[NCLUG] FW: [NBLUG/talk] Microsoft agreed to buy rights to Unix technology

[jbass at dmsd.com]

Mike Loseke <mike at verinet.com> writes:
> Thus spake Crawford Rainwater:
> > 
> > >From one of the California LUGs I subscribe to.
> > Not a pretty thought I must admit.  WSJ is a subscription
> > deal, so I was not able to view the full article as well.
>
>  MS already had ownership of parts of the IP in SCO Unix, older versions
> anyway. This may have been in part a stepping up of that investment.

SCO isn't, and never has been, a Microsoft lackey.

Microsoft is certainly not "stepping up of that investment", as in
truth there is no "investment". Patent law is a tangled web, that
is expensive ... much of the game is building, protecting, and the
most important exercise of CROSS LICENSING patents. Dispite the
current popular trend of denial of and playing Robinhood with
intellectual property rights, at the corporate and legal levels
this is an important part of business and the gamesmanship behind it.

I was a contractor at SCO in a lot of different capacities during
the late 80's and early 90's, and have a view into the Microsoft
and SCO relationship. I still actively maintain friendships and
contacts there.

What Mike says has some truth, but not that different than the cross
licensing that many major corporations have of patents and technology.
The patents that SCO obtained in the purchase of UNIX are a major asset,
and revenue stream, and while cross licensed between a number of the
major system vendors, there is significant technology in that pool
combined with SCO development before and after the purchase, that
even Microsoft needs to keep from having it's products blocked from the
market during a long and drawn out patent fight. One would not have to
look far to see that Microsoft has cross licensed patents with most
major players in the market.

What is more interesting, is that SCO started out a licensee of XENIX,
a Microsoft product derived from AT&T V7 Unix, and became the major
developer of shipper of that V7 UNIX variant for many years. As Microsoft
came under heat as a monopoly, it invested money in both Apple and SCO
to keep them viable competitors, with a small minority market share.
Although Microsoft made major investments in both companies (from the
Apple and SCO view points, a drop in the bucket for Microsoft) it never
influenced any signficant control with those investments. The stock of
both companies has been a terrible investment over the term, not an
investment for MS in normal terms, other than keeping the goverment
lawyers from completely gutting the monopoly that would be terribly
obvious without Apple and SCO.

As the V7 Unix techology grew marginal in the market, SCO in the late
80's decided to replace XENIX in their customer base with a strong push
to AT&T System V with their Open Desk Top (ODT) and related server
offerings.  They also invested heavily in the ACE project to promote
MIPS technology in consumer market desktops/servers as well as several
other hardware and software initiatives which were strongly competitive
with Microsoft.

John Bass