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SCO Gives Friday Deadline To IBM
bcisys writes "Reuters is reporting that SCO is planning to revoke IBM's license to Unix this Friday unless IBM settles SCO's claim that parts of its Unix code are being used in Linux. 'If we don't have a resolution by midnight on Friday the 13th, the AIX world will be a different place', SCO President and Chief Executive Darl McBride told Reuters News. 'We've basically mapped out what we will do. People will be running AIX without a valid license.'"
It's pretty clear that SCO is trying to get IBM customers to pressure IBM to settle this. However, it frankly seems pretty absurd. The bottom line is that, as a customer, I am not responsible for IBM's alleged failure to maintain a proper license for UNIX. IBM's license is a license to *copy* UNIX software, and copying is the only activity that could possibly be prophibited. Given that IBM's customers already HAVE copies of AIX, unless IBM's license from SCO has some very odd language in it it seems extremely improbable that customers could lose the license they already have.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Comment removed based on user account deletion
IBM should just sue SCO for causing damage to the consumer. With this type of move, obviously SCO is hoping that IBM would sense possible damage to its consumers and back off like a good mommy. However, I just think that IBM will sue SCO ;). Everyone hates SCO more than Microsoft now, you'd think they'd get the hint. SCO will not be a company in a few months.
(emphasis added by me)
Though I appreciate that SCO's tactics may be foul, the phrase you're looking for is one fell swoop, as used by Shakespeare. And while you may feel that the use of "foul" may be an appropriate exchange in this case, I assure you that fell is much more so. Observe:
The interesting thing is that SCO is now punishing people for buying Unix/AIX (TM) not Linux. The media spin has been that Linux is under a haze of doubt but for now at least Red Hat customers seem to be in a better position than AIX customers even though IBM has paid for a Unix license and Red Hat has not. Weird.
All I can say is that I did not license my AIX boxes through SCO. I licensed them through IBM and the only person that can revoke that is IBM!! The courts my not see it that way but I have no contract with SCO so how does SCO think that everyone running AIX will be illegal?
Mike
I didn't use the preview button, so get over it!!!!
Mike
Yes, and they don't want it to go to court. That's why the extortion. I'm assuming they know they don't actually have a choice, they're just trying to scare IBM. I don't think they have a chance, and I don't think IBM is going to scare.
I think I speak for all of us when I say that everyone at SCO who is involved with this nonsense, the world would be better off if they just upped and left the planet (voluntarily or by force, not picky).
I say let this thing go to court, then SCO will have to prove it, which they can't, because it's all lies. That'll be fun:)
Spreading FUD about Linux is one thing -- you have a real chance of scaring away some potential Linux users that way. But AIX? It's old-school, like prehistoric. It's firmly entrenched into the legacy systems of some of the biggest corporations in the world, and they not only don't want to get rid of it, they are in fact be completely unable to do so without hugely expensive redevelopment and massive disruption. It is far cheaper for the AIX users of the world to pour money into the defence of UNIX than attempt to abandon the platform. SCO is just waving a red flag in front of one hell of a bull, and they are going to get seriously trampled.
... is that it doesn't matter if IBM renews its license with SCO or not. Assuming you purchased AIX, you already have a valid license from SCO, purchased through IBM. Unless the license terms state that your license from SCO needs to be renewed and/or can be revoked at any time, SCO choosing to withdraw their licensing arrangement with IBM has no effect whatsoever on the legality of your copy of AIX. Naturally, if you purchase AIX *after* SCO revokes the license, then it will be an illegal copy.
Anyone here a lawyer? This could fall into several categories, namely extortion/racketeering, and potentially breach of contract. I can't see IBM agreeing to a clause in the contract which states that SCO is able to revoke the license upon 1 week's notice. That's just absurd.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
isnt it obvious that microsoft is behind this? Why else would SCO be STUPID enough to do what they are doing? Can anyone do a little dumpster digging to find out their part - i mean who do you think is benefiting from this right now?
Wham, come Saturday June 14 thousands of boxes with AIX all over the world would suddenly shut down.
Now tell me why DRM is a good idea and explain how it will never be misused or abused.
And remember kids: Never trust a computer you can actually lift.
I wonder which and how many of the 30,000 patents IBM owns SCO will get accused of violating. Usually it doesn't pay to wake a sleeping giant...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
What are the penalties for fraud if you are a CEO in corporate America? Oh, wait. Nevermind.
I guess SCO President and Chief Executive Darl McBride's passport must be up-to-date, along with a leave-anytime ticket to a country outside the United States' jurisdiction. He must be forgetting about the "International" part of the IBM acronym. Silly boy.
But SCO's threat to revoke IBM's Unix license is the only leverage they have outside of the merits of the case itself, about which we can have heard nothing trustworthy from either side in the suit. On the other hand, if IBM allows them to play that card without trying to settle, it says something. A very public something, to be sure, which means that the P.R. aspects will have been carefully considered by both sides. But concrete actions will also have been taken that will have an impact on any eventual court proceedings. That gives us a (cloudy, tiny) window into what the parties are actually thinking.
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there" - Will Rogers
I'm a bit slow, but I just worked out what had been freaking me out.
Usually, if someone is breaching a license, you would go to them, point it out and ask for a chunk of money. It's not just to help them protect their good name. It's also to protect your own good name as a trusted partner to do business with.
If SCO's business is really about trying to license Unix, then they should pay attention to this. Imagine what their other customers are thinking. "These guys are feral. We should look for a way out of this". And prospective customers would be thinking "Err, no. That's not the type of supplier I want to do business with".Well, unless you are Microsoft. I will leave you to draw your own conclusions on that.
Clearly this is a sad death spiral.
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?
IBM has done something about that already...
We always talk about SCO, SCO, SCO but I realized I have no clue about what IBM's response is...
Anyone ?
Write boring code, not shiny code!
In fact, if you are running AIX, please note that some of your license money would go and has gone to SCO. You might want to ask IBM about a Linux install. I understand that they DO know the meaning of customer loyalty.
Further, if SCO looses this, I doubt Big Blue would continue buying licenses from them. Imagine what losing an IBM contract would do to their stock price. Customer loyalty is especially important if that customer is a Fortune 500 company.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
Ok, so do they need the license and the trademark from 2 different sources?
Aparently you ceritfy your OS and buy the rights for the trademark from the OpenGroup and then you also need a license from SCO...am I following this right?
But SCO doesn't seem to be up in arms over unlicensed releases that are legitimatley derived from the unix source base (OS X).
I just don't see how anyone has any legs to stand on when ther are at least 3 legitimate owners of unix property of some sort (Open Group, SCO, and Novell), plus all of Universities that received early licenses....
Seems like it's time to public domain some stuff....
There has been talk about SCO trying to use their code in Linux as a means of getting royalties from Linux users. That and the fact that by pointing out the offending code/comments they would be annoucing what part is their IP.
However, whould not doing so place them in violation of the GPL by way of their previous distribution of the kernel and OS package (distro)? [by the linking/ inclusion of copyright and copyleft code]
The Open Group is the owner of the UNIX trademark which it holds on behalf of the industry. This truth has not been entirely visible in the media...
Isn't that visibility exactly what is required to maintain trademark ownership?
... unless the contract involves property rights, which is essentially how I believe the law treats this.
If you sell a car to someone, it's perpetual.
If you sell someone the right to use a peice of software, you are essentially selling them intellectual "property" (gee, thus the term.) Unless the contract specifies otherwise, the grant is perpetual -- it's not like MS can take away my right to use the copy of Windows 95 just cause they want to -- they have to prove I violated their license first.
The Open Source and Free Software folks could all say "You have our code, you can see that it has no DRM in it. You don't need to worry about your system being disabled remotely."
That's great PR for us.
frob
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
Its called Extortion. If they do this, they're going to screw themselves in the ass in the long term. They've already filed suit against IBM, they can't start making demands like this ahead of the suit. They can't just revoke the contract for no reason either, and even if they claim it's because they violated the contract, they've yet to offer proof!
I don't know who they think they are, but they're an ant to IBM. If they pissed off IBM enough, IBM is gonna squash them. Hey, maybe that what will happen.
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
IIRC, Winshit (allegedly?) uses a network stack copied from BSD. BSD is an often-theorized alternative source for the "stolen" code, and this could make M$ just as liable.
Then again, I susped M$ has resulted to just plain stealing much of the code in windows.
If I request the windows source code, does the NDA prohibit me from ratting out such stolen code? Can an NDA legally prevent you from calling attention to illegal actions of another?
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Not a lawyer, but I don't understand why people simply don't ask SCO if they are at risk of litigation by making new purchases of whatever.
1. If SCO replies you are at no risk, then presumably you are in the clear (at least can use their reply in court if SCO later turn round and do sue you).
2. If SCO doesn't reply, then presumably this will help limit any damage claims if they do sue you. You did the due diligence (especially if you send a couple of follow-ups and still don't get replies - keep good records!) - and it's at least partially their fault they didn't advise you.
3. If SCO reply yes they might sue you, then of course you want to talk to all vendors [and presumably their lawyers] affected - which includes hardware/database/applications/etc that you couldn't purchase, because of "uncertainty" about the OS platform. You might get indemnified by the vendor, and/or the vendor(s) may even take legal action against SCO especially if they see a lot of customers concerned about these issues.
Would a letter like this do?
Dear SCO,
Our company is considering purchasing a number of Dell/IBM/Other-Vendor computer systems with RedHat-Linux/Suse-Linux/AIX/Other-OS. We also expect to purchase application software to run on these platforms such as Oracle/SAP/Peoplesoft/DB2/Other-Product.
In view of the amount of press coverage regarding SCO's IP claims on UNIX and Linux, we would be interested in hearing whether, by proceeding with such purchases, we would be potentially risking litigation by SCO.
I don't see anybody posted this link yet:
http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-1016020.html
Best Quote: "What SCO is arguing seems instead to be that it didn't know what it was packaging."
All,
Several thoughts have come to my mind concerning this issue.
Please keep in mind that IBM:
1) backs Linux on a large number of it servers
2) believes that it's license with SCO is perpetual.
3) has spent billions hyping Linux.
IBM will likely take action on Friday or perhaps sooner in a pro-Linux fashion, given the above facts.
Suppose it is shown that in the completion of LKP (Linux Kernel Personality) that SCO did incorporate GPL'd code into it's kernel (as suggested by an article on linuxtoday.com) and it is shown that, according to Eben Moglen, that "SCO gave up rights to the code when the released their version of Linux".
If SCO licensed any of this code to third parties for inclusion in their products, it is possible that *all* of those products will be *required* to be released as Free Software under the terms of the GPL.
This is perhaps why SCO is being so loud about this. Is this the fact that they want to hide under all of this legal rangling? Also, don't forget that Microsoft made a public showing of buying a license from SCO, which according to the recent news from Novell, ONLY covers the copyrights which, if the above is shown, would be subject to the GPL.
The implication here is very clear. Many companies which have incorporated the disputed code would need to release their code under the GPL.
Could the GPL set the industry on it's head?
I, for one, hope so. I am not a lawyer, just an engineer.
Later, GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
But yet, if you walk into CompUSA and say "Will you sell me Windows XP(tm) for $299?", the clerk will say "Yes". The signage hanging on the shelves and walls reinforces the idea that selling will occur. More importantly, the reciept says "Sold".
Either the vendors of computer software are committing fraud on a gargantuan scale, or you are being sold software.
(Software publishers wish to change this- why they include those EULA that are legally nonbinding, and why they've pushed US states to create laws making EULAs effective. Virginia, so far, has agreed)
However, the reason normal EULAs are meaningless is because no contract terms were presented before money and product were exchanged. So, they have no similarity with the agreement between SCO and IBM. It was presumably conducted with lawyers, signatures, and even handshakes.
I've been watching this whole fiasco unfold and I've been fascinated. The reason is because I was a Caldera employee up until just over a year ago. I worked in IT, and IT at SCO is still made up of some of my best friends. So, I have the unique opportunity of getting the inside scoop on their feelings of what's going on, and the feelings of the company in general. I also have an interesting internal battle with where exactly I stand on the issue. Being that I learned about the things that matter most there (Linux), I can tell you that the early days of Caldera (right when it went public) were EXTREMELY exciting! We were all going to make money doing stuff that was cool and fun, PLAYING WITH LINUX!
/. community rejected Caldera. "You can't make money with Linux, you leeching bastards!" was pretty much the common attitude from /. users. We tried, we really did. But not only did no-one think they had to PAY for anything, they bashed and made fun of Caldera. Keep in mind that most of us WERE LINUX GEEKS and we LOVED LINUX. Our job was more than money, we wanted to be part of the OS community. People made fun of the logo, the company, the products, and it hurt. I wondered many times what we possibly did to deserve the scorn that was thrown at us CONSTANTLY.
/. persecution since the lawsuit: "Well, there's deffinately no love lost between SCO and the OS community. Things are no different now than they were before the lawsuit."
Something happened though. The
I was laid off about a year ago, and I've since moved on to much better things. Ransom was replaced, and the name was changed back to SCO because OBVIOUSLY there was no value left in the Caldera name after you guys were finished with it.
I've been using Red Hat ever since I was laid off, as Caldera's Linux distro pretty much fell by the wayside. I look back on those days with fondness and wish it could have turned out differently. I am horrified by SCO's actions as of late, at the same time I can't help but think that you guys kinda created this fiasco in the first place. You guys have been poking this dog into a corner for the last several years and now, when it turns around and starts fighting for its life, you seem to be amazed at how angry and irritated and frusterated SCO is. "Will they stop at nothing?!" you all ask in amazement? Of course not, cause they are going the ONLY ROUTE THEY HAVE LEFT. You all seem to be proud of yourselves for boycotting their products... sheesh, that's a rediculous notion since you had all boycotted them WAY before the lawsuit ever happened. I'll quote my friend who still works there when I asked him about how he felt about
I'm rooting for IBM. I think SCO are going way too far. It makes me angry that they have become such a mindlessly self-centered company. SCO is not at all what Caldera used to stand for.
But when you think about it, they really don't have anything to lose and a whole possible pile of cash and revenge to gain if this thing pans out for them.
And the ironic thing is that you are all, to some degree, the ones that helped cause this. You can bet that if they do prevail, they are going to make you suffer as MUCH AS THEY CAN with no remorse, since you all have had no remorse for them in the past.
This is not meant to be a troll. I only wanted to present a unique viewpoint of the whole situation.
The other quote that I can't get out of my head is from Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, where the Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto explains his reservations about attacking Pearl Harbor as ordered by the military junta: ...it was hard to tell them that their plan was full of shit and that the Americans were just going to get really pissed off and annihilate them. Substitute "IBM" for "Americans", and you have my feelings exactly.
God, I love that book.
It's funny reading the comments here. Just goes to show that IBM's Linux strategy is really paying off. If this were any other pair of similarly sized companies, slashdot would be fully on the site of David, not Goliath.
Don't get me wrong -- I'm pro-IBM in this case, and think SCO is somewhere between moronic and suicidal. But it's definitely funny to see this level of grass-roots support for such a huge corporation.
Either we're open minded folk who can see right and wrong without prejudice, or we're so defensive about Linux that we'll side with anyone when Linux is attacked.
Cheers
-b
T3? That's sad.. (hehe)
:
/24 from WestNet, who has the two /16's containing that block.
/24's owned by ShreveNet in Louisana, which is part of 4 /16's owned by UUNet.
:)
:)
Most of the bigger lines I've delt with, it's a fixed rate for connection itself, a dedicated bandwidth amount, and a burstable amount.
Like, we're dedicated to several Gb between our various facilities. That's what we pay for every month, if we use it or not. If we exceed that amount, we pay a higher amount for the overage. If we use less, well that's our tough luck.
If they're in a colocation facility (like most good companies are these days), they probably have multiple lines coming in from different providers, and have at least a 100Mb/s uplink. That's the prefered method these days. It saves a whole lot of money in actually keeping a physical room going at your facility, and having copper or fiber run to you.
A little research can give you a hint of where they live.
sco.com
216.250.140.112
nameservers:
ns.calderasystems.com 216.250.130.1
ns2.calderasystems.com 216.250.130.5
c7ns1.center7.com 216.250.142.20
nsca.sco.com 132.147.210.253
MX:
mail.ut.caldera.com 216.250.130.2
calderasystems.com is 216.250.140.125
216.250.128.0/20 (everything but nsca.sco.com) is owned by 'NFS", which has nameservers of:
ns1.canopy.com 216.250.129.1
c7cs1.center7.com 216.250.142.20
c7ns2.center7.com 166.70.45.162
c7ns3.center7.com 216.250.142.14
166.70.0.0/16 is owned by XMission, which has the nameservers of:
ns.xmission.com 198.60.22.2
ns1.xmission.com 198.60.22.22
ns2.xmission.com 207.78.169.150
The 198.60.22.0/24 block is owned by Xmission, who only has the
The 207.78.169.0/24 is one of two
My guess would be that SCO lives with Center7. If you go to http://center7.com/, you'll see a whole lot of PR crap, that sounds like every other colo provider's crap. They are nice enough to say that their connectivity is an OC-48 from XO Communications, and an OC-12 with Qwest (which is what I see on my traceroute to sco.com), and two T3's that aren't active. They also say something to the effect that their customers are attached "at 10-100", which I'd take to mean ethernet (like, duh).
I'd have to say that xmission.com is just someone being nice enough to provide a home for a nameserver.
I wouldn't expect that too many people can flood their OC-12 off the net, unless it's already fairly utilized. Since I've never heard of Center7, I wouldn't suspect that they are.
The best, and most likely to hurt them is if there was 100Mb/s of traffic filling up their ethernet connection to Center7's switch.. So, don't try to push 600Mbs in, it only takes 100Mb/s..
I know, I know, there are possibilities that they are rather reinforced. What if they have some spiffy hardware in front of their server? They could be doing all kinds of wild load balancing. But if I remember right, this was the company that was hurting for money and this is their last-ditch effort to make get IBM to buy them. Honestly, it looks like an old Linux box that no one ever bothered to update Apache on.
user@home (/home/user) telnet sco.com 80
Trying 216.250.140.112...
Connected to sco.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET ? HTTP/1.1
HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 06:06:47 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.14 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.7.1 OpenSSL/0.9.6 PHP/4.0.3pl1
It would seem to me that any of a few thousand script kiddies out there with a few exploits could get in, or anyone in control of a few dozen DDoS slaves could make their site rather quiet.
Now my disclaimer.. I don't suggest doing it.. It's no fun to have your pager go off at 4am because som
But you've never really tried to return an opened piece of software, right?
How do you NOT develop for SCO? They are POSIX, and have a GNU toolchain..
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
In the case SCO win (if it si possible)
At various discount bookstores around town there are copies of Caldera linux distros (old) at fairly cheap prices. If I buy one and then any linux distro I like, I am protected from SCO because I am a customer. There are some in a remainder bin I think.
I don't like giving in to obvious stupidity and I don't like breaking the law, but running Win98 is not good for my physical or mental wellbeing.
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
hyundai automobiles in the late 80s and early 90s sucked. they were the joke of the car industry for a while. they retreated and when they came back... well just look at the cars around you in a traffic jam, a lot of them are hyundais. who knows they may still suck, but consumers seem to be motivated to buy them.
lindows is a relatively young distrobution, but they have sales channels through tiger direct, walmart, kmart etc. their mission was to provide the average consumer with a linux operating system. they are succeeding more than failing.
these are two companies who a) had a bad reputation and managed to turn it around to become successful or b) a linux company which decided to focus on the consumer desktop market and is somewhat successful.
i can't really comment about caldera and the OS community being against it, but taking the two examples i have just given, it is clear to see that the problem caldera had was not just the OS community.
Why did I lurk so long before registering for a Slashdot account? I could have had a Slashdot ID of less than 100000.
Don't buy into the "software isn't sold, it's licenced" mentality just because the big corps claim that is the way it works. The reality is that courts are divided on the issue and it has never been settled definitively. It is precicely for this reason that UCITA was persued so agressively, but remember that only two states passed it and some even passed UCITA non-enforcement laws.
I believe that eventually the law will conclude that you need a licence in order to make a copy, but that once made, that copy is sold normally through the transactions that move it through retail distribution. The recent case Adobe vs Softman adopted this view (to the minimal extent needed to decide the case).
Six sick
As far as I can tell, nobody has yet mentioned that when IBM introduced AIX and for years and years afterwards, it neither contained Unix code nor bore the Unix logo. AIX gained a sizeable chunk of the "Unix" market share without actually being Unix at all, at least not in any technical sense.
This was well-known among systems administrators who grew up with SunOS or other versions of Unix and who were forced to work with AIX in their day jobs. AIX does everything differently, which leads to frustration of the system administrator when nothing he knows works. ("Why can't they just use /etc/fstab like everyone
else instead of this hundred-line-long /etc/filesystems thing?!?" and "Why
why WHY did they have to invent ODM?"
were both common cries.) Anyway, the
point is that after each frustrating
experience, every Unix-guy-but-forced-to-do-AIX
systems admin would repeat the mantra
"Well, Unix is supposed to do it that way,
but of course AIX isn't Unix."
One of the common jokes of the day (besides "smit happens") was this: "What does AIX stand for? AIX Isn't UniX!"
In case you're wondering, my point is this: IBM was able to successfully sell hundreds of thousands of RS/6000 machines and AIX licenses before it got the opportunity to call it "Unix" (which happened when the Unix trademark began to denote a spec instead of a codebase). If AIX wants to do that again, it can. IBM may have included some System V code since then, but it can fix that and keep selling the machines and the operating system.