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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.""
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."
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.
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?