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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 had no idea it was April 1st. But judging from the last 2 slashdot stories, it must be. This one and the "Science Project Quadruples Surfing Speed". Yikes!
I have linux running on computers that cost less than $96.
One of the main reasons I use linux is the free beer aspect.
How to win friends and influence people.
POKE 36879,8
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.
"Ransom" Love, indeed
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
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)
GNU is not Unix.
Linux is a "Unix-like" operating system. Anyone who has ever done system programming for a Linux system could tell you that although it is close to the SVR4 conventions (such as in the acclaimed O'Reilly 'lion' book) it disobeys many of them because it's not quite System 5 compliant.
Is this really happening or is it early in the morning and I'm a sucker to a hoax?
The site's chugging a bit, so here's the full text. And kids, if you're going to post the full text, post it as a/c for crying out loud. Whores.
---
Informed sources, who would only talk on the guarantee of anonymity, say 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. The fee would go up to $149 per CPU if SCO had to wait through a so-called 99-day "amnesty period" for its money. 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.
Sources say the scheme, which pretty much sounds like a protection racket - we won't sue if you pay - isn't engraved in stone but an undated weeks-old draft SCO press release that details the plan and was read to us has been quietly making the rounds. At press time, we got word that a major player, believed to be IBM, thought it had dissuaded SCO from going through with the idea.
A usually reliable source swears a SCO executive told him that SCO has hired the redoubtable David Boies, who prosecuted the Microsoft antitrust case for the Justice Department, to press infringement claims not against users but against the other Linux distributions. Presumably this means Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, and maybe even SCO's United Linux partners SuSE, TurboLinux, and Conectiva.
It is unclear whether SCO envisioned the free System 5 license it's been proposing to bundle with SCO Linux extending to its United Linux partners or simply saw it as a SCO differentiator.
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.
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. Reportedly there has been a lot of patent research going on in the Linux community lately and there are supposedly serious doubts SCO has much of anything.
SCO CEO Darl McBride was in England or en route home and did not return calls. Other SCO execs declined to comment; neither would Red Hat, SuSE nor major ISVs also familiar with the situation.
SCO's director of marketing communications Blake Stowell finally found a phone and confirmed that SCO was talking to Boies, described in the press release as SCO's "IP advisor," about how best to monetize its IP, but denied that it had retained him yet or that its plans were fixed.
Stowell also denied that SCO would target other Linux distributions, basically suggesting that it would be suicide for SCO to do such a thing. "Microsoft would love to see that happen," he said. Instead Stowell suggested that SCO would take out after other unidentified operating systems that drive something from Unix and hinted that that might mean Microsoft itself since Boies was involved.
Potential SCO targets said patent demands and encumbrances are explicitly outlawed by the GPL, the touchstone of the open source/Linux movement, and any move by SCO against the Linux distributions would make SCO a pariah. They claim the protection scheme itself would be the end of SCO. The open source community regards patents with haughty distain. Naturally there are fears that accounts on the Linux threshold will be spooked if SCO, which is playing on known IP concerns, starts making demands.
The situation is fraught with irony considering that open source people have figured it would be cash-rich Microsoft that took out after them brandishing its patent portfolio, not one of their own.
Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik publicly fretted about his worries that Microsoft will eventually take Linux to court for patent infringement at a Linux gathering only a month ago (CSN No 479).
Red Hat says it is so concerned - despite the fact that it's against patents and signed a petition to the European Union urging the EU not to adopt software patents - that it has "reluctantly" taken the "defensive position" of assembling its own patent portfolio. To mitigate its intellectual inconsistency, it says its patents can be used for free for any GPL work. Licenses, however, would be required for any closed, proprietary use.
SCO, on the other hand, needs the money. Its tiny Linux business is a disaster and there's little doubt that the company, founded by ex-Novell CEO Ray Noorda, would be out on the street by now if it weren't for the Unix operating systems it got from Santa Cruz.
Meanwhile, Boies' track record since the Microsoft case hasn't been anything to write home about. He wasn't able to save either Al Gore or Napster and actually a lot of the tar he managed to dip Microsoft in rubbed off with Microsoft's subsequent appeal and settlement with the DOJ.
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?
This sounds like High School again.
"Mark said that Shirly swears (and Shirly never ever lies) she overheard Jenny say she got it on with Mr. Macgee the English teacher!"
Try using the unmount command.
Ughh... i hate bad puns :|
I was horrified to read that SCO was planning on charging $99 per cpu! Thats outrageous!!
You can imagine my relief when, reading further, I see that its $96/cpu.
Informed sources, who would only talk on the guarantee of anonymity ,huh?
Sounds REAL easy to confirm this one
SCO could not be that self-defeating, could they? So, what they waited around until Linux was firmly rooted in many infastructures, then sue? ie. no money in protecting their property when johnny geek and his 12 friends were the only types that used Linux..
I dunno, there have been equally asinine tech lawsuits in recent times....but this seems way off, IMHO, and somewhat suicidal for SCO
Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!
Unconfirmed sources say that a confidential source, while taking a shit, heard an anonymous executive talking about a meeting with a person who will be unnamed (possibly Jenna Jameson), and at that meeting, the discussion was about the dire financial situation of the company ( the word 'fucked' was heard repeatedly ).
Or maybe someone was commenting about a movie he rented last night.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
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?
It's interesting reading that IBM was actively "dissuading" SCO from carrying out this threat.
IBM has an enormous number of software patents that probably cover every operating system on the market. IBM, unlike SCO, understands that for software companies software patents are like nuclear weapons. They are useful as a deterrent, and useless for anything else.
There's a story, possibly apocryphal, about how a Microsoft lawyer contacted IBM's legal department, informed them that they had a patent that IBM's operating systems infringed upon, and set up a meeting to discuss royalty payments. 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.
I suspect that this is the nature of the dissuasive force being brought to bear by IBM.
This seems to be a useful side effect of large companies like IBM adopting Linux. They serve as a certain form of protection against this sort of shakedown racket, at least from by actual software companies.
The only companies that are able to enforce software patents with impunity are those companies that don't actually manufacture software, like PANIP This highlights the destructive uselessness of software patents -- they are only capable of benefiting companies that don't produce software, in other words, lawsuit factories like PANIP.
Oh yes, they also benefit the patent office to the tune of millions of dollars a year -- a destructive racket in and of itself.
the scheme, [...] isn't engraved in stone but an undated weeks-old draft
Sounds like we can still influence the decision. How do we make SCO an example to the world that this is a very bad idea?
Of course, if you live in the EU you still have time to stop software patents altogether.
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
Great!!!!! Does that mean that Slackware will be the only free distro left? :)
I knew I made the right choiche!
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
If this were to actually happen, their customers - i.e. people who are using Linux for business - would disown them in a heartbeat. There wouldn't be a SCO left to collect on this issue.
Acts 17:28, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being."
From scratch, clean room development will protect you from copyright, but it is no protection from patents.
Check out the source of the article. I'm not quite convinced yet. :)
From the LinuxGram website ( http://www.linuxgram.com/ ):
"Copyright Notice: While we are flattered that some of our readers may want to pass along copies of our stories to customers, clients, associates, friends, family and co-workers, please know that this practice is illegal, violates our intellectual property rights and undermines our efforts to bring you the kind of reporting you've come to expect..
And, so the legalese: It is illegal to reproduce, copy, photocopy, forward, e-mail, publish, broadcast, post on an Internet/Intranet site, rewrite, store in a retrieval system or otherwise distribute this publication or any portion of this publication or any article in whole or in part by any means, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of G2 Computer Intelligence.
"I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy"
Ooooooohhhh! How scary! The man who split Microsoft into two companies! And ensured that Albert Gore assumed the US Presidency!
Given Boise's track record, we can all sleep well tonight.
... is that it doesn't matter that it was written from scratch. Even if that Torvalds guy had been living in a cave, never having seen any kind of Unix ever and just happened to come up with Linux anyway, it would still be a patent infringement if SCO was the first to come up with the patented technology.
Until I see some citations, I'm a bit skeptical about these claims. If it does turn out that the Linux kernel is violating a solid patent, is there any reason why the code couldn't just be tweaked to not violate the patent anymore? While a "real" company might not be willing to do this, the kernel developers have demonstrated a willingness to overhaul major portions of the kernel code and I'm sure any problems could be routed around fairly quickly.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
That doesn't matter. A patent would cover a specific way of writing code. So if you were to write your code in the same way - no matter whether you know of the patent - you violate the patent and owe license fees.
Of course, coming up with the same solution independently is a good indicator that the patent was not actually valid.
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....
Naive people on slashdot will consistently tell you how software patents protect the little guy. Of course, they're unable to ever show you a case of this happening, but I guess the idea that it could potentially help the little guy in some sort of odd circumstance makes it all right.
Software patents have always been a bad idea.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Ransom Love. A little more predictable, but with more sinister implications.
I read this section to mean that if SCO has patents that Linux implements, and 'the community' doesn't already have an unlimited eternal royaltay-free license to use these patents, then the Linux people are right now, regardless of whether SCO tries to pay up or not, legally obligated to remove the implementations of these patents from the Linux code. As far as i'm aware, there have been in the past concentrated efforts to find and remove submarined patents that accidentally wound up in GPLed software, no? What patents of this sort could SCO have?
At any rate one would imagine that SCO would not be so stupid as to demand individual $97 patent licenses from a group of people that (1) is at the moment their core target market (2) has a long-standing tendency to boycott people who do things like demand money for submarine patents (3) would probably not even pay the $97 fees, as they also have a long-standing tendency to not mind stealing from anyone they believe to be screwing them over. (I call (3) "civil disobedience", personally, but that's probably just spin on my part.)
And SCO would have to demand this money from individual users-- it would be impossible for SCO to demand it from vendors, becuase were SCO to start demanding licensing fees from anyone at all regarding patents of theirs inside the Linux kernel (which i assume is where these patent violations would have taken place), all existing linux vendors, including SCO, would be under GPL section 7 immediately legally unable to distribute Linux to anyone at all! (Not permanently, of course, as i find it highly unlikely any defendable SCO patent, once discovered in the linux kernel, would remain there any longer than a span of hours.)
Either way, assuming that SCO is in fact this stupid, and assuming that SCO actually does own patents that the linux kernel violates but that no one in the free software community has ever noticed, i think i'll wait until i read this on SCO.COM to pay any attention to it whatsoever.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I would rather pay $200 to a lawyer or the FSF to fight for my free use of Linux than pay $96 extortion money to SCO...
I'm sure there's a logic in there somewhere.
Bazman
Stop trolling. Boies helped prosecute Microsoft. He's not going to be getting any money in backing from them.
bug.gd: error search engine. Humanity working together to solve all errors.
"Just say no to SCO..."
Doesn't affect me in the slightest anymore, I've happily switched to FreeBSD - 3d support, Linux emulation, and less GNU-hippy-ism :)
smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
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.
Note: I've been unable to substantiate this
Easy one. According to counter.li.org there are 18 million users. SuSEgives us " more than 15 million private and professional Linux users around the globe".
If we consider 15 million users, we have $99 x 15M = $1.485.000.000 (one billion and a half).
The genie has officially left the bottle. That's right; the genie has left the bottle. Move along, folks. Nothing to see here.
--K.
Sig: Bad people happen. Try to avoid being one of them.
BTW: Good luck inforcing that!!
It isn't like Linux distributions come with built in "spy-ware" like Windows does
Way to be a kill-joy SCO/Caldera
HallmarkOrnaments.Com
If SCO publish the source files for linux complete with the original GPL licence files then surely that constitutes acceptance of that licence. They have already done this so I dont see that they can say anything. IANAL but it makes sence to me.
Her bio
Maureen O'Gara, Editor (Long Island, NY) ogara@g2news.com
[snip]Since launching Unigram.X in the US, she has stalked the aisles of Uniforum with a vengeance, leaving a trail of shaking, sweating VPs of many a UNIX supplier.
Now she haunts the corridors of the Microsoft powerbase and gives Client Server NEWS 2000 some of its sharp edge. Famous for her confrontational style in press conferences she is single-handedly the reason why most companies in the sector have abandoned having press conferences. Maureen doesn't just get stories but she gets to the heart of stories , primarily on Client Server NEWS 2000, but also on Online Reporter.
Who knows why more journalists don't ask questions like her? But we're glad she's on our side.
Sounds like the girl in Ferris Bueller's Day off....
"Linux? Linux? Linux?"
"Umm, Linux's sick. My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw Linux Violate SCO patent issues out at Thirty-One Flavors last night. I guess it's pretty serious."
is the doctrine of laches. You can't claim back dues for patent infringement if the person you're suing honestly didn't know about your patent. This supposedly puts a stop to "submarine patents".
Does my bum look big in this?
For the BSD stuff, yes. The System V stuff was written by AT&T, then it wound its way through....uhm..NCR, Novell, and SCO. Maybe a few other companies in random order.
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
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/
#1 You don't show your cards too early if you are planning on taking on the likes of Microsoft.
Attacking Linux distros and users would indeed be suicide. Shops which use it heavily might fork over, but you and I would be hard pressed, further, all those people who have downloaded the sources and built would be like chasing dandelion seeds.
If it is indeed Boies then you know the target is a big one, because you don't hire a gun like him to take on pimps.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Is it just me or does something seem wrong with a linux site running IIS? here is the error i got Error Executing Database Query.
[MERANT][SequeLink JDBC Driver][ODBCSocket][Microsoft][ODBC Microsoft Access Driver]
Could not update; currently locked by user 'admin' on machine 'WEBSERVER'.
The error occurred in
E:\Inetpub\wwwroot\linux\articlenews.cfm: line 200
198 :
199 :
200 : cellpadding=0>
201 :
202 :
SQL
update linuxArticles SET hits = '616' where ID = 381
DATASOURCE
content
VENDORERRORCODE
-1102
SQLSTATE
HY000
Looks like access lasted longer than some sites with mysql db's there were 80 comments before i got this error. I have seen mysql go down stop accepting requests in under 50 comments.
Wang33
PAGERANK++ Robsell.com
I'm sure Microsoft likes what it's hearing today, but it's not stupid enough to get involved.
Why? Because it's in still in court trying to settle it's antitrust case. All a judge (or Sun, or any one else that is "Sue MS" Happy) would have to hear is that MS is involved (in any way I might add) in preventing Linux from being sold in a market that MS dominates, and all kinds of hell breaks loose.
Because if this, Microsoft will not even think of getting close to this case, let alone touch it.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
s/my/may
:)
I think most people realized this, but just in case.
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 noticed two articles this morning that come with disclaimers. Been had by one hoax too many perhaps?
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
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
But the GPL requires not only the freedom to redistribute, but to distribute arbitrary derived works. So really, the above should read "... would not permit royalty-free distribution of arbitrary derived works". But this is clearly nonsense: If I added one-click shopping to GNU ls, I would not have a license to distribute the result. So by section 7, nobody can distribute GNU ls under the GPL.
There are many other scenarios in which the claims of section 7 are rendered absurd. Consider the impact on those outside of the jurisdiction in which the patent applies; the hypothetical rogue nation that outlaws GPLed software; the employee whose contract prohibits him from contributing to certain free software projects. The requirement that "all those who receive copies directly or indirectly" be able to exercise their GPL rights is ludicrously onerous.
Regarding the parent's main point: I certainly believe that SCO itself is prohibited from distributing GPLed software on which it has patents, unless they also give everyone a free, perpetual license to the patent for GPLed software. Otherwise, they would not really be giving others the freedoms that they say (via the GPL) they are giving. Since they have distributed Linux, that alone is enough to thwart the rumored patent attack.
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
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...
Okay, so the conspiratorialist in me is alive and well this morning -- but this whole thing sounds suspicicious.
Remember that Microsoft once had a version of Unix, named Xenix, licensed from AT&T and developed by -- you guessed it, the original SCO. Caldera bought SCO, and the combined entity is known by the "SCO Group" moniker.
Microsoft recently went through a nasty court battle, in which lawyer Boies did a piss-poor job for the U.S. government in pressing anti-trust violations against Redmond. Now this same Boies has set his sights on Linux through a company that has tried to apply Microsoft-like marketing to selling Linux and Unix.
FUD is on the loose here. The SCO Group may think this will drive Linux user into buying their over-priced product -- or they could be shilling for Microsoft. The best way to defeat an enemy is to make him a friend -- and it is awfully suspicious that a lawyer (Boies) would go from a wussy prosecution of Microsoft to actually helping attack Linux.
In any case, this should not be taken lightly; the U.S. legal system is no longer rational, and Boies might find some judge who will ignorantly rule that Linux is somehow "illegal" for patent violations. Stupider things have happened in our court rooms...
All about me
Since SCO = Caldera can any of us sue "Caldera" for not disclosing this to anyone who bought a retail box version of Caldera Linux during the time period in which they owned the rights to SCO?
He says it himself that he knows it would be suicide, and hints that it might actually be Microsoft who is the target.
"GNU's not Unix....it's Linux" / Kami "kokamomi" Petersen
Get some substantiation and get back to me. Until then... What is this www.MOSR.com? Just mod trolls down and reject rumors.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Tossing something patented and replacing it with something that does the same thing... doesnt work. Only a wheel has the function of a wheel.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Bzzzzzzzzzt! You're wrong.
SCO does not own the UNIX trademark. Ray Noorda (back when he ran things at Novell) gave the trademark to the Open Group.
So, unless the Open Group wants to sue folks for making claims to be something like UNIX, what you describe above isn't going to happen.
to my favorite software patent fighting organization!
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
"How does core Unix IP have anything to do with Linux?"
Based on what is described, they are arguing that running a System V based implementation, which is a function-a-like of SCO UNIX, is a violation of software patent. I'd imagine that they'd argue that things like the init structure, command structure and function, and other aspects that are similar to System V as implemented in Linux are intentional and violatory copies of their intellectual property, and have hurt their business.
Should such a case proceed, it'll be interesting to see what kind of arguments and outcomes occur, since Linux has been historically stated to be a re-implementation of Minix, and not solely based on System V (I mean, Slackware uses BSD init even), so they may not have much of an argument to stand on.
Beyond that, since the kernel and structure is all open source, they've had YEARS to attempt something, with their full knowledge of what was going on in the Linux community, and they've waited until now, a full decade after Linux became a stable OS.
The other thing that they're not properly considering is that if they attempt to pursue this, all that people have to do is change how Apache, or whatever other software they're going to attempt to use to prove that someone's running Linux, to report something else, like unknown, which leaves the burden on SCO, not on the user, to prove what is running.
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
Hmmm... that's real reliable.
Let's assume for the sake of discussion that they're really doing this. Why? They don't have the muscle to pursue *all* the violators. And if they did, there would be serious impact to infrastructure. Aren't there one or two or more "CPUs" critical to the internet running GNU/Linux?
So, we also have to assume that SCO doesn't care about the potential impact to the community (not the "Linux community"; the community). And we also have to assume that they don't care about the logistical nightmare of effectively enforcing their alleged patent.
Maybe they're hoping some big organization that has an ideological problem with Linux will buy SCO (and the alleged patent), and enforce it?
If we assume all that, then we can conclude that SCO is ready to throw in the towel. What has happened when the sort of company that might buy this alleged patent for the purposes above actually does so? You can reasonably expect that company act like a wolverine that's found a cache of food.
C'est la guerre.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
On a related point, if you agree to a license and later find out that your system does not infringe, there is nothing you can do. You can't sue because you agreed to take a license. You can't even sue to invalidate the patent because of a principle called licensee estoppel - it means that once you take a license, you are foreclosed from claiming that there is nothing to license (i.e., the patent is invalid so there is no property right to license).
The moral of the story is to spend some time in advance doing your homework. Threats of "you can pay a little for a license now or pay a lot for one later, if I decide to license it to you at all" are designed to do one thing - keep you from doing your homework.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
XJS*C4JDBQADN1.NSBN3*2IDNEN*GTUBE-STANDARD-ANTI-U
The points being made by the SCO people, assuming they're real, is that specifically the System V implementation is the problem. MacOSX is based on NeXT, which is based on BSD, which is a different development strain from System V, going way back. If they took on this to take on Apple, they'd also be taking on BSDi, who have had commercial UNIX platforms for so long that they'd totally get their asses whooped.
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
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.
They're like the buzzing of an insignificant group of retarded flies who keep demanding attention when they have nothing noteworthy.
Here's a plan.
Sounds like fun. I call dibs on the SCO Ethics Manual.
...it would still be a patent infringement if SCO was the first to come up with the patented technology.
...it would still be patent infringement of SCO was the first to win the footrace to the patent office.
Correction.
Inventing isn't required. Being the first to pay the USPTO vig and have the government summarilly declare you "invented" it and grant you an entitlement to a 20 year monopoly is all that is required. Actually inventing the product, before or after the fact, is not only not required, it could be a hinderence.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Oh wait...I just infringed on his (copyrighted) saying! Does this mean he owns me now? Q: Why does someone sue? A: Because they can. and until the rules are changed to stop them from suing just because they can, these kind of ridiculous lawsuits will continue...
I've always supported caldera, thru all the accusations of their 'anti community' actions..
But this is over the top.
While even if they do win some judgment, they can never practically enforce this as it would effect most every OS on the face of the earth.
Must be a joke.. a bad one, but a joke..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Remember, this is FUDot. When it comes to SCO or Caldera, Slashdot had always had an agenda.
Sigged!
"Note: I've been unable to substantiate this - which are fairly incendiary claims. Further updates as more is heard."
Gee, I'd think you'd want to substantiate this BEFORE publishing it live to millions of viewers. Not only is it irresponsible, it is potentially actionable. What if this is not true and SCO sues Slashdot for publishing this? Any real lawyers out their know what could or could not happen?
Peace, or Not?
Lots of Unixes that are SCO's age have problems with time changes. For example during Y2K I had to check if some SunOS boxes were Y2K compatabile enough. It turns out that if you role the clock back the boxes double crash (down for the time change -> come up go down again for the check -> come up and start working).
This is bullshit, pure and simple. How can they claim IP infrigement in Linux if Linux was all about writing a UNIX-like OS *FROM SCRATCH* in the first place ? There is no SCO-owned IP in Linux and there cannot be. Case closed.
I don't know if you're a troll or a fool (since while copyrights require you to *copy* something, patents just mean you have to have come up with an idea, independantly(!), five seconds after someone else gets to the patent office), but you illustrate the danger of submarine patents very well. Linux was developed completely seperately from any other Unix, using fresh GPL'd code for the past 10 years. Despite this, SCO could potential jump up and say 'Hah! We own a patent on XYZ, so pay up!'. No one copied anything, no was even aware the patent existed, but SCO could still do it, and maybe even win in court if it went that far.
In conclusion: software patents suck because a) they last too long, b) get given out for stupidly well-known things and c) are subjected to abuse like this.
Seriously, at 97 cents, SCO would stand to pull in a lot of money, and many large users would pay that small bill than deal with potential litigation. $97 seems like a ridiculously large sum to ask for.
And the man who saved Napster.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
Does this mean that anything implemented to the POSIX standard is owned by SCO?
...
If so, we might note that Windows/NT has included a POSIX library from the start. So Microsoft is going to have to pay $96 in royalties for every NT/2K/ME/XP license that they've collected royalties on.
This might get interesting
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
They got one of the DOJ idiots. They'll never win the case in any substantial form. Wonder if he was at all involved with the USFL vs. NFL suit too.
The GPL specifically addresses this. Section 8 reads:OK, so that doesn't seem to cover the idea of a nation that outlaws the GPL-- i guess there's a bug in that section 7 covers "any law" and section 8 covers intellectual property law only. But that's a pretty outlandish scenario to consider, and unless a country someday outlaws GPLed software, this is not even worth thinking about. Anyway, since most GPLed software is licensed under "GPL 2.0 or, at your option, some later version of the GPL", were this issue ever to somehow come up, RMS could release GPL 2.0.1 in which section 8 allows you to make a geographical exemption based on any law, and just about everyone could switch to that. But i just don't see this happening.
As far as the contract thing goes, that's just kind of wierd and i don't think it's a valid problem. In that case, you've still unconditionally granted the rights the GPL requires you to grant, it's just that someone signed those rights away.
the above should read "... would not permit royalty-free distribution of arbitrary derived works". But this is clearly nonsense: If I added one-click shopping to GNU ls, I would not have a license to distribute the result. So by section 7, nobody can distribute GNU ls under the GPL
Yes.. that is clearly nonsense. But that's not what the GPL says. The GPL says that derivative works must be "licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License". It seems pretty clear to me that your obligations in section 7 are toward certifying the unlimited redistributability of code *you distribute*. Code other people write is not your problem in this way, even if it links against code you put under the gpl, and there's no reason to think it is.
Okay, so it's possible to misinterpret the language in the GPL to make a logical contradiction. That doesn't make it any less a misinterpretation, and since the *intent* of the words which are there are spelled out very clearly in the associated FAQs, i believe a court of law would (if for some bizarre reason someone in court attempted to argue what your post argues) interpret the GPL in the way it was intended to be interpreted.
I don't see the problem here. Section 7 is necessary for the rest of the GPL to work.
Since they have distributed Linux, that alone is enough to thwart the rumored patent attack.
Actually, not really. Since the GPL is a redistribution license and not a contract, there really isn't anything at all *legally* to stop SCO from exercising any patents they might have. If the patent they have is valid and they institute a license fee for that patent, they would lose the right to redistribute any gpled software that is covered by said patent, but then so would Debian. I think the only *direct* consequence for SCO if they instituted a license fee would be that they'd have to stop distributing linux until such time as they removed the code covered by their patent.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Scenario: Microsoft buys out SCO and then THEY keep making a fuss about it until Linux becomes unusable.
All I can say is, this better darn well not be true!
AFACS, There are only two solutions to this mess: One, if they smarten up and don't allow software patents. Two, if new patent laws were raised that required a patent owner to have no more than a certain amount of time after they would have first had reasonable opportunity to become aware of the infringement (I think one year or so would be good) -- further, it would not be legal for a new purchaser of a patent to enforce it if the person or organization they purchased it from had not enforced it within the requisite time.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Linux, *BSD, Windows somewhat all same some part of the same IP Stack... I was beleiving that it was BSD that did most of the IP stack was based on, am I wrong on this???
Well anyway why don't we wait for Microsoft to deffend Linux because somewhat they infrige the Patent too? Or have Microsoft buyed Caldera/SCO and not told anyone?
Conversely, it is alive and well in the IBM RS/6000 p-series UNIX servers.
System V. Ha, ha, ha, I wonder what they won't claim. It's a rumor, no one is that stupid, right?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
> Until I hear that this is false, I'm boycotting SCO.
If everybody behaves this way, we can kill a vendor just by starting a rumor.
The SCO patent story is _unsubstantiated_. It says so in the story and on the front page of Slashdot.
> Doesn't the use it or loose it rule apply anyhow
;-)
IANAL, but I read Slashdot
"Use it or lose it" applies to trademark rights,
"We'll just rewrite the code" applies to copyright.
Patents protect ideas, not writing, and the tragedy of the submarine patent is that prior art has to be, well, prior. Reinvention after the patent doesn't nullify the patent.
Nice try, but no. The patents in question existed before the infringing code, so there is nothing to substantiate that their primary purpose was to defeat the copyright on that code.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Linux threates the existance of UNIX not Windows. Ergo, UNIX vendors are forced to eek out as much as they can as they lose ground.
He works exclusively on the United Linux venture now. He was pretty much sacked from Caldera/SCO. This was just a graceful way to do it.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Careful now, this might make Stallman's head explode.
the way that AMD was able to basically clone the Intel cpu's
...was that Intel licensed the code to AMD so it would head off the likelihood of monopoly enforcement against it. That license expired a few years back, since when AMD has been doing its own development - but they started off doing Intel-sanctioned clones, and had to go to court to get Intel to back off on an attempt to keep them from applying what they'd learned from Intel's designs to their future chip development after the licensing agreement expired.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Never underestimate the peoples power to chose a substantial inferior product to save a penny.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Are they talking about the System 5 start up scripts? If so easy fix is to say f***'em and switch to bsd style startup. It's much easier to find things IMHO. But then again is this true???
I'd quote the article, and started to, but I then thought about possible copywright infringements (seriously!) and decided not to, but do read paragraph 6 of the article.
Only 'flamers' flame!
I too have been considering leaving America for freedom. Is Wales nice this time of year??
As an American, I have to look long and hard at Canada... They (mostly) speak English, seem roughly American sans the carpet bombing, and it leaves us close to friends and family. On the Con side, it's cold, their economy is tied to the US economy, and they are known for bowing to US pressure too often.
The UK on the other hand, it's cold, their economy has not been vibrant since the empire collapsed, and I understand that unemployment is still rampant. (No job = No visa)
Finally, I thought they dropped our tax money out of Helicopters over the desert.
Maybe we should have an ask slashdot: New coutries for expatriates??
~Hammy
Nothing4sale.org ~Hammy
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.
Hmm ... yet oddly, the people who try to migrate for economic opportunity and freedom move from China to the US, not from the US to China.
I guess it's those people you should be ranting to; they don't seem to be listening ...
The open source movement has no such portfolio (attempts have been made to put together a couple of dozen patents, but this is trivial compared to portfolios of hundreds or thousands). However we do have a large body of valuable IPR in the shape of our source code. We can threaten to withdraw that. Any large company should be very frightened by the threat to stop it using Linux or other open source software from tomorrow.
Every open source license should contain a clause along the following lines:
That should make them think twice.
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
Granted patents are published.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
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?
"Prior Art" is the solution to this problem: If a given invention existed "in the wild", or was in use in some public way by another party before one party filed for the patent, the patent will either be thrown out in court or never granted in the first place during the discovery phase.
Contrary to popular Slashdot opinion, the Patent & Trademark Office of the U.S. does throw out many patent applications during discovery due to prior art or previous patents. However, they still let through too many that should never have been granted, which then can go through lengthy infringement cases before they are finally discarded.
Matthew P. Barnson
I learn what I think when I read what I write
It's time for FS/OS to move to licenses with that patent mutual termination clause that goes something like this:
If you ever threaten any legal action in part or in whole because of software patents against any software or program that has this clause in its license, then you and everyone at your company lose the right to ever use any software licensed with this clause.
That's the only way to do it...you ever mess with ANY FS/OS with this clause, then you and your employees can never use ANY FS/OS ever again.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
No offense to Alan Cox because I think that it is an interesting point, but he also picked up a whole lot of mod points because he is Alan Cox.
It was an interesting point, but he was trying to be prolific and whether you think he is right on wrong, he isn't necessarily more interesting than the thousands of other wanna-be philisophical posts on slashdot that are making some prolific statement so that some day they can say, "see I told you so."
So you are correct, people shouldn't mod things as overrated as a matter of an emotional reaction, but people shouldn't be lazy with their mod points and think, "Oh Alan Cox, yeah, I'll mod that one up."
To keep this on subject, yes I think that Alan has an interesting point, but one of the things I've noticed about computer programming types (myself included) is that we tend to over-react to things and bring them to an extreme end. This has been more evident to me as I am a computer programmer that just married a computer programmer. She and I think of the worst possible outcome. We have to, by following the different paths that a problem can follow and choosing the worst possible outcome, you can fix the worst problems first.
This gives us, as computer programmers and interesting view of the world. In other words we tend to view the world in a pessamistic view. Alan has every right to say what he said, and I think that he makes some good points about how things are. Perhaps he has just predicted the demise of the U.S., but I'm still not going to call him a prophet or a fortune teller or whatever.
The fact of the matter is that with a machine in a finite set of rules he most likely has an accurate prediction, however man kind is not necessarily a machine. That means that the people of the US may wake up someday and decide that they are stupid for doing what they're doing and correct the situation.
So like I said, it was an interesting point. The whole point of what I'm saying here is that its just a prediction. He feels that he has history to back himself and maybe he's right. But short of calling him God (which I know some people around here do), he has no definitive way to say that he is 100% correct. An interesting point that may or may not be overrated, may or may not have been modded up to +5 because it was Alan Cox.
"Everybody knows the moon's made of cheese," Wallace.
I am not completely sure what you meant. Would you care to clarify a little bit? English not being my mother tongue, I might be missunderstanding the finer details of irony (if you were, in fact, ironic?).
Sigged!
The first step to domination someone is causing CHAOS so they can't tell exactly WHAT is going on. Looks like it's working.
:)
We've use SCO OpenServer at our site for over 7 years. Well, we did till they dropped OpenServer and required us to upgrade to UnixWare 7.1 during the Y2K scare. So we now have UnixWare 7.1 server. I have yet to receive anything from them wanting me to purchase the aforementioned products. Beleive me THEY LOVE TO BILL ME. So don't think they would just let me slide.
I have also not seen one thing that led me to beleive that this hasn't been sensationalized by the media. From my stand point anyone can walk up to you and tell you you have to purchase x product to reain compliant. It's up to YOU to determine if thier claims are true.
We bitch and moan about people/companies/goverment getting in your business and "infringing out privacy rights" then turn around and get all whacked out when something like this come along.
The only thing threatened with this article is the intelligence of the IS industry. It is UP TO EACH IT person that deal with the software inventory to KNOW what you need to purchase and what needs to be round filed!!
I've nothing of importance to say, now go away before I taunt you with a second sig!
Remote OS detection via TCP/IP StackF ingerPrinting
TCP/IP Stack Fingerprinting Principles
Graphing Randomness in TCP Initial Sequence Numbers
Security Problems in the TCP/IP Protocol Suite
System Fingerprinting With Nmap
Remote OS detection via TCP/IP Stack FingerPrinting
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
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.
# The UK is still ruled by a monarch.
Tell that to Tony Blair. I think he'd be really amused.
The UK still has a monarchy, supported by tax dollars. But when was the last time they made a decision that actually affected what people in Britain or the rest of the world do (besides setting fashion trends)?
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
www.uspto.gov returns 2 patents for the Santa Cruz Operation as the Assignee Name: 6,362,836 and 6,104,392. Both are related to SCOs Tarantella (terminal serverish) product. I guess either or both might broadly cover the use of a Linux box as an X or VNC server, I have only skimmed them.
I looked a bit at patents listed for Novell and American Telephone and Telegraph, but I don't see anything obvious. Caldera comes up empty. I also don't see an obvious way to transfer a patent to a new Assignee, but I'm sure that there must be some method.
I'd sure like to see what patent numbers they intend to exploit....
the no
Perhaps part of their hurry is to grab the money and run before the patents do expire.
Please don't say "Something exists" without describing the something. Otherwise god will hate you.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
The monarchy is kind of an investment. You can view if cynically as the equivalent of the gladiatorial games in Rome, or business cynically as a good ROI through tourism.
Twitter? More like twat.
The US farm industry surviuves on billions of dollars of taxpayers largess because it isn't sustainable otherwise. When you've finished exploring your own arse, you could go look at appropriations for farm subsidies in the US some time. There's a reason the phrase "Moscow on the Mississippi" exists.
|Whatever encumberences people in the US work under are |nothing compared to conditions in China, where you could be |sent to jail for reading this post.
Don't mix efficiency and business freedom with the rather more important issue of personal freedom. Unless I was from the middle east I'd much rather be in the USA than China.
|Germany [bbc.co.uk] go to jail for a web post.
Umm DMCA, 2600, DeCSS ?
|The case of "hate laws" in France an elswhere is well known.
I guess I'm typical of europeans here in that I find the US dislike of anti-hate laws as strange as their predilection for firearms. I guess its a fundamental cultural difference.
May. Or may not. There is no my.
-Lasse
Well my story is not untrue. We could have different versions, different hardware, ... And have you rolled the clock back or just forward?
BTW I also didn't have any problems with Y2K performance the box worked fine for what it was doing and stayed in production until early 2001.
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..."
I guess I'm typical of europeans here in that I find the US dislike of anti-hate laws as strange as their predilection for firearms. I guess its a fundamental cultural difference.
He, he, Europeans love to say Americans are arrogant, but they should travel to Latin America to see what it's said of them over there, specially about the subject of "arrogance". This post is just another great example.
Hate speech laws are and free speech don't go together. That's why millions of people like me, who came from opressive dictatorships, and governments full of unelected bureocrats that "know better" than the masses, leave our countries to a better future for ourselves and our families at the shores of the United States of America. When that same freedom an opportunity is offered in Europe, let the rest of the world know so they can all go there to try to become citizens of your ancient countries.
So please, don't give us that better than thou attitude, because ignorant racists here can say whatever they want. WE WANT THEM TO EXPRESS THEIR HATRED, that way we can figure out who are the idiots and ignore them accordingly.
You think because you have anti-hate speech laws you have no racists in Europe? Better wake up buddy.
|Germany [bbc.co.uk] go to jail for a web post.
Umm DMCA, 2600, DeCSS ?
I don't like the DMCA, but what's worse, putting somebody to jail because they stupidly posted on a web site an (joke he says, doesn't matter) anti US and pro Bin Laden comment, or somebody posting arcane code for DVD ripping? Which case restrains speech more, which case is more likely to happen?
- sigs are for wimps.
SCO, on the other hand, needs the money. Its tiny Linux business is a disaster and there's little doubt that the company, founded by ex-Novell CEO Ray Noorda, would be out on the street by now if it weren't for the Unix operating systems it got from Santa Cruz.
That pretty much explains SCO's motivation.
That is why I considered the patent issue rather than the copyright issue. A patent encumberance would affect Linux since it uses the UNIX design. However the UNIX design is now two decades old and very few patents were filled in any case.
It is possible that a copyright claim over the interface design could be made. However the courts have not been at all keen on that type of reasoning. Apple did not get very far against Microsoft.
The worst that could happen here would be that the Linux world would have to develop a new shell. That would be inconvenient but hardly be a great loss.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
So either this is all a load of crap, or SCO are in violation of the GPL with regard to their own releases. This would explain why they 'haven't reached any decision': their lawyers haven't figured out a way to resolve this issue yet.
And they won't, because the GPL is their only recourse for being a Linux distributor. If they ended up trying to abandon their own Linux ambitions but sue the rest of the Linux industry, they would be, rather than forcing the industry to use some IP of theirs, forcing the industry to immediately and completely cease using anything of SCO's, whatever the cost. There's no way anything of theirs is that indispensable that this couldn't happen, so they're hemming and hawing because what they want to do here, really can't be done.
I find the US dislike of anti-hate laws as strange as their predilection for firearms.
Hmm. How about an insight then. Hate laws are special because they are not just about your ACTIONS, but about your THOUGHTS and IDEAS and FEELINGS. I don't want to live in a society where I am persecuted because of what I think and believe, do YOU?
As far as firearms is concerned, I can kill a lot more people quicker by driving my car into crowds than I can with a pistol. Should we outlaw cars or murder?
Back when we were first throwing drivers left and right into the kernel (1992), someone brought up the point that Linux itself might be vulnerable to IP claims if it weren't developed "clean room" style. At that time it was thought that Sun would be the most likely threat, but a message was floated amongst the kernel and application developers, asking anyone who had worked on Sys III/V code or kernel code for anyone else, and I don't remember anyone raising their hand. I worked for Sun during that timeframe, but did not have access to the SunOS or Solaris source.
Of course, this could all be a desperate ploy by SCO to get cash in the door, but they want to leak it via the rumor mill, to gauge how well it would go over. Credits to Navy beans that, when they get inundated with bad press, they claim that it wasn't a consideration, plausible deniability, all that jazz.
-- Ed Carp, N7EKG erc@pobox.com PGP KeyID: 0x0BD32C9B What I'm up to: http://intuitives.mine.nu
Some very important ones:
And you yourself listed 3 innovations, although you disputed whether they are indeed innovations.
They are; e.g. you seem to have missed the fact that the voting has been over for a long, long time. Unix was correct to avoid putting structured files like ISAM etc into the kernel. Database vendors who need something fancier than vanilla files turn out not to want to add ISAM/etc support to the kernel, instead they universally want an entire disk partition in which to build accellerated database structures.
If you take out the layered applications you are left with the kernel, the shell and mostly a lot of dreck that could be cleaned out without most people noticing.
That is just pathetically wrong. The *only* decent command line systems in existence are (1) Unix command interpreters, and (2) strict copies of Unix command interpreters. Even Microsoft and Macintosh developers depend heavily on Unix-flavored command lines. There's never been a GUI built that could completely substitute for Unix-like command lines.
MULTICS was innovative, but it was also largely a failure (yeah, I know, it was in use until just recently, but there were never many installations).
Following your line of argument, the correct conclusion would be that Unix was a second generation of Multics that *was* successful, by doing so much right.
When was the last time you played a UNIX console game?
A few weeks ago. Rogue. Oh, was that supposed to be a rhetorical question?
Your failures of the imagination are staggering. Quake and Half Life etc are cool, but there's never been a good graphical replacement for Rogue-like games, and many of them are still very popular. Nethack, I think, might be the one that's most popular, rather than Rogue itself.
Don't be a dork. As Henry Spencer said, "those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it -- poorly".
You obviously are aware of a fair number of things about Unix and its history, but equally obviously, you don't understand Unix worth a damn, in Spencer's sense.
Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
The very existence of DEATH TO SCO, Inc. would drive down SCO's stock price, which would make it even easier to acquire.
It would drive the price UP, not down, and SCO shareholders would be very happy to see such a company created.
A large comunity of activists can do a lot of things, but the last thing they want to do is benefit the "agressor".
unfinished: (adj.)
OTOH, it is kind of useful for Open Source because you can develop something outside the US that may leak back there without fear of reprisal. The only things is, that can't then expect whatver you produce to be placed on a major distribution.
See my journal, I write things there