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SCO Sues IBM for Sharing Secrets with Unix and Linux
bstadil writes "The information is still sparse but the expected lawsuits from SCO over Unix/Linux patent infringements has been filed."
SCO is asking for a billion dollars. News.com and Forbes are also covering the story.
... Dr. Evil hired as president of SCO.
First post when posting is disabled?
Yeah, and I am asking SCO for a unix that actually runs reliably, but it ain't gonna happen, buddy.
No, really. SCO should worry less about suing over linux and unix and secrets, and more about putting out a product that doesn't suck so badly.
They stuck me in an institution, said it was the only solution, to...protect me from the enemy, myself
When they hired Boies, you knew they meant business. But they are sueing someone with very deep pockets. I wonderhow deep SCO's are?
Clearly I was a fucking retard. They're fucking evil. Ban them. Send them emails which politely, yet firmly state that they smell like a llama's anus. Sick the Channel 7 ProblemSolvers on them.
Seriously, there's just no excuse. As a nation, we must rise up against this evil, and destroy it once and for all.
today sco also announced they are moving their centre of operations to a hollowed out volcano, and branching out to the lucrative area of 'fricken sharks with fricken laser beams on their fricken heads'
*pinky finger to mouth*
"It's a fairly end-of-life move for the stockholders and managers of that company," said Jonathan Eunice, an Illuminata analyst. "Really what beat SCO is not any problem with what IBM did; it's what the market decided. This is a way of salvaging value out of the SCO franchise they can't get by winning in the marketplace." - Best and most accurate quote on SCO/Caldera ever imo.
Seriously tho, IBM says nothing for linux to fear but FUD itself (literally). Caldera/SCO dropped every single ball they've EVER been thrown, so much so that every thread ever started or ended here is basically a litanny of their mistakes. Sun makes UNIX, they're still alive, IBM still makes AIX, they're certainly alive, poor SCO is dead in the water so they sue.
My guess is the next thing they'll do is sell all their IP to microsoft, and microsoft will use it as a giant club against other vendors. So it's in our best interests to see them stay afloat, otherwise some other patent-abusing, money hungry group of corporate bastards with more money will have all of their "intellectual property" and will actually have the cash to use it. IBM has the cash to hold things up in court long enough to A> Have the costs of the settlement (if ever reached) be deferred by inflation and B> Have the underlying patents they're being sued for actually expire.
Plus, IBM is the former evil empire, they have no qualms whatsoever using their vast horde of defensive patents to counter sue someone into the ground.
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
IBM probably has more technology patents than any other company on Earth (and possibly other planets, too early to tell). I'm willing to bet they can find hundreds of violations in SCO's product lines and bury them.
Either way though, you just know this is going to become a bullet point on Microsoft's next Linux FUD page ("see, use linux and you can get sued).
Finkployd
my immediate question is, Ford runs linux? on what?
and second question is, isn't SCO like... Caldera?
aaaanyway; I guess linux is taking away the marked share of UNIX boxes a lot more than it's headway into the desktop (windows) arena. fighting the wrong crowd, I'd say...
maybe microsoft will file a suit that says "we want damages because linux makes our business model un-profitable."
My life in the land of the rising sun.
There's another good story on this on eWeek which has an interview with the CEO of SCO.
If you can't beat 'em, sue 'em. What a wonderful philosophy.
Yeah, Amazon is planning to file suit against SCO for violating its patent covering the process of suing someone for patent violations.
SCO/Caldera sells Linux, this lawsuit is may have a chilling effect on Linux sales...why is SCO shooting itself in the foot?
If they had an idea about things, they would donate said IP to Linux/GNU, and reap many billions of Dollars of good will and karma, and I would go out and buy their distro to support them if that is what they had did.
When companies litigate instead of innovate, you know they are probably not long for this world.
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Of course, just as I post my story submission to slashdot on this, no sooner than I reload the page after submitting it when the story appears from someone else. Doh!
Seriously, though, I think I'll repeat a comment that I made in my story submission. Does anyone else think that SCO has bitten off more than they can chew? I knew that they were going to make a move, but I thought for sure they were going to pick an "easy" target, like some small Linux distributor. About as big a company as I suspected they would hit was Red Hat.
Suing IBM was a huge mistake. Or more accurately: suing IBM first was a big mistake. They should have done what other companies have, which is take on the little fish in the pond hoping some will roll over and pony up the dough, before attempting to harpoon the whale.
Not that I'm unhappy about this turn of events, mind you. IBM, which has had more experience in dealing with IP rights and patents in the little finger of one of their lawyers than SCO has in their entire company, will pound them into the dirt. The sound you are now hearing is that of the death dirge for SCO.
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)
Can IBM take over (buy) SCO, effectively cutting this lawsuit off?
More like: if you can't beat Linux, and no-one will buy it from you, make sure you destroy the Linux and Unix markets. Better to fuck up everything and hand it all over to Microsoft than to admit you're a worthless company.
"Some claims, though, have more potential merit, Eunice said. One is that creating Unix on Intel processors needed expertise that SCO developed but IBM lacked, Eunice said."
(this was from the news.com article)
If IBM lacked it, which I doubt, I guess we can all be thankful that Linus had the expertise needed to create a Unix on Intel processors. What an idiot.
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.
Good one Caldera.
Black and grey are both shades of white.
And here we were worried about Iraq setting its oilwells on fire in case of a war.
SCO is clearly heading south businesswise, and sees this as a last ditch effort to make some money. They will clearly fail - thanks to RMS & Co, as well as Linux & gang, there is way too much prior art in this department (and yes, I know that this isn't a discussion about patents).
But that isn't the worrying part - what is really worrying is that SCO is poisoning the well to ensure that if they cannot survive (and now it is fairly clear that they won't), then no one else will, either. And sadly, given the way the corporate world works, this part of the strategy is likely to see much more success than the part aimed at making SCO profitable.
I wonder what we can do about this? Can someone sue SCO for infringing on Linux technologies in their own work?
You aren't remembered for doing what is expected of you
MS are happy campers. Mucho "IP hassles when chosing Linux" fodder for the Sales bots and white paper writers. If I was a paranoid, X-Files watching geek I'd wonder how much extra MS paid SCO (Caldera) to pull this crap when they settled thier civil anti-trust lawsuit?
Back in reality I think this is SCO's attempt at getting bought at a premium. Lets face facts, IBM can probably bitch slap them with their own IP, but I bet SCO thinks that buying out SCO is cheaper/easier than the time and effort (not to mention the FUD damage to IBM's linux/AIX biz) IBM would have defending this.
They could not have done this in a more suicidal manner if they'd tried.
Isn't IBM the company that owns patents on nearly everything related to computing, and a policy of only using them defensively? Like, the one company in the IT universe with the largest patent shield? The one with the horror stories about people challenging IBM with some submarine patent infringement, and IBM shows up with stacks of pages of submarine patents owned by IBM that the litigants are violating? What were they thinking? Maybe they just assumed that if they went after any small Linux distro, IBM would still consider it a threat, and step in with the patent shield?
And then beyond the practical concerns, there's the fact no one will ever take SCO seriously again:
Caldera claims that IBM has been unlawfully sharing trade secrets regarding Unix with the free-software community, Dow Jones said. Caldera's business has been hurt by the free Linux software that IBM has been supporting, Dow Jones said, citing Darl McBride, Caldera's chief executive.
I mean.. just.. owch. Could you imagine a more PR-insensitive thing you could possibly say? Where to start with the problems with this.. I mean, besides the fact it gives the impression to the uninformed that SCO created UNIX, or something. There's the fact that SCO has just told every admin in the world who got their start using BSD or linux-- many of whom, i'm certain, are now in purchasing positions-- that SCO should be owed damages for their existence. Not to mention that from talking to people I know who managed SCO UNIX for years, cursed its existence, and yearned for their company to transition to Solaris or BSD or Redhat, it would appear that SCO/Caldera's only worthwhile product at this point was... written by the free software hackers they are maligning here. I'm not much of a troll, but just reading that paragraph makes my fingers itch to flame.
And anyway, didn't SCO release the original UNIX code under the GPL at some point after they bought it? Did I just hallucinate that?
Also, I wonder if there's some way to tell bloomberg they made a small error here: Linux is a variant of Unix and isn't copyrighted.
SCO has a market cap of $25.68 Million. IBM could buy them for $100Million and save %90. Or RedHat maybe.
Actually, someone with a clue should buy them now before, ummm, someone with an interest in seeing Free Software set significantly back figures out that the UNIX IP is pretty much a sitting duck...
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
Buy Caldera outright, and drop the lawsuit.
Currently SCO's shares are trading below $3.
Change -0.05 (-2.21%)
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You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
"IBM is affirmatively taking steps to destroy all value of Unix by improperly extracting and using the confidential and proprietary information it acquired from Unix and dumping that information into the open source community," the suit said. "IBM's tortious conduct was also intentionally and maliciously designed to destroy plaintiff's business livelihood and all opportunities of plaintiff to derive value from the Unix software code in the marketplace." - hopefully IBM wins this one and shuts SCO the hell up.
/. with AIX team working on GNU/Linux, does anyone else remember? This is going to be a tough battle, I hope Caldera loses it.
Linux's rapid maturity--for example, growing up to work on large multiprocessor servers--is evidence of the presence of Unix intellectual property, the SCO suit said. "It is not possible for Linux to rapidly reach Unix performance standards for complete enterprise functionality without the misappropriation of Unix code, methods or concepts to achieve such performance, and coordination by a larger developer, such as IBM," the suit said.
- cool. I guess these allegations have only to do with what IBM has been adding to the GNU/Linux code. Will it be possible to prove that there was no contamination, especially if the former AIX team was working on Linux software? I remember, maybe a year and a half ago, there was an interview on
You can't handle the truth.
From News.com:
p 82597b.HTM)
- "creating Unix on Intel processors needed expertise that SCO developed but IBM lacked"
- "It is not possible for Linux to rapidly reach Unix performance standards for complete enterprise functionality without the misappropriation of Unix code"
Apparently they didn't notice that IBM owns Sequent, which has been shipping 32-processor Intel boxes since the mid-90s... (e.g. http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/s
It wasn't such a stupid lawsuit. Go read about it.
If they can still afford it after losing this round.
You had me at "dicks fuck assholes".
IBM has tens of thousands of patents. Suing IBM over patent infringement is almost 100% guaranteed to be a terribly bad idea, because IBM will just turn around and recite the litany of IBM patents SCO is infringing. Stupid stupid stupid.
Linux's rapid maturity--for example, growing up to work on large multiprocessor servers--is evidence of the presence of Unix intellectual property, the SCO suit said. "It is not possible for Linux to rapidly reach Unix performance standards for complete enterprise functionality without the misappropriation of Unix code, methods or concepts to achieve such performance, and coordination by a larger developer, such as IBM," the suit said.
First thought that came to mind while reading the article: SCO has seriously underestimated the brain pool of tens of thousands (at least) of open source porgrammers. Unix advanced to where it did technologically because some really smart people knew what they're doing. Isn't it possible that Linux got to where it did because a helluva lot more really smart people knew what they were doing?
Intellectual property lawsuits booming
Intellectual property litigation appears to be on the rise in the high-tech industry and for good reason: The settlements or verdicts are often quite lucrative.
Intergraph, which once made workstations but now specializes in software, got $450 million from Intel in two separate suits in the past year and could receive $150 million more from the Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker in an appeal on one of the actions. Intergraph's income from operations in 2002 was $10 million, but net income including legal settlements came to $378 million.
Perhaps I'm not paying attention to the news enough, but didn't it seem like these business-to-business lawsuits started cropping up en masse when the economy tanked? "We can't earn an honest dollar, so let's sue somebody and take theirs."
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
They don't start with a couple of smaller fish, but instead go for the biggest whale in the sea. They should file for Chapter 7 tomorrow. Even the analysts think this is lame.
The best quote in the CNET story is from the suit itself which says and I quote, "It is not possible for Linux to rapidly reach Unix performance standards for complete enterprise functionality without the misappropriation of Unix code, methods or concepts to achieve such performance, and coordination by a larger developer, such as IBM," So all that hard work all the developers and Linux did for the last 10 years were for nothing.
And there you have it. SCO is dead. How can SCO sell a Linux product anymore when they themselves are saying, "Hey, we don't know how Linux could have gotten so good. It must have been from misappropoation of our trade secrets."
Who in their right mind would buy anything from these losers?
Your mom always said, a PB&J is better than nothing, and God is nothing, is a PB&J better than God?
Given that project Monterey was about developing a commercial UNIX for Itanium, and given that IBM abandoned SCO and produced AIX5L for Itanium and discontinued it shortly thereafter, I really do not know what SCO's beef is.
Project Monterey had nothing to do with x86. So what if IBM is pushing Linux on x86.
Now if IBM produced its own Linux distribution for Itanium, and SCO saw some of its Monterey source in the distro, SCO might have a claim.
Your second sentence answers the first.
At least some of the claims just don't pass the sniff test.
When AIX came out in 1990 or so, it was so different from SVR4 that competitors cried "AIX isn't UNIX". IBM really did a huge amount of kernel work and had all sorts of administrative features borrowed conceptually from the mainframe that were lacking in UNIX at the time. Journalling filesystems, logical volume management, etc. just for starters. The toolset for managing AIX was (and still is, to some extent) quite different from other UNIXes. I think IBM kept the SVR3/4 APIs but re-wrote
most of the code below it back in the late 80s.
You know you have a weak argument when you start seeing claims like this:
Added Sontag [SCO SVP], "When they (IBM) started utilizing the same engineers that worked on the Unix System V source code and the ultimate derivative of it in the form of AIX, they have
effectively been applying our methods and concepts, even if there isn't a single explicit line of code" that shows up in Linux.
Believe me, there are a lot of methods and concepts that UNIX (System V/VII,SVR4) stole from predecessors, and continues to steal! Where's the suit from the MULTICS guys against AT&T? Citing executive's handwavings generalizations about leveraging UNIX expertise makes for a pretty weak legal case (and PR case imho). Monterey always had too much hand-waving for me to get enthusiastic about.
However, the issue of IBM allegedly re-creating versions of SCO libraries using SCO's actual code sounds interesting. SCO binary compatibility is actually something somewhat valuable that SCO should fully defend if it was unlawfully infringed upon via trade secret leakage rather than cleanroom reverse engineering. Still, if I remember correctly, most of the SCO/Linux binary compatibility stuff was done by some guy at SCO (Avi Tevananian or something like that? I'm butchering his name, sorry.) SCO was working on Linux binary compatibility before IBM even knew Linux existed. So to speak.
As far as infringing on how to run Linux on Intel, clearly Linus managed that without anyone's help. Now running Linux on IA-64, or perhaps some particular acceleration technique used by SCO might be grounds for a decent case depending on the particular evidences involved. I guess we'll see.
With revenues less than Red Hat, and a business model going nowhere, a legal approach makes sense for SCO. IBM can afford the lawsuit and probably route around it better than, say, Intel could route around Clipper chip infringements in existing products. If it lays clearer guidelines for Linux IP, so much the better. I guess that's what I'm hoping for. As a betting man though, I wouldn't bet on SCO for this case. Unless there are more rabbits in that hat.
--LP
SCO doesn't have any assets worth buying. They have SCO UNIX, and i've never met anyone who likes that. They have Caldera Linux, which while I know that had some proponents, has never been anything more than a second-tier or third-tier linux distro.. and as of late they've fallen off the news map. I've never even met anyone who used caldera. They have a public reputation that is downright horrid-- SCO bashing was a fun and not uncommon pasttime *before* this patent nonsense started-- and is now effectively mud. They have... the original UNIX source copyright, and some submarine patents. Okay, cool, but that isn't worth $26 million.
Why buy them out when there's a simpler solution: IBM simply pulls out their massive patent portfolio and massive lawyer box, countersues for infringement and barratry, and demands $26 million in damages. Or maybe not even demand damages, but make sure the lawsuits drag out such as to keep SCO alive long enough to bleed money through lawyer payments and the fact they just alienated all their customers... until SCO goes bankrupt.
This way, the assholes at SCO don't get an ounce of money, as opposed to one hundred million dollars they did nothing to deserve. Instead, they can't get jobs anymore, since who wants to hire the ex-CFO of SCO, the company that failed at everything it tried, even its last-ditch, exit-strategy attempt at being a submarine patent warehouse (which is probably the most boneheadedly easy business to succeed at, so long as you follow the simple strategy of DON'T SUE IBM)?
I'm going to steal a whole lot of Linux software, and sell it as my own. What are the programers going to do about it? NOTHING!
...at which point they probably have enough evidence they can subpeona you, ask to look at your source code, and sue your pants off when they discover you stole their code.
Well, if they find out, they and/or the FSF can sue you.
And there are lots of ways to find out. There have been a number of cases of people noticing strangely similar functionality in commercial products to GPLed software, and doing some simple analysis to find out, hey, this binary contains suspiciously similar output to that of this GPLed program compiled with obfuscation...
Sure, you could do that, but isn't the risk kind of great?
Microsoft had this product called Xenix on the market (the first UNIX port to the Intel 8086 processor) before IBM ever approached them to produce a DOS. They were not a mere piddly BASIC vendor.
Surprise, surprise, when they left the Unix market they split their Xenix group off to become.... the Santa Cruz Operation (SCO).
And IBM is guiltless? The possiblity that they've tainted the Linux codebase isn't relevant too?
Let's see what SCO is claiming before jumping to conclusions. There might be some code for the Debian people to rip out and replace.
conflict of interest?
I think this is the biggest problem. All too often I encounter this false faith that concepts like "intellectual property" can happily co-exist with concepts like "free as in freedom". I don't think it can, and this article touches on a fundamental reason why it can't. From the very beginning SCO, and now Sun thought they were better because they were covered in the flag of "intellectual property" and free markets. But this is a fraud, "intellectual property" is not a free market property right. It is so dishonest, and so many people fall for it, that it makes me cringe to see it.
The last time in US history where people were so disillusioned was over slavery. Why in the world couldn't people just pull their head out and see that slavery wasn't a property right? Why? The plantation masters were so well educated, and so wealthy, and such intellegent executive business men, so Why? Why did they ignore the forces of the industrial revolution that were going to force them to change? Why did they push it to the point that millions(?) ended up dead?
The fact that the forces of the industrial revolution caused all hell to break out then, and now we are suffering conflict directly related to our society moving into the information age really bothers me. How far are they going to push it this time? What will they be willing to do when push comes to shove and there's trillions at stake?
I haven't read the filings yet, but it sounds as if SCO's main claim is that IBM (and perhaps others) violated their non-disclosure agreements by allowing employees who had seen the Unix source code to work on Linux. However, Linux was developed first on the Intel i386 processor family, way back in 1991, at least five years before IBM took an interest in it. Linux follows MINIX, an even earlier published-source-code system that very clearly isn't derived from Unix - its architecture was very different.
SCO claims that Linux could not have become ready for the enterprise so quickly without use of art originating in Unix. They seem to ignore the fact that hundreds of thousands of people have been educated in operating systems programming, and that very healthy communities of scientific research exist for systems design, and that most of the enterprise-ready features originated in research operating systems and only later were ported to Unix.
They claim that the Linux libraries could not have been produced without input from Unix. But these libraries are written to a printed specification called POSIX, published by the U.S. government and available to the general public. The GNU C library, and many other Linux libraries, existed long before IBM's involvement. We also had printed "man pages" for Unix available in bookstores without restrictions on implementation of the documented facilities, and shelves of published documentation on Unix in every technical bookstore.
So, I think the claims I've heard are specious, and not enforcible in court. Why, then, is SCO doing this? They want to be purchased. This is the exit strategy for their investors, Canopy Group. IBM can buy them just to shut them up. Or Microsoft can buy them to use them to FUD Linux. And Canopy Group management figures they'll play the two against each other to drive up the price. But IBM management is smart enough to poison this particular well, by bringing counter-claims against SCO.
SCO is also party to the GPL, which invalidates their patent portfolio for any of their patents that happen to have been used in a Linux system that they distributed. Under the GPL terms, if you distribute your patented practice in GPL software, you must grant a license to everyone to make use of that patent in any GPL software, for any field of use. This is why SCO's initial claim seems to be focusing on an NDA rather than patents. And of course, the fundamental patents that apply to Unix would have expired some 15 years ago.
SCO can't claim that IBM (or anyone else) was hiding the Linux development from them, since Linux source is available and is part of SCO's own Linux product. They have been distributing the source code that they claim violates their own NDA as Caldera's main product for years. So, they are going to have a very small chance of making this case work.
We in the Free Software developer community must make it clear that we will not tolerate specious intellectual property claims on our software, even if those claims are directed to a user or industrial partner rather than an individual developer. The obvious first step that would occurr to any of us would be to shun SCO - not to do business with them, not to recommend them in our jobs, etc. SCO must have known that they'd be shunned for these shenanigans, and they went ahead with them anyway. This means they're writing off their entire software and operating systems business. SCO is owned by Canopy Group, I guess those folks are writing off their other software businesses, too.
I look forward to getting a look at the court papers, and being a witness for the defense or amicus curae in these cases. I'm sure I'll be joined by a lot of you. In addition, we may have our own infringement claims to make, if the SCO filing violates the GPL terms. I doubt there will be much left of SCO at the end of this.
These folks could have been good partners. Other people in industry were, and beat Caldera and SCO in the market. Canopy Group, their venture firm, were the real managers of SCO and Caldera. Front-men like Ransom Love were not the ones making real decisions. Their business failed, and others flourished, because Canopy Group never understood how to be our partners. They've chosen to screw us one last time on the way out the door. Let's do our best to turn it back on them.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Ray Noorda (who bought DR-DOS solely to sue Microsoft) needed to find a new business model other than suing Microsoft for IP that his company didn't create. But we cheered him on because he was fighting the good fight against evile Microsoft.
No contradiction here. Just good solid reasoning.
Excerpt from the News.com article:
Linux's rapid maturity--for example, growing up to work on large multiprocessor servers--is evidence of the presence of Unix intellectual property, the SCO suit said. "It is not possible for Linux to rapidly reach Unix performance standards for complete enterprise functionality without the misappropriation of Unix code, methods or concepts to achieve such performance, and coordination by a larger developer, such as IBM," the suit said.
Firstly, it appears as though they are referencing the 2.5 development tree. If this is the case, they do not distribute a development kernel that I am aware of. It is possible that I'm wrong. Second, whatever happened to different means to a similar end? Or rather, "There's more than one way to skin a cat." Could it be that perhaps the IBM developers know what they're doing?
Excerpt from the Bloomberg article:
Caldera's business has been hurt by the free Linux software that IBM has been supporting, Dow Jones said, citing Darl McBride, Caldera's chief executive. Linux is a variant of Unix and isn't copyrighted.
I guess they were fooled by the "Copyleft". Hmm, maybe if they caught on that GNU is Not Unix.
If only a legal leg was all that was needed... the world might actually be a bit better place.
...
Whether it is wheelbarrows full of patents or money to drag it out forever, IBM probably has what it needs to 'win' this case.
HOWEVER, I suppose it may also turn out that IBM looks at it and says, well it doesn't look too good, it's worth $X million to just settle. Then where does that leave SCO? With a 'win' to back their next battle? Only vaguely, as surely IBM won't settle out of court AND admit guilt...
I type this every time.
Dear IBM,
Please spend the $US25.68 million it would require to buy out SCO, and then fire every single member of their management and legal department.
Thank you,
A Linux user.
with thanks to whoever posted this script, and with great annoyance at whoever decided that Slashdot posts with low average line lengths are a bad thing, and so need to be offset by pointless filler like this to bring up the average -- apologies while I pad this just a little more, and please feel free to disregard this last paragraph so that the average line count goes above, apparently, 30. Two things you can apparently never include in this news for nerds sites: program code (you can talk about open source, but you can't share it here!) and, apparently, movie scripts. Go figure.... Anyway, this should be enough padding, pretend this whole last paragraph is wrapped in a <!-- sorry --> block :-)
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
This is going to be fun to watch:
Single Camouflaged Operative vs International Battle Marines.
Do a search on the USPTO for International Business Machines as assignee, and file as title, and you get 300+ hits. This is out of their 32000+ patents.
(kind of ontopic) In addition to the groups organized to freely redistribute systems built around the Networking Release 2 tape, a company, Berkeley Software Design, Incorporated (BSDI), was formed to develop and distribute a commercially supported version of the code. (More information about BSDI can be found at http://www.bsdi.com.) Like the other groups, they started by adding the six missing files that Bill Jolitz had written for his 386/BSD release. BSDI began selling their system including both source and binaries in January 1992 for $995. They began running advertisements touting their 99% discount over the price charged for System V source plus binary systems. Interested readers were told to call 1-800-ITS-Unix. Shortly after BSDI began their sales campaign, they received a letter from Unix System Laboratories (USL) (a mostly-owned subsidiary of AT&T spun off to develop and sell Unix). The letter demanded that they stop promoting their product as Unix and in particular that they stop using the deceptive phone number. Although the phone number was promptly dropped and the advertisements changed to explain that the product was not Unix, USL was still unhappy and filed suit to enjoin BSDI from selling their product. The suit alleged that the BSDI product contained proprietary USL code and trade secrets. USL sought to get an injunction to halt BSDI's sales until the lawsuit was resolved, claiming that they would suffer irreparable harm from the loss of their trade secrets if the BSDI distributions continued. At the preliminary hearing for the injunction, BSDI contended that they were simply using the sources being freely distributed by the University of California plus six additional files. They were willing to discuss the content of any of the six added files, but did not believe that they should be held responsible for the files being distributed by the University of California. The judge agreed with BSDI's argument and told USL that they would have to restate their complaint based solely on the six files or he would dismiss it. Recognizing that they would have a hard time making a case from just the six files, USL decided to refile the suit against both BSDI and the University of California. As before, USL requested an injunction on the shipping of Networking Release 2 from the University and on the BSDI products. With the impending injunction hearing just a few short weeks away, preparation began in earnest. All the members of the CSRG were deposed as were nearly everyone employed at BSDI. Briefs, counter-briefs, and counter-counter-briefs flew back and forth between the lawyers. Keith Bostic and I personally had to write several hundred pages of material that found its way into various briefs. In December 1992, Dickinson R. Debevoise, a United States District Judge in New Jersey, heard the arguments for the injunction. Although judges usually rule on injunction requests immediately, he decided to take it under advisement. On a Friday about six weeks later, he issued a forty-page opinion in which he denied the injunction and threw out all but two of the complaints. The remaining two complaints were narrowed to recent copyrights and the possibility of the loss of trade secrets. He also suggested that the matter should be heard in a state court system before being heard in the federal court system. The University of California took the hint and rushed into California state court the following Monday morning with a counter-suit against USL. By filing first in California, the University had established the locale of any further state court action. Constitutional law requires all state filing to be done in a single state to prevent a litigant with deep pockets from bleeding an opponent dry by filing fifty cases against them in every state. The result was that if USL wanted to take any action against the University in state courts, they would be forced to do so in California rather than in their home state of New Jersey. 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. 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. 4.4BSD The newly blessed release was called 4.4BSD-Lite and was released in June 1994 under terms identical to those used for the Networking releases. Specifically, the terms allow free redistribution in source and binary form subject only to the constraint that the University copyrights remain intact and that the University receive credit when others use the code. Simultaneously, the complete system was released as 4.4BSD-Encumbered, which still required recipients to have a USL source license. The lawsuit settlement also stipulated that USL would not sue any organization using 4.4BSD-Lite as the base for their system. So, all the BSD groups that were doing releases at that time, BSDI, NetBSD, and FreeBSD, had to restart their code base with the 4.4BSD-Lite sources into which they then merged their enhancements and improvements. While this reintegration caused a short-term delay in the development of the various BSD systems, it was a blessing in disguise since it forced all the divergent groups to resynchronize with the three years of development that had occurred at the CSRG since the release of Networking Release 2.
My first thougth was "what idiot suit at SCO thinks they can make a case for AIX being SYSV-derived?"
The logic(sic) they are asserting seems to be: AIX is based on SYSV that SCO acquired from AT&T, and that IBM's moved those ideas into Linux.
Nice fantasy. AIX is based on the Mach microkernel from CMU, which in turn is BSD-derived. Even at that it is very much re-implemented, using such intersting magic as an O-O system configuration database, and the first widely available journalling filesystem for a *nix.
People think of AIX as being SYSV because it implements a SYSV *interface*. IBM is all about standards and AIX achieved System-V (and later versions) standard compliance *and* BSD compliance wherever that did not conflict.
So no, SCO hasn't got a leg to stand on on this aspect. I wish them luck they are toing to need it.
Linux is Linux, if One need clarify their dist: <Dist>/GNU Linux
bsds are of course just BSD
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Fahrenheit.
No contradiction here. Just good solid reasoning.
Way to sarcasically ignore the point. The IP laws are stupid and wrong, in the cases of both Noorda and SCO. Yes, many here cheered Noorda and many here now vilify SCO. Using a stupid, wrong law for a 'good' cause as opposed to a 'bad' one doesn't make it any more or less stupid or wrong.
But then again, I suspect that IH just BT, and IH probably L.
You know they call 'em fingers but I've never seen 'em fing. Oh, there they go.
They have very heavy ties to both UNIX (via AIX) and Linux. It wouldn't be a big shock to learn that they've moved some top engineers between the two OSs. They've also got big pockets, and a large customer base which means -- if they lose -- you can dig deep into those big pockets.
IBM is also, arguably, among the least sympathetic of the big Linux players. They have a history of being a mega-corp who (in their own time) defined the acronym FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt). Perhaps SCO is hoping that the Linux community will be less whole-hearted in jumping to the defence of the once - anything - but - open - source megalith.
If IBM loses big, the size of the settlement/charge could shell-shock smaller linux companies into looking for a cheap out.
Running against SCO, however, is the fact that Unix is ancient.. Ancient enough that patents on it's basic design technology -- if they were patentable back then -- are going to be expired by now. This means that most of the violations are likely to be copyright violations -- and most of Linux's code base is not from IBM.
Happily, IBM is far from an early booster for Linux. By the time IBM jumped on the bandwagon, Linux already had a long and happy history of exponentional growth and improvement. SCO's claim that Linux couldn't have grown that fast without stealing code is going to have to swim against that tide.
Yo prove IBM liable for copyright violation, SCO is going to have to point to specific code that IBM stole from UNIX, and show that it was IBM that installed that code in Linux and not somebody else. That's going to be a difficult feat == especially given Linux's history and idea pool (the whole world).
IBM is well versed in litigation by attrition. Much like Microsoft, they took on the DOJ in the '70s -- arguably with more success.
SCO has a formidable opponent, and the possibility of massive profits if it wins big. Needless to say, I do not wish them luck.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
...Or are you meaning both "they"s in your comment are the authors of GPL software? Get a clue, GPL software is licensed, copyrighted software. The public domain specifically refers to stuff that is unrestricted by copyrights and patents, it isn't just a synonym for "doesn't cost anything", etc.
Be careful! New moon tonight.
I had a friend (yeah, that's it) that used to work for SCO when they were still in Santa Cruz, CA.
The executive team would get up in front of the employees at quarterly meetings and talk about how Linux was not a threat and that SCO UNIX on Intel was superior. Who's SCO's daddy now?
Also, this umm, friend of mine also reported rumors of the former SCO CEO being offered more money than SCO was worth back in 1999 from SUN for the company. SCO's CEO supposedly had harsh words for Mr. McNeely.
So, then Caldera buys SCO.
Don't forget that SCO spun off Tarantella at the same time-another failing company.
Then Caldera changes name to SCO Group. Now they sue IBM.
What a bunch of losers!
I hope that I get another call from SCO's "partner" program people about developing software for their platform. It will be a lovely discussion.
I wonder if The SCO Groups head Lawyer is still the same one from SCO (pre-caldera). He was an ex-SUN lawyer.
We used SCO's Unix in 1990 or so to teach Unix students for a while, but after noticing that we'd had to plug in GNU software for almost everything to make it work, we finally switched to SunOS, and later to Linux. But that's not the interesting part. What is, is that Iremember the SCO's original Unix booting with the horrifying sight of Microsoft's copyrights on the Unix flavor underneath.
:-)
You might say, "What? Microsoft did Unix in the 80s? No! That's insane!".
Apparently Microsoft had been working on Unix in some respect for a while, until Bill had decided it had no future (or perhaps, just not a proprietary enough one), and (or so I infer) sold it or licensed it to the Santa Cruz Operation.
This would make for much irony if SCO won their little suit, but then Microsoft bought them to try to reassert control over what Bill once thought was irrelevant, and now clearly -is- the future.
The comments in the suit about IBMs AIX and its claimed collision with the Unix patents is pretty funny, since apparently one of the miseries of doing AIX design was going before a little review board that would judge the odds of your perfectly good code intersecting known non-IBM patents, and then making you break it until it didn't - or so goes one unfortunate's tale.
All of this is, of course, hearsay, so if you were there, just tell us what really happened, yes?
Having done a *lot* of work on AIX back in the early days, I can say that it borrowed some bits from BSD (who didn't then), but didn't from S5 Unix and their kernel was theirs. I didn't have their source code, but I was always cursing them for their incompatabilities which is why I can say they were different.
Also, AIX had a PS/2 distribution in the eary days, so they certianly had x86 architecture since way back when.
First off, don't put cups of coffee near your genitals and you won't burn them. Um, I would expect to get burned pretty badly by hot coffee or tea spilling in my lap. Also do note that being an older gal she would have more tender skin than a young adult (old skin burns easier as it's thinner)
Also think of it like this: Lets say she made her own coffee in her coffee-maker at home (you know the kind where you don't get a choice how how hot it is made. Say simply "on" or "off") or even if she say made some tea (don't know about you, but when I make tea I *boil* the water first) and puts it in a cup with a lid and goes in her car (depending on who's version of the story you believe she is either the passenger or the driver -doesn't matter) and does the same thing as the McDonald's incident what is she going to do then? Sue the coffe-maker company? Or if it's the tea version then what? Oh, she'll sue the company that makes her stove for being able to boil water!
More than likely though, she wouldn't have been suing anybody if she made it herself despite it possibly being the same or close to the same temperature as the McDonalds coffee.
Fuzdout
..My sig ran away. Has anyone seen my sig?
(b) IBM unchains the Lawyer Horde, buckles on their Patent Shield (c) and proceeds to lay the legal smackdown on SCO
(c) then buys up the smoking ruins of SCO for even less than they're worth now
WHICH IS STILL A BETTER DEAL FOR THE SCO PEOPLE THAN RIDING THEIR PITIFUL IP HOLDINGS INTO OBLIVION
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
...oh, wait, we already are. Nevermind.
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
Is this the desparate attempt of a dying company to litigate revenue or is it a threat against IBM by the UNIX vendor to stay away from open source? A one billion dollar lawsuit is sure to draw CEO-level attention. I hope this doesn't prompt IBM (and others) to reconsider their Linux stance for fear of IP infringement. I hope this doesn't start a trend, widespread lawsuits like this could kill big player support for open source pretty quick, even if they are frivolous (which this one might not be).
Probably :)
There for all McDonalds would insteads have to install special harnesses that would lift and hold people with a crane-like mechanism just inches above said toilet so nobody's fat butt lands on the seat and brakes it [g]
Fuzdout
..My sig ran away. Has anyone seen my sig?
My feeling is that this is an MS-inspired shot over the bows to scare VCs and IT chiefs away from Linux. In one case it really doesn;t matter whether SCO/Caldera wins or loses, it just hast to leave a suspicion in these people's minds.
This mean's that not only must IBM win, but they should win 'loudly', i.e., so those people who may be worried about Linux realise that they shouldn't be.
Did they get their Buzzword Bingo set in the bargain bin? Those descriptions are just pathetic. Then again, wasn't Ray Noorda the guy who ran Novell into the ground?
sulli
RTFJ.
What is it going to feel like having your ass handed to you on a cracker by the x86 *nix community??
Signed,
Slashdotters
Flame them. I just did. It's very theraputic.
As part of the actions Novell did when they bought UNIX from AT&T was to settle the BSD IP lawsuit.
So the BSD's have a clean bill of health.
So to avoid the lawyers on this one, you can run BSD. BSDi had bought a UNIX licence at one time, if you like paying $995 for your UNIX. *wink*
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
No doubt this will be modded flamebait but I have to speak my mind on this one--
Caldera/SCO is one of those companies which I have absolutely no good will towards. Sure, someone had to sue Microsoft over the antocompetitive actions against DR DOS, but Caldera didn't even really pretend that the product was a real addition to their product line. They only bought it to sue Microsoft and after they settled, they sold it to Lineo.
Then they bought SCO and became the SCO Group. BTW, this was after they were sued by their shareholders for inflating profits before Enron broke.
Since they dislike the GPL, and can't find a good way to pretend that Linux is proprietary, their business model seems to be:
1: Buy dying products
2: Sue other companies
3: Win or settle
4: Profit
5; Sell dying product line to other companies
6: Profit again
If they were ethical, I would support them.... but I can find no ethics, or any other virtues....
Lets hope this is dismissed soon..
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
...and thus shut them up.
...a small price to pay for IBM.
Let's see, SCO's revenue is ~$20million/quarter and isn't the rule something like 4x revenue, so for $80million IBM could buy SCO thus killing the lawsuit and put SCO out of it's misery (and spare the rest of us all the FUD SCO is spreading).
One SCO executive said suing a fellow Linux vendor would be suicide. IBM isn't exactly a Linux vendor but it is still suicide. I hope they succeed die quickly.
Also I want to apologize to Maureen O'Gara. She was more accurate than she knew.
Wrong, it is Progress. www.progress.com
I have been using it for over half a decade now - it seems to run fine for me. Been on systems with 300 users to less than 10 users.
Worked it on OpenServer, HPUX, NCR MP-RAS, AIX, and finally - finally - Red Hat Linux.
These guys might have a clue for you:
http://I.webring.com/hub?ring=prodev&id=38&hub
Try http://www.amduus.com - lots of code and stuff - not much DBA though.
Not all Progress based applications are smooth though.
If nothing else, the Unix community will see that SCO has the right to revoke the license to use Unix, such as AIX. I guess that acts more as FUD against Unix, not Linux. Law-saffy companies will benefit from going the Linux way, since Unix is a bitch of SCO. Of course this might motivate people to go for windows also...
But of course I agree with millions of other people that SCO should be bitchslapped hard, and repeatedly until they die. I would assume that UnitedLinux doesn't want to be associated with SCO anymore, how realistic is it to kick them out?
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
In other news, the world's largest catapult has recently been constructed on the rooftop of IBM's world headquarters. What it is being used for no one knows, but it now seems to be pointed at Redmond, with a sign on the front which says "Try that shit again, foolios, and see what happens."
Mod Points: Helping you keep your opinion to yourself.
It doesn't even matter anymore whether or not they actually have a valid claim... asking for one billion dollars just makes you a money whore and shows just how greedy and desperate for money you are. If nothing else, they've lost my support because of all of this. I honestly think they are overstepping their bounds with this one. One billion dollars....
Sun can play both sides of the street. Since they paid some ungodly sum to buy full rights to Unix SVR4, they're out of SCO's reach. Even if SCO gets its way (which I doubt, but assume it for the sake of argument), Sun's Linux offering would be unaffected by SCO's suit (but see next paragraph). I know who I'd bet on in a matchup between Sun and SCO...
Of course, SCO's claims are completely incompatible with the GPL, so if they win, Linux would be stopped dead in its tracks until it can be somehow be made "untainted" by SCO's IP. And that's the real danger here. BSD was stopped dead in its tracks by a similar legal situation in the early 1990's; it almost certainly would have been stronger competition against commercial Unixes if that hadn't happened. SCO might even be attempting to duplicate this, and slow Linux down under a legal cloud for a few years even if they ultimately fail in court.
Of course, I hope IBM hits them like a load of bricks (and I expect they will). But don't expect it to blow over very quickly.
They're suing over breaches of NDA and License to Unix code that SCO claims IBM had with them. Patented stuff- in the Linux kernel (Otherwise why would they be harping about SMP systems?).
And, they have the unmitigated GALL to say that Linux systems purchased from them have no issues because they have the license bundled in with their distribution licenses. That is a GPL violation, pure and simple. Either there ISN'T a patent issue or there is- if there is, then the patented stuff has to go bye-bye or have a GPL compatible license. SCO's not claiming to have licensed the alleged tech that way in their press releases.
No, this is SCO commiting corporate suicide in the most public, painful way possible. Picking an IP fight with IBM is not one of the wiser things to do- and to set the stakes so that IBM HAS to do something about it rather than settle simply and easily is downright insane. IBM is all about IP and is pretty much anal about IP handling- with theirs and their partners'. If they don't countersue with their own infringement suit (thus getting the whole mess dropped- SCO can't afford a legal battle on two fronts...) they'll prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that there's nothing to SCO's claims. And that's just the lawsuit part of this whole mess- the bad blood they just earned with the community just torpedoed themselves, UnitedLinux, and anyone that associates themselves too closely with SCO.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I haven't yet read all 300+ comments here, but so far I haven't seen *any* supporting SCO. Do any of you really know what's going on here? It is quite possible that IBM did rip them off. If SCO shared proprietary code with IBM under contractual restrictions, and IBM went ahead and violated those restrictions by putting that code in other products, then IBM is in the wrong. It doesn't even matter if the code is covered by patents or not, all that matters is what the two companies agreed to on paper.
I for one hope that whoever is truly at fault gets nailed, be it IBM or SCO. I believe that agreements should be honored. That's something that corporate America cares little about, especially if a buck can be made by ignoring an agreement. If IBM truly blew off a legitimate agreement, then they should fry. If IBM really believes SCO has no rightful claim to the intellectual property in question, then they should not have signed an agreement with SCO. It could well be that SCO is lying/embellishing/hallucinating, but maybe they're not.
On an aside, back in the 80's and early 90's, I worked on a port of SCO Unix to a proprietary platform. What people have been saying here about SCO's "quality" is true. Their OS was crap. I can't count how many bugs in the kernel we had to fix. We even had to completely rearchitect whole subsystems. When we were done with it, it was fairly passable, but it took man years. The most appalling thing about their code was the third party SMP implementation they bought from some other company. It was truly horrendous. I believe it did improve over the years as the product matured, but obviously not enough to keep them alive.
SCO was a popular platform for Unix on Intel. It was a private company, microsoft had a 20% shareholding, but it wasn't quoted on the stockmarket. It had been like that for years.
Suddenly (about 1995): they announced that they wanted to float on the stock market, all sorts of reasons given but one side effect was that it meant that the major shareholders (the directors) would be able to 'cash in' on their shareholding by selling to Joe Shareholder. Quite unfortunately for the new share holders, Linux started to bite into SCO profits soon after float and it never really recovered.
I have no doubt that the SCO directors had no idea that this ''new phenomenon called Linux'' would have any effect on the SCO sales & thus share price; they were only involved in that sector of the market and so would never have heard of Linux, and even if they had they would not have been able to predict the future effect on the SCO share price; it is quite coincidental that they sold their shares to the general public just before the value started to crumble.
Its the old MS Xenix based Sco Openserver that sucks which is sco's main product. Customers only buy it today to run ancient apps written for it that are no longer updated.
Sco is worth close to 16 million according to some industry analysts. Its dieing.
If sco asks for billion to save its ass then it would make sense for IBM to just buy them for 16 million and get it over with. They would save alot of money and potential hassle in the future. No more future problems with them and also not to mention sco makes some money with consulting which IBM is already king in. IBM could gain more customers in return that would more then make up the ROI for purchasing them.
http://saveie6.com/
Okay, so it didn't say all of that. But it could have.
SIGFEH
They have an anonymous web survey at:
t io n20021210.htm
http://websurveyor.net/wsb.dll/9929/websatisfac
"Fighting terrorists with millitary might is like killing a mosquitor on your Dad's forehead with a rifle."
We have some legacy Unixware 7.1.1 boxen that we wanted to update during the latest round of sendmail patching. The latest vunerability was handled pretty well - vendors had private lead time and when the problem was made public all the patches were developed and available. This was Monday.
Except for SCO/Caldera. Here's the current (3/7) from their website:
http://www.sco.com/support/security/
"Security
We are aware of the CERT CA-2003-07 sendmail issue, and are currently working on fixes for our supported distributions. We will announce the fixes via our normal channels:"
So now we know where their energies have been spent lately. Hopefully when they win and own UN*X outright we can expect the same great service.
Well we've been looking for an excuse to flush UW7 anyway. I'll sign this AC as I prefer not to get sued for quoting from their copyrighted, state of the art, "target us now", security support announcement system.
Well, HE was beheaded in the French Revolution because a jealous colleague found that there was nothing to invent anymore in chemistry.
Antoine Lavoisier, 1743-1794
IBM sells over $10 billion in software every year.
Lotus Notes (#1 selling e-mail and collaboration system), WebSphere (#1 selling web application server), DB2 (#1 selling SQL database), Tivoli (storage and network management software), Rational, ViaVoice, AIX, Sametime (#1 business IM product), and so on.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
According to the article: Linux is a variant of Unix and isn't copyrighted.
This is, as we all know, utterly false. Linux is most certainly copyrighted--that's what prevents you from stealing Linux code to use in your proprietary system. Linux may be GPLed Free Software, but it is certainly copyrighted.
sPh
The slavery part was not overboard if you got the point. It wasn't a comparison of the morality between the two, it was a raw example of a period of time where something that seems so obviously flawed was still perpetuated. Any arguments for avoiding or changing the practice sadly end up only being accepted in hindsight for the majority of people.
Anything I say about IP being bad doesn't go over well with business people, especially the attorneys I work for, but after the 'revolution' comes and the world is freed from the oppresive groups in society... sure, thatll happn... it will be a perfectly acceptable view for anyone to take, just like modern day views on salvery.
People are used to certain ways and won't think twice about it unless they are forced to. Laziness, that's the American way.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Nah, the coprights to UNIX will have expired by the time HURD 1.0 ships.
The problem now is that people are claiming property to the very IDEAS being used to create particular products. Amazon's One-Click Patent is a wonderful example of this.
Now, Amazon could very easily protect and license their overall software package that is used to support their one-click check out. They could sell as many shrink wrapped licenses as they want and use Copyright to protect their "IP" from misappropriation.
The problem is when they try to claim ownership to the very idea that they're implementing. Especially when it's not a terribly innovative one. Now it doesn't matter how you implement the idea, you have to go to Amazon for a license.
You then go on to horribly mischaracterize the GPL. The GPL is not "no one is going to make any money off of software" the GPL is about creating a strong commons that everyone can build off of. Being able to get Apache and Tomcat for free doesn't mean that you can't make money building e-commerce sites for people. It just means that you have access to high quality tools for very reasonable rates. In addition you can even improve those tools and thus return them back for the other programmers to use in even better condition.
Finally, IBM makes its money on SERVICE, not hardware. Sure it doesn't fully embrace all of the principles of the GPL, but they don't embrace all of the principles of proprietary software either. They embrace the principles of "let's get the customer's job done."
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
SCO (using its former name "Caldera") alleges that IBM took its IP and applied that to AIX and then took that and applied it to Linux. What they will have to prove in court is that there really is SCO/Unix IP in AIX that could possibly be applied to Linux. And then they will have to prove that the advances in Linux (which they claim to be as a result of IBM's "tortious" misappropriation of their IP) were not as a result of Caldera's involvement with Linux and specifically with UnitedLinux.
If IBM was responsible for the advances, what possible use was Caldera in the UnitedLinux camp? Their only contribution could have been IP since they had no viable distro and no marketing and, frankly, not much credibility.
If Caldera was contributing to SMP, journalling, etc. then they have a difficult case to win. If they weren't, then why were they involved with UL in the first place?
This shouldn't be difficult to show given that IBM's contributions are open source. What will be interesting is discovering how much of SCO's IP might have been directly borrowed from the GPL.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
So far everyone seems to have posted that this suit is a bad business move on sco's part or that it will destroy their ability to sell unix.
They don't care. They aren't in the business of selling software.
SCO is owned by Caldera. Caldera bought Dr. Dos from Novell so it could carry on the law suit against Microsoft. Caldera reportedly settled the suit for north of a billion dollars.
Next thing you know Caldera buys sco,renames itself sco, makes a couple of half hearted attempts to revive the product and then goes back to suing.
Caldera/SCO is not in the software business its in the lawsuit business. You can be very sure there will be more of the same from these people.
Crash
While I'm no lawer or familiar with takeovers/buyouts, whats stopping from IBM buying SCO Group outright? Last I checked, SCO Group was only worth about $20M. IBM looses this much money when the CEO catches a cold. If anyone from on high in IBM is reading this, take over SCO Group, Fire the executive suite, and to throw a dash of salt on the wound, GPL all the unix (and otherwise) source code! That would end any question that might still be present about the IP rights of SCO Group's code (because now its GPL), and provide Open Source developers some very interesting and exciting stuff to work with. IBM would also assume ownership of SCO Group's portfolio of patents. If there really is anything worth while in SCO's source libraries, it would be available for inclusion in future software. Contemplate that one IBM - a $1B lawsuit (plus legal fees) versus a $20M buyout and possibly even have something to gain by it!
Maybe when you're dead, the prospect of being buried doesn't look so bad.
-- this is not a
Look, Canopy Group is an investor in several technology companies. One of those companies is out of control, and should be penalized. However, going after ANYONE that has an investor in common with SCO is out of control.
Trolltech is a privately held company, but they likely took this investment prior to SCO's decision.
As a previous poster mentioned, Canopy owns 5.8% of Trolltech. You're going to attack the other 94.2% of Trolltech shareholders because of an unrelated business's actions happens to have as an investor someone that owns 5.8% of their company?
I have a lot of respect for you as one of the leading intellectuals in this movement. However, as a small business owner, I'm terrified of what you are saying.
My company has small holdings in several of our clients. They OFTEN take courses of actions that I don't like. If you were to attack another of my clients because of what one of them did, because I was a shareholder in both? I don't think that you are being at ALL fair.
If you believe that the Canopy Group is behind this behavior, than I would suggest an announcement that ANY privately held company that takes investment capital from them (from this point, not retroactively), will be shunned. However, Trolltech did NOTHING wrong, other than take an investment from a company whose other investment did something that you don't like.
I have a third party with an ownership stake in my company. The relationship had been rocky, but quite frankly, I couldn't afford to buy them out, even if they were willing to sell. If you organized a boycott of me because of something they did, I'd be floored.
Unless you are prepared to coordinate the fundraising to buy the Canopy Group out of Trolltech (and any other company that you are prepared to boycott in your crusade against this venture capital firm), back off. You're being extremely unfair to Trolltech, who has done nothing but provide amazing software to their commercial clients (of which we are one, albeit for only one developer) and FREE software to the open source community.
Your imagination about Canopy attacking GNOME is fascinating, but they are a MINORITY shareholder. They cannot cooerce Trolltech management. Deal with Trolltech based upon Trolltech's actions, not the actions of a third party.
Imagine if you were being held personally accountable for the actions of a second cousin through marriage? I don't imagine you'd like that. Same for Trolltech and SCO.
Alex
The WINE project was sponsored by the Canopy Group as well. The Canopy Group is not the problem.
.SCO came from outside the Canopy Group and bought one of the companies that belong to that group.
When SCO bought Caldera, they bought into the Noorda franchise. . .
Don't blame the whole Canopy group for the idiots from SCO.
They all have names for it, it doesn't mean that they necessarily act as management. Any angel/venture investor will take a board seat to advice the company. Depending on the ownership, they may hold multiple seats or other way to manipulate the situation.
I'm not disputing the Canopy is pulling the strings here, but I wouldn't be certain. SCO Managment is responsible. I can't figure out how to cut through their BS and figure out how much Canopy holds... Remember, SCO is a public company, anyone can buy shares of SCO...
I really can't tell how much Canopy owns of SCO. My guess is that they funded Caldera, and would likely have had between 20% and 50% of Caldera, and diluted down with the merger. However, they are likely the largest (or one of the largest) shareholders.
I would suggest that before you attack companies that took capital from Canopy Group before it became "blood money" (which we still don't know, who knows who pulled the trigger).
I think that Canopy may or may not be involved, but we should find out what happens before we open fire one anyone that took their investment. I think that with your stature, you should come out and take a stand in defense of Trolltech, given that their are idiots in the thread that saw a few mentions and are screaming and yelling about Trolltech.
Otherwise, you're going to hurt a LOT of innocent bystanders by this mistaken belief that companies can simply buy out investors because they don't like the actions of other companies.
Alex
A privately held company, if their corporate council had an ounce of brains in preparing the legal agreements that allowed them to sell equity, does have the option to demand the return of shares at a fair market value if the holder of those shares is taking actions the company believes is not in its own best interests. To do otherwise is the insane action - just as they had the choice of deciding who those shareholders were in the first place.
Canopy is taking an action that irritates, and if they are legally successful, will damange the ability for Linux to advance. Every company that is involved with Linux in any fashion needs to recognize this and assess the impact to themselves. Those companies that are involved with Canopy in some fashion are the ones that will be especially sensitive to any damage this suit may do, as their other shareholders realize that this suit poisions the well their customers visit. NO CUSTOMERS MEANS NO COMPANY.
Don't believe me - talk to your corporate counsel.
WHO IS RAY NOORDA? I'll tell you...
.COM run-up to the peak of January/February of 2000.
Ray Noorda was the primary driving force behind the initial success of Novell. Novell was founded in 1979 as NDSI - Novell Data Systems, Inc.. It had a Motorola 68000 based network server box for MP/M and CP/M client machines, and sold everything as a high priced package.
In 1983, the VC forced a reincoporation as just "Novell", and forced Ray Noorda on the founders as "adult supervision" (the VC in question was Safeguard Scientifics).
Ray Noorda changed the business model, and the product line, targeting the newly created IBM PC as both server and client hardware.
Ray Noorda was almost singularly responsible for the success of Novell.
Ray Noorda personally intervened, after the purchase of USL, to get the USL/UCB lawsuit settled. I spent a lot of time talking to him and Mike DeFazio, then VP of the UNIX Systems Group, a legacy executive from AT&T who came with the USL purchase.
Ray Noorda encouraged an executive to move on, after he issued a statement that he didn't like, when that executive stated that Novell/USG was "de-emphasizing UNIX on the desktop". I asked "If not UnixWare, what _Novell_ Operating System will computer users be running on their desktops?" His answer was "None. They will run Windows.". Ray Noorda stormed from the room.
Ray Noorda was to Novell what Thomas Watson was to IBM. He was its strong leader, who forged a stunningly successful company from ashes and raw clay.
Novell was incredibly successful under Noorda. It's stock split 4 times from 1987 to 1992, reaching a high of almost $60 a share before the last split. The closest it's come to that after Noorda was almost $50, in the
The one really big mistake he made was the purchase of Word Perfect; he did it because he believed that Microsoft was the enemy, and he needed to match product lines against them.
The mistake was in letting the Word Perfect founders know how he valued companies, when they were looking for an exit strategy after the incredible mistake of trying to turn technical support into a profit center. To maximize their "valuation", which Noorda based on PPE - Profit Per Employee - they threw all people not essential to the operation of their base business overboard. All the R&D people working on pen computing, all the human factors and other people who were working on ensuring the product was competitive with Microsoft Word, all of the people who worked on the VMS and UNIX versions of the product. How do you raise PPE? Increase "P" or reduce the number of "E"'s. And that's what they did.
What about funding Caldera? Caldera was funded by Canopy, a VC group answerable to The Noorda Family Trust, *AFTER* Noorda left Novell, *AFTER* Caldera was a going concern, *AFTER* some of the Novell/USG engineers, so fed up with the NIH of the USL side of things, started a "skunk works" project using Linux, and Mike DeFazio, VP of Novell/USG, and dyed-in-the-wool USL, got it shut down because it risked cannibalizing the UnixWare market. Rather than let the idea die, they left Novell and formed Caldera, funded out of the pockets of the two founders: Brian Sparks, to my knowledge, sold 50 acres of family land to fund it. Noorda came in after that, with additional funding from the NFT's Canopy venture fund.
Ray Noorda would not have approved of the cancellation of the Linux project inside Novell (while it was in house, we jokingly called it "LinuxWare").
Ray Noorda had a philosophy which Novell pays lip service to today, but which they no longer really follow: coopetition.
Coopetition is a word coined by Noorda as a combination of "cooperation" and "competition". It was realized in Novell by having 2 or 3 groups working on solving the same problem, and then letting the one that produced the best solution "win", and taking that product to market.
Having a "LinuxWare" project compete with UnixWare, and may the best product win, was the *very essence* of coopetition. Ray Noorda would have approved of it greatly.
When Noorda left as president, remaining on the Board, Novell ran on for a time on inertia, with an "office of the president". But the three people who were chosen for this task lacked sufficient vision, and couldn't carry off the duties of that office in keeping with the same philosophy and corporate culture. They were bean counters, which isn't bad in itself, but they didn't know the heart and soul of Novell.
Blame Caldera, if you must; I don't think that's exactly fair: they started with a good vision, and they got an incredibly bad rap when they initially didn't release source code for some things that they *couldn't* release source code on, because they were licensed from third parties. Yeah, this stuck to them, but I believe it stuck unfairly. I don't believe the people I knew who started the company would do this.
Blame SCO, if you must; I don't think that's exactly fair, either: my first job out of college was developing and porting communications software to around 140 different UNIX platforms, DOS, Windows, Mac, VMS, CP/M, etc., etc., and by far, SCO was always easy to work with, both as an OS, and as a company, and as people. I've had a number of very long talks with Doug Michaels, over the years; some one-on-one, some with one or two people, like Esther Dyson, present, and I hold him in *very* high regard. I don't believe the people I know at SCO would do this.
Blame USL, if you must: personally, that's my chief suspect. But SCO also has Microsoft investment, Microsoft code in their OS, and Microsoft board members. There are plenty of real villains to go around, and plenty of pseudo-villains who are likely just fighting for their jobs and their investments of money, time, and self.
But don't blame Ray Noorda.
PS: Novell, if you are reading this, you can have your soul back any time you want; it was never sold, only pawned.
PPS: IBM, if you are reading this, realize that, unrelated to this case, your soul is sitting on the pawn shop shelf next to Novell's; you can reclaim it any time you want, too, by internalizing your customer-facing philosophy.
-- Terry
This whole Canopy thing is a Red Herring. Ray Noorda, the former Novell supremo, owns this venture capitalist co. As we all know, Caldera sprung from Novell, so it's not unreasonable to assume that Noorda funded Caldera through Canopy. Caldera merged with SCO, thus diluting the Canopy shareholding. .com bust, SCO execs made a power play inside Caldera and effectively took over management of the company, removing Ransome Love. These same execs are the ones who have been fighting a desperate rearguard action against Linux on Intel for the past 5 years. First they ridiculed it, then they tried to co-opt it with the Linux Kernel Personality for OpenServer. That didn't work and now find themselves in a corner and this is the final roll of the dice to save the SCO business - not the Caldera Linux business.
As we also know, following the
And as someone has pointed out above, Canopy own only 5.3% of Trolltech, as an investment partner - they're not pulling anymore strings at Troll than they are at SCO.
I wish Perens would get his facts straight before diving in feet first.
And, of course, the Trolls.
What do all these companies have in common? They're geek companies. They employ geeks, and they sell to geeks. What geeks think of them matters to them and can hurt them. If you're doing business with any of these companies, tell the people you're dealing with that you're not happy with SCO's behaviour, and that your unhappiness is sufficient to start you re-evaluating their competitors.
It's also worth pointing out that several of these companies are making use of the Linux[tm] brand, including one of them using it in it's name. The owner of the Linux[tm] brand has it within his power to have a quiet word with them, although, of course, that's entirely up to him.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.