Slashdot Mirror
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.
Coming soon to a warez group near you: Linux!
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
For the benefit of those who are to lazy to read the (fine) story... SCO statement on Client Server News story On January 10, 2003 Client Server News published a story concerning SCO and its UNIX intellectual property. This article states as fact speculations about what SCO may do or not do with regard to its ownership of core UNIX IP. Darl McBride, president and CEO of SCO, has discussed SCO's UNIX IP ownership in many public venues and on the most recent quarterly investors' conference call. SCO has significant UNIX intellectual property dating back to the company's purchase of AT&T's Bell Labs UNIX technology. Our UNIX IP is a significant asset and for several months we have been holding internal discussions, exploring a wide range of possible strategies concerning this asset. We've reached no final decisions on any course of action. 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. It's unfortunate when a publication runs a headline, stating as fact in the present tense that our company is engaging in certain activities when, in fact, we've made no decisions, formed no programs and announced nothing about this.
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!
There are patents on all kinds of wacky things like the setuid bit. SCO has a collection of these that are automatically licensed when someone starts with the original UNIX source base but could be used in a lawsuit if someone tried to make something "UNIX like" without licensing UNIX. So it's basic UNIX concepts that are the sticking point here since Linux is "UNIX like" but not a UNIX and not based on any older UNIX code like *BSD.
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
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
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
This morning I saw the article hoverred my mouse over the URL just to make sure it wasn't a LinuxGram article.
Now that I have time to read it, I can see that it is a LinuxGram article after all and by Maureen O'Gara no less.
I'm not sure if there are any salt grains large enough for the articles she writes.