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SCO Drops Linux, Says Current Vendors May Be Liable
Hank Scorpio writes "Well, SCO is at it again. I just received an email from their Developer Partner Program stating that not only are they suspending all future sales of their own Linux product (due to the alleged intellectual property violations), but they are also beginning to send out this letter to all existing commercial users of Linux, informing them that they may be liable for using Linux, a supposed infringing product. They mentioned that they will begin using tactics like those of the RIAA in taking action against end-users of Linux. This seems like it will be about as successful as the whole GIF ordeal a few years back. Where is UNISYS today? Is SCO litigating itself into irrelevance?"
Here is a mirror location for the letter. Click
but what part did SCO take in writing linux?
As I understand it Linux was written by entirely by Linus originally. The OS uses the command set of unix but is not a copy of it....
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
It's not like there's a single company Linux Inc. or something with a single database or something.
-- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.
...is fixing Dell comptuers now...
They're at our place about twice a month or more.
-- Liberalism is a mental disorder.
LOL! You'll have pry my Linux from my cold, dead harddrive fucker.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
... tune in at the Court to find out if SCO takes the fall. There are lots of people watching. If SCO falls, Linux will emerge from this with a lot a FUD put by the side as a very public failure to sue Linux out of existance fails.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
give me a break
So, if I understand this correctly, they are sending out a letter, to Caldera's customers, telling them that they have are using a product that violates Caldera's intellectual property rights? Is there a possible suit for fraud there, as they appear to be revoking whatever licenses they gave when they sold Caldera Linux?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
OK, so here's the incentive we've all been waiting for, we should all migrate to BSD now. I swear by OpenBSD :)
it's meant to be funny.
Has it been revealed to the world yet exactly which code is in question? I know they were saving this for the trial with IBM, but I imagine as soon as we know it wont take very long to just chop those parts out (assuming its true) and rebuild.
And what, exactly, happened to their statement that they weren't going after Redhat or Joe Linuxuser, but instead just IBM?
"Commercial software is built by carefully selected and screened teams of programmers working to build proprietary, secure software. This process is designed to monitor the security and ownership of intellectual property rights associated with the code. "
Wait a minute. Someone designed the process by which commecrial software is built. Why hasn't someone patented it yet?
Vermifax
Logout
Great. SCO is giving Microsoft the best anti Linux ammo it could hope for.
This is a disaster. Balmer and Gates will trot this out as a major drawback to Open Source. IT is, if true, the living proof of the Intellectual Property issues hey claim for Open Source.
SCO is hurting Linux in the long run. It doesn't matter if this is the last gasp of a dying company. It's ample ammunition for anyone who hates Linux and wants to argue against it.
I can guarantee that we'll be hearing about Linux being riddled with IP violations for years to come, even if this is the one and only example to ever come to light.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
When still 'caldera' they fell so far behind as to be un-useable.. What started as a consistent business distro soon dwindled into oblivion..
And to think i used to support these bastards.. both in Time/effort to promote them, and $ for licences...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
they are punishing themselves before they sue themselves. Maybe they sent themselves a cease and desist order and they took it seriously. I think they realized they had enough legal issues going on and they didn't need another one from themselves. I hope the Smoking Gun gets ahold of a copy of the cease and desist. Then, we can get the real inside story.
They are setting an example. Of course, that example is "stupidity". But you have to give them credit for trying.
In other news, Rambus merged with SCO to form the largest legal team in the universe(s). Cease and desist letters were sent to every inhabitant of Earth as a precautionary measure.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
So SCO sold one this quarter?
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
I thought that SCO was already irrelevant. :)
Looks,
Like SCO plans to go out with a bang...
... a BSD vs Linux war brewing
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov
Truthfully, this will go exactly nowhere - even if IBM has to buy SCO.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Where do people stand if they bought SCO Linux? This has got to be the most interesting position ever, even if it doesnt turn out to hold water.
Picture this: SCO warning customers that they may be liable, can those customers sue/claim compensation from the company that sold them the infringing product? Isnt this comparable to SCO sueing themselves?
Whatever the outcome, people are going to feel this for years to come.
If I received a letter such as this, I would respond as such:
Dear Darl McBride,
Suck my balls, and lick my ass.
Cheers,
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
SCO starts to sound like Microsoft, but then without the backing of billions of $$$.. This letter is clear FUD. What on earth does SCO think it will accomplish with all this?!?
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
I don't know about the rest of you, but when I got here all I saw was a large blue
"YES!"
right under the question, "is SCO litigating itself into irrelevance?"
(It's actually part of an Intel ad, but hey...it's a good magic-8 ball to me).
This company reminds me of this article. What makes them think they have enough clout to even attempt this? They're going to bully IBM?
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Can anyone elaborate about what happened to Unisys and GIF's, I never did find out how that ended (or if it did).
The press needs to now that Linux is DEAD, and *BSD is the SOLUTION
No more confusion about Linux, GNU/Linux, whatever.
*BSD rocks and IS ALIVE among all of us
The Canopy Group companies (with the exception of Novell) have made more money suing others over IP than they have ever made selling product (witness the DR-DOS lawsuit.) They are just continuing a successful (for them) business model.
That being said, screw SCO.
their quotes page just seems ridiculous. are these quotes meant to back up their case that linux is stealing from them?
"if i'd known it was harmless, i'd have killed it myself"
I can see it now. Download your next Red Hat ISO and it'll be a 650meg recording of "What the fuck do you think you're doing?"
SCO please know that I the all mighty CHRIS hate you on a personal note, now go home and CRY.
Slashdot - The one stop shop for procrastination
I cannot believe that this is actually happening. What can they possibly be thinking? Do they really think that by threatening almost every major corporation in the *world* with lawsuits that they'll somehow make more money?
In the business world, you do not want to piss off you *entire customer base* like this!
Please tell me this is an April 1 joke that got leaked late...
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
We all cheered when caldera did this to Microsoft over DR-DOS. Now they are doing it to us. Is it just me or is there something inherently slimy about litigating your way to profitablity?
My Weblog
Another reason to switch to *BSD.
SCO is not making money and its vendors are running from it like mad. Why not call up Microsoft and get some back door money or agreements for some sweet deals in the future by going after the only real competitor to Microsoft.
This is just a last ditch effort by a company that will be talked about in the past tense a few years from now. They are obviously angling to have someone buy them or pay them to shut them up. They're hoping IBM will think "hell, we could buy them and their patents for less than all this legal crap will cost". Going after customers (and how much you want to bet that the customers they go after will coincidentially be customers of a certain large computer corp, is just a way to enlist the customers into pushing said computer corp into resolving the issue quickly.
Personally I think AT&T/Lucent/Avaya should form a company and bring the Unix rights back home.
oh my.. that is one funny read..
yea.. and they are gonna stop people across the world from using linux how?
*sigh*
everyone wants to make a buck somehow.. guess they just had their thumb in their eye and decided to attack the only group worldwide who *might* have given them support.
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
You will be demise of your own company, with no help from anyone else.
According to Netcraft, their site is hosted on a Linux webserver.
Not only Linux but ultimately any Unix like OS would be hit as it seems.
Apples OSX is based on BSD - what will they do?
I thought SCO was already irrelevant, and has been for years.
I've only seen their useless OS used in a couple of times in almost a decade, and only in a dinky little home office. The only reasons people still talk about these guys is because of their rediculous lawsuits.
Could someone please send SCO a memo to remind them that they don't matter, and it has nothing to do with alleged misuse of their intellectual property.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
Once again, such bullshit. Linux is 100% open source. If there are parts of Linux that are infringing, just indicate exactly where the infringement is. That they have not included this information either indicates that it doesn't really exist, or that they don't want to reveal just how small the suspected infringing area really is. We all know that if any actual infringing code was located in the Linux OS it would be gone and replaced with a non-contentious equivalent in no time at all.
Which is why SCO is being so deliberately vague about all of this. They don't want an infringement to be eliminated; they want it to stay in the Linux code base so they can screw over users of Linux.
This is an attack on a development methodology more than anything else. What they're saying is, unless you can PROVE the lineage of your code is clean, we're going to have to assume that it isn't.
I suspect that IBM's lawyers are going to be smart enough to know all this, and will be able to effectively disarm SCO's actions. If there are infringing parts of the code, these will be revealed in a public forum (the courts).
In the meantime, I suggest that the best recourse for a receiver of this letter is to repond, indicating that the entity known as "Linux" is actually composed of thousands of parts, each independently produced, and that SCO needs to provide information indicating which component is infringing.
Or just ignore their f'ing letter.
The faster they push this along, the sooner this whole debacle will be over. Regardless of the lack of merit in SCO's central claims, in CIO-land uncertainty is anathema. It would have been worse for SCO to have simply left the situation as FUD.
Has anyone here actually used SCOs Linux distro? What is it based on? Is it similar to Redhat, Debian, Slackware, what? Does it have any nifty features, or annoyances?
Get your own free personal location tracker
From the letter: Similar to analogous efforts underway in the music industry, we are prepared to take all actions necessary to stop the ongoing violation of our intellectual property or other rights.
"All actions necessary?" Just tell us what code has been copied and it'll be fixed in under a week. The violation will cease to continue. Fast, simple, zero effort.
Or does he mean, "similar to analogous efforts underway in the music industry, we've decided to avoid the main issue and try to make money on the technicalities, while in the long run benefiting nobody and harming ourselves as well as our users."
SCO's been working with Linux, they joined the United Linux group and all.
Also, the code for the various parts of Linux have been available for quite a long time. Why this "sudden discovery" of IP problems? Obviously this isn't something that just appeared with the latest versions of the various distros...
Finally, if the stolen code is so bloody obvious then why not show even one example of where there is direct copying. This wouldn't affect their legal strategy one bit (despite claims to the otherwise) and would grant them so much more credibility.
As it stands it still seems like SCO's jumping up and down and shouting "BUY ME NOW!!!! PLEASE!!!!!!!"
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Thank you, SCO! As a faithful FreeBSD user, I cannot help but be pleased at your actions against the scourge, Linux. We all know how this rogue OS is spreading like a virus (thanks Microsoft!) across the face of the planet. It has undoubtedly caused the near irrelevance of your company and its product by undercutting your "intuhleckshool" property.
Only through a truly impressive display of mindless litigation, right or wrong, can you boost your profile and earn the respect so richly deserved! Your company will be remembered among the greats: Unisys, the RIAA, that software company consisting entirely of lawyers, that guy who patented the Internet, that guy who created the Internet, and so on...
Today, SCO filed a lawsuit against SCO for selling Linux based solutions with Unix properietery code that it had contributed to the Linux development project. The lawsuit is for irrepairable damages and seeks an award of $10,000,000,000 and legal fees. The CEO of SCO had this to say, "We expect a quick settlement to this case." He also added that "With the settlement money and our recouped legal fees, we can move on to other Linux / Unix distributors, such as Santa Cruz Operation or Caldera."
###
Why did I lurk so long before registering for a Slashdot account? I could have had a Slashdot ID of less than 100000.
Is SCO litigating itself into irrelevance?
Why not? What else were they planning on doing to make themselves profitable? No need try and fail to be successful when you can sue and blame everyone else for your eventual failure.
Well, their market cap is $3.4 billion (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&o e=UTF-8&prev=/search%3Fq%3DUIS%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%2 6ie%3DUTF-8%26oe%3DUTF-8%26sa%3DG&q=stocks:UIS+).. .
Not exactly MSFT-levels, but not quite irrelevant either.
Not telling the world what the code is, is a legal blunder of the first order. This means that they have unclean hands, as they are supposed to try and mitigate the damage in order to receive compensation.
You can't knowlingly add to the damage and then ask for compensation incl Punitive damages based on same. Any suit against Linux vendor in the future can site this as an Affirmative Defense" and pretty much get the suit tossed on that account alone
Help fight continental drift.
All else being equal, I'm glad *BSD got the legal troubles out of its system early in development, rather than running into litigious lawyer lapdogs later.
-Adam
alliteration always averts attention...
eh, does it really matter?
The Linux community will be well rid of you.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Hey,
The RIAA is doing good, so why shouldn't SCO learn from the best?
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Linus own the rights to the Linux trademark?
I noticed on their contact page that they have 1-800-GO-LINUX as one of their main lines. Why not sue them for use of the Linux trademark without permission?
Well...
1. They said that the infringing code isn't in the kernel, so thus it may not apply to all "linux users."
2. If it does, then their own distribution would have contained code that violated their IP.
3. If it contained this code, then under the GPL all the other Linux distributers would be free to use it.
4. I'd sue them for harassment - without presenting any evidence or even exactly *what* infringes, they are issuing cease and desist orders. They are trying to scare people from using Linux. They are nothing but hot air.
Or is it possible that MS has sold/given MS stock to SCO officers with the same intent?
I'm not alleging conspiracy - just wondering....
So, if I understand this correctly, they are sending out a letter, to Caldera's customers, telling them that they have are using a product that violates Caldera's intellectual property rights?
I doubt it will be just Caldera users. They'll probably hit users of other distros as well.
Then they'll probably have the crust to send out another one of those obnoxious letters suggesting they'll be able to avoid legal complications if they switch to SCO Unixware.
They tried something like that a few years ago. Didn't work then, either.
If they had been aware that patented source was about to be merged into Linux and they did nothing about it until now then they're guilty too.
Height: 38U, Weight: 0 Newtons, Eyes: #0000FF, OS: Gray Matter 1.0 (Alpha)
I'm embarassed on their behalf. Just check out the links they have put up on the site. And you say this use to be a Linux company?
I thought they had no clue but I couldn't imagine they'll stoop this low. This is really embarassing to the Unix world. I would be surprised if M$ has nothing to do with this.
"Fighting terrorists with millitary might is like killing a mosquitor on your Dad's forehead with a rifle."
If we are in fact infringing on SCO's "intellectual property" by using portions of linux, why doesn't lkml just jump in there and rewrite the portions that are "their property?"
I'd think that SCO should bring about some concrete proof (i.e., which files specifically, which line numbers) -- the burden of proof is on them, is it not? Until then, how can they bring suit against anyone?
If this is to set a precident, I think I'll just sue half the companies in the world for using my intellectual property! I am the sole creator of the word "the." All of your documents are infringing on my IP!
Seriously though, when and if SCO brings some concrete evidence that we have unknowingly infringed, how hard would it be just to rewrite the sections? Judging by how creative people like Ingo, Alan, et al are, we should have like ten different versions to do the same thing in about three days flat...
My curiosity gets piqued every time I see another story about this debacle....
-- Hey, what the hell, it's only slashdot..
Anything gay would be most helpful. If you have gay pix of SCO's Darl McBride, please post them or the urls.
Self incriminating quotes?
quotes from sco's complaint.
Isn't this SCO the same one who was quoted as saying they wouldn't attack Linux? That they were only going after IBM? This company is beyond contempt. They don't sell products anymore. They only exist to sue (read: extort) money out of other companies who do sell things. I doubt there's a better example of why the system of patents needs to be changed then SCO's abuses.
Heh. Did somebody at Caldera^H^HSCO finally notice that they were violating the GPL by shipping Linux while claiming property rights against it?
The funny thing is, they've therefore stolen all the non-infringing code in the kernel, as it's from other people and they can only redistribute it by releasing their own.
(Assuming, of course, that there is any actual infringemnet, which seems unlikely.)
Expect increasingly shrill announcements as IBM blackens the sky with lawyers and SCO tries to give Linux a black eye to force IBM to buy them out before the case is thrown out of court.
We could ask them how much they want and attempt to negotiate down to nothing, simply to keep them too busy to sue. ;)
Kinda treat them like the SPAM guy.
1-888-465-4689
Not only that, but they migrated to Linux from SCO Unix!
SCO published a nice timeline. The few arrows connecting Linux and their own intellectual property go into the wrong direction. If I were them, I wouldn't present this document in court. The dotted heritage line isn't very convincing, either.
..aquire SCO or something? Something smells fishy about this whole thing.
How much is Microsoft paying SCO to do this?
Is anyone wondering if SCO executives are on the take for Microsoft?
Seriously, if companies start to think that using Linux could get them into legal entanglements- like what SCO is starting now, RIAA-style- then they might be more likely to go towards microsoft products, because Microsoft and their army of lawyers will make sure everything is properly licensed. Or so the reasoning should go.
Moreover, Microsoft certainly has the cash and interest to put down bullshit claims that might arise like this, whereas the companies that sell linux products have much smaller resources to put into fights like this. Again, this is the line of thinking that they would hope to instill, to steer customers torwards MS products.
Yeah, yeah, I've got my tinfoil hat right here....
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
They don't realize how much bandwidth Linux currently controls. If every Linux server in the world sent an email to them requesting more specific information instead of vague threats they'd be swamped... for a long time. (Just imagine all those failed email sendings retrying over and over)
We prefer the legal uncertainty surrounding Linux to the commercial certainty of running an OS whose vendor will go bankrupt.
Maybe their current actions attempting to harm Linux are a payback to MS for settling the DR.DOS suit (they did settle that, didn't they?)
Considering the lashing SCO has garnered from the initial and subsequent public accusations it seems unlikely they do not know what they are doing. What is more likely is they have a deal in place already to do what they are doing. Why else would they go to such elaborate means to get this publicity? This is EXACTLY what a particular major ISV "needs" in it's campaign against OSS. Does anyone remeber a few years ago about a certain software company leaving glowing reviews about itself on the internet posing as average users? This is definately a BAD thing and will be used by marketing to sell Linux/OSS FUD for years to come.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Okay, since when is RMS a Linux leader? GNU, yes. FSF, of course. But a "Linux Leader"? Making the GNU toolset available for inclusion into Linux doesn't exactly smell like leadership to me.
So SCO puts up two quotes from RMS, and two from Bruce Perens. And that's it. Hmmm...isn't there someone else, someone for whom the "Leader" label might be more appropriate, someone who might be considered the creator of Linux? Um...his name escapes me right now. Oh, wait: it's Alan Cox!
No, that's not it.
From Darl McBride's letter:
Yeah, that's gonna work real well. Whatcha gonna do, Darl, flood Kazaa with bogus distros that consist entirely of
It's official: SCO is dying.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Only outlaws will have Linux.
Geez, you'd think you guys have never seen a business using a SCO box - they are and have been irrelevant for many years now.
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
The Unisys LZW patent expires in the USA on June 20, 2003. Then what?
...being bought out by some company that just wants to shut them up. Too bad companies aren't allow to slap each other around with wet trout for being stupid.
I distinctly remember stories that say Microsoft borrows various bits of code and libraries from the Open Source community, so there's a very real possibility that chunks of what SCO are bitching about might underpin functions in Windows.
I would write back like this Dear SCO, I will not be liable for anything since your company is a complete joke. You have no substantial evidence, or if you do you haven't shared it. Your going up against a company that has more patents than Microsoft and Oracle combined. Also, IBM has more lawyers and money that you can handle. You proabably also be bought out by them and Unix will be GPL'd. This is undoubtably defeat you in everyway possible. You will lose and I have no doubt in my mind that you will. Your threat is hollow, just like your senses.
Sincerly Yours, The Analog Kid
To get an idea of what SCO is playing at, be sure to read the OSI Position Paper on the SCO vs. IBM Complaint by Eric Raymond. It's truly enlightening.
As far as I can tell:
In August 2000, the company known as SCO became Tarantella Inc.
The SCO tradename was bought by Caldera (now a subsidiary of Microsoft)
So this lawsuit isn't from the original SCO at all, but the new company using the SCO tradename.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Tux and that legacy OS with the wavy flag thingee for a logo has got nothing on these babes. BSD and UNIX 4ever!
Caldera used to distribute Linux. Implicitly, they licensed all trade secrets, patents, copyright on whatever source went in that. So the only code which they can claim to be infringing is that which is not included in any versions of Caldera Linux.
This means, we only need to check the code which is not part of Caldera and account for it. Also, we only need to include the type of code that SCO is developing. Thus any code related to porting to different architecture, device driver, font, X, KDE, GNOME, file systems etc is safe. Any code SCO wants to lay claims, they will have to prove that they never distributed it.
If I were a commercial Linux user, I would feel totally safe.
It is also likely, that accidently or deliberately some of the Linux code has gone in SCO Unix. Linux vendors should file counter claim against SCO to check for this. By doing this, you can ask all recipient of SCO Unix to stop using it and there by get all of them to use Linux!
Yeah, everything could be moved overseas and/or somebody like Alan Cox could continue to maintain a branch of the kernel like what is being done today but, if I really, really wanted to shake corporate confidence in Linux disrupting actual development would be the primary target. It would also make sense for SCO to attempt to do something like this. An arguement can be made that stopping distribution of the kernel sources and any binaries produced would put a halt on the continuing alleged infringement.
Would it stop everyone from using linux? Nope. But it would totally derail business adoption of linux here in the States first. Elsewhere I don't know.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
I know this may seem fanatical, but wouldn't this be the _perfect_ move by MS: Find a company that might have a small possibility of IP claims (however outrageous) against Linux in general and "talk" them into pursuing it to the bitter end, even going so far as writing letters to big business that they may be taking a huge risk by going with Linux?
This would be a great strategy if you were interested in making your potential customers think Linux is a huge risk compared to your product...
With this "Letter to Linux Customers" it seems that Darl McBride, SCO's CEO is taking a page out the playbook of our North Korean friend, Kim Jong Il, the "CEO" of another near bankrupt organization!
Rattle that sabre!
"That's the one thing I never could stand about Santa" Cruz, all the goddamned bloodsuckers!
SCO may claim not to be selling Linux, but their web page says otherwise. Take a look at Buy Me!.
Yet another case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing.
As we have progressed in our discovery related to this action, SCO has found compelling evidence that the Linux operating system contains unauthorized SCO UNIX intellectual property (IP). Due to this discovery, we are taking three immediate courses of action. .... *snip* .... 2 - The second action we are taking is to suspend all future sales of the Linux operating system from SCO until the attendant risks with Linux are better understood and properly resolved.
that statment says to me that they are afraid that Linux. It threatens their UNIX OS. Sounds to me like they are scrambling to do whatever they can to hurt linux so they can shove THEIR (version of/whatever it is) UNIX up everyones arse's and to shutdown anything that remotely resembles the software they own.
I havent studdied up on SCO cuz from the get-go they seem to be plain idiots and i've had enough laughs for right now, but this just seems like an underhanded way to shut down a growing competitor in the OS market.
Our UNIX products continue to support many of the world's largest businesses. In addition, new customer sales indicate that there is still no better option for rock-solid, dependable technology for their core businesses than our SCO UNIX solutions.
Sounds like Microsoft Propaganda to me...
- You're not paranoid, they really are after you.
That's not weird. They make a Linux distro.
It is another angle of attack after all..........
my 2c
Linux leaders? Last I checked, Stallman doesn't even refer to it as Linux, but as Gnu/Linux. Makes me doubt that first attributed quote.
All your linux are belong to us.
"Is SCO litigating itself into irrelevance?"
Heh, I didn't realize they were actually still revelant.
It could be worse, they could still be
running the country.
And believe me, I want to see you disappear. I don't want IBM to spend a penny buying your worthless asses. I want to see you bankrupted and your assets, including your ancient AT&T source picked up for a dime.
IBM has done some underhanded and possibly illegal
things over the years but they've also helped lift Linux up - you are just dragging it down
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
...when did Micro$oft buy SCO?
Based on a really really quick (and therefore possibly erroneous or inaccurate) skimming of their complaint (can be seen here), the crux of their argument seems to be as follows.
It goes on and on the way legal documents always do, so I don't have the patience to read it all... But there might be some substance to the argument.
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
It's a big legal poker game, and it will be funny when SCO has to show.
All they have is a bunch of C data structures which are the same in their UNIX and Linux because they are virtually dictated by the POSIX system calls, IOCTLs, and the structures in device drivers because the ARE dictated by the hardware interface. They've got NOTHING!
I cannot wait for that company to die a painful death. I hope their shareholders sue the hell out of them.
You get four for a dollar. They still can't figure out how to make a profit.
Well done, my good man. Well done indeed.
RHAT distributes Linux and has 30 times the market cap, and 50% more revenue than SCOX. You can make more of free software? Never!!!!
"Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions." -- G. K. Chesterton
1) IBM buys SCO
2) IBM liquidates all of SCOs assets
3) IBM reassigns SCO legal team, senior management, and chief officers to "Big Blue Janitorial Duty" under the "Really long term contract" clause of SCO's purchase
In other news, SCO unveils the SCO 2003 Vegas showgirls. http://www.sco.com/2003forum/. r4lv3k
..and I will SHOOT a BULLET through SCO's fucking BRAINS! No mercy! Fuck SCO! The hell with you MORONS!
Here is the feedback page feedback to sco
if SCOs argument is correct then who ever owns SCo owns the code copyrights too. thus if IBM buys them out they own linux.
Ohhh the FUD in this thing..
Commercial software is built by carefully selected and screened teams of programmers
and then say..
much of Linux has been built from contributions by numerous unrelated and unknown software developers
and then reverse it with..
Linux contributors were originally UNIX developers
So the Unix developers became clueless unrestricted developers when they stopped codeing commercial software and started working on Linux? I would venture to say a very high majority of people who develop on Linux have jobs working on commercial software. In this day and age, "carefully selecting" means person who will accept the lowest wage and "screened" means they looked at your Resume for more then 10 seconds.
This letter was sent to various companies and yet they refuse to release any details of what the issue is? I find that very confusing and frustrating.
At least the RIAA *attempts* to identify offending material, although we have found that to be a not so accurate process.
The adjective proprietatary simple describes almost all Commercial software.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Since SCO released their own version of Linux, doesn't that mean that everything that they have distributed in their version is now under the GPL license? If the alleged patent violations was in what they distributed, don't they in effect give up any IP claims due to the GPL license? This is where my understanding of the GPL is vauge and was hoping someone might be able to clairfy. Thank you.
Fun is all the more so when it shared
Surely, they must be. Together, our combined slashdot brain power can fine some sort of damning evidence proving the Microsoft collusion in this.
I have faith in all of you.
Doesn't MS own part of SCO? If linux is going to die, WE MUST PIN IT ON MICROSOFT! Otherwise we won't have the Martyr effect we need.
This won't hurt IBM. They still plan on selling big mainframes with their own software on it (largely helped on by free linux developers contributions). So what if IBM gets free slave labor and offers nothing in return other than cutting out the little linux consultants with their IBM Consulting Group behemoth.
We don't care about IBM and how they exploit free software developers. Or Apple for that matter and their use expliotation of FreeBSD. We honeslt don't care about SCO. The heart of this is somehow MS is FORCING SCO TO DO THIS. They obviously are blackmailing them. WE MUST FIND THE PROOF!
I eagerly await facts supporting what we all know must be true....
-Malakai
yes i'm friggin kidding.
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
I am a network engineer at SCO.
I was browsing through our smb shares to make sure nobody was downloading illegal files.
Lo and behold, I found a package called linux-2.4.20.tar.bz2
I noticed that you linux users are mirroring that same exact file on some website.
If you do not immediately remove this file, and any copies of the extracted contents of this file, we shall be contacting you through our team of recently graduated lawyers.
Have a nice day.
-r
It sounds like operations like the OSDL may be in trouble as well, employing many ex-sequent developers that worked with AT&T code.
I'd hate to be their lawyers.
Have IBM buy SCO, own UNIX. Then either revoke the licenses from HP and Sun OR up the license fee and make all their money back in a few years.
I work across the street from them, what would you like me to do?
infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
Ummm ... so surely since SCO are related to Linux with UnitedLinux, this means that they have actually released a linux distro, which therefore means it has agreed with the GPL etc.. and therefore the code is basically sanctioned by SCO even if they didnt mean to ??
Just an idea...
--- Did I say that ?
What you SHOULD smell is a "whole open source world versus the fuckers at SCO" war brewing. If they succeed in destroying the Linux market, how long do you think it will take them to go after the BSD's?
the fuck!?
As you yourselves have published a distribution of GNU/Linux, you are bound to the GPL and all restrictions found therein. This includes Section 7 of the GPL, whereby you release all claims upon your patents when used for GPLed code (which Linux is). So in other words, you've just fucked yourselves.
Fuck you all you patent whores.
Sincerely,
Nathan
Quick Squishdotters! DDOS their server!
Chr0m0Dr0m!C
Please post a list of SCOs customers so we can tell them that we will not be customers of any SCO partner.
(1) This lawsuite is 100% bullshit. If there was any legitimacy to it, they would have published the infringing source code. Obviously, there is not.
(2) Blah blah blah, dying business with no business model and no useful product, sue to make money, hope for buyout. Desperation.
(3) By offering their own distribution of GNU/Linux, they released whatever ficticious code they're bitching about to the public under the GPL. They distributed Caldera under the GPL. Thus, any code that they could possibly be whining about is necessarily GPL'ed, even if they do own it.
(4) It is much more likely -- indeed, it is almost a certainty -- that SCO stole code from the FOSS community, rather than vica-versa.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
I highly recommend reading ESR's comment.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
I guess *BSD isn't dead.
little typo there. you mean "made."
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
It has recently come to our attention that you, THE SCO GROUP, are morons. We believe that you have the brains of jellyfish, and your case holds water like a leaky bucket. We have little or no respect for your "carefully selected and screened teams of programmers working to build proprietary, secure software" or your attempt to "monitor the security and ownership of intellectual property rights associated with the code." We are prepared to take all actions necessary to ignore you.
Linux's actions may prove unpopular with those who wish to illegalize or otherwise hinder Linux as a free software system for use in enterprise applications. However, your claimed property and contract rights are thoroughly unimportant and valueless; not only to us, but to every individual and every company whose livelihood depends on the continued viability of freedom of information in a digital age.
And you have no friends. Go away. Thank you.
Yours truly,
the users of Linux
We have evidence that portions of UNIX System V software code have been copied into Linux and that additional other portions of UNIX System V software code have been modified and copied into Linux, seemingly for the purposes of obfuscating their original source.
I have released Open Source software into the wild and suspected that some companies where using my code but I came upon one stumbling block in my argument - it had been modified. Unless you can prove within a reasonable doubt (you see your sig in the header, etc) that the work was stolen then how do you go about this? How do you prove it was your code that has been modified? Sounds like bullshit to me. The other argument may be valid but this is a stretch IMO.
please tell SCO how pleased you are with their lawsuite at: http://www.sco.com/company/feedback/index.html I suggest the letters F, O, A and D. in close succession. Mention how you will never personally nor allow any employer to purchase SCO software. You might want to mention as well, that none of their 1980's vintage ATT cruft has inadvertantly been included in Linux. Linix was a clean-room work-alike created from the ground up, like Coherent and many others. IF they'd like to prove Linux is derivative of ATT UNIX, why don't they hire Ritchie? DO they think they hold patent on the "ls" command?
http://www.sco.com/2003forum/
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
The only out they have would appear to be that they unknowningly released they code under the GPL and that therefore they have the right to revoke the license. That would be like Microsoft accidentally bundling MS Office with Windows XP. And then trying to tell me that even though the proprietary license says I'm entitled to install the software on one machine, that they are revoking the license and I am a software pirate if I don't wipe it from my harddrive. Something tells me they'll have a tough time convincing a judge of that -- especially with IBM's lawyers fighting them.
I hope they realize that it's not quite as easy as hacking Windows machines =)
Is there anyone who could legitimately send them a cease-and-desist letter ("intentional delivery of information in express effort to interrupt and/or block lawful business and/or individual use of Linux" jumps to mind as a basis)? If so, what are you waiting for?
The burden of proof is on SCO, and until violation is proven, this sort of tactic is little better than extortion with a bluff behind it, IIRC/IMO.
So prove it, or shut up and go away, already, SCO!
Internet Explorer was unable to link to the Web page you requested. The page might use standard HTML or CSS.
Just a few comments:
...
...
From Section 0: "Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software
patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free
program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the
program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any
patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all."
So if you distribute you have to grant everybody a free license
From Section 7: "If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent
infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues),
conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or
otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not
excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot
distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this
License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you
may not distribute the Program at all."
SCO realizes, the their lawsuit terminates their GPL license to the kernel
I guess this means we're going to start using OpenBSD instead of Linux? AFAIK, the BSDs are unencumbered because of their original lawsuit with AT+T, and their rewriting of all affected code (this was a couple of decades ago). Plus, if you're using BSD, you're mostly using the packages collection, right? If you decide to use a Linux port, you can decide on a case by case basis whether you have to worry about anything.
I hope SCO is totally humiliated in this lawsuit.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
Simple.
1. locate every machine connected to 'the internet', a global IP infringment system.
2. find all such systems with open ports for SMTP, FTP, HTTP, etc. as all such systems typicialy connect to a 'linux' system at some point.
3. ???
4. PROFIT!
Eyeballing Darl McBride
In the spirit of cryptome
Sorry, I can't get enough of that troll. It's too funny.
Random is the New Order.
Dear Sirs,
:-
After reading and carefully considering your missive of last week in connection with our commercial use of the Linux(R) operating system, our legal team has drawn up the following formal response
Fuck off.
Yours Sincerely,
xyz
Canopy Group is a major stockholder of SCO. I don't know how's the people in Canopy think. Other companies in Canopy's portfolio like Linux Networx and TrollTech are depend on Linux.
/var/opt/K/SCO/
Enough said.
It didn't take this latest little gem to inform me of their crack-headedness...
(Okay, I know they're really just Caldera, but they're stupid enough to think the SCO name had a better reputation, and adopted it. Above-mentioned crack-headedness still applies.)
May 14, 2003
Today every previous and current Linux kernel developer filed a class-action lawsuit against SCO claiming that since SCO has access to the Linux kernel source and mailing lists they might have taken some of the code or ideas from the mailing list and incorporated them into their own kernel.
IBM later announced that they too will join the lawsuit since they have contributed code not part of the original UNIX code and fear that SCO may inappropriately be using their copyrighted work without following the license of the Linux kernel.
The lawsuit aims for two outcomes: Monetary compensation and to force SCO to release their source code so that it can be reviewed for possible infringements.
Linus was quoted as saying: "There is no way they could have written any UNIX like operating system since they only seem to have lawyers working in the company."
SCO? Fuck SCO. 'nuff said
Now, this is rather significant. SCO is essentially threatening to sue every commercial linux user for infringing on their IP. All of this without actually providing any evidence to back up their claims. It really seems to me that there is quite an opportunity for a counterclaim against SCO of some sort brought by every commercial Linux user.
and other large corporations. IBM is too big to sue, so you go after IBM's customers who are too small to defend themselves. It's extortion really.
I wonder if RMS will call them up and demand they call it GNU/Linux. I mean, if they're suing, use the correct nomenclature!
In general, people are contributing their creations from their grey matter on the belief that they will be justly compensated for their efforts. Most people on this planet would not want to do something and not be compensated for their doing (unless they're communists, and even then...).
For instance, no one likes to go to work for an employer, work very hard for three years and receive absolutely no compensation for their work. In this instance, people would scream bloody murder at the employer for not providing adequate compensation.
Therefore, it necessarily follows that people that contribute substantive creations would like to have their works protected from those that seek to gain an unfair advantage in this world. In other words, no one likes having something stolen from them...especially if they've worked very hard and spent many millions on that something.
In the world of Linux, Microsoft and even piracy in general, there are a number of individuals and companies that are stealing these works and gaining compensation without rewarding the original creator of the works. Therefore, these individuals and companies are guilty of a crime. In this case, they are guilty of patent or copyright infringement.
If it is proven that IBM is guilty of patent infringement, then they deserve whatever they get. In addition, those works would need to be removed and replaced by better routines. It's a shame that IBM never learned from the Compaq BIOS experience and lawsuits.
-Mindragon
Just add {In Space!} to anything.
Talk about a misappropriation of air! I bet they're hoping for their fire and hazard insurance to pay out, so they leave the executives with some capital to dispense.
The parent is on target... I already sent a shell script to about 500 Linux users allowing them to automatically ask SCO the question.
why do I get the feeling that Microsoft money is somehow behind this effort???
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
Microsoft buys SCO and continues the lawsuit. They claim that Linux is derived from their IP. Oh, what a world!
GIGOwiz
Quit... Right now... While you still have some tiny speck of self-respect... Stop what you're doing and quit... Now...
And, it looks like it's run by the same sloppy crew as their legal team:
Apache/1.3.14 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.7.1 OpenSSL/0.9.6 PHP/4.0.3pl1 on Linux
I believe there are remote root exploits for each of those packages listed.
--- It is not the things we do which we regret the most, but the things which we don't do.
Man, I can't believe they cited the RIAA/MPAA P2P battle in their rhetoric.
However, that may be a clueful insight into how they intend to identify commercial Linux users. It's called passive OS fingerprinting.
The TCP and IP header structures produced by the various OS's out there in popular use almost without exception have certain "earmarks" or identifiable characteristics about them.
It's also fairly easy to determine whether or not that system is behind a firewall, and all from simply monitoring and examining the traffic of it's response to various types of TCP and IP service requests.
If you'd like to know more about this technique, do a Google search for "Passive OS Identification" and have a look.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
Them thinking that IBM developers used AIX sources to move Linux onto IBM mainframes with many CPUs. Which is a definite possibility. But can they prove it? It also suggests that this is going against the kernel, which once again brings us around to the point of...
File names in the SMP code and line numbers please.
I too, smell a Microsoft rat in this one. It is so similar to Microsoft other vague FUD campaigns of recent years, that it would not in the least surprise me to hear about it. If it ever turns out that MS is funding and aiding this, the fallout would be bigger than the MS antitrust case, as IBM can and does have the financial and legal resources to sue MS for illegal attempts to damage IBM's business, and IBM doesn't come cheap.
This nothing less than an attempt at "stealing" Linux so they are the sole owner, and the only legal version of Linux would be Caldera.
Here's how it works:
1. Stop selling OpenLinux.
2. Sue everyone except Caldera OpenLinux users, and win.
3. SCO are now the only company able to legally use the Linux source code, and they effectively own it. This could result in the GPL being legally nullified.
4. Once the legal battle is won, start marketing Linux again, as the only vendor.
I suggest that all future work to Linux source code and GPL'd applications is released under a new version of the GPL. This version should include a new clause which specifically prohibits the use of the code and application by SCO, any of it's subsidiaries, or any parent companies.
I hear he calls the goat "Billy".
Actually it just seems that way because Linux was created by IBM using almost nothing but Unix code.
Once again, such bullshit. Linux is 100% open source. If there are parts of Linux that are infringing, just indicate exactly where the infringement is.
SCO has stated that we have found lines in the kernel that were exactly like lines in our own Unix.
Need proof, look at these infringing lines...
i++;
i = i + 1;
It is plainly obvious that lines such at these were directly copied from SCO OpenUnix. This represents a serious infringement of our intellectual property.
That was very nice. Here's one I wrote, I would appreciate it if you would take the time to read it and perhaps offer some words of advice. Are you interested in coming to our song writer's workshop?
Anyway, here goes:
Here is my ass
Which you may kiss.
Take time and aim well
You don't want to miss.
For if you aim low
And your lips they do fall
Then you will find
You'll be sucking my balls.
If you aim high
Despite your true heart
Sucks to be you
Now you're eating my fart.
Engaging in behavior that annoys a large group of companies and even many more individuals is a very stupid thing to do. No matter how legally in the right you think you may be, the more of an asshole you are the greater the chance that you'll offend someone who has no respect for the law.
Look what happened to the spammer Alan Ralsky who gloated about how he was living it up filling inboxes with spam. Someone posted his home address and now he's being bombarded with sheer tons of postal mail.
SCO seems determined to draw this kind of reaction. What are they thinking?
I am not very knowledgeble about the SCO case (didn't feel like reading their entire 90-something page, filed complaint), but from what I have read on /. as well as the letter that SCO published to dissuade Linux end-users from using Linux, I can say that I have a fair amount of info to make a hypothesis.
Due to the current downturn of the economy, companies like Amazon are taking any means necessary in order to secure their market share. Amazon is using questionable tactics of pattening EVERYthing in sight.
We have lately seen that Microsoft has been loosing a (small, but yet significant) portion of their market share to Linux. And the SCO case fired up not TOO long ago.
Something smells fishy here: is it possible that Microsoft is secretly backing the SCO case? Maybe in hopes of dissuading companies from switching to Linux by using the argument that Linux infringes on the Unix Sys V copyright?
Plus: everything that has been going on with the music/movie industry and p2p filesharing has got a lot of people (tech/non-tech alike) thinking about copyrights.
Maybe through the SCO case, Microsoft is hoping to win their market share back.
What do you slashdotters think? A valid hypothesis, or easily discredible?
My concern is that, given how SCO has been conducting itself, they will try to use fear as a reason not to use Linux by first suing individual Linux users and developers. Although I do not believe that SCO has much of a case, but how can you know as they will not release any evidence, the suits SCO would file against individuals would probably be very difficult for these individuals to defend themselves against, and, regardless of whether SCO is right or wrong, these individuals will probably choose to settle.
Therefore, I am proposing the following set of initial steps to bring a quick end to this situation:
I believe that under the combined pressure of a stock sell-off and rapidly decreasing revenues SCO will not even be able to continue its current legal activities.
Funny, I've never worked at a software company that works like that.
As an astute poster pointed out on OSNews, they cannot collect on any damages anyway.
They distribute(ed) a version of Linux under the GPL, a licence that legally permits people to copy and branch the code assuming they put it under the GPL. Unfortunately for SCO, whether or not they knew they were distributing their own IP under the GPL or not is irrelevant to the rather compelling argument that they did put their IP under the GPL, and now that they continued to distribute linux after they found the alleged infringements means that no court would declare that licence invalid.
They have knowingly distributed what is potentially their own code under the GPL for nearly a year now. The GPL licence should hold, infringement-free.
The ______ Agenda
Multics was originally concieved of by MIT. GE Information Systems and Bell labs became part of the project.
I'm not sure of the exact details but GE sold their computer business to Honeywell. At one point I think Honeywell and french computer company Bull merged/joined and later separated and I believe that Bull ended up with the rights to Multics.
For more details about Multics you can look at the usenet for the group alt.os.multics or http://www.multicians.org/
Let say, for the sake of argument that there is copied code in the linux kernel, if Caldera has distributed Linux, aren't they required to release it (their code) under the terms of the GPL.
From the GPL:
6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License.
1: IBM finds that the code added, if any, came from Caldera, forcing SCO to sue themselves.
2: IBM, in discovery, demands a receives the source to SCO's flavors of Unix and finds evidence that SCO stole GPL'd source code to put into unixware / openserver. Sco is forced to release the whole shebang under the GPL.
--- It is not the things we do which we regret the most, but the things which we don't do.
Quiet; this is Slashdot. We're supposed to pretend that only Microsoft products are riddled with security holes.
Is there a way we can find out if their claims have any merits? Does anyone have access to their source code?
It seems they just want to sour the milk for everyone (including themselves). Or they think they will continue to exist after such litigating behavior? Who would even want to look at their "valuable source code" after this?
The problem is that now they have already lost the Linux bandwagon. There's nothing left for them. They have to litigate or they are dead. Problem is: I believe they will fail anyway. Fail in their lawsuits and fail in the marketplace.
Regardless, I think the Open Group should jump in and tell them to stop calling their valuable little IP just plain Unix:
"UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group."
http://www.unix.org/trademark.html
Another good reason to use OpenBSD or FreeBSD.
This is just FUD. They're trying to pollute the entire Linux market so that one of the successful vendors will buy them out just to shut them up.
I mean, this bit pretty much gives it away:
Similar to analogous efforts underway in the music industry, we are prepared to take all actions necessary to stop the ongoing violation of our intellectual property or other rights.
If that's not the corporate equivalent of twirling your moustache and laughing evilly, I don't know what is.
It says Vendors may be liable. If the Editor actually RTFA'd, he might have noticed that SCO is actually planning on trying to hold END-USERS liable, not vendors. IBM is the only Linux vendor they have (tried to?) go after so far.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
a lot of people seem to think that SCO is only doing this so that IBM would buy them.
I am actually wondering if someone is paying (okay I am thinking a few bribed persons here) them to do this, with the ultimate goal of spreading FUD about Linux. We all know things like that happen all the time, if politicians can be bought, why can't the company executives.
I mean if this really does go to court and has at least some public attention drawn to it, this will surely alienate a lot of business customers who would be thinking it's not quite safe to use Linux.
I don't know, this is all idle speculation of course, but this scenario seems to me more likely than that everyone in SCO just gone nuts and is trying to drive the company into the grave sooner...
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
H.G. Wells, "The Outline of History"
I'd settle if they just said *when* this supposed infringement was introduced into the source code. Unless the person who introduced the infringment was Linus Torvalds himself when he wrote the original kernel, there was SOME POINT at which the kernel did not contain this supposed infringement. I'm willing to bet there are still plenty of linux users out there (commercial and otherwise) running older kernels that don't even have the suspect code in it.
found the secret dirty hidden link between M$ and SCO's action yet? Sounds like M$ Smells like M$ Must be...
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 need to shut down their own website.
How can we band together to stop idiots like this?
ESR is not a lawyer, but this is extremely instructive, and suggests just how specious SCO's claims are. Noorda is going to get bitchslapped, and deservedly so.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
It's fairly obvious to anyone with any knowledge of Unix and Linux that SCO has no legitimate case, but they are making a go of it anyway. If successful, who's to say they won't go after Apple next? They could even go after Microsoft. Their bicycle developed features like SMP awfully quickly after they had access to Xenix source code.
Refreshing to see understanding about SCO's true actions.
The more people who understand that SCO has no teeth, the less effect it can have in terms of creating the kind of panic it wants.
// -- http://www.BRAD-X.com/ --
...the folks that claimed they weren't out to hurt the Linux community? Doesn't seems like it to me.
--- I was far from home, and the spell of the Eastern sea was upon me. -Lovecraft-
Given Darl's ("my parents can't spell Daryl") involvement in UnitedLinux (http://www.mozillaquest.com/Linux02/UnitedLinux_M cBride-01-P1_Story-02.html) should we now presume that he will sue himself for his prior Linux actions? Also, the fact that SCO has stopped shipping Linux is as meaningful as if I robbed a bank and then took the money back. The "crime" has been committed. I look forward to Darl cross examining himself in due course.
Rich people are eccentric. Poor people are strange. Me, I'd be happy with odd.
i guess the boycott is working.
Call SCO with a problem and make sure that the payment for License and ANY contractual service is witheld until resolved.
This alone is enough to sink SCO.
A Cash crunch can topple a healthy company in weeks, think what is can do to SCO.
Help fight continental drift.
How much is SCO woth ? 100-200 bucks ?! I'm gonna buy them and I'll put their CEO to wash my motorcycle ...
Now I'll admit that I didn't - but even with my quick perusal, I don't know how you can claim to have understood the core of their argument without mentioning Project Monterey. In a document short on specific references (I think we agree on that) there were several references to this joint project between SCO and IBM.
Here is my own summary of what I thought was their core argument.
Again, I haven't read the whole thing, so I can't claim to have understood it myself... but I think I can say that I doubt you do.
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
You're aware Bill Gates never said that, right? Seriously, he didn't.
"Sufferin' succotash."
It's a sad day when companies start to believe that suing for IPR is a better business model than providing quality products and services. Thanks RIAA, MPAA, SCO, we'll all be joining you in hell soon.
FYI, the monkeys who post on the Yahoo! message boards are writing things such as this:
Re: Excellent news AH
by: treycc (32/M/Rochester, NY) 05/14/03 04:47 pm
Msg: 6563 of 6565
Gee, SCO must be really if-y on what they are doing. Hehehehehehehehehheheheheheheheheh... This is going to be quite a ride. Everyone may freak and bail and the stock may suffer for a while--I don't know--but with the SCOSource funds starting to come in things are churning. Hehehehehehehehehehehehe Oh the poor linux geeks. Their little Star Trek-like existence is threatened--this ought to be good for some more illegal tampering with the SCO systems. That seems to be how they handle their stress--strike out in the only way they know how. Hehehehehehehehehe, hohohohohohoho...
It will gratify my to see them lose their kids' college funds. I think the poster shown above is really Steve Ballmer under an alias, but I've been wrong before.
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Perhaps once they publish the offending bits, the Linux community will assist in ferreting out the "Many Linux contributors were originally UNIX developers who had access to UNIX source code distributed by AT&T and were subject to confidentiality agreements, including confidentiality of the methods and concepts involved in software design."
For some reason i wouldn't be supprized if it ended up being the other way around some SCO drone copied linux source code and now SCO thinks we copied theirs. This way around there is at least a shread of probability.
Why don't we organize something?
I vote that we should do the following.
o Go to the hardware store
o Purchase a standard red brick
o Put enough stamps on it so the postal
service will deliver it
o Address it to SCO
o Mail it
I'm sure that they'd get the point if they received a couple thousands bricks in the mail.
The SCO Group
355 South 520 West
Suite 100
Lindon, Utah 84042 USA
Phone: 801-765-4999
Fax: 801-852-9088
Someone should ask SCO, why they're still into UnitedLinux.
http://www.sco.com/unitedlinux/
I generally agree with that statement. It is true, I don't go to work without expectation of compensation. The company is buying my time and knowledge from me. However, I do believe that monetary compensation isn't always the only reason individuals and groups make contributions from their minds and talents. I would imagine that some talented individuals write drivers and applications and freely distribute them simply because they believe in the OSS model, or perhaps they feel that quality software should be freely available to the masses.
Unless, of course, their original intent was to publish the software as a freely distributed piece of code. Then there wouldn't be a case for theft or illegal use of code.
I agree.
To know is to have knowledge....to understand is to be enlightened.
You know, in all this mess about SCO suing IBM and possibly Linux commercial distribution manufacturers over stolen code in Linux, there's one question I have to ask: what is Linux Torvalds' stand on this suit? I'm sure he won't approve for obvious reasons given that Linux by definition cannot have patents or copyrights on any code incorporated into Linux as defined by GPL.
vlad@geekizoid.com?
I have not heard a response from either Alan or Linus?
Does anyone know what their comments on the topic are?
Also, what about SCO going to expire IBM'S licence for AIX code?
What does this mean for my company that runs AIX servers?
This is getting stupid..... Grow up exec's.
Doesn't really say much. Perhaps patches have been backported. Red Hat does it too. They used to have patched up versions of OpenSSL 0.9.5 for a long time.
Okay... here's an idea... some enterprising geek needs to develop a tool which tracks the evolution of kernel patches. (sorta like that cool 3-D fly through mapping posted a while back)
When I write code, it's never perfect the first few iterations. If I were to lift it, it would probably have a much lower defect rate.
So, here's the idea: by graphing the changes in the source code as it evolves, we could narrow down where a potential violation could be. It would likely be in a section of code which was checked in in bulk, and has required little tweaking since.
Now of course if the original developer did a lot of testing before submitting the first patch, then this therory has problems.
If the code was lifted and then changed, it won't be detected, but then the offense has already been corrected, so as long as you aren't running that particular kernel, you are infringing less. (cuz I suppose you could claim derived works are tainted...)
How can I help, you ask? By supporting strong intellectual property laws. And supporting your local technology company ... if they're still around in five years, they will be paying plenty of IP lawyers.
At this point you may have some worries. I hate innovation, you say ... what if the money I invest in technology companies is used to advance technology?
No need to worry. Less and less potential IP lawyer salary is wasted on technology every day, and many visionary technology companies have already made the switch to an all-IP lawyer technical staff! No pesky engineers needed!
Call your elected representative. Tell them that you support the welfare for IP lawyers program, and to keep those IP laws coming! And make sure you say, "A lonely black suit won't happen on my watch."
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone
Someone with enough cash should ask the courts to force SCO to publicly release their evidence. They create enough harm in the marketplace to justify such an injunction. They threaten enough people to require a public disclosure. And, IANAL but I think SCO is legally required to do their best to limit the damage caused by the alleged infrigement.
Or someone in the Linux community could buy them. A really easy way to be branded the Unix name.
This is probably going to be moderated down to troll or flamebait but it's interesting based on current events. Linus said that before he started working on Linux he thought about using *BSD instead but due to the law suit that was going on then, he chose to develop his own kernel.
Now that the BSD lawsuit has long been resolved and a some what immunity has been granted to the bsd operating systems, Linux is being placed in a similar situation. I wonder how long this will take.
Is it possible not to in the digital domain? Old world blocks (legal, threats, etc) are so easy to route around in community based bit world. Use another OS... deprecate the problematic code... span the problem over the community and inevitably come up with a better solution than the proprietary. In the end, everybody gets off. Let the litagous litigate themselves into (further) obsolescence, while the knowledgable lead the way.
Andy
Amazing that Linux and UNIX are so close in design that the code is so interchangeable. Now I wonder where they got the evidence that it was the same code. If it was the same programmers, then the code might progress in the same matter if it does the same thing. I have written two drivers from scratch that do the same exact thing and the source code is almost identical. When a program understands it, he will do things the same if not better most of the time if he started from scratch the first time. Anyways, its hurting us to fight between are selves. UNIX and Linux don't even compare to the market share of Windows machines. Lets put down the bickering between us, come together, because we are scaring prosepctive companies who might buy UNIX/Linux instead of Windows. If Linux has something that UNIX could use, then put it in and vise-versa. We need to make stronger and more versitile OSs and make it looking stronger and powerful then windows in the long run if we are going to beat Micro$oft. Zac
No.
Suing everyone within eyesight is the last acts of a failing company. Goodbye SCO, and good riddance.
Assume for a second that IBM did give licensed code to the community AND after all these years poor SCO discovered they were the glue that held Linux together AND they had sufficient proof of this... IBM has a dollar or two in the bank.
Couldn't they just tie this up in courts just about indefinitely and SCO's last dollar will be spent responding to requests for extentions. It's seems to work in other markets.
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
The GPL is well enough to avoid using Linux. Lately, distributions began to suck very much like SCO products, so maybe they've got (ahem) something in their hands...
Dear SCO,
Regarding your recent lawsuit against the so-called Linux operating system. Linux is only the kernel, the whole system should be refered to as GNU/Linux. I would really appreciate it if you change all Linux references to GNU/Linux in all your legal documents. Thank you!
Yours sincerely Richard Stallman
>This seems like it will be about as successful as the whole GIF ordeal a few years back. Where is UNISYS today? Is SCO litigating itself into irrelevance?"
oh great, we all know how well that turned out.
And BTW: Unisys, pos that it is, makes over a Billion Dollars in Revenue a year still. If this turns out anything like the GIF controversy, Linux is screwed major.
-pyrrho
Even if code snippets were somehow copyrightable, you have to prove that the a large proportion of the work involved was scooped from the infringed source and/or a large part of the infringed source was dumped into the derived work.
If SCO is talking about a line or two of code, even (gasp) a function, AND assuming that this particular part was not subject to the GPL after SCO released SCO Linux and/or Caldera, they have to show that a large chuck of that part Linux was stolen from SCO, or Linux contains most of SCO's code.
I'm not a lawyer, but I've been accused of being one on enough occasions.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
...the funny little dwarf clown.
I love the way that his bibliography is almost all his own writings (becaues that's impartial evidence).
Better leave it to the lawyers, eh, Eric. Run along now.
... something really juvelile like put a burning bag of dog poop on their doorstep?
Dear SCO,
Up yours, smeghead!
Sincerely,
Jon
Does this need to be pointed out again?
SCO is infringing on thier own intellectual property!
Oh wait, THAT DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE
we can just switch to slackware and remove what little system V shit is on there. Doesn't slack use the BSD style stuff? I see this SCO venture failing. If it succeeds, my slackware box will be unaffected.
fopen - example 6.66 - circa 2003:
$file = fopen ("http:/www.sco.com",'r') or die();
fopen - example 6.66 - circa 2004:
# Obsolete, no longer implemented
#
# $file = fopen ("http:/www.sco.com",'r') or die();
I'm surprised that Caldera doesn't buy fruit of the loom stock and try to sue all of us Haines wearers for infringement.
How about monitors? Are we allowed to use those? I could stand a switch to TTY, but I don't think PORN sells very well that way... Could spell disaster for the global economy!
Speak for yourself.
"Is SCO litigating itself into irrelevance?"
At this point, I don't think they need litigation to do that.
"Is SCO litigating itself into irrelevance?" God I hope so. The world would be better without them now. If they're going to try tactics like the RIAA, they best be careful.
That's exactly why they chose a small company with small resources for this law suit.
Their motto was "We sell C shells down by the sea shore."
If SCO was distributing Linux which contained SCO's intellectual property, aren't they then bound by the conditions for distributing Linux saying that their contributions to the code are now part of Linux and, as such, freely available?
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
Across the street from my house.
Big building; big red lighted "UNISYS" on the front.
They must still be doing something.....
We do not even know what code Caldera (SCO) even legally owns.
Unix was written by AT&T in the seventies when it was ILLEGAL for AT&T to market an operating system (in violation of the TRUST agreement with the U.S. Government). To prevent prosicution by the U.S. Government AT&T did not sell the OS and released the source for anyone to use. UC Berkeley picked up the source and expanded it into Berkeley UNIX which was partly AT&T code and partly Berkeley code. At this point all UNIX code was in the public domain (it would have been illegal for AT&T to exercise any copyright or patent claim to the OS.
After the breakup, some idiot at AT&T decided that there might be some economic value to the OS and AT&T re asserted ownership of UNIX. Whether or not this reassertion of ownership was legal was never tested in the courts. UC Berkeley considered challenging AT&T's right to the old code but elected (in the end) to just pack it in.
The question of whether or not AT&T had the right to retroactively appropriate code written while they were a monopoly has never been tested in the courts. Since they were required to give up ownership of the code when they were a monopoly, I suspect that the economic advantages of the code could not (at a later date) revert to AT&T.
You see where this is going. Since Berkeley had re-written (Cory hall) 80 percent of UNIX as it stood in 1985, it was deemed easier by the UNIX community to rewrite the remaining 20% than fight with AT&T.
Caldera may have trouble proving that what they purchased from AT&T is even property (of any kind).
Tom
See ya SCO. Glad you're going to disappear. Too bad you have to be a bunch of bitter assholes about it, though.
of people using commercial Linux ? Can we file for spam settlement if we get such a note ? :)
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
this is kinda unnecessary isn't it? So Linux didn't just get the source in question by accident, but all people involved with Linux are thieves who you'd expect to try and steal things? Seriously.. wtf? Why does this page need to be here?
Billy boy is behind
The Linux kernel is merely a framework upon which a great variety of distros are built. SCO is making too broad an attack; essentially saying that the entirety of Linux is condemned by lines in a few files.
If SCO wants to be taken seriously, they need to say "don't distribute these files: xxx.xxx or yyy.yyy". Without that, they might as well be claiming everyone should tear down every single skyscraper because they have a patent on a bolt used in the lowest ladder of the fire escape. Very simple, and effective, to say the ladder is infringing and have every place replace the ladder. However, the problem with that method is that no one will buy the replacement ladder (with licensed bolts) from them.
SCO isn't going to be able to convince anyone to license or buy their intellectual property - so, as others have said, they have shot themselves in the foot.
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
Ok, I'm not trolling. Hear me out:
= 8
SCO is claming Linux contains AT&T code. GNU/linux always claimed that they never had AT&T code, and thus not liable. But it has to go through the courts to be proved (taking time and money), which is what SCO is counting on. Meanwhile, FreeBSD has already gone through this process in the early ninety's, the outcome of which is that *all* AT&T code was removed from BSD (resulting in BSD-lite), and that noone could sue anyone using this code. Long live free software.
From the recent OSnews interview http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3415&page
In any event, those files with USL copyrights on them have specific permission to be distributed by the Regents of the University of California to settle thse lawsuits, with an additional agreement that Novel (and its successors) would not sue anybody using systems on 4.4lite.
In Soviet Russia, articles before post read *you*!
Accept that IE doesn't support PNG's excellent alpha transparency! (arrghhh!) :-(
As soon as Microsoft gets off of their lazy bums and puts alpha transparency in IE, I will be using PNG even more that I currently do.
...interesting if true.
Aparently they are still selling/distributin Linux so they should sue them selves!
Download it here
BSD licensed software can't be stolen....
then will all you Linux die hards switch to BSD?
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable" - JFK
Now all those [infringing] Linux users can discover FreeBSD, and wonder why they didn't choose it to begin with.
Nuf said. R.I.P. SCO. You've passed your viable lifetime.
Step 1: DDoS their servers
Step 2: Spam them to death (physical mail)
Step 3: Call their 1-800 number from every pay phone in the world 24/7
Step 4: File millions of lawsuits against them and keep them in court forever.
Feel the power of DDOS!
I may be wrong, but isn't it perfectly legal for a person (not covered by an NDA) to write code which is functionally identical to proprietary code, so long as it is not 'cut and paste'? I mean, if I hear that MSAVI.dll (or somesuch) does function X when asked with Y syntax, and I write something that will do the exact same thing the same way, but it's not a derivative of MSAVI.dll (I haven't seen the code), Isn't it my own work? If it isn't, then patents on airplane propellers would also prevent people from creating submarine propellers.
"Similar to analogous efforts underway in the music industry, we are prepared to take all actions necessary to stop the ongoing violation of our intellectual property or other rights."
So old Darl is threatening hack attacks against installed Linux systems? That's not very bright. Please. Just try that once while the case is still in court. I'd love to watch footage of the FBI raid that would result from that.
Y'all haven't proven a damned thing and are bordering on BARRATRY with these baseless legal threats. (Now if you never intend to practice law again, by all means, go that route, but I've a feeling you'll be needing work Real Soon Now, and limiting your options isn't very bright.)
Without a court win in this, Darl, you have no basis for even the oh-so-questionable hacking like the RIAA are attempting. Try it. Just once on a clued organization, say another software publisher, and you're finished. Not only will you be in "pound-me-in-the-ass" prison, there will be NOTHING LEFT of SCO's assets to auction off, as they will have been siezed as evidence.
Try hacking some clueful individuals, and you could find yourself going away for any number of "suprise" charges based on evidence in your own systems.
I'm ashamed to share the last name with that fucker. I can't wait to watch him go down in flames.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
Those who are relatively quiet in situations of angst are clearly the most dangerous and will always win the preceeding.
SCO has been extremely vocal without backing up any of it's statements at all, none of which would hurt them in any manner. IBM responded tactfully and has said nothing more.
Clearly IBM is the most dangerous in this situation. What SCO is doing will have little to no effect on the OpenSource model and Free Software movement in the long run and i'm pretty sure that IBM, after SCO's case has been dismissed, will provide a detailed report point by point as to what took place, why and what the future holds as to IBM's involvement with Linux.
After going over most of the arguments on both sides I realized at the end of the day it doesn't matter. IBM will clearly win either way and SCO is doomed.
I recently read you letter to commercial Linux users. I have to say, I have not read such a collection of patheticness since reading the Halloween Documents several years ago. Your letter is not only insulting to the Linux community (which has helped advance SCO in many areas) but, it is also a display of just how low you and your company have stooped in a sagging IT economy. If you and the rest of the executives at SCO cannot figure out a profitable business model that does not include sueing other companies for what is an obvious ploy to be purchased and then retire on the profits that you stand to make, then perhaps you and the rest of the losers should step down and allow somebody with some true leadership abilities to return SCO to it's profit making days. Please, stop now before you embarass yourself and SCO any further. Thanks you.
"Klaatu, verada, necktie!" -Ash
He said it said vendors may be liable. If Mr. Transistor actually RTF summary, he might have noticed that the post did NOT say that vendors would be responsible, but commercial users. That means end-users in companies, not distribution companies.
Bill Gates is offering an iLoo's to all SCO execs so they can easily dispose of the crap they're dumping. Just one more way Redmond is trying to combat Linux!
Phew ! I'm saved - I use Debian ...
Surely the GPL rules that to distribute GPL code, you can't sue the users of that code? (section 7, if I understand it correctly...)
Therefore, as they continue to distribute Linux, can't Linus sue them? Am I missing something here?
because even if by some fluke they managed to magically eliminate Linux from the world there would still be GNU and the GNU Hurd, which could be adopted as an oipen source alternative, and which have no ties to Unix, being completely different technology. So why worry?
Exactly right. When AT&T/USL sued UC Berkley over BSD, they crippled BSD for a decade. Now they are trying to do the same thing to Linux. The AT&T vs BSD lawsuit introduced enough FUD and left a big enough cloud over BSD to drive commercial users away from BSD and make vendors license SysV "just to be safe". Even a strong BSD varient like the orginal SunOS has been supplanted by a SysV varient Solaris. I suspect that one of Sun's reasons in switching to SysV was to avoid legal issues, in addition to getting the "newer and improved" features of SysV. It is only very recently, with Mac OS-X, that BSD is finally coming out from under the cloud and starting to become mainstream again.
I find it interesting that the letter claims control over UNIX "methods". It sounds like they are contending that they have a lock over all "UNIX-Like" systems, even those with non-encumbered code because the ideas and methods are facsimilies of proprietery methods. I think they are actually saying that they have a monopoly on *nix-likeness. So regardless of the cut-and-paste issue with the code, they are still going to fight over the implementation itself. How they expect this to hold up in court is going to be interesting because the already "gave it up" when they cleared the BSD settlement.
I'm curious to see how "Jury Of Peers" applies in this case. Would they have to find technically oriented persons?
01101001 01100001 01101101 01101110 01101111 01110100 01100001 01101100 01100001 01110111 01111001 01100101 01110010
3. ??? should read Sue user of machine if user is a corporation. No question about this one.
Vote for Pedro
once IBM division of lawyers wipe them out what will be really fun will be watching the shareholder lawsuits against the actual SCO management
a small scale Enron that is ...
other than that, they 're claims are so frivolous and vaporous that this only means free publicity for Linux, after all Linux is replacing they 're supposed cash cow, UNIX (TM) ...
one last point: it would be polite that Sun Microsystems, in a gesture of good will distanced itself from this affair ... that would prove a lot about they 're real intents regarding Linux ...
just my two 0,02
cheers from Portugal
I'd just like to point out a couple of things:
:-)
1. SCO's stock is currently trading at $3.55 / share
2. SCO's Annual Stockholder Meeting is Friday, May 16 at 9am at their headquarters in Lindon, UT.
I just keep getting this really amusing image of a horde of Linux users showing up for the Suits' Fandango and asking annoying questions like:
"I appreciate your concern for protecting my investment by defending the company's IP and all, but I have to ask.... before dumping all this money into lawyers and court costs, did you even bother to send out an email (which would have been free) to the people who are allegedly infringing on our IP and simply asking them to stop?"
"Does that not hurt our chances of winning any legal decisions since we failed to excercise even a minimal amount of prevention?"
"Does releasing our own version of Linux using the same infringing IP after filing the lawsuit against IBM not hurt our chances of winning?"
"Can you think of one good reason why I, as a shareholder, shouldn't demand Darl's head on a silver platter right now for gross incompetence in how he has handled this situation? Can I call for a vote on firing him, or do I need to sue the Board or something?"
"Not widely used" is a pretty good paraphrase of "fringe player." And anyone designing a public web site and willing to discard 10% of customers is also a fringe player.
SCO cannot have any claims over FreeBSD now. Maybe the thing that hurt freebsd's adoption most during its early days will now actually help it.....
I'd like to host a party to celebrate when SCO is dead. Perhaps a formal ceremony to piss on the corporate logo from the front of their building.
FROM THE LETTER
--
<snip>
1 - The first is to send a letter alerting commercial users to the fact that legal liability for the use of Linux by businesses may extend to end users.
<snip>
3 - Finally, although this action affects future development and sales of SCO's Linux offerings, SCO will continue to support our SCO Linux and OpenLinux customers and partners who have previously implemented those products and we will hold them harmless from any SCO intellectual property issues regarding Linux.
--
What the hell? Am I the only one who thinks that these are mutually exclusive? How can they be legally liable if you are saying that they aren't two paragraphs down?
Or are they saying that anyone in the world who is using Linux is liable, and only SCO customers aren't?
and, at the time of writing, they are still distributing Linux with all their precious IP on ftp.sco.com
But what if, on the other hand, you had a nice leather jacket just like mine, and I accidetnally wore it home from a party at your place, thinking it was mine, ebcause I was drunk and didn't realize that I left mine at home.
Do you throw me in jail, or just tell me "Hey man, you took my jacket"
If IBM knowingly infringed, YES, they should be penalized... but not the entire linux community, who in good faith will remove any code that is truly offending.
The reason mayn of us find it hard to believe that SCO's IP somehow "improved" linux, and helped it get into the business world, well, that's because we feel that linux surpassed sco in terms of performance and functionality a long, long time ago. SCO had nothing to teach linux.
Just a though.
Who has access to the alleged code that was copied and the Linux code from the same period?
IBM
Who is actually being sued and could have its lawyers demand file names and specifics?
IBM
Who could put their own programmers on writing replacements? Or request replacements of the files with completely different code from the Linux community in general?
IBM
So why are we hearing so little from IBM. A simple, untraceable leak pinpointed the files needing replacement would do wonders. Barring that, is SCO kernel so closed source that no one else can identify the proprietary coding?
http://www.sco.com/
Is that they're no longer selling Linux because they believe that the Linux (that they sell) is infringing on other Unix IP (that they own).
Um. Ya. So I don't want to sell my book because it makes a use of passages that I used in my last book.
Maybe they should start their lawsuit off by sueing themselves.
--
Mike
-- Mike wildcard@illuminatus.org
If you are going to make the analogy, you are going to have to make it right. If you go to tell the cops that someone stole something from you, the very first question they will ask is "what did they steal?"
They won't take a response like "well, just wait until the court date!" seriously.
The cake is a pie
Hey.. I contributed some linux code that is in
voilation OF SCO's IP rights to FreeBSD. You can go after them too!
Oh, and I think some of that IP material also went into OpenBSD too.
the medical and real estate/title industries, you're right, SCO is largely irrelevant. But for these 2 industries, SCO is still used by many companies (I can think of at least 3 of my own clients off hand). Most of the stuff I've seen has been UnixWare, but I still see an OpenServer install once in a while.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
As you may know, the development process for Linux has differed substantially from the development process for other enterprise operating systems. Commercial software is built by carefully selected and screened teams of programmers working to build proprietary, secure software. This process is designed to monitor the security and ownership of intellectual property rights associated with the code. By contrast, much of Linux has been built from contributions by numerous unrelated and unknown software developers, each contributing a small section of code. There is no mechanism inherent in the Linux development process to assure that intellectual property rights, confidentiality or security are protected. The Linux process does not prevent inclusion of code that has been stolen outright, or developed by improper use of proprietary methods and concepts.
The whole "letter" just reeks but the part I quoted just makes me so mad. I didnt know a company could fall so low.
What effect exactly are they trying to achieve by sending it to Linux vendors like redHta and Mandrake? Why the hell do they want to piss everyone off? Why do the want such bad publicity?
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
Lets all sue SCO to get them to put up or shut up. Death by a thousand lawsuits!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Geeks in the middle of the night, in their shiny new bmw's, or jettas, with bandanas on, pulling up to the front of the sco offices and throwing moltov cocktails at them!
ha! the linux intifada has begun!
You know, if enough of us bought SCO stock, we could vote out the damn management of SCO, install our own board, and say the hell with this lawsuit.
Don't think there's any realistic way to make that happen, but it'd be great to send these jokers pounding.
"Oooo! We can't compete with Linux! Therefore we must sue!"
Can someone provide me a link to comments from M$ on this one, they have been uncharacteristically silent on this issue ... which leads me to think that this is because they are (in some way) beind/... the SCO action.
Who exactly elected RMS as a Linux leader?
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
Linus own the rights to the Linux trademark?
Lets see. When Apache is called 'linux', the trademark is diluted. To the point of uselessness.
What a crock. This suit is so stupid that the RIAA might be embarassed by their mention. More importanly, there are no cost/performace competitors to free software. Even if we assume justice is for sale, Caldera is going to be crushed by much deeper pockets. The CEO of Caldera must think he is Napoleon too.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
If brandonY actually RTF my post, I said the article _title_ was wrong, not the summary of the post.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
When SCO, nee Caldera, shipped a linux distribution with this advanced alien unix technology in it, they granted all of us a license to use it, via the GPL.
You can't go granting everybody a license to a technology, then go sue them for using the technology. It doesn't work that way.
Now, maybe they wish they hadn't, but, guess what, they did.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
okay? Now open up and say AAAAH!
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Well, time to put on my conspircy hat...
Reading that letter, I was struck by how combative they sound. I can't imagine why they would take this stance - if they want IBM to buy them, they'd better stop egging them on, or IBM is going to stomp them into an atomically thin paste just for being so annoying.
Let's think about this for a minute - look at the language they used, specifically. These gems in particular:
"Similar to analogous efforts underway in the music industry..."
Why that particular comparision? They want to compare themselves to the RIAA, perhaps the single most hated organization as far as the musical customer base is concerned? This looks designed to piss off a certain segment of the population and appeal to another specific segment.
"SCO's actions may prove unpopular with those who wish to advance or otherwise benefit from Linux as a free software system for use in enterprise applications. However, our property and contract rights are important and valuable; not only to us, but to every individual and every company whose livelihood depends on the continued viability of intellectual and intangible property rights in a digital age."
We appreciate that a lot of people are finding this is a good thing, but our pocketbook is more important than all that and we would rather mess it up for everyone than accept that we lost the Unix game. Add grand sounding BS to make us sound altruistic and wounded.
Plus, who are those assets valuable to? If by some unimaginable chance SCO technology is woven so deep into the design they do kill Linux the kernel, the world just shifts to BSD. The Hurd goes from a sleepy project with potential to the central focus of a million geeks and lots of companies. Starting from scratch, people use the best ideas of HURD/L4/EROS/etc. and build a real next generation system, with documented non-patented roots in research work. There are lots of scenarios, but NONE of them involve people paying SCO money. Free software folks would rather abandon Linux than submit to such lunacy. If SCO declares war, than war it shall be. And come what may, SCO will die. The only question is how much good work they will take with them.
Ignoring any concept of civility or rationality, rather than request the removal of the offending code they go on the legal offensive. Starting with IBM of all people, who could probably countersue them into cosmic dust. Why didn't they use the tried and true mechanism of knocking off the little folk first and then use the precident to go after IBM? Why sue IBM and threaten everyone else, even customers of other companies??? What do they hope to gain? What if all these companies sue SCO for damage done with unproven claims? Aren't there limits on this kind of crap? What if Microsoft were to say they had patents on unspecified technologies that impacted all open source programs, and advised people not to use them since their might be legal liabilities? Wouldn't they have to prove they did have such a thing before they could start scaring other people's customers?
It almost seems to me like Microsoft must have dreamed this up, and contracted SCO in secret to take this course of action. Works perfectly for Microsoft, since publically they don't have anything to do with this and it's a perfect way to scare people back to Windows. SCO was dying anyway, so they have little to lose and would be tempted (barring ethics of course) to undertake such a course for a little $$$. Yes I'm being a conspricy theorist, but doesn't anyone else wonder just a little?
> I believe there are remote root exploits for each of those packages listed.
Are you suggesting that we should break in and steal some of their code?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
They were relevant? Man I must be getting slow...
Kinda a bummer tho overall, I remember using Caldera before the dot-bust. I recall a well-engineered product (for its time). I was *very* excited and pleased when Caldera bought the SCO properties. At least now they're practicing what they're preaching, which counts towards entry-level respect in my book.
Where is Ransom Love in the middle of all this? Or Ray Noorda?
Personally, I'd be amazed if their clains hold up. I've built dozens of kernels from kernel.org and also from Suse and RH for quite a few years now.. The only thing that comes to mind immediately as possible infringement would be the EVMS (removed from the kernel last year IIRC) and JFS support. Otherwise, I think Darl McBride needs a good ol' LARTing.
Got news for ya: you might be able to reserve all kinds of rights on a specific implementation of the POSIX API's -- but what about the original idea? Hint: If I win the lottery tomorrow, I'll offer Dennis Ritchie (and Khernigan, Thompson, Pike), et al the full rights to the whole thing, gratis. They're the true owners of it all AFAIC.
Not, BTW, that any of this stuff will stop me from compiling and using my own stuff.
I *could* moderate, but it's just too emotional a topic for me FWIW.
C|N>K
May be we should be branding software under the new name GNSUX (GNSUX Not SCO U*iX)...
In the complaint SCO mentions 4000 application developed for their operating system. I remember a higher number being mentioned back when I was involved. I also remember a catalogue of the applications, and a lot of them were really silly apps obviously put there just to make the catalogue bugger. Also, if you'd could count the number of Linux applications, I'm sure you'd reach a number a couple of magnitudes greater.
SCO is as bad (or worse) as Microsoft. They were back then too, although I was blinded because I worked with the stuff all the time.
For example: Back when OpenServer 5 was released, it used a product activation scheme almost identical to Microsofts, which the difference that while corporate customers don't have to activate their copies of XP, every single SCO customer had to call in to activate their system. The activation scheme itself worked pretty much the same.
OpenServer 5, when released, was a huge improvement to the old version, but at release it lacked a lot. One of those useful things was threads. In order to get a pthreads implementation you needed buy DCE. And, if I remember correctly, DCE was shipped by a third party. (I believe that third party is owned by IBM these days, but please double-check that information before you pass it on as fact).
While I worked with SCO products I kept hearing how great SCO was, and how they were the market leaders and the largest UNIX supplier in the word (1 million installations was a common number being passed around). At the same time very people outside the POS (and a few other businesses) business had heard about SCO. As far as I know, SCO got _very_ few new customers during the 90's, but mainly kept selling copies to providers of various POS systems. Another common customer was coporate telephone switch providers.
Most SCO customers, after installing the base OS, started off by installing the full GNU toolchain. The provided tools sucked too much.
There were 3 different C compilers available for OpenServer 5: SCO's compiler, the Intel conpiler, and GCC. GCC was free, so most people used that. Intels compiler provided the best code (but compiled slowly). SCO's tools were somewhere in the middle. I'm still not sure why people payed for them (I'm desperately trying to remember why _I_ used them... I guess I was blind... But me not having to pay for then helped, I guess :-) ).
I still remember the Monterey launch tigether with IBM. I remember having doubds back then even, especially when the SCO representative said that Monterey would take over after AIX as IBM's main UNIX system.
The Monterey launch wasn't the first major launch of amazing new products that was supposed to show the world just how great SCO really was. After SCO purchased UnixWare I remember it being touted as the next big thing, and the product that would change SCO. Naturally, it didn't.
Somehow I doubt the statement SCO made in the complaint about them having Monterey finished in 2001, ready for release. As I mentioned, I left the SCO world in 1997 and even then the star had begin to fade (it didn't take long), after that, nothing was heard about Monterey. Would they have continued working on it for 4 years and then be suprised no one wanted it? I don't think so.
I really hope that this goes to court, and SCO becomes required to show the allegedly finished Monterey product. I'm not so sure they will have anything to show.
I want to know what Linux thinks of all this. Of course he thinks its a pile she0t but it would be cool to get his exact thoughts on the situation of how SC0 is attacking the entire Open Source Community from the last decade or so.
75% of all statistics are made up!
I unfortunately must purchase a copy of SCO 5.0.7 soon for an internal project that only works with it. I have a copy fo the media and instead of a license, does anyone have a keygen? :-) I'd just as soon _not_ give them any more money...
This is where:
http://www.wehavethewayout.com/us/index.asp
We have the way out: escape from unix! yeah, RIGHT!
Of course, SCO hasn't bothered to provide us or the courts with any hard facts so we can't the technical merits of their claims, but just because they bundled their special source code with a Linux distribution doesn't mean that they've shot themselves in that particular toe. However, I've got a feeling SCO's proverbial foot is already perforated.
Bleh!
Below is the correct answer as to why SCO is doing all of this...
[ a ] They want to be bought by IBM.
[ b ] They want to be bought my M$.
[ c ] They wanted to be bought by IBM but the fell through. So now they are shredding all ties to Linux in an attempt to get M$ to but them for their UNIX IP and/or possably start a price war between IBM and M$.
[ d ] SCO is gay.
[ e ] Both c and d.
PS. If you answered correctly you would know to buy SCO stock ASAP, listed as SCOX on Nasdaq.
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
Where is UNISYS today?
last i saw in a big black building off 101 towards san francisco...
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
Then later, a court finds that the car I purchased was manufactured with or contains parts, which are a violation of some intellectual property agreement.
How can I as the consumer be held liable for driving said car?
Bullsh*t.
Poof.
As someone wrote on linux-kernel, if there is code in the linux kernel and in SCO which is identical, it is probably because /SCO/ coders once copied code from linux and incorporated it into SCO. Scroll down a few years to present, SCO hires consultants to compare linux code to SCO's own and hey presto "look its the same code!".
Also, a heavy hint was dropped on linux-kernel by a former SCO employee (iirc) that if one were to look very carefully at the support for a certain filesystem (*cough* 0x83) in the SCO kernel that one would find an example of the type of copying above.
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
I thought, naively of course, that since he was on the side of the "right" in the former case that maybe he had a clue.
This one is so obviously stupid though, that I think I'll have to relegate him to the ranks of "greedy parasites" with most (not all!) of the lawyers I know or have heard of.
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
Curiously enough, Macromedia seems to use it [PNG] as the default vector image format for Fireworks (perhaps even Freehand and Flash), which could make it big fast if they pushed it.
PNG is a raster image format, not vector.
You might be thinking of SVG (scalable vector graphics), which is essentially an XML format for describing vector graphics (note that IIRC the SVG format requires support for PNG and JPEG images, to include said images in an SVG file). None of this, however, makes PNG a vector graphics format by any stretch of the imagination.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
An articlke that totally destroys SCO's position.
http://www.opensource.org/sco-vs-ibm.html
hey, this insight has been stated some 10 times above, and the same was true for all prior incarnations of the sco mindf*ck topic.
I think the argument is valid, but not new.
Ah, I smell microsoft behind all this.
So mod me redundant, too!
~dp
605413? Yes, it's a prime.
The lawsiuts of SCO may very well backfire, as they now claim that Linux infringes SCO/Caldera IP. Siply because the IP in question has long been part of their own SCO/Caldera Linuxes, and according to their own EULA, SCO/Caldera themselves recognize this IP to be correctly released under the GPL. Their EULA can be found here, on SCO.com, alternatively on this maxed-out mirror.
I'm confused. My understanding is that Linux refers to the kernel. So does SCO have a bitch about something in Linux, or in some of the tools that are commonly packaged with Linux and sold as a distro?
If that's the case then why not 86 those items and replace with something else?
Can someone clear that up for me?
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
Didn't Linus say that the kernel was not involved in this issue, becuase he has the last say over what goes into it, and he has not been served any type of papers?
So isn't this more of an issue with GNU and the GNU tools that are bundled as part of the os? So it is not really Linux under the gun, but GNU?
Thanks,
AC
They're in there death throws and it's getting damn ugly.
Hmm... postage gonna be a bitch.
=brian
If there is really an IP problem in Linux, why won't SCO say what it is? Is litigation that important to them or do they not think they have a strong case so they want to do the PR thing for a while first so that when they finally announce what the problem is it will be backpage news. That way, even if it is just a minor issue, they have all this huge PR ahead of time so that nobody will care what the truth is. Come on, SCO. If there is a problem announce what it is. If there isn't a problem, stop this BS.
Nah, they aren't that stupid sco press release
.
SCO Suspends Distribution of Linux Pending Intellectual Property Clarification; Announces Greater Focus on UNIX and SCOx Strategy
SCO Suspends Sales of Linux, Alerts Customers That Linux Is an Unauthorized Derivative of UNIX and That Legal Liability May Extend to Commercial Users SCO Reaffirms Commitment to SCOx, SCO's Growth Strategy Through Web Services
LINDON, Utah, May 14, 2003 -- The SCO® Group (SCO)(Nasdaq: SCOX), the owner of the UNIX operating system, today warned that Linux is an unauthorized derivative of UNIX and that legal liability for the use of Linux may extend to commercial users. SCO issued this alert based on its findings of illegal inclusions of SCO UNIX intellectual property in Linux. The company also indicated that until the attendant risks with Linux are better understood and properly resolved, the company will suspend all of its future sales of the Linux operating system.
"SCO is taking this important step because there are intellectual property issues with Linux," said Chris Sontag, senior vice president and general manager of SCOsource, The SCO Group. "When SCO's own UNIX software code is being illegally copied into Linux, we believe we have an obligation to educate commercial users of the potential liability that could rest with them for using such software to run their business. We feel so strongly about this issue that we are suspending sales and distribution of SCO Linux until these issues are resolved."
SCO will continue to support existing SCO Linux and Caldera OpenLinux customers and hold them harmless from any SCO intellectual property issues regarding SCO Linux and Caldera OpenLinux products.
Going forward, SCO will have a stronger focus on UNIX and the company's growth strategy around Web services, SCOx. The company introduced SCOx in April as the company's Web services framework and plans to introduce new Web services applications from third party developers in August at SCO Forum, the company's annual conference.
"SCO remains committed to servicing our customers and as such, we intend to continue our growth strategy around SCOx -- the Web services framework for small-to-medium businesses and branch offices," said Darl McBride, president and CEO, The SCO Group.
In a separate announcement released today, SCO gave guidance on expected results for its 2nd fiscal quarter. The company expects to report net income of $4.0 million on revenue of $21 million.
In addition, SCO today also posted an analyst report from Gartner to their Web site at www.sco.com/scosource entitled, "SCO Lawsuit Sends a Warning to Linux IS Shops." The executive summary of the report asks whether Linux is safe from encumbrances.
About The SCO Group
The SCO Group (Nasdaq: SCOX) helps millions of customers in more than 82 countries to grow their businesses everyday. Headquartered in Lindon, Utah, SCO has a worldwide network of more than 11,000 resellers and 8,000 developers. SCO Global Services provides reliable localized support and services to all partners and customers. For more information on SCO products and services visit http://www.sco.com
SCO and the associated SCO logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Caldera International, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. UNIX, used under an exclusive license, is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the United States and other countries. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. All other brand or product names are or may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Whether or not SCO has a legitimate claim remains to be seen -- the whole thing seems to be very nebulous without an example of SCO IP which converted into Linux, and then there's the whole "If it was infringing, then why did you have your own Linux distribution" question.
I suspect one reason that SCO isn't being specific is that if they were, it would take very little time for the Open Source community to re-write the code in a clean-room environment. And that would diminish their argument.
In any case, SCO has hit on a good point -- one of the problems with Open Source software is the whole intellectual property thing. It's quite possible for somebody else's IP to make it into the Linux Base, either intentionally or unintentionally. For example, what if there's some crazy Microsoft patent on filesystems that is inadverently infringed in ext3?
It appears to me that SCO, by threatening to sue end users, is pursuing a 'scorched earth policy' -- the idea being that "if we're going down, we're going to take as many people with us as we can. So, it's in your best interest to save us."
By theatening those end users, there's a chill that could come over adoption of open-source products. All Microsoft will ever need to do is say "Sure, the SCO lawsuit didn't turn into anything. But, how many other SCOs are out there? Do you really want to use Linux and risk all that litigation?"
(On the other hand, the letter's assertion that commercial software design processes include verifying legality of the IP used is laughable. When was the last time an engineer said "Hey! I have a great idea to solve this problem. I'd better see if it's patented before I code it up."?)
Plus, who are those assets valuable to? If by some unimaginable chance SCO technology is woven so deep into the design they do kill Linux the kernel, the world just shifts to BSD. The Hurd goes from a sleepy project with potential to the central focus of a million geeks and lots of companies. Starting from scratch, people use the best ideas of HURD/L4/EROS/etc. and build a real next generation system, with documented non-patented roots in research work.
Hmmm... that's an interesting possibility. Losing the lawsuit could give the FOSS community a kick in the pants to develop a really good next-gen OS. I've been reading about those various efforts, but the going is slow.
Of course, losing the lawsuit will bring all the cockroaches out of the woodwork, and generate an avalance of IP infringement claims. That wouldn't be pleasant.
And SCO with a billion bucks would be an unholy terror.
but what part did SCO take in writing linux?
I don't know, but they *distributed* it which means that they granted everyone rights to the portions of their code that they distributed.
The suit has some significant ramifications. If company A distributes product B which is licensed under the GPL, if they later discover that a version of product B infringes on their patents, they may be bound by the GPL not to pursue claims. This may create an unfriendly environment where companies are unwilling to adopt an opensource strategy unless they completely control their distribution channels. But hey, this seems like RMS's dream come true. This is an issue, and my concern is that if IBM wins, they may feel threatened by the GPL too.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
There are nukes in Iraq.
A jewish conspiracy controls the world's banks.
Linux is illegal.
Repeat it over and over and over.
You bet it'll hurt Linux. It'll plant a seed of doubt. CEO's got to be CEO's by covering their asses.
SCO / MS will probably delay and delay to keep this alive as long as possible and giving it a lot of press. Even when they lose, they will have gained something: planting doubt it people's minds. Look how well it worked with OS/2.
...has anyone flipped this Pud's way? This is prime FC material.
smash
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
I mean the stock price isn't that high. How about all of us get together and stage a grass roots corporate take over. Asking for a vote to fire current management would be great.
No.
I can't think of any of it that would be worth contributing to either Linux or {Free,Open,Net}BSD.
Unfortunately, what may make it hard for folks to deal with in the legal case, is that there was very little that was clever or elegant in the SystemV kernel -- any item you might find mentioned in a POSIX standard (i.e a process, an inode, etc.) was pretty much stored in the kernel in the most trivial way possible.
So someone else implementing to that standard could easily pick the same trivial implementation to store the similar entities, and how do you prove whether it was from someone who's seen the SystemV code, and whether they "stole" it?
But basically, I suspect it will end up like a plagurism suit for music, where someone tries to claim that someone "stole" the 1-4-5 chord progression from their song.
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
"...much of Linux has been built from contributions by numerous unrelated and unknown software developers..."
And then in the very next paragraph:
"Many Linux contributors were originally UNIX developers who had access to UNIX source code distributed by AT&T and were subject to confidentiality agreements, including confidentiality of the methods and concepts involved in software design."
So my question is, which way was it?
I know what the Internet is, what the hell is this Interweb business?!
ESR's possition paper is an excellent reference for the former case. This new letter makes that case look crafty if not honest by compairison. It's apparent that Caldera has goon off the deep end as the letter is laughable on it's own. Just look at this nonsense:
... As a consequence of Linux's unrestricted authoring process, it is not surprising that Linux distributors do not warrant the legal integrity of the Linux code provided to customers.
What shit on a stick, the situation is about oposite their oppinon! The recent problems Blair has given the New York Times show that NO writning process works the way Caldera claims their closed source development does. My experience with closed source software is that the "responsible" compnay has no clue about who actually wrote their code, nor do they care. Linux distributions, however, MUST know the copyright holder so that they don't get stung by including important code that someone later claims ownership to. Whereas corporate code is copyright to the company, free code is generally copyrighted by the cheif author. Indeed, I've read more about code going the other way than I've read about free coders stealing inferior ideas and code that has never seen the light of day.
Therefore legal liability that may arise from the Linux development process may also rest with the end user. ... Similar to analogous efforts underway in the music industry, we are prepared to take all actions necessary to stop the ongoing violation of our intellectual property or other rights.
One of these things is not like the other, let's see if we can tell. The RIAA used profits from it's death grip on US music sales and radio play to crush Napster and MP3.com. They then proceeded to harrass individual users of peer to peer services and indexers of files. Caldera, a fringe player with one fewer procuct today than yesterday, is going to do what to Red Hat, IBM and other distributions? For obsensibly including code into a kernel 10 years ago? Then what will they do to individual users? They can kiss my ass. If their actual "evidence" of wrong doing is as flimsy as the reasoning in this letter, there will be nothing left of them after the first hearing.
Darl McBride, you worry about this being "unpopular"? Wake up, it's too stupid to be taken seriously Your efforts to own things you contributed little or nothing too reek of disrepect of intelectual property and your broad deffintions make a moquery of legitimate claims. Do us all a favor, give yourself a golden parachute, kick yourself in the balls a few times, say, "I'm sorry" to all your customers and the rest of the free software world and call it even. Your company won't have much to reward you with when all of this is said and done.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I doubt that IBM or Redhat would buy out SCO... But what about Microsoft? Wouldn't Microsoft love to own the patents that SCO has... Then they could continue this assult on the Linux community to a larger scale... scary though, but entirely possible...
I'm concerned that when the (interesting) parent post speaks of "POS system" above, some readers will think this refers to a "Point of Sale system". Please be advised, in this context it means "Piece of Shit system".
no need to thank me.
-pyrrho
Why? Are they immune to this sort of harassment?
;-)
Linux is taking heat because it is threatening "the established power structures". If the BSD's had been able to go open first they would probably be in this type of situation today themselves, but I wouldn't be sitting here and teasing you about it.
Quack, quack.
It looks like we have our first ever corporate suicide bomber. Hell bent to blow themselves out of existance and take as many firms as possible down with them.
My rights don't need management.
I couldn't remember where I'd read about the Novell/UC Berkley licensing issue, here it is in the FreeBSD handbook (an amazingly thorough book!). A little history.
Quack, quack.
Anybpdy knows if Linus has commented on this issue at all?
How much do you thing can SCO collect from Microsoft for this nicely big FUD?
Presumably, timing is important. Caldera was originally a Linux company, not much different from Red Hat. But over the course of events, they negotiated to get ownership of the Unix IP. Now, I presume that if they act in a timely manner, they would be permitted by the courts to get their house in order with respect to IP issues. Therefore, they would be allowed to go ahead with lawsuits that seek to protect their Unix IP. But, if what they claim is true, then Linux is a mix of copyright and copyleft code. Obviously, copyright and copyleft are polar opposites. SCO cannot simply collect royalties from anyone using Linux, as that would be attempting to damage the copyleft of the GPL. I mean, it seems that in that case what we have is an IP no-man's land. SCO has no right to Linux, and the general public has no right to it. I can't see any alternative, then, to a painstaking process of separating copyright and copyleft code. (Okay, copyright is probably not the right term, because they are more likely to claim violation of trade secrets. But it's the same idea.)
So, what then of Caldera, the Linux company? Presumably, their license was similar to Red Hat's license, which disclaimed any indemnification for IP violations. In other words, Caldera was a service company, providing support contracts for Linux. So, maybe they would be free from lawsuits from their customers. However, they would be required to consider their customers as committing IP violations against the Unix IP. There is absolutely no way they could violate the GPL and grant any kind of waiver of royalties to customers who bought Caldera Linux.
In any case, we have to wonder what kind of due diligence the Caldera executives undertook before they acquired rights to the Unix IP. And does that due diligence, or lack thereof, affect their legal position. I mean, imagine if they knew that Linux contained violations of the Unix IP. If, at the same time, they were negotiating to acquire rights to the Unix IP, and they knew the requirements of the GPL on Linux, then they made a horrible business decision -- one that cannibalized their Linux business. I mean, what were they thinking?! That they would use the Unix IP to dominate the Linux market? That they didn't understand the GPL, which prohibits using IP to dominate copyleft software?
The way I feel right now, it's like that duck in the AFLAC commercial, which walks out of the barbershop shaking it's head and going "Aaaaahhh!"
REDMOND, Washington - March 10, 2003 - Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT), the proven owner of the patent for Most Hated Company of All Time, today announced that it has filed legal action against The SCO® Group (SCO) (NASDAQ: SCOX) in the State Court of Washington, for misappropriation of corporate image, torturous interference, unfair competition and breach of contract. The complaint alleges that SCO made concentrated efforts to improperly destroy the monetary value of Microsoft's image as Most Hated Company of All Time, particularly Most Hated Company of All Time in the Information Technology sector, to benefit SCO's licensing division.
:)
Taken from: Microsoft files lawsuit against SCO
It's funny. Laugh.
Yahoo has the following Financial Profile information on SCO:
Market Capitalization $40.2M
Book Value (mrq) $0.67
Earnings (ttm) -$1.15
Earnings (mrq) -$0.06
Cash (mrq) $0.41
If present trends continue, that cash is going to run out.
[Insert pithy quote here]
damn, SCO has their goons over here. They are making me pay up or else. I guess I have to splash them with some liquid LSD then.
If you want to apply for a patent, you can publish the stuff, but you have a VERY limited window in which you can file for the patent afterwards (less than a year).
If it was in textbooks before, and you didn't write them, it's prior art and you cannot patent.
why don't they suspend sco.com?s t=www.sco. com
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?ho
Apache/1.3.14 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.7.1 OpenSSL/0.9.6 PHP/4.0.3pl1 on Linux.
For example, when folks began downloading massive quantities of music from various Internet channels, corporations realized that this posed a threat to their current methods, as did the CD to tapes, tapes to LPs, LPs to live performances, etc. However, the top management and boards of directors of these large companies have no imagination, no style, no tact, no nothing. They know only one thing... It is commonly known as "the bottom line." What it means is, "We have the inalienable right to eternal perpetually increasing profits."
To continue our example of the music industry, we will note that instead of seeking ways to make the changes work for the company, the aforementioned managers and directors (hereinafter idiots) want to maintain stability in a business that is inherently unstable. This stability is artificial and is achieved through litigation, just as the artificial monopoly provided for "intellectual" property is achieved through law.
The idiots abuse the legal system in order to maintain their bottom line and will continue to do so as long as the courts allow it. The RIAA does this. The MPAA does this. Now SCO is jumping on the "e-Litigation" bandwagon. Who cares anyway... SCO is yesteryear's news. The future is Linux. And if there is some code in there that belongs to SCO, which I doubt, then it is already done because once released in Linux, it will remain in use forever. There will always be some server out there, some desktop out there, some strange hack that will contain this code for lack of being updated to the next version, which is "cleaned" of the offending code. What are you going to do? Make Linux illegal throughout the galaxy because of this? Hang Linus for it? Or, figure that the code wasn't making you any money anyway and spend the would-be litigation funds on marketing efforts, on product line expansion, on research and development, on performing services for valuable customers... and on the million other things that SCO might do, in order to secure a good bottom line through honest, ethical, and otherwise positive and constructive means?
Oh, wait... Their bottom line demands that they abuse the court system, as if they're betting on a semi-fixed basketball game.
When I read the letter I thought it was somewhat reasonable, though without merit... until I got to the RIAA part. At that moment I just had to double-check with my NTP-synced clock to make sure it wasn't April 1st...
Is this the official second fools day in one year?
Jobs? Which jobs?
...believe it or not, is 888-GO-LINUX (888-465-4689). Just FYI...
PNG is a raster image format, not vector.
.png, and you can throw it in your favorite web browser to see what it looks like flat ... and then open it and have all your vector goodness there waiting for you.
You might be thinking of SVG (scalable vector graphics)
I checked this out, and you seem to be quite correct, from a shallow examination of reference materials. However... I kid you not when I say that Fireworks' default file format appears to be PNG -- and there's got to be some kind of devilry going on here, because when you're using FW, you have everything you'd expect from a vector format: editable paths/shapes, perfectly scaling text, multiple layers. But when you save it, it's
This all seemed normal an hour ago when I thought PNG was a vector format, but now it seems terribly mysterious.
Tweet, tweet.
I noticed there were some open positions at SCO. Maybe if you have the qualifications or are interested in a career, you should consider applying? ;-)
Whoa. That is kinda spooky. Could the program be hiding some file-specific metadata elsewhere?
:)
(And for curiousity's sake, open a "normal" png file and see what happens...
Can we sue SCO for extortion if court finds that cut-and-pasted code is small ?
The correct sentence is:
Suck my balls and lick my ass.
No. "Suck my balls" and "lick my ass" are both independent clauses. When you have 2 independent clauses like that, seperate them with a comma.
Even without corporate support, these guys would start afresh with "lessons learned" and in a few years we could be beyond where we are now (think about it, total redesign knowing what u do now...). That's a loser right there for SCO. Angry geeks who've lost a GREAT tool and need to rebuild it. The SAME geeks that have produced as OS comparable to most commercial UNIXs much less win-pffffftttpt as far as technical "quality". SCO is going to take on those characters? Good luck... SCO'll lose based solely tenacity.
But now they'll take on IBM, Oracle, Intel, etc? This will be good to watch just for the carnage...
Computer Science is Applied Philosophy
I'm tired of companies like SCO and M$ taking on the open source community through FUD. So the open source community should strike back. If SCO does not amicably settle all issues related to Linux in 30 days, then every open source project should add a simple clause to the licensing agreement that prohibits the use of the open source software on SCO systems. If SCO Unix systems can't be used with GNU or Apache or Mozilla or MySql who will buy their products? No one. If there are no future releases of Apache or other open source products for SCO no one will come. Then the next time some company decides to bite the hand that feeds it, they will perhaps think first.
Ignoring the fact that it defies all sense of credibility to think that this sort of "erasure" could actually occur, it doesn't carry any legal weight anyways (IANAL, but I checked with one about this recently because I was curious). By not being forthright about the specifics of the violation, SCO has not shown due dilligence to minimize the damage that could be caused by allowing the infraction to go unstopped. IBM and any other companies that SCO wants to sue about this won't have to pay one dime to SCO on this matter, and can even independantly file countersuits to cover their own legal costs.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Many yesars ago, the place I work had a timekeeping system that ran on XENIX on an Original IBM PC. This system was eliminated sometime before I got the job (1990). Knowing that I was learning UNIX at the time, someone gave me the set of SCO XENIX Sys V manuals. I do not remember the exact wording, but the "fine print" in the manuals, and on the box led me to belive at the time that SCO meant Santa Cruz Operation -- i.e. the Santa Cruz offices of Microsoft Corp. I would not swear to it now, but I thought that the Microsoft logo was on the box.
I DEFINATELY Remember *at the minimum* that there was some reference to Redmond, Washington.
Think about it - Santa Cruz Operation must have been an operation run by SOME other company, otherwise why would it be named that way?
Seeing that this fits so nicely with Microsofts FUD campaign, somebody should check this out.
Unisys was notoriously difficult to work with. A few years back I worked at a large corporation on a product that, among other things, generated GIF files. We attempted to get a license from Unisys. Their demands were outrageous. The GIF file generation was a very minor component of a large and expensive software product but they wanted 10% of our revenue! Our patent attorney finally gave up negotiating and told us to go ahead and release the software, saying "If those a$$holes catch us, I'm sure they're infringing on some of our patents." Had Unisys agreed to more reasonable terms they would have had a steady revenue stream for the last six years.
SCO won't get far with this. IBM probably has some patents they can counter-sue against SCO, and they'll settle the whole thing out of court. Ditto for Sun and any other large company they might go after. And who's going to buy anything from SCO after this?
That's flat out 100% wrong.
OS/2 was developed with the master source code repositories running on Xenix for OS/2 1.0 and OS/2 1.1, but that's it. Actually to be technically accurate the master copies ran on MVS, since IBM considered their copies to be the masters and Microsoft's to be shadow copies, but....
Once the first IDW build of NT was done (sometime in 1989), NT ran 100% on NT.
So from 1988 to 1989 NT's source repository ran on OS/2, but it's been NT ever since.
Check out Helen Custer's Inside Windows NT or G Pascal Zachary's Showstopper! for more info.
I just wandered over to one of Macromedia's support pages and noted the following statement:
As little sense as the paragraph makes if you try to parse it closely, this second "chunk" has gotta be what contains the vector information. Maybe the setup is something like the TIFF/PICT preview that some EPS files have? Sigh. I'm kindof disappointed...
Tweet, tweet.
Excuse me, but why in the FUCK would they suspend the sales of THEIR OWN PRODUCT if they OWN THE LICENSE for the IP contained therein?
This is fucking ridiculous. Burn in hell SCO you pieces of fucking shit!!!!!!
~GoRK
Is it time to start chanting "Linux is dying!" yet?
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." - Oscar Wilde
Interesting.
SVG with encoded/embedded PNG data may offer similar capabilities in a standards-compliant form, though I doubt there are any programs currently available that take advantage of this.
Ah well. Hopefully vector graphics will finally catch on before we're all squinting at microscopic icons on a 32,000x18,000 LCD display...
's not Unix
asses
SCO (like Microsoft) views Linux as competitive and they are trying to kill it with a lawsuit.
Not a very good buisness practice. They're worse than microsoft.
"This seems like it will be about as successful as the whole GIF ordeal a few years back. Where is UNISYS today? Is SCO litigating itself into irrelevance"
Cadence sued Avant! some time ago over stolen code and settled for over $200M (story here). This case seems more like the SCO case if SCO's allegations are true. The good news is that this case will probably drag out in court for a decade, which is probably why SCO doen't want to reveal the offending code. They want to collect royalties for a decade, not have the offending code replaced in a year.
Vote for Pedro
A herd of wild eyed half crazed Gnus, look I see them on the horizon. The problem is the Hurd seems to be wearing roller skates while playing ice hockey. The goals are almost impossible, without help.
I really hope some more great innovaters like Stallman get on the band wagon and join the Hurd.
Sure would be nice if all unemployed software tech people got together and created something wonderful to sink Microshaft, SCO and the other companies that rarely innovate but can buy or litigate their way to dominance.
That way tech support would be run by companies with a vested interest in SUPPORT not software sales. The revolution would be complete the user would benefit. The instances of logic bombs that shut you down when a new release is due, would melt away, because the software could not hide them away anymore!
The presence of a rat is well regarded in Japan, it is the sign of a good harvest.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
The Oalliance group's resopnse [http://www.olliancegroup.com/opensource/scoibm.ph p] seems to hint that ibcs2 is the problem, and further that the Intel ABI is the core of the problem (read: system call interface and exec(2) interface). The system call interface governs stack parameter order and register designations and arguments; the exec(2) interface (along with the ELF spec) designates the layout of the stack frame and memory segments for starting applications.
The odd thing about this is that the ABI document that lays all this out was freely available from SCO around 1991-1993.
And here I thought the ibcs2 module had simply disappeared due to lack of demand. My suspicion is that they are pissed because people are using Linux instead of buying SCO to run legacy small-business apps that used to run on SCO and now can be run on Linux without modification.
If that is the case, that is a small number of end-users to sue.
IANAL but as far as I can see unless there is a direct violation in the kernel itself, they can go fuck themselves. The kernel is all that matters, everything else is independant. If say for instance the RPM package contains a violation then SCO can take it up with the writers of RPM etc.
"The damage done to SCO's business is obvious"
It is not at all obvious what the damange is to SCO.
SCO was not a market leader in UNIX at the time the alleged theft of code took place; they were already irrelevant in the bigger scheme of things as Windows NT Server had a significantly higher share of market than SCO. I daresay they were closer to BSDI in terms of marketshare, and they ended up like BSDI in terms of marketshare.
Pushing that aside for the moment, what commercial gain did "Linux" make based on the allegedly stolen code? Or perhaps its more relevant to ask, how did it harm SCO? More importantly did the alleged theft give Linux a commercial advantage over SCO they would not otherwise have?
I don't believe IBM stole any code from SCO, but even accepting that they did, SCO wasn't harmed in any plausible scenario.
I would use this analogy...SCO was and is dying from a debilitating disease. Everybody knew they would die 10 years ago, and they're finally dying now. So a janitor comes by and knocks the cord out of the heart monitor and SCO says "Ah HA! You killed me!".
Perhaps that helps put it in perspective?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
"What they have done is steal our properties. They steal our codes and make it free beer. This is wrong. But we do something very beautiful. We sue IBM, we sue Linus, we sue everyone who touches free-beer software. We will sue them all for 1 billions dollars. All will be sued, none will not be sued. We will sue with lawyers, bullets and shoes."
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
It is interesting that the submitter mentions Unisys in a story about SCO.
It turns out that SCO is the only variant of Linux that Unisys officially supports on their mainframes.
Linux Comes to Unisys Servers (via SCO)
Well maybe not anymore if there isn't an SCO Linux.
(wondering how long the link will survive)
Lets take a step back here for a minute.
We know that SCO has been selling Linux, and as such has been complying with their obligations under the GPL.
Would this not therefore imply that anyone who has purchased SCO's Linux incarnation would, accordingly have all the rights available to them under the GPL, and as such, as they have already released "Linux", all possible IP Claims for linux become null and void.
Or to put it in other words: Linux may have IP that is SCO's or not, however, the fact that SCO have sold Linux, and have licensed these releases under the GPL, then anyone who has purchased said releases may now re-release, accordingly.
My 2c
And anyone designing a public web site and willing to discard 10% of customers [by abandoning GIF for PNG] is also a fringe player.
Ten percent? I haven't had a single complaint about people not being able to view the images of my PNG-based site. The fact is that Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.01 and later, Netscape 4.5 and later, and all versions of Mozilla and Konqueror can display PNG images at least as well as they display still GIF images. The biggest thing I can see that keeps PNG from replacing GIF is that IE does not support PNG's animated cousin out of the box, making it unsuitable for animated advertisements.
Will I retire or break 10K?
everyone knows linux users hate to spend money, but can't we all just throw in a few bucks to have someone put a bullet in this fuckwad's skull?
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
any and all patents on System V expired in the year 2000
Not so fast. Patents subsisting in the United States as of 1995 or so (when the United States signed a patent cooperation treaty) have been extended to grant + 17 years (the old term) or filing + 20 years (the new term), whichever is later. And don't you think for a minute that SCO won't team up with drug companies and lobby for a Cher Patent Term Harmonization Act.
Worst case scenario, they were pending for 2 years
Worse than that: Worst case is that SCO pulled a Rambus and kept the patents pending for nine years.
Will I retire or break 10K?
You simply cannot tell me that SCO's actions are not the result of Microsoft's using them as a proxy to implement a strategy against open source. Re-read published MS letters outlining likely strategies to slow the adoption of open source. Look at what SCO needs- Could it be cash????? What does MS have the most of? It's sure as hell not innovation, pal. Suddenly a ---Linux Vendor--- ("credibility") and an owner of some core Unix IP (more "credibility") gives it to the ** entire ** open source community (a prime MS target) in the shorts after very visibly taking on the largest possible target available, IBM (guaranteed publicity?). Someone in Redmond has been talking to someone at SCO, and has made one hell of a handshake deal. You cannot tell me that SCO's actions won't sow seeds of FUD in the minds of managers that were previously considering Linux solutions. Should SCO win or lose, who benefits?
Conspiracy nut, my ass
SCO was a little slow on the uptake here. They claim Linux code violates their IP. They file a lawsuit about it. After they make this claim they continue to distribute Linux under the GPL.
If Linux does contain SCO's IP, they gave the whole world a GPL License to it!!
Now they are trying to close the barn door after the horse left.
Religion is the main cause of atheism.
Well, at least Microsoft won't have to worry over being sued for ever installing linux on a system.
"Engineers do the work of man, Physicists do the work of God"
Unfortunately this latest move to cease distribution of Linux may be seen by the courts as a good faith measure to come under compliance with the GPL now that they are aware that the code is in there. True, it's taken them quite a while to do it (especially since they presumably knew about the violations long before filing suit), but they may (successfully) argue that they required that time to handle the business logistics of the matter--and I wouldn't be surprised to see a court buy that.
"If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
Back in the late 80s, there was a wonderful licensing battle for IP in the form of Tetris. The story is a long read but it's a good example.
Regardless of how inane this scare tactic is, it's still important that recipients of SCO's letter take appropriate action, or you actually could expose yourself to some legal risk. Here are my recommendations:
- be sure to save the postmark from the envelope.
- it's just a formality, but have your legal team take a look at it and actually note the inconsistencies
- the inconsistencies document should be dated and signed by a notary public
- wipe your ass with SCO's letter and send it back to SCO. literally.
- be sure to photocopy the letter before the above step.
I hope this has been some help.Oops. Did I say I was a "lawyer"? I meant to say "alcoholic". my bad.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
So lets say the SCO's little PR stunt causes a few companies to get cold feet and stop using Linux or not switch to Linux. Whats the loss? Those companies get to pay more money to use an inferior product.
I see open source taking over the market in a very slow fasion over a long period of time, a little setback won't kill it. Sure, the MS balance sheet might look a little better in the short term, and some investors will be happy with the money they made. Linux is the flagbearer, and you gotta expect that the people it threatens to do everything they can to take shots at it.
But like that cyborg in Terminator, it just gets up and keeps coming! Maybe if they put Linux into molten iron... hmmmm... I should be a MS strategist.
Meh.
--- If I had a funny sig too, you might be laughing now.
... an IP pissing contest with Microsoft. They settled for approximately $150 million.
Google for "caldera microsoft settlement" if you don't believe me.
So you can't dismiss the lawsuit out of hand just because IBM is much bigger than Caldera.
Although you can read the filing, laugh hysterically, and THEN dismiss it. Which is what I did.
All I've gotta say is.. Mac OS X :) the icons are scalable, and you can increase the size easily on higher res displays. I imagine Longhorn will include this as well, MS always seems to see what Apple does and copy it..
I beleive that was an IBM hardrive reference.
Is it kernel? Is it GNU extensions/utilities? What if I use 2.0 (pre IBM)??? By not telling us which parts infringe SCO is cynically allowing the base of infringing use to expand presumably to enlarge its collections under tort.
In addition, by not allowing the community to fix the problem, SCO is basically showing that their intent was never to stop the IP infringment but to collect damages. Seems to me that this would be pretty damaging in court to have to admit that the infringing could have been easily stopped however that would interrupt their hoped-for revenue stream.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
Linux has been around what, twelve years? SCO is a coalition of former linux companies who came together a year or so ago to "standardize" linux. They generated and sold the product and then one day they suddenly realized that there were questions about their child's genetics? I think not... more likely they just got greedy and want the sandbox to themselves.... Did Bill buy them?
Too bad they are protected by Windows Server 2003.
cpeterso
He was strong and brave and worked for the open side of the Source....
Then he was seduced by the Dark Side and became Darth SCO, and attempted to destroy all the other Jedi.
Until defeated by IBM Kenobi.
When did Micro$oft buy SCO? There's no doubt that they are behind all this in some way or another! How else would they get the guts to go after IBM with the evidence they got. What they are doing is worth millions to M$! Thanks Bill! Don't worry we won't forget it!!!
Yea, my shareholders...
I give up, some one get me when Elvis returns...
Just a point, here. If you bought that code from Caldera under the GNU license, specifically because it was an open-source, free-as-in-speech, and for whomever really wanted it, free-as-in-beer license,
...then suing all other distributions for "royalties" would significantly decrease the value of your purchase that you had made, because it would render your OS into obsolensence, which would then make your programs and data effectively inaccessible to you.
and therefore found huge added value because you realised the amount of code that would be added by others to such a "viral" license...
In other words, in an era where most products are "end-of-lifed" in 3-5 years, Linux has no end-of-life under the GPL, and therefore is far more valuable. And their violation of the GPL destroys that.
Sounds like a class-action lawsuit to me.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Stinky Comuter Operations, nuff said
Steve Ballmer probably did his monkey boy dance all over the office when he heard about this...
The current strategy, other than a "buy me now" advertisement, might also be an attempt to deflect criticism from shareholders that they drove the company into the ground. At least now they can blame all their woes on the "Linux pirates" and say they even went to court to get their own back.
Personally I wish the whole thing could be hurried up and brought to trial so that it can go away. The FUD that is coming out of SCO right now is highly damaging to Linux. Fortunately nobody in the corporate world (at least publicly) seems to be taking any notice, yet...
From the 05/12/03 FUD letter: ."
"We believe that Linux infringes on our UNIX intellectual property and other rights. . . . Similar to analogous efforts underway in the music industry, we are prepared to take all actions necessary to stop the ongoing violation of our intellectual property or other rights. . .
[obviously a purported denial/revocation of license.]
From the GPL:
"4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is
void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. "
HA! SCO's obvious "attempt" to deny/revoke the licenses of others to use "their" portion of the kernel code obviates all their own rights to copy, modify, distribute the kernel code.
I might have to sue them for declaratory relief in CA just to prove this point.
BTW, SCO's "attempted" revocation is invalid after their acceptance [by use] of GPL'd code in view of the following provisions of the GPL:
"4. . . . However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance."
Yeah. PDF rendering engine is nice. Though I don't know why they didn't just stick with the original NeXT PostScript engine.
What kind of idiot would still be holding on to SCO shares? Its action against IBM is so lame that no settlement $ is likely. What is more likely is the humiliating kick in the crotch (and consequent bankruptcy) that is SUMMARY JUDGMENT FOR DEFENDANT.
Caldera (owner of the "SCO" brand) are just peeved that Linus described them as "a parasite".
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Cleaning their hands so that they can pursue damages against the vendors- not so likely. If they're not telling the "infringers" what they've done right now, they can't turn around and ask for damages later.
This is all a moot point. I doubt they have anything in hand and are now stuck with the reality that IBM won't buy them and plans on litigating this annoyance away. The thrashing around is a result of the coming to grips with said reality.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Correct me if I'm wrong, but SCO used to be Caldera, right? So it seems to me that SCO is the only group that would produce people that are both working on the kernel and have access to SCO code. Seems like this is a case for a private detective to find the employees that did it before suing people...
Help us build a better map!
I predicted this weeks ago.
Microsoft owns SCO, check with Google if you must.
Gift from MS to MS.
I had a spare $100 so I'm trying to buy a controlling interest.
I recognize an attempt at a joke, but in the interest of correctness, I feel a need to point out that Yahoo! Finance says SCO's market capitalization is in the neighborhood of $43.3 million. How you plan to turn $100 into $22 million is the subject of your next joke.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Does this mean anyone was actually buying it before? Or did they finally realize they have no chance of actually selling a product?
Rob.
"For Every Pleasure There's a Tax".
The Man
Is the sig line in the SCO FUD letter a typo or is this retard's name really "Darl" ? If so, I can hear the chanting of the croud now: "D - A - R - _ - L" [coming soon to a stadium event near you.]
From where I'm standing, SCO has been irrelevant for a very long time... :)
There used to be a kernel module you could use in the 2.2.x or maybe even 2.1.x days which would allow you to modify the TCP/IP signature in various ways; if they were really going to attempt this, then every distribution would merely have to enable such a technique with random "signatures.", right?
Why didn't they react earlier?
Chribo
Check YahooFinance, Hillary Rosen is the new boss of SCO!! We're dooooomed!
for(int cnt=0; cnt =100 ; cnt++)
printf("hello world");
that SCO has copied code from Linux into there kernel. After sending out these letters I guess we Linux users should start a class action suit once the first legal stuff is settled to sink them into oblivion.
Hell why don't they just run one of their tactics against the SCO and do something productive instead of killing innocent people?
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
UnitedLinux should eject SCO. Our boycott (permanent for SCO) should eventually extend to UnitedLinux if they continue to retain SCO as a partner. That would mean Connectiva, SuSE, and TurboLinux would be at risk of boycott just for being associated. If UnitedLinux won't do the right thing, these 3 companies should leave and start a new thing together, without SCO being involved at all.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
as they claim that every linux distribution has that tainted code, it doesn't leave much space where that tainted code is, it pretty much has to be in the gpl'd parts.
the business plan behind this move(even if they had a case, which they probably don't) leaves me baffled though, like they would be able to collect on every company on earth.
heck.. it's almost like starting to sue people for using hyperlinks and trying to get them all to pay. it's just begging. and not everybody likes beggars.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
PDF rendering engine is nice. Though I don't know why they didn't just stick with the original NeXT PostScript engine.
Reportedly because doing so would have required them to pay per-copy licensing fees to Adobe, while writing DisplayPDF using their own implementation of the PDF standards didn't.
Some (old) speculation from MacKido
deus does not exist but if he does
What I find annoying is that material about other products seems to get kicked off quickly from the front pages of many sites and some even disappear. This is unfortunate because information is essential in making informed decisions. Microsoft products have been unable to survive in a free market nor compete on technical merits, and then there are the image problems, security issues, fines.
The market has already changed and Microsoft has not. RedHat, Mandrake, Suse, and OS X are all far easier to install, use and maintain. And these are more secure. In other words, they are for all practical purposes, drop in replacements for most home and many business desktops, minus the games. For games, there's Playstation and Gamecube. The market has already said what it has to say about xbox
The U.S. economy is hurting so badly that deflation is now a danger. Ballmer, Allchin, and Gates' insistence on trying to keep a dead company afloat is just causing further harm. Enough all ready, if the executives haven't exercised their options by now, tough. Businesses and agencies now realize that by going with the better (i.e. non-Microsoft) systems, not only do they gain more flexibility, but can spend their time working rather than repair.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
This may be a bit simplistic, but since SCO and IBM both release Linux under the GPL, and assuming the code claimed as SCO IP is in the IBM source and not in the SCO source, then a diff between the source trees should reveal the IP code?
Ok, potentially this is a huge job. But it should be worth trying. It would be most amusing if there is a version of SCO and a version of IBM for which diff says "no difference." Files not related to the suit can be dismissed - there's no need to diff the versions, for instance, of gcc, the scsi module, etc, so the scope of this job can be reduced significantly.
Finally for each potentially infringing source file just split the job out to all slashdotters (IBM might even lend a hand), SETI-style. With suitable checks and balances, the existence or otherwise of the IP code can be established whether or not SCO wish to release details.
Someone forgot the "http://" in the HREF tag and you got pointed to "http://slashdot.org/fuckedcompany.com"
...which, obviously, does not exist. Try this.
I don't give hoot for SCO, its lawsuits or its problems.
Linux distros have been publicly available for years now, freely downloadable or bought in stores with doc included.
For SCO to come along now and say there is infringement is no less than if some other idiot pops up to tell us he has a patent on the wheel and we owe him for ever tire on our car.
Go SCO ! Continue to cover yourself in ridicule and drown once and for all.
RAMBUS tried, but even backed by Intel they failed to own the SDRAM market. Now they have even lost Intel.
I will happy to see SCO go the same way.
Bring on the wood, I feel like dishing out some justice, medieval-style !
They dont reveal which code is offending their rights because they know they have lost long ago on the technical side and really would gain nothing by having any pieces of their code removed, they just want some cash to stay afloat a little longer.
Too bad they make so much noice on their way out of bussiness.
goodbye SCO
SCO seems to continue the tried and true tradition. See the relevant Jargon File entry.
--
I refuse to use
Didn't Microsoft have some ownership in SCO at some stage?
Neither would suprise me, after all everyone is trying to control where the money flows.
Rubbishing SCO is not useful, they played thier part in the UNIX arena. There actions are predicatable regardless of M$ involvement
SCO would have an interest in doing this as they have a very rich set of applications that run under SCO. It's not much of a stretch for them to see Linux as a threat as SCO apps can be made to run on linux, This in itself is a serious threat to M$ in the SME market. I think it's understandable that SCO are on the offensive.
Please, before you flame me I'd like you to know I am an advocate of Open Source and I now work for IBM. I think it's important to maintain a balanced perspective. If this is a FUD a court case will expose it as that, if it isn't then we will finally be able to test the GPL properly in a court, possibly backed by IBM legal muscle.
Back atcha SCO with a big angry blue penguin!!!!
...but the Hurd. I know it isn't really finished yet but I think we can all agree that it is still better than SCO Unix.
OK so I have a copy of SCO Linux. I also have SuSE and Connectiva.
The first three discs are meant to be the same apart from images under the UnitedLinux agreement.
Guess which one is different?
And I don't understand why all of you are complaining. Wait till the facts come out in court. We DO have proof. We do not have any intention of being bought and we do not have any intention of getting unpopular. We probably will get much more popularity when we prove ourselves right. We are doing fine already, I see a link up there regarding our stock.
/. article about that.
So wait and you will see. I'd be really happy to come back to a
maybe all they have left is their bite?
Suncoast Linux - Sarasota, FL
... doing quite well. I just had lunch with a Senior VP yesterday, and he was updating me on their plot for world domination (for which they're being sued by microsoft). Seriously... they're doing quite well; they've branched out way past the big-iron Unisys of even a few years ago... one thing I didn't know... they handle _lots_ of check clearing internationally... 70% in Australia, 75% in UK (I think), and they just took over for Washington Mutual here in America on their rise. An interesting "service" oriented approach, but you've got to change to survive. Actually, most of their business seems to be more "service" related than "server" related.
-- Is "Sig" copyrighted by www.sig.com?
Ahhh... that's the first sound explanation I've heard for that decision.
All this time I had simply assumed it was done for some obscure technical and/or corporate-politics-related reason.
if the Linux-selling part of SCO is a different subsidiary to the one which holds the Unix IP, isnt it possible that the apparently popular belief that "SCO" GPLd away its Unix rights may not hold?
> I want you to do a little expiriment. Go pick up the phone. Now call the cops. Tell them that someone has stolen some of your stuff. When they ask you what was stolen, tell them you don't want to say. See what happens.
well said!
This is where Unisys is today. Their that big honkin' box on the right column.
then please respond to arkanes intelligent post above.
Or it's the latetest version of SCO Unix that for some reason produces the exact same OS-fingerprint?
"Some people are beginning to question if SCO isn't more focused on Unix these days than on Linux. Are you still committed to Linux? Our primary focus has always been on Unix. Our efforts related to Linux have been to provide choices and multiple solutions to our customers. This hasn't changed." As long as the choices involve SCO making an easy buck....
Once more the FSF's prescience is vindicated.
One of the more derided FSF's policies is copyright assignment, loathed even by some GNU developers themselves. For example, the XEmacs fork was born out of other controversies, but RMS himself explained it endures because of XEmacs not having been assigned the copyright to all code it included; putting unassigned code into GNU Emacs would open it to the same kind of attacks SCO is performing against the kernel Linux.
GNU Hurd for one is totally defensible from such attacks; while probably the *BSDs are vulnerable. It also speaks about the difference in attitude between Linus and the Open Source folks from RMS and the FSF guys that the copyright assignment requirement was imposed exactly to forestall such a thing as this attack from SCO, while the at the time seemingly more pragmatic attitude of accepting every contribution is now a source of a big headache, even if SCO's claims are found to be totally misguided.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
PNG is entirely chunk-based, aside from the identifier that appears at the beginning of files. Every chunk has a 4-letter ID where the case of each letter (bit 5 of each byte) is a flag indicating how the chunk should be handled. A proprietary chunk ID can be set to be ignored by any reader that doesn't understand.
Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered SCO community when last month IDC confirmed that SCO accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that SCO has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. SCO is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict SCO's future. The hand writing is on the wall: SCO faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for SCO because SCO is dying. Things are looking very bad for SCO. As many of us are already aware, SCO continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. SCO UnixWare is the most endangered of them all.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
SCO leader Chris Sontag states that there are 7000 users of SCO Linux. How many users of SCO UnixWare are there? Let's see. The number of UnixWare versus SCO Linux posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 UnixWare users. SCO OpenServer posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of UnixWare posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of SCO OpenServer. A recent article put SCO UnixWare at about 80 percent of the SCO market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 SCO UnixWare users. This is consistent with the number of SCO UnixWare Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of OpenLinux, abysmal sales and so on, Caldera went out of business and was taken over by SCO who sell another troubled OS. Now OpenLinux is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that SCO has steadily declined in market share. SCO is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If SCO is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. SCO continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, SCO is dead.
I was wondering whether SCO is not for sale anymore... I guess M$ already bought it.
The site where: "I'm right, as long as you ignore the things that prove me wrong", became a valid method of debate.
Boy, all this in-house fighting about SysV and Linux sure makes me glad I dumped Linux and went to OpenBSD. :)
Either that, or they are insane.
(8-DCS)
Too late, they've been irrelevant for years. The ONLY reason anyone buys SCO these days, instead of using one of the many free unix-clones, is because they have legacy apps that won't run elsewhere.
Ok, so maybe that's a bit over generalizing, but give me some reasons why SCO is better than, say, FreeBSD? Linux? even Solaris?
Randomly throwing law suits around, which can only hurt an already troubled industry, is the last effort of a dying company to squeeze that last nickel out of its customers before the creditors come for them.
Buh-bye Caldera... it was fun while it lasted, eh?
eat peanuts out of my sh*t.
Hey, come get some baby..
I fscking dare you to try anything, assholes..
I'll give you my name, home and office address, home phone, cell phone, office phone, beeper, license plate number, and whatever else you want. You just come try it..
You think you're man enough to put the squeeze on me??
I promise you this, it'll be the last time you try it.
You may come in on your feet but you'll go out on your back..
Eat shit SCO..
I hope they DDoS you to death..
Sorry assed scum bags..
You have to be careful with rabids. You can't let them get to close to each other. If they get to close they will breed well, like rabids. Pretty soon you are up to your ears in them. Oh! My bad. Rabids eh. I thought you meant rabbits. Well they are pretty close.
As you can see I don't care about my karma.
But if SCO is/was selling a Linux product, licensed under the GPL (An irrevocable license), and SCO, the licensed holder of these various Unix products and patents is authorized to license their products any way they wish, ...
Then SCO has in fact ALREADY released these copyrights as a GPL'D product.
Oh YEAH, I'll bet they want to quit selling it - they never checked the source code themselves, and even if the source that they received contained patents that were exclusive SCO IP, by releasing it they have in fact relicensed it. The only (very thin) leg they have to stand on is to say "We were unaware that we were licensing intellectual property that we intended to maintain exclusive rights to. We are no longer selling that property under that license, and ask that the court allow us to remove that license from our intellectual property"
If the court allows this, it will break the GPL as a license - period. It works now because it is irrevocable and the customer has no risk. If the court lets SCO invalidate the GPL on the IP they released, it's going to be a precedent that anyone else can as well.
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
"new" patents get "filing + 20" (plus "injury time" if the PTO takes over 3 years to process the patent)
Plus up to five years more "injury time" if the Food and Drug Administration or another federal regulator takes too long to approve an invention for marketing to the public.
Will I retire or break 10K?
There is another point in this statement that has not been discussed here. The letter states "Many Linux contributors were originally UNIX developers who had access to UNIX source code distributed by AT&T and were subject to confidentiality agreements, including confidentiality of the methods and concepts involved in software design." The courts have many times in the past rejected this kind of statement. This statement means that anybody who ever worked on UNIX source code, and codes again in other than a licensed UNIX environment has violated this agreement and is subject to prosecution. This denies a person his ability to earn a living and has been ruled illegal many time. As I have stated before, I learned many of my programming practices working on UNIX source code. My code still looks very Kernigan and Richie'ish. Lots of code I write will look related to what I wrote in this days. Am I currently copying any of it? No. Does a "for" loop I right still look the same? To a great extent yes. I tend to user longer variable names now but a for loop is a for loop. I am sure they can find sections of the Linux source code that looks much like some version of the UNIX sources. Probably some that is exactly the same for a few lines. SCO, I do not need the UNIX sources. Truth of the matter is I've seen much of them. They are just not that good.
[you know, if you had an email address or ANY way for slashdot readers to contact you, i wouldn't have to do this.]
I see a major problem with SCO's case that no is talking about. That is the equitable doctrine of laches, which prevents a party asserting a claim against another too long a time after he could have, i.e., long after the offended party knew about the damage it supposedly suffered.
The source of the Linux kernel has been open for public inspection from its very inception, and SCO has been free to look through it and discover instances of copyright violation. Even more damning against it, SCO's own people have worked with the source, distributing their "own" version of Linux. There's no way they can claim that they couldn't have known about the issue for all these years.
Here's a nice little quote from a N.Y. state court case that failed to find laches due to a short delay of two years:
Here are some other interesting cites:
-
Understanding Basic Copyright Law Has some examples of where laches might be used.
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Kepner-Tregoe, Inc. v. Executive Dev., Inc. (Federal district court, laches defense successful).
- Ed SuominenP.S. - I am a registered patent agent, not an attorney. This means that I don't practice copyright law, and nothing above is legal advice or the opinion of any client etc. I'm also an open-source software author, which I suppose is a bit like a butcher being a vegetarian...
UNIX the commercial product was sold by ATT to SCO (or its precursor). SCO then licensed this source code to IBM for the development of their own products (AIX?).
This is how it goes...
AT&T formed Unix Systems Labs during one of several breakups, assigning all UNIX IP to them. They then sold it to Novell. Novell used the UNIX to create UnixWare, to complement their NetWare OS.
Novell fell on hard times, and sold USL and UnixWare to SCO. SCO finally released a SCO Unix based on SVR4 (SCO OpenServer was stuck on SVR3 I think).
SCO fell on hard times, and decided to exit the Unix business altogether and concentrate on their Tarantella product. Caldera buys USL, the SCO OS business, and the SCO name. What was left of SCO changes its name to Tarantella.
Caldera files papers to "Do Business As" (which is a legal term) The SCO Group, which is fine since they own rights to the SCO name now. However, it does cloud the issue somewhat since people see "SCO" and immediately think the old Santa Cruz Operation people, but those people are happily doing their own thing as Tarantella, minding their own business. The tragedy of this whole mess is it was started by Caldera (d/b/a The SCO Group), a Linux vendor. OTOH, by possibly distributing their proprietary code under the GPL, Caldera might have unwittingly destroyed their case against IBM and the other Linux vendors.
I don't know when IBM licensed Unix, but AIX is old, so I would imagine it was back when AT&T owned it.
--Mythos
Hold your cows guy's i use to work at SCO years ago and "this" SCO its not the real SCO, its CALDERA SYSTEMS renamed to SCO.
Caldera bought SCO, lay off all the workers (me included) and change his name to SCO.
The original SCO staff from years ago was a good group of geeks and programmers, not this bunch of mormons on khakis.
I remember reading a comment that linus made, stating that he might not have even started the kernel if BSD wasn't under that cloud of litigation. He would have exactly what he wanted, a UNIX like OS with all source readily available for hacking on.
SCO's behavior seems like a page out of AT&T's play book....
--
What is pirate software? Software for inventory of stolen treasure?
Ray Noorda
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
After all, they are sending out unsolicited letters, are they not? And they have no proof to make their messages legitimate. If and once they win the case fine, they can send them out, but before? Isn't that simply spam? If it turns out that they don't have a case, I say they should be sued for misinforming people, for damages to linux vendors, etc...
http://web.archive.org/web/19970614154211/www.sco. com/Feedback/webware.html
http://www.vnunet.com/News/1140919
The records of stock transactions of the Caldera
corporation during the dot bust era a couple
years ago show Ransom Love and others, including
a major backer of Bill Gates' Microsoft (yeah,
a major microsoft partner was one of Caldera's
CEO's)....doing what amounts to insider trading
on a large scale. That is why the stock went into
the toilet so bad that having once sold for over
28 dollars it fell to less than a penny. They
exercised 'options' to buy the stock for peanuts
on a grand scale and sell into the falling market,
accelerating its fall. After the stock had fallen
to single digit cents and lower and bounced back
a little, they bought much of it back at stone
rock bottom prices. Then they did a 'reverse
split' to dilute the shares of those few of the
outsider holders. After they bought SCO, a
company that would and should have gone Chapter
seven, they re-invented themselves, but Allen
and Love and company are still the same old
theives in the same Armani suits and gucci
shoes that they have always been.
Their original Linux distribution was aptly
named, Caldera, like the collapsed volcano.
It was the most unstable distro out there, awaiting only a thunderstorm to put any installation of it permanently corrupted, just
like them.
The records of this insider trading were
publically available in quicken.com at the time,
and I myself lost over a thousand dollars to this
scheme. I will never buy co conspirator gates's
XP.
> Where is UNISYS today?
we just moved into their former office a few months ago. last week their logos have been replaced on all surfaces which have born them in the past =] they are all but gone (from there at least).
apparently, they were in such financial need that they ripped out patch panels, cat5 cabling and power outlet plates to take with them. this is what happens if you act like pricks about pseudo patents.
paul