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Today's SCO News
landoltjp writes "SCO (Nasdaq: SCOX) are hosting a teleconference today in order to clear the air (*snort*) regarding "Novell's baseless UNIX ownership assertions" and other bits of hubbub and nonesense that's in the news today. Should be fun." And SCO has apparently been enjoined from making some of its claims by a German court (also here.) Cringely has an editorial on the whole mess.
While this is a great first step.. there is still much more to do.
/ 28 /caldera.html
As a matter of fact, I think the moking gun against SCO has been sitting right under our noses. In searching for information about Novell's sale of UNIX(or licensing) to Caldera/SCO, I came across an interesting article from last march at
http://linux.oreillynet.com/pub/a/linux/2002/02
In short las year Caldera(SCO) released some of the older UNIX Codes (they say including V7 and 32V) under an open source license. This means that if any of the code that SCO is talking about is revealed to be in these versions, they don't have a leg to stand on.
Search for one thing, find something else.
Just realise the reality of the situation..... There is no reality.
The oft maligned Distribution Lindows might have dealt a fatal blow to SCO. Lindows is apparantly in the clear due to contract entered between SCO and Lindows sometime ago. Couple this with the GPL and the Kernel is cleared for ALL even if the SCO allegations is correct.
Help fight continental drift.
You know, if you'll notice, they actually have an SCO *icon* now.
Meaning if you go into your slashdot user preferences you can disable all SCO stories from appearing on your screen.
Handy thing, that.
maybe if we all phone in at 1 we can slashdot the phone network? ;)
>1:00pm e.d.t.
>US: 1-800-289-0496
>International: 913-981-5519
>Conference code #: 164628
If you read all of Cringley's articles, you'll soon realise that no, Cringley is not onto anything EVER.
The order forbids SCO from maintaining that, "that Linux operating systems illegitimately acquired and contains intellectual property of SCO Unix and/or that the end users of Linuxc can be made liable for patent infringement".
The German SCO office faces a fine of up to 250.000 euro for each offence if it continues with it's claims.
Univention had previously warned the SCO Group because of anti-competitive behavior. The Homburger based enterprise let the period for objections elapse.
"We were therefore forced to obtain the order", said Peter H. Ganten, CEO of Univention and one of the authors of the Debian standard work "Debian GNU/LINUX".
"SCO 's unproven statements , that Linux hurts patent rights of the Unix enterprise, upsets the public and harms the image of Linux. So we have had to resist."
The provisional order against the SCO Group is, according to opinion of the enterprise, an important step in several weeks of smoldering controversy in the computer industry regarding Linux.
SCO Group had sued IBM at the beginning of March for a billion US dollars of damages, because they claim that IBM's Linux programmers availed themselves of the code of SCO Unix version. SCO has so far failed to provide any evidence to back up this statement.
Economic Left/Right: -0.62
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.69
(And for the record, they probably could have stolen...err appropriated code from FreeBSD. Also, note that Linux can run SCO binaries, through iBCS2. But that's likely because there's a standard that governs those binaries...)
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
In fact, Microsoft already has a Unix/Windows hybrid: it's SFU (windows services for unix), and it includes a component called Interix, which extends the Windows NT/2000/XP kernel with a set of Unix system calls, and adds a few hundred Unix utilities.
If buying a SCO licence wasn't pure propaganda, then it's likely that Microsoft bought the SCO licence for the benefit of the SFU product.
It is highly unlikely that Microsoft would ever follow Apple's lead and create a new version of Windows that is layered on top of a Unix kernel. This is because of Microsoft's corporate culture. They are as rabidly pro-Windows and anti-Unix as the Slashdot community is the reverse of this.
Doug Moen.
I have written a truly remarkable program which this sig is too small to contain.
I tried dialing in - I'm a Novell employee and told the operator that - and they said SCO had asked that Novell employees not be added to the call.
Hrmmph.
You'd think they'd at least let us listen to them talking about us!
SCO owns all of UNIX, all versions, all updates, all source and all derivative works. They have ~=30,000 license and sub-license agreements with ~=6,000 parties including many fortune 2000 companies.
.. they also have patents but this is their strongest lead.
.. improperly donated.
This initial enforcement action is based upon copyright law
There is no linux kernel that they have studied that is not in some violation of their copyright laws. They are specifically interested in 2.4 and later
they found evidence of SCO code and derivitaves in the linux kernel
Because of the legal issues there are limitations on what they can disclose, next week they will show some parties their proof, such as members of the press, parties they have license agreements with and some software analysts.
----
There are a lot of good reporters on the line asking a lot of interesting questions. There will also be a full text of the conference call later. Don't know where yet.
I'm on the phone on this conference call right now.
.. blah blah.. which gives us full authority to reach agreement with our customers.
.. came and went and they didn't show up. Later that evening Novell did their thing with that letter we've all read. We were set to show them the code, but they didn't show up. TH
CALL START
great deal of aconfusion over last 2 weeks re: sco's enforcement actions.
suit against IBM and letter to 1500 commercial linux users.
Based on contract/licenses. None of SCO's actions have been based on copyright/patent. No assertion by anyone that SCO doesn't have contract rights. As to the copyrights, 2 points. Copyrights not important to current actiosn. We have stated that we own the UNIX copyrights and right to enforce. Novell has challenged taht. We disagree with that. Desperate measure to curry favor with the Linux community. We will take all steps to rectify the issues.
1995 agreement -- we own all rights to ownership to unix and unixware. blah blah blah.. blah blah blah.. we own everything.. blah blah blah. He's being a real dick about it, too.
Why SCO bases initial enforcement actions: SCO owns unix licensing agreements. ~30,000 agreements. these licensees include a lot of people. blah blah.. these licenses include restrictions and "standard of care". This applies to the original source code and the derivitive works created by the licensee.
Current enforcement actions are based on these rights. They may do copyright stuff later, but not now.
Second question: Does SCO have evidence of UNIX source in kernel? "Resounding yes" Each of our 3 groups studying linux for UNIX code have individually come back finding code improperly put into LInux.
STarting next week viewing code under NDA. We hope this step will be of benefit of the software community.
Question 1: differences wit Novell causing problems to deal with IBM: very simple answer: we have full right to UNIX
Question 2: What does it mean "turned novell issue over to attorneys to rectify issues". We've said very clearly that ocpyright isn't important to current enforcement actions.
Question 3: SCO claims that they're being damaged by presence of their IP in Linux kernel. Aren't you continuing your damage by not showing the code?
We're showing it next week. We'll show our actual code samples. Also derivitive works. ALong with contract info to back up the claim.
Questino 4: SCO has rolled all the dice on this lawsuit. If you lose, what is the remaining company if you lose?
We're enforcing our rights in the UNIX business. Only one compnay can say they own 30,000 contracts on big unix companies. It's an incredible position to be in. Basically saying that all they have is the lawsuits. He talks nothing about actual product or anything. All about suing. All future prospects are regarding lawsuits.
Question 5:
Re: novell contract. did not metino copyright and patents. Does it meniton copyright and patent?
56 pages of novell/SCO documents. Majority of contract clearly shows intent that Copyrights covered as related to SCO going to market.
Again, our point is that C&P don't affect our current lawsuits. Contract rights are much more important than C & P. SOme really bad card-game analogy thing.
Question 6:
Stupid question. Already been covered.. more stuff about copyright stuff. SCO claims they have copyright and patent, but that it doesn't matter for the current stuff. Dude didn't seem to really have much of a clue. Sounded like some guy living in his parent's bedroom in Wyoming. I hope you're reading this. You're dumb.
Question 7:
Were you surprised what novell did, as you were a previous novell exec.
We had a meeting with their vice chairman scheduled to look at the source code stuff. "Come on over, we'd be glad to show those to you". We set up a time to do that 11am tuesday