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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.""
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.
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)
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 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.
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.
It doesn't matter whose copyright was on it, even who wrote it...
They distributed the code under the gpl allowing everybody to see it and thus they have no legal base at all with respect to trade secrets.
In other words: It can't be a secret if you are telling everybody who wants to listen about it.
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
They distributed the code under the gpl allowing everybody to see it and thus they have no legal base at all with respect to trade secrets.
Their argument for this claim will be "we didn't distribute it; we had no knowledge." Denying them this would do two things.
1: Hackers can now put words in the mouth of corporations. (See? MSDN got hacked and folk downloaded GPL'd Windows, so now it's all free!)
2: Every piece of "FUD" about the GPL will be proven--it IS a viral license, that can irrevocably infect your code without your express wishes.
You're the religious zealot. The only thing giving I"P" value is current I"P" law. The perceived value of I"P" as a result of that law cannot be used as an argument for I"P" - that would be circular logic beloved of religions everywhere.
Anyway, SCO have only alleged that Linux contains their I"P". I wouldn't beleive them, myself. If anything, it's far more likely SCO UnixWare contains Linux I"P" (GPL is not anti-I"P" (though I am), it depends on strong copyright law).
It is a non-sequitur to say "go to Cuba if you don't like IP". The renaissance happened without I"P". The very idea of I"P" is antithetical to fields like Mathematics and Science. America prospered by ignoring European I"P" laws in the 19th century. Strengthening I"P" laws, in fact, seems to lead to cultural stagnation.
2: Every piece of "FUD" about the GPL will be proven--it IS a viral license, that can irrevocably infect your code without your express wishes.
Actually, in this case it doesn't matter what open license it is. If the license used was the BSD license, SCO would still be losing their "intellectual property" because the source would still be there for everyone to see. Thus, we need not worry about the "viral FUD" if the above point is brought to attention.
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.
The GPL is what it is. Call it "viral" if you like, call it "ideological", just don't call it late for dinner. Any organization considering releasing code under the GPL is free to have their legal counsel analyze it. Their legal counsel is free to do some research to determine what the possible implications of the GPL are. If the organization and/or its counsel fail to do their homework, I don't see how that can be interpreted as a failure of the license.
sPh
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
2: Every piece of "FUD" about the GPL will be proven--it IS a viral license, that can irrevocably infect your code without your express wishes.
It is no more viral than any commercial NDA'd source license. The viral nature of their source license is the whole basis of SCO's case. If the GPL is a virus, then MS' "shared source" and SCO's Unix license are the bubonic plague.
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
1: Hackers can now put words in the mouth of corporations. (See? MSDN got hacked and folk downloaded GPL'd Windows, so now it's all free!)
2: Every piece of "FUD" about the GPL will be proven--it IS a viral license, that can irrevocably infect your code without your express wishes.
Life is too short to proofread.
Nobody claims that the University of Manchester is the distibuter of the gnu tools they mirror, they claim that the FSF is. SCO's case is very different and not helped by the fact that they only pulled their distributions some time after filing suit against IBM.
Furthermore, the fact that they were making threatening noises towards other distributions, while still actively distributing their own, makes it very hard for them to argue that they had not previously been aware of the possibility that they were distriuting the claimed infringing code under GPL. Especially as this point has been trotted out in every slashdot discussion on the subject.
Of course not. Only when a corporation purposely distributes code does this become an issue. They may not knowingly distribute it, but they purposely distribute. There's a lawyer term that relates here, due diligence, that basically means that a corpoartion has a duty to their stockholders to make sure they aren't doing something stupid by a purposeful action, such as releasing trade secrets under an open license. If SCO really did purposely publicly license trade secrets under an open license, even unknowingly, there may actually be grounds for a shareholder lawsuit against SCO for not being properly cautious about such a public licensing. Note that this would be a bad thing for Open Source in general, as most companies don't have the resources to properly examine, what, 5 million lines of source code for the software in a normal linux distribution. And therefore the proper "safe" response may be to not use linux, even internally.
Yes, the GPL is viral. It is meant to be viral. Stallman did that on purpose. No, it cannot infect your code without your wishes. But it can without your informed intent, if you are not properly careful of what you are doing. Again, due dilegence.
Actually, assuming SCO has a valid case in this lawsuit, I don't really see a problem with both viewpoints on this...
If IBM really did release SCO IP in kernel patches, then IBM is liable for violating a NDA, and there should be consequences for that.
However, at the point that SCO (or Caldera after they bought SCO) released that IP in their own linux distribution, liability for other users/distributors stops.
That (assumed) window between IBM releasing SCO IP, and Caldera (as SCO owner) releasing that same IP under an open license, makes for some interesting possibilities for legal rulings for other distributors.
Oh, and I like your sigline, but really... Cadbury creme eggs *are* heavenly.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
Yes, Any SCO source code in linux kernels distributed by SCO is under the gpl.
As explained earlier if they didn't agree with ALL the terms of the GPL they couldn't have distributed it.
And since they did it is no longer a trade secret and everybody can use the intellectual property in it.
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
"not knowing" is no excuse in court
IANAL(RU), but I was taught (by lawyers) that intent is as improtant as action.
The way I see it, if SCO's code is in fact in Linux, then "Us" would have to prove that it's common practice to examine all of the source code for an OSS distribution (it isn't), that SCO didn't do so (which they obviously didn't), and, probably, that they continued to distribute Linux with their code after knowing that it was "theirs."
They don't belong in the OS industry if they can't even manage their own releases, and/or know what it even does.
OSS is built on trust and re-use. If we (that is, folks who use any OSS at all) had to examine every bit of source code, then OSS would grind to a gut-wrenching hault. At best, we'd have locked-down distrubtions with a small fraction of the software that they have now.
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
No, you are completly missing the point, don't know how it's very simple.
SCO is a distributor, it's not the user's fault, nor will he ever be held liable to using a product that was legitimatly licensed software given to him.
SCO IS LICENSING THEIR GODAMN OS!, you're damn right that everyone that licenses through the GPL SHOULD KNOW EXACTLY WHAT's IN IT! this has nothing to do with joe blow linux user, this has to do with distributors who create and release this stuff, sometimes for a profit, sometimes for not, it's their responisbility. Total bullshit that a company can claim they didn't know what the fuck they were licensing.
Every godamn linux distributor should be inspecting their releases, if they waive that right, they also waive the right to sue for infrigement, if something in that release happened to be one of their trade secrets. This is not the case if someone else does it, if I take SCO's code and implement it, I am at fault, and redhat can't be held liable for my contribution, only I can be held liable. But if SCO dosen't check their own stuff, they just download source and give it out as GPL, that's their problem, cuz they actually own the IP, so they are giving their consent by waiving the right to look at it, even if it was taken from under their nose.
I'm not condoning this action, but I am saying if your own IP, you need to always look carefully at your releases to make sure you don't go releasing it to the public, cuz after that it's too late, and you shouldn't be able to claim damages.
That's the risk you take by owning IP and contributing to open source, it could be SCO employees that put the code in, no one really knows, but since SCO gave it out themselves, it's their fault, regardless of who actually put it in the OS.
This is not a hit on the open source model, because it's clearly a grab at cash, linux will survive in the splendor it is, exactly because of the copyleft, and the fact that if you assign it GPL, you are giving it away, wether the fuck you know what in it or not!
Posting useless rant since 2003.
SCO is a distributor, it's not the user's fault
I didn't say it was the user's fault.
What I said was, SCO either is making a spurious claim (yay for everyone except them), carrying out a 'GIF switch' with the wrong law (yay for everyone except them), or going to court to stop the distribution of their code which they didn't know about, which could suck.
If they go to court, and their claims of fact are found to be true, and no procedural faults stop them (i.e. "you distributed your code for 5 minutes after your CPO knew about it"), OSS winds itself up in quite a pickle.
* If the unwittingly-added code is found to be properly GPL'd, OSS is "viral" and disgruntled employees can wreack havoc with any proprietary software that they want.
* If the unwittingly-added code is removed from the GPL, OSS companies have the hassle of removing all of the effected modules from their systems.
This has the potential to be rather thorny, and FSF zealotry won't help the matter much.
That's the risk you take by owning IP and contributing to open source, it could be SCO employees that put the code in, no one really knows, but since SCO gave it out themselves, it's their fault, regardless of who actually put it in the OS.
If SCO knew that the code was theirs and continued to GPL it, then those GPL's are viable and ironclad. If they made all necessary steps after learning that their code was in Linux, and they didn't put it there, then the status of the "GPL'd" code is in doubt.
This is a murky situation, requiring lawyers and judges and a jury or three. (IANAL, of course--but if you didn't know that already, you're probably delusional.)
OSS practices really have nothing to do with this.
This is a commercial software company. The development practices of such companies are what is relevant here. Did they exercise the standard of care in their industry? Did they exercise the standard of care that they are claiming in their filing against IBM?
If it weren't for their claim against IBM, which includes an affirmative claim about the quality of their own development process, I would say that SCO stood a better chance of claiming reasonable ignorance.
IBM could also provide a parade of OS developers to claim that code review is infact a common standard of care in OS development.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It's as if I give you an old table I found in my basement, and you find a gold bar in one of the legs. Can I sue you to get it back because I didn't know that it was there? No, because it's yours and myfault for not inspecting the table beforehand to ensure I was only giving away the table. You came over, and I gave you the table, end of discussion.
Exact same concept here, SCO is responsible, intent is irrelevant here, because it's not even criminal, it's civil. Someone else "might" have put some code belonging to SCO in the linux kernel, Caldera knowingly kept licensing linux for years, without even knowing what's in the kernel, like I said earlier, waving the right to claim that it's not their fault, wether they meant to do it or not, it's negligence, and they shouldn't be rewarded.
They want money for damages ages after the actually offense happened (I'm assuming it did in this case) and they don't want to take any blame for purposly continuing to contribute to it.
What I am saying here is that they are clearly at foul, and this is most likely pointing to a case of money hungry conglomerates. I mean, you can defend them all you want, but if you want to look at it in a logical sense, they were stupid, and gave away their own shit, copyright dosen't excuse stupidity, nor should the courts.
Posting useless rant since 2003.
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
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.
> 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
Hr may or may not suck but at least he puts his name on comments.
As you can see I don't care about my karma.
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
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?
The way I see it, if SCO's code is in fact in Linux, then "Us" would have to prove that it's common practice to examine all of the source code for an OSS distribution (it isn't), that SCO didn't do so (which they obviously didn't), and, probably, that they continued to distribute Linux with their code after knowing that it was "theirs."
SCO continued to distribute Linux even after filing the suit against IBM. Does that count as knowingly distributing their IP under the GPL? I think it does.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.