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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."
Without publicity, they'll wither and die more quickly, so why don't we choke off their oxygen feed by ignoring them?
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Given that Caldera (SCO) previously gave away the source code for System V, and that early code was given away in a book that Caldera eventually approved, and the SCO licensed Unix to Lindows.com, which distributes it under GPL, the only code that could be in question is very new code - basically the Monterrey project. Given that McBride has stated that they are main interested in Linux Kernel 2.4 it should be easy to track down all IBM additions/suggestions for additions and remove them/modify them.
However, since Lindows has a license and they are distributing Linux Kernal 2.4 under GPL,it seems that SCO has already lost the battle due to their own actions. So it may not even be necessary to remove the code, since even SCO distributed it under GPL!
Almost like John Fogerty (from CCR) being sued for plagerizing himself
Slashdot is like Playboy: I read it for the articles
Is not an operating system I would recommend to any of my customers to buy and run on their servers.
..
..
I have worked with this piece of **** OS and I can say one thing. Datacorruption.
Real case:
SCO UnixWare with veritas filesystem runs Oracle.
Box crashes --> Oracle data corruption.
These boxes crashed a lot (several times a week)
We called SCO support who blamed Oracle
Oracle desperatly tried to find the problem. It was a known bug, in guess what? SCO UnixWare.
SCO did not allow Oracle Server to open the files with directIO, that is circumvent the filecache in the OS. By design it should but in this case it did not, it was a bug in the Operating System.
SCO did not even bother to check their bug database and blamed Oracle who, thank god, found the problem.
I guess that SCO is desperate to make money. Wait who has the money? IBM is rich let's sue em
I really HAD another userid
Sure IBM has a past history of being very supportive of the Linux community. But who do you want attempting to legally guide the future of Linux? SCO or IBM?
Its not supposed to matter how big you are in court - unfortunately it does matter.
http://windows.scares.us
Among other things, McBride says: "I'm not trying to screw up the Linux business,"
Oh really? Then could Mr. McBride please explain why I hear things like, "SCO to Linux Users: Cease and Desist" and "SCO delivers a warning"?
Sounds to me like Mr. McBride is trying to make up for the self-hurt caused by his company's own arrogance. What better way to ruin your competitor than by scaring the shit out of their users?
Any by association possibly owns all rights to OSS?
I for one (like probably everyone here) hope they don't get bought out.
I hope they get ridiculed and made an example of... let this be a lesson to other companies that it's unacceptable to behave this way.
This is just all so laughable.
No it wouldn't. The UNIX code allegedly used in Linux would be EVIDENCE that contract term were violated. IIRC, it is this alleged contract terms violation amongst other illegal acts that is at the heart of the suit, not whether there is UNIX code in Linux--a point that seems to have fallen by the wayside. The code is merely evidence; and it is this ghost-like "evidence" that SCO claims to have that is causing SCO to look like a bunch of buffoons. "We have evidence, but we really don't want to show it. But it proves IBM violated our IP."
As I have said before, changing or destroying evidence doesn't change the fact that a crime was committed.
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
Then why did SOC send threatening letters to 1500 corporations telling them their were IP issues in Linux when:
- SCO doesn't own the IP and
- The lawsuit is a contract issue that can ONLY apply to IBM, especially once the offending code (if any actually exists) is revealed and written out of Linux.
The letter was nothing short of blackmail - give us money or we'll keep throwing turds into the punchbowl."that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
Any chance IBM's legal team could string together SCO's actions of the last couple of weeks and make a case that SCO was trying to blackmail IBM? Maybe there's a RICO case here.
Any chance? IBM's lawyers are among the most dangerous people on the planet. They have a huge stockpile of Patents of Mass Infringement, and a budget that would make the Special Forces weep. Companies like IBM and Xerox (and others) quietly do huge amounts of research, and patent it all. Most infringements they don't care about, because they simply cross-license IP from their allies. Most of the them exist for one reason: so that if anyone sues IBM for anything, they can respond with total disaster, a big smoking crater where your NASDAQ listing used to be. "Yeah, we infringed one of your patents, sorry about that, oh but you infringed about a hundred of ours, you have 20 seconds to come out with your hands up and your pants down."
The one threat that IBM faces here is setting a precedent by buying SCO outright. They won't want to do that unless backed into a corner because it might encourage others. It's more likely that they'd buy Novell.
Darl baby's comments that, "...allowing Linux to steamroller H^H^H^our property makes zero sense" in a response to the question about why SCO is only doing this now (well after IBM joined in the Linux party) and SCO's revenues have gone from $200 million to $60 million in 3 years, sort of makes it very clear what's going on:
It is simply a bluff, nothing more. Darl baby almost wetting himself with joy at the prospect that SCO get bought out because, "I'm looking after the sharholders".
His NDA making it impossible to actually comment on what is in the code, and analysts refusing to take the bait, must make him worry very very much.
This is what is going to happen: IBM and the rest of the Linux world will simply call his bluff and wait until the court discovery phase roll's around, where Darl and co will not be able to hinder anyone takng a look at the code. He is probably crapping himself at the thought of this scenario, because I don't think it will be at all possible for him to prove ONE SINGLE INFRINGEMENT.
The result will be that the case will get thrown out of court and SCO will have to file for chapter 11 almost immediately, and Darl will have to join the ranks of the unemployed...
That is, unless he takes MS up on that job offer to work in MS marketing.
SCO (which is to say, McBride) should learn to shut up before they ingest their entire leg.
Asked why SCO has suddenly started looking at these issues now, after years of declining revenues at his company and the increasing popularity of Linux, McBride said SCO had few options in the late 1990s as Linux began surfacing in the business computing world. "Even if you potentially had a problem [with concerns about Unix code in Linux back then], what are you going to do?" McBride asked. "Sue Linus Torvalds? And get what?"
You would get the infringing code, which SCO has previously claimed is what enabled Linux to succeed in the market, out of Linux. SCO, of course, according to its previous statements, would then succeed because it contained all the *cough* enterprise characteristics that were required to succeed.
So which is it, McBride? If Linux would have been unable to succeed without the alleged SCO IP, then action in 1999 would have allowed SCO to succeed on its *cough* merits. If Linux was able to succeed without the alleged SCO IP, then you have just contradicted the statements in your court filing (not that that was a very accurate document, now was it?)
If I was a shareholder, I'd be mightily concerned about the total inability of SCO management to stick to a single, credible story.
Seriously, though, has anyone ever sat in on a case where something technical was involved? I sat on a jury where some scientific evidence was presented, and I know the entire presentation went right over the heads of almost everyone on the jury. Fortunately someone on the jury knew enough to get the judge to ask a question about some aspect of the evidence; the answer of the expert witness pretty much demonstrated that he was misrepresenting some of the results of his tests. I always worry about there not being a clueful person involved in technical cases, because people can make really irrational decisions when they're swamped with stuff they don't understand.
Hopefully the fair use of and/or similarity between two works of literature provides a good model for the judge to use to make a decision. I would hate to see something like this get screwed up because it was presided over by a judge that can't set the timer on his/her VCR, let alone make sense of kernel code.
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
There's the proverbial snowball's chance of getting back to business as usual here. When your CEO sends a threatening letter to the majority of the Fortune 2000, you've pretty much destroyed your reputation for customer orientation!
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Geez, when this nonsense first broke, who _DIDN'T_ think it was a buyout ploy?
Strange courtship ritual though.. I'm sure McBride has a hefty golden parachute setup, since there's NO WAY any of the 'responsible' leadership would survive a buyout..
For once Microsoft was right. For a long time, M$ has claimed that Linux is a bigger threat to proprietary Unix than it is to Windows. While the threat to Windows is far more than M$ originally expected, the proprietry Unix variants are getting clobbered by Linux.
I find it intersting that companies with more to sell than just an OS (Apple,HP,IBM,Sun) are working on peaceful coexistance with Linux, while the pure software players (SCO,M$) are at DEFCON-1.
As soon as tried my first Linux install (remember SLS?) I knew SCO was in trouble. The fact that it took this long for SCO to deploy an exit strategy is a monument to their executive leadership. The fact that they have the stock flying on vapor is interesting, but it would have been a whole lot smarter to do all of this back in 2000 when their stock was >$80/share and the handwriting was on the wall.
Linus, and anyone else, who wants to compare the SCO code (Copywritten, possibly but unlikely full of SCO's "secrets") to linux (which anyone and his dog can see anytime with no hassle) need to sign an NDA. Why?
The same reason that sco hasn't told us what code is infringing. If we put aside the fact that SCO's unix products are all the worst crap I've ever had to use, and that it's extremely doubtful they had any secrets, and just assume they DID have some secret method in there that had some value...
They can't just say "They stole our scheduler code!, on lines 12345 to 12500 of the 2.4.15 kernel!" Because... then everyone would KNOW The secret, and it would not be a secret anymore.
http://www.drdos.com/fullstory/factstat.html#intr
As everyone knows, Caldera bought DR-DOS and sued Microsoft for anti competitive behaviour. An interesting part of the above story is this: So either Caldera (SCO) have learned about (and probably admire) Microsofts past business tactics and know how effective they can be at destroying competition. Or Microsoft is the puppet master behind this. Using another company as a front for their FUD campaign doesn't further degrade Microsofts public image.
Reading the DR-DOS case really does open your eyes. It really is like a soap-opera, I can't believe just how bad Microsoft were/are.
When people start discribing the Linux community as a business you know what they are about.
Linux isn't a business. IBM is a business, RedHat is a business, Slackware and Debian have a business aspect. But Linux is a code.
This dosen't mean anything malicous in itself. I've just noticed often people will say "The company that makes Linux" or "The Linux industry".
There is in fact a Linux industry but that industry dosen't reflect the whole of Linux. There isn't a "company that makes Linux" there are companys involved in the creation of Linux but there has never been a single company responsable for the whole ball of wax.
Not Like Microsoft for Windows, Apple for MacOs or AT&T for Unix.
What it means is that the person is thinking only in terms of business as if everyone has a proffit motive for anything they say or do.
I submit (and I'm going to say this is sand not cement that I have for the foundation of my clame..) that SCO is looking at Linux as a compeditor and simply desided that there is stolen code in Linux.
SCO need not so much "prove it" to us but the least they could do is tell us what code is stolen. We could replace it quickly enough and it'd be over.
And he said it right... SCO is out to protect it's shareholders. Not SCO's intelectual property.
They have NOT proven anything yet they keep seeking payment from Linux users.
I don't think SCO knows it's clames are bogus. I think they actually believe thies clames are valid. But they don't know what code is stolen and if they'd check I think deep down they know they won't find any stolen code.
SCO has presented us with an argument that is simply "Linux now has features found in SCO Unix. The only way this could happen is if Linux got code from us."
That's not true.
SCO expects us to accept that alone as proof. But it's not any more proof than to say:
A Zigu Di rock fan steals donuts from a 7-11
Jack Du is a Zigu Di fan... he must be the crook.
There is more than one way to solve a given problem and more than one person who can find a solution.
SCO won't put it's money where it's mouth is.
They won't point out the offending code.
What's to stop SCO from pointing at some random code and saying "Thats it.. thats ours"?
Easy...
SCO: "See this thats ours..."
Linus: "Ummm no I wrote that myself."
SCO: "Oh right.. well that's ours"
ESR: "Thats BSD code..."
SCO: "Oh sorry... THAT..."
RedHat: "Is covered in RedHat patent xxxxxxxx. We liccesned it for open source use only. Your using it you said so your villating our IP fork it over...."
SCO: "I mean this..."
IBM: "We wrote that in 1933 to solve a defect in 'Mega 1+1=2 delux' it was taking more than an hour to add 1+1..."
SCO: "Umm this?"
Ghost of Lovelace: "Sorry thats MY code.."
SCO: "Well THIS is deffinetly ours."
CmdrTaco: "I wrote that."
SCO clames the code came from IBM. But if they finger code randomly they'll likely find code that IBM never touched.
SCO is seeking to discredit Linux and boost sales for it's failing product.
If I were forced I'd switch to BSD.. not SCO.
Or if a commertal Unix I'd use Solarus.
I don't actually exist.
Far back in the mists of time I was playing a game of Rifts. Our set of merceneries' mission was to destroy a company's board by breaking into the building during the AGM and destroying things. To do this, we got a big budget from our hirers to buy weapons with.
I didn't use the budget for weapons. I used it to buy shares. No infiltration necessary - just walk into the AGM as a genuine shareowner. Surprised the Gamemaster quite a bit - he'd simply never thought of that approach.
If there are people with SCO shares who are unhappy with how things are going, then they should vote! They should make contact with the board and express their opinion. Remember - whatever the board members think, the board is working for the shareholders and not the other way round. If they protest directly to the board and they're in the majority, the board would have to stop.
With Caldera/SCO's current action, they've ended up as pawns in a game to attack Linux -- not at all the reason they invested their dollars in the beginning. They have decided to sell out as a result of the SCO action...
Cheers,
Ian
One thing not being mentioned is that removal of the code by the Linux community would help their case. That removal would pretty much show to a court that the Linux hackers themselves believed it to be infringing. It would work even better if some stuff was protested as not infringing and SCO says "that's ok" while other stuff was removed. To a judge this would look pretty much like proof that SCO's claims were correct. So it is 100% in SCO's interest to reveal the infinging sections!
For this reason I believe SCO is either lying about the infringing, is being paid by outside parties such as Microsoft to continue this suit, or both.
> So in other words, he's going to let people examine their "evidence", and allow them to come to their "own conclusions", but prevent them from disclosing any proof to the public of the validity of their conclusions
Exactly. Is anyone left wondering why we're (in my case technology journalists) not lining up to sign the NDA?
Steven
Wouldn't the worst result for the Linux community be one that never convincingly and impartially determines what's in the code?
This isn't a matter of trust and faith in the people who wrote that code. It's a matter of perception in the eyes of those who, in the absence of evidence one way or the other, will always wonder if SCO was right.
Sad to say, the damage SCO has already done may be worse than any fallout from proof they're right.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
IBM won't buy SCO because that is not how billion dollar corporations deal with IP terrorism. You don't appease small terrorists.
Why is SCO's action "IP terrorism"? Because its fundamental purpose is to destroy the remarkable social capital that the GNU license and Linux have created--the trust and co-operation of a global collaboration.
The fact SCO claims economic motives rather than ideological ones or corporate bloodlust or something doesn't matter. They are *trying* to make people suspicisous of sharing source. (AOL is doing the same thing with Nullsoft).
We will see increasing attempts to make people suspicious of "counterfeit GPLs" because terrorism pays right now.
In the long run, the social capital and trust our community has invested in Linux and GNU will have to be divided up in order to survive this sort of attack. Information may want to be free, but having a critical amount of it invested in one place invites attack. Like Napster.
The correct communal resopnse on *our* part (not to this particular attack, which is bogus, but to the swarm of them we will now get) is a more defensive posture in which the "web of trust" established.
Think of Linux and the GPL as the "gold standard" of the free software community (the thing everyone trusts). SCO and AOL are trying to panic us into thinking it is counterfeit, and engineer a corporate "bank panic" so they can mop up. They won't succeed, but they *will* decrease peoples trust in gold and drive its price down a little bit.
One response--the wrong one--would be to create a central repository of "valid GNU software" with a central agency, which would indemnify users of free software. This is the wrong approach because it makes free software quasi-proprietary--takes out the viral component of the model.
Another wrong solution is to try to make code use traceable by requiring the developer to publish deltas, not just source. This is wrong because it creates a high transaction cost (not viral, because it is not free).
The right response is to create numerous, smaller, "webs of trust" so that the whole interlocking structure is harder to attack. This is what modular kernels like the GNU/Hurd or Flux project do. Distributions will have many components, mixed and matched, pulling from the same communal pool. By spreading the IP over many projects and users, we can create the same P2P defence that is being used for the same problem in the music arena. There is no central server or even large server (Linus, IBM) to attack.
One way to solve the problem of counterfeit money is to eliminate the central authority. If everyone prints money (it's all counterfeit), then there is no one to attack. In the long run, the answer to terrorism is diversity (along with a solid defence of the "big" communal targets like Linux and the GPL).
This pushes the question of how you can trust money (software licenses) into the P2P area. You build small webs of trust that leverage the "gold standard" but in the long run do not depend on it at all. Probably, we will go through a "Bretton-Woods" stage of managed trust, before going for the free-for-all.
But. We *must* get to the free-for-all stage, or in the long run we will be hostages.
"Hey, you copied 100 lines out of our code!"
"Uh... those 100 lines define POSIX standard XYZ, and there really is no other way to write them"
"But you still copied our code!"
(end cynicism)
A witty [sig] proves nothing. --Voltaire
'McBride said: "We're not going to show two lines of code. We're going to show hundreds of lines of code" that allegedly violate SCO's intellectual property...' - hundreds of lines of code, is that enough to prove the SCO's claim? According to some sources, SCO would have to have not hundreds but thousands lines of code to show as violation of their UNIX rights (5-10% of the total would be the minimum). Since Linux's kernel contains several millions of lines of code, say it is 3mil, then 1% would be a whooping 300,000 lines of code. In addition, there would have to be a coherent and not haphazard way stolen code was implemented into Linux. So, SCO is nowhere near of proving their case even if hundreds of their lines of code might have gotten into Linux.
IP was invented for the sake of lawsuits.
"It's sort of like somebody stealing your car, and you hunt them down and you find them, and they say you can have your car back, but there's no penalty for that," McBride said. "If there's no penalty for stealing property, then where are we?"
Yeah, it's exactly like someone stealing your car. Except that you still have your car, so nobody actually stole anything from you except revolutionary ideas such as including tires, windows, doors, and a bumper. It's actually much more like me building a car in my garage using GM parts, that GM was currently offering for free, then suing me becuase I made a better Sunfire than they could, after they're technicians donated the tools and parts I built mine with.
Suppose a court decides that any release by SCO of Unix cpde under the GPL doesn't alter SCO's rights regarding that code; in effect, saying the GPL cannot be enforced. What then for the GPL?
... a billion dollars in damages. Is this some kind of joke? If anything, the damages should go the other way as Red Hat & co. incur the costs of repairing SCO's mistake and removing the code. Furthermore, SCO have refused to tell anyone exactly what code they believe to be stolen, again making it impossible for anyone to stop infringing.
Now where exactly does the GPL claim to alter SCO's rights regarding their own code? Nowhere that I can see.
Still, for the sake of debate, let's assume that the GPL is found to be unenforceable. That will place SCO in the same position as if they had never accepted the license at all:
5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not
signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or
distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are
prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, 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.
So the court says that the GPL cannot be enforced. Are they going to say that copyright law cannot be enforced? The GPL and only the GPL is what gives SCO the right to distribute all the code that they didn't write.
Suppose the court rules that only section 7 cannot be enforced, section 7 being:
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.
Then things might be a little stickier. But to get this situation, you would have to argue that SCO can release their code under the GPL, but deny others the rights of modification, distribution, etc. that the GPL allows. This is clearly the opposite of the explicit intent of the GPL. I would argue that it effectively renders the whole license unenforceable --- leaving us back where we were three paragraphs ago.
Incidentally, if SCO were to show that they inadvertly distributed the alleged "tainted" code themselves under the GPL in good faith, not realising at the time that their own stolen code was in the kernel, I would expect a court to be sympathetic. However, they can hardly complain if others also use, in good faith, the code that they themselves distributed. A court might order that further distribution of their code should stop, but
I can only wonder why.
"It's sort of like somebody stealing your car, and you hunt them down and you find them, and they say you can have your car back, but there's no penalty for that. If there's no penalty for stealing property, then where are we?"
The problem with this analogy is that commercial Linux distributors and customers *have not* stolen your intellectual property. They did not know when they adopted Linux that it (allegedly) infringed on your IP. They have made no agreement with you. Your desire to extract payments from these commercial Linux distributors and customers is extortion, pure and simple.
What's more, your obstinate refusal to make the allegedly copied code public makes it impossible for new Linux customers--those who have not already "stolen your car", so to speak--to adopt a platform that excludes those portions of the kernel that you claim as your own. I believe this is by design. Since "hundreds of lines" in the 3-million-line Linux kernel may infringe on your intellectual property, you wish to throw out the other 2.999 million lines so you may unfairly eliminate your competitors.
(A more correct car analogy is this one: Suppose Ford Motor Company stole some trade secrets from SCO Motors, Inc., and used them to build a superior automobile. Then SCO Motors sues Ford AND everybody who drives a Ford. Would this be just?)
You also claim that the open-source software model is inherently flawed because there is no "traffic cop" to ensure that submitted code is unencumbered. This is a ridiculous argument. As the Microsoft-Timeline case shows, traditional closed-source software companies are not immune from misappropriation of code. The only "problem" with open-source software is that anybody can review it, looking for their own code, as SCO has done. Linux users do not have the same luxury--they cannot, for example, examine SCO's source code to see if it contains any GPL code.
Furthermore, how would it be possible for any company, open-source or otherwise, to ensure that newly submitted source code is not plagiarized? Suppose a former Microsoft employee gets a programming job at Cisco, and "writes" new code that he actually stole from his former employer. He removes all of Microsoft's copyright notices, of course. How can Cisco know that the code was stolen from Microsoft? It can't--it does not have access to Microsoft's code to compare.
Similarly, the maintainers of the Linux kernel *could not have known* when your alleged SVR5 code was submitted into the source tree. The best you can hope for is for them to remove it once they discovered it was plagiarized--but you won't accept that. Instead, you'll jump to the conclusion that the entire open source software model is flawed and that everyone should just use proprietary SCO software instead.
You have indicated that you're only "trying to take care of the shareholders, employees and people who have been having their rights trampled on." What about the rights of everybody except SCO? The vast majority of LDPs and Linux users have done you no wrong. You are within your right to pursue damages against IBM for breach of contract, but you have no business trying to use this opportunity to unfairly destroy your biggest competitor.