IBM, JFS, EVMS, and SCO

[dayhawk4]

For those of you who have questions regarding some of the packages which IBM supported for many years, then seemed to disappear from the scene, a touch of background from the legal arena may be in order. Personally, I installed EVMS and JFS on Ubuntu 6.06. I was dismayed to say the least when EVMS kept getting flamed on Ubuntu by individuals who obviously didn't read the readme-s concerning installation, others giving advice to just remove it, others arguing that it was garbage as it hasn't been maintained since 2.5.5. It is an excellent system. It did however seem to be dead in development. After three years of not understanding why many links were broken, all development on these packages which was spearheaded directly by IBM were stale, links were consistently missing, among a host of other issues, I came across SCO v. IBM, a case many of you have heard of. This case specifically involved SCO's claims that IBM violated terms of it's agreement by individuals within the company releasing code into the linux community that was rightfully the property of SCO. This caused active litigation which IBM has defended itself actively against until Judge Kimbell stayed the litigation until "SCO recovers from chapter 11". Now, IBM and Novell have been active in making entries into SCO's Bankrupty filings all the way up to June 11, 2009 where both IBM and Novell filed papers with regards to the Bankruptcy filing by SCO. (www.groklaw.net). This I think explains why IBM has not been active, and there are many broken links concerning EVMS and JFS both. Both of these packages are specifically mentioned by SCO as part of their case against IBM. Both of these packages if supported by IBM currently pose a litigation threat to IBM; I would appreciate it then if others on these forums give EVMS, JFS, and IBM a little bit of slack for not being right on the cusp of support on these projects as until SCO and their "rights" have finished litigation and clear IBM's name, anything they actively do put them at risk. Looking at some of the litigation documentation which spans over 1000 pages, I get a supreme headache.... Just though others should know what is going on as these packages have specifically been attacked on this forum (specifically EVMS).... and it would be nice for a measure of context to lighten the results of SCO's and IBM's actions. Specifically to those in the community (more broad then just Ubuntu) who regularly flare IBM for not supporting their linux projects.... At least six years of litigation..... How much has this cost IBM and Novell? How much have these attacks cost Linux?

P.S. The litigation from SCO was filed shortly after Microsoft purchased rights to SCO's copyright of *n*x.