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SCO Group Hires Boies After All
pitr256 writes "So it seems the SCO Group has decided to
hire infamous Anti-Microsoft lawyer David
Boies after all. This comes upon reversal of the SCO Group statement
according to Chief Executive Darl McBride of having not engaged Mr. Boies
to take legal action against our fellow Linux vendors. Now, CNet
News is reporting that not only is SCO Group investigating the Linux vendors
but that it is also going to investigate Windows, Mac OS X, and the BSD derivatives. So if your technology can't win on price
and performance, break out the lawyers and sue everyone. Does anyone else see
this as the end of SCO (Caldera) like I do? I certainly will never use anything from them ever again."
They are, after all, not interested in girls.
I'm sure they are all broken up over the fact that you won't be installing any more warez copies of SCO anymore.
Doesn't this entire SCO suing [insert vendor name here] for using the UNIX IP remind anyone of the days when AT&T was getting in Berkley's face over using the UNIX IP - then Berkley rewrote the entire BSD so there was no AT&T UNIX code in there?
I don't know about Windows or MacOS, but I don't believe Linux or Open/Free/NetBSD use any copywritten UNIX IP code in their kernels. Do they?
my guess is they reversed the old quote:
"Instead of if you can't beat them, join them"
"They view it as if you can't join them, beat them"
I certainly will never use anything from them ever again.
Does that include Linux?
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
Anyone know which patents these are? SysV has been around a long time, and AT&T sold it a long time ago, the patents may not have a lot of life left in them.
I hear they are ripe for a lawsuit from SCO?
(/sarcasm)
Dolemite
_____________________
Save the World! Use a Quote!
It seems to me that OpenBSD, NetBSD, and FreeBSD are derived from 4.4BSD Lite -- which I believe is covered by the original BSD license. It would seem to me that trying to pursue something like that legally would simply be a great waste of time and money.
That being said, it does sound a bit like SCO has given up trying to make money the honest way and brought in the land sharks...
unixkb.com -- articles on practical Unix issues.
I doubt anyone can conjecture in either way at this point. All accounts have been far to vague to really say anything about.
As I stated in a post from the earlier article, this action is a serious threat to SCO's future and I am not certain that SCO has fully examined the fallout that this announcement will cause, regardless of the final outcome.
The very fact that SCO flat out lied, yes lied, in last week's announcement will seriously impact the level of trust that any vendor or customer might have had in SCO.
The CNet article did not discuss the audience's reaction to this announcement but, I doubt very much that it was well received. Would anyone that witnessed the announcement and the audience's reaction care to report on it?
So he defended Napster... That ended well. He fought Microsoft... Does that count as a win? He worked on Al Gores case in the Florida voting fiasco... Good job on that, too.
The Tools Of Ignorance wanna be a tool?
The GPL requires people/companies that distrubute software under the GPL and hold patents for that software to grant royalty free use of those patents for everyone. Since SCO distributes a version of Linux, all code their distribution must be free of any problems with their patents.
SPF support for most open source mail servers can be found at libspf2.
...and hope you can salvage a few dollars for your shareholders after the Chapter 7 filing.
You could call it "Plan Be."
Didn't Caldera already sue Microsoft and lose?
SCO owns the IP for System V. Linux uses several concepts from the System V design, not the least of which is the Linux init system which is a direct take off of the System V method.
Lets look at this guys track record:
:)
Defending Napster: Failure
Representing Al-Gore: Failure
Anti-trust Against Microsoft: Failure
I'm shaking in my boots
Steve.
It's entirely possible that SCO's claims are accurate. If they inherited valid software patents on some of the basic designs of UNIX, then they have a government-granted right to sue any company which uses those designs.
We all view UNIX as being freely copyable in its design, because traditionally it has been. Linux shares no code with the original UNIX, but it does share both design and interfaces such as syscalls. This is not a copyright issue, it is a patent issue. If the patents are valid, then it's possible Linux is infringing by its very existence. The BSDs are in a different camp, because of their heritage and the previous agreements between Berkely and AT&T, but possibly they're infringing as well.
Of course, it's also possible that there is no actual patent infringement going on. But that depends on what AT&T decided to do back in the day regarding patenting UNIX. I know that IBM's standard policy is to patent *everything*.
(cue Gary Oldman at the end of The Professional: "EVERYTHING!" )
All the BSD's based upon 4.4BSD-Lite (which is all of them) are safe from any action by SCO....UCB was sued by AT&T in the mid '90s....the lawyers went through the code and the BSD's have the legal documents to demonstrate that they dont have any SCO code. Windows and Linux and others may have some issues here.
...(IANAPL, and I'm not an expert on US patents) they may be able to get any UNIX-like system on that pesky "prior art" provision, not necessarily because it specifically violates any putative patents by reusing code. After all, as the other poster (and anyone who cares to do a little research) knows, both Linux and BSD originate from independent, non-UNIX codebases. The ideational structure, the "Unix-like-ness," however, that makes these OSes what they are, may be the problem, in fact (actually, de facto AND de jure). And that's a big problem, since it's utterly impossible (?) to get around.
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
Think of the internet as a big dump filled with potential, er, recycling materials. A lot of it is trash but there is some good stuff there. Anyone can go out and pick up stuff and build stuff with it. Only, digital copying and transmission technology means that if someone happens to throw away a split-level ranch house we can all live in nice houses.
So how do you keep this from happening if you are in the business of selling houses? (1) control the real estate market [hardware] so you can have a nice house but no place to put it; (2) cut off access to the dump; (3) make recycling illegal; (4) claim you own the stuff in the dump.
So SCO wants #4 today. What else is new. They'll all be tried. They're all a problem.
The real problem is not today's battle on thus-and-such a front. It's that there are a *lot* of people out there who have it out for recycling of *anything* that people can live in.
=googol=
I think the issue is that SCO is taking very old patents (let's face it, there's not much new in Unix/Linux) that have remained unenforced for a very long time, and now that they are in financial trouble they're trying to create a cash cow at the expense of the entire rest of the industry. Is it really fair for a company that has created nothing (remember, they bought the IP) to set the entire computer industry back 5-10 years in order to save themselves from their own bad business decisions. It may be legal, but it sure as hell isn't ethical.
(Let's also remember that they seem to be wanting to charge a rediculously high fee for these patents. A per processor cost of > $100 is hardly reasonable.)
"If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
As everyone else is saying, look at his track record. His cases seem to be presented with questionable tactics, not fully exploring the ramifications of what he is arguing for, and attacking the case on one tiny point, missing a bigger picture. I remember reading a lot about his work for Gore, that he was so focused on certain demands in the case that he missed arguing for other things he could have won. For the Microsoft case, he was obsessed with the browser issue, missing many points related to Microsoft's behaviour in the bigger picture.
For such a hugely hyped lawyer, he manages to make swiss cheese of the most open-and-shut cases. Now if they had hired Johnny Cochran, I'd be concerned...
Smithers: "Mr. Burns, there is a small Linux vendor trying to make money in sector 7G."
Mr. Burns: "Release the hounds."
Mind the gap
Obviously SCO, but who uses that? More to the point, I think it would be in our best interests to avoid using (and especially paying for) any products from their parent companies and the parent's subsidiaries. In other words, we should avoid the whole corporate tree.
Caldera is the owner, right? And what about it's subsidiaries? Don't they have an embedded Linux biz, Lineo or something?
What these guys are doing is way worse then Amazon, and we (well, some people, not me personally) are boycotting them.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
According to Yahoo Finance, SCOX has a market cap of 16.4M. Can't the FSF try to buy them and then release the IP to the community?
It seems to me that this is an opportunity for us open-source geeks to put our money where our mouths are.
Love is no longer WITH Caldera/SCO, and hasn't been for months now. SCO's abrupt change of strategies (including emphasizing Unix rather than Linux)is the direct result of their new president.
And as lame as we might think this move is, I don't think (yet) that they really intend to try to collect direct payments. I think they'll use this as leverage in future negotiations with other software companies. If it stands up in court, you can't deny that it's a nice carrot AND stick to have when dealing with partners.....and competitors.
That said, if they really DO try to collect revenue, then yes, there should be some kind of market retaliation against the company. And parts of Linux would simply have to be re-written (using different concepts) to replace the infringing IP.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
SCO is not going after every Linux vendor, only those distributing the two libraries without SCO's permission.
To me, this is all just FUD, and is being blown WAY out of proportion.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
patents only last for 17 years from issuance of patent, or 20 years from application for patent, whichever expires first.
Actually, it's whichever expires last according to 35 USC 154(c)(1).
But if Rep. Mary Bono has her way, she'll probably introduce a bill like this to "harmonize" patent terms with copyright terms.
Will I retire or break 10K?
That's not really the issue... the issue is that they are (allegedly) engaging in the scummy business of submarine patents.
Get a patent on a business model/method... don't act on that patent until it's widely used in the industry. Then have your lawyers pop out and sue everyone.
Exactly what choice is provided here? Most vendors wouldn't have even known about the patent, since people in the industry would assume that it's common practice and unpatented (for a variety of reasons).
At that point you can either cease use of the patented technology (which may still leave you open to licensing fees for prior sales, depending on how a judge rules - you're not supposed to be liable, but lawyers can make IP law dance a jig), pay the extortion money, or attempt to get the patent invalidated. Good luck on the latter - if they're doing it toward the end of the patent life then you'll have a hard time getting facts for prior work 15 years ago, and you'll probably wind up paying more in lawyer fees than you would have paid in extortion.
And yes, I do mean extortion. Submarine patents are nothing but that. It's one thing to raise a patent claim when you didn't know it was being violated. It's another thing to intentionally lie low until it's too late. IP law rarely acknowledges the difference with regards to this though.
Of course, there is one other option, and probably one that we'll see used if SCO is stupid enough to press their case. If someone tries to blackmail you, there's always the possibility of blackmailing them back. IBM has enough software patents to make SCO (or anyone else) wonder if they actually invented anything themselves.
People were rooting for the cause, not the person. If motives change, so does opinion. DUH. Welcome to humanity.
Caldera sues itself over code contained in OpenLinux and UnitedLinux distributions!
David Boies of course loses the case.
we're still not sure WHAT that means though... film at 11
I couldn't find a long little dogie, so I got two short ones and spliced 'em...
If they win:
Slashdot poster: You, sirs, have soiled the UNIX world with your money grubbing!
SCO: one million, one million one hundred, one million two hundred, oh sorry did you say something?
Slashdot poster: I SAID--
SCO: One second. Bob! You want to bring those bags over here, the ones with the dollar signs on the front? Alright, go on.
Slashdot poster: Your business will suffer because of the bad will in the open source community!
SCO: Are you a SCO user?
Slashdot poster: Well, no, I use linux.
SCO: So the court decision means you won't buy an operating system that you weren't going to buy in the first place?
Slashdot poster: But previously I would never buy SCO. After your court action, however, I'l never EVER buy SCO.
SCO: Riiight. I hope you'll excuse me, I have to stop at the Mercedes dealership before they close. That nice security guard over there will show you out.
From the CNET story:
From Twenty Years of Berkeley Unix by Marshall Kirk McKusick:
- The University's suit claimed that USL had failed in their obligation to provide due credit to the University for the use of BSD code in System V as required by the license that they had signed with the University. If the claim were found to be valid, the University asked that USL be forced to reprint all their documentation with the appropriate due credit added, to notify all their licensees of their oversight, and to run full-page advertisements in major publications such as The Wall Street Journal and Fortune magazine notifying the business world of their inadvertent oversight.
So, in other words, Mr. McBride - PPPPHHHTTTT!!...
The result was that three files were removed from the 18,000 that made up [BSD 4.4] Networking Release 2, and a number of minor changes were made to other files. In addition, the University agreed to add USL copyrights to about 70 files, although those files continued to be freely redistributed.
...
The lawsuit settlement also stipulated that USL would not sue any organization using 4.4BSD-Lite as the base for their system.
Oh, and might want to make sure you are providing due credit to the University of California at Berkeley before you cast the first stone, eh?
The whole point is no one is using their stuff, ergo they've got nothing to lose.
paintball
Famous perhaps, but why "infamous"?
Is it because he is not on Our Side this time?
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
who fucked up Al Gore's chances in the Florida recounts.
He's the unsung villian who turned Al into a laughingstock. If Boies had advised a statewide recount of ALL counties even a week after the election, he would have got it, and would have turned the election. Instead, he wanted just a few handpicked counties, something no one could go along with.
Of course, Al did follow his advice. For the want of intelligent legal advice, a kingdom was lost. Just in case you go through a divorce, don't sign until you're released from the debts (credit cards you don't want to pay. Boies isn't the only stupid lawyer admitted to the bar.
Actually, there are patents open on *nix: the famous example is patent no. 4,135,240, the setuid patent (this link may work), filed 1973, granted 1979.
I don't know if there were any post-assignation grants of ownership to the patent, or if Lucent (nee Bell Labs) still owns it.
A press release from SCO states that Boies, Schiller and Flexner has been retained in an advisory capacity, which isn't unusual when a company is trying to determine an IP strategy. We often forget that lawyers are often used for things other than suing people (such as, uh, determining under what statutes one may sue, who one may sue, contracts to enforce terms over which one may sue ... I'm not helping my case here, am I?). The press release (and this story) indicates that the UnixWare and OpenServer libraries are affected. Unfortunately, their "Intellectual Property Pedigree Chart" is one of the least useful displays possible, since it appears simply to be the "History of UNIX" chart with some colored lines added. Hopefully, a full clarification by SCO will be forthcoming.
"Freedom is kind of a hobby with me, and I have disposable income that I'll spend to find out how to get people more."
Also how enforcable is a patent that hasn't been enforced for a long time
100% enforceable. It doesn't matter if you bring the violation up on the last day of the patent and it's been infringed for the previous 16 years and 364 days. A patent does not require active enforcement to protect it, unlike trademarks. Copyright is a bit murkier - generally all you can do is force them to not continue infringing (but the copyright is still in force).
There are exceptions -- if you enter into an agreement that requires you to disclose all relevant patents that are applicable to a standard being developed and fail to do so then your patent can be rendered unenforceable. This happened to Dell a few years back, and RAMBUS more recently (not sure if that one has been played out entirely yet).
...Since it makes a lot of things clear.
From the CNET article: "If you pull down (Mac) OS X you'll see a lot of copyright postings that point back to Unix Systems Laboratories, which is what we hold."
From the O'Reilly link in the parent post: Soon after the filing in state court, USL was bought from AT&T by Novell. The CEO of Novell, Ray Noorda, stated publicly that he would rather compete in the marketplace than in court. By the summer of 1993, settlement talks had started. Unfortunately, the two sides had dug in so deep that the talks proceed slowly. With some further prodding by Ray Noorda on the USL side, many of the sticking points were removed and a settlement was finally reached in January 1994. The result was that three files were removed from the 18,000 that made up Networking Release 2, and a number of minor changes were made to other files. In addition, the University agreed to add USL copyrights to about 70 files, although those files continued to be freely redistributed.
Meaning: The reason why those USL copyrights are in OS X is because the code was taken from FreeBSD, which took the code from 4.4BSD-Lite, which had permission to do so from Novell, the owner at the time of the copyrights. That settlement is still legally binding, even if the ownership of the USL code is now SCO. Looks like SCO has no case against the BSDs (nor against MS or Apple, who use BSD code in accordance with the BSD license.) Linux, I wouldn't be sure about, but I always thought Linux never had any AT&T/USL code.
That, my fellow
The way I see it, if Caldera sues over any of their proprietary IP that they contributed to the kernel, etc., the terms of the GPL will govern (I hope
I suspect so. Caldera's active voluntary participation in development of various parts of the system, in its entirety, would probably preclude an attempt at enforcing copyrights that have become "tainted by the GPL." Here again, any IP infringement that was a direct result of Caldera's participation would carry an implied license under whatever license covered the particular system component that contained the IP.
Now, all bets, above, are off if they are going to seek enforcement of IP governing a part of the system in which Caldera did not participate. If the contested IP is merely copyrighted by Caldera and the developers can show that they did a true "clean room" reverse-engineering job, then Caldera will get nothing but legal bills and a LOT of bad press in the community. However, if the "independently-developed" infringing IP is covered by a PATENT, there is NO protection for the developers unless they can prove Caldera/SCO contributed that IP to the project.
Either way, I don't see how Caldera can POSSIBLY gain from this exercise. Many members of the OSS community are also in "buying official" positions out in the "meat world." Anyone want to let them know that if they pee in our Post Toasties(TM), we might just be inclined to return the favor by buying our respective companies' server software, etc, from their competition?
utter rubbish
The real story is that Maureen O'Gara and LinuxGram deliberately spread the false rumour about SCO. The only reason I can think of is that they must dislike SCO.
h tm
If you read O'Gara's article carefully she says that she presumed that SCO was going to go after Linux users. She only talked to one person at SCO who thought the idea was retarded. He said going after Linux users would be "suicide." After that most people would probably decide they had presumed incorrectly but O'Gara likes to go with the most damaging thing she can presume even if it's wrong.
The day after the article SCO said: "SCO has no desire to take legal action against fellow Linux vendors."
But the rumour had already spread. Stupid reporters took O'Gara's speculations and said, "It was reported that SCO was planning to sue Linux users."
Here is a factual article:
http://www.practical-tech.com/business/b01162003.
I knew this guy when he "worked" for Franklin Covey (see bio here: http://www.sco.com/company/execs/dmcbride.html ). He ran the e-Planning group, trying develop things from online planners to FC's desktop planning software.
I should say, "ran into the ground." Everything he did sounded nice on the long project plans that he and other around him made, and were full of COMPLETE FREAKING BULLSHIT, every time.
Darl McBride is a total symbol of all that is wrong with the tech world, especially during the dot-bomb era.
He knows dick-all, but sounds real good and smooth to other suits.
He was really hot on WAP (if that tells you anything!) and thought that people would pay to be able to check www.franklinplanner.com (FC's online planner - seemingly now not working) via their cell phones.
Dumb!
By the way, he also bought that technology (for the online planner) from two guys who were basically Cold Fusion script kiddies for $10,000,000 ... I spent some time talking to the guys who had to rewrite all the crappy code (non-componentized, no db abstraction, etc. etc. non-optimized). Those script kiddies must have laughed all the way to the bank.
I mean, can you believe it - buying an online planner! A good coder can whip up a basic one in a week solo!
Then they spent $250,000 - a cool quarter of a mill US - turning it into a Flash planner ... so it would feel like a desktop app on the web.
Maybe not such a stupid idea, but they executed it as a total one-off, again with no componentization, etc., so that their strategy (to customize this calendar for big corporate clients) was totally impossible.
Then his big plan was an app that aggregates all your data (mail, web, documents, contacts, etc.) into one big portal-on-the-desktop application. I forget the name of the company that he did this with, but again it was a total freaking failure.
FC stock, which had been trading at about $30 in the '98, '99 years, dropped like a stone ... not just because of Darl, of course, but almost certain contributed to by his total freaking cluelessness about anything technical that could actually make (as opposed to burn) money.
The one group of people that did get rich while Darl was at FC was the lawyers ... they had an insane contract with some top firm, running at something like $15,000 monthly retainer.
For what is anyone's guess.
But this really makes sense when I see he's now running SCO. Those dolts are so far gone their exit strategy is to sue the whole world. Maybe they invented the if statement or something, too.
Rest assured: with Darl McBride at the head of SCO they won't make anything innovative, new, good, or money-making.
But I supposed the lawyers are still going to be fine.
Unbelievable ... I never expected him to turn up there.
"Boies is noted in the computing industry for working on the U.S. Justice Department's antitrust case against Microsoft and for defending music-sharing site Napster. He also represented Al Gore in the Florida vote-counting controversy during the 2000 presidential elections. "
With a track record like that, we don't have a thing to worry about...
Mommy. What's a karma whore?
They're hosed. I personally saw Caldera/SCO as a bridge from Linux to Unix and saw them as a catalyst for change over to Linux from Unix, DOS, and oddly, CP/M.
I personally won't buy a thing from them, again. I'm done with them. This is wrong.
This coming from a company that not only contributed to the Linux kernel, but the same company that OPEN SOURCED SCO!!! Where's the lawsuit against them?
Fortunately, this will bankrupt them, soon. I just hope it doesn't end up killing off Linux in its wake.
<really_think="on">
How can they sit on their "moral high horse" and actually have been a vendor of Linux as an OPEN SOURCE PRODUCT?!?!?!? It's pure hypocrisy, IMHO.
I think there should be a counter-suit in the form of a class-action suit from the other vendors, plus a FUD campaign against them for this.
I hope this doesn't do more for Microsoft against The Competition(tm) of Linux and Unix than M$ could ever do. What an opportunity for M$ to sieze upon!
They're nuts, this late in the game. What, no finding of fact or cease-and-desist order?!?!? I hope their lawyer continues to be the loser in all of this....
To me, this is an outrage!
</really think>