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This means that every company with the slightest interest in Linux needs to read up on the truth behind this tragical rubbish SCO serves us all! Start some proactive work by letting your managers read the OSI paper and whatever else they want from Groklaw and this list. Challenge anyone who claims this is the work of Linux zealots to come up with anything resembling proof coherent with the delusions of SCO.

Convince your managers before they get a letter!

I'm sure most of the biggies like Google and other mentioned companies know, but a mid-sized company with sufficient bueraucracy may be intimidated and pay before the trial is up, which will feed back into SCOs ugly propaganda machinery!

Let's show the world how Open Source cooperation is able to unveil the SCO scam and innoculate against it! When the trial is over we'll see who's still standing and who has to bleed cash...

Seriously. Talk about rallying the troops of the other side. Go after Google? Every nerd's best friend?

Anyway, SCO's timing on this matter is very suspect, with its notice so close to a Google IPO. If SCO keeps making noise, I would expect a Google counter-suit claiming defamation, especially if the IPO doesn't go as well as planed.

What the hell are we missing here? SCO hired the "best" lawyers in the country. There has to be some sort of strategy behind all of this. Or meybe the just want us to think that; keep everybody guessing. All I know is I keep a daily eye on Groklaw

By the way, here is an article on Groklaw that provides the Asset Purchase Agreement reflecting the various modifications.

Ultimately, we probably both agree that it is up to the judge to decide what the meaning of "is" is, or in this case, whether they were transferred or not.

Look, the fact is that the GPL is so solid that no sane lawyer has dared challenge it. Linux isn't vulnerable. Heck, it's on some of the most solid legal ground ever devised. I'm personally convinced that RMS must have been Hammurabi or King Solomon in one of his past lives. No way a mere mortal could come up with such a brilliant document without divine inspiration.

Don't believe me? How about an entire site filled with lawyers? Or how about a law professor at Columbia Law School?

Given this limited right, why would SCO need ownership of the SVRx copyrights in order to exercise their rights under the agreement.

Hence SCO did not get the SVRx copyrights. What SCO bought was really the UnixWare business. Not UNIX!

I've had a look through Groklaw to see if I can find the comment I read, it was very detailed and provided an excellent explanation of what seems to be going on.

This comment is also a pretty good read for all the people on here saying how they are going to short stock

Groklaw Article I must sleep now but if anyone wants to try and track down the info search Groklaw for things like "thinly traded", "high closing price", "short squeeze" and it may turn up.

As much as I'd like Novell to be right, it really isn't clear-cut at all who owns the Unix copyrights.

The original Asset purchase agreement does not give SCO any copyrights, but amendment 2 to the deal raises questions. SCO says this gives them copyrights, Novell disagrees.

What does the amendment say?
The section on assets excluded from the deal is:
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.

So, skipping the double-negation and some of the blaha, the deal includes:
[Novell] copyrights and trademarks [..] required for SCO to exercise its rights with respect to the acquisition of UNIX

So it really hinges on what is meant by "required with respect to the acquisition".

SCO says this means everything.

Novells interpretation is that SCO must demonstrate a requirement of these copyrights for them to be transferred. Patent rights, which SCO have made claims to (in court documents!) were definetly not transferred. That is explicit in the deal (and the amendments don't change that)

Given, reading the documents, the intent of the deal does not to appear to be to give SCO all rights to UNIX. But it's difficult to say.

Since this is a matter of interpretation, and SCOs whole case against IBM is built on this ownership, it's unlikely that they'll ever accept Novells ownership of copyright. It's also unlikely that they'll sue Novell, they're busy enough litigating as it is. (even if they seem to want more)

I think we all know Novell will have to bring suit to resolve this. The question is if they will, seing that it's not a clear-cut win, and they really don't have much to win on it either. (If Unix had had value as a product, we wouldn't have had this mess to begin with)

Hallelujah, at last, someone is chasing the money. Good ol' Groklaw has just started some digging into the murky deapths of Deutsche Bank...almost begin to feel sorry for DB once PJ gets going after them.

The judge made the statement on Decemeber 5, but it wasn't filed until December 12.

They aren't really past the deadline until January 12th.


The relvant groklaw link

>Maybe you should be?

OR maybe SCO is seriously smoking Crack, CRaCK, CRACK!

And of course Groklaw has had the full analysis for a while now, including the fact that SCOs filings missed mentioning this dispute, even going so far as to deny there was any ongoing dispute with third parties over Copyright...some pants combusting rather brightly over in Salt Lake City.

Where this story was posted yesterday, of course.

"And C++ programming languages, we own those, have licensed them out multiple times, obviously. We have a lot of royalties coming to us from C++"

Darl McBride, SCO

WTF?! It's true, he said that. Read more here and here

If information relating to a SOFTWARE PRODUCT subject to this Agreement at any time becomes available without restriction to the general public by acts not attributable to LICENSEE or its employees, LICENSEE'S obligations under this section shall not apply to such information after such time.

If this clause is really in most agreements and just ommitted by SCO in the letter, it looks to me like if some code was put into Linux by someone other than the company the letter was sent to that the licensee has no further obligations under that section towards that code. Let's say that code was put into Linux by IBM. Wouldn't that actually indemnify all other licensees against redistributing that code since a third party made it available to the public?

Uh... ever heard of Groklaw? It's probably more important to ask what have they forgotten, as they are the ones with the most information collected on this subject.

This has been done. Please see GrokLaw for the analysis you are requesting.

I would suggest that the Caldera/NewSCO slashdot subject icon be changed to the Groklaw logo.

Many thanks should go out to Pamela Jones for her strong leadership and coordination of the fight to find the truth behind the SCO allegations.

sco/novell Unix contract excluded assets, Schedule 1.1(b) Excluded Assets (Page 2 of 2)

a couple of assets which SCO does not own:

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. However, in no event shall Novell be liable to SCO for any claim brought by any third party pertaining to said copyrights and trademarks.

B. All Patents

SCO doesn't own Unix or anything at all found in Netware. Novell never gave up any patents. Novell owns all copyrights which SCO doesn't need to run its business. Boies should have read this earlier.

No. On Dec 5th, the court rules that SCO had to respond in detail to Interrogatory Nos. 1-9,12,13 from IBM. They had 30 days from the date that it was entered into the books and the judge signed the order IBM prepared...Dec 12th I beleive. That makes the 11th the deadline. On the 23rd, the judge finds out if SCO complied with the order. Expect to see some legal filings on Jan 22 or 23 to delay the order since SCO hasn't had enough time to make up^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hfind^H^H^H^Hdocument their case.

The original interrogatories are here.

So, any bets on how long after all the SCO claims are thrown out as frivilous until the shareholders sue the officers...

I bet the entire profits for SCOG in the year 2006 that the shareholders will never sue the officers. I am confident in my wager because:

1. There won't be any profits for SCOG for that year
2. The shareholders, directors, and officers are the same people
3. They will all be in jail and broke already

SCOX is mostly held by insiders. And they're selling.

That is why you should consider visit Groklaw more often. They cover and uncover more SCO dirt than any one else on the net.

So a judge told SCO to come up with evidence within 30 days from December 5.

Would this evidence be the list of header files as printed in this letter, or has SCO chosen not to disclose anything further?

Is that 30 business days or 30 human days?

Stallman asserts that "non-free software carries with it an antisocial system that prohibits coopoeration and community." This is MOST certainly overstating the importance of software's influence on each person's ability to cooperate and experience community. And I assert that this is where the open source movement fails. While open source software promotes cooperation and community for the developers involved in its creation, it doesn't attempt to build community by creating more user friendly tools. The general popluation doesn't care about the right to see the source code, most of the users of computers can't do any thing with the code any way. Open source project managers and developers need to better consider their end users. End users are not always other programmers, some are teachers, doctors, lawyers, engineers, housewives, grandparents. Usability must extend into high quality instructional programs that provide the information at the user's fingertips. Job aids and other electronic performance support tools that address the needs of the non-developer community will do more to foster cooperation and community between the developers and their users. After all what good is any application free or not without a high probability of end user acceptance?

No he's right, one hundred million percent right, yes we could have wider community, involving the wider community of FOSS users, but the FOSS documentation movement, addresses this, as does the EFF, GrokLaw, Creative Commons and many, many more, if you know of another hole in the community, well start organising and fill it.

In any case RMS is right the FOSS developers freedom, is the necessary basis of the freedom, for every one else, unless the developers have this freedom, all the other freedoms are stifled.

Lighten up - This is the first I've heard of this article (Okay, I saw it last week on Groklaw too) and it's extremely relevant to the issues facing OSS in the coprorate world, especially with S.C.U.M. lurking about. (That's SCO Corporation's Underhanded Management, BTW). Putting this on the Slashdot front page makes sure that "many eyes" we talk about so often have actually seen it. Getting the word out about good, relevant, useful tools (well, once in a while) is one of the reasons I still come here.

Soko

You're falling into one of the fallacies about Open Source development oversight that SCO is trying to get everyone to buy. The fact is that Open Source development has extremely good oversight of IP in code, and the Linux kernel has a well-defined formal structure and organization for development, headed by Linus Torvalds.

Torvalds as well as the Free Softeware Foundation developers who contribute the GNU code to GNU/Linux appear to be far more concerned about incorporating proprietary code into their work than do many companies which develop and market proprietary code. See this Groklaw article for some good examples.

Additionally, while SCO would have us think that GNU/Linux end users are liable for IP infringement in Linux because there's no established company to sue, this is a tenuous and untested legal theory. Copyright is about copying. Use is about using. Using Linux is not illegal, nor can it be an infringement of SCO's copyrights, no matter what SCO says.

SCO's scare tactics are just that. They're on a shakedown expedition to try to collect IP royalties. If they were serious about targeting IP infringement they would put their cards on the table and declare what code in Linux is a problem for them, but they're running a classic protection racket, and unless and until they publicly tell us where the beef is, then they have no moral high ground on which to demand anything more than scorn and contempt.

I suggest you visit Groklaw's website and review the archives on the SCO/Linux issues before you start basing presumptions on SCO's erroneous FUD.

Ok, this is insightful how ? At best it's completly wrong and its poster is just ill-informed, at worst it's FUD, and its poster is just a troll.

People, don't try to explain it to him, this as already been covered in great lengths on Groklaw :

The GPL is a License, Not a Contract, Which is Why the Sky Isn't Falling

Basically, for those who don't want to read the long (and very informative piece, thanks PJ!) It strikes down is second possibility and refutes much of his wrong language.

I'm sure an AC like you can use the search facilities on the site and find out for yourself. In case you don't manage to find the prominent "Search" link to the upper left, I'll even hand it out for you : Search

Start reading here

The Linux kernel development already has a tried and true tested organization. Linus Torvalls and crew operating as benevolent dictators, totally open to public scrutiny, with no abolute power to dictate what additional patches the distributions and developers end up using. It has worked and continues to work very well.

All the contributions and development are traceable though both the Bit-tracker/CVS logs and the mailing lists, which makes everything available to public scrutiny for everyone, include those who are publicly defending Linux.

Throughout 2003, the SCO Group's so-called evidence and legal theories have fallen into disrepute though the rediscovery of the combination of the terms of the GNU General Public License and the open development process of both the Linux Kernel and even UNIX itself.

The weight of the historical evidence, including the active participation of both old SCO and Caldera executives and employees in the development and promotion of Linux, tips the scales of justice heavily in favor of IBM, RedHat and Linux end users. In fact the weight of evidence effectively chucks SCO legal position off the scales, out the window and over the cliff like a cartoon catapult.

While each new Darl McBrides threat and new David Boies partners legal theory look impressive at first glance, in practice they are about effective as attaching a giant anvil to a biplane to catch a pigeon.

See http://www.tibonia.com/Dmeg1.htm

The McBride and Bois Show to stop the Penquin is becoming a joke ...

Bois you snickering legal type hound,
When court time is needed, you're never around!
Those millions you ripped from SCO's legal chest,
Should be there for bungling at which you are best!
So, Stop The Penguin, Stop The Penguin,Stop The Penguin,Stop The Penguin,Stop The Penguin, Stop The Penguin, Stop That Penguin
How?
Sue them! Mud them! Fud them! Charge them!
Stop That Penguin
Now!
You Stowell, start fudding it's worth the chance,
For some will believe by the lies that you plants!
And Kevin, you invent me a legaly-bob,
That catches that Penguin, or I lose my job!
So, Stop The Penguin, Stop The Penguin,Stop The Penguin,Stop The Penguin,Stop The Penguin,Stop The Penguin, Stop That Penguin
How?
Sue them! Mud them! Fud them!
Charge them!
Stop That Penguin
Now!

How is it a company with 3% market share can get 80% of the fucking press?

Our brainy heroine and penguin loving paralegal babe, PJ at Groklaw, posted an article covering some New Year's trend spotting. Some of the goodies:

1. Invester's Business Daily makes up its Top 10 Tech Stories of the year without mentioning Microsoft in any context.

2. A speculation comes from Chris Gulker in an IT Managers Journal article that Microsoft will introduce an MSLinux when Longhorn turns out to be unsellable. (Good thing or bad thing? I think good, if it happened.)

3. The example of Smart Displays, where per-user licensing inhibits even Microsoft's innovation, as cited in a Register article:

"The final nail in its coffin was Microsoft's absurd decision to kow-tow to the tin god of its licensing agreements. If you took your smart display downstairs, nobody in the den with the computer could use it. Single user licence, repeated Microsoft marketing droids. 'We can't compromise our standard licensing policy."

4. From the counter example of what can be, in the MagicBike project of the Parsons School of Design, PJ muses: "The idea is, when everyone gets to play, innovation is the result. Innovation doesn't come from money or walled-in projects, although money can help implement ideas. Innovation comes from people, and as George Bernard Shaw once pointed out, talent can show up simply anywhere, where you least expect it. The lower the barrier to entry, the more likely you are to get wonderful ideas. It's one reason I keep it possible to leave anonymous comments on Groklaw, despite the down side to that."

5. Vince Cerf's vision of the ubiquitous net is cited, reaching even to other planets.

PJ concludes: "Yes, [Microsoft] must adapt in order to be part of the future. I think it's a given that no one wants a wireless product that can only legally connect to one PC predetermined during setup. Not after somebody sent the mayor an email from a bike in Union Square station in NYC. Or even read about it. Once you have the concept and you see what is possible, you know what you know, and Brand X doesn't work for you after that. Like the song says, there's nothing like the real thing."

I know most of these points have been previously featured on /., but I like the compilation of them as a converging threat to Microsoft's paradigms that may cause significant rethinking in 2004.

Besides, I think I have a crush on PJ... :-)

Our brainy heroine and penguin loving paralegal babe, PJ at Groklaw, posted an article covering some New Year's trend spotting. Some of the goodies:

1. Invester's Business Daily makes up its Top 10 Tech Stories of the year without mentioning Microsoft in any context.

2. A speculation comes from Chris Gulker in an IT Managers Journal article that Microsoft will introduce an MSLinux when Longhorn turns out to be unsellable. (Good thing or bad thing? I think good, if it happened.)

3. The example of Smart Displays, where per-user licensing inhibits even Microsoft's innovation, as cited in a Register article:

"The final nail in its coffin was Microsoft's absurd decision to kow-tow to the tin god of its licensing agreements. If you took your smart display downstairs, nobody in the den with the computer could use it. Single user licence, repeated Microsoft marketing droids. 'We can't compromise our standard licensing policy."

4. From the counter example of what can be, in the MagicBike project of the Parsons School of Design, PJ muses: "The idea is, when everyone gets to play, innovation is the result. Innovation doesn't come from money or walled-in projects, although money can help implement ideas. Innovation comes from people, and as George Bernard Shaw once pointed out, talent can show up simply anywhere, where you least expect it. The lower the barrier to entry, the more likely you are to get wonderful ideas. It's one reason I keep it possible to leave anonymous comments on Groklaw, despite the down side to that."

5. Vince Cerf's vision of the ubiquitous net is cited, reaching even to other planets.

PJ concludes: "Yes, [Microsoft] must adapt in order to be part of the future. I think it's a given that no one wants a wireless product that can only legally connect to one PC predetermined during setup. Not after somebody sent the mayor an email from a bike in Union Square station in NYC. Or even read about it. Once you have the concept and you see what is possible, you know what you know, and Brand X doesn't work for you after that. Like the song says, there's nothing like the real thing."

I know most of these points have been previously featured on /., but I like the compilation of them as a converging threat to Microsoft's paradigms that may cause significant rethinking in 2004.

Besides, I think I have a crush on PJ... :-)

FUDmaster reports "The SCO arguements, a mysterious book of uncertain age, is widely believed to be written either in an unknown language or a long-lost encryption scheme. Groklaw reports that computer scientist Gordon Fud has demonstrated that it's possible to generate a text like the SCO arguements -- containing language-like regularities, despite being potentially meaningless -- using cryptographic techniques of the time. This lends some support to those who claim that the manuscript is a hoax. Dr Fud calls this language legalese and it is so convincing that major thinkers of the day are struggling to comprehend it!" Wow what do other slashdot readers think? (laugh it's funny - if off-topic)

http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&si d=20031222174158852&title=Standards&type=article&o rder=&pid=41223

or: groklaw great post! thanks!

This case, Your Honor, at a very fundamental level, involves infringement.
Infringement is a very broadly defined category in the law. It can include
copyright infringement, trade secrets infringement or plain old confidential
information that's taken without permission. Those are all very differently
defined areas of the law that all have very differently defined rules of
proof. The -- what we need to get our arms around collectively, on our side
and on IBM's side, is a clear definition of what source code is at issue,
what source code is potentially an infringement. Before we discuss whether
it's a trade secret or a copyright or anything else, the most important
thing is for both of us to come to grips with the universe of source code,
the documentation and methods and concepts that we believe are at issue so
we can argue about them. And once we have an understanding of what that
universe is, the very complex rules -- this is a complex case, Your Honor.
There's going to be some of this code and some of these methods that are
trade secrets, and some are going to be copyright and some are going to be
contract violations and some are going to be nothing. I submit, Your Honor,
that's the very first step that needs to take place before we start worrying
about whether there is trade secret burdens met or not met.

But Mr. Torvalds is also clearly angered by SCO's accusation that much of Linux was merely copied. "In short," Mr. Torvalds said, "for the files where I personally checked the history, I can definitely say that those files were trivially written by me personally, with no copying from any Unix code, ever.

"I can show, and SCO should have been able to see, that the list they show clearly shows original work, not copied."

[Emphasis mine] Darl C. McBride, the chief executive of SCO, said he stood by the company's assertions. He said that a Linux expert who will testify in the SCO suit against I.B.M., which was filed last March, went over the code closely. "As a social revolutionary, Linus Torvalds is a genius," Mr. McBride said. "But at the speed the Linux project has gone forward something gets lost along the way in terms of care with intellectual property."

Gah! Enlightenment is only a click away. I had gotten so used to seeing the DMCA abused by slapping crap 'crypto' over a product and suing anyone who dared point out deficiencies that I had forgotten about the myriad other ways that the law can be abused.

Now, if SCO could only manage to invoke the PATRIOT act, my disillusionment and contempt would be complete and warranted.

Can SCO really be that incompetent?

No, none of the code in the Linux ABI modules contains SCO IP. This code is under the GPL and it re-implements publicly documented interfaces. We do not have an issue with the Linux ABI modules. The IP that we are licensing is all in the shared libraries - these libraries are needed by many OpenServer applications *in addition* to the Linux ABI.-- Blake Stowell, 2003-02-05

Think IBM will find this interesting?

previous pump-n-dump speculation mentioned that there needed to be 4 quarters of profitabliy before Darl got a big bonus kick-in

That wasn't really speculation... That part of Darl's contract was documented in one of SCO's SEC filings. If he made SCO made a profit for four consecutive quarters then Darl would get 150,000 stock options.

If you read the article though, he still gets a ton of options regardless of the four quarters of profitability... It will be interesting to watch when they start to vest.

Here is the letter from SCO warning recipients of alleged copyright violations. I must tell you that the list of files has everyone I am hearing from falling on the floor laughing. We will be issuing a statement explaining why as soon as they recover.

People are buying this stock like they buy a lottery ticket, expecting that most likely it will fizzle, but if it pops, it could be big. Even the weakest case has some chance of succeeding in court, or being bothersome enough to prompt a settlement.

Cheers,
Craig

The further point is that SCO don't have the right to determine what happens to copyrights held by other companies.

If a company (lets say... IBM) creates a software form which is copyrighted, they can choose exactly what to do with it. If they want to release it under the GPL, they can do that. If they want to release it to SCO for inclusion in Unix, they can do that too.

Note that, because it is possible for the copyright holder to release exactly the same code under both the GPL and another form of license, should they so wish. They can also create derivative works of the original code of theirs and distribute those derivative works as they see fit.

OpenOffice/StarOffice works on this principle, as (i belive) does one or more of the SQL implementations.

What SCO are claiming in this case is that IBM have effectively assigned all copyrights to SCO for the code in question, and/or that by licensing the code to SCO for use in Linux, the same code cannot also be Licensed for use in Linux. This is a gross misstatement or misunderstanding of the GPL and copyright law.

As copyright holders, IBM can allow anyone they feel like to use their code (including anything they have written regarding JFS, NUMA and SMP).

Note that this means that the code in UNIX does not mean that any part of UNIX will have to be placed under the GPL.

See the Groklaw Article :: The GPL is a License, Not a Contract, Which is Why the Sky Isn't Falling for related discussion.

And with that fact in mind we refer you to the RedHat case on anti-competitive practices.

Or that's how I interpret things anyway. See this article that was recently linked to from the YRO section.

From the article: So when you read people say that the GPL is perhaps not enforceable because you don't sign it or click on a form, or because of a lack of privity, or because there is a lack of consideration, or some such, you'll understand that the person misunderstood and thought in terms of contract law. It's a common error.

Even though you don't necessarily have to break the seal to physically get at the CD, the license still applies. In the same way, it's possible to bypass some installers that would make you click an agree button, but it doesn't actually make any difference. You're either using the software under their license with their terms, or you're using it illegally.

No it wouldn't! They would be in violation of the GPL and would have options: GPL their code, or correct the problem (by removing the GPL'd code.) They would probably have fines associated as well. See this article for details.

FYI, the 2nd SCO countdown on your page is incorrect - the federal judge ordered 30 days from the order (December 12th) - see here.

Must... Patiently... Wait for... PJ.

:)

I know it is frustrating, but it doesn't really matter. IBM is going to show in court that there is no SCO code in Linux.

The question, of course, is whether the claim is true or not -- it is coming from SCO, after all. There's a good chance it could be true, though, because a big part of SCO's claim is for trade secret violations -- which require the alleged secret to, well, remain secret (disclosure does not effect copyright, but it does trade secrets). It only makes sense for them to seek a protective order, and it does not really effect the case from the judge's and lawyers' standpoint. But that doesn't make it suck any less for the rest of us who want to see the code for ourselves.

Ah, but as Linus recently noted, U.S. copyright law has an interesting definition of financial gain:

'The term "financial gain" includes receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works.'

I'd be just as happy, however, if lawyers put the kind of ridiculous price tags on open source code as closed source gets in hacker trials. "Yes your honor, we normally give it away for free, but it represents the work of 10,000 programmer hours, who could have gotten $500/hour rates if they chose to spend their free time making software as a private contractor, but instead decided to recieve alternate financial gain in the form of future copyrighted works. The only fair thing to do is pay them with cash, at 5x the normal rate for punitive purposes."

What confuses me is reading the replies at Groklaw. According to Loren Heal in the message posted at Groklaw , under the user information and time "Authored by: RealProgrammer on Monday, December 15 2003 @ 11:47 AM EST," "But if you use the Linux source code, even by including the Linux
kernel header files, you may only publish your program under the GPL." Loren claims to have reached this conclusion after reading comments by Linux Torvalds. I only saw one reply that might or might not have been a correction to this statement.

I'm assuming to use Linux specific system calls one has to include the header files.