SCOwned!

I saw an article come up on Groklaw today entitled, OpenLinux 3.1.1 Still Available, with the 2.4 kernel:

Guess what? I'm told you can still download Caldera's OpenLinux 3.1.1 from the Internet. Yup. OpenLinux is still marching on, thanks to that perfect license the GPL...

My initial reaction was, "So? Hasn't this been established for a long time?" Well, maybe not. Then I remembered a little item I have in a stack of old Linux CDs: If you can't see images for some reasons, these are two CDs labelled, "LINUX TECHNOLOGY PREVIEW FEATURING THE NEW LINUX 2.4 KERNEL PREVIEW", "© 2000, Caldera Systems, Inc. All Rights Reserved". The first CD is labelled "Installation Disk" and also has the note "GPL Source downloadable from: ftp.calderasystems.com/pub/LTP". (Incidentally, that directory is still there, and it has a SRPMS directory, but it's empty.) The second CD is labelled "Source Code". I popped in the Source CD and lookie lookie: Linux-2.4.0 source code, can it be? One of the files inside that RPM is linux-2.4.0-test3.tar.bz2. You can also find this file on the kernel.org archives and the accompanying PGP/GPG signature matches which proves it's the same file:

gpg: Signature made Tue 10 Oct 2000 02:39:32 AM EDT using DSA key ID 517D0F0E
gpg: Good signature from "Linux Kernel Archives Verification Key "

So here is a standing offer to IBM: If you want to borrow these CDs for your case against SCO, you are more than welcome to have them free-of-charge, although when it's all over, I'd like them back so I can frame them and hang them on my wall and laugh. I won't object if you frame them for me or put them in a nice display case, but this is not a requirement. Owned.