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SCO vs Linux.. Continued
An anonymous reader writes "ComputerWorld has an interview with Chris Sontag, from SCO.
Now the story has a pretty face." The interview has a variety of comments worth noting like how much source code SCO thinks has slipped from unix to linux. This story continues to amaze me.
From http://perens.com/Articles/SCO/SCO_10-K.html
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 SCO pays Novell 95% of the royalties. SCO gets to keep 5% as administrative agent.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
Be respectful in the face of their disrespect. Be honorable in the face of their dishonorable acts. Take the high ground and watch them collapse on themselves.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
...This story continues to amaze me...
What continues to amaze me is the following...
Netcraft reports that SCO's own website is running on Linux.
SCO is still apart of UnitedLinux
SCO's own phone number is 1-888-GO-LINUX
They sure have their hands in a lot of Linux for it being so "illegal".
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
You are looking at the wrong stock. SCO is not SCO/Caldera. SCO -- SCOR group, traded on NYSE (first clue that it wasn't the right symbol) -- isn't doing well, either, but that is coincidental (unless there are a bunch of stupid day traders that can't tell their symbols apart).
Caldera is SCOX (traded on NASDAQ) -- yahoo summary.
While they are down a boatload in the last couple of days, they are still not below the levels they were trading at the beginning of May (or earlier).
As it stands, it looks like this little publicity stunt has driven the stock up more than down. Given current trends, it looks like it may normalize such that the whole thing is a short term wash in terms of stock value-- whether it proves profitable over the long term remains to be seen.
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 $1,894,000, respectively, as restricted cash and royalty payable to Novell. The October 31, 2001 balances were reclassified from cash and equivalents and other royalties payable to conform to the current year presentation."
Zoid.com
It's a posix layer and standard utilities (most of the BSD based). It does include gcc, though (and the source code).
It's been available (from interix or MS) since NT4, though, and I doubt it contains any SCO code, and (as I said before), the command-line tools are mostly just recompiles, so it seems unlikely that's why they would get a Unix license (OTOH, suing microsoft is popular, and juries do stupid things sometimes).
Unlikely. I've worked on a few IP litigations, and a great deal of effort is put in to keep secret documents out of the public view. When the documents are discussed in court, the doors are closed, and anyone who is not allowed to see the info is removed from the courtroom. The exhibits the court uses are never released to the public, and even the transcripts are never released to the public.
If you are patient enough, a good observer can figure out what was discussed in closed door sessions
Microsoft has been shipping Services for Unix since 2000. It recently won the Open Source Product Excellence Award for Best System Integration Software at LinuxWorld.
NO
Good god, its so damn easy to get mod5 as "informative." Whatever. Anyway, the compat layer is for things that are almost completely owned by Solaris in the IP world...nfs, automounter, etc. Those are COMPLETELY Sun, and not even SCO is making claim to them. Think M$ gave money to Sun? Hell no - Sun is a linux ally. They're not trying to discredit Linux. Serves M$ no purpose.
Or, so that you can become somewhat informed on your own, go to M$ all on your own. How about checking out the MS "solution" itself, Services For Unix.
Here's what MS says about it: "Services for UNIX provides file sharing, remote access and administration, password synchronization, common directory management, a common set of utilities, and a shell."
File sharing is through a samba-like util and through nfs, password sync is through ldap-like stuff (as is the directory management), and the utilities have various "uses." Not one of these things has anything to do with SCO.
Of course, if SCO would just mention what is being infringed, that might help the clueless be less confused. Many of us know its bunk without their even bothering, though.
SCO and IBM worked together for some time on a version of AIX for Itanium. AFAIK, SCO contributed UNIXWare code, and IBM contributed AIX code.
IBM walked away from this agreement.
If IBM contributed anything from this collective codebase (either their own code or SCO's), then SCO's actions become entirely logical.
This may not be about historical UNIX code. This may be about recent development efforts and the sour relationship between IBM and SCO over Itanium UNIX.
--From the Lone AC, Yippe KY--
SCO Group Chief Executive Darl McBride said a published report that his company may take legal action against Linux founder Linus Torvalds was overstated.
Responding to a portion of a Wednesday story by CBS Marketwatch that has generated intense criticism from the Linux community, McBride told CNET News.com that targeting Torvalds is unlikely.
"Virtually we see no reason why that would ever happen," McBride said. "We're not trying to go down that path."
McBride's comments were meant to address a portion of the story that stated, "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."
While he would not completely rule out the possibility of suing Torvalds, McBride emphasized with News.com that "I wasn't even talking about patents."
A CBS Marketwatch reporter did not immediately respond to a request to respond to McBride's comments.
Torvalds, meanwhile, said he sees legal action against him as ineffectual but not inconceivable. "I don't see what (SCO) would expect to gain from suing me, but they don't seem to be acting very rationally," he wrote in an e-mail interview.
And while Torvalds said he agrees with some of the criticisms SCO's actions have triggered on Linux-friendly online forums such as Slashdot, he also called for restraint and maturity in dealing with SCO. "I hope this doesn't incite anybody to (launch a denial-of-service attack against) the SCO Web site or something silly like that," he said.
SCO's actions, including legal threats and assertions that Linux programmers couldn't have built high-end features into the operating system on their own, have indeed inflamed the passions of many Linux advocates. SCO's Web site was crushed by such an attack earlier in May; the specific attackers were unknown, but SCO was quick to blame Linux proponents.
SCO sued IBM for more than $1 billion in March, alleging Big Blue illegally incorporated Unix intellectual property that is owned by SCO into Linux. Initially, SCO said it wasn't going after Linux, but it changed its stance when three separate investigations found Unix source code copied into Linux, the company said. SCO has declined to reveal the specific code that was allegedly copied.
The copying of source code could potentially expand SCO's legal actions beyond IBM through copyright infringement claims, but McBride said contracts provide a stronger legal case.
"Our code is showing up inside the Linux kernel. Given the rights we have, where does that take us? The most logical place is the guys we have contracts with," McBride said.
Novell, which owned Unix rights before selling at least some of them to SCO's predecessor in 1995, on Wednesday disputed that SCO has copyrights and patents for Unix. It didn't dispute that SCO holds the contracts under which Unix is licensed to others.
SCO said it will reveal in June the Unix code has been copied into Linux, but only to select people, such as independent analysts who have signed nondisclosure agreements. It won't share that code publicly, saying the Unix code is proprietary.
SCO says it has more than 6,000 Unix licensees, including companies and universities, and that its direct contracts with companies such as Hewlett-Packard, IBM or SGI require that sublicensees protect the Unix code. A sublicensee is a business that has purchased hardware or software with Linux from IBM, for example.
"They sign up for the fact that they may not misappropriate the code," McBride said. Unix is used at the majority of the 1,500 large companies to which SCO sent letters alerting them to legal risks of using Linux, he said.
Contrary to Novell's assertion, SCO contends it does have Unix copyrights and could base legal action on them. "I think it's perfectly clear we have the rights to enforce copyright claims," McBride said. "Clearly copyright is a path you can be taking a hard look at."
But at $6/share that's still three times what it was trading for in mid-March of this year and ten times its July '02 price.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
See here
An infinite number of monkeys will eventually come up with the complete works of
The fact of the matter is that sorting out who owns any particular piece of Unix code could take decades in court. You find two pieces of code that are exactly the same in SCO Unix and Linux. This could be any of the following:
- An amazing coincidence
- SCO licensed software that was copied into Linux improperly
- SCO licensed software that was copied into Linux properly (i.e. by a SCO employee)
- Software from a 3rd party, properly incorporated by both SCO and Linux
- Software from a 3rd party, improperly incorporated by both SCO and Linux
- Software from a 3rd party, that properly/improperly incorporated it into their product which was then incorporated into SCO/Linux
Have you ever taken a look at the Unix family tree? There's no way they are going to be able to sort out the ownership of any individual piece of code. I mean hell, with Novell speaking up, it might be that SCO doesn't own squat (that they are just licensed the copyright that Novell still actually owns). Novell might not even own it either.
It will make some headlines, the world will move on, and in about a decade when this gets settled it will all be irrelevant.
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