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Law Professor Examines SCO Case
An anonymous submitter writes "This law professor from the University of California points out weakness in SCO's legal bluster, and further takes a poke at closed software, for those hungry for more SCO scraps. At the end, he references Slashdot for more info ('itself a demonstration of the power of dispersed individuals working together')."
They're liars.
We've got grounds for a huge lawsuit. It's obvious that in bad faith the University Professor is attempting to slashdot slashdot. He even included a direct link to our homepage. Untold damage!
Sue! Sue! Someone, call SCO!
I assert that my comment is only my opinion, not that of any employer, past, present or future.
Slashdot User Examines SCO Case
"Slashdot User notque from the University of Arizona points out weakness in SCO's legal bluster, and further takes a poke at closed software, for those hungry for more SCO scraps."
Uhh.. I think SCO sucks, and I think Microsoft sucks.
http://use.perl.org
It could be that they've got a solid case. It could be that they're working out some great shenanigans. Irregardless, I'm starting to wonder if Linux should be open to the average user to contribute, or if perhaps it should be restricted to a core group of companies and Linus who can afford lawyers to vet the code. Things are getting pretty scary in the open source world, particularly with the lawyers getting involved...
GPL or not
The second principle is that a party's rights can be affected by its later conduct - which can constitute a "waiver," giving away rights. Until recently, SCO was a willing player in the Linux movement, releasing code under the open source ("copyleft") license. Everything that happened to Linux was in the open. Yet SCO delayed in suing.
SCO had made their bed in deciding to take advantage of the open source movement. Now they want to retroactively change the decision.
At the end, he references Slashdot for more info ('itself a demonstration of the power of dispersed individuals working together')."
Now, if only we could breed, we would rule the world! Muh ha ha ha!
I attack the darkness.
GeekNights!
Late Night Radio for Geeks!
At the risk of parroting RMS here, Linus started the kernel roughly a decade ago.
GNU started the OS itself about two decades ago.
It is an important distinction. I really wish that there was a distribution of the GNU OS that used a non-Linux kernel (but was otherwise like other GNU/Linux distros), which would be more concrete evidence of the importance (and extent!) of the GNU portions of the overall OS.
Somebody get that guy an ambulance!
Can anyone put out an article on SCO and have it posted as news?
If I could spell more than 15 words in the english language correctly, I'd create an article and submit it.
They are rehashing the same statements, we can all tell that SCO has almost no case to stand on, which is why the story is so compelling.
It's like watching the Iraqi Information Minister. It's hilarious to watch someone openly ignoring the blatent obvious.
And we get really mad when they make headways in the case, because they are so utterly moronic.
http://use.perl.org
I have to say I'm gonna root for SCO on all of this from now on, I love cheering for an underdog
Slashdot, the site where everything's made up and the points don't matter
This really demonstrates the only Archilles heel that Linux has to fear: software patents.
If Microsoft or anyone else gets coordinated enough, maybe 10 years from now, the software industry will be so littered with software patent landmines that Linux will no longer be able to continue development. This is a very real possibility.
Please, Slashdot readers, we need to join together to figure out how the hell we are going to stop this, or else we need to come up with implementations of new ideas, business methods, software algorithms before anyone else like Microsoft can, and publish them open source so that no one else can claim a patent on them!
Talk to your representatives in Washington, Europe, whereever because this is a very real and very serious threat that **will** kill software development.
Slashdot refers to him, he refers to Slashdot. HELP!!! I'm stuck in a DOS loop!
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
I have a small company and was attacked in a similar way by a large German company (I'm in the USA). They simply attacked with a lawyer from a large office in New York and I am in a small town in California. My lawyer did some digging and found that there is a federal law that states you must give the person in violation a full description of the violation and allow a responce. If there is not a civilized responce then you can go to court. We never went to court and we got the problem sorted out. It sounds like SCO would be in violation of that federal law.
Not that Linus', RMS, or ESR didn't have some good points on the technical side, but it is good to see a legal perspective of the case.
It's nice to see a legal perspective on the case, but what I want is to hear how a 7th grader feels about the case.
We've heard everyone elses opinion on it, Little Jimmy deserves to be heard.
http://use.perl.org
Well, there went his credibility...
Sure, the federal government wouldn't let old Brigham retain governership of Utah when it became a state, but wouldn't it by nice if we could install the guy as head of SCO? Even as a man who's been dead for more than a century, he could probably run that ship better than its current leadership.
..is not listening to cusotmers..
After they lose this case there will be nothing lkeft but the angry mob of customers taking McBride's hide and stapling it to the wall..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Not to be too critical, but did it seem that that "lawyer" basically just wrote a book report from previous slashdot stories? I'm NOT a lawyer, but could have come up with that.
And that's really all I'm saying. Thank you Anonymous Coward, you troll quite a bit, but you sometimes are right on the money.
http://use.perl.org
he references Slashdot for more info ('itself a demonstration of the power of dispersed individuals working together').
I though slashdot was a 'demonstration of dispersed individuals procrastinating together'.
Who knew I was demonstrating power all this time?
This post cannot be rebroadcast without the express written constent of Major League Baseball.
please people, wake up!
can't you see it's obvious what SCO is doing?
and what this is all really about?
no... ok clueless ones, here's a clue for you...
after they announced the lawsuit their stock went up $10 a share, and the VP sold over 100,000 shares that day!
hello?!? Don't you get it? They don't care if they lose (and they will) that was never the point!
just like the WMD crapola in iraq (there never were any, it never was about that), it was about the oil!
all SCO wants to do is jack the stock high enough, long enough for their CEO, VPs, etc to cash out nice and RICH, and leave a burning twisted pile of rubble at the end....
they probably figured IBM (or someone - say Mr. Bill at M$) might buy them out, but either way, they're getting fat and rich off the share prices.
its a stock scam, and the securities people should be all over this!
so now you know the truth... what are ya gonna do about it?
SCO is claiming that IBM licensed some code (from AT&T mind you) and since they (actually Sequent) wrote some code that ran on top of that licensed code then they had to obey the license for the new, original work created without any help or IP from the "licensor".
That would be like saying since McAfee wrote Virus Scan on top of Windows and using the information from Windows then they can't reuse any of that code in writing a Virus Scanner for any other OS.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Either: ...or... b] The evil GPL has destroyed the intellectual property of SCO.
a] SCO wins and Linux and/or IBM is injured
I have to wonder if they researched the issue and then clued in SCO to go after people.
Also...
What if it is determined that IBM gave up its rights (by helping Linux) and that SCO isn't the sucessor the the rights? Would nobody own UNIX, and if so, would that devalue it in some way?
Geez, some of you people can be assholes.
Alright, the guy is brown nosing in his article to get some fame, but he's surely more qualified to comment on the legal merits of this case than 99% of the cretins here. It is legal opinion that will decide this matter, not a bunch of people arguing over the merits of RMS's claims to OS glory. No matter how wizard your skills are Harry Potter, getting a lawyer's opinion is the only way to understand the potential impact of this case, which could make some of us very unhappy. I, for one, found this article informative, and that's all I ask for with opinion pieces.
Now take a pill and play nice.
Not every parody. Tom Lehrer did it right:
There's antimony arsenic aluminum selenium,
And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium,
And nickel neodymium neptunium germanium,
And iron americium ruthenium uranium.
Europium zirconium lutetium vanadium,
And lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium,
And gold protactinium and indium and gallium,
And iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium.
There's yttrium ytterbium actinium rubidium,
And boron gadolinium niobium iridium,
There's strontium and silicon and silver and samarium,
And bismuth bromine lithium beryllium and barium.
There's holmium and helium and hafnium and erbium,
And phosphorus and francium and fluorine and and terbium,
And manganese and mercury, molybdenum magnesium,
Dysprosium and scandium and cerium and cesium.
And lead praseodymium and platinum plutonium
Palladium promethium potassium polonium,
And tantalum technetium titanium tellurium,
And cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium.
There's sulfur, californium and fermium, berkelium,
And also mendelevium einsteinium nobelium,
And argon krypton neon radon xenon zinc and rhodium,
And chlorine carbon cobalt copper tungsten tin and sodium.
These are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard,
And there may be many others but they haven't been discar-vard.
When you say GNU/Linux you mean GNU/XFree86/KDE/Apache/Bind/OpenGL/SDL/BSD/Posix/M ySQL/PHP/Python/Linux right ?
"Semper in excretum set alta variant"
SCO (ex-Caldera) is run by lawyers, and they are not stupid nor crazy. Clearly they have a plan and it justifies putting their company at total risk.
Assume for a second that this case goes to court. What are the chances that it will be resolved quickly? Not good. The matter is arcane enough that it will spend several years going through judgement, appeal, judgement, appeal, as long as SCO can pay their own (cheap) legal fees.
What on earth can SCO be after? I don't believe it's a settlement from IBM. They _know_ IBM, a company that has always lived by the fist.
What else? Their business is bankrupt. They sell _nothing_. Their IP is worthless - indeed, realizing this may have been the trigger that set them on their course.
Nuisance value, that is their game. They are attacking Linux and all OSS by association, and they are attacking it a level that plays directly to the paranoia of managers making a Windows / Linux choice today. What SCO are saying, and getting lots of attention to, is that Linux/OSS is not a safe choice. Even IBM are likely to be sued. How about your business next? If the RIAA can sue ten thousand P2P users, why can't SCO sue ten thousand Linux users?
Normal decent paranoia suggests that Microsoft's hand and money lie behind this move, but that is not the crux of the matter.
What is important is that we are at the stage when Linux/OSS seriously threatens commercial interests, and this looks like an undeclared war by those interests against it. War is not nice, not decent, not logical.
Such attacks can go either way. Linux has never has so much publicity as during the last weeks, and the association IBM+Linux is now strongly in the minds of many managers. This is a good thing. People trust IBM.
The OSS community must counter attack. The best approach would be a collective libel and defamation suit by some thousand OSS developers, seeking punitive damages against SCO.
Such a suit would not win but it would show SCO that their opponents are not helpless nerds unable to understand the meaning of cold, hard steel. Knives out!!
Perhaps someone from the EFF would set up a campaign fund? I would gladly contribute $50 or $100 if it would result in SCO getting slapped with a suit.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
We're getting off the subject with this which is why I've "held my tounge" up till now. However, I think I'm going to comment on this anyways.
A few years ago, I was mucking around with Linux on my machine. Of course, I was a regular in the associated IRC chat rooms, and did a lot of internet searching to basically "learn how the dang thing worked". As my understanding grew, I started to contribute by helping newbies myself when I could (once walked someone through a kernel build over IRC). Anyway, back then, the pervading mode of thought was that Linux was the actual operating system and the everything else were merely extensions to it (X, FVWM, etc.). Just like with DOS was the actual operating system and Windows was just a program running on top of it.
Now, the paradigm appears to have shifted. The latest versions of Windows are no longer trying to eek out what they can out of the venerable DOS and, today, Linux is just a kernel and the whole package is the OS.
Fair enough, define it however you wish, but it really just boils down to semantics..doesn't it?
BTW -- When the HURD matures a little (a my kids get older so I have some free time), I'll probably muck around with it a little as well. Although, I did just do a hard drive install of Knoppix and I'm pretty darned impressed with KDE - quite an evolutionary change from FVWM2.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
NO you could not have.
there is a difference, a big difference, between an Anonymous Coward IANAL saying "the SCO suit has no merit", and a law professor saying "the SCO suit has no merit".
sure there are no new facts, no brilliant new insights there, (nor from you). it's an opinion piece. What is significant is not what was said, but who signed their name to it.
I just reloaded to see a Reginald Charles selling $55,450 worth of his SCO stock. At $55,450 that's the largest insider trade listed since this thing started.
06/20/03 BROUGHTON REGINALD CHARLES Sold 5,000 $11.09 $55,450
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Um...Mr Insightful. I hate to tell you this but software patents don't discriminate against just OSS. Software patents is a mainefield that the entire computing industry has to face every day.
Since it's the US that's pulling most of this nonsense. It's the US that will suffer the most, while the rest of the planet will shake it's collective head, and mutter something under it's breath about those silly Americans.
If there's any dark knight? It's the same force that brought about the mess in the first place.
That's right, greed. You'll see change when rampent software patents make it nearly impossible to continue to make money.
Then you'll see the gordion knot undone quicker than it took to tie.
Is is well known that SCO relies heavially on BSD code. But the BSD license, while it allows forking, strictly forbids suing over derived code. Since linux and BSD share alot of code - I could envision SCO loosing controll over all of their 'intellectual property'
is it just me, or are we slowly bing SCO'ed to death here on slashdot? let me get this straight off the bat:
SCO is publicly making a public ass of it ('s corporate) self.
there, it's been said. i don't need to say it again. if the subject comes up here around the water cooler, i may voice my opinion again to a new party, but really, i'm pretty confident that SCO has no legal grounds here (yes, IANAL, like most other slashdotters). this "me too"ism that is growing here is getting out of hand. how many people do we really need to tell us that darl and co. are raving?
i am sure that there are all kinds of interesting submissions that are being passed over in favour of SCO stuff, and most lilely because of volume, so please - i beg you: don't submit more SCO stories. pretty please? with sugar? unless something changes?
i'm done whining now (which is my right as a slashdotter). move along...
Schrodinger's cat is either dead or really pissed off...
Part 1 and Part 2 of 3 part interview with McBride
I wasn't aware of the timing, but according to the article, SCO's McBride said:
Let's see. He's saying that IBM quit working on Project Monterey before Caldera bought Santa Cruz Operation's UNIX rights. That Santa Cruz Operation sold the rights precisely because they weren't as worth much at that point.
But part of SCO's lawsuit against IBM is SCO's claim that because IBM quit working on Project Monterey, IBM is conducting anti-competitive behavior.
Since SCO knew about this at the time they bought it, then surely, the price SCO paid for those rights was already discounted because IBM was no longer pursuing Project Monterey.
It's kind of like buying a junked car that had been damaged in a collision and then suing the driver of the other vehicle for wrecking your car. It was already wrecked when you bought the car! At best, the seller might have had a claim against the other driver, but not the seller.
If SCO wins, maybe we should buy the salvage rights to a World War II navy vessel sunk in a World War II battle. Then we can sue Japan for the full cost of the ship plus interest and penalties because they sunk our boat.
Corel shareholders fight suspicious takeover deal
Corel is being buried alive, and at breakneck speed, by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen and a former MS executive who, incidentally, also worked for the McKinsey consultancy firm which validated the post-MS investment strategic U-turn. Under the deal all Corel products would be privatized for a measly $30M. Corel shareholders - who've also pushed for Linux support long and hard - hope to canvass enough NO VOTES to scrap the deal but the raiders are tilting the rules in their favour.
It all went horribly wrong after the Linux powerhouse merger agreement between Corel and Inprise/Borland was derailed three years ago. We understand that Borland (in which MS had a shareholding stake) had valid reasons for pulling out under the agreed terms, but the combination would still have made perfect sense. Corel founder and CEO Mike Cowpland was soon ousted and CTO Derek Burney was named interim CEO. Conveniently soon afterwards Burney's half-acquintance, Microserf Tom Button, gave him a call and invited Burney for a visit at the MS campus and before we knew it, he had signed a $135M investment deal with MS, accompanied by an incredibly one-sided Alliance deal in which Corel had all the commitments and Microsoft basically none. In his debt of gratitude, Burney even promised not to sue MS over any anti-competitive tactics that MS "may" have used in their MS-Office offensives. Next Burney drew up a new strategy based on those commitments - again incidentally killing all Linux efforts and reducing emphasis on anything competing with Microsoft - and submitted his ideas for "validation" by McKinsey & Company, a consulting firm with strong culture of alumni networking.
From 2001 onwards Corel milked the increasingly-abandoned WordPerfect Office for revenue while toiling away on its dotNET descendant. Staff was getting laid off as a three-year turnaround plan was revealed to be centered on a dotNET-based enterprise system for massaging corporate data and delivering it in realtime to any type of devices through extensive use of XML and SVG graphics. Corel even bought SoftQuad and Micrografx to merge their technologies into the project codenamed Deepwhite. Great idea but with somewhat misguided execution.
In 2002 Corel managed to strike a few high-profile albeit limited OEM preload deals with the likes of Dell, HP and Sony. While Corel received little in terms of revenue from those deals, even that limited success must have come as a shock for Microsoft. "How dare those ingrate nobodies invade our holy turf!" could have been the likely reaction at Redmond. With the anti-trust spotlight under a friendly operator it was time for the final strike, and how better add insult to injury than by not just taking Corel out but actually keeping the corpse within the family!
In December 2002 the Paul Allen financed Vector Group, managed by a fo
I hope that, then, more and more people will feel more confident about open source, then start to use it.
-- --
What I really wonder is how much closed projects have benefited from open projects. I wonder if you were to analyze a closed source program from MS or another big company if any of the programmers took their code from open sources. The only difference is that you can't be sued for patent infringment if you can't see it is there.
This kind of stuff really pisses me off. Mr. Chander has written a basically intelligent article, discussing why SCO's case is BS. Yet, he has revised history, probably unknowingly.
Linus Torvalds did not "indtroduce an operating system...that did some of what UNIX did". Linus wrote a kernel, which is complementary to UNIX kernels (though different in architecture, design, etc). He did not write the entire operating system -- properly called GNU/Linux. He wrote one component necessary for the operating system that is now improperly called "Linux".
This is not a knock again Linus. He has never claimed credit for any entire GNU/Linux operating system, nor GNU/Linux in general. He has simply claimed credit for the Linux kernel.
It is, however, a prime illustration of how simply calling all GNU/Linux OS' "Linux" is revising history. People here talk about it like, "so what, everyone knows Linus didn't write all of the software for Linux-based OS' [GNU/Linux distros]". We know that. Obviously, no one else does. This lawyer thinks that Linus Torvalds created the GNU/Linux distributions from the ground up, single-handedly.
It is an example of revisionist history. Just like how Issac Newton is credited as the founder of Calculus, but no-one mentions Leibniz, who invented calculus at the same time as Newton independently.
Linus has done great things for the FS and OSS communities. We should, however, credit others where credit is due.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
As SCO is now requesting open source code to ensure it does not contain SCO's property, please send your ISOs and uncompressed images of Redhat, Suse, Lindows, Debian, Slackware, Gentoo, Mandrake, Yellow Dog, and Knoppix to investorrelations@sco.com
robertb@sco.com
kmartens@sco.com
darlm@sco.com
chriss@sco.com
shitheads@sco.com
With this full transparency, legions of open source coders could write around the protected algorithm. Although important code might be sacrificed, no legal problem would remain.
Much more distressing is the possibility that a company like SCO finds a judge who agrees to view code that is the foundation for a legal claim "in chambers", and finds IBM or another firm using Linux guilty of violating some "copyrighted" or "trade secret" not a matter of public record.
That's the big danger of the SCO case -- the prospect that the code that is the foundation for the legal claim never sees the light of day.
But I'd love to hear the Professor's views on the evidence that has emerged thus far. As far as I can see, SCO's case revolves around developments at IBM and Sequent (now owned by IBM). They have talked about RCU and NUMA and JFS and something else I have forgotten. It seems that what SCO have shown so far is equivalent to this: IBM devise a new scheme for (eg) scheduling in the kernel. They implement this new scheme in AIX, sell it to some customers and everyone (including SCO) is happy. Later on, IBM conceives its Linux strategy. They then port their new XYZ scheduling scheme to Linux, offer it to Linus and eventually it gets merged into the Kernel. Now SCO comes along and says that IBM has no right to incorporate it into Linux because it belongs to SCO. The fact that the original technology licensed to IBM has got nothing like XYZ scheduling in it doesn't matter to SCO; as far as they're concerned, since IBM incorporated it into AIX first, the technology belongs to SCO.
All of this begs the question as to what SCO have been showing to their independent experts. Suppose they grab the code for XYZ scheduling, as seen in AIX. Then they grab the code for XYZ scheduling, as seen in Linux. Obviously, these two pieces of code, are going to be a pretty good match, even down to the comments. They tell the independent consultants that the former is System V code (because SCO claims that everything that was ever added to AIX belongs to them). And they tell the consultants that the latter is from kernel 2.4.XX. So the independent consultants, in all good faith, report that there is a match between "SCO code" and Linux code. My bet is that this is what SCO have been doing. I believe that this is the reason for SCO wanting people to sign NDAs. They can't risk anyone who knows anything about the kernel saying exactly what the code represents. It is in their interests to fudge the issue of where the code has come from. If some random hacker has grabbed the original SVR4 code and slipped some of it into a patch that has found its way into the Kernel, that could occasion some sympathy for SCO (not $3bn or even $1bn worth of sympathy). If that is the case, it looks like code that SCO originally paid for is being used without SCO being compensated. On the other hand, if it's IBM's implementation of XYZ for AIX, which they have ported to XYZ for Linux, then SCO's case is dead in the water, and SCO knows it.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
I think Linux itself is not threatened in its essence. Pray hard (if you live in the EU or US) that the EU doesn't follow the US' idiot lead and decide that software can be patented. As long as there are significant Linux players in countries that DON'T recognize software patents (say, China, India, and Brazil, to name a few?), Linux will thrive safe from the software patent menace. I don't think innovation itself will wither, just in certain countries.
Of course, this will come as cold comfort to those of us in the idiot countries, because if M$ and company DO manage to erect software patent barriers to OSS, Linux will be a banned article we cannot legally import.
The logical result of all this will be that the US and (probably) EU will lose their technological edge to China and India and become second-rate powers (and probably not just in the software field) until the software patent madness is overturned.
Our leaders, if they had any ability to think strategically beyond the next election, would realize that Open Source is a critical resource for their countries' ability to compete in the only area they have a critical advantage in -- their technological edge. (Not that I like what's been sliced up with that edge recently, but living in a declining country is an unpleasant prospect...).
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
From the article:
More generally, companies trying to derive more revenue from their intellectual property portfolio may lash out at licensees. But licensees of open source software distributed under a permissive license do not have to worry about this possibility.
Nuff said. Here's your argument for your PHB.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
The hour long discussion has been archived on mp3
Some defensive items in the article are correct but that is because previous reporting got those right already, for example the delay in SCOX taking action and their willful distribution of supposedly infringing code under GPL terms (fully willful, there was no "inadvertent" element, they were "advertising" these featues)
The closing comment highlights how much this article is about politics more than law Otherwise, there will be no such thing as truly open, free software - and as a consequence, there will effectively be an economy-dragging tax on information technology. A judge will hardly be bothered with the existance or not of free software, there isn't a law or constitutional principle or similar that says freedom of software is protected. Same for SCOX being able to collect a "tax" from others, if judges were bothered by this, stupid patents wouldn't have a chance and we know this is not what actually happens...
So, Mr. Chander, please read the freaky claims before speaking about them. Getting infected with slashdotters' bad habits can be very dangerous in court.
Word of advice; personally, I wouldn't accuse the SCO folks of running an illegal pump-and-dump scam in a public forum, since that could potentially lead to a libel suit. Since you've represented this as fact and not opinion, I'd say you're at pretty high risk...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
SCO alleges that "as long as the Linux development process remained uncoordinated and random, it posed little or no threat to SCO...." But in truth, Linux was always coordinated - just by many different hands.
In the final years of the 1930s the german army raced across Europe trashing all opposition in their path. At the time of their greatest military successes the German army was running a field command structure called "mission based" command.
Mission based command placed the authority to act in the hands of the soldiers on front line, the idea being that those closest to the front would undoubtably be best positioned to make fast assessments of a situation. Should an opportunity present itself they were free to exploit it to their advantage without having to check with the beaurocracy above. The overall target was known - to win, and as long as your actions fitted the target it was up to you.
This system worked so well that all fell in their path 'til they hit the English channel and turned on Russia (at the instruction of their one leader).
Contrast this to the latter half of the war. The more centralised command became around the leader and his sycophantic entourage, the worse things got until eventually the leaders own incapability to understand the demands of those at the front line led to the collapse of the whole system.
The first example was Hitlers order to Rommel to stand fast to the last man at El-Almain. The same mistake was made again at Stalingrad and in several other situations.
The distributed, "module based" development of Linux allows developers to react in the same way as the soldiers on the front line, patching and adding features on the fly without having to discuss it with their manager, product manager, product devlopment manager, product development management manager etc. leading to events like the KDE team patching the SSL flaw in konqueror while the MS FUD machine was still denying it was a problem.
NO! before you start saying it their are no insinuated similaraties between OSS community developers and certain historical characters of an evil nature it's the model that's similar. Ironically the intent in the case of Linux is freedom not enslavement.
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
"This law professor from the University of California points out weakness in SCO's legal bluster, "..
Talk about shooting fish in a barrel..
In point of fact, Ritchie created Unix to run a chess program, not for telecommunications. Only later, when AT&T discoverd that Unix was a very creditable OS, was it used for more prosaic, business related work.
Don Dugger
"Censeo Toto nos in Kansa esse decisse." - D. Gale
That's the fun thing about "intellectual property". It doesn't burn to the ground. It survives corporate implosion - at pennies on the dollar. With a fire-sale price, such "property" can even be snatched up by those with relatively little to lose and a lot to gain if they can leverage their new holdings in a creative manner.
And, of course, it doesn't stop there. Even if a company remains intact one shouldn't depend on the benevolence of that company. Company leadership changes. There could be a personnel shuffling in management. Or perhapse someone in Legal discovers a particularly "clever" way of making more money and gets top-level support.
Which, of course, sounds awfully familiar.
We need a new campaign.
:)
How about "Hell no! I won't SCO!"
While dying they have to pay the last bills, the UNIX "IP" would ve a valluable asset that will be sold to the first lawyer willing to sue somebody again.
It won't be IBM. There has to be a room somewhere in Armonk with reams and reams of case material. If they don't use it to stomp SCO they can surely use it against whoever buys that material. Anyway, I don't think IBM is necessarily opposed to buying that IP themselves. They're just not going pay SCO's market cap for it. Once SCO craters, then yeah they'll likely buy it at a fire-sale price just so nobody else can make trouble with it.
I suspect that they've probably already evaluated this case and decided it was kosher.
Or perhaps, it suddenly occurs to me, the SEC is hesitant to interfere with ongoing private litigation and will act if and when the case is shown to be meritless and it all becomes public record? (NB: a sealed settlement with IBM would massively complicate that effort). Twitchy they may be, but they're still run by an administration that is decidedly anti-regulation; that might limit their potential eagerness and make them act cautiously.
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
The law professor's commentary suggests that while this case is being spun against open source software and could certainly affect it, the case is also an example that demonstrates significant problems in the software licensing of proprietary code. Given further analysis, the commentary could be developed into a thorough examination into the problems of software licensing and proprietary software. If the proper legal analysis was completed by reputable individuals, the resulting work could be published nation-wide in various reputable magazines, journals, and newspapers. The analysis could then be expanded throughout the IBM vs. SCO legal action. Let's change the focus of this case from Open Source ignores IP issues to the destructive nature of software licensing in business. If IBM wins, we get an "I told you so" card and the momentum behind open source could hit critical mass and be a BIG win. If SCO wins, it won't just be a blow against open source, but it will be a blow against every business since the powers of the copyright holder concerning software will increase by an order of magnitude. SCO and others are spinning this case against open source with no published evidence, just unsubstantiated legal claims. For any ip lawyer who reads slashdot, we need you. Competent analysis of this case is essential. The outcome of this case is either going to benefit software development or hinder software development, both proprietary and open source. Let's stop allowing SCO to spin this case without substantiating any of their claims, let's spin the case to show what it is really about, software licensing. Let's do it not with unsubstatiated claims, but with superb ongoing legal analysis of the situation throughout the progress of the case. Thank you.
T'is very true. If I point a CEO or CTO to my article on Kuro5hin, they'll just yawn and walk away. On the other hand, if I point them to the same article signed by a lawyer and law professor, they're a bit more likely to sit up, take notice and possibly even sell their inflated SCO stocks.
If I say "Let's go to war against North Korea", people talk about putting me in a psyche ward.
If Bush says "Let's go to war against North Korea", people go and buy duct tape and plastic(!).
The difference is not the words, it's who says it and how people listen to them that counts.q1
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Yes. It is obvious. This is discussed again and again each time SCO comes up. Thanks for restating it.
But you, in turn, are missing another point. It doesn't matter what their intent is. What matters is their claims and actions.
Another initial theory floated when this whole thing cropped up is that its all being orchistrated by Microsoft. After all, it would appear to be validation of MS' most recent anti-Linux strategy claims. I'm more inclined to think that Caldera/SCO took a pointer from Microsoft's sales propoganda. But in any case, there will now be CIOs making purchasing and deployment policy based on both Microsoft and SCO propoganda.
What we are already doing about it. Keeping informed. Discussing claims. Being prepared to offer a counter-perspective if the oportunity arises.
Part of this situation is a publicity stunt. That's where we come in. But the other part will, most likely, be an actual trial in court. That will be up to IBM.
One final point...
Keep in mind that the SEC is a governmental agency. These guys work on a very different time schedule than we do. They're slow and deliberate - but if they come down, they'll come down hard (whether it sticks or not is another point entirely).
I'm reminded of the spammer Rodona Garst who's legendary pump-and-dump spam eventually lead to action by the SEC.
Let us assume (it really is possible) that SCO just wants to spin this out as long as possible. Am I right that we will need to endure literally years (not weeks or months) of unsubstantiated FUD before SCO can be forced to prove anything? No doubt, eventually, SCO can be sued into the ground if (as most of us suspect) their claims are frivolous. This is rather irrelevant in that the company was clearly going under before they initiated all this. Can any lawyer indicate how, under US law, this might be brought to a quick conclusion if IBM has no real case to answer? How quickly?
There are 70 lawyers in my firm.
At least one has come into my office asking if we use Linux and expressed concern about the lawsuit when informed that we do. (Samba, CUPS, etc.)
I explained the lgeal reasons why they should not be concerned but since I am just the IT manager my words have little credence.
This is the kind of article I can forward to all the lawyers who ask as it's from the kind of source they will listen to, speaking a language they understand.
As other posters have pointed out, it's not what he says (which we all already knew), it's who is saying it.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
SCO has said, it won't sue SCO Linux customers. Can they afford to this? I think no. It is in catch-22 situation.
If SCO sold the SCO Linux to its customers legally then that sell is governed by GPL and SCO loses right to its proprietary code. If it didn't sell them under GPL, then SCO had no right to sell at all and its customers are using illegal copies and now anyone can sue SCO Linux customers. In truth, the SCO Linux customers are doomed. Either SCO must recall the product or they can be sued by Linux developers. SCO wants to sell SCO Linux but without GPL and it can't do it.
The SCO case against IBM is altogether a different matter. That is between IBM, SCO and let them figure out in court. But if SCO tries to sue Linux customers, it is in deep trouble.
First off, the code in question was implemented on PTx(?) which was a variant based off the licensed IP. Second off, the code they're debating was in fact written for OS/2 and ported from there.
. html for details.)
SCO is trying ot claim that since the writers worked on both the Unix variant and the OS/2 one that the knowledge used from the one extends the license to the other.
They're trying to lay claim to a derivative of a derivative of a derivative. To make matters more entertaining the actual derivative was a paper about a generic RCU implementation with nothing tied to a particular OS. (See Cringely's article: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20030619
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
"In its complaint, SCO claims, in essence, that without its UNIX contracts, IBM was nothing, and without IBM, Linux was nothing. But both of these claims, like SCO's allegations, are dubious."
He worded that entirely too nicely.
In fact it can be easily argued that open-source discourages copyright infringement because it can so easily be detected.
If I take a piece of GPL code and extend it with my own code to make a new program, it is true that I cannot release the result without also releasing my code. However (and this is a big one that everybody that calls the GPL "viral" ignores) I can remove the GPL code and sell the rest, the part I wrote, as closed source!. Now it is true that I will have to replicate the functions I need from the GPL code, but everybody knows that is not impossible or even difficult. This could even be a reasonable business plan as temporarily using the GPL code may allow development and testing to be done sooner.
SCO is basically claiming you cannot do that with their code. They are trying to say the Unix code is truly "viral" and it really "infects" everything it touches. The GPL does not "infect" at all and is completely harmless once you seperate it from the code it came in contact with.
In the late 1990s, IBM, Sequent, and the Santa Cruz Operation were working together on a project called Monterey. Monterey/64 was designed to be a common UNIX platform running on 64-bit Intel (Merced/Itanium) and Power4. It had wide industry support from hardware and software vendors, such as Intel and Oracle. Around 2000, IBM scrapped the project based on issues with the Itanium1 platform and concerns about SCO's ability to deliver. UnixWare retained its name for some time after the SCO purchase from Novell. In the next year or two IBM acquired Sequent and Caldera acquired SCO. However, in this way did Sequent non-uniform memory access made it into UnixWare and AIX.
This is how IBM and SCO have NUMA cache concurrency code. NUMA made it into Linux because IBM wanted to improve Linux reliability on their SMP Xeon-based servers, and instructed some of their programmers including some people who worked on Dynix/Sequent that wrote NUMA in the first place. This is how NUMA came to be in Linux. What I believe is the management at SCO has little knowledge of the code history of their SVR4 UNIX product. Caldera upper level management is populated with experts in hostile takeovers and making a business out of patent and copyright enforcement. I have no doubt that they took the effort to see if the Linux kernel had any resemblance to their UNIX code tree, and lo and behold some of the SMP memory management code is identical.
SCO quickly informs IBM to stop putting UNIX code in Linux, but they don't seem to know that NUMA belongs to IBM, it is a derivitave work of AIX, which is a derivitive work of Dynix, both of which IBM owns, and on top of that IBM's source license with UNIX Systems Lab gives them intellectual property of code they create based on AT&T code.
Claims that IBM is "diluting" UNIX by putting UNIX-based code in it and having UNIX-knowledgeable software engineers working on it is rather a stretch of the imagination. If IBM has sole intellectual property on Dynix/Sequent, just because they shared it with Santa Cruz does not mean they cannot use the code elsewhere. SCO wants to compare their SVR4 UNIX with Linux code, but what we really need to see is Dynix and AIX right beside them. This will prove that IBM owns NUMA.
Claims that using NUMA in Linux will place SCO UNIX under the GPL are also false. SCO will retain rights to use and improve NUMA code they received from Monterey, because it pre-dates the NUMA code used in Linux. So in the end there are essentially who Sequent NUMA forks, the one in AIX and UnixWare cum SCO UNIX is proprietary and the other written for Linux is open source.
The professor's article consistently fails to give credit where credit is due. "Linux" is not an operating system and it never was. Linux is a part of an operating system called a kernel (which acts as a bookkeeper managing the resources of a computer so applications can share those resources without conflict). It's fair to credit the major chunks of an operating system; GNU and Linux are both valuable chunks. It's also less confusing to the reader if one refers to the union of the GNU operating system with the Linux kernel by mentioning both parts (hence the term "GNU/Linux"). For the FSF's take on this, please read their essay which also has a link to a FAQ on this issue.
So far all of SCO's claimed violations are related to code in the Linux kernel. Therefore GNU has nothing to do with this lawsuit.
You might be running a GNU/Linux operating system. More power to you. I'm running a GNU/KDE/Mozilla/Sun/Python/PHP/Apache/Linux operating system, thank you very much. GNU only contributed a tiny portion of what I use. I'm very grateful to GNU for their software contributions, but to say that GNU and Linux are the only important components of the O.S. is the height of silliness.
OTOH I bet they *will* listen to hundreds of SCOX investors after they get bilked.
Try this one on for size...
...SCO*cough*SCO... could take GPL code put it in a library release the library under the GPL and than simply link to it and keep all work that linked to it proprietary.
Ignore all of the bluster that SCO has been spewing about copyright's and patents, what you are left with is a supposed contract dispute between IBM and SCO. SCO is trying to claim ownership over derivative works of UNIX which they are apparently trying to claim is anything that uses UNIX services. Thus anything that is a derivitive work is supposedly covered under the license that SCO and their predecessors made UNIX available under.
Now compare this to the GPL. When you release a piece of software under the GPL you must make all derivitive works available under the same license as the GPL. Sound awful familiar? I thought so too.
So...if SCO is going to compare their license to the GPL and claim, "if the GPL can do it why can't we?" than what is the result? I have read the GPL and think I understand it as well as anyone. Not being a lawyer I can't claim authority in that respect but I believe it to be a totally fair and appropriate license. So why can't SCO claim the same thing? The license they released UNIX under may be vague in this respect but if it comes down to "any derivitive work of UNIX must be released under this same license" than how can the GPL be lawful and the SCO UNIX license not be lawful? Both can't be true.
There is one aspect that may be different between these two cases. The GPL has no exclusivity clause. Thus although the copyright holder is forced to make the source available under the terms of the GPL they can also make the program available under any other license they choose. In fact this is sometimes done so that the community can work on the GPL'ed code and the copyright holder can make money by selling to companies that want to hide their code changes.
Now I don't know that the SCO license has an exclusivity clause but there's no reason it couldn't. It's certainly fathomable that the GPL could include a clause that said "you must make the source available ONLY under the GPL" but I think it would be much less useful and certainly not as widely accepted. Anyway, the point is that SCO could have an exclusivity clause in the license. The end result being that indeed anything that uses UNIX services or runs on top of UNIX could be considered a derivitive work and thus subject to the terms of that license. In which case IBM and others would be libel for damages since they broke SCO's license by releasing code that by copyright belonged to them but that they gave up control over.
So...this is just a thought, as I write it already I see ways to argue against it. But it would be a sorry day in hell if either "derivitive work" was restricted such that only code that used code from another program was a derivitive work. Effectively this would put all GPL code under the LGPL. A particularly unscrupulous company
Furthermore, if SCO has no exclusivity clause in the license than the point is moot. As the copyright holder is certainly within their rights to release the software under other licensing terms.
I'm not sure what kind of probability to put on this scenario. But I've heard of stranger things. It's entirely possible SCO wouldn't mind going to court either to restrict the term "derivitive work" or even somehow in a backhanded manner, invalidate the GPL all in an attempt to avoid copyright infringement for work they have placed in to the SCO Unix offerings. Invalidating the GPL wouldn't get them anywhere though since than they would have to deal with the actual copyright holders and I'm thinking they wouldn't be too beholdin' to SCO.
Anyway, it's just a thought.
Sure information wants to be free, but how much are you willing to pay for the packaging?