Slashdot Mirror
Today's SCO News
joebeone writes "Linus has commented on the SCO v. IBM suit saying "SCO is playing it like the Raelians" and that he will withhold his judgement until the code in question is shown in court. He has also recommended that former slashdot editor, Chris DiBona, be appointed to a panel offered by SCO to examine the evidence." Businessweek has an interview with SCO's CEO. The Open Group would like to remind everyone that SCO is only one of many in the Unix world.
Why charge for one discussion when you can charge for two?
DID YOUR MOM SERVE YOU AN EXTRA HELPING OF DUMB TONIGHT?
Who the hell else is under consideration? SCO's CEO?
Hello Bill,
Re: Dropping of the anti-trust matter - done
Re: Slowing down Linux - done
I am eagerly awaiting your third wish.
Sincerely,
Satan
You will have to pry my proprietary software $$$ from my cold dead hands!
The May Issue of Linux for You India has interview of SCO India Head in which that guy is pushing linux and says linux is the key focus of SCO with they wanting to contribute to the Linux Community by way of more software. Isnt that a bit odd!
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
Anyone else noticed that SCO continued to sell their Linux distribution for two months _AFTER_ they sued IBM? They even had a kernel source code on their servers available for download >:)
For more information click here.
--
One by one the penguins steal my sanity...
This is precicely why SCO does not divulge exactly what's in question: it would be too easy for IBM et al to say "Oh. So sorry. Many regretti." and recode it, thus deflating any hope they have for the Home Run.
All SCO can be after is money - QED.
"Stop whining!" - Arnold, as Mr. Kimble
Think about it, Microsoft has been spreading the FUD that GPL is THE big problem in enterprise environments not open source.
With all the bad publicity this is generating for linux, even if SCO were to loose its case in court, the Damage has already been done
Do managers really care whether linux code has or has not infringed upon copyright code? Do they ?
All they will see is that, GPLed code could potentially land them in problem.
This has a two fold implications on a IT manager thinking of deploying linux
- One:- As long as the case is not resolved, using Linux could mean risking being sued for copyright infringments. Also what's to gurantee that no other company could sue in future.
- Secondly mixing GPLed code, or even using the GPLed libraries with their own propritory code is now a NO-NO
This has been probably the most successful attack policy of Microsoft. Shoot from the shoulders of SCO and scare the IT managers.Remember programmers like you and me, don't matter as long as IT managers are scared to use linux in their enterprise.
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
From the article:
"...Linus Torvalds has suggested...former Slashdot editor Chris DiBona for membership on the panel of experts to which SCO executive Chris Sontag has offered to reveal evidence of copying code from SCO UnixWare to Linux."
And you just freakin' know what LT wanted to add was, "I would also recommend Slashdot editor CmdrTaco, but judging from his posts, he doesn't seem to know much about UNIX and is kinda stupid in general."
Talisman
"Study your math, kids. Key to the universe." -The Archangel Gabriel
What the f*** do you think you are doing?
(with the express permission from Madonna)
Its nice to see that the two sides are moving closer together. It seems like only last week that they were only discussing the possibility of disscussing discussions regarding the discussion of case discussions.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Linus, of course, is cleverly hedging his bets here. He knows there's no chance that a Slashdot editor will catch a duplicate!
Actually the executives are going somewhere.... have you seen the stock price.
Unfortunately in the U$ the end justifies the means and the executive options for SCO are now making them rich.,.
It is not important if they win as long as they can cash out before the outcome....
You will have to pry my proprietary software $$$ from my cold dead hands!
Well, the article states it is:
:)
- it is added in the last 18 months
- it is added by IBM
- they added 'a whole program'
I think this narrows things down a bit, shouldn't it be possible to make a list of code added by IBM in the last 18 months?
Maybe we could all put a snippet of this code on our website, and the one who gets sued by SCO has the right part
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
The key quotes from the CEO are:
"We have examples of code being lifted verbatim. If you look at the code we believe has been copied in, it's not just a line or two, it's an entire section -- and in some cases, an entire program. "
Now this may or may not be true or may be true in some mostly-irrelevant way. But that leads me to a question.
My question would be, if, theoretically, a coder knows in their conscience that they did violate copyright in this way, what would be their best recourse to fix the situation?
Should they patch the code themselves and submit a patch? Would such a patch withstand legal scrutiny?
And should they warn the person who they send the patch to about the urgency/motivation of the patch?
Alternatively, should they merely notify/tell someone else ASAP so that the violating code can
be removed and replaced by someone 'clean', and sooner rather than later?
It would seem one of these two would be wise. That way, the amount of time between when the violation is ruled to have occurred, and the time when it is 'made right' through a fix is minimized, and the effects of any judge-ruled injunctions to correct things are minimized. Or if the issue is fixed particularly before the case is ruled upon, perhaps the point can be ruled as 'moot' since the violation has since been fixed.
Either way, this raises some sub-questions:
A) who should they tell in the open source community about their indiscretion?
B) should they attempt to be anonymous in their communications? (to avoid legal liability)
C) does telling someone else then open the tell-ee to some sort of potential legal liability?
Clearly a swamp of legal issues that are better avoided entirely. Any answers though?
--LP
P.S. Of course Slashdot advice/commentary isn't legal advice/comment. But it's an interesting question and I figure *someone* on here has a more considered opinion than I.
"He has also recommended that former slashdot editor, Chris DiBona, be appointed to a panel offered by SCO to examine the evidence."
Why's that? So that it can get sent to court three or four times?
<ducks>
LOAD "SIG",8,1
LOADING...
READY.
RUN
OSI Position Paper on the SCO-vs.-IBM Complaint by Eric Raymond, President of The Open Source Initiative. Do we really have to say more, than what have already been said?
Karma: Positive (probably because of superiour intellect)
how can they prove that they did not take the linux code and incorporate into their code.
The dates and times of code inclusion into linux are pretty well documented, but how can you do that with closed source.
***Quis custodiet ipsos custodes***
In the business week article Darl McBride tries to scare (potential) OSS consumers:
I believe the way the open-source community works right now has some fundamental flaws that have got to be addressed. We need to address how this open-source intellectual property is developed, routed, and sold. Thousands of software developers send code to contribute to open-source projects -- but there isn't a protective device for the customer using the software to ensure they're not in violation of the law by using stolen code.
This might be true, IANAL. But this is no different for proprieraty, closed source code. For open and closed source alike, you cannot trace if code has illegaly been copied into it from another source. So, even if you buy a proprietary closed source application, you might as well be in violation of the law.
...except the Raelians don't appear to be a doomsday death cult.
SCO is playing it much more like, say, Heaven's Gate or Jonestown. Drink the koolaid, take a trip on the passing comet.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
I was at a meeting yesterday with 60 or so Security and IT leaders from around our city. One of the items being discussed was the use of OSS. The general consensus of the non-techie leaders was that they would steer away from OSS when things like SCO were going on. The more technical leaders were trying to explain some of the issues, but that largely fell on deaf ears.
This entire issue has nothing to do with the code. It doesn't matter when SCO release the "offending" code or if the code is really an IP infraction or not. Most people's understanding of this will simply be a headline here and there. The idea that you might get sued for using Linux will be all they remember. If the courts determine there is some basis to this, it will get even worse. Those things take a long time for the general population to forget.
it is ok for the open source crowd to simply remove the offending code, but not for those who have GPL violations, like OpenTV to simply remove their offending code?
Violation, you scream. You must pay the consequences, no matter how the code got in there.
But, if it is the open source crowd that put the bad code in, then just remove it, it's all good.
More open source double-standards.
The article from Newsforge had this (anonymous) comment attached to it. I didn't think of this, but it looks like he's right.
[disclaimer: as stated above, this comment was written by an Anonymous Reader -- I'm just pasting; any positive moderation doesn't belong to me, except a "+1 informative" if you will]
"As people may recall from the original settlement of the BSD lawsuit, three files had to be removed from BSD that represented things in SysV source. What is often forgotten, though, is that AT&T itself was in a far greater bind because while there was some SysV code in BSD, there was a LOT of "borrowed" and misattributed BSD code found to be in AT&T SysV. BSD permits this, but the license at the time required the advertising clause, and AT&T fraudulently ignored this. The actual settlement said that AT&T would no longer sue the BSD people, and that the University of California would also agree to hold AT&T harmless for misappropriating BSD code. Hence, much of the code that SCO owns is actually misattributed BSD code for which UC permitted AT&T (and it's decendents) to use."
"Now much of Linux also shares code derived from ancestrial BSD sources or people who have worked in common on both, and I am sure many of the same ancestrial routines still found today at the core of SysV are in fact also BSD derived. Hence, where common code may exist, it's code that AT&T originally misappropriated, and that SCO is free to use and relicense from the AT&T/BSD settlement, but in point of law neither AT&T nor the current SysV owner has actual legal copyright over. Perhaps the regents of UC could hall these SCO scum back into court, as they are in fact in material breach of the AT&T/BSD settlement if SCO now claims copyright "ownership" of that originally misappropriated code since the settlement gave AT&T no such rights."
Another thing that quote brings up is what program? Can anyone who has a SCO UNIX license go program by program through the code in Linux and find any possible culprits? If SCO won't show the code, perhaps we can find (or not find) anything based on these clues. Anyone with a copy of SCO's UNIX should be able to do this, even if you can't program you can at least be able to tell, "This block of mumbo jumbo is the same as that block". The results of a study like this would be very valuable
IBM misappropriated SCO's code, which was then incorporated into the Linux kernel released by Caldera, making Caldera liable. SCO then bought Caldera, thus implying that SCO had been misled into buying a license to their own code. SCO fails to realise this and releases Linux as per the GPL.
Okay. That bit makes sense. SCO then realise that some of their code is amisapprpriated. They contuinue to distribute it under the GPL even though they claim the GPL doesn't cover it. They also claim that some of SCO's code is in the Linux kernel, but fail to say what. All this time they continue to distibute their own code under a license which states that either they are not allowed to, or that they must allow others to do exactly what they're claiming everyone else shouldn't do.
SCO make some statement that says that it isn't being distributed under the GPL, and the GPL says so, disregarding the fact that says that if they distribute GPLed code they give a license to use all the code that's included.
This is where I sart getting a headache. I just can't make the facts of that last sentence sound coherent however hard I try.
The article is incorrect. The actual SCO OpenServer certification status is:
s .h tm
1. SCO OpenServer does not hold a Unix 98 cert, AIX does.
2. SCO OpenServer does not hold a Unix 98 cert, True64 does
3. SCO OpenServer does not hold a Unix 98 cert, Solaris does.
4. SCO OpenServer does not hold a Unix 95 cert, AIX does
ad naseum...
infty. SCO holds only a 95 cert for Unixware which it bought (and certified for the bought code, nothing later on) and for which the Open Group holds some of the trademarks anyway.
More info on:
http://www.opengroup.org/products/cert/certprod
So SCO has no legal right to call their flagship product unix anyway. Openserver is not and should not be allowed to be called Unix.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Are those statements true? I kind of hope so. Linux is just the kernel (name flames aside, technically it's true). So it's not possible that anyone can add a whole program to a monolithic kernel. That would indicate that they are actually talking about something included as a program/utility/whatever in the OS by the distributor (I'm assuming this is IBM). If it's even true that a whole progrm was released under GPL when it wasn't supposed to be, it's easy to excise it from any distributions that are including it. It's certainly not a core piece of the OS, GNU and Linux are enough to create a useable OS/Linux distribution.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
For several other interesting quotes, see the whole interview.
Trusted Computing FAQ | Free Dawit Isaak!
Has anyone else noticed that in all the reports, press releases, and other things related to this frivolous lawsuit, two major playres are not mentioned by anyone. Mandrake and Debian don't appear in anything SCO has released. Is this just a coincidence or is it intentional? And either way.. why not warn them and their users also, why only talk about Red HAt and SuSe? Just a thought....
Just realise the reality of the situation..... There is no reality.
SCO ship a bunch of Linux stuff with their "LKP", (Linux Kernel Personality) add-on for UnixWare, and according to The Inquirer they've written to say:
So, within a few weeks we'll be able to compare the old "Linux RPM CD" with the new one and find out what SCO/Caldera think was stolen.Watch this Heartland Institute video
Then SCO has already achieved their goal.
My question wasn't meant to be whether users would be criminally liable, but whether the product they were using would be considered illegal and subject to any kind of claim by the copyright owner. In property law, one who purchases a stolen item isn't entitled to keep it once it is found to be hot, even if they bought it unaware.
Let's please realize the difference between theory and praxis.
Let's also realize that the chance Linux contains relevant SCO code is nil.
With that in mind - In theory you would have to upgrade to a newer version if some infringing code is found. However, in real life it won't matter because: 1) The courts are so slow that the infringing software would be out of date long before you would have to upgrade, 2) Nobody cares. 3) Nobody knows. Neither MS nor SCO have the registration information of SuSE, RedHat or Mandrake customers, many customers don't register and for those who use debian or Gentoo, such registration information doesn't even exist. They might force their own users to upgrade, but quite frankly they can't even prove that they haven't already jumped to another distribution.
Sorry for overreacting in my last post, but I feel very frustrated and sad that SCO is so successful with this pure FUD campaign.
My question wasn't meant to be whether users would be criminally liable, but whether the product they were using would be considered illegal and subject to any kind of claim by the copyright owner. In property law, one who purchases a stolen item isn't entitled to keep it once it is found to be hot, even if they bought it unaware.
;)
Hmmm... say you own a legally purchased copy of the song 'My Sweet Lord' by George Harrison. This lawsuit comes up. Are you now required to return your copy of 'My Sweet Lord' because it is now considered 'stolen property'?
The answer is 'no, of course not.' Because copyright violation and theft, despite what the BSA wants you to think, are not the treated the same under the law. Copyright violation is not theft per se because it is a 'theft' of an expression of an idea, not the theft of physical property -- basically it's plagiarism. The plagiarizer is the liable party in this case. Copyright violation is also (generally) a civil matter, rather than a criminal matter. It's (literally) an infringement upon somone else's exclusive right to copy. Basically the party that causes damages to the copyright holder is the liable party.
I hope this makes sense to you because I feel like I'm babbling.
My journal has hot
Why not? Isn't SCO's action libelous against the core developers of Linux? There appear to be several derisive comments about Linux in the SCO complaint.
The kernel developers have carefully crafted Linux over many years. It seems to me they would be willing to protect *their* image and *their* product from these kind of attacks.
Especially the people who developed the capabilities that SCO claims did not exist in Linux until IBMs intervention. The SCO action claims these developers are lying, that they never did the work!
If EFF files a lawsuit on behalf of named developers of the Linux kernel, I'd pledge $100 over paypal to such an effort.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Err, make that
3. More Profit!!!
Sincerely,
Bill
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Contrary to a popular hacker belief, Linux (for purposes of this post, Linux refers to the kernel, GNU, assorted tools and environments, etc) can effectively die if we, the community, aren't careful.
In order to stay "alive" Linux must continue to provide innovative and useful tools AND support for modern Internet standards and protocols on on modern hardware. Without support for new Internet standards/protocols and new hardware, fewer people will be inclined to try Linux, and some Linux users will be inclined to switch away. This process is a negative feedback loop, which is sometimes known as a death spiral. Each generation that a negative feedback loop is allowed to continue makes it more likely that it will continue for another generation. If allowed to continue for too long, you end up with an extremely small and insular group of coders developing software that is utterly useless to anyone but themselves.
To avoid this negative feedback loop, we must maintain and expand our current user base. This is an inherently positive process, as it means that new coders will join our ranks to help make better software. However, while we continue to gain new coders every year, the overwhelming majority of people who are new Linux users are not writing new code. As cliched as it may be, these kind of people expect Linux to just work with their (often new) hardware and with modern standards, protocols, and file formats, and if it doesn't they are unlikely to return.
The obvious response is that Free Software coders will code in support for new hardware, like they have done in the past. However, a few points bear mentioning. One is that much of the device support in the kernel is the direct result of contributions (code, money, extensive documentation) by hardware manufacturers. Another is that as devices become more advanced and complicated, it becomes exponentially more difficult to write adequate drivers for them without extensive documentation provided by hardware manufacturers. In both of these cases, hardware manufacturers may be unwilling to give their assistance unless Linux has sufficient market share, or the prospects of a larger market share in the future.
In a related vein, Internet standards and protocols, as well as office file formats, are under constant threat of patents and proprietary trickery. The only way to stop or prevent this is to have a large user population which can react negatively to any such proprietary encroachment. For example, the community just barely averted disaster with W3C patent policy, and it still was not a complete victory for us. This was just the tip of the iceberg, and we may not be so lucky in the future unless we continue to grow.
So failure to maintain and expand the Linux user base threatens our ability to support new hardware and standards/protocols, and failure to support new hardware and standards/protocols threatens our maintenance of the user base. A classic feedback loop. Now that we know why expanding the user base is important, the question remains, which potential converts do we target? The choices are individual users or companies.
Targetting individual users is difficult and manpower intensive (LUGs). Most end-users do not perceive immediate benefits of switching, and will thus resist switching. And even when they do switch, there is little benefit to the catalyst of the switch, other than a vague sense of accomplishment. Not that this isn't worth doing, but it's not the optimal strategy.
On the other hand, corporate switching has a much higher payoff. A single corporate switch can affect hundreds or thousands of users. Benefits of switching to corporations are quickly noticed (ie: cost savings, reliability, etc). And benefits to the catalyst (ie: money) are also palpable.
In conclusion we see that maintaining and growing the Linux user base is necessary for its long term viability. And we see that the best way to expand Linux's user base is to start by targetting businesses. Thus, anything that threatens that strategy threatens the long term viability and survival of Linux as a whole.
The preceding comments reflect the author's personal opinion and are public domain, unless explicitly stated otherwise.