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IBM Responds To SCO: Business As Usual
Newsforge is running a statement from IBM on its decision not to bow to SCO's demand that they stop shipping AIX. In a statement this short, there's not much room for weaselly language, but the even-shorter version is this: "IBM's Unix license is irrevocable, perpetual and fully paid up. It cannot be terminated."
It's even crazier than we think. SCO isn't claiming that it (or AT&T, Novell, etc.) necessarilly wrote the code that IBM allegedly put into Linux. Rather, SCO says that it has exclusive rights to any code that IBM distributed with AIX, even if the code is entirely IBM's own word! Essentially, all code in any form of Unix belongs to SCO.
Accoding to an interview at Byte with Chris Sontag, SCO's VP, Linux is used by terrorists, and therefore IBM's Linux efforts are equivalent to selling arms to terrorists. Because of this, Sontag expects the US govt. to support his case against IBM and Linux as part of the war on terror. He also accuses Intel of using Linux as a way to flout US laws that ban weapons exports to North Korea.
Unfortunately, this is not a troll or an attempt at humor.
Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. i was coined by persons that felt that this was IBMs main tactic against competition.
eric
It was a rubberband, not electrical tape, but I digress
Fascinating, I always assumed "FUD" was invented to describe Microsoft tactics but now that you mention it, FUD is a much more accurate description of IBM's tactics in the late-eighties, early-nineties. To coin an old phrase "no one ever got fired for buying IBM". Fortunately they have learned a lot from the early-90's crash and although I'm still sure their only motivation is still profit, you have to admit that when you think "FUD" in 2003 it doesn't bring IBM to mind anymore.
Monday:
IBM +1.75
SCOX -0.28
copy and pasted from here/a
There is no god
The licences between AT&T and IBM that are posted on SCO's site as Exhibit A and Exhibit B.
In section 3.03 of exhibit B it clearly states that "AT&T" may revoke the licence for non-compliance. Moreover paragraph 4 of the cover page contains a standard "no alterations unless signed in writing" clause. I see nothing that allows AT&T to sell this termination right without IBM's approval. There are similar sectoin in Exhibit A, section 6.03 and paragraph 4 of the cover page.
You mean, like if their VP of Engineering sold every bit of stock he had? Ha ha, yeah... wouldn't that be.... hmmm...
Newsforge: SCO VP Opinder Bawa cashes out
I know it's silly but I always love when IBM uses the phrase "FUD" in corporate announcements
h tm
The irony is delicious, especially when it was Gene Amdahl who coined the phrase "fear, uncertainty and doubt" to describe IBM's tactics towards his company after he quit IBM and founded Amdahl Computers (see one of the 1975 entries at http://www.academic.marist.edu/pennings/hyprhsty.
Call me old fashioned, but I like a dump to be as memorable as it is devastating - Bender
The Open SOurce/Linux community invented the term and the tactic...
Did they, or did it originally apply to IBM?
AIX is widely used in big businesses such as insurance companies, banks, etc. Linux and BSD are often used for middleware applications in these types of organisations, but they're nowhere near as scalable or mature enough to take over from AIX and other commercial UNIXs yet.
Well, apparently nothing.
Notice the huge block of 26-34k shares sold off-market at 1/10th penny apiece to all the executives just before the 100-day-warning IBM volley in March? Notice how this isn't an annual reward program -- didn't happen last year? Notice that there's not been any insider buying since that point, but plenty of selling once the stock swung upward?
This sort of thing is not going to go unnoticed by the SEC. At this point, if I were playing devil's advocate and suggesting this were a glorious pump-and-dump scheme, I'd say that McBride and friends were merely playing for the cameras at this point, trying to look genuinely quixotic to the end while they take their turns selling off their chunks at one million percent profit.
A lot of people are going to walk away from this with very fat wallets, no matter what happens. Some anticipated the market's buy-in and have already entered and exited. :-)
Because Robin Miller, on NF, just got the scoop from IBM. It's called reporting. It's happened before - what will happen now is that the other news organizations will see this, and rush out to get stories.
Yeah, I'm that guy.
Actually it was coined by Gene Amdahl after he left IBM to start his own computer company. "FUD is the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that IBM sales people instill in the minds of potential customers who might be considering Amdahl products."
See http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/FUD
Well that's good, JFS for linux is a port of OS/2's cleanroom implementation. IBM has a habit of writing white papers on everything they do, so it's likely that a number of those papers became public, so everything done in JFS was likely common knowledge - down to the mechanism, if not the code - well before it became part of Linux. Hell, before the Linux port even began.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Linux JFS is based on OS/2 JFS, not AIX JFS.
http://216.239.37.100/search?q=cache:CL5Bwe26iPIJ
The new Journaled File System, on which the Linux port was based, was first shipped in OS/2 Warp Serverfor eBusiness in April, 1999, after several years of designing, coding, and testing. It also shipped withOS/2 Warp Client in October, 2000. In parallel to this effort, some of the JFS development team returnedto the AIX Operating System Development Group in 1997 and started to move this new JFS source base tothe AIX operating system. In May, 2001, a second journaled file system, Enhanced Journaled File System(JFS2), was made available for AIX 5L. In December of 1999, a snapshot of the original OS/2 JFS sourcewas taken and work was begun to port JFS to Linux.
cpeterso
The Revenge Of the Coders. Why doesn't everyone who contributed to the Linux kernel slap a TRO on SCO? I'll do the paperwork and the filing for free....
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.
Coining a phase means creating a phrase.
It doesn't mean quoting it.
Umm, didn't Boies once work as IBM's defense atty in the federal antitrust case against IBM back in the 70's - 80's?
Now he's representing IBM's opponent? Doesn't that constitute an "Attorney Conflict Of Interest"? If he loses for SCO, then SCO can sue Boies for attorney malpractice.
Attorneys have been disbarred for failure to excuse themselves from counsel in COI cases.
What is stopping the people within SCO who started this case and subsequently destroyed SCO from walking out of SCO with incredibly lucrative golden parachutes, and possibly simply being rehired at another company in incredibly high-ranking, lucrative positions just because from the ignorant perspective of another corporation's board, hey, they were the ones who got SCO all that attention and tried to capitalize on that IP, even though it didn't work out?
To further back up your hypothesis, take a peek at what the executive team was paid last year. Some are surprisingly low. If they were not paid in salary, then they almost certainly were paid with stock. Hell, according to the following figures, I make more than Darl McBride, but somehow I seriously doubt that....
(figures taken from finance.yahoo.com's profile on SCOX)
Ralph Yarro, III, age 38 (Chairman)
FY2002 Pay: --
Darl McBride, age 43 Pres, CEO
FY2002 Pay: $80.5K
Robert Bench, age 53 CFO, Prcpl Accounting Officer
FY2002 Pay: $173.0K
Opinder Bawa, age 39Sr. VP-Technology
FY2002 Pay: $178.0K
Christopher Sontag, age 39 Sr. VP, Operating Systems Group
FY2002 Pay: $6.2K
The Nazi invasion of the USSR killed millions of Russian soldiers and countless more civilians. The USSR did not retreat out of desire/willingly; it retreated because it had no choice. The final stand at Stalingrad and the subsequent victory was only possible b/c the German forces were weakened from the Russian Winter. Millions of Russian lives would've been saved if the USSR managed to hold off the Germans at a front further West.
The point is, however, that this may not be the proper license. If this license doesn't allow sub-licensing, then it is not the license which IBM utilizes for AIX. And, regardless, SCO is utterly full of shit when they claim that AIX customers may be held liable - that's just pure and utter crap -- the customers have a license derived directly from SCO. SCO would have to suspend it from each and every one of those customers, individually, and would have to give some proof of those individual customers violating the terms of the license. Frankly, SCO is screaming for a lawsuit on illegal restraint of trade here... probably because if they get sued by IBM or by one of IBM's customers then they're in a much better legal position as the defendant.
Beyond that, it's still not clear that IBM even violated this license... or rather, that SCO didn't violate it in claiming that IBM violated it. Depends on what information SCO submitted, in writing, to IBM. If they didn't detail the exact violation -- and their court briefing sure as hell isn't adequate -- then they're in violation of the license and cannot suspend IBM's license over this. It's exactly this kind of thing that got UnixWare in trouble with UC and BSD. If you don't play by the rules in IP, you risk losing the IP completely - it's the trade off for the monopoly power granted by copyright, patent, et. al. (and, yes, I know this is allegedly trade secret stuff, but SCO's gonna have one hell of a hard time making that stick against IBM -- I mean, come on... IBM was doing "enterprise features" before Unix even existed).
Your synopsis of the case indicates you have paid no attention already. Had you been reading SCO preess releases, you might have been alternately amused and outraged. Did you send in your "one time only" $99 per CPU Linux fee? Do you really think they own all of Unix? Their have backed their ludicrous claims with nothing but slander and insult and so far the only people taking them seriously are M$ and an English major. If you would, kindly sit at that other table in the cafeteria with all the PHB for the durration and quit posting useless drivel.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The little guy fills out the necessary paperwork to proceed in forma pauperis?
:)
Check out the Supreme Court of the US's order lists sometimes.
Look for "Motion for petitioner to proceed in forma pauperis is granted".
That means "I don't have to pay the legal fees cause I can't afford it".
SCO have amended their complaint against IBM: - They now want $3bn
- Blames Linus for letting proprietary stuff into Linux
- Complains Open Source "can be used for encryption, scientific research and weapons research" in Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea and Libya
- Says IBM copied RCU
- Sequent added to the complaint
http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-1017965.html
Ok, I did a little digging, since everyone has been proclaiming how huge IBM was and how puny SCO was. My conclusion is that they are right. Here is what I found:
M &target=%2fstocks%2ffinancialinfo%2fstatements%2fb alancesheet%2fannualO X&target=%2fstocks%2ffinancialinfo%2fstatements%2f balancesheet%2fannual/ nlj_client_list_who_defends_corporate_america.shtm le ys/aug01.cfm
SCO
Net Assets: $37.4m (Source: Multex)
Total Employees: 340 (Source: Multex & Yahoo! Finance)
Legal Department Employees: Unknown (See below*)
IBM
Net Assets: $96,484m (Source: Multex)
Total Employees:
315,889 (Source: Multex)
Legal Department Employees: 308 (Source: Law.com)
Sources:
IBM Balance Sheet - http://yahoo.multexinvestor.com/IS.aspx?ticker=IB
SCO Balance Sheet - http://yahoo.multexinvestor.com/IS.aspx?ticker=SC
IBM Legal Department as of 2002 - http://www.law.com/special/professionals/nlj/2002
IBM Legal Department in 2000 and 1999 - http://www.corporatelegaltimes.com/editorial/surv
*SCO's legal department is not anywhere in the top 200, naturally, and no mention of size or otherwise is made in any SEC filings, etc. However, unlike IBM, SCO has no "Head Counsel," nor is any real mention made of an in-house legal department. From this, I construe that SCO either outsources its legal needs to a third-party firm, or does not employ enough lawyers to require a full "department." The acquisition of David Boies perhaps corroborates the first. Any additional information that anyone has would be helpful.
A CD from iTunes: $10 A Song from iTunes: $0.99 Not paying a cent to Microsoft: Priceless
Uhh... whatever. I tried using their graphical installer its first time around (don't laugh... I was trying out the distro as I never had before -- only knew Debian and Slack up till then. It did not pass muster.) and it sucked big time. I tried it on four different HW configs and it failed each in new and disgusting ways. The error handling was absolutely non-existent. What a total piece of shite.
Can I bum a sig? I left mine at the office.
In the beginning it was a suit against IBM's alleged breach of contract in copying code from Unix(tm) -whatever this means right now - into Linux. SCO gave IBM 100 days to give them $1 billion or get their AIX licence revoked. At the time it wasn't sure that this had anything to do with Linux.
IBM barely responded.
Then there were 1500 letters of warning sent to corporations running Linux and AIX I assume. At the time it wasn't sure that this had anything to do Linus.
IBM barely responded and the Linux community exploded with some people even calling Darl to come out and have a fist fight. Linus was very calm and welcomed the threat, but commented that the suit didn't have much chance of getting anywhere. Microsft, very publicly, bought a licence from SCO, giving rise to millions of suspicions that MS was behind the whole charade.
Then Darl McBride retracted his statement about sueing Linus. He then started the first of his (in)famous conference calls, claiming ownership to just about everything that had ever been in touch with anything to do with Unix.
Then Novell chimed up saying that no patents or copyrights had been sold to SCO.
SCO claimed that they had been sold, "according to some of our experts"
Then SCO started harping about hundreds of thousands of lines of code.
Speculation was rife in the OSS community as to what code exactly was being referred to.
Then there was the code preview and the (in)famous SCO NDA, which in effect didn't allow you to comment on the specifics of the code. Most analysts commented that they didn't see how SCO had a case, with only Microsoft friendly Gartner warning clients about Linux.
Most analysts refused the NDA, with only some analysts taking the bait. After reviewing the code, the situation was by no means any clearer than before, because while the analysts had indeed seen similar code, there was no relaible means of checking when the code had been entered into the SCO Unixware codebase, thereby starting suspicions by thousands of OSS members that SCO had in fact copied Linux code into the SCO code base.
The 100 day period rolls around, with only Darl "the mouth" McBride making threatening sounds about "mapping it all out for IBM and AIX licencees". Darl had failed to notice that IBM covers each and every one of it's cutomers against lawsuits against AIX.
The next week, IBM, in a first real response to the whole theater piece, basically stated that "AIX is ours, it's licence is irrevocable, and that this matter will be sttled in court". McBride, apparently very unsettled by the fact that IBM was not taking him personally seriously, resorted to an attempted injunction and that all time favourite fallback method used by Americans of all colors and creeds when really in deep shit: "Linux is giving the commies, arabs and terrorists high tech because it's free for all"- Appealing to Americans patriotic fervour when one has no other way out, thereby following the likes of other famous personages such as Oliver North, Admiral Pointdexter and Richard Nixon.
The saga continues...
This is better than TV.