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SCO To Show Copied Code
A number of people have written this morning in regards to the latest update in the ongoing SCO dropping Linux, with word from LinuxJournal that SCO has broadened the implications of code copying. A number of analyst groups have come out, however, saying that it's fine to keep moving ahead with Linux adoption - and there's an interesting interview with SCO's General Manager of SCOSource.
Nonono... the business plan is:
1. Sue IBM.
2. Irritate the dinosaur.
3. Get bought by dinosaur.
The reason for this being that SCO is on the way down, down, down. The only way to rescue shareholder value at this point from total obliviion is a large injection of equity. Since no-one is likely to weigh in with the millions needed, the best way to obtain that equity is to replace it with those of a more stable stock.
i.e. get bought by IBM.
It's a high-risk, last-ditch strategy by a failing company.
- K
Doesn't matter, the gpl clearly states you can't take things back once distributed....
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
Please help others moving from SCO to Linux and post links to documentation like this:
e ople.redhat.com/drepper/sco-porting.pdf
UnixWare to Linux Porting Guide (development tools and the API)
http://people.redhat.com/drepper/
http://p
Oops, here
Um, well, no. If a court were to rule that the code was released under the GPL without the authority of the proper copyright holders, then the GPL release would be voided.
Any license is only valid if the party releasing the material under that license, had a right to do so.
IANAL, blah blah blah...
This is the fourth highly moderated comment from the other SCO thread you blatantly ripped off!
Karma whore.
I believe it's the other way around (but I may be wrong - please correct/add). Caldera was originally a Linux-company which then bought the rights to Unix from SCO. About that time SCO changed it's name to something like tarantella or so and shortly after that Caldera also acquired the rights to the name SCO. Then they changed their name to SCO, stopped selling Linux (which used to be their core business) and the rest you know.
0x or or snor perron?!
LZH (Lempel-Ziv-Huffman; find repeated strings in a sliding window and then use Huffman coding on the resulting backreferences and raw characters) is freely implementable in all countries - it was developed for pkzip-2.0, and later adopted for gzip. You're thinking of LZW (Lempel-Ziv-Welch). Although the US patent on that will expire in a couple of years IIRC.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Religion is the opium of the people. Evolution is the opium of scientists.
Wrong. Imaging that YOU wrote some code -- you own it. You can then "fork" your code. One branch can be GPL, the other can be sold/modified/whatever without having any requirements. The GPL just guartees that you cannot "take back" the forked version. Also, once forked, you cannot re-merge them or "borrow" bug-fixes from the GPL version without making your proprietary version GPL.
In short, if you "own" some code, you can do whatever you want with it! If you GPL it, then you can have a "GPL" version and a "private" version -- you can give away what you want, and keep what you want.
In fact, some companies do exactly this! Note that the code for Open Office came from Star Office. Yet Star Office is NOT GPL. In other words, Sun forked the code into a GPL and a non-GPL version.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
I wrote the iBCS modules. There is NO AT&T or SCO code in it.
-- Linux Consultant
As far as I can make out this isn't a patent issue. /. :-)
I'm not sure what it is, if it isn't a kite, but it seems nearest to being a trade secret issue, in which case I would expect due dilligence to be applicable. It might be time to stop speculating until there are more data? On the other hand this is
I hereby inform you that I have NOT been required to provide any decryption keys.
They may have stopped distributing OpenLinux on CD, but they are still distributing it via FTP.
It expires in about a month. On June 20th, 2003, LZW, at least in the US, becomes an unencumbered file format. It will remain patented in a few other countries for another year or two, but essentially, Unisys only has another month to harass people over GIF usage before the patent expires.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
Yes, it is. They have patents, which they plan to enforce, namely with regard to multi-processor stuff. They also have copyright. Both of these supercede "trade secrets," and neither can be revoked due to any presence or lack of "due diligence."
If you have a source that suggests copyright (NOT TRADEMARKS) can be revoked by lack of due diligence, I'd definitely like to see it, because everything I've seen states clearly that copyrights are protected for Life+70. Otherwise, do musicians who allow their songs to be traded on Napster-clones lose copyright? No.
Any due diligence issues might play out in a penalty phase, but in terms of guilt and innocence, it's irrelevant.
There have been a jillion articles on this thing, including with SCO officials, so it's not a matter of more data. They claim that both patents and copyrights have been violated. Patents supposedly got leaked through IBM's AIX collaboration with SCO. Copyrights supposedly did because they claim that a lot of pre-IBM linux developers were privy to unix code that they were NDA'd from using elsewhere.
That's where it currently stands. Much of this was in the articles attached to this discussion, which you might have considered reading first.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
This is simply false. Once you distribute your code under the GPL, you lose ALL CONTROL over that code PERMANENTLY. That is simply what the GPL is designed to do.
This is not entirely true. The original copyright holder of a GPLed work can do something no other distributor of that code can do. The owner can still fork the code under any license he chooses. He can also legally prevent anybody else from releasing derived works under anything but the GPL. This is a major basis of TrollTech's current business model. The XFree86 version of QT is GPLed but they also license it for closed programs. Granted someone could port the GPL QT to other platforms but it would still be GPL only TrollTech has the authority to license it otherwise.
This type of control is even used by some GPL critics to argue that it isn't "completely free". So which is it? A total permanent loss of control for anyone realeasing code under it or a fearsome utterly controlled straightjacket used to deny others freedom? I'll grant that the GPL is controversial in these parts but its critics can't have it both ways. I would say that the "utterly controlled straightjacket" has at least some arguable points going for it.
The only legal regime that your statement is true for is the Public Domain. Even the BSD Licenses (often held up as an exemplar of Total Freedom) allow legal recourse for plagiarism.
SCO started this case in state court in Utah. SCO alleged both SCO and IBM were Delaware corporations, making them technically "residents" of the same state. Unfortunately, IBM is actually a New York corporation. Therefore, there is federal court jurisdiction to hear the case (residents of different states and amount of controversy in excess of $75,000.00).
SCO obviously wanted the case in state court. It very carefully pled no federal law claims such as copyright or patent. It pled only state law claims for unfair competetion, etc. The only reason to do this would be if SCO wanted this in state court.
IBM removed (that's the verb) the case to federal court - United States District Court for the District of Utah on the basis of diversity jurisdiction. Not a thing SCO can do about it.
Why did SCO start the case in state court and why did IBM remove it? The state law claims of unfair competition, etc. are the same (the classic Erie decision still applies for all you budding 1Ls out there). The case will still physically remain in Utah.
IBM gets Rule 26(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Under Rule 26(a), the parties must disclose to each other, without even a formal request, the most relevant documents to their case. The disclosure must be done relatively quickly. I doubt there is a similar automatic disclosure in the Utah rules. In state court, SCO might have been able to drag the discovery process out for at least a few months. It could keep its source code hidden for a while. Under the federal rules, it cannot do that. By removing the case to federal court, IBM undercut a big hunk of SCO strategy - namely FUD.
Obviously, the most relevant documents to this case are the source code listings SCO alleges IBM stole. These must be produced to IBM and produced quickly. There willl probably be a protective order preventing the rest of us from seeing them, but IBM gets to see them very soon (like maybe this month).
If there was no theft of code by IBM, expect a quick resolution of the case. If there was theft from Project Monterey in violation of the SCO-IBM agreement, expect a slugfest over intent and the the measure of damages.
In addition, by not even knowing the corporate home of its adversary, SCO comes in looking foolish. How hard would it be to determine IBM is a New York corporation, not a Delaware corporation? Not hard at all. Take a look at any of its SEC filings. It was a stupid mistake by SCO and although it does not logically follow that the rest of its allegations are undermined, it does decrease credibility of SCO and its attorneys.
The interesting question (at least for entertainment value) is who subpoenas RMS first to testify.
From an earlier interview, which was pulled because of it's containing an admission of guilt:
- 05 -12-010-26-IN-CD-LL-0026
"Finally. Somebody raised a possible problem that you yourselves distribute the infringing code under the GPL licence. Do you see that as a problem from your point of view?
No we do not, because you do not have an infringement issue when you are providing customers with products that have your intellectual property in them.
OK, but Linux has a kernel which isn't yours. Are you saying that there are changes to the kernel?
We have concerns and issues even with areas of the kernel.
So you are saying that you are happy distributing the kernel because the offending code belongs to you anyway, as I understand it?
Yes."
I.e. these guys don't have clue 1 what the GPL actually says. Unfortunately for them, failure to comprehend a license does not relieve you of your responsibilities under said license.
http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2003
--- It is not the things we do which we regret the most, but the things which we don't do.
It's not "the smart money" as far as I can tell, insider trading is at 68%, yes, but smart money is "institutional" trading and that's only 16% of their daily volume. With 12 million of SCOX shares outstanding, the daily 350,000 shares volume would be only 3% of the total. It's not exactly a buying/trading spree. Rather this is overall market condition that is still sort of bullish and so most stocks moved up including Red Hat.
IP was invented for the sake of lawsuits.
If so much code was stolen, why is it that I can't mount a SCO EFS filesystem under Linux? I can mount virtually every other filesystem under Linux save SCO filesystems with divvy partitions. This is also the same company that takes two weeks to respond to remote root exploits with patches.
Me-thinks SCO is full of SH*T and is going to fade into history. This is SCO's last stand, how tragic and sad.
Too bad I haven't finished migrating everything from SCO to Linux yet. I guess the clock it ticking and I better finish porting.