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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."
SCO has made public statements and accusations about IBM's Unix license and about Linux in an apparent attempt to create fear uncertainty and doubt
I know it's silly but I always love when IBM uses the phrase "FUD" in corporate announcements since they know it means nothing to the mainstream press but it gets the Linux community all fired up. As petty and transparent as it is, IBM's press announcement can be roughly tranlated as "hey geeks, didja hear that? SCO called Captain Kirk a wimp, you feeling riled?" Well, riled we are...
The second paragraph: "IBM's Unix license is irrevocable, perpetual and fully paid up. It cannot be terminated" is nothing but pissing on SCO's shoes. Beautiful, I can't suppress a beaming smile.
So when does SCO sue Sun?
And after that, is Apple next?
Can we get a SCO section for all of this? I filtered Caldera so I don't have to see all of these stories and here's one slipping through.
Yea, this post is so -1... But so is this story.
Phase 1. Imagine a Billion dollars.
Phase 2. Sue everyone.
Phase 3. ???
Phase 4. Profit!
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
Speak softly, and carry a big stick.
Ever get hit by 50 gazillion patent infringment lawsuits and the one of the worlds biggest legal departments?
I stole this Sig
Yeah man.
I like this. No settlement, no pre-arranged fees. No engineering/blackmailing for a takeover by SCO...
Just no nonsence usiness by IBM, to paraphrase: 'You are wrong. We do not want you and we will not bow to you.' Gives them a lot of cred in my book, no matter how tedious SCO can be.
represents years of IBM innovation, hundreds of millions of dollars of investment and many patents
uh oh....watch out SCO...they've opened their patent library...you're fscked
I think your idealism has made you forget that IBM and SCO are COMPANIES. That means money is involved. That also means greed is involved. Any schoolyard-bully characterization you give them is naivety at the extreme. Yes, we'd all like IBM to kick their (SCO's) ass. But, they are doing it for different reasons than an armchair-quarterback like yourself would like to think.
Mabye we should create a new topic called "SCO vs. IBM"... ?
IBM is the last company in the world to do things for ideological reasons (okay, maybe second last.)
.. and I'm young!
Its probably a better risk/reward route to fight in court than just to stop shipping AIX. I mean, did anybody really think IBM would just snap its fingers and go, "Drat." like that?
Even if they are in the wrong, its probably a better business decision to fight it given that you cant just shut off a revenue stream like AIX (tho probably smaller than it used to be) at the request of a competitor.
Course they could be in a right as well, in which case taking it to court isn't exactly a display of courage rather than simply doing the logical thing.
I just never thought I'd live to see the day where IBM is getting support from nerds and the like
"Old man yells at systemd"
Well, if SCO hoped that IBM would settle or buy them out, they were clearly mistaken. Now that THAT plan has backfired, d u think they'll go after some one else next ? Maybe RedHat or SuSE ? It'll be interesting to see how they ( RedHat and others ) respond if that happens. After all, currently SCO is going after IBM only on the issue of trade secrets and their contract with IBM. Would they stoop to going after distributors of Linux if this doesn't work ?
{cough} Said moderator was probably expecting you to "RTFA", at which point you would have seen the line;
As a matter of fact, it was the very first sentence of the article. Sorry, chum, but your moderation was fair.
BD Phone Home!
Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
I can remember the day Big Blue was the enemy and everyone was rooting for this geek kid out of Redmond...
My how things have changed since then.
Even the big bad 'client/server' model is back..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
In the past two months, I've been reading over and over and over and over and over about this court case, without there anything getting something done or new added.
But in the same time, the crowd gets more enthousiastic, more violent in their responses and more sure of themselves.
It feels like the time between october last year and somewhere april this year when the TV stations and pulp-newspapers around the world had specials every day about the upcoming war, with new(tm) and improved(tm) reports about how this was going to be finished and how everything would turn out right at the end.
I'm going to ignore the SCO non-newsitems on slashdot until this case is over and read a proper review of it in one of the less sensational newsletters. Just my 2 cents.
bash$
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
Doesn't this say something to you? Maybe you should stop reading them if they don't interest you. But don't push your crap on everyone else.
Please, SCO story whiners, you are a minority. SCO stories are obviously extremely popular on Slashdot. The editors would be fools not to post them.
Clever signature text goes here.
I haven't seen this posted before. In a news.com article, IBM's alleged violations are listed:
Specifically, the transferred code includes the Journaled File System (JFS), extensions to make Linux work on a multiprocessor server employing the non-uniform memory access (NUMA) technique, Sontag said. In addition, he said read-copy update (RCU) for relieving some memory bottlenecks on multiprocessor servers, was transferred.
Well IBM was regarded as THE "Evil Empire" in the 80's if you was a Nerd, Geek, etc. At this present time it's Microsoft, who knows who it will be in 20 years time.
So the idea is that if you pay millions for commercial software, some company you didn't even know you were doing business with can shut you down. But if you use the free software that works better, is more compatible and looks the same, you're good to go. And this is a problem. OK, thought I had it. Somebody explain this again.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
a word of advice, you don't go after the company that practically has the patent on ones and zeros.
sure, you might go after one division, and hope that just want to shut you up, but the core of the company? never.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Not only that - why does Boies have such a sterling rep, anyway? The three big cases I'm aware of he's been involved in are DOJ vs. Microsoft, his management of Gore's legal strategy in 2000, and his defense of Napster.
Microsoft - nominally won, but the original terms of the settlement were pretty much a slap on the wrist, which Microsoft is now (allegedly) ignoring anyway.
Gore - anyone who's noticed who our President is right now knows how this one went.
Napster - Lost in convincing fashion, so badly the company cratered.
Now maybe he has a knack for finding indefensible defendants (I don't think Perry Mason could've won Napster), but as far as I can tell, when you put Boies on the case, it's as good as lost!
Interesting results from the Insider page:
2003-06-11
OLSON, MICHAEL P
Vice President
6,000
Automatic Sale at $8.59 - $8.66 per share.
(Proceeds of about $52,000)
2003-06-09
BENCH, ROBERT K.
Chief Financial Officer
7,000
Planned Sale
(Estimated proceeds of $60,000)
2003-06-09
BENCH, ROBERT K.
Chief Financial Officer
7,000
Automatic Sale at $9.16 - $9.3 per share.
(Proceeds of about $65,000)
2003-06-06
HUNSAKER, JEFF F.
Vice President
5,000
Automatic Sale at $8.90 per share.
(Proceeds of $44,500)
I don't know how this got modded up as "+5 Insightful" - are the moderators really that clueless these days?
What is stopping the people within SCO who started this case and subsequently destroyed SCO utterly from quietly selling all of their SCO stock sometime between now and the point SCO goes into court, thus making gobs of money in the span of time between SCO's stock price being temporarily knocked up by all the publicity around this case and SCO's stock price being knocked down once it becomes apparent SCO has nothing to back up their claims with?
What you're describing is known as insider trading - it's a very serious offense and typically involves prison time. Ask Martha Stewart if you don't believe me.
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?
I know most of you children who live on Slashdot seem to think that anyone who is on the board of a company is jsut plain stupid. However, that's not the case. If the facts of the case indeed turn out to be the way you're describing them, the people responsible for the case will certainly not be someone any intelligent board will want to hire.
Mmmm.. Donuts
The way I see this, this can only help Linux in the long run. If IBM wins, and it seems likely it will, we could start to see large chunks of AIX/UNIX code released under the GPL. If the UNIX code is declared generic, inhibitions to release unix-like code under the GPL will decrease substantially. On the other hand, if all hell breaks loose and IBM looses the rights to distribute AIX the results will be even more immediate. The "disputed" code will be replaced under the GPL by our programmers, and life will go on. *Most importantly* SCO cannot win this, because winning places a monsterous shadow of FUD over UNIX. Companies will think twice about investing in UNIX if they have to fear the fickle whims of SCO. This will be very interesting.
I don't want to rain on your parade but you do know that is IBM PR at work. There's almost certainly a team of IBM lawyers meeting with SCO lawyers to talk a way out of this mess 24hrs a day.
I mean, c'mon people! Wake up and smell the PR action going on here.
This isn't "IBM, defender of the free". This is "IBM, that's mine, that's mine, that's yours and now it's mine".
If you were IBM would you come out with press release saying "Oh shit, we're fucked. Whatawegonna dooooooo". Um, no.
Whatever you do / / /
Don't fouque with Big Blue
Or Big Blue
Will annihilate you.
This is like defending the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany: You just fall back a little, and fall back a little more, and let the opponent thrash around, kicking and screaming, burning energy and money, wasting men and machines, building up a supply line that he can't defend. SCO has to stay in the headlines, has to keep pushing deeper and deeper so the press stays interested, or else people will catch on to the fact that the don't have the resources to take Moscow, let alone Sibiria, before winter comes.
And winter is on its way. Once the stock market realizes that this is going to be long, drawn out battle, they will lose interest in SCO, and the stock price will start to fall again -- we saw the first frost on Monday. Their stock price is like the temperature in Kelvin, likely to fall towards a very absolute zero if they don't keep moving. SCO is not equipped to fight unter six feet of financial snow, while IBM has resources to burn. This is where the comparison breaks down: IBM is not a starving Communist dictatorship, but rather has the industrial capacity of the U.S. to draw upon.
So time is on IBM's side, while SCO is running out of ways to escalate this fight. And this is what is so beautiful about the press release: The way it makes clear that there will be no quick, furious battle, just a steady stream of legal artillery raining down on SCO while IBM slowly marches away, giving ground, gaining time. The actual court case will trap SCO like ice, and the the snow will start falling, and SCO will start starving.
And all this time, safe behind the Urals, the penguins will be breeding...
That hinges on AT&T's successors -- we presume SCO although that's been called into question too -- complied with their part of the license, namely "by not less than two (2) months' written notice to LICENSEE specifying such breach". Yeah, SCO gave IBM "100 days" notice of something, but of what, exactly?
Even if IBM flagrantly violated the SCO-IBM contract to develop Monteray (and I'm not saying they did), that is not the contract by which SysV was licensed to IBM. Unless SCO can point to something in the original IBM-AT&T contract that IBM violated (and which IBM hasn't since fixed), SCO may as well go piss up a rope.
-- Alastair
thus spoke the evil proctologist said: the enema of my enemy is my friend....
The SCO Group of Lindon, Utah (not to be confused with the cutting edge SCO design firm of Santa Cruz that had made contributions to science) is simply trying to use the power of patents to destroy in its quest for riches.
There are many who consider the power to destroy as a greater power than the power to create.
Even though IBM may not have a perfect past, they do have a long history of creating things, and that history deserves a little bit of admiration. IBM has made a good steady stream of contributions to science along the path of it quest for world dominance. So, yeah, I will cheer big blue as I personally value those who create more than those that simply brandish threats and demand payments.
AT&T, as part of it's monopoly ruling, had to divest all assets other than telco related assets. Therefore, whoever purchased those assets (the old SCO) now owns them, including licensing agreements.
It doesn't matter who's name is on the deed to your house, if you sell that house and the deed with it, the new owner now has all rights to it.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
Uh NO.
I don't know what was in the mind of IBM'S legal team but I am willing to bet that having this tried in SCO'S home court wasn't topping their list of desirable venues.
Further the process of federal court is significantly different and more expensive than state court. So Your'e looking at what from the begining would be a very complicated and expensive lawsuit, IBM looks on and says lets make it more so and slow things down too.
BTW while I don't know whats going on in IBM'S head its pretty obvious by SCO's choice of counsel that they realised this was going to be a federal case from the start. If they felt there was any chance this was going to stay in Utah, they would have hired a well connected Utah firm, not Boies who is a federal player.
Not to imply that SCO has any validity to their claim but to tout IBM as a hero for what they do normally is silly. That is IBM's response to just about anything...SCREW YOU, we are bigger than you and have more lawyers and money.
That is what got them in trouble with the feds before, it is what almost led them down the tubes following the MicroChannnel/PS2 fiasco. Given enough tries even doing nothing will be the right answer some of the times.
On a side note our IBM rep assured us that we are covered, we dealt with IBM in good faith and with documentation that they were legally able contract for the SW at the time, even if the unthinkable happens and IBM loses, business's would at that point have to start doing somthing new, but until then all is good.
Words mean things, you twit.
Just because you can say War==bad and Terrorism==bad, this does not mean that War==Terrorism. Likewise, you can't just say that Bush==bad and Dictator==bad, therefore Bush==dictator (or terrorist.)
There are many kinds of evil in the world, and in order to combat and defeat a kind of evil, you must understand it. Tactics that work against war probably do not work against terrorism.
English is a wonderfully decriptive language. Learn it before you post again.
Most of use depend on *nix; Windows have a few servers here and there, but ... and think about the possibility ... if SCO won this case in, say, 2007, and all UNIX derivatives were invalid, what would we be left with?
MS Windows, which by then would have Palladium. If SCO get their way, even *BSD will be dead; in the worst-case scenario, the US will be depending on European laws making something (Linux, *BSD, whatever) legal to be distributed (hmm, maybe under license?) to the USA
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
IBM is going crush SCO. It's gonna take a few years but they have been marked for death. No licensing, no merger, no buyout. Remember, IBM got into a pissing contest with the Justice Dept. in the 70's. In case you need to be reminded the Justice Dept. is part of the U. S. Government who prints the money. The Justice Dept. does not have to show a profit, IBM does. IBM fought the Justice Dept. to a standstill for over 12 years and still showed a profit every year.
IBM most likely employs more people in their legal department than all of SCO. IBM is going to go into court with SCO and stall, bleeding them dry in the process. The legal fees will bankrupt SCO and IBM will not even break a sweat.
You do realize that this is precisely what is so wrong with our legal system and how corporations abuse it, right? It just happens to be working in our favor at the moment, but what happens why Goliath goes after the little guy and the little guy is right?
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
Actually...
SCOX 10.75
last trade: 4:48PM
change: -0.462 (-4.12%)
IBM 84.15
Last trade: 4:29pm
Change: +1.40 (+1.69%)
A mildly good day for IBM, a rather poor day for SCO considering the NASDAQ was up 2.46%.
Still, SCO is up from $6 and change a week or two ago; someone must think something good's happening for this company. I can't imagine what; it's been only bad news for them, especially that SCO may be liable to thousands of kernel contributors for violating their GPL'd copyrights--yay!
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
And SCO has yet to clearly specify (as opposed to vague generalities) what was disclosed(*), let alone prove that IBM made such disclosures.
Even if they do manage to prove IBM did that (unlikely, given IBM's usual extreme care in managing IP rights), IBM can argue the point that the clause was rendered moot because the "software products" had previously been disclosed by AT&T and others (see the USL vs BSDI suit, for example), including AT&T's successors Novell and SCO.
Sure, if, if SCO can prove that things actually happened the way they said, and that the license means what they think, and that the point was not rendered moot by previous actions, then IBM is in trouble. I wouldn't hold my breath on that point.
(*) The vague generalities mentioned have included JFS (Journaling File System), the Linux version of which was ported from OS/2; SMP, which in large part was developed (in Linux) by Alan Cox on hardware donated by Caldera for the purpose, and NUMA, orginally an SGI development. None of these things were in the SysV code that IBM licensed. For SCO to claim that these are non-disclosable "software products" for the purpose of the license, they'd also have to prove that their interpretation of the "derivative work" ownership reversion applies to such technologies that were added to UNIX/AIX by IBM rather than derived from it. Good fscking luck.
-- Alastair
dude, where were you during the September that never ended? Usenet used to be a great place for info on the internet.
FreeBSD for the impatient.
This is not funny. This is lame and dorky, just like every other "visualize SCO as pasty wimps getting the shit beat out of them by big manly-men IBMers" post on here.
No, SCO isn't showing anyone the code because there is no code.
3.IBM, red hat et al can then say "yes we were using your code but we stopped as soon as we found out about it" which means that SCO cant do things like filing an injunction that says "if you use our code, you have to pay us mega $$$"
SCO can't do that anyway - read a little bit about the doctrine of laches.
SCO has been harping on about this for two months. If they went to a judge now and said "we want a TRO to stop these people from using our code", the judge would say "since you didn't think it was important enough to ask them, or to do this when you found out about it, you must therefore value any infringing code at $0. And since you have declared that the code has no value, I'm not gonna stop someone else from distributing it."
Seriously. By not telling anyone where it is, SCO has declared that the monetary value of any of "their" code in Linux is $0.
I guess that helps to explain what happened to Drexel-Burnham-Lambert. Be seen as making a wrong decision and you're out the door. I'll bet they still can't comprehend the death of company loyalty, or why eventually the sleeze oozed to the top of their organization.
/. poster.)
It would be a lot funnier if this attitude didn't represent the viewpoint of so many incompetant managers out there. 'Next contestant' my ass: have you ever wondered why the competant people went to work for someone else, dipshit? ('Dipshit' is Mr. O'Neil, not the
If the AC is out of a job, it's likely to be at least in part the fault of a greedy coorporation or two that hogged resources and fought destructively and dirty instead of co-operatively and clean. Greedy corporations (like SCO at present) are almost always driven by one or a few greedy individuals. They should not be able to use any corporation as a moral facade that they can hide behind.
Contrast insert-random-company-here with (say) Scaled Composites. Burt Rutan may well make more megabucks as a consequence of his venture, but he doesn't need to and he knows it. If I had anything to bet you, it would be down on this premise: Rutan is doing it primarily for the challenge and to see if he can, not in the hope of earning squillions. Notice that even his domain has a wordplay in it: SCALED.COMposites. Anything that will encourage fair, competent and happy players like him and discourage the greedy has to be a good thing!
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
But they have nothing to lose, so they're free to run a "scorched-earth" campaign.
Disclaimers: IANAL, IANACEO, IANACFO.
If IBM can countersue them into the ground, then they can be acquired by IBM for nothing, instad of the zillions McBride is hoping for. If this happens, McBride, Sontag and Co. can kiss those golden parachutes they were hoping for goodbye.
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
More than 600 postings on this thread, and (at the top level at least) nobody's mentioned indemnification yet...
SCO thought they'd be smart today, pull the plug on IBM and the AIX installed base and let all those multi-billions of dollars of customers force IBM to it's knees. Oh please... A standard part of the (megabuck) license agreement that the AIX licensees sign is that IBM will indemnify them against patent and copyright infringement committed by IBM in constructing the product. IP infringements do happen, intentional or not, and it's only reasonable for a licensee to expect the licensor to stand behind their product. That's indemnification - it frees the person who's purchased the license from having to defend against an embedded IP infraction. In addition to IBM indemnifying their own code, they would normally ask indemnification against infringements by the licensee if they make mods.
Now, if you're buying software from me, I can promise indemnification and buy and insurance policy. But you won't buy from me, because the IBM salesman also paid you a call, and explained that his ability to stand behind his product legally is unmatched by anyone else, probably in the world. More lawyers, more patents, more money and more lethal force than anybody else is packing.
I've mentioned it in earlier postings, and it's popped up in this thread too. Little gnats often pop up and try to suck some blood from IBM. They are crushed quietly and behind the curtain by IBM's IP portfolio and legal muscle. Usually the customers don't even hear about the problem, which is the way they like it. Nothing probably makes the IBM contract management group more angry than having a SCO make a ruckus in public and cause them to have to call their gazillion licensee to tell them that there's no problem.
The only question on how this will turn out is whether IBM will take SCO out for a ride in their limo before fitting them with concrete boots or whether they get it in broad daylight at the toll booth.
Which leads to the worst job in the world (yes, even worse than yours). I remember reading an article that mentioned that only 3 SCO employees are focused on the lawsuit (yes, many many more non-employees), while the other couple of hundred continue on their path of innovation, the Caldera way.
I think everybody realizes that this is going to take a while. The guy you *don't* want to be is the VP of Sales as SCO. Now, you might have been jazzed that your company was going to squeak, IBM would buy it to make the problem go away, and you'd go home with your $20 million bucks. Only it didn't work that way. Not only is IBM not going to buy you a mansion, they're not going to even acknowledge your squeaking. You might have felt a buzz of pride thinking that IBM would have to rename AIX to "SCO AIX". Now, IBM has about 3000 people talking to every client in the world telling them how their enormous company is going to crush your clueless company.
Then the SCO CEO comes into your office, says "This isn't as easy as I thought it was going to be" and tell you that it will be really important that you maintain SCO's revenue stream since it will be too damn obvious if Microsoft gives SCO anymore money.
When SCO makes a sales call today, do you think anybody *doesn't* laugh at them? That's a job that sucks.
Oh well, I guess you can hope that Microsoft buys you before the end of the quarter. In two weeks...
David Fung
Two points...
IBM must have a copy of the "offending" code as identified by SCO? In which case IBMs silence means they believe they have a killer defense. Any other situation IBM would be negotiating a settlement.
SCO motives have changed over the months. At first it was just a trivial copyright problems with some SCO libraries. They probably had a case then. Since expensive laywers have become involved everything changed. SCO is now attempting to hijack all Unix. It's obvious that they are on the road to trying to use legal tactics to invalidate ALL existing Unix licensing in the hope that ALL Unix rights and code will revert to SCO. If they win against IBM, SUN, HP SGI and many others will be next.
Another bonanza for lawyers.
http://ebgp.net/ccc/
FUD is a much more accurate description of IBM's tactics in the late-eighties, early-nineties.
To my recollection, it goes back at leas to the late seventies, to the time of "IBM and the Seven Dwarves", when the Seven Dwarves (Honeywell, Univac etc) complained that it was IBM's main selling tactic.
It is an obvious tactic to use when you are overwhelmingly the largest plauyte in the field. IBM then, Microsoft now. An the fact is that there is some truth in it. You know that you will never be totally lost if you fall back into Microsoft's choking embrace. Maybe you could do better by hunting around, but why bother? Many peole prefer mediocrity to risk, even if the payoff may be high.
OTOH, I think it is a very bad signe for the long term propagator of FUD. IBM had a massive fall after years of FUD, and only recovered when it dropped that attitude completely and started competing on its merits. While you use FUD as your main marketing tool instead of excellence, you aren't developing your product properly, and eventually the competition will get far enough ahead that FUD won't work. And when that happens, you are in deep trouble, because you are already far behind. I predict this for Microsoft in 3-4 years time. The chanllenger may, or may not, be Linux. And the crash will take years to happen.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.