The little SCO that cried wolf

Once upon a time, there was a little company named SCO that lived in the town of Unix. Now, one day SCO went into the woods. And, horrors, it ran back into town shouting that that the big, bad wolves -- IBM, Red Hat, and Novell -- had attacked it with their big nasty Linux penguin buddy, Tux the Destroyer! And -- oh no! -- they had stolen SCO's picnic basket of Unix intellectual property goodies.

And, what do you know? People paid attention! They came from all around and said, "You poor little company!" SCO was so happy. No one had paid so much attention to it in years. So SCO decided to sue the big bad wolves, saying that its Unix intellectual property had been stolen by that mean Linux penguin.

Now, this was kind of funny since SCO was once Linux's best buddy. They used to play together. They used to work together. Why, SCO/Caldera's programmers even helped write Linux.

But, SCO said, "Oh, we're not a Linux company now. Pay no attention to what we said and did before. Today, we're telling you, cross our heart and hope to die, that Linux stole source from us and that's no lie!"

"We didn't steal a thing!" the penguin's friends said. And, the one named Novell said, "Come to think of it, we own Unix anyway, not you, so we'll sue you!"

And you know what? It turned out Novell was right! SCO refused to believe it and tried to fight. But, now at long last, SCO's story telling days may be over!

At least I hope so. I've been covering the SCO anti-Linux saga since before day one, and let me tell you, it's been a real education. I didn't know that a company could keep multiple lawsuits going with so little in the way of proof. Now we all know.

For the record, SCO never showed anyone any real proof that there's one lousy line of Unix specific code in Linux. The pity is that Caldera/SCO could have been the Linux company. With Ransom Love at its head, they had a great leader who got how open source could be turned into a viable business.

If it hadn't been for SCO's moronic greed for a quick profit, we'd be living in a world where Caldera/SCO and Red Hat would be dueling for the number one spot in Linux. Or, perhaps, it would still be Novell vs. Red Hat for business Linux since Novell had strong ties with Caldera's leaderships. Caldera, the Linux company that first acquired and then transformed into SCO, was founded by ex-Novell executives who had seen early on that Linux would be the future of operating systems.

Oh well, too late now. The bankrupt remains of SCO owes Novell $2.55 million for illegally selling Unix intellectual property rights to Sun. SCO could fight on and waste more money. Why anyone would give SCO more money to throw away on its frivolous lawsuits is beyond me, but I guess someone will always believe it when someone cries wolf no matter how many times they do it.