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SCO Terminates IBM's Unix License
AKAImBatman writes "SCO has terminated IBM's license to use Unix code. SCO is filing for an injunction that will require IBM to cease all sale of AIX as well as accrue damages for each day IBM continues to sell AIX."
Whether the court will grant it or not is another matter entirely.
If IBM believes the license is perpetural, and the injunction is granted, IBM will file a counter claim for breach of contract, probably for the same amount of daily damages.
This means nothing. It's just more grandstanding.
The slashblurb has phrased this poorly. SCO did not terminate IBM's UNIX License. SCO stated that they had terminated IBM's UNIX License. There is a difference.
I could issue a press release saying that i had used my magical powers to turn Bill Gates into a toad, but that would not automatically make it true.
Does anybody else get the impression that Big Blue is going to give SCO a bloody nose over this whole thing? I mean, come on, SCO! It should be obvious by now that IBM isn't going to buy you - they're going to sue you into bankruptcy, and then buy the rights to your code from your liquidators at a dirt cheap price.
Someone needs to give SCO a clue.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
In order to do B), IBM would have to have a copy of what SCO thinks is the offending code...
IBM *has* a copy of the offending code. IBM has had a copy of the System V source code for years now. Anyone with a copy of both Linux and System V can easily find which lines they have in common.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
No, imagine for a second what would happen if they actually were to get their injunction requiring each and every copy of AIX to be collected and destroyed. The National Weather Service is using AIX for some of their weather modeling. What do they do, just cease operations for a few months while they port their software..... to WHAT? None of the other commercial UNIXen are safe, you can bet they aren't stupid enough to try porting to a rack of Dells running NT. So does the Weather Channel replace their feed with a slide saying "Out of Service pending resolution of SCO v IBM"? Follow the ripples down through the economy from all of the sites running AIX.
Now imagine the horror as every entity with a "licensed, not sold" product starts frantically researching how many companies their vendor licenses various bits from and calculating the odds of one of them getting into a pissing fight. You either get Congress going into emergency session to pass a law protecting the end users from being pawns in this new form of corporate blackmail or the economy collapses.
Democrat delenda est
What is interesting is that they have NOT filed for a temporary injunction.
In most cases of alleged IP violations, the accuser will file for a temporary injunction, rather than waiting for the end of the trial after which an injunction may be granted.
The real implication is that to get a temporary injunction, SCO would have to convince a judge that they had a likelyhood of prevailing at trial. In order to convince a judge of this, they would have to back up their allegations against IBM with real facts.
Temporary injunctions could cause severe problems, so they are not issued on a whim. There must be real evidence and the defending side has the opportunity to refute that evidence.
So the real impact of SCO's actions is to spread more FUD, and keep the time at which they must present any real evidence far off in the future.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Who owns SCO? I have the impression that IBM should try buying it, if only to stop it from pissing everybody off.
That's the whole point. Most analysts think SCO is doing this simply to make themselves obnoxious enough for IBM to buy them. That's why SCO's stock goes up when they get obnoxious: buyers are betting that IBM will finally decide it's easier to pay to make it go away.
Does this mean that SCO now has a legal basis for suing Joe User for downloading a Red Hat ISO?
What do you mean a "legal basis"? They've certainly intimated that they could and might sue for such. However, you can sue anyone you like for anything you like. The sued can, of course, countersue for harassment, etc. In this case, I would expect IBM to file a counter-motion for an injunction against SCO saying IBM cannot distribute AIX. Regardless, SCO's attempted revocation of the AIX license does not affect the legality of Linux. It's merely SCO's retaliation (blackmail, if you will) for IBM not giving SCO what they want.
The judge is likely to make a quick decision (IANAL) between the two injunctions, as SCO is clearly costing IBM by their statements and IBM is clearly costing SCO by distributing unlicensed code (only one of those is "illegal", but which one?). Oh, the anticipation.
Although the terms may sound bizarre to any ordinary human, they apparently describe well-defined concepts in lawyer-speak.
A "perpetual" contract means the parties do not need to renew their agreements.
e.g., My lease to the apartment I live in expires in two years, so this lease is not perpetual.
An "irrevocable" contract is one that one or more (usually, all) parties to the contract cannot back out of without due cause.
Basically, the contract remains valid unless certain obligations specified in the contract are not fulfilled, or unless following the terms of the contract would require breaking the law, etc., etc.
(Disclaimer: IANAL)
The court will only grant SCO's injunction if SCO shows a likelihood that it will ultimately prevail on the merits of its complaint. This question gives IBM its first opportunity to fire its legal guns, which IBM has been putting into position for months. Good-bye, SCO.
I appreciate all the jokes about David vs. Goliath, with people cheering for Goliath, but I have to wonder why IBM hasn't taken the opportunity to annihilate SCO's case by now. Are the lawyers just waiting for this thing to reach a courtoom to unleash the legal nuclear weapons? Are they waiting to spring a nasty surprise on SCO, like proof that the code in question is really BSD, or even GPL? Do the charges really have merit, and the legal team is just buying time to figure out a way to extricate the company unscathed?
Seriously, Big Blue's been strangely dormant on this. What gives? For one thing, the reputation of Linux--a codebase that IBM's banking a big chunk of money on--is at stake.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
As far as I can tell, SCO now plans to sue every single end user of AIX. Which should help the adoption of Linux in a big, big way, since all those users now need to replace their AIX installations. This could be the best thing to every happen to Linux, since it makes IBM a Linux only shop.
The big deal isn't that the Weather Channel is running AIX. Many banks are using AIX as their OS. Because AIX is known to be secure.
So, SCO is doing something dangerous for their "case". Now, the David-against-Goliath case they think they've got is transforming in a David-against-GoliathS
I don't understand what they're trying to do. Do they want to run out of business? Or do they are simply stupid?
Montreal - Best city to live in!
The end of SCO Group is very near, perhaps within a month. As soon as the judge denies their request for a permanent injunction against IBM, shareholders will know the case is over and will flock away from the company in droves -- sending the stock price plummeting. If you own SCO stock, sell now, while the price is overvalued.
Best,
Doug
Doug Mehus http://doug.mehus.info/
In the GNU Coding Standards, there are a couple of paragraphs about the issue of using/referring to Unix code, as well as accepting code from other contributors whose sources (no pun intended) are unclear. The necessity of being extremely careful with these things is now becoming painfully clear...
I read the contract yesterday. I'm no legal expert, but it seems from the wording of it that IBM has to "designate" where the code is used, and how it's used. As long as it's under license, ANY license, (including gpl) they should be okay.
The problem is that the damn thing is paradoxically worded. And parts of it are crossed off and pencilled in. It's a real mess.
On top of that, It was signed in 1985 by AT&T and IBM. System V isn't even mentioned in it. Hell, they mention West Germany as a viable country to sell dirivitive code in!
SCO is listing it as evendence. But I don't see how it's even applicable considering that the origenal code that it was made in reference to has fallen into the public domain.
Am I wrong about this?
Please correct me if I am.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
Now that Mr Mc Bride appears to be claiming the right to extort licencing fees from anything stemming from System V I think he is doing a very good job of illustrating the daftness of the system which gives this claim any ( remote ) credibility at all.
How can a company who have themselves had comparitavley no input whatsoever into the development of System V and anything which has come from that claim rights from the millions of people worldwide who have actually created the programs and applications in question ?
I don't think for a second SCO will get anywhere with these aims either in the US or Worldwide but the fact they even consider they are in with a shot points to the fact that somewhere down the line all common sense has been lost. If one good thing can come from this it's finding out where the current laws diverge from common sense and taking some steps to ensure the work of millions of people and hundreds of corporations can't be held to ransom over similar issues in the future.
Does OpenBSD even _have_ SMP support? And Linux? If AIX is out, so is Linux. Neither OpenBSD nor Linux are anywhere close to a drop in solution. Not to mention the massive amounts of cash nessecary to replace the kind of big iron AIX generally runs on...
Why?