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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.
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?
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.
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)
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
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.
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.
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...
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."
[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?
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
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.
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
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...
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.
"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?
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
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
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.
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)
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.
Yeah, Caldera bought the SCO name, rights to the original AT&T/Bell Labs UNIX codebase, and the UNIXWare and OpenServer products from SCO a few years back. What was SCO took on the name Tarantella - the name of the DOS/Windows to Unix crossover product that the former SCO also sold. Caldera later renamed itself to 'The SCO Group', and has been selling Linux, UNIXWare and OpenServer product lines - until just recently.
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
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.
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.
As you pointed out, SCO/Caldera did not have any outstanding claims to the source, so they had no integral or premediated claims to the source. The authors could have said 'adventitious' instead.
Your description of objects being bought and sold actually demonstrates how accidental or adventitious ownership works. If I bought a car, I had no previous ownership-interest in it; I'd be doing it out of legal chance, as accidental ownership -- I just bought the car because I could.
A company or person who built the car could say that they have some interest (may or may not be ownership) in the thing, and therefore have some intrinsic reason to buy it. Their ownership would not be accidental. They bought the car because they already had something at stake in the value of the it, perhaps as a demonstration of their workmanship.
Actually, the fact that SCO/Caldera never obtained *ALL* the rights from *ALL* the licences is one of the main points of the article. They make this clear several times by showing different systems that were licenced and SCO has no right to, and systems that SCO released to the public both freely and under the GPL. A second is that SCO/Caldera profited for several years from the actions, including distributing infringing code under the GNU licence and contributing to the code in a public work, but are only now attempting to assert some rights against another company. A third point is that SCO/Caldera probably does not have those rights that it is trying to assert, through the earlier settlement and licence issues, mutally accepted 'theft' of code [which isn't theft if both parties were aware of it and took no official actions], and other history.I think that in spite of some slightly incorrect dates, omitting the free/open arguments and the GNU/Linux OS vs. the Linux kernel, and the inclusion of anecdotes like 'But that emperor has no clothes', the authors have a very clear and solid attack against several aspects of the suit
frob.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
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.