SCO
A subsidiary of the Canopy Group and suspected sock puppet of Microsoft, the Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) is chemotherapy for the cancer that is the GPL. SCO is the legal owner of the patents infringed upon by the Lunix operating system, regardless of what basement-dwelling e-lawyer Slashdot fanboys may say. To legally use Lunix, you must pay a $699 license fee to SCO. (A lawsuit is pending against Richard Stallman for falsely advertising claiming that Lunix is "free software.")
Members of SCO include Esker Melchior.
Note that their messiah, Darl McBride, is a moron.
Based in Lindon, Utah, SCO has a worldwide presence with representation in 82 countries. This infrastructure enables SCO to sue anyone who uses Lunix without a license, thereby confronting the forces of software piracy in our midst. SCO has a channel of more than 11,000 talking heads, a soon-to-be unemployed development network of 8,000, one mexican janitor, and thousands of direct account customers who are soon to be the object of litigation. They also have an install base of more than two million obsolete systems.
Currently, SCO is in the process of getting its face smashed by IBM (and practically anybody else with a computer and a halfway decent lawyer), while selling GPLed software on OpenServer 6 -- despite claims that the GPL is unconstitutional and the fact that they now owe Novell more in licensing fees than OpenServer will ever recoup. In its own cute way, SCO is only doing it for the lulz.
SCO is now basically a lawsuit-machine. However, its lawsuits are about as valid as most internets defamation torts, and so it has become the shared lol-cow of IBM and the US court system. Once Microsoft stops supporting it, the litigation will finally end and all the lawyers will have to get real jobs.
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