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The Power Behind the SCO Nuisance
akahige writes "Forbes has a fairly detailed story about the sordid history of The Canopy Group and all the various companies they've sued -- Microsoft (who they beat) and CA (this case is still pending), among them. Before joining Caldera, Darl McBride sued IKON Office Solutions, for whom he worked -- and won. And it also seems that a bunch of Canopy power players also sit on SCO's board of directors. The short summary is, 'these guys are professional litigious bastards -- be exceptionally wary.'" A local user's group is planning a protest for tomorrow. Reader myst564 writes: "After reading all of this SCO press I remembered that SCO once offered up all of their 'Ancient UNIX' (their words, not mine) source to the world while retaining all copyrights (i.e, no OSS license). Interestingly enough it WAS located here but isn't any longer: SCO's Ancient Unix. What's more you can read about the original release here at: Linux Today. I downloaded the source myself way back then but never did anything but delete it! Anyway, check out this comment. It's interesting that this was predicted in 2000!"
The GPL has never been tested in court. SCO's claim that they own the Linux source code is clearly ridiculous--how can a person own an idea? So there's no doubt in my mind that Linux will emerge victorious in the end, which makes GPL, and therefore GPL/Linux, even stronger!
So bring it on, we welcome the test! Any thoughts?
It's only libel if it's not true. And it'll be hard to prove one isn't a professional litigious bastard while suing someone else for being called that :)
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
These guys in Utah are no dummies. The crunchies in the Linux community should be paying more attention.
,"That's not Fair!" while SCO continues to pound away. How many of us had the "Life-isnt-always-Fair" revelation?
I know which side I'm on, and I know everyone is pretty sure they know what side they are on, but I cant help getting the feeling that Linux side is relying way to much on the Fair principle and forgetting that it is quite difference from Justice in the legal systems.
What I am trying to say is that
Justice does not equal Fairness.
Ie It may not be Fair what SCO is trying to pull, but the legal courts are also concerned with what is Just and in this we are talking money and if the legal courts are about anything, they are about money. Making sure there are legal grounds to protect property (money).
Thus, What I see is the linux community simply yelling
Is the Linux community about to get the same?
Sigs are dangerous coy things
The Linux @ Work section on Forbes seems to be authored by pro-MS people. To them, linux is something only fanatics use. Unfortunately, it appears that most of what they are currently suing over was done by them before their current lawsuit happy management was in charge. It's bad when you wish Ransom Love was back in charge of Caldera/SCO/whatever they want to be called.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
So they're buying each other's stocks, raising the prices and then selling them to outsiders at a profit.
In this cozy company, SCO even leases its office space from Canopy--a fact disclosed in Securities and Exchange Commission filings, along with the fact that SCO's chief financial officer, Robert Bench, has a side job as a partner in a Utah consulting firm that last year billed SCO for $71,200.
So they're renting space from the parent company, at possibly below market rates, making their own profits look bigger OR at above market rates making the parent companies profits look bigger.
But I'm confused how the CFO, who has a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders of SCO, can also be a partner of a company (hence having a fiduciary responsibility to his partners) that consults for SCO. He has cross-loyalties. Either the contracts with the firm are too generous, benefiting his partners at the expense of the shareholders OR the contracts are too strict screwing over his partners to the benefit fo the shareholders.
> What then are they really contributing? Is SCO really a software company? What is it?
Sounds like the so-called "technology firm" - a bunch of lawyers with a big patent portfolio and nothing better to do for society than shake down innocent passers-by, and use the proceeds to buy up more patents.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Before you know it, you receive an envelope from SCO on your doorstep, as you now have seen their sources, and you might be working on Linux..
Caveat emptor!
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
The Forbes article is unbearably basic and takes the view that SCO have a good chance because Caldera won a previous case against Microsoft.
No attempts to examine any facts are made, with the assumption being that Caldera won the DR-DOS case only because the judge agreed with them and not because Microsoft actually did anything wrong. Whilst the judge's decision does determine the outcome, if you want to analyse the situation before the end of the case then you must look at the facts yourself, i.e. they are not irrelevant!
- Brian.
Every single SCO story on Slashdot gets a lot of comments - far higher than average. This means that these stories are very, very popular to the readers. Why, pray tell, should Slashdot stop posting popular stories? It doesn't make sense.
As for a new IBM vs. SCO topic - this thing is time limited. When IBM has utterly devastated SCO, there will be nothing more to report.
Please, stop the whining about the SCO stories. They are obviously very popular, so you are a tiny minority. And as the saying goes, if you don't like what's posted on Slashdot, go somewhere else. Simple.
Clever signature text goes here.
I disagree. I have YET to hear anyone on slashdot say anythign to the affect of "thats not fair." What people are saying is "Thats not right." People are pointing out lies and misrepresentations they believe SCO is making. Nobody is simply crying foul.
more than 1/2 the work of the lawyers will be research into the issue. The community has already produced mounds of information that lawyers can and WILL use in court. Look at what was found today about the Anchient UN*X code being shown, and the predicition of law suit.
I think the Linux community is not a bunch of kids but intelligent working professionals that know exactly what is going down here and is offering their help in the best way they each know how.
Unfortunately, the MD5 checking won't lead us to the core of SCO's complaints. After reading this inteview, it seems that they claim IP rights to all licensed derivatives of SysV, not just their "ancient" codebase.
That is, they say their license agreements w/ IBM, Sun, etc. give them control over the bits in AIX, Solaris, etc. that were developed by the licensee. So it seems that if IBM develops a special memory locking scheme for AIX then shares it with linux, SCO still claims a violation even though they played no part in developing the code.
Here is the relevant comment:
When we take a top-tier view of the amount of code showing up inside of Linux today that is either directly related to our Unix System 5 that we directly own or is related to one of our flavors of Unix that we have derivative works rights over--we don't necessarily own those flavors, but we have control rights over how that information gets disseminated--the amount is substantial. We're not talking about just lines of code; we're talking about entire programs. We're talking about hundred of thousands of lines of code.
Where people get a little confused is when they think of SCO Unix as just the Unix that runs the cash register at McDonalds. We think of this as a tree. We have the tree trunk, with Unix System 5 running right down the middle of the trunk. That is our core ownership position on Unix.
Off the tree trunk, you have a number of branches, and these are the various flavors of Unix. HP-UX, IBM's AIX, Sun Solaris, Fujitsu, NEC--there are a number of flavors out there. SCO has a couple of flavors, too, called OpenServer and UnixWare. But don't confuse the branches with the trunk. The System 5 source code, that is really the area that gives us incredible rights, because it includes the control rights on the derivative works that branch off from that trunk.
And they say the GPL is viral!
Now I have no idea if this claim is true, if it's in the contract or if it's enforceable, but it make SCO's claims seem a little less bizarre.
Kill, Tux, kill!
Do these people (canopy, SCO, whatever) actually produce anything, or is all their revenue generated through litigation? If this were a biological analogy, I would say that this is classic example of a parasite.
That source offer was made by people with no management connection to McBride...
So? That doesn't make it any less valid of an offer, nor any less applicable to the current situation. (Not that I necessarily believe that it is particulary applicable, but for the sake of argument) If the code was once given away by the owner, any new owner can't just revoke and/or retroactively criminalize the original offer. They can only change the terms going forward.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The SCO-IBM case is centered around two assumptions:
1. Unix Source went into Linux
2. This was because of a violation of an agreement SCO had with IBM
Now that it seems that the Unix sourcecode was in the open, how will they ever prove that IBM put it in Linux, breaching the agreement? Anybody could have done that, if the source code was copied from Unix to Linux at all.
the pun is mightier than the sword
First, let me point out that IBM does not have the right to transfer the rights of individual developers the world over, to SCO. So even if they put SCO code into the kernel, SCO could at most require it to be removed. Whether that would require the removal of whole programs, or individual sections of code, is up to individual lawsuits of SCO against individual developers. Those lawsuits, in turn, would probably turn on such things as whether the developer knew that this was SCO code.
If I sue John in a court of law, I can't ask the court to award me Bill's house. That lawsuit has to be against Bill. And I *definitely* can't sue Mary for living in the house that she rented in good faith from Bill, especially before said lawsuit against Bill reaches a conclusion.
Nonetheless, the MD5 hash checking [of the 5-line segments, as described on slashdot]] still will be useful. First, it will tell us what code coincides. That allows us to look for BSD coincidences: BSD source automatically cleans that code. We don't have to worry about it. Next, it allows us to track down and start talking to individual developers, to find out where the code came from: published material in a textbook that predates SCO's work cleans code also. Finally, for those programs that remain unsure, it allows us to immediately start recoding those programs or finding alternatives, so that even before any decision [like my hypothetical lawsuit vs. Mary vs. Bill vs. John above] the code can be clean. In that way, no work is ever legally held to be derivative. Only former work is held to be derivative, which is a major difference, especially against Microsoft's / SCO's / Forbes' FUD.
Just out of wondering, I wonder how to get a Sourceforge "code cleaning project" going. Could that be done?
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
The Forbes writer missed one thing: it isn't the Linux companies SCO and Canopy are suing, and against the company they are suing they're relatively small fish. IBM is the defendant named in their lawsuit. Remember the IBM-DOJ antitrust suit? The one that IBM fought to a standstill for 20 years? The one that IBM effectively won?
The Linux people may or may not be right, but IBM's saying SCO is blowing smoke and IBM has the legal department and the paper trail and audit trail procedures in place to be certain they know what they're talking about. And this suit is a direct threat to their core business, they aren't going to take it laying down nor pull any punches in dealing with it.
.
If you read the article, you'll see that the current SCO was formerly Caldera. Caldera bought the Unix rights from SCO, the old SCO became Tarantella (which was one of their products IIRC...), and then Caldera renamed to The SCO Group.
Which pill makes me small?
Seriously though, this is going to be part of what hurts NewSCO if this ever get's to the courts.
They are going to have a darned hard time showing what they really own, what they stole, and what was borrowed... long before they ever became NewSCO.
The wiggle room that they have built into thier complaint is they are not really using copyright, or patent as the basis for the suit, they are using contract law.
And they are alleging the transfer and or use of 'Unix Methods and proceedures'. This is a fuzzy area that may not even be answerable.
Part trade secret, part dogma. If you didn't know about how to do something, or that something could be done, you might never have developed it yourself, even without using the original Unix code, or seeing the affect.
Might be true, might not, but the contract kinda binds you up and makes you liable, even if you didn't peek under the covers.
These are the kind of arguments that RMS had for creating GNU in the first place.
Owning code is one thing, controlling ideas is another, and what SCO is attempting is not protection of code, but restriction of ideas.
The temptation is to throw out the phrase UnAmerican right about here, but that's not right. Corperations are not American, or Canadian, or Egyptian... they are just big money making machines that have more rights, fewer morals, than individuals and total disregard for anything but more profit/power.
I can imagine that IBM might care about the GPL. After all, it gives them:
(1) a free, very dedicated, and huge developer base for code that runs on their systems
(2) A ton of good will from said coder-base, thus sales into the future are much more likely
(3) It helps keep down that upstart competitor from the NorthWest.
At this point, there are just too many computer-savvy people to make "Only IBM" a reality. The code will be developed, one way or another. So IBM's best bet is "IBM at the head of the stack of everyone." Since IBM has invested in Linux, IBM does have reason to push development under Linux.
These reasons lead me to believe that yes, IBM does care about the GPL. Not for the sake of the GPL, but for the sake of their own business. So I'd say that their motivation is dual, and if given a choice between "let SCO destroy Linux, and we squash SCO" and "squash SCO before SCO destroys Linux", they'll likely choose the latter, even defending Linux in court.
When it's the masse rabble against the castle, it's usually a ton better to be the guy directing the rabble, than to be the guy in the castle. Especially if the guy directing the rabble also has access to a ton of munitions. I think IBM has already chosen their spot, and that's where they'll be. This one doesn't look to me like what America pulled on Iraqi Sikhs ("yeah, rise up, and we'll support you, probably").
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Maybe it's just me, but it sounds like the death of System V UNIX. I believe the statement to be correct. Most all commercial Unix vendors branch from System V. Even Linux has a fair amount of roots tangled with System V. Just because most Unix OS's are dirived from System V doesn't make SCO's case any more legit though. That's just my opinion.
Although I think SCO's lawsuit is nothing but FUD with the backing from Microsoft. In court who knows what will happen. O.J. got away clean and so did Microsoft. When it comes to the justice system, I have very little confidence that justice will be served. So maybe we do have something to fear.
I don't know too much about what SCO is battling over, but I think the only safe Unix's out there are ones based off the BSD Lite tree. As far as I know, FreeBSD and NetBSD are totally free of System V source code right? So SCO couldn't even in their wildest dreams touch them with their sue happy plans could they? I'm not a *BSD advocate, but is this not true? I know BSD Lite wasn't a complete OS, but after the court battles in the early 90's with ATT and BSD, I'm under the impression that BSD did indeed purge ALL System V code from their tree. The kernel is totally free of ATT code as I understand it.
Hasn't RMS being predicting this since dinosaurs ruled the Earth? Remember how we all thought "Gee, Richard, aren't you being just a little paranoid?"
He might be a slightly crazed filthy socialist hippy, but by golly, he nailed this one.
Next up: all those RedHat "defensive" linux patents, and their sort-of-promise to temporarily refrain from suing over them. Better hope that they never get bought out by someone a little less altruistic, eh?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.