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Someone over at Groklaw this morning was claiming that RBoC is the only major Canadian bank not still running OS/2. RBoC uses an OS from a company that's fairly close to Vancouver that is unbeloved of /.ers.

The SCO fiasco crap could have easily ended if Linus could produce some sort of audit trail, send it to SCO, and say "here's who contributed what, go take it up with the author".

Linus did say that.

"It's not our side that isn't identifying the code. We'll work damn hard to identify everything they care to name," Torvalds said. "In fact, the source control system is out there in the public, and it identifies the source and the reason for patches," mentioning the BitKeeper repository he's used for the past two years to keep track of code in the heart, or kernel, of Linux

...

No. I allege that SCO is full of it, and that the Linux process is already the most transparent process in the whole industry. Let's face it, nobody else even comes close to being as good at showing the evolution and source of every single line of code out there. The only party that has had serious problems clarifying what they are talking about is SCO, and now when details start emerging like with RCU, it's clearly about IP that they had nothing to do with, and don't even own. I'm sure that they are confident that they own the collective work of Unix, but that's a separate thing entirely legally from being the actual copyright owner of any specific section of code.

How much more of an audit trail do you want? The SCO-job was gonna happen. One way or another.

Microsoft's Monopoly trashing everyone's software patents = good

No, that should be trashing everyone's software patents = good, because these never seem to do anything but stifle innovation.

Anyhow, there are ways to deal with this, which is why the EFF has announced a Patent Busting Project, which you can read about in this article on Groklaw.

The gist of it is that you can file with the USPTO to have a patent reexaminated if you present them with prior art. Of course, it costs money, too, which is rather annoying, if understandable.

Speaking of which, this would not be a bad time to donate to the EFF.

but then, Sun says linux isn't open source, so...
(sorry, couldnt find the specific article, but the one I linked to does mention it)

You state an appealing concept, for sure. Who wouldn't want to live in a society governed by "reasonable" laws (instead of mostly commercial ones)?

The fact of the matter is, I'm sure you'll find, that there are just too many facets to a population to make do with anything simple, and too many rotten tomatoes to make do without stringent prohibitions here, there and in between.

And, I don't think lawyers should be avoided at all costs, in spite of their common reputation -- there are also good lawyers you know.

Meanwhile, may I refer you thusly.

I fully understand that this article is coming from an open source advocate and therefore it will reflect that movement's philosophy. The same thing could be said of Mark Webbink's article about licensing and much (if not all of) ESR's articles. But I don't think that means there is license to misstate history. Hubbard notes:

The Free Software Foundation launched the GNU project in 1984 with the initial aim of creating a complete operating system environment (the GNU system). It may not have succeeded in creating a mainstream operating system, but it did create some excellent tools along the way. Among these are the Emacs editor, the GCC (GNU C Compiler), and the GDB (GNU Debugger). [...]

A relatively minor correction: the GNU project began before the Free Software Foundation. Therefore the FSF did not launch the GNU project. GCC was renamed to mean the GNU Compiler Collection some time ago when it compiled multiple programming languages.

What's more important to note is that GNU was not just at attempt at only making a complete OS, its ultimate goal is to give people software freedom (a concept not discussed in the open source movement because software freedom is perceived to get in the way of speaking to this movement's target audience--businesses). RMS launched GNU with that aim and GNU continues to be developed with that aim today. Understanding this focus will pay off in Hubbard's next paragraph.

GNU is not properly discussed in the past tense just as it is inappropriate to speak in the past tense about various BSD systems (despite the running gag here on Slashdot that BSD is dying); all of these systems and others based on them continue to be developed.

The greatest caveat to using software from the GNU project is probably its licensing terms. GNU software is released predominately under the GPL (GNU General Public License), with some of its software released under the less-restrictive but still formidable LGPL (GNU Lesser General Public License). Anyone interested in incorporating GPL- or LGPL-licensed software in their own products should certainly read the section on evaluating licenses in this article.

Here we get a clear indication that this article is chiefly aimed at managers who want their businesses to be treated as charities. The GNU project's aim to deliver software freedom would be hindered if that freedom could be taken away in derivative works. So the chief license of the GNU project (and the entire free software community) requires that all the power of the license be granted to licensees.

Later we'll see that the most agreeable licenses are the non-copylefted licenses (forgive me for using free software terminology here but the open source movement doesn't differentiate on the basis of freedom preservation and as Webbink's intellectually dishonest essay illustrates, this is a useful distinction): most notably the MIT X11 license and the new BSD license. It's key to remember that this essay is not about businesses licensing their programs under the new BSD or MIT X11 license; it's about what licenses to look for in other people's work that allow businesses to build on what they have done and exclusively control the derivative program. Given this, it's odd that these licenses are championed for their ability to let businesses sublicense derivative works and yet (in the last part of the essay) businesses are warned not to "establish a reputation, either fairly or unfairly, as a "taker" who has no interest in giving something back".

In the second section, Hubbard summarizes the GNU GPL:

GPL. You are allowed to use GPL'd software in your own code as long as your own code is also licensed under the GPL and provided under the same terms (basically free of charge and in source form) to end users.

"Use" is a tricky word because it

damn, just when i want some REASONED analysis of this, groklaw is having php grumbles...

Please read this excellent article by Pamela Jones on Groklaw called "Samizdat - a Noble Word with a Touching History" In fact I recommend everyone read it. It is one of the best articles on Groklaw ever.

ESR is a egoistic windbag. I would much rather see Pamela Jones receive the award.

will thay give credit to GNOME and GPL s/w on which it is based. lot of details on GrokLaw

Google should be able to do whatever they want, considering that the customers have agreed to it.

Of course this attempted regulation is not stupid per se - it's just stupid in the context of Google and its e-mail system. If Microsoft were to do this to Windows and implement an uninstallable system that could track your browsing, document editing and other activities in order to collect demographic data, I'd say throw the book at them. The difference? Google doesn't have a monopoly over anything. There are tons of alternatives, both for webmail and e-mail in general. (Of course there are also alternatives to Windows, but for better or worse the world is more dependent on Windows than it is on Gmail.)

I hope silly uses of our government's time like this one don't serve to prevent us from doing useful things with government regulation - like forcing Microsoft to refund your money if you return your unused copy of Windows, or preventing public companies from inflating their stock values for executive sell-offs. There is such a thing as regulation that serves the public good, regardless of what Religious Republicans try to tell you. This just ain't it.

Heh, you should read PJ's take on it, as this story is also covered on Groklaw

Speaking of which, has anyone else noticed the singular omissions Brown of AdTI is making here? One might think that he was acting with a reckless disregard for the truth, which counts as evidence of "actual malice." Not that that should be surprising to us, as those on SCO's side of things have been known for defaming people before (see my sig or journal), but it might be a basis for a lawsuit, even though Linus is likely a "public figure" ... Of course, IANAL.

He also tried to disclose Pamela Jones' home address, according to this article of hers over at Groklaw (complete with lyons' name highlighted!). Now why would a reporter do that? The only explaination I can come up with is to scare PJ and make her feel uncomfortable. And why would a simple journalist want to do that? Clearly he and/or his masters had a bone to pick.

The timing of this actually ties nicely with the SCO/IBM trail shenanigans. IBM has just made a request that the Court certify that It's use of Linux (and, in effect, anrybody's use of Linux does not violate any of SCO's purported copyrights. This would apply to pretty much everything contributed up to SCO's last disclosure in court (which would be, I think, sometime mid-April).

Given that the UNIX code base (read: SCOX) is the biggest threat to the legal cleanliness of the Linux, having a responsibility trail for everything that gets added in from here on in is a good fit. It only leaves about a one month hole in the documented cleanlines of Linux -- which shouldn't be that hard to close.

The groklaw article about the (proposed) change in the Linux submission process tries to explain (among other things) some fof the legal and technical implications of the change.

I just can't put my finger on what they're up to...

I have two words to answer your question.

Software Patents

A few more words...

Eben Moglen spoke at Harvard in February regarding not just SCO, but the future direction of the IT industry at large.

He said that today the battle is over copyright. In five years the battle will be over software patents. And in ten years the battle will shift to that of bandwidth. Of ensuring that everyone has access to bandwidth as easily as they do electricity, so that all may share in the information that is available.

My dates may be slightly off, but you can see the coming progression of battlefields.

Microsoft engages in illegal and immoral behavior. But they are not stupid. They are preparing for the next war, which will be software patents.

The transcript of Eben Moglen's speech can be viewed here from Groklaw and the video of his speech can be viewed here from Harvard. (Sorry, it's in Real Media format)

If you haven't seen that speech, you should. To call it enlightening is to do it a disservice.

- Neil Wehneman

P.S. I realize I use battle and war imagery a lot in this post, but quite frankly I believe the stakes are that high. Imagine if the printing press revolution had fallen to the entrenched interests of the day. We are now in the same situation, only with digital information.

With their typical prescience, the FSF discussed this issue. Read the transcript of Eben Moglen's talk or listen to the talk and you'll find this segment about one hour into the talk (during the Q&A section):

One of the legal consequences of the SCO affair is that people are going to start to pay closer attention all the time to how free software products are put together. They are going to discover that what really matters is how you deal with the questions of, for example, possible lurking work-for-hire claims against free software. They're going to discover that in this respect, too, Mr. Stallman was quite prescient, because they are going to recognize that the way they want their free software put together is the way the Free Software Foundation put it together since now more than twenty years. The way we're going, they're going to discover that they really would like to have it, is for each individual contribution of code to a free software project, if the guy who contributed the code was working in the industry, they would really like to have a work-for-hire disclaimer from the guy's employer, executed at the same time that the contribution was made. And the filing cabinets at the Free Software Foundation are going to look to them like an oasis in a desert of possible problems. We saw that problem coming. We have tried in our act as stewards over a large part of the free software in the world to deal with it. People are going to want to have that up front for everything that they can possibly, and they're going to be much more reluctant to rely on software that wasn't assembled in those ways.

If you are thinking about working in the law of free software, and gosh, I hope you are, one of the things you might want to be thinking about working on is the software conservation trusts that are going to be growing up around this economy in the next five years. I'll help you make one, or you can come to work in one of mine. We're going to need to spend a lot of time doing work which is associated with trustees. We're going to be spending a lot of time making sure that things are put together and they are built well. And we are going to be doing that on behalf of a third-party insurance industry which is going to be growing up, is growing up before our very eyes now, which is learning that it really cares how the free software is assembled.

Sage words when one's software's source code history is being questioned.

It's out now!

GrokLine

Groklaw story on Grokline

And I wonder why the submitter didn't think to link to the same story on Groklaw!

Go figure?

There is an article on this subject at groklaw
It covers more or less the same territory in a bit more depth.

Note that PJ at GrokLaw doesn't feel that this motion is necessarily a slam-dunk -- but the IBM lawyers seem to be running on the sharp side, so I'm giving it at least a 75% chance (with most of that other 25% coming from my lack of shureness given that IANAL).

According to PJ, even if this motion doesn't pass it'll help get the judge up to speed on SCO's shenanigans (The memorandumm in support provides a pretty good quick history of what's been going on in the courts {and elsewhere} in the last year). FYI, it's a different judge handling this motion than handled all of the disclosure motions.

Part of what makes figuring out the probablility of success for this motion is the fact that much of the relevant disclosure is under wraps, but IBM's summary of it makes it seem like SCO disclosed a big goose egg in a mildly convoluted package.

I never thought about the GPL like that, but you are absolutly right. It's really that simple. No wonder Darl and his lawyers couldn't understand.

This is why the GPL is so beautiful, it's one of the most elegant hacks ever made.

Eben Moglen put it this way when he spoke at Harvard a while back...

The grave difficulty that SCO has with free software isn't their attack; it's the inadequacy of their defense. In order to defend yourself in a case in which you are infringing the freedom of free software, you have to be prepared to meet a call that I make reasonably often with my colleagues at the Foundation who are here tonight. That telephone call goes like this. "Mr. Potential Defendant, you are distributing my client's copyrighted work without permission. Please stop. And if you want to continue to distribute it, we'll help you to get back your distribution rights, which have terminated by your infringement, but you are going to have to do it the right way." At the moment that I make that call, the potential defendant's lawyer now has a choice. He can cooperate with us, or he can fight with us. And if he goes to court and fights with us, he will have a second choice before him. We will say to the judge, "Judge, Mr. Defendant has used our copyrighted work, copied it, modified it and distributed it without permission. Please make him stop." One thing that the defendant can say is, "You're right. I have no license." Defendants do not want to say that, because if they say that they lose. So defendants, when they envision to themselves what they will say in court, realize that what they will say is, "But Judge, I do have a license. It's this here document, the GNU GPL. General Public License," at which point, because I know the license reasonably well, and I'm aware in what respect he is breaking it, I will say, "Well, Judge, he had that license but he violated its terms and under Section 4 of it, when he violated its terms, it stopped working for him." But notice that in order to survive moment one in a lawsuit over free software, it is the defendant who must wave the GPL. It is his permission, his master key to a lawsuit that lasts longer than a nanosecond. This, quite simply, is the reason that lies behind the statement you have heard -- Mr. McBride made it here some weeks ago -- that there has never been a court test of the GPL. To those who like to say there has never been a court test of the GPL, I have one simple thing to say: Don't blame me. I was perfectly happy to roll any time. It was the defendants who didn't want to do it. And when for ten solid years, people have turned down an opportunity to make a legal argument, guess what? It isn't any good.

Read the whole speach at Groklaw.

• The paper is poorly written, full of contradictions and gramatical errors. If their essay were a program, it would not even compile, let alone work.
• Nearly every paragraph makes an unsubstantiated assertion. Brown seems to feel that just inserting "it is clear that", "ironically", "clearly", or "it is widely known" is an adequate substitute for cited evidence. Ironically, it clearly is not.
• Brown clearly does not understand the terms he uses, such as "copyright", "public domain" or "open source". He does not seem to understand that copyright protects representations, not ideas. In several places he seems to think that open source is in the public domain.
• Quotes such as "sometimes theft is necessary" as are attributed to the open source community without any evidence they were ever uttered by anyone.
• Experts are asked misleading or hypothetical questions to elicit quotes that are used out of context. I think AdTI is not honest enough to ask straight questions because the answers would not suit them.
• Brown says he can't believe that Linus wrote Linux, because... welll, he just can't believe it. Nothing more. He does not cite even a single line of Linux source that was copied from any other system, despite that all the data needed to check this is available to him. If he found even one line, his paper might be credible. But he does not.
• When sources are cited, Brown grossly misinterprets the data: diagrams that do not show code descent are interpreted as showing code descent.
• If Microsoft paid AdTI to write this, they didn't get much for their money.
• AdTI would like universities to release their work under something like the MIT licence, rather than the GPL or proprietary licences. At least this is not obviously silly, though as usual they just state it without making a meaningful case.
• Perhaps worst of all, the authors did not even speak to Linus before publishing these fabulous \ allegations against him.

Ken Brown's Motivation, Release 1.2

Background

On 20 May 2004, I posted a statement refuting the claim of Ken Brown, President of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, that Linus Torvalds didn't write Linux. My statement was mentioned on Slashdot, Groklaw, and many other Internet news sites. This attention resulted in over 150,000 requests to our server in less than a day, which is still standing despite yesterday being a national holiday with no one there to stand next to it saying "You can do it. You can do it." Kudos to Sun Microsystems and the folks who built Apache. My statement was mirrored all over the Internet, so the number of true hits to it is probably a substantial multiple of that. There were also quite a few comments at Slashdot, Groklaw, and other sites, many of them about me. I had never engaged in remote multishrink psychoanalysis on this scale before, so it was a fascinating experience.

The Brown Book

I got an advance copy of Ken Brown's book. I think it is still under embargo, so I won't comment on it. Although I am not an investigative reporter, even I know it is unethical to discuss publications still under embargo. Some of us take ethics more seriously than others. So I won't even reveal the title. Let's call it The Brown Book. There is some precedent for nicknaming books after colors: The International Standard for the CD-ROM (IS 10149) is usually called The Red Book.

Suffice it to say, there is a great deal to criticize in the book. I am sure that will happen when it is published. I may even help out.

Brown's Motivation

What prompted me to write this note today is an email I got yesterday. Actually, I got quite a few :-) , most of them thanking me for the historical material. One of yesterday's emails was from Linus, in response to an email from me apologizing for not letting him see my statement in advance. As a matter of courtesy, I did try but I was using his old transmeta.com address and didn't know his new one until I got a very kind email from Linus' father, a Finnish journalist.

In his email, Linus said that Brown never contacted him. No email, no phone call, no personal interview. Nothing. Considering the fact that Brown was writing an explosive book in which he accused Linus of not being the author of Linux, you would think a serious author would at least confront the subject with the accusation and give him a chance to respond. What kind of a reporter talks to people on the periphery of the subject but fails to talk to the main player?

Why did Brown fly all the way to Europe to interview me and (and according to an email I got from his seat-mate on the plane) one other person in Scandinavia, at considerable expense, and not at least call Linus? Even if he made a really bad choice of phone company, how much could that cost? Maybe a dollar? I call the U.S. all the time from Amsterdam. It is less than 5 cents a minute. How much could it cost to call California from D.C.?

From reading all the comments posted yesterday, I am now beginning to get the picture. Apparently a lot of people (still) think that I 'hate' Linus for stealing all my glory (see below for more on this). I didn't realize this view was so widespread. I now suspect that Brown believed this, too, and thought that I would be happy to dump all over Linus to get 'revenge.' By flying to Amsterdam he thought he could dig up dirt on Linus and get me to speak evil of him. He thought I would back up his crazy claim that Linus stole Linux from me. Brown was wrong on two counts. First, I bear no 'grudge' against Linus at all. He wrote Linux himself and deserves the credit. Second, I am really not a mean person. Even if I were still angry with him aft

>In fact, the things IBM doesn't want to have thrown out are their counterclaims against SCO. IBM does ask for almost all of SCO's claims to be thrown out.

Not really. What SCO claims in the media is "IBM stole our code and put it in Linux". Their COURT claims, however, are different. If you look at SCO's second ammended complaint, Copyright infringement is the fifth cause of action, but they never directly accuse IBM of putting UNIX code in Linux (just "derivative works"). The rest of the claims are contract violation, unfair competition, etc.

Partial summary judgement on copyright infringement would be a PR nightmare for SCO (even though they'll spin it as though that's what they wanted), but I would expect the case to continue until SCO becomes the largest crater in Utah.

Thats exactly what they've done.. and since they wanted to give SCO as MUCH chance as possible to:
1. produce the evidence
2. destroy their own argument
3. bankrupt SCO in legal fees
its taken this long...

If it was a short case noone would have cared about it and the benefits to Linux and FOSS wouldn't have occured...

jeez don't you read groklaw at all?

Reading throught many of the recent Groklaw stories and posts, I've found some of the legal insights intriguing. IBM's lawyers did a wonderful job of giving Darl and Company plenty of time and opportunity to paint themselves into a corner.

IBM has documented SCOX's failure on two different orders to produce their evidence in discovery. They have also brought forth conflicting statements made by various lawyers and corporate types, the lawyers saying, "We have no further evidence" with the officers saying, "We will find more evidence as things go along". Even more damaging, SCO's filing lawsuits against so many other entities has caused other lawsuits to depend on the conclusion of this one, so there suddenly is no way for them to not go ahead.

I just hope that the SEC seeks criminal cases against SCOX board members over this one. That would do everyone well for the long term.

Also out is Memorandum in opposition of SCO's delaying tactics.

"Originals" available here. Multi-Page TIFFs. You can install libtiff-tools to get tiff2pdf and tiff2ps.

Related docs which could make the subpoena irrelevant: Defendant/Counterclaim Plaintoff IBM's Memorandum In Support of its Cross-Motion for Partial Summary Judgement on its claim for Declaratory Judgment of Non-Infringement (phew).

I especially loved the comment that insinuates that Linus could have done a better job if he HAD stolen the code, than he did.

Basically, the above is _exactly_ the kinds of mistakes a young programmer would make. It's classic.

See any similarities?

Groklaw
Weblogs

Or is this some standard template?

Groklaw has a story on the SD Times FUD Award, as well as some comments from Red Hat's new counsel regarding FUD activities as responses to the disruptive technologies of Open Source, and that Red Hat will defend against it in the future.

Also, IBM has just filed a memorandum opposing SCO's motion to extend the court schedule. It sounds boring, I know, but what it basically says is that there is no reason to extend the court date, because any delays in the schedule have been caused by SCO's own malfeasance, and IBM intends to ask for summary judgement on everything anyway.

Here are some of the choicer quotes:

"As stated, the most egregious example of SCO's discovery misconduct is SCO's persistent refusal to identify with specificity the UNIX System V source code that forms the basis of its claims against IBM."

"IBM believes that discovery in this case should be conducted according to the schedule to which the parties agreed almost a year ago. In fact, as we will lay out in forthcoming submissions most (if not all) of the claims in the suit can be resolved on summary judgment without more discovery. SCO should not be allowed, through its own misconduct, to prolong this case merely to serve its own interests in cultivating the fear, uncertainty and doubt SCO has created regarding Linux and IBM's products."

"In the instant case, SCO has not shown "good cause" for extending fact discovery in the case for an additional nine months and putting off trial until September 2005. ... [E]ach of SCO's stated reasons for requestinfg the extension are attributable entirely to SCO's own stalling tactics during the course of discovery and reflect an utter lack of diligence."

A tiff of the full document can be found at Pacer's public SCO v. IBM page.

The PDF can be found at Frank Sorenson's sco.tuxrocks.com site.

PJ' post about this on groklaw notes that the best translation for tocqueville would be city of the crazy falsness -- or, as I would put it: fudville.

Or are is it just a coincidence that they have the same image header as Groklaw?

I regularly search on google for it, but no big news for the moment :-/ This seems to be the latest update (Grokdoc - A Status Report Sunday, April 18 2004). Basically says the reaction was very good and there are a lot of hands willing to help... but no beta-testing URL nor anything like that. I really would like to redirect some happy new-converts there...

Fark and ArsTechnica probably have articles too.

The /. editors are terrible.

</satire>

Fark and ArsTechnica probably have articles too.

The /. editors are terrible.

</satire>

On Groklaw, this was reported last Thursday. Not only will Germany vote no, but there is some pretty heavy pressure on France to do the same. In fact, to quote Groklaw, "They call business methods patents on software corporate racketeering and say they don't want to copy US methods"

The entities putting pressure on the French govt. include the head of MandrakeSoft, who has pretty heavy pull over in France. In fact, IIRC, a lot of French govt. agencies use Mandrake Linux.

Hardly secret, as the Utah courts have already noted. Novell sued them and WON for their share of the proceeds. SCO tried the usual tricks of getting greedy and trying to rewrite the contract unilaterally, trying to bring in oral agreements, then as usual, got shafted by their own evidence.

Groklaw has already covered it.

best quote: The district court perspicuously noted that the Canopy position "requires the court to reach the anomalous conclusion that by taking the attorney fee provision out of the agreement it really was writing the provision into the agreement."

The decision of the Utah Court of Appeals, which was also reported on Groklaw, says that there was a secret agreement that Canopy would sue Microsoft. Novell and Canopy were simply fighting over which of them should pay the cost of Canopy's suit against Microsoft.

Did Novell indirectly create a monster? Caldera's 300 million winnings against Microsoft are now being used to fund lawsuits against Linux (and Novell).

Novell also was to receive a cut of any lawsuit awards in the form of so-called "royalties."

* * *

When Canopy prevailed against Microsoft and received the settlement, it tried to first deduct its attorney fees, court costs and other expenses, the judges found. Novell, believing its still-undisclosed cut of the award should have come on the gross amount, sued for breach of contract.

To accomplish this, Novell and Canopy executed two separate documents: the first was a contract of sale, obligating Canopy to pay $400,000 for rights to the source code; the second was a temporary license obligating Canopy to pay $600,000 in license fees and "royalties." The royalties included provisions for payment to Novell of a percentage of any recoveries from lawsuits.

it has to be said, innocent until proven guilty

It's nice that you want to keep an open mind, but paragraphs 3, 4, and 5 of Judge Jackson's findings, Novell did indeed arrange secretly for Caldera to sue Microsoft, essentially on Novell's behalf. I think that qualifies as "proven guilty."

And here's a picture of Darl's seat , courtesy of SCO's just-closed Polish office. (The former manager of which is now setting up his own Linux business, specializing in helping users migrate from SCO's software onto Linux -- which is not SCO's, of course! -- see Groklaw for details)

FYI... There is a new article at groklaw describing a ruling in the Canopy vs. Novell case.

For those who don't know, this is yet another case where Canopy (parent company of SCO) says that what is written in the contract isn't as important as the oral agreements they made, and that what the parties agreed to is the opposite of what the written contract says they agreed to.

FYI... There is a new article at groklaw describing a ruling in the Canopy vs. Novell case.

For those who don't know, this is yet another case where Canopy (parent company of SCO) says that what is written in the contract isn't as important as the oral agreements they made, and that what the parties agreed to is the opposite of what the written contract says they agreed to.

Google has claimed in its Letter from the Founders, addressed to the shareholders and contained in their S-1 filing, that it plans to sacrifice short term profitability in order to remain true to its original vision.

A choice quote from their letter:

We believe a well functioning society should have abundant, free and unbiased access to high quality information. Google therefore has a responsibility to the world. [...] We believe that fulfilling this responsibility will deliver increased value to our shareholders.

Jason.

The plan should be:

1) Like you said, F/OSS organizations should file for their own patents that are freely available for all to use. I am unsure how this will be sponsored though since filing for a patent is nontrivially expensive.

2) Support PubPat in looking for prior art for the worse offending patents against free / open source software, and other patents that are harmful to society. A story from Groklaw about PubPat.

3) Try to get patent reform done including disallowing software patents, and have more patent examiners hired with actual experience so they can sniff out bogus claims.

The plan should be:

1) Like you said, F/OSS organizations should file for their own patents that are freely available for all to use. I am unsure how this will be sponsored though since filing for a patent is nontrivially expensive.

2) Support PubPat in looking for prior art for the worse offending patents against free / open source software, and other patents that are harmful to society. A story from Groklaw about PubPat.

3) Try to get patent reform done including disallowing software patents, and have more patent examiners hired with actual experience so they can sniff out bogus claims.

Just so ya know, Bert Young has a experience in helping companies that are basically dead in the water keep up the illusion of growth right up to the moment of reckoning. The GL has a story on it here.

The market is losing interest in SCOX. It's clear now that there's no big near-term win there.

It's hard to get excited about a press release from a lobbyist from a trade association, especially when it doesn't announce any action. But it's good to have statements like that, because it discourages Congressional action. Recall that SCO was lobbying Congress at one point. With IBM, Damlier-Chrysler, Utah's Novell, Goldman Sachs, and the National Retail Federation against SCO, Congress isn't going to do anything stupid.

The real action is in the SCO vs IBM lawsuit, where SCO is not doing well. SCO has narrowed their copyright claim. SCO had a deadline coming up on the discovery front, where they have to disclose the "infringing code". They're close to the "put up or shut up" point in that case. They've stalled and stalled, but it didn't work. One motion at a time, IBM has whittled away at SCO's claims. The trade secret claim is gone. The copyright claims are steadily shrinking. The claim that the GPL is "unconstitutional" is gone. Meanwhile, IBM's claims against SCO threaten SCO's remaining cash.

If you read some more Groklaw, especially here, when the filing first came out, you will see that SCO is still calling the GPL unenforceable, inapplicable, and so on, and IBM still claims that SCO's GPL violations are causing harm. So it will still be an issue in the suit and countersuit.

Specifically (I feel stupid quoting myself, but):

For one thing, "denies the enforceability or applicability of the GPL" is littered all over their responses. Paras. 24, 26, 28, 108, 143, 155, all have some statement to that effect. So they will have to explain why, when they distributed Linux and then broke the GPL, the GPL is not enforceable or applicable. Otherwise they will have a meager defense regarding, e.g. their breach of IBM's GPL'ed copyrights (Counterclaim 8, including paras. 155 and 157).

For another thing, read IBM's sixth counterclaim (142-147). The claim is that SCO breached the GPL, which is causing continued harm to IBM and other developers. SCO will have to explain what they believe about the GPL because IBM is making it an issue.