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SCO's Real Motive... A Buyout?
psykocrime writes "Acccording to this article in ComputerWorld, CEO Darl McBride of SCO has finally discussed the possibility of a buyout by IBM in public. Among other things, McBride says:
"I'm not trying to screw up the Linux business," he said. "I'm trying to take care of the shareholders, employees and people who have been having their rights trampled on." and
"If there's a way of resolving this that is positive, then we can get back out to business and everybody is good to go, then I'm fine with that," McBride said today in an interview with Computerworld. "If that's one of the outcomes of this, then so be it."
Also, yet another computerworld article indicates that most of the press and analysts who have been invited to take part in SCO's "public review of the infringing code" have declined... apparently due primarily to concerns over the terms of the non-disclosure agreement SCO is asking them to agree to. Linus in particular has said "no way" to signing their NDA to look at the code."
They (IBM, of course) are complete and utter morons. Which I see no evidence of.
Expect IBM to make an offer for SCO, to publically announce that it has now "bought the rights to Linux", and it will start to assert control over it.
Yeah, right, FUD themselves in the foot, they will.
Working for necessity's mother.
Unfortunately, its not that simple. IBM is the one in "trouble" here, not Linux. SCO is suing IBM for some kind of breach of contract, which will not go away if the offending code is rewritten.
Note that this is not making any claim about who owns the copyrights to the Unix code, just what the SCO 10k statement means.
Here is the link to the article I mentioned, for the google-challenged.
Uh no, being required to pay a licensing fee violates section 7 of the GPL. It would then be illegal for anyone to distribute the program at all.
Some things are more important than an animated rat
SCO gave away the source to Release 7, not System V.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I make a movie with my buds. We spend $100K of money hyped from friends and family and shoot a cool low budget western. Miramax sees it and likes it, they want to sign it. So, they contract a deal with me and my buds giving them exclusive license to our low budget western for the next twenty years.
Now, I still own the copyright. It's my movie: all Miramax bought were the US distribution rights. Does that mean I can't sell those rights to someone in Mexico? Maybe - maybe not; depends on the contract. But if they bought exclusive US rights then one thing is sure: I can't sell those exclusive rights to any other US distributor. And if Sony decides to stick it on DVDs and they haven't cleared it with Miramax, those will be the entities going to court; so long as I didn't break my end of the deal (by trying to sell the same rights twice) then it ain't my battle - it's up to Miramax and Sony.
SCO claimed at first they owned... Then, when put in their place by Novell they changed it to we own the rights... It's entirely possible they own (via licensing) exclusive rights to something that is actually owned by another entity.
That's the entire point of copyright and patent protection: to allow you to hold an exclusive property that can be traded and sold through contract. SCO may or may not have a case, but it's not a stretch to believe they (at least) honestly believe they own exclusive rights to a property owned by Novell.
Maybe there's a RICO case here.
You misunderstand the point of RICO. It was designed to take down corrupt organizations that were structured to insulate those in charge from the individual crimes committed by their henchmen. Prior to RICO, it couldn't be proved under existing rules that (for instance) some Mafia boss knew who pumped sixty bullets into Salvatore "The Cleaver" Luchese, or that he'd ordered the hit himself. Under RICO, it became possible to bust him by demonstrating a "preponderance of evidence", showing that there was no way he couldn't have known. Thus Giuliani and others used RICO to nearly demolish the Mafia by accumulating many smaller cases.
RICO has also been applied to fringe religious groups in recent years; I was just reading an article about suing the entire Hare Krishna organization for child abuse. Violent anti-abortion groups have been targeted in a similar way. And though it's too politically explosive to pull off, mention has been made of the Catholic Church. (I'm not sure I like this idea, but the church leadership hasn't helped its case much.)
RICO really isn't applicable to SCO at all. On the other hand, they would be a ripe target for a stockholder suit, if it turns out they lied (and/or gambled the existence of the company on a lawsuit against one of the most aggressive in the business). Someone else mentioned the term "barratry" in an earlier thread, which I believe means the frivolous filing of lawsuits. The 1500 letters could also be actionable if SCO was lying. Finally, it's possible that the SEC could get involved.
Look it up in the U.S. code, TITLE 18--CRIMES AND CRIMINAL PROCEDURE, CHAPTER 41--EXTORTION AND THREATS, Sec. 873
Short: No.
As pointed out earlier (Here,Hereby a few people you can't do that. PERIOD.
You have a DUTY to mitigate damages. Failing that you will collect ZIP.
Help fight continental drift.
Even stranger than that, is UnitedLinux, which people seem to be forgetting about. If SCO knew that there were IP violations in Linux while they were working on and promoting UnitedLinux, something isn't lining up right.
This is absolutely correct, and in turn opens up SCO for lawsuits from the other UnitedLinux partners.
According to Novell, SC0/Caldera only got the right to license Unix to other people. They don't own the patents (now expired) or the copyright to the code. They don't even own the trademark "UNIX," which transferred to the Open Group after UNIX Systems Laboratory settled their suit with the University of California.
The only thing SC0 owns is the XENIX/OpenServer/Unixware code that they did not get from Novell. I think the Open Source Initiative wrote about this not too long ago. Check it out at opensource.org.
In the USA, we like stuff watered down, like beer, television, and freedom.