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OSI vs SCO
the jackol writes "As expected, the OSI's just given the SCO vs IBM case a bite with this position paper. "SCO has never owned the UNIX trademark. IBM neither requested nor required SCO's permission to call their AIX offering a Unix. That decision lies not with the accidental owner of the historical Bell Labs source code, but with the Open Group.""
OSI is ISO backwards. Conspiracy.
Someone actually used AIX?!
The best bet for this whole thing is that SCO did their own Linux and released it. Since they did it under GPL, the cat's out of the bag. ...At least from this point on...or rather, the point they released it on. They've pulled their Linux since then.
Question is, can they sue for release of software BEFORE they released the now GPL-ed SCO code in their Linux distro?
Could you please troll in an open format such as Ogg?
Real for Linux sucks balls.
Anyway - on a related note: this is why IBM will not buy SCO. As much as people daydream that IBM is "on our side" and all that, there seem to be all too many who conveniently forgets that IBM is in it for the money, not because they have some kind of conviction that OSI is morally good, or something - it's only good because it's making them money.
Buying SCO, even if it temporarily puts this behind them, makes OSI completely unworkable by IBM - beacuse this would set a precedence of sketchy IP companies suddenly realizing that IBM will actually pay CASH for bullshit patents and stuff. As much cash as IBM have, they can't be buying every bullshit patent touting company out there - at least not doing so while making a buck.
so, if SCO fucks linux over, IBM will just find another route to makey money, and if linux stands, IBM will continue to stand my its side. Regardless, though - don't expect IBM to chump out the change for SCO, though i do think they will push a few lawyers for the good cause, because getting a few lawyers and bust SCO's bs out of the water and keep linux standing will, in the end, mean the best bottom line for its business.
look at the world with an economic eye, guys.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Can we get some legal certified toilet paper? Cause now days, you need an attorney just to wipe your own ass. To bad the slashdot crowd can't just pool togeather some money to kick SCO out of existance. I can dream can't I?
Life is not for the lazy.
OSI Papers notwithstanding, all it takes is a tipply judge to cause a lot of headaches for everyone from RedHat to Yellow Dog. In any case, Microsoft wins. Their line...go with the smart, non-litigated choice...Windows XP. Now with Software Assurance!
So, not matter what happens, open source will survive. GNU/Linux may suffer, but not other systems.
The SCO law suit will probably go down in history in the same category as the stupid congressmen that bad-mouth the GPL. Namely, the trashcan.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
I thought we already talked about this.
open-source advocate Bruce Perens:
g =f d_nc_1
http://news.com.com/2010-1071_3-1007758.html?ta
He doesn't outright say it be he is almost implying that certain monied interests (M$?) could be indirectly funding the whole SCO effort to spread FUD about Linux.
smd4985
BS...err SCO is dying !
I've been reviewing this document since ESR first published it on the web several weeks ago. I'm glad to see he's updating it, and the chart is a great improvement.
There are still some rough edges, though. For instance, directly below the AIX label on the chart the text says "AIX and Solaris are not included..."
It's a wonderful overview of the UNIX world, but it also underscores complacency among UNIX hackers for AT&T's license. I'm not sure the judge in the SCO v/s IBM case will look kindly on the "everybody did it so it was okay" attitude toward sharing code. Isn't that just the thing SCO is talking about?
SCO's complaint is factually defective in that it implies claims about SCO's business and technical capabilities that are untrue. It is, indeed, very cleverly crafted to deceive a reader without intimate knowledge of the technology and history of Unix; it gives false impressions by both the suppression of relevant facts, the ambiguous suggestion of falsehoods, and in a few instances by outright lying.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
I'm reading in the paper where ESR uses a graphic to illustrate the relationship between the various Unixes/workalikes, and I'm a bit confused -- why is Linux way off to the side disconnected from everything else when a largish part is composed of BSD tools and another largish part is derived from Unix?
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Yeah, i saw this ages ago (well, a few days anyhoo). I found it fairly interesting, until i looked outside and was mesmorised by the grass growing!
Honest, I do think this is an interesting case, purely from one view point. The claims SCO have raised are valid, but since the legal submission they gave to the court is 'open source', ie everyone can read it, the amount of evidence piling up against SCO is astonishing. The interesting point is how on earth SCO feel their gonna get out of this. I can't wait for it to hit the courts....
With Microsoft is now licensing Unix from SCO,they're probably planning on using SCO as a FUD lever (or worse) against Linux The result could be a bidding war between IBM and Redmond to control SCO. IBM could buy out the sickly company to euthanize it. SCO sold their soul in hopes somebody would bid it up to take them out of their misery.
ha ha! Offcourse he would say "haha" whether is SCO or ISO :)
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
Furthermore, SCO is barred by the terms of the GNU General Public License from making copyright or patent-infringement claims on any technology shipped in conjunction with the Linux kernel that SCO/Caldera itself has been selling for the last eight years. Therefore, SCO may accuse IBM of misappropriating SCO-owned software to improve the Linux kernel only if that software does not actually ship with the Linux kernel it is alleged to be improving!
Finally, SCO is barred from making trade-secret claims on the contents of the Linux kernel, not merely by the fact that the kernel source is generally available, but by the fact that SCO has made the sources of its Linux kernel available for download from SCO's own website!
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Good troll there, mr. anonymous...
Now go play somewhere else.
IBM neither requested nor required SCO's permission to call their AIX offering a Unix.
Big whoop. Yet another pointless, posturing remark from a paper of dubious value.
If you have a knowledge of Unix history, read the paper with a critical eye, and do a little research, its not hard to find errors, omissions, overstatements, and what appear to be some dubious legal claims.
I think that the Linux community is going to be very disappointed if it is relying upon this paper for its views.
How could you hope not to be considered a troll? Unless you are an attorney working on the case, you've seen the same court documents and press statements as the rest of us have. SCO has not demonstrated their claim. SCO acknowledges that IBM has a unrevokable, perpetual license to the SCO UNIX sources. You can show all of the case law you like, but you still have to have evidence.
I suggest that we all just wait and see what happens, because, for all of our comments on slashdot, it's what the judge hears from the two sides in the case that will really determine the outcome.
If you only read one position paper all year . .
Seriously, this should be required reading for all slashdot visitors. It had a lot of great info. If you read the paper, you'd realize that SCO doesn't have a chance in hell (which is kind of what we thought anyway).
I believe the key is what "derived" means in the context of that graphic. Yes, Linux uses UNIX design concepts and structures, but that's true of all the OSes in the graphic; to that extent, they're all related. Solid lines indicate direct inheritance of code. The off-to-the-side bit reflects the fact that Linus' original project was built from scratch and didn't use code from the other family members.
WRT the use of BSD tools, I suspect this was a judgement call in producing a readable graphic describing major influences. Show all interactions and the page is an unreadable mess, (possibly resembling the profile of a gnu?).
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
can we counter sue these motherfuckers for messing with us for no reason, knowingly trying to fuck up an important part of the industry?
.. fuck.
This is BS
[4] We use the term "hacker" in its correct and original sense here, as an enthusiast or artist of computer programming.
'Hacker' is pejorative for many concerned with law enforcement, who do not care about ESR's 'hacker/cracker' agenda. Why not just call them 'contributors' or 'authors'? I don't see references to 'Micro$oft' or even 'Unices' in the document.
When suing someone else in the corporate world, you must be very careful of one thing:
Make sure they can't countersue you on something else.
If IBM were smart, they'd go looking through their patents and technology and countersue SCO into the stone age.
Chances are EXTREMELY good that a company as large as IBM has something to fire back at SCO. Patents are as useful for defending oneself against extortion as they are for extorting money from people in the corporate world. (Many companies file patents solely for defensive purposes - If someone goes after them for patent infringement, they hope that they can strike back with their own patent infringement claim.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I wonder if lawyers (hopefully the ones on our side) search/read thru slashdot and other places similar for ideas. I hope they do. Amongst all of the crap there are some half way decent ideas, facts, and angles.
Considering the history of SCO in the mid-late 80s, you have to wonder how closely MS and SCO remained linked at the executive levels. Gates really liked UNIX and MS had their hands in the mix in that time frame. Gates is technical and understands why Unix/Linux is powerful and he actually liked working with it. SCO took over all the MS aspects of their initiative (sort of) back in the 80s/early 90s.
I suspect that their is more here than meets the eye in terms of collusion between MS and SCO. I could see MS picking up SCO if they can damage Linux in the process.
To spell it out, here is what I'm suggesting (IMHO): I suspect MS and SCO execs are acquaintences. I suspect that MS execs tugged on the SCO execs to make some troubles for Linux (starting with the IBM thing whenever). I suspect that they have a big bag of such issues with which to harass Linux vendors. I suspect that MS will enter the Linux/Unix arena in the next 3 to 5 years, possibly through an aquisition of SCO.
Question: Was SCO part of the anti-trust suits and related suits against MS? If so to what degree?
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
Thus, no company will attack OSS IP in the future, and the M$ proxy server SCO has an all-too-appropriate permanent BSOD.
We can only hope.
I beg to differ as a corporate lawyer specialized in IP laws I think you mom sucks real hard.
now mr.trollboy go play somewhere else.
PWND!
Now I've seen Everything
I spend $1500 on a unlimited user UNIX
called Interactive UNIX. It was marketed
by Sun at the time. It was a true SVR3.2
running on Intel. This was in 1994.
Win, lose, or draw, SCO can hurt Linux merely by muddying the waters.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
BSD tools are BSD tools, and Linux tools are GNU tools.
http://www.gnu.org
Why do you think Stallman and his ankle-biters are so adamant about calling it GNU/Linux? Cause they're all BSD fans?
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Interesting how Caldera held the torch as it were for DRDOS (which IMHO was the TRUE and technically superior DOS for the PC, insofar that it really WAS better than MSDOS (aka "Messy DOS"), it derived directly from from Digital Research whereas MSDOS was the bastardization of Digital Research's CPM and further mangled by Bill Gates et al.) and DRDOS was MSDOS' direct and main competitor back in the day. Also interesting is the fact that Ray Noorda was involved in the formation of Caldera. It's no secret that there was no love lost between Mr. Norda and Bill Gates - especially from Ray Noorda's side.
With the way that SCO/Caldera has appeared to have become Microsoft's bitch, Mr. Noorda must be choking on his biscuits right about now.
To add to the list of x86 UNIX's, there is ISC Interactive UNIX which SunSoft bought. If I remember my history correctly, they used portions of that to help with drivers for Intel Solaris.
This was covered (not very well) yesterday: link
I felt that I was up to the job to convert the entire server pool to the Linux technology. I had several years experience programming VB, C#, ASP, and
so linux is a failure because you were horribly underskilled for the job?
does that mean that Ford is at fault for all the bad drivers on the road?
I know that you are just a troll, but some of the newbies here will read you and actually believe your tripe.
Linux = success if you have skilled and capable people behind it... Windows expierience = nothing in the Linux world as you need REAL TCP/IP skills REAL Netowrk skills and REAL computer skills. something that no MS certification delivers or shows.
you failed because you assumed and did not have the skills to do the job (and after reading it I strongly suspect any project management skills you have..)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Think about it, MS cannot possibly buy SCO else the wrath of a new anti-trust suit.
Got Code?
earth calling Lumpy...earth calling Lumpy
:-)
it's a troll come back home
Furthermore, SCO is barred by the terms of the GNU General Public License from making copyright or patent-infringement claims on any technology shipped in conjunction with the Linux kernel that SCO/Caldera itself has been selling for the last eight years.
And wouldn't Microsoft like having the legality of the GPL being questioned, lengthily, in court.
They may not expect to win, but as a way to hurt enterprise sales, rendering the entire licensing structure legally ambiguous for a year or two would certainly be worthwhile.
The GPL has never been tested in court, after all, and that's already something of a concern about it for enterprise level customers. Making that a huge dominant issue and giving those legislators who go 'ack! communism!' a kick at it makes it a PR war, and a PR war is where having deeper pockets is really useful.
This lawsuit is what SCO will be known for. It's really too bad because before Caldera got ahold of SCO it was one of the true Unix hack shacks.
Zoid.com
Go ahead ... mod me down, but I was there, when Gilmore was over at Evans Hall (Cal, Berk) fixing AT&T Un*x bugs and a participant on the MINIX list when Linus posted his announcement...
Yeah, I was the original postmaster at {sun.pacbell,uunet,pyramid, amdahl}!hoptoad and also have a copy of the letter Gilmore received from AT&T stating none of their code was in the GNU code...
Of course, John didn't get into Linux until he realized it could be used as a front end iron box, years later.
So.... what about MINIX and this letter gnu@ ?
The best part is at the end of the document:
A judgment in favor of SCO could do serious damage to the open-source community. SCO's implication of wider claims could turn Linux into an intellectual-property minefield, with potential users and allies perpetually wary of being mugged by previously unasserted IP claims, and ever-more-outlandish theories of entitlement being propounded by parties with only the most tenuous relationship to anyone who ever wrote actual program code. On behalf of the community that wrote most of today's Unix code, and whose claims to have done so were tacitly recognized by the impairment of AT&T's rights under the 1993 settlement, we protest that to allow this outcome would be a very grave injustice. We wrote our Unix and Linux code as a gift and an expression of art, to be enjoyed by our peers and used by others for all licit purposes both non-profit and for-profit. We did not write it to have it appropriated by men so dishonorable that after making profit from our gift for eight years they could turn around and insult our competence.
And here's the really important message:
Damage to the open-source community would matter, because we are both today's principal source of innovation in software and the guardians and maintainers of the open Internet. Our autonomy is everyone's bulwark against government and corporate control of the digital media that are increasingly central in political, commercial, and personal communications. Our creative energy is what perpetually renews and finds ever more exciting uses for computers and networks. The vigor of our culture today will translate into more possibilities for everyone tomorrow.
I think that is a nice roundup of every geek's feelings towards the tendencies found in politics, business and laws nowadays.
Keep open minded - but not that open your brain falls out...
Wow. Thank you Eric. Thank you for throwing the history book at them.
Much needed, much deserived.
www.levenez.com/unix/
No, seriously, check it out. Best *nix genealogical tree I know of.
...but XENIX was SCO's original Unix, while UnixWare was what it picked up in the Caldera acquisition...
IIRC SCO was making UnixWare long before Caldera acquired them. So this statement is a bit confusing.
I read in today's paper that the action against IBM is actually being taken by "SCO Group", a completely independent entity to SCO (the Santa Cruz Organization). It said that "SCO Group" used to be Caldera (of Caldera Linux fame), and Caldera bought UnixWare off SCO previously.
However I haven't seen this distinction mentioned on Slashdot (it seems to be a pretty big one..), can anyone confirm?
in AIX:and in Linux:The names of the variables were changed, but that didn't fool my eagle's eye.
maybe they should have started with OSI so they could get their facts right!
Don't Tread on OpenSource
And Trinity is really Neo's sister! (gack!)
You that havent reed it, do read it.. not for the SCO clames, but for the Unix history..
If IBM had the legal grounds to base a countersuit on one (or more... probably more) of their numerous patents, it would take a very, very long time to prepare these things in an airtight way, not like what SCO has done with their haphazard and amateurish nonsense.
One thing's for certain; no matter what hapens, IBM will make sure their rebuttals and countersuits are extremely well supported and factually correct, probably with the help of many, many highly paid expert witnesses.
I'm expecting them to try to prove a point in court, to legitimize their new business model, and to open up future revenue streams for cooperation (they need to clear EVERYONE of this nonsense, or else an entire industry [the one they created by embracing Linux] might disappear).
It would do better for their bottom line in the long run to prove their business model is sound, and to legally fuck their competition (i.e., SCO) than just outright buying SCO; it would then look like they are covering something up.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
This paper is a gem. It provides a good history of unix and unix-like OSs, and in my mind it establishes that SCO has no claim to the UNIX trademark. SCO willfully misrepresents itself as a much bigger player in the enterprise market than it actually is, for the purpose of claiming bigger damages. My favorite quote:
Examination of SCO's 10Ks reveals that, even were we to assume that every dime of their revenue came from the enterprise market, their 2002 share could not have exceeded 3.1% [5] This is at the level of statistical noise.
Scene One. Linus is watching 'Matrix Reloaded' in his room. Santa the ant is slowly moving towards Linus. Billy happens to be spyin on Linus.
[Billy]: Dude, where you goin ?
[Santa]: To bite Linus.
[Billy]: Well, eat this grain, and make sure you bite hard
getSexySig();
One good reason why computers can do more work than people is that they never have to stop and answer the phone.
petitiononline.com/scosueme/petition.html
http://unmoldable.com W:"No one of consequence" I:"I must know" W:"Get used to disappointment"
Not any more they don't. They run Linux under VM.
However, you used to be able to get AIX for S/390. It was hugely expensive and didn't really catch on.
BSD is protected by res judicata. In other words, this has already been litigated when Novell sued Berkeley and they won.
Last night I watched on one of the cable news channels, Larry Ellison and Scott McNealy sitting side by side discussing the newest "partnership" between Oracle and Sun Microsystems. In effect they are about to all-but-legally merge the two companies into one. I predict that they will ultimately actually do the formal merger soon. They *have* to, in order to survive against MS in the future. Ellison can buy SCO with his pocket change, and I predict he will. This is the dark horse that hardly anyone has yet mentioned here on Slashdot. Look for IBM to blow the chance at "owning" Unix, because of their attittude of conservative "not caving in to demands of terrorrists", and no doubt SCO is terrorizing the *nix world right now, but Ellison is enuff of a cowboy to pull off such a gamble.
>The GPL has never been tested in court, after all, and that's already
> something of a concern about it for enterprise level customers.
Then maybe it is finally time for the GPL to have its day in court and do or die. And this looks like an excellent test case.
My rights don't need management.
"for use by enterprise customers, it(Linux) must be re-designed ...This ...is not...possible ...without (1) a high degree of design coordination, (2) access to expensive and sophisticated design and testing equipment; (3) access to UNIX code, methods and concepts; (4) UNIX architectural experience; and (5) a very significant financial investment."
Too bad one can't be held in contempt of court for blatant and aggravated stupidity. This reminds me of the Nazi dentist in the Kurt Vonnegut novel who proved Jesus was Aryan and not Jewish through careful examination of His teeth in medieval paintings.
"SCO has never owned the UNIX trademark. IBM neither requested nor required SCO's permission to call their AIX offering a Unix. That decision lies not with the accidental owner of the historical Bell Labs source code, but with the Open Group."
Well, this is quite true, but it's a trivial offhand swipe at SCO that has nothing to do with the court case. SCO are claiming breach of contract and copyright infringement, not trademark infringement.
The OSI position paper is actually pretty good, and almost any sentence picked at random would probably have been more relevant than that one.
How about:
SCO alleges (Paragraph 57): "When SCO acquired the UNIX assets from Novell in 1995, it acquired rights in and to all (1) underlying, original UNIX software code developed by AT&T Bell Laboratories."
SCO neglects to mention that those rights had been substantially impaired before its acquisition of the ancestral Bell Labs source code. [...] ten years ago at a time when Linux was in its infancy, the courts already found the contributions of other parties to what is now UnixWare to be so great, and Novell's proprietary entitlement in the code so small, that Novell's lawyers had to settle for a minor, face-saving gesture from the University of California or walk away with nothing at all.
Or:
SCO's claim to own the scalability techniques certainly cannot be supported from the feature list of its own SCO OpenServer, a genetic Unix. The latest version advertises SMP up to only 4 processors (a level which SCO's complaint dismisses as inadequate), no LVM, no NUMA, and no hot-swapping. That is, SCO is alleging that IBM misappropriated from SCO technologies which do not appear in SCO's own product.
The title kind'a get you thinking... "The Fear War on Linux". It seems pretty clear that the only one who might benefit from this is Microsoft. Really fitting for their strategy of FUDing Linux out of existence. Is this just a convenient turn of events for the Redmond guys, or a truly Machiavellian charade orchestrated by them since day one?
Btw, could someone explain these clearly out-of-context quotes?
Well what do you know, I am also a lawyer, and I think Slashdot should append a long legal disclaimer after each post just in case anyone got offended by the post. Othervise the poster doesn't have a legal leg to stand on.
Which would be a lie, since they're still getting sued by at least two states, MA being one of them...I think VA is the other state?
Please help metamoderate.
They disbarred me for that. Alas.
This is getting tiresome.
SCO has made a big gamble here, they're incurring the wrath of much of the Unix community (and ALL of the Linux community), and they might end up destroying what's left of their IP and credibility.
BUT...they're putting their money where their mouth is. They're taking this to court, and winning or losing based on a court ruling.
Eric Raymond, on the other hand, is providing a 'rebuttal' to their case which is at LEAST as revisionist and self serving as SCO's, but he's not risking anything. Instead he's sitting back, making smarmy comments, feeling superior, and further convincing the Linux community that Open Source is a holy and sacred beast, which must take over the world.
In other words, his evangelism is just as galling as SCO's corporatism, but without the clout behind it.
It's time for ESR and all the rest (Theo de Radt, creator/manager of a fabulous OS and general asshole, Linux coders who don't believe in documentation, etc. etc.) to get off of their evangelical horses and start working for the best results, rather than a vision or mission.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
It was probably for the best. You'll at least make it through the first part of the revolution alive, although the second part is going to be a wildcard for anyone.
I think this is most successful F.U.D attack against GNU/Linux. We have to defend our turf. Fight back, force SCO to show us copied code. And fix and finish these F.U.D attack at ASAP. Otherwise it will more destructive and MindCrarft test report or any biased journalists or M$ management PR works.
[My english is better than most other people's Turkish, so please point out mistakes politely. Thank you.]
The SCO spokesman said something was added to Linux by vendors that was proprietary code. That sounds like the kernel is out of the picture, in which case, we cant say their aim is on "Linux" no matter what the intention. So it could be something like YaST or even some fancy scripting. How hard can it be to replace something thats not the kernel in a distro? And this wouldnt affect the other distros either.
Theyre really kicking up dust in the face of Linux and not clarifying why. Everyone has been blindly mounting defence for Linux without even knowing what code came from UNIX by IBM at all. By the time they 'reveal' their little blame, all this wall of defence would have strengthened the case for Linux being really free.. and we needed a phreak losing case like this to give a reminder to the community not to use tainted code anywhere in the distros at all. No other Operating System grew up with so much licensing issues in mind; and Linux is bulletproof now. It is precisely this reason why Linux took the lead over BSD.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
After reading Eric's paper, it seems to me the smoke and mirrors SCO is putting up could only come from one of two motives:
A) Create an image that SCO owns the rights to all of Unix/Linux, hoping they'll make a bundle by either licensing those rights or getting bought by an outside party (like M$)
B) Disrupt the Linux community in the hopes that some outside interested party will help fund their initiative, so the interested third party can sell more of their own operating system (M$?)
Kudos to Eric and OSI for creating this position statement. It should be a help to IBM, and if not, at least it calms the fears of those enterprises running Linux.
This article in Australian IT (props go to Google News!) suggests that the real reason SCO is suing (and sending out nasty letters to Linux vendors and customers) is to slow the adoption of Linux in the enterprise. From the article:
Any IT manager whose team runs Linux could find a fast-talking lawyer at their door - hardly an event to enhance a career.
Until the dust settles, you'd be a mug to take on Linux while writs and threats are flying around the globe.
Perhaps that is one of the key objectives of this saga.
Microsoft, by licensing SCO's Unix offering, lend legitimacy to their lawsuit and in so doing make IT managers think twice about deploying a Linux solution.
Who am I to blow against the wind? -- Paul Simon
Congrats.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Would they be able to, or would the monopoly commission stop this? Can they stop an IP sale, or just a company buyout sale?
Why would microsoft license the IP? For me there are 2 possible reasons...
a) Cover their arses from already using the IP (which means at least THEY know what code SCO is complaining about (consipiracy smells like shit here), or
b) To finance SCO, they don't care about the actual code...
I don't believe that SCO should be bought out by IBM, unless they want the IP. If they wanted the IP, they would want it for making money, hence that they do not want to buy SCO means, to me, that they don't want/need the IP.
Now, M$ is another story...
GNU/Linux is rotten to the core. Some might even say dying.
Caldera, the Linux company now called SCO suing IBM over IBM's work with GNU/Linux. Previously, Calderia's CEO called the GPL, a core idea of GNU/Linux poison.
TurboLinux, SuSE, VA Linux all lost millions of investor dollars chasing GNU/Linux.
Something IS wrong when a company that files for a 57 million dollar IPO to be a Linux company files a lawsuit over the very same techology 3 years later.
'Bell Labs Unix
Bell Labs sold several variants of this system over a period of years. The initial development line ended with Version 7. The business-oriented line ended with System V release 4 in 1998. The original genetic Unix. A trademark Unix, and proprietary.'
That should be 1988.
I wonder if the next generation of hackers will be able to do the same. I don't mean this as an attack against the *ability* of the up-and-coming...but I don't know if the neophites will be able to stand against a market if that market is openly hostile towards them. Will I (or others entering the field) ever have a chance at becoming "an old hand" that has been critical to the development of the market? Will we ever have the chance to be so initimately involved that we can protect "the open internet"? Or will these gods and legends eventually pass on, leaving the kindom to a weakened progeny--weakened because they did have the experience of building what they defend--who are left to the mercy of corporate marauders?
I am both inspired and disheartened, and am left to consider my place in computer science more than ever.
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes. -- Walt Whitman
SCO's complaint cannot be understood without reference to a seismic shift now occurring in the software industry. The root of the shift lies in the approximate doubling of hardware capacity every eighteen months which has been the trend since the mid-1970s. This means that the typical complexity of software designed to fully utilize state-of-the-art hardware also doubles every eighteen months, escalating the difficulties of software engineering to previously unimagined levels.
This is so much bullshit, you don't need to write twice as much code to do twice as much work. If anything, it makes programming easier because you can use a lot more pre-made code in libraries without worrying about performance. I think it's hilarious that he goes on and on about his own philosophy and theories and states them as pure facts while also talking about the specifics of the SCO case. It weakens his whole argument, really.
and look at this:
Examination of SCO's 10Ks reveals that, even were we to assume that every dime of their revenue came from the enterprise market, their 2002 share could not have exceeded 3.1% [5] This is at the level of statistical noise.
Statistical noise? Yeah, if you were taking a survey with a standard sample size (~1200 samples), but not if you're looking at all the data (such as comparing revenue). ESR is simply showing is poor education here.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
One thing that might help would be to contact your local paper. I've just written to the editor of the business section for mine, offering him a few helpful links and my help if he wants it.
Help spread anti-FUD.
That's about the level of the argument here.
I hope that the court DOESN'T just throw this out of court but fines SCO into oblivion as a warning to other IP vultures (and saves IBM the time and expense of counter-suing.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I'm impressed. This paper uses the word "meretricious"!
VERITAS File System (VxFS) and VERITAS Volume Manager (VxVM) are owned by VERITAS Software Corporation. They are not part of the Bell Labs code. By reading Eric's article one could infer (I did) that he was implying this code is part of the Bell Labs code.
Disclaimer: I work for VERITAS Software Corporation.
Your statement that SCO risks destroying what's left of their IP and credibility tacitly recognizes that the value of their assets was diminished prior to this lawsuit - which makes the gamble you admire them so much for seem a lot less daring. The actions of SCO are being widely seen as a last-ditch effort to sell out a failing business model. Sounds a lot more like putting your mouth where your money isn't.
If SCO's claims are substantially false then this lawsuit is about significantly more than them taking a gamble and winning or losing. It is about business participants in the open source software community abusing the court systems out of self-interest. Actions of this nature are a significant threat to the viability of open source development, and that is a considerable burden to add when you consider that businesses with a vested interest in maintaining a monopolistic interest in proprietary software development (not to name any names) invest significantly in spreading disinformation about open source, including in lobbying efforts to sway the decisions of our legislators.
Eric Raymond and his co-authors, meanwhile, are expressing an opinion and making it public. You are not obligated to read or believe it. It does not put a burden on the court system or require any business to divert money that could be spent on creating value in the economy on defending against litigation.
Every community has its zealots. Clearly you have philosophical differences with Eric Raymond. So, if you want to make a point, demonstrate specific points in this paper and show using verifiable evidence that they are false or misleading. Contribute to the dialog. Otherwise you're just being contrary.
One last thing - your final comment seems to imply that it is poissible for any endeavor to acheive the best results, without containing a component of vision or mission. I think this is false, and it is particularly false in the world of cooperative, distributed efforts.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
This is so much bullshit, you don't need to write twice as much code to do twice as much work.
It was not said that you need to code twice as much; rather, that complexity doubles. This is demonstrably true.
Statistical noise? Yeah, if you were taking a survey with a standard sample size (~1200 samples) Actually, 3.1% is > 2 standard deviations from the mean regardless of sample size. It's noise, plain and simple.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
So we know (for a change) how the IP story ends :
...95141.3
But now I'm confused about how that story starts. Any clues?
The issue SCO is suing for ( unless i totally mised the boat here ) is patent rights over code components, NOT the trademarked name 'unix'...
... i dont belive they had rights to that.
In that case i agree.. the name does belong to the opengroup.. and has for a long time..
But the code?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
There seems to be a lack of acknowlegement about SCO and Microsoft being in bed for the last 20 years or so. http://www.computerhope.com/unix/xenix.htm
IANAL, but I can't see how Linux is going to be affected. If the current code contains SCO proprietary stuff, then the Linux hackers should remove it and provide their own implementation. It's IBM that's gonna suffer.
SCO has never owned the UNIX trademark. IBM neither requested nor required SCO's permission to call their AIX offering a Unix. That decision lies not with the accidental owner of the historical Bell Labs source code, but with the Open Group.... There is a body of code and associated intellectual property (IP), originating in Bell Labs, which SCO purchased from Novell in 1995.
So, which is it, Eric? Does SCO own the Unix intellectual property as an "accident," or did they buy it?
This contradiction is understandable: he is saying that no one can truly own intellectual property, and that selling IP is null and void on a moral and ethical level. The fact that SCO owns the Unix source as a result of sale is simply a historical "accident."
There's some truth to that on the level of abstract justice. Coca-Cola could have bought Unix as easily as SCO did. Nerither of them wrote it in the first place, and neither of them has an abstract moral claim to it. Similarly. it's arbitrary that, say, Paul McCartney is currently the owner of the Buddy Holly catalog.
But that is the nature of property -- that it can be bought and sold, with reference primarily to the financial transaction, and with only limited concern about whether the new owner is in some moral sense the rightful owner. The reason we allow intellectual property in this society is so that people will be incented to create more of it, since IP becomes a thing of value the creator can then sell to someone who did not create it.
We've decided as a society that the incentive to create that is involved in limited monopoly outweighs the potential social benefits of unlimited access to all IP. Dismissing the transactions that placed Unix in the hands of SCO is dismissing the nature of property, and instead treating Unix as an ideal which is rightly the property of everyone. However, if Bell Labs couldn't have sold Unix, they most likely never would have developed it in the first place.
As if to underscore the point that he is protesting the fact that anyone owns Unix, that it was developed as property and sold as property, Raymond goes on to indulge in irrelevant bragging about the ease of obtaining the supposedly confidential sources:
The contents of the historical Bell Labs codebase is well known; through most of its history, AT&T/USL/Novell tacitly ignored source license violations for non-commercial purposes, and many senior Unix programmers still possess bootleg copies of that source code. (The authors of this document could lay hands on one without difficulty.)
This I think is near the heart of the free Unix controversy. The Unix community was accustomed for years to living outside the law. Bell Labs charged an unreasonable amount for source code access, but Unix and its client applications were written in such a way that one really needed source code to use it effectively, so bootlegging source became the regular practice. This led to a habit of disregard for intellectual property, and even a feeling that this disregard was somehow virtuous. And of course, people who feel this way would hardly coinsider it a problem to pilfer Unix sources to help create Linux. Unfortunately this subculture of software piracy is incompatible with the right of the owners to control their property.
This unresolved conflict is now coming to a head. I think any reasonable person can see which side the courts are likely to come down on. My hope is that IBM will settle by buying Unix into the public domain or otherwise freeing the source, but if that's not what happens, then SCO may very well succeed in enforcing its property rights, "accidental" as they may be.
I'll assume two things here: 1) You're not a troll, and 2) you've read the OSI paper that was the article. Both are probably wrong, but hey.
So if you have some serious research, I'm sure we'd love to see it. Particularly if some of it invalidates claims in the OSI paper, which are pretty strong.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
UNIX systems that are built under licenses that SCO inherited are the dominant UNIX variants. These include Solaris and AIX and HP-UX. All have licenses from Bell Labs/AT&T that protected AT&T's intellectual property, which SCO now owns.
SCO and Intel UNIX: OSI has it wrong and so does SCO. SCO did port Xenix to the 8086 and 286. Intel/AT&T paid to have Interactve Systems port UNIX 5.2.2 to the 286 and 5.3 to the 386. SCO used the Interactive port for the basis of the later products. Interactive built a packaged UNIX based on V.3 which was eventually bought by Sun which used this as the base of Solaris for Intel.
IBM hired Locus Computing to port UNIX to the PS/2. They used a V.2.2 variant and did not use the same code base that was used for the RISC AIX, which was developed by Interactive for IBM.
The OSF ported the MACH kernel and UNIX layer but still used a variety of the Bell commands. I think the kernel was Bell license free, but I can not remember the exact terms. I know you needed an AT&T 5.2 level license, but I think this was because OSF still used the commands, libs, etc from Bell.
In a way, SCO is correct, in that the Intel ports of the various UNIX'es all derive from some version of Bell Labs UNIX which the vendors had access to via an AT&T license.
It would be pretty funny if their included some of their patents like this:
US Patent #5,965,809, "Method of Bra Size Determination by Direct Measurement of the Breast
Maybe just to point out the silliness of the whole case.
Life is too short to proofread.
If SCO thought Linux was so sucky before IBM got involved with it, why did SCO start creating distros in the first place?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Where's-my-next-grandstand-ESR says, "Picking a fight with IBM isn't smart. Picking a fight with me isn't smart either. Picking a fight with both of us is mind-bogglingly stupid, especially when the facts ain't on your side."
s tate=9 v08f1.4.25
_ mark.php
d ?f=doc&state=9 v08f1.5.1
Speaking of mind-bogglingly stupid, the public record begs a moment in the spotlight.
In 1998 Eric Raymond was generally fond of telling us all how "open source" was "his term", namely a USP&TO service/certification mark which he owned and that he was going to sue anyone in general (and me in particular) who used it without his approval. That was about the time that he declared that Linux, published under the GPL, conformed to his newborn "open source" license, and therefore was not so much "free software" published as it was under the GPL, but was "open source" because, well, it conformed to the nascent "open source initiative" license, even though Linux was first published eight years before Raymond decided that "open source" was a better term, for purposes of marketing free software, than the term "free software" was. Well, Linux had been described since its genesis in 1990 as free software but Raymond decided that Linux was better described as open source and contrived his open source license to fit the occasion. Historians refer to such slight of hand, on a nice day, as revisionist.
In fact, there had been no USP&TO acceptance of the term "open source", but only an application, from February of '98, for the term as a certification mark. That was Raymond's first lie, that it had been accepted as a "service mark". And the applicant was not Raymond, but rather a corporation, Software in the Public Interest. That was his second lie.
http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&
Go here and read what the SPI corporation had to say about Raymond and his antics of misrepresentation at the time. They were not happy with what he was trying to do.
http://www.spi-inc.org/news/1998/19981124
Forward to 2003. Same Eric Raymond, different year, same misrepresentation. Visit the Open Source Inititative web site and note that it displays what it calls the OSI Certification mark, and that this logo has a TM in it, which is an clear assertion that it the OSI Certification mark is a US registered trademark. Take a look...
http://opensource.org/docs/certification
Hmmm. Now, go back to the USP&TO web site and note that, again, there is NO trademark, as Raymond & his OSI web site assert, but only an abandoned application.
http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfiel
Better that such typical and often-occuring misrepresentations of the legal status of these terms by Raymond & his OSI are exposed now rather than in a courtroom where Raymond, along with IBM and its legal defense would be blown sky high (as in obliterated) by Ray Noorda's lawyers. It would be a damn shame if the judge were so put off by a demonstration of Raymond's hard-earned style of hyperbole and self aggrandizement that the judge were to decide that IBM itself had no real defense except Raymond's self-serving version of history and that IBM actually was in the wrong here.
If the IBM defense is in the right on this one but if it introduces a self-proclaimed "UNIX historian" who prefers his own "facts" which are shown to be misrepresentations of easily documentable facts, then IBM itself and any truth of its defense will tragically be subverted by Raymond's time-worn antics. IBM wants to win this one but the last thing it wants to do is to put someone on the stand who regularly shows himself to be hell bent on exposing himself as someone who prefers his own, self-aggrandizing, cooked "facts" to the ones that any 9-year-old can document with an internet browser.
Once again postings like this prove that Slashdot is full of CS graduates and home "experts" who wouldn't know true corporate computing environments if they slapped them in the face. Of course people use AIX.
/dev/pts/0 from netmgt1 /dev/pts/0 from netmgt3
Yes, we certainly do use AIX, and it is a fine, reliable, stable and high-performance *nix.
telnet (CWX1)
CWX1 (AIX 4.2.1) Unauthorized use/access is prohibited.
login: root
root's Password:
Last unsuccessful login: Wed May 14 13:25:58 2003 on
Last login: Thu May 15 09:28:00 2003 on
Determining terminal type, please wait...
Terminal recognized as vt220 (DEC VT220)
TERM=vt220
/ >#uname -a
AIX cwx1 2 4 00054848A100
/ >#uptime
10:41AM up 337 days, 12:13, 4 users, load average: 0.19, 0.22, 0.54
/ >#
Yes, it's an older, outdated version of AIX, but does its job and runs too reliably to risk dorking with upgrading it. Besides, it's on a private internal network only (hence being able to telnet in as root), and runs an older version of Oracle that's quite happy on this platform. And furthermore, it's long since paid for itself over and over again.
- Any code or file released by Caldera and accepted by Linus into the kernel tree with the copyright notice "Copyright Caldera Corporation, All rights reserved. This file is released under the General Public License..."
Is deemed released on purpose, retains its license under the GPL, and cannot be used ex-post-facto for tort under copyright or breach of contract law.
Do you agree with that statement?
--Maynard
And Bill Gates is the devil because...
Nice try, but guess what? Unixware and OpenServer are still two separate products.
For the most part, though, this seems to have some good points. I'd love to see the reaction from SCO. It's farily obvious from SCO's original presentation (from which this document quotes) was not fully reviewed by enough mind power backed by technical experience. For example,
Virtually none of these software developers and hobbyists had access to enterprise-scale equipment and testing facilities for Linux development. - SCO
Not true at all, including the hardware IBM, Compaq, etc., made available, not to mention the equipment Caldera generously made available themselves to developers. Oops. Too bad they got rid of the folks who could have reminded them of this...
Let me get this straight. SCO is suing IBM about AIX and OSI is involved. The GPL should be ok though. Too many TLA's. I'm so confused.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
this is just another note from Eric S. Raymond. I don't think one individual filing multiple briefs and writing letters "on behalf" of multiple groups does anything to help linux's case. I'm not trying to cast aspersions on him personally, but his role has primarily been as an evangelist and hobbiest. His writing is entertaining and often makes good points, but isn't particularly professional (sounding) and right now, the courts are seeing a small group of software pirates and music bucaneers in league with elements of the rogue mega-corporation, IBM attempting to squash the clean cut, small town Mormon business that invented computing as we know it.
Probably as a vector to put Unix code into Linux, and someone might see these modifications, think that they are good and contribute them to the kernel or where ever it is found in. Then wait a long time, people wouldn't realize that the code came from Caldera. Then when they became SCO, it would put blame on IBM for the code and say they put it in.
He's pointing out a gross error the grandparent made.
I scaned the parents in the thread and didn't see this mentioned. If it was, mod this down.
About 3/4th of the way down, I got a little confused by this statement: "It is a matter of record [23] that IBM's approach to LVM was rejected by Linus Torvalds in favor of a different approach. Accordingly, even if we were to stipulate that IBM has access to SCO's JFS[emp. mine] technology, any attempted misappropriation came to naught!"
I think he ment to say SCO's LVM. Has he filed this brief yet and if not can someone contact him to have this corrected?
I started to refute this, but then I deleted all my text. I'm not gonna waste more bandwidth on a troll, the likes of which should be in the next Harry Potter movie.
(1) Reference to self in third person
.
.
.
The principal author of this position paper (Raymond) has been a Unix developer since 1982, is a technical specialist in systems programming technologies related to those at issue,
(2) Delusions of grandeur
and is a historian whose writings on the open-source community and Unix ([TNHD], [CATB], [TAOUP]) are widely considered authoritative both within the community and outside it. He has been since 1997 one of the leading theorists and (both in his individual capacity and as the president of OSI) one of the principal spokespersons/ambassadors for the open-source community
(3) Endless citing of own pretentious bullshit
[TNHD] The New Hacker's Dictionary. Third Edition. Eric S. Raymond. Copyright © 1996. ISBN 0-262-68092-0. MIT Press. 547pp.. HTML at the Jargon File Resource Page.
[CATB] The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Second Edition. Eric S. Raymond. Copyright © 1999. ISBN 0-596-00131-2. O'Reilly & Associates. 240pp.. How and why the Linux development model works. HTML here
[TAOUP] The Art of Unix Programming. Second Edition. Eric S. Raymond. Copyright © 2003. ISBN 0-13-142901-9. Addison-Wesley. 240pp. Work in progress, to be published August 2003. HTML of the draft is here
Someone I know was once sued because, having seen how one product didn't work well, they took a completely different approach that worked much better. The stolen IP was the knowledge of how NOT to do something!
So, perhaps SCO's case is that IBM discovered that the SCO's code and development model were completely useless and then improperly switched to backing Linux. At least the total inadequacy of SCO's codebase is something that would be much, much harder to refute.
Let's review some basic UNIX history:
- early '80s: SCO bought the rights to Unix V. 7 from AT&T and developed XENIX (one of many x86 UNIX derivatives), with Microsoft as a partner.
- Across the '80s many other developers developed UNIX on Intel, as well as UNIX on other chip platforms such as 68K. This includes Sun, SGI, HP, Sequent, IBM, etc etc etc.
- The trademark for "UNIX" was sold to X/Open in the early '90s. X/Open then renamed themselves "The Open Group". They still own the trademark.
- In '91 Linus released the first Linux Kernel to the hacking community. He wrote this on his own and is a derivative of nothing other than his own work.
- In '93 Novel purchased USL (AT&T)s stake in the UNIX codebase.
- In '94 Berkeley and AT&T/USL settled an ongoing copyright infringement lawsuit over the rights to those portions of the BSD codebase which contained original AT&T Version 7 code. A few files in BSD were removed, rewritten, and then BSD was rereleased as BSD-4.4Lite. (This had nothing to do with Linux).
- By '95 Caldera was actively contributing source code to the Linux Kernel, along with dual CPU hardware, to further community development of a product line they were actively engaged in selling. All of this code was released under the GPL with full knowledge and intent of management as part of their business plan.
- in '95 Novel purchased the rights to the original UNIX codebase from USL
- By '96, when Kernel 2.0 was released, Linux had basic support for SMP in the kernel.
- In '98 Novel sold the UNIX codebase to SCO (previously SCO had only a source license from AT&T). SCO, IBM, and others began Project Monterey to unify an single UNIX source tree among many hardware vendors.
- In '99 - 2000: Kernel 2.2 was released which included many new SMP features. By this time independent of project Monterey Linux developers were coding in beta their own journaled filesystems, Logical Volume support, clustering failover, and very early NUMA support.
- 2001: SCO split into Tarantella (a web services company) and the original SCO name w/ original AT&T UNIX tree. Along with this was the original SCO Openserver codebase and UNIXWARE. Linux had by that time far surpassed UNIXWARE in SMP scaling, along with most other enterprise features, and all of this had happened before IBM invested in Linux and dumped project Monterey.
Thus, one sees from the history of Linux development, all relevant "enterprise" features were developed independent of IBM and the project Monterey codetree. The assertion that "SCO released code which accidentally made it into the kernel tree" and "loosers weepers" is completely irrelevant to the facts at hand. None of that happened, thus the hypothetical doesn't matter.
ESR makes all of this perfectly clear in his position paper.
Cheers,
--Maynard
Probably a troll, but I'll bite. Your statements are so far off that it's hard to tear them apart, which is probably what makes it so fun as a troll.
Why don't I just stick to the most obvious problem:
* Standard deviation is a function of sample size, making everything you've said completely false.
Microsoft, of course. If this FUD prevents a few people from switching to Linux, it would certainly make Microsoft happy. Well worth paying a few license fees. Or even funding a lawsuit by someone like SCO.
But they wouldn't do anything like that, would they?
Come on ESR, you could have atleast made sure that your timeline was correct!
Even if he messed up the fact that FreeBSD has to different parents depending the version (FreeBSD 1.X is from 386BSD and FreeBSD > 2.0 is from 4.4BSD-Lite Release 2), 4.4BSD-Lite (FreeBSD is not from 4.4BSD, which was AT&T licensed) was release prior to 1993 (I think 90-91). The beginnings of 386BSD and Linux are both at about the same time.
Little details do matter...:)
BWP
what he said......
All this stuff about "irrevocably infect your code without your express wishes" is just FUD. Whining about "programmer took some 'free' code to incorporate into our precious corporate product" is just whining -- no one else is responsible for your clueless employees. "GPL" is not a synonym for "public domain."
SCO distributing a Linux distribution doesn't necessarily affect the case since they can reasonably claim they didn't look through all the billions and billions of lines of code in the kernel. But I'm not a lawyer, and my unfounded speculations are just that. Don't read this paragraph.
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
The verses you quoted (Luke 18:24 and 1 Timothy 6:10) teach that the love of money makes it difficult for people to prioritize spiritually, not that making money is immoral.
SCO is a souless puppet whoose strings are being manipulated by the heartless tyrant known as MicroSoft. They deserve the full fury of the opensource community that will be unleashed upon them in the next few months.
Slashdot taught me how to use the preview button!
I really hope that a lot of people actually READS the paper. It's excellently clear, and very well written.
If the case goes to court (which it should) and IBM wins (which it will), then a lot of FUD about Linux and IP actually will be out of the way.
> There have been several posts from people who are upset with what they say is revisionist history from ESR.
;-)
There are numerous places in this paper where ESR gets his facts wrong, & not a few typos (e.g. the genealogical chart he provides for UNIX post-v.7 out _does_ show the lineage of AIX). And he can't help but add a section or two about his pet theory about how wonderful Open Source is.
HOWEVER, there are far less errors in ESR's history of UNIX than in the SCO Group's. The biases in their narrative distort the facts; ESR's bias does not. If the two or three sections where he waxes prophetic about Open Source are removed, the basic facts of the relationship between SCO UNIX, IBM & Linux remain.
I only hope that people bring these errors to ESR's attention, & that he proves his assertion of the superiority of Open Source by making the nescessary bug fixes. (Or someone else will prove it by forking his white paper, with the necessary improvements.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
From the OSI position paper:
The required attribution is "UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the United States and other countries".
Is it United States or United States of America? Do "required attributions" require correct country names or will any abbreviation do?
Well fancy that! I ALSO happen to be an attorney and I have done extensive research on this case as well. It looks to me like SCO hasn't a legal leg to stand on since none of the code they claim is in Linux actually existed before 2002. (I've also signed the NDA to see what it is that they are claiming they "have on Linux". That's why I'm posting AC. Seth is a cocksucker.) SCO will be laughed out of court on day one as soon as they make their "revelation".
The GPL has never been tested in court, after all, and that's already something of a concern about it for enterprise level customers.
The shrink-wrap EULA has also never been tested in court, IIRC. Does that make MS software "something of a concern" for enterprise level customers?
Besides, it isn't clear to me what exactly about the GPL must be tested in court to mollify enterprise customers. If they are simply using GPL software, then the GPL doesn't even do anything. For pure users, GPL==freeware. The GPL restrictions come into play only if one chooses to redistribute GPL'd software. If you do not accept the terms of the GPL, then the software reverts to standard copyright law, under which you have no rights to redistribute it. I really don't see how one could invalidate the GPL without necessarily invalidating all software licenses at the same time (IANAL).
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
SCO didn't. Caldera did. Then Caldera bought SCO UnixWare, OpenServer, Services and Support, and a few other odds and ends. Then *new management* came in, took over Caldera and the "Old SCO" and replaced it with what we have now.
This is not the same company as Caldera; this is not he same company as SCO. It is a new entity with completely different leadership which has entirely different purposes from either previous company. It just happens to have the same name as one of the previous companies.
I bet some people would be happy to go back to the days of Ransom Love... I dare say the fights over THAT Caldera seem relatively tame compared to what the entirely new leadership at SCO are doing.
It seems to me that this entire position paper will get thrown out as it is talking about SCO OpenServer. SCO's suit contends that the infractions occurred with UnixWare.
J
It's not failing. It's gaining marketshare. It's winning people contracts in larger and larger organizations for larger and larger installations.
There's no such thing.
Put another way... I felt that I was up to the job to perform a heart-and-lung transplant. I had several experiences applying band-aids to minor scrapes and recommending chicken soup to people with the sniffles.
You got the wrong memo. It's in honor of Richard Nixon, who also (unlike Karl) has an 'i', an 'n', and an 'x' in the same name.
Ought to be easy, as you clearly don't have any.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
"everybody did it so it was okay" wouldn't wash, execpt that AT&T played along -- probably to maximize overall market acceptance and garner "free" programming contibutions from the user community. Good plan for AT&T, or bad, we don't have the boardroom insight of the time to say. But, when the owner of a trade secret doesn't protect it, actively, positively, and without fail, the secret is out and lost forever. That is the law.
... as well as an attorney.
How about citing some of your 'extensive legal research'? I'm not going to believe that it exists until you do.
SCO has not disclosed their primary evidence in the case. Without access to this evidence, you have no basis to form the opinion that they have a 'damn strong case'.
I believe the main reason why MS is "licensing" from SCO is to give it additional funding in the proxy fight against Linux, IBM, etc.
So, what exactly does OSI's ownership of the UNIX trademark mean, if honoring the trademark is more "in the breach than in the fact"? Has OSI failed to enforce its interest in the trademark sufficiently for it to be weakened and unenforceable?
The reason I'm asking is that, should SCO prevail, could OSI get ugly and demand that SCO stop using OSI's trademark in their marketing materials?
After he became famous by stealing the Jargon File and publishing it for his own benefit, he's moved on to writing fluffy, irrelevant, legally moot junk in an attempt to deprive SCO of any of its legal rights to the intellectual property it owns.
"I'm done...."
Nice grammer, attorney-boy. If you had done even one-half of 1% of the research that you're claiming to have done, then you'd realize that SCO hasn't got a single legal leg to stand on.
...But retained the SCO name for marketing purposes. --M
No. It means your IANAL retentive
> Everyone derides ESR and RMS because they stick by what they believe in. Even if you don't agree with them, why do you feel that they need to change their stance?
"Bash unto others", is pretty much the motto of humanity.
A sense of superiority is the goal for most, and how better to achive power than to "win" by aimless bashing of anything that matters not to you directly. Think of it as "eliminating the competition" in the game of life.
> "Not everyone has the same beliefs as you do."
Indeed, and those without "my" beliefs should probably be, in order of preference...
o Killed.
o Condemmed by "God", so others might serve my purpose in feeling rightous enough to do the actuall killing/bashing.
o Bashed until they vanish from my world experience, without a trace.
o Denied until they are clearly "in their place", like in a box under someone else's bridge.
It stinks, but that's life in today's world. Get used to it.
While having little legal bearing, it would be nice to have an executive-summary-style comparison of the featuresets of Linux vs. SCO's offerings. Not having worked with SCO's products, I'm not in a position to do this alone (I've administered various Linux distros, Solaris, and AIX), but if some sysadmins with SCO experience would like to put some thought into this, I'll help do the writeup and the suit-friendly presentation. Contact me at eodell@sfront.com if you're interested.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
As an attorney interested in legla matters related to the software industry, I am followwing this case closely as well, and my legal opinion is of the contrary. After careful ponderance of the evidence presented so far by both sides, it seems that the judge is leaning heavily in favor of granting all further rights to nVidia. This will leave the OSI in a lurch as it has pending preprocessed propietary patents in proper due to come up with SGI in 2004. This will leave the GNU scrambling to find new sources for OT... SCO had better purchase PanIP, a far more experienced enterprise class litigator, or shut up shop.
"HAHAHAHHAHA!!!!"
If you're a consultant, then you're easily the stupidest person that I've ever seen.
"...NET Framework at the kernel level."
HAHAHAHAAAAA!!!!
pi=sigma{n:0-infinity}[(1/16)^n][(4/(8n+1))-(2/(8n +4))-(1/ (8n+5))-(1/(8n+6))]
Reading thru the OSI document, it became clear to me that the SCO suit and surrounding PR are an attempt to do to Linux what the USL/BSD suit did to BSD a decade ago -- that is stall it's adoption in a cloud of legal FUD.
For those who are not aware, back in the early '90s Unix Systems Lab (the inheritor, at that time, of the bell labs IP in Unix) sued the BSD people over their attempt to split off the BSD code from the Bell Labs IP. At that time, they had realized that the BSD code base had very little code that had actually sourced with AT&T and decided that it was time to excise what was left of the AT&T code and go their own non-proprietary way. USL was indignant at this abandonment of fealty and attempted to sue the BSD group back into compliance.
As the OSI paper succinctly puts it: "The suit was settled after AT&T's request for an injunction blocking distribution of BSD was denied in terms that made it clear the judge thought BSD likely to win its defense." -- (and after Berkeley's threat to counter sue AT&T over their own violations of the BSD copyright and license).
Many people, however, credit the current popularity of Linux -- at least in part -- to the legal cloud that the AT&T suit placed over the BSD codebase -- at about the same time that Linus released the early (and relatively primitive) versions of the Linux kernel with the GNU utility codebase.It is believed that a number of people decided that it was easier -- legally speaking -- to throw their lot in with the clearly IP-intact Linux than to risk getting caught by the BSD license debacle.
As a result, Linux is now the dominant Unix-variant OS OS, and the various BSDs -- which started with a much more stable and mature codebase are now holding a relatively niche market space.
SCO's suit along with their rather bombastic and (as shown by the OSI document) seriously misleading and unfounded PR claims seem intended to create precisely the same kind of 'chilling environment' around Linux. The fact that Linux is just about to get into a serious head-on fight with Microsoft for control of both the server market and the desktop market may be either coincidental or part of a conspiracy.
Although SCO's legal filings have a limited immunity to claims of slander and libel, to the extent to which they have repeated those claims in press releases, public statements, and letters, they are not. Those public and semi-public statements appear to be a large part of SCO's 'legal' campaign, and open them to some serious libel claims.
I honestly believe that it would be appropriate for the Linux community to seriously look at suing SCO over the insulting, degrading and clearly untruthful statements that they've made about us. The intent of those statements is to degrade the image and financial value of the work of the Linux community, and if they're allowed to stand, they may succeed in doing so to a greater degree than they already have.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
The Money that Microsoft recently gave to SCO should be put into an escrow account so when RedHat, SuSe, and others sue SCO for damages arising out of SCO's frivalous case, they would have something to be compensated with.
Did you just teleneted in as root??
:)
Its not only your OS that is outdated
Richard Stallman
"Linux is a copy of UNIX. There is very little new stuff in Linux."
Linux kernel forum
"I consider the law prohibiting the sharing of copies with your friend the moral equivalent of Jim Crow. It does not deserve respect."
Richard Stallman, Free as in Freedom, Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software: O'Reilly (2002) at p. 72
"The whole GNU project is really one big hack. It's one big act of subversive playful cleverness..."
Richard Stallman, Revolution OS (DVD)
Bruce Perens
"This is becoming a tradition. I go there and break the law every year in the name of free speech."
Bruce Perens, explaining his plan to demonstrate how to modify DVD technology to attendees of an Open Source convention.
"We have to remember that Linux is a follow-on to UNIX. It's not just a UNIX clone. It's actually a UNIX successor."
Bruce Perens, mpulse magazine, December 2001.
CONTEXT FOR THE ABOVE:
Stallman is often full of hyperbole and not to be taken literally when he comments on his competition. You might as well quote Bill Gates on Linux. Humans deride the competition.
Perens is as American as Washington, Jefferson, and those other long haired radical revolutionaries that believed in FREEDOM enough to disobey tyrannical laws bought by the rich to oppress the majority.
Is that context enough?
I didn't expect to be able to read those misquotes off their site, after hearing that they'd been DDoS'd some days ago.
But not so, their site isn't lagged at all.
Is it just me or does ESR play the "insult" card too often? It would seem to me to be better stated that "SCO saw benefit to using the contributions of the community and now attacks that same community by which SCO profited."
Insult doesn't mean much. Insult is not a legal issue. Who contributed and who profited is more meaningful.
Later,
LurkerMan
From the OSI paper:
"The most skilled programmers flocked to the new mode."
This is pretty questionable. The most skilled programmers were probably well-established, well-paid, and mostly restricted and cautious about contributing to open projects while employed at closed companies.
Not at all. I seem to remember that AT&T sold UNIX System III and V licenses back in the '80s for about $40,000 per license. This included the rights to the source code, modifications, the "UNIX" name, and the right to distriubute a commercial product based upon this tree. None of the commercial UNIX vendors such as Sun, SGI, IBM, HP, et all pay a recurring fee for use of the original UNIX source tree.
Linux was derived from MINIX. That is all.
It appears that SCO's claims about Linux scalability, etc, may have been as a result of some IBM PR in 2000.
A vunet article from June 2000 quotes Miles Barel, IBM's program director for AIX and Monterey, as saying that scalability, volume and systems management features present in IBM's Unix operating system, AIX, are still missing from Linux.
Of course, an IBM'er would (at that moment in time) push AIX over the (then) hobby project called Linux. But, it seems that it is this comment that's sparked SCO's much delayed attack.
"values of beta will give rise to dom!"
Apache, Sendmail, Squid, Samba, Cdrtools, OpenOffice, Gnome, Kde, gcc, Mozilla ...
This programs are open source and SCO can use it.
If SCO hate opensource, why can use it?
I think that all the open source programers must put a clausule
in his programs to boicot SCO.
In the other hand, www.sco.com use Apache+Linux...
( http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=www.sco. com )
"This document, originally proposed as a draft brief of amicus curiae, has been endorsed as an OSI position paper by OSI's Board of Directors. The Board has concluded on advice of counsel that OSI cannot seek amicus status in advance of pleadings. The option to seek amicus status at a future time remains open."
As you can see I don't care about my karma.
What is today *BSD played a large role in eroding the intellectual property that wound up in the hands of SCO (the net2 stuff being just the most obvious and highest-profile). So the jokes about RedHat FreeBSD are funny, but not in the way people seem to think. If SCO thought there was a dime to be squeezed out of *BSD I'd bet they'd be gunning for them too.
This might be an interesting case, I don't forsee any big winners, but the loser could be the GPL, if things go a certain way it could be open season in terms of enforcing the license or (more likely) citing it to remove contributed code from large projects (like linux) retroactively (that is, invalidating a GPL-ed release of something would virally invalidate all derived versions).
The thing that I'm seeing in this whole affair between SCO's FUD and ESR's OSI writeup is oddly ironic: it won't be a battle between open source developers and Micros~1 that becomes the pivotal point for Linux, it will more likely be this issue that we're all reading about.
This sig no verb.
I see they've added pretty diagrams since last I checked. Nice. This is top quality material.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
The sales number on their website is 1-888-GO-LINUX, shouldn't it be 1-888-KO-LINUX?
I think they are confused.
Microsoft aggravates my tourettes syndrome.
Disclaimer: I'm a log time SCO reseller/consultant and although I do more and more Linux, a lot of my business is still SCO. Which probably makes me prejudiced.
When Microsoft was under assault by the Justice Dept., they whined that any harsh punishment would have drastic effects on our economy. I think this suit has equally undesirable consequences.
Chances are that this will all blow over with little or nothing changing. Either they'll lose, or they'll win but won't be so greedy as to kill of the golden goose. Let's hope so, anyway.
But suppose they are as rapacious and unprincipled as Microsoft? Suppose they actually have a case, and actually win, and start demanding outrageous royalties and compensation for previous sales?
That could destroy Linux. Destroying Linux makes Microsoft stronger and only hastens SCO's own already progressing downward spiral. No doubt it would affect FreeBSD also because of FUD if nothing else. While it might not directly affect Sun and Apple, making Microsoft stronger doesn't help.
My wife and I talked about this today. Without a strong base of Unix/Linux customers, you can stick a large fork in me. It's been my life for 20 years. I am NOT going to start doing Microsoft crapola now; I'm too old, too tired, and I dislike their stuff too much.
OK, putting me out of business doesn't kill the economy. But how many others will be similarly displaced and disenfranchised?
Can anyone guesstimate what the economic consequences of the Worst Case Scenario might be?
-- Tony Lawrence
Others called me on spinning more into your comments than was fair (guilty) - good rhetorical technique, not always the best way of getting to facts. I think it is very interesting, though, to ponder the vision versus elbow grease factor, if you will. I often look at the world of Open Source development as a sort of model anarchy, still my favorite idealistic model for self-governance. I think there is a need for visionaries and advocates, but what you say is true - there's a fine line between principles and dogma, and the latter usually ends up restricting your options.
Whether the actions of these two representatives (SCO and Eric Raymond) can really be meaningfully compared, you are making me lean to the belief that ultimately this lawsuit can be a good thing if it clarifies ownership of Unix (after reading that paper I have no idea what that really means).
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
And by looking at this page at SCO this got quote a lot of awards from their distribution of Linux. Can you imagine their awards page from now on... (I am guessing it won't be changing for a while!)...
I do wonder what any of their larger customers using SCO's linux distribution are thinking right now! If SCO do give up on linux they are going to annoy a lot of their clients...
Mark.
PS. Thought this was funny still being on SCO's Partner page...
IBM offers the industry's most comprehensive lineup of solutions for Linux®. IBM's efforts to advance Linux stretch back to 1998 and signify an unrivaled show of support via technology, skills, services, and corporate focus. With the industry's largest portfolio of hardware, software and services for Linux, IBM support continues to expand, allowing more companies to leverage Linux to grow their e-businesses.
---- There are 10 types of people in the world. Those that understand binary and those that don't
The paper says:
However, The Open Group's strict construction of the term ÒUnixÓ is more honored in the breach than the observance.
This is a pretty common misuse of Shakespeare's line from Hamlet. Most people take it to mean that the thing in question is mostly ignored, but what Hamlet meant when he said it was that the tradition in question was a bad one, and that it was more honorable to breach than to observe it.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
$1?
$0.01?
-$1,000,000?
Seriously, I'm sure MS paid nothing or got some kick-back to accept the license. It's a common market strategy (e.g. Rambus) to "sell" licenses for undisclosed terms to major players to make your claim seem stronger. Seems to have worked again, SCO stock is way up on the news.
-Ryan C.
-Ryan C.
I was wondering if "UNIX" was still a trademark. In all the days I've been around computers I've heard them described as PC, Mac or unix system. PC has always been Wintel or compatible. Unix systems could mean Irix, Linux, *BSD, Solaris but mainly mean your going to be using "ls" instead of "dir" to do your dirty work. This article mentions a few ways a trademark can be lost and lists some nice examples.
I think that most computer people would agree that unix is pretty generic by now. I don't know if this is directly related to the lawsuit or not. What do you think?
I was going to point out some of the mistakes in ESR's paper but I really can't be bothered now. Can someone get the Unix timeline fixed please!
I am guessing that from the announcement on the 19th that the payment was "Active Directory Services" or whatever it is called. See www.sco.com and look at the last few news items!
---- There are 10 types of people in the world. Those that understand binary and those that don't
Sure, not all the facts are right, but that never held back Fox News or The New York Times. Enjoy.
Taken shamelessly from http://www.ridiculopathy.com/news_detail.php?id=8
I've always used windoze because frankly, I've been to lazy to learn Linux. But the level of their greed has plain pissed me off. Linux it is.
Now, I realize you say its on an internal network only which somewhat mitigates risk but how secure is that network, really?
Obviously you didn't believe me when I said it's on a private network did you?. There are only six devices on this private network segment -- the server itself and five workstations, it is NOT routeable *anywhere* else, or even connected to any other network device period. You have to be physically present in the computer room, where I am right now, and under my personal supervision to telnet to this AIX box.
Seems that while SCO has stopped serving the bits, planetmirror still has this stuff laying about:
The click-through license:
and the files that live behind it (accessible without accepting the license, no less)
5th Edition UNIX
6th Edition UNIX
7th Edition UNIX
Mini UNIX
UNIX System III
UNIX 32V
No one actually admits to being a lawyer. Doesn't matter, no one's advice here should be taken too seriously. You folks must think a lot of yourselves and your precious reputations to always be announcing that you are not lawyers. At least make me laugh and switch to "IAMANAL" or simply "Type A". Dumb asses.
pardon this post! it is far from PC (politically correct).
Screw Them! They are a sinking ship that wants to grab a hold of something solid. They file the lawsuit, become a PITA (pain in the ass) and IBM will buy them to shut them up and make the go away. IBM stick to your guns, and not pay them a dime. Actually counter sue for harassment and legal fees. Even if you dont get the harassment lawsuit (which you should not care about) get your legal fees back. And put those bastards out of business. Screw Them!
Scott
janitor
sdn website family
email: scott at sboss dot net
"He has been since 1997 one of the leading
0 29 0
therorists..."
^^^^^^^^^^
http://www.opensource.org/sco-vs-ibm.html#id279
I knew Unix folks were Hackers,
but now they convinced me
they are therorists!
infinite9:
/ genprogc /floating-point_except.htm
On AIX, if you want to receive SIGFPE, then enable it. The call is fp_enable().
Other options include examining a status flag in the Floating-Point Status and Control registers (FPSCR), using fp_divbyzero().
See:
http://www.unet.univie.ac.at/aix/aixprggd
Anti-ESR zealots are ALMOST as bad as the anti-RMS ones... (but as you demonstrated, the anti-ESR guys are obviously much more stupid)
... makes you sound like an idiot, so shut the fuck up
...makes you sound like an idiot. Please shut the fuck up.
"According to today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer, some observers say the "deal could impede Linux. .... The agreement ... will put between $10 million and $20 million into the hands of The SCO Group, of Lindon, Utah, said a source close to the deal."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A145 17-2003May20.html?nav=hptoc_tn
we like to start wars for the economic benefit of those in power
if that is not corruption what is?
I found this interesting fact by looking at Caldera's insider trading in the last 2 years.
On February 21, 2003, 6 Directors of Caldera International (SCOX) purchased between 26,923 and 33,462 shares of Caldera stock each.
Of course none of them were familiar with this case or with M$ofts pending license.... right?
Yeah, really! How about YOU Shut The Fuck Up instead? The man has a fucking RIGHT to question the message and the messager. What part of that don't you fucking understand? Go back to reading your comic books and popping your zits.
Yeah, really! How about YOU Shut The Fuck Up instead? The man has a fucking RIGHT to question the message and the messager. What part of that don't you fucking understand? Go clean your fucking closet why don't you?
Stallman didn't say that. He quoted Larry McVoy who said that.
That quote was taken completely out of context. What Stallman actually said was:
In the interest of brevity, even that's not in complete context. Stallman is basically saying if you were to thinking about what the law should be, and someone proposed the current copyright law, the current law would not merit much thought.
The final Stallman quote,
sounds like meaningless babble. I don't know what the heck that's supposed to mean. Maybe if SCO put it in context it would make more sense.
Bruce Perens
In a show of civil disobedience, Bruce was planning to circumvent the region controls on a DVD player. He was planning to get arrested so he could put the DMCA on trial. His employer, Hewlett Packard, was afraid that they could be held liable for his demonstration, so they asked him not to do it. In the end, Perens cancelled the demonstration since it would defeat his whole purpose of HP was sued.
From the magazine interview:
So Perens was referring to the original AT&T UNIX and its stream-oriented foundation. What SCO fails to mention is that they do not have a claim against Linux based on the original AT&T code base. As Eric Raymond pointed out so well in the position paper, AT&T attempted to enforce their intellectual property rights, but ended up settling out of court by paying the defendant's legal fees.
Eric Raymond is the LAST person on the planet whom I would want to rely on to explain trademarks to me. He's the idiot who lied about owning the Open Source certification mark (dead-abandoned) and who asserts that Open Source Certified is a trademark (dead-abandoned).
Hell, Yes, Raymond puts his name on his bullshit. And that is the point here, not that there's anything wrong with an anonymous comment. If you don't like the rules here at Slashdot go somewhere else. If you can't get used to this feature of Slashdot in all these years you need psycho-therapy.
My 8-year-old granddaughter's homework today contains hard to spell words like SEPARATE and teaches that it is incorrect grammar to use an apostrophe and the letter s as the plural form of any word. Now, you were speaking about idiots?
Feel Free to show us all any indication at all why exactly it is that you consider yourself to be a genius....
This is one of the most stupid comments I've read
in slashdot. Seems so faked. But, perhaps -real- stupidity supports MS sales.
Every old UNIX hand knows that SCO has always been the ugly second-cousin of real unix environments like DEC Unix, AIX, HPUX, and Solaris. No real unix administrator would ever *choose* to use SCO if s/he had the choice.
And I can honestly say that after having administered all of the OS's mentioned above, Linux is vastly more innovative than any of them these days. Sure all of them have thier cool utilities, but feature-for-feature Linux wins hands down.
That niche including the largest number of installed copies of a genetic-Unix desktop OS than of all other desktop Unix variants combined (including Linux)... ?
Of course, Mac OS X Server isn't doing quite as well... (yet).
A lot of patents are filed for the simple reason of increasing the patent count of a company for threat/marketing purposes.
It also depends on who invented it - Some inventors are given special treatment because they're so valuable to the company, even though they might be a bit eccentric.
Back when my dad was in IP for a major company, some of them would rate patents on a scale of 1 to 5. 1 was "really important, use our best lawyers to draft and file", 4 was essentially "get some wino off the street to draft it up and file it", 5 was "patently stupid".
Most 5s were thrown away, but said company had a few Nobel Prize winners that had some REALLY crazy ideas patented because Lucent wanted to treat them well, and also so they could say, "Person Y works for us and has filed N patents"
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
...wow, I thought Mike Huntz was bad.
We are not talking about test scores, or any other continuous data, but rather we are trying to determine the composition of the set. There is no reason to assume that it will fall into any kind of normal Gaussian distribution pattern.
If we determine the makeup by testing every element rather then by taking a sample, there is no margin of error. The only thing ESR could have meant by his 'statistical noise' comment is that SCO's market share was equivalent to zero. But this is clearly false. It also doesn't take price into account.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
It was not said that you need to code twice as much; rather, that complexity doubles. This is demonstrably true.
Well, there are two kinds of complexity. Strictly speaking, we are talking about O(n) running time. In that case O(2n) = O(n) anyway, so if you 'double' the complexity, it stays the same.
If you're talking about 'conceptual' complexity, like how many conditionals, etc, then that would in fact be related to code length. And like I said, faster computers let you write less code, not more.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Well, I suppose you have a point when it comes to underlying tech, like an OS. Obviously an OS that supports SMP, lots of threading, protected mem, NUMA, transparent clustering, and all sorts of crazy goodness is going to take longer to write then DOS. But at the same time, that's really more of an issue of supporting hardware *features* then it is a result of hardware speed. You could have all of that with a 386 if it supported those things. Now of course, having those features requires transistors, the number of which also goes up with Moore's law. But I don't really think the feature set is doubling every 18 months :P
He also seems to be claming that the open source model is the only one that works. Microsoft, SUN and other small companies seem to have been able to keep up.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n