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IBM Denies Charges of Unix Theft
ahooton writes "C|net is
reporting
that SCO has filed a lawsuit accusing IBM of theft of it's Unix intellectual property. SCO
alleges this occurred because IBM released portions
of the Unix system, owned by SCO, in to Linux." While the suit is nothing new, IBM's retort is. IBM asserts it is innocent of any charges of wrongdoing. Additionally, IBM is accusing SCO of trying to stifle Linux development through the use of the courts.
...it's "At Least SCO went after the big guys first."
There is no RIAA-suing-college-kids style lawsuit here. They went right after someone who could afford to defend themselves, instead of trashing say, SuSe and RedHat.
On the other hand, it's IBM, who probably even has a patent on human life for christ sakes. Therefore I doubt we'll be seeing much more of SCO, especially if this suit doesn't hold water.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
The good thing is that right now you can run linux on IBM's zSeries, AS/400, RISC6000,... all the way down to a PDA. It's no joke to say that there is alot of money about to be made... That's the real reasonb for this suit...
||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.
From a different CNet article about the lawsuit:
...:
"HP did a complete buyout of Unix licensing from SCO," HP spokesman Brian Garabedian said. "We have a perpetual license rather than per copy license for HP-UX...We don't believe we have any exposure to the SCO lawsuit."
Sun, too, bought out its Unix license, said John Loiacono, vice president of Sun's operating platforms group.
"We bought our Unix license out....We are unencumbered for all things," including Sun's version of Linux, he said.
And then in the linked article:
IBM did make one argument defending its use of Unix intellectual property, saying it has the "irrevocable, fully paid-up and perpetual right to use the 'proprietary software' that it is alleged to have misappropriated or misused."
It sounds like IBM believes that they have "bought out" its license as well. So
1) Did SCO mislead IBM (and possibly HP, Sun, etc) with these license buyouts?
2) Is SCO trying to make everyone forget about the license buyouts?
3) Does SCO consider the buyouts invalid for some reason?
The whole thing is just weird. SCO is done. Even if they win, no one will ever trust them again. They could produce an OS that whipped any commercial or OSS implementation, but no one would buy it. Had they attacked a smaller, but significant target first (Sun?) they might have had a chance at getting bought out. But with IBM, I don't think they will bother, they'll just crush SCO. They have unfathomable resources. IBM could even afford to lose the case. Sun couldn't.
the no
Out of curiousity, has anyone ever considered the possibility of a group of people individually filing a claim in small claims court against a company that is doing something they don't like?
In this case, for example, what if we could mobilize a few thousand people who use Linux professionally to sue SCO for slander? Professionals who use Linux are risking their reputation on it; SCO saying that Linux uses stolen code reflects badly on the professional. If what SCO is saying is untrue, that's slander and is in fact causing damages, yes?
Now, here's the trick -- if 5000 professionals who are effected by this in the USA were to file claims in small claims court of say, $1000, then SCO would have to simultaneously defend 5000 cases, or risk losing $5 million in damages.
What kind of effect do you think that would have on a company of SCO's size? Catastrophic, I'd think. And what's nice is that since they're impuning our professional judgment without providing any truth, we should have a cause of action.
If this is doable, this could be a serious way for a large community such as the free software community to show extreme displeasure with companies that do stuff like this, and for it to really count.
Any lawyers or anyone with professional knowledge out there that can comment?
"As somone who walked for SCO (or rather Caldera how it was called at that :)
:)
time) I can tell you this is utter crap. There were very people actually
doing Linux kernel work then (and when the German office was closed down
all those left the company) and we really had better things to do then
trying to retrofit UnixWare code into the linux kenrel. Especially given
that the kernel internals are so different that you'd need a big glue
layer to actually make it work and you can guess how that would be
ripped apart in a usual lkml review
It might be more interesting to look for stolen Linux code in Unixware,
I'd suggest with the support for a very well known Linux fileystem in
the Linux compat addon product for UnixWare.."
Could be intresting
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
There's exactly one way IBM can do that: buy SCO. Sco/Caldera's logic is simple: they are a dying company, and they know it. So they want to make it as nasty as possible. If this gets to court, SCO doesn't have a whit of a chance (which is why they didn't go after the little fish first, BTW.) However, it might be the end of SCO, but it will be very costly in terms of PR for IBM as well. SCO's hope is that IBM will find buying SCO to be the easier way out. That's the best case scenario for them.
BUT. That would put an end to SCO FUD, but MS FUD will start right thereafter. (See, we've been saying it all along, linux is incapable of innovation, sco was going to prove that in court, but big baddie IBM was afraid of them and bought them out.) So its a lose-lose situation.
Just curious. It seems that all the comments revolve around how SCO is stupid and wrong and greedy and dumb and soon to be extinct.
What if they're not. What if they do have a genuine grievance. I'm not trying to be a troll or flamebait, just honestly curious. What impact would this have on GNU/Linux? Would people honor SCO's claims if they're proven right?
>BUT. That would put an end to SCO FUD, but MS FUD will start right thereafter.
Sadly, the MS FUD has already started. In the wonderfully written "Code Red for Open Source" article at Cnet which is fair and balanced (in that Fox News kind of way) Balmer is quoted as saying something to the effect, "See, you dont know who's writing your OSS software." I'm sure that little quote doesn't sit too well with IT managers debating adopting OSS. Certainly, MS's list of crimes is volumes long, but the fear of being sued because the product your using was written by 'shady individuals' as Balmer seems to be suggesting can have a real chilling effect.
Yeah, it is a lose-lose situation depending on how people interpret what is going on. I think its fairly obvious there's a strong attempt at getting a buy-out here which makes their moral position regarding the supposed theft of IP a bit suspect. I hope others see it this way.
Its like me going up to the guy who broke into my house and stole my stereo and telling him, "Okay, we'll leave the cops out of this if you take over my payments and buy out my equity. I can't afford this place anymore and I dont want to go bankrupt."
What really gets me, and I'm not even a linux advocate (i use it when I need a free server), is that SCO is trashing Linux's reputation left and right in its attempt to get bought out. I'm surprised there aren't names, addresses, and phone numbers of the SCO people listed here for harassment a la spam king style.
A little civil disobedience goes a long way.
They would still have to go to court. SCO does not intend to survive the lawsuit. The real issue IMHO is whether SCO execs have actually crossed the line into fraud considering how untrue some of the statement in the original were.
IANAL but it sure sounds like lying under oath to me.
"In an e-mail discussion that took place 24 and 25 April, SCO-Caldera Senior Vice President Chris Sontag told MozillaQuest Magazine that there is SCO-owned code in Red Hat and SuSE Linux distributions. He also told MozillaQuest Magazine that the tainted code is not in the Linux kernel that Linus [Torvalds] and others have helped develop. We're talking about what's on the periphery of the Linux kernel.
"Fighting terrorists with millitary might is like killing a mosquitor on your Dad's forehead with a rifle."
It is times like this when I wish that Stallman et. al and linus didn't mess with *NIX. Really it seems that if you touch *NIX at all you are just waiting for a court battle.
:)
Of course then "GNU's not Unix" wouldn't have such a ironic twist
ps. I love linux,bsd and really only use *NIX based systems, but it is really hard to find an organization that hasn't been sued over it's history with unix.
Now there's a defence worth contemplating: it's far easier to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that certain code existed in Linux at some point in time than it is to prove the same for a closed pieces of software. This works both ways: the closed source owners can show it was in an open source repository but will they be able to prove it was in their repository before that?
There's an oportunity for a countersuit based on breaking the GPL in there somewhere...
Karma? What's that again?
I'll sue your ass etc.
Make claims about source code, which as itself is unpatentable (are 'Caldera' suggesting they own the 'do while' loop?, due it's reusability and the fact that there are only so many ways to do things, and that any programmers will probably come up with the same thing from time to time on a totally independant basis.
Caldera's claim that their source has somehow ended up in the Kernel of various companies is debatable particularly the comments about 'obfuscated code' which is a way of saying that the code in question bares no resemablance to their code at all, other than it was written using the same programming language and perfoms a similar function.
It really is all about the money, Caldera had no involvement in the original creation of the Intellectual property and have no moral right to lecture the world on how sad it is when such property is debased, dressing up as Sco and pretending to be Sco won't change anything here.
I've no doubt the original angle was for a buyout but now we've got to the point where it is abundantly clear that IBM have no intention at all of buying them the game is up, and so Caldera/Sco will become a shell of a company file for Chap 11 and fire all it's staff, hire a few lawyers instead and float along with whatever cash they have left until they sink, then somebody will buy the Unix IP at a firesale price, hopefully they will cast it into the public domain lest it corrupt any other mortals.
Economic Left/Right: -0.62
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.69
The GPL is not some Evil Overlord's World Destroying Superweapon. GPL violation is copyright violation. Even if there is some language in the GPL concerning penalties for violation, it is up to a judge to set the penalty. The judge has more options than "make them GPL the whole thing". He could restrain distribution altogether. The violator could be made to pay for an alternative license to the code he's using. He could even be made to pay damages and to reimplement the code in question. Like any copyright violation, the Court will want to put an end to it. There's more than one way for them to do it.
Incidentally, discretely replacing such code may not necessarily work. A whistleblower could whip out a tainted code tree. Your developers might screw up and leave debugging symbols in old binaries. It would not be hard to prove in court that a sanitized code tree did not create a binary in dispute. The court may well see a code tree as business records to which the rules of evidence apply. "So Mr. Project Co-Ordinator, where is the source code that produced the exhibit in question?"
Yeah, getting the GPL stuff out your code tree would be a good idea. There's no ironclad way to prove it was never there.
Certainly, MS's list of crimes is volumes long, but the fear of being sued because the product your using was written by 'shady individuals' as Balmer seems to be suggesting can have a real chilling effect.
As chilling as this?:
SQL Server developers, "particularly those Microsoft customers who relied on Microsoft's assurances, failed to investigate them thoroughly, and knowingly continued to provide material steps in an Infringing Combination. These infringers, if any, may face treble damages for the entire three and one-half years the case was tied up in the courts. Microsoft is not a law firm. Relying on its advice should not constitute acting in good faith; which is the required defense to treble damages for failure to investigate and honor patents once on notice of their existence."
Microsoft is hardly lily-white when it comes to providing their customers with unencumbered products. IT decision makers need to know this.
the no