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SCO Threatens to Press IP Claims on Linux -$99/cpu
Tangential writes "New story on LinuxBusiness week says SCO is about to mount an effort to get all Linux sites to pay a per cpu license for so-called patent violations."SCO has been proposing to charge users $96 per CPU for a so-called one-time System 5 for Linux software license to protect their systems from SCO-enforced patent issues if they ante up as soon as demand is made." They've retained David Boies (DOJ prosecutor of Microsoft) to handle the legal issues." Note: I've been unable to substantiate this - which are fairly incendiary claims. Further updates as more is heard.
I have linux running on computers that cost less than $96.
One of the main reasons I use linux is the free beer aspect.
SCO, after it's buyout from Caldera and then becoming SCO again, has generally behaved favorably towards Linux and the Linux community, even to the point of incorporating Linux functionality into Caldera/SCO Open Unix 8 through a Linux Kernel layer. If SCO's business model has previously included making money off Linux, it would be an act of either desperation or spite to suddenly demand royalties.
Also, isn't SCO still owned by Caldera, and SCO in name only?
. We've got computers, we're tapping phone lines, you know that ain't allowed - Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime"
That 5% of the cost of linux per CPU, that should be easy for most people to pay.
Doesn't the use it or loose it rule apply anyhow, Linux has been out for ages, the source codes there for anyone to look at. SCO should have cried wolf a long time ago, they have no excuse.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
IANAL (not even US citizen, for that matter), but don't patents need to be applied / enforced right away ? I mean, it's probably been years since those (thought-to-be) patent-violating codes are being used, so doesn't SCO lose its rights to the patent for not having sued earlier ?
Tsuyoikoto ha taisetsu da ne, dakedo namida mo hitsuyousa (Strength is an important thing, but tears too are necessary)
Is it just me, or has everyone else noticed a lack of information about this. What does the patent cover? What software does it apply to?
In fact, is there any information other than SCO wanting patent royalties for some undeisclosed software?
If SCO had pursued this avenue, oh lets say 5 or 6 years ago, they may have been able to win such a case. But I think now what they'll get is a long drawn out battle which will give the open source community time to build in replacement solutions that will make the case moot.
Guess its time to roll up our sleeves and get coding.
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
If this is indeed true - does this surprise anyone?
It has been said time and time again that SCO/Caldera (and to some extent UnitedLinux) would end up bringing the worse part of proprietary systems (like moronic licensing policies) to Linux. Now it's finally here and we can go ahead and stick a fork in what used to be a pretty good company.
Looks like the decision makers at SCO/Caldera have Ransom Love on the brain.
Some people complain about Red Hat's "market dominance". I guess some companies are just content in making decisions that are so stupid, that they're making it easy to dump their product. RH is going to wipe the floor with what's left of SCO. Who in their right mind would pay per processor fees for linux?
I'd have to agree. This article, while yes very disheartening, and shocking, should have been left until the author had real details to share. Not just a bunch of hearsay, and rumors.
'Course, the article does actually talk about the marketting director, who confirms that they are seeing a lawyer about IP assets. So, there's a strong question of truth here. But it still sounds way to much like, "I heard this the other day from this guy, who never lies"
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
This sounds like osx to me. And the whole thing smacks of the sleasiest kind of blackmail. But, knowing how vociferous the Gnu/Linux community is, and how suicidal such a move would be for the company given the culture of the community, this sounds like either some of hoax or perhaps an "anthrax-killer" type ploy to make folks aware of a potential legal loophole with the gpl.
See if I pay it. Wanna take me to court? Okay, do so. I'd rather pay an attorney than hand money over to you.
And if everybody takes this tact, they'll back off. These cowards from Caldera/SCO have been waiting to do something like this for a long time. I don't trust them and never have.
Of course, they won't sue me, an individual user. They'll sue RedHat, as the story says. They'll sue SuSE. They'll sue Mandrake. Let's see them sue the Debian Project, while they're at it and get the EFF involved.
Until I hear that this is false, I'm boycotting SCO.
Off to look through the debian packages to find ones contributed by Caldera and remove them....
If this is true, it means SCO is dying. I would
expect a totally cash-strapped company to do
something like this. I would not expect a company
like MS to do this, as it does not need the money
and does not want the bad PR. Some have commented
that they wouldn't expect this to come from "our
fold"-- they underestimate what can happen in a
dying company. Things can get cynical and negative
real fast. Keep in mind though that this is
somewhat unsubstantiated.
The Berkeley system distribution (BSD) evolved out of AT&T UNIX. When push came to shove, the courts ruled against AT&T - the IP rights for BSD rest with the University of California. I can't imagine any IP in the original Unix that doesn't have a counterpart in the Berkeley codebase.. and the BSD license grants everyone the rights to use that IP.
Furthermore, Microsoft would likely be a large offender of any patents. NT has a POSIX subsystem. Pretty much all of the Unix concepts (processes, pipes, files, yada yada) are present in Win32, heck, in any OS. If SCO really wanted to milk money out of this, I'd be astonished if their first move wasn't to buzz around Microsoft and catch a large cash settlement. Or attempt to be purchased.
My bullshit meter is blowing chunks.
This sounds like a scam. If the patents cover something trivial its a nobrainer to toss it out and replace it. If they cover something buried in POSIX or some wellused piping/whatever method there are surely similar functions in *BSD and MacOS X. Its perticularly interesting that they only target linux nad not the other 'nix wannabies.
It smells funny indeed.
HTTP/1.1 400
The IBM legal team supposedly showed up with a pile of hundreds of patents that Windows infringed on, and that was the end of that.
The mechanics of American business are defined by meetings such as this. IBM is standing in the gap for the moment, but I am afraid that Linux's nebulousness will result in its being banned in the U.S., simply because no one will be around to go to the closed door meetings you describe.
We could of course, organize protests, and these might be well attended and done with heroic emphasis, but those of us who understand the very concept of electronic freedom are in a hopeless minority. Most computer users are perfectly happy with Windows, AOL, IE, etc., and are actively hostile to those sufficiently aware of the open source world to be concerned about these issues.
I have a two pronged approach to this problem. On the one hand, I am doing everything I can to evangelize for electronic freedom. If enough Americans understand the sheer tyranny megacorps exert over how we use information, we might be able to change things. I'm not optimistic, however, so plan B is finding another country to live in. I have to say that I've never imagined leaving the United States in search of freedom.
Demanding a per CPU fee from Linux users and/or distributers for alleged patent infringements would be the single most stupid thing SCO could possibly do.
This actually reminds me of the time (1987) IBM launched their MCA bus based PS/2 line. IBM then reportedly demanded a 'per system ever produced' fee from clone makers wanting to license the MCA technology in order to make clones/compatibles. Unsurprisingly, a few months later we had the EISA bus, a few years on the MCA bus is extinct and the world runs on PCI. Strategic blunders like these have killed off large corporations in the past.
Then again, if the real target is a certain software marketing outfit a bit further north on the US west coast, the process might reveal a few more skeletons in various corporate closets. That might of course turn interesting if you're into that sort of thing.
-- That grumpy BSD guy - http://bsdly.blogspot.com/
If you read the article, it says that RedHat is starting to aquire patents as well.
Now, I have no doubt that Redhat is doing this for the good of the Linux community but Redhat is a publicly traded company, is it not? All it would take is a corporate takeover/merger and all those good intentions could be out the window.
It would be wise to keep GNU/Linux patent free, even if the patent is owned by Redhat.
I've been swashdotted -- Elmer Fudd
Bell Telephone Laboratories was issued a patent in 1979 for the setuid (set user ID) bit in the Unix file system. This patent was no doubt transferred along with the rest of "Unix," from AT&T to Unix International to Novell to SCO.
This patent was never enforced, and should have expired by now. Hypothetically, there could be some other similar intellectual propery "landmines" in the very specification of Unix-like systems.
Just FYI; the story sounds like FUD to me.
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
I thought patents were only enforcable for a specific length of time. 7 or 20 years are the numbers sticking in my mind. Given that Linux is over 10 years old and I believe the AT&T code which Novell and then SCO owned is even older than that, wouldn't any patent claim be in effect mute.
Copyright lasts much longer, too long at 95 years past the death of the original author. But that is already being litegated at the US Supreme Court.
If there is anything substantive about this, I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft was sitting in the SCO boardroom within hours with a nice check for a billion dollars.
I've got a couple of PCs at home that mostly run Win98, but sometimes run Linux, and some at work too. OK, so maybe the Business Software Alliance could come around demanding to see what I'm running at home, but they won't get within 100yards of where I work. Secure underground bunkers with multiple card-access locks on the grounds of an airport. I must admit it would be kind of funny to watch the Pinkerton rent-a-cops call out Homeland Security to detain the BSA goons...
Count the downloads, maybe? Nope, that won't work either. I've downloaded some distros I've never used, and I've seen burned copies of downloads passed around and copied by multiple people.
So, again, who counts how many cpus any given person is running Linux on? My boxes at home are behind a firewall doing NAT and hiding all the usual ports, so good luck fingerprinting that...
One thing you have to realise is that twenty years from now nobody will care if one wacky bankrupt state has banned Linux. There will be no real IT industry left in the USA by then anyway. The odd billion chinese people are slightly more significant.
People like PANIP are the final death throes. The innovators dilemma is destroying the west. We lost the heavy industry, we have to pay farmers to avoid losing farming, we are losing the support businesses, gradually the more efficient nations munch their way up the food chain. Soon all that will be left are the futile attempts to own ideas and lawyers.
That won't last long either. There are a lot of non US companies building huge patent pools. Their staff are cheaper, their lawyers don't charge outrageous fees and they have lots of young and bright staff encouraged to think rather than to conform for fear of liability and lawsuits for being original.
Something to think about as you watch the US drop your tax money out of bombers over the desert
to my favorite software patent fighting organization!
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
XJS*C4JDBQADN1.NSBN3*2IDNEN*GTUBE-STANDARD-ANTI-U
Well SCO aka Caldera is an enterprise with a long Linux tradition. I may dislike it more than like it, but this is more a question of taste and preferences. Anyway, one shall take into consideration that SCO, today, combines one of the oldest Linux distributors + the most traditionalist Unix developer.For such a company to come up and try a suicide move like the one shown in the article is rather irrational. True, there have been such cases, when companies change hands and new management gets nuts and the company burns to flames. But, as far as I remember, it was Caldera who bought the remains of SCO. Considering that this company was created by one of the most mature figures of software, and a full-hearted anti-MS partisan - Ray Noorda, I really wonder how serious this story can be.
Besides, the story itself, is full of foggy statements. Many already referred the strange chain of anonymous sources that broke things to the newsrooms. But there are many other foggy moments.
First is the price tags - 96, 99, 149 per cpu. For anyone who knows how Linux is deployed, one can really wonder how they could be planning for such BS.
Then we read: Users of SCO Linux would get a free System 5 license. They would also have the free right to run SCO Unix apps on Linux. So... Are we talking about Linux or SCO Linux?
Then, we have this weird statement on pressing charges: Presumably this means Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, and maybe even SCO's United Linux partners SuSE, TurboLinux, and Conectiva. If I'm not mistaken, TurboLinux is a Japanese comapny, SuSE is from Germany and Conectiva is from Brasil. Well, patent systems behave differentially in different countries. So, the best that SCO could have done was to commit harakiri as its partners would probably broke the alliance and it would force Caldera to fight in three different countries.
And the most weird of all statements would be this one: SCO would base any claims it makes on the Unix patents and copyrights that it acquired when it took over the Santa Cruz Operation. Its press release claims it "owns much of the core Unix IP" and that it has the right to enforce it. Well, if it owns much of the core of Unix, then not only Linux but the whole *NIX world would be in danger. Considering that this was once a matter that was partially and painfully settled down between Bell and Berkeley, considering that even Windows has a little bit of Unix inside, considering that lots of standards and protocols are based on Unix, considering the tens of Unices around, this would be double harakiri for SCO. So it is very weird to consider that anyone at SCO could ever seriously think the way it is shown on the article.
So it is very probable that the article is either someone trying to get some sensational points in yellow journalism, or this is a well elaborated FUD test to see how people react.
If one cares to see SCO site, they still are well determined in their Linux moves. And this adds an argument to the fact that probably this article is just some cheap provocation. No matter that I dislike SCO/Caldera, I have to recognise that someone is playing dirty against them.
Well, I agree that we're seeing the beginnings of the American Empire. Asymmetric threats give rise to a local police state and a foreign policy of overt gunboat diplomacy, which is analogous to the rise of the Roman Empire.
The core of the empire will be commercial, exactly like the British Empire was, but where Britain dealt in a monopoly of commodity, the American Empire will be about the monopoly of intellectual property. How far would we have to go from banning Linux due to (imagined) patent infringement to bombing other countries to enforce our patent law?
I'm afraid that history does not support your predictions about the fall of America. I say that with not the slightest pride. I honestly hope you are right. (Though I have more confidence in a resurgent Europe being the world's next major power) I'm personally not at all concerned about power and influence. I want freedom. And because the U.S. is set to create an Empire of Information, we stand to be the greatest threat to freedom the world has ever known. I cannot and will not support that Empire.
MS is/was a substantial share holder in SCO. In fact, it wasn't until 1999/2000 that SCO removed MS's CFO from SCO's board of directors.
Maybe MS is using their position here to put some pressure on Linux?
US monopolies on "intellectual property" vanish as soon as significant foreign players decide not to go along. The UK was far ahead of the US early in the 19th century. How did the US catch up? By ignoring British patents and copyrights, and smuggling manufacturing equipment out of Britain and cloning it. The Chinese don't even have to bother with that, as US corporations are setting up manufacturing operations in China.
In another few years, the Chinese can just say that they want to negotiate new terms: they'll happily continue to sell the Americans practically everything, as almost every manufactured good consumed by Americans is made there. But they want to pay vastly less to American copyright and patent holders. If there's no deal, they just pay nothing at all: the US could try to forbid Chinese exports, and watch its entire economy collapse, because too many basic necessities are available from nowhere else.
Similarly, Europe is running a big trade surplus against the US: Americans buy much more from Europe than they sell to Europe. This means that American companies need access to European markets far more than vice versa, putting the EU's regulatory authorities in a position of power. The US has evidently abandoned the antitrust concept, but you'll soon see the EU insisting that American companies break up, and winning.
We all know the historic MS/SCO link over Xenix. It would be great ploy by a sinking SCO ship to succesfully execute a patent claim over Linux implementations - so as to position themselves as an MS aquisition target.
This is no more inconceivable than the recent, successful coup against Constitutional rule in the United States...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
When i was a poor student, I had fond wishes of running a UNIX machine, just to learn about it. I priced out suns, decs and even looked at abused 3b2's. if my pennies were dollars, i might have been able to think about this... but they weren't, and i scriped every penny for a LONG time and bought a machine to put linux on, just to play with...
Does it mean anything that back in 1994, AT&T did not push the "patent" coverage, ie sue, sue, sue (or get an injunction to stop development) ?
Does it matter that when Novell bought the IP that it did not enforce the patent?
IIRC, version 0.12 was circa 1991. this is twelve years of non-enforcement.
On another note, It would be interesting to see what "core unix ip patents" they would cite, as they might be applicable to many other operating systems (windows?)
Also, linux implements POSIX, which is a ISO or ANSI standard, right? Are there other such standards which are patented?
(lotsa questions, no answers)