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A technology blog for The Economist Group IT team

Monday, May 17, 2004

The problem with Linux

The current edition of Fortune has the best summary I've read of how Linux users are open to lawsuits from SCO. You should read Gunning for Linux if you have a Fortune sub. If not I have a copy. There are lots of twists, but this passage best summarises what the issue is:

"(Steve) Mills (head of IBM's software group) stated that while Linux lagged behind Unix at the moment (January 2003), IBM would exploit its expertise with AIX to bring it up to speed."

"In this and earlier public statements, IBM implied that it was grafting sophiticated code from AIX onto Linux to accelerate Linux's commercial upgrade. (Darl) McBride (former Novell executive and CEO of SCO) believed that IBM couldn't do that, since all AIX code constituted, in his view a UNIX derivative whose sourcecode IBM had to keep secret under its licences."
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