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Yes... because the contract states in 4.16(b) that SCO can't waive any rights of licensees without asking Novell for permissions. So technically the AIX license of IBM they have waived is still intact because Novell didn't agree. (See GROKLAW as a reference.)

it appears Novell has just torpedoed SCO's newest acusations against IBM. here's the letter they sent SCO waiving the claim to any Sequent developed code that touched SysV. Since Novell already waived the claim to IBM code, there's not a lot left for SCO to stand on.

According to one of SCO's lawyers, in a letter published on Groklaw, SCO only managed to sell three "Linux licenses".

Yes. Three (3).

He says: "At this juncture, I am only aware of a license with Computer Associates, Questar and Leggett & Platt."

I'm betting you can get a good price on a used Linux license from them by now...

How can software companies port their apps when the viral GPL stands in the way?

The best short rejoinder to this illogic was composed by PJ of Groklaw right here:

Groklaw is allowed to reproduce his paper in full, because first, he copyrighted it and then he granted everyone permission to reproduce it verbatim, provided his permission notice, his license you could say, is preserved.

It's legal, because he, the author, has the right to forbid copies under copyright law or to relax the copyright restrictions. It's his property, so he gets to do what he likes with his own property.

Now, I can reproduce it verbatim, but only if I follow his instructions, because it's not my property, even though I tacked on this paragraph ahead of it. His part is still his, and I can't argue that because I tacked on a paragraph of my own, I can release the combination under some terms of my own choosing or that I can revoke his permission to reproduce, because I want my paragraph under total copyright control with no relaxed terms. What he wrote is still his property, not mine. I can release my own paragraph any way I like separately, but if I release his paper with it, it stays under his chosen restrictions.

You can reproduce it too, but only if you also follow his instructions, because it is still his property, even if you got it from me instead of directly from him.

Anything hard about that concept? Unfair? Viral? Unconstitutional?

How can software companies port their apps when the viral GPL stands in the way?

The best short rejoinder to this illogic was composed by PJ of Groklaw right here:

Groklaw is allowed to reproduce his paper in full, because first, he copyrighted it and then he granted everyone permission to reproduce it verbatim, provided his permission notice, his license you could say, is preserved.

It's legal, because he, the author, has the right to forbid copies under copyright law or to relax the copyright restrictions. It's his property, so he gets to do what he likes with his own property.

Now, I can reproduce it verbatim, but only if I follow his instructions, because it's not my property, even though I tacked on this paragraph ahead of it. His part is still his, and I can't argue that because I tacked on a paragraph of my own, I can release the combination under some terms of my own choosing or that I can revoke his permission to reproduce, because I want my paragraph under total copyright control with no relaxed terms. What he wrote is still his property, not mine. I can release my own paragraph any way I like separately, but if I release his paper with it, it stays under his chosen restrictions.

You can reproduce it too, but only if you also follow his instructions, because it is still his property, even if you got it from me instead of directly from him.

Anything hard about that concept? Unfair? Viral? Unconstitutional?

Hey, that's just a total lie. Here's the real transcript:

THE COURT: Mr. Marriott, my question for you is, do you acknowledge or not acknowledge that S.C.O. is in substantial compliance with the previous order?

MR. MARRIOTT: Well, that is a very hard question, Your Honor. We were provided with a lot of documents and we were given certainly a lot more specificity than we had been provided previously.

The difficulty is that since in our judgment without getting to the merits, but in our judgment the question here is whether the code they say we have dumped into Linux can be linked to Unix System Five. They have a different view. We won't argue the merits of that. Certainly we are entitled to discovery as to whether that is the case. I would refer Your Honor to our interrogatory numbers one, two, four, six, nine and 13.

In one we ask for confidential information misused. In two we ask for the nature and the source of the rights. In four we ask for the manner of misuse. In six the origin of the code and the products upon which it is based. I mean, the list goes on, Your Honor. One of which, in fact, 12 asks specifically whether the code was derived from Unix System Five. So whether or not we have the same view on the merits as S.C.O. as to the contracts, which clearly we do not, certainly we are entitled to discovery as to our understanding of the way the contract works. We have clearly asked for that. This is a case that to my mind is about whether Unix System Five in one fashion or another, either directly or because some derivative of it has been dumped into Linux has been adequately provided and we don't have that.

To be asked when they have given us a lot, Your Honor, it is --

THE COURT: Maybe that is a determination for me and not for you.

Do you have anything else on this?

MR. MARRIOTT: I do not, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Thank you.

I will take that under advisement, but let's go forward now on the issue of S.C.O. 's motion for discovery from I.B.M.

From here

SIXTH AFFIRMATIVE DEFENSE
The General Public License ('GPL') is unenforceable, void and/or voidable, and IBM's claims based thereon, or related thereto, are barred.

SEVENTH AFFIRMATIVE DEFENSE
The GPL is selectively enforced by the Free Software Foundation such that enforcement of the GPL by IBM or others is waived, estopped or otherwise barred as a matter of equity.

EIGHTH AFFIRMATIVE DEFENSE
The GPL violates the U.S. Constitution, together with copyright, antitrust and export control laws, and IBM claims based thereon, or related thereto, are barred.

Indeed, another person mentioned that Groklaw was citied in IBM's legal filings. You might also be interested in this:

OSRM has simultaneously retained me, part-time, to work on their indemnification project as their Director of Litigation Risk Research. Not only that but they are donating a certain portion of my time to Groklaw, which will free me from having to do so much nonrelated paralegal work and be free to really focus for the next year on this project. I am very excited about the project and I hope we'll have fun too. Groklaw will continue, meanwhile, as it is, and it remains noncommercial and my personal baby. Well, more accurately, ours, because Groklaw wouldn't be much without you.

Which is from this Groklaw article.

I should also mention that Groklaw, which was originally a completely separate site, has long been hosted by iBiblio. IBM has donated to them.

That fact, of which no one who knows anything is particularly surprised, is what Daniel Lyons of Forbes added to some random blog posts and turned into a conspiracy article. Barring them firing Mr. Lyons for it, this has sealed my oppinion that their "research" consists primarily of press releases with little or no actual independent research and minimal, if any, editorial oversight.

In other words, I wouldn't trust their advice for managing a child's lemonade stand, much less my finances.

Head on over to GrokLaw

They are converting all the documents to HTML and searchable text as we speak.

78. However, as is widely reported and as IBM executives knew, or should have known, a significant flaw of Linux is the inability and/or unwillingness of the Linux process manager, Linus Torvalds, to identify the intellectual property origins of contributed source code that comes in from those many different software developers. If source code is code copied from protected UNIX code, there is no way for Linus Torvalds to identify that fact.

Unless you count it being available from SCO's web and/or ftp site.

Somewhere at Groklaw (in this thread, IIRC) someone mentions that this code was indeed available from SCO under the GPL.

Wouldn't that just suck? ;-)

If you look at the list, you'll notice that most of the files are header files. These header files are probably available in the off-the-shelf releases of these OS'es. They have then probably does some compare and came up with the resulting list.

If they get all sources from IBM, they probably will perform the exact same comparison, but on all the new files they got.

However, we shouldn't be so worried about this. According to one post on groklaw, the contents of these files are mostly #include's anyway.

For your information, as groklaw.net points out, SCO dropped contract claim and added copyright claim to case - as PJ mentions, IF judge will allow them to do that. Yes, SCO still thinks that they own IBM code for all that stuff, it's rather strange. I guess that code nowhere contains their copyright. Oh, and there is still problem with Novell who says that copyrights are NOT transfered to SCO. So in large case, IMHO it's already over now. At least for SCO.

How come there hasn't been a story about the fact that SCO has now revealed the allegedly copied source files in linux including line numbers. More info here:

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200402070 22922296

The news.com article got it SORT OF right. SCO filed a motion to amend it's claims. IOW, they asked the judge to be allowed to amend the claims. The judge has YET to rule on this motion. For a FAR more accurate and complete edition of what happened today see Groklaw here and look here for IBM's analysis of what SCO provided.

The news.com article got it SORT OF right. SCO filed a motion to amend it's claims. IOW, they asked the judge to be allowed to amend the claims. The judge has YET to rule on this motion. For a FAR more accurate and complete edition of what happened today see Groklaw here and look here for IBM's analysis of what SCO provided.

can we then as folks who have contributed code to GNU and Linux and all the GPL'd goodies not seek damages from SCO in a class action suit for their violations of the GPL?

Grabbing the pdf shouldn't be a problem for Ibiblio's servers: try IBM Report on SCO "Compliance" here.

And, of course, Groklaw has a summary of today's court action. Basically SCO ends up looking stupid again.

Schedule 1.1(a) Assets

1. All rights and ownership of UNIX and UnixWare and Auxiliary Products, including but not limited to all versions of UNIX and UnixWare and Auxiliary Products [...] including source code, [...]

Schedule 1.1(b) Excluded Assets

V. Intellectual Property:

A. All copyrights and trademarks, except for the [...] copyrights and trademarks owned by Novell as of the date of the Agreement required for SCO to exercise its rights with respect to the acquisition of UNIX and UnixWare technologies.

SCO refuses to disclose from what lines of UNIX System V code these alleged contributions are supposed to derive, which it must know to allege the contributions were improper.

Use the Groklaw copy. Slashdotting pacer is bad. I recommend saving the groklaw copy locally though, because it's still quite slow.

IBM has told the judge that SCO did not comply with her earlier order to specify their claims precisely (in terms of what Linux code was involved). There was apparently a ~30 minute conference with counsel in chambers before the open hearing. It doesn't sound like the judge was too sympathetic to SCO; from one witness's notes:

The judge said "The problem is, unless you identify those codes, then IBM is not in a position to have a response. We're at an impasse, and the case cannot continue with an impasse, that's why there was a court order".

From other comments the judge made (see the Groklaw write-up), it sounds like SCO may get one more really final order to lay out the specifics of their case. (Ha!)

IBM did not move for dismissal, to the surprise of some observers. My theory is that IBM thinks they have SCO on the run, and want to make sure there is nothing left of them but a glowing crater when this is all done.

Groklaw has a detailed eye-witness account. It seems SCO's new claims might just be about IBM continuing to distribute AIX after SCO "revoked" their license. And apparently IBM's lawyers wiped the floor with SCO's counsel (it wasn't Darl's brother this time!). Great reading - enjoy!

"One academic study found that 90 percent of the content exchanged on file-sharing networks is copyrighted, [RIAA lawyer] Frackman noted.

"[Judge]Noonan pressed further, asking whether the authorized exchange of 10 percent of an estimated 750 million swapped files -- games, live recordings and public-domain works such as Shakespeare -- met the criteria the Supreme Court set forth in the Betamax case. 'That sounds like a lot of non-infringing use to me.'"

Includes the exact quote from the judge:

"Let me say what I think your problem is. You can use these harsh terms, but you are dealing with something new, and the question is, does the statutory monopoly that Congress has given you reach out to that something new. And that's a very debatable question. You don't solve it by calling it 'theft.' You have to show why this court should extend a statutory monopoly to cover the new thing. That's your problem. Address that if you would. And curtail the use of abusive language."

This is a public forum that most people in the word (with a computer) have acccess to.

This site is a probably the only good resource to get an idea of linux-advocate attitudes.

There is nothing wrong with joking but a little professional consideration wouldn't hurt.

Shame I couldn't find Stephen Evans email address easily, or I'd have delivered an incendiary missive straight to his inbox.

Judge: Intention is to grant IBM's motion to compel delivery (interrogatives 12 and 13) . Plaintiff to file responses within 30 days. Postpone discovery until compliance achieved. There is a protective order in place
(taken from court minutes).

Judge Wells seemed to have little patience for the filibuster She stated that the proceedings needed to conclude before noon (probably lunchtime!), but with both sides having a chance to state their case. She interrupted McBride several times to help focus him back on the point of the hearing. She was very fair and direct. She gave McBride every chance to convince her that she should not grant IBM's motions. She brought up several points that weren't directly addressed during arguments, indicating that she had read and absorbed the material, and noticed some of SCO's antics. She especially did not seem impressed about handing over the code on paper, rather than in a useable format. McBride remarked that he believed they had resolved that problem.

he's right :) Look at the photos. chris either had to pee, or spiderman gave him teh gay dance.

LINDON, Utah, Feb. 1 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The SCO Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: SCOX), the owner of the UNIX(R) operating system and a leading provider of UNIX-based solutions, has confirmed that a large scale, Denial of Service attack has started that has made the company's Web site, www.sco.com, completely unavailable. Internet traffic began building momentum on Saturday evening and by midnight Eastern Time the SCO Web site was flooded with requests beyond its capacity. The company expects these attacks to continue through Feb. 12.

The virus is written in Russia as a mail relay vehichle. They are just using the SCO issues as a foil, and indeed it worked on you. There even is an apology inside the virus from the author stating that he is just doing his "job"

Now Hang your head in shame.

oh and here is a link to The Groklaw analysis of the situation.

You have not been reading the site. Remember back when SCO claimed they were DDOSed and nobody believed them because their website was down and they ftp site was up? Groklaw published opinions by respected professional network engineers that said, "Looks like SCO is lying."

But when CAIDA (a theoretically unbiased 3rd party) said that their logs showed indications that SCO was telling the truth, Groklaw included that information in an update to their first article - despite the fact that CAIDA did not release the actual details that lead them to that conclusion.

Security Experts Doubt SCO Was Attacked as Claimed -- Groklaw

If Groklaw was all about presenting a one-sided view, they wouldn't have bothered to mention CAIDA at all.

We are now publishing the article and welcome Groklaw readers' further contributions, corrections, improvements, and comments. This is an ongoing project. This article is the first in a series where we'll discuss the System V UNIX ABI, or Application Binary Interface. We approached the research as, What if Linus Torvalds had not already claimed paternity of most of the header files? Then what?

The article will first explain what the ABI is and what it does, then discuss whether the code was released under the GPL and if so whether management at SCO knew and approved, and finally show how the Linux files that pertain to this do not appear to be infringing files that SCO can claim.

For those who are not programmers, such as myself, there is a footnoted section to explain in greater detail and in plain English what ABIs and APIs and shared libraries are and how they work. If you read it first, it will clarify the terminology for you and you will be able to follow the thread in the article more easily. At least, it helped me tremendously.

I think you will see from this article alone that if SCO is planning to sue anyone over the ABI files, unless there are facts we haven't unearthed, they seem to be leaning on a rickety bamboo reed.

GROKLAW TAKES A CLOSER LOOK AT THE ABI FILES
~by Frank Sorenson et al

Back in January 2003, word leaked out that SCO was planning to charge Linux users for "System V Intellectual Property" in Linux. SCO created a new business division called SCOSource to come up with new ways to make money from this "intellectual property". The original SCOSource Presentation (PowerPoint version) talks of licensing SCO's shared UNIX Libraries from OpenServer and UnixWare for use in Linux.

A Little Background: What Are ABI Files? [1]

As background information, shared libraries are files containing information to be loaded when an application is run. They usually implement common routines, and their inclusion simplifies programming, reduces file size, and standardizes interfaces. A simple example of this would be the "copy file" and "move file" commands: both commands check file permissions and manipulate the file system. When applications have a great deal of functionality in common, this functionality is often placed into shared libraries.

Shared libraries are architecture, operating-system, and version specific. Executables for different systems follow various standard formats, such as a.out, ELF, and COFF. To load an application, the system must do several things: the system interprets the format of the executable (or binary), loads any shared libraries referenced, and begins executing the code found in the binary.

If the executable is in a different format from those the system supports, or if the library files are for the wrong architecture or operating system version, the binary normally will not run. In 1991, Intel announced the availability of the iBCS-2 (Intel Binary Compatibility

So for the slower among you, the answer is no, it's not.

Incidentally, your notions about internet censorship in China are way, way, way off the mark. That harvard list of blocked sites people keep passing around? I was able to access the vast majority of those. There a few sites I'm consistantly unable to get at from work, like groklaw, and for example the bbc, but I'm never sure if that's due to wackiness in the way the network works here or actual willful censorship. It's never terribly consistant.

Lots of sites (like geocities) that allow people to make their own websites for free are blocked. Same with free blog services, that sort of thing. The Chinese government seems to want to restrict anonymity.

No one cares about Slashdot though. Not enough people read it in China. Just look how long it took someone to post a reply to your question that actually knew what the fuck he was talking about.

I think my eyes started to show my brain whatever they want to at this time (1am).

The Virtual Dummy site looks a lot like Groklaw. Hmmmm... Maybe Pamela Jones is secretly behind all this..

Insert funny conspiracy theory abound Pam taking over the world here. X-D

It is likely that this virus has been assembled for the purpose of defaming the Linux developers by spammers, SCO, or others. Your behavior will influence whether or not it succeeds in this mission.

Thus, I urge all persons who have sympathy for Free Software, Open Source, and Linux:

• Do not cheer on attacks on the SCO site. By doing so, you falsely implicate our community in the attacks, in the eyes of outsiders who read your words. Our community believes in freedom of speech, not silencing our opponent's speech through net attacks. We will defeat SCO using the truth, not by gagging them.
• Publicly deplore the attacks as an attempt to defame us, and not an effort of our community. Show others this notice.
• Continue to fight SCO, using all legal means at your disposal. Show others the analysis of SCO's ongoing fraud at Groklaw.net and elsewhere, and explain to them your own experience as a participant in the Free Software community.
• Continue the visible presence of Free Software as a force for good in the world by producing excellent original software for everyone's free use and deploying it wherever possible. Promote these projects to the press and public as you carry them out. Do what you can for other public-good projects such as schools and non-profit organizations. FreeGeek.org is an excellent example of how to carry this out.
• Show others by example that our side always takes the high road. When they see a low-road sort of action like denial-of-service, spam, or stock fraud, they'll know who to blame.

Remember that your actions count. You are ambassadors of our community.

Bruce Perens <bruce@perens.com> (U.S.) 510-526-1165
Version 2, January 27, 2004.

The master version of this notice is at http://perens.com/Articles/SCO/DOS/
Please check that location for a more recent version. You may re-publish this material. You may excerpt it, reformat it and translate it as necessary for your presentation. You may not edit it to deliberately misrepresent my opinion.

On January 26, 2004, a new virus became rampant. I have read reports that the virus payload has two purposes: to install a remote-execution back-end of a type commonly used by spammers to redistribute email, and to perform a denial-of-service attack on SCO's web site.

Denial-of-service attacks via virus have been a common trick of email spammers. They were first used to take out some of the anti-spam blacklist sites. Several of those sites had their (non-spam-related) business so heavily disrupted that they closed the doors of their anti-spam projects rather than be attacked again.

The Open Source developers are a target of spammers. We are the creators of most high-profile anti-spam technology. For example, SpamAssassin started out as, and remains today, an Open Source project. The predominant mail delivery programs of the Internet are Open Source projects such as Sendmail and Postfix, and thus most efforts to spam-proof those programs are Open Source as well. This is important, because it gives spammers a reason to defame us.

SCO also has a reason to defame us, as part of their stock-kiting scheme. We have assembled ample evidence that they have lied under oath in court. Such a company would not balk at attacking their own site in order to paint their opponents in a bad light.

Thus, it is likely that this virus has been assembled for the purpose of defaming the Linux developers by spammers, SCO, or others. Your behavior will influence whether or not it succeeds in this mission.

Thus, I urge all persons who have sympathy for Free Software, Open Source, and Linux:

• Do not cheer on attacks on the SCO site. By doing so, you falsely implicate our community in the attacks, in the eyes of outsiders who read your words. Our community believes in freedom of speech, not silencing our opponent's speech through net attacks. We will defeat SCO using the truth, not by gagging them.
• Publicly deplore the attacks as an attempt to defame us, and not an effort of our community. Show others this notice.
• Continue to fight SCO, using all legal means at your disposal. Show others the analysis of SCO's ongoing fraud at Groklaw.net and elsewhere, and explain to them your own experience as a participant in the Free Software community.
• Continue the visible presence of Free Software as a force for good in the world by producing excellent original software for everyone's free use and deploying it wherever possible. Promote these projects to the press and public as you carry them out. Do what you can for other public-good projects such as schools and non-profit organizations. FreeGeek.org is an excellent example of how to carry this out.
• Show others by example that our side always takes the high road. When they see a low-road sort of action like denial-of-service, spam, or stock fraud, they'll know who to blame.

Remember that your actions count. You are ambassadors of our community.

Many Thanks

Bruce Perens

I think it started to piss him off when they claimed their code was in the headers that linus had actually written, for example errno.h..

You read his response here

I've just seen this on Groklaw.

Kinda makes you wonder what 'dark force' is actually behind all of this.

Well done to PJ who takes home another well deserved award

I'll second that. How she manages to fit in the Groklaw research at the same time I'll never know.

> If anyone asks you what this sco fiaSCO is about, you can direct them to this article.

AND THEN you direct them to these published Novell vs. SCO correspondances, Make sure to point out McBride's (SCO's) intentions as stated in their own words back in 2002 compared to his open letter a year later. It shouldn't be too hard for anyone not keeping up with /. to come to the conclusions that SCO is seriously smoking Crack, CRaCK, CRACK!. Although, it may just be easier to point them to this simulated IRC chat which seems to epitomize the entire series of events leading to this big mess. Oh and supposedly SCO is suing trees now.

> If anyone asks you what this sco fiaSCO is about, you can direct them to this article.

AND THEN you direct them to these published Novell vs. SCO correspondances, Make sure to point out McBride's (SCO's) intentions as stated in their own words back in 2002 compared to his open letter a year later. It shouldn't be too hard for anyone not keeping up with /. to come to the conclusions that SCO is seriously smoking Crack, CRaCK, CRACK!. Although, it may just be easier to point them to this simulated IRC chat which seems to epitomize the entire series of events leading to this big mess. Oh and supposedly SCO is suing trees now.

> If anyone asks you what this sco fiaSCO is about, you can direct them to this article.

AND THEN you direct them to these published Novell vs. SCO correspondances, Make sure to point out McBride's (SCO's) intentions as stated in their own words back in 2002 compared to his open letter a year later. It shouldn't be too hard for anyone not keeping up with /. to come to the conclusions that SCO is seriously smoking Crack, CRaCK, CRACK!. Although, it may just be easier to point them to this simulated IRC chat which seems to epitomize the entire series of events leading to this big mess. Oh and supposedly SCO is suing trees now.

Here are some more SCO courtroom skits for your enjoyment.

The hearing was delayed until Feb. 6. The reasons for the delay seem uncertain.

Personally I need a 12 step program just to weane me off Groklaw.

Groklaw.net

Our engineers have reached the conclusion that parts of Linux have almost certainly been copied or derived from AIX or Dynix/ptx. In those cases, confirmation of this opinion would require access to more current versions of AIX and Dynix/ptx. . Empasis added.