The risks inherent in open source today

"The SCO Group, which filed a $1 billion lawsuit against IBM claiming Big Blue infringed its intellectual-property rights in Linux, likely represents just the beginning of potential litigation involving open-source software."

It is far more likely what SCO is doing far more represents the end of this kind of stupidity. Everyone knows that SCO is playing legal shill to Microsoft, that they're fighting a stupid dying battle -- all for what?

So that they can buy Microsoft time in the enterprise marketspace, time that more stupid FUD can be spread.

Is IBM or SUN or SGI going to end up doing something like SCO? If not them, who else?

Good question...who else?

Can open source afford to trust even Red Hat? Probably more than other enterprise companies but the list is dwindling...IMHO I feel that enterprise Linux shouldn't be in the mix with desktop Linux at all....but the media sees it otherwise. Unfortunate :/ I feel that big business will always equal squashing the little guy. Also unfortunate...especially if you are the little guy or represent the little guy.

devnet: I meant "probably no one else in their right mind is going to play Don Quixote like SCO". In other words, I don't think anybody is going to follow. The mainstream press is acting like the "battle" over IP is just beginning -- I think it's ending. Look at IBM and Sun and their sharing of patents with respective communities.

No, this is FUD, pure and simple.

AAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!

No wonder people hate lawyers!!!

A couple of things the fee-trolling lawyer who wrote the article neglected to mention:

1. Open Source licensing tends to be much less troublesome than proprietary licensing. Why? The vast majority of Open Source software is based on a handful of common licenses. It certainly is important to know which things are GPL'd -- if you're planning to build software on it, etc, but, compared to the variety of provisions in proprietary software licenses, it's a breeze.

2. What is all this business about controlling access to source code?

This guy is a super goober with his head back in "Chinese wall" days. At trial, it would take exactly one question to poke a mighty big hole in the Chinese wall defense:

"So, do any of your developers have access to the internet, either at work or at home?"

Sigh. This is what you get from people who feel the need to justify their fees.

In other words, it's over a year old - and TSG didn't look as completely, utterly and totally screwed as they obviously do today.

The article linked by this submission is just a stub. It actually links to a (much older) article on another website. The stub itself contains no actual news whatsoever, only an introduction which is nothing more than a slightly re-phrased version of the first two paragraphs in the original article.

I know meta-news is important, but why don't you link to the real thing instead or mark the stub as such?