SCO Might Sue Linus for Patent Infringement?

An anonymous reader writes "[Darl McBride, SCO's chief executive stated] that unless more companies start licensing SCO's property, he may also sue Linus Torvalds, who is credited with inventing the Linux operating system, for patent infringement." It's right at the end of the story and it's quite a statement.

Comments

WTF?

[Verteiron]

Ok, so what, exactly, are they planning to sue him for? It's not like he can be held responsible for what IBM may or may not have put into the kernel. Or can he?

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can sue anyone for anything. Doesn't mean that you will win though !!!

If they can prove that he knowingly used the Unix source code as a model while he was developing the Kernel then they may have a chance legally.

I can see a lot of big legal guns coming out on his side though. We could not allow such a precedent.

Remember that cases are adjudicated as points of law and not common sense!!!

Anything can happen in a court of law.

Re:WTF?

[UnknownSoldier]

1k. Sue Your Boss:

"See, the great thing about this country is you can sue anyone for pretty much anything! And you'll probably win!"

GTA3 Commercial Lyrics

Re:WTF?

[Artifex]

Ok, so what, exactly, are they planning to sue him for? It's not like he can be held responsible for what IBM may or may not have put into the kernel. Or can he?

The bigger question is, why does SCO think it can sue IBM for putting stuff into the kernel that SCO doesn't even offer? This has been covered to death the last few days, but jeez, SCO can't claim true enterprise scalability of any sort in its own products, so where can they claim the IP was theirs?

Not to mention that if anyone has a claim to sue Linus, it's the people who created Minix, for creating a workalike - and even then, he didn't copy code. Go look at the UNIX heritage charts for a much better understanding.

SCO is an emaciated, rabid dog nearing its death-frenzy howling and trying to scratch or bite as many others as possible. It's only natural for its foamings to get worse and its anger to increase when presented with images of people playing in the open-sourced software fountain (rabies induces hydrophobia, you know). If you can't shoot this rabid dog, grab your children and run away from it. If you wait a few days, it will have drowned in its own spew - but anyone coming near, especially investors, will find that even its carcass is less than worthless and should be avoided.

Re:WTF?

[AstroDrabb]

IBM, Linux, or the rest have nothing to worry about since Novell announced that SCO has no patents on Unix and Novell still owns the IP.
http://www.novell.com/news/press/archive/2003/05/p r03033.html

Re:WTF?

[Phronesis]

Not to mention that if anyone has a claim to sue Linus, it's the people who created Minix, for creating a workalike - and even then, he didn't copy code. Go look at the UNIX heritage charts for a much better understanding.

You don't have to copy anything to infringe on a patent. I can infringe on the Unisys LZW patent by writing my own LZW code. All I have to do is use (whether by copying or by innocently reinventing) Terry Welch's algorithm during the next month in the USA.

Similarly, if Linus introduced into the kernel either his own code or code donated by someone else (IBM) that implements any algorithms for which SCO holds patents, even if the code in question comprises completely original implementations of those algorithms, then by redistributing the kernel without a license from SCO, Linus is infringing on SCO's patents.

Re:WTF?

[JosefK]

"The bigger question is, why does SCO think it can sue IBM for putting stuff into the kernel that SCO doesn't even offer?"

http://linux.rice.edu/pipermail/rlug-discuss/200 0- August/000557.html

The SCO v. IBM case arises from Project Monterey, which was a joint venture between SCO and IBM to port Unix to IA-64 or some such thing. IBM eventually pulled the plug, and focused instead on Linux.

SCO's primary claims against IBM seem to be that IBM took code that had been either brought by SCO into the project, or (more likely) developed by/in conjunction with IBM as part of the project, and used it in its subsequent Linux development.

So, even though SCO's products didn't (don't?) have the enterprise features they are accusing IBM of "stealing" from SCO, it seems to be their contention that the Project Monterey work was intended to develop such features, thus the claims for breach of contract and unfair competition.

SCO claims of pre-existing IP violations in "every" Linux distro would have no bearing on the IBM case.

Re:WTF?

[JosefK]

It's not quite that simple. SCO v. IBM is primarily a breach of contract case, *not* an IP-violation case, and SCO does have rights to act as a licensing agent for the Unix IP. It all depends on whether IBM took what they are alleged to have taken from SCO, and whether the IBM/SCO contracts for Project Monterey restricted IBM from doing anything with it outside of Project Monterey.

Re:WTF?

[two_center]

The threat to sue Linus is an "I'll get your little dog too" move. Can the flying monkeys be far behind? Hypothetical: if Novell shows up at the courthouse with a suit against IBM identical to SCO's, who gets to sue?

Re:WTF?

[macdaddy357]

Everyone SCO is threatening should sue them for harassment, and seek SCO's gross assets+10% in damages. Maybe that would put an end to their crap.

Re:WTF?

[macdaddy357]

Does SCO have any idea who they are F-ing with? IBM could have them all sleeping with the fishes by tomorrow.

Re:WTF?

[E_elven]

I didn't think you could patent algorithms?

Although if this is true, I think my patent application for "in a computer program, stepping through the contents of any container (as defined above) by means of repetition and index point incrementation".

E

Re:WTF?

[PygmySurfer]

"Or at least get a settlement."

Re:WTF?

[finkployd]

I didn't think you could patent algorithms?

Ever heard of RSA?

Finkployd

Re:WTF?

[SN74S181]

It's kind of amazing that as long as they're 'our' fascists they seem to be okay with some people.

Re:WTF?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Gee.

Sue Linus, for an implementation that mimics an API which is not under patent protection?

Sue Linus, for an implementation of an API under the U.S. Government sponsored POSIX public specification?

Sue Linus for the implementation of an API for which your claim to hold copyright cannot be legally documented?

Even if the Linux kernel were a clone of Unix internals, the 1991-2 date comes before the U.S. was even clear that software could be patented. In FINLAND!!!!! outside the jurisdiction of U.S. legal bogosity.

BTW: From when does this imaginary patent protection for the Unix kernel and I/O mechanism date? 1970? 1972? I smell expiration.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM could have them all sleeping with the fishes by tomorrow.

And now that they have alienated nearly every Linux developer on the planet, we can document a migration plan to get all of SCO's customers off their products and onto Linux.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean that Unix hasn't been improved substantiall since 1972? I guess the Microsoft salesman was right after all!

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

The bigger question is, why does SCO think it can sue IBM for putting stuff into the kernel that SCO doesn't even offer?

Hello. Please don't regurgitate FUD from Eric Raymond. It makes you look foolish.

Google is your pal

Re:WTF?

[Enry]

That's rather irrelevant.

IF IBM gave bad goods to Linus for inclusion in the kernel, the it's a breach of contract with IBM. They can then be sued. Linus gets sued to remove the offending code/features, which he (AFAIK) still hasn't seen, so he can't remove what he hasn't been asked to remove.

When SCO first started this, they said the offending code was not in the stock kernel, but in kernels distributed by IBM and/or Red Hat.

Apparently this story has changed.

Re:WTF?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Buy my software, or I'll shoot this penguin!

Re:WTF?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

You mean that Unix hasn't been improved substantiall since 1972? I guess the Microsoft salesman was right after all!

Just the kernel, maybe the login code... Improved substantially, yes. Fundamentally expanded in focus or basic mechanism? Probably not. The big Unix innovations seem to be file-based I/O, and the pipe.

Re:WTF?

[axxackall]

I wonder, if RMS is so against such an innocent GIF, why he never criticize Flash?

Re:WTF?

[Cirvam]

Um, did you look at the date on that page? Maybe 3-4 years ago that stuff was true, you know when 2.2 was just coming out and stuff, but now most of those have easily been surpassed by linux. Although I'm betting there's stuff in there that SCO might still be better at.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Higher courts will eventually decide if a mathematical concept (algorithm) - as opposed to a specific $tring implimentation of the algorithm - can be patented. Bet not!

Re:WTF?

[Archfeld]

you hit on the piece that has been puzzling me, WHAT CODE, or FUNCTIONS ? Has it been revealed to those in the know under some kind of NDA or is SCO still just making intangible references ?

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever tried to click the link to your signature? It just sends you to an angry GameFAQs page complaining about linking from other sites... I know, I know, -1 offtopic

Re:WTF?

[Enry]

The last I heard from the SCO Information Minister was that three independent (yet unnamed) groups have reviewed the code bases and found similarities.

But this is getting really strange. Let's take a look at a few scenarios:

1) SCO has a patent, implemented by IBM, released as patch to stock kernel.

IBM gets sued for patent infringement, retracts patch from locations it's distributing it, noone can implement it without paying SCO.

2) SCO has a patent, implemented by IBM, submitted to Linus and part of stock kernel

If the offending patent is implemented in a kernel relased by SCO, they're SOL for the patent infringement because of the GPL. They may still be able to sue IBM for breach of contract, but the offending code and implementation could remain.

3) SCO has code lifted by IBM, relased as patches

Trade secrets are different than patents as they can have no expiration date, but if it gets out, you have no recourse. Which is why you don't see patents for Coca-cola. It's a trade secret. If you know the secret and ever divulge it, there's probably enough legal paperwork you signed to make you wish you were in pound-me-in-the-ass prison instead of the hell the Coke lawyers will send you.

4) SCO has code lifted by IBM, released as part of stock kernel.

Again, maybe they could sue IBM, but SCO has also released the offending code. Thus they would have no recourse against Linus.

So the only situation that could actually cause Linux grief is #1. But the patch wouldn't be part of the stock kernel, meaning that it would not affect all Linux users. But as has been pointed out before, SCO doesn't seem to have many patents. Certainly nothing they could sue Linus for.

Re:WTF?

[jedidiah]

Software technology simply isn't as dynamic as people like Gates would have you believe. Much of the ballyhoed "innovation" in the PC space is merely the re-implementation of much older solutions developed long ago in more serious computer systems.

Mainframe->Mini->Micro.

Re:WTF?

[Wingnut64]

Even if the Linux kernel were a clone of Unix internals, the 1991-2 date comes before the U.S. was even clear that software could be patented. In FINLAND!!!!! outside the jurisdiction of U.S. legal bogosity.

Good thing we don't have a history of forcing our laws down peoples throat in that region.

If the MPAA can try it, so can SCO.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Open a new window, then paste it in.

GameFags blows anyways .. no search in the forums? WTF?

Re:WTF?

[Zeinfeld]

Ok, so what, exactly, are they planning to sue him for?

In other news John Ashcroft announced that terrorism charges might be brought against both motherhood and apple pie under the Patriot act. David Boies, representing the administration stated on behalf of his client, "These people have to learn that their actions have consequences".

Re:WTF?

[johram]

I was reading the fabled halloween documents that emanated from Redmond WA and I was surprised to note Microsoft's view of the development of Linux and also even more so the response of the Linux hacker that was reviewing the Halloween document. And I quote from the following URL: http://www.opensource.org/halloween/halloween1.php ---- Linux is a real, credible OS + Development process Like other Open Source Software (OSS) products, the real key to Linux isn't the static version of the product but rather the process around it. This process lends credibility and an air of future-safeness to customer Linux investments. Trusted in mission criticial environments. Linux has been deployed in mission critical, commercial environments with an excellent pool of public testimonials. Linux = Best of Breed UNIX. Linux outperforms many other UNIX's in most major performance category (networking, disk I/O, process ctx switch, etc.). To grow their featurebase, Linux has also liberally stolen features of other UNIX's (shell features, file systems, graphics, CPU ports) Only Unix OS to gain market share. Linux is on track to eventually own the x86 UNIX market and has been the only UNIX version to gain net Server OS market share in recent years. I believe that Linux -- moreso than NT -- will be the biggest threat to SCO in the near future. Linux's process iterates VERY fast. For example, the Linux equivalent of the TransmitFile() API went from idea to final implementation in about 2 weeks time. { All true. I couldn't have put it better myself :-). } ----- end quote ---- One is drawn to the list of authors of the review and one wonders who was responsible for the "{all true. I couldn't have put it better myself . }" remark. Someone please explain to me how the editors of the review of the Halloween Documents did not defend the independent development of the Linux OS and what possible ramifications this admission (if it is such) has on the current SCO fiasco?

Re:WTF?

[anagama]

I'm on way down to the pawn shop for a nice double barrelled shotgun. This dog needs a shootin'

Re:WTF?

[itwerx]

G=C800:5

And I thought I was the only one who remembered really obscure crap like that... :)

Re:WTF?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Ahhh....

Touché!

Re:WTF?

[wohlford]

I'm just curious why Disney never sued Caldera for using Micky's ear?

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're wrong about #2. Just because SCO distributed the code under the GPL does NOT mean they also offer a royalty-free license for the patent. While the GPL is a license allowing the copyrighted work (source code) to be distributed, patent infrigement can STILL make such distribution and use illegal. The copyright on GPLed code implementing the patented algorithm and the patent are two entirely separate entities.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're all fascists. Even you are a fascist. George W. Bush is a fascist. Bill Gates is a fascist. 99.99999% of Wall Street is comprised of fascists. I say... kill 'em all then sort 'em out later. Die fascist pigs, DIE!

You will feel the swift and painful kick of my iron boot.

Re:WTF?

[rifter]

This has been covered to death the last few days, but jeez, SCO can't claim true enterprise scalability of any sort in its own products, so where can they claim the IP was theirs?

More to the point, how is it insightful to see something is covered to death but not read the articles? Then again, in slashdot all is lawful.

SCO UnixWare apparently has enterprise features, and ESR was unfortunately wrong but corrected himself. Of course most people read the 5 second blurb about his paper and did not read his paper. Oh well.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bruce Perens, crowing over this news said:

"This morning, Novell announced some of the terms of the company's 1995 agreement to sell its Unix business to SCO. The shocking news is that Novell did not sell the Unix intellectual property to SCO. Instead, they sold SCO a license to develop, sell, and sub-license Unix."

If the license to "sub-license Unix" was exclusive, it doesn't matter whether Novell retained patents or not. SCO would still have the right to stop people from devaluing its licenses.

Re:WTF?

[MntlChaos]

if their distribution violated their patent, then Linus can sue them for violating the GPL (if can't distribute it royalty-free then you can't distribute at all)

Re:WTF?

[rifter]

Trade secrets are different than patents as they can have no expiration date, but if it gets out, you have no recourse. Which is why you don't see patents for Coca-cola. It's a trade secret. If you know the secret and ever divulge it, there's probably enough legal paperwork you signed to make you wish you were in pound-me-in-the-ass prison instead of the hell the Coke lawyers will send you.

Or to paraphrase the immortal words of Sgt "Bat" Guano, they will have to answer to the Coca Cola company. ;)

Dr Strangelove rocks...

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

You might recall that Novell owns the patents. SCO pulled back yesterday, saying that it's not about patents, it's not about IP, it's not about trade secrets.
Those guys from SCO are really amazing, how inventive thy are when it comes to threatening the Linux community.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm.......
It seems to me that just a few days ago, SCO admitted that the Linux kernal itself did not contain any cribbed SCO code. That was after they had threatened Red Hat and Suse.
So having admitted that openly, it would be damned hard to bring suit. The supposed code infringments are in other parts of the Linux OS, and Torvalds has no control nor part in that, he just has say over kernal developments and merely owns the Linux trademarks.
And they'd be stupid then to sue. The question then is why would they say something stupid like this? It sounds like a mere temper tantrum.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

HOLY SHIT! You'll lose all your data if you do that!
Oh wait...you prob dont have a MFM drive...

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll have to use some of my additions for that !

Re:WTF?

[itwerx]

Most RLL controllers and quite a few SCSI controllers used that address as well.
A few manufacturers had some completely different address but the ones I thought were really bizarre were the ones that started at C800:6

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

the CEO of SCO Australia can be reached on his mobile : 0419 660 016

Re:WTF?

[bestguruever]

Except that they are not SCO's patents. Novell has stated ( in the previous slashdot article on this mess ) that SCO mearly has a license to this IP. I haven't checked out the UPTO or the subsequent contracts between SCO and Novell, but SCO's repsonse that the suit was for breach of contract does leads me to believe that this is correct. Perhaps, when I am sober enough, I will verify all this.

Re:WTF?

[Anti-HanzoSan]

Q: Why can't you circumsize Darl McBride?

A: Because there's no end to the prick.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the point, Einstein. 3 years ago Linux was a complete joke compared with UNIXWare.

Unixware is the same base codebase as Solaris, and I don't think even the biggest slashbot would argue that Linux comes close there.

Re:WTF?

[phagstrom]

You can sue anyone for anything. Doesn't mean that you will win though !!!

Right you are and thank Eris for that. No, in order to win you will need to use the chewbacca defence....or bribe a judge

Re:WTF?

[mpxcz]

you'll never know...

the Lawyers think they can do it.
I just hope they never try

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Having administered two Unixware systems and several Linux systems a bit over 3 years ago, I would have to say that Unixware was not quite the wonderful product you seem to think. It was a horrible dog performancewise on the same hardware at typical tasks esp. disk access, came without a compiler or NFS without extra licenses, and was only still used in one case because the business was stuck with an old proprietary accounting application which only ran on SCO. In the other case the SCO box was replaced with a Linux box, and the company was relieved to finally pull the plug on the beast.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Flash isn't patented, and there exist non-macromedia implementations of the technology (e.g. Squeak can play most flash movies). There's no reason why you couldn't build an alternative (Free) platform on the same file formats, its just that no-one is interested enough to do this.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the deal. I'll take this penguin away from you, but you can shoot as much as you want those glass-covered holes in the house walls all around you, ekh?

Re:WTF?

[MonkeyDluffy]

That's the point, Einstein. 3 years ago Linux was a complete joke compared with UNIXWare.

You obviously are unfamiliar with Linux 3 years ago. Linux supported more hardware, ReiserFS was available, and Linux supported more processors in SMP.

Unixware is the same base codebase as Solaris

Dream on. Solaris is heavily rewritten - the enterprise features in Solaris are not part of the SysV codebase. And SCOs products still lack them. So a Linux vs Solaris debate won't help you.

-MDL

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh the reason for all this is simple: SCO wants to be bought by IBM in order to increase market share. Period. But IBM doesn't want to buy SCO because it would hurt their shareholders.

It's like little kids in a sandbox throwing sand at each other. Cute isn't it?

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Buy my software, or I'll shoot this penguin!

Yeah, that's about ALL I got out of this whole pissing contest...

I'll club a baby seal to make a better deal

cause I'm craAAaAAzy eddy....

Re:WTF?

[jmony]

Indeed, Minix was created by Andrew Tanenbaum as a way to teach Unix to his students...

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

I may have missed it because I didn't read all the (numerous) posts, but what about the fact that, according to Novell, SCO holds NO PATENTS anyway? If that is the case, then on what grounds can SCO possibly sue Linus? I realize you can, in the U.S., sue anyone for just about anything, but what would they use as the basis for the case? According to the article at http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/05/28/HNnovell sco_1.html, SCO is sueing IBM over contract infringment, not IP / copyright infringement. Don't tell me that Linus also had a contract with SCO!

On another point, wouldn't it be cool if Novell did still hold the patents / copyrights and just said "Here, this is the code in question, we're releasing it to the community"... Doubt it will happen, but it would sure let some steam out of the SCO legal department...

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, reverse engineering software is a perfectly legitimate practice. Just look at the court case between Sony and Bleem many years back. Bleem came out scot-free because they never used any of the Playstation BIOS code.. they merely reverse engineered the process of how the Playstation instruction set works. Connetix, by comparrison, got their ass sued off because they'd used the Playstation BIOS code to accomplish much the same thing...

Hell, just look at the zip utilities on Unix, etc.. PKZip has held the copywrite on the zip codec since the 80s, but now there are freeware, opensource versions of the codec...

Chris

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

SCO has already stated this is not about patents or copyrights. They are suing IBM over breach of contract, or something to that effect. Of course, SCO has said many things, and their story has changed on an almost daily basis.

Re:WTF?

[mr_z_beeblebrox]

The last I heard from the SCO Information Minister was that three independent (yet unnamed) groups have reviewed the code bases and found similarities.

1. The infidels claim that there is Linux, there is no Linux
2. There is no reason to be afraid of Linux, am I afraid...NO!
3. The infidels claim Linux is in every business. Do you see Linux, I do not see Linux.
4. We will destroy Linux. The linux that is in businesses. We have lured it into those business and will crush it with our Ip rights...
(whispering in background)
4a. Yes of course I meant with our copyrights and licensing management authority

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

You forget, I patented a process of "incrementing by one". I sue you.

~S

Re:WTF?

[Alan Hicks]

I can see a lot of big legal guns coming out

I can see a lot of big illegal guns coming out!

Re:WTF?

[WCMI92]

The problem with this, and I see this being a BIG problem for SCO, is that they keep moving the goalposts...

First, "United Linux" was ok...

Then it was users are ok, then they were not ok.

Then, United Linux was NOT ok... Then they pulled their distro, WEEKS after saber rattling.

Here's what SCO is wanting to accomplish, and I don't see ANY WAY they can get away with this, even assuming there IS code in the kernel or some other critical part of the OS that they own:

SCO isn't disclosing the code, not because it's worried about it "revealing a trade secret", but becuase it's worried about it being REMOVED and no longer being an issue.

SCO doesn't WANT the offending code removed. They want it it stay, and use it as a lever to turn Linux into a CLOSED system that they, and they alone, "own". That's more or less what Ranson Love and Caldera were lamenting about not being possible back when they started implimenting PER SEAT licenses in Caldera.

That's why they won't reveal it. Assuming it's there, and that, given the consistency of their rants, is a stretch.

I don't see how they could get away with that in court... The court is either going to find against SCO, or against Linux. If it finds against Linux, the code will be ordered to be REMOVED, and the guilty parties fined. SCO cannot keep the code secret AND use it as evidence in a trial, as the defendants have a right to ALL plantiff evidence..

Re:WTF?

[cshark]

I say let them sue Linus. It will provice many a fun flame war. And the more they sue, the less likely they are to stay in business. Especially yesterday after their whole effort was discredited by novell.

Re:WTF?

[TheCrazyFinn]

But Novell actually holds the patents SCO claims to own.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, butt monkey, if SCO owns the copyrights, they can do whatever they please.

Re:WTF?

[TheCrazyFinn]

Unixware might share a bit of code with Solaris, the bits they both stole from BSD. Note that Unixware is SysV+OpenServer.

While Solaris is very SysV'ish compared to SunOS, it was split off from the AT&T code base years ago.

Re:WTF?

[Oriumpor]

They own no software patents directly. Novell has refuted their claims, (Novell owns the patents, gets 95% of revenue generated, and SCO bottom feeds the last 5%.) Screw SCO and the horse they rode in on

Re:WTF?

[jceaser]

Now with more dolphin meat.

Re:WTF?

[Tukla]

You can sue anyone for anything. Doesn't mean that you will win though !!!

No, but you can bankrupt the defendent with legal costs. The best part is, if you lose, you don't have to pay the defendant any reparations!

Anyway, how much money does Linus have? I haven't gotten the impression that he's exactly rolling in dough.

Re:WTF?

[Tukla]

I didn't think you could patent algorithms?

You can not only patent actual algorithms, you can also patent simple concepts, like hyperlinking. These sorts of patents are making software development more difficult; and, unless you have a staff of tech lawyers to pore over thousands of patents, you are becoming more likely to violate a patent inadvertantly.

Re:WTF?

[Xabraxas]

Let's hope not. Novell has already stated their interests in not hurting Linux. They are becoming more dependent on Linux and I'm sure they wouldn't want to do anything to hurt that.

Re:WTF?

[rworne]

You can't. You can patent methods, so all you have to do is:

cat patent_application | sed s/algorithm/method/g > new_patent_application

There you go! And I saved you thousands in legal fees. For my next trick, I'll show you how to patent common business methods on the internet. Here's how:

Take an existing business method, preferably one that cannot be patented like:

Receiving payment from a customer for a good or service.

Now add the magic substitution:

Receiving payment from a customer for a good or service on the Internet.

And there's plenty more where that came from. It's a brave new world!

Re:WTF?

[jjp5421]

maybe start iLoveTheScoInformationMinister.com???

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, there are surprisingly few Fascists. It wasn't that big of a political trend after the end of WWII. Even during and before WWII it was mostly an Italian political ideology.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

The bigger question is what do they think they can get from him? It's not like he's wealthy or anything. The one thing of value that he has is the copyright to the Linux name. Can you think of a company that would like to have that little thing? (HINT: they just licensed UNIX from SCO).

Re:WTF?

[MSZ]

Anyway, how much money does Linus have? I haven't gotten the impression that he's exactly rolling in dough.

Well, nowhere close to billg ;-)

Though if Linus were to set up legal defense fund account for donations, the balance could very well exceed SCO's whole "market cap". In a week probably.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't infringe on a patent by writing software that implements the patented matter; you infringe on a patent by running software that contains unlicensed patented matter.

Re:WTF?

[rifter]

maybe start iLoveTheScoInformationMinister.com???

As long as you don't capitalize it that way, otherwise you will violate Apple's patents on i[A-Z]* and InterCaps! :)

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not going to argue that UnixWare is wonderful, but to say it supports less CPUs than Linux is an outright lie.

UnixWare ships on 32-way machines from Unisys. Linux is still in the 1-4 CPU ballpark.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget about xbill! That was a fairly big innovation.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

You may be interested to know that your catchy phrase has been used as the title for a brazilian article about the issue: "Compre meu software ou eu atiro no pingüim"

Re:WTF?

[MntlChaos]

SCO does not own the copyrights to the rest of Linux

Re:WTF?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

"Compre meu software ou eu atiro no pingüim"

Brazil! a country which actually has penguins!

The phrase isn't mine... It's a riff on a cover the National Lampoon did around 1975: "Buy this magazine, or we'll shoot this dog!" [Picture of a frightened looking dog, with a revolver pressed to his head.]

These guys were over the top - back in the day.

Re:WTF?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Xbill...

More an opinion than a game, really. Did anyone ever reallyplay this?

Re:WTF?

[mink]

The C800:5 as I recall was specific to Western Digital MFM and RLL controlers. (8 bit)
I cant remember if they moved it for the 16bit ones sold with 80286 machines.

But then came Spinrite and we no longer neded to use that debug command unless we really wanted to.

Well, that just shows what this is

[Knife_Edge]

All SCO is doing is blustering. This has been discussed to death here before.

Re:Well, that just shows what this is

[johny_qst]

Yeah can we seriously get editors to stop putting SCO legal claims on the mainpage until some actual source code is released. I'm tired of seeing what three legal actions will come out of SCO *owning* infringed intellectual property each and every business day. Shakespeare and lawyers always come to mind at the same time.

Re:Well, that just shows what this is

[Anonymous Coward]

The Shakespeare character who said "first, kill all the lawyers" was a tyrant. He wasn't interested in killing the lawyers to stop stupid lawsuits, he wanted them out of the way so he could do whatever the heck he wanted.

Re:Well, that just shows what this is

[Morel]

Would you please refrain from polluting our self-righteous ranting with your precise facts?
Sheesh...some people.

Re:Well, that just shows what this is

[Anonymous Coward]

In my opinion we shall use all possible forms of legal action. Also governmental bodies may be helpful, esp. in Europe, where competition law is more strict about such public FUD tactics.
Despite the recent "Abmahnung2 Sco Germany continues to show press releases on its homepage that educate their customers Linux was endangered by SCO claims.

Patent claims, that is what failed companys do.
Software patents are evil. Help to fight them in the EU. http://www.noepatents.org

Re:Well, that just shows what this is

[jc42]

Yeah, and above all, nobody should ever mention SCO's patent number(s). That would take half the fun out of it.

They did announce the patent numbers, didn't they?

Re:Well, that just shows what this is

[Kaemaril]

Just goes to show, even the baddest of people with the worst of intentions can still come up with good ideas.

Re:Well, that just shows what this is

[jcast]

No, he was a (IIRC socialist) revolutionary (or more precisely said revolutionary's assistant) (OK, that's a tyrant---you win there) dreaming up the `ideal' world (if only it would work).

Re:Well, that just shows what this is

[Anonymous Coward]

And this is bad because.....

Re:Well, that just shows what this is

[RevSmiley]

Dam right I want to live in a world where I don't need to check with a lawyer or politician before I fart. Or use an OS even. Oh I forgot most politicians ARE lawyers. HMMM

Should Linus be afraid?

[valisk]

I think a 24% crash in SCOs stock price today shows what the market thinks of this news, and exactly how much Linus has to fear.

The threat to get Linus is as hollow as the rest, no Judge will allow a suit to be brought when the ownership of the IP is in question, and given that Novell own a vast majority of the patents (832 unix and novell vs 117 Sco and Unix), according to the USPTO, the fact that Novell have taken some time and obviously a lot of expensive Legal advice before making such a series of claims vis a vis the ownership of the Unix IP and seems willing to step in the way of SCOs legal bullets, I'd say SCO's battle to steal Linux from the community has just got infinitely more difficult.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[DetrimentalFiend]

To be honest, I wish that Linus had a reason to be afraid. His reaction to this whole thing started off as complete apathy and is still hovering around it. Linus has treated the whole incident as though it has nothing to do with him, so I'm glad that SCO has crossed the line and done something that will force Linus' hand. Maybe it's selfish, but I really would like to see Linus sticking up for the Linux community, which now includes big businesses such as IBM.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Dante]

I disagree, strange as it seems I don't want him to take it too seriously. It's supposed to be fun right? Personally I hope he quits when it is no longer fun.

How would you feel if you got sued because of what you did for _FUN_.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[bigfleet]

This is clearly based on the assumption that stockbrokers have the first fucking clue about technical issues. Remember, all it takes is one person with an opinion, and the herd mentality takes over from there.

An you know what they say about assumption...

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[gwernol]

I think a 24% crash in SCOs stock price today shows what the market thinks of this news, and exactly how much Linus has to fear.

Although if I were Linus I wouldn't exactly take the market as my best legal opinion in the matter... IANAL and the M(arket) is sure as hell is NAL either.

The threat to get Linus is as hollow as the rest, no Judge will allow a suit to be brought when the ownership of the IP is in question

Like I said, IANAL, but I would have thought a judge would allow such a suit. After all isn't one of the principle functions of the civil court to decide exactly these sort of contract disputes?

given that Novell own a vast majority of the patents (832 unix and novell vs 117 Sco and Unix), according to the USPTO,

I don't believe the USPTO keeps track of changes of ownership of patent rights. Even if it did, this seems to be primarily a contract dispute not a patent one.

the fact that Novell have taken some time and obviously a lot of expensive Legal advice before making such a series of claims vis a vis the ownership of the Unix IP and seems willing to step in the way of SCOs legal bullets, I'd say SCO's battle to steal Linux from the community has just got infinitely more difficult.

I don't think so. It has got a little harder (hooray) but I don't think it has got that much worse. Even Novell's chief executive is quoted in the article as saying "We believe it unlikely that SCO can demonstrate that it has any ownership whatsoever in those copyrights" (my emphasis). That isn't the totally unequivocal statement I would have liked to hear.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Bruce Perens]

SCO does not own 117 patents. Maybe they are mentioned in 117 patents, as an example of a Unix system. Mind your search parameters. They own only a handful of patents, and no significant ones.

Bruce

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Alan]

If you've ever seen linux talk, or read his book, that's his attitude (as I see it, YMMV, IANAL, IMHO, etc). He wants to program cool stuff that interests him. He couldn't care less about linux vendors, desktop wars, or 90% of the shit that "the linux community" is concerned about. I'd be willing to wager that if no one but him used Linux he's *still* be hacking away on it, because that seems to be the sort of person he is (the fact he's more a manager of code now than a coder aside).

I for one agree with his apathy... it's denying the sort of media circus that could result. Think about how much better all our lives would have been if the media had chose apathy in the OJ case (I know I'm going OT here) and just reported "OJ on trail for murder" and then proceeded onto the next story.

Personally I'm ignoring it all too, until some code that is actually damning is produced, or there is actually a legal leg to stand on, it's just noise.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to my perl, which is mostly just noise as well.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[hpa]

To be honest, I wish that Linus had a reason to be afraid. His reaction to this whole thing started off as complete apathy and is still hovering around it. Linus has treated the whole incident as though it has nothing to do with him...

It's called "don't feed the troll." SCO is doing this for hype (and presumably to give the execs some time to dump their stock) so there is no reason to give them more heed than necessary.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[valisk]

thanks for the correction Bruce, I didn't have time to filter through them to gain a truly accurate figure :)

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[valisk]

Like I said, IANAL, but I would have thought a judge would allow such a suit. After all isn't one of the principle functions of the civil court to decide exactly these sort of contract disputes? To get the judge to allow a case on patent violation they will first have to show that they own the patents in question, which means facing off vs Novell first, only then could they really threaten Linus with patent violations

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[RighteousFunby]

This whole SCO affair is best representated as a game of Sid Meiers Civilization.

1: The main protagonist is holding back information that you could use to nuke the shit out of their entire military operations with.

2: The bands of Linux users that are up in arms are the partisans. They do jack shit, other than make mountains out of anthills.

3: Linus is the guy who, while being allied to just about everyone, has a sneak attack from one rogue state. All out war starts (possibly).

See! First to build successful spaceship wins the lawsuit! Hurrah!

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[mcrbids]

Linus is an engineer. His role is to make a cool something.

He's succeeded. Compare that to the FSF and GNU-Hurd.

After all the time, love, and energy he's given us, you want him to give still more?

You're a selfish, whiney pantywaist.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, unlike the hordes of know everything Lawyers on Slashdot, Linus sticks to what he knows and is good at. I don't think he gives a rat's arse about SCO.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to say, that from the quotes and interviews that I've seen/hear this sounds about right.

He might get his undies in a bunch over kernel coding issues, but does a good job at not taking himself too seriously otherwise. (WTF should we care about what Linus thinks? (though my guess is that he thinks "WTF should anyone care what he thinks"))

I'd expect that most of the folks that go on about "the community" would find Linus' lack of pretentions anoying if they ever had to deal with him directly.

DISCLAIMER: I do not know, nor have I ever met Linus. He may be a raving prick in person for all I know. I'm basing my opinions on interviews that I have seen/heard. (and comparisons with RMS who would make Jack the Ripper seem like a fairly nice guy)

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[bruthasj]

Nope. I disagree. There are plenty of advocates out there right now, like RMS, ESR and BP. What we don't need is more of them, especially from the ranks of lead developers. Linus needs to keep on keepin' on and try to ignore the issue while others try to mop the mess up. It will blow over, I'm certain of it. Linus losing focus on the 2.6/3.0 kernel would only be a certain blow to future kernel development.

So, Linus, ignore all this crap and keep rockin the boat.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[alonsoac]

How would you feel if you got sued because of what you did for _FUN_.

If I'm getting sued for something I sure hope I at least had a fun time doing it!

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Selanit]

You said:

He wants to program cool stuff that interests him. He couldn't care less about linux vendors, desktop wars, or 90% of the shit that "the linux community" is concerned about.

That's correct, and it has been one of his great strengths. This lawsuit, however, is part of that remaining 10%. If SCO were to actually win a favorable judgement at trial, it could very easily diminish Linus' ability to "program cool stuff that interests him". The issue is therefore directly relevant to his own interests -- especially if SCO goes ahead an sues him personally, whatever the charge.

For this reason, I will be surprised if Linus doesn't make some sort of statement before much longer.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[j7953]

This is clearly based on the assumption that stockbrokers have the first fucking clue about technical issues.

They don't, but we haven't seen any technical issues anyway yet, or have we? As far as I know, SCO refuses to disclose details.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[RodgerDodger]

Why should he? He doesn't get paid for working on Linux; it's something he does off his own back.

Big businesses like IBM can stick up for themselves.

Linus is just this guy, you know...

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[H.G. Pennypacker]

I vandalise buildings for fun.

Oh wait, you mean what I do for fun has to be legal?

Isn't that exactly what's in question right now?

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[sjames]

Linus has treated the whole incident as though it has nothing to do with him

Perhaps that's because it has nothing to do with him! According to Novell SCO doesn't own the IP, and so can't sue. A SCO vs. IBM really has little to do with him either, and ultimatly, IBM would just crush SCO anyway. According to a rational analysis, the IP in question, no matter who owns it, is of little value and coul;dn't have made a significant contribution to an already superior kernel.

So why shouldn't he be apathetic?

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[shnarez]

How would you feel if you got sued because of what you did for _FUN_.

Be careful how you word that. What one considers _FUN_, another can consider patent/trademark/copyright infringement, or illegal, immoral, or downright wrong.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Anonymous Coward]

How would you feel if you got sued because of what you did for _FUN_.

That depends entirely on what you do for fun. I suppose if I'd do <insert-your-crime-here> for fun, I'd be taking a calculated risk so a suit (or an arrest) wouldn't come as a complete surprise.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[DetrimentalFiend]

You have a very valid point. I guess that I would have to agree with you, though I wish that he'd stick up for Linux a little. Very interesting point, though.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Austerity Empowers]

I don't see why Linus should volunteer to be drug through politicial nonsense. He is taking the reasonable stance of being the creator of something great, not becoming our messiah and leading us through the murky waters of capitalism.

He's an engineer working for himself, his job is to create first and foremost what he wants. If it so happens to be what the rest of the world needs, well it's really nice that he is sharing his work with us and helping us all understand how to make a better operating system.

In any event, Linus may WANT to wage war, but he HAS to keep quiet precisely because of these lawsuits. If it in any way appears he has an agenda, it could be problematic for Linux's future. His decisions thus far represent what i would consider heroic acts of discretion. Let him be.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[bwt]

I believe that you should ignore idle threats, and turn the other cheek to hollow threats and minor attacks. People who can do this are noble and wise.

I admire Linux for his attempt to take the high road and ignore this as a minor attack. Unfortunately, it is becoming clear that this is not a minor attack. SCO is threatening the viablity of Linus' life work and his greatest accomplishment. If he will not fight when attacked this way, then he has no life's work or accomplishment.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Anonymous Coward]

True, but they are close to a patent for pissing off the open source world, and delivering weasel speak through their anal orifice.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[RatFink100]

Linus is treating this with the level of seriousness it deserves. I think that's a fine example, to the community and everyone.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[fliplap]

If its a contract dispute than Linus has even less to worry about since he doesn't have a contract with SCO.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Ryan Amos]

Yeah but sue him where? He can still program cool stuff that interests him from the Netherlands (iirc that's where he's from.) I don't think the Netherlands would be too friendly towards a dumb US patent law case. They'd probably just say "No jurisdiction, do it in the US." In which case it'd be Elcomsoft all over again. Except that nobody likes SCO so they'd probably lose.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[bwt]

It's called "don't feed the troll."

It is becoming clear that SCO is no mere troll. They are not simply posting foolishness on some newsgroup or mailing list. Trolls don't ask a judge to enjoin your life's work. Trolls don't send letters to the Fortune 1000 companies threating potential legal action.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[boots@work]

Linus has better things to do than respond to trolls. SCO is a troll. A troll with a lawyer is still a troll.

They're not even a particularly *good* troll, at least by Slashdot standards. The original complaint contained really bizarre claims like the "Linux is a bicycle" paragraph, and while that can be amusing it does kind of tell people that you're not serious.

And then SCO started changing their story halfway through -- "it's just IBM", "it's not in the kernel", "it's in the kernel", "it's Linus". That kind of inconsistency always gives an amateur troll away. Look at the Subject Line Troll or the Recipe Troll -- they pick a good thing, and they stick to it. SCO could learn from them.

I think Linus was probably pretty sure that there was no infringing code in the kernel, and so he decided not to waste time or breath on the matter. If only the rest of us were so smart. ;-)

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[madprof]

Um, he's Finnish. I have to express disbelief that you didn't know that given that it is repeated everywhere.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[WCMI92]

"This is clearly based on the assumption that stockbrokers have the first fucking clue about technical issues."

SOMEONE does... A stock doesn't drop by more than 25% on an otherwise UP day by accident...

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[bwt]

That is what lawyers are for -- they take the burden of defending your rights so that you can focus on your day-to-day needs. Linux is being defamed, he is being threatened with lawsuits. These are not games for "advocates". This is seriuos business and he needs to emphatically assert his rights so that he can continue to have those rights.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[GC]

Ummm... yeah... utter astoundment that someone posted a somewhat insightful reply on the basis that Linus was Dutch.... FINNISH... or is that Finish... it's all dutch to me.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Anonymous Coward]

And he does live in the US at the moment, doesn't he? I have no idea if that actually changes things, given that the initial development was in Finland (although who knows at what point SCO thinks the infringment took place) but presumably it does bring him into their jurisdiction.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[GC]

no, you are correct, but this is really the last death throes of a dying corporation- troll, nice analogy but the resemblence ends there.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[martyn s]

It's all the same to me guy.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Dyolf Knip]

Funny. I thought it looked more like the puny civilization with tech 1000 years behind, only a handful of scattered cities, and a military that is barely adequate to fend off barbarians, waltzing up to the capital of your massively powerful world-spanning empire and demanding you give them tons of money, all your tech, and half your cities.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[bwt]

Do you have a list of which ones they actually own. If it's a handful, they can be compared to the Linux kernel to get an idea of what SCO is thinking. Also, the search for prior art can begin, regardless of whether or not the patents are relevent to Linux.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[bwt]

I think this case will permanently damage SCO. But what is also important is that the free and open source communities appear strong so that no other company out there even contemplates this kind of crap. "Peace through strength" if you will.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[klaun]

I admire Linux for his attempt to take the high road and ignore this as a minor attack. Unfortunately, it is becoming clear that this is not a minor attack. SCO is threatening the viablity of Linus' life work and his greatest accomplishment. If he will not fight when attacked this way, then he has no life's work or accomplishment.

Much like yourself I would guess.

Who are you to criticize him or say his accomplishments amount to nothing if he refuses to follow your advice, when he's contributed far more to the world than you ever will?

Having given something creative and imaginative to the world, you claim he has an obligation to defend it? His prior labors on your behalf are not enough for you?

What are you doing to defend Linux from SCO besides spouting at Slashdot? What have you invested in this fight or given to Linus that he owes you anything?

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[bwt]

You misunderstand something that is absolutely critical. Novell's press release absolutely DOES NOT prevent SCO from suing Linus personally. The best you should even hope for is that Novell has made it very difficult for SCO to win if both sides are vigorously defended.

And sitting back with your head buried in the sand pretending that you can go on programming cool stuff while a large corporations is attempting to stomp on your life's work is not vigorously defended.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[dsplat]

I think a 24% crash in SCOs stock price today shows what the market thinks of this news, and exactly how much Linus has to fear.

Although if I were Linus I wouldn't exactly take the market as my best legal opinion in the matter... IANAL and the M(arket) is sure as hell is NAL either.

No question about it. The stock market is not a legal advisor. However, there doesn't seem to be a great deal of confidence that SCO will win this one. What that indicates is that a wider world than Slashdot has judged their claims to be weak.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Anenga]

because of what you did for _FUN_.

Hear that Windows users?! Why use Windows when you can use an operating system that was done for FUN?!

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[rshimizu12]

This is the ultimate cheapshot from SCO on this issue. If SCO decides to sue Linus then I can assure you that the whole industry will rally behind him and provide financial legal support if necessary

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[attobyte]

Maybe Linus is waiting for proof. I mean what an idea, why whould he take a position on the topic ( something that could bit him in the ass in court ) without any proof. He is a bit smarter then that.

Atto

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[JoeBuck]

I'm sure that Linus is getting some legal advice right about now, and that's probably why he's been relatively quiet, other than a couple of general statements. However, I suspect that the lawyers are telling him not to sweat it.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[dunelin]

Watch out. "NAL" is a trademark of Novell, the "Novell Applications Launcher." I'm sure that SCO will vouch for "IA" too: "Inane Assholes"

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Anonymous Coward]

dude i heard he was GAY too...

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Phroggy]

For this reason, I will be surprised if Linus doesn't make some sort of statement before much longer.

What would be the point of that? If SCO actually sues him, then he can make a legal defense. If SCO tells him what they might sue him over, he can issue a statement on his position. In the mean time, why bother? SCO will probably be in deep trouble with the SEC pretty soon, and will have other things to worry about.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[bwt]

Much like yourself I would guess.

In fact, I'd apply this standard to myself: If my life's work was attacked this way and I would not fight to protect it, then I would have no life's work. Since you asked, for the last four years I've served as a senior software developer as a contractor for the US Air Force. That portion of my life's work is protecting your sorry ass right now. So Fuck Off.

Who are you to criticize him or say his accomplishments amount to nothing if he refuses to follow your advice, when he's contributed far more to the world than you ever will?

My advice is to defend himself from attack by a company that appears poised to ask a court to enjoin him from distributing Linux. If Linux is enjoined and Linux is his life's work, then what has he accomplished? He made an illegal program that no one can use without breaking the law.

What are you doing to defend Linux from SCO besides spouting at Slashdot? What have you invested in this fight or given to Linus that he owes you anything?

I never claimed Linus owes me anything. He doesn't.

But if McBride is correct (not that I believe this), Linus engaged in patent infringment that and wasted hundreds, maybe thousands of hours of my time because of a false pretense that he was shipping clean code.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

SCO does not own 117 patents.

Yeah, and after the Canopy Group realizes the pile of doo-doo that they stepped into with this one, they'll end up owning a whole lot less! Sell-off...

Idly, I wonder if the Canopy Group got sold a bill-of-goods by Ransom Love, who exited stage left before they could discover that the "intellectual property" they were investing in was second-hand vapour...

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[wowbagger]

A troll with a lawyer is still a troll.

Incorrect. A troll with a lawyer is 2 trolls.

A troll with a law firm is a whole-mess-of-trolls.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Tailhook]

I wish that Linus had a reason to be afraid

Linus is taking exactly the correct approach to this whole mess. Whether it's deliberate I can't tell you. His approach is best described as public indifference. There are three reasons why this is best;

SCO would like nothing more than to have Linus apoplectic over their actions. Nothing would serve the FUD machine better than to have Linus acting hysterical and muddying the water. If Linus started saying or doing dramatic things the targets of SCOs threats would be that much more nervous. Linus is not a court of law, CEO or powerful shareholder. He can't force anyone to do anything about any of this. I think the best thing he can contribute is quiet indifference.

Indifference is the ultimate insult. At the very bottom of public discourse we find the Troll. The Troll feeds off anger. The Troll creates as much trouble as possible and feeds off the results. Anger registers as a negative on the attention scale, but at least it's non-zero. Having people pissed off you is clearly less than being admired and loved, but being ignored is worse. The more indifference SCO encounters, the more dramatic they become, because being ignored is not acceptable.

Indifference, by default, prevents anything stupid being said. Rule #1 when dealing with lawyers and courts; Shut Your Mouth. It doesn't matter how exonerating what you say might be. It will eventually end up on the point of the dagger you find sticking out of your chest.

Those are three good reasons why Linus not being an activist in this matter is best. Now you'll have my opinions;

You want Linus to be an activist. In my opinion we have far more than enough of those already. Why can't we allow at least some of the non-activists in this world a little oxygen? Must everyone who wishes to matter be a megaphone for some cause? Have you lost the ability to appreciate spin-less competence? I long ago concluded that the vast bulk of activists we seem to spend so many of our mental computons listening to have zero interest in what their advocating anyhow. Most often they appear to be playing to their peers.

UNIX has been a legal football for going on 20 years. Wouldn't it be nice to just let the damn court dates arrive and get it over with, with as little drama as possible? Maybe, just maybe, if everyone took the Linus approach, we could avoid creating anymore celebrity lawyers/judges out of all of this. God that would be nice.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[TopShelf]

Then again, "the market" is dominated by major brokerage houses that have lots of lawyers on staff to assist analysts with just these sorts of questions. More often than not, the market is a pretty good leading indicator for how these issues work out.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Anonymous Coward]

How would you feel if you got sued because of what you did for _FUN_.

You obviously need to go to Tijuana. Quick.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Lumpy]

how about the fact that linus can overnight end up with a legal defense fund that is LARGER than SCO can ever come up with.

This CEO of SCO must be the biggest idiot on the planet.

Piss off the geeks that can easily outfund him overnight. Yeah, that's a bright move.

I'll give linus $100.00 right away if he needs it to fight this.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[BrokenHalo]

What's a pantywaist? It sounds fun :-)

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[wfrp01]

Yes. SCO will suffer. But I want more. I want to see that the people behind this pay some consequences. They already have many of the legal protections afforded by corporate immunity. But we could at least draw them out from behind the cloak of "SCO did it" anonymity. Who the hell are these people? I want to make sure I know where they go after this. I think they should become executive pariahs, that no company interested in keeping customers would want to touch. Before that can happen, though, they need to have their names splattered all over tarnation so that everyone can clearly make the association between the people and their actions.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[ibis]

Frankly, I predict an additional 50% drop tomorrow. The price has only come down to the top of the gap created by the FUD letters SCO sent out. Since they have been exposed to be complete FUD, expect the price to drop to pre-gap levels tomorrow.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[mnmn]

If Linus reacts, the market will too. SCO used to be a heavyweight once, but investors are now looking at the reaction to see how much of a threat SCO really is. The reactions will determine Linux's market uptake by nervous companies in the short term, so apathy as well as the communitys strong backlash and support from IBM Novell Sun Open Group etc will ensure this Microsoft-funded project does minimal damage.

What I am personally interested in are the top executives of SCO right now, including McBride. They hold the knowledge of any possible 'deal' with Microsoft, and should any one of them step forward and spill the beans, I will stand back, watch Microsoft stocks plummet with lawsuits and love it. I am also interested in seeing who will really hire those top execs or even buy SCO after this ordeal. Certainly not IBM. Will McBride be a manager in a software company? will the other execs remove their employment at SCO from their resumes? Will they all quit the Linux/UNIX business and move to something else like legal assistance?

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[mnmn]

At this point it seems Linus is being given too much credit. He holds the trademark to the Linux kernel, but a news blob a while ago mentioned SCO is not suing for something added to the kernel, but to the Operating System in general by the companies. This completely removes Linus, until this statement.

And then again, trying to comprehend what SCO is claiming, that someone somewhere along the line copied code to the Linux system, either kernel or glibc or some applications. Did other developers know about it? Unlikely.

If someone copied code, and he is NOT employed by Linus, can Linus be sued for it? This is of course assuming we're talking about the kernel.

Linus knows all this, and like most of us, knows what SCO is really up to and how all this will end. After this ordeal, Linux might lose a small section of its market, but confidence in Linux's license and code will soar. The next company would not be able to sue Linux for any significant damage, and will be turned down faster by the courts. In that sense, its good to have an imbecile like SCO testing the legal foundations (and strengthening) of Linux, rather than someone bigger, with a more damaging lawsuit.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Anonymous Coward]

The best you should even hope for is that Novell has made it very difficult for SCO to win if both sides are vigorously defended.

If Novell releases a Linux-based version of Netware, it would make perfect business sense for them to grant a license for use of their patents in the Linux kernel. Unlike source licenses and copyright issues, it doesn't have to be broad. They can state that patents XXXXXX, YYYYYY and ZZZZZZ are used in the Linux kernel. They license the use of those patented technologies within the Linux kernel and any future kernels derived from it, on the condition that they are licensed under the GPL.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Anonymous Coward]

i'll give you a 3/10 on the troll-o-meter, has some good flamebait points, but just isnt well disguised.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[spoons67]

Why should he? He doesn't get paid for working on Linux; it's something he does off his own back.

Linus in employed by Transmeta, and yes, he does get to work on Linux on company time. So he does get paid for it to an extent. Not to mention a cool few million he netted from selling some of his Red Hat stocks early.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Carmody]

After all the time, love, and energy he's given us, you want him to give still more?

Oh for crying out loud. He is not a Christ-figure. He gave his time, love, and energy to a project that interested him. He didn't do it for US, he did it for HIMSELF. That isn't a bad thing. (oh god, I hate it when I sound like a Randroid) I'm glad that he did what he did. We have all benefitted. But he didn't wake up one day and say, "I am going to give everybody free beer and create a movement that will redefine the concept of free speech." He woke up and said, what many engineers all over the planet often say, "Hey, I just thought of something mega-cool I can do... and fuck, I didn't want to go to bed early tonight anyway."

(I know he said this, for he told me so in a dream)

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF dude? You're just reinforcing the stereotype that Americans (I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you are) know nothing about the rest of the world. WTF do the Dutch (i.e. Holland/the Netherlands) have to do with Finland?

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Blkdeath]

In fact, I'd apply this standard to myself: If my life's work was attacked this way and I would not fight to protect it, then I would have no life's work.

There's another line of thought that goes; if you defend yourself against such an attack, you acknowledge its validity.

Since you asked, for the last four years I've served as a senior software developer as a contractor for the US Air Force. That portion of my life's work is protecting your sorry ass right now. So Fuck Off.

Your "life's work" is also being used to bomb civilians in foreign nations.

Perspective, my dear sir.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[boots@work]

Good point.

"Whoa... nasty infestation you've got there. Still but, a bit of hydrogen cyanide ought to clear them out."

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Cirvam]

Unless IBM buys SCO out. But I think they would have done that a while ago if it was gonna happen, plus it would just legitmize their claims.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Anonymous Coward]

The people who produce propaganda like Bowling for Columbine are responsible for milking liberal sentiment for all it's worth.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[cHiphead]

if you defend yourself against such an attack, you acknowledge its validity

im afraid thats utter bullshit, sir. defending yourself against someone elses claim is an important part of life itself. with that frame of mind, you are damned if you do, damned if you dont. :(

as far as his life's work, well, in a monumental coincidence, once again he's damned both coming and going. no doubt his work is probably being used assist in the blowing up of shit in other countries. unless of course he programmed some sort of autoflush toilet system for the airforce. but even then im sure they'd find a way to use it to blow shit up. maybe even literally.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[jasonditz]

" Um, he's Finnish. "

I was under the impression he was just getting started :)

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[SN74S181]

I don't get the preachy 'hear that Windows users' blather that goes on here all the time. Anybody with any sense at all uses both Linux and Windows, and perhaps some other OSes as well.

It's only idiots and zealots who try to force an either/or proposition.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[SN74S181]

Actually he's of Swedish descent but his family lives in Finland.

da bing da bop da boop.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Tony-A]

but this is really the last death throes of a dying corporation

Reminds me of a time, long ago when a horse went through a sale barn with a dollar bill attached to its ear (to try raise some interest). The final bid? Ninety-eight cents! Methinks there will be some serious scrutiny of the "management" of SCO.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[GnarlyNome]

Incorrect. A troll with a lawyer is 2 trolls : but with only half the brain

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[smittyoneeach]

Your math is ronngg.
A troll with a lawyer=1 troll + 1 shark.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[canuck_wingnut]

"His reaction to this whole thing started off as complete apathy and is still hovering around it."

Lord, think about it, I mean if I were him, I'd almost be tempted to glue my mouth shut
UNTIL CALLED for! He probably has consulted a lawyer who would tell him "Shut up unless I say
it's O.K." That way, what he says (or doesn't say) can't be used against him.
A lawsuit of this nature is no joke and should be treated as such, and
from where I sit, that is exactly what Linus is doing.

Go Linus!

Nosce Te Ipsum

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Bruce Perens]

I think Canopy was in this from the start. All three CEOs (Brian Sparks, Ransom Love, Darl McBride) have been Novell executives.

Bruce

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[rifter]

What's a pantywaist? It sounds fun :-)

Unfortunately, they weren't. And they did not sell well. Perhaps a precursor to SCO Products?

Pantywaists were an attempt at a unisex undergarment for children in the US in the early 20th century. Unfortunately in US culture anything associated with women (even as unisex) tends to get a stigma of being effeminate (this was especially true in the "good old days". The term was later extrapolated to mean an effimenate male (a sissy, one with no cojones, etc...).

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[eniu!uine]

If I'm getting sued for something I sure hope I at least had a fun time doing it!

Right. Like alimony.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never heard Linux talk before. Is there an implemention of SAM that I've never come across for Linux yet? Cool...brings me back to my old Apple // days...

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Reziac]

Linus is probably best off to keep his mouth completely SHUT unless and until SCO actually does sue him, and then consult a lawyer before saying a word -- so he doesn't accidentally say something that works against him in court.

After all, SCO's gum-flapping has already compromised *their* case. Why should Linus make the same mistake??

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Well, Bruce. I just hope they will see just desserts.

Nice to know you can help serve 'em!

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[intermodal]

he's from Finland, but he now lives in Santa Clara or something (somewhere in Silicon Valley, at any rate) and works for TransMeta, a US company.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[canuck_wingnut]

"Will McBride be a manager in a software company?"

Looke for messr's Mcbride et al to be flipping burgers in a Utah MacDonalds near you soon! ;-)

If I owned a Computer company (or any other, for that matter) I wouldn't hire a dork like that.

Poetic justice, I say, since that's where many an out of work Computer programmer seems to wind
up these days, if they can't find anything else.

Wouldn't it be peachy to have a former CEO having to say yes sir, yes sir three bags full to you. ;-}

Nosce Te Ipsum.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Anonymous Coward]

When the SCO execs met Sparks flew and Love followed and a few months later it was here comes the Bride.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[kien]

Be careful how you word that. What one considers _FUN_, another can consider patent/trademark/copyright infringement, or illegal, immoral, or downright wrong.

Truer words were never spoken. Just ask these people. :)

--K.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Anonymous Coward]

Overall, SCO's stock is still up 250% or so -- by your own logic, that indicates the markets think this is a substantial case.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[caluml]

A pride of lions, a flock of birds, a gaggle of geese, a _______ of trolls ?

Answers below, please.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[rasjani]

There's loads of things people do that are fun to them but will result them with court and/or jail time if cought..

For example: Cannabis, BlackHat stuff, writing viruses, speeding and so on..

Not necessery good stuff but i know that some people consider those "fun"..

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Billly Gates]

"It is becoming clear that SCO is no mere troll. They are not simply posting foolishness on some newsgroup or mailing list. Trolls don't ask a judge to enjoin your life's work. Trolls don't send letters to the Fortune 1000 companies threating potential legal action."

No kidding. Read this. I like the part at the end where McBribe oops McBride wants Bios advice on how to maxmimize profitabilty from this incident. I do not know about you but it seems like SCO looks at this as a free lottery ticket. A troll indeed. I love the part of the licensing 6.0 like clause which says "Pay us $99 per cpu now or we will charge $199 later". Extortion! Pure and simple.

They are beyond trolls. God this makes them look worse then the RIAA.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine a be* cluster of 'm.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[rowanxmas]

slash

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[madprof]

It is 'finnish'. And yeah I found it a bit odd it got modded up but hey I'm not ungrateful.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Anonymous Coward]

"drug?"

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Anonymous Coward]

and it the letter to novell, they said they said it was about contracts, not patetents/copyright.

So there is nothing unequivocal here....

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[hyphz]

Also, as far as I believe, it's illegal ("constructive litigation") to use the threat of a lawsuit to make people do stuff who aren't a) the subject of the lawsuit, b) aren't related to them in a way that's something to do with the lawsuit, and c) aren't doing something similar to what the lawsuit subject is doing.

In other words, "stop sharing files or I'll sue you" is ok (a). "Stop sharing files or I'll sue Kazaa" is ok (b). "We'll sue this student you don't know for $300m for file sharing, so you'd better stop sharing files yourself" is ok (c). But "stop sharing files or we'll sue the firm you work for so they run out of money and lay you off", is not ok unless the firm is something to do with file-sharing too.

"BigCorp, license our stuff or we'll sue Linus" clearly doesn't fit into any of a), b) or c); BigCorp isn't breaking SCO's patent, isn't involved with a group breaking SCO's patent, and isn't also intending to break SCO's patent.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[evenflow]

> Actually he's of Swedish descent but his family lives in Finland.

Close but no cigarr. He is a swedish speaking Finn. Finland is a bilingual country.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Zigg]

Or people who just plain don't need what Windows offers. I'm quite comfortable with a mix of Linux and OpenBSD myself, and I don't think that makes me an idiot or a zealot.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[edwardd]

Tell it to my Parole Officer!

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Anonymous Coward]

How would you feel if you got sued because of what you did for _FUN_.

A lot of hackers/crackers already receive legal threats because of what they do for fun. So do skateboarders. So do adulterers.

(Yes, I got your point, I just thought it was an odd way to phrase it....)

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Dr. Manhattan]

Fine, mod me offtopic, but I have to say:

...I've served as a senior software developer as a contractor for the US Air Force. That portion of my life's work is protecting your sorry ass right now. So Fuck Off.

I love this attitude. Sounds just like the bit from "A Few Good Men": 'I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it.'

Problem is, as a citizen of the United States, it's not my privilege but my duty to question the manner in which my security is provided, because ultimately the people who do so work for me. It's my responsibility. I vote fo rit and I pay for it.

The other fun part is the way that many (note: not all, and from what I've seen not most) military types hold civilians in contempt. If you don't think we're worth defending, why the hell are you doing the job? Besides which, if you love our country you've got to love the civilians. A body made up entirely of immune cells isn't going to last too long...

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[tkg]

If someone copied code, and he is NOT employed by Linus, can Linus be sued for it? This is of course assuming we're talking about the kernel.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Linus have final approval authority for new additions to the kernel? IANAL but it seem to me, if this is the case, it could potentially make him liable on some level. Athough he could claim ignorance of the code's origin, it could be argued that the onus is on him to verify.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[sjames]

In the sense that anyone can sue anyone for anything with or without grounds, he can be sued. Up until the announcement that they might sue Linus (which was the reaction under discussion), he was probably underestimating the incredible stupidity and desperation of SCO.

At the same time, one might ask why doesn't he round up his legal staff and throw some of his billions.....OH! He doesn't have that! What would you have him do but sit back and watch the fireworks? There's little he can do about the fact that the U.S. civil court system can be used for legalized extortion.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[mnmn]

You're right. Say some developer pasted code into the kernel, Linus unknowingly approved and it shipped in millions of systems and distros. There will be a new legal battleground with Linus denying the knowledge, the developer hiding in a bush and SCO trying to hold responsible not just Linus but EVERYONE along the chain including RedHat and IBM, their distributers, users and their dogs.

Of course the chances of this is slimmer in Linux than other OSes, Linux is more audited than other UNIXen, and Microsoft. It would be great if Microsoft had to release their sources for auditing someone found Linux code in there, and posted the news on slashdot.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[sjames]

There's more than one way for a huge corperation to crush a moderate one. IBM could throw more than SCO's net worth into lawyers and just wait for the bankrupcy.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Anonymous Coward]

You dumb twit. He can't do anything as long as SCO refuses to detail what they claim was copied.

What do you want him to say, that SCO is lying? How the fuck would he know? He only wrote ~10% of the code. It seems unlikely, but it is possible that SCO is right. We won't know until SCO details its claims.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[featheredfrog]

Although if I were Linus I wouldn't exactly take the market as my best legal opinion in the matter... IANAL and the M(arket) is sure as hell is NAL either.

Interesting. SCO [SCOX] was trading less than 4 up until mid-to-end April which is when (If I recall correctly) this "Sue Linux" campaign started. Just now it's trading at about 6. A 50% rise in insider's value. Hmmm. And since on 2/21 this year a bunch of Directors have been "awarded" shares at $0.001/share, I'm looking for some more insider sales.

How about slashdotters? Should we each buy some SCOX and then raise holy heck at the next shareholder's meeting? Could be fun...

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[starm_]

OK this deserves more visibility! At the risk of repeating myself.

Today I read this from advocado:
"SCO hints it may sue Linus Torvalds for patent infringement"

and then a few articles below:
"Microsoft to purchase UNIX rights from SCO"
refering to this article.

Coincidence? Has anyone else noticed?

starm_

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[bwt]

Your "life's work" is also being used to bomb civilians in foreign nations.

To bad you aren't among them.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[bwt]

In the sense that anyone can sue anyone for anything with or without grounds, he can be sued. Up until the announcement that they might sue Linus (which was the reaction under discussion), he was probably underestimating the incredible stupidity and desperation of SCO.

You have this exactly right. It was the right approach until that point, too.

At the same time, one might ask why doesn't he round up his legal staff and throw some of his billions.....OH! He doesn't have that!

You need to learn the first rule of politics: if you can't afford it, use somebody else's money. Plaintiffs lawyers often work on a contingency basis that doesn't require the Plaintiff to pay anything -- and then they get a cut 30-40% of the winnings. But more importantly, such a suit would be in IBM's interest. It might also be in his employer's interest. Or Red Hat's interest. Or Novell's interest. etc...

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[moby]

In fact, I'd apply this standard to myself: If my life's work was attacked this way and I would not fight to protect it, then I would have no life's work. Since you asked, for the last four years I've served as a senior software developer as a contractor for the US Air Force. That portion of my life's work is protecting your sorry ass right now. So Fuck Off.

You are protecting me how exactly? The only threat I can think of was 9-11 and your software didn't seem to work there.

My advice is to defend himself from attack by a company that appears poised to ask a court to enjoin him from distributing Linux. If Linux is enjoined and Linux is his life's work, then what has he accomplished? He made an illegal program that no one can use without breaking the law.

There's the heart of the problem. The mind who is fearful will prematurely take the offensive without using itself.

I never claimed Linus owes me anything. He doesn't.

Very good, now that you realize that try to comprehend this... nobody owes you anything!

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[samj]

a gaggle of trolls perhaps?

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Anonymous Coward]

...so many of our mental computons...

ROFL! Big thanks to the HP marketing droids for introducing a new, highly versatile word into the language.

So, how many computons does it take to create a coherent argument on /.?

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[HiThere]

Well...no. What the market thinks is that they have a better chance of winning a lawsuit (or being bought out) than they have of selling their products. I agree. This doesn't mean that I think that they have a good chance with the lawsuit.

OTOH, if they were to win what they're asking for, then the upside would be extremely high. So SCO stock is a bit like playing the lottery. Yes, people do it. And sometimes people win hugely at the lottery. But more frequently they loose a tiny bit.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[ProteusQ]

Maybe that's why he's staying quiet. It's said the Finns are silent in two languages...

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are protecting me how exactly? The only threat I can think of was 9-11 and your software didn't seem to work there.

Deterrence perhaps?

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[HiThere]

I'm afraid that the recent MSWind EULAs render the applications totally useless to anyone who take their agreements seriously, and considers their work worthwhile.

Now if you say that most people don't take the EULAs seriously, I would agree with you. I would also consider that this is potential economic suicide. You are in essence transferring title in all of your work to MS. I.e., they have the right to "add, modify, copy, remove or delete" (I think I have that phrasing right) any files on your disk. So I find their software useless.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[HiThere]

Most of the community aren't activists in any political sense. One of the benefits of Slashdot is to instill at least a minimal amount of political awareness into us.

But you tend to hear the activists, because they are noisy. And because they devote their attention to political things, they devote less attention to coding. So they don't contribute as much in that area. So? This is the kind of activity where they do contribute. This, and the "organization" against the SSSSCA, etc.

Most people aren't primarily political. Geeks tend to be less political than most, because we are generally raised as outcasts, so we don't have much experience. But it's an important activity. This *sure* doesn't mean that everyone should center themselves around it, though! Linus in not a politician. He's rather diplomatic, but he's not a politician. This is who he is. If he were someone else, he wouldn't have build Linux.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[rifter]

SCO is dying...

Maybe they should have worked in some bit about usenet posts and "you don't have to be a Kreskin to see the UNIX code in Linux..." Then they could have a goatse.cx link like "SCO feels that the following patents are clearly infringed by Linux." ;)

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't need what Windows offers, why do you have a fake Windows BSOD message as your tagline?

And by the way, Windows 95 didn't have the BSOD, which was an NT-only 'feature.'

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[HBI]

The fact that some of you are scumbags does not invalidate the great mass of decent people. At least I hope there are a great mass of you.

That's what keeps us going.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[sjvn]

Canopy owns large chunks of both SCO _and_ Novell.
Betcha they're pleased as all punch about this now.

For more on SCO, Novell and Unix IP see:
http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/repor ts/481 8/1/

Steven

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[bythescruff]

Seems to me that if Linus can't escape responsibility for distributing code belonging to SCO simply because it was someone else who added it to the Linux kernel, then SCO can't escape having released their own code under the GPL as part of their Linux distribution simply because they didn't know it was in there.

If he can't say, "Well, I didn't know it was in there," then neither can they...

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is that appealing to daily/weekly stock fluctuations is fucking stupid.

As you point out, it's all speculative value and has little if anything to do with any perception of SCO's legal case. (Which, according to the talk on the town that I've heard, is "for real".) Just look at all the shorting daytraders in this thread.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[welshsocialist]

Should Linus be afraid?

In a way, he should be afraid. If SCO wins in court against IBM and proves IBM put SCO's UNIX code into the kernel, then Linus could be in hot water. SCO might want Linus to answer these questions:

When was SCO code put into the kernel?
Did Linus know the code being put into the kernel was SCO code?
Has Linus attempted to remove the code in question?
Did Linus discipline those who put the SCO code into the kernel?

In short, I would not want to be in his shoes now. There is hope though. I think SCO will lose this one though.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Blkdeath]

To bad you aren't among them.

Much as I hate to do it, you're the one defending your much touted "life's work" as a programmer, so here goes;

If you can't discern the difference between "to" and "too", I'm not particularly frightened by your m4d c0d1ng sk1llz. :)

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[rifter]

I love this attitude. Sounds just like the bit from "A Few Good Men": 'I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it.'

Problem is, as a citizen of the United States, it's not my privilege but my duty to question the manner in which my security is provided, because ultimately the people who do so work for me. It's my responsibility. I vote fo rit and I pay for it.

The other fun part is the way that many (note: not all, and from what I've seen not most) military types hold civilians in contempt. If you don't think we're worth defending, why the hell are you doing the job? Besides which, if you love our country you've got to love the civilians. A body made up entirely of immune cells isn't going to last too long...

I have often said that the most cherished right US Citizens have is the right to bitch. We can say whatever we want, right or wrong. It is the job of US Military personnel to protect that right, even when I am bitching about them. That often makes what they do a thankless job (especially since they do not decide whose country they end up flying to and who they have to kill when they get there).

At the same time, it is the right of every US soldier to have and express whatever opinion they wish as well, and they have the particular distinction in many cases of having directly paid for that right.

Voltaire said "I may not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it." I believe in that, too, but these people really do it. They may also end up in some war in which they should not be involved, they may kill civilians and surrendering soldiers, but at the end of the day they are also responsible to protect this country if it is attacked. They are also the only people capable of ensuring the Constitution is truly respected, as it is their sworn duty to protect the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic, and they therefore would be responsible for disobeying and resisting should some president become an outright dictator.

But to directly address the issue you brought up, I took that sentiment as just another example of the support vs users war. IT personnel often hold users in contempt because they do not understand what they (IT) go through to provide the systems the users work on (and destroy themselves, then ask them to be fixed, then blame IT and the computers). To me, the problem of the military is similar, but a bigger game with higher stakes. I don't blame them at all for feeling the way they do.

Look at how the average veteran is treated in this country, where they come home and they are told not to wear their uniforms because they might be attacked; they are made to feel ashamed for what they do. Look on the streets and see how many of the homeless are ex-soldiers. Where is the monument to the WWII veterans who fought a war against tyrants who would have utterly destroyed the earth, and gave our country the power it now enjoys (and sometimes abuses)?

If the military did not feel we were worth defending they would not do their job at all. Or worse, they would take over and kill us all. Obviously the majority feel we are worth protecting whether they like us or not, and the individual soldier, by not quitting, likewise is making that statement.

It is right for us to question the actions of our government. It is our duty as citizens. It is right for us to apply scrutiny to the things done in our name by those who serve. But it makes perfect sense that those people should also feel they deserve some gratitude and credit for trying and for making difficult choices you and I have refused to deal with at all.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Zigg]

It's not fake. It's real. And I used to use Windows, about six months ago. As far as your definition of "BSOD" goes, it was blue, and it signified that Windows was essentially dead in the water. If you've never seen it, you're quite a lucky person.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[rifter]

Absolute baloney from a computer newbie using his first XP box. Windows 9x had many blue screens of death, and they were more commonly seen there than on NT. The quote in grandparent's sig is actually one that appeared in many blue screens of death.

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[rifter]

If you read his book(_Just_For_Fun_), he talks about his swedish ancestry and the origin of his name. Actually it is a fascinating book. I would never have thought Linux started originally because Linus wanted a decent terminal emulator so he could get at his email... :)

Re:Should Linus be afraid?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's curious how that kind of statement always seems to come from people who've never actually seen what they're talking about.

It's like the moral majority who blame music they've never actually heard the lyrics from or those that hate GTA3 or Doom for society's ills. Curious how, when put on the spot, they've never actually seen what they're spouting about - they just heard it from some other equally uninformed source.

Huh?

[Registered Coward v2]

What happened to the "it's not patents, but licensing" arguement?

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

What happened to the "it's not patents, but licensing" arguement?


It's Wednesday afternoon (please try to keep up)

Go To Hell McBride

[8282now]

like the title said...

And

[Bruha]

Linus could always say Ni to all the source he's committed into every Linux Kernel and SCO would be in a world of hurt maybe.

Obviously it's time to stop talking about it becuase all you're doing is advertising their name for free.

Re:And

[Jerf]

Obviously it's time to stop talking about it becuase all you're doing is advertising their name for free.

There is a such thing as bad publicity, especially for publically traded companies.

Re:And

[Anonymous Coward]

"Any publicity is good publicity." -- Madonna

Re:And

[Anonymous Coward]

"What the fuck are you doing?" -- Madonna

Does SCO just want the wrath of all Geekdom??

[Sergeant Beavis]

Oh yea, I can see every script kiddie on Earth going after them now. GEEZ what a dumb statement to make.

Re:Does SCO just want the wrath of all Geekdom??

[j_dot_bomb]

I can also see lots of donations heading to his defense fund. Geeks are apathetic but for this I think they would pony up in suprising numbers.

Re:Does SCO just want the wrath of all Geekdom??

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to take your statement one step further and propose that SCO is intentionally trying to bait script-kiddies. They've been referring to a DDOS attack in just about every public statement since the filing. I'll bet they were just /.'d and they've been calling it a DDOS attack, it's now died down, and they need to get attacked for real in order to say F/OSS developers are all a bunch of theives and vandals.

Re:Does SCO just want the wrath of all Geekdom??

[Anonymous Coward]

We need to get a donation site going for SCO.

If we don't rally behind them now, Intellectual Property and Innovation may become a thing of the past. Now is the time to stand up for what matters.

Now is not the time to stand by and watch passively. Rise, Yes Rise Up and show your support for perhaps the one organization standing against the common hacker!

Rise, yes, Rise up and Live!

Re:Does SCO just want the wrath of all Geekdom??

[cdc179]

Comence:

#!/bin/sh

while [ 1 ]
do
ab -n 1000000 -c 1000 "http://www.sco.com/" &
done

Make em eat bandwidth!

Counter Suit

[rfmobile]

I suggest counter-suing for defamation of character. Just how much is an international reputation worth? Linus could end up owning SCO. Now *that* would justice. -rick

Re:Counter Suit

[rfmobile]

*ahem* Now that would BE justice! -rick

Re:Counter Suit

[Anonymous Coward]

Or torture. SCO's hardly rolling in the dough.

"There's nothing like owning a failing company. It makes my marriage look fantastic!"

Re:Counter Suit

[Tackhead]

> Linus could end up owning SCO. Now *that* would [be] justice. -rick

"Some people have told me they don't think a fat penguin really embodies the grace of Linux, which just tells me they have never seen a angry penguin charging at them in excess of 100mph. They'd be a lot more careful about what they say if they had."

- Linus Torvalds.

"Darl McBride, I'm pleased to have you as my new employee. Mr. McBride, could you please move two feet to the left. Yes, there. Perfect. No, you don't have to do anything else, just stand there."

- What I imagine Linus' first words would be at the shareholders' meeting after he becomes the new majority shareholder of SCO.

Re:Counter Suit

[idontgno]

I suggest counter-suing for defamation of character. Just how much is an international reputation worth? Linus could end up owning SCO. Now *that* BE would justice. -rick

Geez, like "I hope I can countersue the drug dealers so I can own their crackhouse." Ick!

Re:Counter Suit

[WCMI92]

"I suggest counter-suing for defamation of character. Just how much is an international reputation worth? Linus could end up owning SCO. Now *that* BE would justice. -rick

Geez, like "I hope I can countersue the drug dealers so I can own their crackhouse." Ick!"

McBride must be receiving some EXCEPTIONAL crack to think he has a spit into an incoming F5 TORNADO's chance of winning any of this shit...

SLAPP suit?

Is Linus the resident of a state with anti-SLAPP laws?

Re:Counter Suit

[Ryan Amos]

Linus could end up owning SCO.

So you mean he'd lose and owning SCO would be his punishment?

Re:Counter Suit

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

I think kicking old Darl in the gonads so hard his children are born spitting teeth would be justice at this point...

Actually, Darl is exhibiting a behavior known as "Barratry" which, if he's a member of the bar, can make him an EX-member of the bar rather easily. Attempting to manipulate matters by threatening legal action (for instance "License our product or we'll sue this engineer") without any basis to actually DO so, and you can get yourself in very deep shit with the courts.

I hope Darl finds himself in front of a federal magistrate with no sense of humor whatsoever (apart from perhaps a dark and vindictive one).

Soon.

Re:Counter Suit

[MsGeek]

As far as I know, Linus lives in Northern California. Uh, Sorehands...does CA have an anti-SLAPP law here? Paging Sorehands...

Re:Counter Suit

[chrysrobyn]

I suggest counter-suing for defamation of character. Just how much is an international reputation worth? Linus could end up owning SCO. Now *that* would justice. -rick

In order to prove a defamation of character, you have to prove that Linus' character was actually defamed by this claim.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, do you believe that this man, who has donated countless hours of his personal time, sweat and tears to a computer program, which we'll call an "Operating System", willfully infringed upon copyright and/or patents and/or trade secrets? Do you believe that someone who shares all the fruits of his labor, called "Source Code" for all to view, check and use without restriction knowingly did something bad? Or, after those hundreds of thousands of lines of code, is it likely to find only one such infraction a demonstration of humanity?

Personally, I think that a company that finds problems a decade after Linux started sure says something about Linus' character -- and it isn't negative.

Re:Counter Suit

[GypC]

Emperor penguins (for example) have a maximum land speed of 1.7 mph as they waddle along. Underwater they have an admittedly impressive (for the amphibious) and graceful max speed of 15 mph. I never did understand that quote. Perhaps the only time Linus has actually seen a penguin it had just been shot out of a cannon? Maybe it was strapped to the roof of a Mustang... Or could it have jumped off a 20 story building, forgetting for a moment that its wings are useless for aviation?

Re:Counter Suit

[Anonymous Coward]

SCO is a big steaming turd that is about to be flushed. If you own stock in it, sell sell sell!

Re:Counter Suit

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe he was just kidding you pedantic humorless gnome. Go back to your cave.

Re:Counter Suit

[bwt]

How about for copyright infringement.

SCO is distributing his work (regardless of whether IBM added extra stuff to it) in violation of the GPL licence, which requires them to add no further conditions and give "all third parties" (which includes IBM) a licence under the GPL, which isn't compatible with trade secret retention.

Re:Counter Suit

[barc0001]

Actually, the best thing to see happen would be for IBM to take advantage of SCO's 24% drop in price today to buy up 5-10% of the SCO stock, and then sue the directors (who, being company directors, are PERSONALLY liable for damages) as major shareholders for corporate malfeasance in destroying SCO's good name with their actions designed to artifically inflate the stock's price and perceived value at the cost of long-term customers. Bankrupting a few of these weasels as an object lesson would be far better than throwing them in a 6'x9' as someone else suggested.

Re:Counter Suit

[Keith Russell]

I think Linus was thinking less flightless waterfowl, and more pipe-hittin' mofos getting medieval on Darl's ass.

Re:Counter Suit

[cabbey]

Linus could end up owning SCO. Now *that* would justice.

With a market cap of 80M, just about anyone could own sco.

Re:Counter Suit

[fredrik70]

um, sorry, not from the US, what exactly is SLAP??

Re:Counter Suit

[nathanh]

What I imagine Linus' first words would be at the shareholders' meeting after he becomes the new majority shareholder of SCO.

How about "All your code base are belong to us. You are on the way to deprecation."

Oh, don't look like that, you knew somebody was going to say it.

Re:Counter Suit

[numark]

Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation - they're court cases that companies wage against people for speaking out against them. For instance, if people campaign against building an industrial center in the middle of town, a company could try to sue someone for interference with a contract, defamation of character, or conspiracy. It's easy to get someone to settle and shut up so that they don't have to pay lawyers to defend against a frivolous lawsuit.

Re:Counter Suit

[numark]

California has an anti-SLAPP statute, Code of Civil Procedure, Section 425.16. A judge can dismiss a SLAPP lawsuit at the beginning of the case, and require the filer to pay court costs. See CASP.net for more information on it. Linkified: CASP.net

Re:Counter Suit

[darkcompanion]

"Darl McBride, I'm pleased to have you as my new employee. Mr. McBride, could you please move two feet to the left. Yes, there. Perfect. No, you don't have to do anything else, just stand there."

Linus : Hi Darl, what's up. Hmmmm. Yeah. We need you to move your desk more to the back. Some more people joining us and so. So, hmmm. Yeah. Oh, and I see you have my stapler.

Darl : (mumbles) on day I set this place on fire.

Re:Counter Suit

[HiThere]

Are they still?

It's a pretty puzzle, really.
Under the GPL, unless they shipped the source with all the binaries (perhaps they did) they are required to continue to make the source available for 3 (or is it 5) years. (There are several ways of satisfying the constraints, but an ftp server is the most common one.)

OTOH, this means that they can't add any further conditions. Like don't redistribute our trade-secret protected stuff. Or like, "you can't compile something derived from this and redistribute it under the GPL".

And if they did distribute the source, then they weren't allowed to add that kind of conditions to the source.

But they may not have owned the copyrights, so they weren't allowed to put it under the GPL in the first place. This made it also illegal for them to distribute the original Linux with those features present, because the other software included is only allowed to be distributed as part of a GPL work. So all of their profits for every version of the work that they distributed were illegally obtained, no matter which theory you take...except for the trade secret theory, in which case they have abandoned their trade secret.

I'm having trouble imagining a legal theory that would turn this case into anything less than a disaster for SCO (i.e., much worse then not filing the suit). OTOH, IANAL.

And this ignores the recent activities which reek of fraud and stock manipulation. (Why hasn't the SEC yet said something?) And should lay the managers wide open to both criminal charges and stockholder suits.

If they get out of this with whole skins, then the legal system is even more **** than I thought.

Re:Counter Suit

[rifter]

According to sorehands, it is an acronym for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. Essentially, it is when a company sues you so they can silence you because you are saying things which, while true, would hurt their reputation. Sorehands says it is illegal. I say if it is not it should be, because using lawsuits to stop competition or to silence people warning about the danger of a company's products (or their terrible business practices) is definitely an abuse of teh process. It is too bad our courts are clogged with crap like this; it stops legitemate claimants from obtaining justice.

I'd pay a couple of $$$ to the Linus defense fund

[rushfan]

In short, Novel thinks SCO has lost it's gord, SCO knows they are hosed, and are creating MS style FUD by saying anything to get their lame company in the news....

I hope Novell is right in:
"We believe it unlikely that SCO can demonstrate that it has any ownership whatsoever in those copyrights," said Jack Messman, Novell's chief executive, in a statement Wednesday

But anyway, I'd pay a couple of bucks, especially if we get a Pay-Per-View event of Linus kicking McBride upside the head.

Rushfan

Theres a buck to be made here...

[jdehnert]

Think I'll go pattent "Hello World!"

I always wanted to name a band "Special Guest" too.

Re:Theres a buck to be made here...

[dogfart]

I always wanted to name a band "Special Guest" too.

I remember a band named "Free Beer". Clubs were always careful to put their name in double quotes.

Re:Theres a buck to be made here...

[Zack]

IIRC, they changed their name and became famous. I believe they're called "Bare Naked Ladies" now.

Re:Theres a buck to be made here...

[CanSpice]

I always wanted to name a band "Special Guest" too.

You're too late. =)

Re:Theres a buck to be made here...

[named]

There is actually a band from Victoria, BC (Canada...) who are called "The Special Guests."

So you're too late ;)

Re:Theres a buck to be made here...

[limekiller4]

dogfart writes:
"I remember a band named "Free Beer". Clubs were always careful to put their name in double quotes."

"Everyone Gets Laid" - From P.C.U.

Re:Theres a buck to be made here...

[pstav]

I want to name a band "Double Quotes"

-arf

Re:Theres a buck to be made here...

[c13v3rm0nk3y]

Once they get past their early pop stage and start experimenting with epic songs in a minor key, they can rechristen themselves "The Scare Quotes".

Re:Theres a buck to be made here...

[SubtleNuance]

...thats the trick "Barenaked Ladies" pulled, clubs would bill "Now appearing; Barenaked Ladies" and you would do a doubletake...

Re:Theres a buck to be made here...

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

Actually my idea for a band name was "To Be Announced". Actually used it for one gig back in 1988 or so...

"Special Guest" reminded me of it because our joke was always to point at signs like ...

"May 24th: U2 and Special Guests: To Be Announced" and go "yea man we're opening for those guys next month."

Good times.

Re:Theres a buck to be made here...

[ivern76]

That reminds me of the movie "PCU", where the protagonists get hundreds of people to come to a party by adding "Everyone Gets Laid" to the ad...without mentioning that that's the name of the band.

Re:Theres a buck to be made here...

[Anonymous Coward]

I always wanted to name my child "Minnie Moore".

"...and many more!"

too bad

[McDrewbie]

too bad SCO doesn't own the patents nor copyrights. on unix. Their deal with Novell never involved Novell giving up their copyrights on UNIX http://perens.com/Articles/SCO/BigLie.html http://www.novell.com/news/press/archive/2003/05/p r03033.html

Re:too bad

[curtisk]

the article on Perens' site is right to the point .....good read

Re:too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

It's interesting that dispite the proof from Novell and SCO's own statment about contracts, this new article implies that McBride has no idea that his company might not own patents or copyrights on UNIX.

Make an enemy of everyone...

[Nom du Keyboard]

McBride added that unless more companies start licensing SCO's property, he may also sue Linus Torvalds

SCO really does seem to want to make an enemy out of absolutely everyone left on Earth.

Excuse me, but didn't Linus actually write Linux from scratch to duplicate the functionality of the existing Unix systems -- or do I misremember those early days?

Re:Make an enemy of everyone...

[jerryasher]

My understanding is that wouldn't matter in a patent case, unless you are arguing the patent was for an obvious invention.

Patents do protect against independent inventions of the same patented technology.

Re:Make an enemy of everyone...

[8282now]

If I recall correctly, I believe he used Minix as a reference.
a free, unencumbered implementation of *nix.

Re:Make an enemy of everyone...

[Nom du Keyboard]

Patents do protect against independent inventions of the same patented technology.

True. But not against prior art.

Re:Make an enemy of everyone...

[mindstrm]

Actually.. they do.

Prior art is very misunderstood, I think

When you file a patent, you have to cite prior art... which is things related to what you are doing, in order to show how yours is different.
Usuually these are references to other patents, but other stuff can go in there too.

Now, if it is shown you LIED on your prior art declaration.. and you KNEW of others donig the same thing as yours, and left it out... your patent can be invalited.

On the other hand, if it merely turns out that some shepherd in khazakstan did something a year before you and never told anyone... my understandign is that won't invalidate your patent. You may not be able to enforce said patent on the shepherd... but your patent may still stand.

Re:Make an enemy of everyone...

[jerryasher]

Patents are weird shit if you ask me. I can patent non-obvious things, but I am supposed to show, on the patent itself, the prior art for those things. Makes my brain hurt.

Re:Make an enemy of everyone...

[arkanes]

The prior art declarations are things like your patent that aren't your patent, or things on which your patent relies. All those "do X, but ON THE INTERNET" patents would have to mention a hypothetical patent on the Internet in thier prior art.

Re:Make an enemy of everyone...

[Anonymous Coward]

...everyone but Microsoft, that is.

Re:Make an enemy of everyone...

[Delphiki]

It depends. If they kept it a secret then your patent should stand. If it was published or common knowledge or anything like that, your patent is invalid if I'm not mistaken, whether you knew about it or not. Of course, I could be wrong and I accept no liability if anyone gets sued because they assumed I knew what I was talking about somehow!

Re:Make an enemy of everyone...

[drinkypoo]

If it was published or common knowledge or anything like that, your patent is invalid if I'm not mistaken, whether you knew about it or not.

Almost. Your patent can be invalidated by a court.

Re:Make an enemy of everyone...

[mindstrm]

Yeah.. of course. The only way a patent is revoked is by the court.

My point is basically that invalidating a patent isn't just as simple as "find one guy who did this beforehand, and it's invalidated"

Is this possible?

[man1ed]

What patents still exist that cover Unix? Don't they expire after 17 years? I don't think patents filed for "time sharing systems" or "virtual memory" in the seventies are still applicable. Besides, if this is valid, why are they not also suing everyone else? I know Sun licensed the Unix code to make Solaris, but did they license patent rights as well? What about FreeBSD? GAAHHH! How can SCO even claim that this nonsense is valid?

Re:Is this possible?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah. For patents before the 1995 expiration date change, utility patents expire in max( 20 years + filing date, 17 years + granting date ).BTW, Unisys's LZW patent expires June 20th.

Re:Is this possible?

[bofkentucky]

IANAL (/code needs a macro for this) but my understanding is that the 4.4BSD-lite release is completely clean and can not be sued as part of the UCalifornia Board of Regents vs. AT&T settlement. ATT got to keep all of the nifty 4BSD networking code (Bind, TCP/IP stack, real low level stuff all the way through telnet and gopher clients) without displaying the BSD advert clause in return. This split happened after the creation of Minix (and Linux), and should have absolutely no bearing on this case, with the obvious reality of modern *BSD's/OSX/Darwin (all derived from 4.4-lite) being completely free of fear of SCO on Unix IP infringement claims.

Re:Is this possible?

[Anonymous Coward]

To see what can be patented, see United States Patent 6,351,850. USPTO is a joke!

Re:Is this possible?

[Anonymous Coward]

You forget. Law isn't about truth. It's about providing profitable employment for lawyers. Remember that SCO's chief counsel in this mess was a former ally in "get-Microsoft" campaign, which was of no real benefit to parties who were so in favor of it.

Re:Is this possible?

[Evil Grinn]

What patents still exist that cover Unix? Don't they expire after 17 years? I don't think patents filed for "time sharing systems" or "virtual memory" in the seventies are still applicable.

Not to mention that neither of those were Unix innovations anyway. Maybe a patent on pipes, or something.

Re:Is this possible?

[senrik]

The same guy Boies, or something like that, also lost the bush v. gore thing at the supreme court. He cant be THAT good.

live (sue) by the contract...

[kenl999]

die by the contract...

IANAL (NDIPOOS) but it'll be pretty obvious if the transfer of (copyright|patents) is in the contract Darl's so found of boasting about.

Re:live (sue) by the contract...

[Anonymous Coward]

Congradulations, google has no results for NDIPOOS. Quick, get a patent!

Re:live (sue) by the contract...

[kenl999]

sorry, thought it would've been obvious:

Nor Do I Portray One On Slashdot

my god, do you mean I actually posted something original? On Slashdot?

Save Linus

[ShwAsasin]

If SCO decides to actually sue Linus, I hope all the server companies (or atleast the big ones like IBM, Red Hat, Penguin Computing, etc.) will help with his legal costs. After all, he did give them a great product without them do all the R&D themselves.

Re:Save Linus

[Eudial]

Oor. he could simply ask all the linux users to send him 2 or 3 bucks. that would make about $54'000'000. (counter.li.org estimates 18'000k users).

Re:Save Linus

[HiThere]

They could put out a special edition of the 2.6beta1 kernel on a CD, with a picture of Linus on the disk. Sell it for $20-30 each (the picture is copyright & trademarked, so no cheating).

I think a lot of people would buy a commerative CD, even if they didn't want to try the latest kernel.

tetris solution :)

[graveyhead]

A while back, I posted this joke:

I don't know which planet YOU are from, but in my book SCO (the f**kedcompany formerly known as Caldera) is an extremely innovative company. I mean, when I installed their version of Caldera Linux back in 1998, they had a game of Tetris that you could play while the installer ran. Tetris! WHILE YOUR OS INSTALLED! Now, if that's not real innovation worthy of IP protection, I don't know what is. So don't you dare come along mister and say that SCO has no real effective Unix IP to license :P

The thing is, I got two interesting replies that went largely unnoticed:

dvNull (235982) wrote:

BTW i knew people who worked for The Tetris Company who planned on making a case against Caldera for infringing on the Tetris copyright.

and An Onerous Coward (222037) wrote:

I would be so happy if IBM stole that bit of IP and got it into every distro. That would be schweet, and well worth another billion dollar lawsuit.

OK, so why not? I second Onerous Cowards' motion. Except, instead of stealing, IBM should immediately obtain a contract with The Tetris Company to redistribute Tetris. Then they should file lawsuits against SCO for infringement. Even if the lawsuits are frivilous, it would still be a thorn in the side of SCO when it is realized publicly that they very blatantly stole the IP from The Tetris Company.

On a side note, it seems to me that Caldera has a serous history of copying technology... DOS and Tetris are the ones I know about, plus they came up with a Linux distribution... ooh there's originality at work. Also, I believe they bought those rights to UNIX (acquired when they bought the original SCO, IIRC) How can this company turn around and sue IBM for infringement?! It doesn't make any sense. As far as I can tell, that install+game really is the most innovative they've ever been as a company. God that was brilliant. I hate waiting.

Re:tetris solution :)

[Segod]

I remembered reading something about this awhile ago so I looked it up on e2. http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=Tetris

"Due to Soviet political structure at the time, the inventor, Alexey Pajitnov, was not able to patent his game. This gave rise to many sundry Tetris clones for all manner of machines."

So i think the first guy was probly making it up. Why else would there be so many clones?

Re:tetris solution :)

[pinerob]

Maybe this will shed some light.

1. http://www.atarihq.com/tsr/special/tetrishist.ht ml

Re:tetris solution :)

[prowley]

It doesn't make any sense. As far as I can tell, that install+game really is the most innovative they've ever been as a company.

And they didn't even invent that. The Commodore 64 had some games that featured mini games you could play while the main game loaded from tape.

Re:tetris solution :)

[Watts Martin]

Caldera acquired DR-DOS from Novell, which Novell got from Digital Research. While I agree with your main point, it's important for old geeks like me to clarify this sort of thing. DR-DOS was the legitimate descendant of CP/M (it's actually the renamed CP/M-86). If you know your MS-DOS history, you'll know it came from QDOS, which was Seattle Computer's unauthorized 8080-to-8086 translation of CP/M. So in a real sense, MS-DOS is in fact a copy of DR-DOS, not the reverse.

It's also worth giving credit where credit is due. Tetris aside, Caldera was really the first company that pushed concepts Linux users take for granted now like easy installs, file and network browsing, etc. They may have dropped the ball years ago, but they were the first "Linux-focused company" to put the ball into play. I don't consider the current SCO to have much to do with that Caldera, though.

Re:tetris solution :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Since you have BLOCKQUOTE and B down, please attempt to master the A tag as well.

Re:tetris solution :)

[Escaholic]

>> Tetris! WHILE YOUR OS INSTALLED!

This is rather amusing, especially considering Konami patented letting the user play a game while loading the application.

Which is the reason no other computer games company does this.

Re:tetris solution :)

[dolson]

There was a distro I tried out not long ago that let you play Solitaire while it installed... I can't recall if it was Lycoris or what, but I'm sure it's on my list.

Re:tetris solution :)

[dvNull]

At that time TTC wasnt going after people who gave away their Tetris clones but after people who sold the clones. I dont know how it is right now.

Since they dont have a playable Tetris version in Caldera Linux anymore ( last i checked in 2001, it was solitaire), this may be a moot point.

dvnull

Re:tetris solution :)

[aweraw]

What about Namco? They had Galaga while Tekken was loading on PS1...

Re:tetris solution :)

[osguru]

Entirely off topic - but its also worth mentioning that not only did DR-DOS kick ass... but managed to piss of MS-DOS (and PC-DOS) marketing departments by always releasing a full version number ahead of MS-DOS (with PC-DOS just following MS-DOS).

Re:tetris solution :)

[drinkypoo]

OK, so why not? I second Onerous Cowards' motion. Except, instead of stealing, IBM should immediately obtain a contract with The Tetris Company to redistribute Tetris. Then they should file lawsuits against SCO for infringement. Even if the lawsuits are frivilous, it would still be a thorn in the side of SCO when it is realized publicly that they very blatantly stole the IP from The Tetris Company.

That would be especially poetic since as far as anyone can tell Caldera acquired DR-DOS in order to sue Microsoft.

Re:tetris solution :)

[Anonymous Coward]

> Caldera was really the first company that pushed
> concepts Linux users take for granted now like
> easy installs, file and network browsing, etc

Ahh, the good old days before they fired all the actual programmers and hired lawyers instead.

This just in:

[Andorion]

I'm suing everyone for everything. Details at 11.

~Berj

Re:This just in:

[Dynedain]

I'm sorry, you are violating my patent on aforementioned business model. Pay me exhorbitant licensing fees immediately, or I will sue your mother.

Irony alert

[dogfart]

Wasn't Linux initially based on Minix, an academic look-alike for UNIX, designed specifically to avoid AT&T intellectual property claims?

I see some irony here

Re:Irony alert

[quigonn]

Go learn history. Linux doesn't contain and never contained any Minix source code. Linux was totally written from scratch.

Re:Irony alert

[Anonymous Coward]

from snatch? who's snatch?

Re:Irony alert

[sloanster]

Nope, inspired by minix perhaps, but not based on minix at all.

In fact, the fundamental designs of linux and minix were so diametrically opposed that torvalds and tannenbaum had a famous usenet thread about it. Tannanbaum, a CS Prof and creator of minix, basically thought linus was insane for designing a monolithic OS at a time when microkernel design was all the rage. Tannenbaum actually went on record as saying he would give Linus a grade of F for the design of Linux.

Ironically, minix is still an obscure academic toy, while linux has moved into the data centers of most fortune 1000 companies.

Re:Irony alert

[nbehary]

While you are correct. I think the original poster just misspoke slightly. Linux did start out as a Minix clone as far as I know. If you read it that way, the parent makes complete sense.

Re:Irony alert

[dogfart]

Go learn history...

Well these USENET posts do indicate some connection here, as does this post by Linus himself.

These documents look historical to me. The Minix and early Linux communities were mixed, and I think it is unlikely they concerned themselves with keeping the code bases separate.

Re:Irony alert

[ClosedSource]

I guess what you mean by "from scratch", is that it doesn't contain any copying and pasting from any other OS.

Another definition of "from scratch", would mean that Linus had never read any material on Unix internals or spoken to anyone about it and reverse-engineered it by observing the behavior of a legal version as a user. If there were a trade secret case, this would be the best scenario for a defense.

Re:Irony alert

[gurumeditationerror]

They wouldn't need to worry about keeping the code bases seperate; Tanenbaum would have made sure there was no minix code in Linux, It would have given him more chances to attack Linus

Re:Irony alert

[Anonymous Coward]

indeed, i recall there's a book out there, something like "How to right your own 32 bit Operating System" (by Sams?), which basically has the entire Minix kernal source to demonstrate all the concepts discussed. I reckon that would have had to get passed a few lawyers before going to print. And the code was all "copyleft" ie your free to copy at will as long as you credit original author.

Re:Irony alert

[Anonymous Coward]

Inspired by Minix. Similar to it perhaps (codewise). Designed to be somewhat compatible with it (filesystem, anyway). But not based on it.

Re:Irony alert

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be interesting to dig up the old "micro versus monolithic" debate again for the uninitiated. Especially for comparing what each approach actually has delivered a decade later with linux/solaris/bsd on one hand and OS_X/WindowsNT/Hurd on the other.

Re:Irony alert

[attobyte]

I thought Linus wrote Linux on Minux. Thats it nothing more. What was he using at school it had to be something *uix.

Mike

Re:Irony alert

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd hardly call Linux "similiar" to Minix. Minix is a microkernel for a start, and it doesn't even have a swap mechanism in the VM. The original Linux versions uses the Minix FS, but it was quickly replaced with ext2 once Linux development became self-hosting.

Minix is small and clean, and the code doesn't take many shortcuts. Completly unlike any version of Linux in fact!

Re:Irony alert

[DavidTC]

No it wouldn't.

If someone goes around printing trade secrets of Unix (pretending there were any), and Linux read them, he's not in violation of anything. Trade secrets aren't like copyright, you can't be 'infected' unless you were under an NDA.

The whole idea is fairly silly as all Unix source code is fairly well known.

Re:Irony alert

[ClosedSource]

No. This would make trade secrets trivially easy to circumvent.

As long as you can establish that the third party obtained the information from an individual who violated the NDA they signed or through another individual who had obtained the information in that manner, you could take legal action against that third party.

I think we need a term for this one...

[Anonymous Coward]

In L.A., there's "suicide by cop."

Here, we have "suicide by Linus."

Time to move

[Boone^]

Linus might think about working remotely from Finland until this mess gets straightened out.

Does this desperate attempt seem like SCO's struggling for survival, or now that their original plan has holes they must keep plugging away to reach their goals?

Re:Time to move

[kmahan]

Nothing wrong with hanging out with the parents for a while.

Re:Time to move

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he'll acquire the services of the crafty ronin Sanjuro and Zatoichi, the famous blind swordsman and travelling masseuse, to protect him from the bumbling hirelings of the SCO clan. They won't stand a chance.

hmm

[adamruck]

What would slashdot do if SCO would shop sueing people? Slashdot could be in trouble, after all it would loose half of its daily articles.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, we would just go back to MS-bashing.

Re:hmm

[themassiah]

Probably not, the editors would just post more duplicates.

Re:hmm

[cdrudge]

...and the wonderful grammar in its reader's posts.

Re:hmm

[TC (WC)]

Hmm... Looking at the way things have been going lately, I bet Slashdot could then sue SCO for interfering in it's business plan.

Of course, if SCO stops suing people at some point, I'm rather sure there won't be enough of SCO left to be the target of a lawsuit.

Not if Novell comes thru....

[Anonymous Coward]

This whole issue could potentially be put to bed once and for all if Novell comes thru (earlier Slashdot article). It will be intresting to see SCO back pedaling and maybe even giving up the conspiritorial goods on other companies that bank rolled their legal steam roller.

wow

[westcourt_monk]

Stupid..

Stupid for reporting every little SCO quote. Stupid for thinking courts can allow such lawsuits.. and how in hell can SCO afford all this crap anyway?

Stupid...

Re:wow

[the eric conspiracy]

and how in hell can SCO afford all this crap anyway?

They can't. This is being handled on a contingency basis. If there are a lot of counter-suits SCO could be in big trouble.

Re:wow

[tomreagan]

Legal Fees to Prepare a Spurious Lawsuit : $25000

Filing Fees in the Plaintiff-Friendly States of your Choice: $1000

2 Months of Free Press when the entire Tech Community goes apeshit: Priceless

For free and open source software, there's GNU. For everything else, there's SCO BastardCard.

Re:wow

[WCMI92]

"Stupid..
Stupid for reporting every little SCO quote. Stupid for thinking courts can allow such lawsuits.. and how in hell can SCO afford all this crap anyway?
Stupid..."

Didn't SCaldera just have a "profitable" quarter on the back of a HUGE Microsoft license purch... uhh... License to spread FUD?

Take the blinders off...

This is MICROSOFT versus Linux. SCaldera is just the intermediary.

Re:wow

[Loosewire]

nd how in hell can SCO afford all this crap anyway?

I think SCO has its lawyers on a "You win this or we leave your resteraunt without picking up the bill" agreement

Re:wow

[asscroft]

"I'm going to hell and I'm going to take all of you with me"

Look, Rumsfield posts on slashdot!

(offtopic reply to a sig, I know. I know.)

Re:wow

[grahamkg]

Maybe that was crafted as a bullshit response, but those numbers provide an interesting perspective. For US$26K you can bollix a major portion of the world's computing industry.

But, why not? Not long ago, the air transportation industry was hosed by terrorists wielding $2 box cutters.

It's not just the Linux end on the SCO case that is of concern. IBM is now required to resolve this issue by June 13, 2003 (Exhibit E from the SCO case files). If it is not resolved, the current agreements to Unix code are terminated. Bye bye AIX. Extrapolate from there. (I have no financial or other interest in IBM, beyond the fact that I own a ThinkPad running SuSE 8.2.)

What power for a pittance.

Re:wow

[GC]

it's times like this where the 5 point maximum is clearly a mistake in the works... mod parent up to 10 please.

Who owns the patents?

[Anonymous Coward]

If Novell, not SCO, owns the patents then what can SCO sue Linus Torvalds for? Certaintly not for patent infringement.

FUD, FUD, and more FUD.

We found HIM!!!!

[gsfprez]

Darl McBride has been unmasked as the Iraqi Information minister!!!

Thank Allah... i thought he had died at the hands of the infidels that were not in Iraq!

That's just regoddamndiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Why doesn't IBM just buy them out, and give Darl McBride the ass-raping he so sorely needs?

Re:That's just regoddamndiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Shares in broomstick and toilet plunger manufacturers soar!

SCO == SUC

[DrCarbonite]

Obviously SCO is grasping at straws now. Linus created Linux before SCO owned the patents, so any role he himself may have/had originating things took place before it was sold.

In addition, I think Novell must have a strong case otherwise they wouldn't have spoken out. They were not part of the original debate, so why would they enter it if they didn't have solid grounds to prove their point? If you own shares of SCO, you may want to ask the board why the CEO/president is running around wasting company money on frivolous lawsuits when they could be spending it on product development.

Re:SCO == SUC

[WCMI92]

"In addition, I think Novell must have a strong case otherwise they wouldn't have spoken out. They were not part of the original debate, so why would they enter it if they didn't have solid grounds to prove their point? If you own shares of SCO, you may want to ask the board why the CEO/president is running around wasting company money on frivolous lawsuits when they could be spending it on product development."

No way Novell stated what they did today without checking the facts and consulting the lawyers. They have TOO MUCH riding on this, with Netware 7 basically being a Linux distro+NDS... (a product I'd love to migrate my Netware 5 WAN to)

We've been wondering WHY IBM hasn't countersued...

I think we got the answer today ;)

The Novell allegation makes that a LOT easier.

New definition

[Anonymous Coward]

SCO - v. as in, "To pull and SCO" - wreak havok on your own stock price by throwing lawsuits any way you can, thus driving down your stock so someone can afford to pick it up and keep the company/technology going

Re:New definition

[Eunuchswear]

Ah, so you think SCO's price has gone down since the lawsuit.

I guess Nasdaq could be wrong.

To be serious, seems to be plunging since 27/5, I wonder why :-)

Thanks Novell.

Sue this !

[cyberchondriac]

I'm waiting to see IBM countersue SCO for writing for the x86 platform !
Or would that be Intel ? :-)

Re:Sue this !

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL, though that will never happen since afaik IBM only owns the definition of the term PC (as a computer which is running an operating system capable of executing IBM-DOS compatible applications (natively?), to which neither (newer versions of ) windows nor linux comply) it would be the coolest and most hillarious thing of the century if they did =).

Don't take this threat lightly!

[sumbry]

I've been an avid FreeBSD user for years, and I remember when this same exact thing happened with AT&T vs. BSD years ago. I would seriously avise the Linux camp not to take this threat lightly (as everyone seems to be doing) because even if you are in the right, this could screw up Linux distribution for years.

All SCO has to prove is that portions of code that it licensed for AIX to IBM ended up being used in Linux. This is alot easier than you think. All it takes is ONE PROGRAMMER out of the thousands that contribute code to have done this, for the Linux camp to be screwed. Since no one is out there auditing Linux code looking for stuff like this - how hard do you think it is for one person out of thousands of developers to have done this?

Look at how much code already is shared between the various BSD and Linux flavours already. Kernel drivers often have huge chunks of code that are just copy and pasted from one flavour to the next.

BSD had the jump on Linux way back in the day but has less marketshare now because of the same BS that happened with the AT&T suit oh so long ago - and we ended up winning that suit!

Be wary. This issue is not as cut and dry as all you may seem to believe. If SCO can prove that one person messed up, Linux is screwed. All it takes is 1.

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[Kissing Crimson]

Since no one is out there auditing Linux code looking for stuff like this

Actually, there's a team of people at IBM (and I'm sure a few other companies) doing exactly that.

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[Camel Pilot]

You are forgetting the Novell development. It looks like SCO has no footing for sue anyone.

Also the question comes down to, are they claiming copyright, trademark, patent rights or trade secrets violation? SCO keeps changing the claim which cause me to believe they grasping at straws.

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[fwr]

Wow, that's unbelievably doom and gloom. Everyone is taking it easy in the Linux community because of two things, I believe:

1) SCO is suing IBM. IBM already invested billions of dollars in Linux and isn't about to let this one go.

2) Precisely because of the history of the BSD case. If there is offending code all we have to do is take it out. SCO can't ban Linux entirely, just Linux that contains copyrighted code, if that is the case.

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[sumbry]

1) SCO is suing IBM. IBM already invested billions of dollars in Linux and isn't about to let this one go.

Right, but if it goes to court, it might be possible to issue a temporary injunction baring Linux distribution until the issue is settled. This is (sort of) what happened to BSD.

2) Precisely because of the history of the BSD case. If there is offending code all we have to do is take it out. SCO can't ban Linux entirely, just Linux that contains copyrighted code, if that is the case.

You're right, all BSD did was take out the offending code, but the suit caused distribution of BSD to be help up for a while. That hurt us- we're still paying for it to this day.

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, in my mind even if there was a chance for there to be some merit to SCO's claims, they're taking IBM to court.

IBM.

Even with some legit claim (and even this doesn't seem likely anymore), there's no way I can see that IBM wouldn't still squash them flat, and end up with royalty payments *from* SCO for infringing a couple dozen IBM patents (ie, I think IBM is in a position to make some legally-legit claims over just about any company that does anything computer related).

Yes, I think the patent system is broken, and that this is the game that it's turned to. And, it's a game that IBM is playing probably better than anyone else (what, a decade running with the most patents of any company worldwide? And strong patents too, the strongest set of IP according to MIT's Tech Review).

Of course, I think it's the quantity of patents you have that helps you in these contests, not as much the quality, but I'd wager that IBM has more of both than anyone else in the industry.

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the worst they could do is ban distribution of the code in question. Assuming the act in question was a year ago that would only restrict distribution of 2.4.19 and 2.4.20 from the stable releases.

Quite possibly they could just revert all changes from IBM get the code working again and release a version free from any question until the case is settled.

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[mkro]

All it takes is ONE PROGRAMMER out of the thousands that contribute code to have done this, for the Linux camp to be screwed.
(...) If SCO can prove that one person messed up, Linux is screwed.

You seem to be avoiding elaborating the consequences here. Exactly how is "Linux screwed" and "the Linux camp screwed"?
The person submitting the code? Sure.
The company hiring him to submit code? Mmm, okay.
"Linux" and "the Linux community"? No, why? Remove, rewrite, move on.

I hate to bring in bad analogies, but: Building house. Stolen bricks. Tear down? [Y/N].

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a question for you:

If people do not leave in mass due to these pending lawsuits, will you quit claiming that the only reason Linux is popular because of the AT&T lawsuit?

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think it just takes one person. Linux will write it's way out of any bad eventuality.

And I don't think the community is taking this lightly, they are running around like a nest of disturbed fire ants!

If IBM has to pay SCO, that's too bad, but that's not really a fear. The fear is SCO slowing linux down.

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[Nucleon500]

I'm just curious: How forthcoming was AT&T with the infringing code? How al-Sahaf-esque was it's press releases? What was the media coverage like?

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[Anonymous Coward]

It is official. Netcraft now confirms: *BSD is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

Fact: *BSD is dying

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[CaptainSuperBoy]

Look at how much code already is shared between the various BSD and Linux flavours already. Kernel drivers often have huge chunks of code that are just copy and pasted from one flavour to the next.

That cannot be true. Due to the GPL, Linux code can't be copied into a *BSD kernel.

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[Nucleon500]

I would hope that any judge would be sane enough to only ban distribution of contested code after telling everyone what code that is! How can you not distribute it until you know what not to distribute? And yes, as SCO has said, the code would be instantly rewritten. Which SCO shouldn't care about, unless their motive is to screw Linux, not to protect their IP.

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[dfung]

I totally agree with you on this which actually is bad in the (often stupid) court system.

IBM can't afford not to audit and maintin source code that they licensed in a total clean-room situation. If an IBM employee violated that contract, then IBM could be in a bad hole (but see more below). Engineers may make mistakes, but organizationally, IBM "knows better" than to allow a breach like this to get out the door.

A slimy SCO lawyer will certainly point out that IBM has extensive code reviews specifically to prevent this sort of breach, therefore this violation must have been intentional and systemic from IBM management - a more serious situation.

Of course, IBM doesn't mess around with little worms like SCO on something like this. In addition to the group that's working on a direct defense, there's a small army of IP specialists that at IBM that are working on kneecapping SCO before they even get to the courtroom. IBM has tens of thousands (might well be over 100,000 these days) of patents that cover every aspect of computing since they were a cash register company. Now, maybe SCO has been totally clean and not infringed or violated some juicy patent from 1945. Maybe SCO has added so little that there's no conflict anywhere.

But if they haven't carefully been reviewing everything that IBM has patented since before their engineering department was born, there's a pretty good chance that the may be in violation of a good amount of IBM's IP. Then SCO will get a nice letter from IBM with about 30 pages of infringments from their crappy installer and perhaps they'd like to sit down and set up a cross-licensing agreement to resolve these issues before they commit themselves to a literal lifetime of defending themselves in court.

*That's* how an IBM or Microsoft plays ball. And there will be no FUD in the halls of SCO when IBMs says it time to quit playing.

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[RealAlaskan]

All SCO has to prove is that portions of code that it licensed for AIX to IBM ended up being used in Linux.

Look at how much code already is shared between the various BSD and Linux flavours already.

The BSD code probably looks suspiciously like the licensed Unix code, since they come from the same base. Remember, the reason that AT&T lost was that they'd been copying some of that BSD stuff ...

I think that if there is anything that SCO licensed to IBM in the Linux kernel, that it would be reasonable to assume that it came there legitimately, via BSD, or was copied from Linux in the first place, by SCO or some previous owner. In a criminal case, it would be all over. SCO need only show a preponderance of evidence, since this is a civil case, but even if the offending code is real, showing that it got there the way SCO claims won't be trivial.

Even if IBM loses, it isn't obvious that any IBM customers, or corporate Linux users, will be inconvenienced. In fact, I think that it seems very unlikely that anyone other than IBM would have to pony up.

Whether the resulting FUD hurts our adoption isn't clear, either: Linux is a lot more popular than BSD was when it went through lawsuit purgatory.

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[AstroDrabb]

Well if Novell is correct in there response, then SCO has no patents, copyrights to sue over. This is MS FUD trying to stall Linux from beating them in the server room so they can have more time with longhorn.

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[hayden]

BSD had the jump on Linux way back in the day but has less marketshare now because of the same BS that happened with the AT&T suit oh so long ago - and we ended up winning that suit!

The difference between then and now is that then it was AT&T vs a university and there was an absolutely undeniable history of code sharing (even if it was a long time ago). This time it's a dying company against IBM and there has been no evidence presented of any code sharing (or anything except nebulous IP infringement).

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[Anonymous Coward]

if there is no auditing, what if the codes were entered prior to IBM involvement, how can they prove the codes were entered by IBM dev?

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[JoeBuck]

Back in '92, someone made this exact argument to me about the AT&T/BSD case. He was wrong: the BSD people had screwed up (there were several files that had tainted AT&T code), but BSD won anyway.

You forget an important lesson of the AT&T vs BSD case. It was found that AT&T itself was engaging in serious copyright violation (removing all the University of California copyrights from their code). They had to settle.

Similarly, SCO will be found to be violating all kinds of IP rules itself: IBM patents (you can't sneeze without violating an IBM patent, they have so many), remaining BSD code with copyrights stripped, GPLed code copied into their Unix product, etc. Then they have the problem that they don't own the copyright!. Novell does.

Finally, there's a huge difference: the GPL, and the fact that SCO itself distributed and worked on Linux for years. They can't claim ignorance, as their own engineers worked intimately with the Linux kernel and OS, modified it, and distributed it. By doing so, they granted a GPL license on what they distributed to the world. They can't revoke that.

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[Anonymous Coward]

The irony is that the unprecedented success of Linux is killing both SCO and BSD.

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at how much code already is shared between the various BSD and Linux flavours already. Kernel drivers often have huge chunks of code that are just copy and pasted from one flavour to the next.

Sure, but BSD developers aren't going to sue Linux developers for all that cutting and pasting.

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[JoeBuck]

The Linux people are on much safer ground than the BSD people were. It was stipulated by all parties that the Berkeley folks worked intimately with the Bell Labs source code, and were attempting to gradually replace the proprietary parts with free parts. Given this, it seemed quite likely to the courts that they hadn't done this right, and that BSD was a derivative work.

Linux, on the other hand, is a re-implementation from scratch. Torvalds and his lieutenants didn't have access to proprietary Unix source (though a couple of contributors had been "exposed").

Also, courts aren't casual about granting injunctions that would cause enormous economic harm without evidence. With billions at stake, any injunction would get appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, and SCO would be required to demonstrate that it had a reasonable chance of prevailing. But SCO hasn't sued Linux, it has only sued IBM. You are speculating about some legal action that hasn't even begun yet.

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the stupidest thing I have ever heard. I feel dumber for reading that.

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[rjamestaylor]

• Since no one is out there auditing Linux code looking for stuff like this - how hard do you think it is for one person out of thousands of developers to have done this?

Don't use this argument, you look like a SCOunderel or SCOhort. The fact is it is not on the shoulders of Linux's developers or users to PROVE its code is unemcombered. Rather it is up to the offended party to show that it has been offended (otherwise it has no case to bear).

On a slightly different topic, SCO's argument on the call today was that no one is validating the Linux code base and therefore distributors and users are in danger of being sued by SCO. Let's assume that SCO is right, for argument's sake, and there is a violation within Linux. Would the users had been better off if they acquired their software from a vendor who issues a license and states that the software bought is clear of encumberance? Well, lets say you buy everything from one vendor, say, Microsoft. Say that all your products are Microsoft-licensed and backed by Microsoft. Say you bought SQL Server. Say Microsoft got in a licensing tussle with a vendor of its own and the vendor claimed Microsoft was misappropriating its intellectual property. As a user with a valid MSFT license, you're immune, right? I mean, Microsoft may be in trouble but you are in the clear. Right? Wrong. The courts have upheld that said vendor can bring legal action against Microsoft's SQL Server clients for misappropriation of IP.

SCO's argument that users need a single source (SCOSource) to validate their software licensing against IP violations is specious and they know it. But it is good, effective FUD.

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[Wateshay]

Now, maybe SCO has been totally clean and not infringed or violated some juicy patent from 1945.

I don't think SCO's going to worry too much about whether they violated a patent that expired in 1962, before Unix even existed.

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[willtsmith]

Yeah,

We (Tivoli Indy) had an IBM IP guy come in and explain a lot of this stuff. He basically explained the strategy of patenting anything and everything possible.

Effectively, if someone sues them they search their IMMENSE inventory of patents and find things that apply (even remotely). After that, it's a simple matter of cross-licensing or annihalation via litigation.

BTW, IBM is the #1 patent holder in the US. They file more patent applications than ALL OTHER parties in the US. They have a VERY NICE incentive program for folks to patent what they do. And they DO take advantage of it.

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[monkeyboy87]

Anyone thought to look at the list of submitals from ibm.com to the kernel source tree?

How much code are we talking about? what are we talking about filesystems? SMP?

what percentage of the kernel in use today is based on code comming from ibm.com?

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[esquimaux]

As somebody who works for a company who was minding its own business when the boys in Blue showed up waving patent claims at us, I have to say that IBM doesn't just defend itself with its alleged IP. It's out there beating the bushes for victims.

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[Piquan]

I've been an avid FreeBSD user for years, and I remember when this same exact thing happened with AT&T vs. BSD years ago.

Both AT&T and BSD had legitimately screwed up.

and we ended up winning that suit!

No, we settled out of court.

Also, we may want to remember: while AT&T was pushing to really jack BSD with a drawn-out legal debate, as soon as Novell got ahold of the IP, they wanted to bring it to a quick resolution. I think the quote was, "We want to decide this in the marketplace, not the courts."

I don't think that SCO really has a leg to stand on. AT&T did, and was able to effectively halt BSD development for a while because of it (even though, IIRC, they didn't get the injunction they were after).

I'm not taking this lightly, but I also don't think this is going to be the big problem it was in 92.

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[mnmn]

Youre right. Although a small bit of code or algorithm is something I could make in an hour or so, the silly patent laws created trouble for UNIX and will now create trouble here. Imagine a certain way to shuffle swap space, some optimised way. An engineer at AT&T might have come up with it, and much later, a geek working on kernel version 2.3 might have come up with the same optimised algorithm, but it can be shown the algorithms are the same and POP goes the weasel.

I dont know where the line stands... ascii cmp of more than 5 nonblank lines?? can algorithms like the queue and bubble sort be patented? How about two consecutive machine codes??

Where the line SHOULD stand is a significant breakthrough.. that possibly wouldnt have happened elsewhere in the next 5 years. With such a description, Linux wins right there and even investors wouldnt get worried, but the legal landscape in USA anyway is too thorny for innovation.

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[sumbry]

You forget an important lesson of the AT&T vs BSD case. It was found that AT&T itself was engaging in serious copyright violation (removing all the University of California copyrights from their code). They had to settle.

Actually I'm not forgetting this lesson - this is the point I'm trying to make. The case was still eventually won and found in BSD's favor (sort of, 3 files had to be removed from the source and BSD did admit it had done wrong in having them included) but the 2 years this case spent in the courts is a large part why it was not adopted as quickly as Linux was back in the day (there were other reasons but this had a huge effect).

It's not even a matter of right vs. wrong, everyone is missing that fact. If SCO is successful in tying Linux/IBM up in the courts for years, then that is what will end up being the most damaging, regardless of who wins or looses (wanna know why Microsoft paid millions in licenses fees - this will help SCO fight a long battle).

If SCO decides to sue Linus as well, he could get caught up in legal battles (very expensive) for years, even if he is in the right.

This country has a screwed up court system, half the time it's not even a matter of who is right or wrong, but rather who has the most money and can afford to fight for the longest. Judges have a history of not being very technical and not understanding at all the issues at hand.

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[Anonymous Coward]

Be happy you didn't sure them first.

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[Karl Rove]

Re:Don't take this threat lightly! (Score:4)
by dfung (68701) on Thursday May 29, @12:12PM (#6062723):

> Now, maybe SCO has been totally clean and not infringed or
> violated some juicy patent from 1945.

Patents expire after 20 years.

-- Karl

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[Anonymous Coward]

It can if the author of that portion of code licenses it under a BSD-style license.

The author of a driver can easily target both Linux and BSD by using a dual license or just a (advertising-clause-less) BSD-style license.

An example of a significant kernel driver shared between Linux and FreeBSD is the drm module used by the XFreee86 DRI system.

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[Eunuchswear]

IBM already invested billions of dollars in Linux

Don't you love those unexamined assumptions.

Billions of dollars? You have some kind of evidence of this?

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[motown]

What most people don't know is that even to this day companies that assemble computers have to pay a royalty to IBM of aproximately 10 dollars/euro's per sold machine. It involves a quite ridiculous patent on placing a motherboard inside a case. And not just in the States, in Europe too!

Considering how many computers are sold annualy, that must really add up. I wish I owned such an obvious patent. I wouldn't have to work for the rest of my life, that's for sure!

Can anybody tell me if this patent really applies to any computer, or if it's just limited to systems based on x86 ATX-motherboards? In other words: does even Apple have to pay these royalties? What about laptop-manufacturers or systems containing motherboards in VIA's mini-ITX format?

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never heard about the "motherboard in a case" patent, but IBM does have many patents on fundemental PC technology -- ISA (it's still in there), VGA, and so on.

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[rifter]

Can anybody tell me if this patent really applies to any computer, or if it's just limited to systems based on x86 ATX-motherboards? In other words: does even Apple have to pay these royalties? What about laptop-manufacturers or systems containing motherboards in VIA's mini-ITX format?

I never heard of such a thing, but if this is true it would be foolish for IBM to try to make Apple pay them since they have prior art. The Apple I was a motherboard in a case (made of wood) before the IBM PC was even thought of. Then again, one has to wonder why they did not dig up the altair, though perhaps the altair did not have a motherboard as such. Could some old hands weigh in on this?

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[rifter]

Yes, IBM has invested [Carl Sagan Voice]Billions and Billions of Dollars in Linux. Linux has been IBM's main thrust in the last few years. There is even a Linux compatability layer in AIX now (for all we know, Linux may ultimately supplant AIX once IBM has ported all their technology to Linux), and they are selling Linux on IBM hardware like there is no tomorrow. They know they can make money on the hardware and services, and services made them more money than anything else in the past few years.

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[rifter]

Funny thing that you mention SQL Server, since Microsoft was found to have misappropriated IP in its development...

The "What if you get sued?" argument is just like the "Who are you going to sue?" argument. There is really and truly no difference in these situations between what happens when you are a user of Open Source (or Free) Software or Closed Software. In fact it could just as easily be argued that you can get into more trouble with Closed Source Software. I think in the end, though , the pros and cons w/r/t these scenarios balance out fairly evenly, whereas Free Software offers significant advantages to the consumer.

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not funny -- rather it was my intention to refer to that story.

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, this is a case where I failed to RTFP (Read The Fucking Post). I read most of it and then chose to react to the first part, and only realized later my mistake when I read the rest of it.

Re:Don't take this threat lightly!

[shaitand]

ummm I've never heard of such a patent, and having worked at numerous pc manufacturers, none of whom pay such royalties... I believe this patent is either not enforced, or non-existant.

*sigh*

[Mensa Babe]

"[Darl McBride, SCO's chief executive stated] that unless more companies start licensing SCO's property, he may also sue Linus Torvalds, who is credited with inventing the Linux operating system, for patent infringement."

Why won't he sue Richard Stallman, while he's at it? After all SCO has said that whole programs were copied ("stolen" if your will) and we know that Linux is a kernel (and quite monolithic at that), not a bunch of programs.

*sigh*

Hey! Darl!!! Can you hear me?! Will you please finally read this? Pretty please?

Re:*sigh*

[idontgno]

Why won't he sue Richard Stallman, while he's at it? After all SCO has said that whole programs were copied ("stolen" if your will) and we know that Linux is a kernel (and quite monolithic at that), not a bunch of programs.

Yeah, what happened to "GNU/Linux"?

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

Stahlman want's Linux to die. I suppose he is dancing with glee while he boots up his Hurd

Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my OS.

[Desmoden]

prepair to die!

Or at least flog him or something...

should have posted this earlier

[Anonymous Coward]

unfortunately most slashdotters won't see this article.

SCO deserves maximum bad publicity for this threat against Linus.

Are they fucking stupid?!! How dare they? I hope whoever at SCO is responsible for these crimes gets royally fucked in court by shareholders, linux users, joe blow on the street, Bubba from cell block 6, and whoever else wants in on the action.

Does this remind anybody else of the Jerky Boys?

[zhrike]

This so reminds me of the sue-happy guy done by the Jerky Boys.

He calls up a lawyer to ask a number of questions about possible lasuits (all ridiculously frivolous), dragging the lawyer further and further into the realm of stupidity, then he asks the lawyer if he could sue HIM.

"Sue everybody!"

I think Ole Darl is that guy.

Next up: SCO sues Slashdot. News at 11.

Code to prove this?

[LoRdTAW]

They still have not shown any code or IP for patent infringement. When are they going to find (or show) the smoking gun? I have not been following this story 100% so if I am wrong link me to some info.

Re:Code to prove this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since it becomes a tradition NOT to show a smoking gun at all and say "I am right forever", like in case with Iraq war (where is the mass destruction weapons?), it seems that SCO doesn't feel obligated to show any code at all.

Re:Code to prove this?

[mark-t]

Actually, if this thing is about patent infringement, they *HAVE* to be specific immediately. Patents are required by their nature to be public knowledge.

I hope there's a counter suite

[MongooseCN]

Why don't all the commercial linux vendors get together and counter sue SCO for their slandering of Linux. Maybe it will shut them up for good.

That or blow up their headquarters. Ok that's a little extreme. Burn it down slowly...

Re:I hope there's a counter suite

[Albert Pussyjuice]

A company cannot slander Linux. Slander is the oral communication of false statements that injure a person's reputation. As Linux is not a person, slander doesn't apply. Also, Linus would not have a great case for the guy at SCO slandering him because of the nature of the statement. Stating that you are considering bringing a lawsuit against someone is not slander since it is probable that this statement is true, and hard to prove otherwise.

Re:I hope there's a counter suite

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuke them form orbit. its the only way to be sure!

Re:I hope there's a counter suite

[attobyte]

I could swear I have read lawsuites of companies sueing for slander. So can you sue if you slander a companies name and not a product?

Maybe I am wrong.

Mike

Re:I hope there's a counter suite

[Anonymous Coward]

- That or blow up their headquarters -

please don't... I live a block away from them...

Re:I hope there's a counter suite

[rifter]

A company cannot slander Linux. Slander is the oral communication of false statements that injure a person's reputation. As Linux is not a person, slander doesn't apply. Also, Linus would not have a great case for the guy at SCO slandering him because of the nature of the statement. Stating that you are considering bringing a lawsuit against someone is not slander since it is probable that this statement is true, and hard to prove otherwise.

I would have to beg to differ. Firstly, SCO has directly slandered RMS and others in the Free Software movement with their statements, particularly their misquotes. They have directly slandered IBM (which is a corporation and therefore a person). They have indirectly slandered Linus yesterday, for I quote :

Think about if I was the CIO of a company and I'm going to be running my business on an operating system that has an intellectual property foundation that, by almost everyone's admission, is built on quicksand. There is no mechanism in Linux to ensure [the legality of] that intellectual property of the source code being contributed by various people.

...

based on the research that we have done, we have identified specific Unix System V code for which we have ownership rights that have ended up in Linux against our wishes. There is inappropriate intellectual property in Linux. The development process has no one that is ensuring that inappropriate code is not getting into Linux. All that's there is an honor system, and obviously there are a few, at least, that have broken that honor.

Also:

How many lines of code in the Linux kernel are a direct copyright violation? It's very extensive. It is many different sections of code ranging from five to 10 to 15 lines of code in multiple places that are of issue, up to large blocks of code that have been inappropriately copied into Linux in violation of our source-code licensing contract. That's in the kernel itself, so it is significant. It is not a line or two here or there. It was quite a surprise for us.

Now remember first that this is in the context of directly suing Linus. They are talking directly about code which is being committed to the kernel, which is Linus' job as maintainer of the Linux kernel. They are publicly claiming not only that Linus' methods are negligent, but that this idea is widely accepted and patently obvious. They are directly attacking his skills as an engineer and his reputation as an honest man.

Reading what Sontag had to say pissed me off because firstly it was a lie and secondly it was a direct attack on Linus' character and skills. If that is not slander, I do not know what is.

That said, I do not expect Linus to sue anyone, because

1) He is just not a suing kind of guy

2) He is not a hothead like me ;)

3) He is pretty wise in his dealings

Linus knows to keep his mouth shut and not be baited by SCO because he knows he is in a fight for his life, but also that SCO is going to hang themselves if we can be patient. Besides, all indications so far are that SCO has nothing. Linus, as the quintessential engineer, is waiting to see what the problem really is so he can fix it. Until SCO "produces the body" (GOD, can there be a habeus corpus for a situation like this? Too bad IANAL!) we don't know what they are talking about. By SCO's own admission, neither do they at this point.

As for RMS, well, damnit, many slashdotters have claimed he has no reputation to smear, and that is really very sad. I don't think he deserves half the hell people give him, and I think if he has lost reputation it is only because he has suffered many slings and arrows and continued to go on with his Holy Quest.

Re:I hope there's a counter suite

[Albert Pussyjuice]

I would have to beg to differ. Firstly, SCO has directly slandered RMS and others in the Free Software movement with their statements, particularly their misquotes [sco.com]. They have directly slandered IBM (which is a corporation and therefore a person). They have indirectly slandered Linus yesterday, for I quote [computerworld.com]:

I was informing the parent to which I was responding to that Linux is an OS and therefore cannot be smeared. You quoted this and told me I was wrong. But then you cited SCO slandering RMS, IBM, etc. Nowhere in your little tirade did you inform me how SCO slandered Linux; probably because that is impossible. An OS cannot be slandered. I was informing the parent to my post of what the word slander means. Since you told me I was wrong in your first sentence but gave no supporting evidence of this (although none exists because Linux is not a person in any legal sense) I decided not to read the rest of what you posted. Have a good day and when you decide someone is wrong - try to refute what they actually said instead of what you wished they had said.

Re:I hope there's a counter suite

[rifter]

I was informing the parent to which I was responding to that Linux is an OS and therefore cannot be smeared. You quoted this and told me I was wrong. But then you cited SCO slandering RMS, IBM, etc. Nowhere in your little tirade did you inform me how SCO slandered Linux; probably because that is impossible. An OS cannot be slandered. I was informing the parent to my post of what the word slander means. Since you told me I was wrong in your first sentence but gave no supporting evidence of this (although none exists because Linux is not a person in any legal sense) I decided not to read the rest of what you posted. Have a good day and when you decide someone is wrong - try to refute what they actually said instead of what you wished they had said.

The problem is that slandering Linux, especially in the way they have done, is indeed slandering Linus. That was part of my point. Something I left out was that both in many posts and in SCO's documents they seem to have used the word Linux when they meant to say Linus. This does not help matters.

Re:I hope there's a counter suite

[Albert Pussyjuice]

"The problem is that slandering Linux"

Again, one cannot "slander" Linux. Check the definition. What you are trying to say is that SCO, by making statements about Linux, has indirectly slandered Linus. "is indeed slandering Linus"

Legally, you can make that argument but it won't hold up in court. You should review some case law and do a little more investigation before you decide someone has been slandered. Now, getting into a discussion of legal boundaries on Slashdot is quite foolish so I'm not going to go any further than that. Do a little more research and you might just find out why it is that you're wrong.

Re:I hope there's a counter suite

[Anonymous Coward]

It's fun to keep an account for karma whoring and moderating people that make you look like a fucking monkey, right?

where's the popcorn?

[necrogram]

if this didnt involve linux, and now Linus, i would think is down right hilarious. I just cant wait to see the season finale

what has linus done?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if linux does contain SCO owned code how is linus to blame for this? Surley if they're gonna sue anyone it should be the people who put that code in (oh wait wasn't that some SCO programmers???).

And SCO will burn...

[WCMI92]

Methinks it's time for Linus Torvalds to sue SCO for defamation given Novell's revalation.

It'd be the dumbest thing they could do... Linus is an ICON to geeks. Fuck with Linus and we will make SURE our bosses don't buy SCO.

Ooops, I forgot, one one IS buying SCO, that's why they are filing bogus lawsuits!

Re:And SCO will burn...

[bwt]

Defamation might be hard to prove, because it requires not just false accusations, but knowingly false accusations.

A better countersuit would be good old copyright infringement: SCO has distributed linux in violation of the GPL licence, which requires no "further restrictions" and that the distributor grant to "all third parties" (which includes IBM) a GPL licence to the work "as a whole". The GPL is not compatible with patents enforcement and is not compatible with trade secrets.

Re:And SCO will burn...

[coolgeek]

Not to mention the defendants have the advantage when it comes to discovery. Probably exactly the type of thing SCO would hope to gaslight someone into doing.

Re:And SCO will burn...

[mark-t]

While it's true that the GPL is not compatible with patent enforcement or trade secrets, SCO's IP would actually not be subject to the GPL if SCO was not the ones who originally put it in there in the first place. The fact that SCO distributes Linux is irrellevant. If they did not originally insert the code in question into Linux themselves, then the GPL is wholeheartedly nullified for those code sections. Remember, the GPL is only a copyright clause, it doesn't change who owns the copyrights on code that various people wrote. If a person who doesn't own the copyright on some code puts it under the GPL, the GPL would be void for that particular code.

A better idea might be for a company like IBM to sue SCO for its legal costs... Then buy them out dirt cheap to fire all the bastards that came up with this ridiculous idea.

Re:And SCO will burn...

[jedidiah]

Just who are you trying to kid?

By SCO's own admission, they knowingly and willfully released their intellectual property under the GPL. They did this after they realized that Linux was "contaminated". It doesn't matter who did the original work.

The fact remains that SCO released it themselves under the GPL. NOTHING can undo that.

They were obligated to be the first ones to "cease and desist".

Anything else is a blatant copyright violation at best.

What patent?

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

What patent infringment? Since Novell NEVER transferred the patents/copyrights which patent in particular are they referring to?

SCO is so fucked now.....
All of you folks might want to head over to the message board of your choice and advise people to short SCO stock since they are not long for this world. You might even be able to help their speedy demise.

A more pressing issue....

[curtisk]

.....what the hell is up with UTAH? Is this a really just a turf-war? :p

SCO is screwed as SCO or any other derivative in the future....they're peeing in the pool, but with their swimsuit dropped to their knees! Shameless!

Re:A more pressing issue....

[Anonymous Coward]

Utah is weird. On the one side you have Regular Mormons. On the other side you have Jack Mormons.

Both types of Mormons are similar to Jews when it comes to business dealings. Very shrewd. Often unscrupulous. The cowboys and the tradesmen are usually the Jack Mormons. And the merchants are usually the Regular Mormons. Both types will cheat you if given half a chance.

McBride is probably a Regular Mormon.

Funny...

[Kirby-meister]

Just about everybody on Slashdot hates SCO with a passion.

A week ago I saw a banner ad for SCO Unix on the top of the front page...

SCO has descended to the playground bully level

[Bruce Perens]

This is by far the most irrational thing I've seen from SCO. Go to www.uspto.gov and search the patent collection online. Look for "Santa Cruz Operation", "SCO", and "Caldera" as patent owner. They were granted one patent last month, and not a significant one. There isn't much else there.

A lot of patents owned by other people mention SCO as an example of a Unix system. That is by far the largest source of mentions of their company name in the patent database.

So, where's the ammo in Darl's gun? No patents. No copyrights for the stuff he said he owned. No trade secrets, as far as I can tell.

And then, to threaten Linus Torvalds as an individual sounds especially whiny. multi-Million-dollar corporation sues San Jose programmer who has made a life of giving his work away for free. SCO has descended to playground-bully level.

Karsten Self revealed this interesting tidbit from SCO's 10K report:

The Company has an arrangement with Novell, Inc. ("Novell") in which it acts as an administrative agent in the collection of royalties for customers who deploy SVRx technology. Under the agency agreement, the Company collects all customer payments and remits 95 percent of the collected funds to Novell and retains 5 percent as an administrative fee. The Company records the 5 percent administrative fee as revenue in its consolidated statements of operations. The accompanying October 31, 2002 and 2001 consolidated balance sheets reflect the amounts collected related to this agency agreement but not yet remitted to Novell of $1,428,000 and $1,894,000, respectively, as restricted cash and royalty payable to Novell. The October 31, 2001 balances were reclassified from cash and equivalents and other royalties payable to conform to the current year presentation.

This is SCO's admission that Novell owns Unix System V, all revisions - that's what they mean by "SVRx", and pays Novell 95% of the royalties. SCO gets to keep 5% as administrative agent.

That proves the Novell allegation.

SCO stock dropped from $9 to $6 today. I'm surprised it closed that high.

Bruce

Re:SCO has descended to the playground bully level

[valisk]

Yeah, I was watching the stock price plummet, interestingly the bulk of the fall took place after this comment from McBride, which indicates that nobody takes him seriously, I imagine SCO stock is facing a hammering tomorrow.

It's a great job you, esr and the rest of the community have done over the past few weeks, thank you and I hope we can now clean Sco's clock for them :)

Re:SCO has descended to the playground bully level

[GGardner]

According to Novell, the patents are assigned to Novell, and there are a bunch of patents there, though nothing jumps out as an obvious "Unix" patent. I'd just like to know which patent they are talking about. It seems contrary to the whole patent system not to mention which patent you claim someone to be violating.

Re:SCO has descended to the playground bully level

[PD]

I read all the comments on the Yahoo SCO forum for the past few days. It's striking to see a lot of loudmouth idiots claiming that SCO was going to skyrocket and take out Linux with it. Then today, they are strangely absent. I wonder if they are upset about something?

Re:SCO has descended to the playground bully level

[bradm]

SCO stock dropped from $9 to $6 today. I'm surprised it closed that high.

There wasn't enough time between the start of the freefall after lunch, and the close of the markets.

Short-sellers who didn't want overnight exposure to further lies^h^h^h^h SCO press releases probably took their profits. 24% isn't bad for a day's work. Heck, anything over 5% is well worth the effort.

Re:SCO has descended to the playground bully level

[m0nkyman]

Times I wish I had enough experience to short sell the market, Volume I

Re:SCO has descended to the playground bully level

[adolf]

The Company has an arrangement with Novell, Inc. ("Novell") in which it acts as an administrative agent in the collection of royalties for customers who deploy SVRx technology.

Bruce, if this is the case, is not SCO merely acting contractually responsible by attempting to collect royalties on Novell's behalf? In this event, it doesn't matter if it's thier IP, or not - it's their job to fetch money from it, and keep 5% of the take.

At least, that's how I read it.

Re:SCO has descended to the playground bully level

[jeffy124]

I dont know if you're actually gonna read this, but I'll give it a shot anyway.

SCO has made statements saying that they may sue people who use Linux, including those using their own distro (purchased or otherwise obtained before these shenanigans).

Is there possible groundings here for which a complaint may be filed with the FTC? That is - buy product P from company X, then get threatened by X because you're using P? You may not be the one to do this, but what about those companies that have purchased software from SCO? Thoughts/Comments?

Re:SCO has descended to the playground bully level

[Trusted Content]

Heh...

The instant this story broke I was leaving messages on my dad's machine saying "SHORT SCOX!!! SHORT SCOX!!!".

Unfortunately, he didn't get them until the market had already closed. :(

Re:SCO has descended to the playground bully level

[Jaywalk]

This is SCO's admission that Novell owns Unix System V, all revisions - that's what they mean by "SVRx", and pays Novell 95% of the royalties. SCO gets to keep 5% as administrative agent.

Interesting. IANAL, but I think you need to prove that you have been damaged for the dollar amount you are suing for. If they're hitting IBM for a billion dollars for the "damage" they've done to SCO's UNIX biz, that would mean they're projecting $20 billion in revenues. Quite a step up for a company which has never been near even one percent of that figure.

Re:SCO has descended to the playground bully level

[Monkey-Man2000]

I'm curious, do you have a link to where they stated they'd sue their own users? I was thinking that they emphasized that they would not do that. Of course, they've been flip-flopping back and forth on whether they'd sue users period (assuming they have a valid case against us).

Re:SCO has descended to the playground bully level

[jeffy124]

i think slashdot needs a "retract comments" button or something. doesnt have to remove the comment - just attach a note to the original post saying the poster retracts statemnts in his post.

I was referring to this story, but noticed this thread in it. Hence the reason we need a "retract" button.

Re:SCO has descended to the playground bully level

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to love Novell's terse 'we-have-a-pocket-full-bullets' response to today's SCO claim that it does own the UNIX copyrights:

'Maybe SCO will find out in court...'

Re:SCO has descended to the playground bully level

[Bruce Perens]

I haven't seen the contract. But it sounds as if Novell would be happy to release SCO from that obligation.

Bruce

Re:SCO has descended to the playground bully level

[Bruce Perens]

It's possible. I would leave it to a larger Linux business to pursue that. I think I can nail these guys to the floor without approaching a court room.

Bruce

Re:SCO has descended to the playground bully level

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm, doesn't that also say that they haven't bothered to actually remit the 2001 or 2002 payments to Novell?

Re:SCO has descended to the playground bully level

[MAurelius]

Bruce, Just a quick question from a non-legal mind: does the USPTO update its files, online or otherwise, to reflect changes in ownership of patents? What about the US Copyright Office?

Marcus

Re:SCO has descended to the playground bully level

[mnmn]

$6? Wow Microsoft has bought so much of SCOs stocks. This figure certainly doesnt include SCOs own execs' stocks, they all must have suitcases of cash in their car trunks, unmarked bills.

Re:SCO has descended to the playground bully level

[Tsu Dho Nimh]

Bruce - Good point. One does not pass along 95% of licensing fees if one is the owner of the IP being licensed.

Re:SCO has descended to the playground bully level

[Tsu Dho Nimh]

It's SOP for a company that has purchased a patent to send the USPTO the proper notifications. For one, it makes it easy for people who want to license your technology to find you.

Re:SCO has descended to the playground bully level

[TedC]

So, where's the ammo in Darl's gun? No patents. No copyrights for the stuff he said he owned. No trade secrets, as far as I can tell.

Darl's hidden card: he plans to plead insanity.

Re:SCO has descended to the playground bully level

[crisco]

Look for SCOX to drop down below the $1.50 / share January levels before the real celebrations can start.

Re:SCO has descended to the playground bully level

[TruthTeller]

Wow!! This is great. Though the whole issue is NOT about open source Vs proprietary, still many will perceive it so. Even from that context also, what a nice revealing fact it is!! - open source has always got some nice powerful friends backing it. Ultimately whole episode turned to do good. I feel now, the gates are openend, with Novell's backing, for the possibility of getting the real unix code and patents themselves for open source, if required. Unofficially it is equivalent and already it is.

Oh! my god, I'm scared

[gallir]

Months ago I've made public a one liner patch... patched my kernel. Mama, mama!!!

Who owns the patents? Novel or SCO?

[yuri benjamin]

How can SCO sue Linus for infringing patents and copyrights that Novel owns?

put a rookie on this one..

[segfault_0]

Put a rookie lawyer on this one and wait out any lawsuit that these morons file.. They will be chapter 7 and liquidated or bought before it comes to bear anyhow..

Re:put a rookie on this one..

[Anonymous Coward]

and file rule 11 sanctions motion against the firm.

Tortious Interference

[Shadow Wrought]

McBride added that unless more companies start licensing SCO's property, he may also sue Linus Torvalds, who is credited with inventing the Linux operating system, for patent infringement.

IANAL but it seems that the above quote seems like great fodder for attorneys. One of the main arguments going against SCO's claims (other than the obvious Novell claim that SCO owns diddly/squat) is that this is a money making gimmick and not a "real" lawsuit. With McBride throwing out gems like this it'll be fun to read the answer brief!

Re:I'd pay a couple of $$$ to the Linus defense fu

[WCMI92]

If Linus needs a legal defense fund, count me in. I'll kick in dosh until it hurts.

I owe that much to Linus, if it weren't for him, I doubt I've have ever gotten into Unix-flavored OS's.

Look at the contrast... Lunus wrote a Unix kernel... Gave it away to the wold. Scaldera? SUE all the world!

The now is the time!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Dyslexics of the world, untie!

Duno, but...

[AchilleTalon]

isn't required Linus making money directly by selling, trading, etc... proven intellectual property from SCO to be a sueable candidat?

As far as I know, Linus is an employee of Transmeta and is not running any Linux company. He may own some shares or been paid by Linux companies, but it doesn't make him a candidat for such a vendetta...

Re:Duno, but...

[the eric conspiracy]

isn't required Linus making money directly by selling, trading, etc... proven intellectual property from SCO to be a sueable candidat?

There is a research exemption, however I would think Linus has at least taken speaking fees at conferences, etc.

Re:Duno, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

you can sue anybody for anything

Re:In Soviet Russia...

[WetCat]

... Soviet Russia sue you.
(there were NO lawyers).

timing

[asv108]

Novell added that in recent months, SCO executives had asked Novell to transfer the Unix copyrights to SCO -- a request that was denied.

It would be interesting to see if this request for transfer occurred before SCO's legal maneuvering or after..

McBride added that unless more companies start licensing SCO's property, he may also sue Linus Torvalds, who is credited with inventing the Linux operating system, for patent infringement.

IANAL, but there are no grounds for suing Linus unless SCO can prove that Linus was aware of infringement and knowingly let it occur, which is obviously far fetched, but SCO seems desperate enough to try anything. SCO had a profitable quarter with a 4.5 million profit, but I would be amazed if they company lasts more than a year given the current state of their legal situation and the public relations nightmare that is developing now and his sure to create a huge backlash. Most of the decision makers in charge of recommending SCO's products are the exact same people who hate SCO now because their BS legal actions.

Re:timing

[lscotte]

Novell added that in recent months, SCO executives had asked Novell to transfer the Unix copyrights to SCO -- a request that was denied.

It would be interesting to see if this request for transfer occurred before SCO's legal maneuvering or after..

Sounds like after. I listened in to the shareholder meeting for a bit, and he claimed that they had a meeting with Novell yesterday (Tuesday) to discuss this but that Novell was a no-show.

*Shrug* Not that we can trust this as the truth, but just because SCO invited Novell to a meeting, doesn't necessarily mean Novell agreed to have the meeting. Who knows what really happened.

Re:timing

[JimDabell]

IANAL, but there are no grounds for suing Linus unless SCO can prove that Linus was aware of infringement and knowingly let it occur

It doesn't matter if Linus wrote the code himself and had never heard of SCO. A patent covers independent implementations.

Even if he got hit with a multi-million dollar lawsuit, Linus could just pack up and go home. Software patents aren't legal in Europe.

Re:timing

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be interesting to see if this request for transfer occurred before SCO's legal maneuvering or after..

Ask Novell. I can't imagine they have any obligation to keep the date of the first request a secret.

Re:timing

[haggar]

Software patents aren't legal in Europe.
I think you are wrong: at least here in Finland (which just happens to be Torvald's home) they seem to be legal, and in fact, I know of a huge mobile phone company based in Finland, that is registering a lot of software patents here.

I could be wrong in the unlikely case that they are patenting these as "ideas" and "technological advances" instead of just software.

Patents can be violated in "clean rooms"

[nurb432]

You dont have to have any previous knowledge of a patent to violate it.

Nor does the patent holder have to enforce it , until he feels like it..

Its why patent lawers make so much $$, the research.

Re:Patents can be violated in "clean rooms"

[Nom du Keyboard]

You dont have to have any previous knowledge of a patent to violate it.

I don't believe they can patent the look and feel of Unix. Those suits were lost a long time ago.

While they might well be able to patent the exact code of a unix implementation, if Linus wrote his own code from scratch, or derived it (as other posters have said) from Minix, it would seem his code and methods of implementation are not any patented by any other person.

Unless a process patent (i.e. a patent on anything that implements "Unix" exists) -- which I completely doubt -- I don't see how Linus's code could be considered patented by anyone else.

Besides, I was using Unix in 1977. Those ideas have to be either prior art or expired patents by now.

Then again: IANAL.

Re:Patents can be violated in "clean rooms"

[Anonymous Coward]

you are wrong on several counts:

1. patents protect against independent reinvention, i.e. if somebody comes up with the same invention, it is still a violation. that's why supposedly only "nonobvious" inventins can be patented, something that the patent office seems to ignore

2. patents cover ideas, not the way they are implemented. the exact code would be covered by copyright, not patents. you could patent a clever idea how to solve a particular problem. i suppose the first guy who came up with semaphores or spin locks might have been able to patent these concepts, and it would have covered every implementation of semaphores or spin locks

3. unix started iirc in 1969, but it was continuously developed, so some (probably most) patents regarding unix came later

4. linux wrote the kernel based on the posix specs, i.e. he read what posix said a certain system call was supposed to do, and then figured out how to write cde that satisfied those specs (i would argue that this would invalidate any patents he might have violated, because they would have violated the nonobvious assumption). he wrote the early code on a minix machine. try to find the flamewar between torvalds and tanenbaum to see how much the linux code is derived from minix (hint: probably nothing: tanenbaum said at one point that based on linux he would fail torvalds if he gad been in one of his OS classes)

Re:Patents can be violated in "clean rooms"

[PetWolverine]

Patent the "look and feel" of Unix?

So, monospace, aliased white text on a black background is illegal unless you pay royalties?

Re:Patents can be violated in "clean rooms"

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there any,/i> software that doesn't violate a petent?

Re:Patents can be violated in "clean rooms"

[rifter]

So, monospace, aliased white text on a black background is illegal unless you pay royalties?

No, but light grey characters printed on paper in response to characters typed on a tty are illegal unless you pay The Telephone Company. If the two are connected and there is not a computer between them you have to pay The Typewriter Company. :)

Re:Finally

[metamatic]

Cut it out, RMS.

Re:In Soviet Russia...

[Loosewire]

dont you mean
"In soviet russia, Tux kicks SCO's ass"

I think it's time ....

[taniwha]

For the city of Santa Cruz to get SCO (based in Orem Utah) to stop using their name

Re:I think it's time ....

[mendepie]

If they still used the name Santa Cruz Operation then I would believe that the City Councel would go after them. I dont know if they would have a legal leg to stand on, but I belive they would do it anyway.

But since they are now just SCO they cant really do anything.

Re:I think it's time ....

[physicsnerd]

As a resident of the City of Santa Cruz, I fully agree. If we win the suit we can actually save our fireworks show. I might also add that if we lose the lawsuit we can change our name to Santa Carla! I love this town, I just have never gotten used to all the damn vampires.

Physicsnerd

------------------

"Even logic must give way to physics" - Spock

Re:I think it's time ....

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

If they're doing that, they finally need Utah to give up the name Jazz and put it back in New Orleans where it belongs.

Jumbo Shrimp, Millitary Intelligence, Utah Jazz...

Maybe

[T40 Dude]

SCO owns Linus ?

Re:I'd pay a couple of $$$ to the Linus defense fu

[Anonymous Coward]

Or he could get his wife to kick SCO's ass with her mad karate skillz.

SCO is dying

[Jacek Poplawski]

It's cool to watch its agony.

just how sick is this goddamn SCO already?

[Anonymous Coward]

just shut down those SCOdiots already!

jeeeebuz, wholy frickin shiat, someone shut them SCOoooooooopid fuckers up atlast.

Which Patent?

[GGardner]

For a long time when these people mentioned IP, we thought they meant copyright infringement, not patents, but now there's all this talk about patents. However, no one lists which one(s).

There's the famous 4135240 setuid patent, which Bell labs granted to the public domain, and which has expired by now anyway.

Novell gave us a clue, by pointing out that some patents might be in their name. But searching for Novell and Unix on the USPTO web site yields 62 patents. Most of these seem like they came from work on NetWare, but it is hard to tell for sure. Looking through these patents shows how bogus the US patent system is -- I quickly persued several at random, and every one was either an obvious technique, or being violated all over the place, or both. (IANAL).

The first patent returned by the search (6,546,433) lists "PowerBuilder 5 Unleashed!", by Sams publishing as reference material. Frankly, if I were a patent examiner, this would be evidence alone to reject the application.

Re:Which Patent?

[haggar]

I did a search for Novell AND Unix, and got 832 entries. How did you do your search?

Re:Which Patent?

[GGardner]

If you use the advanced search, you want to type someting like AN/Novell and Unix. This limits the search to patents which have been assigned to (i.e funded by) Novell, not those which just reference Novell.

Re:Which Patent?

[haggar]

Thanks GGardner. I know I am inexperienced with their interface, but I would like to learn because there seems a lot of interesting (and even amusing) bits of information to be found.

Avast ye mateys!

[WCMI92]

Captain Love, there's a GASH in the hull! Red ink is flooding all compartments!

Ransom Love: Don't just stand there, stuff it with lawsuits!

Re:Avast ye mateys!

[jensend]

Love has been gone from Caldera-SCO since before the name change.

Ransom Love may not have made the brightest business decisions, but if he were still in charge, I am pretty sure none of this would have happened.

Re:Avast ye mateys!

[cHiphead]

and thats the goddamn truth. at least ransom love was greedy in a pro-linuxy sort of way.

To think....

[Anonymous Coward]

If Linus had used CVS for years, like the BSDs have done, the person(s) who checked in the code would be known.

NDIPOOS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Alright, I just did a google search on your acronym and couldn't find it anywhere. If you're going to make a new acronym, it might help to clue in the reader what you're talking about. My best guess:

Nor Do I Pretend Or ___ ___

I'm assuming that you haven't patented NDIPOOS yet, so...

FIrst patent!

How about I trademark that while I'm at it: NDIPOOS?

Use it again, and I'll sue your a** into SCO oblivion!

Matt Fahrenbacher

Re:NDIPOOS?

[lonedfx]

Neither Do I POo On Slashdot ?

lone, dfx.

Re:NDIPOOS?

[Eunuchswear]

Nor do I play one on Steinfeld [sp?]

Re:NDIPOOS?

[rifter]

Nor Do I Play One On Slashdot.

It is a play on all those US commercials where someone comes on and says "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV. And that is why you should heed my medical advice when I tell you chugging aspirin like there is no tomorrow is just the right thing to do, yessiree! But only if it comes from the company that paid me to say that..."

SCO changes name to SCUM

[Anonymous Coward]

Santa Cruz Ugly Mofos.

SCO wants attention

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone was forgetting who they were, this is all just a big stunt to get front page publicity on slashdot.

Buy our product or we'll kill this puppy!

[dmoen]

'Nuff said.

Re:Buy our product or we'll kill this puppy!

[arkanes]

Everytime you masturbate, SCO sues a Linux developer....

Serious drugs...

[Eggplant62]

Whatever McBride's smoking, I wish he would tell ME! It's gotta be some good shit.

Or the mushrooms this year are particularly fine.

Re:Serious drugs...

[Flower]

No it's bad shit. Good shit keeps you mellow during which you don't give a shit while bad shit gets you clawing at the walls and talking crazy shit.

This is crazy shit that you want no part of. Do not take the brown acid. The brown acid is bad.

This public service anouncement has been brought to you by the Commitee Against Crazy Ass Shit.

Re:Serious drugs...

[Bill Lurker]

Hallucegenic drugs cause brain damage. You should enjoy life more or/and read the bible.

Thats where the mentally addictive part of those drugs comes from - You become less mentally aware, but you don't notice it because you're drugged. You come out of it, the world seems so boring because your brain is no longer functioning as well, you take more of the drug so you don't notice it.

Stop using drugs for awhile. The world won't seem so boring when you start to think clearly again. It might also be noted the historically large number of religions and even intelligence agencies that have used these type of drugs to control their victims. Does anyone really want to see anyone publicly support drugs, wondering if the poster is a victim or trying to make victims?

Re:Serious drugs...

[Flower]

That you would take my post even semi-seriously is some sad shit.

I pictured Darl McBride holding a gun

[linuxguy]

> "McBride added that unless more companies start licensing SCO's property, he may also sue Linus Torvalds, who is credited with inventing the Linux operating system, for patent infringement."

I pictured Darl McBride holding a gun to a stuffed penguin's head and shouting to the crowd :

"Give me your money or the Penguin gets it!"

Re:I pictured Darl McBride holding a gun

[PsibrII]

Funny you should mention guns. I'm sure these tech companies think lawsuits are good clean fun, until things turn sour and some columbine wanna be kids think "Hey, that mofo lives just down the street from us. Let's go Quake 3D his CEO @ss." Linux is way beyond just cult status now. And there is, beyond just columbine wanna be kids looking for fun, the laid off tech sector guy who really really doesn't wanna go work at burger world to keep from starving. So as those unemployment checks start to end, and they read about yet another company trying to feed off the dying body of the tech sector, they say to themselves, Hey, why not ? As they load up the the duffel bag with filled .308 magazines and flash bangs. Yep, time to do a "hostile" takeover.

Re:I pictured Darl McBride holding a gun

[pyrrho]

I think it's Darl McBride in a penguin suit with the gun to his own head --- "Give me your money or the penguin gets it!"

Re:I pictured Darl McBride holding a gun

[Walter Wart]

Shades of "Blazing Saddles" where Clevon Little holds a gun to his head and says "Nobody move or the n***er gets it."

Re:I pictured Darl McBride holding a gun

[ddriver]

So, you are going to get me the address, aren't you?

Re:I pictured Darl McBride holding a gun

[Baloo Ursidae]

I pictured Darl McBride holding a gun to a stuffed penguin's head and shouting to the crowd :

"Give me your money or the Penguin gets it!"

What McBride fails to recognize, however, is while he may have the gun to the penguin's head, he's holding the gun backwards. Maybe we should egg SCO on just to watch them shoot themselves by accident.

Re:I pictured Darl McBride holding a gun

[Sgt_Jake]

Do you often find yourself peeking out your window looking for the 'little men in dark suits'?

Get help. Soon. Your paranoia is the reason we have the department of 'homeland security'.

Slackware had this way before.

[Stradenko]

My WC Cdrom distribution of slackware 3.0 let me switch to another VC and play tetris for terminals back in '95...volkerding is the real innovator here.

PR Dept Is a bit behind

[echorun]

The SCO webmasters might want to change a few bits of information of their site... such as this page

The ship is sinking!

[L0J46K]

Think hard back when UNIX was so very expensive and SCO was a legitamate solution. Now look and see what an utter piece of SH*T it is compared to these open source solutions we have for FREE. SCO is obviously looking for a way to put it's name in the press and maybe turn a few heads. What does it really matter to us, we all know SCO is dated, and Caldera is just another Linux distro. It would be no shame if it disappeared.

Re:The ship is sinking!

[jedidiah]

SCO was never a legitimate solution. This is why their filing against IBM is so laughable. Even if they do manage to wipe Linux off of the face of the earth, SCO still has to compete against the dominant commercial Unix vendor: Sun.

SCO is simply doomed regardless.

Re:The ship is sinking!

[L0J46K]

Agreed it was never a good solution, but I know several unfortunate companies in my area who still have to maintain it. Ugh.

Its all a BIG LIE!

[Anonymous Coward]

May 28, 2003

"This morning, Novell announced some of the terms
of the company's 1995 agreement to sell its Unix business to SCO. The shocking news is that Novell did not sell the Unix intellectual property to SCO. Instead, they sold SCO a license to develop, sell, and sub-license Unix. The title to Unix copyrights and patents remains with Novell. To back up this assertion, Novell refers to public records at the Library of Congress Copyright Office and the U.S. Patent Office . . . "

http://desktoplinux.com/articles/AT4842883975.ht ml

I love this!

[El_Ge_Ex]

This is better than Reality TV!

Just when you thought you knew how the story would end (with IBM buying SCO to quit being annoyed by them). SUDDENLY A PLOT TWIST! Novell could end up getting SCO for FREE!!! :)

This is the best Reality Show yet!

Re:I love this!

[taustin]

This is better than Reality TV!

Well, duh. This is actually based on reality, unlike Reality TV.

Re:I love this!

[bsharitt]

This is better than Reality TV!

That's the same thing I said when I drove by the dump.

Re:I love this!

[praedor]

What are you talking about? How can you say that having a LOT of hottie women lined up to try to marry you, practically fighting for access, isn't reality?

I'm late to work every frickin' day wading through the hotties on my doorstep every morning.

Re:I love this!

[ces]

Novell could end up getting SCO for FREE!!!

The problem is who would want SCO? SCO is sort of like fruitcake or herpes, its the sort of "gift" you want your enemies to have.

SCO is confused

[lspd]

They seem to think the PR newswires are instant messenger services. I won't be at all suprised if the next tidbit from SCO mentions that all UNIX IP licenses will come with a free 3 day pr0n membership.

They really need to take a step back and make up their minds about what IP they have and who they're going to sue. Lashing out with threats of lawsuits for anyone who questions SCO's WMD...er...IP claims hardly bestows confidence in the merit of those claims or the intent behind these lawsuits. Sounds more like a pump-and-dump stock scheme to me.

Re:SCO is confused

[Gunzour]

They seem to think the PR newswires are instant messenger services.

I couldn't have put it better myself. I meen geez, the press release from SCO said (verbatim!):

Copyrights and patents are protection against strangers. Contracts are what you use against parties you have relationships with.

There are so many things wrong with that I don't even know where to begin. I mean, when is the last time anyone used the word "you" in a press release?? And contracts are something you use against others? I think this was actually written by Harvey Richards.

Re:I'd pay a couple of $$$ to the Linus defense fu

[Anonymous Coward]

If Linus does indeed get sued, I'll donate a couple hundred to the cause. (PPV or not). I'll bet there are plenty of others who would, as well.

Take this threat lightly!

[RoLi]

I would seriously avise the Linux camp not to take this threat lightly

So what do you "avise" me to do?

Wet my pants?

Stop using Linux? (Yeah, you would really like that, would be good for your MSFT-stock, right?)

Start crying?

There is no evidence, there isn't even the sligtest hint of evidence and SCO voided anything by releasing Linux under the GPL themselves anyway.

If you really think that anybody should start being aFraid, Uncertain and Doubtful, you are either pretty dumb or part of the FUD machinery yourself.

If SCO can prove that one person messed up, Linux is screwed.

Wrong. No matter how much you would love Linux to be screwed, only the person who messed up and maybe the organization he works for is. If there really is infringing code (which is doubtful) and if for some special reason the GPL doesn't apply to SCO, it has to be rewritten, that's all.

To sum up, yes I will take that threat lightly.

Re:Take this threat lightly!

[sumbry]

So what do you "avise" me to do?
Wet my pants?
Stop using Linux? (Yeah, you would really like that, would be good for your MSFT-stock, right?)
Start crying?

Ahh, because I point out a bit of history as to how this has happened before in the courts and because I have a little knowledge of the court system an IP now I'm an MS lover? Sit down little Linux script kiddie and take a deep breath before you hurt yourself. You're very misinformed and typical of why I said people shouldn't take this lightly.

There is no evidence, there isn't even the sligtest hint of evidence and SCO voided anything by releasing Linux under the GPL themselves anyway.

How do you know this? SCO doesn't have to show you anything - all the offending code has to be shown to IBM right now. And because of NDA's and the like (whatever is stipulated in their contract) they may never have to show you any of it.

If you really think that anybody should start being aFraid, Uncertain and Doubtful, you are either pretty dumb or part of the FUD machinery yourself.

Ok - when did I say this? When does - "don't take this lightly because it's happened in the past before" translate to be afraid, uncertain, doubtful, etc?

Wrong. No matter how much you would love Linux to be screwed, only the person who messed up and maybe the organization he works for is. If there really is infringing code (which is doubtful) and if for some special reason the GPL doesn't apply to SCO, it has to be rewritten, that's all.

Riiiiight. Now I want to see the fall of Linux, especially since it (along with Solaris, BSD, etc) have been paying my bills for longer than you've probably been walking.

To sum up, yes I will take that threat lightly.

Go ahead. The BSD camp took this very seriously, won the case, and still got fucked in the process while it was being straigtened out in the courts. Know your history little kiddie - else you're gonna be bound repeating it.

Re:Take this threat lightly!

[RodgerDodger]

So what do you "avise" me to do?

Well, for starters you can not be so picky about spelling. After all, the "sligtest" spelling typos are nothing to fret about.

Secondly, stop being so deliberately offensive to someone offering valid advice, backed with historical precedent.

Or forget it, just go and stick your head in the sand. It's all up to you.

Re:Take this threat lightly!

[RoLi]

You didn't answer the questions:

So what do you "avise" me to do?
Wet my pants?
Stop using Linux? (Yeah, you would really like that, would be good for your MSFT-stock, right?)
Start crying?

Re:Take this threat lightly!

[RoLi]

Wrong. No matter how much you would love Linux to be screwed, only the person who messed up and maybe the organization he works for is. If there really is infringing code (which is doubtful) and if for some special reason the GPL doesn't apply to SCO, it has to be rewritten, that's all.

Riiiiight. Now I want to see the fall of Linux, especially since it (along with Solaris, BSD, etc) have been paying my bills for longer than you've probably been walking.

Yes, you do.

You distribute false and wrong doomsday messages "Linux is screwed" while knowing very, very well that's not the case.

Fact is, Linux is not screwed, even if there is some infringing code in it, which is very unlikely anyway.

Again: Linux is not screwed, your LIES won't change that.

If you love Linux so much, why do you lie and spread FUD about it?

Re:Take this threat lightly!

[sumbry]

Wrong. No matter how much you would love Linux to be screwed, only the person who messed up and maybe the organization he works for is. If there really is infringing code (which is doubtful) and if for some special reason the GPL doesn't apply to SCO, it has to be rewritten, that's all.

Why is it so doubtful for code to have been copied? Have you ever done any coding or kernel development before? Why is it so hard to imagine that out of potentially thousands of developers and tens of millions of lines of code, that a few hundred or thousand could have been copied from another project?

It happens all the time. Granted, most of the time it happens involves GPL'd projects, MIT licensed projects, or BSD licensed projects - but that doesn't stop it from happening.

How many stories have we read today about commercial companies stealing GPL'd code and using it in their projects? Is it really so hard to imagine the reverse happening, even if only by one person?

And yeah, the code would have to be re-written if this did happen, but if it is proven, SCO can seek damages and ask that anyone who is using an OS that uses the code now pay them license fee's (or otherwise upgrade, but how fast do you think that'll happen across the board).

Also - just because I'm pointing this out doesn't mean I support SCO. I don't, and think they have a weak case, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna automatically jump on the Linux is right bandwagon and be blinded by the facts (when/if) they come out.

Re:Take this threat lightly!

[RoLi]

deliberately offensive to someone offering valid advice

How is "Linux is screwed!" and "don't take that lightly!" valid advice?

That's FUD, nothing else.

Re:Take this threat lightly!

[broter]

sumbry, please stop feeding the trolls :)

Re:Take this threat lightly!

[sumbry]

Come talk to me again in about 10 years when you understand some history, learn to read, and stop cheerleading for your favorite OS just because.

Spreading information and history is not equivalent to preaching doomsday messages, you need to seriously learn the difference between the two.

Re:Take this threat lightly!

[NonSequor]

Here's some advice. If you want to convince people that your views are correct with respect to some issue, it helps if you try not to act like a total ass.

Re:Take this threat lightly!

[RoLi]

Actually SCO would have to file a seperate lawsuit because this lawsuit is about trade secrets.

I'm sure that you know very well that trade secrets can't and therefore don't have to be put back into secrecy after they have been published. The only consequence is that the leaker (which would be IBM) would have to compensate the owner of the loss.

So Linux doesn't even have to be changed, they can continue to use the no-longer secret trade secrets anyway. The absolute worst-case of this suit is IBM being fined.

So please, "sumbry", put your lies and FUD elsewhere.

Re:Take this threat lightly!

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you know this? SCO doesn't have to show you anything - all the offending code has to be shown to IBM right now. And because of NDA's and the like (whatever is stipulated in their contract) they may never have to show you any of it.

Umm. Exactly how am I supposed to stop using code if they will not tell me what code to stop using?

And if that fails, I'll use their tactics and sue them for a hundred billion dollars for 'something'. I don't have to identify what, just 'something' that makes them liable to me for ungodly amounts of money. Because that's what they are basically doing. They are threatening Linus for 'something', but they won't say what.

Re:Take this threat lightly!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you love Linux so much, why do you lie and spread FUD about it?

Because....... BSD is dying!!!

Re:Take this threat lightly!

[boots@work]

It's unlikely (not impossible) because code going into Linux is reviewed to a greater extent than I have seen or heard of on commercial projects. Have you ever worked on a project where you can't even commit code, let along ship it, without it going through at least two levels of review? Perhaps you have, but it's the exception not the rule.

It seems likely to me that SCO code would be caught by review if somebody tried to submit it to Linus, because it would "feel wrong" for Linux, or not look like it was original work. Things in the kernel work in particular patterns, and old code looks different to new code. See Hellwig's comment about how messy SCO code is. If it was copied, it would have to be rewritten so much that people might not bother in the first place.

Of couse it's not possible to catch all plagiarism by review, particularly when the purportedly original document is not available for comparison. It does at least seem like the kernel team have made a good-faith effort to prevent it, which ought to count for something.

There is also the question of whether anyone would *want* to copy from SCO. It's a pretty crappy OS by modern standards after all. Copying from BSD I can imagine, but SCO?

In any case, SCO have admitted today that they don't own the copyrights, and they only have a breach-of-contract case. So users who don't have contracts with SCO should be safe.

So at the point where SCO make a concrete and verifiable allegation, rather than vague FUD, then it's worth taking it seriously. SCO don't even have to reveal their code -- just saying where it is in Linux would allow the developers to know whether it was new or not. Up until then, SCO are just pissing in the wind and deserve all the crap they get.

Re:Take this threat lightly!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sumbry, I don't recall who said this but it seems strangely appropriate: "Never argue with idiot. He'll bring you to his level and beat you with experience."

Please note that there are many of us Linux users that are literate and rational--I hope this particular thread doesn't reflect poorly on the whole lot of us.

Your point is well taken and is much appreciated. Understanding what happened to BSD in the past is important given the similarities.

Re:Take this threat lightly!

[Triumph The Insult C]

No, it's not FUD. Do we know if SCO actually has a leg to stand on? No. So what Novell has entered into the picture.

We have shit laws like the DMCA, Patriot Act, etc etc, because people took things TOO LIGHTLY.

Until it is proven, in court, that SCO has no foundation to sue, then no one knows. One learns from their mistakes, and the Linux community has a chance to learn from the ATT/BSD fiasco. It is completely valid advice. It's a good idea for the Linux community to get their ducks in a row just in case the courts rule in favor of SCO.

Re:Take this threat lightly!

[Arandir]

You're failing to see the huge point looming over your head while you nitpick the trivial to death.

BSD got seriously hurt in the *perception* department. Linux itself was started because it was *perceived* that BSD was encumbered. I agree that IBM/Linus/SuSE/etc will be able to win any case SCO lobs at them. But Linux will still garner a undeserved negative perception among the public. Imagine every news article mentioning Linux for the space of one or two years quoting McBride in paragraph one.

The perception won't affect the geeks, nerds and hackers much, but it will affect the general public. Who will want to buy the latest embedded Linux doodad if they perceive they might get sued for it? Who will want to repartion their harddrive to try out Linux if they might get sued for it. Who will want to hire you as a known Linux programmer since you might introduce some "infected" code into the company's project? The perception may be stupid, but last I checked stupidity ruled the world.

Re:Take this threat lightly!

[sumbry]

Please note that there are many of us Linux users that are literate and rational--I hope this particular thread doesn't reflect poorly on the whole lot of us.

This is where the irony comes in - I've been using Linux for much longer than I've been using BSD. I just remember following all this BS back in the day (the AT&T court cases).

I totally don't understand or get all this Linux vs. BSD bullshit that's been going on for years. I use both, developed for both, and have for a very long time. It's all very idiotic to me. I don't see it as us vs. them, I just see it as us Unix users.

However it seems like anytime someone posts or writes a comment that isn't 100 percent "I love Linux" then they're the enemy? What the fuck??? Just because I point out other sides to an argument (that I don't even agree with but want others to recognize valid points) or may point out flaws in my favorite OSes (for improvement) suddenly I'm not a team player anymore?

I know, I know, most of those comments come from 12 year old loosers, but it's still frustrating.

Re:Take this threat lightly!

[Anonymous Coward]

why don't you go back to the message that started this discussion and read it. that's exactly what SCO threatened to do

Re:Take this threat lightly!

[Daniel Phillips]

"There is no evidence, there isn't even the sligtest hint of evidence and SCO voided anything by releasing Linux under the GPL themselves anyway."

How do you know this? SCO doesn't have to show you anything - all the offending code has to be shown to IBM right now. And because of NDA's and the like (whatever is stipulated in their contract) they may never have to show you any of it.

Actually, anybody with a licensed copy of SCO's source can diff it against Linux and report the similarities. That's a rather big vulnerability in SCO's little game, don't you think? Especially if the copying turns out to be in the other direction?

Re:Take this threat lightly!

[sumbry]

Actually, anybody with a licensed copy of SCO's source can diff it against Linux and report the similarities. That's a rather big vulnerability in SCO's little game, don't you think? Especially if the copying turns out to be in the other direction?

Then why hasn't anyone done this yet? I just don't believe it's as easy as you think it may be.

And SCO may have used code from Linux, I'm not arguing that. All I'm saying is that this could end up getting Linux tied up in courts for years.

None of this is new. Alot of this same stuff happened to BSD in the AT&T suit, and while BSD ended up coming out on top, it still cost 'em 2 years in the courts.

This is not a matter of right vs. wrong, but rather SCO may be able to successfully tie up Linux and IBM in the courts for who knows how long. I'd hate to see it happen, but everyone seems to believe that this is a cut and dry case, and the more time that passes, the more that this seems to not be the case (will the real owner of Unix please stand up?)

Re:Take this threat lightly!

[Billly Gates]

"The absolute worst-case of this suit is IBM being fined."

oh? Tell me how can Linux survive if your employer could be sued for using it. If the court proves yes Unix code got into the Linux kernel then SCO has legalized extortion. The article above mentioned charges for all linux users. Wouldn't it be great for SCO if Redhat or Suse somehow went under? Well they can sue both companies for damages. IT does not matter whether they knew about the infringment or not. SCO by law would be entitled for compensation for services for every distro sold.

In other news Linux itself could be in jeapordy. I for one would not pay $149 per cpu to run a free os. I would switch to BSD in a second.

Re:Take this threat lightly!

[Daniel Phillips]

"Actually, anybody with a licensed copy of SCO's source can diff it against Linux and report the similarities. That's a rather big vulnerability in SCO's little game, don't you think? Especially if the copying turns out to be in the other direction?"

Then why hasn't anyone done this yet?

How do you know nobody has?

Re:Take this threat lightly!

[Anonymous Coward]

BSD got seriously hurt in the *perception* department. Linux itself was started because it was *perceived* that BSD was encumbered. I agree that IBM/Linus/SuSE/etc will be able to win any case SCO lobs at them. But Linux will still garner a undeserved negative perception among the public. Imagine every news article mentioning Linux for the space of one or two years quoting McBride in paragraph one.
>
>
BSD got hurt because the people behind BSD at the time were greedy and stupid. Just look at the history of BSD.

BSD was never about creating a "Unix lookalike for the Masses" like Linux and Hurd was. BSD was about modifying Unix so the BSD crowd wouldn't have to pay anything to A&TT and others for when they sold
it.

FSCO

[Anonymous Coward]

We should come to Linus' defense:

Who's got zip guns?

You'd be surprised what Judges allow

[astrashe]

You'd be surprised at what judges allow. The basic reality that litigation costs money, and that frivolous suits do a lot of damage to people hasn't really sunk in.

It's amazing, when you think about it, that there haven't been more lawsuits. Not because there are grounds for them, but because it's a convenient way to harass people.

The community needs to come up with a way to respond to this incident, and to other things like it.

Re:You'd be surprised what Judges allow

[Anonymous Coward]

The community needs to come up with a way to respond to this incident, and to other things like it.

Word. But, what, how? there aint a community, and if there is, the community's divided.

Re:You'd be surprised what Judges allow

[gladbach]

True, but defending linus would be the greatest example for the need of probono work by the EFF and FSF etc etc.

I doubt linus has anything to worry about financially.

Re:You'd be surprised what Judges allow

[nvrrobx]

Having been through this lately, I can tell you how damaging it is.

6 months of litigation, running over $15k now, and almost costing me my job.

The other thing to remember, you don't always have to _prove_ your case, but if you get a sympathetic judge which doesn't understand the intricacies of the case, you're screwed.

My attorney told me to remember that the burden of proof in civil court is not nearly as strict as a criminal case. (Okay, that's paraphrased, but you get the point)

SCO just really needs to get a life of their own.

Re:You'd be surprised what Judges allow

[mikeee]

The community needs to come up with a way to respond to this incident, and to other things like it.

Well, there was the build-your-own-cruise-missle story on slashdot last week...

Re:You'd be surprised what Judges allow

[HiThere]

Have you joined the EFF yet? If not, this is a good time.

Are you a member of the FSF? You might consider it.

Re:You'd be surprised what Judges allow

[DavidTC]

My God, you're right! Someone set up the IBM defense fund!

Wait, no, they're a multi-billion company, aren't they? ;)

What kind of fucking moron sues IBM to drive them out of business?

Time for another DDOS!

[Anonymous Coward]

ping -f www.sco.com

Time to make SCOX fall even further!

Re:Time for another DDOS!

[whoever57]

Wouldn't

wget -r --delete-after "ftp://ftp.sco.com"

be more effective? Not that I am advocating this, just discussing a technical point.

Re:Time for another DDOS!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is also affective. PRESS SEND

No no no...

[ctid]

He's holding the gun to his own head, and saying, "Give me your money or the fuckwit gets it!"

Re:No no no...

[cHiphead]

*throws money at him*

*takes the gun*

*shoots him anyway*

that would be worth a $1500 SCO license.

(ps- doesnt that last line in the article just scream that a Troll got access to the article before it went live?)

They cant sue Linus

[Honest Man]

Unless the code Linus actually wrote has the SCO's code in question - they have no case.

This whole case is lame.. If you asked a few thousand OS coders to write an OS, wouldnt a few of them get a couple lines the same? Even if they never talked the entire time coding was being done?

This whole case feels like SCO just wanted some attention - I hope they get the crud sued out of them.

Re:They cant sue Linus

[Ignominious Poltroon]

They may sue over patent infringement, in which case it doesn't matter if the code is copied.

Re:They cant sue Linus

[Billly Gates]

Unfortunatly SCO might actually have one. This is not IP infringement but patent infringement.

SysV is still patented and Linux is a SysV system. Unless its changed to a BSD one SCO really does have a case.

But Linus has zero money to give compared to the cost of bringing him to court. My take on this is that SCO wants to kill Linux! I can not think of any other logical explanation. If Linus is forbidden to develop Linux again thanks to a nasty blackmailing settlement, the Linux community will be in caos as well as its credibility.

Sco actually thinks people will say "Oh, Well lets go buy SCO instead." Ya right. What a joke.

Is SCO smoking crack?

[QuantumWeasel]

That is mind-nimbingly specious reasoning. Not only do SCO show their truer colors, but they seem to have truly taken leave of reality. Sign me up to support Linus' legal defense fund.

*shakeing of fist*

[pigscanfly.ca]

Its not like they havent already pissed everyone off enough. Now here is the problem:
Unless linus actually put the code in himself AOR he is awhere of the fact that he is violating patents and continues to distribute he is not liable (INAL) .

Now if they sue linus I put forward that slashdot take up a fund to pay his legal costs and ensure that SCOs exuctives & rats(lawyers) have a slight detour on the way to courtroom.

Re:*shakeing of fist*

[Billly Gates]

This is not an IP case like IBM. Its patent and Linus is repsonsible for using SySV which SCO has the contractual rights too.

They may sadly have a case. The problem is that from what I read is there are over 20 patents in the linux kernel! If Linus decided tommorow to make sure no patents were violated then it would not be an OS anymore. Even fonts are patented.

This is insane and the real issue here is software patents. The second Linus clear one patent on the kernel then the lawsuits will come flying in because they removed one patent but not bigcorpsA or bigcorpsB.

Threats and hostage taking???

[bninja_penguin]

Darl McBride, SCO's chief executive stated] that unless more companies start licensing SCO's property, he may also sue Linus Torvalds,
Isn't that outright criminal?? That's quite close to a criminal taking an innocent bystander in a bank, and saying, give me all the money or this bystander gets it in the head. That's usually called hostage taking, and carries a charge of kidnapping. Whereas in the SCO case, (I'm paraphrasing) "People better start buying licenses from us, or we'll go after Linus" is called extortion or, as the case may be, blackmail. If SCO has legitimate claim to sue somebody, they should sue, but to use threats against someone to get some other person to do something is illegal. Good God SCO, WTF is up with you?? At first I was skeptical of you, then I was disgusted with you, earlier today I was laughing at you, now, Jesus H Christ man, you people are treading on some seriously thin legal ground. Are you sure you have any legal counsel?? Outright extortion attempts are liable to get you some serious jail time that even Microsoft couldn't buy you out of. Give up now, while you still have a chance to at least do time in "Club Fed" for SEC violations and lying about IP ownership, don't push it until you do serious time for criminal acts.......
Aww, what am I saying, keep it up you punks, then you can spend some "quality time" with felons who'll treat you like the bitch you are.

Re:Threats and hostage taking???

[mj01nir]

That's what struck me first about this. Why on earth would he say that? How can SCO even tie those events to one another? Can / should Linus pursue a claim of extortion against SCO? I know it's easy for me to say, but I hope Linus kicks SCO in the balls for this.

This is just unfuckingcredible. I sure picked one helluva day to be sick and stay at home.

Re:Threats and hostage taking???

[nedjacket]

Anybody remember PKARC? This was Phil Katz's first compression program. The people that made ARC sued him and won. PK changed his algorithm, called it PKZIP and never looked back. At the time, the xxARC programs were used by BBS's. That community adopted PKZIP and went out of their way to ignore anything that came from the ARC folks. Win the battle, lose the war.

Re:Threats and hostage taking???

[rnturn]

``At first I was skeptical of you, then I was disgusted with you, earlier today I was laughing at you, now, Jesus H Christ man, you people are treading on some seriously thin legal ground. Are you sure you have any legal counsel??''

Are there any cases where a law firm has asked a judge for a gag order to shut up their own client? If not, Boies should be considering being the first.

Re:Threats and hostage taking???

[demon]

How can SCO even tie those events to one another?

Sounds like the kind of logic Bush Jr. has been using in the war in Iraq. Disjoint events and people, they truly have nothing to do with one another. Guess Darl McBride's been taking lessons from the Prez.

if sco is right...

[CuteAlien]

our laws are wrong. I mean does really anyone believe linus tried to steal patents?

Re:if sco is right...

[Anonymous Coward]

no. much worse! linus is about to do

What bit do I licence ?

[Humunculus]

"McBride added that unless more companies start licensing SCO's property..." So how do we know which supposed part of Linux is SCO's property, if they don't tell us ?

If I must buy a licence, I at least want to know what I am getting for my money, and what is contracted for, yes ?

Rob. "For Every Pleasure There's a Tax".

Re:What bit do I licence ?

[Billly Gates]

SySVR4 is patented and publically available. This is what they will go after if they try Linus.
Linus himself stated to ignore patents because they are so redicolous. If that statement ever shows up in court he is royally fucked.

Re:What bit do I licence ?

[HuguesT]

> If that statement ever shows up in court he is
> royally fucked.

Not necessarily. A lot of patents really are ridiculous, you only have to show that. I'm sure that the community would help footing his legal bill. We might end up with a saner patent system as a result.

Bring it on.

Linus didn't invent the part of Linux that is UNIX

[Anonymous Coward]

All Linus wrote was the Linux kernel, the part that loads linux. The BSD/System V commands and APIs that give Linux it's UNIX look and feel were not developed at all by Linus, they were developed by the GNU organization.

If they want to sue anyone, they should sue GNU.

GRRR!

[coene]

Isn't SCO a public company? Are any of their shareholders happy with all of this stuff? I think SCO is clearly a mismanaged and untrustworthy company, and should be treated as equally hostile as it is treating it's business, investor and customer interests.

Where's the mafia when you need them? Let's all pitch in our $0.02 and take a contract out on these guys.

<end HYPOTHETICAL rant>

Re:GRRR!

[Anonymous Coward]

Are any of their shareholders happy with all of this stuff?


They were EXTATIC with this stuff this morning (~$9/share) They are less happy now (~$6/share) but still pretty happy when you look at anything longer than 5 days. If tomorrow the stock goes to $.01/share they will be pissed as hell and screaming for blood.

It's pretty simple how the market works.

Re:GRRR!

[jedidiah]

The stock took a 25% hit today.

Can you say "shareholder lawsuit"?

It would be poetic justice if SCO was done in by a barrage of stockholder lawsuits.

Oh that's rich.

[twitter]

Does this mean that 95 cents of each MS $ of it's undisclosed "Unix" licensing fees are going to Novell? Does M$ know this?

Re:Oh that's rich.

[RedWizzard]

Does this mean that 95 cents of each MS $ of it's undisclosed "Unix" licensing fees are going to Novell? Does M$ know this?

I believe it does. And not only that, but if hell froze over and SCO got their billion dollars from IBM I think Novell would have a pretty good claim for $950M of it.

Re:Oh that's rich.

[Anonymous Coward]

So, it follows that SCO is really just the hatchetman here for Novell.

Ray Noorda: Bwaa Haaa Ha

Re:Oh that's rich.

[HiThere]

Nooo... Novell doesn't own SCO stock. So it can't really tell them what to do. All it can do is take it's percentage. Which it does.

It's an interesting commentary on their Linux distribution that they made more money from Unix, even with paying a 95% toll to Novell.

RMS is gonna be mad.

[Belisarivs]

Remember, it's GNU/Linux. :)

Poor RMS. Can't even get put down by the man without Linux stealing his thunder.

Re:RMS is gonna be mad.

[bsharitt]

I think SCO is going after code in the Linux kernel itself. I don't think they are saying that there is stolen code in Emacs or ls.

Re:RMS is gonna be mad.

[rnturn]

``I don't think they are saying that there is stolen code in Emacs or ls.''

Well, at least not today. Who know's what they'll claim tomorrow.

When all else fails.....

[Darth_brooks]

Swing for the fences.

The SCO is starting to remind me of Dean Wormer from 'Animal House.' First they put the linux world on double secret probation. Now, as the majority of the IT world is walking out on them humming the star spangled banner, they're shouting "You're all expelled! No more fun of any kind!"

I guess that leaves microsoft as as the preppy frat boy stuck banging the gavel.

Steal-Code-Operations -- My Testimonial

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. I totally agree. Steal-Code-Operations needs to be shut down forever. Their OS always sucked ass. It was the most expensive, proprietary, high-priesthood, piece of crap OS that I have ever used. Five years ago, Linux was like a cadillac compared to SCO's Edsel. When I first sysadmined SCO I was stunned at how archaic it was, so I installed a whole shitload of GNU replacement software, and only then did it become remotely bearable. This was from a text console. Their driver code was so fucked I could never even get the PS/2 mouse working and they had some shitty X-Window system deal going that looked like a ten year old version of FVWM, I laughed as I thought to myself what an over-priced piece of shit software this was. Everybody else in the company was scared to touch it, but through some serious hacking I had it whipped into about the best shape it could be in a few weeks of part-time tinkering. Even still, Linux was so much better it wasn't funny. I think it was OpenServer 5.0 -- don't bother, any Linux blows it away easily.

Okay, this is getting ridiculous

[haruchai]

A 24% decline in their stock price isn`t enough.
I hope that at least some of their stockholders managed ( not upper management, I hope) to make a few bucks but I want to see them hit zero dollars by Monday.

backlash potential...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just trying to imagine the potential retribution from the hacker community that worship Linus' feet. Am I alone?

Re:backlash potential...

[Anonymous Coward]

yo brotha! i'm with ya!

Didn't Linus transfer copyright to the FSF?

[Dastardly]

I thought Linus transferred the copyright on the Linux Kernel to the Free Software Foundation, so the FSF would handle GPL infringement. Wouldn't that make Linus a bad target? Shouldn't the FSF be the target of a lawsuit?

Re:Didn't Linus transfer copyright to the FSF?

[borgheron]

No, he didn't. SCO is scrounging around for anything that they can find to scare the Linux community into submission.

They KNOW that they are going to die and it's obvious that they don't have a case. Their own release of Linux obviates any patent claims they may have.

It's dubious, at best, to claim patent infringement when YOU yourself have profited from the very OS that you claim infringes!! Darl McBride has, singlehandedly, reduced SCO from a respectable company to a laughing stock which provides daily amusement for us.

We should, in fact, applaud him for making us laugh so much recently.

It is obvious and it has been obvious from the beginning that SCO's ENTIRE goal has been to sew FUD and that's EXACTLY what they're doing.

Later, GJC

Good Day, GJC

Why SHOULD he be afraid.

[mindstrm]

Linus doesn't sell linux. HE doesn't market it. He does kernel development, and his name is on it.. that's all.

Why shouldn't he be apathetic? SCO is getting far more attention than they deserve out of this.. at least in terms of the fear they are causing. There is NO WAY this case will succeed.. the absolute worst case will be IBM did something wrong, and IBM pays damages. No judge is going to smash linux.

What does linus have to fear? Can you imagine how much legal support Linus himself would get if sco tried to sue him personally? Just for what it represents, ever damn linux geek on earth would be ready to contribute to the defense fund, not to mention every linux company on earth. So far sco has ONLY SUED IBM, and have made only threatening vague statements and threats about their "Intellectual Property" to everyone else. Saying they had a contract with IBM that IBM has violated is one thing.. all the other vague shit they are claiming is something else entirely.

Linus has ALWAYS been apathetic. He has always mainted the world can do what it wants with linux.. he did it for fun. He doens't get too into the politics of it. He is a smart programmer, and a celebrity... but his life isn't riding on the success or faulure of linux. He isn't Bill Gates.

Re:Why SHOULD he be afraid.

[Decimal]

What does linus have to fear? Can you imagine how much legal support Linus himself would get if sco tried to sue him personally? Just for what it represents, every damn linux geek on earth would be ready to contribute to the defense fund

They'll probably all be too busy posting on Slashdot to contribute any money. But I'd imagine that 1 million slashrants are going to be a great help to Linus... er... somehow.

Re:Why SHOULD he be afraid.

[Anonymous Coward]

>Linus doesn't sell linux. HE doesn't market it. >He does kernel development, and his name is on >it..that's all.
>
>
And most importantly, Linus doesn't actually
*OWN* Linux these days. He's more like a appointed trustee of the Linux name/trademarks/copyrights for legal reasons.

TO ALL THE EUROPEANS!

[Anonymous Coward]

Let your representatives in the EU, which is considering software patents, know about this,as an example of why software patents are a BAD IDEA! A lot of European cities (Munich comes to mind) have shown a shining to Linux, and software patents could leave them without that choice!

Re:TO ALL THE EUROPEANS!

[Anonymous Coward]

To bad the EU is not a democracy. There is no direct citizen > EU government connection. Only via the nation-states.

Re:Does this remind anybody else of the Jerky Boys

[Soko]

...questions about possible lasuits (all ridiculously frivolous), dragging the lawyer further and further into the realm of stupidity, then..."

This typo is strangely appropriate. As in:

"SCO is really in la-la land."

or...

SCO: "NO! Our source! I don't care about what Novell says, OURS!"
Novell: "Look in the agre-"
SCO: *plugs ears* I CAN'T HEEEEAR YOU! LALALALALALALA....."

Should be added to the Jargon File or something:

lasuit (lô' soot) n : A litigation over Intellectual Property based on ridiculously frivolous grounds, dragging the complaintant further and further into the realm of stupidity. See: SCO.

Soko

Linux Distros ....Countersue that fucker MCBRIDE !

[zymano]

Only 1 distro countersues. Why ????

If all the linux companies sued SCO at once , it would be pretty cool.

Wake up SCO!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello Darl, its time to come off those drugs you on, that fantasy world of yours is going to be the death of you, haven't you even heard that drugs are bad???

SCO to sue Michael Jordan, Kittens, Jesus

[MAXOMENOS]

June 1, 2004. Santa Cruz, CA: SCO threatens to sue yet more icons of goodness and decency In yet another move calculated to antagonize virtually the entire world, SCO announced today that they would pursue multi-billion dollar lawsuits against basketball legend Michael Jordan, all kittens less than a year old, and Jesus Christ, for failure to pay royalties on all revenues that "might even conceivably be gained by exploiting our intellectual property in some fashion or another." SCO CEO McBride, speaking from behind the door of a reinforced bunker in an undisclosed location, stated that although none of the parties have used UNIX or Linux as far as he is aware, the decision was made to pursue litigation anyway "for the hell of it. I mean, we're already suing fifty thousand parties as it is, from IBM to a rusty tricycle in Ai, Alabama. What's three more?" The last year has not been good to SCO. Novell and IBM both filed $10 billion lawsuits against the company, and their stock was delisted after the share price dropped from $8.30 a share to about eight cents a share. This led SCO to file a series of bizarre lawsuits against figures in the Open Source and computing world, including Eric Raymond, Bruce Perens, Richard Stallman and Tux the Penguin. Eventually, SCO ran out of people in the computing world and started targeting smaller, less fortunate users and groups, starting in early 2004 with a class of 12th graders in Portland, Oregon, for maintaining a Linux laboratory as a school project. Starting from there, they began to sue "everyone conceivable" who might have derived profit, use, or fun from Linux. The public reaction has been overwhelmingly negative. Two months ago an unknown terrorist organization detonated an atomic bomb over SCO headquarters in Orem, UT, and then immediately received a pardon from US Attorney General John Ashcroft. Vigilantes and bounty hunters now scour the Rocky Mountains for company employees, who fetch rewards of $1000 to $1,000,000. SCO executives are featured every night on FOX's "America's Most Wanted." Last week, Time named McBride the Most Hated Man in America, beating out even Osama Bin Laden and Michael Bolton for the title. "We're not discouraged," said McBride. "Eventually, the judge will see things our way and we'll start collecting royalties. And then the world will be MINE! ALL MINE!" McBride then broke out into hysterical laughter, which continued into the lonely night.

why?

[astrashe]

Has anyone looked at what SCO managers are doing with their stock?

When I hear stuff like this, I wonder if they're trying to push the price up so they can bail out.

I want to stress that I have no information that this is happening, and I'm not making any accusations. It's just the sort of thing I wonder about in situations like this.

Re:why?

[Walter Wart]

If they're trying to push the stock up they've chosen a, herm, peculiar way of doing it.

Re:why?

[Bruce Perens]

You can generally get disclosures of insider trading on the web. I think I used to do it at quicken.com . When I worked for HP, I watched Carly's trades and those of other executives.

Bruce

Re:why?

[pirodude]

You can read up on what the execs are up to here:
http://biz.yahoo.com/t/s/scox.html

Re:why?

[SheepHead]

I realize this is quite late, but you can indeed check the SCO insider trades at quicken.com. Here is the page.

SCO's stock symbol, if anyone was wondering, is SCOX.

sheephead

A patent may be used non-commercially...

[bagofbeans]

Torvalds did not make commercial use of Unix. Any individual may use any patented technique for personal use, but cannot commercially exploit a patent without a license. Torvalds didn't sell anything (did he?), so suit will fail because a suit must hinge on measuring monetary damage.

Re:A patent may be used non-commercially...

[Karl Rove]

This is patently incorrect (pardon the pun).

Patents cannot be used without a license,
-- even for personal non-commercial use.

Could it be you're mixing things up with
copyright? Under the fair use exclusion it
is OK to make a copy of a copyrighted work
for non-commercial purposes -- such as for
backup, study or review.

-- Karl

Living up to their name ...

[SPK]

... let's see, threatening to sue Linus if XYZ don't pay up ... sounds like Ransom Love to me ... (oh, wait, Love is not longer the CEO ... and McBride is another ex-Novell exec)

As I've pointed out, it's not DDoS it's DLoP.

[twitter]

Distributed Lack of Purchasing. It's deadly and legal. Santa Cruz Out-a-business, no need to DDoS.

No, that is not as black and white as it looks.

[mindstrm]

Yes, technically Novell may still be the actual copyright & patent holder.. but they DID license those to SCO, who has the ability to re-license all over the place.

Whether that boils down SCO having the right to enforce those patents and whatnot is another matter, and depends on the language of the contract, which we all don't have, so it's silly to speculate on.

What is clear is SCO had the right to relicense some unix stuff, and they of course have the right to enforce the terms of those licenses.

Whether or not they can attack other parties is a separate issue.

Laughing all the way...

[adenied]

And Bill Gates is laughing all the way to the bank. A united front against Microsoft would be so very nice. Not like we'll ever see it.

jihad on sco!

[docstrange]

Where are the terrorists when you need them.
And why don't they declare jihad and bomb sco.

I might get moderated down for this, but this is a holy war. They're attacking our HOLY ground. And something drastic needs to be done to stop the crap that sco is pulling.

Re:jihad on sco!

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear that SCO funnels 90% of its revenue to settlements on the WEST BANK. (wink, wink)

Also that they plan to air-drop millions of tiny bottles of LIQUOR on MECCA. (nudge, nudge)

Tell your cousin OSAMA right away!!!

Re:jihad on sco!

[PsibrII]

Funny you should mention Jihad. I heard someone at SCO went on the hajj and stole a piece of that big stone they all dance around in mecca. I would think that is kinda not kosher.

Have no fear.

[genzil]

If they do sue, and Linux sends out a plea for help I'm sure the most of the linux community will help. Possibility even IBM would help!

Should we take a page from the Scientologists?

[miracle69]

We could all launch individual lawsuits against SCO and DDOS their legal team.

Go L.Ron! it's your birthday. Go L.Ron! It's your birthday!

Spin doctor

[mao che minh]

I greatly enjoyed the SCO call session earlier. I only jumped in near the end, so I'm not sure exactly who it was that was representing SCO at the time - but he was one serious spin doctor. He adeptly deflected all blame, made it sound like being in the business of sueing people over IP (which is all SCOSource does) was a noble and legitimate business model, and even made a valiant attempt to prove that SCO, not Novell, actually owns the rights to Sys V. I couldn't believe how casually the callers accepted his rubbish as fact.

I wonder what the spin doctor would have to say to your above post. That's some pretty damning empirical evidence that disconfirms everything he claimed.

This keeps getting better. I can't believe that something concerning intellectual property, UNIX and Linux, and websites full of people that like to debate the effectiveness of Python over Perl, can be this damned entertaining.

Re:Spin doctor

[MaxwellStreet]

That "spin doctor" was none other than Darl McBride. You heard it from the mouth of the beast.

He *did* sound rather convincing with his talk of how they already owned the copyrights, and were just looking for corroboration from Novell. And the analyst he was speaking to seemed to believe him too. (If he already owned them, why would he need the letter from Novell? Getting his ducks in a row for the trial, perhaps?)

Of course, a 24% drop in SCOX, much of it after lunch, says that people are more inclined to believe Novell about who owns what - and his little fantasy wasn't playing well in Peoria.

Re:Spin doctor

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't believe how casually the callers accepted his rubbish as fact.

Wall Street isn't Slashdot. There's no point in arguing with a guy that you don't believe. You just go out and sell all your stock in his company. If you don't own any stock to begin with, sell some short!

Think BOFH:

"My company is going to make money by suing IBM!"
"Sounds like a business model that I'm interested in. What was your ticker symbol again?"

*Clickety-click*.

Re:Spin doctor

[shiflett]

Don't assume anyone accepted anything as fact. Other than the three or four people who asked a question, everyone was muted the entire time.

Re:I'd pay a couple of $$$ to the Linus defense fu

[Anonymous Coward]

But anyway, I'd pay a couple of bucks, especially if we get a Pay-Per-View event of Linus kicking McBride upside the head.

Wish I was better at shockwave

Pay up or

[realdpk]

You guys better pay up or I'll shoot this puppy!

The 'Smart Money' speaks

[Chmarr]

SCOX lost $2.11, almost 25% of its market value on Nasdaq today, and made Nasdaq's "Most Declined" listing at #1.

Although I have my doubts over particually how 'smart' the stock money is, this is particually telling.

Re:The 'Smart Money' speaks

[Gunzour]

Well, it's still trading way above where it was before all this started. Wall street pumped this stock up pretty much, and if any insiders are selling, I hope the SEC is taking notes. Looks like a pretty blatant pump-and-dump to me.

SCOX stock closing prices:

Feb-28-03: $1.85
Mar-31-03: $2.88
Apr-30-03: $3.15
May-19-03: $6.80 (SCO Announces UNIX licensing deal with Microsoft)
May-22-03: $8.89
May-27-03: $8.71
May-28-03: $6.60

I was *very* tempted to short this stock earlier today even though I've never shorted a stock in my life, and it looks like it would have paid off.

Re:The 'Smart Money' speaks

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF is up with VA Software? LNUX

nasdaq

Re:Linux Distros ....Countersue that fucker MCBRID

[WCMI92]

"Only 1 distro countersues. Why ????

If all the linux companies sued SCO at once , it would be pretty cool."

It'd be cool if Red Hat, SuSe, Mandrake, Lindows, Gentoo, Debian, Lycoris, et all became "United Linux" to take them down ;)

Backwards: SCO has infringed Linus's IP

[bwt]

I keep posting this, but nobody seems to get it. SCO as a **distributor** of the linux kernel has committed copyright infringement UNLESS they have properly licenced all copyrights from which it is derived. If somebody else (IBM or Linus) creates a work which is improperly licenced, but is derived from GPL work, then SCO **STILL** must abide by the GPL in order to distribute a deriviative of the GPL portions.

In order to do that, they must abide by the clause (clause 2b) which requires them to licence "as a whole" to "all third parties" (which certainly includes Linux and IBM) the works which they distribute under the terms of the GPL, assuming they either modify the source (clause 2) or distributed binaries (clause 3). This is not compatible with patent enforcement (vs Linus) or with trade secret protection (vs IBM).

Clause 6 states that no "further restrictions" are allowed. Clause 4 moreover states that any attempt to "otherwise ... sublicense or distribute" the work will "terminate your rights under this License".

Finally, Clause 5 states that "by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it", which implies that SCO has accepted the GPL by distributing Linux, which even under SCO's extreme viewpoint is inarguably "based on" GPL works.

Linus should and frankly MUST sue SCO for copyright infringement for distributing a derivitive of his work without a licence. In fact, any other kernel contributor could do the same so long as their original work is included in what SCO has distributed. It does not matter if SCO wilfullly commited copyright infringment (it is still infringement), though it is untenable to call it unwilfull after they began publicly proclaiming to retain rights to elements of Linux.

Re:Backwards: SCO has infringed Linus's IP

[joebeone]

alright... all we need is some volunteer IAALs...

Re:Backwards: SCO has infringed Linus's IP

[mark-t]

No.

If they weren't the ones to insert it into the kernel, then the GPL on their code is void. You can't expect the GPL to apply to code that wasn't even put there by the people who own the copyright. The fact that they distribute it is irrellevant. If they didn't put it there in the first place, the GPL clause is void with respect to those sections of the code.

Re:Backwards: SCO has infringed Linus's IP

[jedidiah]

Unfortunately, no one yet knows enough about the SCO allegations to make such claims...

Re:Backwards: SCO has infringed Linus's IP

[jedidiah]

But you can expect it to apply once the OWNER OF THE WORK IS AWARE OF THE PROBLEM AND STIL DISTRIBUTES the project.

This isn't Redhat distributing a kernel contaminated with Microsoft proprietary code.

Re:Backwards: SCO has infringed Linus's IP

[bwt]

If they weren't the ones to insert it into the kernel, then the GPL on their code is void.

Well, YES. That is the whole point. They are distributing unlicenced code, a large chunk of which is derived from GPL code written by Linus and friends.

The fact that they distribute it is irrellevant.

Alas, you lose during the bonus round. Read your previous statement until you understand. Their licence is VOID. So what gives them the right to distribute something they don't have a license to? Or to make the additional copies in the first place? How would Jack Valenti respond if you operated a business to sell copies of the Matrix that were unlicensed? That is how Linus should respond to SCO. Jack wouldn't care if you could show that what you were distributing was actually some third party mix of the Matrix plus some parts that were copyrighted by you. Why should Linus?

Here, I'll help you:

Q: True or False -- Under standard copyright laws of most nations, such as those in the US, in order to distribute a derivitive work, you must have a valid licence from all of the copyright owners for all of the works from which the work in question is derived.

A: True. For more information, including citations to caselaw start here in section c.

Please answer this: by what authority does SCO distribute code which includes among it code authored by Linux Torvalds? If you get confused, go back an read your first sentence.

Re:Backwards: SCO has infringed Linus's IP

[bwt]

Actually, awareness, knowledge, or wilfullness doesn't matter as far as finding infringement has occurred, it only affects damages and remedy.

Re:Backwards: SCO has infringed Linus's IP

[bwt]

You didn't understand what I said.

SCO's allegations themselves breach the GPL, because they are , per section 4, an "attempt" to "otherwise ... sublicense or distribute" portions of the code that they MUST distribute solely under the GPL because they contains stuff authored by Linus Torvalds, even if it contains other stuff which they own the "contract" rights to.

It doesn't even matter if SCO is actually correct. The "attempt" to retain other rights that they distributed in a GPL mixture is what violates the GPL. If those rights are non-existent, it is still an "attempt". Read section 4.

Re:Backwards: SCO has infringed Linus's IP

[bwt]

Most plaintiffs attourneys will work for a 30-40% contingency fee. Under 17 section 504 statutory damages for willful, knowing infringement are up to $150,000 per work. There are a whole lot of plaintifs attourneys in the world that will go to work for a good shot at their share of a six digit number. Actual damages include profits from infringement and are likely higher.

I count five separate versions of linux that Caldera currently ships, so each one infringes separately. I'm guessing that only ones that they distribute after they filed would be deemed willful. So we are talking about a case where you don't need to prove much at all to ask for $750,000 in damages.

Re:Backwards: SCO has infringed Linus's IP

[jedidiah]

You're simply a moron.

SCO became the "offender" as soon as they new what was going on. They gave away their own property. They did so intentionally.

If this were a personal property issue, there would be no doubt that SCO has no standing to prevent the use of it's property by others. You would be laughed out of court for merely suggesting such a thing.

Re:Backwards: SCO has infringed Linus's IP

[mark-t]

Please answer this: by what authority does SCO distribute code which includes among it code authored by Linux Torvalds? If you get confused, go back an read your first sentence.

Agreement with the terms of the GPL to not limit the distribution of the GPL'd code or any works derived from it. It says nothing about failing to agree with the distribution terms of portions of Linux which may not actually be subject to the GPL (which would include any sections that were inserted into Linux by someone other than the the copyright holders or those authorized by them).

The point is that if SCO's IP *was* misappropriated, then it's not SCO's license that's voided, it's the GPL that's been voided (with respect to SCO's code only). For the GPL to apply to a work, it must be applied by the original holders of that work. The fact that a company distributes a GPL'd work does not make them necessarily responsible for its contents (even it contains code misappropriated from them). Since the GPL never actually applied to their code in the first place, the fact that they agreed to the terms of the GPL on the rest of Linux is superfluous.

The people (if any) who violated the GPL are those who inserted code into Linux that was not supposed to be. If this is true, SCO has every right to seek damages (although this won't hurt Linux one bit in the long run).

Personally, my money's on SCO being so full of dung about this whole thing they could make more money selling fertilizer than they have trying to sell their dying software for the past decade.

Re:Backwards: SCO has infringed Linus's IP

[JosefK]

"The point is that if SCO's IP *was* misappropriated, then it's not SCO's license that's voided, it's the GPL that's been voided (with respect to SCO's code only)."

But if SCO, after it has learned of the misappropriation, *knowingly* offers a sublicense to *its own customers* on that SCO code in the Linux kernel, that is a violation of the GPL and nullifies SCO's license to distribute the remaining GPL'd code. If their customers cannot enjoy the full rights extended by the GPL for the portions tainted by the misappropriated code, SCO (and anyone else) is enjoined by the GPL from distributing the software at all.

Re:Backwards: SCO has infringed Linus's IP

[bwt]

You're simply a moron.

Ok, if you don't believe me, then read the damn law for yourself. 17 USC 504 (c)(2) explicitly contemplates damages not less than $200 when the infringer proves that he was "not aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright"

SCO became the "offender" as soon as they new what was going on. They gave away their own property. They did so intentionally.

I really don't know why you are insulting me, you are claiming slightly less than what I am claiming and acting as if I am disagreeing with you. In fact, they gave away more than just their own property. They also copied and distributed code written by Linus, which is an act of infringement (knowingly or not) unless they satisfy the terms of his licence.

SCO became the "offender" as soon as they took an action that violated the GPL copyright licence on the sections of the kernel legitimately authored by Linux, which they distributed within their product. It's no defense to say IBM infringed first. SCO's acts are separately accountable to any copyright holder whose rights are in play. The first such violation was the attempt to enforce additional restrictions against IBM, (trade secret rights), because the GPL requires SCO,as a distributor, to grant rights to "all third parties" (including right back to IBM) and not to impose "further restrictions" on the GPL licencing of the mixed unix/linux work "as a whole", which is required because it contains GPL parts. SCO would be able to wage their claim against IBM if they hadn't shipped code written by Linus that was mixed with it. But since they did and the GPL is viral, they did more than just give away their own property -- they put it under the GPL and attached their own infringement liability to Linus to any attempt by them to enforce any other rights to it.

When SCO realized that the GPL of the product they shipped was voided (no later than the filing of the lawsuit), they became a **worse** offender by continuing to distribute it, knowing and even claiming openly that the GPL had already been violated. They failed to explain what authorized them to copy and distribute code, partially written by Linus, without any licence at all.

All I have been saying here is that Linus should ask SCO "hey, you reproduced and distributed some of my code -- did you comply with my license which requires anything mixed with my code to be GPL'd and thus released from trade secret and patent protection". They say "No we didn't comply with your licence because our stuff was in there against our will". He says "I'm sorry IBM screwed you, but it doesn't give you any right to screw me -- I've been infringed as soon as you even attempted your claims because my licence requires you to licence everything you distributed with it to the whole world, including IBM. If you blow that off, you have no right at all to distribute my stuff."

Re:Backwards: SCO has infringed Linus's IP

[mark-t]

. SCO's acts are separately accountable to any copyright holder whose rights are in play. The first such violation was the attempt to enforce additional restrictions against IBM, (trade secret rights), because the GPL requires SCO,as a distributor, to grant rights to "all third parties" (including right back to IBM) and not to impose "further restrictions" on the GPL licencing of the mixed unix/linux work "as a whole", which is required because it contains GPL parts

The GPL is not as omnipotent as that. If a person takes someone else's stuff that is not free and publishes it "under the GPL", that doesn't make the stuff free. In fact, in spite of the GPL clause being present, the GPL is actually completely void with respect to the misappropriated code.

SCO, by being a distributor of Linux, certainly agreed to the terms of the GPL, but the freedom to distribute and not limit distribution wouldn't apply to code that wasn't ever legally covered by the GPL in the first place, even though it was distributed with GPL'd work. As long as SCO hadn't known about their code being there, they would not be held responsible for having agreed to apply the GPL to their own code.

Unless SCO is dumber than mud, they removed the infringing code from their own current distribution as soon as they learned about it.

If SCO's claim is valid, I'd be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on this one. Of course, that's a mighty big "if"... one that I'd be shocked as hell to see.

Re:Backwards: SCO has infringed Linus's IP

[sgtrock]

Unless SCO is dumber than mud, they removed the infringing code from their own current distribution as soon as they learned about it.

NOTHING I've seen from Darl McBride suggests that he is anything but dumber than mud. IMO calling him that insults mud. :)

Re:Backwards: SCO has infringed Linus's IP

[HiThere]

Does SCO currently ship ANY versions of Linux? They've denied it (perhaps for this reason).

OTOH, if they were violating the GPL in the past, then any monies that they collected were illegal, and that should be worth something. And they even continued to ship Linux after they started their lawsuits. So...

Let's see if I have this right. . .

[taustin]

"If you don't give us money, we'll sue someone else"?

Isn't that criminal extortion?

That's right, dammit!

[Anonymous Coward]

How would you feel if you got sued because of what you did for _FUN_.

"No!" means "No!"

Ok, Darl, you're embarrassing yourself

[Bodhidharma]

Time to shut the hell up, SCO. You tried. You had balls but the game is over. Go home.

SCO became Rudy of SUN's clone?

[linuxislandsucks]

SCO became Rudy of Sun's clone?

This is bad as saying JBoss is not opensource in order to lock them out of somehow competing with SunOne the Slow beast J2EE server

With apologies to Stan Marsh

[bnenning]

I am saying this to you, Darl McBride: you are a liar, you are a fake, and you are the biggest douche ever.

Company image

[CuteAlien]

Usually companies care about that. I can't imagine SCO getting back in Unix-business after what they do currently. Even hardcore soloris, bsd, etc.. fans are mostly horrified by the current actions of SCO. It's like they are storming out of the room and slamming the door. Unix was SCO's main business, it's hard to imagine this will do them any good if they really intend to continue doing this.

Re:Company image

[Skapare]

It's more like they are tossing all the chairs and breaking all the glass in the room because they are upset over the rest of us wanting to play with someone else's toys.

It reminds me of a short skit I saw on a kids' TV show. It started with 2 kids fighting over who gets to play with a toy. The mother comes in and takes the toy, sets it aside, and demands "You two solve this like adults!". One of the kids then says to the other "You're gonna hear from my lawyer".

Re:Company image

[pmz]

Unix was SCO's main business, it's hard to imagine this will do them any good if they really intend to continue doing this.

After all this, they will become a consulting company, where they will use their expertise to help other suicidal companies go out with a bang.

Reach out to SCOX shareholders and executives

[Corpus_Callosum]

The Yahoo! Stock message boards are very active with major investors, partners and executives of each board's respective company. The SCOX board is reasonably active, but could use some of the strong, intelligent insight that is spread around slashdot on this subject.

I think those of us that are so inclined should voice our support for Linux, Linus, Open-Source, etc... there as well as here. Let your voice be heard by the people that invest in SCO, run it and do business with it...

Hell, even the trolls can have fun there...

http://messages.yahoo.com/bbs?.mm=FN&action=l&bo ar d=1600684464&tid=cald&sid=1600684464&mid=9 062

Re:Reach out to SCOX shareholders and executives

[shane_rimmer]

clickable link to the SCO message board on Yahoo to get rid of the added spaces in the URL.

Re:Reach out to SCOX shareholders and executives

[SCHecklerX]

I just took a gander at the linked message board. The posts by the 'linux community' are not helping.

Grow up, people. Do you really expect to be taken seriously by investors when you post shit like: "SCO LONGS = F*CKING IDIOTS"

Re:Reach out to SCOX shareholders and executives

[Anonymous Coward]

could use some of the strong, intelligent insight that is spread around slashdot on this subject.

Man, I don't think I've ever read anything like that before. I'm still trying to wrap my head around it.

Re:Reach out to SCOX shareholders and executives

[fredrik70]

could use some of the strong, intelligent insight that is spread around slashdot on this subject.
OMG, you completely thrashed the SCOX board! completely! *grin*

Re:Reach out to SCOX shareholders and executives

[Anonymous Coward]

Grow up, people. Do you really expect to be taken seriously by investors when you post shit like: "SCO LONGS = F*CKING IDIOTS"

Although this sort of stuff gets posted to those boards all the time, I have to agree that it isn't taken very seriously. If you want to have more of an impact, post links to the substantive analyses of the weakness of SCO's case:

• The OSI response
• Novell's letter to SCO
• Bruce Perens' comments here on Slashdot

Find others that are well-worded and thoughtful. Post them as separate messages. Give each a descriptive title. Quote one or two sentences that give the flavor of the article. Point out that they were down $2.22 today and they are off another $0.11 in after hours trading.

Re:Reach out to SCOX shareholders and executives

[Trespass]

C'mon, he was really just asking for a forum invasion. It was pretty obvious.

Re:Reach out to SCOX shareholders and executives

[Anonymous Coward]

Who says that's from the Slashdot crowd? Are you familiar with Yahoo Finance Boards? That's standard fare in la-la land. In fact, I couldn't help but laugh when someone recommended posting there to be seen by serious investors. After a few days of reading, serious investors go elsewhere for most stocks. Just look at the Sun or Oracle boards for an example. Complete waste of time...

Re:Reach out to SCOX shareholders and executives

[Anonymous Coward]

Voice your support by shorting SCOX, if it's still possible. I personally think the legal accusations were to temporarily bolster SCOX price so execs could dump stock at anything higher than the $1-$2 range. I think they know that the company is dying and are just attempting to get some cash out of short term stock increases

Re:Reach out to SCOX shareholders and executives

[Tsu Dho Nimh]

"very active with major investors, partners and executives of each board's respective company."

ROFLMAO! The publically available message boards (Yahoo, Raging Bull, etc.) are the realm of daytraders trying to make the price jump a skosh so they can make a buck. It's more like a singles bar named Rumor Central in Pump & Dump City.

Re:Reach out to SCOX shareholders and executives

[gaj]

I doubt that most of those messages are from the "linux community". Those sorts of posts are pretty normal on yahoo's stock message boards. They make some of the more volatile alt.* groups look tame.

Re:Reach out to SCOX shareholders and executives

[QuackQuack]

In my experience, the Yahoo stock boards are filled with pumpers and people with no apparent job or social life, who post dozens of off-topic messages every day at all hours of the day. You can usually find a couple of serious investors on each board, but the signal to noise ratio is very poor.

I say Short'em!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, to me it is obvious that SCO is doing stupid things. I am nearly certain they will waste their money in lawyers, get a ruling that clarifies that some of the Intellectual property that they claim is not their property and lose whatever reputation they had left. The net result of this stupidity is bad news and losses.

Making money from correctly predicting losses and bad news is easy... (stocks 101)

[Caveat emptor: I don't have a crystal ball and my predictions may be wrong for multitude of reasons, you're not paying me anything and this is not professional advice. I already shorted SCOX and I have a vested interest in its price declining]

a more constructive suggestion

[BoneMarrow]

SCO should suck my dick

Re:a more constructive suggestion

[Anonymous Coward]

Only one way to tell them. Press send!!

I built a cluster using SCO "Technology".

[SphynxSR]

It is called a cluster fuck.

Re:I built a cluster using SCO "Technology".

[zoid.com]

Hey.. That's called a Circle Jerk!

I too have been very critical of Linus' Apathy but

[FreeUser]

To be honest, I wish that Linus had a reason to be afraid. His reaction to this whole thing started off as complete apathy and is still hovering around it.

I have in the past been very critical of Linus' apathy and apparent blindness to some of the deeper underlying issues that will likely affect our freedom to code at all, much less code on the operating system our cooperative effort has created over the last 12 years or so, in part under his non-political guidance. Richard Stallman, as undiplomatic as he can be, truly does Get It(tm), and has done much to steer the community away from trouble (remember the KDE/qt/GPL conflicts. Imagine the situation we'd be in vis-a-vis SCO and M$ FUD if Gnome hadn't appeared, the flame fests hadn't been fought, and ultimately a workable, compatible solution hadn't been found, thanks to Trolltech's admiral flexibility and willingness to acknowledge mistakes and fix them, and thanks to RMSes stubborn insistance that the GPL be adhered to, no matter how cool the project.

All that having been said, the last thing on earth I would want to see is Linus sued for his 12 years of unselfish generosity. Do I agree with Linus' political (or rather, apolitical stance)? No, on that front I come down on RMSes side, despite my fervent desire that he learn a little diplomacy (which, to be fair, he appears to have done in no small amount, as listening to any of the speaches he's made in the last few years amply demonstrates), and despite the extreme irritation I felt at his 'lignux' proposal years ago.

I may not agree with Linus on some points, and I may wish he'd speak up a little more often to defend the Community he helped catalyze into being, but the man is entitled to his own world view, his own opinions, and no one in their right mind should wish something so awful as a lawsuit (however unfounded) onto someone who has done so much to enrich us all. As one who is personally bearing the brunt of an appalling act of barrotry myself, and having to defend against a frivilous, but non-the-less expensive, lawsuit (condo related, for the curious), I take particular exception to the notion that Linus deserves any kind of kick in the pants, much less a kick to the head through SCO's (or anyone elses) letigious thuggary and barratry.

I relish the demise of SCO, and the dozens of countersuits and investor lawsuits that will undoubtably follow. With luck, the fools will have left an I undotted or a T uncrossed, and be doing some hard time in a 6'x9' cell to boot, compliments of the SEC.

McBride is an idiot piloting a sinking ship!

[Anonymous Coward]

it's time for SCO to give it a rest.

Over my dead body...

[Znonymous Coward]

This is all a scare tactic. SCO knows their days are numbered. In fact, their stock lost 25% of it's value today because of Novell's press release.

The bottom line is this...

SCO is dying faster than all the BSDs put togther.

More details at MSNBC

[doe]

You can find more details on this story over at MSNBC.

It includes Novell's threats of legal action:

"SCO's actions are disrupting business relations that might otherwise form at a critical time among partners around Linux technologies and are depriving these partners of important economic opportunities," Messman stated. "We hope you understand the potential significant legal liability SCO faces for the possible harm it is causing to countless customers, developers and other Linux community members. SCO's actions, if carried forward, will lead to the loss of sales and jobs, delayed projects, canceled financing and a balkanized Linux community."

So what is POSIX then? Can SCO sue the IEEE?

[The_Dougster]

The vmlinux kernel when combined with, say, Debian, is supposedly very close to meeting the IEEE POSIX specification.

Now my question is, if there was some kind of problem of legality, shouldn't the POSIX founders, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers be in fact liable. All of the Linux guys are trying to create the POSIX OS, not UNIX. UNIX is pretty much dead AFAIK. POSIX is where its at.

Any IEEE experts out there who can elaborate? Maybe the IEEE will be SCO's next target after they have become sufficiently pelted with rotting vegetables.

Linus???

[djocyko]

he may also sue Linus Torvalds, who is credited with inventing the Linux operating system, for patent infringement."

I thought this was mostly Richard Stallman. From what I can tell, Linus only produced the kernel. Is anyone as bothered by this as I?

I'm no big GNU/Stallman fanatic, I call the OS Linux, not GNU/Linux, but the truth is that any other kernel would still make the operating system what it is...

Re:Linus???

[jmcnally]

What about Andrew Tennenbaum and his Minix kernel?

I would have modded you +1 Funny

[YellowSnow]

But you were already 5 Informative, thanks Bruce I actually laghed out loud at SCO's latest as reported by you, Cheers!

Other thing

[mindstrm]

Because you can selectively enforce patents, you cannot sue for damages if the party was not aware they were infringing on your patent. You can of course set the terms goign forward they must adhere to, or get them to stop using it, or whatever.. but they can't exactly SUE linus for infringing on their patents withotu first making sure he is aware of what patents he is infringing on, and suggesting a remedy.

You can't find someone who has been using your patent, unknowingly, for 10 years then sue him for 10 years worth of damages, it doesn't work that way.

Re:In Soviet Russia...

[chunkwhite86]

In Soviet Russia, Linus sues SCO!

Blackmailing the community?

[bobKali]

So SCO is threating to sue one person unless everyone else (not that person) pays them tribute for patents and copyrights that THEY DON'T EVEN OWN????

Kinda reminds me of a magazine cover I saw once. Had a picture of a puppy (or kitten or some such cute animal) with the caption "Buy this magazine or we shoot the dog."

Re:Blackmailing the community?

[rnturn]

`Kinda reminds me of a magazine cover I saw once. Had a picture of a puppy (or kitten or some such cute animal) with the caption "Buy this magazine or we shoot the dog."'

That was a National Lampoon cover. From around, oh, mid-'70s. And a classic.

Now that's journalism: Linus lawsuit in last line

[Nice2Cats]

What I really, really love about this story is how the CBS MarketWatch journalist displayed his complete lack of understanding for Linus' importance in the IT world and stuffed the threat of a law suit in as an afterthought at the bottom line. I've lost track of how many magazine covers Linus has been on, his name is mentioned in just about every article on Linux, he even has a frigging biography that you can buy in just about every major bookstore in the planet -- and CBS hides it in the last line. Beautiful.

Makes me want to go back and see how CBS did Lady Di -- Traffic was heavy today in Paris, France, with light rains causing trouble for inexperienced drivers (...) In one of the day's many accidents caused by excess speed and driving under the influence, Lady Diana of Great Britian was killed. Light showers are expected in Roissy in the north of the city tomorrow with evening highs at around...

Or maybe the death of Christ: Two common criminals died today as Roman justice rammed home its message of no tolerance [no zero, remember] with iron spikes through their hands and feet (...) The two men's crosses were separated by that of Jesus Christ, Saviour of Mankind, who also died (temporarily). The Jerusalem branch of amnesty imperium romanum condemned the two criminals' execution as...

Talk about doublethink!

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see if I have this straight...They put a notice on their own Web site that essentially acknowledges Novell's claim to the patent rights by deconstructing their complaint against IBM to a possible contract non-disclosure violation. Then their CEO threatens to sue Linus for infringement on a patent they don't have.

I'd sure like a hit of whatever McBride's smoking, unless it's Chairman Bill's.....Oh, never mind. I fotgot for a moment this isn't FC.com!

hoax

[Anonymous Coward]

this "quote" has got to be a hoax.
Darl cannot be that stupid.

that said, SCO has already accomplished what they
set out to do. Temp raise the stock price and sell while its high. Everything else is window dressing.

- Kayen

Re:hoax

[The_Dougster]

Heh, I bet they sold high, then shorted their own stock. Next step is for all them to acknowledge their mistake, the stock will plummet, and they buy off their short-sells. After that everybody retires and leaves the public stockholders holding the bag.

Clever. If they were as talented as programmers as they were investors, they might give TRS-DOS a run for its money.

What losers. Bah!

Re:I'd pay a couple of $$$ to the Linus defense fu

[tulare]

But anyway, I'd pay a couple of bucks, especially if we get a Pay-Per-View event of Linus kicking McBride upside the head.

Lol, I'm still trying to pick myself up after trying to picture that. Not to say that he couldn't - you'd be surprised how many mousy-looking, quiet people have black belts or can bench 245. Nonetheless, it would be hella funny to watch.

a lesson for bullies everywhere...

[Anonymous Coward]

they're just not that bright, are they...

Any half-competent playground bully will tell you that bullying is most profitably directed to those who are significantly smaller than you. If you try to extort lunch money out of a kid 5 years older, a foot taller and 5 stone heavier than you, you will not get rich. You will get battered.

Continuing with the metaphor, SCO is most certainly the little guy here, and they seem to be trying to intimidate the freakishly enormous kid that has to shave 3 times a day and can't fit in his desk....

They should take a lesson from the MPAA-RIAA axis...gang up with your fellow hoods on a few little kids, and the spineless will offer you fealty.

Having a pop at Linus is just a sign of SCO's malaise..with no-one to blame for their business model being washed up, they are lashing out like the town drunk at any and all that they perceive to have "done them wrong", and becoming less coherent as they go on. Wouldn't be surprised at all if they start blaming Freemasons or the CIA next.

No, Linus Could Buy Them

[superid]

SCO current market cap is just over $100M, but thats with a significant current spike, within the last year they were under a buck a share with a book value of under $15M.

Not that he would, or would want to, but I'll bet Linus could write a check for that.

SuperID

Wow, that's messed up

[djatari2600]

Sue Linus Torvalds. GREAT WAY to spread the use of your product.

make a dollar

[NECTROLL]

now would be a great time to sell short!

no - sue his mom instead

[leeet]

SCO should sue his mother for giving birth to such an evil! Giving away software for free, what kind of idea is that! :)

Re:no - sue his mom instead

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhhhhm,

Giving away software for free, what kind of idea is that!

Actually, wasn't that somebody else's idea?

All we need now is for RMS to petition Linus' mother to change his name to GNU/Linus!

He does still live at home, right? ;-)

Is this similar to what happened to BSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

So that means that Linux will fall out of favor and leave way for an unexpected operating system to come out of nowhere and rule the world....
OpenBSD. Be afraid of the Theo...be VERY AFRAID.

RMS! Naah -- GNU is k00l!

[The_Dougster]

Actually, RMS is kind of like a Jesus to computer software. A lot of people don't like his radical views, but the fact is that he has done more for computing than anybody else in history.

I certainly am not ashamed to say "GNU" because, I love it. I love "ls --color=auto" just try that with SCO OpenServer and you are in for a rude awakening.

Like the BASH shell? Yeah its pretty awesome isn't it. Like being able to append --help to a command if the man page is missing? The fact is, if you boot Hurd, you are in fact running GNU. No GNU/Hurd, really not "just Hurd", just GNU.

Stallman's crew had completly re-written every UNIX utility program from scratch and that was "GNU". When a kernel became available, they were in -- totally.

Linus & Associate's awesome kernel was of course key, but I suggest you remove all GPL licensed code except the kernel and see what kind of an OS you have. Essentially nothing, you would have to port BSD to the Linux kernel, and then you would have BSD/Linux.

GNU is something to be proud of, mainly because it totally rocks. It is the "NEW" Operating System.

Blacklist SCO Employees

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just going too far, and it's time to take a hard look at not just the company SCO, but the people who support it. Chiefly among those who support SCO are its employees, including its engineers and its programmers, whose work has formed the basis for these actions.

I say that we blacklist them. Give them a chance to jump ship or change their company's policy if they want, but no company that uses Linux or Unix should ever hire a former SCO employee if these lawsuits go forward. It's drastic, but without that internal pressure the management will keep suing until someone can't take it and settles.

Re:Blacklist SCO Employees

[samantha]

I agree. Anyone who would continue to work for SCO at this pont is a moral and intellectual coward.

Re:Blacklist SCO Employees

[Skapare]

At the very least they should post their resumes on the various online job boards by 1 June 2003. Don't even consider hiring them if its posting date is any later than that.

Seems Inconsistent...

[jmcnally]

Given that they have acknowledged that don't own the patents and cannot sue for patent infringement. They say they are suing those who have violated licensing agreements. Since I assume Linus never signed any agreements with SCO this will go nowhere.

Re:Seems Inconsistent...

[cageyjames]

Very, but it seems that this whole SCO threat is built upon being inconsistent. I mean, that way know one can figure out whats going on...

All your Linus are belong to us!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry. I couldn't help myself.

Pantywaist?

[Anonymous Coward]

I strenuosly object to your use of the term 'pantywaist' in a derogatory manner. I'm a pantywaist and my father is one as well. It's a perfectly normal condition that many, many people live with on a daily basis. To use the word in the manner in which you have degrades hundredes of thousands of good, honest people, you retard!

Re:Pantywaist?

[Anonymous Coward]

I *make* pantywaists. If you all check your girlfriends' panties, you'll see my fine work in the waitband. Oh, wait, this is /. - you all need to check your mothers' panties, my handiwork is in the waists.

Swine!

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, what a bunch of bastards!
As a mark of my disgust, I shall no longer refer to myself as coming from Scotland.

Until this mess is sorted out, all mail shoud be addressed to 'tland.

I shall be encouraging residents of Wi'nsin and Nova 'tia to take similar measures.

ploy

[Anonymous Coward]

i feel this is a ploy to something bigger. That could be the Art Bell in me, but why would a company make threats with absolutely no backing? It seems they are setting the stage for something else in the mean time.

Re:I'd pay a couple of $$$ to the Linus defense fu

[johndiii]

How much would you contribute to buying up SCO stock and firing the current management?

you mean the MAN who created Minix

[Anonymous Coward]

Andrew Tanenbaum, the guy who wrote the operating system for educational purposes; some people who have taken operating systems classes may remember him as the guy that wrote their textbook as well.

Actually, what's interesting is why Minix was written. AT&T had allowed the source code to UNIX to be freely distributed to universities, etc. Then someone realized that there was commerical potential in UNIX and they began restricting access to the source.

Because it's frequently useful to have a functioning model at which to look when studying a subject, Minix was born to fill the missing educational void created by the commercialization of UNIX. It was designed to be big enough to be a real operating system, but small enough for one person to pretty much keep in his head at one time. Linux was created because there were a number of people who wanted to pile stuff into Minix which Tanenbaum didn't want there.

Re:you mean the MAN who created Minix

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh.. you mean Linus' bi@tch...

Re:you mean the MAN who created Minix

[geirhe]

Andrew Tanenbaum, the guy who wrote the operating system for educational purposes; some people who have taken operating systems classes may remember him as the guy that wrote their textbook as well.

"Their textbooks" would be more appropriate. Tanenbaum is one of the most productive authors I know, and his books were very good ten years or so ago. He is in the same league as Horowitz, Hill, Hennessy and Patterson.

Re:you mean the MAN who created Minix

[Bludd]

Seems like they are still good. His book called "Computer Networks" was the best textbook I had this semester. It's funny, informative and well written. More textbook writers should be like this guy.

Re:I'd pay a couple of $$$ to the Linus defense fu

[PsibrII]

Why bother playing fair ? just circulate a rumor that one of the offending SCO people has a stolen shi'ite relic in their office building.

Does this narrow it down to the kernel level?

[zakezuke]

I honestly don't know the number of projects Linus Torvalds has worked on, it's likely that sco doesn't either. For the time being i'm going to assume they are talking about something on the kernel level that *might be* SCO IP. A point that SCO has yet to prove.

Does anyone else have some sorta clue wether or not SCO is indeed talking about something on the kernel level, or possibly some rogue distrubution or program designed to give some level of compatability to SCO applications.

Also, as Novel has stated that they indeed do retain some, if not all the rights to the product that SCO licenses, wouldn't it be possible for Novel to License this product to anyone who is sited as being on SCO's list? $1.00 being the minium level of currency exchanged for a valid contract in america, unfortunatly, but based on the limited amount of my information on the subject, might very well be a viable solution.

"Dear SCO...
Thank you for bring to our attention that we need to license our product for fear of the possiblity that there might be some code that is protected under copyright laws. To this end, we have aquired a license from Novel for the sum of $1.00. Thank you very much an have an insperational day"

If we all donate like 1$

[Stonent1]

Could we the people just buy SCO so we can all piss on the board room table and throw the Unix code into a big fire? Darl, what a f'ing a-hole!

Re:If we all donate like 1$

[ddriver]

I'd donate fifty bucks to do that!

SCO sue Linus for a contractual violation w/ IBM?

[usurper_ii]

SCO has now said it isn't an IP issue or a copyright issue, but a contractual issue. Since Linus had no contract with SCO, how could they sue him for an alleged contractual violation that happened between SCO and IBM?

And the same goes for anything IBM may have leaked, and note I'm not saying they did...but if they did break a contract, how can anyone using a Linux product using such code be held liable for a contractual violation done by IBM, again, when SCO has now said it is contractual issue and not an IP issue or a copyright issue.

On one hand I guess we can be glad SCO are such morons, but on the other hand, can you imagine releasing a press release saying the issue was never about IP or copyrights when they are running around screaming about suing everyone because Linux may have some of their IP in it!!!

Go that way really fast, if something gets in your way, turn

No, it does not...

[Kjella]

The Company has an arrangement with Novell, Inc. ("Novell") in which it acts as an administrative agent in the collection of royalties for customers who deploy SVRx technology.

Bruce, if this is the case, is not SCO merely acting contractually responsible by attempting to collect royalties on Novell's behalf? In this event, it doesn't matter if it's thier IP, or not - it's their job to fetch money from it, and keep 5% of the take.

They can act as representatives like BSA for Microsoft, but they do not actually own the code in question. As for civil or criminal prosecution, I strongly doubt this agreement is sufficient to act as Novell's legal representative, nor are they pretending to be. OTOH, I have no idea what the legal definition of an "administrative agent" is in the US.

Kjella

Bring it on

[Anonymous Coward]

You panzy mutherfuckers. That's the only way this is going to get settled. I claim rights on my asshole, SCO better start paying me fees!!!!

damages?

[fydfyd]

IANAL but, even if true, in what way did Linus Torvalds benefit from infringement? What in the world would SCO hope to recover? Red Hat's revenue? That's pretty hard to take out of Torvalds' pocket.

I can't believe I got sucked into this silliness.

Send them my reguards

[streettech]

Send!!! This isn't too creative but if a few thousand slashdoters click my link they'll get the point. >: )

Re:Send them my reguards

[Anonymous Coward]

Mode parent up! Come ooon!

Re:Send them my reguards

[terrox]

ahahah, thats funny!! - yes click.

Can't they just re-license from Novell?

[Malor]

I don't see any language that claims that SCO has an exclusive right to relicense the UNIX IP, so presumably, IBM can merely approach Novell and get a license from the original holder. That won't stop the lawsuit from going forward (because the alleged contract violations will still have occurred), but IBM will still be able to ship all the AIX they want.

If Novell is as pissed at SCO as it appears, I'd suggest that they set up IBM as another vendor with the rights to sell the Unix IP, preferably so cheaply that SCO would derive no further benefit from their extortion.

It'd be even better if Novell released the UNIX IP to the public domain, but the stockholders would likely be unhappy at this.

drumroll please...

[Nephroth]

After extensive thread-reading I've come to the conclusion that nearly everything that could be said about SCO has been said but one and that is simply:

SCO can blow me.

That will be all.

Re:drumroll please...

[Flower]

No. There was a post requesting oral sex from SCO already.

But honestly, can someone explain why a person would willing accept a blowjob from Darl McBride? I mean after all these dumb ass comments he's made you do kinda get a vague idea of where his mouth has been....

BastardCard

[200_success]

Reading a BastardCard comment on Slashdot: Free

Legal fees for suing the poster of that parody: $25000

Being yet another pain-in-the-butt corporate citizen: Priceless

For amateurish lawsuits, there's SCO. For everything else, there's BastardCard.

Re:BastardCard

[EMH_Mark3]

Heh.. I find this one to be much better :)

Yes, tell that to the guy paying child support

[lysium]

I'm sure the responsible lads forced to pay for the child they dropped on someone would agree. Just to point out the fact that something that starts out as a real good time can end up a real serious responsibility. It's not quite a fair analogy, but it proves my point.

---------

SCO == Microsoft

[nsayer]

In the begining, Microsoft set up a division to fiddle with a Unix port. The division was eventually called SCO, and their product was Xenix. Microsoft then spun SCO off.

I'm sure it's not anything like the same SCO anymore, but I still find the irony delicious that just when Microsoft wants to spread FUD about Linux, SCO is the outfit that's actually doing it.

SCO Self-Contradictions

[geekinexile]

SCO's response to Novell was "we never said anything about copyrights or patents, our suit is about breach of contract." Yet now they threaten Linus with patent infringement... Each statement SCO issues is increasingly incoherent. The wheels are coming off pretty quickly. Expect the SCO board to make a change in management - soon.

SCO Sales Rep meets Red tha Nigga

[Anonymous Coward]

RtN: Hey sweety, welcome in our new one room home.
ScoSR: Beware, I represent the company that owns (drumroll) UNIX (TM/R/TOG)
RtN: Look hon, everybody, I say eeeeverybody know by now that that SCO stuff had a bad bad smell. Mesa knows. Now OCS!!!
ScoSR: (unsure) OSS what??!
RtN: Invert SCObag. Turn out.
ScoSR: (whimper, cry)
RtN: Or would you like to arrange a license first?
ScoSR: (weeping) EULA?
RtN: No, GNU/RASS!

Sorry, couldn't resist. Let's have a SCO free day tomorrow... please =)

Stock price chart

[g00set]

It may have had a dip today but check out what their stock has done since they started this patent mess in January 2003.

Re:I have been wondering about this for years.

[borgheron]

No, he did not. I cannot state that strongly enough. GNU/Linux is completely original.

Also, may I say, it shows something of your character that you would rip someone off like you just described for fame. No wonder you posted Anonymously.

Companies clone one anothers products all the time and there's nothing wrong with creating something compatible or something which competes.

Later, GJC

Tell me how much SCO wants for my 2 Linux boxes

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

And I'll gladly send it to Linus for his legal fund. And I suspect that I won't be the only one...

Re:Tell me how much SCO wants for my 2 Linux boxes

[Anonymous Coward]

1 MILLION dollars!

Linus admits guilt?

[Anonymous Coward]

"See, you not only have to be a good coder to create a system like Linux, you have to be a sneaky bastard too "
Linus Torvalds

Maybe they want Linus to take *this* job:

[Petronius]

No shit, posted yesterday: VP Engineering:

Job Description:
Oversee a major part of the organization's product development/engineering functions relating to software development, including software systems development, software applications development, and/or software QA engineering. This position reports directly to the CEO.

Job Responsibilities:

* Directs and coordinates planning and functions, including all phases of design, programming and operations.
* Reviews and evaluates project feasibility.
* Responsible for part of product development/engineering function relating to software development (e.g., applications, software systems, software QA).
* Formulates research and development programs, policies and procedures to maintain the organization's competitive position and profitability.
* Directs and coordinates research and development leading to new or improved products and processes.
* Establishes priorities for research and development projects, and monitors
expenditures and progress toward goals.
* Oversees the development of new product ideas, including the study and evaluation of their potential and practicality.
* Coordinates the initial stages of new product development, as well as modifications or design changes in existing product lines.
* May be responsible for a corporate engineering department or may be the engineering head for a division/group.

Job Requirements:

* Must have excellent verbal and written communications skills with the ability to analyze and solve complex problems. Must have excellent prioritization and organization skills.
* BS degree (MS degree preferred), and at least 7 years work experience in all phases of software development, including directing software engineers and developers.
* Operating Systems background; emphasis on UNIX systems preferred.

Education and/or Experience:
BS degree (MS degree preferred), and at least 7 years work experience in all phases of software development, including directing software engineers and developers.

Insider selling?

[whovian]

The CFO's last 5 sales, as reported by Y!
(http://biz.yahoo.com/t/76/82.html)

2003-04-08 4,100 SCOX Sale at $2.90 per share. (Proceeds of $11,890)
2003-04-08 4,100 SCOX Planned Sale (Estimated proceeds of $11,931)
2003-03-10 7,000 SCOX Planned Sale (Estimated proceeds of $21,420)
2003-03-10 7,000 SCOX Sale at $3.06 per share. (Proceeds of $21,420)

2002-07-18 165,000 SCOX Acquisition (Non Open Market)

Re:Insider selling?

[Flower]

Well, no wonder they're in so much trouble. Their CFO can't even properly short his own stock!

The SCO Unix to Linux Migration HOWTO

[Anonymous Coward]

How many people are there out there qualified to help every single SCO customer drop them like the poisonous snake they are? It's time to provide a migration path, the best documented one ever written. If apps have to be written to replace SCO's stuff, nows the time. Bury them!

Interesting statement from SCO...

[headbonz]

...given this SCO response to Novell's recent open letter. It says, and I quote,

"SCO® owns the contract rights to the UNIX® operating system. SCO has the contractual right to prevent improper donations of UNIX code, methods or concepts into Linux® by any UNIX vendor." (Italics mine).

They go on to say that:

"Copyrights and patents are protection against strangers. Contracts are what you use against parties you have relationships with. From a legal standpoint, contracts end up being far stronger than anything you could do with copyrights."

For those who won't take the time to read the Novell letter, Novell claims to hold all of the patents and copyrights for the Unix operating system, thus refuting SCO's claim to IP rights.

--

"Depth is to your life what dead air is to a talk show."

Thomas de Zengatita

Two words...

[Chordonblue]

Fuck

You

You choose the order. I hope these people burn. I'd actually dedicate real dollars to see to it in fact.

Re:Two words...

[Anonymous Coward]

Let those assholes know!

Re:Don't take this threat lightly! don't compare..

[Anonymous Coward]

Comparing IBM and BSD is like comparing a kitten with a friggin Lion. The patents, the money, etc...

Go ahead Darl...

[Anonymous Coward]

Make our day.

Darl really wants to open up the hornet's nest, doesn't he? Well, he'll get his corporate-deathwish if he sues Linus.

Re:Does this remind anybody else of the Jerky Boys

[Anonymous Coward]

lasuit (lô' soot) n : A litigation over Intellectual Property based on ridiculously frivolous grounds, dragging the complaintant further and further into the realm of stupidity. See: SCO.

SCO who?

Re:Does this remind anybody else of the Jerky Boys

[NoData]

Hahah. I wondered who else would think of this.

I think this was the bit where the "Saul Rosenberg" character (the whiny, New Yorky, bad-Woody-Allen-impression one) drove his motorbike and sidecar ("speedin' all up n' down da road") while drunk and smashed into a bunch people. Who are now about sue him. So he wants to sue them back. The lawyer politely explains that thats crazy, he doesn't handle "that type of case" (i.e. frivolous).

"Well, then can I sue YOU?"

"Sue ME?"

"Yeah."

"Why would you wanna sue ME?"

"For the damages you're causing me."

"The dam..! I'm causing you damages?! How?"

"The damages you're causing me now. I'm tryin' to get help here, and you're not ..."

"How am I causing you damages?!"

"And the people you represent...I'll sue them too."

"What do the people I represent have anything to do..!"

"Sue you, sue everybody!"

"But wha...? What do the people I rep..."

"The sidecar smashed into these people! I'm tryin' to explain to you!"

"What does that have to do with the people I represent?!!"

And so. This is from memory. Just thought I'd share.

Good memories.

SCO's stock price dropped fast today.

[Futurepower(R)]

SCO stock price is dropping fast.

Re:SCO's stock price dropped fast today.

[alsta]

HOLY SMOKES!

Re:SCO's stock price dropped fast today.

[Ark42]

http://quotes.nasdaq.com/quote.dll?page=charting&m ode=basics&intraday=off&timeframe=1y&charttype=&sp lits=off&movingaverage=none&lowerstudy=&comparison =&index=&drilldown=off&selected=SCOX

I would like to see it going down, but why do I see it going up in the long run recently? I hope I am just reading that chart wrong..

Re:SCO's stock price dropped fast today.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's off another $0.11 in after hours trading although the volume isn't particularly heavy.

Re:SCO's stock price dropped fast today.

[caouchouc]

Litigation is great for stock price if you can convince enough people that you stand a good chance of winning. Stockholders love the sudden cash infusion.

SCO's stock price rocketed with their releases about the case and news of forthcoming proof earlier this month. The investors must have thought that SCO's chances were good and that licensing revenue would start rolling in, so they bought in.

Tech investors have gotten slightly wiser after the bust, and they realize that threatening Linus is suicide because of how much support he and his kernel have. Even if you don't know what Linux is, it still looks bad: "If you don't license our crap, we're going to kill this puppy."

Now a lot of the investors are getting out while they're ahead, and SCO's stock has dropped over 24% to about $6.60 at the time of this post.

Re:SCO's stock price dropped fast today.

[Anonymous Coward]

If everyone who opposes this action would go out and buy SCO stock, and sell it immediatly for 1/2 of what they bought it for, the value for the owners and lawsuit speculators would dimish so much that SCO would eventually collapse.

Re:SCO's stock price dropped fast today.

[Anonymous Coward]

SCO's collapsing pretty fast all on their own.

Re:SCO's stock price dropped fast today.

[HiThere]

SCO's only down 10% so far today. I was expecting something more dramatic.

Re:SCO's stock price dropped fast today.

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe the whole point was to drive up the price of the stock with litigation that sounded good but had no substance ... then when it got high enough, sell ! maybe you're not seeing people bailing because they took a strike at Linus, maybe its the SCO corporate execs that see that its high enough and are taking the money and running ...

Re:SCO's stock price dropped fast today.

[Anonymous Coward]

you never talk to me anymore. you hate me. why done you call me anymore? why?

by the way, SCOX's losses was on high volume. Fucking loser CEO just fucked his shareholders.

Time for a Fresh Start?

[flipper9]

Maybe it is time to ditch older computing technology (that appears to be riddled with both old, out-dated code and "liability") and start on a new operating system from scratch. Linus and other kernel hackers (plus all of the other open source application developers) are you listening?

Re:Time for a Fresh Start?

[pair-a-noyd]

Screw them all.
I *LIKE* Linux as it is now.
It works *GREAT* for me and everyone I know that uses it.

Screw the assholes, let's just keep on. Use it and defy them to stop us. When they start going after the little guy for surfing the web and sending email with a little Linux box then they will be cutting their own throats.
The little guy always gets more sympathy than XYZ Mega-Corp.

People like the underdog...

Never test the wrath of a woman.....

[evenprime]

SCO execs should fear Linus's wife, not Linus. Tove has been a nation karate champion in Finland
six times.

Counter SUE Microsoft and SCO

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we need to sue MS & SCO of disrupting our time with false accusation.

Seems that McBride worked for Novell prior...

[Anonymous Coward]

to coming to work at SCO/Caldera june of last year. How weird is that, he was a vice-president at Novell as well. You would think he would have know about the contract with Novell prior to leaving..

Re:Seems that McBride worked for Novell prior...

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact a good majority of the executive officers of SCO came from Novell at one point.. Just check there latest DEF 14A filing at Nasdaq.

Re:Seems that McBride worked for Novell prior...

[AndroidCat]

I wonder how Ray Noorda feels about all of this?

Re:Does this remind anybody else of the Jerky Boys

[JamieF]

Better yet, la-la-la-suit.

Inside McBrides mind...from the article

[Anonymous Coward]

"We talked to those guys, but there was never one comment at any time that, 'Hey, we want to buy copyrights from you,' " McBride said. "It was very clear in our minds that we already purchased that."

I think that sums everything up nicely. Yes, you have contracts McBride, but in YOUR HEAD you believe what you want to!! Good luck with that, maybe some counseling? Because we all know, what is in your mind is legally binding right? Fucking asstards

Re:Inside McBrides mind...from the article

[AndroidCat]

Is McBride related to Commander McBragg? (They've got lyrics for Tux too.)

SCO's still alive

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow there's one tech company that should die. Talk about a crappy implementation of *nix. BLECH! 5-7 years ago I was doing DG-UX, HP-UX, AIX, IRIX, and SCO. God how I hate SCO I hate SCO never touch their piece of crap OS.

If you know anyone who owns SCO stock...

[GC]

then let them know the story and let them know that they should get out straight away.

Hell, if you know anyone with money, let them know the story and that they should start selling stock they don't own straight away.

If it will stop more stories on this site about a dead-company in it's last brain-dead spasms then I'm in.

You can't be serious

[Anonymous Coward]

It's well known that Linux 1.0 was amateurish garbage. If SCO claims that as its own intellectual property, then this deserves a place in the "News of the Wierd" columns. Are they suing Andrew Tannenbaum as well?

The next day at SCO...

[Sayten241]

Bob: Sir, there's a swarm of a couple hundred penguins out side wanting to see you
Steve: Well, what do they want?
Bob: Well, from what I can discern, they are demanding blood.

I don't know why SCO would come out and say this. It just pulls linux users together even closer on this issue, and this is just so obsurd that it can't be more than an idle threat anyhow.

Independent invention

[Ashtead]

IANAL, but I have been involved in a patenting process and subsequent litigation. There was talk about the concept of independent invention, which means that if someone comes up with a solution that someone else has a patent on, the situation isn't a clear-cut matter of infringement.

The next question to ask would be about the timing of this: Which specific functions and features of the kernel are under fire here? And when were these put into the kernel?

And finally, isn't SCO becoming engaged in barratry here?

Re:Independent invention

[BrokenHalo]

It seems to me that we've all heard a lot of noise from SCO, but I have yet to hear what they are claiming ownership to. Until they actually say what patents have been infringed and how, their claims are just hot air. If their claims have any validity, then why keep the details secret?

Re:Independent invention

[Eccles]

There was talk about the concept of independent invention, which means that if someone comes up with a solution that someone else has a patent on, the situation isn't a clear-cut matter of infringement.

Tell that to e-bay and the nonsense $35 million judgement against them. ...and someone send the judge the dictionary definitions of "novel" and "obvious."

Re:Independent invention

[sonofepson]

Barratry was a new term to me, so I looked it up.
According to Infospace.com (via opera dictionary lookup, handy feature that) it is:

1. fraud by a master or crew at the expense of the owners of the ship or its cargo.
2. the offense of frequently exciting and stirring up lawsuits and quarrels.
3. the purchase or sale of ecclesiastical preferments or of offices of state. Also,barretry.


Although the meaning in this context is #2. I suppose that since they are jumping headfirst into the middle of OS Holy Wars, #3 also suffices.

Re:Independent invention

[Anonymous Coward]

This is FUD, specialy since Bill offered to pay for stuff. M$ already mentioned Linux is a bigger threat, hell they lost Germany over it now they need a "big-gun" to prove they are the ultra OS. Mod me down if you want but I smell a whole lot of M$ on this one! Think about it, pay the CEO at SCO off with a couple of Mil, say the company is going down, so much as much noise about Linux on the way. If you believe me look at the other CEO's that get big bucks after the company goes down.

Re:Independent invention

[Anonymous Coward]

patents are public aren't they? They're even online. Why doesn't someone go take a look to see what SCO has?

Re:Independent invention

[Andy Dodd]

" IANAL, but I have been involved in a patenting process and subsequent litigation. There was talk about the concept of independent invention, which means that if someone comes up with a solution that someone else has a patent on, the situation isn't a clear-cut matter of infringement."

It is infringement. Period.

Now there IS a difference between "willful infringement" and just plain infringement. i.e. whether you KNEW from the start that you were infringing.

For willfull infringement, damages are usually tripled.

Re:Independent invention

[Midnight Thunder]

If their claims have any validity, then why keep the details secret?

This is like Bush claiming the USA knows that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, not showing anyone the evidence and then looking a bit sheepish after the war is over not beng able to find any (maybe time will prove otherwise, we will just have to see).

SCO is spreading FUD and is trying to blackmale everyone, unless they show evidence quickly the should retract their claims. Maybe SCO should be pressured into showing their evidence, or be issued a cease and decist, or whatever is appropriate in this case.

Doing a search for 'Caldera Systems' at the USPTO only shows one patent. I am having a little trouble finding patents held by SCO. If anyone can list the patents held by SCO and Caldera it would be very much appreciated.

Re:Independent invention

[Zylogue]

Can you say 'Fund Raising'?

Just like the new, more visible police presence everywhere you go. More tickets means more revenue.

This is just one way for a failing (failed) management team to try to save their collective backsides, by created more liquid worth within a dead horse.

just my $0.02

Z

Wow. Imagine...

[Anonymous Coward]

...a Beowulf cluster of fucks...(?)

or, um.. a Beowulf cluster fuck of... (?)

Overwhelming response

[Anonymous Coward]

But what is also important is that the free and open source communities appear strong so that no other company out there even contemplates this kind of crap. "Peace through strength" if you will.

Let's respond by creating a complete migration plan from SCO Unix to Linux, along with any necessary tools. If we can get a significant number of their customers to leave them, it will hurt them in a place they have to disclose to their customers ... the bottom line. We have the capacity to target anyone who would sue the open source community. We can make it very clear how much it will cost.

Re:Overwhelming response

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's respond by creating a complete migration plan from SCO Unix to Linux, along with any necessary tools.

That's actually a good idea, but how would you go about doing that? Serious question: Do you know of ANY company that actually uses SCO? I don't. I'm not willing to load SCO UNIX on any of my machines to find out what's needed for migration, either. So, how would you go about doing that?

Re:Overwhelming response

[HiThere]

That's a worthy endeavor... but don't expect SCO to last long enough to suffer from it. They seem to be headed not just for bankruptcy, but for the pen.

So every linux user, send Linux one dollar

[Vilorman]

And send SCO a bill for two dollars (plus postage).

-brian

This is NOT SCO's Doing

[llywrch]

At a time when any sane, intelligent individual would be lying low & planning a way out of this mess, McBride has decided to commit career suicide in the most visible & gory manner imaginable.

Most executives have no problem with McBride's attempt to sue IBM for alleged property theft -- it's a stunt many of them have wet dreams of pulling off. And many have no problem with the fact he failed in this attempt. What I expect almost all of them have a problem with was that he didn't do his homework: he knew Novell still owned enough of the UNIX intellectual property treasure box to undercut his case, & failed to get that part in hand before he went hunting for bear. (And the Open Group also happened to own the UNIX trademark & standard, which further dilutes the SCO Group's lawsuit.)

At this rate, McBride better hope he'd got a fat severence package from his employer & that it's well-sheltered from the SCO Group's eventual bankrupcy. Because not only has he just ended his career as a corporate executive (PHB or otherwise), he's working on limiting his other career options.

Obviously he's definitely not getting a job at IBM or any other company that does work for IBM -- & that covers a lot of potential employers. And showing that he failed to make this deal work isn't going give any other potential employer -- either in the high-tech industry or outside of it -- a warm feeling about him. This loose talk about suing Torvalds is only going to alienate more potential employers.

Threatening to sue Linus Torvalds at this point, frankly, suggests that McBride is mentally unstable. Torvalds has stated many times that this whole lawsuit is barely on his radar, & has only an off-the-cuff opinion about the whole matter. And even if McBride could prove Torvalds intentionally harmed his company, how much money could he get out of him? More than a few hundred thousand dollars?

I wouldn't be surprised if McBride appears in public later this week rolling a pair of ball-bearings in his hand & threatening to sue an unnamed SCO Group employee for stealing the strawberries from the company kitchen.

Geoff

Re:This is NOT SCO's Doing

[walt-sjc]

You obviously don't understand the executive hiring process. The bigger the failure you are, the bigger the paycheck at the next company because you MUST have learned from your mistakes.

Extortion?

[Anonymous Freak]

The comment "unless more companies start licensing..." seems to be dangerously close to extortion to me. "If you don't start giving me money, I'll beat you up." Sounds remarkably similar.

If anyone has a recording, or knows of multiple witnesses who have heard this phrase uttered, I say McBride needs to be reported to the police for his practices.

The problem with Linux..

[SystematicPsycho]

The problem with Linux is that it was too sucessful, and still is. In this regard SCO wants to ride on the high of Linux's success by dragging it through the courts. Had Linux not been so successful then SCO wouldn't be in this mess, it is as simple as that.

Re:The problem with Linux..

[jedidiah]

Puleeeze. SCO isn't worthy to be Sun's towel boy.

SCO was NEVER a respectable Unix. Even before 1995, it was a joke. After that, it was simply irrelevant. Between the BSD's, Linux & Solaris there was simply no point.

Sun ultimately did SCO in, not Linux.

Once Linux got rolling, SCO couldn't even give away their product.

Re:The problem with Linux..

[SystematicPsycho]

Err I never said SCO was a respectable UNIX. What is questionable is the timing of all this, why now? Ultimately it goes back to SCO and the situation their in - obviously someone in SCO has said well there might be something to gain by going after linux and had linux not been successful then that suggestion would probably never of been made.

Could this be a silicon Cold War? - IBM and Microsoft, the super powers fighting it with SCO vs Linux. (just hyping it up some more)

moron might litigate for pateNTdead use..

[Anonymous Coward]

& unauthorized re-unbaling of the brand gnu eyecon0meter(gpl), buy payper liesense stock markup frauds.

they blew the stinking thing off the scale with their Godless softwar gangster last gasper frivilous litigators.

lookout bullow. consult with yOUR creator. stand/buy?

Microsoft

[tiny69]

While everyone's attention is on the circus being created by SCO, someone needs to keep an eye on MS. I can see them using this whole affair to backdoor the Linux community while noone is watching. (If MS is not already playing SCO like a puppet...)

Perhaps M$ pulling strings behind the scenes

[vim001]

read this ... http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,110868,0 0.asp

SCO Will Kill Puppy

[suntse]

In a press release today, the SCO corporation said, that if more people don't buy SCO Unix, they will kill a puppy.

tazmanian dust devils

[Anonymous Coward]

we've had similar problems tracking those things.

What SCO is doing wrong.

[John Meacham]

Stock Price Manipulation.

A False lawsuit designed to manipulate their stock price rather than being an honest attempt to win is illegal. The SEC should get involved and investigate. This would also make their managers personally liable for securities fraud if it was found that SCO never had any standing and knew it.

Re:I too have been very critical of Linus' Apathy

[attobyte]

Here is my take on it:

Linus has said that RMS is the Pholisopher (sp?) and he is the engineer. The engineer shouldn't have a side it is RMS that should stand up. He is the one that came up with GNU and wrote the GPL licenses. Linus just used the licenses. I think Linus takes a good stance by not saying anything because he did create this community but he is not the leader of it.

Scorched Earth analogy

[deek]

Does anyone remember a feature of Scorched Earth, when you defeat another player, and they suddenly spew forth about 2 or 3 volatile attacks before they finally perish?

This sooo reminded me of SCO and their situation for some reason.

DeeK

Re:Scorched Earth analogy

[rnturn]

``Does anyone remember a feature of Scorched Earth, when you defeat another player, and they suddenly spew forth about 2 or 3 volatile attacks before they finally perish?''

Heh. The market's dealt a severe blow to SCO so this is their volley of ``volatile attacks'', eh? Makes you wonder if there hasn't been a meeting that went something like:

D.M.: I remember a game where, if someone defeated you, you could unleash some furious attacks before you finally died. Maybe we could base our legal strategy on that.

D.B.: (rolling eyes) Yah, sure. I think we can put together something along those lines. For example -- and this is just off the top of my head -- you could do a letter campaign, heck, you could even sue Torvalds. Or you...

D.M.: YES! YES! I LOVE IT! That's EXACTLY what I want to do!

D.B.: Wait. I was just throwing out an idea or two and...

D.M.: No, you wait. Just who's payin' who around here. Let's start with the letters. Have a draft on my desk by tomorrow.

Wacky? Sure. But no more so than what we've seen in the press in the past few weeks.

warning against being hit with...

[Anonymous Coward]

flying puppIE poopIE, aka the last assets of the felonious payper liesense bullshipping industrIE.

Stop it!

[Arandir]

This is just too funny. Dr. Pepper spewed out my nose and my hernia stitches just opened up. Stop the levity before I piss my pants...

Re:Stop it!

[Bull999999]

Just wipe yourself with SCO branded toilet paper made from 100% pure shredded incriminating SCO documents. I'm pretty sure their tp will be of better quality than their software because they specialise in BS.

Patent war? IBM is going to beat them silly

[darkheavy]

Similarly, if Linus introduced into the kernel either his own code or code donated by someone else (IBM) that implements any algorithms for which SCO holds patents, even if the code in question comprises completely original implementations of those algorithms, then by redistributing the kernel without a license from SCO, Linus is infringing on SCO's patents.

Ok. It have been stated already that SCO has no patents nor IP related to their claims. They do have code, but that sale didn't involve the IP nor the patents involved in the development of that code.

The really funny thing is that IBM, HP, Compaq (formerly Digital), Novell et all do have patents related to UNIX (and I'll bet they have patents over H2O methodus and aparatus). If SCO wants to get into that game they're going to suffer. A lot.

Re:Patent war? IBM is going to beat them silly

[walt-sjc]

Just a thought, but SCO most likely has it's own patents independant of anything they got (or didn't REALLY get) from Novell.

Re:Patent war? IBM is going to beat them silly

[Anonymous Coward]

Again, so why are they talking about "enterprise scalability"? They have patents for technology they've never sold? They have a portfolio to match IBM's in court? FAT CHANCE. For any infringement SCO could find by IBM, IBM could likely find a dozen infringements in SCO's "products."

Re:Patent war? IBM is going to beat them silly

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah IBM is a gorilla in patents. This is inside industry info but once an "enterprise" software company gets to a certain revenue level, IBM comes in and says 'you're infringing these 3 patents'. The company spends 3 months documenting how they are not. Repeat cycle until company agrees to pay IBM some kind of recurring fees to avoid being sued into the ground.

Re:Patent war? IBM is going to beat them silly

[MWelchUK]

You'd think that wouldn't you?

This says otherwise!

Re:Patent war? IBM is going to beat them silly

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM have a patent on having numbers and letters on the screen at the same time, go on IBM, whip out out and beat SCO read the head with it!

It's patent death match time!

I really hate SCO.

[Anonymous Coward]

I also hate every executive suit it employs. I wonder what the engineers and programmers are thinking about their wonderful leaders right now. Probably every self-respecting technical staff member is working full time on his or her resume, trying to get the hell out of that insane asylum.

Is it my imagination...

[dcavanaugh]

or does the Caldera logo bear a striking resemblence to Mickey Mouse? Go get 'em Disney!

WAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!

[Theovon]

Mommy! Linus stole my toys! Tell him to give them back to me!

(I won't bother to mention that I got those toys from Novell in the first place.)

McBride

[Alomex]

SCO is just like the depressed patient standing on the ledge of the building threatening to jump, when what they really need is to be rescued.

The threat about suing Linus is just the latest nutso move. It can only be interpreted as a cry from help from a mentally unstable McBride.

Where are the snipers?

[ProfessionalCookie]

There's gotta be a few good snipers in the slashdot crowd. If someone is holding a gun to your penguin are you just gonna sit around. My bet is that by the time Darl McNugget is in the news as dead SCO stock will have hit a new low.

After all, it is your baby we're talking about here.

Re:Where are the snipers?

[HiThere]

To take him that seriously, you'd need to believe that he had a chance of winning. Or at least of being a serious inconvenience.

As it is, it looks more like a pr event. Yeah, he's trying to make it negative publicity, but if he doesn't make a reasonable showing in court, that's not how it's going to work out. And I don't think he has a case.

Re:Where are the snipers?

[ProfessionalCookie]

Yeah you're right- I've just been playing Ghost Recon all night.

In other news...

[necrognome]

The SCO network has been chosen as the site of this year's Annual Script-Kiddie DDoS Challenge!

I'm sure that Novell and IBM will

[The Analog Kid]

gladly help Linux out if SCO decides to sue him, listen SCO knows they've lost when Novell made their statement, now they want to go out with a bang.

ridiculous

[Tuxinatorium]

SCO is a bunch of IP-weilding terrorists.

fight back!

[krokodil]

Most modern Unix-like OS are tend to relay heavily on open source software. SCO included. We can fight back.

Put code in popular free/open source packages which cause compilation/execution problems on SCO Unix.

Do not port and test free/open source packages to SCO Unix.

Sourceforge to remove SCO machines from their compile farm.

Let us see who would want to use SCO Unix then, without BASH, APACHE, LESS, SSH, etc.

not userland code, apparently

[JDizzy]

If SCO sues Linus, then that would mean the offending code is kernel code. Linux only holds control over the kernel, and the central source repository. That at least narrows down the scope from anywhere in a Linux based distro, to some place insidce a Linux kernel, or kernel module. You can never unilaterally blaim all off linux for beign in violation. In reality it's only just a few lines of code from the source file(s). The industry would simply splice out the offending code with a replacment. So what SCO is apparently wantign to do is tell everyone to stop using linux , or be sued later, and not telling what part of linux is the offendign part. Revelinng the part of the offending code would remove the ability to sue everyone under the sun aspect of the law suit, which seems to be very lulkrative for SCO.

Will they sue Mother Nature?

[curious.corn]

... after all without IBM's code injection she would have never developed such refined DNA code in so little time! Remember, they're in it only to protect the countless hours commited by Bell engineers to the ancient source; not the money!

Get your story straight, SCO

[Unregistered]

I thought it was init that SCO claimed the rights too. As linus only maintains the kernel, how can they even CLAIM damages. Or is it the BS over multiprocessor support and other things SCO can't do themselves?

Re:Get your story straight, SCO

[kazbah]

The threat to sue Linus is over patent infringemnt. If (big if as Novell claims that SCO doesn't own the patents) SCO has software patents that cover portions of UNIX that Linux copies or emulates, even if it is not the same source code, there could still be patent infringement. This is, more or less, one of the reasons that GIF files were dropped as file formats from open source graphics programs - there was a patent that was being defended (valid or not it doesn't really make a difference) for the compression method used in GIF files. Rather than continue using the file format and end up in muddy patent law, it was dropped and PNG files became the defacto replacement. IIRC, none of the open source software used any code from the original compression libraries - just the methodology - but that could still infringe on the (stupid) patent.

Correction ... selling

[Skapare]

A more correct analogy would be a boat owner trying to sell a sinking ... or sunken ... ship. Or a fallen bridge. He's just trying to find a way to bail out without a total loss on his stock options.

dumbasses

[mlerner]

You can't sue the creator of your product, he can sue you so watch out f*****s

Ludicrous speed now!

[osguru]

Everyone is just about in agreement, including the press (even the bad ones), that this lawsuit has zero merit.

Rather than backpedal - SCO is just adding to the fire by now talking about going after Linus.

What could, or is, the real motivation behind this/these kind of stupid lawsuits? What does SCO really hope to gain from this - besides a quick settlement which isn't going to happen as IBM has already said.

Is this just a simple case of SCO just being pissed that they lost market share - or are the patients really running the asylum there?

didn't Novell just say that they didn't...

[Anonymous Coward]

...sell SCO any patents, *and* SCO has been asking for them, but didn't get them (implying that SCO *knows* they don't have the patents)?

"Now we're going to hit you with this big sti... oh, never mind"

What exactly are they doing? Seems like spectacular corporate suicide to me.

I propose we coin a new term: to "SCO" meaning to shoot yourself in both feet.

Re:I'd pay a couple of $$$ to the Linus defense fu

[cabbey]

But anyway, I'd pay a couple of bucks, especially if we get a Pay-Per-View event of Linus kicking McBride upside the head.

Wouldn't that be his wife's job? Even if not, it would be better entertainment.

two days later...

[primus_sucks]

unless more companies start licensing SCO's property, he may also sue Linus Torvalds

two days later...

Oh crap, Linus owns the Linux trademark. Oh well, let's sue him anyway.

1-888-GO-LINUX

[osguru]

SCO should sue itself.

http://www.sco.com/company/feedback/index.html

Re:1-888-GO-LINUX

[Anonymous Coward]

Let those fuckers know how you feel! Send it!

His lips are moving.

[Anonymous Coward]

From this article, "Hired gun David Boies can't understand why no one likes his client. All SCO Group did was file a billion-dollar lawsuit against IBM claiming the computer giant was sharing code secrets with open source developers. Somehow, everyone thinks SCO is in it for the money and out to thwart Linux."

Gee, your client sent threatening letters to 1500 users indicating that they might be vulnerable too. It has threatened to sue Redhat and SuSE. And now it is threatening to sue Linus Torvalds. Mr. Boies, your client is in it for the money and out to thwart Linux.

Re:Now that's journalism: Linus lawsuit in last li

[Anonymous Coward]

Linus isn't really that important in the IT world. Nor is Linux. Most pros base their systems around BSD or Windows NT anyway.

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like this guy is drunk in a bar throwing empty bottles at all comers.

We'll laugh when it's over.

OSI Position Paper on the SCO-vs.-IBM Complaint

[rshimizu12]

Heres more proof that SCO's claims are bogus at best: OSI Position Paper on the SCO-vs.-IBM Complaint (http://www.opensource.org/sco-vs-ibm.html) "SCO/Caldera 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/Caldera neglects to mention that those rights had been substantially impaired before its acquisition of the ancestral Bell Labs source code. There was a legal action in 1992-1993, in which Unix Systems Laboratories and Novell (SCO/Caldera's predecessors in interest) sued various parties including the University of California at Berkeley and Berkeley Systems Design, Inc. for alleged copyright infringement, trade secret disclosures, and trademark violations with regard to the release of substantial portions of the 4.4BSD operating system[36]. 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. The University of California then threatened to countersue over license violations by AT&T and USL. It seems that from as far back as before System V Release 4 in 1985, the historical Bell Labs codebase had been incorporating large amounts of software from the BSD sources. The University's cause of action lay in the fact that AT&T, USL and Novell had routinely violated the terms of the BSD license by removing license attributions and copyrights. The exact terms of final settlement, and much of the judicial record, were sealed at Novell's insistence. The key provisions are, however, described in Twenty Years of Berkeley Unix: From AT&T-Owned to Freely Redistributable, [McKusick99]. Only three files out of eighteen thousand in the distribution were found to be the licit property of Novell (and removed). The rest were ruled to be freely redistributable, and continue to form the basis of the open-source BSD distributions today. 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. If the current lawsuit proceeds, justice requires that the court and settlement records in the AT&T-vs.-Berkeley lawsuit be unsealed, with a view to determining the degree to which SCO/Caldera's IP claims are nullified by the results."

Isn't barratry illegal?

[faedle]

bar-ra-try - The offense of persistently instigating lawsuits, typically groundless ones.

Re:Isn't barratry illegal?

[Flower]

So far they've only filed one suit against IBM. This kind of contradicts the defination of persistently if you ask me.

Bury them instead

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's get all of their customers off of SCO's products and onto open source.

Just another attempt to keep the reaper away.

[locutus2k]

This seems to me to be nothing more than yet another attempt to keep SCO in business. They have been doing just about anything to stay afloat. Also, notice how they didn't really make this big of a deal out of it until Linux started becoming more interesting to the corporate world? Now, that something even close to UNIX is starting to chip away at the Evil Empire, they are doing their best to get some of the pie.

This entire argument isn't about IP, SCO just wants some of the money that Big Blue is making off of this.

Kudos to them for trying, but I hope the judicial system takes their blinders off long enough to realize what is happening.

Fools

[Cybo2002]

haha, if SCO sued Linus, imagine how many rebellious anti-social geeks (hence, us?) will be after them! :D

Welcome to America

[Crashmarik]

Your'e a giant failure your business is being out innovated by agile competitors, what do you do ? Innovate and invest in improving your product ? Nahhh thats too much like work spend your money on lawyers trying to sue everyone you don't like out of existence.

Why aren't you going to see spammers sued out of existence ? Lawyers won't do it, professional courtessey.

Put up or shut up.

[DdJ]

Has anyone seen any reference to any patent they might be talking about? What current patents to they claim exist that might fall into this category?

First, remember that basic patents on core Unix functionality are things like the setuid patent. Dennis Ritchie filed for the setuid patent in 1973, got it in 1979, and when he got it explicitly put it essentially into the public domain. SCO can't sue over that sort of thing.

Second, remember how old the core of Unix is. The patent mentioned above is from 1973! It was granted in 1979! What's the lifespan of a patent? Less than 20 years. If it were 20 years from the date on which it was granted, it would still have expired in 1999, a few years ago.

So, what the hell are they talking about? Can anyone give one example of a Unix patent that Linux might be violating? I haven't seen any, anywhere.

Law 101

[Anonymous Coward]

Typically, lawyers sue people (or companies) that have lots and lots of money. Sueing people who don't have lots and lots of money doesn't make sense unless the intent is to scare them into or out of doing something. Linus does not have lots and lots of money. He's employed by Transmeta, a hardware company. He's an engineer like a lot of other engineers in America. SCO and its private backers are trying to scare Linux users out of using Linux and are trying to scare the main developer out of developing Linux.

IMO, this is looking more and more like a MS backed effort to smear the Linux kernel project and the GNU/FSF movement by calling into question their code and treatening to sue FOSS developers. I hope to God that it fails and the crooks behind it are exposed for who they are and what they stand for.

Linux is the best thing to happen to computing since the Commodore 64. It brought the fun back to computing and gave users, as well as businesses, a choice on Intel hardware.

Try not to laugh at their stock valuation

[Dagmar d'Surreal]

SCOX ticker through MarketWatch

Once you've looked at the daily (yes that view is just today) expand to the week and then month and tell me if quite possibly the SEC may be taking a look at whether or not the CEO of SCO is deliberately making these superfluous announcements in order for someone to be cashing in on the entirely temporary jumps in their pathetic value.

criminalisation of the art of computer programming

[cdn-programmer]

Granted this is civil... but look at what Adobe and the US criminal justice system tried to pull off with Dimitris Sklyrov. IMHO these issues are related because the legal system is now being employed to harass and threaten programmers. Any one of us can be a target. 10 years ago we could pursue our careers with very little threat of a law suit. Today - if one has a success then the question becomes how many times over will we be sued.

The whole issue illustrates how fucking preposterous the US legal system has become and other countries are planning to follow suit. Of course we also have countries like Norway and the issue of the DeCSS and Joh Johanson and I have no idea what label should be stapled to this mess. It would be simpler to just take the lawyers involved out behind the barn and get rid of them! But the horrible thing is that the victims of this perverted system are expected to finance it. Next time you are in a courtroom ask yourself of all the people in there - which ones are not being paid?

Here we have a threat to sue an individual (Linus) because he used his own ideas... ideas that apparently an unrelated individual manages to patent in a country (USA) that the person (Linus) doesn't live in.

Then after this flight of stoopidity - people come forth and suggest they will donate to the defense fund. Of course - this simply subsidies the US lawyers who collectively created the problem in the first place.

The bottom line is that this is getting right fucking crasy! Somehow we need to figure out how to counter this.

There are two sets of laws here that are working against us. First is patent law which as it is currently implemented has the following consequences. 1) if you own a valid patent and a large company wants to use what you invented - they will simply claim your patent is invalid and bankrupt you in the courts. 2) if they own an invalid patent then you cannot afford to fight them in the courts. Thus - you cannot do your job. You cannot pusue your career. Here we have intellectual feudalism where the sherrif of cyber notingham tries to turn you into a peasant.

[read up on Leo Farinsworth if you doubt this - he invented television and died a broken man - bankrupt as well - because RCA fucked him over in the courts]

Then the second set of laws are in the same group as the DMCA where we sometimes face criminal charges because perhaps someone wants to play a CD or a DVD and does not want to use software from Microsoft to do it.

-----------

Patents are only valuable to large companies and they are only valuable because they can be used to restrain trade. Given this - large companies pool their patents in a defacto free patent zone. Those on the inside are more or less protected and do not run the risk of litigation. Anyone on the outside is fair game. What a wonderful little oligopoly eh?

Maybe "we" need to start playing this game. Suppose we organised an Open Source Patent Association and paid a feee like $100 bux to join it. This would create a pool of funds whereby the "best" ideas in the open source community could be patented. All members of the association would recieve protection and access to any and all patents. Any closed source shop would be billed or face court action -or- have to pool their patents in order to join.

Since most of the great ideas are invented in the open source community - in short order this association might have a rather wicked sheaf of patents and this could be used to ensure that members of the open source community cannot become victims of bad faith litigation.

The "shoot the dog" threat - smells like MS...

[SysKoll]

SCO is saying: "License our stuff or we sue Linus".

This reminds me eerily of an ad billboard posted in my town by a local radio station. It had a guy pointing a gun at a dog and a caption saying "Listen to us or we shoot the dog".

Every dog lover around here protested and they hastily changed the billboard to say "Listen to us or we shoot the DJ", which didn't raise any protest. Pet lovers must hate humans.

I guess Linus should be glad he can muster as much sympathy as a dog!

Seriously, it's very sad SCO has to scoop that low. They really must be getting desperate. What next? "Pay us or we'll kill your horse"?

In his latest column, Robert X Cringely says he wouldn't be surprised to learn that a tentacle of the Microsoft poulp is behind this whole lamentatble affair. Neither would I. It does smack of an MS PR job, complete with outrageously bogus claims and botched execution.

-- SysKoll

Re:The "shoot the dog" threat - smells like MS...

[SN74S181]

That guy who appropriated the 'Robert X. Cringely' moniker (it was used by multiple writers until he glommed onto it to milk it for his livelihood) is still publishing his screed?

Re:The "shoot the dog" threat - smells like MS...

[SysKoll]

Yes, he his. Not bad columns either. They're sometimes way off the mark but then, even our well-researcher cough Slashdot posts cough are sometimes a bit wacky, aren't they? :-)

Jerry Pournelle (of Byte fame) has commented a few times about the succession of writers who used that byline and he even had a whack at it, apparently.

Surely if you're gonna sue somebody....

[Boss, Pointy Haired]

..you can't go making throw-away comments about it in a PRESS RELEASE of all things and then expect to be taken seriously in a court of law later.

Feeding the Jackals - The Bugroff Licence.

[refactored]

Markets? Law? Nah! This is about feeding the jackals (Lawyers) and maybe a bit of M$ PR on the side.

I wish I didn't see the future so clearly sometimes, but I wrote the following a good few years back...

The "No problem Bugroff" license.

Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation devised, in addition to some marvelous software, the GNU General Public License (GPL for short). Or the CopyLeft it is sometimes called.

It is quite a revolutionary document, using the "copyright" tool to to protect your right to use free software.

Unfortunately using copyright to protect free software is a lot like using a Jackal to guard the hens.

In fact, various inconveniences relating to this have resulted in modifications such as the LGPL (Library General Public License) and more recently the NPL (Netscape Public License)

I call these matters mere inconveniences, the real damage will occur when the Jackal's, (sorry, I mean lawyers), actually get to test the GPL in court for the first time.

Thus enter my version.

Its very simple.

Entirely consistent.

Completely unrestrictive.

Easy to apply.

The "No problem Bugroff" license is as follows...

The answer to any and every question relating to the copyright, patents, legal issues of Bugroff licensed software is....

Sure, No problem. Don't worry, be happy. Now bugger off.

All portions of this license are important..

• "Sure, no problem." Gives you complete freedom. I mean it. Utterly complete. A bit of a joke really. You have complete freedom anyway.
• "Don't worry, be happy." Apart from being good advice and a good song, it also says :- No matter what anyone else says or does, you still have complete freedom.
• Now bugger off. The only way to get rid of pushy Jackals is to ignore them and not feed them. The GPL is just begging somebody to take it to court. Can't you just see it. Exactly the same thing that happened when some twit (not Linus) registered Linux as his own personal trademark. People got upset, started a fund, and hired, off all ruddy things, a Jackal to try and defend the chicken! Who really benefits from this trademark / patent / copyright thing anyway? The lawyers. Who made it up in the first place? The lawyers.

OK so the last part of the license sounds a bit harsh, but seriously folks, if you are a :-

• Lawyer asking these legalese questions... You should go off and learn an honest trade that will actually contribute to life instead of draining it.
• Programmer asking these legalese questions... You have amazingly powerful tools in your hands and mind, use them to ask and answer the worthwhile questions of life, the universe and everything. Stop mucking about with such legal nonsense and get back to programming.
• User/reader asking these question... Don't worry. Go off and be happy. Have fun. Enjoy what has been created for you.

Linus Legal Defense Fund (LLDF)

[SphynxSR]

Does the EFF have a LLDF? If not quick register the site. I would but my network wouldn't handle the load.

Monkeys behind?.

[Anonymous Coward]

SCO to Linux - I'll get you my pretty, and your little dog too!

Novell to SCO - Shaa, and monkeys might fly out of my butt!

Linux to Novell - We're not worthy! We're not worthy!

OK, you just hit a pet peeve of mine.

[Anonymous Coward]

The fella in front of me said:

"Like being able to append --help to a command if the man page is missing?"

Of course the reason the man page
is usually missing in the first
place is because the GNU folk are
being arrogant bastards and making
fucking "info" pages instead! Yeah,
like I said, pet peeve. I miss the
time when you could expect a man
page for everything.

Re:OK, you just hit a pet peeve of mine.

[The_Dougster]

I agree. Those "info" pages truly suck. They seem to have been some half-assed attempt at hypertext which went horribly wrong.

Even still, the --help thing will usually give you the latest options for a utility even if the man page is out of date. AFAIK --help is a totally GNU thing, don't expect that on your grandfather's UNIX. There are just tons of cool features in GNU's implementation of the utilities which are completely lacking in other UNIXes (like SCO). After you get used to GNU, going back to OpenServer is like a boot to the head.

Besides, the man pages are rarely installed on SCO boxes at all because nobody is expected to really use them. They mainly run serial terminals and some business app programmed in BASIC. Very low-tech. SCO OpenServer can barely run Apache, and it is buggy as hell.

Re:OK, you just hit a pet peeve of mine.

[RevSmiley]

Fuck I would settle for a CURRENT info page.

No, there is always *BSD

[AHumbleOpinion]

... If SCO were to actually win a favorable judgement at trial, it could very easily diminish Linus' ability to "program cool stuff that interests him" ...

No, there is always *BSD. Genetic diversity is a good thing, even in Open Source.

Just call him...

[Anonymous Coward]

Douche McBag. Kinda catchy, no?

We haven't yet begun to show our wrath...

[ikluft]

But if they harass Linus, it's travel time! I have some vacation time available at work and would show up with other protesters to picket outside SCO's headquarters if that helps put some pressure on them. We can keep piling on the pressure from different directions if they want to play a PR game. We'd make sure the local media in Salt Lake have enough advance notice to get their cameras warmed up while we're enroute.

Salt Lake City is easily accessible by air (a Delta Airlines hub.) It's a 2-hour non-stop flight from any of the SF Bay Area's three major airports. Or a 1-1/2 day drive if you prefer a road trip.

Re:We haven't yet begun to show our wrath...

[Anonymous Coward]

How about a bunch of people travel of there to start a riot and beat the shit out of everyone in a suit???

I *LIKE* that idea...

Re:We haven't yet begun to show our wrath...

[Frobnicator]

I live and work a few blocks from there, and have met several people who worked there.

That is, they USED to work there. They left a while before all this mess happened.

Just tell me when the Official Slashdot Protest is, and I'll take a day off. :)

frob

Re:We haven't yet begun to show our wrath...

[PsibrII]

Picketing wastes a whole lot of manpower. Much more effective to map out the habits of your mark, and have a few others help in roughing them up a little.

Corel makes Painter. I was

[alfredo]

planning on buying it, but I have changed my mind. I do not want any of their products on my computer.

Re:Corel makes Painter. I was

[Tokerat]

Not Corel, Caldera.

Re:Corel makes Painter. I was

[lspd]

Different company, but don't buy it anyway. After an influx of cash from Microsoft, Corel dropped all of it's Linux development. Their winelib based products were left in a very buggy state, customers were left to just deal with it, and their Wine development team went off to start Transgaming.

Corel Draw somewhat works on my Debian Stable desktop system. Wordperfect 2000 barely works on the same system. Neither comes close to being usefully reliable though, and there are reliable alternatives to both products.

Corel Draw may have more features than OpenOffice.org when it comes to vector graphics, but what's the point when it crashes all the time? If someone would recompile the damn thing with a newer winelib, GCC and GlibC...and do away with the custom font server...it might be something more than a novelty item. As is, it's a waste of money.

IANAL

[Anguo]

> I ANAL

What does I ANAL mean?
I mean, seriously.
and YMMV?

Re:IANAL

[pirodude]

I am not a lawyer
Your milage may vary

Re:IANAL

[Hanzie]

IANAL: I am not a lawyer
YMMV: Your mileage may vary

I'd add hyperlinks, but british telecom has patented them.

Re:IANAL

[Anonymous Coward]

I Am Not A Lawyer

Your Milage May Vary

Re:IANAL

[Anonymous Coward]

What does IANAL mean?

I am an asshole.

and YMMV?

Your Mother May Vomit.

Linus is right

[73939133]

Linus didn't copy anything, there are no patents, and he was under no contract with SCO. SCO doesn't have a legal claim, end-of-story. If they cook up some bogus claims then one can address them when they actually come forward with them. Until then, there is no point in wasting any time on it. Slashdot should probably stop posting stories about this as well. It's of no relevance to anything.

Linus should cheer up immensely....

[Anguo]

I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left."


Margaret Thatcher

Nope

[mark-t]

BSD had the jump on Linux way back in the day but has less marketshare now because of the same BS that happened with the AT&T suit oh so long ago - and we ended up winning that suit!

Nope. Linux and FreeBSD came out at very nearly the same time (Linux actually had a head start on it by just under a year, iirc). Linux was slow in development at first (although it was being incrementally improved with a new release of the kernel almost constantly), but had many features that made it work on common platforms of the time, such as the ability to load and run on a machine with less than 4Meg, the ability to share a partitioned hard drive with other operating systems, and a floating point emulation package. When BSD was introduced, it had networking, and blew the shit out of Linux at the time in terms of sheer functionality.... but the problem was that it A> required more memory to run (which was very expensive at the time) B> required more hard drive space because it didn't have shared libraries (also very expensive), C> required a floating point coprocessor (another luxury feature that many did not have), and D> could not share a physical hard disk with another OS (a limiting factor for people that still wanted the option of using DOS). These limitations were eventually overcome in FreeBSD, but by the time most of them were, Linux had come a long way towards catching up on some of the details that had made BSD originally so clearly superior. Most people who were using Linux at the time didn't see a compelling reason to switch, and new people were hearing about Linux because of its growing popularity.

It is important to realize that the first users of Linux were university students, not corporations... who did not have thousands of dollars to go and spend on the hardware that BSD required, so Linux "won" the war merely by operating on the hardware that its users at the time could afford. Had BSD, when it first came out, worked on the exact same hardware as Linux, I suspect things would have turned out very differently.

Re:Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

just to add to your point -- Linux was designed on and for a typical "whitebox" i386 PC clone machine, while *BSD was essentially ported over from the VAX minicomputer. Furthermore, the UNIX culture at the time was heavily biased towards custom workstations from Sun and others.

The upshot was that Linux would work with standard ATA controllers, and soon developed things like PPP/SLIP support. BSD for a long time expected a custom workstation configuration and expected SCSI and a fulltime ethernet connection.

This culture has pretty much continued, with very aggressive support in Linux for new consumer hardware, and much more conservative 'workstation'/'server' support in BSD.

how appropriate

[spurious cowherd]

I *knew* there was a reason the Calder^H^H^H^H SCO logo resembled Mickey Mouse

Aside from the obvious; they are exhibiting Disneyesque behaviour

But I don't think they own a Senator

Sad

[Dr Reducto]

he may also sue Linus Torvalds, who is credited with inventing the Linux operating system, for patent infringement.
This is sad that you can be sued for even being associated with the creation of something that a corporation doesn't like.

Implied license

[yerricde]

You don't have to copy anything to infringe on a patent.

However, if the alleged infringement occurs early enough in the patent term, it could be argued that the invention was probably obvious to anybody skilled in the art.

then by redistributing the kernel without a license from SCO

By distributing the Linux kernel under the GNU GPL, SCO granted an implied license to its patents to all recipients of SCO code.

Re:Implied license

[nexex]

However, if the alleged infringement occurs early enough in the patent term, it could be argued that the invention was probably obvious to anybody skilled in the art.

Tell that to ebay. Some guy claims to have patent on 'internet auctions.'

Re:Implied license

[carlos_benj]

If practice makes perfect, and nobody's perfect, why practice?

Yeah, I know, replying to a sig....

Practice doesn't make perfect. If the practice doesn't result in ever increasing performance, then the practice only results in creating a rut. So, it could be said that practice makes permanent.

Rehash: Patents and the GPL

[Dr. Evil]

SCO distributed Linux under the GPL. If Linus is guilty of patent violation, SCO is guilty of copyright violation.

Section 7:

If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

Strange thought, don't you have to actually do something to violate a patent? The code in and of itself does not violate the patent. And if SCO violated Linus' copyright by distributing their patented code under GPL... then they're suing because Linus doesn't have a license... ugh.

Ugh!

Re:Rehash: Patents and the GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

Posessing the code without a license to the patent is in itself a patent infringement. It is only for practical reasons that people are usually not sued for using a patent for personal, non-commercial, non-distributing purposes -- if the holder just wanted to spite you, they could enforce it.

Re:Rehash: Patents and the GPL

[ichimunki]

Prove it with references to quotes from the USC and relevant case law or shut up. Thanks.

Re:Rehash: Patents and the GPL

[Dr. Evil]

That's not the hair I'm trying to split.

Is the patent on what the device does, or what the device is?

If it is on what the device is, then every general-purpose computer can decode or encode MP3's, run the SCO's patented code etc. It's just a matter of how hard it is for you to actually put the algorithms into the machine.

Does viewing the reference implementation violate the patent? It can be copied, pasted, compiled and run... so why not?

Do routers violate patents by forwarding packets containing patented code?

If not, when do you actually posess the code which violates the patent? When it is in an executable form?

Is posessing the i386 binary on a PowerPC violating the patent?

Could you just send the code out as source? what if it needed to be fixed before it would work?

All these problems go away when you say that it is the action which is patented. When using the machine violates the patent. That encoding an MP3 is violating a patent, that creating a GIF is violating a patent, that running the kernel is violating the patent.

The reason I bring it up is because I don't know. I'm not a lawyer of course...

Re:I too have been very critical of Linus' Apathy

[Amazing Quantum Man]

SCO's (or anyone elses) letigious thuggary and barratry.

Oooh! There's a good one! IANAL. Does someone who IAL know if barratry is a civil offense (lawsuit) or criminal offense (prosecutable)?

If Novell's IP claims stand up, these vague threats against everyone except IBM (they may have a breach of contract suit there) would seem to be barratry.

Google link to "micro versus monolithic"

[Anonymous Coward]

From Google:
- http://www.google.com/googlegroups/archive_announc e_20.html

- http://www.sco.com/scosource/quotes_from_complaint .html

Wait a few more days

[WindBourne]

Unless MS starts buying up SCO, I suspect the directors are currenty selling their stock and it's price will be < US$ 2.00 in a few days.

Re:I too have been very critical of Linus' Apathy

[spoons67]

My take on things?

RMS is the Oracle, Linus is the Architect. Perens, Raymond, Cox, et al are the agents.

THE LINUX 0WnZ J00

History lesson

[Anonymous Coward]

The real reasons for the fates of free BSD and Linux are to be found, at least initially, in practical matters unrelated to the lawsuit albatross around BSD's neck.

Linux succeeded because Linux gained stability first, by the very nature of its inception. Linux evolved from the bottom-up based on Linus's work with the multi-tasking features of the x86. Linus had an x86 multi-tasking core upon which he and others built a Unix-like kernel. The x86 core routines were already very stable by August of 1991.

As for BSD, Jolitz released 386bsd in February of 1992. It was rushed prematurely to release and was not at all stable. It would rarely run for more than a few minutes without crashing. Jolitz faced a problem opposite to that of Linus, for Jolitz already had a kernel; Jolitz was faced with mating his pre-existing kernel with the i386 architecture. This is a somewhat harder problem because your hands are bound by many pre-existing design assumptions.

Additionally, 386bsd required 200 Megabytes of disk space at a time when most private individuals were using only 20 and 40 Megabyte disks. Linux on the other hand could be distributed on a couple of floppy disks, easily downloaded even at sluggish 2400 baud speeds.

In June 1992 386bsd was still very unstable, although getting better thanks to an unofficial "patchkit" developed independently of Jolitz. While 386bsd was still struggling with stability problems, Linux had already garnered good press, as illustrated by its appearance in the the June 1992 issue of the German computer magazine C't. Linux won top honors as the most stable operating system in the C't test, beating out Irix, and SunOS, and several others in the execution of the "crashme" test. At the time, 386bsd needed no help from "crashme" -- it was capable of crashing on its own, and was not even evaluated by C't.

In summary, Linux succeeded initially because it was first in stability, and it was a better match for the consumer technology of the day. The lawsuit against BSD was not yet a factor.

So sue Linus already...

[buss_error]

because I've got a few hundred bucks in the bank whose first stop will Linus's legal defense fund.

After the judge laughs SCO out of the court, I've a few hundred more for the legal OFFENSE fund...

Re:So sue Linus already...

[Demerara]

exactly

I will get my plastic out and contribute to a legal defense fund for Linus.

SCO-SCHMO - with any luck, they'll be beyond Chapter 11 by the time it gets to court.

If their share price drops low enough, maybe we can all buy up their penny-stocks, call a shareholders meeting and fire the PHB's. Then appoint Linus as CTO. That would be sweet.

Brokers couldn't accommodate all the shorts!

[Anonymous Coward]

Also there were multiple reports on the Yahoo Finance board that Datek, one popular broker, was turning away short-sell orders for SCOX.

And a bunch of the longs are probably too shell-shocked or stuck in denial to capitulate right away. Think of all the dot-com bubbles, and how they took months and months to actually burst.

Forget lawsuits. Let's out-compete them!

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the information onYahoo, SCO has a market cap of about $80M and 340 employees. Does anyone seriously think they can keep up with the open source community when we implement a migration plan away from their products?

Did he say anything...

[Nick Driver]

... about roasting stomachs?

Bring it On

[ReadParse]

Wouldn't you love to see THAT lawsuit. It might even make national mainstream press. Everybody would come to the table on that one to support Linus.

thank-you

[Archfeld]

that was the best summary I've read on the subject to date :)

No tetris solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only this, but also Alexey Pajitnov now works for Microsoft. So forget any tetris solution...

solution is simple! short the hell out of SCO

[Anonymous Coward]

buy some stock, short it to hell, then we chip in beer money to buy the company for a few hundred thousand, and shut it down. Unless some wealthy benefactor can buy SCO outright, (controlling interest) and force there hand, we'll just have to force the stock price low enough to be affordable!

McBride was paid $80,500 in 2002

[virtigex]

On checking out Yahoo's profile of SCO (and the plummeting stock price), I couldn't help noticing that he got paid $80,500 in 2002. Did he just join the company or does he have a massive stock option grant that will mushroom when... oh dear never mind.

Re:I too have been very critical of Linus' Apathy

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha, as if anyone would go to prison. Investor fraud is almost legal in the USA. Kenneth Lay is a free man with over $10 million in the bank.

Why use tetris?

[WindBourne]

Take xBill, add a 2'nd character called darl. I m sure that plenty of ppl will find it amusing.

Re:I'd pay a couple of $$$ to the Linus defense fu

[spoons67]

Troll? This is too funny!

For the uninformed, Linus's wife Tove was the Finnish National Karate Champion.

Mother Theresa & kernel developers

[Anonymous Coward]

I am of two minds about this. On the one hand I think the leadership at SCO is beginning to sound psychotic. "Hey guys, today was tough, what with Novell coming after us and our stock starting to tank. But here's a great idea that will really help us out: Let's threaten to sue Linus Torvalds! Yeah. Too bad Mother Theresa is dead, cause it would have been great to sue her too." SCO is run by a real genius.

On the other hand, I think it would probably be a wise precaution for the kernel developers to put some procedures into place to prevent an irresponsible coder from deliberately/inadvertently contributing code that belongs to someone else. Or maybe such safeguards are already in place? I would think if someone did that and Linus hadn't exercised "due diligence" in confirming that the contribution was legitimate, that he might be liable in a court of law.

I thought it was already settled

[yerricde]

I thought it was already settled that the only thing Blue Planet Software/The Tetris Company actually owned was the trademark on the word TETRIS, not a patent or copyright on the game of falling tetraminoes. If you disagree, and you represent BPS/TTC, please send cease and desist letters to the address listed on this page.

Oh, and Tetris Worlds is shit.

I think i'll sue SCO.

[Bowie J. Poag]

By most people's accounts, I not only hold the "annoyance" patent, but i've got market cornered on annoyance-related technologies.

I think i'll call my lawyer tomorrow. SCO is treading on my territory.

On a serious note, I think we're seeing the beginning of a new trend when it comes to business management. If Chapter 11 is imminent, as has been the case with SCO in recent years, file lawsuits! File as many as you can, for as much money as humanly possible. It buys you time, and if by some stretch of bizarro-world luck you happen to win, the money you get comes straight out of the pockets of your competitors!

With all this, keep one thing in mind:

We live in a world where the most profitable company in the world sells bug-infested software, while another company who goes belly-up selling a product that can't crash.

Figure that one out.

Infringing on Weird Al's IP

[Marsala]

Tell you what, folks. If no one comes down here to Crazy Darl's Unix Emporium and buys a license in the next hour, I'm gonna club this baby seal. That's right, I'd club a baby seal to make a better deal. And I'll do it, too... cuz I'm Craaaaazy Darl.

Buy SCO, Public Domain their IP, Close Shop

[The Other White Meat]

I think we really ought to make an example of this company.

We buy enough stock to be the controlling vote at the next shareholders meeting.

At that meeting we vote to transfer all SCO intellectual property into the public domain.

We then vote to liquidate the remaining assets of the company, firing everyone working in that shop summarily.

Let it be a lesson for any other company thinking of messing with the Open Source movement...

Re:Buy SCO, Public Domain their IP, Close Shop

[adunsulag]

I think the parent company of SCO would love that. Since the main stock holder of SCO is Canopy(www.canopy.com), and I am sure they would love to make up for their losses.

Appeal?

[yerricde]

OK, so a U.S. district court has ruled in favor of some unknown. But has a court of appeals agreed to take a look at the case?

Re:ridiculous (Penguin thrown to the lions)

[Anonymous Coward]

SCO Sympathizers reign of terror in Northern Ireland
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_irela nd/118415 4.stm

How to short a stock

[Anonymous Coward]

I shorted some SCOX today. I short stocks all the time, and it's not hard.

The background: you need a brokerage account with 'margin' enabled. The 'margin' feature enables you to borrow the shares that you are selling.

The mechanics: when you go to enter an order, there are the usual "buy" and "sell" options. In addition, there is "sell short" and "buy to cover". You want "sell short".

You can elect to sell short at the current price ("market") or you can put in a limit price ("sell short at $6.50 or higher"). I usually use limit orders, even in fast markets.

If the stock moves below $6.50 before your limit order executes, then you have to cancel your limit order and try again. If it's dropping too fast, you can either chase it down, or try a market order, or give up (often a good idea).

You can sell as much stock short as you could buy with the same amount of money. If you have $10,000 in the account, you could sell about 1500 shares at $6.50, or 3000 shares if you want to leverage at 2:1.

I recommend that you be very conservative about the amount that you short! The reason is that short positions that move against you reduce your equity position 3x as fast as long positions would, so you'll get margin called a lot earlier on a bad short position. For a $10,000 account, on a fast moving stock like SCOX, 500 to 1000 shares is plenty of exposure.

One more thing you need to do before placing your order:

Choose your stop loss price.

The stop-loss price is the price where you give up and admit that the trade is not working right. In this case, you could choose a stop loss at $9.00 or $10.00 (very loose) or up at $7.00 (tight) or $6.60 (very tight).

If your short-sell order fills, you will have something like -1000 shares of SCOX in your account. That's right, negative shares. The broker will also add $6,500 cash to your account (the proceeds of the sale), minus their normal commission of $10 to $30. There's no extra commission for short selling.

At that point, immediately enter your stop-loss order. This is a buy-to-cover order with a stop price (not a limit price) at the point you picked, say $7.00. The full order is: buy-to-cover, 1000 shares, stop price $7.00, market order.

The idea is that if your trade does not work (which happens all the time, the market is often unpredictable), and the price goes back to $7, you will automatically buy back 1000 shares of SCOX, leaving you with a $500 loss (plus commissions). Ouch! But this is better than watching it go back to 8, or 9, or 12, and getting the shaft.

If the stock goes DOWN, though, then you're making money. Watch it go down as much you think it's gonna, then cancel your stop loss order, then isue a normal "buy to cover" order to buy it back.

This is mostly the same as normal "buy/sell", except that it's "short sell/buy to cover" (not just plain "buy", but "buy to cover", for some reason). The differences are:

-- it's harder to get a short order filled because of the uptick rule, the availability of shares to borrow, and stuff you don't need to worry about much, except that it means your short-sell order often goes unfilled.

-- the risk of a bad short position is quite a bit larger than the risk of a bad long position. Volatile stocks can go up faster than they go down! But the reward is the same. So ... you have to be more sure that you understand the stock, and take smaller positions than you would if you were long.

Have fun. If you lose money, you can moderate me down as your recourse. :)

Re:How to short a stock

[HuguesT]

Thanks,

I wish I could moderate you higher than you are now.

Cheers

Rescued?

[dmaxwell]

I like "pushed" better. I like "jabbed in the ass with a cattle prod" even more. The icing on the cake is the entire 'nix community chanting "jump!, jump!, jump!".

almost ...

[Shadowlore]

Trade Secrets *do* often have a time limit. It depend sont he contract. Many contracts, as well as case law, state that if others figure it out on their own, or after a reasonable amount of time, tough luck your protection is gone.

Many contracts are for 2-5 years.

Re:almost ...

[Enry]

IIRC, that's would only be between IBM and SCO (for example). If Linus or Alan implemented the features on their own without help from IBM, then SCO is out of luck on both fronts (removing the code and suing IBM).

Not necessarly (IANAL)

[dachshund]

Linus should and frankly MUST sue SCO for copyright infringement for distributing a derivitive of his work without a licence. In fact, any other kernel contributor could do the same so long as their original work is included in what SCO has distributed.

It depends whether or not SCO continued to distribute after they'd verified that their proprietary IP had entered the Linux codebase, and for how long.

If they stopped distribution, or removed the offending code after discovering it, then it could be said that they'd made a good-faith effort to obey the terms of the GPL. Do they lose the right to control that proprietary code? Probably not. Can they continue to distribute? No. Should they be held responsible for copyright violations? Probably not.

If you did allow Linus or the FSF to sue for copyright infringement, you'd essentially be saying that SCO should be penalized because somebody else stole their proprietary code and stuck it into a piece of Open Source Software that-- unknown to them-- passed through their hands. That's a pretty perverse result.

In fact, section 7 of the GPL offers some clarifications on this. It says that any company that knows it cannot legally redistribute must cease distribution. It does not necessarily hold that a company may be penalized for previous distributions where it acted in good faith, but was undermined by the actions of some third party.

In fact, the GPL is not at all clear on this situation, which is why it would be problematic if it went to court. A judge would have to make a very tough call, and the results are hard to predict.

Re:Not necessarly (IANAL)

[bwt]

It depends whether or not SCO continued to distribute after they'd verified that their proprietary IP had entered the Linux codebase, and for how long.

No!! You can go back in time (up to the statute of limitations) and say "I just discovered that way back in 1998 you distributed your product FOO which included unlicensed portions of my work. Pay up. Oh, and I want your profits from the infringing sales, too." Just ask Dr. Dre who just lost 1.5 million in such a verdict.

Wilfulness is an element of statuory damages, which can be quite large, but actual damages do not depend in any way on state of mind.

If they stopped distribution, or removed the offending code after discovering it, then it could be said that they'd made a good-faith effort to obey the terms of the GPL.

The point here is that if SCO admits it EVER shipped any version of Linux under the GPL, then they have no case for patent infringement or trade secret violations on any protected element within the code they shipped. Conversely, if they claim to retain patent of trade secret rights to something, it cannot be in anything they shipped unless that shipment was unlicensed piracy.

In fact, section 7 of the GPL offers some clarifications on this. It says that any company that knows it cannot legally redistribute must cease distribution.

It has no such knowledge requirement. Section 7 is phrased in absolutist terms: "If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all."

It does not necessarily hold that a company may be penalized for previous distributions where it acted in good faith, but was undermined by the actions of some third party.

SCO did not act in good faith if it attempts to retain rights to portions of code that are intermixed with GPL'd code, because the work as a whole has to be GPL'd. As for what happens downstream from the infringer, The GPL is very explicit on this in section 4. It states that if you violate the licence, for example if you "attempt" to "sublicence or distribute" under any other terms than the GPL, then your rights are terminated. It goes on to say those who received their licence from you "will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance." Thus SCO can't get improperly licenced code from IBM and have any GPL rights unless it's action are 100% consistent with the GPL.

Sue Linus for what?

[dchamp]

I suppose they could sue Linus for every dime he's ever made selling Linux, right? That would be, er, exactly NOTHING.

Not that I agree with superflous litigation, but it would be SO FUNNY if SCO went through a costly court case, only to have the Judge come to that settlement.

SCO really cares about its customers...

[Anonymous Coward]

clearly, SCO care deeply abouts it's customers...."

"SCOsource is a new business division to manage its UNIX® System intellectual property. The charter of the new division is to create new and innovative licensing programs to meet the changing demands of today's market and to protect its intellectual property asset.

SCO is the owner of the UNIX Operating System Intellectual Property that dates all the way back 1969, when the UNIX System was created at Bell Laboratories. Through a series of mergers and acquisitions, SCO has acquired ownership of the patents, copyrights and core technology associated with the UNIX System. The SCO source division will continue to offer traditional UNIX System licenses to preserve, protect and enhance shareholder value.
"

They told us it was coming.

[Piquan]

For those who have forgotten, Halloween VII was a leaked memo from MS dated Sep 2002. It was a survey report, discussing what types of FUD were most effective, and where FUD was backfiring. From this:

Direct attacks of OSS and Linux are NOT highly effective. Messaging that discusses possible Linux patent violations, pings the OSS development process for lacking accountability, raises the specter of possible security flaws, and the like are only marginally effective in driving unfavorable opinions around OSS and Linux, and in some cases backfire. On the other hand 'positive' OSS and Linux messaging, i.e. access to the source code, the price, lower TCO, the ability to freely make copies, and the like drive very favorable opinions around OSS and Linux, both across geographies and audiences.

"Linux patent violations/risk of being sued" struck a chord with US and Swedish respondents. Seventy-four percent (74%) of Americans and 82% of Swedes stated that the risk of being sued over Linux patent violations made them feel less favorable towards Linux. This was the only message that had a strong impact with any audience.

And later:

Messages that rely on an abstract discussion of intellectual property rights are not effective.

The discussion of IP rights needs to be tied to concrete actions.

Re:They told us it was coming.

[rnturn]

Yes. That is funny. SCO shows it creative side when it lifts a strategy directly from a company known throughout the computer industry for its near total lack of creativity. (Or perhaps they are just steal^H^H^H^H^Hborro^H^H^H^H^Hinnovating in the same way.)

Re:They told us it was coming.

[kardar]

Linux is OK. Risk of violating IP rights is not a reason to avoid using Linux.

Linux is also a better operating system. That's an excellent reason to use it.

Actually, if an individual chooses to use Linux, and another hesitates because of the fear of violating (or being accused of violating) IP rights, then the individual who fearlessly and courageously moves ahead and uses Linux will be better off than the individual who does not. More importantly, if these two individuals are each other's competition, then the individual who chose to go ahead with Linux will be better off.

Re:They told us it was coming.

[ces]

Perhaps SCO is just the hired help and the real driving force behind SCO's actions is in Washington State somewhere?

What SCO is thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

It is strange that SCO tried to transfer (read buy) the IP for System V *after*
the lawsuit. Common sense dictates that SCO would have had
their paperwork in order before the got started. And that is exactly the
point: did they realize they need to own the IP because they found
strong support from deep pockets (like Microsoft) and they are now able to
aim for a bigger prize? Considering that SCO acts in public like a pappet of Microsoft,
somedays it feels like the real fight is between Microsoft vs Linux, and not SCO vs IBM.

Can't sue Linus

[Tokerat]

...if he wasn't the one who put the code into the Linux Kernel.

Obviously he had to approve it, but if UNIX source is such a big secret how is Linus supposed to recognize submitted code as such?

What sort of a name is Darl anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is is short for something? Darling, Darlene,
Darlington, Dalek (you will be exterminated!)?

Perhaps he plans to rename Linux to Darlix, or possibly Daleks, after he's established ownership.

CVS History... don't we know who added the code?

[DraKKon]

CVS works wonders right... we can SEE who added the code can't we? Wouldn't it be funny if it was a SCO employee that did it?

I still think they should SHOW what code was lifted, IF any..

SCO - Recursive Sue

[Anonymous Coward]

void sue( node * s)
{
sueA(s);
sue(s->next());
}

void sueA( node * s)
{
cout<<"Sue : "<<s->data()<<endl;
}

Look who the lawyer for SCO is!

[Vip]

None other than David Boies, lawyer for the government during the MS anti-trust trial!

Here's the article.

Vip

Damn im pissed

[SQLz]

Where is McBride getting this weed he's smokin? That must the be the b0mb shit. I'd like to license some of that.

Re:Damn im pissed

[Anonymous Coward]

He got the weed from JavaOne!

SCOX - stock watch

[towatatalko]

Today 2mil shares of SCOX were traded on far higher volume than any other day of their average trading (300k or so). So, it is rather obvious that SCOX is walking on the thin ice of news and expectations that were hyped to their stockholders and speculators. The decline is as rapid as its rise in the previous weeks, so it might be a matter of few weeks as well when it goes under $5. June 13, or even earlier, should show what SCOX is really worth.

The decline is not a classic 5 wave down appearance (by Elliott Wave standards), so it's hard to say how deep this correction will go and how fast. If it were 5 waves (called impulse wave), SCOX would be pretty much doomed already. Besides, if anyone of you is inclined into technicals, today's action just touched the lower bond-support channel (hourly view), so it is likely that SCOX will try to fight back with some renewed rally. It'd have to go below $5.80 to cut trough the current support.

Civil RICO Countersuit?

[Mistah Blue]

IANAL, but I wonder if IBM couldn't bring a civil RICO (Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organization) against SCO. I would ROFL if they could do one better with a criminal RICO suit. It seems to me that SCO's business line is now extortion, which to me seems to qualify it as a corrupt organization.

Personally, I think IBM needs to squash them for the annoying insect that they have become.

Do I see another DDoS coming through?

[bernywork]

If previous reactions out there are anything to go buy, SCO pushing this one is bound to earn them another DDoS.

Pip

[Tokerat]

Yes, I'll pay $50 for one!

von Neuman, you're next

[Phoenix666]

SCO announced today that after Linus, they're going after von Neuman for having invented the computer. "It's clear that his research was specifically designed to lead to the machine which is responsible for violating our intellectual property rights," SCO spokesmen were quoted as saying.

When asked if SCO had considered that without von Neuman's work they wouldn't have any intellectual property to begin with, the spokesman chided the journalists present for splitting hairs and using legal mumbo jumbo to confuse the issue. "The fact is, everyone in the world owes us a living, and they better pay up before we sue the bejeezus out of them. We have legions of lawyers ready and waiting."

The interview was cut short when a copy of an otherworldly book dropped out of the sky and landed on the stage with a thump. When examined it appeared to be an almanac or encyclopedia of otherwordly origin, and curiously enough it had fallen open on the following entry: "SCO: a dirty bunch of swindlers whose backs were first against the wall when the revolution came."

BSD/Linux

[Tokerat]

*blinks*

...as ridiculous as that sounds, I'd be cool to do "just cause". ;-)

McBride is hurting his case and should shut up!

[rifter]

McBride added that unless more companies start licensing SCO's property, he may also sue Linus Torvalds, who is credited with inventing the Linux operating system, for patent infringement.

Pretty transparent, eh? What, give the troll money or he'll get you and your little Finn too? Jiminey!

IANAL, but I am reasonably certain you cannot legally say you will sue someone unless someone else pays you money/ buys your product. If that person damages you and you have a legal right to sue, that right is irrelevant to whether others pay you money not to do it. In short McBride is seriously hurting his/SCO's case here (such as it is) with his wild and stupid statements. I can just see the lawyers turning red and going "ixnay, man!"

Seriously this sort of thing would embarrass any lawyer, even if they are slimeballs ;).

They should sue Tannenbaum first

[Anonymous Coward]

Before they sue Linus they have to sue Andy Tannenbaum. Linus used his OS to start with.

riiiight

[pimpinmonk]

well if they can sue linus for that, then I think by their logic I'd be justified in counter-sueing SCO for simply being fuckin annoying!

Your prejudice is awful.

[Frobnicator]

It's always interesting to see such prejudiced views. People are people, not stereotypes. Pick any affilation or group, and you will find both good people and jerks. (Note -- your comments wouldn't fit in the 'good people' set.)

A simple test for prejudice:

Just replace any of your religious names you used with "Christian" (specialized with either 'church-going Christian' or 'once-a-year Christian' for your classes), "Muslim", "Jew", or "Hindu", or whatever other you want. Or replace it with "black", "woman" or {fill in country name here}.

If you could be fired or punished in court for the comments, it is badly prejudiced.

I can see why you posted as Anonymous Coward.

frob

SCO paid Royalties to Novell for SVRx in Jan

[zoid.com]

This is from their 10-K filing in Jan. Why would they pay if they owned it?

"Restricted Cash and Royalty Payable to Novell, Inc.

The Company has an arrangement with Novell, Inc. ("Novell") in which it acts as an administrative agent in the collection of royalties for customers who deploy SVRx technology. Under the agency agreement, the Company collects all customer payments and remits 95 percent of the collected funds to Novell and retains 5 percent as an administrative fee. The Company records the 5 percent administrative fee as revenue in its consolidated statements of operations. The accompanying October 31, 2002 and 2001 consolidated balance sheets reflect the amounts collected related to this agency agreement but not yet remitted to Novell of $1,428,000 and $1,894,000, respectively, as restricted cash and royalty payable to Novell. The October 31, 2001 balances were reclassified from cash and equivalents and other royalties payable to conform to the current year presentation. "

Read for yourself:

HERE

BAHAHAHA

[Tokerat]

*wipes tear* LMFAO Dear God, why isn't this modded higher?

SCO's desperation...

[Anonymous Coward]

SCO's desperation reveals little of legal precedence besides Bill's hand up their ass. EMC will probably dump them for their foolishness. Maybe their execs can sell their houses before the interest rate moves. :)

NiqHoltzHam

Can we revoke their license under the GPL?

[ajv]

I maintain a package pnm2ppa, widely and wildly distributed with most Linux's, and in pkgsrc on all the *bsd's, and included with some legacy Unix's "free" CDs.

It's licensed under the GPL. Is there any method to revoke SCO's use of my work under the GPL? If so, maybe as a whole, all us authors who do this stuff for free can band together and get our own back by withdrawing SCO's permission to use our software (and derivatives)?

Andrew

Re:Can we revoke their license under the GPL?

[Oriumpor]

IANAL but, If they claim ownership of Linux IP, which they released under the GPL (see caldera linux, way back machine) and they are claiming ownership of sources, that they themselves distributed under the GPL....

It seems to me, that the easiest thing to do, would be for the Linux community to come out and say "We don't believe you do own X and X" Buttt.... "Since you released linux, we will grant you GPL license over the code in question...." It would be a smack in the face of the real developers, (if the code in question really is unique) and would actually HELP their claims that they *OWN* that IP... but they would own a freely distributed GPL'd source... so... they would be screwed.

Re:Can we revoke their license under the GPL?

[RdsArts]

I understand your position, but if you did that, and even if SCO IS being odd, the idea of the GPL is freedom. The first time we deny someone a GPLed work, regardless of how someone may feel about them, that is the day the GPL is dead.

Free software is about software being free for everyone. Not just the people we like.

Someone should call the FBI about RICO charges..

[Anonymous Coward]

being set against SCO. (They're trying to blackmail the Linux/Unix community to pay up or else they might sue Linus.

Tip of the iceberg

[Ogerman]

What many people don't realize is that there are literally tens of thousands of bogus patents out there relating to all aspects of software, interface designs, methods of data communication, etc. The ugly reality is that the USPTO pretty much rubber stamps everything that comes their way without much review. If you look hard enough, pretty close to every substantial piece of code in existance, Open Source or proprietary, likely violates somebody's nonsense patent. While these bogus patents are rarely enforced, the SCO situation is proof that the danger exists, even at an 'unfounded threat' level. But as proprietary software empires fall to Free alternatives, we will quite likely see more of this nonsense.

The long and short of it: our basic freedoms, especially speech, are being squelched by overzealous patenting. You cannot write software today without worrying about accidentally "re-inventing" or bumping into somebody's supposedly patented idea The modern patent system has decayed precisely into what Thomas Jefferson envisioned when he wrote: "..For to embarrass society with monopolies for every utensil existing, and in all the details of life, would be more injurious to them than had the supposed inventors never existed; because the natural understanding of its members would have suggested the same things or others as good." AND.. "the abuse of frivolous patents is likely to cause more inconvenience than is countervail by those really useful"

Software patents must be eliminated. All of them. They are a threat to free speech and expression. They are a threat to innovation. They are a threat to the Open Source movement. Software patents are by very nature trivial--something the USPTO is not supposed to allow.

With that in mind, here are some links to get you started on some anti-software-patent activism:

http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/Patents/patents.html
http ://www.petitiononline.com/pasp01/petition.html
http://antipatents.8m.com/software-patents.html
http://www.researchoninnovation.org/patent.pdf
h ttp://www.freepatents.org/
http://petition.euroli nux.org/index_html?LANG=en

Re:Tip of the iceberg

[no_code_charlie]

What many people also fail to realize is that the USPTO is not the final arbiter as to what constitutes a valid patent. That is, the validity of all patents are subject to challenge in court (either by way of defense to claim of infringement or by way of preemptive challenge to patent). True, the patent holder enjoys a presumption of validity wrt to his patent, but this only affects the burden of proof; it is of small avail wrt a bogus patent. So, the moral of the story is, next time some asswipe like SCO tries to stick its lame patent in your face, just say: screw you; sue me.

Re:Tip of the iceberg

[The Cookie Monster]

I agreed with nearly all of what you said, but

Software patents are by very nature trivial

This is simply untrue. Arithmetic compression for example is not at all obvious, and if it was always kept as a trade secret and never published then the vast majority of programmers would live out their entire lives and never realise they can encode more than one piece of information into a single bit.

As much as I dislike patents, it's the frivolous ones that are the real problem, the trivial ones, the obvious ones, not the software ones.

Re:Tip of the iceberg

[Ogerman]

This is simply untrue. Arithmetic compression for example is not at all obvious..

Maybe non-obvious to you, but the vast majority of compression algorithms are pretty obvious to mathematicians and computer scientists. The rest, typically the lossy ones, are based on finding patterns in nature that can be simplified. But it's still just mathematics and/or scientific discovery and should not be patentable for that very reason.

That aside, another clear case against the patenting of any data compression or communication protocol is the promotion of standards. For example, where would the Internet be today if there were no patent-free compressed image formats?

Re:Tip of the iceberg

[HiThere]

You can't encode more than one flip of information in a single bit. What you are doing is encoding some of the information in the context, and then using that so that information that would normally require an entire bit's worth of information doesn't take as much.

As a crude example:
How large a number can you encode in 8 bits?
Suppose I tell you that you don't have to consider negative numbers?
O, suppose that you also only have to think about even numbers?
Well, what if you know that it's also an even power of two?

Every time you add a contextual constraint, the size of the number increases, but the number of states remains constant. With more complex systems you can start to consider probalistic encodings, e.g. Huffman codes. Or encodings that allow a certain amount of noise to creep in. But you are still only holding one bit's worth of information in any one bit (though frequently it doesn't even mean that much when you take it out of context).

Re:Tip of the iceberg

[HiThere]

But the cost of defending against a patent suit can be horrendous. This is a part of why the system is said to be skewed to the benefit of the large and wealthy. And it is said quite accurately.

The patent system is so extremely fouled up that we would be better off without having any patents of any nature than by having the system that we currently have.

Copyrights aren't good, they run for much too long, and they are too expensive both to defend against and to prosecute. But compared to patents, they are marvelously good.

The entire legal system is skewed to benefit the wealthy and the corporations. This shouldn't really be a surprise. It's the natural consequence of the vanishing of the frontier...you can no longer run away from unjust persecution. Running away will never be praised, but it's frequently the only answer. And if you can't make your victims stay around to be extorted from, you have to treat them a bit more gently, so that they don't have sufficient reason to flee.

Re:Tip of the iceberg

[no_code_charlie]

The cost of prosecuting a bogus patent infirngement claim is even more horrendous than defending against one. True, even that is not something an ordinary Joe would be able to handle financially but, for that matter, almost no litigation is. I do agree with you, however, that the patent/copyright system needs to be fixed, especially with regard to software. My thinking: 1) object code should not be independently copyrightable (but could constitute 'copy' of source code for infringement purposes) as it is created by machines, not people (founding fathers no way conceived or intended that machines would qualify as authors); 2) Complete copy of source code should be deposited in order to obtain registration of source code (ala other types of works); 3) Nonobviousnes standard should be more rigorously applied wrt software patents.

Re:Tip of the iceberg

[The Cookie Monster]

But you are still only holding one bit's worth of information in any one bit (though frequently it doesn't even mean that much when you take it out of context).

Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
Don't let THEM imminetize the eschaton.

Of course you are only encoding one bit's worth of information into one bit, the non obvious part is that when the entropy of an independent piece of information is less that one bit, you can actually store it in less than one bit and then use the rest of that bit to store something else unrelated to the first piece of information. This is certainly not obvious, I've never met a programmer who figured that one out for themselves. Also, from what you wrote it is hard to tell if you understand arithmetic compression - many people misunderstand it when it is explained to them because it just sounds impossible.

Re:Tip of the iceberg

[aster_ken]

3) Nonobviousnes standard should be more rigorously applied wrt software patents.

So should the idea of being unable to patent mathematical concepts and algorithms be applied more rigorously.

Re:Tip of the iceberg

[HiThere]

You could be right about that, I've never tried to implement it, so my understanding is purely theoretical. (Actually, I've never tried to implement any compression technique, as such.) So I'm sure I don't have a clear understanding of the details. But I have a clear enough understanding to know that you can't store more than one bit / bit (though, of course, with an inefficient encoding you can store considerably less).

Re:I too have been very critical of Linus' Apathy

[Anonymous Coward]

It's interesting that you mention the SEC as SCO had an earnings conference call today.
http://biz.yahoo.com/p/s/scox.html

Each company has its own response -

[Anonymous Coward]

SGI has graphics and hardware - Linux follows

Sun has stability - Linux follows

IBM has clout - Linux follows

Microsoft has marketshare - Services for Unix (SFU) weakly follows Cygwin

SCO has nothing - Strike!

--

What does SCO hope to accomplish? I'll use Linux personally whatever it's legal status and I can't comprehend anyone competent suggesting SCO to their employer...

SCO Is The North Korea Of Software

[Anonymous Coward]

All they want is a little attention.

Novell refutes SCO's claims

[kyoko21]

According to Yahoo! Financials, SCO's claims to copyrights are totally unfounded. Quick blip, but interesting read.

I can see it now....

[RdsArts]

*two SCO execs come into the Transmedia office, walking slowly to Linus' desk*

Linus: Excuse me, gentlemen, can I help you?
CEO1: Oh, no, we're just looking around. Ooops! *knocks over contract from corner of desk*
CEO2: Ooh, how clumbsy of my associate.
Linus: that's quite alright.
CEO2: Well, you see, my friend here, he's really clumsy.
CEO1: Yah.
CEO2: He's a tad butter-fingered.
CEO1: Yah
CEO2: Some may say he's got a problem with depth perception.
CEO1: .... Yah?
CEO2: Yah.
CEO1: Oh... *looks sad*
Linus: Is there a point to this, gentlemen
CEO2: Well, see, if you could, perhaps, have more people buy more SCO licenses, perhaps we could get my friend here some glasses.
CEO1: Oooop. *knocks over pyramid of penguins from desk. Stumbles. Falls on top of them*

sorta like North Korea

[sacrilicious]

The more indifference SCO encounters, the more dramatic they become, because being ignored is not acceptable.

I agree, and see a similarity between SCO's increasingly dramatic antics and those of North Korea. When a week goes by and Linus hasn't responded, SCO will start talking about turning linux into "a raging sea of fire".

I don't think so

[dachshund]

No!! You can go back in time (up to the statute of limitations) and say "I just discovered that way back in 1998 you distributed your product FOO which included unlicensed portions of my work. Pay up. Oh, and I want your profits from the infringing sales, too." Just ask Dr. Dre who just lost 1.5 million in such a verdict.

Unfortunately, you're looking at this as a pure copyright case, when it's actually going to be judged as a contract/license case.

SCO would argue that they attempted, within all bounds of reasonable good faith, to comply with the terms of the GPL, and that their efforts were undermined by bad-faith actions of a third party-- actions that they didn't even know about. The plaintiff (Linus, the FSF, whomever) would then have to convince a judge that this faithful attempt at compliance is worth zero, and that SCO should be still be liable for every copy of Linux that they ever shipped.

It will come down to a matter of contract law, not copyright law. Does the judge hold SCO to an impossible contractual standard? Or does he/she seek a reasonable middle-ground? If the judge determines that the demands of the plaintiff are unreasonable, then he/she can decide that certain aspects of the GPL are unenforceable, while leaving SCO protected under the remaining sections. In that case, the plaintiff has no copyright infringment case against SCO.

The funniest part of this all is the alternative. Let's say the FSF or Linus does prevail, and forces SCO to give away rights to its proprietary code, or alternatively, collects millions in damages. Such an outcome would put a stake through the heart of the GPL. Who in god's name would ever deal with GPLed code if there's even the slightest chance that it could expose their business to this sort of legal immolation? Hell, Microsoft couldn't do a better job of scaring people away from GPLed software.

The FSF would be insane to take the route you suggest. Their "victory" would be the greatest defeat in the history of free software.

Re:I don't think so

[bwt]

There is nothing "good faith" about trying to retain trade secret status for something that you yourself distributed for-profit as part of a GPL'd product, when that licence forbids you from adding any "further restrictions". If SCO want to call "mulligan" then it better pony up all the profits it got along the way.

Once they realized that they had essentially been tricked into distributing their own trade secret, they cannot try to shift "who gets screwed" to Linus. The legitimate parts of the kernel that are truly authored by Linus & freinds are GPL and SCO has an independent duty to Linus, as a distributor to assure that his licence is respected. That licence requires them to not impose additional restrictions, such as trade secret protections.

The bottom line is that the secret is out not just because IBM divulged it, but also because SCO re-divulged it with a statement to "all third parties" (which back-covers IBM) that it was free software. If SCO only did that because they are too stupid or too negligent to inspect their own product carefully, then they deserve what they get. After all, they are PROFITING from shipping this code.

Talk about unclean hands -- they accuse IBM of mishandling this code, when they did the exact same thing themselves in such a way that, on its face, back-authorized IBM to do what it did.

Had SCO not been distributing Linux, they would have a much stronger claim. But they did, and this comes with some very far reaching requirements to abandon various IP protections for all code within what they distribute.

Re:I don't think so

[bwt]

Who in god's name would ever deal with GPLed code if there's even the slightest chance that it could expose their business to this sort of legal immolation?

It isn't the GPL that exposes them to legal immolation, it is non-compliance with the GPL that exposes them. And non-compliance with the GPL is also called copyright infringement. It really doesn't matter WHAT licence you are using, if you don't comply with it and base your business on it, then you are exposing yourself to legal immolation.

Please explain to me any reason why Red Hat (say) would change its business if SCO was called to the carpet for copyright infringement here.

Re:I don't think so

[dachshund]

It isn't the GPL that exposes them to legal immolation, it is non-compliance with the GPL that exposes them

But it is the GPL that exposes you to potentially being non-compliant, even when you've made all reasonable efforts to comply.

If someone breaks into your company and steals proprietary code, all they have to do is insert it into a GPLed software package that you also contribute to and distribute. At that point, you're screwed. You get a very unpleasant choice: either give up rights to your own code, or pay millions in damages.

What sin have you committed to place yourself in this situation? You had what you thought were legitimate dealings with a GPLed product. The only reliable way to protect yourself from this sort of inadvertant exposure is to avoid doing any work on GPLed products, and perhaps to prevent your employees from doing so as well.

Please explain to me any reason why Red Hat (say) would change its business if SCO was called to the carpet for copyright infringement here.

Any company that relies on proprietary code and also works on GPLed code could be at risk. I'd be a lot less concerned about Red Hat than, say, a major contributor like IBM, though I'm sure Red Hat has proprietary code it doesn't want to lose.

Furthermore, it would pretty much confirm Microsoft's earlier ramblings about the GPL putting a company's IP at risk. You could lose your IP because of the actions of one disgruntled employee or even a hacker. The GPL starts to look downright dangerous.

Re:I don't think so

[MrGrendel]

SCO would argue that they attempted, within all bounds of reasonable good faith, to comply with the terms of the GPL, and that their efforts were undermined by bad-faith actions of a third party-- actions that they didn't even know about.

Considering that they only stopped distributing Linux on the day that they sent out the infamous letter threatening end users, I think it will be incredibly difficult for SCO to argue that they did not know about any copyright or patent infringements while they were still distributing. They obviously had to know at some point before they filed against IBM, and that was two months before they stopped distribution altogether. It might be difficult to hold them to the terms of the GPL for distribution that was done before they suspected that anything was wrong, but once they did suspect wrongdoing, they had to decide to either stop distributing Linux and pursue IP claims, or just let the matter go. By continuing to distribute Linux while preparing to assert additional IP claims based on that code, their license to distribute was terminated (see clause 7). All distribution after that point is clearly in violation of copyright law, because they had no authorization to redistribute.

Let's say the FSF or Linus does prevail, and forces SCO to give away rights to its proprietary code, or alternatively, collects millions in damages. Such an outcome would put a stake through the heart of the GPL.

This will be no more of a problem for the GPL then it will be for any other license to publish. SCO can't be forced to give away any rights to their proprietary code. They can either decide to abide by the terms of the GPL and stop all of this nonsense, or they can admit that they violated the Linux copyrights and face the consequences. SCO would not have to worry about countersuits if they played by the rules. If they discovered that there was illegal code in Linux and stopped distributing immediately, notified the developers about the violations and waited for them to be corrected, then none of this would be a problem. That is the correct way to handle this kind of matter. That course of action would have demonstrated a good faith effort to resolve the problem while still protecting whatever IP they may own. Instead, they decided to continue to distribute Linux without a license to do so.

Re:I don't think so

[dachshund]

There is nothing "good faith" about trying to retain trade secret status for something that you yourself distributed for-profit as part of a GPL'd product, when that licence forbids you from adding any "further restrictions". If SCO want to call "mulligan" then it better pony up all the profits it got along the way.

I hate to defend SCO, but if things happened the way they say they did, then they acted very reasonably. Somebody else violated an agreement and illegally copied SCO's proprietary code into a GPLed product. SCO redistributed that product, with no reasonable way of knowing that they were distributing their own code. Their decision to distribute under the terms of the GPL was logical, given the information they possessed at the time.

Contracts have certain real-world standards for reasonability. For instance, a contract cannot demand that you display a supernatural ability to detect wrongdoing by a third party. If a judge determines that it was not possible for SCO to uphold certain aspects of the contract no matter what, and that SCO could not have known this, he/she may rule that certain aspects of the contract cannot be enforced.

The GPL even has a provision for this: "If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under any particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to apply and the section as a whole is intended to apply in other circumstances." The FSF recognized that the restrictions of the license might be limited under certain circumstances, without invalidating the entire license.

Is it unfair that IBM has a higher burden that SCO? Not necessarily. After all, IBM is (allegedly) the party at fault in both cases. If they accidentally released somebody else's code, then there are no mitigating circumstances; it's their screwup, they have to deal with it. In SCO's case, SCO acted reasonably, and their non-compliance was actually brought about by an illegality on the part of IBM. One could even argue that IBM (or someone at IBM) acted with the deliberate intention of bringing about this circumstance, which is an even better argument against holding SCO to the full conditions of the contract.

But here's the real reason to know your line of argument is defunct. Nobody's pursuing it. With all of the high-powered lawyers and Free Software advocates on the case, it's not like you're the only person to come up with this one. Either they know that the interpretation of the GPL is likely to be a lot more flexible that you give it credit, or they understand that the potential blowback to the Free Software movement makes this a lousy solution.

Re:I don't think so

[dachshund]

Considering that they only stopped distributing Linux on the day that they sent out the infamous letter threatening end users, I think it will be incredibly difficult for SCO to argue that they did not know about any copyright or patent infringements while they were still distributing.

I agree that continuing distribution for long after they had confirmed the existence of the code would seriously undermine their case. I guess it's a question of how quickly they stopped distributing, and more importantly, whether they acted to remove the proprietary bits from their distributions. They could argue that they took immediate actions to correct the situation, but there were certain legitimate complications that slowed them down. A court might buy it. Nothing in the legal system is black and white.

And even so, I don't get the impression that they distributed too many copies of that code after they announced it was tainted. Perhaps they're prepared to risk an infringment suit on that handful of copies, knowing that it wouldn't be worth the legal fees to prosecute it.

SCO can't be forced to give away any rights to their proprietary code. They can either decide to abide by the terms of the GPL and stop all of this nonsense, or they can admit that they violated the Linux copyrights and face the consequences.

I disagree. Though we may look at these two things as alternatives, companies considering contributions to GPLed software will see it as a rock and a hard place. Why mess with GPLed source at all if it could potentially force you to decide between giving up your precious proprietary code, or going bankrupt paying damages?

Of course, I think that's a perfectly reasonable set of alternatives to present to a company who has actively violated the terms of the GPL. But when a company can work diligently to comply with the GPL and still be faced with that Devil's Alternative-- due to some malicious outsider, perhaps-- the only reasonable answer will be to avoid the GPL like the plague, and perhaps require your employees to do so as well.

If they discovered that there was illegal code in Linux and stopped distributing immediately, notified the developers about the violations and waited for them to be corrected, then none of this would be a problem.

As I said, you may be right about the first part of that sentiment. Their case depends on the rapidity with which they stopped distributing. However, I honestly don't know if their notifying developers of the violations will make much of a difference. If there is a strong legal reason to keep the violations confidential until the case reaches a judge, the legal system might not consider that an important component in determining SCO's compliance. If SCO can argue that they had to keep the information secret because of a legal requirement, it's going to be hard for the court to hold that against them.

Re:I don't think so

[bwt]

But it is the GPL that exposes you to potentially being non-compliant, even when you've made all reasonable efforts to comply.

No different from any other copyright licence in this regard. You better get it right. They have NOT made a reasonable effort to comply with the GPL. They want Linus's code, but they don't want to abandon rights to things they ship with it.

If someone breaks into your company and steals proprietary code, all they have to do is insert it into a GPLed software package that you also contribute to and distribute. At that point, you're screwed.

I think you are getting at a fair question: if SCO legitimately owned proprietary code and discovered that IBM had mixed with GPL'd code, what should they have done?

The answer is very simple: they should have immediately sent IBM and the Linux community a C&D letter stating what parts of the code were proprietary. They should have refused to ship that code themselves under the GPL.

Does this place a burden on them to actually understand everything they ship? Yes, it does, but only if they want to keep their proprietary stuff cleanly separated from their GPL stuff.

Any company that relies on proprietary code and also works on GPLed code could be at risk.

Not quite. Only if the company wants to ship two such code bases that are candidates for mixing. Consider Corel from before: there was little risk that WorkPerfect code and linux code would intermix.

Furthermore, it would pretty much confirm Microsoft's earlier ramblings about the GPL putting a company's IP at risk.

They were overdoing it. The risk is only there if you mix code and distribute the result. Most USERS of GPL code aren't going to distribute modifications of it to others, and if they do, they'll have looked at the diff. Even if you modify GPL code, your extensions don't become GPL until you distribute them.

Consider Oracle. They released a clustered file system under the GPL. What proprietary rights have they lost -- just the ones contained in what they GPL'd. All they have to do is make sure they know exactly what's in the code they ship. If somebody else sends them a patch that adds large chunks of their proprietary RDBMS code in, should they blindly smile and ship it out? Um, no. They should be checking every patch submission they get.

Re:I don't think so

[dachshund]

The answer is very simple: they should have immediately sent IBM and the Linux community a C&D letter stating what parts of the code were proprietary. They should have refused to ship that code themselves under the GPL.

I'm with you on the second part, though as I've said before, it depends on how quickly they stopped shipping. They might even be held liable for those copies they shipped after determining that there was proprietary code in the source, but not for any copies shipped before that point.

As to notifying the Linux community... I'm not sure they're actually required to do so. Certainly nothing in the license compels them to do so, and if there's a valid legal reason-- demanded by the courts-- for keeping that info under wraps until it reaches trial, then they could have a legitimate excuse not to notify the Linux community of the precise violations.

I never said the law was just.

Does this place a burden on them to actually understand everything they ship? Yes, it does, but only if they want to keep their proprietary stuff cleanly separated from their GPL stuff. ... Only if the company wants to ship two such code bases that are candidates for mixing. Consider Corel from before: there was little risk that WorkPerfect code and linux code would intermix.

I think SCO has a pretty good defense on that score. They could simply point out that they audited all of the changes they made. How were they to know that their proprietary code was present in, say, a file that they didn't even modify? Like it or not, this argument has a pretty good chance of convincing a judge; especially when he or she considers the sheer size and complexity of a full audit.

In fact, in your post above you mention "looking at the diff". Had SCO "looked at the diff" after modifying the code, they wouldn't have noticed the proprietary code, anyway. That code was allegedly added by IBM before it got to SCO, so it would have been transparent to diff.

If somebody else sends them a patch that adds large chunks of their proprietary RDBMS code in, should they blindly smile and ship it out? Um, no. They should be checking every patch submission they get

Ultimately that's what a court is going to have to determine. Is is reasonable to expect every company to scan through every single piece of code in a potentially enormous project for code that some malicious third party may have stolen and incorporated? The answer could be yes, in which corporate contributions to GPLed applications are going to become a rare phenomenon. That sort of auditing can be too damned expensive to be worth the trouble.

One answer, as I see it, is a new version of the GPL that explicitly requires companies to take steps to prevent tainted code from getting out into the wild, and to immediately give licensees notice of how to remove it should it get out. Naturally this would only apply in situations where the leak was due to serious outside violations, not just anytime some company has second thoughts abour releasing a piece of code. It's much safer to provide for these extreme circumstances than to leave it for the courtroom.

Re:I don't think so

[MrGrendel]

As I said, you may be right about the first part of that sentiment. Their case depends on the rapidity with which they stopped distributing. However, I honestly don't know if their notifying developers of the violations will make much of a difference. If there is a strong legal reason to keep the violations confidential until the case reaches a judge, the legal system might not consider that an important component in determining SCO's compliance.

If they stopped distributing and asked the Linux developers to correct any IP problems then this would be a moot point because it assumes that they are not going to attempt to collect damages from Linux developers or users. In return, the Linux developers would overlook past GPL violations by SCO. Doing that would not have any impact on the IBM case since that is a contract violation case, not a normal IP violation. Corporations don't have anything to fear from the GPL. Free software developers don't want proprietary code mixed in with their GPL'd code any more than the owners of the proprietary code. Treat them fairly and respectfully and most of them will cooperate and get the offending code out as quickly as possible. SCO will be facing lawsuits because they are belligerent and threatening, not because someone secretly stuck their code in Linux.

Even if there is a legal reason to keep the specific violations secret, that does not help SCO in terms of compliance with the GPL. Section 7 states that if you cannot follow the terms of the GPL for legal reasons, then you are not allowed to use it. The GPL makes it pretty clear that if any of the terms are violated for any reason, then the license is terminated. I don't know if it can be terminated retroactively, but that isn't an issue in this instance because SCO clearly continued to distribute Linux after they decided to make unallowed IP claims.

Re:I don't think so

[bwt]

SCO redistributed that product, with no reasonable way of knowing that they were distributing their own code.

No, they have a duty to the copyright holders of all rights that they licence to assure they abide by the terms they agreed to. As a practical matter, this product is open source, so all they have to do is examine what they ship. If they failed to examine the contents of what they shipped, they chose to blindly accept the contents and if those contents are infringing, then their neglicence to their duty to respect the licence terms is no defense.

But even you would agree that since they began preparing this case, that at some point they did know. At that point, their violation of the GPL became wilfull, since they continued to ship it. Do you disagree?

The fact that they did discover the problem only proves that an argument that they had "no reasonable way of knowing" what they were shipping is untenable. All they had to do to protect their own interest -- all they had a duty to do to protect Linus's interest -- was exactly what they did do, just BEFORE they shipped.

If a judge determines that it was not possible for SCO to uphold certain aspects of the contract no matter what, and that SCO could not have known this, he/she may rule that certain aspects of the contract cannot be enforced.

Is SCO really going to suggest that reading the code to the product they are shipping is impossible? Since when is "I didn't read what I was agreeing to" a defense? Why can't they use diff to examine changes, like the rest of the world does? If SCO can't do this, why do they think IBM or anyone else can? If somebody embedded DeCSS or a Metallica song in the code, do you think Jack Valenti or Hilary Rosen would accept "we can't be expected to know what we are distributing" as an excuse?

After all, IBM is (allegedly) the party at fault in both cases.

My argument is that whether or not IBM committed infringement against SCO (and it would be against Linux as well), that SCO also committed separate infringement against Linux by trying to enforce additional restrictions to elements of what they shipped mixed with the real deal GPL'd kernel code. SCO has no right to say "Oh great, this licence is screwed -- let's ship it anyway".

Re:I don't think so

[bwt]

How were they to know that their proprietary code was present in, say, a file that they didn't even modify?

It doesn't matter if they knew. Knowledge is not an element of copyright infringement. In fact, most cases of copyright infringement that go to trial do not involve wilfull infringement.

They certainly knew that they were under an obligation to give up any further ristrictions on what they were shipping. If they didn't care to look deeper, that was their choice. Negligence is never a defense.

The fact that they did eventually know dismantles any argument they try to make. They only cared when it was their IP that was being harmed, but they were negligent on their duty to assure that they didn't ship contrary to the licence.

They eventually proved that they could in fact identify the mixed code (I'm assuming they have the proof -- otherwise their screwed). Why can't they do that before they ship, instead of after?

Re:I don't think so

[dachshund]

It doesn't matter if they knew. Knowledge is not an element of copyright infringement ... The fact that they did eventually know dismantles any argument they try to make.

You may have a point, but again, you're looking at this as a matter of copyright law, not contract law. All SCO has to do is convince a judge that they complied with the terms of the GPL to an eminently reasonable degree, and they can be protected from copyright infringement charges.

And I'm not sure that their eventual identification of the code represents damning proof that they should have known before they shipped copies of Linux. Who knows what bizarre circumstances brought it to their notice.

Re:I don't think so

[dachshund]

Why can't they use diff to examine changes, like the rest of the world does?

I think this statement illustrates how much you're underestimating the seriousness of the problem. Let's imagine that you take SCO to court and tell the judge, "SCO could have just used diff to locate the infringing sections; this is a common industry technique."

SCO's lawyers will immediately respond that the infringing code was added by an outside party. Even though SCO did a careful audit of every shred of code it modified, there was no way for it to realize that its (stolen) proprietary code was in the source before it did a single edit. For instance, SCO may have quite reasonably assumed that since it made no changes to kernelfoobar.c, there would be no way for its proprietary source to get into that file. A diff wouldn't have found this problem.

The judge, upon hearing how badly even the plaintiff underestimates the magnitude of the problem, will be inclined to believe SCO when it claims that a full audit was a major task, and not something it reasonably need have done.

But even you would agree that since they began preparing this case, that at some point they did know. At that point, their violation of the GPL became wilfull, since they continued to ship it. Do you disagree?

I don't disagree, but I think a judge will want to consider a) how many copies were distributed after SCO became aware, b) how quickly SCO acted to halt the distribution, and c) any changes SCO might have made to remove infringing sections from the code it was distributing. One likely outcome I imagine is that SCO could be held liable for every copy of Linux it distributed after becoming aware of the situation, but none of the copies it distributed before. How many copies are we talking about, and is it worth an expensive infringement suit?

The fact that they did discover the problem only proves that an argument that they had "no reasonable way of knowing" what they were shipping is untenable.

I don't think this is going to hold up. We have no idea what brought the infringment to SCO's attention. Perhaps it was a random fluke so unlikely that no reasonable person could argue that SCO "ought to" have discovered it before shipping Linux. Alternatively, they could have someone inside IBM who notified them of the infringements. In any case, all SCO has to do is convince a judge that it needn't have imagined the possibility of stolen code being in the Linux distro.

Is SCO really going to suggest that reading the code to the product they are shipping is impossible? Since when is "I didn't read what I was agreeing to" a defense?

It becomes a defense when the total size of the code exceeds several dozen megabytes, and even "reading" the code won't be enough to discover copyright violations. In order to reliably find this sort of problem, SCO would need to actively machine-audit every line of Linux code, against every single line of its own code. That's a daunting task, and certainly it would be a compelling argument to note that-- as far as I know-- nobody else in the business does it.

On the other hand, a victory by Linux or the FSF would damn well insure that every company does start doing this before releasing GPLed code. And I imagine the cost will drive companies the hell away from the GPL.

SCO has no right to say "Oh great, this licence is screwed -- let's ship it anyway".

They don't. But can they be held liable for every copy they shipped before they became aware? I highly doubt it, and I doubt that the few copies they shipped afterward are going to be the axe that brings down this particular monster.

Re:I don't think so

[bwt]

That's because it is copyright law, not contract law.

The unreasonable part is that they are simultaneously claiming that the code they received was not properly licenced, so that the terms therein don't apply to them, at the same time they are pretending this isn't a problem for them as distributors. Which is it? If the code was improperly licenced, they commited copyright infringement, if the code was properly licenced, they gave up their patent and trade secret claims as part of exercising that licence.

Re:I don't think so

[dachshund]

That's because it is copyright law, not contract law.

No, first and foremost it is a matter of contract law. The court will have to determine whether or not SCO's actions can be considered protected by the GPL. No copyright case can be made until it has been determined that SCO does not deserve protection under the GPL.

The unreasonable part is that they are simultaneously claiming that the code they received was not properly licenced, so that the terms therein don't apply to them, at the same time they are pretending this isn't a problem for them as distributors. Which is it? If the code was improperly licenced, they commited copyright infringement, if the code was properly licenced, they gave up their patent and trade secret claims as part of exercising that licence.

First off, it has nothing to do with the validity of the license they received. It has everything to do with what they redistributed.

Furthermore, I'm not trying to burst your bubble, but the world of contracts and licenses is is a lot more complicated than a piece of boolean logic. IANAL, but I've learned this through experience.

You assume that there is no middle ground in which portions of the GPL can be held enforceable while others can be relaxed, given the circumstances. My bet is that the court will choose to enforce Section 7 in a limited manner: if you can convince the court that you could not reasonably have known that you were in violation, you won't be held for past distributions. As I said before, Section 7 is the most legally questionable area of the GPL, and not coincidentally is the only section with a sort of severability clause that anticipates that it may or may not be enforceable by a court.

Re:I don't think so

[bwt]

All copyright law contains questions of whether an enforcable agreement was entered into by the parties. That does not make it "contract law". The difference is jurisdiction and remedy. It would be settled in Federal, not state court, for example, and would rely heavily on Title 17 of the US Code.

The case I'm imaginging would proceed like this: Linus would file in Federal court for copyright infringement, claiming SCO has reproduced and distributed his work without a licence. He would be arguing that SCO did not comply with the GPL on portions of the code he authored and thus that SCO's reproduction and distribution of these violates 17 USC 106 (1) and (3). The problem for SCO is that they have to fully comply with ALL enforcable aspects of the licence. Their only hope is to try to argue that the parts they did not comply with are not enforcable and are severable. The critical parts that SCO would have to attack are section 2b, 4 and 6. None of those seem assailable in the slightest.

There are two very easy ways SCO could have avoided liability. (1) Not distribute Linux in the first place (2) Distribute Linux and give up all these rediculous claims.

I just don't agree with your analysis of Section 7. In fact, I think Section 7 is essentually vacuous because that is the law anyway. It states the obvious: if you distribute a mix of code derived from several sources, you must be able to simultaneously comply with the distribution licences from all of those sources or you must not distribute.

From Linus perspective, it restates the obvious: you may not distribute his code mixed with anything with an incompatible licence, regardless of who did the mixing. In most cases, mass reproduction and distribution is consider much worse than just creating the infringing item, because it generates large amounts of revenue. SCO has no rights to distribute his parts of the code outside of what Linus grants them and he never granted them the right to distribute his stuff with proprietary stuff (from any source) and his licence even explictly forbids it, though this is unneeded. Congress requires an explicit grant with the burden of proof on the distributor.

SCO is a bunch of commies

[EEGeek]

In short... what a bunch of fucking morons....

Re:SCO is a bunch of commies

[rsklnkv]

Er, methinks you mean fascists.

Who benefits from SCO's death?

[Scramando]

You know, there's something insidious going on behind all of this "sewage".

Is it possible that MS could be waiting to scoop up the entrails of SCO once finishes all of its death throws?

If it does buy up the worthless remains of SCO then what could it do with the IP it obtains?

Do you think that Windows might finally be BSOD proof?

I dunno. I'm just tired of all the rage, anger, malice, insults and indignance displayed by all of us and I'd like to focus on something else for a while.

IF there's meat to this...

[Timex]

...would it mean that the folks from Edsel could come back and sue Ford, GM, etc for running them out of business?

I would think that if a company can't stand on their own merits, then they should do what thousands, nay- millions, of companies have done: go away.

Seeing problems down the road and suing those that are starting to become more successful than oneself seems to me to be bordering on the moronic.

I miss Subject Line Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

Subject Line Troll is my personal hero.

Boring

[Anonymous Coward]

This is all sooo boring. Why don't we all just go over to Darl McBride's house and kick his ass?

This cries out for the term "SCO scud"

[sacrilicious]

A term derived from the dud missiles used by Hussein during desert storm. A while back there was a list of humorous office terms that included "scud memo: a poorly conceived and drafted memo that does more damage to its sender than to its intended target." Describes SCO perfectly.

Maybe we could just shorten it to "scod".

And they might not.

[ebuck]

I know everybody's in a rush to beat up on SCO for making such an irresponsible statement, but let's face it. We're dealing with a bunch of amatuers.

If you're going to sue someone, keep quiet until that last minute, and WHAM!!! They'll be reeling in shock long enough to give you an edge against them.

SCO wants publicity, so they whine and threaten instead of going straight to the suit. But what kind of company (or CEO for that matter) whines and threatens about something so important (to SCO)?

Their tactics only demonstrate that there is nothing left to save or sell, and soon their own shareholders will get tired of the dog and pony show.

Re:And they might not.

[Catnapster]

I'm just surprised you didn't consider who SCO is threatening to sue.

DUMBASS EXECUTIVE 1: Yeah, let's sue Linus Torvalds! I'm sure all the hackers out there who idolize him will agree fully with us and not crack us into oblivion!
DUMBASS EXECUTIVE 2: That's a great idea! I know those hackers won't find my IP address, then crack my computer so they learn our home addresses, then come and kill us!
DUMBASS EXECUTIVE 1: You're right, they'd never do anything like that!

If they didn't whine and threaten, that would be less time for the angrier Linus devotees to delete important legal documents.

So why are they whining and threatening?

Bagdad Bob...

[i]

...is apparently an employee of SCO now !

Immediately inform http://www.welovetheiraqiinformationminister.com !

The Evil Plan Is Almost Complete

[jjgm]

Quoting Andrew Orlowski in el Register:

Caldera was created in 1994 by a team of Novell Linux enthusiasts, headed by Ransom Love. It received seed capital from Novell CEO Ray Noorda. We'd meet Caldera in these years and they professed their ambition was to "get SCO".

McBride has nearly finished the job of destroying SCO from the inside out. Maybe that's a secret part of his job description; a more Machiavellian plot could scarcely be hatched. In which case, he could reasonably expect a sizeable payout.

I second this motion

[semios]

Can we get it in the Jargon file atleast?

Real Strategy

[GrimGrinningGhost]

I think the obvious is missing. All that SCO really has to do is generate enough publicity suggesting that Linux may have some legal challenges ahead, and any company considering a switch to Linux implimentation will put their plans on hold until all of this is resolved. In the mean time sales of Linux will be stalled and Linux alternatives will be pursued. Further, if I was a Linux competitor, I would have my marketing people all over the place getting my companies name in front of clients.

Also, I would be keeping a close eye on SCO's marketing people. What are they doing?

can't sleep or the clowns will get me

Defense Fund

[orange]

Kewl, lets rock and roll.
So where do I send my defense fund contribution?

SCO in Utah

[Anonymous Coward]

The biographies at http://www.sco.com/company/execs/
show a lot of BYU and Utah State grads.

I do see a variety of backgrounds of management
of Novell, another company with headquarters
in Utah.

The headquarters of both companies are in
Utah County, just south of Salt Lake County.
Interesting.

On what did Linus infringe?

[imhotep1]

If Novell is correct, SCO doesn't hold the copyrights. The Open Group owns the Unix trademark. A quick search of the US Patent office (my actual search query is here.) reveals that SCO doesn't have any Unix related patents before November of 1993 (after Linus had written the kernel)

So really, this whole lawsuit has lept headfirst from a giant joke into something well beyond offensive.

That was beautiful. Thanks.

[semios]

I especially liked the death of christ. Thanks, again.

Good lord man...

[Ayanami Rei]

you got trolled. Wasn't it obvious?

YHL. HAND. v_v;;

for great justice : swap sco.com's dns entry

[Anonymous Coward]

...with goatse.cx

Let's invite SCO to sue ALL OF US !

[Taco Cowboy]

If SCO is so anxious to SUE SOMEONE of "infringing on their IP", then I think we should help SCO by becoming defendents-en-masse, in a reverse-class-action suit, and let SCO sue ALL OF US.

I can't wait to see how much love and goodwill SCO will get by suing all of us.

FUCK SCO

[rsklnkv]

Send your complaints here :

http://www.sco.com/company/feedback/index.html

sco

[Anonymous Coward]

the CEO of SCO Australia can be reached on his mobile : 0419 660 016.

Dear Linus

[hkg4r7h]

Dear Linus,

YHBT, HAND!

Let me add...

[dachshund]

... that we could well avoid this whole mess, thanks to the Novell announcement today. But sooner or later we're going to have to deal with this for real.

Neither legal solution is ideal, depending on whose shoes you imagine yourself in. It's pretty scary to thing that someone could steal my top-secret "I'm gonna make a million bucks with this" code and stick it into a GPLed project I also work on, thereby screwing me. It's also scary to think that a company like SCO can taint the entire Linux codebase with a couple of snippets of code.

The answer, I would imagine, lies in a few new clauses in the GPL. Should you find that some third party has placed you in violation, you should be legally required to hold all downstream parties blameless for some period of time, and immediately hand them the information required to remove the tainted code.

Such a requirement protects copyright holders, but might also prevent a repeat of SCO's "we're gonna sue every Linux user, but we won't tell you exactly why" situation.

I don't think you understand the nature of trolls

[Anonymous Coward]

check out this exposition

ZX Spectrum fans know They copied that too

[fr0dicus]

I had a game that let me play a pacman clone while the real game was loading from tape.... the name escapes me at the moment, can anyone remember what it was called? Some form of side scrolling beat 'em up if I recall.

Beware the Blue Penguin

[some old guy]

Linus need not worry (of course, he wouldn't anyway) because when IBM gets through with SCO, Darl McBride will be paying a licensing fee just to breath the same air.

it just got stranger...

[geoff lane]

I REALLY hope someone with a deep understanding of all this is preparing to write a book. This action could be the trigger that destroys the current easy path that IP claims have in the US courts.

As SCO is relying on trade secrets to hide their IP (ie close source) it's SCOs responsibility to protect their IP. Open source developers cannot inspect the SCO code so if they did write similar code (and there is no claim of cut&paste editing here) they would never know. SCO on the other hand has easy access to all Linux code. Then, as
any damages could only be obtained via a civil action SCO would have to demonstrate to the court that they immediately acted to MINIMISE the damage before going to court.

SCO loses.

This is a proxy war

[ites]

Reminds me of the old days when the US and USSR smashed up little third world countries as part of their "cold war". Today, IBM is the US and Microsoft is the USSR, Linus is Korea and SCO is East Yemen.

It's clearly a battle between IBM and Microsoft, over the value of the Linux brand. SCO is being used as a vehicle to try to weaken this brand. We are unlikely to see IBM or Microsoft get involved directly, but there will be an escalation of this. It will not end with SCO's demise, if that happens soon.

Re:I too have been very critical of Linus' Apathy

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you need a better dictionary. The definition of "barratry" is "the persistent incitement of litigation" (courtesy of Webster).

An extract of the offended code

[Anonymous Coward]

i++; ...
j++; ... ...
n++;

SCO found thousands of lines with these code which is exactly the same as in their code. Microsoft will sue too, it also seems to be a part of windows code.

Would they have a case ?

[skeeve22]

With many forms of IP, you actually lose your rights to enforce the IP if you do not act against infringers within a reasonable period.

In this case Linux has been around since 1991 (?) and no action has been taken, ergo it might seem that the IP holder has lost the right to enforce IP as it has failed to act in a reasonable time.

IPLawyers got any comment ?

WOW

[{X-Frog}]

eh, stupid or not, SCOX lost more than 24% of their stocks value today (May 28th)

Anyone mind sending a postcard in?

[Anonymous Coward]

The SCO Group
355 South 520 West
Suite 100
Lindon, Utah 84042 USA

retribution?

[pavera]

Ok, now maybe all of us slashdotters combined can't do much.. but there are 250,000 of us or so right? what if we all instead of donating thousands to Linus' defence fund what if we all take that money and short SCO's stock?? Can we make a difference are there enough of us to "slashdot" their share price? If we can drive their stock price to nothing, get all of the institutional buyers to sell it, hell we could make ourselves money while driving the company's net worth to $0. It would be fun to slashdot a stock. heck we did it to their conference call.

Re:Now that's journalism: Linus lawsuit in last li

[arakasi]

What I really, really love about this story is how the CBS MarketWatch journalist displayed his complete lack of understanding for Linus' importance in the IT world and stuffed the threat of a law suit in as an afterthought at the bottom line.

It's called a punchline.

if everything would be open source...

[rafi]

if everything would be open source from the beggining such problem wouldn't exist at all - and that is the reason why Open Source is good.

well...

[fredo__69]

this is crazy... who'll be next? My main work is on Solaris but I'm also had the "pleasure" to work on SCO while at a clients site, they should put time & cash in there products instead of laywers and blabla...

-fredo

Re:I too have been very critical of Linus' Apathy

[Jonner]

Linus is a leader, though not the only one. He may not have asked to be a leader, but he became one and has accepted the role, at least in the development of Linux itself. Not everyone is a philosopher, but everyone has a philosophy, whether he realizes it or not. It seems Linus' philosophy is one of hedonism and apathy, which is a little irresponsible, IMHO, since so many people depend on his leadership. He does have a responsibility to those he leads. RMS needs to become less abrasive and offensive, and Linus needs to care a little more.

Perhaps SCO's threats so far are silly enough to be ignored, but it would be foolish of Linus to pay no attention at all. I assume he is paying some attention.

Name One

[meadowsp]

"Since most of the great ideas are invented in the open source community - "

Please name one.

Re:Name One

[Anonymous Coward]

Einstein's {special,general} theory of relativity

Re:Name One

[Tony]

TCP/IP, along with many of the ideas related to it (sliding transmit windows, for instance).

World-wide web.

Email (not just SMTP, but the entire concept).

Many of the basic concepts in comp-sci, such as the various sort methods, binary trees, hash buckets, etc.

Is this enough yet? If these concepts were tied up in patents, we couldn't do our job.

Now, name one great idea that *didn't* originate in the open community. (Warning: this is a trick request. I can "prove" that any idea you present originated in the open community because we are *all* standing on the shoulders of giants.)

Aren't they a Software company?

[obtuse]

What business are they in? Sure code review is hard, but that doesn't make it optional. They just wanted to be parasites & make money off of Linux, but they accidentally gave away their own stuff because they're incompetent? Gee, it must suck to be that stupid.

They are, or were, an OS software company. Then they decided to sell someone else's OS software that they got free. If code review is too hard for them, then they shouldn't be selling an entire Linux distribution, but should stick to the far easier task of writing software that no-one with a choice will use.

This isn't a danger to the GPL, because it isn't unique to the GPL. Other licenses can work similarly. If you give your own shit away accidentally because you didn't look in the box before you did so, you still lose.

Unfortunately one implication of this is that some very large companies may want to avoid the Linux distro business, if they don't know what they own.

SCO didn't do their homework anyway

[EmagGeek]

Did they bother to read the history of linux? If so, they'd realize that linux followed after Andrew Tanenbaum's MINIX system. In fact, there was a lot of tension between Torvalds and Tanenbaum over the design of linux, and Tanenbaum even went so far as to proclaim that "Linux is obsolete." Apparently he didn't approve of Linux's kernel design.

License

[RevSmiley]

Hey? Where is their money for a City business.
Really Santa Cruz needs to crack down on this bandit operation.

Snork

Linux is the ball that will just keep on rollin

[Anonymous Coward]

No matter who wins any lawsuit, No matter if Linus gave up or was sued, Linux (TM) will always keep goin. Any infringing parts of the kernel (my guess is they are not core parts of the kernel that are being implicated anyway) will be fished out and Linux will go on. It could even change its name (Linux branch anyone?). We've seen branching occuring in lots of other GPL areas, such as XFree. The sourcecode is out there now, even if development went underground there is no way any court would be able to stop it (just like attempting to stop the proliferation of file sharing is futile).
So I will go to bed tonight knowing that this lawsuit, no matter how valid it may be (we all know its a load of hot air anyway) contains very little threat to the day to day use of a free Unix like implementation.
It's very hard to attack proven GPL code, it just gets out there, multiplies, duplicates and mutates. Hmm maybe Microsoft were right to describe it as a virus. A good one though maybe..

Who's Next?

[Cnik70]

This is quickly turning into one of the biggest jokes I've seen in the longest time. It appears that the dying embers of SCO is trying to find anything and everything to latch onto for a lawsuit. If they would have spent as much time running their business as they do suing anything that may have a linux link, they probably would not have found themselves in the rut they are in today.

MY prejudice is awful.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mormons all of them will screw any non mormom in a second. Boycott the whole fucking state.
Darl is a poster boy for a "good mormon"
Wonder why the FBI is so fucked up? Most of the agents are Mormons. That is why it's called the Mormon mafia. That is why like all good mormon endeavors it can't admit it fucked up ever. "Gotta look good" so they can get that spirit planet when they die. Screw um

time

[RevSmiley]

SCO will not be around for years. They will be out of money inside of a year. IBM will squash them like a bug.

Re:criminalisation of the art of computer programm

[Anonymous Coward]

What about a GPP, Gnu Public Patent...
Frankly, I don't know how much a patent costs, but since they seem to be handed out like candy at Grandma's house...

Dictionaries and the Law

[tres3]

I know, I know, Off topic! But...

When it comes to legal matters the only dictionary that counts is Black's Law Dictionary. Just a little FYI.

A prediction

[jarek]

As much as I'm tired of predictions made on the internet, here's one. SCOs shares drop below $1 within two weeks. Owners of SCO shares sue Mr. McBride for fraud with proof that he knew there was no case to begin with based on the letters sent to Novell. Microsoft requires their money back (which at $1 would match the market value of SCO) and SCO goes chapter 7 immediately. IBM picks up the remaining pieces to avoid that Novell get the rest Unix ip/licensing/copyright assests.

Perhaps I have confused my own hopes with a prediction. So be it. /jarek

One for the tinfoil hat brigade

[Zigg]

Last night, I saw "Boies' Take" on Forbes, in which litigator-to-the-stars David Boies (who is SCO's "hired gun", as the article puts it, in this non-case) tries to make himself and SCO out to be innocent, bewildered, almost childlike in their incomprehension as to why everyone hates him. For what it's worth, I don't think Boies nor SCO expected this backlash.

So, this brings us back to Microsoft's donation (umm, I mean, license, yeah) to SCO. Turn it on its head for a moment. What if Microsoft realized all along Boies (who was up against them in the antitrust case) was going to be tied to these SCO shenanigans, and they figured this would be a great two-for-one hit -- serve that pesky Linux a smackdown, but also give Boies some bad press as revenge?

Mmm... conspiracy.

Sounds Like..

[RevSmiley]

Sounds like North Korea..

Wouldn't this be...

[Anonymous Coward]

...similar to trying to sue Jesus? I think in this day and age, there are enough Linux fanatics out there to wipe Orem, UT off the map if they were really this stupid.

Class action suit, anyone?

[Slartibartfast]

I wonder... IANAL, but it still occurs to me that these bozos are really beginning to reach into the dreck, and they're doing it enough that it might be time for the Linux community might start to consider fighting fire with fire. Any lawyers out there who might give their considered opinion as to whether or not we, as a community, could sue them for something along the lines of "willfully and knowingly endangering our livelihoods by damaging the perception and credibility of the Linux operating system"?

Just curious...

what about this?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.novell.com/news/press/archive/2003/05/p r03033.html

Why Linus

[Anonymous Coward]

SCO will hint/imply Linus knew about the IBM theft and included the IBM code into the kernel anyways.

And with the linux development model, all code for the kernel has to go through him.

All the code in the kernel is now contaminated with the IP right issues.

The next step from SCO is some sort of cease and desist order from the courts to stop further kernel development until these problems can be thrashed out. The timing would be perfect with 2.6 soon coming out.

Church of SCOlogy

[turambar386]

What lameness. SCO is beginning to sound like a certain cult we all know. Pretty soon they're going to be telling us that 75 trillion years ago, Linus blew everyone up with hydrogen bombs in volcanoes and the only reason we use Linux today is because we are all infected with space cooties.

The American Way

[mtfbwy]

If you can no longer compete, sue.

Yes, but...

[tkrotchko]

"Arithmetic compression for example is not at all obvious"

No, but mathematical expressions are not patentable by their nature because its effectively patenting a natural law, like gravity or gene sequencing....

oh wait...bad example....

SCO is going to get a beatdown

[Andy Dodd]

Their lawyers have obviously never heard of defensive patents.

Don't mess with someone whose stack (of patents) is bigger than yours. You will lose. You might win the first case (a battle), but you will lose the war.

Re:SCO is going to get a beatdown

[HiThere]

But their lawyer does know about defensive patents. So just what really *is* going on?

Forgot one thing

[Andy Dodd]

If the inventions are created at about the same time, then the patent can be nullified or assigned to the first creator of the invention.

In most countries in the world, the rule is "first to file". In the US, it's "first to invent", but 95% of the time "first to file" wins in a conflict case. (i.e. deciding who actually has rights to the invention.) - You need LOTS of documentation and proof to win such a case if you're not FtF.

you will so fucking get it muther fucker.

[Anonymous Coward]

sue the man and you will so have all of hackerdom on your fucking arse. peace? or you fucking die.

cracked box post.

Peace.

Sweep SCO under the rug

[wesmo]

The general buzz is that SCO's grasping at straws because they expected IBM to buy them out. Hence, SCO turns around and starts making trouble in the hopes to force IBM to buy them out.

News.com LWN's article, which references a News.com article, seems to point to this as well. They go a step further poking that IBM will buy out SCO, then toss them in the dumpster.

We all know the fact is that SCO's business has all but vanished. Their business model now is chasing after patent royalties. From my recent experience with patent hungry Gemstar and their failed buyout of DIVA which resulted in Gemstar being fined $40mil, the patent-chasing business model is doomed to failure and only results in animosity towards the patent chaser.

SCO is just making noise to (1) get in the headlines, and (2) drive up their value before getting bought out.

Thank YOU SCO

[Anonymous Coward]

I always knew that Linux was illegal! SCO, you're doing the right thing

Oh please, oh please, do it!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sue him and we'll see some good publicity on the Open Source world and some stupidity exposed on the SCO/MS side.

This FUD is so bad that isn't even false ;-)

bye bye SCO

[Anonymous Coward]

Our company had 14 separate Unixware installations that I am aware of (it's a Fortune 500 company and I am a infrastructure manager in one small unit in th U.S.). We now have 5 that I am aware of and we're trying like hell to get to 0. This is all because of the legal crap and has occurred in the last 6 months with the exception of 3 of them which we were already replacing before the IBM rep brought up SCOs upcoming tactics. Oddly enough he was the one that suggested I start reading slashdot. I hope more companies follow suit. You don't need a business partner that is unpredictable and malicious. These are the types of partners that drag others down with them or at the very list leave permenant scars on your business reputation.

Re:But

[Pendersempai]

"Oops." -- Enron

Don't you see history repeating?

[Nicolas450]

All this SCO, IBM, Novell thing reminds me of an old story about Apple, Microsoft and Xerox about patents regarding icon and windows... Seem to me that novell is trying to tell SCO to just Shut up!!! Hope they will soon!!!

SCO sues Albert Gore

[moojin]

May 29, 2003 - Salt Lake City Utah -

Today, SCO Inc. filed a lawsuit against former vice-president Albert Gore for inventing the internet, which is the most widely used vehicle to distribute the Linux operating system. Recently, SCO filed a lawsuit against IBM for donating UNIX intellectual property to Linux development. SCO claimed to be the owner of the intellectual property of UNIX, until Novell corrected their incorrect assumptions.

Al Gore, who was once attributed to saying that he had invented the internet, released the following statement, "Contrary to SCO's assertions, I, Albert Gore am not the inventor of the Internet. Not only would a quick check of Scientific Journals reveal this fact, but a review of the U.S. Congressional record confirm that I voted to pass the law in which the predecessor to the Internet was funded. To my knowledge, the law which help fund the DARPA NET did not make a party to inventing the next phase of the project which was the Internet. I believe it unlikely that SCO can demonstrate that I was directly involved in the scientific, financial or legislative development of the Internet. Apparently, SCO must share this view, since over the last few months it has repeatedly asked me to transfer my non-existent patents for the Internet to SCO. I have rejected these requests adamantly. Finally, I find it telling that SCO failed to assert a claim against the true inventors of the Internet or its predecessors."

SCO could not be reached for comment because it is still answering questions from yesterday's past quarter results conference call in which 250+ people listened to, which is more than their usually 7 to 10.

attacked? bullshit

[gosand]

I admire Linux for his attempt to take the high road and ignore this as a minor attack. Unfortunately, it is becoming clear that this is not a minor attack. SCO is threatening the viablity of Linus' life work and his greatest accomplishment. If he will not fight when attacked this way, then he has no life's work or accomplishment.

Bullshit. He hasn't been attacked at all. Some 3rd rate dying company, probably on the puppet strings of a defensive, ego-maniacal monopoly, is making idle threats about how other companyies have incorporated Linus' incredibly popular pet project and infringed on something that they purchased. However, Linus has not been implicated until now, and it was a pretty half-assed implication at that. I have a feeling that Linus is pretty confident in his views on Linux. He doesn't NEED to respond unless he is
a) sued by SCO
b) called into court
Not only that, but a lot of his work is documented via newsgroups and past revisions of the kernel.

At this point in time, what does he have to worry about? What would you like him to do? Issue a press release saying that his work is his own, and doesn't infringe on any patents held by SCO? What? What do you want him to do, issue some kind of diatribe on how IP is stupid, or how SCO is run by a bunch of idiots grasping at straws? What? What would you have him do? How about a counter-suit for mentioning his name and tarnishing his reputation?

Linus is more admirable for not doing anything. Amongst all the uproar, posturing, and name calling, he still remains honorable and wise.

Re:I'd pay a couple of $$$ to the Linus defense fu

[Dr. Smeegee]

Actually I'd rather see Tove (Mrs. Linus) do that. Probably more effective too, what with those mad judo/childrearing skills.

Re:Linux Distros ....Countersue that fucker MCBRID

[Anonymous Coward]

In germany this already has happened. one of the top origanisations of the distro makers (Linuxverband) said, show the evidence or we are going to throw you out. Now another organisation LinuxTag, now goes to court for cease and desist so that Sco finally has to present evidence. Wonder what Sco is doing against this one, closing the german office? The managers of the german Sco are really in a bad situation there. They basically are hung for a few bunch of ***** running their american father company into the ground. At least Sco germany was on its way to get a name again, with the United Linux alliance, before the shitstorm started.

Not in Finland

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me tell you, the Finnish goverment aren't such pussies as the Norwegians, who stamp their constituents in a puddle to curry favor from the recently-bought US lawmakers.

Our current PM might be a populist asshole, but we'll get rid of her and the whole center party for decades to come, starting from the next elections.

Is that SCO's logo?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, this may be a bit off topic, but is that their logo next to the story? I just ask 'cause I just had a revelation! Look at the blue part of the logo and imagine the globe rotated an extra 90 degrees. Assume the blue part is symetrical and a pattern emerges!!

Just a question

[Anonymous Coward]

I am neither a Us citizen nor a laywer, but given the current situation and yesterdays novell statement. Wouln't it be possible that the whole Sco issue is not a civil case anymore.

Lets look at the facts:

Blackmailing of companies
Accusations without giving proff
threatening persons for sueing without giving proof either

and not a single line of proof but different accusations every week. Then the statement of Novell which basically nullifies some of the accusations without Sco even having to give proof.

Basically the whole issue seems more like a criminal case to me with following illegal things done by Sco:

Blackmailing
possible fraud
possible stock manipulations

Is it possible to have calfornian state attourneys and maybe also the attournes of the stock exchange looking into Sco? Given the facts here and in germany where Sco probably soon will be forced by court to present the evidence I think there is a case to get some of the Sco Ceos into prison!

Re:CVS History... don't we know who added the code

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but as soon as the file is renamed you'd better have a backup lying around, it is time we move to SVN or a similar system. CVS sucks....

lawsuit tied to profit ?

[kjshark]

What's the motivation ?
Is McBride's sense of justice is tied to how much money he makes ? Or is it that frivolous lawsuits make him feel better when he's failing ? Or is it that he has to blame someone because he sells an uncompetitive product ? Or is he just a cheap whore ?

This is like a magazine cover from a few years ago

[cgenman]

"If you don't buy our IP, we'll kill this Geek"

Been there before

[Anonymous Coward]

This totally reminds me of the time that Oral Roberts locked himself in the Oral Roberts tower and told all the old people that God was going to kill him if they didn't send him $1 million.

And the folks sent it too.

Could be expensive for Linus

[Anonymous Coward]

Time for the EFF to start a fund to help in his defence. I've got several copies of Linux so I'm prepared to put my money where my mouth is, SCO might come after me soon.

SCO, what's going on?

[doublem]

If you've been keeping up with the tech news, you know SCO is throwing around lawsuits and threats of lawsuits.

It all boils down to claims that someone put something in Linux that belongs to SCO.

Reports form SCO on what was inserted and by whom changes from day to day. All we've gotten from SCO is vague statements and shifting claims. Either this is a smear campaign against Linux and IBM, or SCO's executives have no real understanding of their company's technology, and can't speak consistently about what's going on.

They have, to date, refused to release the details, and restricted themselves to vague doublespeak worthy of a Dilbert comic.

I want SCO to tell us exactly what code violates their patents, copyrights, contracts or whatever the "They did bad" of the day is.

SCO's press releases have claimed ownership of IP and trademarks that are owned by Novell and the Open Group. Every time they are called to task they make a new string of claims.

And now, according to http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7B C408959E-005A-4E93-9006-B32DCD1FCA22%7D&siteid=yho o

"McBride added that unless more companies start licensing SCO's property, he may also sue Linus Torvalds, who is credited with inventing the Linux operating system, for patent infringement."

This just days after Novell pointed out that SCO does NOT own any of the Unix patents. They are largely owned by Novell. It smells more like blackmail than anything else. If Linus Torvalds has infringed patents, why not just sue him? Why do these alleged patent infringements get ignored if enough people buy SCO licenses?

I want SCO to tell us what was done wrong.

I want to know what the actual violations are.

I want to see the details.

I want SCO to stop hiding behind press releases and lawyers and tell us what is going on.

Unless they show us the code, I'll be forced to conclude that this is the dying gasp of a doomed company, grasping at straws in a desperate effort to shift the blame for the company's death away from the executives running it.

LINUS TORVALDS LEGAL DEFENSE FUND

[Anonymous Coward]

Ken Creten here (just ridding the anonymousness).

What do you all think?

SCO either have got unix patients or are lieing

[nzpolar]

SCO either have got unix patients or are lieing: Read this from SCO's website (http://www.sco.com/scosource/) "SCO is the owner of the UNIX Operating System Intellectual Property that dates all the way back 1969, when the UNIX System was created at Bell Laboratories. Through a series of mergers and acquisitions, SCO has acquired ownership of the patents, copyrights and core technology associated with the UNIX System. The SCO source division will continue to offer traditional UNIX System licenses to preserve, protect and enhance shareholder value." (http://www.sco.com/scosource/) Seams they think they own more than they do; or they own more than we think they do..

Ain't got no patents

[siskbc]

Similarly, if Linus introduced into the kernel either his own code or code donated by someone else (IBM) that implements any algorithms for which SCO holds patents, even if the code in question comprises completely original implementations of those algorithms, then by redistributing the kernel without a license from SCO, Linus is infringing on SCO's patents.

I got burned on this one before - the company CURRENTLY known as SCO seems to own shit as far as patents go...although your analysis is correct if they did. That kind of makes it all the funnier, doesn't it? They have NO patents...Novell claims they have NO copyright over the historical codebase...yet here they have the gall to say this garbage about. Appalling.

Oh why doesn't Apple just buy SCO and be done!!

[jswitte]

Oh, Why doesn't Apple just BUY SCO out in a hostile (or maybe not..) takeover and be done with it! Here's the scenario:

• Apple buys out out SCO (they only have a market cap of about 75 million (surely less by later today ;-)
• then they donate or otherwise nullifies ALL their patents (anti-patents as discussed several years ago here?) to the FSF, or BSD group, or whatever.

Or perhaps Apple could somehow buy out SCO as a wholly owned subsidiary so that SCO retains it's own liabilies (I don't know exactly how this happens, but I know that DOW Chemical did it when they bough Union Carbide. [See Bhopal.org for the other side of the hideous tragedy]) Then Apple could still sue the pants off SCO (if SCO had any value left, that is)

Then Apple goes on the rampage, and sues the USPTO over frivolous patents. They might have to take care here not to tread on some of their own patents. I don't have time to look them up, but I'm sure they have some *worthy* ones on the books relating to the Rosetta/InkWell/Newton (but not, specifically, one I was told about by L.Y. regarding the integration of character and word recognition information - which was a counter-patent against a stupid patent by another company on the integration of stoke and character information.)

Ah, well, I know no-one will probably read this.. But I can dream..

Why doesn't the FSF have this on their front page?

[jswitte]

Why the heck doesn't the FSF have this on the FRONT PAGE!! After all, Linux is GPL, and isn't the copyright of all GPL software supposed to be transferred (maybe not exclusively, I'm not sure) to the FSF expressedly for legal protection reasons?

Anybody??

SCO has already won

[captnjameskirk]

They got M$ to cough up $10 - $20 million in license fees, and they haven't even used up their legal budget yet. All they need is one or two more like that, and all the executives can cash out and go home before the stock crumbles...

Wish I could short the stock

[nightsweat]

But you have to wait for an uptick to buy it. SCOX went down 26% yesterday and it's down 7% this morning.

I don't think there's an uptick in sight.

They know all that - they don't care.

[siskbc]

BTW: From when does this imaginary patent protection for the Unix kernel and I/O mechanism date? 1970? 1972? I smell expiration.

Well, see, like you say, they don't even own it, so it doesn't matter if the patent was granted yesterday - Novell isn't enforcing it. ;)

What they're doing here is cute though - they are so willful at mixing concepts that it's disgusting. They blatantly mix arguments that are only germane to patents with a trade-secret situation. They always refer to SCO OpenUnix as Unix (circleR), a trademark they don't own and isn't unique to them. They claim that Linux is in violation of trade secrets they couldn't have been a party to. Every other day they claim they have patents and copyrights - then they kind of admit they don't - but not really.

I can't imagine their lawyers are that retarded that they can't make the distinction (in fact I know they're not). And they can't hope that IBM's are. Additionally, they can't be hoping still that IBM will settle, because IBM's foaming at the mouth now.

The only possible conclusion is they're using their spotlight to spread as much FUD as they can before this thing goes to court and they get reamed. Of course, they will lose any credibility they might have had in the process, and will certainly lose a great deal of business.

Something's making this "Suicide-by-IBM" gambit worth it - gee, I wonder what?

They will

[siskbc]

If SCO decides to actually sue Linus, I hope all the server companies (or atleast the big ones like IBM, Red Hat, Penguin Computing, etc.) will help with his legal costs. After all, he did give them a great product without them do all the R&D themselves.

Smart companies like SBC with questionable IP go after Mom&Pop shops to establish precedent before going after the big boys. Naturally, that assumes you have things, like say a patent, that enables you to win the case, unlike SCO.

The last thing IBM wants, being a major linux player, is SCO spending Linus into a settlement, because settlements look bad (and IBM already had a chance at that one that they passed up). So if Linus is sued, expect IBM's hired muscle to crack some SCO kneecaps for him.

I just checked my wallet....

[eMartin]

I just checked my wallet, and I've only got 79. Anybody want to spot me the rest?

Information Minister For Hire!

[ferret70]

SCO should hire This Guy, I hear he's out of a job lately

Coincidence?

[starm_]

Today I read this from advocado:
"SCO hints it may sue Linus Torvalds for patent infringement"

and then a few articles below:
"Microsoft to purchase UNIX rights from SCO"
refering to this article.

Coincidence?

starm_

What about the NDA?

[lacrymology.com]

My first question is: Where are the people who have signed the NDA and looked at the evidence? SCO has mentioned numerous times that they would allow anyone to come and look at the evidence as long as they signed a NDA. OK fine. Why are the Linux community bigwigs not going yesterday to check this out and simply say, "Yep, they have a clear-cut case/no case/whatever"? Surely, that wouldn't violate said NDA correct? I propose a /. pool to purchase a plane ticket for CmdrTaco.

wtf?!?

[jparp]

Wow!, It seems SCO's trollery knows no bounds.

I'm confadent that SCO wont get far enouph with this to sue Linus. They'll get driven into the ground long before they get the chance.

But if they did sue Linus, I don't think I could imagine a more unifying cause in the Open Source / Free Software communnity. EVERYBODY loves Linus.

I mean could you imagine the protests of millions outraged geeks?

It would sure give the community allot of publicity. Though I sencerly hope it does not come to that.

Retroactive Revocation of a License

[Royster]

Dosn't work. The GPL isn't even very clear on whether

Generally, if a license is revoked, that revocation is prospective from the date of revocation and not retrospective. Someone can rely on having a valid license. As, at least until they filed a patent suit (and it appears they filed a breach of contract suit as they don't even own the patents in question) the license was valid.

SCOX - Titanic II?

[Anonymous Coward]

SCO's stock is going down faster than Monica Lewinsky.

Down 8.55% so far with no bottom in sight!

HAA HAA!!

WTF?

[cyclist1200]

Exactly how the f*** can they sue Linus for patent infringement when their press release yesterday as much as said "OK, we don't have the patents or copyrights, but it's all about the contracts!"?

I liked Darl's wording, too: "Unless people start giving us money, we'll have to sue the guy that made things hard for us."

I mean, the guy's just whining now.

SCO's Stock Does the Limbo

[Anonymous Coward]

How low can you go? Will the lights still be on long enough for us to get the end of this story?

Today it is beowulf

[sad_]

Besides the mentioning of Linus in the article, SCO is claiming Linux is using their 'cluster technology'.

"clustering technologies in Linux that are used to tie groups of computers together to complete heavy-duty tasks."

So first we have source code from SCO in the kernel, then it is SYSV, some time later in 'unix' commands and now beowulf.

makes you wonder what we will have stolen from SCO by tomorrow...

why keep details secret? to string out the lawsuit

[zptdooda]

Good question ... their secrecy seems illogical unless they have more than one goal.

By keeping the details secret, they can avoid an early end to their business venture.
This maximizes:
1. length of the FUD attack
2. duration of bankrolling by M$ via license fees. I think this is SCO's primary revenue base now.
3. time for other companies to get unnecessary SCO licences. They may want time to build inertia here.

It's possible SCO and M$ know the lawsuit will probably fail, but I think it'll be a couple of years until the case even starts in court. Some open source progress can be diverted by this focus.

M$ may be using SCO tactically. They don't want their weapon to fizzle too quicky.

Not whining

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called "panic" - flailing about doing random things just before smacking into the sidewalk at 200 MPH.

MAD DOG!

[Anonymous Coward]

Get your metaphores right!

Atticus uses a rifle, which he gets out from the back of the china cabinet.

Re:MAD DOG!

[anagama]

Hmmm ... I sense a movie reference which I don't understand. Name that movie - I'm sure I missed it!

Outcomes

[ces]

IBM still hasn't really fired back at SCO yet, in light of Novell's assertions I'm sure it isn't going to be pretty when it happens.

IBM will probably respond with a countersuit alleging patent infringement by SCO and breach of contract and trade secret violations related to project Monterey.

I'm sure Novell is probably checking its agreement with SCO right now to see if SCO has possibly violated the contract. If so expect Novell to sue SCO for breach of contract.

If both of these happen SCO will be out of business quite quickly.

If SCO was to sue Linus for infringing on patents they don't own, I'm sure he would have no problem finding donations for his legal defense fund. Heck he might even get a good IP lawyer on contingency considering suing someone for violating patents you don't own is a good basis for a countersuit.

question on the patenting of software.

[LifesABeach]

i don't know that much about software patenting, but the following is rattling in background mode...

given:

one can patent a process, say a software process.

proposed side step:

consider there are 256 ways to write a for/next loop using goto,if-then,assignment statements.

by writing software differently, one has changed the process in which data is 'handled'.

therefore:

because a patent describes a process(s), one only needs to describe, ( maybe pain stakingly ), a different process for doing the same thing.

i believe there are patents, which implies exceptions, to same processes.

the reason i'm thinking this is because of the problems that ford went through to side step an existing patent on motorized carriages/cars.

Buy this IP licensing agreement....

[Anonymous Coward]

...or the Penguin gets it!

Barratry?

[Gurney]

Actually, I believe the legal term for what SCO is doing is 'barratry', and it is illegal last time I checked. Threatening legal action without grounds in order to blackmail someone into doing something completely unrelated is one way to get yourself sued right back, thrown in jail, and/or if you're a lawyer, disbarred, depending on the law in your area. IANAL, but look up the term in any legal dictionary. (BTW, 'barratry' is also used to refer to certain maritime crimes, but we can probably ignore that meaning.)

A different aspect of the same legal principle may apply to SCO's law firm, if they are the ones advising Mr. McBride to say these things; that is, stirring up a dispute in order to drum up business and fees, whether or not the client has a valid case or not.

Could this be useful, or am I just full of it? What do you guys and gals think?

I always get a kick out of the way...

[freeBill]

...anyone who says (or implies in this case) "Shakespeare said, 'First, kill the lawyers'," always draws the Shakespeare-didn't-say-it-one-of-his-characters-sa id-it response from some lawyer. (I assume they're lawyers, since no one else would draw such a distinction.)

Have you ever heard someone say, "Shakespeare didn't say, 'A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose,' he had one of his characters say it"? Have you ever heard anyone say, "The Shakespeare character who said, 'There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at its flood leads on to fortune' was a murdering traitor who was about to be killed for making the mistake of taking one particular tide at its flood? Or how about, "The Shakespeare character who said, 'A rose by any other name would smell as sweet' was a suicide, guilty of a grave crime against God"?

Actually this particular character was a petty thief with pretensions of being a revolutionary. He may have dreamed of being a tyrant; he may even have been a petty tyrant in his petty gang. But he was no tyrant in the usual sense.

But Shakespeare often put his own beliefs in the words of his characters. He was a playwright, after all. Except for the sonnets, all of the "Shakespeare said" things we know are spoken by his characters. Even some of the sonnets seem to be written in another voice. "First, we kill all the lawyers" was an applause line, thrown in to get a cheer out of the crowd. The fact that it gets quoted so often reflects the fact that we all feel that way at one time or another. Probably Shakespeare did, too.

All playwrights put their ideas in the mouths of their characters. Shakespeare often put stirring words and noble sentiments in the mouths of traitors and murderers. In fact, since most of his characters were in some way flawed, he often put moving statements in the mouths of less-than-perfect characters. But that doesn't mean he didn't see value in the statements. And it doesn't mean he wasn't above throwing in a crowd-pleaser here and there to boost ticket sales.

If this barrister-esque AC is suggesting that politicians who use this kind of crowd-pleasing lawyer baiting to boost themselves are undermining some of the founding principles of the USA and other rule-of-law-based republics, I agree with the underlying meaning behind this post, but I think only a lawyer would advance the idea that the distinction between what Shakespeare said and what his characters said has any meaning in the real world.

Re:I always get a kick out of the way...

[rifter]

But Shakespeare often put his own beliefs in the words of his characters. He was a playwright, after all. Except for the sonnets, all of the "Shakespeare said" things we know are spoken by his characters. Even some of the sonnets seem to be written in another voice. "First, we kill all the lawyers" was an applause line, thrown in to get a cheer out of the crowd. The fact that it gets quoted so often reflects the fact that we all feel that way at one time or another. Probably Shakespeare did, too.

Considering (as I recall from my public school education) much of what we know of Shakespeare today comes from the court documents of the various lawsuits in which he was involved, I would say yes. It would seem he was constantly being screwed by lawyers.

Get Your War On.

[ubikkibu]

You know, I disapproved highly of the DDoS and other attacks that SCO has suffered after beginning this pathetic campaign. They will implode on their own, I thought.

But this is a FUD war. Suing Linus? Does SCO have nothing to offer but litigation?

Every big Linux installation is an advance in the ground campaign. Every cvs commit we make is a step forward. Linux gets faster, better, and stronger every day, while the enemy no longer even tries to keep up, but resorts to the courts (and monopoly advantage) to preserve its fading empire.

Programming is political. And this is war.

buy them

[Anonymous Coward]

Would someone just buy them and shut this crap up, please. I'm tired of SCO whining and never justifying it's statements.

IBM, step up and buy this small company so we can move forward with development of Linux.

Re:buy them

[GreatBallsOfFire]

When this all started, I submitted an article to /. addressing this, that
was never published.

</whine>

What I propose is that everyone contribute a dollar or two and donate it to, say, FSF. Then FSF should use that to buy out SCO. This way, FSF owns the rights to distribute the commercial stuff, and can use the commercial revenue to fund GNU. Kills two birds with one stone.

Slashdotting a stock

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, in a generic way, it does happen. Sometimes a small cap stock does attract a "flash crowd" of people all getting in at the same time because of a fashionable news item. In fact that happened to SCOX.

As far as this specific idea goes, let's take a look. SCOX has been trading about 500,000 shares per day at $6 to $8 per share. To make any kind of impact on that, you'd have to bring at least 50,000 shares of new trading volume, or $300,000 per day.

The numbers on the conference call were: 244 callers (up from 7). Suppose that 200 of them were there because of the Slashdot effect and related publicity. So we can mobilize 200 people to call an 800 number during the day.

It's a giant step from "call an 800 number" to "commit $1500 of trading capital", even when there is a good chance of making money (and keep in mind that the first people who shorted SCOX last week watched it go UP from $6 to $8 so they LOST 1/3 of their money).

So I don't think the Slashdot Effect is big enough to slashdot a stock.

Yet.

Re:criminalisation of the art of computer programm

[Rich0]

You are basically describing feudalism - you pledge allegience to your feudal lord (employer). In exchange the various lords out there agree that they only go after the lords and not the serfs. If your lord is defeated in battle you find yourself out of a job, but the vanquising lord may find it useful to bring you under his leige - after all somebody has to till the lands he just captured.

The current IP system only works against those who can't keep up in the arms race - individual competitors or small companies who aren't in alliance with a large corporation. But those folks shouldn't be allowed to play in the competition game anyway...

SCO...

[Anonymous Coward]

....is an irrelevant company. Its just a matter of time when other companies realise this too.

Mostly Open Source licenses

[dachshund]

Actually, very few licenses outside of the Open Source community require you to re-license any code in a redistributable fashion. Sure, if I accidentally include the wrong code in my proprietary product, other people will receive it-- but they generally can't redistribute it at will. In fact, there are very few licenses that require you to distribute the source code at all.

I suppose there's the occasional, rare situation where you contribute code to a third-party application under some strange license-- say, you're writing a plugin for some application and the license demands that you automatically grant rights to the company that publishes the application.

But even in those unusual cases, you're generally only required to give up the object code, not the source. And it's only one company that you're licensing to, not the entire world.

So yeah, this problem is not unique to the GPL. It could affect other GPL-like Open Source licenses. I don't see how this makes anything better.

O.K, that does it

[hopeless case]

SCO's ruin is no longer what I want.

Nothing less than McBride being led away in chains for fraud and libel is going to satisfy me now.

Section 7

[dachshund]

Even if there is a legal reason to keep the specific violations secret, that does not help SCO in terms of compliance with the GPL. Section 7 states that if you cannot follow the terms of the GPL for legal reasons, then you are not allowed to use it.

It's clear that Section 7 bars a company from distributing GPLed code when they know that there are factors preventing it. The question facing a potential judge will be: does section 7 allow a plaintiff to collect damages for past distributions even when the defendant had every good reason to believe that it was obeying the terms of the GPL?

Given the circumstances of this case, the judge may find that SCO is barred from distributing further copies of the code, but that they cannot be held financially responsible for their earlier actions, given that they were caused by a bad-faith action of a third party.

Section 7 even allows that it may not be fully enforceable under all circumstances. Read the middle paragraph: "If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under any particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to apply and the section as a whole is intended to apply in other circumstances."

Re:I too have been very critical of Linus' Apathy

[rifter]

If Novell's IP claims stand up, these vague threats against everyone except IBM (they may have a breach of contract suit there) would seem to be barratry.

Too bad it is not even defined as an offense here in the US. If it has, lawyers in the US are pretty quiet about it, perhaps in hope of protecting their own. Essentially in the US lawyers can do whatever they feel like doing. Judges (who are lawyers) make arbitrary rulings that have nothing to do with facts, prosecutors lie in open court and hide/plant evidence, defense attorneys sell their clients down the river on purpose (or if their clients are rich help them commit crimes), and "civil" attorneys make lying, baseless threats like the ones SCO is making in order to bully people while maintaining a veneer of lawfulness.

Confucius warned that when a country's laws become meaningless civilization is ready to fall. If the US does not rein in its lawyers (including those who become Congresscritters) this is exactly what will happen. People who think it has already happened have no idea how bad it can really get (think Western Rome after the barbarians took over...)

Re:I'd pay a couple of $$$ to the Linus defense fu

[HiThere]

Do you really want to give them money?

Re:criminalisation of the art of computer programm

[Kooglebot]

Some nit-picky corrections:

> read up on Leo Farinsworth if you doubt this

The name is actually Philo Farnsworth. (The story of Edwin Armstrong, the inventor of FM, is also instructive. He literally went crazy fighting RCA in court.)

> a country (USA) that the person (Linus) doesn't live in.

Actually, last I heard Linus lived in California. I don't know if he is currently a U.S. citizen, though

Re:Now that's journalism: Linus lawsuit in last li

[HiThere]

That is, in fact, a good reason to be suspicious of the story. It may well have been tampered with, and McBride may not have said that.

Linux Today seems to be reporting that this is the only story covering the speech that mentions the threat...and that they haven't been able to get confirmation.

Re:Linux Distros ....Countersue that fucker MCBRID

[zymano]

i heard that

Whole mess of trolls

[Java Ape]

I agree. What I don't understand is why we in America are allowing the trolls with their lawyer mininons to completely de-rail all vestiges of creativity and innovation in a tidal-wave of litigation and innuendo.
I haven't played role-playing games in a long while, but this barbarian is ready to grab my trusty +4 troll-chopper and go berserk. . .!
SCO-long, see ya later.

Re:criminalisation of the art of computer programm

[HiThere]

I believe, however, that he lived in Finland at the time under discussion. But wasn't that over 17 years ago?

Re:I'd pay a couple of $$$ to the Linus defense fu

[johndiii]

True. With twelve million shares outstanding, and a float of less than four million, a lot of the money would go to insiders. That would be bad.

OK, then, let's all sell the stock short. :-)

Going back up.

[Futurepower(R)]

Down 12% before and now going back up.

HA!

[DrMorpheus]

LOL! I guess I'm not the only one that thought their trademark looked like the Evil Mouse(R)!

Coke's secret

[konmaskisin]

* sugar

* carbonated water

* brown die (burned "caramel" sugars - very bad for you but in small brown doses should be ok ...)

* red can (shade of red is trademark)

Now bring it on "Coca-Cola" ...

But Intel wrote the book on it?

[tjstork]

Intel developed the 80386 architecture to make it easy to write operating systems for and Linus Torvalds did exactly that. I have the book myself, but I was, sigh, never so ambitious. It's by Morse, I believe, one of the seniors on the Intel team at the time. He goes on in great length to explain how to do task switching, interrupts, virtual memory, all using the Intel part.

Really, any multitasking OS is just an implementation of an Intel design, so, does SCO plan on including Intel in its lawsuit.

Re: New surprising SCO claims heard on Slashdot!

[llamafirst]

This is like Bush claiming the USA knows that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, not showing anyone the evidence

This just in! As reported on Slashdot, SCO has accused the Linus Torvalds regime with posessing weapons of mass destruction!

And, um, they say that don't need to provide proof, either.

"Regime change begins at home..."

M$CO

[rice_burners_suck]

A drunk SCO manager walks into a drugstore and says, "I want to buy a bottle of gin!"

The druggist says, "We have three types of gin: Oxygen, Hydrogen, and Nitrogen."

"Oh, trying to be funny, eh? Well there's three types of turd: Mustard, Custard and YOU you big shit!"