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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.
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?
End of lesson. You may press the button.
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.
Economic Left/Right: -0.62
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.69
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 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
Think I'll go pattent "Hello World!"
I always wanted to name a band "Special Guest" too.
Eschew Obfuscation
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?
The thing is, I got two interesting replies that went largely unnoticed:
dvNull (235982) wrote:
and An Onerous Coward (222037) wrote:
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.
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
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.
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.
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:
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
Bruce Perens.
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.
> "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!"
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".
The Man
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!
...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
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
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.
Finding God in a Dog
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.
... sublicense or distribute" the work will "terminate your rights under this License".
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
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.
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.
o ar d=1600684464&tid=cald&sid=1600684464&mid=9 062
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&b
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
It is called a cluster fuck.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
Would you please refrain from polluting our self-righteous ranting with your precise facts?
Sheesh...some people.
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.
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?
SIGBUS @ NO-07.308
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.
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.
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:
And later: