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SCO Has "Made No Decision" On Linux IP Claims
Earlier today, a Slashdot post reported the possibility that SCO would attempt to collect royalty payments for intellectual property that SCO (according to that story) claims would make other Linux vendors liable to the tune of nearly $100 per Linux-running CPU.
This report on NewsForge reports that SCO has issued a statement "disputing the claims in the story, but confirming that it does have significant asset claims in Unix IP and it is discussing 'possible strategies.'" Awfully ambiguous on SCO's part; I'd feel better about a straight denial.
fuzzy thinking to make you want to scream for some real answers.
The reality of the situation is that SCO could never collect 100 dollars against every PC running Linux. At best, they would hurt RedHat, destroy what's left of Mandrake's bank account, and have a luminous cloud over every little distribution out there.
Are they going to use the linux counter or something?
--------
Free your mind.
1. Buy "Unix" name
2. Lose millions
3. Scramble for cash
4. Come up with hair-brained idea as a 'Hail Mary'
5. ???
6. Bankruptcy!
Trolling is a art,
Coming soon to a warez group near you: Linux!
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
...right behind Unisys. I think they're still waiting for their first royalty check from Slashdot. [Insert make believe deity here]-forbid they should use PNG instead.
What intellectual property does SCO claim to own? Are these patents, or copyrights, and over what code or protocols?
I think the core Linux was based on is past-due, patent-wise, so any claim on that would be prior art; and the fact that Linus coded the basic kernel from the ground up would eliminate copyright concerns, so what's left? Auxiliary functionality?
Someone was mentioning System V; is it SysV binary code compatibility that SCO is laying claim over? I think that could be eliminated from the kernel without major disruptions; some people would get really peeved about the inability to run proprietary software they couldn't recompile, but...
If SCO tries anything, Torvalds, Stallman, et al will have cause to sue SCO and force them to drop their patent claims.
Still, SCO could stop distributing Linux, and demand others do so as well... There's nothing the GPL can do about that. This would simply force another vendor to buy their patent, such as RH or IBM, etc.
OTOH, these claims are still completely unsubstantiated.
This type of crap is just another reason software patents should be not allowed... Ridiculous.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
From the press release: "SCO is a Linux vendor and a leading member of United Linux", so SCO is distributing (claimed) patented software. However, from the GPL:
7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.
That means that by not licensing the patents for free they're violating the GPL. Wonder if that infringement on the GPL could be used to invalidate their claim for money on Linux?
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
SCO must consider all options, it is after all a revenue generating corporation (supposedly). But, they must consider the risk that such an action would have. Should they decide to enforce such a claim, they risk having to spend a great deal of money defending the lawsuits that would surely arise from other similar companies.
Now, let's assume for a moment that they go forward with their claim and that it is uncontestable. The next step, naturally, would be for every Linux distribution to switch to the BSD style init system. SCO has no claim to this and therefore gain no further revenue from their System V rights. But, most importantly, no one would trust SCO again. Everything SCO would be shunned by all Linux distros and the community at large. At that point SCO may as well forget their Caldera roots and stop selling Linux completely because no one will buy SCO Linux again. SCO will be forced to try to line from SCO Unix alone and the original SCO proved that this is a very hard thing to do. It will be even harder now, as Linux was not as strong a contender 3 to 5 years ago, at least in the mindshare department.
I'm sure that SCO will eventually say that they will NOT enforce this claim against Linux but, they need to do it quickly because the longer they wait the less people will trust them.
The whole point in these two "articles" of sorts is that it would have been much better to just wait and see what exactly is SCO's intention. The first article was jumping the gun (as this one proves), and the reaction of Slashdot is to.. again jump the gun? I almost think some people are using any and all opportunity to spread FUD.
It's quite simple, really: just wait what the decision will be, and if it turns out that Caldera would want to collect royalties from Linux distro makers, then let all hell break out, badmouth SCO and collect karma points all you like.
If it turns out, however, that SCO only wants to target Microsoft (which is, if you think about it for a second, the only sound and sane choice, as MS are the only ones that possess cash in aboundance), then I really wonder if all these zealous posters will take their words back and say "sorry, I suck". And remember, SCO (Caldera) has a history of getting money out of MS, so this should be one hint that MS will be the target. And the prosecutor that was mentioned in that first, atroucious writeup, was Boise, who clobbered MS rather badly (or well, depending on your POV) and earned his reputation as MS's nightmare. That should be another hint.
Sigged!
Would seem to be whether or not the distribution of a freely distributable version of Linux by the prior owners of SCO, perhaps in violation of their own patents, would in some way negate their current claims. After all, isn't it the case that if you fail to defend your patent or other intellectual property, it becomes harder to defend it later?
Are SCO going to pursue every linux user in the US? and if they do, will the US government (that's busy spending billions trying to re-ignite their economy) simply sit back and watch as the rest of the globe becomes more competitive and a better location to establish your business as a result?
Maybe, just maybe, this is actually what's required though. A really harsh pursuit of a patent by a failing company that sees this crazy ability to patent any and every idea relating to computing, whether it's obvious or even whether it's been done before properly challenged and hopefully halted. And if it's not halted? Well then for many companies it quickly becomes silly to be located in the US.
What intellectual property does SCO claim to own? Are these patents, or copyrights, and over what code or protocols?
... it innoculates against entities such as SCO submarining code into the OS and then making copyright claims down the road.
... and, of course, powerless to do anything about it beneath a government that no longer even feels the need to feign democracy, much less practice it. However, the rest of the world will continue on quite happilly without us, probably breathing a sigh of relief that such an out of control, unilateral superpower has managed to shoot itself so severely in the foot.
... why should one country, one corporation, or one human being own knowledge and wisdom, regardless of whether they thought of it first (and most likely had their employer claim ownership of their thought), or, as is just as often the case, merely won the footrace to the patent office or cribbed the work of others.
It almost certainly is not copyrights. Linux was written from scratch by Linus Torvalds and released under the GNU GPL. Any and all code submitted to the kernel is likewise GPLed, so if SCO submitted code, they did so under the terms of the GPL. This is where the GPL really shines
Of course, if someone violated SCO's copyright and got it accepted into the kernel without divulging its origins (or claiming to have written it themselves), then SCO would probably have a copyright claim against the purported author, not those (the linux kernel folks, distros, and users) to whome that hypothetical black hat illegally licensed the code. And if said person were actually in the employ of SCO, then sco would have essentially granted a licenses and would be bitchslapped by the courts. None of those latter scenerios are even remotely likely, so, as I said, it is almost certainly not a copyright claim SCO's vague comments are asserting.
What they own are almost certainly software patents, likely patents written from looking at the source code written and developed by others, and granted rubber-stamp style from the notoriously irresponsible US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). As others have said, such are the equivelent of 'nuclear weapons' for IT, and if SCO were to do such a foolish thing (as a consiquence of their own stupidity, or shilling for Microsoft), the end result will be no GNU/Linux in the United States (the only country stupid enough to recognize such patents), and a United States with an IT industry that would be irrelevant not within the generous twenty years Alan Cox suggests, but within a scant 5 years at best.
In short, America would become the technological backwater its behavior and policies have so richly earned it. We in the States who care (a vanishingly small minority) would be unhappy with this
In any event, if the rest of the world ever wants to throw off the yoke of the American Hegemony, the best and most effective first step they could take would be to reject our copyright and patent schemes outright
The best thing the developing world could do for itself is tell America and western Europe to fuck off and none-too-gently place their IP regimes, patents and copyrights in particular, into a location where the sun never shines. If free software is destroyed by these knowledge-squatters, it will not be the first such promising work of humanity so destroyed, nor the last. Until people wake up and put these Robber Barons in their place (preferably behind bars), atrocities such as this potential fiasco will occur again and again, with human progress and public interests being trampled, again and again, by the attourney equivelent of a spoiled child's shreak "No, I thought of it first, you can't use it!"
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Perhaps it's appropriate that the very first Unix systems were used to process patents for Bell labs. See: http://www.english.uga.edu/hc/unixhistory.html
What goes around, comes around...
SCO is a Linux vendor and a leading member of United Linux. Contrary to the claims in the Client Server News article, SCO has no desire to take legal action against fellow Linux vendors. As a normal part of business, SCO has had discussions with several legal experts in the field of intellectual property law, and these discussions included David Boies. Contrary to the claims in the Client Server News story, SCO has not engaged Mr. Boies to take legal action against our fellow Linux vendors.
I mean, geez. What else are they supposed to do?
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
They could hurt Redhat, yes because Redhat is an American company. But I thought Mandrake was a French company? And I doubt that they patented using European patents. Likewise with Suse.
Do you know what is happening here? The US is starting to feed on itself. And people outside the US are starting to profit....
For example copyrights on specific music pieces in Europe expire and as such they are free to copy, but not in the US.
Interesting the Land of Free is turning into the land of the regulated lawyer! Actually sad!
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
They can have my Linux, when they pry it from my cold, dead hand.
Life is too short to proofread.
And hoist MS on their own petard. Microsoft gave^h^h^h^h loaned money to Caldera to buy SCO to kill SCO. MS used to have a chair on SCO's board, and SCO had to use code done on Xenix coded by MS (when MS was the developer of Xenix) in all versions of SCO.
The EU made MS back off of that, then MS bailed out of SCO, then sent money Calderia's way. MS denied they did so for Caldera to buy SCO, but it didn't take long between Caldera getting the money and gobbling up SCO.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
A quick check of the USPTO searchable database turns up only TWO patents to SCO's name (Using SCO's name spelled out for the assignee name as the search criteria) and neither of the two seem to really apply to Linux in general.
Here's the link to the search request so you can see for yourselves
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
As the owner of UNIX, SCO probably has rights to a lot of patents from AT&T, USL, and Novell pertaining to UNIX. Those patents presumably wouldn't be recorded as being registered by SCO, even if SCO owns them now.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
First of all, read this document: Microsoft Applauds European Commission Decision to Close Santa Cruz Operation Matter -Decision upholds Microsoft's right to receive royalties if SCO utilizes Microsoft's technology.
This means that it's probably not only SCO's IP, but also some of Microsoft's IP that is involved here.
Unfortunately, Microsoft sold its SCO stock, so this conspiracy theory doesn't quite work out. But hey, the Evil often returns to its former Servants to recruit them again, doesn't it?
The assignee has to be changed when the IP rights change hands, otherwise it's still theirs. Any of the AT&T patents would most likely have expired and a rough check of the Novell patents doesn't seem to reveal much of anything applicable either.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
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
all they have to do is go to Spain, or venuzuela or Mexico or any govenrnment thinking about converting to Linux and point out the possible complicationsif this ever did go to trial. Maybe the linux distro you are thinking about will have an accident, see...
It would be the cheapest way for MS to subvert Linux. Even sheaper than buying the Sony DRM patents that are in the news lately. (Buy DRM patents, dont let GNU use them. Eventually enough music/movies is out in DRM that without liscenced DRM enabled players linux desktops suck. end of linux withou microsoft having to compete at all).
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.