Slashdot Mirror
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.
I know it's been said before, but...
SCO's real purpose behind this lawsuit is not to get money, but to publicize itself in hopes of finding a larger company to buy them.
SCO's business hasn't been so great lately, and...they're just a little desperate at this point.
SCO alleges this occurred because IBM released portions of the Unix system, owned by SCO, in to Linux.
I've understood that they've reimplemented some technology in Linux, but have they really just taken the existing pieces and put them into Linux? I doubt it.
Would someone care to shed some light on the subject?
.: Max Romantschuk
What I hope this means, is that IBM will once and for-all put an end to this SCO FUD. Who knows the true reason behind SCO's logic, but whatever it is, we dont need it ;)
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
....LINUX DOSN'T SUCK!!
...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.
Here is another CNet article on what SCO Group Chief Executive Darl McBride thinks on this issue. From the article,
"We're finding...cases where there is line-by-line code in the Linux kernel that is matching up to our UnixWare code," McBride said in an interview
Interesting... eh?
getSexySig();
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
Has anyone else seen the comments McBride has been making lately? Here's some choice quotes from news.com.com.com.com's unbiased and uninflammatory article, "Code Red for open source?":
"We're finding...cases where there is line-by-line code in the Linux kernel that is matching up to our UnixWare code," McBride said in an interview.
Please note that he has refused to release examples of this.
In addition, he said, "We're finding code that looks likes it's been obfuscated to make it look like it wasn't UnixWare code--but it was."
Please note that he has also refused to release examples of this, too.
"The Linux community would have me publish it now, (so they can have it) laundered by the time we can get to a court hearing. That's not the way we're going to go."
Yeah, that's a great excuse to not actually give any evidence of the accusations you're making - tell people that 'the Linux community' will try and sanitize every existing copy of the source code to all the versions of the kernel containing this supposed SCO source - which, he says, has been in the kernel for 'several years'! Perhaps he missed the bit where his lawyers briefed him on the GPL and how it lets anybody have a copy of the source code - including SCO itself! Is he really suggesting that SCO lacks the ability to keep a copy of all currently extant versions of the Linux kernel to use as evidence? F'chrissakes, the md5 checksums of Linus's kernels are public knowledge - if anybody tried to 'sanitize' a particular version, it'd be ridiculously easy to prove that it'd been changed since its original release.
"This is not about 10 lines of code, it's about 20 years of extremely valuable intellectual property we're trying to protect...Am I supposed to lie down and not say anything about it?" McBride said. "There's a certain point here where you stand up for what's right and let the chips fall where they will."
Gotta love that last line... McBride wouldn't know "what's right" if it came up and bit his ass.
I can't even begin to express my disgust for a company that insults, intimidates and sues the very people who have made it possible for SCO to distribute their own version of Linux. Crawl away and disappear, McBride - you're a liar and you know it.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Last I heard, IBM was asking SCO to state specifically what code they were alleging that IBM had used, and IBM had gotten no answer. Today's story still has IBM describing SCO's allegations as "unsupported." If the nice folks at SCO can't back up their claims, are they just betting that the effect of the news stories on their business ("no bad publicity") will be greater than the losses they'll take for filing a frivolous lawsuit? What am I missing here?
Think, write, think, edit, think...then post.
...McBride then stated "Clearly you can see places where IBM's source code adds two numbers together, in some instances the same two numers our software would be adding durring the same process. This is clearly infringment." McBride was scheduled to answer more questions after the laughter died down, but was apparently then unavailible for comment.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
That there is the SCO reply saying that they have hired consultants and found major code duplications between UnixWare and Linux, although they will not release the information about what parts of code they are talking about that has been duplicated. Article also quotes SCO's Darl McBride:
"We feel very good about the evidence that is going to show up in court. We will be happy to show the evidence we have at the appropriate time in a court setting."
I hope they are bluffing, or IBM will just buy SCO out and be done with it.
I found the code that matches up exactly, the top five matches are ( drum roll )
.cpp file! Linux developers will pay for this blatant violation of SCO's IP rights!
5) for ( int x=0;x lt 10;x++)
4) while ( x lt 10 ) {
3) #include stdio.h
2) #include math.h
1) int main( String args[] )
Number 1) shows up in every
Note: for some reason the board wigged out with greater than and less than signes, so I had to leave those out. lt = less than
I can't afford a sig!
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 $5 million in damages.
What kind of effect do you think that would have on a company of SCO's size? Catastrophic, I'd think. And what's nice is that since they're impuning our professional judgment without providing any truth, we should have a cause of action.
If this is doable, this could be a serious way for a large community such as the free software community to show extreme displeasure with companies that do stuff like this, and for it to really count.
Any lawyers or anyone with professional knowledge out there that can comment?
This is the most cheapest way to try to earn money. SCO can't stand up to themselves to come up with good product, so they found the most ugliest route to get money. Kudos SCO !
Ok - so you've unix' IP, so what ? What have you done with it. Hybernate and wait for unix to hatch by itself and pour money on you. Come on...
SCO's real purpose is not prove Linux' authenticity, its just a cheap trick to earn money( if they're going to get a dime ). Besides, I hope folks in M$ should be very happy tonight, laughing and feel as if they've got something for their bait...
Time will tell as who is the real beneficiary is... FUD over Linux at this point - I won't say is bad, because we don't know as how it spins out but it certainly will be a bump in this superfast drive.
"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
We agree to your price of 10 million Lira (about $584). Please send us your contact information so we can buy you out.
Sincerely,
Darl McBride
CEO, SCO Group
120 character sigs suck. Make it 250.
McBride's taking a dingy up against the battleship that is IBM. Can he honestly think that SCO won't be reduced to so much virtual matchwood? I'm just waiting for the moment when he's staring down IBM's big guns, and goes "Eep!".
Wait for it...
I like Christoph Hellwig's (ex-Caldera employee) comments on the Linux Kernel Mailing List 02 May 2003 06:44, in part:
"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.."
Let's hope the FSF sue SCO for infringement of the GPL. For a billion dollars. I'm sure IBM lawyers would lend a helping hand! ;)
"Mary had a crypto key, she kept it in escrow, and everything that Mary said, the Feds were sure to know."
I'm pretty sure any lawyer that helped you with this would be charged with barratry, or for vexatious litigation.
:)
I'm not sure if individuals can be charged with something similar. You'd have to look it up.
Note that the charges you are laying can still have some merit, but doing them in an attempt to subdue the defence isn't legal.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
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?
"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.
IANAL, but it seems to me that there must be a defensive line against the SCO suit in the mere fact that it has promulgated that policy. Of course the existence of the policy is no guarantee that it is going to be adhered to 100%, but in the (unlikely) event that SCO is able to establish that some illegal copying of their material did take place, the corporation can hold its hands up and ask what more it could have done to prevent it.
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
Ballmer actually said: "customers will never really know who stands behind this product."
The intent is similar, but it's a subtler shade of meaning here.
Of course, people pay Red Hat and IBM and other companies money to stand behind the code. And you DO know who wrote the code anyways. Their names are all over it.
My journal has hot
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.
Buy the company, declare all its IP community property, fire every single employee, burn their buildings, loot their coffers, trample their crops and sew their fields with salt.
This is not my sandwich.