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More on SCO vs. IBM Lawsuit
Colin Stanners writes "SCO has held a TeleConference and put up a page with information on their lawsuit against IBM. The key phrase (from their complaint) is: '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.' Their page also includes a Q&A, presentation, and exhibits, although these are mostly licensing agreements and not code." Bruce Perens had an interesting comment on the situation, more than one group is trying to organize a boycott, and Newsforge has a story based on SCO's press conference this morning. Newsforge and Slashdot are both part of OSDN.
They are in the wreong market to be suing open source companies, especially when they agree to it themselves. (ul)
more than one group is trying to organize a boycott
The market has been "boycotting" SCO and it's crap for years, not like there needs to be a special effort.
"It is not possible for Linux to rapidly reach UNIX performance standards for complete enterprise functionality without the misappropriation of UNIX code"
Umm SCO is no gem in the rough. My opinion Five years ago Linux was a better choice then that of SCO.
Sounds like Penis envy to me.
Sorry, it was the dedication of thousands of programmers and millions of testers that made Linux what it is today.
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
In other words SCO appears to believe that fair competition is unfair...to them anyways ;-)
It must be anti-competitive than right? heh, what a joke.
SCO -> Flames -> Crash -> Burn...bubye, don't let the door hit you on the way out...
No Comment.
The lawsuit information found from the SCOSource link is an audio recording - it'll take about 1/10th of a normal /. effect to bring that to its knees!
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
you have to admit that SCO is the better platform for rapping, because SCO rhymes with "fro", "dough", and "blow".
Interesting thing... if/when this resolves itself, and it's shown that SCO's allegations are false, and Linux DID scale to those performance levels in such a short period of time, this will weigh extremely favorably on the side of the effectiveness of the open source model.
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
Everyone who has installed SCO (any type or version) in the last year raise your hand.
I don't think there is much of a point in boycotting a company who has clearly turned away from producting anything and now simply exists to litigate based on its IP.
-Peter
Maybe I can sue SCO for $1B when my sendmail gets hacked. SCO SUCKS!
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.
Of course! Nothing can possibly be as good as your product unless they steal from you! I mean, after all, your product is perfect isn't it? If the person who made that comment meant it, I can't understand how they came to be in such a profession when they are clearly clueless. If they didn't mean it, I'm not so surprised. Liars are successful these days.
I am a viral sig. Please help me spread.
Does SCO even care that they:
I hope IBM bitchslaps them. Litigiously speaking, of course.
--
Okay, I got Linux installed. So where's the free beer everyone keeps talking about??
From bruce perens article:
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.
Would be interesting if it comes to court, if nothing else, just to see just how enforcable GPL is.
.ACMD setaloiv siht gnidaeR
I don't know if anyone posted this yet, but the official press release is here.
But I already don't use SCO! Nonetheless I'll use them even less!
sulli
RTFJ.
It's fairly obvious to me what this is all about; Linux is stealing UNIX marketshare, so SCO is going to do everything it possibly can to discredit it's competitior. It's typical FUD. Unfortunately for SCO, they're too late. IBM has made too much money from linux to allow a little gnat of a company like SCO push it around. Even if this lawsuit isn't thrown right out of court, it'll be proven in short order that none of the code to the linux kernel comes from SCO's IP. ipso facto, IBM can countersue SCO into oblivion.
At least, that's how I see it.
Despite millions of years of evolution, human beings, taken as a group, are still stupid, panicky animals.
What if SCO ends up being right in court?
Why would they poke the T-Rex that is IBM with a stick, unless they think they can bring it down?
We can sit around laughing or bitching or whining or moaning, but what will happen if there turns out to be code in Linux that we dont have the rights to, either by way of trade secrets or patents?
Can all the SysV and other SCO stuff be removed without killing Linux? Would a setback be weeks, months, years, or would it be the end?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Lovely. Once again, I have to say that IP rights should not be assignable to corporations.
It is quite clear to me that SCO is only suing to get money from a cash cow / destroy a competitor (IBM) by leveraging IP rights that it should not be allowed to own in the first place.
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
"We know your develoers and they are not competant enough to do that. So obviously you ripped it off of us."
But I hope Bruce and others won't lose time pointing out the implications for people who want to participate in programs like MSFT's "shared source". They open themselves up to later lawsuits if they later develop or distribute anything technologically related, even if it isn't textually derived from the original.
It is an interesting counterpoint in case Microsoft wants to use the lawsuit in any anti-linux campaign ...
So their argument is that Linux has grown so quickly and effectively that Linux must have stolen code? Somehow I can't see that argument standing in court. Unless they have specific copywrited code that Linux has stolen, they won't have too much of an chance. And if they did find stolen code, they would have to prove that IBM as a company is responsible for it being there in order to be awarded money.
I live in Boston where the job market is tough even with a zillion computer-related companies around. I can't imagine how rough finding a job must be in Utah. It seems unfair to fault people for keeping a job in these tough times.
sujal
politics, food, music, life: FatMixx
...ever buying a SCO Unix learning bundle. Granted it was 3 or 4 years ago, and only for the puposes of learning about UNIX, but I still regret it.
It was disregarded for the trash it was and I moved onto Linux, BSD, and Solaris x86 in more recent times to give myself an ongoing *nix education.
It sickens me to think 20 or 30 or 40 (whatever is was) dollars went to a company that openly wants to butcher the open source software movement; something that genuinely has the potential to help the world at large; and if not that then at least allows me to run more than one PC without paying taxes to 50 different software vendors & retailers, like SCO.
'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 how long has this linux thing been going on, then? A mere day and a half, from the sound of things. And there aren't tens of thousands more programmers available for linux than any other O/S, are there?
"As a writer / novelist you might want to spellcheck your sig.
Lets try this again
http://www.sco.com/company/feedback/
Bruce already summed it up above, and a reply to the first thread I started on the original article posted by big_groo here and reformatted for easy reading by Jah-Wren Ryel here sums up what happened in the AT&T vs BSD court case.
They're highly informative in case you missed them in the last article.
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
I already asked this question on Newsforge, but...
Does IBM have an official position statement, or any kind of response to this, available yet? I would very much like to read it.
Thank you for any help...
-----
"You spilled my egg... I needed that egg."
Now right it 10 times on the blackboard.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
IBM has been interested in Linux for some time, and Linux has been around for even longer; if there were trade secret problems, SCO should have complained immediately, back then. Waiting until now may provide IBM with a lot of ammo.
On the other hand, I may be confusing trade secrets with trademarks... little help?
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
How about someone setting up a list for Linux Hackers willing to spend time migrating SCO customers to the linux platform for free. To fight back I am willing to spend some of my time.
Got Code?
What's going to happen to SCO's intellectual property when it croaks? Who will buy it? I think the ancient unices that they own are of great interest. I'd love to see those in the public domain, but that's probably wishful thinking.
From the complaint:
Except for SCO, none of the primary UNIX vendors ever developed a UNIX "flavor" to operate on an Intel-based processor chip set. This is because the earlier Intel processors were considered to have inadequate processing power for use in the more demanding enterprise market applications.
What about the x86 version of Solaris?
Why would IBM *buy* SCO? If they released their product under the GPL, couldn't IBM just take a distro and re-release it as "SCOSUCKS" under the GPL? Couldn't anyone? What would burn the top brass at SCO if after this lawsuit (clearly aimed at them just trying to cash in), someone took their distro and made it successful.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
IBM buys SCO and flushed it's UNIX IP down the toilet.
SCO is dead.
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
"Prior to IBM's involvement, Linux was the software equivalent of a bicycle. UNIX was the software equivalent of a luxury car." Cute. Then why are you selling Linux SCO?
-- This is not a sig
Comment removed based on user account deletion
UNIX was developed by Ken Thomson in the 1960's. There was no AT&T USL in the 1960's.
More
Let me make sure that I understand this.
SCO, I mean Caldera, sells Linux (and Unix). They claim that IBM improperly added their Unix technology to Linux. However, it didn't bother them when they sold Linux, with those improvements, for years. So they're suing IBM for improperly modifying a product that SCO is selling, and has known about for a long time.
I have been looking for an excuse to get rid of Caldera 2.3 from our desktops for ages.
Thanks to your suit against IBM and our illiterate management, I can now install any distro other than Caldera....
/. Where the truth
>> That doesn't seem like the firmest ground on which to base a lawsuit
Not a trial, but a lawsuit, sure. You're "innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" in criminal court, but "innocent until proven guilty by a preponderance of the evidence" in civil court.
So the judge is supposed to ask himself "Is SCO more likely right than wrong?"
I don't think it's entirely far-fetched that SCO may be right.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
SCO is basically claiming, much like AT&T did Long Ago WRT BSD, that the AIX source code is wrought with a mix of SCO's licensed code, as well as IBMs internal AIX code.
Based upon statements by IBM executives, IBM seems to be, essentially, raiding AIX to implement high end features into the Linux kernel. If they do so, then any SCO IP within AIX may be transferred into the open license of the Linux kernel.
IF THIS IS THE CASE, the SCO may very well have a valid claim here. The facts on whether SCO is a good Unix, bad Unix, good company, successful company etc, is irrelevant.
So, SCO is taking this claim to court to clear it up. IF SCO is correct, then further erosion and disclosure of their IP MAY harm SCO, so that's why they want to slow or stop the process quickly.
IF SCO is incorrect, then it's all a waste of time, but it does give IBM a clearer path to help Linux move forward using legacy techniques and technology already developed for AIX.
... that distributes documentation in Windows Media Player, PowerPoint, .pdf...
http://www.sco.com/scosource/
Yeah, I'm whining and nitpicking. This is a stupid lawsuit.
---
SCO is weenies
Gator is Spyware
Microsoft is thugs
And yet, SCO still offers products named OpenLinux. Is that going to change to ClosedUNIX or OpenLinuxfor$100.
to be talking about eunichs all the time.
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
They're probably hoping IBM will buy them out for a couple million dollars in an effort to avoid bad publicity, and then the SCO managers can retirs in luxury. The sad thing is, it might even happen
Sig:Why copyright isn't a fundamental human right
SCO is in the same position as Intergraph before it, and is trying the same gag. They're a formerly large and influential company, fallen to the point of minnowhood. They have no prospect of growing significantly, have no revenue, and no significant human capital. So they've gone the patent litigation route.
There's no obvious "strikebacks" at such a company (they're a lot like a "litigation proof" private citizen). Consumer actions or intensified competition won't work, as that is intended to interfere with revenue streams they don't have in the first place. Large tech companies (particularly IBM) might normally unleash a broadside of retaliatory IP lawsuits, but again SCO won't care much - that would interfere with revenue they don't have or enjoin actions they aren't taking. Their current claim is huge, but they'll try to negociate a more "reasonable" sum with IBM - one that would probably be less than the cost to IBM of the litigation.
Intel wouldn't roll over for Intergraph, and I'd guess IBM won't for SCO.
## W.Finlay McWalter ## http://www.mcwalter.org ##
... is working in the SCOsource division of SCO.
"Hmmm. I believe we'll be suing them for (Long pause)
1 BILLION DOLLARS!"
Everybody Wang-Chung tonight!
If IBM bought SCO, they would have the IP rights to the original code, plus the name "UNIX" which is trademarked.
Confirms Intellectual Property Rights for All Versions of Its UNIX(R) Operating Systems
Help fight continental drift.
I think legal arguments should have to be logically sound. This one is clearly begging the question. "It's not possible for them to be as good as we are unless they stole from us. So we're suing them for theft."
Cripes, sounds like 5-year-old whining to me.
I've never seen SCO Unix (is that what it's called) anywhere. I wonder if it would be better for our community to kill SCO with kindness? I'm considering writing to SCO (in my own name) asking for information on their products. I won't put anything in my letter about a protest or about this issue at all. I will just ask them to send me some details. I wonder what the effect of hundreds of thousands of people doing this would be. At the very least it might make it difficult for them to identify real would-be customers.
Is this legal? Is it a good idea? Would it have any effect at all?
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
I just LOVE listening to the audio broadcast of this on SCO's site. I think I'll listen to it again, and again, and again. Maybe I could listen to it on every computer in my house...
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Argh.. We still sell and use SCO OpenServer 5.0.x in many customer sites. We integrated Cleo's SNA/SDLC/3270/HLLAPI/??? product into ours on SCO years ago and it's hard to move away from it now. Can anyone suggest a good Linux alternative? Our application runs fine on Linux without the SNA integration. So if we can do it some other way, no more SCO! That would have made me happy before they went and did this :)
p
Cleo SNA product:
http://www.cleo.com/products/gateway.as
I thought I remembered something regarding MS and SCO IP rights.
Microsoft-SCO 1997 Settlement
Call them. Fax them. Write them and send by post.
:-)
;-)
Lets organize and by doing so, we can effectively deny non-complaint-related traffic from getting processed effectively
Sort of how Code Red and NIMDA DDOS'd Microsoft technical support
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Help fight continental drift.
I grew up in the town where SCO (hint: Santa Cruz Operations) started and I remember them making news even as a teen. Back in the late 80's or early 90's there was a big frenzy in the local media after one of the female employees came forward claiming that SCO's CEO at the time had fondled and/or harrassed her. Several other women came forward with similar claims and there was a flourish of publicity until a "settlement" was reached and the story went away. I cannot remember the names of the parties or even the final disposition of the CEO ('twas a long time ago in a land far, far away), but I do remember some of the stories made the company sound pretty nutso, such that it had a pretty bizarre corporate culture. This was further reinforced by folks my parents knew who interviewed there.
Long story short, they've been nuts for awhile.
Guess I was ontopic afterall!
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
The complaint spent some time on the subject of SCO's could-not-possibly-be-reproduced shared libraries, but then I saw no more mention of it.
Any idea what's up with that?
They'll also have an interesting time proving that their "trade secrets" are still secrets. There are many books on OS design now available that have been influenced by Unix over the years. If they're looking to demonstrate an actual infringement, they'll have better luck showing that IBM propagated a boneheaded mistake, rather than a Good Idea essential for high performance.
It seems that this more about AIX than about Linux. Linux is just being added for the sake of publicity, but the real attack vector against IBM are the contractual obligations under the System V source code licensing for AIX.
So much for the GPL virus. Looks as if proprietary license agreements can be pretty viral, too. So beware of Shared Source! You might walk into the System V trap!
or ibm buys sco or sco loses either way .. linux wins
-beer
David Boies's firm is trying a new four step litigation process:
1. Sue mega-corp for success where self fails.
2. Present no evidence but swear you would have made ONE BILLION DOLLARS.
3. ???
4. Profit!
They have phone and fax numbers there :) This could get fun. We can now /. their phone lines *grin*
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
If they released their product under the GPL, couldn't IBM just take a distro and re-release it as "SCOSUCKS" Er, there are laws against that kind of thing. SCO is a trademark.
"As a writer / novelist you might want to spellcheck your sig.
Their sales line is 1-888-GO-LINUX.
;)
Please MR Linus--
Please make them license the trademark from you!
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
So in a Boycott, we stop buying SCO products whereas, um...
Don Marti did some great research on this subject here:4 .html
http://www.ssc.com/pipermail/atc/2003-March/00003
RMS's gonna be pissed not only isn't it GHNU/Linux but they forgot Hurd IBM's involvement, Linux was the software equivalent of a bicycle. UNIX was the software equivalent of a luxury car.
in general the document keeps confusing AIX the OS (unix derivitive) and AIX the software suite full of apps etc .... and tries to imply that by giving away usefull parts of AIX written by IBM that IBM might also be giving away trade secret Unix sources.
Of course there is the possibility that IBM slipped up and did somewhere include some source from Unix in stuff that it has released ... but that's one of the great things about Open Source .... it's all there for anyone, including the SCO lawyers to read - if there's a SMOKING GUN THRY PROBABLY WOULD HAVE FOUND IT BY NOW
IANAL. However, I am trying to read through the exhibits SCO provided on its website. I have not looked at all of them, but I couldn't resist passing this on. Their exhibit C is a letter of understanding between AT&T and IBM which re-writes some of the clauses of the contract and license in an earlier exhibit.
I would point people to the 4th page of the pdf file, which addresses clause 7.06a of an earlier agreement. It reads in part:
"LICENSSE agrees that it shall hold SOFTWARE PRODUCT subject to this agreement in confidence for AT&T. . . . Nothing in this agreement shall prevent LICENSEE from developing or marketing products or services employing ideas, concepts, know-how of techniques relating to data processing embodied in SOFTWAR PRODUCTS subject to this agreement, provided that LICENSEE shall not copy any code from such SOFTWARE PRODUCTS into any such product or in connection with any such service and employees of LICENSEE shall not refer to the physical documents and materials comprising SOFTWARE PRODUCTS subject to this agreement when they are developing any such product or service or providing any such service. If information relating to a SOFTWARE PRODUCT subject to this agreement at any time becomes available without restriction to the general public by acts not attributable to LICENSEE or its employees, LICENSEES obligations under this section shall not apply to such information after such time."
Now, I've not glanced at exhibits D and E and have not read completely exhibits A,B and C. However, this clause, if not overridden in D or E, would seem to me (remember IANAL) to give IBM the right to use IP embedded in licensed code to produce other code or services. It would even seem to allow people who have worked with licensed code to work on the new project so long as they do not refer to licensed code or documentation while working on the new project.
So, even if IBM took SCO intellectual property and placed it into Linux, so long as they didn't copy SCO owned code or look at while working on the Linux code, it seems to me that it would have been perfectly legal under the contracts for IBM to co-opt SCO owned IP and place it under the GPL in Linux.
Anyone read it differently?
SCO has effectively alienated the geek community, which means they are either incredibly stupid (similarly business decisions have been made by smarter companies before) or the comments about their ultior motives are definately true.
The geek community made Linux, it made FreeBSD, and it makes or breaks the companies involved. Alienating them is business suicide.
The most well known of which is "Never get involved in a land war in Asia." But only slightly less well known is "Never go up against IBM, when Intellectual Property is on the line!" A ha ha ha! A ha ha ha! A ha ha...
(thud)
My amazing wife - Artist, Author, Philosopher - Laurie M
One point:
Linux doesn't follow Minix in any way implying there's Minix code in the Linux kernal. Linus was part of the Minix hacking community for a time and he decided to stop messing around with Minix (the 'ensigns training ship' of OSes- truly a pedagogical work for students to learn from) and create something new.
The early Linux system used the Minix filesystem structure. That's about it.
If SCO is trying to get them bought atleast somebody is biting, if not IBM. Share pices are up 50%
.ACMD setaloiv siht gnidaeR
Besides, IBM has done far less for Linux than the Linux hacker community at large has. I've been using Linux for over 6 years, before IBM had any investment in Linux at all, and it wasn't THAT far behind where it is today. After all, I chose Linux over SCO back then.
SCO is really leveling a huge insult towards all the dedicated kernel developers who are the real reason Linux is doing so well today. Without IBM, Linux wouldn't be far behind, if at all, where it is today. No, IBM didn't make Linux great, thousands of independent developers did, and SCO just insulted every last one of them.
Fuck SCO. Fuck them up their stupid fucking asses.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
As Bruce Perens and others have pointed out, SCO just wants to get bought. They are suing for (raising pinky to side of mouth) "one billion dollars". But their market cap is 25 million dollars so they are suing for 40 times their current market value. Even adjusting for today's stock price their market value is less than $40 million. Most recent quarter per-share data: cash on hand=$0.92, earnings=-0.26. They better get bought quick.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
why :
CALDERA SYSTEMS, INC.,
a Delaware corporation d/b/a THE SCO GROUP,
Plaintiff,
vs.
INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION, a Delaware corporation,
Defendant.
take place in THE THIRD JUDICIAL DISTRICT OF SALT LAKE COUNTY
STATE OF UTAH
?
why not in Delaware?
Boy, this outta work great.
Who are you going to organize it with? People who already don't buy SCO (and no one is buying SCO it seems..)?
The best the boycott can do is raise up a stink that the public, who doesn't understand or probably care what UNIX is (but they know what Britney Spears and Disney are, which is why those kind of boycotts are actually more successful. The problem there is that no one can get past the "Boycot the MP--OOO! New DVD! SHINY!" stage..). It's useless to talk about boycotting a sinking ship. It's like the passengers on the Titanic saying as it's going down "Why, I don't like what the Cap'n says, so by golly I just won't abide by it! I'm gonna sit here and drink myself silly...."
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
SCO was a division of Microsoft. Microsoft's Santa Cruz Operation produced Microsoft Xenix, a System 3 variant based on licensed AT&T code. It was the first UNIX Operating System to run on the Intel 8086.
'Bill Gates' did not "use SCO as a hedge in case windows failed." Windows itself didn't exist until after Microsoft had divested themselves of SCO and Xenix. The word is (**) that Gates wanted to be rid of Xenix because all they were doing was reselling something and paying substancial royalties for each sale to AT&T.
(** I belive the place I read it may have been from a post by Linux Zealot 'Rex Ballard' on the linux.advocacy newsgroup, so take it with a grain of salt!)
The idea is it's easier (and cheaper) for IBM to spend the $20 Million or so to buy SCO, than spend time litigating, or possibly losing a $1 billion lawsuit.
The alternative thought is to have Microsoft buy SCO, and keep on sticking IBM & Linux with the pointy lawsuit stick, adding to FUD and distracting IBM from Linux.
This could certainly be a tactic. Everyone knows their product sucks, they have no product or market share, and it just comes down to cashing out. The question may be who will buy them and for what purpose?
From SCO's complaint:
"51. Prior to this time, IBM had not developed any expertise to run UNIX on an Intel chip and instead was confined to its Power PC chip."
IBM had a version of UNIX on Intel, AIX-PS2. And don't forget OS/2's (albeit limited) POSIX layer. And IBM was involved with Linux before Project Monterey began.
Well, it seems there are some speculators out there that think this is a good deal for SCO. There stock has hit a 52 week high today, on ten times the normal volume. Hope this doesn't indicate SCO has a chance of getting anything but thumped out this deal.
So, let's get this straight.
So either Canopy doesn't know what's going on, or is pretty hands-off, or they have no qualms about using one business in a way that would hurt or kill off one or more of their other viable businesses. Either way, they aren't a good company to work with.
Kind of like the dilbert comic, "The net-net at the end of the days is we owe ourselves 3 billion dollars."
-Adam
The compaint read more like a SCO advertisement than a caomplaint versus IBM. All they are doing is crying about how Linux didn't used to be a big deal.
It also sounds like they are trying to say that if IBM didn't get involved in Linux, it wouldn't be a viable operating system? WTF! Linux is what it is today because of the blood sweat & tears of programmers around the world offering their talent & time to build it up.
Sure alot of things are going to be base off of the "concepts" & "ideas" from Unix, but that's just because those concepts & ideas work! Why would we build on new concepts that aren't proven to work & work well?
Give me a break! I think SCO needs get the pool stick out of their @$$ & learn to play nice. (instead of griping that they didn't properly foree the future of Linux.)
~ tmasman
"Force always attracts men of low morality."
-Albert Einstein
Oh! And this one time, at band camp...
Right after reading this story, my login fortune was as follows:
IBM:
[International Business Machines Corp.] Also known as Itty Bitty Machines or The Lawyer's Friend. The dominant force in computer marketing, having supplied worldwide some 75% of all known hardware and 10% of all software. To protect itself from the litigious envy of less successful organizations, such as the US government, IBM employs 68% of all known ex-Attorneys' General.
Yao. Can I write a check?
I seem to recall that Microsoft got rid of a lawsuit brought by a the company that did disk compression (Stac?) by buying the company outright.
Perhaps, what's left of SCO (the lawyers and bankers) are hoping to prod IBM into buying them!
The case is worse than you think. There are all sorts of factual inaccuracies in the filling.
For example they make a great deal out of the fact that Linux = Linux + Unix; to show that the intent was to steal Unix intellectual property. As a side note Linux is a pun on Linix which was an abbreviation for Linus' Minix and SCO owns no Minix intellectual property.
They refer to Stallman as a former MIT professor.
Where it is not just factually untrue they often are highly misleading. For example they talk about SCO intellectual property as part of the Monterey project and then have quotes from IBM indicating the version of JFS in Linux is from Monterey project. The clear intent is to leave the reader with the impression that JFS came from SCO and was stolen by IBM.
Unlike the other two mistakes (which might just show negligence is preparing a court filing) this one is clearly an attempt to mislead the court.
Similarly they have multiple sections outlining the fact that the probability of someone randomly creating libraries compatible with the SCO OpenServer Shared Libraries are close to 0; which hints but never states that Linux is compatible with the SCO OpenServer Shared Libraries.
I think a very good case can be made for summary dismissal. As for IBM winning in court there won't be a problem. If this is the best claim Caldera has they really are in deep trouble.
This has got to be the last gasp of a dying company ...
In both cases, whooptie-doo.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
This is horse shit. I picked up some nice long sleeved shirts at SCO's booth @ LinuxWorld in January. They're great looking, comfortable shirts, and now I can't wear them...
SCO, you bastards.
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig
Many have observed that SCO is pretty much dead, so why boycott it?
Instead, boycott Canopy, the VC firm that is in part responsible for SCO's strategic business practices. Don't do business with Canopy, or any of their holdings. SCO is listed bottom center on Canopy's front page.
5 types of people in North America - Politicians, Laywers, Marketers, Coders, Labourers.
A long time ago I remember someone stating that one measure of a society is the ratio of number of engineers thinkers and artists (those who create new things) and the number of managers, accountants and lawyers (those who don't create but manage, count, and redistribute wealth based on those creations). If so, thats one ratio we'd be on the lower scale of.
As far as North Americans go, I think the lawyeritis is a disease of us U.S. of Americans, I'd leave the Canadians and Guatemalans out of it. For some reason, Americans don't believe in personal responsibility anymore; it's always someone else's fault. SCO kept the old Xenix code cranking for years, not too many new features, it was very expensive and a wealth generating cash cow. When someone came out and did essentially the same job for cheaper, they called foul. I looked at the complaint, and it seems that they're saying "if you match this API, you must have stolen the code". Ummmmm....
I first worked with SCO OpenServer in 96. Even at that time I thought "this has no added value, they're going to get their ass kicked by Linux or FreeBSD". I don't see anything compelling from SCO to make me change my opinion of it's value as an OS.
I wonder if they're going to sue FreeBSD? Silly Linux/FreeBSD flame wars aside, in some ways it has more "enterprise" things than Linux. Yes, it doesn't have the device driver support and some of the bells and whistles, but it has a more mature VM, more mature scheduler. How did FreeBSD get these without help from IBM? Here you have this Linux with all this enterprise support, and here's FreeBSD that can go toe to toe with it in many spaces, and the selection often comes to personal preference. I know SCO can't sue BSD (the outcome of the great lawsuit that stymied FreeBSD development for years) but FreeBSD has no AT&T code, yet does many of the same things. Maybe aliens did it; far be it for us mortal programmers to understand this UNIX thing.
SCO forgot that as much as anything, UNIX is now an API. A guaranteed featureset, with the implementations at least at some level irrelevant. If they have no value add over the standard UNIX API (and in some respects Linux is lacking; I hate the way Linux and FreeBSD 5 do threads) then they will be selling to a shrinking locked in marketplace.
Last random point; how is it they're only guessing Linux got these things from UNIX? Can't they just look at the code and say "oh, thats from us"?
BTW: In contrast one of their statements, BSDI is a commercial UNIX, and it's BSD based, not SysV based. It also runs on Intel.
Ok, how about "5c0 5uX0r5" :-)
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Thought you all might be interested in this article.v iewer.asp? a=695
http://www.sourcemagazine.com/articles/
"In 1979, brothers Doug and Larry Michels founded the Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) as a UNIX porting and consulting company using venture capital from Microsoft..."
"Microsoft acquired a 25 percent share of SCO, which at the time gave it a controlling interest. While SCO handled the actual development and added some enhancements of its own, Microsoft handled the marketing of the product, which it touted as the "Microcomputer Operating System of the Future!""
While reading up on this SCO article, I noticed the following diagram. Isn't this diagram derrived from another source? Does that mean they are doing something against copyright or some such matters?
I know there was an article about this history diagram some time back but can't find it at the moment...
Eric B
ebresie@gmail.com
Shared libraries are by their nature unique creations based on various decisions to write code in certain ways, which are in great part random decisions of the software developers who create the shared library code base. There is no established way to create a specific shared library and the random choices in the location and access calls for "hooks" that are part of the creation of any shared library. Therefore, the mathematical probability of a customer being able to recreate the SCO OpenServer Shared Libraries without unauthorized access to or use of the source code of the SCO OpenServer Shared Libraries is nil.
Aside from the insult proffered to programmers everywhere (calling our decisions "random"), there's the real problem that it IS possible to duplicate functionality in shared libraries without the source code. Check out WINE as an excellent example.
I've been using SCO Unix/OpenDeskop/OpenServer for about 10 years now. It's never been cutting edge or 'sexy' but it has worked for me. This is just going to make the few supporters SCO has left leave and it gives a case of ammo to Microsoft...
So sad.
Can anybody list some well known products SCO sells so I can boycott them?
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
given that SCO is attacking IBM, what is to stop IBM from making the same claims of SCO? SCO is saying that IBM is helping linux, but doesn't SCO own Caldera, which is a part of UnitedLinux? what's stopping them from using the same unix code to help move UnitedLinux along?
this could make things interesting for companies like Sun, who is supposedly developing their own linux distro (i read it here a while back).
i wonder which sold more last year. SCO or Caldera...
I wonder what Microsoft's managers have to say about this irrational, or tactical move by SCO, especially due to their recent plans to spread their product to "open source heavy" China. see http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/28/163921 6&mode=thread&tid=109
Look at some of the other contributors to the Linux game. Many of them have expertise on multiprocessing. The point is rather than hide the expertise in their propietary binaries, thjey chose to contribute.
See my journal, I write things there
Comment removed based on user account deletion
SCO might have written their own death warrant by suing Big Blue. IBM has more software patents than Microsoft and Oracle combined, and probably has enough legal firepower in their patent portfolio to countersue SCO out of existance.
I doubt that anyone will miss them once IBM is finished mopping the floor with them.
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.
What if this applied in other areas of creative work?
The Tolkien Family's lawyers:
"It is not possible for Robert Jordan, George R.R. Martin, Terry Brooks, Terry Goodkind, or any other well-regarded fantasy writer to reach acceptance as credible authors of the fantasy genre without misappropriating methods and concepts from J.R.R. Tolkien such as good vs.evil, elves, magic, dragons, and also the coordination of a major fantasy publisher, such as Tor.
Sheesh.
"Sometimes nothin' is a pretty cool hand." - Cool Hand Luke
"For example, Linux is currently capable of coordinating the simultaneous performance of 4 computer processors. UNIX, on the other hand, commonly links 16 processors and can successfully link up to 32 processors for simultaneous operation. This difference in memory management performance is very significant to enterprise customers who need extremely high computing capabilities for complex tasks. The ability to accomplish this task successfully has taken AT&T, Novell and SCO at least 20 years, with access to expensive equipment for design and testing, well-trained UNIX engineers and a wealth of experience in UNIX methods and concepts."
Why would IBM *buy* SCO? If they released their product under the GPL, couldn't IBM just take a distro and re-release it as "SCOSUCKS" under the GPL? Couldn't anyone? What would burn the top brass at SCO if after this lawsuit (clearly aimed at them just trying to cash in), someone took their distro and made it successful.
Yeah, that works great for Caldera Linux (or United Linux or I can't tie my own shoe Linux or whatever the hell they want to call it today). Problem, it doesn't do squat for SCO Unix which is a completely seperate closed source product.
Ransom Love left Caldera^H^H^H^H^H^H^HSCO many months ago.
Trolltech is not owned by Canopy group. It has a 5% stake. No, IBM will continue to use Qt for embedded.
OK I'll hide my head in shame. Oce printing uses a SCO solution for their postscript control center:
(individual systems -> SCO master -> ?SCO slave? -> Postscript rip -> SCO slave/master -> ?IOCA RIP? -> Printer. Its switching to Linux but it isn't converted yet (since it works and scales big enough).
[Screams of "but its not my fault" in the background]
So back to my above comment about SCO making a tactical move: Does it bother anyone that their stock has soared 52% since this morning's open (to 3.29)??! This gives the stockholders a chance to either stick with this rollercoaster or SELL, SELL!
they claim Linux is a combination of the word UNIX and the name Linus.
I think Linus should stand up and tell them that he just replaced the "s" at the end of his name with an "x" and tell them they can keep their crappy trademark <g>
s#s#x#
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
Say what you want, but it appears that for SCO shareholders it's already bearing fruit. Their stock is up ~50% today (A whole dollar!). While I expect that fruit to quickly rot, right now the stock appears to be trading at an all time high. So if you sell right now you might actually make some money out of it.
It appears that SCO has helped themselves to
r y0 1.html
t io n.ppt (slide #4)
Éric Lévénez's unix family tree, possibly in
violation of the "you can freely use this diagram
for non-commercial purposes" line at the bottom
of the page.
compare http://www.levenez.com/unix/
with
http://www.sco.com/scosource/unixtree/unixhisto
http://www.sco.com/scosource/SCOsource_Presenta
I guess "What's mine is mine, and what's yours
is negotiable" rings true at SCO.
--chuck
There is so many good things coming out of the US but also a lot of bad. Just now the US is trying to go to war against a poor country in the "third world" just to get contol of their oil. It doesn't matter how they try to disarm themselves.
Now your laws of "intellectual property" tries to destroy the efforts of a whole world to develop something that can make us to communicate freely with each other.
Now - communicating freely with you - how can you let this happen?
Per
Wow.
So we need to boycott KDE now.
Gee, that's going to work well.
'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.'
Which is why we use Linux to host our website. http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?mode_u=off&m"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."
If you read the SCOSource Q&A document from their site, it explains when SCOSource was created in the first place (January 22nd, 2003) and why ("As a publicly held corporation we have an obligation to our stakeholders - our investors, customers, resellers, developers and our employees - to manage these important assets responsibly and to derive value from them.")
Read further and it gets interesting. Quote:
Is SCO going to sue Linux vendors?
SCO is a Linux vendor and a member of United Linux. We have no interest in suing Linux vendors. While we haven't formulated the details of our new SCOsource effort, we're confident that we can work together with other vendors to clear up IP issues in a fair and amicable way.
Two weeks ago an industry publication headlined a story saying SCO was threatening to sue Linux vendors.
The story was wrong. SCOsource is now one day old. We haven't made any plans to sue Linux vendors, and we certainly haven't threatened any vendors. This story was damaging to the Linux community and made assumptions that were incorrect.
Unquote. So much for not threatening any vendors. They claim to have been in discussions with IBM, but IBM probably recognized a shakedown early and promptly laughed at them. I'm sure that they recognized the threats of a dying enterprise with few cards to play.
Here's the relevant section:
That's all well and good, but it blatantly ignores a couple hard truthes of the marketplace at the time:
- The architecture of the Itanium is so different from x86 that SCO's knowledge of previous Intel architectures was either useless or an active hinderance to development.
- By May 2001, it was obvious to anyone paying attention to that Linux was going to be the OS of choice among the early adopters of Itanium. A significant percentage (20% at least) of all Itanium-1 processors produced were going into compute clusters at academic HPC sites like NCSA and OSC (my employer), and those sites were all using Linux on their Itaniums. (NCSA bought their Itanium gear from IBM, IIRC.)
I think this suit is going to come down to SCO needing to prove the sentence italicized above, including identifying the trade secrets that IBM supposedly misappropriated. I have to think that's going to be extremely hard to prove, especially given that IBM wasn't even substantially involved in the Linux/ia64 port. (HP did most of the heavy lifting there, I think.)Personally, I think Bruce Perens is right -- SCO is trying to get someone with deep pockets to buy them, whether that's IBM, MS, or somebody else.
"My life's work has been to prompt others... and be forgotten." --Cyrano de Bergerac
And, even if their claim did have even a hint of validity (which it does not), UCB, AT&T, and DEC (aka Compaq) would all have just as much, if not more, right to sue by that logic.
Well, SCO now technically owns UNIX, so they're suing as the body that issued the license, not just another licensee.
I just read (most of) the claims they make.
In there, they are talking about how in the early 80's, they saw that the intel processor, while not as powerful as the IBM, Sun and other processors, could be used to run Unix on, and basically claim that they provided Intel with a market for the chip - never mind the whole DOS thing going on.
They go one about how disorganized Linux is/was and that basically it could not have moved to where it is now without UNIX's help - gee...I didn't know that SCO could help organize a group of developers from around the world - powerful stuff that.
What's next? Without SCO, there would be no Internet? Perhaps SCO should claim that it laid birth to Apache and it should be named SCO/Apache...because we know that Apache could not have been created without the help of UNIX.
Now I need to go fix a leak in my roof and I hope that UNIX can come over and help me.
"My opinion Five years ago Linux was a better choice then that of SCO."
Just for the record, the company called SCO five years ago was a different company. Caldera purchased the IP when the original SCO ("Santa Cruz Operation, Inc.") died. (The rest of the old SCO is now Tarantella, Inc., which is struggling, but still around, and still occupying the old SCO headquarters in Santa Cruz, CA.)
When Caldera realized they weren't making any money off of their Linux products, they revived the old SCO trademark as "SCO Group".
So, while I agree with the sentiment of your post, I think your comparison of this SCO to the SCO of 5 years ago is meaningless. They're two different companies. The only thing they have in common is the name and ownership of the System V source.
Can you please let me know what, if any, violations there are of your intellectual property in GNU/linux (with references to patent or copyright numbers) so that I may build a version that does not violate your intellectual property?
-Tom Hudson
Here's what came up after I clicked on "submit":
You will be hearing from us soon.
Sounds ominous :-)
Technically oriented people are sometimes amazing for their lack of insight into marketing.
It's, "Work hard for years, destroy it all in an afternoon with bad public relations."
Here's some of the misconceptions they have:
In their brief, one of the points they make is that Linux was originally created for not-for-profit uses:
I don't know for sure about what Linus was thinking, but I know for certain that GNU was intended to be used in commercial, for-profit applications. Stallman has repeatedly stated that people can GPL stuff and sell it. His analogy was with legal help: you pay a lawyer to write up a contract, but then you can give the contract to a friend in a similar situation. You pay once for the lawyer to write up the contract; the lawyer doesn't get royalties every time you use it. OTH, your friend would be wise to at least run it by a lawyer before using the contract to make sure it fits his/her situation. You can produce GPL'ed software that way, too. You can offer custom GPL'ed programs for a fee. The GPL has ALWAYS been intended to be applicable to for-profit programs.
Free of charge, yes. Not-for-profitt, no. I can sell GPL'ed code for a gazillion dollars if I want. Of course, the first person who buys it can then put it on an ftp site and distribute it to the world...
All GPL'ed software is copyright property. That's the only way the GPL works.
And then they go on to claim that IBM is trying to "destroy the economic value of UNIX (paragraph 90)." Um, guys, Stallman's intent at the outset was to destroy the economic value of all proprietary software.
I just hope that IBM's lawyers don't let them get away with such huge misconceptions. I really hope IBM can squash this suit like a bug (oh, wait, is that a good analogy? IBM... squashing bugs...infinitely growing bug lists... hmmm...))
Acronyms Obfuscate
But then, I'm Machivellian. Most corporations are too. But are we the same Machievellian? :-)
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
When they are unable to comply with contractual response time, have your account payable department withhold payment until problem has been resolved.
If invoice gets to you for authorization of work done, delay. Throw it out and request a new by snail mail. Repeat.
Ask your system house vendor for a review of SCO licensing. Withhold payment until done. DElAY everything you can. In a few weeks their cash is below required minimum and the banks etc. will call their loans.
Noting kills a company quicker than a cash crunch, NOTHING. It's like a run on a bank. End of SCO.
Help fight continental drift.
From the compaint:
Except for SCO, none of the primary UNIX vendors ever developed a UNIX "flavor" to operate on an Intel-based processor chip set. This is because the earlier Intel processors were considered to have inadequate processing power for use in the more demanding enterprise market applications.
Hmmm.... I guess that Solaris x86 doesn't count?
Prior to IBM's involvement, Linux was the software equivalent of a bicycle. UNIX was the software equivalent of a luxury car.
And SCO UNIX was the equivalent of that Mercedes Sportscar until you discover that it had a really cheap transmission in it and 2 cycle lawn-mower engine....
Nother interesting point which regardless of accuracy should give Shared Source advocates pause is:
Based on other published statements, IBM currently has over 7,000 employees involved in the transfer of UNIX knowledge into the Linux business of IBM, Red Hat and SuSE (the largest European Linux distributor). On information and belief, a large number of the said IBM employees currently working in the transfer of UNIX to Linux have, or have had, access to the UNIX Software Code.
It seems to me that this suit is interesting because as a derivative works suit... This is very dangerous for Microsoft and its shared source initiative. So the idea that this is good for Microsoft is actually very misleading. Normally, lawyers will usually take a "play it safe" mentality where unless victory is quite likely, suits are often discouraged. Particularly in expensive areas like copyright or patent laws. So the fact that SCO has moved into the DMZ of copyright law is significant and could redefine where the DMZ is. In fact their presence there, if they lose would be a severe blow to their ability to pursue other suits. So if IBM wins, this is a victory for all of us.
Now as to what can be done:
1: Can the FSF get involved?
2: If so, cvan we all donate to them?
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Their email send doesnt accept mails from postmaster@localhost, but does like postmaster@127.0.0.1 ;-)
hehe heee
I started using Linux (Slackware) in March 1995, and it was already better than the SCO system I sometimes used at work then. At least in terms of developer-friendly tools, and the performance / reliability was reasonable on a single CPU.
Doubtless, many people learned this much before I did...
.
Yow! I'm supposed to have a plan?
Luv yer first-world tunnel vision there. Guatemala is not in North America, but Mexico is.
I take it as similar to the whole JFS claim, where they hint at something which is an out and out lie but don't say it. In the case of the JFS they hint that IBM stole JFS from SCO. In the case of SCO libraries they hint that Linux has these libraries but never say it.
I mean this lawsuit is really shockingly bad.
It seems that SCO has missed a few facts on their stampede to litigation: Except for SCO, none of the primary UNIX vendors ever developed a UNIX "flavor" to operate on an Intel-based processor chip set. Guess they never heard of Solaris x86? What else are the mistaken about along the way? A lot it seems... perhaps we should take score? 1 pt for each marketing hype disguised as legal verbiage. 2 pts for each plain old mistake 3 pts for each sneaky misdirection (i.e. that Linux could not run on more than 4 CPU's without massive help from a big vendor) Anybody want to total up this mess? At least we all get to see how afraid of Linux the actual UNIX holder is. Interesting stuff.
I guess, while Unix is in the hands of a company line SCO, that finally Unix is dead. Sad..
The site www.sco.com is running Apache/1.3.14 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.7.1 OpenSSL/0.9.6 PHP/4.0.3pl1 on Linux.
Looks like they started to switch in August of 2002, had some problems and switched back to SCO for a few days, and then completed their switch on August 14, 2002.
You KNOW a company is dying when they don't eat their own dog food.
"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."
Maybe. But, from their complaint, it seems that what they're complaining about is the possibility that IBM may GPL the AIX code in the future. Unless I misread the complaint, IBM hasn't done that yet, meaning no AIX in Linux, meaning no AIX released by SCO.
That would mean two things: 1) Linux distros aren't in danger if they don't accept IBM's unwitting potential AIX trojan, and 2) SCO hasn't unwittingly GPL'd their own patents.
Am I missing something? Has AIX/Monterey code been incorporated into Linux distros already? Because if SCO does shoot themselves in the foot by GPLing themselves out of a lawsuit, that would be pretty damned funny.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Check a map. Guatemala, a neighbor of Mexico, is in North America. You may say "central America" but that's not a continent. It's in North America.
They are true Unixes as well. NetBSD, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD as well as some others are still alive and well and UNIX.
Queen B.
HDGary secures my bank
Considering that Unix was a beast created in the 70s and that its been over 20 years then any patent awarded before 1985 has expired. Beyond that I wonder what patents SCO still has that are still valid?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Who cares about all the irrelevant patent-expired-15-years-ago intellectual property? If IBM bought SCO, they could issue a memo cancelling the lawsuit. Let's not beat around the bush here, what SCO is perpetrating here is extortion by lawsuit, and nothing more.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
The first rule of thumb should be: if it doesn't come with a well-known open source license, don't look at the source code; if you do, you may find yourself in a world of legal trouble and cause pain not only for yourself but also for your employer or the open source projects you are working on. Occasionally, one can make an exception to this rule, but it needs to be carefully thought through.
A sun becomes a red giant before turning into a white dwarf ember. This would have been wittier if it Sun in SCO's place.....
I find that it's a common mistake among people who don't understand law very well to confuse the copyright status of a work with its license terms.
For an expensive IP lawyer to make this mistake in a complaint shows lack of attention. My guess is that SCO can afford only so many hours of the high-priced David Boies, and they ran out of their legal budget before Boies got to that part. So they got some cheap clueless intern to fill in the part about "GPL software cannot have a copyright owner."
If they are producing shoddy work like this in the complaint, then IBM will overwhelm by sheer force of numbers if nothing else.
OK, if you must. Every geopolitical reference I have ever seen refers to Mexico being part of "North America" while Belize, Guatemala and points south are considered "Central America" until you get to the border between Panama and Colombia, south of which everything is "South America".
I'm sure someone can chime in and correct me as to whether or not Guatemala is part of North America. I say no.
Or did you just decide to get rid of Central America to make a point? "Check a map"?? Hey, how about we make Morocco part of Europe? After all, it's just a hop away from Spain!
Never mind the fact that in the days of IBM's PS/2 systems (no not the sony toys - the 80386 era) you could get AIX for PS/2 so IBM had indeed prior knowledge to run UNIX on Intel CPUs.
--Ulrich
On no accounts allow a Vogon to read poetry at you
Anyone else wonder if part of the motivation behind this asinine behaviour might be to scare people to use UnitedLinux? With Caldera having an interest, they may be the only distro immune to these kinds of frivilous lawsuits.
... or some such bullshit.
I bet we'll see a campaign along the lines of "UnitedLinux is better, because UnitedLinux is the only Linux incorporating proven UNIX technology."
Ransom Love is a wanker.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
Easy way out for IBM, just buy controlling interest, 51% of their $2 stock--before someone else does. That 51% of the shares of SCOX can't be worth a $Billion. Give shareholders a slightly dignified price a little above $2. Give employees option to join IBM or affiliate, swap 401K SCOX stock for IBM stock, allow early retirement. Add a few more patents to their legal patent hanger. Give Mr. Gates reason to reconsider selling off his SCOX a couple years ago...
If what SCO says is true than IBM did screw them and they deserve to pay SCO some cash. You can't just take someone's code and then use it in open source without their knowledge, especially if that person expected to make money off that code. If what SCO charges is false, which is what many people seem to believe, then IBM will win the case, SCO will get nothing, and they will probably go out of business shortly after that. Why is a boycott required? And who uses any of SCO's products anyway?
The other suggestion by Bruce Perens is just as unlikely: Microsoft buying SCO.
If Microsoft acquires:
a. the rights to Unix, they'll be slaughtered in court again.
b. a Linux vendor, be it a small one, they'll lose a lot of credibility with their customers
Incidentally, when they buy SCO, they do both. Don't think they'll bite.
the pun is mightier than the sword
It IS a whopptie-doo since one of SCO's tactics is to revoke IBM's liscense to the UNIX mark and code within 100 days if they do not meet SCO's demands. Basically IBM should buy SCO because the $25 million(SCO's market cap) would be small change to insure the $1 Billion Linux investment and the umpteen Billion US$ they have invested in AIX. Heck just the lawfirms bill for this suit may run over a million.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Try this link if you want to read the NewsForge article and all the comments in nested mode, to minimize click-throughs:
SCO follows David Hannum's 'sucker' theory in lawsuit against IBM
The real Webmaven is user ID 27463. I don't rate an imposter, because my ID is such a lame-ass high number.
The claim is that SCO had technology that allowed a UNIX workalike to run on commodity consumer class Intel CPUs.
In other words, this isn't about UnixWare per se, ( which they got from Novell), it's about *Xenix* (which they got from Microsoft) and we all know how technologically advanced Xenix is/was.
And that's without even getting into the fact that they also sell Linux (which they got off the internet for free. Do these people do *anything* on their own?).
So, lets see what we've got here. Their claim seems to be that they *purchased* failed technology, or just plain downloaded the successful bits of it, and this is proof that the R&D might of Linus, GNU, Damned near everyone who programs and has internet access AND IBM combined couldn't have possibly matched their failed technology in only 10 years?
Right Bob. Bite me.
KFG
We have that:
e rvices/info rmation/company/factsheet.html
(1) SCO is suing IBM.
(2) SCO is part of the UnitedLinux effort.
(4) IBM is one of the owners of SuSE [1].
(3) SuSE is part of UnitedLinux, too.
They seem love each other like a family...
[1] from SuSE website (look into the "investors" section):
http://www.suse.com/us/company/press/s
SCO owns the rights to Unix. They licensed these rights to HP (HP-UX), Sun (Solaris), and IBM (AIX) among others. The license agreement that IBM signed specifically prevents them from disclosing Unix's source code. Now, consider:
That's a license infringement, clearly. Consider:December 20, 2000, IBM Vice President Robert LeBlanc:
Again, clearly a license infringement - SCO's license agreement, which IBM signed when they licensed Unix, in fact explicitly prevents IBM from open sourcing any of SCO's IP, which AIX is clearly a derivative of.Although I agree that unix/linux should be open, it looks like SCO has some solid legal footing here. I'm just surprised that it took them this long to file the lawsuit...
http://www.sco.com/company/feedback/index.html
As much as I am ashamed to bring this up, Micro$oft themselves have made a flavor of UNIX from way before SCO even entered the UNIX field. It's Xenix, and it's designed to use the x86 platform because there was great promise in it, even in the 80's.
I don't get it. What is the actual alleged IP they claim IBM stole? There seemed to be some implications not actually said that I missed. The only thing I can think of is:
1 - IBM licenses the UNIX name, and agrees to some NDA about it.
2 - IBM implements AIX, under the UNIX name.
3 - IBM later on ends up getting behind Linux.
4 - Some of Linux's development is now coming from IBM employees.
5 - Those employees probably previously worked on AIX.
6 - Thus IBM may be taking AIX techniques and putting them into Linux, which violates their agreement #1 at the top of this list.
I think that's SCO's angle, maybe. It's hard to tell from their press release. Of course those of us in the know understand that licensing the right to use a name has nothing to do with copying the technology. Linux is as UNIX-compatable as any other of the UNIX implementations, and that was already true well before IBM's involvement in it. It just can't legally call itself UNIX.
It seems to me that IBM could avoid this by no longer calling AIX a version of "UNIX", but instead calling it "UNIX compatable", just like Linux does, and thus neatly avoid SCO's idiotic case in a manner that doesn't really hurt them in any material way.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
http://websurveyor.net/wsb.dll/9929/websatisfactio n20021210.htm
Question 3: When was the last time you purchased any SCO products?
Thankfully.. Never.
Question 4: What was your primary purpose in visiting the SCO Website today?
Other: To try to /. sco.com =P
It is well know that IBM is one of the "Big Dawgs".
Does this mean they are going to get a SCOoby snack?
.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
Unix is very, very well understood, as the source code was freely distributed and then forked to hell and gone. Since the early '90s, the only thing all the Unix vendors really needed from Unix was the name, which is kindly provided by the Open Group these days so long as you have the cash.
AIX is not an SVR4-based Unix. Anyone who's taken a look at the psychotic commands required to admin an AIX box clearly understands this, as does anyone who's ever ported SVR4 based software to it.
Solaris and Irix are a little closer to their SVR4 roots, but True64 is BSD based. HP-UX is based around a Mach microkernel. MacOS X is based around both Mach and BSD, doesn't use any of the traditional file system or configuration tools, and it's still not as weird as AIX. So it can be easily argued that IBM did, does and will continue to do it's onw weird, scary thing without the need for anybody's code, patents or input. Exhibits A, B and C: zOS, OS/400 and OS/2. IBM has OS style kung-fu like no other company in the industry.
The offspring of 386BSD; Free, Open and Net are cleared of patent problems after a legal tussle with AT&T. Yahoo's been a FreeBSD shop from day one, so it's an enterprise class OS that got there without the deep pockets of any Computer Giant. There goes the foundation of the lawsuit.
What's worse, if you have to fear just one legal department, fear IBM's. They have a portfolio of defensive patents that will bury SCO so deep in countersuits, they'll never see the light of day.
So SCO is going to crash and burn and die for being stupid.
SoupIsGood Food
Are you kidding? It's obvious, they need the press. Don't forget that to marketing, ANY press is good press-- as long as they spell their name right. They've been having some trouble getting any notice of late, apparently...
Let's look at it from a different perspective.
...
... go figure
--SCO wins, stock goes up -- management cashes out and drives the company down the drain; they have a lot of practice in this matter
--IBM get's fed up and buys out SCO, stock goes up-- management cashes out and doesn't give shit.
--Bunch of spamers on stock web sites spread fud about how valid SCO's arguments are, bunch of idiots buy their stock, the stock goes up 40% in one session
well
the management knows the company is going nowhere with their crappy software, they can't follow their fellow brothers of Enron, WorldCom and others because there is nothing to steal, so they've found out other way to make money.
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
miss who?
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
I just came across this short article by ESR over at NewsForge. ... But it's also deeply stupid to piss off that community like this, unless you think you're never going to have to hire programmers again. SCO is behaving as though it thinks its IP portfolio is the only asset it has left.
From the article:
Sorry if this already has been posted. Havn't seen it here though.
Since 14-Aug-2002 apparently:
The site www.sco.com is running Apache/1.3.14 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.7.1 OpenSSL/0.9.6 PHP/4.0.3pl1 on Linux.
Let's see. Somebody replying to the other article said they're worth 16 million bucks.
They probably pay a nickel per minute for their 888 number.
That means that we can bankrupt them by making 320 million minutes worth of useless calls, navigating their stupid voice menus! If we can each make 100 minutes worth of calls, we only need 3.2 million slashdotters to participate!
Looks like it's time for an offensive slashdotting, old school!
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
As part of the SCOSource effort, SCO has retained David Boies, the lawyer who prosecuted the U.S. government's case against Microsoft Latest News about Microsoft, defended Napster in its case against the RIAA and worked for Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election controversy.
That last part made me smile in a rather humorous and menacing way:
David Boise...ponder that for a moment.
Microsoft Case: Worthless Victory.
Napser: Lost Cause.
Al Gore: I don't know where to begin on that.
{veering waaay OT)
(I forget where I heard it, but during the debates I was said "Instead of choosing the lesser of two evils, this is like trying to pick the less evil of two lessers".
Gore as a VP was ok, but seemed like a wooden dummy at times.
Tho I suppose a wooden dummy would be preferrable to a sock puppet (boosh)...at least the dummy has *some* substance.
(settling back OT:)
Damn I need more sleep and less coffee (woah...wierd never thought I'd say that).
Does anyone else besides me see a combination of all 3 cases in this SCO suit?
I forsee just that.
.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
You're not getting the point. Bruce suggested that IBM might want to nuy SCO to get the their UNIX IP rights, not their stinking unix or linux operating systems per se.
Solaris x86 probably wouldn't count, because they were talking about early Intel CPUs.
Since Linux doesn't run on pre-386 (did it ever? I don't think so..) I think the 386 is a good test case.
In April 1988, Sun Microsystems was selling the Sun386i 150 and 250 workstations, which used the 80386 CPU. These ran SunOS, which is BSD 4.2 UNIX derived.
Before somebody starts hopping on the "original UNIX vendor" clause, BSD *is* a real UNIX -- particular version 4.2 which contained AT&T source code and required a UNIX license!
Also, I'm curious as to what SCO thinks of 386BSD -- the original non-AT&T-licensed release of BSD UNIX by William Jolitz.
I wonder of UNISYS was ever a UNIX license holder (for QNX). I remember usign 80186-based QNX Workstations back in the mid-eighties.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
I followed the Boycott link... interesting and well presented, but the part here:
IBM, please buy out SCO and take their so called UNIX intellectual property and make it public domain. Then terminate the employment of those who remained with SCO.
Seems a bit harsh to terminate rank and file employees just because they worked for SCO. Evaluate them individually, might be they are good people with valuable skills. It might be a small point, but it imediately turned me off to the rest of the message.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
SCO could be legally right but ethically wrong and, if I believe that, I have every right to base a purchasing decision or make a recommendation on that viewpoint. I also have the right to state my opinion and try to sway more people into boycotting SCO.
Perfectly legal to use a technique to net tuna that catches and kills a dolphin here and there. Enough people got together because they felt it was wrong and due to a boycott and the publicity around it you now have dolphin-safe tuna being sold. Disney has subsidiaries that made films for a more mature and non-family oriented audience. Perfectly legal. Was the Christian Coalition wrong in boycotting them?
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
You just need a big, fat, red magic marker. Make a circle-with-slash (e.g. No SCO!) logo out of it.
Then it will be truly 1337.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
The best thing that can come of this is that IBM buys SCO.
IBM will be around, it as a company understands the value of Open Source, and won't be bought out by M$, as SCO is in serious danger of being.
Like AT&T owning the Unix TM, that'd pretty much ensure a future for Unix.
Of course, what'd be best of all is for the US Govt to realize the value and industry that is Unix and buy it for the common good, but I'm not even sure if it can do that.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
The North-Central-South division in this continent has probably been more political than geographical, but nonetheless the fact remains that people all over the world consider "Central America" to be the strip that runs between Yucatan in Mexico and northern Colombia.
BTW, the Panama Canal is artificial, so that doesn't hold up much either.
My son was taking drugs and hanging out with some mixed-up punk rock friends, and I was patient with him and his rebelliousness, but now he's installed SCO on his computer!
That's the last straw, I'm disowning him!
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
Dear SCO,
Be sure to close your eyes before walking into the jet intake manifold.
Sincerely.
Is this a deal where SCO couldn't find a way to sue Linus (and the entire assoicated parts of the OSS community), so now that they have someone they can sue (IBM), they are?
There is very little future in being right when your boss is wrong.
the misappropriation of UNIX code, methods or concepts
How do you misapropriate a concept? Surely, that's a misconception?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
SCO group is acknowledging that Linux is as good as its Unix if anything through this lawsuit. It's like SCO telling its customers that Linux has competant enterprise functionality. This sounds like a great news for Linux to me.
Make sure everyone that has dealings with SCO calls in ANY service owed. From Bug fixes to service calls etc. Make sure reasonable payment to SCO is withheld until the owed service is rendered.
No company can respond to a huge sudden increase in service demands. Make sure it is demands covered under already existent and "paid for" service contracts.
SCO only has $10M in cash and nothing will sink them faster than a cash crunch.
Help fight continental drift.
You and I go back many years. But you seem to have outlived your usefulness. Please do the honorable thing and drink the koolaid now.
You are hellbent on killing yourselves. Well, get it over with already!!
You are some annoyng little people in an annoying little company living annoying little lives...
Buh bye!!
All the unix soure code will be safe and maybe just maybe IBM could gpl or bsd Unixware. If IBM buys them we can all email them and ask if they would release the source code and hopefully the product itself for free.
Sco's crappy Unix that everyone hates is called Sco Openserver aka MS Xenix. I do not care about that piece of garbage but Unixware is a very good version of Unix from what I heard.
Honestly I have never used Unixware and there are no software applications for it besides open source software but it rocks! Its the original Unix from bell labs. A full and original Unix sys-v and not a clone. It supports up to 32 processors, 64 gigs of ram and can create threads really fast. Some reports state that under smp machines Unixware can create threads 100x as fast as Linux. This would make it a kick ass webserver. Like FreeBSD and Solarisx86 Unixware supports Linux binaries. Many unixware users who used Unix back in the pdp-11 era say it feels just like old original Unix they used to use.
Linux is trying to get to the enterprise but Unixware is already there. IBM could let Linus and everyone look at the source code to improve Linux. Future kernels could base the code off of unixware. Or better yet use Unixware as the new kernel.
I would love to try out Debian Gnu-Unixware or Gentoo Unixware distro's.
It would also be funny to call it Gnu-Unixware because gnu=gnu is not Unix. When RMS opens his mouth we can just tell him that Gnu is really Unix so shut your mouth. How can he call anything gnu thats unix related?
http://saveie6.com/
I think the boycott of SCO should be more extensive than merely refusing to purchase any of the Canopy Group's products or services. I think that all of the open source tools and applications authors should detect and drop support for SCO's operating systems (UNIX or Linux based).
---
the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword is mightier than the court, the court is mightier than the pen.
IBM bought a non-exclusive license from Microsoft for a number of reasons, all of which make sense. First they did not have a big budget for the PC project, it was a skunkworks project outside the normal IBM development line. Second their original plan had been to buy a CP/M license but Kildall went surfing instead. Third Microsoft probably would not have written MSDOS if IBM was going to keep the exclusive license. Fourth a large part of the success of the IBM PC platform was the fact it could be cloned. Without that the IBM would have been just another proprietary platform, the independents would have got together an built a competing system on CP/M and that would eventually have dominated the market.
I read through the SCO complaint, it is very short on actual facts. It is all inferences. It is like the case Powell was making at the security council 'Saddam must be building WMDs so Inspectors failure to find them indicates he must be breaking 1441 by hiding them'.
Particularly risible is the bit where SCO sniff that it took them 20 years to get UNIX to work on 4 processors. Multiprocessor UNIX appeared on Intel very shortly after Intel produced their first multi-processor chip, the PentiumPro, but leave that to one side. Just how many multiprocessor O/S has IBM put together over the years? If you count the prototype systems they have probably done 20 or more.
Expect IBM to retaliate with a metric shitload of patent infringement countersuits. Although IBM does charge for licensing some of its patents, they have a lot more that they don't eforce except defensively.
This suit is just like the Intertrust suit. You have a company that is going to the wall rapidly looking for something that can save them. They want to be taken over so they sue a larger company hoping they will recon that buying them out is a better plan than the cost of the lawsuit.
Until recently SCOX was trading at a Market cap of $10 millon. Heck the Intellectual property is worth much more than that. The lawsuit boosted the price from $2 to $3, so SCOX would now cost a total of $35 million. This is a no-brainer for Big Blue. Just get out the check book and sign on the dotted line.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
why SCO retained David Boies? Bummer, I used to have respect for Caldera, about 2 years ago. Now, I'm going to burn what's left of that respect, and scatter the ashes in the North Atlantic. I seriously *hope* that Ransom Love is doing something a bit more productive and public-minded these days.
C|N>K
I agree with your examples but I'm not sure they apply to this case. If SCO is correct IBM stole from them. I agree if SCO is wrong they are acting immorally, but how are they acting immorally if there claims are true? My thinking was if what they clam is true and they win, where is the problem? The open source community shouldn't back companies what steal code for the sake of open source. If they are wrong and lose they are doing to die, boycott or not. I wouldn't use their OS's simply because they are going out of business at that point. Not that I use them or would use them anyway. IMHO they have a hard sell over Solaris for UNIX and Red Hat, IBM or any other popular distro for Linux now.
Here's the quote from the complaints that uses the term "hooks"
Just been browsing and found this:
Googlism
the best one is:
sco is a strong proponent of the open source movement.
$0.02
.bottom line, don't just underwrite it...
I would think that this type of litigation would spark soe sort of personal vendetta as well .. ..
.. including revenge ..
I reckon that IBM should first take them to court, WIN, watch the stock plummet as everyone tries to bail out of the sinking ship, and finally buy up whatever is left
Get it all