Toolkit

Story: Inside the Linux arcana

Posted by: Anonymous (Friday 19 March 2004, 5:48 PM)

Folsom, what are you thinking?

1) Sun holds an option to buy SCO stock at $1.83. If SCO wins, SCO's stock will skyrocket, and Sun will make out like a bandit any way you cut it. If SCO loses, Sun will buy and hold 1% or more of SCO's stock - giving Sun at least some access to what's left of SCO's IP when SCO dies. For pennies. Sun wins again. Sun doesn't really have a specific interest in propping up SCO, ithey will be just as happy if SCO wins or loses.

2) Sun has (and has always had) better hardware than RH or IBM. Sun's workstations that are now 10 years old still sell on EBAY for about the cost of a mid-range new Dell workstation. They're getting hurt because a $1000 Intel or AMD machine is almost as capable at 1/3rd the cost - NOT because an intel box is 3x the machine (OS isn't even a factor). With clustering and HA capabilities, Sun's longstanding reliability factor is offset by the cost. And I hate to shatter your rose colored glasses but the Sun OS is a better Unix than Linux, even today. It'll be 3 or 4 years still before Linux is capable of what Solaris can do at the mid and high end range.

3) Huh. And they have 5.7 billion in the bank for R&D (they could survive for 3 more years without selling a thing), a whole new class of products out this year [that are pretty damn impressive] and have doubled thier stock price. That's a pretty nice toilet.

4) Yeah... I'll bet they're pretty scared of some sysadmin in New Mexico.

5) If SCO wins, their stock will be a far cry more than $8.75 a share. IBM will have to foot billions, probably upon billions - and that's after they pay the fines [5 billion if SCO as it's way]. And I'll tell you something - if SCO wins, and IBM does in fact foot the bill, after penalties and the increase in SCO's price (not to mention the revenue SCO would be generating on licences) it won't be to protect Linux or keep it free, it'll be to licence it just like SCO's planning to do. They will try to keep Linux alive, but they will charge every company on the planet to use it - just like they did with Unix. You're asking them (IBM or SCO) to surrender their largest revenue stream for the sake of freedom? Get real.