was almost as bad as some of the *n*x advocates in his
diatribes.  He accused SCO of being not exactly honest in
their nameing of their V2 release prior to the V3 release
to confuse people.

Last email I had from Larry was about 2 years ago after retiring
from the IT environment at a chemical firm.

>SCO has certainly worked on some interesting projects such as
>the Universal Driver Interface (hi Robert if you're listening),
>and participated in some industry standards work including the
>one that produced iBCS which they're now suing people for using.

And how about CGI.  Computer Graphics Interface.  Is ee an 
old circa 1985 Xenix volume high on the shelf with that label.
No relationship to the procedures of the same name

>SCO paid royalties to Microsoft for many years for things
>relating to Xenix,

And they were required by contract to keep Xenix compatibility and
pay license fees in perpetuity.  It was not until the challenge
be the EU which made them drop that requirement for European
licenses/licensees that there was any hope.  It was about 6 months
after that the SCO no long had to keep Xenix compatibility
in all their OSes.  That seems to be a little known and largely
forgotten part of MS licensing schemes as more has been focused on
Windows, IE, cetera.


Bill
-- 
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com

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