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.

Comments

This would be a 180 to previous behavior

[carlhirsch]

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?

Re:This would be a 180 to previous behavior

[Zeinfeld]

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.

Or they have hired a jerk as IP counsel. There are law firms that will mindlessly extract value from an IP portfolio on your behalf for a cut of the profits.

There are two issues that would appear relevant here. First is whether there might be a question of detrimental reliance. Having failled to enforce the rights now asserted for so long have the rights become unenforceable? While patents are not like trademarks and lack of enforcement does not necessarily lead to loss, there are circumstances where it can.

The more interesting issue is the question of which of the SCO patents have expired and which are enforceable in the first place. There is very little in UNIX that is innovative. Most of the design is simply a stripped down version on MULTICS. While simplifying a system is often the key to commercial success it does not win any patents.

Furthermore Linux and BSD are derrived from the original UNIX of 20, 25 years ago rather than the reworked System 5 version. The system 5 release was the first time AT&T applied singificant development resources to UNIX, up until then they had simply been content to sit and collect their royalty checks.

The problem for the Linux community is that defending a patent suit, even a completely frivolous one will cost in the region of $2 million.

Finaly, we can do without the knee jerk anti-Microsoft reaction to every Linux story. Microsoft has played the patent game defensively.

Re:This would be a 180 to previous behavior

[silas_moeckel]

Hold the phone SCO was part of a company the distributed Linux for free correct? If this is true how can they claim pattent infringement on something they gave out for free under the GPL? It's one thing to say thats an infinging work pay me but it's another to have one part of the company releasing it for free under the GPL then get spun off and claim it's yours again.

Now granted they can claim infringement on anything but it's another thing alltogether to distribute infinging work then claim it's infringing. I shouldent be able to pattent something release it for free under a liscence then go and sue for infringement as I did give out that code.

Yeah, but... What!?

[91degrees]

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?

Are you really surprised?

[reaper20]

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?

So send me a bill, SCO

[idiotnot]

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....

BSD?

[lpontiac]

The Santa Cruz Operation of course bought Unix from Novell, which in turn got it from AT&T. Unix was written at Bell Labs when Bell Labs was still part of the phone company. It is unclear whether the alleged IP is unassailable and that valid patents or copyrights actually exist or that the Unix libraries are actually in Linux.

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.

Re:Patents as deterrence against enforcement

[stinky wizzleteats]

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.

I sincerely hope this is not true

[badger.foo]

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.

setuid is patented; anything similar?

[Lumpish Scholar]

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.

Re:setuid is patented; anything similar?

[thogard]

AT&T may have patents to the /proc file system concept but I know about published prior art as well as one of the people who came up with the idea.

There is the issue of how thouse rights were transferred. As far as I know, no part of AT&T gave up any rights to any of it patents when they were split up. What they gave up was rights to some markets. I suspect tring to get SBC to pay for a license to use an old AT&T patent would be pointless.

There is also the issue that Sun owns all the rights to all of Unix as well. When things started going bad for SCO (or was it novel or whoever), they bought a non-exclusive right to everything. Since they helped develop System V, they are in a very good position to keep themselves covered in this case.

Of course the all new code could be written released under a new license. One that specificly excludes all rights to use the software from any company that has ever brought a patent suit aginst anyone. That would be an interesting twist. The concept goes aginst free software in a bad way but its the only big stick free software has left and it will be needed if the dmca line nonsense keeps going on.

And who gets to count the cpus?

[surprise_audit]

Seriously, who counts how many cpus I'm running Linux on?

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...

The fire is here, but where is the smoke?

[Ektanoor]

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.