[chu-ka-pi]

I started a very similar thread in the UNIX forum but I think it is a quite important issue we're dealing with here...

So here you go: (please, respond in the UNIX forum... If only there could be a way to soft-link a thread :-)

I hope that by now, most of you are aware on what's going on in the open source community, more specifically about the whole fuss SCO is making about GNU/Linux.

So, if you thought Mac OS X was immune from the SCO lawyers' madness, you were dead wrong. SCO may consider to cancel the ATT-BSDi settlement:

http://www.internetnews.com/ent-new...cle.php/3110981

Quote from SCO's CEO:
"With our limited energies and what our guys are going through, we probably won't file any suits against BSD until sometime in the first half of next year."

Of course, I guess it is useless to remind you that Mac OS X is based on FreeBSD...

So... How can I contact Apple to ask them If I'll be indemnified if it turns out that Mac OS X contains SCO's IP?

CKP

Because knowledge is power...
Check out: www.groklaw.net

[Person Man]

I don't think you have anything to worry about. In the end it will be SCO who loses.

[Millennium]

OSX is not "based on" FreeBSD. This is a common misconception.

OSX is based on Mach, an entirely different kernel from FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and so forth. This kernel is compatible with a lot of code from the BSD operating systems, but it is not BSD itself. Some of the code in OSX's Terminal apps are taken from the BSD distributions, but that is something completely different. It's worth noting that no Linux commands are involved in the lawsuit; only the Linux kernel itself.

What does this mean?
One, even if SCO goes after BSD -and they will likely be out of business before that lawsuit can even begin- Mach is something completely different, and is likely to be unaffected by the lawsuit.

Two, if SCO tries to go after the BSD command set, Apple can reimplement commands as a workaround. Individual Unix commands are seldom terribly difficult to implement; that's the beauty of the whole thing.

Three, if SCO is stupid enough to try and go after Apple, Apple has better lawyers than SCO does.

Frankly, I can't wait for SCO to lose this case, SCO to go out of business, and Darl McBride to spend the rest of his life in disgrace as the thief and fraud he is.

[NeXTLoop]

Originally posted by Millennium:
OSX is not "based on" FreeBSD. This is a common misconception.

I think you have that a little backwards. The Mac OS X UNIX Technical Brief PDF that Apple makes available says this:

The Mac OS X kernel at the heart of Darwin is based on FreeBSD and Mach 3.0. The open source FreeBSD (developed at the University of California, Berkeley) distribution is one of the most widely used UNIX implementations available today. This BSD implementation provides Mac OS X with the stability, performance, and compatibility associated with UNIX. Apple has enhanced BSD by adding Mach 3.0 technology based on the OSF/mk microkernel from the Open Source Foundation.

So if anything, it's the other way around. Mach compliments BSD, rather than BSD just being a set of commands that compliment Mach. At the very least, they're very equal. Either way, it's definitely correct to refer to Mac OS X as being a flavor of FreeBSD, or at least based on it.

But even ignoring the whole Mach/FreeBSD debate, the Register had an interesting article about how in their SEC filing, SCO admitted that their lawsuits are destroying their business. And they admitted that their lawsuits will most likely continue to destroy their business. That's very good news, and probably why SCO is looking to expand their lawsuits. They now realize they've done so much damage to their reputation that they'll never be able to recover in terms of their business model. The only recourse they have at this point is either to sell out to a competitor.... or keep looking for litigation targets.

Here's the link to the Register article...

[King Bob On The Cob]

I thought they were suing over code used in the SMP implementation, which I thought Apple rewrote most of to squeeze more power out of their Dualie configs. (They needed to make the duals seem just that much more powerful than the single proc version I thought)