[Biodevelopers] SCO/IBM Lawsuit

[Eric Gundrum]

Sam,

As far as I can tell, the lawsuit is insignificant. So far SCO seems
unwilling to publicly identify what parts of Linux were copied. That makes
the intent of the suit suspect to me.

The worst case fallout I can imagine, which I think is unlikely, is that
the Linux retailers will be injoined from selling their Linux until a court
overrules that injunction or they can document that the questionable code
comes from a source other than SCO. I expect they could replace any suspect
code within a few weeks. Maybe this is why SCO won't identify the suspect
code -- the Linux community would just purge it and render the suit
irrelevant. (BSD has been identified as a potential source of new code. It
went through this with AT&T several decades ago.)

		--eric

--- At 5:15 PM -0400 6/17/03, Sam Jaffe wrote:
>The SCO lawsuit has sent a chill through the corporate enterprise
>computing world, especially for anyone working with Linux or AIX. What
>about the  bioinformatics community? Are you following the lawsuit with
>interest, or have you already dismissed it? Has your project formed a
>committee to deal with the potential implications? Have you started
>formulating plans for what to do if a judge issues an order to stop using
>Linux or AIX? I know that such a possibility is remote, but one never
>knows how the legal system will react to such lawsuits. Any replies would
>be appreciated. By the way, this is for a story I'm working on dealing
>with the subject. Thanks.
>
>Sam Jaffe
>The Scientist Magazine (www.the-scientist.com)
>215 386 9601 x.3015
>sjaffe at the-scientist.com