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SCO NDA Online at LinuxJournal
shadowbearer writes "The full text of the SCO NDA is available here at LinuxJournal. IANAL, but my reading of it makes me understand all the industry "No way!" style comments. Here's a snippet:
"Dan Ravicher, an attorney who specializes in free software and open-source issues at the firm of Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler, said in an interview there are three key problems with the NDA. First, Ravicher said, "SCO can pick and choose among all its evidence" to show only the parts that back up the company's claims. "They're agreeing to let you see the half of the picture that they want you to see", he added.""
"Dan Ravicher, an attorney who specializes in free software and open-source issues at the firm of Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler, said in an interview there are three key problems with the NDA. First, Ravicher said, "SCO can pick and choose among all its evidence" to show only the parts that back up the company's claims. "They're agreeing to let you see the half of the picture that they want you to see", he added.""
It is interesting to note that if what Ravichner is saying "the
NDA does not exclude information that the recipient obtained in
ways other than from SCO" is true, then signing the NDA could
prevent you from disclosing any information about SCO code even
if the court rules that SCO's distribution of the code (with
Linux) made it public.
So you could in theory be binding yourself to confidentiality
with regards to SCO's code even if (when?) the ruling goes
against SCO!!
As SCO has said, binding legal agreements are far more
compelling in a court of law than copyrights. I wouldn't touch
that agreement with a ten foot pole.
Unfortunately, as we knew it would be all along, this is just
another ploy by SCO. They won't give you full access to the
code, you can't talk about the specifics, they can bind you from
disclosing already public information, and to top it all off,
they can make you come to Utah to defend yourself in court.
Doug Tolton
"The destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't." -John Galt
Bob has some interesting thoughts this week. The column is about how, IF there is UnixWare or OpenUnix code in Linux, it was most likely Caldera itself that put it there, not IBM. This isn't a new idea, but he provides quotes from Ransom Love at the time which sound pretty damning.
SCO/Caldera's motto at the time was "Unifying Unix with Linux for Business". To the extent that wasn't just hype, how can they blame anyone but themselves for migrating their UNIX code into Linux?
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
Really? I'm of the opinion (and I think most reasonable people would agree) that if someone wants to pick and choose what they show, htey have something to hide.
So, what are they hiding?
It's pretty obvious - the fact that they don't have a case. After all, the the code is in fact already in open-source software, it's already public.
I certainly wouldn't want to look at their piece-of-shit code, just like I wouldn't want to look at anything coming from the Beast of Redmond - to avoid future charges of infringement/theft/copying.
End result: Anyone stupid enough to go along with this qualifies for the darwin awards. They've certainly removed themselves effectively from the pool of OSS developers.
No, it's just the gambling instinct.
Although we all know SCO doesn't have a case, most investors aren't that savvy. Plus, even without a case, you always have a chance in the US - you can pull a crazy judge after all. So the investors are figuring, maybe they win, maybe IBM settles or buys them out... if either of those things happened SCO stock could suddenly be worth a lot more. There's always a good amount of money in the stock market looking for the high risk gamble-moves that could bring a good payoff. Most of those investors, of course, are sensible enough to keep the bulk of their holdings in safe stuff, but they still budget a certain percentage for risky buys... anyway I'd figure those are the buyers. The sellers are probably the SCO executives and their pals, who presumably have a more realistic understanding of their chances.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
They don't even want to you divuldge file extensions. Wouldn't that keep any programmer from well... programming? It would suck to sign this agreement and then find out you need to switch careers or SCO will SUE you.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
What could the counterparty to SCO possibly gain by agreeing to this?
Money. The counterparty would presumable be being employed as an Expert Witness in the lawsuit. Fees for such witnesses are normally very lucrative. >$1000/day plus expenses for the research phase (reading the code) and more for attendance in court are the figures I have heard.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
Could somebody who has contributed to the Linux kernel explicitly revoke SCO's license to redistribute it and then counter-sue to get them to stop? It would seem that SCO has lost their right to distribute the kernel by attempting to add restrictions on top of the GPL (which the GPL forbids) and that as a result somebody who owns part of the kernel could enforce a revokation of their ability to use the GPL'ed code. Wouldn't it be great if all the kernel contributors did this at once? SCO would quickly be drowning in countersuits. (Maybe we could even see the headline In Soviet Russia, Linus sues SCO!)
Of course, I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know how realistic of an approach this would be.
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Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
Yeah. I was reading an article at news.com.com where mcbride was saying how they haven't finished assessing the scope of their case yet. Which seems odd to me bacuase companies usually know what the scope of your complaint is before your go around suing people. I mean, otherwise, how do you know what you're complaining about?
This signature has Super Cow Powers
Here is why: They want to collect royalties. They cannot collect royalties if the code in question is removed and replaced with "clean" code, which is what will happen within minutes of them announcing exactly which lines of code are in violation.
All right. Let's say SCO does have a legit claim and does want to collect royalties. Even so, at one point or another, they'll have to reveal the "code in question" to, at the very least, the parties involved in the lawsuit, if not to the general public as well. If they never reveal said code, then how the hell can they prove that it was copied? That would be akin to accusing someone of stealing without even specifying that which was stolen.
Now, even when they do reveal said code, they are claiming that damges have already taken place. So, even replacing the code with "clean" code will not suffice to pay for past damages, though it would prevent future infractions. If SCO wins, the judge would likely rule that either the code be removed or end users of Linux pay royalties to SCO. Again, this is only a speculation; I am certain, however, that SCO will be unable to force Linux users to keep their "illegal" version of Linux so that they would have to pay royalties.
In any case, I and many others feel that SCO's claims are bogus and that they've no chance in court. Even if the code is, in fact, copied, it still remains unclear whether or not SCO really has the rights to it and, even if they do, whether or not average Linux users are in violation.
You forgot your </i> tag after the quote, but that's not the point of my responding to your flamebait instead of modding you down. Modding down stifles discussion, while responding stimulates it.
I have official boxed sets of several Linux distributions. I pay for them with my employers' money in order to support free software companies. (I'm a *n*x admin at a large university). My employer supports me in this practice. However, in truth, when I install a new Linux box, I boot up from the CD and install the distro over the 'net so that it comes up with the most up-to-date packages already installed.
That being said, I've never bought a SCO (nee Caldera) distro because I've never thought they had anything to offer over and above the base Debian distro they built from. Their recent behavior has put me in the frame of mind that even if they DID offer a significant improvement over the base Debian distro I would not buy their product, so, yeah, there ARE slashdotters who pay for Linux and who will NOT ever buy from SCO as a result of this lawsuit.
Just my $0.02
utter rubbish