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It's called Groklaw, and I couldn't agree more - they don't need Slashdot's help.

Please, people, stop submitting this crap to Slashdot. Go make a blog site dedicated to every little gossipy detail of SCO's legal activities if you want

The irony is that SCO dropped the "GPL is unconstitutional" claims just a few days ago. See this story on Groklaw.

import net.groklaw.IANAL;

Oh, it's over. don't believe me read Groklaw Daily. SCO has told the courts too many contradictory things to prove any of them. They'll lose to IBM first, then Novell, then Redhat, then autozone, then Chrystler. If they sue anybody else they'll really be fscked. They probably won't exist as a company after Novell. (though technically you're right, the cases haven't been settled, dropped, or judged yet)

Old crap, different day. Apparently the pressure is on to not cover real news like the fact the SCO royally screwed up with Daimler-Chrysler (DCC has not used the software is question for 7 years) or that SCO is no longer saying GPL is unconstitutional.

Maybe it's this you read. It says that if SCO stays below 6.75 for 20 days BayStar can ask for redemption. While this says that it's 8.46 and SCO can force the pay off. Either way, they are already facing a BayStar pullout, so it's hard to say how much it would hurt.

But Sun clearly needs to stretch their vision much further to survive. Java is still proprietary, and despite its open standards we're only able to use it thanks to their kindness. That's all well and good today, but Sun is a corporation, and a corporation's motivations can change with time. That's one of the points of open source - if they were to open source Java, we'd still like them, but we wouldn't be so dependent upon them. If their kindness ever runs out, Java developers will have a hard time moving elsewhere.

And as Pamela Jones noted on Groklaw this week, Sun may be trying to cater to a growing open source and free software community, but they clearly don't get it yet. Their execs still make Darlian public statements like "Linux is a great desktop, but not a server" and "Red Hat's distribution is proprietary." They don't get it. And until they grok free software and open source, and understand that ditching the lock-in model will make smart customers trust them, no one will respect them as a leader. And if casting aside their leadership potential by persuing lock-in is their only direction, then yes, they should just fold now.

Partly for the reasons outlined here. I don't completely agree with all PJ says there, but I do believe that the particular way in which Sun goes about attacking other companies and hyping itself is very counter-intuitive to them remaining a successful company that people are interested in.

I would be happy for them to remain where they are, carving their own niche, but they have to learn to stop attacking everyone else as they go along.

Groklaw has posted a text version of DaimlerChrysler's response to SCO's complaint.

"What is up with Sun funding SCO?"

Sun did not "fund SCO". Having take the decision to continue selling Solaris x86, Sun needed to improve their lamentable driver support. In a straightforward "buy v/s build" decision, they chose to buy. SCO was simply the only vendor with SVR4 device drivers to sell (hundreds of them). This sale went down in Feb '03, before SCO started tossing lawsuits out like confetti.

IBM Timeline

Red Hat Timeline

Novell Timeline

Sun Driver purchase news item

There may be many reasons to dislike Sun, but in my personal opinion they are not sponsors of SCO, and PJ seems to letting emotion cloud reason when it comes to commentary concerning Sun. They're certainly no better or worse than (say) HP or Oracle.
Tony.

"What is up with Sun funding SCO?"

Sun did not "fund SCO". Having take the decision to continue selling Solaris x86, Sun needed to improve their lamentable driver support. In a straightforward "buy v/s build" decision, they chose to buy. SCO was simply the only vendor with SVR4 device drivers to sell (hundreds of them). This sale went down in Feb '03, before SCO started tossing lawsuits out like confetti.

IBM Timeline

Red Hat Timeline

Novell Timeline

Sun Driver purchase news item

There may be many reasons to dislike Sun, but in my personal opinion they are not sponsors of SCO, and PJ seems to letting emotion cloud reason when it comes to commentary concerning Sun. They're certainly no better or worse than (say) HP or Oracle.
Tony.

"What is up with Sun funding SCO?"

Sun did not "fund SCO". Having take the decision to continue selling Solaris x86, Sun needed to improve their lamentable driver support. In a straightforward "buy v/s build" decision, they chose to buy. SCO was simply the only vendor with SVR4 device drivers to sell (hundreds of them). This sale went down in Feb '03, before SCO started tossing lawsuits out like confetti.

IBM Timeline

Red Hat Timeline

Novell Timeline

Sun Driver purchase news item

There may be many reasons to dislike Sun, but in my personal opinion they are not sponsors of SCO, and PJ seems to letting emotion cloud reason when it comes to commentary concerning Sun. They're certainly no better or worse than (say) HP or Oracle.
Tony.

"visa vi?" What's that? I think you meant, "vis-à-vis."

I know I ask a lot of Slashdotters, but the lingustic horrors seen daily around here leave me quite stunned. Nothing makes one sound more authoritative than good communication skills. Correct usage of the proper words makes any argument that much more convincing and bestows on the author an air of credibility.

The converse is also true: Incorrect useage of improper words makes any argument less convincing and subtracts from the author's credibility.

Now, on topic: Where in the world do you get off dismissing anything that PJ says in such a flip manner? Are you just new here, or have I just been trolled? PJ runs Groklaw, which is the target of a link in about every third Slashdot story lately.

Actually, when SCO stock hit $7.18, a bunch of them actually bought SCO stock. Not sure the "pump and dump" thing is playing out. Honestly, I think they are all just spoiled kiddies.

Groklaw coverred the story.

• Has IBM actually used its patent against anyone, or did they just get it in self-defence?

One of IBM's counter-claims against SCO in that circus of a lawsuit is that SCO infringes this very patent. See this thread on Groklaw. I don't know if they've had other legal disputes over the patent.

That would be IBM's Countersuit in this mess. SCO is the perfect target to go after for GPL violations. This could turn out to be VERRRY good for Linux people.

More on this at Groklaw and the Mercury News

"BayStar Capital Management LLC believes SCO needs to hire executives with more savvy about intellectual property cases and spend less money on its Unix products, BayStar spokesman Bob McGrath said Wednesday."

"SCO's chief executive is Darl McBride, whose cash compensation totaled $986,047 in the company's fiscal year ending last October. That pay package troubled BayStar, McGrath said, given SCO's small size - the company has annual revenue of $79 million and about 300 employees."

Baystar may finally be the one's to shut oldSCO's mouth for us so that IBM can finish the execution cleanly

Baystar asked for their money back.

Depends if you mean sued as in 'successfully sued', or just the initiation of the process, and if you believe your nation's legal system is just and fair. Personally, I have a hard time believing the latter about any nation's judicial system, but I worry that SCO and friends will use this as an argument to support their case. I was hoping there would be some brilliant retort to silence such a question once and for all, but I guess I'll just have to hope that 'open-sourcing' this thought hasn't given malicious types any advantage ;-)

Groklaw's running a more detailed piece that gives more information than in the press release. This basically ammounts to a reporter reporting about herself, but that also makes it information straight from the source.

Much like The Enquirer's news is not the same as that of The New York Times (your choice to which you prefer), not all web-based news providers are the same.

Some focus on humor and amusement, some on getting news out fast, and some on getting the facts as straight as possible (Groklaw is one of the better current examples of the latter, but many of the good hardware review sites also fall into this category.)

• Readers will gravitate to the news styles they want, regardless of medium.
• There are web-based news outlets that focus on facts and the verification thereof.
• Generalizations are bad, M'kay.

PJ has chosen to not respond to repeated questions about this. That's her choice. I'm done cutting her slack, especially given her own snooty attitude about document licensing in this article.

By the way, the order is: read; think; reply. I'm advocating use of the GNU Free Documentation License, which allows for commercial use. PJ is implicitely against that.

• 1. Distributed network of tech-savvy people collect usability data by observing newbs interact with GNU/Linux systems in basic set of tasks ("email, a simple letter, a firewall, and surf the internet").
• 2. Usabilty data (collected from step 1) is aggregated and publicly archived in its raw form.
• 3. A public Wiki is created by the community (based upon the collected data from step 2).
• 4. At the same time, an "official" Wiki is created by smaller core team (based upon the collected data from step 2).

Yeah.. that's quite a conspiracy theory. It's probably more likely that the SCO people are merely morons.

I don't think it's either. Well, I do think they're not the brightest bulbs, but it appears more likely to me that they started with reasonably intelligent and only mildly underhanded plan ("Let's irritate IBM into buying us out") and then found that they had painted themselves into a very unpleasant corner when IBM called their bluff.

I wrote a fairly detailed explanation of my view in a Groklaw post. I'd be interested in comments.

As usual, check the Groklaw story for the gritty details, including the contract (and commentary).

IANAL. I am a paralegal, so if you have a legal problem and want advice, this isn't the place. Hire an attorney instead. Research is, however, what paras do, so here I am sharing things I have found in my research.

IANAL. I am a paralegal, so if you have a legal problem and want advice, this isn't the place. Hire an attorney instead. Research is, however, what paras do, so here I am sharing things I have found in my research.

IANAL. I am a paralegal, so if you have a legal problem and want advice, this isn't the place. Hire an attorney instead. Research is, however, what paras do, so here I am sharing things I have found in my research.

IANAL. I am a paralegal, so if you have a legal problem and want advice, this isn't the place. Hire an attorney instead. Research is, however, what paras do, so here I am sharing things I have found in my research.

IANAL. I am a paralegal, so if you have a legal problem and want advice, this isn't the place. Hire an attorney instead. Research is, however, what paras do, so here I am sharing things I have found in my research.

IANAL. I am a paralegal, so if you have a legal problem and want advice, this isn't the place. Hire an attorney instead. Research is, however, what paras do, so here I am sharing things I have found in my research.

IANAL. I am a paralegal, so if you have a legal problem and want advice, this isn't the place. Hire an attorney instead. Research is, however, what paras do, so here I am sharing things I have found in my research.

To be fair, there is also the lion school of legal practice...fierce, brave, tenacious. Unfortunately the rats, vultures and sharks tend to dominate.

Wow, for the first time ever in my /. posting history, it's actually relevant to add: IANAL.

... where SCO has been ordered to:

1. To fully comply within 45 days of the entry of this order [NB: March 3 + 45 = April 17] with the court's previous order dated December 12, 2003. This is to include those items that SCO had difficulty in obtaining prior to the Court's previously ordered deadline of January 12, 2004.
2. As previously ordered, SCO is to provide and identify all specific lines of code that IBM is alleged to have contributed to Linux from either AIX or Dynix. This is to include all lines of code that SCO can identify at this time.
3. SCO is to provide and identify all specific lines of code from Unix System V from which IBM's contributions from AIX and Dynix are alleged to be derived.
4. SCO is to provide and identify with specificity all lines of code in Linux that it claims rights to.
5. SCO is to provide and identify with specificity the lines of code that SCO distributed to other parties. This is to include where applicable the conditions of release, to whom the code was released, the date and under what circumstances such code was released.

6. It's a tall order. I foresee a lot of coffee drinking and nail-biting this weekend, whether or not the smoking suitcase is full of evidence.

... where SCO has been ordered to:

1. To fully comply within 45 days of the entry of this order [NB: March 3 + 45 = April 17] with the court's previous order dated December 12, 2003. This is to include those items that SCO had difficulty in obtaining prior to the Court's previously ordered deadline of January 12, 2004.
2. As previously ordered, SCO is to provide and identify all specific lines of code that IBM is alleged to have contributed to Linux from either AIX or Dynix. This is to include all lines of code that SCO can identify at this time.
3. SCO is to provide and identify all specific lines of code from Unix System V from which IBM's contributions from AIX and Dynix are alleged to be derived.
4. SCO is to provide and identify with specificity all lines of code in Linux that it claims rights to.
5. SCO is to provide and identify with specificity the lines of code that SCO distributed to other parties. This is to include where applicable the conditions of release, to whom the code was released, the date and under what circumstances such code was released.

6. It's a tall order. I foresee a lot of coffee drinking and nail-biting this weekend, whether or not the smoking suitcase is full of evidence.

PJ's discussing it over on Groklaw.

German corporations enjoy free speech in Germany as well -- this is not the issue. The German legal system just doesn't believe in waiting years before addressing what is an obvious wrong. Contrast this with the judge in the SCO case who decided to let SCO keep spitting out their FUD until the IBM case is solved, thereby giving SCO a free hand to continue to damage RedHat's reputation for what could be just about forever. German courts happen to think that if you want to say bad things about the way other people do business, you should be able to prove it right away, not five years later. This is sort of along the lines that free speech does not cover me calling up your boss and telling him that you, say, have intercourse with sheep.

The simple fact is that Germany's legal system is superior in this respect, as in quite a number of others. Or to put it the other way around: The American legal system is hopelessly stuck in the 18th century, and even though Germany is not in the 21st century where everybody should be, it is at least in the 20th century.

Sometimes, 200 years and a bit of common sense can make all the difference.

Well, this certainly has the potential to become a really big deal for tHe FOSS community, one way or the other.

For the legally inclined, there's another discussion about this going on over at Groklaw.

This must be how Gregory Blepp managed to get those 1.5 million lines of infringing code fit to a suitcase.

Yeah, I liked that! And the Mozilla sample was Groklaw.

Pump up the stock price based on nice big numbers ("43 million active users and 425 advertisers") that lead the unwary/uninformed to assume that this company has specialized capabilities that can be the beginning of the next Internet boom; the executives and investment backers incrementally cash out while stories about the sure thing are dribbled to the media to keep the stock price up. Groklaw discusses the SCO strategy in greater detail.

Just like the GPL uses copyright against itself,

The GPL doesn't use copyright "against itself", it uses copyright the way it was intended: to extract a payment in return for the right to copy. What's interesting about the GPL is that it requires payment in kind rather than cash royalties.

See this good article for a non-technical discussion of this.

But it makes sense. Whether you're drawing a contract to protect intellectual property or protect *distribution* of intellectual property, in either case you are deliberately writing a contract that protects some actions and prohibits other actions.

No, it doesn't make sense. Is it really so hard to see that the two are not comparable at all?

Here is why these are completely different: the iTMS agrement is a contract, the GPL is a license. Contracts are based on contract law, and the GPL is based on Copyright law. You can check Groklaw for a decent explanation of the GPL: see the "Copyright and the GPL" section".

Further more, the GPL is a license which grants you rights above and beyond what the law grants you (fair use rights are part of copyright law). The iTMS agreement (and DRM in general) restricts your rights to fewer than granted by fair use. This is why EULAs and such are controversial, and may not really be enforcable.

SCO's licensing behavior, as IBM has been pointing out in their Counterclaims to the SCO lawsuit (Counterclaim 6, para. 142-147 is especially relevant), violates the GPL, because SCO distributed Linux and other GPL software, then attempted to alter the terms of the license using SCOsource.

Paragraph 147 shows what kinds of damages open source developers have a right to expect:

147. As a result of SCO's breaches of the GPL, countless developers and users of Linux, including IBM, have suffered and will continue to suffer damages and other irreparable injury. IBM is entitled to a declaration that SCO's rights under the GPL terminated, an injunction prohibiting SCO from its continuing and threatened breaches of the GPL and an award of damages in an amount to be determined at trial.

SCO is unpopular with "the /. crowd" precisely because a significant number of them are Linux and open source developers. Yes, all open source projects get tarred with the same brush in the non-tech public (read: investors) when SCO claims the GPL is unconstitutional and threatens to sue end-users. These guys aren't multimillionaires being bankrolled by M$ and don't have the money, time, or ability to get into a legal fight with SCO. They all lose customers and support until the lawsuits are over. When the Yankee Group publishes yet another TCO study that says "Linux is great, but, oops, the costs of indemnity from legal challenges pending in the courts forced us to revise our cost estimate upward," businesses learn that Linux is risky until the court cases are over. Developers lose.

Someone must be responsible! Someone must pay for this damage! The thought that Darl McBride, Canopy, M$ et al. will come away from these lawsuits, no matter what, with their reputations, fortunes, business practices, quotidian lives intact is like a maddening thorn in the brain of "the /. crowd". That's why everyone keeps asking about criminal charges... not because they really hope to see these people in jail, but because they are yearning for justice.

SCO's licensing behavior, as IBM has been pointing out in their Counterclaims to the SCO lawsuit (Counterclaim 6, para. 142-147 is especially relevant), violates the GPL, because SCO distributed Linux and other GPL software, then attempted to alter the terms of the license using SCOsource.

Paragraph 147 shows what kinds of damages open source developers have a right to expect:

147. As a result of SCO's breaches of the GPL, countless developers and users of Linux, including IBM, have suffered and will continue to suffer damages and other irreparable injury. IBM is entitled to a declaration that SCO's rights under the GPL terminated, an injunction prohibiting SCO from its continuing and threatened breaches of the GPL and an award of damages in an amount to be determined at trial.

SCO is unpopular with "the /. crowd" precisely because a significant number of them are Linux and open source developers. Yes, all open source projects get tarred with the same brush in the non-tech public (read: investors) when SCO claims the GPL is unconstitutional and threatens to sue end-users. These guys aren't multimillionaires being bankrolled by M$ and don't have the money, time, or ability to get into a legal fight with SCO. They all lose customers and support until the lawsuits are over. When the Yankee Group publishes yet another TCO study that says "Linux is great, but, oops, the costs of indemnity from legal challenges pending in the courts forced us to revise our cost estimate upward," businesses learn that Linux is risky until the court cases are over. Developers lose.

Someone must be responsible! Someone must pay for this damage! The thought that Darl McBride, Canopy, M$ et al. will come away from these lawsuits, no matter what, with their reputations, fortunes, business practices, quotidian lives intact is like a maddening thorn in the brain of "the /. crowd". That's why everyone keeps asking about criminal charges... not because they really hope to see these people in jail, but because they are yearning for justice.

Lackadaisical (adj.) - 1) Lacking spirit, liveliness, or interest; languid: "There'll be no time to correct lackadaisical driving techniques after trouble develops" (William J. Hampton). 2) Affectedly pensive; languidly sentimental.

And now thanks to SCO and the RedHat lawsuit (page 5) referenced by the Groklaw article we might see an expansion of the definition for lawyers and geeks alike...

3) Lacking urgency and passionate conviction: "[SCO is] ... taking a lackadaisical attitude toward pursuing its claims."

Don't know exactly, but my first suspicion would be the buyback program. Choice quote (click link for source):

"'Some critics believe the buyback frenzy was nothing more than executives seeking to maximize their own wealth. 'They boost the price in the short term and then sell their shares,' says Kathleen M. Kahle..."

Definetely check that Groklaw link for more information. I'm just a programmer, so really, I don't know what I'm talking about. But the buyback program seems like a good place to start.

Were there any Sun statements made against Linux?