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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?"
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.
The big question, is when will SCO tell us what they think is in violation. I read the last interview here with an SCO PR dude and he avoided being clear if it was copyright or patent. I only assume it's not trademark, because they would be require to say what the think is a violation there.
If there is a real violation, SCO should fscking say what it is or go the fsck away! I hope the stock price falls and they all go broke.
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 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!
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.
"Great. SCO is giving Microsoft the best anti Linux ammo it could hope for."
Only in the short term - in the long term it'll permanently dispell the SCO/UNIX/Licensing FUD that MS keep pushing so hard.
Given the speed that the courts move, it should all be worked out just around the time of the release of Longhorn - giving Linux a clean bill of health just in time to get in the way of Windows 2005.
Beep beep.
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.
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?
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.
The problemo that they have though is that 'SCO' is really Caldera inc which in turn used to sell Linux. There is a big problem with distributing linux if you intend to get heavy on the IP trip. As Bill Gates observed, Linux was released under a viral license which in effect strips away most of SCO's intellectual property rights.
The only things that Caldera can enforce its rights on at this point is code that is in the SCO code base AND a Linux distribution AND NOT in any Caldera distribution that shipped after the SCO acquisition.
The other tricky problem they have is detrimental reliance. Oh and don't discount the fact that getting into an IP pissing contest with IBM or Microsoft or any of the really big players is suicidal for any technology company, those guys have more patents to fire back in self defense its not funny.
The only reason SCO is doing this is that its their last gasp survival attempt - get bought by someone big.
A much cheaper way to do the same thing would be to put the company up for sale on EBay.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
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.
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
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
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
IANAL, but....
If SCO distributes (distributed) GNU/Linux under the GPL/LGPL/etc licenses it's required to, doesn't that mean that anyone can freely copy and redistribute it? If this is true, anything that is in Caldera Linux is free game, regardless of whether reams of source code were lifted verbatim from UNIX because SCO licensed it under the GPL when they distributed GNU/Linux. Anyone have any insight on this? Surely there must be someone at SCO who read the GPL before they released software under it! (Though it seems it took them quite a while to read the software they were releasing... sigh)
http://pythonisito.blogspot.com/
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.
"Has it been revealed to the world yet exactly which code is in question?"
No, and for two primary reasons:
1) SCO's bluffing until the bitter end. There is no copyright infringement, and everyone in high level positions at SCO knows it. SCO's market exit strategy (to be bought by IBM) backfired in a huge way, and there is no way to repair the damage. If SCO backs off now, it will be destroyed by the SEC for gross negligence towards the shareholders. Everyone at SCO knows that IBM is going to destroy SCO, and are merely trying to hold off the inevitable for as long as possible.
2) There is no copyright infringement. When the trial starts (and it's a given that this will get to trial considering #1 above), SCO will have to produce something (and I guarantee it will be manufactured ala Microsoft). At that point, the jig will be up. SCO doesn't actually want to go to trial, but now the company has painted itself into a corner and will -have- to go to trial. This is a great big "OOPS!" on SCO's part.
"And what, exactly, happened to their statement that they weren't going after Redhat or Joe Linuxuser, but instead just IBM?"
SCO realized that IBM wasn't biting, and panicked. This is SCO's flailing around for anything and everything to halt its inevitable destruction.
"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."
:)
I presume this means that derivative works created by SCO users who received SCO code under the GPL are still legitimate, and that this license to create derivative works has not been revoked, right?
So any SCO user has the right to grant a license to any non-SCO user to make derivative works.
Any SCO users out there want to pipe up and grant such a license to IBM, Redhat, etc?
Actually, *are* there any SCO users out there?
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
It's also pretty clear it's working for them. The more press they can generate out of this, the higher their stock goes. It has almost doubled since they started.
My take on this is that they're going to pump this whole issue as much as possible before anything becomes public, and at that point the executives will probably dump most of their stock. That's another good reason to go after IBM first; it's not hard to convince IBM to agree with the court to "guarantee that proprietary information is kept secret."
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!
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.
Wait a minute, maybe I'm missing something, but if they distributed the products "SCO Linux" and "Caldera OpenLinux", doesn't that mean that all the code is GPL? And they GPLed it themselves? And, of course, once it's GPLed, then anybody can incorporate it into their distributions as long as they provide source code.
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.
As SCO's own source is closed, how can we possibly verify that they didn't merge Linux code into their Unix source? If there is code that matches, there is a public verifiable trail of Linux and GNU software development, with archives of that old code for confirmation.
We aren't allowed to see any similar development history with SCO's code, not even the source snapshots that would have been purchased by IBM et. al.
Finally there is the wee issue that the vast majority of *nix kernel algorithms have been analyzed and discussed to death in dozens of textbooks for operating systems courses. By definition those algorithms are not patentable, because they have been published to the public domain as part of those textbooks. If Linux and SCO both happen to implement those algorithms, SCO cannot claim infringement because they don't own that IP.
I really can't think of any Linux features that aren't discussed in such texts. The kernel doesn't use SVR4 signal APIs or semantics. The network stacks are from BSD origins. Resource scheduling algorithms are a dime a dozen from the textbooks, as are approaches for process and application/user security. What does that leave for SCO to claim they "own"?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
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.
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.
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/
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.
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
I imagine they can claim that they were previously unaware of the infringement. That's why they've now stopped selling their Linux.
The problem I see them running into is that their claim seems to be based not so much on specific violations relating to copied source code, but on the general idea that people working under non-disclosures later "disclosed" information in the form of source code which they wrote for Linux, thus violating their agreements.
There are a lot of problems with this. Perhaps SCO misunderstood what they were purchasing. Unix is not some brand-new system that was developed in a secret lab, with code disclosed to no-one. The violations Caldera is claiming are likely to be vague and almost impossible to prove. Unless they have specific information to the contrary, anything in Linux might very well have been put there by someone with the necessary knowledge who was not bound by an agreement. The Unix code base has been subject to all sorts of outside interactions over the years.
This legal action is simply a mark of SCO's desperation and lack of income from products. If they're lucky, they might collect an out-of-court settlement from IBM and some other deep pocket customers they choose to go after. They'll never win anything substantial in court, though.
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.
That may or may not be the case. However, SCO condoned all of this the moment they began distributing Linux themselves. While they could initially claim ignorance that this was going on, they could not claim so once the suit against IBM was filed.
It seems that they did not understand the full implications of the GPL when they filed their original suit against IBM.
However, the cat is now out of the bag. Any code that was in any kernel that SCO distributed after filing suit against IBM is now "in the public domain" and they can't take it back.
This just may end up being a test case for the GPL.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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.
From the text of the Copyright act:
In other words, you can copyright a binary, or you can copyright the actual printout of the code (verbatim.) You cannot however copyright any workalike code.
As far as patent infringement goes, they would have a leg to stand on if they were to prove which specific patents they were seeking to enforce. Given the System V was released in 1983, any and all patents on System V expired in the year 2000. Worst case scenario, they were pending for 2 years, and would have expired in 2002.
Considering IBM's license to all of that technology is an established fact long before any of the events described, I think SCO is going to find itself in the hurt box if this case is placed before a Judge.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Any SCO users out there want to pipe up and grant such a license to IBM, Redhat, etc?
That's an excellent point, and I can't help but wonder....
Suppose for a moment SCO is right -- there's some dead-on, no quibbling, not even kidding evidence of code-lifting. However, Caldera/SCO has simultaneously been releasing the same code -- which they have rights to either way -- under the GPL. Wouldn't the very act of releasing that code effectively cancel the argument that it was proprietary?
Tweet, tweet.
Hey! Come to think of it, I *am* still a registered Caldera OpenLinux user. Back in the days when all I had was dialup, I went out and bought Caldera because RedHat didn't include KDE at the time (and, in fact, Caldera was the only major distro including KDE at the time).
:-P
Okay, I hereby grant a license to any non-SCO user to make derivative works of all SCO GPL code to IBM, RedHat, etc.
Oh, and while I'm at it, I hereby revoke SCO's license to its own code, citing violations of the GNU General Public License, which basically says that those that violate the license have no license to use it, so there.
My journal has hot
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.
Assuming there's nothing obvious (eg, SCO copyright notices in the comments), one of SCO's challenges will be to establish the pedigree of their code. Just because there are identical sections in the two source trees now does not imply the direction in which copying occurred. To prove that, for example, code that existed at SCO in 1994 showed up in the Linux kernel in 1995 is somewhat more challenging. IMO, most companies' backup procedures are probably not adequate to establish the necessary chain of evidence. You can't just show up with a tape that you say has filesystem dumps from 1994. Look at what goes on with photographs of crime scenes:
-
The prosecution will call the photographer, who swears that they were at the scene and took pictures.
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Then they trace the film through development by the lab, again with people swearing that they developed that film, made these prints, etc, with records to back that up.
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Then they ask to admit the photos as evidence.
As a defense attorney faced with a backup tape cartridge, I would demand that the other side at least prove when it was dumped, and that the security arrangements were such that it was not feasible for another tape to have been substituted between then and now.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.
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.
So this letter is about SCO' "intellectual property" 1) I'm not sure about the scope of their contribution with respect to making a better OS -- please correct me if I'm wrong. 2) I have no idea what "intellectual property " means. Thank Gods J.S.Bach (and sequel) cannot sue us for composing music. It might be the case that we're wittnessing the extinction of a species. Usually the task of writing this kind of litterature is left upon random marketoids. As a shareholder, I'd be scared to see the CEO so personnally involved.
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!"
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'
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
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
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!!!!