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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."
If SCO has to give 95% of UNIX royalties to Novel, and SCO wins a suit (right after a bunch of pigs fly overhead) based on that IP, doesn't that mean that SCO would have to give 95% of the winnings to Novel?
Beep beep.
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. Ha.
Linus is right;
... Fairly entertaining," said Torvalds.
Torvalds in an e-mail interview compared the fight between SCO, IBM and Novell Inc. to bad TV. "Quite frankly, I found it mostly interesting in a Jerry Springer kind of way. White trash battling it out in public, throwing chairs at each other. SCO crying about IBM's other women.
Pass me the popcorn.
On a more serious note is the statement that;
[Micheal] Overly said a review of the code by anyone other than a judge "means absolutely, positively nothing" in determining the merit of SCO's claims.
So basically, the word from a legal expert is 'lets get this to court, shall we?'
Bring it on Darl!
An infinite number of monkeys will eventually come up with the complete works of
IBM should flip SCO off buy buying Novell and releasing Unix under the GPL. SCOs legal case (or bluff) would instantly disolve.
It's the source for SCO's brand of UNIX, not for Linux.
While SCO alleges that part of the Linux sources are copied from their OS, it's not like SCO's UNIX is Linux.
(It'll still be interesting to see SCO trying to prove that somehow someone copied the source of closed-source software to use it an a GPLd piece of SW. After all, they'd also have to disprove the far more likely alternative that one of their developers illegally copied Linux freely available GPLd code to use in their closed-source kernel.)
Investors should have known better than to back an obvious loser so if you've got SCO shares at this point you've got to be pretty daft.
Ideally, this time next year, SCO is just a bad memory.
will have to deal with the fact that no one in the *nix community will ever want to do business with what is the current company.
If IBM buys SCO, and I hope they don't, they should gut SCO for their customers base, engineers, and products, and can everyone else working there.
Even if this results in a massive win for SCO, I see them getting no new business in the future due to the trouble they have caused. Linux code will be rewritten in a week or so, and SCO will be left with perpetually declining sales.
I always said that Red Hat should have bought SCO with inflated stock shortly after Red Hat's IPO several years ago. We could have had all of SCO's customers on Open Source by now and there would be no IP disputes.
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.
Sleep with an elephant at your own risk.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
Sounds good. To prove that, why don't you go steal some MS source code, submit it as blabla.c, and see if it gets into the kernel. You might find that Linus absolutely does not just "let anybody's code in" the kernel.
I know at least two people who bought Caldera stock around IPO time because it was a Linux company. They believed in Linux as a product, wanted to support Linux development, and thought there might be some future profit in it.
I've heard a lot from them over the last week. 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, and have lost significant money in the process on Caldera/SCO shares alone. But they also realize that the dollars they had invested this company have supported action which may eventually reduce the value of their larger holdings in other Linux companies. I can understand the frustration that they must feel.
I'd venture to say a lot of Caldera investors may be in the same position. So what's this about "rights" of the shareholders?
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
If you are concerned over the treat of lawsuits over intellectual property then you are actually in a better legal position using GPL'ed Linux than using Microsoft's products.
While SCO has yet to provide any publicly available substantial evidence in their case against IBM and Linux, Timeline Inc has already won a US Washington Court of Appeal judgment against Microsoft in another contract dispute.
Unlike companies like Oracle Corporation and others, Microsoft chose a cheaper option when licensing Timeline Inc's Data base technology. That license puts developers and users of Microsoft SQL Server,Office and other Microsoft product at risk of being sued by Timeline Inc for violation of Timeline Inc patents.
Microsoft's products do not provide users and developers an absolute safe haven from the threat from lawsuits based on violations of intellectual property. Microsoft's EULA provide the developer and end user with no protection against threat from current or future intellectual property lawsuits.
However, since the SCO Group has knowingly sold and distributed the GPL licensed Linux kernel and other components, it must by the terms of the GPL license, provide all those who receive the code from them an implicit license to use any intellectual property, patents or trade secrets which SCO owns and is used by the GPL'ed source code. That implicit license to that SCO intellectual property is also granted to anybody who subsequently receives the GPL source.
The GPL only grants the right, for reasons of intellectual property infringement or contractual obligations, to stop distributing the GPL'e binaries and source code if the conditions are imposed upon you by a third party. Since SCO claims ownership the intellectual property in question, it must grant all subsequent recipients of the GPL licensed source code SCO has distributed and any GPL'ed derivative, the same implicit licence and right to SCO's intellectual property the code imposes upon.
SCO has acknowledged deals with Suse and Lindows to distribute SCO's intellectual property in GPL'ed Linux, but the GPL license does not grant anyone or any organization the right to append extra terms and conditions upon the recipients of the GPL licensed source code.
It is very easy to effectively fold the current development branches of the Linux kernel and any other GPL'ed code back into SCO's distributed GPL'ed sources. This would grant the same implicit license for the infringed SCO intellectual property to the all the current development.
You are in a better legal position using the GPL'ed Linux platform and other GPL'ed software, than you are using Microsoft's or any other closed source software.
McBride said his company will open samples of its contested code to interested parties next week under nondisclosure agreements so SCO can prove its points. The open-source community, however, won't be be given an opportunity to remove any offending code and replace it with new material, he said. Instead, damages will continue to be sought.
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. In other words, we're back at square one -- a whole lot of unsubstantiated allegations, no proof. Btw, even if there are "hundreds of lines" of shared code, that does not prove that they were copied into Linux from SCO. It's much more likely to be the other way around.
Btw, can't Linux just sign the NDA and then -- if he finds anything -- remove it from Linux?
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
Except Linux (nor GNU/Linux) has stolen nothing, nor has IBM, from SCO. Even if that allegation were true, the fault would lie with IBM, not the FOSS community.
Giga Information Group Inc. analyst Stacey Quandt said she has discussed SCO's offer with her legal counsel, and if she signs an NDA, it may hinder her ability to write about it.
In other words, SCO has stacked the deck. People can review their code under these terms, but can't write in any convincing manner to the public about their findings.
[Giga Information's Stacey Quandt] has advised clients of Cambridge, Mass.-based Giga to continue with their Linux adoption.
In other words, SCO's absurd allegations aren't driving people away from GNU/Linux.
They don't want to tell; they want to sue. -- Linux
That just about sums it up. Except that IF their claims are valid, they gain nothing by with-holding the evidence. They cannot claim before a court of law that they should get continued damages when they could have allowed the FOSS community to remedy the situation.
[Stamford's George Weiss] said SCO is making its case based on "vague inferences" and is asking analysts to do the same
It appears the experts agree with me.
[Framingham's Dan Kusnetzky said, "I'm not sure that showing us the code would prove anything to me, because I don't know where it came from"
As I said before, it will be difficult if not impossible for SCO to prove where their code came from, the dates on it, etc; whereas proving those things will be easy for FOSS.
Even if there is similar code, that doesn't mean there is infringement, especially under copyright law "fair use" provisions, said Overly. "If I take a piece of code that someone has written, take it verbatim but expand on it and use it for a completely different work, that may or not be copyright infringement"
Another problem for SCO's absurd case.
a review of the code by anyone other than a judge "means absolutely, positively nothing" in determining the merit of SCO's claims.
A review by people other than lawyers will give you the real truth on the matter. Though a judge can give a legal ruling, it will invariably be false, as judges understand about as much about computer code as I understand hieroglyphics.
legal experts said Linux users have to pay attention to the fight. "The fact that you ignored it could potentially cause your damages to increase substantially"
Actually, GNU/Linux users can ignore this all-together. The user faces no liability what-so-ever. Nor, in fact, can anyone be said to be liable other than IBM, for they are the only ones who were in a position to know what was and was not proprietary SCO code. No-one else, not the FOSS community, not GNU/Linux users, nor GNU/Linux companies, were in any position to have any possibility of knowing that (because SCO's code is closed).
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Query: Does anyone have a link to the text of the non-disclosure agreement the SCO are wanting the experts to sign?
I'd quite like to have a look at exactly what is being asked of the experts.
An infinite number of monkeys will eventually come up with the complete works of
Why don't they load a database for an installation of this software with code that is indisputably "clean" like the BSD code, code that is clean because it was released in the GPL'd Caldrea releases, the Lindows code they used with SCO's blessings, etc. Put in all the legitimate sources Linux developers could have used as inspiration, then load the current distro OS source, run a comparison and see how much came from "legitimate" origins. The remainder is original work OR possibly bastard code stolen from a illegitimate source.
Do the same with SCO's code, rev by rev, and see if there is any overlap. If there is stolen code, there will be identical text. If something is the same in Linux and SCO's UNIX ... check the dates to see who wrote it first.
With this method, NO ONE has to see the source code but the people running the software that does the analysis, and even they just load it into the database. They need not be programmers because they just do a "pedigree" check on the code. In fact they should not be programmers ... anyone can ifentify a string of matching ASCII text. They would not be hindered by an NDA, and would be EXPECTED to testify about the results.
Well, it's not that simple either...
There are several ways this can go.
IF this comes down to patents, which is unlikely, then every copy of linux using the patented method would be in violation, and SCO could force everyone to stop using that method (in theory, anyway). This is highly unlikely, and they haven't mentioned patents yet. Furthermore, if it was about patents, there would be no reason to keep it secret before trial.. as their methods would be protected no matter what.
If it comes down to Copyright, IBM would pay damages, but the rest of the world would not be guilty of anything; pretend for a minute it's not Linux, but some version of OS/2. Would everyone who IBM sold OS/2 to have to stop using it or face legal action? Hardly. OF course, linux being free, it's a bit different.. but fundamentally, it's the same. And I'm sure the community would happily re-write the offending section, or find some code that pre-dates it and work from that, to be fair.
What is most likely, and what SCO seems to be saying, is this is trade-secret stuff. The thing about trade secret is, it only applies to secrets. That's what the NDAs and other contracts are for... so if IBM leaked proprietary methods (NOT patents... just thigns where two parties agree to keep it a secret) into the linux kernel, then they violated a contract... and they will pay damages. However, again, the rest of the community faces no threat. Trade secret laws are NOT patent laws, they don't afford you protection of something indefinately.. they only let you keep somethign a secret. If it's in the linux kernel, it's just not a secret anymore. If you leak a trade secret, say the formula for Coca-Cola, to usenet, you are gonna be in deep shit, trade secret laws will down on you, but coke has no way to stop the world from knowing about their formula now, and can't prevent someone from using it.. that's why they KEEP IT A SECRET... made in parts by separate companies, mixed at the factory, with the forumla only known to a couple people, and the files locked in some super secret vault guarded by alligators.
If SCO 'knows' there is Unix code in Linux, doesn't that mean they could have had their engineers (or someone else who has access to the Unix code) study the code to benefit their own? I doubt a point like this would ever come up in court because it's pretty loaded and would be hard to prove but it is something to think about... And it may not even be illegal assuming they didn't copy and paste.
Let a few rumour slip to the press that the $10M is the price they estimate the court case will cost and thet they think they will be unable to collect the expected Damages against SCO they court will impose.
That would make their stock price crash to around $2 for a Capitalization of around $15M, then have a RedHat led consortium offer $20M or so, that will likely be accepted.
IBM can then buy some of the SCO contracts from RH and a later date.
That way there will be no impression left that IBM gave in to Blackmail.
Help fight continental drift.
Sure, we could all sign an NDA and then look at the SCO code, but most of us are not interested in what the SCO code is. We simply want to know what code in LINUX has been, apparently, copied, from SCO, without permission. For this no NDA is needed, since that code is clearly already available to the public. SCO does not appear to be willing to do this, since it knows that a public discussion, on what is available to be seen,would likely kill its case. Until SCO stops throwing FUD around, I like many others are going to have a hard time taking them seriously. The only thing we can do is wait for SCO and IBM to hash it out in the courts, as SCO appears unwilling to provide any evidence to the press and the public in general.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
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.
Also, this was almost certainly an exit stragegy. If you look at there stock price before and after their filing the complaint, its very obvious they wanted to use this to bump up the cost of the company long enough to get bought by IBM to make them go away. Unfortunatly for them, companies started coming out the woodwork to actually fight them.
Dollars to doughnuts something like that's the case with every single one of their 10-to-15-line "violations".
It's like in biology everyone got excited when Stanley Miller made some racemised amino acids from crude chemicals plus electricity in a cunningly arranged apparatus. He got amino acids because that's the way chemistry works. You won't get proteins the same way because that's not how chemistry works.
Through a similar process, I would expect to see many dozen-line chunks of near identical code in any two large code bases addressing the same problem. Or even addressing different problems.
There's also a lesson to take home from statistics. One common trick pulled by statistics tutors is to split a class into two, and get half the class to toss a coin 100 times and write down the results, and the other half to "toss coins" in their heads and write out the results. The tutor can pick out the fake coin tosses because they are too even, there are no runs of five or six of the same side.
The complete absence of similarities would be strong evidence that someone had seen both SCO and Linux code and deliberately removed the similarities. The brain-breaker for the judge would be: does this negative evidence of awareness of SCO's code constitute misappropriation of trade secrets or abuse of contract? (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing